Gig #145: Of late 49: Fire-Toolz, Ewa Justka, Davey Harms, Metal Preyers, JAK3, Caleb Landry Jones, Villaelvin, Model Home, Lorenzo Senni, Golem Mecanique, Lee Ranaldo & Raül Refree, Vladislav Delay, Fistfuck, Zeroh, Kill Life w. Penny Rimbaud

Fire-Toolz
Ewa Justka
Davey Harms
Metal Preyers
JAK3
Caleb Landry Jones
Villaelvin
Model Home
Lorenzo Senni
Golem Mecanique
Lee Ranaldo & Raül Refree
Vladislav Delay
Fistfuck
Zeroh
Kill Life w. Penny Rimbaud

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Fire Toolz It’s Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer
‘Fire-Toolz is the flagship musical project of a consciousness that has taken the physical form of a transfemme non-binary human named Angel Marcloid. While her orbiting projects like Nonlocal Forecast and MindSpring Memories find Marcloid pursuing discrete, genre-specific composition in styles like jazz fusion or sample collage respectively, Fire-Toolz compresses tropes and ideas from virtually every style of music in her vast toolbox into combinatory pieces overloaded with novel juxtapositions and intricate structural decisions.’ — Max Allison

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Ewa Justka Oi, Kant!
‘Oi, Kant! is a new DIY “drum-ish machine” from Polish underground techno artist Ewa Justka that pairs modular routing with rhythmic appeal. The result is a box that can make both deep grooves and unhinged sputters of noise. The synth’s exploration-encouraging setup has a wide range of sonic possibilities due to its modular routing options. Featuring drum, bass and cymbal voices—plus a resonant filter that acts as a fourth—that can all be routed through one of the machine’s four sequencers, Oi, Kant! rewards users who want to experiment or just recklessly twist and tap buttons.’ — Electronic Beats

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Davey Harms Little Brother
‘Like Providence contemporaries Lightning Bolt and Container, Harms’ music is built on aggressive repetitions that amplify subtle variations. This quality intensified after Harms began releasing music on Hausu Mountain, the genre-melting Chicago label whose founders Maxwell Allison and Doug Kaplan were among Mincemeat’s early fans. On 2016’s Cables, released under his own name, Harms loosened his pedal-only set-up without compromising that barreling intensity. On Soundsystem, a 2017 follow-up credited to World War, Harms broke further from his comfort zone with dynamic rhythms to compliment his expanding instrumentation. Appropriate for an album named after one moniker and credited to his other, World War takes the best qualities from each release and produces a leaner, meaner fusion. At under 28 minutes, it’s Harms’ shortest and most potent release yet.’ — Miles Bowe

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Metal Preyers Peppa
‘As Metal Preyers, London’s Jesse Hackett and Chicago-based Mariano Chavez distill a sozzled, bleary impression of their time spent with Lord Tusk and a crack squad of Ugandan musicians in Kampala, 2019 for the indomitable Nyege Nyege Tapes. Documenting the result of six weeks of making music, art, and videos, and Waragi Gin-fueled rides into Kampala’s nightlife, Metal Preyers takes form as an industrial/ambient film soundtrack for Chavez and Hackett’s visual art produced under the Teeth Agency moniker. Joined by a full battery of traditional percussion and strings, plus the canny use of whistling and Lord Tusk’s rude sound system sensibilities, the Afro-Anglo-Americano ensemble serve a triple AAA-rated trip that lures listeners into their intoxicated/intoxicating state of mind and effectively connotes the experience of a jag deep into the belly of Uganda’s thrilling, sprawling capital city at a crossroads of East and Central Africa.’ — Forced Exposure

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JAK3 Raverboy
‘Hot on the heels of his debut tape outing for Origin Peoples, Pennsylvania-based Waistdeepclique affiliate JAK3 returns to the label with his first-ever vinyl release, ‘R4VER’ – a six-track dementia-inducing sonic commute, convincingly making the rounds between mutagenic Birmingham tech tropes, squared lo-fi membranes and ’95 post-dated, high-velocity breaks straight out a ravers’ paradise.’ — Inverted Audio

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Caleb Landry Jones Flag Day
‘The Mother Stone came together after actor/musician Jones met filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. “I was a big fan of his work,” Jones says. “Instead of wanting to talk, I thought I’d write him a piece that would somehow let him know who I was.” Jarmusch enjoyed Jones’ music and, subsequently, connected the actor with Sacred Bones label head Caleb Braaten. “I had no idea what an astounding and unusual musician Caleb Landry Jones was until he gave me some of his music to listen to two years ago,” Jarmusch said. “Oh man, I don’t even know how to describe it! But I asked Caleb if we could get it to Caleb Braaten at Sacred Bones. And now, thanks to these two Calebs it’s being delivered to the world—a strange and beautiful gift!”’ — Madison Bloom

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Villaelvin GHOTT ZILLAH
‘In April 2019 improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist Elvin Brandhi moved into the ‘Villa’ in Kampala, Uganda, working on a collaborative album with several artists from the Nyege Nyege collective. This new project called Villaelvin is the first full LP to be released on Hakuna Kulala and abrasive track “Ghot Zilla” is a first glance of Head Roof. Auto-tune blast beats from field recordings of Evangelist churches, the swamps surrounding the studios, with warped drums by Kampala based percussionist Omutaba, improvised stream of consciousness lyrics from local rappers Hakim and Swordman Kitala, with glitched out bassy productions with Boutiq Studio manager Don Zilla and Congolese producer Oise.’ — Pan-African Music

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Model Home Grip
‘Model Home are the Washington-based duo which include the rapper NappyNappa and the multimedia artist Patrick Cain. In the duo’s own words “a collaborative experiment in liberated sound, vision, and performance“. According to the press release, the spirit of free improvisation pervades the tracks, a sound evolving from two artistic sensibilities bouncing off each other without a set plan and creating a third pathway to unknown worlds.’ — Fact Mag

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Lorenzo Senni THINK BIG
‘Scacco Matto is described as a continuation of Senni’s distinctive “pointillistic” trance style, previously heard on records like Superimpositions and 2016’s Persona EP, which marked his debut on Warp. “The title means ‘check mate’ in Italian, and there’s a constant ‘opponent’ within the tracks – like I was playing a chess game with myself,” explains Senni. “I was really trying to bring the music to a certain place and then switch advantageously to another approach. I wanted to see how far I could push the ideas I’ve been developing since [2012’s] Quantum Jelly and in order to do that, I needed to force self-imposed limits and rules.”‘ — Christian Eede

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Golem Mecanique Face A
‘Although Karen’s main instrument are her voice, and her mind, she also performs on organ, and also together with the Mediterranean folk music impressionada Marion Cousin on this deeply moving album. Karen also utilises a very special French instrument known as the BAB, a kind of mechanised vielle (hurdy-gurdy)… one of the more incredible inventions of the La Nòvia group’s legendary instrument builder Léo Maurel. Basically, the instrument sounds like an arcane goth/spirit interpreting Phill Niblock’s string pieces, in monochrome on the very edge of the invention of color grain. Marvellous.’ — Stephen O’Malley

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Lee Ranaldo & Raül Refree Alice
‘There’s always been an elemental poetry to the output of Lee Ranaldo. From his wonderfully mottled solo work and helping define a generation with Sonic Youth, to his first book, 1994’s Road Movies and several other collections of poetry and short writings since, his voice has always sounded and read multi-dimensional. On Names of North End Women, his new collaborative album with Catalan musician and producer Raül Refree, listeners are treated to a whole slew of new accents and strange patois, most of which are resistant to second-guessing. From the first balmy notes of opener ‘Alice Etc.’, the big sell here is instantly enticing: celebrated though they both are as guitarists, here, Ranaldo and Refree meld minds to eke out shapeshifting expanses that owe little to their instrument of choice.’ — Brian Coney

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Vladislav Delay Rakka
‘Rakka is compelling no matter the context, a breathless cycle of terror and retreat that mirrors stresses as ancient as extreme climates and as modern as our frenetic news cycle. But it’s also accurate. I’ve spent extended chunks of the last five years in the woods—sometimes above the Arctic Circle, sometimes trudging through feet of snow on the rim of the Grand Canyon. I listened to Rakka for the first time without knowing anything about it and immediately found myself transported beyond my headphones and back to those wild places, intoxicated by the rush of circumstances that could have killed me. Thanks to the ubiquity of cameras capturing the world’s most isolated locales, you can now see what the world looks like from the side of some razor-thin, windswept perch in the Rockies; turn up Rakka and close your eyes, and I swear you can also understand how electrifying it feels.’ — Grayson Haver Currin

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Fistfuck Tongue Removal (Edit)
‘I couldn’t be more thrilled that “Tongue Removal” is part of this new batch on Fantasy 1. This is my first CD-R release in a while. Go over and grab the whole batch. It’s insane.’ — Fistfuck

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Zeroh 4D
‘This is not something to passively listen to while working on something else. The 14 tracks demand your attention as he experiments with the production from noise to classical to jazz with sprinkles of trance and the grey area of what you might hear in your brain during REM sleep. He pitches his voice all over the place, also tweaking with the BPM within a song to throw your brain for a loop. He even engineers his voice differently within the track “The Lord & Nature” bringing it front and center in the first half then couching it behind the beat on the second half.’ — The Fader

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Kill Life w. Penny Rimbaud Us Boys
’50th God Unknown Records release a double split 7″ with the mysterious Kill Life featuring CRASS’s Penny Rimbaud.’

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p.s. Hey. ** JM, Hi, Josiah. Yeah, it kind of is, isn’t it. Pretty impeccable. I’m almost sure I featured the book here before more minimally in one of my ‘… books i loved’ posts ages back. I’m hunting for my juice too. There’s something non-conducive in the air, but patience always works. Well, patience with nudges. I’m good. Hope you are too. ** Ian, Hi, Ian. It is pretty wild, but very composed too. Good combo, in this case. I think context or context creation is pretty key, yeah. I’m doing fine. You too? How’s stuff? ** Armando, I’m doing all right, thanks. No, I’m all but sure I had the book in a ‘books I loved’ post quite a while ago, but no more than that. Well, I would say your impression of the book is 100% inaccurate, but I guess you can decide if you ever read it. Extreme treatments sound daunting, yeah. Well, depending on their/your definition of extreme, I guess. But extreme is usually a red light. The interview was good, yeah, thank you. I hope your day is a big surprising winner. ** David Ehrenstein, Well, yes, I agree. Everyone, Mr. Ehrenstein’s FaBlog takes us on a little trip to Alabama today. When’s the last time you went to Alabama? Get on board. ** Tosh Berman, I know, right? One of those, damn, I wish I’d thought of that title first kind of titles. Grabby as grabs can get. Absolutely for sure about the potential of a narrative. You’re not tempted? Well, I guess you just wrote it, or its synopsis at least. I went too that pony ride place on the grounds of the future Beverly Center once as a kid. Startling memory. I sort of can’t believe the Beverly Center is still there and functioning. Talk about an elephant of a ‘good’ idea from the past. You’re very fine, I hope? ** _Black_Acrylic, Indeed! You know, your story idea has a dreaminess about it if you can sustain such a lovely, almost nothing concept for long enough. Or, yeah, there’s the ‘Babyfucker’ route, but your writing group might … balk? ** Sypha, Hi, James. I did read the entire ‘Sea of Fertility’ tetralogy strangely enough a long, long time ago. And I liked it a lot at the time. Yeah, I read all four, and, you know me, that’s a whole big bunch of pages by my usual standards. You’re digging it? Whoa, B&N is reopening! Congrats! How was your first day? Do you guys over there suggest masked customers and have required hand sanitiser lotion use at the door and so on like we do here? ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! It’s actually really worth reading. Extremely well composed and written. Thanks about the Little Caesar round up. I’m really happy you like Tim’s work. He was/is amazing. Any news on your book getting freed up and heading our way? ** Misanthrope, I think you’d like it. And it’s really short, so it won’t waste your precious time even if you thumbs-down it. I would love to see those Enchanted Forest pix, you bet. Oh, right, you were 7 when that Garrett single came out. Duh, okay, everything makes sense now. Ack, I was hoping to get to see you with a giant hippie afro or something, damn. But okay. Welcome back! ** Steve Erickson, Good that your eye stuff is in motion. Mm, I tend to like when things take things at face value and expect the viewer to use their brains enough to decide what they think. Although current day USA’s anti-thinking bent as the context does give me second thoughts. I don’t know that series, and, given my non-interest in TV, I probably never will. But that’s interesting to know about. ** Right. Today you get my new gig of new/newish music I’m into and am, by virtue of the gig context, suggesting as a world of possibly fruitful investigation for you. But, hey. See you tomorrow.