Crow’s Nest 56: 082023
But mom, I don’t want to write a subheadline!
Howdy, if you’ve been itching for another fix of experimental, alternative and dance music in your inbox, issue #56 of Crow’s Nest is here to help you with that. Thanks, as usual, for opening. I don’t have much else to say right at the moment so let’s get into it:
Sometimes I wonder if my friends and readers ever get sick of me posting about yet another post-punk record tickling my fancy. I figure they’re either along for the ride, or it's so sick that I don’t care what others think of it. I listened to this record from Marseille trio Catalogue 4 times within 24 hours of my first listen—clearly I'm not concerned with wearing it out. The drumming comes from a machine, but the way the band manage to consistently lock into cold wave-inflected ecstatic zones makes you think there's a second human in the exceptional rhythm section. Imagine VISION 3D, taking it down a notch or two in intensity to make the coolness stand out just a bit, recording their next one in Cincinnati to get that scene's flavor in the mix, and you have this record. Dig in and savor the result:
A late arrival to my inbox on Bandcamp Friday—so late it wasn’t ‘buried’ since there was nowhere for it to burrow—announced the upcoming album from Wet Fruit as “angular art rock, jangly chime, and post punk group vocals”. Enough to prioritize a spin, but I was not expecting how strong and different that song was. I really can’t say there’s anything that quite assembles the constituent pieces together like this elsewhere. Immediately digging up their debut album for more, the band plays a heady post-punk fusion that folds in elements of progressive rock, second wave post-rock, surely indie pop, math rock, and jazz drumming in the mix as well. So, post-punk of the Electrelane/En Attendant Ana sort, if you also could also go for some Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Pärson Sound miniatures led by the drums, filtered through the FACS template. If you think post-punk bands in general have bad SEO, Googling “Wet Fruit band” digs up a lot about articles not mentioning them, but rather Wet Leg and Fake Fruit. (Good bands, those two.) But you know them now. September 22nd was already shaping up to be a great day for music, but now it’s even better. (Note: I wrote this when Dandelions At The Gate only had one song available; assembling the post proper, the full release is available digitally. Hell yeah!)
Sample pioneer Carl Stone may not be the best at naming compositions, but the labeling of this one itself was enough for a massive ‘LET’S GOOOOOO’ from the moment it was announced from those who are familiar with his work. This compilation starts with early electroacoustic drone pieces, moves into mid-career stuff that could work on leftfield dancefloors—1999’s ‘Flint’s’ has a certain contemporary cultural relevance, nudge nudge wink wink—through more ecstatic material created last year. The personal highlight for me in the inclusion of 2007’s ‘L'Os à Moelle’, a monstrous beast of a record which, for someone averse to ranking music, is easily a top 10 favorite of mine.
Despite devouring You’re With Stupid earlier this year I have yet to fully get around to everything the book noted that I wanted to listen to. Only so much time, my trip to Japan affecting my listening, trying to keep track of everything else, etc. so I only recently spun The Pin Group. Flying Nun Records’ inaugural release, Roy Montgomery on guitar, a band with a <2 year lifespan who never left Aoteraoa, the archetype of endless indie rock bands to come, exactly everything you’d ever hope for from a murky, lo-fi record cover someone in the know passed along to you. Still worth a spin all these decades later whether you have before or not.
Richard Elliott’s 33 1/3 book on DJs Do Guetto, the 2006 compilation which launched of the birth of the kuduro and batida club sounds from the immigrant communities of Lisbon, notes the ephemerality within which much of these songs exist, precariously hosted on file sharing sites and other improvised web-native archives that could quietly disappear when a link breaks or an inactive account gets deactivated. Príncipe Discos, the premier outlet for this sound, re-hosted compiled files in 2013, and as the file sharing sites that powered early millennium dissemination of underground musics continue going down or disappearing, have now more permanently and officially released the highlights of this compilation on the label, pressing them to wax under its Creolized name. It can be hard to imagine that what was 6 young men putting out some music for back-to-school, making a little noise and their mark on things locally, has continued for as long as it has and has spread as far as it has as well. Then again, listening to this music, it’s incredible to hear the starting point all over again knowing where things would go from there.
Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul collaborated with Colin Stetson on this charming record. As a drone music lover, music from bagpipes seems like an underexplored area of territory—then again, if I didn’t realize there was more to bagpipe music than Scotland the Brave I wouldn’t think much of the instrument family. If you don’t get what I’m talking about, give this a listen and let it charm you as much as it has me.
Since this is still a relatively small area of territory, I feel it’d be appropriate to include another pipes drone work that I really like. The History of Sleep by Donald W.G. Lindsay and Richard Youngs came out shortly before I started this newsletter, and I’ve found it a very … entrancing listen on occasion since then.
If the term ‘Smalltown Supersound’s Le Jazz Non series’ makes you think this isn’t minimal acid techno, same. The series takes its name from a prior compilation the Norwegian label put out, the title swiped from a New Zealand Noise compilation issued by Bruce Russell of The Dead C’s Corpus Hermeticum label. Anyway, Trym Søvdsnes’s debut EP is an understated welcome addition to my recent listening. I particularly like the restless undercurrent to this work: there’s always something going on, usually in the background and usually not what you anticipate, that builds these tracks up. It’s been a minute since I’ve spun Acid Mt. Fuji but I do get that sort of vibe from this, especially on Ordnings Mix. Slow burn ambient not ambient dance music then, pretty good for home listening, getting into flow states and (presumably) killer to drop on a dance floor’s hi-fi soundsystem (even though there isn’t anything resembling a drop among the 4 cuts). fwiw the next release in this series appears to be a collaborative perila x Pavel Milyakov album, currently only previewable on Boomkat … stay tuned for more then.
I’ve followed Brooklyn producer FaltyDL’s work for, geez, nearly a decade now, but can’t really pin it down. To me he’s one of those guys you’ve known for a while, very much a solid and decent human being, never bad or anything but not like super standout and that. He’s just kinda there, you know? On this EP for Unknown to the Unknown, though, he might be making a break for the next level. Braindance/IDM material, some fairly inventive breakbeat cutups that sound like he’s been energized by the kids getting into jungle and drum ’n’ bass, the kind of leering synth tones you’d expect from a track named ‘wef EX 2C’ if you-know-who had put it out. Anyway, if this is where he’s at, let me text some mates and see about catching his next gig in town for sure.
For those paying attention, Ohio remains a hotbed of experimental creativity, with a new wave of players revitalizing and recontextualizing the work of previous freaks. Dayton’s Elite Terrorism Modulus, appearing here on local staple Orange Milk, bill themselves as a jam band. I can hear shades of local acts Brainiac and Moth Cock in their weirdness, but the noise bed reminds me most strongly of Caroliner here, to be frank. If you’re not repulsed by the above descriptor, be sure to stick around to the end as this album, in my estimation, peaks with its final songs.
Last week, Bandcamp Daily ran a series of articles for its ‘Slept-On Week’ covering releases throughout the site’s history they feel haven’t gotten the attention, love and respect they deserve. Incredibly, I think I had only heard of 1-2 of their picks prior to this week, so surely you understand what treasures within there might be. I highly recommend perusing the full series if you haven’t already. Below is (mostly) some highlights from them that I’ve enjoyed:
The mononymously anonymous producer ‘Anton’ hails from Bristol, which makes sense on paper if not on record. Styling his output under the Naked Flames moniker as ‘dub rave’—think trance crossed with Basic Channel—this short and sweet EP is very high energy, full of propulsively syncopated cymbals and other effects-laden elements which are just straight up fun. I’m not sure how lasting this style is or will be—part of me senses it’s gonna wind up like my past vaporwave and Death Grips phases in college where it seems Very Important but once I’ve had my fill I move on and forget what all the fuss was about—but I can already see the all-black Berghain clientele up in a tizzy about this. I would love to hear these drop in a small space like Podlasie Club and see how ballistic things get.
For something better appreciated by those heads, G-Man aka Gez Varley (formerly of LFO) has put out of a pair of Remastered dub techno compilations from the early 2000s-ish. As Phillip Sherburne noted in his Futurism Restated newsletter, these are very much in the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction vein and “minimalist but not too minimal”. I think the 2nd one sounds better over speakers and the first on headphones, but both are worth a rinse if your DJ sets need a refresh in that realm.
The press for this record from NYC’s BLKLN highlights its synthesis of 40+ years of NYC art-rock and the downtown scene from which no wave and Sonic Youth emerged, but listening to this I hear a question: what if Dean Blunt was actually good? The bedrock of these records is rhythm-box post-punk topped with deconstructed noise swirls, the former strong enough to stand on its own, the latter forcing you to pay attention to what’s happening within, not unlike a bunch of material I’ve covered before from the British Isles, Texas, and other intriguing hot spots. The production is contemporary for sure, which helps this sound fresh. I can only hope the reason a followup hasn’t yet materialized is because BLKLN has been busy working with figures making work akin to past collaborators John Zorn and Jon Hassell. Hopefully more is on the way. No worries if not.
I have a soft spot for experimental electronic music from Peru—and a number of recent Superspace Records releases in the big listening queue, and got another email shortly after writing this up—so it’s little wonder I’ve enjoyed this record from Lima’s Sismo En Bucarest. An intriguing collagist/plunderphonics long-player, listening feels like bingeing crunchy videos of Latin American street life, from day-to-day streetscapes to intense party scenes in the slums to violent encounters, state-sanctioned or not. Not all of this is meant to make your ears bleed—the record ends on some comparatively placid ambient-leaning numbers—but noise rap connoisseurs, deconstructed club heads, and others for whom Since I Left You or Endtroducing… were a gateway into the weirder corners of the underground should find a lot to love within.
Finally, how about a record that sounds like the industrial collage of the psychogeographic territory between Russia and Iran? That’s about all I can discern from this record literally named Unpronounceable, out on Berlin coldwave mainstay Detriti. A great voyage into non-Latin script worlds.
And that’s issue #56 of Crow’s Nest for you. I hope you found something within that you liked. Take it easy until next time.
That Catalogue record is fantastic! Reminds me of Missing Persons (in a good way). Thanks for getting it on my radar.
Separately, how was the Sweeping Promises show? GLICY is on my shortlist for Record of the year, and I was bummed I had to miss their Milwaukee date.