I believe context clues can tell you this is issue #60 of Crow’s Nest, so if you’re reading this, thank you! I don’t really feel I have much to say right at this moment—the change in seasons seems to be bringing down my energy levels—other than the usual music recommendations, so let’s get to it.
This is a veritable weird one. Listening to it, it sounds like a French group attempting to make an MPB album with an instrumental palette somewhere between cold wave and vaporwave. Perhaps it’s more in line with the concrete science fiction riot tradition in French music than something I’m strongly familiar with? There’s … something … going on with it that I can’t place, nor does my instinct to file it under ‘weird pop’ and be done with it feel right. Would learning what a chanson is help? I find myself hitting play on it and being beguiled by it further despite my inability to penetrate beyond its surface.
Swedish drone artist Ellen Arkbro has been on my periphery for a bit—a Boomkat message here, a random tweet in my feed there—and this one finally clicked with me. Focusing on the organ, many of these compositions are near-static, with changes that can hit like a sucker punch. Purportedly, moving around will change what you hear, that’s how well-defined and powerful this material is. The highlight is ‘Sculpture I’, which lives up to its name as practically sound art; turn it up loud enough and you can practically feel individual sawtooth waves hit your eardrums in a serrated pattern even absent other sensory manipulation.
Not to repeat myself again especially after last issue, but in terms of 90s dance music, I’ll keep the tunes but leave the nostalgia. Above Board Projects, one of the best archival labels currently doing it, put out this compilation from techno duo Megalon with a fresh coat of mastering. These tracks have a propulsive sci-fi feeling to them that come across as minimal, yet more energetic and restless than a lot of stuff debuting these days. I want to note is Vol. 2 here, with Vol. 1 coming out a few weeks ago and just missing the cut for an earlier issue. Please proceed to the nearest spaceport and prepare for takeoff.
90s weird indie rock outfit Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 got a decent amount of press last year—or, perhaps, I should say I follow Ryley Walker on Twitter—with the first in a series of reissues of their catalog. So it’s a bit odd that this new rarities compilation dropped with hardly a note in the press. That being said the Bandcamp sales roll call looks healthy, and 20 compiled tracks of this inventive group’s experiments is well worth digging into in detail. It’s refreshing to hear what a group like them were playing around with and considered for even a short while, when contemporary innovation in the realm can often feel nonexistent. Is there any group in the category that would think to cover Morricone, Caroliner, the Residents and The Shaggs nowadays like TFUL282 do here? Exactly my point.
The Paranoyds’ synth-heavy, minimal-wave leaning post-punk sound puts them into the same lane as their LA neighbors Automatic, but where the latter are thoroughly enmeshed in a protective coating of ironic disillusionment, The Paranoyds seek to pierce through that into something emotionally raw in the hopes of building something better. That’s clear well before the titular call-and-response of the closing track or ‘Destructive Banter’, whose lyrical content you can surely guess. Simultaneously moving towards something that’s alt rock radio friendly and thematically radioactive to the smooth operation of such a station (or playlist), they’re one of the more exciting acts on Third Man’s roster, and I’m eager to see where they go from here and if they can burst through this stasis.
There’s always something further in the archives or otherwise ‘out there’ to discover, if you know where to look. Gossip Wolf turned me on to Panicsville, the long-running noise label by local ghoul Andy Ortmann. This featured solo record by Nurse With Wound and Current 93 collaborator Diana Rogerson turned my ear. While the back half disintegrates into ambient-leaning sound poetry, the beginning part’s deconstruction and refrigeration of conventional sound elements is quite compelling and original. If you, like me, aren’t much into Halloween, this is still a good, seasonally appropriate listen to give you a good set of willies. Caveat emptor all around though, of course.
It’s not even original to say that writing about dance music and describing it absent context is hard, but I do want to note that calling a genre ‘The Beat’ is simultaneously repulsive and refreshingly audacious. The subtitle ‘West Coast Breakbeat Rave Electrofunk 1988 - 1994’ should give you a better understanding of what’s inside this package, also from Above Board Projects. Delicious home listening and surely exciting then and now on a dance floor, infused with the possibilities of generating a new fusion of sound from a multicultural tapestry and background, before the tech faction of the Bay Area took over and caused rents for an alright studio apartment to reach $2,200+, as a friend there now told me last week. I should note this is also Vol. 2 to a Vol. 1 that dropped a few weeks earlier like Megalon above, which also just missed the cut for earlier issues. (Single Cell Orchestra’s opener on that record might be the best cut across both volumes though.) No better time to catch up on this though.
I’m not sure if you’ve checked the calendar recently, but today is jungle Sunday. The perfect time to listen to this from the artist I know as ‘that guy who does longform jungle exhausted stuff on Hyperdub’. Kind of. Clocking in at a tidy 31 minutes, Models is short on breaks but does utilize artificial intelligence (come back here) to synthesize odd voices in a style that creates a murk between Elizabeth Frazier and Autotuned Soundcloud rap. It’s an accumulative grime that sticks with you like a gross industrial byproduct, yet it remains peculiarly compelling, in a manner spiritually and affectively similar to Mouse on Mars’s work from a few years ago. It’s a hell of a lot more engaging than the crap AI evangelists hacks say is the future, for sure.
A lot of the much-revered 90s dance scene has been poorly archived or otherwise faded from view over time—see the Above Board Projectses above. DUCKBEATS, a part of the Primitive Productions family, is an occasionally working outpost for some of this material “of dubious origin and intent”, so good luck gaining further clarity on what, exactly, this stuff is. But it’s another set of solid house cuts that would continue to go off nicely on today’s dance floors. Sometimes it’s fine not to worry about where things come from but enjoy them in the present, for sure.
Toronto jangle-pop outfit Ducks Ltd. have maintained a quiet drip feed of collaborative singles since Modern Fiction came out two years ago. The latest one sees a verifiable chorus of local indie rock stars (Ratboys, Moontype, Dehd) join them for a nice little tune. I’m usually not a fan of indie rock albums with track lists that look more like hip-hop mixtapes, but if this is another lead up to the next album, I’m still excited for it.
Post-punk usually isn’t a family affair, but Mancunian brother-sister duo SLAP RASH show that’s not impossible. Bass and drums fleshed out with some electronics on top, it’s more on the sloganeering/aggressive side of the genre. Fire Talk and its Open Tab subsidiary are always worth following, and it’ll be worthwhile to see where the siblings go from here.
Irish producer Eamon Ivri put out this release under his Lighght alias as “some tracks you might like to play in the club”. It’s full of good leftfield peculiarities in a style that flits between electro and Livity Sound-esque experimental efforts. Definitely good stuff for an adventurous club night.
The liner notes for this single—its first pressing to wax as a 7”—notes its utility as a DJ tool for adventurous folks behind the desks, and indeed Yaşar Akpençe’s darbouka playing feels like something prepped for an academic exercise or cutting into a sample bank. It stands on its own but also feels like a predecessor to the MENA/non-European Mediterranean drum-heavy work that folks like DJ Plead are known for. Solid stuff.
And that’s it for issue #60 of Crow’s Nest. Hopefully something above captured your fancy. Until next time, thank you for reading and listening and take care.