Album Review: Heta Bilaletdin - Nauhoi

I often wish that I could project the state of my mind in a way that would make the world more intelligible to others. Maybe that's why I write this blog, to provide an abstract layer of metaphor through which to interface with reality. Music does this on its own. I'm just calling attention to the way that it fills in unseen gaps or pulls around incomprehensible crags. It is the dust that reveals the shape and grain of the road underfoot, disclosing the unseen and unforeseeable, like a flashlight whose beam crosses the boarder between timelines. I sense these words leaving me and reaching you as a dashing black line drawn across a map, overlapping and overcoming the palpable real barriers and consternating elements that separate us in order to wind a thread between two distant pinpoints and effect a transference. A thread on which the plastic isometrics of Heta Bilaletdin's Nauhoi can reach you like a mechanized passenger pigeon delivering a message of the rediscovery of the dodo. An improbable initial metamorphotic incantation from the artist, a translation of sensation into sound and back, one which rotates the ballast of one's skull in a counterclockwise manner, releasing jets of green steam in the course of cycling revolutions and forcing its contents to reorient into imperatively unsteady compounds whose forensic potential is in proportion to their combustibility. Daisy-frilled snakes of electric intelligence will circle their barbed coils around the trunk of your spine and act as ribbons of satellite receptors for splendid telekinetic telexes from spiritually inverted terrains. A groan of mystic stone. A fire as cold as night. A bowl of porridge that stares back at you with the kindness of your grandmother's face. A chalice of insight infused with a wisdom as dense as packed sand. A concrete mixer for the mind. All of this has been recorded, because that is what Nauhoi means.

The uncanny dissemination funnel of Fonal Records awaits.  

Album Review: Hoshina Anniversary - Hisyochi

It was hot today. It's summer. What should I expect? It's like I'm complaining about nothing. Still, it got to me. Not in terms of temperature, but in terms of everything else. It's not that it was hot. It was the way it was hot. Every movement caused skin that had adhered to my seat to stretch as if I were stripping off a bandaid. Sweat ran in rivulets under my clothes, streaming over me like I was taking a shower, only instead of washing away the grit that had clung to me I only grew saltier and grimier by the hour. The sun's radiation reflected off the sidewalks as if it was the light escaping from the Ark of the Covenant. I left dark, penetratingly damp thumbprints on everything I touched. My body's reaction was cartoonish and the depths of my displeasure were daunting. I don't mind it when it's hot. It's really all the minor discomforts that add up due to the heat that forms a mountain of misery. Writing this indoors and under an AC vent could not result in a greater appreciation for temperature-controlled environments. It's giving me the peace of mind and relaxed clarity of presence to punch out a few words of admiration for Hoshina Anniversary's Hisyochi. Coincidentally "Hisyochi" means "somewhere cool to relax during a hot summer" which is exactly where I am writing from, and I will go on record as it being superior in nearly every way to the sun seared alternatives I had braved earlier. Unlike many artists I write about, I actually recall where I first encountered Hoshina Anniversary- the Panty and Stocking soundtrack. How important is this fact to the overall arch of this short tome? It's a relatively minor detail; however, coming to this record from his soundtrack work definitely aids in my appreciation of his sense of detail and texture, as well as his versatility as a composer. The saucy and sassy nature of the project where I first encountered his work definitely left me with the impression that I should expect to hear something with a high degree of pep and polish. The polish is here, however, the pep has been pruned to no more than a kernel. But a strict preference for momentum is not the disposition that Hisyochi operates from, instead, we find the artist cracking open the strictures of dance music that pressure and coax us to move, rewiring them to prioritize a passage towards internal quietude- a balm for the fever of the day. Synths and smooth bass lines babble forth like cold water from a grated vent, spilling over your limbs and lifting your weight away from the grip of gravity, pressing you closer to heaven, high enough to lick the clouds, relieving the tension in your muscles that would usually hold it in perpetual exertion. Beats rotate like the blades of fans, surrounding you in a cooling cyclonic current of air, while leafy, shadow-hued atmospherics guard you from the signs of prying heat or perturbing flashes of solar death rays. Early tracks such as "Rakka 落花" and "Irahu いらふ 応ふ" established the perimeters of this aural shelter, while later numbers like "Roman 浪漫" and "Shonyudo 鍾乳洞" elaborate on previously inaugurated features with Caribbean flourishes, jazzy jaunts, and affective intensifications of psyche-rippling pulses and permutations. It kind of feels like eating a bowl of mochi ice cream with your soul- an ingestion of relief that frees your essent from the sticky clump of overheated flesh for which it is attached- allowing it to drift and savor sensation in a newly consummate state of elevated leisure. 

Find a serene balance with more releases from Patience / Impatience.

Album Review: Moreish Idols - Lock Eyes and Collide

It's good to crack into some good old indie rock-styled indie rock now and again. Of course, I don't mean, the indie rock that your Gen X sibling used to stuff wrinkled dollar bills and all their faith in humanity into a postage-stamped envelope in the hopes of being able to hear. The kind they used to make when I was a youngin' (the kind you could grab off the rack at a Best Buy)! The kind that would sort of make your parents happy because it reminded them of the '60s, but would also give them a panic attack because it reminds them of the '60s, plus a mesh of some too-arty, '90s slacker vibes, which all together lead them to worry that your future would be art school followed by a long career as a part-time bus boy at a cafe that boasts at selling vegan rice crispy bars (but only because the owner doesn't realize how much bone is actually in marshmallows). Moreish Idols hits that sweet, nostalgic soft spot for me... and now that I'm an adult with a career, no one is going to give me concerned glares for spending all day listening to their EP, Lock Eyes and Collide. As is suitable to their style, they glean quite a bit of jangle from the electric-folk side of '60s psych-rock, but have this kind of strange, almost competitive elasticity to their performances, where the mix gets all chewed up between the vocals and the drums, almost like two dogs fighting over a strip of rawhide. It's a dynamic that gives the tracks a nice little burst of hungry urgency that contributes a steady column of intrigue to the otherwise peaceful chime of their sound, kind of like James Murphy bursting from a pile of vinyl wax shavings to teach a retirement-age REM how to recapture the weighty haste of their youth. While this interplay pleasantly drives the earlier tracks, it's the later half that the band really finds their stride, wherein "Green Light" stages a surreal conflict between bass-dueting pontifications as they make shapes in a contest with sax-kissed tumble-funk flexs, and the closing track, "Chum" where waves of chaos are unleashed in gratifying contrast with a painlessly preserved power-gaze pantomime that's batched blushingly well with a fuzzy tickle and melodic mascarade, wrapped in a persevering pure-hearted purr. Lock Eyes and Collide? You don't have to tell me twice. 

You heard me, Play It Again Sam. 

Album Review: Moka Only - In and of Itself

I gave In and of Itself a spin because I like Moka Only's name. It's really that simple. It's just a good name for an MC. Makes me think of sweet and smooth flows, with a sense of richness and balance... like a hot cup of mocha! And that's pretty much what it's like listening to the record- slick, stimulating, hot to the touch, but goes down easy. Moka's not just a wordsmith, but also his own beatmaker, filtering jazz clips through a system of hydrating, super-steamed funk and subjecting them to a signature enhancement of finely tuned house rhythms that help condense the motion of the tracks and improve their consistency. Jazz-rap (to borrow an unholy AllMusic genre tag) is a common production style, even in 2023. When an artist wants to come across as suave and together, it's one of the styles they tend to fall back on, and it can sometimes feel like a bit of a crutch as a result. It has an incredibly well-established cultural cache and proven track record for hits... and beat in the style are easy to come by. If you want to buy a Dilla-style beat, you can pretty much cold DM anyone with a SoundCloud. But Moka really is doing something different. His beats feel infused with his personality, with a genuine appreciation for their sources, an understanding of their strengths, and a spiritual-like connection to their real and mythical origins. Frankly, I couldn't imagine anyone else's flow gliding on these creamy, surging curves and sticky, shuffle bumps. In and of Itself is a machine specifically calibrated to serve a special kind of brew, one that Moka Only is distinctly and uniquely qualified to supply. 

Album Review: Patrick Cowley - Afternooners

The soundtrack to a film is rarely its defining feature. We can all think of exceptions to this rule, but generally, what captures the focus of your attention while watching a film is the action and dialogue, not the music- a deliberately subordinate facet of the production that drips away from your conscious register and into the background to aid in establishing ambiance and other supporting aspects of the viewing experience. More marginal even than your average film score are the arrangments that end up setting the scene in porno flicks, where the substance on the screen is ALL action and not much else. Again, there are exceptions, of which Patrick Cowley's body of work certainly qualifies. The composer was responsible for many sublimely simple ditties in his day, some of them ending as mood setters for bold and brassy homoerotic encounters set to celluloid in the '80s, many of which have now been collected and released as compilations by Dark Entries Records. My current favorite of these collections is Afternooners (named for a skin flick of the same title), not just because I always thought the aphorism for a mid-day hookup was incredibly amusing in a nonchalant and disarmingly innocuous kind of way, but more importantly, because the soundtrack is back to back jams. All of the arrangments have this steady, drifting, interstellar momentum to them, that seems almost more accommodating to a light show at a planetarium than the man-on-man action they were composed for. I would not go so far as to say that you could never guess that this music was meant for a porno if no one told you as much, but it's not the first thing that springs to mind, either. Their bopping, synth drags and radar-sweeping-like intervals are ranging with a satisfying dose of pep, a bubbly overload that saturates the senses like you've been dunked in a vat of fruit-flavor fused seltzer. The tracks often leave the impression that you are being transported to a new reality where you find yourself reinvigorated and rejuvenated by the intoxicating quality of the alien climate and the fantastic visuals of your surroundings. The scores have an air of exploration imbued within them as well as a keen sense of adventure, as if they were meant to accompany a voyage into the unknown, electrified with a zest for pleasure and anomalous sensation that forges a path of rapturous possibilities, venturing forth where no man has gone before... At least, that's the story you might tell yourself and others. There is a first time for everything after all, and if you've never found a porno soundtrack that you could see yourself playing while relaxing for a night of stargazing as easily as you could use it to put the moves on some hard-bodied, heart-throb, then maybe its time that you let go of your inhibitions and see where Afternooners will take you. 

Explore deeper with Dark Entries Records.