Hello there,
Welcome to issue #14 of Crow’s Nest. As always, thank you for opening and reading this.
I don’t have a whole lot to write about for this issue. My anxiety has been high as of late, which is why I didn’t write up an issue for the last (final?) Bandcamp Friday. I’ve been feeling kind of down too when not super anxious or really not feeling much of anything it seems. Working on things in therapy and that which are probably related, though on reflection when writing this up mid-spring has always been a bit of a rough patch for me going back a full decade or so at this point.
Anyway … tunes. If you are up for it feel free to leave a comment or share this work, I’m not necessarily looking for external validation though that’s always nice. @embirdened on Twitter as well if that’s more your thing.
This one’s a serious tweet, the fun ones are below like usual. Fill this out if you haven’t already esp. if you’re here in Chicago:
A confession: I’ve never been a big fan of dub music. Certainly I am grateful for its existence and the innovation it has brought to music, but the dub I’ve listened to previously never did much for me. I’m beginning to think though, that while I’ve known that listening to it on low-quality speakers (and sober) was probably disrespectful to the music, it has also been the speakers.
Remastered by Pole for a 15th anniversary reissue for it’s first release outside of Brazil, this is an entrancing dub rock record that has entered heavy rotation lately. Some of the 8 tracks are near-straightforward, large-ensemble rock numbers, one features a reading of Virginia Woolf, another could easily slot into a club DJ set … it’s a truly beguiling record. Santtana and his band claim the title stems from how it felt hotboxing during the studio sessions but you don’t necessarily need to do the same to enjoy this.
If Dry Cleaning are the downbeat, stream of consciousness side of modern living, Squid are on the other side of that tent of rising UK post-punk groups. This is very anxious music indebted to longform, repetitive workouts of krautrock, whose buildup and release momentum contravene post-rock cliches, alongside some other unexpected left turns. Very much emblematic of modern life, again, though some of the literary references—including Anna Kavan’s Ice, which needs to go back in my ‘re-read this’ pile—indicate a bit more than just strong self-awareness. The pre-release singles remain the highlights at this moment for me though I’m sure that will change with time. I have a ticket to see them at the Bottle later this year and cannot wait for that.
Not Waving has stayed on my radar for a few years—not entirely due to the excellent moniker taken from This Heat—and this one is poised to be big for me. It’s quiet, pre-loudness wars style, and even if that weren’t the case How To Leave Your Body deliberately lingers on the periphery of attention. That’s not entirely due to features from Jonnine Standish and (residually) Jim O’Rourke though they certainly contribute. Eventually I am going to actually hear what Marie Davidson is singing here. One day, hopefully soon.
I know that plenty of what I feature here is what you’d consider weird. I can’t necessarily tell since my sonic palette likes this stuff, and I do filter out a lot that I find too weird or don’t like or get, believe it or not. So, with that in mind, let me assure you, this one is Deranged. Its press release calls it an off-kilter Boredoms meets Negativland. Alright. I’m a little sensitive to some of the declared sample sources but I’m assuming Opal Tapes did their due diligence on that front. It’s probably not 100% coincidental my recent anxiety peaked with my first listen. I swear I do like it.
I finished reading Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler recently. I can’t tell if it’s brilliant in the conventional sense of the term or if that’s just an artificial, surface-level view of it. It has some of the best writing about the experience of being online in the modern age, and handles some of the cliches of the ‘meta’ self-referential writing mode that has been popular as of late as well, yet it still feels a little too small-bore, tidy and self-contained to be a definitive modern classic. It is unsettling even if you’ve never deliberately pretended to be someone you’re not online, and in that sense ‘says a lot about society’. One for my ‘to re-read’ pile for sure. (Do not read if you are sick and tired of hearing about writers and media in New York.)
I haven’t read a whole lot else outside of the New Yorker recently I feel is worth sharing, but here are a few articles I liked:
-Gideon Lewis-Kraus on the relationship between the U.S. government and investigating U.F.O.s. They’re out there.
-Matthew Hutson on ‘Persuading the Body to Regenerate Its Limbs’
-Jiayang Fan on food, disgust, and who determines the relationship between the two. As someone trying to branch out in their diet or, at least, my takeout options, it’s interesting to consider this from the other side of such judgments.
Forgot to write this one up the past 2 issues or so. It should be theoretically possible to write a better confessional indie album about being young, isolated and a bit down in Chicago but the search is still on for that. ‘When Will I Learn’ and ‘Ferry’ are my highlights here. Out on the upstart yet strong local label Born Yesterday Records which I’m keeping my eyes on.
Here’s a tape that vacillates between indie pop and deconstructed club experimental electronics, all with the sheen of bedroom recording. It’s inspired by personal growth and development over the past half year or so by the artist. All proceeds from the release are going to Chicago hip-hop auteur Sharkula, whose recent Take Caution On The Beach (prod. Hausu Montain’s Mukqs) is worth a spin as well.
O Yuki Conjugate are yet another name of an artist I feel I should know more about/of and yet. So when I saw the email from Optimo about this I gave a listen and have felt blown away by it. Apparently the group has been active for nearly 4 decades? And these tracks are all like as old as I am, this being a pared-down reissue originally out on Staalplaat? They got me there. Much to consider. Like just how good this is.
A new EP from one of Portugal’s finest. The title track has a very slippery feeling to it, almost like a phasing effect. The whole thing sounds like something out on AD 93, which is tight. Eris Drew has a remix on the B-side as well.
Producer Brian Leeds’s earlier, dub techno leaning work is some of my favorite work in the genre. When he pivoted to a more ambient sound it lost some of its appeal to me. I can count on one hand the number of instances where I wish there was more work from an artist in a certain style and dub techno Leeds is one of them. Not in Kansas anymore though, in multiple senses. Encountering it on some compilation in 2014, his song ‘Battery Tunnel’ caught my ear and has really stuck with me, it’s probably my favorite track of his. So when he recently started putting his back catalog up on Bandcamp I was really excited to see this EP with more work from that era. ‘Battery Tunnel’ hasn’t been dislodged from that spot in my head but it does feel nice to have a bit more material from this period.
This band is either from Rouen, France, or Montreal; when I looked into that I just got more confused. Perhaps they split time between the two? Independent of location this is a solid post-punk EP worth a few spins.
This is a short but sweet set of primitive indie-surf rockers from local group Axis: Sova. Just 3 dudes rocking out hard, usually to the accompaniment of an early drum machine that refuses to compromise an inch on momentum. I’m not even sure what else I can really compare them to, I just want to see them dominating as an opener to a half-empty venue soon.
Twitchy, experimental dance music out on anno who are a great label for that kind of stuff. Small but mighty back catalog including releases from Brian Leeds and Christoph de Babalon. I’m trying to avoid using “liminal” as a descriptor for this since that feels like a crutch and perhaps more representative of how I tend to listen to music but it seems appropriate here.
I feel like this might be the vibe for this summer instead of the super-optimistic ‘hot vax summer’ some people are trying to manifest. Might just be me though.
And that’s it for this issue. As always if you’ve gotten here thank you for reading, I hope you found something that you like within. The weather outside my apartment is wonderful but I’m on an antibiotic that advises against prolonged exposure to direct sunlight, so, I’m not gonna head out for a walk. At least my windows are open. Here are some ducks in Lincoln Park during an earlier one of those. Take it easy.