Hi there, welcome back to Crow’s Nest. As usual if you’re reading this, thank you for doing so, I hope there’s something within you enjoy.
I realize it’s been a bit of a substantial break between issues, more so than usual. I didn’t make my standard Sunday publishing date due to ‘writing too much about things’ in combination with ‘wanting to do this right’. I’ve been very much aware of this gap, mentally drafting parts of this issue pretty much since shortly after the last one went out. The month of April for me is, historically, usually a bad one—to bastardize John Peel on The Fall, always different [reasons], always the same [effect]—and this year’s April was certainly no exception. (Was T.S. Eliot right on that? Wouldn’t know, haven’t found the motivation to pluck The Waste Land off my shelf and review that.) Not that good things didn’t occur last month, it’s just the bad outweighs the good, frequently, for me. Spent a lot of time on that in my last therapy session. Maybe I’ll commence an official, annual break that time next year? Anyway, I’m still here, you’re still here too hopefully, plateauing is not the same as regressing, change would be nice but the same isn’t bad, get knocked down/get back up again/pissing the night away … you get the idea. Let’s get to it.
There is no way in hell you are getting the full issue in your inbox, FYI.
A bit over 2 years ago, as mass event cancellations began driving home that the pandemic was definitely going to be a huge deal, the actor Vanessa Hudgens posted a (from what I recall) creepily upbeat video arguing that the Coachella music festival should go ahead despite the lethally infectious disease we knew very little about was spreading rapidly. Her argument was that, yes, the festival would spread it, people would get sick and die as a result of attending or coming into contact with people who did, but what could ya do? We should still have some fun and try not to let it get the best of us despite the dreadful outlook. At the time, it felt grotesque and selfish to suggest this, especially coming from someone privileged enough to express outrage over weekend trip plans disintegrating. (I’m sure it still would be if I dug up a copy of the vid and watched it.) Two years later and at least 1,000,000 American deaths later, Hudgens’s stance in that video is also the de facto position of the American political party which claims to follow science and listen to the experts.
Considered the opening of and bellwether for large outdoor events for the North American summer, Coachella made headlines for announcing there would be no vaccination or masking requirement on the festival grounds. Considering fests under the best pre-pandemic conditions were petri dishes, this felt, at minimum, ill-advised. It was also well within Coachella’s capacity to mandate bare minimums of mitigation, either via requiring a vax card upload within the app attendees were required to download to register their wristband and attend, or by stationing staff along the lengthy entry walk to get into the Empire Polo Grounds for in-person vetting. Coachella had easily the largest volume of event staff I’ve ever seen, doing everything from security checks to running the music/event stages to typical vending/custodial work to guiding charter shuttle buses around area hotel resort parking lots at 2 A.M. as the main festivities wound down. Thankfully, most every staff was more friendly Disney World type than junior police officer, which helped contribute to a positive, upbeat mood getting in and dealing with the usual logistical issues of music fests.
This general cordiality extended among the attendees. While largely avoiding the main stage, rap/EDM tent and expansive entry area where the influencers in their ugly-chic neon stretch cutout bell-bottom jumpsuits congregated to create #content probably helped with this, dealing with others in the crowd was easier than anticipated, even by my low standards. Refilling my water bottle around 5 P.M. the first day, the heat and a couple drinks telling my body to tell me to take care of myself, the slow-moving crowd clustered around too tightly spaced stations dispensing water too slowly to be ideal remained polite. When someone within that crowd collapsed, we all quickly made room for them to get some space to recover. Then we made room for someone in their group to reach a station, collectively agreeing they probably needed the water more than we did right then and there. This wore off a bit as the weekend progressed—by the end the number of people jostling my shoulder bag moving through crowds for Fatboy Slim and others, despite seemingly adequate space, transcended ‘annoying’ and got to ‘impressive’ levels—but seeing many people thank their bus driver at the drop-off point and otherwise keeping their grievances in check did wonders for the general mood.
Some other logistics of note: the food vendors were labeled less by brand than by primary offering, and lines were never too long for them. Admittedly, the two-hour time difference and (for me atypical) full hotel breakfast before shuttling over to the fest meant I was eating at relatively odd hours. The main merch line forced everyone through its entirety before you could buy, which likely meant at least a 2 hour wait if half-empty looking, perhaps 4 if full? A surprising number of people were wearing fest merch towards the end of the weekend—mostly hoodies, them probably not heeding advance warnings that, Coachella being a desert, yes it’s 80+ when the sun’s out, but come 8-9 P.M. it’s in the 60s and windy. Unless you bought merch online the only easily obtainable piece was sponsored by the fest’s official cryptocurrency partner. Showing proof you had downloaded the official NFT got you a black t-shirt whose thread count is too low to make an acceptable workout shirt. Despite the digital prominence of the sponsorship, it was tucked off to the side along with a tutorial-core visual art installation that I’m sure did little to convince attendees of crypto’s potential. (Given the Tether peg is disintegrating as I revise, that’s probably for the best.) I’ve not checked the value of my Jonathan Zawada-designed seed ‘in bloom’ but suspect it will live on within an app on the second screen of my phone I’ll rarely if every view.
I also want to point out that alcohol consumption on festival grounds was confined to designated beer gardens, off to side/back from the stages themselves. Security manned exit points to ensure you had finished your drink(s) before leaving. It seemed weird on first impression, but realizing the surrounding metro area lacks the infrastructure to handle mass medical/security issues alcohol’s consumption exacerbates, it made sense. Considering it had been at least 6 months if not more since most attendees were at a music festival, and (myself included) their first 80º+ days since before Omicron meant much of anything outside of colleges’ Greek life/departments, a festival forgoing some bar money and passively discouraging drinking, and babysitting them while doing so, felt like a major revelation. (Side note: get a weed vape DELETE BEFORE PUBLISHING)
While all of the above is important—who enjoys a festival whose general experience turns into a shitshow?—ultimately, for me and (hopefully) most of the attendees of this music festival, the important thing is the quality of music on offer. The schedule, always an item of concern, didn’t drop until the morning before gates opened. Even considering that was in part due to The Weeknd negotiating terms with the fest and/or Swedish House Mafia, it was still stressful as many, myself included, didn’t get a chance to plot their weekend details until after their flights to SoCal landed, not knowing if the spread would work well for you, or if you had multiple hours-long gaps in interest or grinding splits. Also, Arcade Fire was now playing tomorrow.
Admittedly, I’m writing this part of the issue last and it’s been a few weeks since I was there. There are some weirder details/small things I could write about but don’t feel like including here; ask me in-person about those. Looking at the schedule from a distance, the gaps between big (for me) acts and periods when I was more wandering around or chilling with my brother and other friends there seem more prominent than much of what I was watching and would want to write about here. Memory’s funny that way.
Logic1000, Sama’ Abdulhadi, Gee Dee and QRTR had solid DJ sets earlier in the days. The latter appeared on the DoLab stage, not advertised like the others (though better than the Heineken stage), and had a carnival-like atmosphere crowd performers helped maintain. VIPs dancing behind the decks also took turns spraying the crowd with misting guns; ‘VIP labors to make GA more bearable’ is, admittedly, an all-timer of a bit.
Spiritualized, playing the indoor Sahara tent at midday (6 P.M.) was my first highlight. Perhaps it was my brother’s weed but Jason Pierce and his 9-piece band sounded impeccable and perfectly mixed, collectively committed to sublime execution of the space rock/blues/gospel mix with no one attempting any solo extravagance. It felt half as long as it lasted and I cannot wait to see them execute it again in a couple months at Pitchfork.
Getting to The Avalanches partway in after catching Amyl & the Sniffers (who are on track to prove those who discount Aussie musicians’ skills wrong on their current tour, though I’m not angling for tickets to see them this week), a guy in the crowd asked my brother and I if we were fans of Since I Left You. The snobs in us sarcastically confirmed before he said many in the crowd sincerely had no idea about their debut. The amount of fun the duo was having surely has turned at least hundreds present on to it though, I have to hope, and watching them play felt life-affirming. 25ish years in and many trials and tribulations later, the 2 were still together, still in love with the records that made Since I Left You, still playing them and still finding new ways to piece them together and make some magic. Fuck, they still love themselves and us, and I hope I can always reciprocate that appreciation to them and my loved ones.
Arcade Fire’s appearance may have been the big surprise of the fest for those not chasing celebrity guest appearances (I only recall seeing Kenny Beats sit in with a frustrated IDLES), but the bigger surprise I and many around my age have had through the WE rollout has to have been our rediscovered love and appreciation for them. Win Butler’s heart-on-his-sleeve sincerity felt insufficient last album, but the pendulum has swung back in his favor. A true believer from the start and throughout his career, observing that “We were just kids” first playing Coachella in 2005, Wake Up still rings true today. Who is even attempting the same on their scale, trying on their level? They may not fully succeed but man, they’re still giving it their all. I’ve not gotten to the studio album yet, but from the Mojave tent the new material held its own against their most venerated classics, especially when it moved into post-disco territory with Régine Chassagne on lead vocals. Will Butler’s stage presence is missed but it’s your loss for discounting them at this time.
Things moved into weirder territories on Saturday. Stepping out of the cavernous, AC-cooled Yuma tent and its mirror-ball shark after Sama’ Abdulhadi’s turn behind the decks, the desert wind had kicked up enough dust to obscure the mountains off in the distance, and stash the sunscreen for the day. (Masking wasn’t required but you had a good reason to wear one.) Black midi brought out a mime troupe to perform on top of them tearing through John L; I liked Schlagenheim plenty upon release, but you couldn’t quite rock out to them this time. Their current sound of progressive rock played in hardcore frameworks feels like dropping in on a late-semester postmodern literature grad seminar without a syllabus: surely it makes sense on some level but it felt inscrutable to a casual observer. Hopefully their just-announced forthcoming album sees them improve on their pacing. Before them, hardcore group of the moment Turnstile played to a crowd whose small size Pitchfork lamented. Even considering a group like them is now an outlier at the fest, the energy needed to sustain appropriate appreciation for them could be lacking when you had 5 more hours of festival + a commute back to go. (Little wonder the most pushed cocktail on festival grounds was the Red Bull vodka.) Pitchfork said the same about Grimes a decade ago in comparison to The Lumineers though, which is a promising consolation.
I caught the first half of Danny Elfman’s set, which was the weekend’s Serious Music Twitter highlight. In-person, watching him, an industrial band including Wes Borland, a full orchestra and choir move between his solo work, Oingo Boingo material and highlights from his scoring was certainly unique. It’s not anything I would having paid to see on its own, and the whole thing lacking some coherency and strong emotional connections to, say, seeing the theme to The Simpsons live meant my brother and I left to see Caribou, but it was a strong reminder of how much weirder and intriguing this fest and music fests in general could be if they took greater risks in their lineup curation. If the influencer crowd is souring on Coachella, and the general public on music fests as experience, going out on a limb to book underappreciated acts seems like the way to get people back onto the grounds, rather than chasing a nebulous common-denominator college kid everywhere.
Case in point: at the close of Saturday I abandoned DJ Koze’s slow-going techno for J-Pop icon Kyary Pamyu Pamyu one tent over. The overbearing bubblegum aesthetic is not anything I strongly push in this newsletter, but her and quartet of backup dancers got the crowd going, at one point getting us to hop 10 feet left and right like a gabber Electric Slide. It was unexpected, and again not anything I would want to see elsewhere by itself. It was also some of the most fun I had all weekend.
General exhaustion from the travel there and 12 hour+ days of Friday and Saturday had me taking Sunday easy, and was also my least strong day lineup-wise. Reliable acts like Run The Jewels and Jamie xx had me feeling meh and walking away quickly, having seen both (headline) at other fests since shows resumed. Watching from a beer garden, Vince Staples asking his crowd who knew Big Fish Theory has me thinking even my limited interest in rap shows might be coming to a close earlier than expected. Altin Gün’s psychedelic take on Anatolian folk standards was an early, clear highlight for the day; even the band were taken aback at the size of the crowd they drew, and the number singing along in Turkish affirms my belief that the market for pre-globalized world music traditions is stronger than bookers seem to notice.
You can tell my feelings about the fest are a bit mixed—I don’t regret going, but I’m also not planning for next year at this time. I’d like to return to the desert for some leisure, but I don’t feel a music festival is necessary next time. Perhaps the expectations I accumulated with a hotel reserved a year in advance and tickets I’ve been paying in installments since last June weren’t fully met, even if I can say I caught Arcade Fire during their rollout this time, and saw shirtless Danny Elfman too. Getting there and back was more intense than heading cross-city (or walking a medium-length stretch through a city) for a fest like I’m used to. The 4-hour flight delay on the way back—the same day a Trump judge invalidated the federal mask mandate for airports and transit—didn’t help. Nor did what I thought were allergy symptoms coming up a couple days later help, to be confirmed as COVID a couple days after that either. I did get the ~$2,000 overcharge on my hotel room resolved quickly though.
If you’ve ever wondered where and how I dig up some of the more obscure music for Crow’s Nest, besides Twitter, here’s the secret: I tend to sign up for and follow most labels or groups on Bandcamp after 1-2 releases intrigue me, and I’m bad at unfollowing them. So even once music media outlets/attention turn away from yesterday’s fascination, I’m still opening those emails and listening, and this is where I discover many gems, so to speak. That’s the case with this record: I’ve followed Six Tonnes De Chair Records for years, listened through much ‘meh’ material the label puts out, but have never been actively aggravated enough to unfollow. Then they release Hypnose by Vision 3D.
From what I can tell, Vision 3D are Wallonian; if you haven’t noticed, Crow’s Nest content skews English as I’m largely monolingual, understanding and/or speaking Spanish being a minor miracle (do not ask about Latin). I can’t tell what these post-punks are saying as I think it’s in French and have enough trouble with English singing, but the energy they bring, alongside plenty of vocal doubling, comes across like getting pressed into a chainlink fence, the perpetrators demanding your recognition and submission to them. (In a good way.) What’s particularly impressive is how they constantly sound like they are in the 5th or 6th minute of a noisy freakout, despite no song getting to the 4-minute mark and average being under 3. Give it a spin, then go pick a fight or be defiantly iconoclastic.
I’m officially declaring that “something’s up” in Cincinnati, and no I’m not referring to Joe Burrow’s swagger. Crime of Passing’s self-titled makes it clear that the post-punk scene there is thriving and on to something significant, and I felt that way a few weeks before recent fav Feel It Records announced they were moving there. This record is a concise yet inscrutable slab of wax—the excellently-named quintet share members with the similar-minded groups The Drin and The Serfs—moving from darkly groovy post-punk exercises to searchingly melancholy synth-pop to white-hot, blizzardly noise. I might need to book an excursion over there to catch them if they don’t head my way soon.
Manchester producer Finn has dropped off his latest batch of tunes and as always they’re worth at least a few spins. His note of these as being “back to basics” rings true—many of these numbers are quite minimal, frequently sticking to his signature juxtaposition of stickily sweet synth work with unsettling vocals and samples. (see: his cover art.) When it works, it works, and there’s little you can do aside from getting into its groove and letting it work its magic.
The JANUS/Texas dance underground axis of artists and their dispersed associates, who received some substantial acclaim in the indie dance press towards the middle of the last decade, may no longer have the spotlight (aside from quasi-affiliate Yves Tumour), but those I associate with that scene continue putting out work. London-based producer IVVVO put out this album last month on AD 93, a bit outside that label’s usual sounds. Shifts between sun-bleached, neon deconstructed club and hazy, aqueous shoegaze-grunge fusion come to mind as I spin this.
Winged Wheel is a pandemic formed remote collaboration indie-kraturock supergroup. While much of krautrock’s greatest stems from the bonds developed via in-person jamming, the tightness of Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray) on drums and Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Expensive Shit) feels like a veteran live act. Matthew Rolin’s guitar work and Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana) supply the mystical other half to the form. It’s not quite Tago Mago II but at times it sure does feel like that. If the four ever (finally) get in one room to play, and said room happens to be accessible via Chicago’s public transit network, I’ll be there.
They’re here, finally. 2.5 years after the death of bandleader Takashi Mizutani, the first official recordings of Japanese acid rock band Les Rallizes Dénudés have been released. Laying low for most of their career, likely to obscure connections to the leftist Red Army Faction—original bassist Moriaki Wakabayashi participated in the Japan Airlines Flight 351 hijacking, living in exile in North Korea since—Les Rallizes Dénudés bootlegs and tapings found strong appreciation and influence within the underground. Like many major underground figures, I find it a bit hard to tease their novelty and innovation within their music, but nevertheless their rough, repetitive ecstasy shines through here.
[Tood Terje put out what I’m riffing on 8 years ago voice] It’s Article Time:
-Luisa Rollenhagen, at Defector, looks at how the Ukrainian refugee crisis is playing out in Germany. Of particular interest: many helping the Ukrainians were themselves refugees arriving during the 2015 migration crisis.
-Damon Krukowski, at his Dada Drummer Almanach newsletter, notes intriguing parallels between Spotify’s claims of artist support and fake artists problem, and parallels in geopolitics and trust in media.
-Gawker examines recent Twitter favorite Footy Scran in detail. As an American following the account, I’m now struggling to understand why Europeans insist on pairing dissimilarly-sized sausages with bread rolls, along with whatever abominations they’re slinging in Norway.
-Jono Podmore, writing at the Quietus, looks into the environmental impact of vinyl manufacturing and how the industry might become greener (environmentally).
From The Baffler:
-Jérôme Tubiana records the story of how—and why—one of his Chadian fixers became a jihadist insurgent in Mali.
-Alessandra Bergamin takes a look at how the palm oil industry is impacting Guatemala.
-Dan Albert makes the case for giving poor people cars over making transit more affordable. As someone who does not own a car, lives where I do to avoid car ownership, and greatly desires the buildout of public transit over continued auto dominance, it makes a compelling argument given the on-the-ground reality of public transit for much of America. (It’s also a broadside against Transit Secretary Mayor Pete’s neoliberal technocratism.)
From the New Yorker:
-Luke Mogelson reporting on civilian mobilizations during the war in Ukraine is, predictably, excellent.
-Kelefa Sanneh profiles Fivio Foreign, highlighting the culture war associated with drill music. Feels timely, as I type, in light of Young Thug/Gunna’s racketeering indictment.
-Matthew Hutson investigates non-battery energy storage developing as part of the clean energy revolution.
-Simon Rich, “Mario”
A couple issues back I highlighted Nude With Demon by The Web of Lies, a new post-punk group assembled by veteran scene players, and noted my intention to go back through their other works for more. The album has remained a frequent spin for me since, and you might be surprised to learn I didn’t fully follow up on that digital crate digging. Thankfully, Bandcamp Daily did so in a profile of their label, Wrong Speed Records, a pandemic-kickstarted endeavor with a strong communal/DIY ethos by Hey Colossus’s Joe Thompson. The best discovery within, Nude With Demon aside, is that band’s 13th record Dances/Curses, a double album full of deliciously repetitive guitar work you can surely already imagine I would like based on past issues.
Tech house and fun are largely antonymous, but A-Trak makes a compelling case that perhaps the two should make amends. Fixing up an E-Mu SP1200 drum machine as a lockdown project, the producer created this EP and another forthcoming one with it. The end result feels a lot like Four Tet and/or Floating Points getting intoxicated and striving to compete with Mica Levi over how much weirdness you can fit in a typical pop song format. (Except for closer Bee Bop, which reminds me of 1080p.) As much ink and brainpower is being spent worrying about the state of dance music, this is a good reminder that however ‘the scene’ breaks, this shit should be fun, damnit.
London electronic fixture Shelley Parker pops up now on London institution Hypercolour Records. I probably don’t have the proper sound system or willingness to rack up noise complaints to get the finest details of this twisting beat work out of my playback—and at revision time it seems to pale in comparison to the new Ploy—but it holds its own. To me it comes across like Beatrice Dillon or the latest release the Boomkat emails are drooling over, especially with a little THC doing its thing in your system.
Has ‘ambient punk’ ever been a thing? Eno’s always kept those 2 away from each other in his work, I think, but now Straw Man Army have given it a go. The ever-present tension between raw energy and political, didactical lyricism is present here, but artfully navigated, like Gang of Four at their least blunt and most articulately concise. (Sentences like that are one reason why I don’t really write poetry.) Drahla with a heavy The xx influence also comes to mind as I spin it some more—sub vibraphone for Jamie’s pan steel. Admittedly this is not piss off your neighbors, reactionary id punk, but any group capable of keeping their footing across such chasms is worth your attention.
Having a full album ready to go right as the pandemic kicked off, sensuous British producer Kelly Lee Owens found herself with a wide-open schedule and nothing to fill it. While she has resumed touring since, in that interim she went to Oslo, linked up with noise artist Lasse Marhaug (Merzbow, Sunn O))), Jenny Hval etc.) and came up with something she’s labeled her 8th LP. Billed as something between Enya and Throbbing Gristle, I can’t really speak to the former, but the latter’s influence is evident in some of the dread and textures deployed in this record. Considering it her 8th full-length seems appropriate too, it comes across like an intentionally difficult, artistically necessary work from someone who’s lost interest or desire in keeping their audience satiated. No doubt a future cult classic.
A bit like Six Tonnes De Chair above, Melbourne’s Nice Music is another label I started following a while ago, tolerating a fair chunk of mid releases from since, thought about unfollowing, then something like this lands in that reminds why I work like this. Horse MacGyver’s LP is a slab of weirdo experimental dance music from down under that’s gotten a few more spins than I usually give to lesser stuff. It might be the black Bandcamp page background but it feels a bit like something Opal Tapes would put out if based down under, with the requisite changes in mood and ethos. I’m not sure if the proximity in name is intentional but this sure sounds like the producer is making the absolute most of the tools at hand to come up with this.
EAT DIS is a web-first label (?) helping keep the dance music communities set up along the information superhighway weird and wonderful, while getting ‼️s from the usual corners come Bandcamp Friday. (I don’t mean that pejoratively.) Latest release Lost Mecha Tools from Twofold could be another BF grab bag of originals and remixes strategically timed for a little more attention and $, but the work within merits consideration even after the email is deleted and the card purchase settles. Hard-hitting footwork-type constructions and more within.
Keeping up with Chicago house producer Jamal Moss’s archival output, mostly under the Hieroglyphic Being moniker, can feel like a part-time job even for the biggest dance music devotee. Kicking off an acid-focused series is this album, which in my estimation is a step above most of his other output, quality-wise. ‘Decoding the Adventures of Freedom’ towards the end is the immediate highlight for me.
It started before seeing them at Coachella but I’ve been on a strong Amyl & the Sniffers kick recently. The music, not their namesake, that is. I’ve featured them before but ‘Guided By Angels’ is a damn near perfect song, and the rest of the album rarely slouches either.
And wow that’s a lot yes, and if you’re here, you got through it all, hopefully. Thank you for doing so! Hope you found something within you enjoyed. Until next time, presumably 2-3 weeks from now!