Hello everyone, and welcome to Crow’s Nest issue #54. Thank you for reading and your patience between issues. I hope your summer is going well despite the outdoors’ non-cooperation on the matter.
Japan was nice. Good sights, great food, a bunch of quality time (some might say too much) with my siblings, a little bit of growth and self-knowledge gained, can’t say I regret going. There wasn’t too much focus on music on the trip: balancing group interests and dynamics and that meant nightlife was not our priority, and catching shows when not specifically traveling for them is always a crapshoot. I did catch BUCK-TICK, who are about Japan’s equivalent to The Cure, in Hiroshima, but photos were prohibited as a part of Japanese concert etiquette. If you find yourself in Shibuya and need a break from the area’s hustle and bustle—say, after crate digging in Tower Records—stop in to The Lion café for a drink or two and listen to a few records on their hi-fi. Catch me elsewhere if you’d like to hear more.
See you at Pitchfork Music Festival next weekend? Let me know, I guess.
An observation that Aphex Twin made in a since-deleted interview promoting Syro has stuck with me: often the most interesting/intriguing music is made by outsider amateurs early in a genre’s development, ignorant of standard conventions such as music theory chord structure. Mr. James had been referring to jungle, but the observation seems to hold for Scottish electro duo Transparent Sound. As Tresor’s liner notes observe, the pair have spent the past 30 years or so stumbling into these jams, ignorant of the details of what they were doing, trying things out and smashing shit together until it sounds good. Some of this is old and stone-cold classic material, some is weirdly cinematic, and other stuff is seeing the light of day for the first time or re-mixed for the current year. And what a glorious racket it all is, full of left turns, unexpected shifts and just plain wild shit going on throughout. Sometimes the songs can be a bit too packed or ‘pump up the jams’ 90s exercise video for the tastelessly tasteful crowd; part of Tresor’s goal with this release is to deflate the secondary market’s prices on this material. If either of those things rubs you the wrong way, may I offer a suggestion: how about you get over yourself and have some fun?
I have a bad habit of not exploring an artist’s earlier works once I discover them, which made me think I missed the boat on Norwegian producer Lindstrøm, given how forgettable his recent works had been. Listening to this, however, it’s safe to say he well deserves his title (reign?) as the king of space disco. I’ve not heard these on a dancefloor, nor are their progressive leanings necessarily the type to be deployed mid-set, but by the time second track Nightswim began its epic, Elaenia-esque build, I was convinced. As an American I’m a bit temperamentally opposed to royal prerogative; that being said, long may the king reign over his territory.
If you get overly concerned or disturbed by what the Zoomers are up to, scroll past this and don’t look back. Anyway, the massive surge of hardcore’s popularity as of late—who who’ve guessed Turnstile would be headlining Riot Fest even at this time last year?—has been leading other groups such as Nashville’s Snooper into intriguing areas. Combining short track times with egg punk’s eclecticism and post-punk’s guitar work and politics, the band’s live show is apparently full of props, puppetry and other goofiness that keeps things from getting too serious and going in unexpected directions. A scroll through their Spotify back catalog suggests a tendency towards revision and refinement of earlier work too. There’s a song about eating bedbugs, the second-longest one (<2 mins) features a footwork-esque coda after a pandemic-set drama … call it ‘hyperpop hardcore’ I guess? If you’re still reading this go ahead and give it a spin or like 4 and see if it clicks for you like it has me.
If you have or had the opportunity to catch Etran De L’Äir on their U.S. tour but didn’t, you messed up. It’s hard to argue that their form and style of ‘desert blues’ makes them the best wedding band in Agadez, and blew me and some friends I invited to a street festival last week to catch them. (Much better than the more local acts imo.) This live recording of them in Seattle serves as a quality sampling of what you missed and perhaps might inspire some FOMO if you weren’t there.
Lo-fi art rock outfit Powerplant are back with their latest peculiar missive. You’ve got overdriven drum machines, the general background of lo-fi late 70s/early 80s post-punk/indie pop, and the skewed view I’m sure you know by now. If this EP ends a bit too quickly for you and you don’t want to wear it out too quickly, there’s enough material in the project’s back catalog to flesh out a lengthier listening session, such as the shows they’re teasing for an upcoming U.S. tour. I believe Chicago is one of those destinations … see you there!
I'm firmly in the anti-Dean Blunt camp—his schtick has pissed me off for years now—but you can't fully write him off. Case in point: this group have graduated from his World Music label to Matador, so he’s onto something I don’t fully recognize. bar italia, firmly guitar-bass-drums post-punk, stand out as really stark and austere within the often stark and austere genre. Their cryptic press photo is black-and-white, no greyscale, and it's very easy to imagine them as fashionable café bums taking their literature courses very seriously—a Lifestyle I avoided by several notches. The lyrics would be cryptic even if the trio did not take switch vocals mid-song. There's a lot to unpack here and I'm sure just listening like I do is only scratching the surface; hopefully my bullshit detector isn’t malfunctioning with them.
Italian producer Piezo has been on a tear recently. This EP—his third of the year—sees him on the percussive Nervous Horizon label getting squiggly weird with plenty of left turns and other odd moments across these tracks. I wouldn’t call this post-dubstep per se as it’s not post-dubstep like that, none of those guys fold in a little dancehall/dembow … anyway, this EP is high energy, hard to turn away from, and well worth your time.
I’ve never taken a good, systemic look at indie pop: I love a good jangle and well-written, conventionally-structured stuff will always be a welcome listen, and I gave the C86 compilation a spin once, but what the fuck is the Paisley Underground? Anyway, I knew The Umbrellas before—last year’s Write It In the Sky has to be 2022’s most slept-on track relative to its quality—but had not given their self-titled a listen until like last week. And man, I have been missing out. This is some of the best material in this lane I’ve ever heard, exactly the sort of thing you need in moments of melancholy in your 20s when you’ve not given up or are going to give up the twee aesthetic but man, it’s going to be like this huh? My brain is telling me a less murky Vivian Girls as a comparison point, not sure how accurate that really is though. Its impressive groups like this even still exist in San Francisco anymore, let alone of this quality.
Theoretically, there has to be some limit on the amount of first and second wave punk out there to be re-discovered. In practice, reserves still appear to be plentiful. This compilation from short-lived Northwest Indiana punks Dow Jones and the Industrials contains some of the snot-nosedness I’ve come to expect from the region, but also folds in electronic experiments that feel fully in conversation with similar experiments carried out across the state line to the east, both past (Devo) and relative future (Brainiac). Whether the stock market is up or down, material like Latent Psychosis, Too Stoned to Disco and Bite It Off will always be a solid investment.
Another beguiling release from the long-term pile. Originally released 40 years ago, this a longform narrative piece which, while it feels structurally academic, folds in enough humor and actual entertainment value to be engaging. Strongly feminist, the primitive drum machine patterns feel of their time but well worth a few listens in the present age. The more things change the more they …
Irish producer Eamon Ivri is simultaneously an internet-native presence—his Lighght dance project releases seem like they were born terminally online—and deeply rooted in his local community and personal friendships. It works for him, as he recently put together and opened a last-minute gig for Matmos. He describes his Mineral Stunting alias’s releases as ‘gulch ambient’, and while I’m not 100% what he means by that (if anything at all), this second record from the project is well worth your time. The individual pieces are sketch-like, close to that diaristic modern ambient that places like Boomkat and Tone Glow love to praise, but these works lack the haze and liminal patience of those others. It’s busy but not crowded, and doesn’t require your full attention or close listening to appreciate. There’s plenty of room in the gulch for you to inhabit.
Ukrainian composer Yulia Vlaskina grew up in the Donbas before moving to Kyiv, and has resided in Berlin for the past year-ish. This pair of works was finished there; I’m not speculating on any abstract narration or thematics. You’ve got a pair of gorgeously tense, dubby ambient numbers here: think early 2010s Tim Hecker crossed with Huerco S.’s (enormously underrated) Railroad Blues EP. As that was a fairly formative zone for me it’s been love at first listen c/o Futurism Restated:
Clicks good. All tension, little release, some peculiar flute motifs, a static-y kick drum and line, other crunches, that’s all you need. Firmly deconstructed, I don’t have much info on the generically named John Roberts but he does have a drip feed of releases going back 15 years should this one intrigue you.
Anz returns to Hessle Audio with this one-off primed to be a dance floor staple. The synths are rave-y but not necessarily anthemic and I'd bet a fiver the breakbeat is a cut-up of 180db_; considering I fucking love 180db_ I’m glad this isn’t a cover or repurposed sample that aggravates me. Simply put, well-executed dance music.
A short 2-tracker on Mechanical that recently surfaced in my backlog listening queue. Full of intriguing, tense and dark-hued menace pulling from genres like deconstructed club and IDM/dub techno, this is just waiting for proper execution long after the sun has gone down. Definitely one to put Mechanical back on my ‘I definitely need to check this out’ list of labels and avoid the unsubscribe button I’ve been tempted by for them. Couldn’t tell you more about Talker but I’ll keep listening.
Texas experimental supergroup Water Damage put out this uncreatively-titled, adequately labeled LP recently that’s well worth your consideration. Both are zoner drone rock jams powered by repetition, the first one more aggressively menacing, the second ‘lighter’ with a first half fueled by what sounds like a glockenspiel rhythmic line. It’s very easy to imagine this on the car stereo soundtracking another gridlocked, punishing commute in triple-digit temps in the modern Lonestar State.
Alright this issue is kinda long blurb-wise since it’s been a while and I pre-wrote a lot of it before today—mostly in Notes, both phone and Substack—and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include this or not. Anyway, wigged out rock from Pittsburgh that traverses a number of styles from classic FM radio staples to noise rock freakout to punk assault to fucked-up post-punk drumming and more. It sounded pretty good when I drafted that last sentence on the Shinkansen (I think) and it holds up upon another listen.
I’ll leave on one final note from the trip to Japan. During our time in Tokyo my siblings and I went to a bar themed around city pop—exclusively that on the jukebox, the walls plastered with idol 7”s, colorful cocktails, the whole deal. This song was played at least twice while we were there, I shazamed it 3 times … enjoy!
The Umbrellas are fantastic. I'm as surprised as anyone that the Bay Area keeps cranking out Grade- A jangle pop, but here we are. It feels like Slumberland Records can't miss.