Crow’s Nest 42: 110622
Daylight Savings Time’s end might be the worst ‘sale’ of the year
Hi everyone and welcome to issue #42 of Crow’s Nest. I don’t fully know the reference but is 42 the answer to the universe? Hopefully this issue expands your universe, at least.
This morning we learned that Mimi Parker of Low has passed away. There’s a lot or words that could be said about that, but I and most everyone else who are fans of the band are struggling to find them at this time. There are few contemporary acts that have come close to accomplishing what Mimi and Alan have done, and their music is surely only the tip of their relationship. I was fortunate to be able to see Low twice on their tours for Double Negative and HEY WHAT, which have been some of my favorite shows ever. Mimi’s stately presence behind the kit during Low’s 2019 Pitchfork Music Festival set remains burned in my mind, a highlight of highlights from the fest. All my love and support to Alan at this time.
Drexicya has never fully clicked for me—I know, I do like Lifestyles of the Laptop People Cafe, and I have the recent Tresor reissues in my listening queue, stay tuned—so I’m not stating this definitively, but the Detroiters’ legendary sci-fi techno-electro springs to mind on this EP from Romanian duo Khidja, as does Andy Stott’s slower moments. Detailed, experimental haziness abounds in these tracks like a forested Expressionist painting. Similarly spirited Azu Tiwaline has an excellent remix too. My only complaints? I would like an additional 4+ minutes to each track to further explore the sublime peaks reached in the final 2 minutes-ish of each one, and the digital only pair deserve some space on wax themselves—if anything, they’re the best of the bunch.
Chicago house producer Jamal Moss, best known for his work as Hieroglyphic Being, is endlessly prolific; listening to everything he puts out is a part-time job in and of itself. In the past month he’s added another Bandcamp account—M3MB3RS ONLY—to his roster, dedicated to the ‘worst’ quick and dirty edits he’s put together. I like material like this; seeing obvious issues with something is inspiring, in that it fuels motivation to do or imagine something greater rising from them. Across the (currently) 7 releases of M3MB3RS ONLY, there’s at least one standout track—one that I can ID the source material for turns Ted Milton’s ‘Love Is Like A Violence’ into a chorus of sirens—but the ‘best’ one overall is the Volume 2 EP, not to be confused with the Vol. 2 album. It bats .500 with the ecstatic looping of ‘OH OH OH YAH’ and ‘TAKE IT FROM THE TOP’. If that’s, somehow, not enough for you, Moss is promising at least 5 more albums of material before the nest Bandcamp Friday in 4 weeks.
Congolese ensemble Full Miziki—helmed by Lady Aicha and Pisko Crane—decamped to Nyege Nyege’s Kampala studios to record for a year with HHY & the Macumbas’ Jordan Saldanha. I highly recommend reading the accompanying notes for more information and context. Percussion heavy, highly kinetic and ecstatic dance music sure to get you out a funk, quite unlike anything you’ve heard in a while.
This … bunch … of tunes from local band Brady contains traces of alt-country to them in a way that helps the ‘alt’ portion of the descriptor hold up. The band describes themselves as “The perfect blend of hick shit, innuendo, & a sad story” which makes it appropriate for the change in seasons and lighting we’re undergoing. Perhaps the “room spray” the band sells helps further set the mood? It’s not as dark as, say, Rider/Horse or Nude With Demon, but I definitely believe this would be the result of 1.5 days of recording in the Michigan winter. They play with Spread Joy and WAD at one of Sleeping Village’s $1 beer nights in January, which should be a bright spot in the depths of winter.
… and speaking of Rider/Horse, they’ve a new album out this month:
The name might be post-punk-esque but the contents within are punk to the core—at least, the heartland palette/form at home in the Midwest or, given the group’s location, the Australian/Melbournian equivalent of the American Midwest. The descriptors that come to mind are ‘bright’ and ‘invigorating’—the guitars shine clearly through as though they’re being played on synths at times a la Amyl & The Sniffers or CB Radio Gorgeous.
I like Spoon. Not, like, love them, but out of all the Pitchfork-core indie oughts acts, the Austin stalwarts have maintained the consistency and dependability of a chilled can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. (Perhaps Pacifico or Tecate is the more appropriate companion lager here, but I do like PBR like I like Spoon.) Spoon has also managed to avoid succumbing to complacency, maintaining a semi-experimental edge that makes the latest LP more than a fresh merch table item with little of the new material appearing on the latest tour’s setlist. Following this year’s Lucifer on the Sofa, an album I liked the first time I listened but admittedly have not found myself returning to, the band has enlisted Adrian Sherwood to ‘reconstruct’ it as a dub album. There’s plenty of added studio instrumentation from session players Sherwood recruited, along with delay, echo, and other effects not a million miles away from classic dub LPs. But this is not a standard re-mix either; I’m not aware of anything in the vein of dub that’s this heavy on harmonica solos, and Britt Daniel sounds like a radio announcer cutting in and out of transmission. When you finish that beer, smoke some weed out of the can and enjoy the trip to space.
Post-punk/underground dance music fusion work strikes at about the center of my taste. Production duo Raime have switched monikers and formally invited journeywoman drummer Valentina Magaletti on as a member in Moin, and on their 2nd album that relationship fully blossoms. This is studio work cut up like dance music and returned to the sender at a slightly oblique angle to a ‘live’ version, sounding eerie even minus the threatening found sounds used for vocals. I’ve not spent too much time with the full album but I have lovingly played the lead single ‘Melon / Yep Yep’ to death. I imagine similar moments will reveal themselves to me soon enough.
The Orielles have been on my periphery as an intriguing if not super memorable indie-dance act—I strongly recall soundtracking my walk to my early voting location for the 2020 primary to their 90s pastiche record Disco Volador, right before the pandemic really hit. Their new album sees them take an enormous leap forward and begin fulfilling their potential as more than solid revivalists. The details are worth reading in full but the band decided to dig deep into themselves in formulating Tableau, throwing out convention and taking chances with their material in a way not unlike Kid A or other ‘difficult’, transition-y works. The result is a dark, deep avant-pop-rock record which seems perfectly timed for the change in seasons and introspection that usually follows the colder months.
Having seen them last night, I still struggle to make sense of Palm. The Philly art-rock deconstructionists operate on an internal logic I’ve yet to fully crack, though the sold-out crowd at Sleeping Village was enthusiastic about it. The palette is reminiscent of Animal Collective though few seem capable of describing it further. Have a listen for yourself and feel free to send in your interpretation or understanding below.
If you remember “Lime Matrices Deep Afield” from a few issues ago, maybe as one of those ‘Ryan what the fuck is this and how can you say you like it’ releases I feature, the Kazakh teen behind it has released another album. Information overload longform tracks with more going on than you find most anywhere else, this release is what I would imagine being in the tesseract from Interstellar would sound like. That’s probably the best way to describe this.
Digging deep into my inbox to recall how this 2014 ambient album came onto my radar, I see Eiderdown Records recommended it for October’s Bandcamp Friday. Beautiful stuff, hidden gem, minimal, folk, ambient, etc. give it a spin.
I don’t listen to too much minimalism or contemporary classical music—I can only tolerate so much vibraphone—but the highlights I occasionally check out from Bandcamp Daily have convinced me that dance music could probably innovate in exciting ways if it took textural and percussive cues from the genres. Things such as the woozily-phased woodblock lines in ‘De Snelheid’ from this mid-90s Icebreaker album, for example, could be deployed to shake up dancefloors in wild ways barely encountered nowadays. It doesn’t hurt to expand your horizons and take chances on this material.
Longtime readers of Crow’s Nest know of my complicated relationship to ambient music. I’ve never been fully opposed to the genre, but often it does nothing for me and worsens my mood rather thanks improves it. I have had experiences with the genre recently which have had me refine my positions, though—perhaps I just needed to find the right strains or something. Anyway I enjoyed this record from Blackpool producer Fred Laird listening to it at the office recently, taking an Eastern/Buddhist spin on the genre. I think the underlying drones to these pieces helps solidify them in my ear. ‘Start meditating’ is a goal I’m putting on my list for potential New Years resolutions—not that I’ve ever been big on those—and this might be a good reference/companion piece for that.
So this is one of those bands who’ve received one of those fabled Canadian grants. Halifax’s Heaven For Real certainly demonstrate the value of financial support here, with a well-crafted set of art rock-y gems. Perhaps the fiscal cushion has dulled their edge, but I will take such a tradeoff considering the issues most bands have with making money nowadays.
Well, that’s issue 42 for you. If you’re reading this, thank you, as always, hopefully something above tickled your fancy. Life is constantly difficult and challenging in ways we never fully expect, and certainly things as of late have been no exception. But, if you put yourself out there and take a good look, there’s usually something beautiful to discover nearby. Let’s look forward to those moments and cherish them always.
The Icebreaker record reminded me of when I would take 2 of whatever was on the table and just see what might happen. Just chaotic enough to be interesting, and enjoyable overall.