Crow’s Nest 61: 111923
27 Reasons To Be Thankful For Music Right Now
Hey everyone, welcome to issue #61 of Crow’s Nest. I don’t really have too much to say longform right now, been trying to keep busy to ward off the impact the change in seasons can have on my mood and mental health. Luckily there’s plenty of new music to sort through which helps with that, you’ve gotta be deliberately avoiding listening to stuff you think might be good in order to say otherwise at this time. Let’s dig in to recent riches below:
Sahel Sounds brings you another phenomenal northern Malian guitarist. Recorded live at a Bamako wedding seemingly on a phone in an affectingly amateur way—the kind of stylistic detail that ought to hold up well—Boumaly’s fried shredding slowly mutates in a minimalist looping style, backed by what sounds like only one drummer and a pair of vocalists. Definitively desert blues, but is also pulls in bits of kuduro and jazz into the mix as well. This is the kind of record that makes you feel alive and is well worth adding to your collection.
Everyone’s favorite anarchist acid-jam band returns with a new album on Trouble in Mind. Catching them earlier this year, it’s hard to deny the power and joy in this music, especially the opening number. Whether you agree with the politics behind it or not, it’s a great record of jazzy celebration and having fun that’s worth a few spins as daylight becomes a scarce commodity around this time of the year.
‘Keep Austin Weird’ can feel a bit hollow in the face of culture wars, money, and Sun Belt migration patterns, but every now and then you find a pocket of that idea worth preserving (and I say this as a University of Oklahoma graduate). Wet Dip play an aggressive, harsh style of no wave well removed from its origins in NYC: the serrated guitar work in particular sounds like an out-of-control freight train or taking a sandblaster to unprotected skin, and I can’t say I’ve ever felt quite as embarrassed when not understanding what someone’s singing in Spanish. The overall effect is sonically a bit far from Chat Pile, but comes across similarly to them, even down to the cover art. Great work to sink into even if it’s not exactly welcoming to your complacency.
Here’s a record well worth your attention. Fusing synthesizer with a 16-person choir, Moritz von Oswald creates an intriguing mix among oppositional elements like organic vs. mechanical and light vs. dark in a package that winds up somewhere between ambient, minimalism and techno, not unlike the mix von Oswald pioneered in the latter realm with Basic Channel and other ventures that put Berlin firmly in the center of dance music. Dance music this is not despite its release on Tresor, it’s worth the time it takes to get into its layers and uncover what all is going on within.
Coming at you from the opposite side of the ambient spectrum, Glyn Maier’s latest tape processes field recordings into an ecstatic, sensuous wonder. It’s like a forest bathing session miraculously compressed onto magnetic tape.
I enjoyed seeing Ethers at a $1 beer night at Sleeping Village earlier this year, but failed to look into them further. I was really enthralled with their performance on Halloween at the Empty Bottle, gave their album a spin, then another, and another … it’s heavier post-punk in the vein of Vision 3D, Onyon, name some other French and Canadian groups I really enjoy, but stands out from that milieu with Farfisa organ lines that lend things a carnival-esque sound on top of the semi-political cacophony. The album also dates to 2018 on Trouble In Mind, so hopefully there’s another one coming soon.
The second part of the acronym for this project by Buz Clatworthy may change, but the first part—Rock Music—isn’t in doubt. It’s buzzy and a little ramshackle in parts, firmly within the post-punk/jangle pop vein you know I really enjoy. If you’re looking for something new and fresh out of Australia, look no further.
Twin Coast are a local brother-sister duo who play a bombed out, My Bloody Valentine-worshipping shoegaze that came onto my radar via Gossip Wolf. Their latest single splits between a bedroom-recorded Loveless song, and a 25-minute ambient soundscape that comes across a bit like Body/Head attempting a Yellow Swans cover. I caught them opening for an Elephant 6-affiliated group at Schubas a week ago: my friend and I couldn’t imagine they’re of legal drinking age, and I gotta assume the members of Lifeguard I spotted in the crowd are peers. So I’m definitely excited to see where these two go from here.
90s noise pop greats Velocity Girl have recently reunited, and Sub Pop has put some of their material on Bandcamp that I listened to for the first time recently. Most of my comparative points here would be anachronistic, so I’ll leave by saying my favorite of the cache is the Simpatico! full-length followed closely by the Sorry Again EP.
Local indie rock/space rock/post-punk mainstays Cafe Racer are calling it a day following the release of their 4th album Words in Error. A solid group and a fitting final statement from them. They’re putting on a pair of final shows next month at the Empty Bottle to send them off, so you’ve got a couple final chances to see them whether you’ve caught them before or not.
In case you forgot that Yo La Tengo released an excellent record at the beginning of the year and/or you missed them on tour this year, the trio have released a live session at Bunker Studios as well. The cuts are a little more intense—maybe punchier is the right word there—than This Stupid World, and are worth a half hour of your time at minimum. They have even more dates announced into next year as well; check local listings in case it’s been a minute since you’ve caught them.
Here’s a nice little tape from jangle/power/bedroom pop outfit Soup Activists. From St. Louis, recorded with Sweeping Promises in Kansas (same as Wet Dip), out on Berlin label Mangel. The tape isn’t split up into individual tracks, only the A-side and B-side. Exactly the sort of small gem one would hope for in a plastic and magnetic tape package.
Speaking of Mangel, they put out this tape from Berlin group Noj this week that’s also worth your time. More cold wave-inflected goodness out of that city’s rising post-punk scene.
London’s Disciples label maintains an impressively eclectic roster; I can’t imagine a different connecting line between artists including Bogdan Raczynski, Wold Eyes, Special Interest and others. They’ve had a handful of intriguing releases these past few weeks as part of a very prolific 2023:
—The peculiarly seductive avant-pop/avant-rock of Charlène Darling, which feels at times like a deconstructed, Francophone/Belgian, experimental jazzy in the same realm as Broadcast:
—The second-wave electro of NSRB-11, a reissue of the 2013 album from Dataphysix, DJ Stingray 313, Penelope Martin and Lana Jastrevski, which brings an oftentimes airy yet resonant take on the genre:
—A collaborative single between Jlin and Suzi Analogue:
There’s nothing on the latest EP from Rhyw that sounds as iconic as last year’s ‘Honey Badger’, but the overall quality to this slab of contemporary techno is so high you’d hardly notice. If we’re in the midst of a race to be the most hard on the dance floor, this submission is surely bound to easily reach the final rounds.
I was talking with a friend last night a bit about how it can be challenging to know many of the major shakers and players in club music, particularly when they disappear for a bit and the conversation shifts. If I had mentioned that Untold is back to him, would that have meant anything? The producer had a bit of swagger in the post-dubstep/bass/deconstructed club sphere in the late 2000s through the mid-2010s, dipped, and now is back on this collaborative 12” with Parris. Whatever happened, Untold is still keeping pace with Hessle Audio and other labels that continue to drive underground dance music, making for a welcome—and hopefully sustained—return.
I really didn’t like the records Mount Kimbie put out last year—being essentially solo albums, they mostly showed that they’re greater than the sum of their parts—but the duo is now a quartet, formally adding multi-instrumentalist Andrea Balency and drummer Marc Pell (who’s also behind the kit for Good Sad Happy Bad fka Micachu and the Shapes) as members and dropping this single, presumably a prelude to an album next year. I’m usually not much for too liminal songs here, but the group (as a group) pulled it off well on Love What Survives, and I’m finding myself dwelling on it like I did with many of those songs. Their next US tour is only 6 months away, and yes I have a ticket for the Lincoln Hall show.
It’s not surprising to hear that a contemporary club record focuses on rhythm—few bother to write proper melodies these days tbh—but not many do it as well as Ayesha here. A self-taught producer working off of intuition, I can’t really say what’s strongly appeals to me here—maybe it’s the Beatrice Dillon-priming with reverb—but I did find myself putting it on a few more times than I usually would for something like this. It’s not a record for the head either so find the grooves within:
PC Music might be calling it a day at the end of this year after a decade of redefining pop and club music—yes, it’s been that long, don’t text—but they are going out at a full-on sprint rather than quieting closing the doors after disposing of inventory. On this single, producer GRRL mulches contemporary club sounds into something oozing, ringing, and blazing with energy. It’s hard to feel sad at the end of this era when it’s going out with a bang with entries like this.
A solid EP of dub techno-leaning tech house from down under. Imagine Call Super taking the straightforward route again and you’re there.
Techno mainstay Fort Romeau is probably best known for his longform emotional bangers—shout out the title track to Secrets and Lies—and maintains a drip feed of material from various outposts. This one does not really tug at your heartstrings on the dancefloor; it’s just a very well-executed piece of tech house. Material of this quality will always be welcome.
If this record went up against Rhyw in the aforementioned hardness face-off, it’d probably lose. But this record from Hodge out on Timedance is surely big among those in the know and worth your time regardless.
While the future of Bandcamp remains uncertain under new ownership, especially after their opening salvo of firing half the staff post-acquisition from Epic, their new-ish listening party sessions are a great addition to launch events, in the best cases bringing the joy and energy of a lively live chat into music appreciation. Probably the best one I’ve caught was for the launch of Volume 4 of BBE’s J Jazz series. Always essential, the context label staff brought in the chat deepened my appreciation for the artists, even if that chat wasn’t archived and I’ve forgotten most of it. 16 tracks from the long 70s of Nippon Columbia’s archives, you’ve got everything from big band to blues rock-adjacent work to bamboo flute playing from someone designated a living national treasure of Japan to a fellow named Herbie Hancock within. The physical media should have the context I’m missing for this record.
If the above record is a bit too intense to take in all at once, the crate diggers/fanzine writers/party people at Love Injection have reissued a downtempo, chill dubplate by Japanese producer Yasushi Ide they found in Japan a few years ago. Ide is clearly a musician’s musician based on the collaborators Love Injection note; it’s definitely worth a deeper dive into his back catalog. The dub version is a bit more muscular than the original remixes by Kaoru Inoue, but still remains great for a moment of bliss when you need it.
The Quietus turned me on to this record from Vladimir Lenhart, which sees him re-tool Balkan folk music with industrial tape manipulation into something termed ‘Ethno-Noise’. I had it on in the background of my workday a couple of times, find industrial music aesthetics to be normal, and am no stranger to peculiar processing and eclectic vocals and sampling, so it sounds fine to my ears. Though perhaps that’s just evidence of how far my preferred sonics are from the mainstream.
And that’s it for issue #61 of Crow’s Nest. Hopefully something within is something you enjoy. Thank you for listening, as always. Enjoy the holiday season.
Great stuff, as always!