DeafKids
Laura Cannell
The Newcomer
die ANGEL
Elucid
Coma Cluster Void
Blockhead
Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh
Phase Fatale
Ziúr
Machine Girl
Elodie
Colleen
Rose Kallal
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DeafKids Pés Atados
‘Configuração Do Lamento is an untamed release, happy to juxtapose monolithic drone riffage with frantic polyrhythmic detours, the band citing the syncopated beats of African drums as a major influence. It is a guttural, scorched mutation of psychedelia, that similar intent of frying the listener’s perception, whilst void of anything approaching earthy wistfulness, wholly fluid in nature, paying no heed to any musical expectations other than the creators own internal logic. A bombardment of clanging percussion sits below relentless guitar battering, and a whole host of electronic tamperings, effects which in practice manage to further confound the proceedings. Using the term psychedelic in the absolute loosest sense is apt, as the band claim that ‘non-genre genres’ are a chief source of inspiration, referencing anything from their own background in punk, right the way through to spiritual jazz, practically any form which allows the artist to experiment with the utter extremes of musical expression.’ — Neurot Recordings
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Laura Cannell Air Splinters Through
‘On all her previous albums Cannell has used her highly distinctive violin technique to tap into the East Anglian fen landscape, drawing out sounds that seemed to be hidden in the dark, damp earth. Hunter Huntress Hawker continues a series of astonishing recordings that only she could make. Playing her instrument with an overbow – that is, a bow restrung around the body of a violin – she can sound several notes at once, making her own harmonies like a one-woman band. The sound is rich and expressive but also strange, like the music of an older, half-forgotten culture. This is why she is usually described as a folk musician, although as an improviser she does not fit the standard folk template. Her sound jumps out of the present to inhabit a unstable time zone that is both present and past.’ — The Quietus
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The Newcomer TIRED EARTH
‘Earth Motivation is the first release on a new Opal Tapes sub-label called Beatrice & Annie. Its maker, Jon Pritchard, is formerly known as the beats producer Young Montana?. As such, this is an EP from familiar, if obscured, faces. It contains recognizable elements, but they’re served with a twist. Take “FUGUE,” which mostly does what it says on the tin by serving up fugue in a classical, albeit digital, style, only to finish with a detuned Supersaw à la Lorenzo Senni. The effect returns in “IS AS US,” eventually merging with baroque melodic arpeggios with ghostly results. “GO▒D FI▒▒RE” and “TIRED EARTH” have the structure of a woozy beats track with a low bitrate vaporwave makeup. “GO▒D FI▒▒RE” has a Young Montana?-esque see-saw swing while “TIRED EARTH” has the klak-klak heartbeat of 2-step and mangled vocals. Parts of Earth Motivation might be familiar, but it induces a sense of wonder tinged with confusion, a sure sign that you’re experiencing something new.’ — Resident Advisor
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die ANGEL Papyrus
‘lpo Väisänen, formerly of Pan Sonic, and Dirk Dresselhaus, aka Schneider™, have been playing an annual show together since 1999, the year they first met while Dresselhaus was supporting Pan Sonic on tour. Since then, they have released seven albums as a duo under the name Angel. Now they are about to present their eighth as the slightly modified die Angel. Recorded in Germany between December 2016 and January 2016, it’s called Entropien I and it features Oren Ambarchi.’ — The Wire
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Elucid Jealous God
‘Elucid’s music can be difficult, or at least seem unapproachable. It’s full of knotty, dense writing and supremely technical passages. Yet unlike plenty of underground rappers (and major-label artists, for that matter), he’s uniquely attuned to melody and song structure. Even when he breaks convention, his intent seems to be clear; his delivery is an intoxicating blend of the gruff and guttural and something more melodic. His LP from last year, Save Yourself, was a collage of heartbreak and ambition that takes dozens of listens to properly unpack; it grappled with love, gentrification, and the corrosive nature of religious institutions.’ — Paul A. Thompson
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Coma Cluster Void Everything Is Meant To Kill Us
‘Coma Cluster Void doesn’t do things like other bands. The group’s Thoughts From a Stone is a 22-minute piece. With haunting, classically-inspired passages, doses of technical death metal and hard-edged progressive rock, the track is undeniably unsettling and yet impossibly entertaining. When the band formed in 2013, the members agreed that Coma Cluster Void would be a vehicle for storytelling, both through musical composition and the written word to expand the palette of expression in metal music. Thoughts From a Stone, a one-movement symphony, connects with the collective’s first album, Mind Cemeteries as well: It provides the backstory of the mysterious Iron Empress, a character pivotal to that earlier work.’ — Pop Matters
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Blockhead Bad Case of the Sundays
‘Sampling is how I make my music. Without it, my music would suffer considerably. My way of stepping around the legal aspect is to simply keep a low profile. Don’t license it. Sure, that’s a shitload of money I could be making but it’s not worth jeopardizing my sound for. The reality of it is that my music doesn’t make enough money to really attract the attention of people looking to sue. On top of that, I tend to go for pretty obscure sources. There have been a few times I got caught and it was dealt with very amicably and didn’t result in my having to pay anyone out or mortgage my house. Maybe I’ve just been lucky? Who knows. I’m knocking on wood right now just in case.’ — Blockhead
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Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh Dust Love
‘The music on viola player Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh’s first solo work, Oreing, is constantly ambitious. As she mines her instrument for new sounds, her emphatic songs swing from subtlety to repetition to fiery noise. Each of the tape’s four pieces is a journey through intense peaks and calm valleys, seeming to hint at an unspoken narrative. Oireachtaigh built the songs on Oreing from what she describes as “small fragments that I chanced upon just from playing around.” After recording those bits, she let them sit a while, then improvised on the original ideas. She performed the resulting pieces a few times live before committing them to tape, which only took a few hours including mixing. That no-frills process created music that feels considered and developed, but also retains the rush of her original spontaneity.’ — Hi Bias
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Phase Fatale Redeemer
‘Phase Fatale is the techno project of Berlin-based DJ and producer Hayden Payne. Originally from New York, Payne explored the post-punk/coldwave world through various projects over the course of a decade. Started in 2014, Phase Fatale served as an outlet for his own interpretation of darker and industrial-fused techno. Defined by rigid drum programming, cutting synthesizers and bleak samples, he has created a sound imprint that has transformed into a new electronic identity. This joining of sinister productions and cold atmospherics sculpt the landscape of future war.’ — Resident Advisor
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Ziúr U Feel Anything?
‘For someone who has previously released just two EPs, the vision of Ziúr’s music is advanced and precise. It’s music which beckons you into an alternate world; wonderfully alien pop music that eschews conventions. She creates eldrich atmospheres that balance gentle melody and warm pop, in which strange elfin voices sing from other worlds and spiralling rhythms feel like entire structures moving. In the latter half of the record these harden into a pounding, martial symphony of steel, and introduce the kind of rough electronic riffs and guitar samples that betray her background in punk.’ — Planet Mu
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Machine Girl Freewill (Phase β)
‘Wow, if you told me in 2015 or 2016 that Machine Girl would’ve been the artist to (finally) redefine digital hardcore to match the improved electronic technology of the 21st century and compete with like.. well really the only contender for the best digital hardcore album of all time, that being Atari Teenage Riot: 1992-2000, then I would’ve been totally dumbfounded. Here I thought they were just another manic breakcore artist, but apparently they have a lot of fury to lash out on us, and I really fucking love it. This is easily one of the most creative hardcore albums of the decade, and it’s crazy just how well this was executed. I mean, we really fucking need this too. Digital hardcore is a genre with so much potential yet so much of the music in this genre uses dated 90s and early 2000’s tech because apparently there hasn’t been much of a desire for a revival.’ — strayslack
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Elodie La Saison Blanche
‘”Vieux Silence”, and ELODIE in general provoke a visual imagination in an instant, perhaps filtered through aged watercolour, tape grain, antique lenses, forgotten levels of listening and observational patience. On this gorgeous album Chalk & van Luijk also collaborate with piano, pedal steel and clarinet (played by ; Tom James Scott, Daniel Morris and Jean-Noel Rebilly, respectively). Each detail carefully considered and colouring step by step, like an impressionist watercolour.’ — Stephen O’Malley
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Colleen Winter dawn
‘Since her earliest release in 2002, the French multi-instrumentalist and singer has sounded more like herself with each new project, despite continual efforts to disrupt her own working process. In the first act of her career, Schott’s albums on the Leaf label manufactured ethereal loopscapes from old music boxes and 19th-century glass harmonicons, reinventing forgotten instruments and charging them with a percussive energy rooted in minimalism, gamelan, and other non-Western musical traditions. Shortly before her lengthy hiatus in 2007, Schott fell in love with another obscure instrument: the viola da gamba, a 15th century antecedent of the cello, which allows players to perform both chord and melody, handy for a solitary composer. By sloughing off historical context, Schott has been able to perceive all her instruments as generators of raw sound, opening up unexpected possibilities in genre and mood; it’s an approach that aligns her with her musical hero, Arthur Russell, whose disregard for classical tradition turned his cello into a spartan rhythm section.’ — Chal Ravens
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Rose Kallal Murzim
‘Rose Kallal has had an ongoing relationship with London label We Can Elude Control since 2010 when she released her first record, a 7″ split with Karl O’Connor (aka Regis) and ex-Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris. Following another record featuring a remix by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and a collaboration with Strange Attractor editor Mark Pilkington, Kallal is about to release her debut album. Called Perseus, it’s a collection of six extended modular synth recordings, made at home in Brooklyn, New York. As well as audio analogue electronics, Kallal also works with 16mm film, and her performances often incorporate multiple projections, computer animation and video synthesis. Kallal has produced a video for the album track “Murzim”.’ — The Wire
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p.s. Hey. ** H, Hi there, h! Good to see you, buddy. My trip was very good. The build-up to Halloween was excellent and full of lovely home haunts. As for Halloween itself, I spent it cramped in a seat on a jet. Our film: We’re submitting it to film festivals. That, for better or worse, will be the extent of its life for the next while. We should hear back from two festivals by the end of this month. Our fingers are very crossed. An Alvin Lucier event, very nice! Sorry to hear of the rejections. Yeah, they’re hard to avoid, but luckily they don’t mean anything ultimate or longstanding. Take care! ** Armando. Hi. Wow, ha ha. Well, I thought her piece fit well in the show, and I don’t know her work otherwise, and if that makes me a ‘pedantic, bourgeois, ignorant, myopic Western European elite’, then so be it, I guess. Oops. ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, yes, I did in fact forget that great Thek piece, silly me. ** Steve Erickson, Yeah, re: Destroyer, although he uses rock so flexibly I almost think his work doesn’t count as rock, but, yeah, that’s where he’s coming from, although actually I think he’s coming from folk originally. I get the quality of Queens of the Stone Age, but it doesn’t do much for me. Why would anyone with interesting aspirations want to collaborate with Marilyn Manson at this point? He’s so long since creatively spent. Anyway, very nice thoughts and wordage there. Yes, I saw the link to your film last night on Facebook and watched it. It’s excellent! I didn’t have any big issues with the sound. The abrupt cuts threw me at first, but I wound up liking them and thinking they’re effective. And the actor is very good, convincing and yet knowingly inside the conceit. Congratulations, Steve! Everyone, Many of you who hang out here know that Steve Erickson has been making a short film. Well, it’s finished, and you can watch it yourselves, and I highly encourage you to do that because it’s very fine. I have embedded the video at the bottom of this p.s. for maximum access. Enjoy! And here is Steve’s little introduction to the film: ‘The short film I directed this summer, THIS WEEK TONIGHT, is now up on YouTube. It’s not technically perfect – there are some issues with the sound that couldn’t be fixed in post-production, although everything is perfectly audible, but I am very proud of my writing and Dave Hall’s acting as a cable TV news host who just got fired. I am very attracted to the form of the filmed monologue and plan to direct another one next year. I began writing this at the very tail end of last year, around Dec. 27th or 28th, and I think it’s still quite topical and expresses an anger, alienation and helplessness many Americans still feel.’ ** Bill, Hey! Thanks, pal. I haven’t seen ‘BPM’, yet anyway. Everyone I know here who’s seen it said the same thing: ‘I didn’t like it, I don’t think you will like it either, but you should probably see it.’ Which didn’t make me rush to the theater. But I will watch it ere long. Right, Thanksgiving does have a bright side! ** Sypha, Hi, James. Ha ha, I always think everything I write is totally accessible too. Those ‘trivial’ details and the inordinate attention to things, locations, etc. are some of the most impressive, valuable, and characteristic qualities of your voice and your writing. That fascination and unusually close attention are two of the reasons your work is so distinct and impressive and pleasurable. But it’s true that anything out of the ordinary can cause as many problems (especially with publishing’s self-styled arbiters of readers’ tastes) as it can create devoted fans. Publishing is just a series of doors. How great if ‘Harlem Smoke’ made it through one of them. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi, Dóra! Congrats on your first work day! I see, I see. I would imagine the learning curve is natural and will find you as knowledgeable as anyone will need you to be very quickly. How many days a week do you work? Very cool. I wish I could pop in there and ask you very easy questions. The new film script is going well, I think. We want to do something quite different than ‘PGL’, less centrally narrative driven and ‘looser’ seeming so we’ll have room to be more adventurous and playful with the actual visualization, so it’s taking time to figure out the right way to do that. I’m just laying out a basic, still sketchy script for the first part of the film that I can show to Zac, whereupon we’ll start working together to finesse it, assuming Zac likes what I’m proposing. The ‘Crowd’ premiere is tonight. Nerve-racking. I’m guessing Gisele will call and let me know how it went tomorrow. My day yesterday was work-y. It was fine. And I do think my jet lag is dead, although I’m always really cautious to declare victory. Did you work again today? How was that and everything else? ** Amphibiouspeter, Hey, Peter. Ha ha, nice. Glad you liked the Hilliard piece. It’s not rainy here, but it has gotten quite cold, 0 degrees and below at night, which I fucking love. You take care too. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, Ben. So today is kind of the official relaunch of YnY then, yes? Going public seems like The Beginning. Hooray! The world will be a richer place by the time you leave for work today, assuredly. ** Schlix, Cool, thanks, Uli. Fingers very crossed, and your opinion will be most welcome, not only because I probably won’t get to see ‘Crowd’ myself for another couple of weeks. ** Keetawn, You could go into Hip Hop with that moniker. I’m glad I didn’t grow up in the country. Or maybe I should have. Killed a whole bunch of mosquitoes, I have. One last night, in fact. Spooky that mosquitoes are still alive now that it’s winter here. That can’t be good. Varg! Lookin’ good. I have a big head, and I can’t wear hats. Not even caps. Whenever I have, people say, ‘Christ, you have a big head’. But no one ever says that when I’m hatless. ** Misanthrope, G-man. Good. My jet lag is gone too. High international five. I doubt it, re: the jerking off. Well, maybe about the Japanese GIFs. Or, venturing a guess about what kind of person would look at my blog, maybe about that painting of the boy with the knife in his back. I was completely convinced that I was bi for a couple of years there. It seemed totally logical. And I was apparently a very convincing bi because when I traded that identity in for being gay again, some people I knew were weirdly disappointed. I think maybe they thought it was the less adventurous choice. Which I guess it was. Anyway, you know I don’t personally believe in collective identity, so who gets people’s hearts and sexual organs isn’t very important information about them to me. Happy Wednesday! ** Okay. I made one of my gigs for y’all with some music I’ve been exploring and digging recently. As ever, I hope you’ll give it a test. So do that, watch Steve’s film (just below) if you like, and I will see you tomorrow no matter what you end up doing.
THIS WEEK TONIGHT, a 2017 short written and directed by Steve Erickson
Now available in North America 