Interview: Boy Harsher

Photo by Courtney Brooke

I'm a horror fan and a music fan, and a Boy Harsher fan, and my interview with Jae and Augustus about their new album/film The Runner covers all three topics and more. I wasn't able to hit everything we talked about into my write up (I think we talked for twenty minutes about Videodrome) but what I was able to keep in I think still provides some pretty good insights into the direction the band is headed in. 

Check out the interview here: https://newnoisemagazine.com/interviews/interview-boy-harsher-talk-new-album-short-film-soundtrack-the-runner/

Find the album here: https://www.nudeclubrecords.com/

Album Review: Hoity-Toity - Not Your Kind

There was a time when people would discover their new favorite rock band by listening to the radio at a restaurant or while driving around doing errands. I remember this time because I lived through it. You'd be sitting and waiting on a cheeseburger or taping your thumbs on the steering wheel while a bank teller prepared your account statement on the opposite end of a vacuum tube and then BAM! you'd be blindsided by a guitar hook that came out swinging over a local FM frequency, or you'd be temporarily transported by the liberatory howl of a singer whose name you needed to know STAT. 

That's obviously not how it works now. Radio has become far more consolidated in its formatting over the past three decades meaning that only artists with a proven market share and guaranteed rate of return will get played. This also means that your chance of finding anything new while listening to the radio is becoming more and more remote.* I bring this all up, because if radio were still a way for young rock bands to connect with a potential audience, Hoity-Toity would be in the ears and on the lips of everyone under 40 right now. 

The four-piece out of Redlands, CA consists of singer Shelby Muniz,  bass player Tana Snyder,  ax-wielder Aria Hurtado, and kit-crusher Kelsey Caselden, and when their powers combine, they produce some implacably catchy pop-punk that will take you back to the days when Sugarcult declared that they were "Stuck in America." 

Their second EP Not Your Kind grabs the torch and takes off at a sprint on the first track "Y'know," a star-gazing whirlwind of sticky chords, wrapped the blinding shimmer of a tameless groove, pierced by the elegant arch of Shelby's pristine voice. "Mykinnacoma (Not Your Kind)" straps up for a scrap with dusty, hard rock groovse that circles around a fog of smokey, Sabbathy feedback like an MMA fighter looking for the opportunity to put their foot under their opponent's chin and score a KO blow. "Should Haven't" introduces a southern blues style to the band's repertoire which helps sell the tension of the song's woman-on-a-wire act, as well as doing the shovel work of preparing the listener for the Latin guitar-led and hard R'nB of the sardonically romantic, steadfast rebuke of "Small Dogs." The EP then leaves you with a final gust of fury with the thunder tom-backed, fat dance grooved, punk rock rave-up and burn down of "Norm" with its hot, back-talking leads that strike like a bolt of heavy metal thunder. 

Your local DJ is doing you a disservice if they're not barricading themselves in the studio and blasting it out on their airwaves over the vociferous protests of their programming manager and the cracking sounds of office security breaking down the studio door. Not Your Kind cries out to be heard and we need some brave souls to bring it to the masses. 

*And don't interject with an argument that Spotify playlists have taken over the cultural space radio used to occupy, because 1) it hasn't, and 2) these playlists don't promote the same kinds of connections to an artist that radio once did- Spotify playlists are tailored to listeners via an algorithm, meaning that listening to them is a highly isolating and individual experience. Further, these playlists largely serve as background noise and mood leveler for worker drones as they slowly burn out over a keyboard and wither before a three monitor display- in other words, it's not the same damn thing at all!

Album Review: Hassan Wargui - Tiddukla

The story behind Hassan Wargui's Tiddukla ("Friendship" in English) is well known, but that doesn't mean it's not worth retelling. The prolific Amazigh singer and banjo player recorded and released the album under his own name via YouTube in 2015 where it gained most of its traction before being picked up by Hive Mind and given a proper vinyl pressing and digital release last year. 

Now Hassan is far from an obscure player in the world of international folk, but even then, I hadn't heard of him until I check out Tiddukla. He has a number of projects that he works with on a regular basis and he has even collaborated with New York-based producer Jace Clayton (DJ/Rupture), but all these connections didn't translate into access to sufficient resources to release Tiddukla outside of his native Morocco once it was finished. Without other options, YouTube ended up being the best method for broadcasting his sound to a global music audience. 

Tiddukla is lush and calmly anodyne, extending crescent waves of golden tones towards you, like a balmy gust of sandy, desert wind. Hassan feels fully present in each verse and measure, and I feel like I can reach into the rustle quite distorted air that transports each note of these songs and recognize the warmth of his grip in a friendly handshack intercepting my cautious approach into the sonic space he has opened up. 

It pains me to think that there was a very high probability that I might never have come across this album. After all, most of what I watch on YouTube are videos of people disassembling and discussing machinery and unlicensed, out-of-context clips Gravity Falls- in other words, I very easily could have missed it. It's interesting to me how platforms that most people in the US use frivolously as a time sink (myself included), may serve for others as the best option for breaking through the limitations of poverty and under-development. While as a for-profit company, YouTube is hardly a pillar of benevolence, they certainly are not going to stop an underdog from rising and gaining an audience (engagement is engagement, and engagement is green [or so they claim]!). 

There would seem to be a lot of things working against Tiddukla, and Hassan's music in general: his humble origins in the Anti-Atlas Mountains where he built his first banjo from scratch, through to his struggle for recognition on the world stage, playing traditional music and singing in a Berber language that was not only suppressed for centuries, but whose name, most English speakers can't even begin to pronounce. And then there is also the issue of him not having any real way of distributing his music outside of his island. But if you're reading this, it means that none of that was enough to stop him from getting his music in front of someone who cares. 

Tiddukla is a beautiful and irreplaceable gem, but also a testament to the fact that there isn't a wall too high, or an ocean two wide, that it can keep people separated and foil their drive to connect over their shared love of art and culture. It is also a reminder to myself to always be on the lookout for something fresh, and from my relative experience, unorthodox. Something that I haven't heard before but which would indubitably improve my life if I gave it a chance.  

It's available via Hive Mind Records. 

Album Review: Smirk - EP

How much amusement you'll get out of Nick Vicario's latest punk rock scud Smirk will depend on your tolerance for deliberate opacity. He's not going to telegraph any kind of expectations for you and you end up just having to roll with whatever punches he throws at you. Maybe there is something wrong with me, but I appreciate him not accommodating the audience for his music in this way. 

Smirk's 2021 EP followed the release of the band's LP earlier in the year, the latter being a compilation of two cassette-only EPs, originally titled Cassette and Cassette II, respectively. Unlike its sibling, EP consists of all original material, written specifically for this project (as opposed to Public Eye, or one of Nick's other bands, and later released as Smirk), but doesn't feel like it is from this era- actually, it doesn't feel grounded in anything from the 21st Century, or reality- period.

On EP, it's clear that Nick is drawing from guitar tones and playing styles that appear on specific records from the late '70s- but it's hard to place your finger on which records, in particular, are helping him articulate his sound. A lot of rock of that period had a kind of hazy, muddy varnish to it that tended to smear over identifying markings and insignia and these sort of lived-future, ugly-time jumper characteristics definitely infect Smirk's sound and make it difficult to pin down. I don't think I'm saying anything offensive when I point out that EP sounds like it could have been recorded at any point in the last forty years and might have ended sounded roughly the same. As it shakes out, you can't really put too many labels on what Smirk is doing here. Ultimately, you just have to trust the feel. 

The album begins with a song called "Death To Smirk," a sunburnt surf march, defined by an ulcerated groove that carries with it callously carefree melody under a title that lets you know just how thoroughly Nick is committing to the bit. "Precious Dreams" genuinely feels like it is being sung by someone who recently changed their medication and may need to have their dosage reassessed, while the guitars chords being performed are not so much riffs as concessions Nick has pried out of his instrument- a certifiable monstrosity of a song that eventually finds its way to a moment of unsettled clarity in the psychedelic antichamber of the bridge. Then there is"Minuscule Amounts" which feels like it shares some DNA with Radioactivity, but only as a result of a teleporter accident- so honestly, there is no telling where the song picked up the contaminants that pigment its sound. 

I've heard a lot of misguided but sincere comparisons of Smirk to Gang of Four and Devo- both of which are way off. The guitar work and singing is much closer to a cross between the Dils and Dow Jones, but even these parallels tend to confuse rather than clarify what you are hearing here- especially when the dollhouse electrical fire sounds of "Staring At Screens" and the chicken-wire blues that beefs up the always-on-the-run closer "Lost Cities" enter the picture.

It's also very difficult to tell what any of these songs are about as well- which is may be for the best...sometimes, the less you know about an artist's intentions, the better. This intense level of obscurity and blunt spectacle would seem off-putting, if it weren't for the surprisingly level of earnestness the project is approached with. Whatever Nick is doing here, he really seems to believe in it, and his confidence sells it pretty hard. There are a ton of wiry-sounding garage punk bands out there, but only one Smirk. Don't settle for less.

It's out thanks to Total Punk Records. 

Album Review: C!erra My$t - What A Sad Life

There is something absorbingly abstract about C!erra My$t's art. You can grasp its gravity it with your senses but your mind may not be able to catch up with its consummate pull. This is true of their music as well as their design work. Both feel like the product of an iterative process of refinement with no end goal and no clear origin. At some interval, they both reach a sufficient stage of density and then are presented for exhibition via Bandcamp. I don't get the sense that C!erra My$t's work is ever totally finished, though- and that's what makes it so captivating. The entry point for every track on their latest release What A Sad Life seemingly via fissure and always in medias res. With each, there feels as though there is a reason you are there, why you have come to this place, but you won't be able to discover either motive or cause from the clues around you. Further, you will exit the track at a stage when the it deems ready to let you go- but these stops are always far from the conclusion of the journey you were on. Still, there is satisfaction in these obtuse collisions with permeable sound as well as the forced trespass and expulsion they usher you through. You get the sense of a life ever in motion from these processes- one glimpsed like the final parting glance of the sun above the top of a distant building as it retires at dusk- thin and evasive, but cuttingly bright. The selection of sounds used to validate these layered incursions work beautifully and congruently to establish the album's various and shifting moods- stalled and torqued vocal samples and hyper-expanded, mousse-textured synth hums insolate break beat splinters and shards in an ambrosia of suspended hostility and thawing ceasefire, interspersed by water-logged guitar solos, begging bleats of battered 8-bit sound cards, and snippets of dialogue from anime betraying various shades of ennui. It has a kind of natural elegance and inevitable force to, like water forming a cyclone around a drain. A mirror surfaced cylinder, rippling as it is pulled down a metal gullet and inhaled into the dark below, with you sitting in the catch at the center on a wad of toothpaste, dry as talcum but trapped and transfixed by the crude, unnerving marvel of it all. You are not in the drivers seat on What A Sad Life, but you are lucky to be along for the ride. 

This album is available through Virtua94. 

Album Review: NTsKi - Orca

Kyoto-based singer and songwriter NTsKi has been working on her debut album since at least 2016 when she was still living in the UK. Traveling the oceans and learning to survive in a global pandemic have not unsettled her sense of place or self though, and her album Orca is remarkably self-contained for having coalesced during a period the intense disruption and upheaval. 

Orca is a reflection on a lot of things- from the natural world to the nurturing aspects of friendship- but it is most notably in conversation with Miharu Koshi's 1984 album Parallelism (the title track of which she covers on the album). Miharu's work is rightfully described as evocative, opening up a space for European, specifically French, jazz and contemporary composition into the world of Japanese pop music. It is campy. It is aggressively irreverent. And it is humorously, avant-gardist. Miharu's work takes up the entirety of the space with which it is given, and captures and preoccupies the whole of the listener's attention as if they were attending a performance of a play or opera- a space where the audience is entirely subject to the whims of the players and their exhibition. In other words, while you are listening to Parallelism, you are living within its world for as long as it is spinning on your turntable. 

Orca in contrast, is more of an album that travels with you like a companion, rather than swallowing you whole like a great whale. It borrows many of the bantering, tubular synth resonances and modulations from Miharu's and other's works, and turns them inward, not in an implosion or disappearing act, but rather in a shrinkwrapping process around a specific artifact in order to define its outline and give it body. This artifact being domestic-oriented j-pop and R'nB, the kind that can be made on a laptop positioned on a coffee table, atop a stack of books, or even in a closet, balanced precariously on a pair of flannel-clad knees. 

These popular but secluded forms are ones that NTsKi gives a spiritual infusion of passion and character to, and they definitively come alive under the heat of her touch. Orca is, therefore, less an absurdist and reality-cracking production, and more like a humble and conversational húsvættir- a familiar that travels in your purse or pocket, infused with the scents or sounds of home. Or, less paranaturally, like a house cat that sits in your lap, pinning you to a piece of furniture while you're preparing to leave- summoning an appraisal of your own desires and motivations, and ensuring that you will take a bit of them with you when you go. Orca will either keep you here, or enable you to take here, there- wherever there might be. 

Orca, is a creature whose languid demeanor and purposeful passivity cut through the artifice around it- focusing the real and immediate and clearing the air of external pressure and far-off objectives. NTsKi's soft and pliant vocalizations, in formation and flow with the dazzling, flight and fancy of the score, are spectacularly received but not obtrusive to thought- providing a focal point for contemplation, while not obscuring a sense of presentness in the process- even when it resembles a prism bursting under hydraulic pressure. 

What NTsKi has done here is a trick of transformation, where alienness becomes a lens to uncover the forgotten in the familiar, and the familiar becomes a passage through the distortions of a chaotic world. Orca will be your pet- a cherished Cheshire companion to a curious encounter with the self in a world that is seemingly always changing, and where the human desire for connection and understanding of the self are the only constants.  

Orca is out on Orange Milk Records. 

Album Review: Alfa Mist - Bring Backs

Alfa Mist is a creature of East London, a place of interchange and collaboration that continues to be a locus of well recognized but unorthodox interpretations of classic jazz motifs, of which his work is an exemplary choreographed instance. 

It's hard not to think of each showcase of the producer and improviser's catalog as a ballet- an elegant interpretation of thought, impression, and emotion, forged through sweat and commitment, and materializing in a seamless progression through stages of motion that lend expression to the ineffable tides and textures of our lives. His latest release, Bring Backs is no different. 

On this outing, the self-taught pianist reflects on his past and journey through music, while cutting confidently upstream through influents of jazz fusion and mindful, spiritual orchestrations. The album has a very deliberate but naturalistic flow to it, one that feels like a refinement for the collaborative style exhibited on his 2017 album Antiphon and 2019's Structuralism. Both of those albums were very warm and concerted (as is Bring Back), but there was a formalness to them that is not present here. 

Bring Back feels freer. It sees Alfa Mist letting go more, while trusting the shape that his efforts take with the eye of a wise but watchful guardian. These compositions feel like they grow of their own accord, and only need reflection and guidance to nurture them to reach their potential (much like the man behind them, I imagine).

One more thing that I think is important in understanding Bring Back is Alfa Mist's insistence on his music's interfacing nature with the world of hip hop. This is very interesting to me, because it forces a reckoning with my own understanding and received definition of the word. 

Is hip hop simply a style of music? A way of life? A branch of philosophy? All of these and more? The influence of jazz on hip hop is well documented, but the inverse relationship is not as well defined- what is jazz after decades of music enthusiasts learning about Herbie Hancock by chasing down samples from Digable Planets songs? And how do you define the parameters of these sounds when younger fans discover Nina Simone because one of their favorite rappers credits Ye as one of their influences only to learn to whom their idol's inspiration owes his debts? 

One's sense of self is always to a degree, a product of one's understanding of their past. Pulling apart and rethreading the fabric of this record will always hold the potential to reveal insights into one's own possible futures- a practice of singing back through time and then listening intently to the changing timbre of the returning echo. 

Anti- released this one. 

Album Review: Karloff - Karloff

We have a live one. Ontario's Karloff (yes, named after the actor) is a hardcore band who draws inspiration from noise and post-hardcore- way more than you'd expect. Their debut is very scramzy with nods to quieter forms of '90s indie rock sprinkled throughout. And fuck, do they love complex rhythms. Like, your neck could seriously develop a thread like a screw trying to follow the direction that some of these tracks take. It's almost like they want to be a hardcore-jazz hybrid of some kind. Which, honestly, they should just go for it because there are so few of those kinds of groups to speak of- virgin soil if you will. As it is though, Karloff has a winning oeuvre that reeks of potential- both realized, and waiting to be fulfilled. A track like "Abre Los Ojos" sounds like City of Caterpillar, reduced to rubble and ash by a volcano, with the remaining debris scattered to the wind by a series of tornados, or belched into the air by a row of geysers- it has a relentless, tremulous quality to it that never lets you get your footing and keeps shacking you to your knees every time you think you do. "Fortune Harbour" starts out with a persistent and berating slap of anguished vocals and guitars, which smooths out into a pensive groove for the midsection only to bristle out into chaos and autophagic feedback for the finale. The anguished thrust of "Sun" singes for sure and I'm pretty swept up by the Cave In-styled satellite signal radiation that permeates "Ocean or other." Karloff has my attention with this one. I don't give out scores, but Karloff's debut gets two out of two bent and bruised ears from this very happy dude.  

Out on Zegema Beach Records. 

Album Review: Howless - To Repel Ghosts

I don't hear enough from bands out of Mexico City. I can't imagine why. It's a big place, with a lot of creative people in it. I'm not going to speculate as to why, but what I will say, is that what I do hear, I tend to like. What reaches my ears tends to fall into three distinct categories: ska (a genre I like, but only when performed by Latin American and Caribbean musicians), black metal (a genre I REALLY like, especially when it's sung in Spanish), and shoegaze (a genre I raley am given a reason to celebrate). 

Mexico City's Howless is different than all of the above... they are a shoegaze band, who I like- as much as an Argentinian Ska band, or a black metal band who I can imagine playing in cowboy boots. So, yeah, they are a band I like a lot. Their latest release To Repel Ghosts has been traipsing the crooked corridors of my brain for a while, and it's been getting a free pass on rent for a variety of reasons. All of which stem from the same conclusion- they just get the vibe right. 

What works for me about shoegaze, at the times when it does work, is its arresting enigmatic and overwhelming nature. When I'm feeling it, it's a genre that feels suspended between extremes of mood and perception in a permeable haze of concrete, sonic antagonism. 

Imagine you're engulfed in a blizzard, but instead of snow caught in the winds that are thrashing your clothes and pulling at your hair, its a siege of rose petals, each as soft as you can imagine but with a little razored edge- ever so slight as to cut you with each passing swipe, but never deep enough to draw blood, coating you in acute but indistinguishable lacerations- it's pleasant, but exahustingly painful, and all the while you stagger through this cloud of stinging caresses, you are beckoned forward by some sweet perfume, salivating like a coyote- dripping with desire, although never for release. 

That's always how I feel shoegaze should sound, and that's where To Repel Ghosts frankly hits the mark. I can't say exactly what I'm feeling while listening to it because it is changing by the second, and sometimes even less than that. And that's what keeps me coming back- trying to retrace my steps and find what I had felt before, only to discover something new, satisfactory and disorderly in it's place. 

I love the Italian disco parts that stir and mingle with dark fixations on opener "Fade Out," the bright power-pop and sensuous bluster of "Rain and Ice" feels tense while still in repose, the pouty and pinning "Unlucky" is infectiously optimistic in its embrace of its underdog casting, "To Repel Ghost" feels like a big romantic seance where you summon the shade of a dead boyfriend to pair dance with abandon to a The Psychedelic Furs instrumental, and "Levels" simply expresses what it feels like to be caught between the layers of a dream as it collapses in on itself in a dustless, controlled demolition at the moment you reacquire consciousness. 

To Repel Ghosts is the kind of haunting you want in your house- a state of mind and sound that opens a path to indulge in moods that previously lay like old toys in attic drawers. Seemy things that you might never pick up again for for fear of what lingering things they may awaken inside of you. Memories you might not recognize as your own. Sentiments that feel stolen, but which would be wrong to give back. 

It's out on Static Blooms Records. 

Interview: SiP / Prezzano

Got to talk with Jimmy and Pete of the excellent Chicago local experimental duo SiP / Prezzano for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series this week. Their new self-titled album is out on Moon Glyph Records.

Interview: https://chirpradio.org/podcasts/sip-prezzano-intervie

Album https://moonglyph.bandcamp.com/

Album Review: Horologic Mime - Horologic Mime EP

"Soundtrack" music is kind of an odd and surprisingly common genre of experimental music. Odd in how pedestrian it tends to be. These kinds of works are usually framed as the score for an unreleased or fictional film that is meant to play in the listener's mind- casting them as the director of a movie they neither had any prior investment nor interest in. 

They also tend to be self-gratifying solo excursions, with a single producer cosplaying as either John Carpenter or Ennio Morricone. In short, they lean towards the perfunctory, while asking a lot of the audience and giving back very little in return. 

Horologic Mime is an exception to all these tired tropes. They're a three-piece rock band and plunderphonic production collaboration out of Italy, who share almost no DNA with the sounds of your average, afternoon Spegeti-Western buffet binge on TCM. 

In fact, I'm not sure what the reference points for their first EP are... but they do not feel of this world. What they do feel like is menacing. 

The moody guitar work cuts through you like a moonbeam seeking to unlock some dormant beast inside you while the rattling industrial percussion speaks to a city landscape in rapid degeneration and decay. 

It's like an amped-up accompaniment to some insanely violent '90s anime OVA, like a Wicked City, Baoh, or even Iczer One. "Horn Of Plenty" perfectly conveys a sense of ominous, twilight terror, like something is slithering around your peripheral vision, carefully avoiding street lights as it tails you on your walk home. 

The meandering whine of the guitars coupled with a mechanistic groove and ghastly atmospherics on "Inevitable Choice" capture the aura of an urban terrain slowly being absorbed and twisted by a creeping demonic miasma, corroding concrete and steal into parodies of human habitation in a nightmare before your very eyes. 

The mood lightens slightly on "Human Child" where cartoonish vocal performances are recut into a series of amusing tailspins of nonlinear conversation, but the searching synths and the steadily intensifying heat of the surrounding feedback still convey a sense of barrenness and desperation. 

Then there is "Cleanliness Within," a seething cybernetic sludge mire march, that could drain all the hopes people project into the cloud for technology to answer our benighted prayers and reducing these dreams into a putrid, silicon-evaporating, acidic downpour of dread. 

They call it soundtrack music- sounds created to help breathe vibrancy into still images as they come to life. But Horologic Mime sound more like a massacre- a fiendish crime forever preserved on celluloid, an endless shudder for posterity. 

Album Review: Mis Sueños Son De Tu Adiós / The Civil War in France Split

Can screamo be cozy? We've reached a point in human history when this question must be answered. And I think the answer is yes. There was a time when the concept of hardcore, and connected styles of music, pretty much-impelled people to bust out their doors and run wild in the streets like a partially singed-bat fleeing the hovel of a burning tree. But since COVID has religated many of us to housecat status, punk musicians have had to accommodate their sounds to a more domestic setting. This has not resulted in a neutering of the urgency or power of their music but rather caused them to have to reorient the compelling aspects of their work to be delivered in tighter, more compact packages. To illustrate my point, we have the four-song split between Baltimore's The Civil War in France and Argentinian artist Mis Sueños Son De Tu Adiós. Both of whom have sounds that land squarely within, what they themselves describe as, bedroom screamo. A style that mainly consists of extremely lofi guitars performed often in a stuttering, Poison The Well-style groove, with compressed percussion, and toy-like keys and synths that help to provide a melodic bumper for the lurching, shrieking vocals to press into and bay against. While both artists share a lot of similarities in terms of style, they obviously have their own identities as well. Mis Sueños Son De Tu Adiós has a harder edge to their guitar playing, and a wild kind of whiplash sense of melodicism that delightfully batters itself against its confines as if refusing to accept the restrictions of its existence as an audio file and home-recorded piece of music.  In contrast, The Civil War in France leans into the homespun aspect of her chosen aesthetic with wheezy organs, plastic-fan-like drum loops, and quiet, thin guitar tuning, seemingly calibrated so as not to wake the neighbors. It's all pretty strange and highly expressive in a way that we all have the right and desire to be when we think no one is looking. This split is an international release that will make you feel right at home wherever you hear it. 

Album Review: CC Sorensen - Twin Mirror

Twin Mirror was written over a period of two years while composer CC Sorensen was in the process of settling into, then decamping from, and then finally coalescing into their new home in San Antonio, Texas with their partner. The chaos of their life during this period is hardly heard over the chorus of communion that permiates the album though-  a potently serene and transportive listening experience. It is impossible to quantify how the disintegrations and fluxations that a person experiences impacts the art they make, but what every dragoons CC battled while recording Twin Mirror, it does not deter from the impression that is a special engagement— precious in its unassuming powers of transcendence. 

Where ever you are, physically, when you experience Twin Mirror, your mind will be drawn somewhere else. Almost like you've been caught in the soft enclosure of a pair of giant, overlapping palms, then lifted hundreds of feet into the air and away from the murky soup of anxiety which your days are steeped in. Such an experience would seem terrifying in the abstract, but in practice, it feels like the outcome of a successful rescue mission- A jettisoning of your consciousness out of the prison of your surroundings. A freeing of potential. A domestication of fear. A recasting of one's inherent plasticity into a new mold. 

Twin Mirror is a freejazz record in its conception and from, but one that does not scrutinize itself in comparison to its contemporaries. Some parts feel formal, while others are shockingly candid. It is truly free in this respect. The orchestral bows and trumpets all feel like they were recorded in the open air, with a swarm of fireflies as their audience, and the ambiance of sound that envelops the compositional maneuvers featured here overflow like a well expelling its cool, clean contents in some great showing of affective catharsis. A cup with no lip should not spill its contents, and yet I feel absolutely drenched in what has lept over the invisible boundaries that define the edge of this album's sound. 

What captivates me most about these compositions is their relaince on the contributions of unwitting amphibious collaborators, by which I mean, field-recorded frog calls- a natural chorus that often seems to supplement the arrangments in the same way a choir of human voices would in a mass or ritual, providing a kind of emotional and sonic rail which the listener can grip while traversing a marsh land of sound- a difuse, guardian spirit that does not have a single geometrical body but whose presence is nonetheless felt in the aggregate, cherished, and wholly relied upon. 

Twin Mirror has a kind of fluid excellence to it that I have only ever previously experienced while tasting the wind on my tongue, or the inhaling the smell of sunlight as it runs through the strands of my hair. This album will engage the full range of your current senses, and potentially, point to others that had previously lay inactive and unroused. It certainly helped me wake up and feel centered this morning, and it might just do the same for you- provided you invite it in. 

It's out on Full Spectrum. 

Album Review: Pockets & Alfred. - So Sensitive

The 2017 mixtape So Sensitive from Richmond rappers and producers Young Pocket$ & Alfred. is a whole vibe. It's one of those albums that just seems to give more to you every time you listen to it. I feel its mercurial nature is attributable to the approach the artists took to compiling and shaping it, and that the nature of their collaboration accounts for its lasting generosity to the listener. 

As far as I can tell, they weren't trying to make an album in any specific tradition or style of rap or R'nB, but rather sought to use rap music to set a certain mood, weave specific textures, and to explore the connection between sound and color. Basically a synesthetic playground of boundary breaching infatuations and playfully transgressive curios. 

While the rhymes that both artists, as well as a small battalion of guests, lay down on So Sensitive are helpful to conveying the liquid nuances of the album, taken on the whole, the album feels like it is best-understood post-linguistically. Very much like some poems- the kind where the rhythm and the cadence carry as much or more meaning than the words. Poems whose truth can only be grasped by allowing your ego to fade into the recesses of your consciousness as you ride the wave of psychic/sonic motion that carries you through the splashy tributaries of someone else's brain. 

So Sensitive is like floating in a deprivation chamber in this way, except instead of depriving you of external stimulus, the pool of tactile dream emulsion that you've been immersed in expands the field of available sensations rather than restricts it. Experiencing the album in this way makes the title doubly important in my opinion. 

So Sensitive is often used as a label to characterize someone who has withdrawn into themselves and away from others. That is not how Pocket$ and Alfred. are categorizing themselves on this record. They are "sensitive" because they are receptive to others' moods and the pleasure of their company.  So Sensitive is therefore an encountered as an experiential toolkit to help you do the same. 

So Sensitive is out on Citrus City Records

Album Review: Foie Gras - Holy Hell

 Walking blindfolded into the dark is not a casual pastime for your average person. Iphigenia Douleur of the gothic synth project Foie Gras is not like the rest of us though. She does not recoil from the shadows- She embarrasses them. Her 2019 EP Holy Hell is exemplary of the enmity of her firewalk into the strange world of shades. 

Iphigenia releases her voice like a gasp, air escaping her lungs in equal parts shock and satisfaction, the heat of her breath visibly trailing behind her like steam from a locomotive. It is almost like you can see her words, dancing in the air against the detuned and inhospitable instrumentation- tones that sap warmth from the air like a black hole devouring starlight. 

"Psychic Sobriety" is particularly threatening with its enticing, rhythmic wrap of a beat, percussion that slaps like a crop on leather, a motion that fills out the body of the song, creating the vision of a tragic figure that is slowly carved open by the glinting maneuvers of chilling synths that slice across its face and abdomen. 

This disfiguration process continues on "God Lived As A Devil Dog," where Iphigenia adopts a confessional, reverent tone, while exposing the insatiableness of her lust over a prickly coil of interweaving worshipful synths and boiling guitars. From this point forward, the synth tones continue to have a swelling, gospel-like quality, lending a delightfully perverse flow to the seething shove of "Sisyphus,"  the alien evaporation chamber of "Red Moon," and the heavy-lidded, hushed soul of the prostrating "Latex Sun (for Úna)." 

Holy Hell makes every step Iphigenia takes into the unknown as darkly succulent as a ripe peach that pulses in your hand as if containing the beat of a human heart. 

Holy Hell is out on Yellow Year Records. 

New Noise Bandcamp Friday Picks: Feb '22

I wrote another rec list for New Noise to celebrate Bandcamp Friday today. Many of the recs here are for albums that dropped last year. 2021 was a particularly good year as far as stuff I am interested is concerned so I will probably be writing about albums from the last 12 months for the next 12 months. There are a few albums that dropped in January though, and I feel like I am managing to keep up with the flow of releases, in my own obscure way. Hopefully, you find something on the list you enjoy. 

You can check out my write-ups here: https://newnoisemagazine.com/column/new-noises-bandcamp-friday-picks-february-2022/

Included in this month's list: 

Fit For An Autopsy – Oh What The Future Holds (Nuclear Blast)

Lady Wray – Pieces of Me (Big Crown Records)

Xenia Rubinos – Una Rosa (Anti- Records)

Taking Meds – Terrible News From Wonderful Men (SmartPunk)

Slant – 1집 (Iron Lung Records)

Bug Love – Judge ( Self-Released)

Curly Castro – Little Robert Hutton (BackWoodz Studioz)

Fuss – We’re Not Alone (Phat ‘n’ Phunky)

Age of Apocalypse – Grim Wisdom (Closed Casket Activities)

Noir Disco – Now! 2073 (Self-Released)

Life’s Question – LP Promo 2021 (Triple B Records)

VHS – I Heard They Suck​.​.​.​Blood (Wise Blood Records)

Album Review: Pedazo de Carne Con Ojo - ¿Pero Like Cómo E'tá?

How many rappers do you know who make rap music that they think their Mom might like? Probably not many. Now, I'm not talking about your Mom. Your Mom is probably into some wack stuff. No offense, but we all know how Moms can be, and they're not usually into cool stuff like rap music. 

Frankly, though, I'm not talking about your Mom, I am talking about Steven Perez's Mom, who used to play all sorts of music from the Dominican Republic for him as a kid. Music that he has now rediscovered as an adult and which informs his current artistic endeavors. 

Steven is the beat-masher and rhymesayer behind Pedazo de Carne Con Ojo, and his 2020 album ¿Pero Like Cómo E'tá? represents an arranging of mid-to-late 20th Century merengue and batacha into the world of goofy, good-natured rap music. 

Calling it goofy is not an insult, mind you. Music is meant to be fun. And fun things can be goofy. That's part of why they are fun. What I mean when I say goofy though, is that while Steven's raps are definitely delightful, he also is willing to take chances with his music and stand by the results, whether they pan out or not. 

Thankfully, they usually do, and ¿Pero Like Cómo E'tá? is full of bops, like the jittery, horn-varnished coo of "Hold Me Down," or the big-city bustle of "Handle Yr Business" with its rolling samples and spry, cross-talking flow. 

"I Need The Bag" has a sparkling psychedelic quality that remains clear-sighted despite its submersion in foggy atmospherics, and "Mind Racing" manages to bridge the gap between frantic and centered, like a bridge over a torrent of roiling self-doubt and anxiety. 

Overall, ¿Pero Like Cómo E'tá? sounds like Steven has his shit together and knows what he is doing, which I'm sure is something his Mom is proud of. I hope she likes the music too, because I sure do, even though I realize that I'm not necessarily the target audience for it. 

 ¿Pero Like Cómo E'tá? is out on Citrus City Records

Interview: Julian Sartorius

Photo by Nicole Pfister

Julian Sartorius is a jazz percussionist, who through years of training and cultivation has attuned is his sense of rhythm to unleash the transformative potential of thinner and ever more de minimis executions in sound. His latest project may be one of his more conceptually purposeful, even within a career defined by conscious engagement with the subtleties that demarcate the crossroads between psychology and the auditory impact of percussion. Locked Grooves, is exactly what it claims to be, a series of recursive, percussive pieces that can be looped infinitely, or for however long it takes to germinate some new aural horticulture in the furrows of your brain. The truest experience of the album is the vinyl version, in which the duration of each track is up to the individual listener, but a taste of its potential can also be acquired from checking out the digital release below: 

 

If you want to get your hands on that vinyl, it is out via -OUS Records. 

In acknowledgment of the recent repressing of Julian's album, I caught up with him via email to get some of my burning questions about his work answered. You can find his replies below: 

Interview conducted on January 7, 2022 via email. 

Please briefly describe the conception and execution of your latest album Locked Grooves.

Generally in my work, I am interested in exploring possibilities and finding freedom within
specifically tight frames. Locked Grooves is an album consisting of 112 beat loops cut onto a vinyl LP as locked grooves. Every beat loop is exactly 1.8 seconds long - the duration of one rotation at 33 1/3 rpm. Since the beats are cut as locked grooves, the loops can be listened to endlessly - as long as one wants. The needle of the record player has to be lifted and placed manually. For the digital release, we decided to publish the beats as one-minute tracks. The listening experience of the vinyl version can be reproduced by listening to the digital version in repeat mode.

How did you determine the parameters for this project, and why did they seem significant for you to explore?

The framework for this album was quite rigid on account of the technical specifications of the vinyl format, as I was aiming to create rhythmic figures that could be listened to endlessly. I really enjoy limitations like these, because they force you to explore in-depth. What are the elements that carry a short loop of 1.8 seconds into infinitude? What kind of rhythmical figures even fit into 1.8 seconds? How does my own perception and attention shift over time while listening to a specific loop?

What challenges did working within this framework present, and how did you address them?

I recorded an extremely high amount of material over a metronome of 33.33333 bpm. Within this, I explored various metrics: 4/4th, 3/4th, 5/4th, 6/4th, 9/8th, 11/8th, and so forth. The biggest challenge was finding the individual loops that really can be heard over a longer period of time and have the potential to ‘unfold’ themselves to the listener. I edited over 500 loops and continuously reduced them to form the final collection, which was a very extensive process. I ended up with 112 loops that I wanted to have on the album, unconditionally.

At more than 112 minutes in length, Locked Grooves is of comparable length to a feature film. Please give us an idea of how you utilize this length to develop your concept.

The length of 112 minutes only corresponds to the digital format. In the vinyl version, the album has no duration, it is potentially endless. As described above, listening to the digital versions in repeat mode is the closest a digital listener will come to the original intention of the album. The digital version of the album is not necessarily meant to be listened to as a whole - contrary to how one would watch a movie. To me, the digital format is more of a collection that needs to be explored playfully: one can listen to individual loops or certain sections, one can make use of the repeat mode or shuffle mode. The fascinating thing about this is that the album shifts its shape constantly, but at the same time there is a continuous flow that comes from the underlying limitation of the loops length. Of course, the album can also be listened to as a whole, the loops are arranged in an order that creates a flow of rhythms that morph perpetually.

Do you intend the Locked Grooves to be experienced in a single sitting, or can it be broken up into multiple listening sessions?

I intended it to be broken up into multiple listening sessions, especially the vinyl version of the record. Maybe someone would listen actively, while at the same time letting time drift away.

You had mentioned that you intend Locked Grooves to be enjoyed in a similar fashion to a painting. Are there any musical works that you personally have enjoyed in this fashion, and did those works inform this album in any way?

I compared the loops with paintings because they ‘stand still’ in a similar way. When exploring a painting, the viewers decide autonomously how long they look at a certain section or detail, the eye wanders and only over time does a viewer unlock different layers and details.

The loops can be approached in a similar way by listen to them in-depth in order to discover ‘new’ or unheard elements and textures. So for me, discovering a painting or a photograph is a very similar experience to the act of listening to loops. In this respect, the format chosen for this album invites to focus on certain layers and details.

What did your tool kit for making this album look like? Did you have to experiment with any novel materials or techniques to achieve the sounds you were looking for?

All of the beats are produced acoustically, on a prepared drum set. I use various materials - metal, wood, plastic and fabrics - to prepare my drums. By preparing a drum set you can create sounds that have unexpected timbres and resonances, some might even sound as if they were produced electronically, despite being played acoustically.

How much time did you spend just banging on things in order to get the sound right for this album?

I’ve been developing my sound vocabulary for many years, always searching for new possibilities of acoustically produced sounds. It’s a never-ending process on the basis of using any kind of material as a musical instrument. While working on the album, the process was more about focussing on a suitable setup, and then trying to capture these sounds as well as possible.

What are your top five albums or performances of 2021 so far?

I’m unable to answer this question - I often listen to music that was recorded years ago. Currently, I’m exploring the genre of Maloya, which comes from La Réunion (Réunion Island). And due to the lockdown in the first half of 2021, I’ve not seen as many shows as usual.

Anything else you want to add, or that you would like people to know?

Listen.

Big thanks to Tim Wilson of Unsung Hunger for making this interview possible.