Listening with an open mind. Writing about what I hear. Do you have something interesting you'd like to share? Write Mick at thasoundblog@gmail.com. Twitter @thasoundblog
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
I had a chance to talk with a really interesting guy this week. Proud Father is the music project of a NASA Mars rover piolet, who makes space rock about really grounded stuff. Namely, his own, practical search for meaning. Check out the full interview and a track by track break down of his debut album The View of Earth From Mars over on New Noise. Links below:
Proud Father's album is out via Massif Records, who you can check out here.
Had a lot of fun checking out this fresh and excellent new wave records from Australia's Web Rumours. Read what I had to say about New Tricks over on New Noise. Links below:
This has been out for a while but that's not going to stop me from talking about it. I feel kind of hypnotized by this album. I keep coming back to it, and if you've heard it yourself, it won't be hard to understand why. It's gorgeous. Effortlessly so. Lianne La Havas's self-titled album has the quality of a naturally forming oasis. Appearing first as an illusion on the horizon- it becomes more real and rejuvenating the closer you get and the more time you spend with it. It takes a lot of effort to sound this good. But you have to have the raw talent for it to be worth the exertion. You can't build something this sturdy out of spit and string from a vision board, and Lianne doesn't need to try. She is working with only the finest of materials here- her voice, her intangible knack for poetry, and a graceful sense of melody. "Read My Mind" has a delicate inevitability to it, a fateful dream plucked out on the strings of the heart. Later, "Seven Times" introduces Brazilian guitars to create a cleansing mix of prayer and patience, and "Soul Flower" builds and bursts through cycles of affirmation and refraction, making space for recuperation and healing in furrows of rich and delicate grooves and percussion that shares the quality of applause. I'm becoming chuffed just recalling its effect on me. Excuse me while I lay on the flow and just let it flow over me... for like, the twentieth time in the past year.
You can get a copy of Lianne La Havas album from Nonsuch here.
Found this crust punk band while surfing the ol' web. I liked them. So I did a little review for New Noise. Check out what I had to say about Tennesse punks Black Market Kidney Surgeon at the links below:
Spooky Tavi is a psychedelic artist who achieves what every garage band who plays arpeggiated guitars can only dream of, creating something genuinely strange and transcendent. Check out what I had to say about his new album Hyperdrive over on New Noise. Links below:
I've been following City Girl since 2017's Loveless Shadow EP. This was a little while before I had any idea of what they were attempting to accomplish or the music that inspired them. All I knew back then was that City Girl made simple but elegantly layered synth-pop set to easy on the ears breakbeats and I loved it. What I eventually grew to understand, was that City Girl's sound harkened back, somewhat indirectly, to the balanced and progressive R'nB popular in Japan during the '80s. A style that would eventually acquire the designation city pop. City Girl's ineffable cool seemed to presage both the emergence of Youtube channels dedicated to lo-fi beats to "relax/study to" as well as the present fascination with clean, futuristic R'nB and funk. Two things that I will forever be in awe of them for.
While City Girl hasn't changed their style since that first EP, they have allowed themselves to make complex rhythmic pieces and songs that are more welcoming to collaboration. Case in point, mearly every track on City Girls most recent LP C-Girl has a guest on it. From opener, "PACK IT UP BOY," where vocalist tiffi delivers an elastic performance, chiding lustful paramours for their unrequited affection and the joys of mercing dudes in video games, to later cuts like the plastic sunset rinse of "LET GO," which sounds like it could have been pulled from the Light in the Attic Pacific Breeze comp, if it weren't for the presence of vocalist ry carving through each incoming neon tinted measure like a dolphin breaching through a cresting wave.
C-Girl definitely feels like City Girl making an entry into the world of mainstream R'nB at times, but I think that this is mostly a consequence of mainstream R'nB finally tuning into the frequency the producer has been emitting all these years. The results speak for themselves, and I'm not complaining.
I wrote a review about a comp from one of the great unsung heroes of early East Coast punk today for New Noise. Beex is a beast and you should check out their stuff if you ever had a love affair with prickly '70s power pop like I did. Links below:
Minnesota-based producer Dosh has apparently found a renewed source of vigor and purpose since the implementation of lockdowns last year. Prior to the pandemic, Dosh hadn't released an album in seven years. Now, he is on his second release in ten months. Following the Summertime EP, Tomorrow 1972 is similar in that it maintains a stylistic consistency that is closely tied to a wisely constrained set of ideas, melodies, and instrumental choices, a fact that seems unremarkable until it is experienced in full. Both albums rely on various forms of late 20th Century jazz to pump life into the vessel of their chambers, with Summertime dipping its toes into sticky, warm Headhunter fusion, while Tomorrow 1972 drains from Dosh's subconscious, a sip of spacey, post-bopping nectar.
"Manhattan" begins the album with what sounds like a jazz orchestra slowly liquifying into soup, dripping note by note into a tin can to be sold as a health supplement. "Wake Me Up When It's Over" trades in some Weather Channel-friendly melodies that rinse and splatter like a mid-afternoon rain against a nearby window pain, lulling you to sleep on a lazy summer day while your cares evaporate into the atmosphere. Beyond just explorations in mood and sound though, I think Tomorrow 1972 is an album that uses the light of reflection on one's past and relations, in order to find a path forward in life. This is evidenced from not only the specific year in the title, but also by the track "Big Floyd," a clear tribute to George Floyd, a man murder at the hands of Minneapolis police, whose death resulted in a fiery surge of justified anger last summer, and whose life is celebrated here with cool, balmy echos and wide-circumference ripples. A fitting sonic shrine to a man, who, by all accounts, was a tender, peaceful soul. Then there is "Tomorrow Is In The Bones," constituting a poem read to bestow respect on the memory of Dosh's Anticon label co-founder and friend Brendon "Alias" Whitney, a track that allows certain words of affection and imagination to filters like a white fox through a thicket of smooth and clean smelling underbrush and to frolic atop spiritual buttresses anchored to clouds, encouraged by silver-lined synth tones and the yodeling instrumentation of a homespun, folk-orchestra.
You can never go back the way you came, but you can always learn to better appreciate how you got here.
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| Image thanks to the artist |
I had a delightful time talking with Chicago's Late Nite Laundry for CHIRP Radio's Artist Interview Series where we talked about their sound, their visuals, and how and why they keep it all "in house." Check out our conversation below:
Yves Tumor is impossible to pin down, but on The Asymptotical World, the artist gives you a taste of some dingy post-punk and big romantic rock in Yves's most straightforward record yet. It still comes at you with a twist though, and I really appreciate the places that it goes. Check out what I had to say about it below:
Check out my review of The Asymptotical World over on New Noise.
I wrote a review of the captivating new album from Ted Byrnes, percussion expert for groups like Lingua Ingnota, clipping., and many other well-loved noise artists. Check out what I had to say about Moving My Body Through Space over on New Noise at the links below:
Australian band Hiatus Kaiyote come back after a little break with another fantastic and incredibly complex album that combines rock with jazz and R'nB in such a wonderful way that it probably has Erykah Badu sending her agent texts and emails day and night to get her a session with them. Mood Valiant is worth your time today and you can check out what I had to say about it over at New Noise. Links below:
Rob Frye may be known around Chicago as one head of the tri-part, shamanistic entity known as Bitchin' Bajas; although, unbeknownst to many, he has another life away from that transcendental, psychedelic outlet. That is, Rob is a credentialed field biologist. His role as a scientist began to overlap with his skills as a musician in an unexpected manner, when after the conclusion of his work with the Californian Institute for Bird Populations 2016, he began manipulating field recordings of an Amazonian bird called the uirapuru, or musician wren, unlocking the potential of the complex ambiance and elegant, tonal curvature of its call.
He's far from the first musician to become entranced by the uirapuru, as its song has inspired a number of classical pieces throughout the late 19th and early to mid-20th Century (as well as the samba, is legends are believed), but these calls take on a special character under the gaze of Rob's kaleidoscopic eye. It would be easy to imagine a pitch-shifted version of the uirapuru's call inspiring some exotic detours in a Bitchin' Baja's track, but Rob had other ideas. Instead, he's followed his feathered muse into the world of free jazz, resulting in a solo ensemble album he calls, Exoplanet. While the uirapuru only directly inspires two tracks on the album ("XC175020" and "XC222182"), the entire exercise has a free-flowing and organic quality to it, influenced by the human perception of nature.
The dynamism of the album is certainly owed in part to the players who participate on it, all of whom represent some of the most prodigious talents the city presently has to offer. With the involvement of local heroes like cornettist Ben Lamar Gay, violinist Macie Stewart, drummers of the likes of Quin Kirchner and Tommaso Moretti, as well as synthesizer guru Nick Ciontea, it is apparent that this is less of a flight of fancy, and more the execution of an eagle-eyed visionary.
Even knowing all this, it's astounding how fluid this Exoplanet is on the whole. While you are listening, it feels like you are simply bathing in its mellow tones and effortless flow. Like you are being glazed in sound, like rose-scented, crème de cassis syrup drizzled on a fresh raspberry crepe. There is barely a moment of drag in the entire proceeding, only a coalescence of confidence and mastery of form.
Clear some time this evening and let it Expolanet cascade through you. There are less transportive ways to spend forty minutes of your night, believe me.
Exoplanet is out via Astral Spirits Records. You can get it on vinyl here.
I wrote a quicky on this fun little split from Broken Baby and Egg Drop Soup. Broken Baby have an album coming out later this year, so if you like this, keep an eye out for that. Check out the write-out on New Noise at the links below:
I wrote about the funky and freshly minted new album from The Internet's Partick Page II for NEe Noise today. You can read what I had to say at the links below. Respect the bass.
I wrote a review of the latest album from Oxnard's Dead Heat, and as is my want, I went a little over the top. I'm like Sylvester Stallone writing about hardcore. Handsome, charismatic, maybe a little egotistical... oh yeah, and I don't know when to shut the hell up. Maybe you'll get something out of my review, maybe you won't You should listen to World At War either way, because it is fuckng popping off!
Crocodile Slam is the solo project of Gabriel Artie, a Brazilian experimental composer who was enjoying a vagabond tour of the Americas when COVID hit and forced him to seek shelter in his native state of Goiás. His latest LP Nascido em Swampland is the by-product of his hermetic retreat to safety. It takes a lot of time and concentration to make a satisfactory album, and it's Gabriel's sequestering that I think accounts for all the layers and quirks this strange little marsh flower has to offer. Plastic harp like melodies peculation into a suborn hypnogogic state of relief inside the garden walls of a concrete playpen, admitting transgression in the form of pulsing melodies to message out peach pit-sized nodule of resentment, before swallowing the rest back down like it was iron flavored sap from the Tree of Life. There is soft anger that pumps through the grooves and veins of these tracks. Not one that could be directed at anyone in any threatening manner, but one that is slightly unnerved by the conditions of its own birth. Like it's not sure why it's here but it realizes that it has to make the most of the time that it has with you. These compositions are very relatable in that sense. Do you know why you're here? Why you exist at all? These are probably the wrong questions, but we ask ourselves them all the time. Maybe we ask ourselves these questions because we know that they don't have an answer. Because the answers we need, we don't want. So we never ask questions that could lead us to them, becuase if we went where answers could be found, we might never return to the world we know and hold so dear. How many roads must a man walk down before he is neck-deep in tadpoles and algae? I can't say. And I can't help you unpack the clutter of your mind. But I can recommend interesting things to listen to while you tackle the task. Let yourself get lost in a swamp of contemplation with Nascido em Swampland, and let Crocodilo Slam be your guide.
Nascido em Swampland is out via Municipal K7 Records, and you can get it on cassette here.
Remember the '90s? It was a long freaking time ago. We'll you can get back in touch with the feeling of that long-lost era by checking out Dazy's debut EP The Crowded Mind. See what I had to say about it over at New Noise at the links below:
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Jordyn Blakely is the beating heart of, and drummer for, some of your favs of the fifth wave emo and shoegaze persuasion, like Night Manager, Butter The Children, Jackal Onasis, Stove, and the touring band of Bartees Strange. She now has a new project called Smile Machine, and she dropped her first EP Bye for Now under the name last Friday.
Smile Machine is technically Jordyn's solo project and revolves around an exploration of her search for romance, identity, and connection in this weird, anxious, hellhole we call modernity. Work on Bye For Now actually started well before the pandemic but it was the lockdown that gave her reprieve from the grind of daily life that she needed to finish it.
The buzz around Bye for Now wasn't something that immediately grabbed me. There were a bunch of name drops that gestured towards it being a kind of Dinosuar Jr revival for Gen Zers who grew up with old siblings who mythologized the '90s for them. It's a pretty worn-out appeal, and an inaccurate one at that. Rather, Bye for Now is an album that is firmly planted in the music of today. That music may be backwards looking to a degree, with debts to acts as diverse as Sloan and Sunny Day Realestate, but today's emo bands understand these sounds primary as they were interpreted by groups live Ovlov and Pity Sex, and is, therefore, music that could only make sense with the context of our modern milieu.
For instance, the hairy scrape and gauzy, bruised production of "Bone to Pick" is too raw for even the more hardcore leaning Dino Jr albums like You're Living All Over Me to be a sensible comparison. "Pretty Today" sounds like a Tiger Jaw demo slowly melting atop a pile of keepstake that have been lit ablaze in order to cleanse the emotional power they have over their former owner, while tracks like "Stars" sounds a little like a swan song from Modern Baseball performed by Retirement Party as they sink into a boiling tarpit.
Have I sold you on this yet? Because I really like it. I think it's really fresh and hope you'll check it out.
And in case you needed another reason to like Jordyn and her new album, I also have an interview with her that you can read below. We talked about how the production of the release both suffered and survived due to COVID, the stylistic choices she made for the release, and all of the happy accidents that happened along the way. Check it out below!
Interview conducted over email on July 16, 2021.
Why did now feel like the right time to release a solo record?
I was hoping to put out an EP once I had enough songs completed, and had planned to release it way earlier but got delayed by quarantine and my own procrastination. I think I work more efficiently with deadlines! Dan (Francia) and I had planned to just record it really quickly, in a few weeks or so, not overthink it too much and just get it done. One Saturday in early January 2020 we tracked drums, then I wrote the bass parts to be ready to track the following weekend. After that we did the guitars and vocals, and still had some loose ends like guitar leads, solos, extra vocals and keys, but once we were in quarantine everything moved so slowly. Sometimes it was hard to feel motivated to work on my own music when wegles and were undergoing this stressful crisis and so many people were dying. My identity and relationship to music sometimes felt frivolous, like an aspect of an old life I had lived, and we had entered into this new dimension where every day was just focused around survival and uncertainty. Other times it was awesome to have something to escape into and feel hopeful about and I'm grateful to have had music to help me. I think now ended up being the perfect time to release this after all though, and I feel lucky that it's out when we can play live and play with other people.
I'm charmed by the title of your solo release, Bye for Now. It amuses me that you would name your first album after a parting salutation. How did you come to settle on this title?
Thank you, I'm glad someone else found that funny too! I just like the way it sounds phonetically, it feels and sounds nice; a little bit sad but also hopeful. It was sort of inspired by this one afternoon in the winter during quarantine, when we were only able to spend time with a very limited handful of people. Someone said it to me as I was leaving their house to run some errands only to come back later the same day, and it was a sweet and amusing moment. That was such a strange, specific time in everyone's lives, I think, and the expression reminds me of how it felt to be in lockdown, to just leave everything and everyone behind temporarily, not knowing if or when we'll meet again.
How does your search for, and understanding of identity, info the themes of this album?
It was over the span of a few years that I wrote everything that's on the EP, in my late twenties, and a lot changed during that time. The butterfly on the cover is emblematic of coming out of your cocoon and striving for inner growth, yet still having a long way to go with the ocean and mountains in the distance. I was at a really different place in my life when the earlier songs were written compared to when I finally finished it. I ended a relationship that was detrimental to my mental and emotional health and was struggling with a lot of depression, isolation and anxiety. I went from being a pretty social, outgoing person to spending a lot of time alone, and songwriting gave me a safe space to process everything instead of just trying to escape myself through partying or drinking or whatever I would have done when I was younger. I was determined to work on my unhealthy behaviors and patterns, and working on music seemed a lot healthier than what I usually did to cope.
It interests me that you would stay in the realm of shoegaze and emo for your solo record as drummers in these lanes don't typically get their due. Was there ever any thought of going in a completely different direction with Bye for Now?
These songs are just what ended up happening, and what I was capable of doing and playing at the time. I'm definitely influenced by the people I play music with, but as far as songwriting goes I was always really moved by bands like Sebadoh, Thursday, Autolux, The Microphones, Deftones, Elliott Smith; anything that sounds super sad or angry I've always felt very drawn to. I always respected and felt inspired by how vulnerable those people allowed themselves to be and hoped to be able to do the same at some point. Drumming always just came easier to me and I was scared to be that exposed and in the spotlight so it wasn't until a few years ago that I tried writing. Transitioning from drums to guitar is a new way of communicating for me so sometimes I feel limited by my vocabulary, but it feels new and expansive at the same time. It's exciting to see where things go and to be able to express myself in a deeper way.
From what I've read about the way Bye for Now was recorded, it definitely was a community effort, and the product of a series of happy (and not so happy) accidents. Would you mind elaborating on some of the triumphs and challenges you experience while making this record informed how it eventually all came together?
He will probably not want to take any credit but I just really appreciate how supportive Dan (Francia) was throughout everything. I figured once quarantine started, everything would be too stressful and chaotic for us to keep working on the EP, and like it didn't matter now that it felt like the world was ending. Plus it would be more complicated doing everything remotely with us being in different states, but he called me on the phone and said he was determined to finish the album with me and edit the remote takes. Even before that, though, just being down and being patient with me and my process which we kept referring to as "the craziness", haha. Giving direction and making all of the decisions was new for me and sometimes overwhelming, as I'm used to being in a band setting where almost everything is collaborative and I'm not responsible for any huge final decisions. Between Dan, Nick Dooley who mixed the tracks and Amar Lal who did the final masters, the sound and feel of everything changed a lot over time and wasn't easy to finish once we were remote, especially because all of us lived in different states. There was a lot of back and forth; it can be difficult to explain and communicate exactly what you want something to sound like via emails and phone calls, whereas in person you can execute something almost right away. Each person who spent time working on the EP added a bit of themselves into it, and it turned out sounding even better than I could have imagined.
Is there a chance we'll get to hear these tracks live anytime soon?
Yeah! We have a few shows this summer; Sunday 7/18 with Youbet and Slight Of for the EP release show, Thursday July 29 with Dolly Spartans at Bar Freda, Friday August 13 at the Windjammer with Scarlet and OOF, Saturday August 28 at Rippers, and hopefully some out of town shows at the end of August too. I'm just trying to say yes to as many shows as possible after a long year and a half of no shows. It's weird and exciting because not everything is as we left it; there are new and different bands, and there's this openness where everyone is just down to play no matter what, and people want to come see shows more than ever, it seems like.
Any shoutouts or final mentions you'd like to add?
Yeah, I'm really grateful to the entire EIS family and happy that Dan and Alec wanted to put the EP out, and to everyone who helped me work on it and finish tracking. To all roommates, friends, exes, bandmates, and family members who ever endured listening to me practice any instrument, came to a show, or encouraged me to keep going.
Growing Fins is an emo band. If you like emo music, you might like Growing Fins's self-titled EP. If you don't like emo music, then go away.
Read my review of Growing Fins's EP over on New Noise here.
Buy a record, specifically Growing Fins's self-titled EP, here.
Angry Blackmen are two bad ass MFers and their new EP REALITY! leaves no doubt about this fact. Read what I had to say about it at New Noise at the link below:
Cola Boyy lives a life that very few of us could imagine. Dance music producer and punk rocker by night, left-wing activist by day. Dude's a king. Check out my review of his debut LP Prosthetic Boombox over at New Noise at the links below:
Weird people make amazing music. That's the rule. Nothing you can do about it. Nothing you can do what enjoy the music they make. It's not such a bad deal when you think about it. Check out my review of the debut album from one-man doom metal band human. at New Noise at the links below:
The difference between chaos and deliberate complexity is not a fine one. The distance between the two can be an acer or more wide, and depending on what you're talking about, the gulf can be infinite in scope. It all depends on the level of intention, foresight, and control exerted over a thing. Relative to the observer though, it might be difficult to decern a difference. And if you get a real drip, they might even read a plan into pandemonium, and vise versa. For instance, the universe is a swirling void of chaos and impenetrable disharmony, sometimes mistaken by idiots for being the product of clockwork engineering. In contrast, the music of the band Birthday Ass is often mistaken as representing total turmoil, when in fact, it is the outcome of a masterfully intricate design. There is no genius guiding the universe, but there is one at the helm of Birthday Ass, and her name is Priya Carlberg.
Head of the Household is Birthday Ass's second album. If you don't know what they sound like, think of Captain Beefheart, but sober, and mean, and also funnier, and replace all the blues parts with wild tempo and tonal shifts biopsied from the canon of American jazz. So how about it? Do you feel like the guy from Scanner's whose head is about to explode like it was blasted in the back by a 12-gauge shotgun? Cool. Here is the part that might make you pop like an egg in the microwave. Remember the metaphor from earlier about Pryia? Yup? Good. Birthday Ass's songs are meticulously drafted before they are played. Those strange, tubular and incongruous shifts you hear about eight times per track. Those are not events born out of improvisation or accident; they're written that way.
Flowing from the master's pen, through the rehearsal room, and into your ear. A fluid, well oiled, rube goldberg of sound, made possible by the talents of a cadre of New England conservatory cognoscente. A cadre whose skills are challenged, by the measure, on these tracks, but whose prowess and perseverance make possible the mockingly whimsical "Blah," the back-alley nightclub mugging of "Plubbage Blubbage," whose outlandishly swiveling melodies are critically superintended to cut you with a switchblade smile, and the deceptively airy "Jello" which wriggles and contorts despite the weighty qualities of its grooves, proving that there are in fact times when sugar and cement do mix, if only in song.
As it turns out, Head of the Household is a self-referential title, and the house this maestro matriarchy commands is the residence of underground jazz itself.
Russia's Tvar' rules and their debut album Water is almost too good for words. Black metal and garage rock. It shouldn't work, but it does! Read my review over at New Noise. Links below:
I wrote a review about an album about a marriage going up in smoke. Does this album have something to say about your current marriage/relationship/fling? Read my review, listen to the album, then decide whether or not you need to straighten your shit out. Links below:
Cody・Lee in a Japanese psychedelic pop band formed back in 2018 as a group of college friends messing about and playing songs. Fortune found their favor though and they pretty quickly met with enough success to consider making the band a full-time gig. Typically, none of this band's success has translated into little more than a batted eye in their direction here in the US. Japanese bands rarely garner a large audience in my native country, and when they do, it's generally because their music was included in an unusually popular anime. At least that's usually my reference point for Japanese music. Yes, I'm an enormous dork. Let's move on.
I don't know how I encountered Cody・Lee. All I can recall is that it involved the internet and a bout of insomnia. This hazy, half-remembered setup is actually a pretty good segue into talking about the band's debut album 生活のニュース (Life News). The album feels like it's landed in my lap via a rip in the fabric of reality, arriving either from another time, another universe entirely.
Twinkling, starlight colored guitars, slipping between the warp and weft of '70s psyche and soul, banking and then swerving left through shades of brit-pop and pop R'nB, acquiring both a taste for melody and hunger for hip hop in route, then going through a final twilight rinse of future funk revival before reaching my ear and getting caught in the grey mesh of my brain, like a falling start landing in a palm of catchers mitt during a cosmic game of baseball. More concisely, it's rare and polished dream-oriented pop with novel twists on familiar sounds. All around ecstatic and inspired stuff.
If I had to pick two top tracks to recommend to get you started, it would have to be the slick, ripple guitar lead "我愛你," a track sopping with nervous excitement and post-surf, sudsy overflow, and the spacey, sky-bop voyage "トゥートルズ." Although, I can't deny the chaotic charm of the controlled demolition and twisted ankle twirl of "When I Was Cityboy."
I can't promise that 生活のニュース will change your life, but I think it will give you a chance to hear something you probably haven't before. You could try to find a band from the US who are doing what Cody・Lee is doing here with a commensurate level of vision and polish, but I doubt you it would be worth the effort. You're welcome to make the attempt though. I'll wait... but I'm going to be listening to 生活のニュース the whole time.
Cuba probably has one the richest musical heritages in the Caribian. Its incredibly diverse pantheon of styles is a mix of Mediterranean, Northern European and West African folk styles. The first two you might have been able to guess based on the island's colonial past, but you'd be missing an essential ingredient if you left out the third. Cuba under Spanish rule was one of the largest importers and exporters of slaves in the Americas. Further, it continued to rely heavily on slave labor for its agricultural output, decades after the slave trade officially ended in the rest of North America, surviving until it was finally abolished in 1886. However, just because you take someone away from their home, does not mean that they forget themselves or where they are from. Many of these displaced peoples managed to replicate the drums and other instruments that were used in their ceremonial forms of music back in Africa, including Arará, Abakua and Lucumi. These sounds made an indelible mark on the music of Cuba, and as the popularity of the island's music spread, so did the imprint of these sounds.
For a better part of the early to mid-20th Century, Cuba was essentially run as an organized crime ring under the auspices of General Batista, who governed the country with the aid of US bankers and mobsters whose main business was tourism. During this period, forms of dance music like conga and son were used to help create an exotic atmosphere in order to entice middle class Americans to come to Cuba, where they could live like kings for a weekend while they dumped a sizable portion of their savings (and/or company payroll) at a mafia owned casino. This is how the mambo became a punching bag in American media and synonymous with a gullible, white-bread and mayo fattened oaf, who lives for pleasure and is easily parted with his money. Ergo, the mambo became the sound that masks a wise guy laughing all the way to his safe. A dubious fate for any tradition.
Okate is seemingly an attempt to rehabilitate some of these wayward Cuban traditions by bringing them back to their African roots. The band is comprised of veteran Havana musicians who primarily perform variations on the rumba, but manage to integrate African spirituals and traditional forms of son as well. I'm pretty familiar with Afro-Cuban music as it often appears blended with Afro-beat, but what Okate is doing on their debut, self-titled LP feels radically different, and all together fresh. For starters, the first track, "Caridad" doesn't sound at home in a club, but instead seems to emanate from the street corner just outside, with its twisting rhythms, parched melodies, and choruses that calls out, begging for a response. " Chi Chi Ribako" sounds like you are witnessing a conversation across the centuries, beginning with one voice arching like an arrow shot into the sky, only to fall back towards terra firma in a hail of descendants represented by the response to the initial, sky-ward solicitation- all these points landing on the banks of a babbling bongo rhythm and salsa melody- sprouting, flourishing, and becoming a lush valley of tropical sound. "Gaston's Rumba" begins as a slow, ridged traipse that gradually gains speed and complexity to gradually develop a hypnotic rhythm. This pattern is replicated on the more avuncular "Na Na Saguey" to an undeniably trancey triumph.
I don't need to labor the point any further, Okute's self-titled is damn good. The band describes their sound as Havana unfiltered. I've never been, so I have no way of verifying this is true, but I'm thankful to have something genuinely Cuban as a reference point for the island's culture after decades of cringing at mambo jokes.
"South Carolina RnB singer and bedroom pop producer Khari Lucas aka Contour has penned a richly passionate and painfully patient treatise on modern romance on his latest EP, Love Suite." - There is the first sentence of my review of Contour's new record. Read the rest over at New Noise. Links below:
Metal is one of those genres of music where being obscurity is no indication of quality. I get a fair number of emails each week from people looking to have their new metal projects reviewed and I always feel little guilty because I never get around to even saying more than five words about any of them. Not that I'm obliged to talk about anything anyone ever sends me, but a lot of the stuff I get sent is really good and I want other people to hear it! That's why I'm starting a new segment for the blog: Metal Monday.
Every two weeks (maybe) I'll do a quick run down of some of the underground releases that I've run across and that I think are worth sharing. What counts as underground? Well for starters, unsigned bands, or bands that are on labels smaller than Nuclear Blast, Relapse, etc... Also, bands with small social media followings or who aren't covered in any depth by the major music pubs. I don't know. Underground is kind of a fuzzy term and I'm not even particularly married to my own definition of it (as accurate as I believe it to be). Maybe I'll do a Century Media release run-down at some point. We'll see what happens. Right now the segment is taking the form of short reviews, but it may evolve into a column in future editions. I treat this blog like a living thing. I give it what it needs and let it take on the form it needs to.
Anyway, enough filler, let's get to the killer (recommendations)!
Heavy Sentence - Bang To Rights (Dying Victims Productions)
Spellbound Suffering is the second EP from Toronto's Phantom Crawl. It was released in 2020 along with their first EP Grotesque Seance, and it is out via Sewer Rot Records, who also dropped some killer albums by groups like Mortuary Spawn (who I've reviewed here) and Celestial Sancutary (who I talked about here). A lot of bands get labeled OSDM when they're actually doing something you would never have heard back in 1989 (see Tomb Mold's Planetary Clairvoyance). Phantom Crawl is a pretty gleeful outlier here in that Spellbound Suffering actually does sound an awful lot like classic Obituary- complete with big ballsy, thrash leads, grooves that feel like they are constantly at war with the backbeat, and of course, super grainy production. The most distinguishing aspect of the band's sound though is the vocals. These aural eruptions sound totally wet and degenerate. Completely sapped of their humanity and decency. Like a minister with a curse on his head, slowly turning into a boar on the steps of his chapple during a late summer thundershower. It sounds like the singer is literally burping and vomiting some of his lyrics. It's disgusting and I love it.
