Gig #81: Of late 23: Duster, M.E.S.H., death’s dynamic shroud.wmv, Thighpaulsandra, Vince Staples, Tallesen, Rolo Tomassi, Slackk, RP Boo, Flying Saucer Attack, Seven Davis Jr., White Poppy, Xiu Xiu

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Duster Tropical Solution
‘There was no shortage of psychedelic listening options for the late-’90s space cadet; you simply had to navigate the substrata of drone-friendly bands such as Spiritualized, Flying Saucer Attack and Bardo Pond. San Jose, Calif.’s Duster flew closer to Earth, offering more structured guitar-rock compositions and the kind of muffled-yet-melodic vocals that hadn’t been heard since the (original) shoegaze era. For debut album Stratosphere, the songwriting duo of Clay Parton and Dove Amber recruited drummer Jason Albertini (an original member of Queens Of The Stone Age) and created a sound akin to Yo La Tengo playing beneath a heavy winter blanket. For an exploration of the pop side of the space-rock moon, Stratosphere is one place to start.’ — Magnet

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M.E.S.H Thorium
‘Piteous Gate, the debut full-length from Berlin-based artist M.E.S.H., uses the cinematic and all of its tropic tendencies to arrive at a statement of personal vision often hard to find within the social continuum of future-minded electronica or quasi-club music. That isn’t to say the record isn’t full of the social tropes common within the field; rather, the record uses those sounds — ephemera from sample packs, pirated VSTs, Ableton drum-racks loaded with Frankenstein YouTube samples, mecha, etc. — to contextualize the individual’s relationship to the largeness of spectacle. The album’s subtlety and abstract tendencies prevent it from becoming solely a work of stock collage or pastiche appropriation. Rather, in order to evoke the powerful, high-budget achievement of top-dollar soundtracks, M.E.S.H. incorporates trending audio into the prodigy of his own will to power, an act that reflexively places himself at the center of the discourse’s high-fidelity. After all, the individual artist’s own labor can become competitive with the machines that produce our most grandiose sci-fi. Finally, there can be indistinguishability between the sheer productive capability of capital and the loner armed with vision and software — one of the dreams of electronic music all along. This exchange between subject and massive infrastructure, between personal will and infinite resources, makes the space of Piteous Gate similar to a public space structured like a collection of multiple private domains. But, isn’t that just cinema, blown away/disappointed people sitting together alone in a public space?’ — SCVSCV

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death’s dynamic shroud.wmv 너 땜에 맘이 맘이 맘이 맘이 괴로워요
‘For anyone who may have written off vaporwave years back, please let Death’s Dynamic Shroud.wmv’s messy, marvelous new album pull you back in. Vaporwave went through some ugly years after its time in the spotlight. There were a lot of factors: over-saturation from a flood of less-than-inspiring releases; a pushback from its conceptually weighty origins; a few brick-dumb articles that introduced it to wider audiences as a punchline. In their own ways each of those contributed to creating an environment that was intensely, defensively closed-off to the point of asphyxiating itself. Yet lately there are releases popping up that show vaporwave growing and evolving in ways that are really exciting. That’s part of what makes I’ll Try Living Like This such a blast. It doesn’t try to subvert any of the current trends in vaporwave, it doesn’t try to hearken back to the intensely conceptual qualities of the early days. I’ll Try Living Like This does one single thing: it fucking bangs — hard and consistently — for a dizzyingly complex and immensely pleasurable hour, and then says good bye (the last track is literally called ‘Good Bye’). It feels like a part of this genre’s strange lineage, yet never feels tied down by it.’ — Fact Magazine

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Thighpaulsandra Paralysed
‘If you have heard any of Thighpaulsandra’s previous albums, you will know that you’d best approach this record with no fixed set of expectations, because once again he changes genres and defies easy classification, sometimes more than once within one song. Drawing on his long-time background as a key member in such diverse groups as Coil, Spiritualized and Julian Cope’s band (in each case arguably at the height of their creative prowess) and his work as producer and sound engineer for an even larger variety of customers, you’ll find classical passages next to hard rock riffing, krauty experimental work-outs turning into super catchy, almost radio-friendly songs and more. Many adjectives have been used to describe Thighpaulsandra’s work: epic, challenging, timeless, idiosyncratic, but certainly never predictable or boring.’ — Editions Mego

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Vince Staples Get Paid
‘Talking about the four, five, or nine “elements of hip-hop” is no longer fashionable, not because the art form has fundamentally changed, but because we have learned more about what it is. Why, then, is evaluating distinct criteria like “production” and “lyricism” still so much more common in rap criticism than in any other kind of music writing? Summertime ‘06 is privately nostalgic for songs like Sean Paul’s “Temperature” and Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’” and Beyoncé’s “Check on It” and Cassie’s “Me and U” and Yung Joc’s “It’s Going Down.” Rap songs from 2006 continue to affect us because they sound thrilled with themselves; there’s a sublime and overwhelming Gestalt to these tracks that transcends catchy hooks and smart lyrics, combining these with the affective realm of voice inflection and onomatopoeia to create an irreducible sum. I thought about this when Vince Staples told the Grantland NBA After Dark podcast that music in the era of digital piracy was about “creating moments.”’ — Will Neibergall

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Tallesen Emmel
‘Tallesen works full-time as a roof-top gardener in NYC. Since his day job consists of planting vegetation that he’ll (potentially) never see fully grown, gardening provides a good entry point into why his music sounds the way it does: as if it were a tree planted on a 20th-floor balcony whose growth can only be measured from a specific point in Central Park. Importantly, though, Tallesen wants to make his audience move. Because a lot of his music is audibly contorted and melted, stretched and stifled, etc. and etc., bodies tap or move (uncontrollably, even) to a potentially non-existent, perhaps constantly decaying rhythm. Yet, as Tallesen tries to shift both with and without this confinement of beat, there’s an insatiable twitch inside us that wants to move with one or all melodies, a fleshy desire for audible nihilism.’ — C Monster

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Rolo Tomassi Raumdeuter
‘Rolo Tomassi are the wild children borne of Converge and the Dillinger Escape Plan’s technical ecstasy, borne thousands of miles away but in full possession of that visionary collision between the atavistic and the exultant – that is the essence of the group’s totemic, visceral power. Those qualities are featured most daringly here on tracks such as ‘Raumdeuter’, and ‘The Embers’, their sheer assurance and sophistication a wonder to behold. Eva Spence’s vocal command remains one of the most potent weapons in extreme metal, a blade honed amid the aural contortions that it is relentlessly ground upon, never losing its razor-sharp capabilities. Short circuit guitar pathways scorch and suspend themselves alongside riptides of bright melodic arcs, their brutality landing as harshly just as surely as their melodic immediacy. But these signature aggressions are given nuance by the surprising yet welcome pools of evocative piano-centred pieces.’ — Kevin Mccaighy

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RP Boo Your Choice
‘Sonically, RP Boo is a modern-day Zatoichi samurai, cutting his samples in unorthodox ways. His sound remains unique. Fingers, Bank Pads & Shoe Prints contains both tracks made after his acclaimed 2013 debut album “Legacy” (“An album of scorching, scene-defining hits” SPIN) and older tracks. Highlights include “Banging On King Dr.” which sees him cutting up street numbers; the monolithic noir feeling of “Sleepy”; the subtle funk of “Your Choice” which may in some way be inspired by his Dad’s role as bass player for Prince; “Lets Dance Again” whose delicate soulful sound echoes deep streams of Chicago dance music history; the dramatic string-infused “Daddy’s Home” and the celebration of achieving dreams that is the closer “B’Ware.” Fingers, Bank Pads & Shoe Prints is the sound of an innovator reconfirming his place as leader with one of the most essential Footwork albums to date.’ — Planet Mu

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Slackk Posrednik
‘Slackk’s Backwards Light EP harbors the unshakeable sino-grime sound of yesteryear and mobilizes it, bringing it successfully into the current by combining it with a raving orchestration that fits well with its R&S; home. It’s a similar model to some of his previous work — the track “Three Kingdoms” from last year’s debut full-length Palm Tree Fire offered a comparable Eastern motif. But while that almost boarded on banality, Backwards Light is sharper and arguably more original. It’s difficult, by and large, to divorce Slackk’s music from a grime context. Indeed, Slackk — a.k.a. Paul Lynch — is regarded as invaluable to the genre, having previously ran the radio-rip resource grimetapes.com. Slackk’s re-imagining of grime, however, gives a dynamism that is lacking somewhat in the boxy square-waves and established rhythm patterns that are otherwise commonplace.’ — Stefan Wharton

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Flying Saucer Attack Instrumental 7
‘For over a decade, there have been few reported sightings of Flying Saucer Attack. A delicious run of albums in the 90s gave way to near-total silence at the turn of the new millennium, almost as if planned. Over time, the Bristolian experimentalists have been whittled down to a one-man band, consisting of core member David Pearce. You could call them space-, post-, avant-, or whichever prefix you might apply to ‘rock’ in order to emphasise the decentralisation of ego and retrospection in the context of otherwise traditional rock instrumentation. Whatever you call it, the urge to transcend is clear. Incorporating disparate folk and electronic influences, previous efforts saw Pearce revelling in the puerile joy of burying acoustic tracks in noise – sometimes white and mechanical, sometimes tailored to sound a little like the eponymous flying saucer. Today, Pearce’s vocal presence and melodic talent take a backseat, giving way to pure ambience. In light of the freeform discord of Flying Saucer Attack’s live recordings (see 1996’s In Search Of Spaces and 2003’s P.A. Blues), as well as a few reverential pieces named in tribute to Popol Vuh, the new album’s material is not unprecedented, but it is daringly funereal and earnest. A few whispers of flying saucer remain, but they are mostly subdued in the mix – less campy space-exploitation, more of an atmospheric tool.’ — The Quietus

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Seven Davis Jr Sunday Morning
‘George Clinton bestrides today’s music like an intergalactic Colossus. You can hear the Funkadelic and Parliament bandleader’s influence in numerous recent albums, from the most praised (D’Angelo, Kendrick Lamar) to more obscure efforts, such this debut from Californian DJ and producer Samuel “Seven” Davis Jr. Universes takes the tradition of Clinton’s psychedelic funk and feeds it through a modern beat-making sensibility, as with the combination of compulsively jumpy electronics and woozy Funkadelic vocals in “Welcome Back”. “It’s whatever you want it to be,” a voice intones at the start of the album, which is themed around the notion of space travel; focused production ensures the Afro-futurist trip doesn’t take a wrong turn into self-indulgence.‘ — ft.com

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White Poppy Confusion
‘How do you grapple with something that isn’t there? On her third full-length as White Poppy, Natural Phenomena, Crystal Dorval manages to erase almost all traces of herself. Her voice disappears into the ether with lyrics that are mostly indiscernible — when there are any at all. The attack of her guitar is blunted and nearly bleached out of existence in reverb and delay systems. And the minimal percussion employed tends to feel more like a kite bobbing along at the end of a tether than anything solid and grounding. To this end, Natural Phenomena reads like further notes on a musical history of disappearance and obfuscation. Roughly one third of the album is made up of lyrically-oriented songs, another third contains wordless vocalizing, and the remaining third is entirely instrumental. Because they aren’t divided up into sections as such, it gives a sort of watercolor impression of songs half submerged.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

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Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks [extract]
‘In a weird way (what other way could there be?), there is no more apt a group to perform Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch’s unmistakeable score for Lynch’s seminal Twin Peaks TV-series than Jamie Stewart’s Xiu Xiu. Like the show, their music is elusive, dream-lit with dark undertones. Commissioned by David Lynch himself, this is an immediately recognisable yet entirely new interpretation of the music of Twin Peaks; one emphasising its chaos, drama, fear, noise and sidelong leering glances. “The music of Twin Peaks is everything that we aspire to as musicians and is everything that we want to listen to as music fans. It is romantic, it is terrifying, it is beautiful, it is unnervingly sexual. Our attempt will be to play the parts of the songs as written, meaning, following the harmony melody but to arrange in the way that it has shaped us as players.”‘ — Jamie Stewart/Opera North

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p.s. Hey. Before I/we begin the day’s time-delayed interactions, d.l. H has a kind offer that applies to some of you out there reading this. Namely, H has some books that must be sacrificed due to an impending move to a new location, and H is offering them to someone here free of charge. These are the books in four groups/links: Books 1, Books 2, Books 3, Books 4. Now, I will let H explain the offer, and here H is: ‘[The] receiver [of these books] should be one real person. (Unfortunately, no organization/store/press…etc., because they resell these books which libraries here would do, which I don’t like…when I ship these with my cost, etc.) That person must be younger than 30 year old, and almost unemployed and unschooling, while wanting to be desperately, (ie. not living on wealthy personal or educational (art grants included) sponsor’s fund), book lovers, and aspiring writers, who are simply appreciative and humble about receiving the gift and will actually read these over some time for their studies and pleasure. Interested persons please email to Dennis Cooper, dcooperweb@gmail.com. He will choose an appropriate one if there are some candidates. If there’s no right person till this weekend, I will donate these to a university library here and my advisor who will keep the books so well. Thank you. ** Thomas Moronic, Whoa, awesome! Disneyland, or my pickings from the big D., did an escorts/slaves-type number on your magnificent imagination-plus-fingers combo. Superb, pal, and I am entirely humbled. No, I didn’t write any of those texts. They’re all lifted from here and there. Credit my writerly eye and pickpocketing talents or something, I guess, for their disconnections. Thank you, man! ** H, Hi. Thank you again for doing that. I hope I passed the offer and info on in a clear and appropriate way. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I know I went to Disneyland first when I was just this side of being a swaddled blob of an infant, but I don’t know when that was. I was two years-old when it opened. So, pretty early. ‘The Jetsons’ has a lot to answer for. ** Tosh Berman, I can’t believe you’ve only been to Disneyland once, but I’ve been … it feels like hundreds of times. I’ve been to Disneyland Paris a few times, and, in Tokyo, we chose to go to the second Disney park — Tokyo Disney Sea — instead. I’ve come to really like Disneyland Paris. It took me a while. And Disney Sea was quite nice. A handful of good rides and a super beautiful mountain/ crater smack dab in the middle that’s dreamy to look at and to ride rides within. But I’m really into Disney as a great artist, and I think the original Disneyland is his masterpiece, and it’s the only park that he supervised and designed/signed off on down to the tiniest details. All the others are attempts to replicate it, usually at lower cost, and always using a larger area of land to enclose the park, which changes the experience, design, everything. The last time I went to Disneyland last October, I was really struck by how small and tight and almost claustrophobic it is compared to the others. Even with the post-Disney alterations, it really feels like a one person’s artwork, and the others don’t have that feeling at all. ** James, Hi. Oh, I didn’t mean to “school you”. I just happened to know the discrepancy. Sure, I got humiliated by a teacher or ten back when. Horrifying abuse of power there. Ha ha, see, if that had been Disneyland-obsessed me getting my head stuck it would have been a highlight of my life or something, I think. To become, even for an embarrassing moment, a design detail in Disneyland sounds dreamy. But I am, as I keep saying, weird. Well, yeah, JC’s review was really obnoxious. It certainly didn’t help my opinion of his stuff. He really does come off as being very in love with his not anywhere near as brilliant as he seem to think self. That doesn’t help either. ** Steevee, Hi. When I was a young Los Angeleno, one of the big things my friends I did as often as we could was go to Disneyland on LSD. I did that a lot, and all he way up until the early ’90s, although, by then, I would go on Ecstasy rather than on LSD. Never had a bad or scary experience, but more than a few of the similarly drugged friends who came with me did. I’ll try the new Weeknd. They’ve never really grabbed me, but they’ve never put me off either. I’ve always felt on the verge of being seduced. ** Sypha, Hi. Among the later novels, I think ‘Pussy King of the Pirates’ is probably the most fun, if you want to delve into them. Yeah, I think you have to be in the mood to be exhausted with Swans, or I mean you have to get into their particular style of exhausting listeners, or something. ** Robert-nyc, Hi, Robert! Really, really nice to see you! I’ve never been to Disney World or to any of those Florida-based parks. It’s a massive hole in my Disney theme park fascination. When I was in high school and early college, it was a fairly common thing for guys and gals at my schools to take summer jobs working at Disneyland. They did have wild stories, more prank- and drug-oriented than sexual, but I can’t remember any this morning. I’m very good. We’ll probably be looking for a venue to show ‘LCTG’ in NYC pretty soon, or rather our producers will. Yeah, hang out more often if you can and feel like it. That would be nice. I hope you’re good, and you sound good. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Flamingo Land looks totally charming. I didn’t know about it. I’ll pen it in for a future theme park road trip. ** Postitbreakup, Hi, Josh. Thanks! There’s a scene in the next film that Zac and I are going to make that’s set in an amusement park. Maybe in Parc Asterix, but we’ll see. I don’t know those rides you mentioned, I don’t think. I only know the So. Cal, Paris, and semi-know the Tokyo parks. There are some pretty decent books on Disney’s art that have a good amount of stuff about Disneyland and its making, etc. in them. Good to see you! ** Misanthrope, Well, with the name LPS, he would have to be a funny guy, or, otherwise, he’d be raw meat for bullies. Thanks for the update about the mom thing. Sounds as complicated and stressful as ever, albeit closer to some kind of conclusion at least. That’s all it takes to be evil? Huh. That just sounds like ‘jerk’. I don’t even know who two those lads you mentioned are. I assume they must be comely and all of that. ** Kyler, Hi, Mr. K. I think it was just called Skyway. No, wait, when you were going from Fantasyland to Tomorrowland, it was called Skyway to Tomorrowland, and vice versa. Not an imaginative title. How’s it, bud? ** Okay. I’m presenting you with another gig of music I’ve been into lately for your auditory and, in some cases, visual perusal, and I hope your experiences in its regard are fruitful in some manner or other. Also, do get on H’s kind offer if you fit the bill and want some awesome free books. See you tomorrow.