Listening with an open mind. Writing about what I hear. Do you have something interesting you'd like to share? Write Mick at thasoundblog@gmail.com. Twitter @thasoundblog
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| Image courtesy of the artist |
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.
I find the debut, self-titled LP from the Norwegian experimental project Sturle Dagsland strangely comforting. This is despite the fact that the majority of the album appears to collapse hip hop, techno, and Northern European folk into something that sounds like the secretive language of a creature that's been living on an asteroid in deep space and learning to talk by descrambling 50-year-old radio transmissions with a walkie-talkie, a bent tuning-fork, and half a roll of aluminum foil. There are times that the singer of the group, Sturle Dagsland (the band is actually comprised of brothers, Sturle and Sjur Dagsland) sounds like Anderson .Paak attempting to rap with a shock collar on, and many others when he kindles the impression of Bjork, gasping out a verse while being slowly constricted by a large python. Complimenting these prodigiously dynamic vocals are Sjur's instrumentation, which often resembles an experimental Janet Jackson single that was too outlandish for European clubs in the mid-'80s and whose master tapes were accidentally overdubbed onto joik folk field recordings and then dipped in turpentine. It may not surprise you that neither brother put much stock in established musicality and structures, or that Sturle once honed his singing skills by practicing vocal techniques with a team of Icelandic sled dogs. Put simply; I have never heard anything like this before. And I love every second of it.
I place a good deal of importance on the human capacity for creativity and my encounters with art are a consistent motivating factor in my day to day. Art contains in it the seed of an idea that work can be more than toil. That there is some breed of human endeavor that will not result in alienation- that it is to make something that can exist for its own sake- or that can exists as a psychic trapeze act, jackknifing the mental impression of one mind into the consciousness of another. What I find so invigorating, wholesome, and validating about Sturle Dagsland's music is that it feels as close as modern pop music can to this ancient dream of transcendence through creation. That through your effort and exploration, you can produce something that lives through you and which exists without an exploitable function. Something that brings someone closer to you and synchronizes their subjectivity with your own through the locus of a shared experience. This was the original function of all music, I think, and in seeking and apprehending this ancient celebration, Sturle Dagsland music rightfully acquires the denomination of "folk." So much of contemporary music is obsessed with mimicking and reproducing existing styles- and don't get me wrong, I love most music for the skill that is put to these ends. But, there is also a time to embrace what more inspiration can unlock in you than the mere desire to duplicate, and I hope the evocative nature of Sturle Dagsland's debut will have an evolutionary effect on those who hear it. I hope that it will not inspire imitators but independents. That it will not generate reproductions so much as galvanize revolutions.
Hotline Maimi OST was the first game soundtrack I think I ever really considered on par with the music I would hear on the radio or listen to on CD. Now I had been into videogames since I was a kid and my love of many of my favorite titles was closely tied to their music.
I thought the boss battle score in Metal Gear Solid was incredibly engaging and level music for each match in Twisted Metal II would give the stage an added layer of humor and drama, which heightened the whole experience. Even going as far back as the 8-bit thrash of the original Doom episode, videogame music has always sent a spike of adrenaline ping-ponging throughout the soft and malleable corridors of my brain.
But it wasn't until I heard the OST for this stylish and violently existential, neo-noir twitch-shooter that the idea of a game's music as an independent creative work really dawned on me. Part of the soundtrack's uniquely sticking character is the way that the tracks were composed and assembled. Each has its own mood and personality- separate from the game, but which still managed to deepen the sense of emersion while cracking skulls.
It all works because the developers got some very talented people to score their vicious masterwork. Artists like M|O|O|N and El Huervo, and even the man who would become the standard-bearer of darkwave and Italian Disco revival in the years following the game's release- I'm talking, of course, about Perturbator.
However, the individual composer whose contributions are the most consistent in my mind is Scattle. There is a brooding calm to his tracks that give them an ineffable cool. Borrowing from the lo-fi synth soundtracks of '80s thrillers and horror, his compositions explore the menacing resolve and cold, tamping of fear and regret that would have to occur in the mind of someone capable of committing the insane acts of reprisal that the gameplay requires.
Sometimes the tracks take on the mark of Euro-disco, filling the air of urban nightfall with a sooty, irony aftertaste after a rainfall. Other times the synthy parts babble and pool around reflective funk basslines like fresh blood flowing across the floor- oozing under and around a scattering of still-smoking bullet casings. And at other times, it appears that the rhythm is moving in glinting sweeps, with a fateful and deliberate pressure, like it was calmly polishing an oversized blade. For your convenience and pleasure, Scattle's tracks from the OST have been collected into a single EP titled The Takedown.
There isn't a single number that is wanting for character or purpose on this album, and you'll find plenty of intriguing sounds to liven up whatever your doing- from frying an egg in the morning, to going on a mid-day jog in the park, to trying out your mixology skills at night to further woo your partner or a hot date. Just try to ignore any strange messages that might appear in your voicemail after giving this thing a spin. They'll only lead to trouble...
Live and Dangerous II is a sequel to Gee Tee's 2017 live album Live and Dangerous. Sort of. It's kind of hard to tell what is going on with Gee Tee sometimes. Which is kind of the point. Causing overwhelming chaos and confusion is probably the only why these guys roll out of bed, put on their big boy pants, and make themselves eggs each morning. And it's definitely a big part of why they make music (or whatever they call this stuff they've wrestled out of their instruments)!
The Australian garage rock band started out as the solo project of one Kel, who began writing and tracking songs about cars by his lonesome sometime in or around 2016. Gee Tee, and the original concept for the group, were inspired by a series of wacky, Ed Roth knock-off, novelty stickers called Odd Rods. And the spirit of these anarchic commercial oddities still inform the band's ethos.
Gee Tee's sound will be somewhat familiar to the knuckle-dragging fandoms of bands like The Mummies or the Spits- only Gee Tee are outlandish. Maybe not so much in presentation, but definitely in style (but also in presentation). There is a certain variety garage band that aims to make their sound as inscrutable and unintelligible as possible, and Gee Tee are on the knifes edge of listenability in this regard. This is definitely one of the things that is laudable about them- they can write a hook, they can make its stick, and they will make you dig through a Walmart parking lot worth of asphalt thick distortion to get to the goods. And yeah, you'll want to dive into this mess, because the goods are just that damned good!
It's hard to imagine lyrics being this catchy while simultaneously being entirely incomprehensible. Or synth and guitar hooks that are so masterful in their prosaic elegance and allegiance to primitivism. It's almost like the band learned to play by doing a skillshare with a tribe of Neanderthals. God only knows what life skills the band taught those brutes in return (keep an eye out for any particularly hirsute web designers going forward).
Live and Dangerous II was recorded for Goner Fest last year in the living room of Gee Tee's guitarist and saw a 7" and cassette release this year- sometime after Kel finished gluing together the artwork for the sleave. Words somewhat fail beyond this point. To get a real understanding of what Gee Tee is all about, you kind of have to see them for yourself. Get a firm grip on your hat, other headwear, or accessories, and click the video player below.
Of all of the unlikely success stories, Abu Obaida Hassan may be one of the most miraculous. A break-out player in the nightlife of Khartoum (the capital city of Sudan) during the '70s and '80s, his career was cut short when the military dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir outlawed musicians and caused him to have to flee to Saudi Arabia for his safety, as well as to find work. Before governmental and religious censorship put an end to what was once a prosperous and diverse performance scene in 1989, Abu Obaida literally could not walk the streets during the day without getting mobbed. And at night, the festivities wouldn't begin until he arrived, sometimes performing at multiple parties and clubs per night- skipping from soirée to shindig- from dusk until dawn.
By the time he could return to Sudan without reprisal, he had been gone so long that many people presumed he was dead. A local newspaper had prematurely announced his death in the '00s. This fact, and the tremendous crackdown on secular music that had transpired over the past thirty years, had done the dirty work of dimming the spark of his former stardom. Or so it would seem.
In 2016, a chance encounter at a record store led a representative of New York's Ostinato Records to uncover Abu Obaida's whereabouts and persuaded him to release some music through the label. Today, Abu Obaida, while too frail to tour, gives regular concerts in his home, as the new government of Sudan makes efforts to preserve and promote the music and the culture of the region- a heritage that had been all but smothered during the preceding years of oppression. The country has a long way to go in order to rebuild what was tragically lost in those years, but Abu Obaida and his family are cautiously optimistic that things have finally taken a turn for the better. However, if you were to ask them, they'd probably tell you that they are still waiting for the government to properly acknowledge Abu Obaida's accomplishments and legacy. Recognition that should be forthcoming, especially following the global success of Ostinato Records's The Shaigiya Sound of Sudan.
You might be thinking that this is all well and good as far as backstories go, but what about the actual music of The Shaigiya Sound of Sudan? What makes Abu Obaida's record so special? Well, for starters, the eight-track EP is purported to be the first worldwide release and recording of Shaigiya folk tunes. Abu Obaida originally hails from Merowe, the central city of the Nubian culture. Shaigiya, the tribe he is a member of, have their own distinct, cultural and artistic legacy, separate from Nubians and others they share territory with. You can hear the traditional call and response chorus singing of Abu Obaida's folk music throughout The Shaigiya Sound of Sudan. Sometimes it is mixed with Arab and Nubian melodies, but it is always distinctive for its affable, smooth pitch and keeling, percussive welter. "Qamar Al Massa" stays surprisingly sturdy on a silty, panning beat, while "Fargooni" layers handclaps and drums into a hop-scotching polyrhythm, that slowly increases in tempo, interplay and intensity as the chorus of calls and responses rebounds between Abu Obaida and his back up singers, like an ember bursting from one hearth and landing in the mouth of another. Even for Sudanese music, this is unique and captivating to an unparalleled degree.
Ironically, one of the aspects of his performance that Abu Obaida was best known for so many decades prior, was his use of an electric, custom tambour or African lyre. But on his debut for Ostinato Records, he performs the instruments in its traditional, acoustic style- albeit, with his signature additional string. It's also somewhat unexpected that Abu Obaida, wiry tambour is not more prominent in the mix. If you didn't know to listen for it, you might miss it on some tracks as the accompanying drums keep the same rhythm and have a sharper timbre, which masks the sounds of the string instrument, sometimes all together. This is hardly a complaint, though. Even though Abu Obaida's name is on the cover, these are obviously intended to be group performances. While Abu Obaida is certainly in the driver's seat, they are meant to be understood as the sounds of a specific community, and are therefore performed communally. What could have been a solipsistic endeavor is realized only in collaboration and coordination with others. The Shaigiya Sound of Sudan is a testament, not only to Abu Obaida's musicianship and vision, but also the creativity and foresight he can inspire in others.
The Shaigiya Sound of Sudan is out via Ostinato Records
Homeboy Sandman called this record his favorite of 2012. And while that means something to me, It's not why I've held on to Oddisee's People Hear What They See LP for nearly ten years. In reality, it's been kind of a talisman, a charm to help me grasp in reality, what I hold in the gaze of my mind's eye— guiding my actions, as if I were an arrow, that, once let loose from the bow, catches the correct air current, and in the face of all probabilities and statistical likelihoods, hits the bullseye- dead center. Oddisee has a certain adeptness of observation and sophistication of execution about him that I aspire to myself. This is demonstrated on People Hear What They See in ways that I think are immediately clear, even when listened to without intention or directed attention. This holistic approach is something that seeps to the surface from the very bones of the release's concept, like a wellspring of crude hinting at an abundance of wealth sousing just below the surface. Oddisee takes as his starting point for the album the way in which people have become dependent on visuals in the modern era- to the point of a near handicap. He acknowledges that we live in an era so awash in visual pleasures that we fail to give due weight to our other senses (or our own critical faculties). It's a thin world. One that is defined by illusion. And one that he was able to slip into and flesh out with some character with his effortlessly fast and visceral flow and benevolent command of boom-bap beats. I might not have saved the world, but it did catch my eye (and ear!) and has left a lingering sparkle as a sign of the encounter. And it proved to me something that I've held fast to ever since- that you can change the way a person sees the world by sharing with them a glimpse of what it looks like from your vantage point. It doesn't always work. But it is always worth the effort.
People Hear What They See was released by Mello Music Group.
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| Image by Jason Neloms |
I'm proud of every interview I have the chance to do. Talking with artists about this art is endlessly fulfilling. However, every once in a while I get to have a conversation that ties together a bunch of stuff that's important to you- history, human connection, and the desire to know and be known by others. I feel like we touch on all of these things and more during my conversation with 1/2 of Chicago hip hop duo Jyroscope for CHIRP Radio's Artist Interview Serious. I'm really excited about this one. Check it out below or on CHIRP's website here.
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| Image courtesy of artist. |
I greatly appreciate how reflective quality Timothy Corpus's new ambient album MMXX and I'm very pleased that I had a chance to talk with him for the CHIRP Radio bog. Read how he has been surviving the pandemic and how his new album came together at the links below:
Interview: https://chirpradio.org/blog/the-chirp-interview-timothy-corpus
Buy MMXX: https://timcorpus.bandcamp.com/
I wrote a review of the debut LP of 5th Wave emo favs Jail Socks for New Noise today. Read what I had to say about Coming Down below:
Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-jail-socks/
Buy: https://counterintuitiverecords.com/products/jail-socks-coming-down-pre-order
Where to begin with Shanghai's Round Eye? Well, for starters, none of them are native-born Chinese. They're actually from all over the world, but have found themselves in mainland China, primarily due to work. Lead by vocalist, former Florida resident, and Libyan Hit Squad defector Craig [last name redacted]; the group are four albums and ten years into their career- a spectacular exercise in stubborn survival and foolish flights of misbegotten fancy. They've managed to thrive in their adopted haven despite having tours canceled by the authorities at the last minute, having their art censored due to its obscenity, and having their very existence snubbed and motivations questions by hipsters and elitists from across the globe. But, hey, what doesn't kill you makes you weirder, you know? And Round Eye are plenty strange.
For their fourth album Culture Shock Treatment, their second with Mike Watts behind the mixing board, Round Eye have make a record that is about as old-school punk as you can get. Don't know what I mean? Look, it's not your fault. Blame Green Day or Sire Records, or the music press in the '90s. A lot of people treated The Ramones and the Sex Pistols as the only legacy acts worth mentioning back in those days. But the genre was more than just three chords, played loud and fast with dried glue in your hair. There were some dudes with real vision back in the day. Acts like The Damned, who combined punk attitude with humor and absurd theater. Fellas like Grahm Parker who presented an air of sophistication while maintaining an encourageable, wise-ass sneer. And punk clubs opened up spaces for deranged pop acts like Sparks and no wavers like James Chance & The Contortions to flourish. If you were to triangular a point in rock and roll's sea of sounds and inspirations between all of these groups (plus The Fall), you'd find an island inhabited by mostly insane people that neighbors the one the Round Eye calls home.
Culture Shock Treatment, like most of the band's previous albums, is political in theme, and while Monstervision took mostly safe jabs at the American election of 2016, this one is aimed at what they view as authoritarian overreach in the place where they now live and work. I can't tell you how, since I don't live there, and can't speculate, but the passion and anger in the face of injustice permeate the album, like water oozing through an exasperated sponge. Wring it out in your ear, and you might learn a little about what it's like to live in a place different than your own... or you might just lose your grip on your own sanity. Caveat emptor and all that.
Culture Shock Treatment is out via Paper + Plastick Records.
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| Photo courtesy of the band. |
At Pioneer Works is the third album that Les Filles de Illighadad (Daughters of Illighadad) have recorded with Christopher Kirkley of Portland-based ethnographic label Sahel Sounds. That might not seem particularly significant, but it is. He's been a constant collaborator with the band, and like other Tuareg musicians, including Mdou Moctar (who appeared on the first Sahel Sounds comp Music from Saharan Cellphones), he's opened quite a few doors for them. Not the least of which are the doors of Brooklyn's Pioneer Works, where this album was tracked live in 2019.
The album contains some variations on songs that appeared on Les Filles's previous albums, 2017's Eghass Malan and 2016's self-titled, but is mostly stacked with fresh materials. Without a doubt, even the familiar tracks are genuine articles in their own right and it's worth hearing these songs again to revel in the versatility of each of their variations.
What separates Les Filles's music from other popular Tuareg and Malian music is the band's adoption of tente rhymes into their repertoire. This is actually very significant. Tente is usually a form of drum-lead (after a fashion, the base rhythm of the styles is performed with a mortar and pestle, which is played like a percussion instrument) choral music performed by women, while the "desert blues" guitar style that forms the core of Tinariwen's and Bombino's sound is traditionally played by men. However, the woman-led Les Filles manages a synthesis of the two, represents a transcendence of not just sound, but of prescribed social roles and definitions well.
Tradition is important to all cultures for sure, but the strength and meaning of a tradition, I think, is best measured by its flexibility- something which Les Fellies's incursions within, and excursions through, Tuareg folk demonstrates to be incredibly robust and adaptive. Specifically, Les Filles give these desert ballads a hypnotic, almost prayer-like quality. Imbuing them with something enchanting and inescapable- like the smell of fresh dirt after a rain, the way that shadows bow and then evaporate before the rising sun, or the simple wonder of a bird in flight.
Wrote about last year's EP from Greenboro pop boys Charm. I also put some words down about their latest single. All the words are on New Noise. Enjoy!
Read about Sugar Mountain: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-charm/
Buy Sugar Mountain: https://acrobatunstable.com/charm
It usually takes me a couple of days after Labor Day weekend to reset my brain and get back on the grind. Thinking about the history of struggle for survival and dignity in this country and how hostile, sour, and fucking deadly it has been for the people who dare speak up about the conditions they are expected to live under gets be a little worked up... every dang time. Labor Day is a day when I spend more time than usual contemplating these things (especially since the real Labor Day has been dragged down and replaced with some brain-wormed holiday dubbed "Loyalty Day" in the US- No. Thank. You.) And when it comes to music for working people- music that speaks to working class issues- folk in fine, but if you want to get the feelings and the facts right, you need to turn up some hip hop. There really isn't a more direct form of musical expression out there, and if you want to hit the bedrock of human experience, it pays to be direct.
Bambu's Sharpest Tool in The Shed, dropped last year, but it's still extremely relevant... and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Set against the backdrop of the 2020 summer uprising for black lives, the LA MC describes in startling and lyrical detail the ways that banks and real estate investors loot neighborhoods through gentrification, the methods by which police act like an occupying force in segregated neighborhoods throughout urban centers, the coercion that guides and defines the choices and circumstances of so many lives, the parallels between prisons and public schools, and intolerability of ongoing apartheids- both in the US and abroad. Bambu's flow really pops throughout, landing lines like left hooks- striking out against the false narratives and consciousnesses that define what is and isn't politically and theoretically possible. It's very cool to hear straight fire, spit from Bambu's jaws like sparks from a furnace- skipping and skimming atop classic jazz samples and crisp, confident grooves. Every track sounds like a battle in a war that Bambu has been preparing to fight his whole life. I wouldn't call it a performance, but a prosecution of the justifications for an unjustifiable state of affairs. These are dope tunes, addressed to a distressed and daunting world.
And if you listen to Sharpest Tool in The Shed and don't think what he is talking about are working-class issues, then you need to ask yourself- who do you think a working class person is? Is it a dues-paying union member who works in a factory? Is it someone who drives a car for a ride-share company? What about someone who delivers burgers or pizzas through Postmates? Is it the dishwasher who works in the restaurant that made that those burgers and pizzas- the line cook, the server, the bus person, the host? What about someone who comes the US from another country to work, with or without a VISA- who possibly sends money back to their family on the other side of the border? What about the person who is unemployed- someone who can't find work, or who is incapable of working due to disability or other mitigating factors? How about the person holding out the empty Burger King cup, who stands in the middle of the road near stoplights and asks people in passing cars for change? What about just anyone who has to work for a wage in order to justify their existence? I'm going to stop burying the lead- these are all working class people, leading working class lives. And nothing in this world is going to change until they realize that they share more in common with each other than they've been lead to believe.
Get a copy of Sharpest Tool In The Shed from Beatrock Music here.
Wrote a review of the latest album from Detriot's The Codgers for New Noise today. Most of their band members are either represented by a union or are involved in labor struggles in the state. They're also a really great folk band, whose songs and subject matter feel very honest and relevant to the present moment. I figured they would be a good band to cover following Labor Day.
Read my review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-the-codgers/
Buy The Codgers Have A Little Fun: https://thecodgers.bandcamp.com/album/the-codgers-have-a-little-fun
Because I love making lists of music to check out, I wrote a list of recommendations for New Noise for Bandcamp Friday this month. You can check it out here.
Included in the list are...
G. Brenner – Bushfire (Very Jazzed)
This fucking album. When Stalking the Ghost dropped in 2017, it was the first album released by Unearthly Trance since their reanimation. The shambling horror show that is NYC sludge metal band broke up in 2011, got back together, and then dropped their sixth album of signature black metal meets cacophonous tar-choked metal on the unsuspecting populous of this wet dirtball of a celestial body. People talk up Melvins, Neurosis and Isis like they were the pinnacles of what low, slow, and brooding rock music can do to unsettle the human psyche. I suspect the fact that Uneathrly Trance escapes such similar praise is because of the cerebral damage their concussive riffs are prone to cause. Brain damage is the only possible explanation. This band cut a split back in 2018 with Primitive Man for fuck's sake! This is a band that knows terror and captures it succinctly with the whirlwind of their sound. Places to stop and sights to wish to unsee on this tour of abject madness include the pummeling “Into the Spiral” with its fiery guitar work and reptilian bass lines, the deliberate slow burn of “Dream State Arsenal” with its oceanic grooves and mammoth riffs, the merciless and rhythmic hammering of “Scythe,” and “The Great Cauldron” with it's he flesh cleaving riffs which churn and lap wickedly at the creases of your ears. When it comes to heavy music, Unearthly Trace is the real fucking deal.
Wrote a review of the galaxy collapsing new LP from Body Void titled Bury Me Beneath this Rotting Earth for New Noise today. Read it below:
Rejoicer is the one-man hip-hop production team Yuvi Havkin. Yuvi, currently living in LA, hails from Tel-Aviv, and is credited by many as the driving force behind Israel’s modern beat movement. Energy Dreams is Yuvi’s debut album for Stones Throw and serves as an exploration of the mystic potential of free jazz to radically alter one's perception and transcend the provincial setting of one's surroundings. His soundcraft relies heavily on nonlinear logic as a guide with hypnogogic emission as its goal. Yuvi has crafted an unabashedly spiritual broke-beat album inspired by a lucid dream he experienced in which still objects stirred and his sense of time had become flat and inverted. As Yuvi himself explains, “I wanted to create an atmosphere of freedom; of walking in unfamiliar territories while still feeling at home and at ease. There’s a huge music world in my head that I hadn’t expressed or explained, and I decided to try tap into that world of sounds.” If you are looking for something that is easy to digest while leaving plenty of vibes to savor, look no further than these sweet servings of potent dive into the blossoming center of the lotus of deep-knowledge.
Did a write-up of the new album from Chicago hip hop collaboration Air Credits. It's a pretty good companion piece to the unfolding apocalypse that continues to unfold before us. Read my thoughts over at New Noise below:
Read review of Believe That You’re Here: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-air-credits/
Buy Believe That You’re Here: https://aircredits.bandcamp.com/album/believe-that-youre-here