Crow's Nest 50: 041723
Crow’s Nest’s Inaugural April Issue
Hey everyone, welcome to issue #50 of Crow’s Nest. Halfway to triple digits! Thanks again, as always, for reading this and your patience between issues. April has never really been my month, and the past few weeks have been stressful for varying reasons—work and attempting an apartment search this time, most prominently—and this is actually the first time I have sent one of these out during an April since I started doing this about 2.5 years ago. Here’s hoping something below catches your ear.
A housekeeping note: as you might be aware, since my last issue Substack rolled out a Notes feature to the platform. It’s meant to allow for shorter posts to the platform, such as sharing other content or things that don’t make sense as a longer post. Notes are accessible via the Substack app and in your web browser at https://substack.com/notes. Notes is not, inherently, a Twitter clone, but it can compete with the platform depending on how one chooses to use it, as those of us on the platform are figuring out in real time.
As you might have seen and/or expected, the potential competition from Notes caused the Twitter CEO to go ballistic and hastily attempted something like a war with Substack over it, throttling the ability of URLs with Substack in them from receiving typical Tweet interaction (since rolled back) and stopping Substack from using the Twitter API to embed content into newsletters (still in place). So, Tweets aren’t in this issue and may not be returning.
I’m still attempting to figure out how to use Substack Notes for myself. Social media use is uhhh definitely not something I want to increase in my life right now, unlike my protein intake or dating app matches. For now, I’m going to try to use it to write up or at least prototype blurbs of things that catch my ear in real time and are worth sharing, not unlike what I sometimes do on my Twitter account @embirdened. I intend to assemble those (and more) into a standard Crow’s Nest issue which, perhaps, may spread out the effort required in assembling these, one of the big impediments to doing these. “We’ll see what happens there,” I must note, and if you have any feedback/ideas/suggestions on how to use Notes, drop me a line:
Well, let’s get to the reason we’re primarily here then.
The first song or two on this LP don’t quite prepare you for what’s to come. I initially felt it was going to be a Spanish-language record in the vein of the more verbose, preening varieties of contemporary UK post-punk. There’s certainly a heaviness to the (dual) bass lines and instrumentation. Stick with it, though, and things mutate into something that’s more akin to, in my head, Horse Lords giving 90s noise rock a try. Or, that’s what comes to mind as the drummer or another percussionist goes ballistic on the cowbell throughout the record’s runtime. It’s certainly unique and, as someone who’s always interested in seeing what unique percussion patterns can do, worthwhile in and of itself. If you’ve got someone in your life who still does the ‘More cowbell!’ bit, this is worth putting on to see what they think. And even if you don’t it’s well worth a few spins.
It took me a few spins to get into this EP, but once it sunk its teeth into me I found it near impossible to dislodge. Must’ve been bitten by a shark swimming along the Garfield Park Beach coast that’s the subject of the first song. A local group, you’ve got the wiry guitar lines, thick slabs of bass and relatively short runtimes that firmly situate them as egg punk and within my ear, even without some synth absurdity at play. If you’re still struggling to situate yourself in young adulthood or otherwise assert yourself—such as that song about leaving work early you’ve definitely composed in your head before—this one’s for you.
The history of post-punk is littered with groups whose influence far exceeds their short time together and limited discographies. Particularly given the fertile experimental nature of many of these groups whose uniqueness is never directly copied, this makes discoveries and reissues of even minor works feel eventful. This reissued 7” from Japan’s Non Band falls squarely into that category. 2 songs, 8 minutes of all-tension, no release work in a claustrophobically minimal bass/drums/violin/vocals setup that reminds me strongly of no wave, particularly in the drumming. The physical release includes a photo magazine to help situate the group better than I can here.
I suppose if you do feel ‘Non Band’ would be a group based in the Anglo sphere, it balances out that ‘Urusei Yatsura’ isn’t Japanese, I guess? No matter. This reissued LP with bonus tracks from the Glaswegian group is vital for anyone with an interest in 90s punk/indie/shoegaze but not looking down/noisy guitar stuff that was breaking into consciousness via MTV during that fertile era. I personally hear them a bit as a cross of Pavement and Th’ Faith Healers; perhaps this is what the former might sound like if they weren’t committed to underutilizing their chops? Anyone with a taste for or opinions on distortion will likely hear something different within, and you know what? That’s fine, this is well worth the discovery and a slot in that canon.
I had thought there was a Chicago Reader article contextualizing this better than I could but I can’t seem to find it. Anyway, as the Bandcamp notes detail, early last decade local group Allá recorded an album that is soon to be reissued on the both upstart and vital label No Sé Discos. Lead single Without U, initially recorded in 2010, is, as I tweeted a couple weeks ago, “like Dilla producing glitched-out trap reggaeton on a melting MPC that [is] somehow also digi-reggae”. I’m still a bit baffled by it but that only convinces me of its power and makes me want to catch their headlining set at their label showcase at the Empty Bottle on May Day. (It’s free too!) Hopefully there will be more detail and sense-making by then, but even if not I’m fine if the reissue contains more like this.
Don’t let the association with post-vaporwave label Doom Trip turn you away if that’s not your bag. Here, Korean artist Heejin Jang plays around with the concept of manufacturing or prototyping her titular creation in a quasi-science fiction abstract narrative. Even if you don’t get that part of the work—honestly, I don’t really even as a bird myself—the full LP is a great work in the experimental noise/drone/ambient space. Much of the textural work here isn’t harsh, and the moments where breakbeats get stretched into free jazz-y abstraction are a great departure from some of the beat work reasserting itself elsewhere. It’s an endlessly intriguing record for those so inclined.
I could have posted a Vince McMahon escalating reaction memes for this blurb—and pretty much did so, mentally, on my first read of the Bandcamp email announcement—and multiple spins have justified such a response. While the style has spread around the world since—Jrouli by Cairo’s Cheba Wahida got some attention last year for sure—this compilation by the always intriguing Born Bad Records highlights raï music in its origin city of Oran, Algeria, at the moment when the traditionalists of the form were supplanted by the influx of modernizers with electronic instrumentation decades ago. In a way, that seems to mirror the sociopolitical tension of Oran to Algeria, conservative traditionalists to cosmopolitan liberals, virtue vs. vice etc. as detailed in the extensive liner note essay on the release page. The sounds, to my ears, are as intoxicating and exciting as they must be to anyone else who’s encountered the form, whether in one of those road clubs or here on record, from the first notes from Cheb Hindi’s synths onwards.
I try not to succumb to 90s British rave nostalgia—I was born after the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 was enacted, and there’s nothing worse than longing for an earlier period sabotaging your joy for the present version, for starters—but there was undeniably something special about that era and the music that came out of it. Above Board Projects has assembled this compilation of some of the best tunes of that time—including a Richard D. James rarity—into this release. Many of them, like The Black Dog’s ‘Cost II’, are far more melancholy than one might expect from the title. Many of them would be quite welcome on dance floors to this day, and still feel unique and of a higher-quality than contemporary production work (no offense). It’s well worth the trip to Happy Land if you’ve not already been, or even if you have to be honest.
Predicting anything Port Chalmers noise rock deconstructionists The Dead C will do in advance—whether on a future release on in general on their existing records—is a bit of a fool’s errand, in my view: you need to take them for what they are and see whether you agree with it or not. On what can be considered a ‘pleasant surprise’ for them, last Bandcamp Friday the group reissued a trio of their 90s albums The Operation of the Sonne, The White House, and Tusk, newly remastered for loudness by Norwegian noise fixture Lasse Marhaug (who’s recently worked with Jenny Hval and Kelly Lee Owens). Of the 3, the most pure noise-y of the trio that appeals to my off-kilter and mind (especially when stoned) is Tusk, which appears on vinyl for the first time. Press play if you so desire:
Geographically close to but at least several worlds away in actuality from The Dead C, Dunedin-originating indie rock lifers Bailterspace are well-regarded by guitar heads as having some of the best tone to their axes around—which is always a good thing even if the songs themselves don’t always compare as favorably. Not that they don’t have good songs, as evidenced on this reissue of a pair of their singles from the Clawfist singles club, to which Melody Maker awarded them back-to-back ‘Single of the Week’ nods, back when that was both Important and Unprecedented. Yeah, things change for sure, man, but those that stand the test of time are worth revisiting.
Let’s end on a different note here. Dance music often takes itself far more seriously than it needs to, for varying reasons. This release doesn’t. I’m not going to spoil what happens with some of these edits for you. Just put it on, let them wash over you, and see if you disagree with me that some of these need to be declared illegal before it’s too late.
And, well, that’s issue #50 for you. As always, thank you for reading, and hopefully the part of you that’s in search of new music is satisfied by something within. I’d say until next time but hmm, I might have something up on Notes at any time now. I’ll keep you posted on that.
I’m all in on Cel Ray. Kinda all in on Notes, too, tbh…