RIP. A weekly roundup of releases on Bandcamp and Soundcloud selected and delivered by Aidan
You may have seen me talk about Brad Rose of Foxy Digitalis/The Jewel Garden over the past year. Brad asked me to provide a mix for the FD mix series and after much humming, hawing and other such deliberation I gave them a mix of strange and wonderful sounds I’ve amassed over the years. Music from people like Dean Hurley (yes, something from Twin Peaks), Laurie Spiegel, Taylor Deupree, Geneva Skeen, nothing natural, Patrick Cowley, Meemo Comma, Jennifer Moore, Knowing (Jonathan Deasy, aka Quiet Clapping) and more. It’s a strange and muted ride. I won’t say it’s wild. Brad gave me a lovely introduction too. You can read and listen here.
Rodney - Primitive Engineering
I checked back through the archives (ie WhatsApp chat logs) and I mentioned this to a friend in late 2018 upon its release. I then forgot about it until I came across a track by the artist on last year’s Plenty More Things to Do in Limbo compilation. A quick check on Discogs and here I was again. I’m going to blame new-child syndrome for not having taken it in at the my youngest son was three months old when this came out and I was on the longest hiatus that I’ve ever taken from these mails. No matter. Music doesn’t expire. It’s a crumbling mess of strange and dubbed out sounds, similar to O$VMV$M (speaking of, where have they been?).
Straightforward banger forthcoming on Trax Couture. Rattles, clangs, sirens and wobs.
This isn’t one to stick on in the car on the way to the shops. This is for deep listening while you’re going on a long walk or sanding some wood or cutting the grass or … I duno, something that takes time and effort. There’s not a track here shorter than six minutes, so it deserves some proper listening. It’s scuzzy and noisy, overpowering and overwhelming. Brilliant throughout.
Distant Animals - The Frequency Of The Heart At Rest
Another release that demands your attention, this was inspired by periods of very little sleep, “the haze of the perpetual tired”. It’s suitably ominous and full of terror, hazy and gauzy and full of zoned repetitions, with delayed notes nodding like the discomfort of prolonged wakefulness. Wavering flute lines recall the soundtracks of a thousand 70s horror films, while discordant noise attacks like the furies.
This is another album on Glacial Movements (who’ve had quite the year) and it’s another suitably glacial album of ambient soundscapes. It’s scarily beautiful, strange and wonderful, hypnotic and enticing.
VA - Listen with ME (Anticipating Nowhere Records)
This is a dual-purpose release, celebrating a year of the Anticipating Nowhere Records label and also raising money for ME support and awareness. In a year, the label has released artists like Black Hair Rolled In Dried Blood, Sulk Rooms, dogs versus shadows, caroline mckenzie, Quiet Clapping and Draaier to name but a few. Label boss Simon Klee says that earlier this year he was diagnosed with ME as well as fibromyalgia, and says that his life would have been, if not easier, more manageable, had he received such a diagnosis earlier. To that end, he wishes to help anyone get to that stage sooner, hence the fundraising aspect of this compilation. The music itself is a snapshot of UK experimental music, with woozy ambient, strange drone and general sonic manipulation across the board.
VA - Sounds for an Empty House I
Strap in kids, it’s concept time. From what I understand, and I could be wrong, sounds were recorded in an empty manor in Wales (see the cover art) and artists were asked to ~remix~ these sounds as part of a 24-hour livestream. Then artists were invited to remix that livestream, so we have artists from all over the globe included across three albums. It’s funny to have things split up when we live in a world of 200-track Bandcamp releases but at the same time I appreciate it. Things SHOULD be finite! Anyway you can hear these sounds split across volumes one and two AND in one TOTAL volume that includes the complete submitted works, such as tracks that are up to two hours in length.
Heavy-hitting drum machine badness.
Korea Undok Group - Fixed Ending Korea
I’m sure I’ve said it before but I could listen to this all day. Musty piano and terribly mournful clarinet harmonies, just utterly gorgeous sad music. It’s from an album that’s due next month.
The whole release from DJ Girl is excellent but ‘Cuica’ in particular blows my mind. The EP is a whole is intense yet intricate, but this track is at a lower tempo and feels like a wall of sludge.
Sharda - Low Tide (Sharda Dubs 2021)
Sharda (aka Murlo) is set to release a new EP on Local Action, and ahead of it he’s just dropped a mix of his recent dubs. It’s giddy and exhilarating, a thrilling 46 minutes of modern garage sounds. There’s a sweet remix of Gemma Dunleavy’s ‘Up De Flats’ in there early on, as well as collabs with DJ Q and India Jordan.
Objekt - All night @ Nowadays NYC [23/10/2021]
I don’t know if you’ll get through all of this but Objekt has just shared his recent all-night set at New York’s Nowadays. Nine hours, it’s split into four parts. He’s described it as the best DJing experience of his life. I witnessed a good chunk of his five-ish hour set with Call Super at Amsterdam Dance Event in 2013 and it remains one of my own personal favourites (if not my favourite outright). We have to remember that while DJing is an art, it’s also a job. Not every set will be amazing, and even if we enjoy it as punters or listeners, it might not be their own personal favourite, so it’s nice to hear when something is special to them too. “I have never felt so intimately close to, and in tune with, an audience – whose faces I could barely even see – for the entire duration of a night.” As you can imagine in a set that long there are many styles and segues, moving from ambient fog to trippy “IDM” to breaksy silliness to intricate techno, all the way back to … breakbeat? I don’t know what to call it. I won’t lie and say I’ve listened to every minute but upon an initial flick through I can recognise a handful of tunes (“Theme From Q”, “You Don't Know Me”, the Andy Weatherall mix of “Soon”) but it’s all good and it’s brought together by one of the most technically gifted DJs out there. PS Goodness me I didn’t realise you’d see his whole comment in the preview? That’s weird.
Jake Muir announced his new album last week. It was released on Wednesday. That’s how it should be done. The Berlin-based ambient aficionado with a sense of humour has teamed up with Ilian Tape, which is slightly surprising to me but given recent albums from Skee Mask maybe it’s not such a shock. The first that comes to mind listening to this is “swirly”. The sounds travel around in twisting cycles, like a river that traps you and pulls you down into its dank eddies of sound.
An absolutely blinding release from fiyahdred on Hyperdub. The title track is sultry and groovy, with rattling percussion, all-encompassing snarling bass wobs and a cheeky and entrancing vocal. The opening track has an almost g-funk-esque melody to it, over thumping funky sounds, while ‘Flutey Loopz’ blends the titular sounds with gurgling bass noises and sampled yelps. I’m sure I use this word often but it’s a genuinely thrilling release.
Comet of any Substance - Full of Seeds, Bursting with its own Corrections
“Imagine Kevin Shields, Delia Derbyshire and Autechre jamming a dystopian sci-fi soundtrack and you might be in the ballpark.” I can’t even top that, to be honest. This album is indeed foggy, woozy, confusing, unnerving, exciting. Woof. The title seems to come from Italian engineer/economist Vilfredo Pareto, the full quote running as follows: “Give me the fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.”