The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Gig #113: Of late 24: Juana Molina, Anthony Pateras, Aaron Dilloway, Chino Amobi, Alex G, Huxley Anne, Forest Swords, Carla dal Forno, Loke Rahbek, Jlin, WaqWaq Kingdom, Pharmakon, Organ Tapes

 

 

Juana Molina
Anthony Pateras
Aaron Dilloway
Chino Amobi
Alex G
Huxley Anne
Forest Swords
Carla dal Forno
Loke Rahbek
Jlin
WaqWaq Kingdom
Pharmakon
Organ Tapes

 

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Juana Molina Cosoco
‘Since her early gem Segundo, Juana Molina has twisted acoustic and synthesized sound into fitful creations that underscore her narratives; with this work, she’s reached a zen place where the very texture of a tone becomes its own language. In her music, the “meaning” of a song can come from lyrics or gibberish rhythmic syllables, from radio static or synthesizer sounds that droop like tree branches made heavy by rain, or layered voice chorales that suggest whip-poor-wills in conversation. None of the sounds or the melodies that occupy the foreground of Halo last too long, and that gives the music an arresting quality: You want to pin it down and dissect its components, and the more you try, the more elusive it becomes.’ — First Listen

 

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Anthony Pateras Autophagy
‘Composer, improviser, and electro-acoustic music maker Anthony Pateras has for the better part of two decades continued to make forward thinking uncompromising music in a variety of guises. Whether it’s via one off collaborations or his various bands including Pateras/ (Sean)Baxter/(David) Brown, Thymolphthalein with Natasha Anderson, Will Guthrie, Jérôme Noetinger, and Clayton Thomas, PIVIXKI with Max Kohane, the Pateras/(Robin)Fox duo, North of North with Scott Tinkler and Erkki Veltheim or tetema with Mike Patton, Will Guthrie and Erkki Veltheim, you know that the involvement of Pateras ensures the result will be music quite unlike anything you’ve ever heard before.’ — Cyclic Defrost

 

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Aaron Dilloway Born In A Maze
‘Hundreds of releases and countless live performances littered the path that lead to 2012’s Modern Jester, artist Aaron Dilloway’s last major artistic statement as a solo artist and one his most well received documents since leaving Wolf Eyes, the prolific noise troupe that Dilloway co-founded in the late 90’s with musician Nate Young. Introducing itself with the cover image of a posed dummy ready for his yearbook portraiture, The Gag File pick up right where Modern Jester left off; its identity is directly tied to an absurdly uncomfortable head shot that stays permanently fixed in the listener’s mind whenever the album is summoned.’ — dais records.com

 

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Chino Amobi Kollaps
‘Experimental producer and NON co-founder Chino Amobi’s new album is described as “a musical epic set in a distorted Americana populated by a cast of sirens, demons, angels, imps, priests, hierophants, monsters and peasants” and features a long list of NON members and likeminded contemporaries including Elysia Crampton, Rabit, Haleek Maul and Dutch E Germ (aka Tim DeWit of Gang Gang Dance).’ — Fact Magazine

 

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Alex G Sportstar
‘On Rocket, his latest with Domino, Alex G dives deeper into his insular world while also expanding his palette, experimenting with jazz, country R&B, and noise rock. While the entire album is unmistakably him, no two songs are alike. The angst-filled fury of “Brick” finds Giannascoli screaming over a muddled production as if Lil Ugly Mane produced a Trapt single. On the next song, “Sportstar”, he sings an Auto-Tuned ballad about a destructive, one-sided relationship over hypnotic keyboards. “Proud” proves he could make a tremendous alt-country record one day if he wanted to, and there’s a saxophone on closer “Guilty” that would make Dev Hynes and Carly Rae Jepsen blush. Giannascoli’s gift is that he can manage these wild shifts in tone without ever losing sight of his vision. It’s purposefully scattered, not so much showing off as a desperate search for the right way to express himself at any one time.’– Consequence of Sound

 

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Huxley Anne Nin
‘Music was the grounding influence in my life as I grew up. I started dancing at age 3, piano at age 6, was on Napster torrenting albums at age 8. My diary was full of moody adolescent songs by age 12, shitty bands at age 16, then lots of lyrics & poems, half-hearted attempts at singing, finally opening Garageband in the desert on an iPad at 20 years old where I realized making electronic music was the medium I’d been searching for. Everything felt sort of scattered and unfocused before that—I always knew I wanted to pursue music, but I didn’t know how to translate the sounds I hear in my head until I started using a computer to do it. Synths work, too.’ — L.A. Taco

 

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Forest Swords Raw Language
‘His first new solo material proper since the Engravings [2013, Tri Angle] album locates the Merseyside-hailing artist Forest Swords scaling up his compositions to a more layered, pinched and grandiose sound but still kept just out of reach, somewhere in the middle distance, like the outline of a sunlit mountain range in the distance occluded by a spring storm. The R&B ruggedness that was key to his cherished earlier work belies Compassion, too. Echoing a beat-driven aesthetic that resonates with the rich history of his home region, a place cleft between sprawling, sea-sprayed wilds, concrete brutalism and mock classical architecture that makes for strong allegorical comparisons with his music.’ — Boomkat

 

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Carla dal Forno What You Gonna Do Now?
‘Patience is the key to understanding Carla dal Forno’s solo work: You Know What It’s Like is a grower, and one that demands repeated listening. Just two or three listens is a waste of everyone’s time – the record’s comparatively short 30-minunte running means it can glide past like someone else’s shadow. It’s a secret work, too; dal Forno has clearly taken a lot of time to make this a fleeting but intriguing glance into a specific time and place. She takes care to lay out her mysterious music for us – a music that feels timeless and ancient, full of uneasy memories and dark secrets. And, further, a music that feels potent and sensual, like a slow moving river. What really gives this record its strength is the total lack of bombast. There’s no sense of braggadocio. No sense of being in the “music industry”. No striving to make a point to peers.’ — Richard Foster

 

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Loke Rahbek Like A Still Pool
‘Echoing the growing influence Copenhagen’s Posh Isolation have had in recent years, label co-founder and creative instigator behind many of their acts Loke Rahbek steps out with a debut solo album. Assembled over the course of 2014-16 at Stockholm’s fabled EMS studios and Rahbek’s Posh Isolation base in Copenhagen, City Of Women effectively distils aspects of the various PI projects Rahbek has been involved in over the past few years to deliver a nine-track collection that defies easy categorisation. There is romance here in this mythical city, witnessed in Rahbek’s sumptuous piano playing in both ‘Fermented’ and ‘A Word A Day’, whilst his obvious mastery of channelling extreme noise to evoke an emotional response is evident in the title track or album opener ‘Like A Still Pool’. Pitched somewhere between a wistful Varg and the post-Hype Williams abstraction of John T Gast, this is a fine statement of intent from Rahbek on perhaps his strongest and most absorbing production to date.’ — Boomkat

 

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Jlin Black Origami
‘Never one to rely too heavily on melodic samples, Jlin instead explores the movement and meaning to be found amongst volatile beat patterns and otherworldly fragmented sounds. And while her February 2017 EP, Dark Lotus, offered a glimpse into her evolution as a producer, this latest full-length showcases Jlin’s talent for manipulating silence as well as sounds. Tracks like “Holy Child” and “Nandi” convey spirituality through complexity, their rhythms shifting and morphing as elements like drum beats, bells, and stray vocal samples fold into each other with mathematical precision. Other tracks, like “Hatshepsut” and the album’s closer “Challenge (To Be Continued),” layer disparate elements — like whistles and percussion samples from Africa, Japan, India, and HBCU drum lines — to evoke a sort of power that is at once unencumbered, but controlled.’ — The Fader

 

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WaqWaq Kingdom Step Into A World
‘Seasoned King Midas Sound watchers will know that vocalist Kiki Hitomi is frequently the best thing about the gnarled trio. Her bell-clear vocals and knack for a hook cutting through the waves of dubbed-out filth on a song like ‘Aroo’ to create something that hangs around the garden of left-field pop, without ever quite making up its mind whether to come in or not. On the face of it, there are similarities between WaqWaq Kingdom – Hitomi’s new project – and her King Midas day job, with both bands skirting around the edges of reggae. But whereas King Midas Sound delight in the filthier edge of the dub spectrum, all crooked dance hall beats and dubstepped sheets of bass, WaqWaq Kingdom create something that is simultaneously lighter, more psychedelic and downright weirder than anything cooked up by King Midas producer Kevin Martin (aka The Bug). Perhaps this is to be expected from a trio that features DJ Scotch Egg, an artist who mines the unexpectedly fertile cross over between gabber and chiptune, alongside a Nils Frahm collaborator (Andrea Belfi) who plays the trimba, a kind of triangular shaped drum pioneered by Moondog.’ — Ben Cardew

 

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Pharmakon Nakedness Of Need
‘The release date of Contact marks the ten-year anniversary of Margaret Chardiet’s project, Pharmakon. While working on her newest release, she began to evaluate the project as a whole. Though the content of each record has been very different and specific, the pervading question, which has underlined them all, is what is means to be human. Her last album, Bestial Burden, focused on the disconnect between mind and body, looking at the human as an isolated consciousness stuck inside of a rotting vessel. For Contact, she wanted to look at the other side of the spectrum – the moments when our mind can come outside of and transcend our bodies.’ — Sacred Bones Records

 

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Organ Tapes w/ Andrew Thomas Huang Fire Cock
‘Organ Tapes communicates with the listener obliquely. His music is painterly, operating through gesture and refraction. His vocals are slurred and auto-tuned, his beats amorphous and textured. On Words Fall To Ground, his second collection of original material, his sound continues to expand and accrete, filling up space gaseously, pregnant with affect, linear propulsion subsumed by drift and swell.’ — Rafael Lubner

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Liquoredgoat, Hi, D. Before I forget, thanks a ton and a half for the awesome and super fresh guest-post. It’ll launch here a week from this coming Friday, on the 16th. Sweet! Very nice about scoring the Duvert. On the same wavelength, I just got a galley of Duvert’s novel ‘Atlantic Island’ that Semiotext(e) is putting out this fall. It’s said to be one of his greatest, so I’m petty psyched to finally get to read that. Bon day! ** David Ehrenstein, My great pleasure, David. Proust and the Dreyfus case, okay, I’m curious. Thanks, I’ll read that when I get my next bit of clear sailing. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi, Dóra! What a nice day (yours): working on your book and your magazine. Like heaven. And fantastic news about the Hobart pub. date! Yes, yes, please hook us/me up as soon as it’s up there. All is good. We did get the extra editing time, an additional week (meaning an extra five days)! So we’re relieved about that. I, of course, just edited the film with Zac all day into the evening. Our production manager came by to look at some footage, and she seemed pretty pro about it, so that’s good. Oh, and the writer Christopher Higgs wrote very smartly and nicely about my GIF novel ‘Zac’s Freight Elevator’ and a few other things, and that went up at Entropy yesterday, and that made me very happy. It’s here if anyone’s interested. So, yes, and back to the editing races again I go in a few minutes. What did Wednesday deliver to you? ** Sypha, Hi. It’s an amazing post for sure. Definitely very happy to get it back in the public eye again. I wish I was the kind of writer who could write a novella on vacation. Your discipline and tempo when disciplined are very admirable, sir. ** Jamie, Hi, Eimaj! Ha, the editing room is not unlike a little mine actually, or it’s dark and stuffy at least. The mining — and the editing is not unlike mining now that I think about it — goes well. Oh, god, yes, I know very, very much about having budgetary perimeters lorded over you. In film stuff, you just try to keep the script/plan as complicated as originally planned and cut down the shot list, simplify the shooting location, and stuff like that, but I guess it’s not that simple in animation where elements aren’t as easily separable, or so I imagine. Are you working on the script revision now? Yesterday’s editing went well. We’re refining everything and shortening/lengthening, and moving things about a little. No big problems so far. Sometimes the scenes just won’t become what we wanted them to be, so we’re having to reinvent them to make them work, and that’s interesting. Anyway, blah blah. I hope Glasgow has heavily and passionately welcomed you back. Any progress on the new home front? Stop: Madeleine -> metro line 8 -> Stop: Chemin Vert love, Dennis. ** _Black_Acrylic, Highty-ho, Ben. ** Steevee, Hi. No, I haven’t done a Frank Perry Day, and that’s an excellent idea. I will. Thank you! Good, tentatively very good news on the stabilizing of your emotions! ** Misanthrope, Hi, George. Good until the evening isn’t good enough, man. That simply has to be righted. Your doctor guy got his degree to do that and earns his keep doing that and it is his solemn duty to sort that shit out. End of story. You saw that Mr. E reviewed ‘Handsome Devil’? There was a link here to his review, uh, two days ago? ** S., Hey. My heaven would be a no seafood zone. Seafood makings could live their happy, pre-seafood little lives in it though. No story is bad until it’s finished, and probably not even then. That’s my motto or something. Haunted bookstore: now you’re talking. ** Okay. I made one of my gigs for you today so try to find some time and space in your busy lives to test out its offerings if you can and are okay with that idea. Thanks. See you tomorrow.

18 Comments

  1. MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro

    Hey, how are you, Dennis? Long time. I’ve been unwell for many months, but have been keeping one eye on the blog. Finally starting to feel like myself again and was pleased to see today’s gig. I’ve been listening to a lot of this stuff too. Especially Chino Amobi, Jlin, Aaron Dilloway and old favourites Pharmakon, Loke Rahbek, and Alex G. I also went to a film club screening of Mouchette last week, made me think of you. I think it’s my favourite Bresson, so powerful. It’s hard to articulate how his films make one feel. Glad your film is coming along nicely, before I fell ill again I was trying to get LCTG screened at the CCA, wasn’t I? Sorry that didn’t happen. Oh well. My health allowing, we should be visiting Paris from the 16th of July for seven days. Would be nice to meet up for coffee and those lovely parisian pastries, however I suspect it will be too hot for you, ha ha. It has always struck me as odd that a Los Angelino would be so averse to the heat! Anyway, thanks for this treat of a gig. Will familiarise myself with the unfamiliar, post-haste!

  2. Jamie

    Hey Denutante, I really really like that Chino Amobi track! Thanks for that. I’m also really taken by that WaqWaq Kingdom video. That gif you’ve used at the top is so strangely hypnotic and kind of beautiful. I’ve spent a little too long today staring at it.
    So, how’s life back down the mines? Hope you’re striking diamonds and gold, haha.
    I am indeed attempting to revise the strips in a economically minded way today and at the moment I’m looking to do the kind of things you talk about cutting scenes and shots etc, but on the future ones I think it’s totally back to drawing board. A thing I never realised before is that we have have all our backgrounds and props made and paid for separately outwith the animation company, so some of my more lavish ideas are having to be canned and replaced with action set in the same room as last time. I kind of enjoy having to stretch my imagination with these limitations, but there’s only so far it can go.
    Your talk of reinventing scenes is interesting, esp when the scenes are already shot. How’s that working out?
    Flathunting is going slowly, and I’m not sure if surely, but it’s going. I think Hannah is really stressing out over it and working too hard at the same time, so I’m prepared to just accept something to be settled soon. Thanks for asking.
    So, what were Wednesday’s wonders? Mine have yet to come, I think. Hope yours has been awe-inspiring.
    Heuristic love,
    Jamie

  3. David Ehrenstein

    Lovely weirdo audio today

  4. Marcus Whale

    Top selection! It’s always a bounty when these posts come up. Very into Pateras’s work, my favourite piece of his is probably the 70 minute percussion *sextet which is wild and relentless in quite a beautiful way. The title was I think Beauty Will Be Amnesiac Or Not At All or something to that effect. Also thanks for your very kind words about Inland Sea a few weeks back. Marcus.

  5. Sypha

    Dennis, well, re: the novella just because I say I’m going to work on it then might not mean that I actually end up doing so, ha ha. One thing I’ll be doing different this year is that I’m bringing up a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. In the past years my brothers have brought up puzzles as well, and recently at work they were selling a puzzle made up of posters of famous Broadway musicals (yes, Barnes & Nobles sells jigsaw puzzles now), so I thought, why not? That’s me, living dangerously…

  6. Dóra Grőber

    Hi!

    Exactly how I felt. I love days like yesterday the best. Thank you, about the Hobart thing! I’ll share the link here as soon as it comes out!!
    That’s so great, I’m glad you got the extra days and it’s good news about your production manager too!
    Thank you for the article at Entropy, I really loved it! It’s really rich and pushes one to dig further into almost everything he mentions! (It also reminded me I should check out the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.) Congratulations for being a part of it!
    My day was filled with usual stuff and I met a friend in the afternoon which was nice. Other than this, nothing too special happened but it’s been all good.
    How’s the movie coming along? I hope very much as planned!

  7. steevee

    Waq Waq Kingdom sound really interesting – and surprisingly poppy for one of your posts, although I was really startled to see Charli XCX in this context. (I was less startled when I heard her new album in its entirety – it’s my favorite bit of mainstream dance-pop since Robyn’s BODY TALK.) Since I started following Tiny Mix Tapes, I’m a lot more familiar with these names, if not all their sounds.

  8. S.

    i keep looking for other seafood to eat. im like all that water and 5 things to eat. this place is heavenish to me i guess. im going to swim for the first time in years. my mom keeps trying to get me to swim with the dolphins. im like no ill die. i want to be jonah. music would really improve my life. almost 18 again. a way i never was

  9. _Black_Acrylic

    That Jlin LP arrived in the post yesterday and I’ve really been digging it. It’s a truly original sound that she’s got, more complex and multilayered than any other footwork producers I’ve heard.

    It’s the UK General Election tomorrow and I’m sorry to say that everything points to a big Tory win. I had today off work and couldn’t help myself following the campaign’s last sorry dregs. Anyway I shouldn’t bitch and moan too much, let’s save that for Friday.

  10. steevee

    I also really like Anthony Pateras and Carla dal Forno. I will call Rough Trade later this evening and ask if these are available on CD.

  11. chris dankland

    i really like Juana Molina, Forest Swords, and Carla dal Forno !! thanks for the music recommendations

    i’m gonna see Alex G and Japanese Breakfast play on Friday !!

    hope ur having a good morning, take care

  12. Joseph

    Before checking out this post I was completely unaware Duvert’s Atlantic Island was being released, in English, at all, let alone soon, so hell yes. All I’ve got is, I think, all there is – Good Sex Illustrated and Diary Of An Innocent but have always known there’s so much more out there unavailable not really even due to the language barrier but the lack of existence. What about that first thing of his that initially received praise and was later denounced? Is this it? I forget. Another thing to look forward to (my relatively and fluctuating abject poverty got a brief reprieve today so I get did Writers Who Love Too Much) Thanks for the music to dance to, especially the Juana Molina.

  13. Misanthrope

    Dennis, I agree, it isn’t good enough. I’ll see my GP and see what she recommends. As far as the surgeon, he’s a good guy and a good surgeon. A friend who’s a nurse at the same hospital said he’s the only doc who’s never had a complaint against him. If there’s anything fucked up about this surgery, it’s the mesh that was used and that is now part of the big class-action suit. It wasn’t recalled until a couple months after my surgery. So at the time, everything, as far as the medical field knew, was hunky dory.

    But of course, he could probably fix it somehow. The only real option I’m seeing is another laparoscopic procedure to snip the adhesions, which, of course, could cause more adhesions. Ugh. I’m really trying to avoid that.

    I totally missed that DavidE had reviewed “Handsome Devil.” I’ll look for it now. Strange of me to miss such things. However, sometimes I get on so late that I do a good, fairly thorough skim and then head to the comments section. Just missed it, obviously.

  14. h

    Dear Dennis: enjoyed the piece on your GIF fiction. So nice. And very nice music curation, as usual. Brief, today, but more soon. Have a nice day.

  15. Kyler

    Hi Dennis, thought of you tonight because Tilda Swinton was on Stephen Colbert, and he asked her what her greatest inspiration for acting was. She said it was the donkeys in a Bresson film, I forget which one, but I’m sure you’d know. I like that the donkeys were her inspiration. Hope the editing is going well. Looking forward to the film. K

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