Bandcloud 313

I think there was some 500 best albums list going around (to much disdain). I decided to make my own list. I've been chipping away at it. Somehow rather than writing about the music it's been more a series of memories with music attached. I've only written 29 or so at this stage. Maybe I won't get to 500. Like Sufjan and his 50 states. Sufjan has a new album out today actually.

Civic Edits - With Happiness
Civic Edits is a collaboration between Sunken Foal and DEASY, and this album is a collection of "samples / mixes / cutups". If you think of that kind of album you always think dusty and musty, but this one manages to maintain the musical spirit of its forebears while presenting everything with a bright sheen. It's all very pristine. This unexpected approach speaks to the digital age, with samples culled from CDs and downloads rather than ripped from old records. Maybe I'm projecting here but that's how it seems to me. The sources are varied, and the results are anything from plodding not-quite-club music to not-quite-boom-bap. It's as mangled as the artwork (see above). It's also got a track entitled 'Wet Pubs'. 

2Lanes - Baby's Born To Fish​.​.​. / Impish Desires
Good man 2Lanes drops his latest on Portage Garage Sounds. Side note. I have no idea what that label name means. I understand the words independently, but together? Shrug. Second side note. 313 is the area code for Detroit. As it happens, 2Lanes actually sent me these tracks a whole year back so it's nice that they're finally out. That's the music industry for you!!! 'Baby's Born To Fish...' is a trippy affair, pleading vocals over a beat that feels like it's marching dolefully towards the end. The swirling sound design and delicate percussive effects make this a really immersive experience. It's a dream team too, with vocals and additional performance from Kesswa, John F.M., Ian Fink (who popped up here a few weeks back) and Shigeto. Then 'Impish Desires', featuring raucous flute from another Bandcloud alum Ji Hoon, feels like it belongs in the explosive climax of a John Carpenter film. Scuzzy guitar (synthetic or otherwise, who cares?) over chunky chunky bass. It's gooooood stuff. "Releasing a club-ready 12" in the midst of a global pandemic? That's the 2 Lanes." 

Mike Parker - Stinging Insects / Stages Of Metals
This rips. I don't usually say that because it feels very American, but there's no better way to put it. It rips. Really nasty squidgy sounds that feel like they're coming from the titular insects, the first track is nasty and terrifying. The second makes me think of DJ Shadow's jaunt into hyphy, '3 Freaks', only slowed down to a druggy, repetitive, half-time frenzy. The two tracks feel like they're about to explode into some 170bpm madness, so I guess that's what they're made for. I'm getting chills just thinking about the possibilities. 

VA - For MASI (Patrúin)
Irish label Patrúin has assembled some wonderful talents to raise money for MASI, the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland. It's a brilliantly sequenced release, with evident care and thought gone into the order of the tracks. Opening with some bliss from Rory Sweeney and Može, it moves into some ambient beats (oxymoron?) from Sias, building into bolder sounds from DJ Après Ski and Oli. There's an unexpectedly delicate piano number from Lighght, and some slamming electro from Ngoni Egan and Maurice Anthony Moran. There's an appropriately haunted piece of modular escapism from Witch Trials, and the closing tracks from Breen and Flowers At Night crown off a stellar collection. Great music, great cause. 

Bright Patterns with Vicki Siolos & Abby Echiverri @ The Lot Radio 09 - 17 - 2020
Bright Patterns is a show on New York's The Lot and it's hosted by Vicki Siolos. This one features an hour from Siolos and an hour from Abby Echiverri, who put out a record on The Bunker in 2018. The first hour features weird ambient and experimental sounds that verge on jazzy  fourth-world territory as well as lots of gorgeous synth sounds. The second features beautiful and haunting sounds from across the decades, with highlights coming from Yoshio Ojima and Pete Namlook & Peter Prochir. 

ike release - Personality Fragment
With this set of tracks, ike release seeks to uncover various fragments of his personality. Ambient melodies, stomping club sounds, beefy bass melodies under dreamy, floating synths, evocative and emotional combinations of all the above. The whole may never be complete. Twirling, swirling, yearning, burning. There is much colour to be found here, and a willingness to be open, unvarnished, vulnerable. 

Carly Barton - Heart Scale
There are two gorgeous tracks here. Sludgy and murky, woozy, hypnotic. I've listened to it over and over and will no doubt be listening again and again. I hope you do too. Barton recently contributed a mix to the Beyond/Below series that somehow passed me by.

Falx - Joy to Come EP
This is an interesting one. A breaks-laden, sample-heavy release that includes a full list of all samples used in its making. Bold move! Falx is a Dublin producer who has a show on Dublin Digital Radio as half of Variant Crew. At first, Joy to Come seems like it may be overly indebted to UK sounds, with crisps hi-hats and clasp, Think breaks and wailing vocals. All executed perfectly, no doubt, but perhaps nothing entirely novel. The raucous rave spirit is alive and well in 'Elevate', complete with Coco's 'I Need A Miracle'. The 85 seconds of 'Tjader's Rest', sampling Latin jazz musician Cal Tjader, shows a willingness to go beyond the easy and expected points, and it's just a shame that one isn't longer. 'Celandine', which simply samples something from 'Soulful Vocals Sample Pack', features slightly off-kilter chords over haunting synth patterns and stuttering breakbeats, and 'Celestial Seclusion' samples everything from Tekken 2 to Yazoo. There's a bonus track if you buy the tape, which is a steal at €5. It's a hugely accomplished release, with great promise alongside its reverence for past sounds. 

Yeong Die - Threshold Value [CLIPP165]
This one really throws you, as the first track is a proper bouncy number, and then the album moves intro strange and unclubbable arenas. That track is called 'Dishes Done', as if getting the nitty gritty of clubby thump out of the way allows Yeong Die to focus on something else, with found sound, weird globs, radio static, distorted stomps and bizarre, spacey romps through the galaxy. Genuinely fascinating from start to finish. 

URTE - Permafrost
The latest release on Coyote Records comes from German producer URTE, and it's an especially intriguing take on the bones of the instrumental grime sound. 'Cancel' builds slowly like a rocket launch, staring towards the sky and preparing for that eventual release. The title track takes echoing percussion and muffled bass stabs and pits them against muted trance arpeggios, once more building towards something bigger. The clicks and kicks of grime appear most prominently in 'Tannhäuser Gate', another trek into trancey sounds, while borrowing bass sounds from 00s prog house. It's an interesting blend of sounds but it definitely succeeds. Does the release fail to launch, as it were? It seems to be aiming for something without ever really firing off. Maybe it reaches that point with the syncopated thump that arrives in the last minute of 'Shielding', which otherwise features a slow and delicate mixture of droning synths and the occasional blurted arpeggio. Perhaps any shortfall is covered by the inclusion of a remix of 'Permafrost' by TUSK, a new moniker of Bandcloud's old friend Spokes. 

Zac - Live @ The Lodge (2019)
This was recorded at The Lodge, a party in the woods near Seattle. It's a performance on a modular rack sequenced by an Analog Four, with added guitar elements. It's part exploration, part experiment, all full of love and wonder.   

Malik Da Freek - Luv Sng
Ahhh what a wonderful flip, taking Rihanna and Future and sticking them on top of some gorgeously lush house sounds. Full release next week. 

I've been watching HBO's Watchmen lately and one episode I watched last night featured a disco version of George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' that I'd never heard before. Of course it's Walter Murphy, of 'A Fifth of Beethoven' fame. Enjoy.