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
I wrote a review of the extremely heavy new metallic hardcore album from Argentinian, one-woman band Anti for New Noise today. Brutal is as brutal as it looks. Link to read the review is below:
Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-anti/
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| Image by Rachel Winslow |
I got to talk with Chicago local folk artist DPCD for the CHIRP Blog today. Their front person Alec is a very thoughtful guy and he makes some preciously ephemeral folk music with the help of his band. Get the full scoop at the link below:
Interview: https://chirpradio.org/blog/the-chirp-radio-interview-dpcd
Buy DPCD's It's Hard for a Rich Man to Enter the Kingdom of God
I know next to nothing about Twinkle Park, but their EP touched, or been touched by tickled the right part of my brain so I feel compelled to say something about it. Near as I can tell this is a one-person band who has named the project after a stage from Sonic Adventure. Also, Twinkle Park, is, amazingly, not an emo band. I've listened to touched, or been touched by half a dozen times, and it still shocks me that this isn't true about them. Instead, Twinkle Park is a Vocaloid shoegaze band, meaning they play fuzzy synthesizer music, with a software filter and/or AI assisting with the vocals. They also seem to borrow from the sing-songy, pop-facing variety of Japanese shoegaze, as opposed to the speaker frying variety most familiar to fans of MBV, and seemingly just about every indie band from 2009 to roughly 2012. There is still a healthy amount of guitar fire raging on this album; it's just competing for space with synth melodies that sap heat out of the air like they've been carved from dried ice. And the resulting sonic temperature is overall comfortably temperate, and (I can not emphasize enough) incredibly refreshing. The melodies are tight. The production is bright. And the overall effect is captivating and uplifting. I'm absolutely smitten with the use of Vocaloid on this album as well. Even more than the crisp and airy melodies, these digitized diva dynamics give the mix a calming sense of beauty and fulfillment. The whole album makes me feel like I'm sitting in a room where the walls are made of goose down, and which is slowly being filled with a parade of kittens who deliver donuts and filled churros upon arrival. I don't think I need to tell you that this is a dream come true. If Twinkle Park was trying to get my attention, consider it got!
Buy touched, or been touched by from Pop Spirit here.
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| Photo courtesy of Oscar Bait |
I did an extremely fun interview with Jim of Chicago punk band Oscar Bait for New Noise today. The article includes a track-by-track breakdown of their upcoming EP Everything Louder Than Everything Else. It's out this Friday. Link below:
Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-cameroon-garage-funk/
Buy: https://analogafrica.bandcamp.com/album/cameroon-garage-funk
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| Image courtesy of NVDO |
I got to talk with a young, up and coming MC from Chicago who goes by NVDO for the CHIRP Blog today. Kids going places. Mick Jenkins clearly agrees, as he guests on half the tracks on NVDO's debut The Waiting Room. Check out our convo at the link below:
Interview: https://chirpradio.org/blog/the-chirp-interview-nvod
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| Image courtesy of the band. |
Some people simply have vision. Some of these also happen to be very talented. Or at least talented enough to justify whiling aware their spare hours, toiling towards some creative end, instead of, I don't know, getting guilted into working unpaid overtime for your employer, or whatever "normal" people end up doing instead of making art. Now I don't know what the individual employment situations are of the four players in Union City, New Jersey's thisisthepartwhereyouhelpme, but after diving into, and splashing around in, their refreshingly diverse catalog, it's pretty clear that whatever time they do have to themselves, they devote almost entirely into their craft- burning hours like coal to feed their ambitions.
The group is presently made up of drummer Diego, bassist Edwin, the other bassist Ralph, and guitarist and vocalist Saedi, and the music they make together rivals just about anything else I've heard in terms of sheer ingenuity and dynamic assemblage. They seem almost honor-bound to break the mold they forged for their last single with each successive release. My introduction to the band may have been the dissonantly Craw-esque, hybrid hardcore of "Marred," but whatever impressions I had of them from that track were stripped, as a matter of course, like old wallpaper, to make room for the calculatingly cryptic, space-hop of their next single, "they didn't tell you it'd be okay to be worried." Hunting backward through their catalog reveals a band that is seemingly and uncontrollably allergic to their own past,. A group that is perpetually advancing- demonstrating new levels of originality at every turn to excite the sense of curious listeners.Interview was conducted via email on September 23, 2021. It has been edited only slightly for the sake of clarity.
Who is TITPWYHM, how did you all meet, and what is your origin story?TITPWYHM is a group of musicians that have been in each other’s lives for the past ten years.
We met through the constant cycle of building friendships through jamming locally.
How would you describe your music to someone who hasn't heard it before?
We are the answer to a question mark.
Romantic metal exploring what a song can be.
An esoteric pizza.
We listen to a lot of Dean Blunt, The Body, Touche Amore & Serbian pop. Sometimes together, sometimes on our own. We are all way depressed and used to make prog, post-hardcore, and emo.
Now it’s just like whatever comes out is what it is.
Lately, that has been on the grindcore/powerviolence side of things.
Our set will usually explore electronic, powerviolence, & city pop. But that’s all just labels that eventually get tired too.
In what ways does your music reflect on problems caused by corporate influence on society and inequality?
Lyrically, inspiration comes from work (the journey and being at a desk). Midtown Manhattan at 9am is always an experience of everything on all the time. All senses activated. A lot of distress. I don’t remember ever being able to tell that other people were crying on the street on the way to work until this year.
This is corporate. Trying to hide our lives in plain sight. Do we even get time to process loss? Remember every corporate COVID commercial? Who was unhappy in any of those? The high gloss finish smeared over the metropolitan area contains a high percentage of blood and tears.
The feeling in our music is the warning that you are living exactly how “they” want you to live.
We like to attempt to create this feeling of punching upwards and around us. Break free of the constant control. Share your information, share your love. Don’t hide it behind a paywall. Be grateful for the people that keep the wheels spinning.
Where do you see yourself fitting into the hardcore and emo scenes in New Jersey?
There are so many good bands right now.
It’s pretty nuts. The output of heavy music is so top tier.
Just 3 bands to name only a few: GEL, Massa Nera, & Hundreds of AU.
All very exciting and different types of heavy-ass shit.
That’s the energy we want to be around. That’s what we think is really important.
It doesn’t have to be hardcore or emo or indie or hip hop. Or whatever branding.
We want to be surrounded by the best of all of it. Stuff that gives you goosebumps.
It’s hard because we’ve been removed for a while so we’re just starting to begin to crawl out of the hole again.
Where are your favorite places to play in Union City and what do you like about them?
God Bless whoever tries to keep a scene alive in Union City.
The local government wants to keep the noise down and the streets very nicely paved for the condo owners. Very shiny parks. Our music takes a hard look at this environment and what people are allowing themselves to accept as normal.
Shout out to Greenhive on 45th Street. They’ve been very supportive of local artists in such a profound way in such a short amount of time.
You can walk in there and it’s a streetwear tee pop-up, an experimental hip hop show, a noisecore set, a painting lesson. Amazing really.
Arawax Records on 11th street is another place that’s doing a lot for the local music community. They always have sick-ass performances and DJ sets going on. Amazing record selection. Crate diggers pay attention.
Otherwise, there hasn’t ever been an established space you can call a “place to play”.
It feels like Footloose sometimes. Did we just age ourselves?
Which of your current singles do you think will be most representative of your sound moving forward, and why?
As for singles, that's kind of hard to pinpoint, perhaps our current single "Marred" as well as the "Fuck Up Song." We also have some electronic songs that dropped that are touching more upon our personal projects.
The future is always uncertain.
If there was one album you could see yourself covering, front to back, which would it be and why?
Demon Days by the Gorillaz- It’s an album with so many moving parts. It’s scary, it’s sensual, it bumps hard the whole way through.
This can be interchangeable with the Ark Work by Liturgy or With a Cape and a Cane by The Joggers
Are there any shoutouts you'd like to give?
Shout out to our mommas.
Shout out to GG for these new songs coming out.
We’ve lost too many friends to abuse and they deserve to share this space. It is what has set off this greater explosion.
Rest In Peace Andy.
Rest In Peace Angela.
Rest In Peace Raymond
Wrote about the tremendously absurd and awesome new noise and synth-punk band Fashion Pimps And The Glamazons's debut Jazz 4 Johnny for New Noise today. Interested? Links are below:
Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-fashion-pimps-and-the-glamazons/
Buy: https://www.feelitrecordshop.com/collections/feel-it-releases
You know, there was a lot riding on British composer and ensemble player Emma-Jean Thackray's debut LP Yellow. Thankfully it meets all of the expectations I could have placed on it. As it should. Not everyone gets their own imprint on Warp Records. Because when they do, they are instantly elevated to an artistic standing where it is appropriate to name them in the same breath as geniuses gurus of the likes of Flying Lotus. Such an event is akin to pulling Excaliber from a stone and suddenly finding yourself the king of the realm. Or queen in this case... and the sword is also a bent trumpet, and the bolder is a laptop with a failing hard drive... this metaphor is getting complicated. Where were we again? Oh yeah, Emma-Jean's LP!
Emma-Jean's, self-produced, full-length release isn't like many other jazz albums at present. Not even those produced by her contemporaries in the London soul and jazz revival- even those on offer by the resplendent Nubya Garcia, or the strikingly elegant Moses Boyd. The closest comparison I can think of to how Yellow sounds and feels to me is Damon Locks and the Black Monument Ensemble's album NOW from earlier this year. It's the only thing that I can think of which matches the same wavelength of irrepressible energy. They're both ensemble albums (obviously) and are both albums that remove their namesake and organizer from any sort of visible (or a guess, in this case, audible) role- instead, allowing their collaborators to produce the force and intensity necessary to bring the respective albums to life. I suppose this is in part due to both Emma-Jean and Damon's emphasis on interpretation and improvisation- letting their collaborators own their performance in the moment of creation, even when they are under the direct supervision of the composer (Emma-Jean & Damon) as producer. Both albums are also inspired by a certain vision of transcendence. For Damon, this transcendence takes the form of a dream of emancipation from apartheid and the current conditions of oppression experienced by black people in Chicago and elsewhere. While this is clearly a goal of Emma-Jean's as well, the ecstatic and visionary nature of her work takes on a more cosmic and spiritual tone in practice.
There is another musician who emerges from behind the curtain of my perception while listening to Yellow, and that is Alice Coltrane. There are no harps on Yellow, but there are many ecumenical prayers, and the journey which Emma-Jean embarks on is dynamically tethered to a shooting star which shot forth from Alice's creative cognition when she embarked on her quest to seek Satchidananda. There is a hymn in the midst of this generous generative genesis of grace called "May There Be Peace," a tonal supplication for centeredness and rejuvenation, stated in the planest of words, which acts as a focusing chakra, aligning the lush shimmer and bright, orchestral funk of "Sun," with the clamorous and celestial jazz of of "Mercury," exhibiting two of the many extrasensory impressions that the album reaches for and grasps, in complementary and diverse modes. In comparison, more sensual movements, like the gripping thump of "Green Funk" and the brisk and lean, golden-hued gospel of the title-track demonstrate the pliable and clay-like flesh from which the album is carved- acting as its anchor in the world of fresh dirt, and clean water, and refreshing currents of breathable air. Most evocative of the album's overall message though, is the light-funk, fusion drop and dizzy slide of "Say Something," which extols the merit of openness and love expressed through words and actions- emploring the listener, not just to speak, but to say the words that reside in the beat-keeping box in the barrel of their chest.
Music can't heal all the pain that resides in the world. But through it, we can at least feel something in unison with each other. And maybe, that can be the start of a dialogue. One that can hurdle boundaries that separate our lives and limit our impressions of what each has to offer the other. Not in a crass exchange of value as we experience in our everyday consumer culture, but as people: members of a potential community of souls, with individual experiences, memories, thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams, and each driven by a thirst for meaning. Next time you meet someone, whether they be an old acquaintance, or someone you are just getting to know- don't just say what you've been programmed to say by countless frictionless interactions in your past. Instead, tell them what really matters to you, and what that moment demands of you both. Form a bond with them, and let it mold to the individual shape of your hearts and palms. You might just be surprised at what brave new adventure this measured moment of truth ushers you both into.
Formerly of the Bay Area, Torso is one of those hardcore bands that embodies perfectly the sense of ambient anxiety that persists today. A low-hanging fog of doubt and acified uncertainty that withers flesh and cracks the mind's defenses. A lot of the anxiety expre4ssed through their sound is the product of systemic plundering by the ownership classes over the past decades which has caused a consistent reassessment of the security and independence one can expect as they age, enter the workforce, and then age out or become disabled (which is usually the same thing). Torso reminded me of a rust belt band in this way, and it always surprised me that they weren't from Detriot or Philadelphia. The other social malady that Torso seems concerned with is psychological, or rather the way that people offload their mental necrosis onto others- whether this comes in the form of narcissistic projections through social media, or the way that some people can cause entire communities to collapse into infighting and toxicity as a way of protecting and preserving their own egos from being challenged by outsiders, or even by any of their so-called friends. Almost all of these buttons are pressed on the opener and self-titled track of their EP Community Psychosis, a galloping, crashing screed against superficiality and the army of defensive pricks that make up most punk scenes (and the majority of opinion havers on Twitter). Vocalist Mae sounds absolutely wicked on the whirl of angst and shattered expectations that is "Waste of Time," and every groove on "Progress" sounds like another nail in a coffin you've been sealed in, lyrically depicting a world dislocated from its own future and sense of purpose. The EP closes out with the guttural and incendiary "Running on Empty" which has a fizzling, fuse-like quality to it, and sounds like the fast-burning preamble to a full-on, psychotic collapse. Community Psychosis might have come out over half a decade ago, and it still feels vital as fuck.
It surprises me how prominently Whores.'s second EP Clean. has stood in my record collection since its debut in 2013. Of course, I didn't discover it until just before they unleashed their 2016 LP Gold., and because of it, the EP felt like a precursor at the time. I figured it would eventually be shifted to the back of a milk crate and end up being lugged to a record store for resale at some point. This has not the case. As I said, its position in my personal catalog has only become more entrenched, and its shadow has grown longer with time. This seems due to the fact that it's the release where Whores. finally nailed the right balance of blistering, distorted sludge rock- that sounds like it is being performed by the future ancestors of Morlocks- and gauging social commentary that glides into your perception like someone's thumb driving directly into the center of your eye. They would later polish and perfect this aesthetic on Gold., but the way that it emerges on Clean. is truly bracing and unsettling.
I get such a strong sense of foreboding when I listen to Clean. One that seeps into my bones and never manages to dissipate. Like how the dark and murky, brain-broth, blues grooves of opener "Baby Bird" manage to portend impending disaster, even before vocals enter the picture and intimate a disturbing, and all too familiar, sense of entitlement and coddled neurosis, with all the subtly of a beartrap folding on some poor quarry's leg. Or the way that the guitars on "I Am Not A Goal Oriented Person" have a nasty, impelling quality to them, one that resembles a bullwhip, employed against a marching, labored, and depressive groove, that will not be hurried, regardless of the punishment that is layered on top of it, causing the whole song to become a cycle of self-inflicted violence that only becomes more abusive with each repetition.
What sticks with me about Whores. though, is that beyond just their style and vision, they give off a bad vibe. And Clean. is the album where I first noticed this about them. Listening to this album is like making direct eye contact with a very large snake, and feeling the full strain of the cold, hungry, calculating set of motives that is returned to you with its gaze. Like it is waiting for the moment you blink to strike and release its venom into your flush, fleshy cheeks. Whores. have the same vicious instinct about them, but only more frightening because it is interspecies.
Every veil ripping denouncement of the petty-bourgeois, every spark that is thrown on the heaping trash pile of our consumer culture, and every castrating stab taken at contemporary masculinity on Clean. is presented as if the band is letting you in on the fun. As if it's actually someone else who represents the quantum of all of society's problems, and the band is inviting you to justifiably ridicule them. And while it's true that Whores.'s ruthless polemics are both funny and insightful, it's hard to shake the feeling that you've been invited to the party as a party favor, rather than a guest. No one is safe from the band's ire, though. The worst parts of this country that they point to, are all present in you as well. And once you've let your guard down and gotten near enough, they'll stick a knife in you, and pop you open like they were opening a clam- exposing the bubbling pit of vipers, self-pity, and rosy, red #5 dyed narcissism that dwells inside. Will the last thing that crosses your mind be the realization that you've deserved it? If you've been paying attention, then there can only be one answer to this question.
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
Talked with Chicago's one and only "Hood" core band for CHIRP Radio's blog today. Their new single "Accountability" slams and I'm stoked as hell to hear what they drop next. Get on this train before it leaves the station and check out my interview with the band here.
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
There are a lot of hardcore bands who I admire, but few more than La Armada. It was an absolute pleasure to talk with Paul and Jon of this Chicago legend for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series this week. Check out our conversation on CHIRP Radio's site here or below:
I have never been into 5 Seconds of Summer of The Academy Is.... but they inspire Boston's 5ever and I really dig them. I may need to reevaluate how I feel about some good-hair, radio punk after hearing Forever. Check out what I had to say about the album over on New Noise. Links below:
I wrote a little something on Santau, the latest album from anti-colonialist Australian punks Jalang for New Noise today. Links below:
Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-jalang/
Mutant Flesh is the 2018 debut LP from LA-based, hard-hitting death rockers, Deth Crux. The album is a tight, charging burst of punk agit-rock, barely contained by the expensive nature of the album’s concept- a gothic rock opera about a city slowly overrun by hungry and promiscuous teenage mutants. Featuring members of doom metal outfit Buried at Sea and death metal ghouls Lightning Swords of Death, Deth Crux extracts the blackened heart of Bauhaus and transplants it into a zombie werewolf, and then set the freak lose to be raised in the sewers and streets of an abandoned industrial sacrifice zone by a cohort of churlish crust punks, surviving mostly on a steady diet of discarded trash and Christian Death.
Campy, haunting, and disturbingly seductive, Mutant Flesh is the b-grade horror saga soundtrack you didn’t realize you needed in your life. “Phantom Blood” is coldly brooding with white-hot anger roiling beneath its surface- like a fridge rainfall, descending on freshly spread asphalt that's become the entomb a luckless victim of mob violence, and whose ghost will not know rest before it knows bloody vengeance. “Spectral Other” is forceful in its depiction of consuming paranoia, while “Black Abominable Lust” births a cursed medium that channels ominous contorting guitars which entwine menacingly with spectacularly spectral vocal cascades. “Chrome Lips” portrays the loneliest chapter of a necrotic neon-noir diegesis, complete with a goose-pimple-inducing sax solo. Finally, we arrive at, “Mutant Flesh” which feels like a spider-like, belly-dragging descent into a catacomb of chthonic madness and irreversible Cronenbergian degeneration.
If anyone reading this is considering footing the bill for a remake of C.H.U.D., you should seriously consider writing these guys a check to get them on retainer for the OST.
Mutant Flesh was released via Sentient Ruin. You can still pick up some physical copes here.
I wrote about a very special record from a very special Ohio emo band today for New Noise. Big Camp Trash vibes from these folks. Check out my thoughts on Farseek's Standstill at the links below:
Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-farseek/
I wrote about an extremely ugly black metal album for No Echo today. Xalpen is a Chilean band who named their debut LP Sawken Xo'on which means "3 Shaman" in the language of a now extinct Patagonian tribe. It only gets weirder and more barbaric from there. Check out thoughts on the album below:
Review: https://www.noecho.net/reviews/xalpen-sawken-xoon-review
Buy the record: https://xalpencult.bandcamp.com/album/sawken-xo-on-remastered-2021
Mass Of Fermenting Dregs started out as an all-woman alternative rock band from Kobe City, Japan back in 2002, and released two well-beloved and brash EPs and an LP before breaking up in 2012. As of 2015, they've reformed and released a couple more albums with vocalist Miyamoto Natsuko as the sole remaining original member, leading the band with the angelic sweep and plunge of her daredevil vocal delivery. I'm glad that the band is back, but it's hard to deny how compelling of a coup that the original ensemble was able to mount.
Of the releases from that original run, the fandom appears split between the first two EPs, with 2010's ゼロコンマ、色とりどりの世界 (Zero Comma, a Colorful World) getting little more than a friendly nod before being politely dismissed. And of these two EPs, 2008'sワールドイズユアーズ (World Is Yours) is easily my favorite. I can't claim that it is better than their self-titled EP, but it's the one that I at least enjoy more. Their first album has a lot of charm and a wonderful kind of alchemic energy to it, but World Is Yours is where I feel the band really came into their own.
You could consider Masu Dore, as the band is sometimes called, an indie band, and they definitely fit into the range of sounds and styles that this term encompasses in Japan. Although, I think alternative rock does a greater service to their overall quality and ambitions back in the early '00s. I had encountered World Is Yours briefly during my "indie rock" phase back in 2009, but it didn't really click for me then. Likely, because it was too busy, and frankly, imaginative for me at the time. In the years since, I've opened myself up to a lot of different varieties of music (many of which I didn't even realize existed a decade ago) and I've found more and more to like about World Is Yours during that time.
The frenetic affair begins with the "このスピードの先へ (After this Speed)" which starts with some sticky, post-hardcore riffs, that act like the ignition turning over for a tremolo charged take off into the clouds, with Natsuko's crisp and bubbly vocals driving some mid-air acrobatics that premium jet fuel couldn't come close to delivering the spark necessary to propel. "青い、濃い、橙色の日 (Blue, Deep and Orange Day)" takes a pensive, if a still dynamic approach, to spinal-tapping, high-gloss post-punk and burst like keg filled with florescent dyed gunpowder and despair. This is followed by the momentous charge and the swelling stampede of the "かくいうもの (Such Things)," the welling edema of which it eventually channeled by the sharp, stab of some lance-like guitar work, which contrasts beautifully with the stead build and warry tempestry of Natsuko's melodies. The highlight for many on the album is the off-kilter, driving, and surprisingly vampy uplift of "She is inside, He is outside." It's a song that I admire as well. However, the song that I keep coming back for, again and again, is the closing title track, whose sunny grooves crisscross with spastic and sardonic guitar chords, providing Natsuko's an obtuse set of brisk and crackling counter melodies to push against with the patient power of her voice.
World Is Yours may be more than a decade old at this point, but when an album still sounds this fresh, you'd hardly guess that it's aged a day since its initial release. Seriously, this one is worth returning to.
World Is Yours was released by Avacado Records... which no longer appears to exist anywhere on the internet, and Universal Music Group... which does not list the band on their website.
Wrote a review of the very self-aware debut LP from Kevin Nichols. Dissapointer is for you if you ever listened to a grunge album and thought to yourself, "These guys sound like a bunch of whiners, maybe they should sober up and get a clue." It's fun, it's cute, it's thoughtful. Check out what had to say about it over on New Noise:
Read the review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/album-review-kevin-nichols-dissapointer/
Buy the records: https://kevinnichols.bandcamp.com/album/disappointer
I think it pays to be honest as a reviewer and admit when you have no reference for what you're hearing. What is wonderful about the encounters that you and I, and everyone, has with music as an art form is that context can be secondary to aesthetic experience. You can like something. It can even make you feel amazing. But you might have no idea of what was going through the artist's head while they made the music you've enjoyed. For certain songs and artists, this is by design. They need to say something, and they need to say it through a song, and whether the audience takes their meaning or not is secondary to the act of communication and creation itself. A lot of dance music works this way, as the lyrics are usually repetitive or non-existent, allowing the rhythm to the talking. And what it often says may have a very different meaning for the creator than for then for each, or any, body moving about the dance floor.
This is a long-winded way of introducing an album that I've enjoyed immensely but for which I have no idea how to correlate what I think I'm hearing with what I believe the intended message of the music is. In a lot of ways, South African producer and FAKA collective member Desire Marea is dyed in the whole dance-music dynamo. They have an exceptional sense for sequencing, timing, and the general architecture of beats and grooves. In this way, their latest album Desire, is just an exceptional electronic dance album, as capable of motivating gyrations as thoroughly compelling as anything Jimmy Somerville ever midwifed for the muses. Only on Desire, the sexuality ingrained in the music is transposed through the transformative membranes of black African queerness and gqom. It is also apparently the sound of someone allowing themselves to slip into darkness, fade from the foreground, and recede from the light- in a kind of spiritual disappearing act- where they phase into the walls while their presence remains forever imprinted on the space while their influence and ego become obfuscated and impossible to quantify. On tracks like the ephemeral "Zibuyile Izimakade" the back-splashing beats and otherworldly grooves permeate the listener like fog through a screen door, later this is contrasted by the recurrent swivel signal of electronic rhythms which presages a oozing descent into a pressure chamber of suspended, agoraphobic retreat- both tracks showing the artist disappearing but remaining perpetually present all the same.
There are times on Desire when the artist is more upfront with their audience about their intentions and connections, though. Like on the tender, dark-reverie of the tearfully earnest, electro-current "You Think I'm Horny," and the slow swell of the dark-wave disco-soul of "Tavern Kween," an apparent homage to the Desire Marea's mother. But even when they are speaking directly about their purposes, experiences, and identity, Desire Marea still feels elusive and decentered, their essential nature distributed and defuse, and beyond one's grasp.
While this demeanor of enigma is certainly appealing, it would become tiresome if something telling didn't eventually break through the shadowy ambiance. And Desire Maria's furtiveness does melt away at points, although, only in unexpected ways. In this regard, I'm thinking specifically of the track, "Thokozani," an uptempo club number suffice with haunting synthy bluster. There are no words to this track and no vocals; it is just a beat and a rhythm- expertly composed and executed. And it's this track that gives me the most insight into Desire Maria. They are an artist first and foremost, and their intention as an artist is to create. In this case, they have made something wonderful, pleasant and thoughtful- but if the thing that they had made had none of these characteristics, it would have been all the same to them.
There are things that Desire Marea clearly wants to say and the world with which they are willing to share with us- but the true recipients of the artist's message are a select few, and even then, and of the places that the artist reveals to us, only they will know the terrain of its sonic geometry. For the rest of us, the majority of us, we will simply have to be contented bearing witness to its splendor. There is joy in this, the pleasure of experiencing beauty at a remove. Knowing that you can hear and see it, but never touch or grasp it for your own. You have to be contented at this distance, or else be consumed by obsession. An artist can only ever give you something to admire; they can never fully give you themselves.