Bandcloud 277

Okay so I feel like I've been shoving emails at you lately but this really is the last one. Of the year, too. I'll only be taking a week off though, will be back on Jan 3.

Watercooler Session #15: Cormac
Cormac is a hero. He's part of the team at ddr. and he regularly helps me out with everything from digital promo to levels, door codes and uploads. He also makes bread and loves ambient. This mix for the Goldbrick crew is simply delightful. Soothing ambient, field recordings, soft vocals and organ drones. Tracklist and links here too.

Kali Malone - Live at Le Guess Who? 2019
Cormac's mix finishes with something from Kali Malone, and here are two pieces from her performance at Le Guess Who? in Utrecht last month. I wish I had the words to describe her music but all I can say is that it creates great longing and yearning in me. 

in Fosa - There are Two
This is pretty creepy and weird and harrowing. The accompanying text has lines like "a future without night requires the creation of darkness". Drones that sound like helicopters, haunting sounds that could be the rims of glasses or just programmed noise. 

VA - XMAS ACID
This is a comp from Melbourne, Australia, repurposing Christmas songs and carols for devilishly acid purposes. It's not all for me - some of it is a bit too silly, but there's one track that deserves a special shout out. That comes from The 303 Wise Men and it's called 'Little Drummer Boy In Goa'. It takes the riff from that particularly annoying song and turns it into a minor key trance anthem. I'm stunned to be honest. All profits from this release are going to the Indigenous Community Volunteers, a non-profit community development organisation working throughout Australia with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. 

VA - Cicada Songs (Future Ethics)
This compilation comes from the team behind the Rave Ethics zine. It's out on a specially designed USB stick and of course digi download. There's a zine that comes with it, featuring: "an interview with Discwoman’s Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, writing on off-Facebook event organizing from Adwoa Afful, a beautiful cover from collage artist Fenna Fiction, and a guide to recognizing opioid overdoses and administering Naloxone from Liz Singh and Sara Martin in Toronto. It also features a comic from Berlin-based artist @juicycomics and a poem from Wafa Ktaech." There's music too! There's creepy stomp in the form of Odete's 'The Sorrows of the Bitch'; rattling blips and bangs from Bergsonist in 'ceasefire deal'; nightmare techno from softcoresoft with 'Edges'; and dreamy hypnosis from Violet and Beta Librae, with 'Soul Searching' and 'false positive', respectively. 

Marlo Eggplant - Loose Footing
This is a great splonky mixtape from Marlo Eggplant that dropped this week. Creepy reversed vocals, crumbling sounds, shreddy guitar, whirring noises and droning electronics, silly melodies, all these things abound. 

Everyday Dust - Beyond The Capital
This release in itself makes a mockery of any kind of list written before the end of the year. I heard it just yesterday and it stopped me in my tracks, filling my soul and dampening my heart with inner tears (by that I mean it's wholly emotional but I didn't actually cry). You could say that it's not particularly inventive and you'd probably be right. Foggy synth. Wistful feelings. Deep mournfulness. These are all fairly standard tropes, both in Bandcloud specifically and in ambient/electronic music more broadly. But this one just hit me, you know? 'Aspen Gateway' in particular.

Burning Nymph - blue crystal fire
This is weird and creepy and the artwork is an old painting of a flayed man. Don't say I didn't warn you. It's like a 60s folks song fed through reverb and surrounded by clanks and other weird and creepy sounds. *SCRATCH THAT* I've done some research (ie basic googling) and it's literally the song of the title, sung by Robbie Basho in 1978, fed through reverb and surrounded by clanks and other weird and creepy sounds. Ahem.

VA - A Dozen Things to Do in Limbo (Limbo Tapes)
Another fantastic release that you should hear before the year is out. I only know two artists here (Memotone and Sunun), so it's a welcome introduction to new people. The artists are all from Bristol so you get a real combination of old timey samples over trip-hop-esque beats (Titus 12, Rodney), electronica that's alternatively hazy and janky (Eusebeia, How Du), emotive flute and clarinet (Lupo & Coyote), bells and dial tones (Flight Mode Squad), kalimba and bass (Sunun), spacey, echoey dub that traverses time signatures (T'iwu, Dive Reflex Service) and so on. It's brilliant in any order too.

Ocean Floor - Void​/​Through
"Two moon-drenched synth compositions. Music to soothe dark winter nights."

Sanpo Disco w/Scott Young (NTS - 11/12/19)
I tweeted about this one here. It's a lovely set from an artist who's actually got a really great clubby, percussive EP coming out next year. It's a superb blend of ambience that's glistening and otherworldly, foggy, dubby, crackly, and then in comes Teresa Winter. It finishes with some drone that seems familiar but I can't name right now. One to repeat.

Transpacifica / Ghost Signs - Silent Night
This is a drawn-out drone version of 'Silent Night'. That's all there is to it. Gorgeous. 

PIQSIQ - Quviasugvik: In Search of Harmony
Finally, a very unChristmassy Christmas release. This comes from PIQSIQ, a duo made up of two sisters who are "Inuit style throat singers performing ancient traditional songs and eerie new compositions". This release sees them take a number of traditional Christmas songs in their own style. For them Christmas is a time of mixed emotions, between the joy of Inuit celebrations and the pain of Christian colonisation of indigenous peoples. With that in mind, they recorded these songs entirely without words, instead focusing on haunting melodies outside of an explicitly religious context. Speaking of haunting, see the tweet above this section. Anyway it's great because I really love 'Carol of the Bells' and 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman'. Also for the record, wishing people comfort and joy is the best. See this tweet too.