Bandcloud 317

I'm trying to restrain myself from sharing too many dank and spoopy releases, there's one more Friday before Halloween so wait until then! I'll also have a two-hour Samhain special airing on Dublin Digital Radio on October 31, more details next week too. I think I overdid it last week so a briefer mail today.

Madalyn Merkey - Oranges
I featured Madalyn Merkey all the way back in 2016 and yet I completely missed this album until Tony P tweeted about it recently. Lovely stuff, I bought it and it wasn't even a Bandcamp Friday. It's a selection of songs taken from online performances, yet it flows like what one might term ~an album~ if one were that way inclined. Someone asked recently why album artwork is still square, and that's a great question. Sometimes you click on a Bandcamp image and the full thing pops up and — shock horror — it's NOT got a ratio of 1x1 (see chromasy in the second chunk of blurbs below). I digress. The tracks on Oranges range from lengthy ambient excursions to frivolous floating bubbles, slightly twitchy oddities and drifting numbers that feel like wispy summer clouds. 

JFK - agnri bopa
Wild and wonderful high-tempo stuff here, beyond techno but not quite drum and bass, it's frantic and hectic and bangs to heck.

VA - The Slasher Comp (Sounds for the Soul Records)
Tis the season for scary music so here's a soundtrack for a non-existent slasher film. Features a lot of artists unknown to me, as well as Danni Rowan, who appeared on the latest edition of Bandcloud's podcast Orange Hexagon Son, as well as he11 gir1, who featured here some weeks back. Naturally it's all synth-driven stuff, nasty and chilling and gurgling across the 13 tracks (of course there are 13).  

ghunghru 044 // maral
I shared maral's album on Leaving two weeks ago, and this mix for ghunghru is a stunning counterpart. It features an early recording of maral's from 2010, replayed in its entirety for us! Very brave for an artist to be so open. The music is blindingly good and doesn't sound all that far from what she's doing now. Wild explorations with Persian classical music and modern techniques, hefty bass and distorted sounds. There's a moment where Le Tigre's 'Deceptacon' shows up in hugely cut-up form, almost unrecognisable until it couldn't be anything else. The final section of the mix is taken from a tape brought home by the artist's parents from Iran, and I'm not sure if it's the sound of the rip or the player but the atmosphere surrounding the music is breathtaking. 

VA - Music For Abandoned Cold War Places (ZeroK)
I love the utilitarian title of this release. It cites Music For Airports in its blurb, and I suppose that's the benchmark for utilitarian titles, but this one goes a step beyond imo. The tracks here have been inspired by specific locations designated by the project's curators, and naturally they are dank, cold, cacophonous and melancholy.  

Nkisi - Peeling
This is a recording from a party that took place in June 2019 in Berlin. Climate of Fear previously released a set from Elena Colombi from the same night, and now it's time for Nkisi's set, or at least part thereof. It was a 10-hour party after all. It's tough going, two 40-minute sides of atmospheric, apocalyptic techno laced with nightmare acid, tempos rising gradually until it reaches a climax of around 175bpm. Not for the faint of heart. 

VA - SLINK Volume 1 (SLINK NYC)
This one is fun. It's a four-track comp EP from the SLINK collective in New York, a group of people who in better times have thrown parties, playing host to the likes of Amazondotcom, Cassius Select, and quest?onmarc. Now they're making records! The first release features crew members rrao, K Wata, Enayet and Simisea, who you may know from having featured here before because of his show on The Lot (and his irreverent Instagram account). The press release comes with words like "slippery mutant rhythms", and that really shines through on the tracks. Stripped back and punchy beats hit hard, while awkwardly shifting rhythms throw your ears and your feet into unexpected positions. In tandem with the digital EP, the crew has made a T-shirt, with half of all sales going to a relief fund focused on supporting BIPOC-owned and led creative spaces who create safe spaces for BIPOC and LGBTQIA communities. 

NSMA-MIX-013 | Ambient Babestation Meltdown
I've only made Ambient Babestation Meltdown's online acquaintance recently but she's someone who clearly puts a lot of passion and work into her music. This mix is for the Negative Space [Ma] series and features a range of sonic sources, from old sex-ed tapes to bang-up-to-date electronic weirdness. About halfway through there's a DJ Richard track I recognised and it felt like a Where's Wally moment, given how bizarre and obscure a lot of ABM's music is. There's also a super-gnarly track from ABM alongside Bandcloud friend JEM, as well as one she's done with Those Who Came Before Us and Us Who Are To Follow, who featured in a mail here a few weeks back. Eyes peeled for more!

TUSK Virtual & The Reality
A large compilation tying in with the recent TUSK festival, all for a single UK pound. Across 30 tracks a huge range of sounds is represented, with artists such as Oui Ennui, Triple Negative, Lacrima, Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O’Rourke and the previously featured Loula Yorke all offering excellent music. There's ambient, weird collage, distorted noise, it's all what one loosely might term experimental, if one were that way inclined, but rather I should just say it's very, very good, and did I say it's only £1? 

chromasy - When These Mountains Turn To Oceans
This is a wonderful release, deftly blending synth sounds with crisp field recordings. There are moments that sound a bit Music Has The Right To Children (sorry to return to these lads so often but the comparison is undeniable), but only in terms of a reference point. There are moments that are genuinely swoonsome, and there's a bizarrely stretchy melody that recalls those DJ Sakin & Friends tracks from the late 90s. It stretches beyond these influences (if they are even influences) into a beautiful release that asks what the world will look like if and when the title comes to pass.

Great Circles - This Green Earth w/ Carl Ritger - 15Oct2020
This Green Earth goes out each fortnight on greatcircles.net and this is his latest exploration. It opens with a fascinating piece entitled 'SUM (State of the Union Message)' by Ruth Anderson, a lengthy sound collage incorporating advertising, TV and film and an array of other sounds. It's a perfect opener, and I'm keen to dig into Anderson's work. Artists like Iannis Xenakis, Svarte Greiner and Stars of the Lid also feature, but after these three I'm completely unfamiliar with the work included here. It's a wonderful two hours, sparse, dense, overpowering and enveloping.  

INTERVENTION x V​/​A 001
Another super comp here, well, I'm guessing it is. Right now I'm listening to the sole playable track; it's by Lee Gamble and it's a subtle freaky banger. The other artists here include LUX E TENEBRIS (aka Meemo Comma), Lack, Loraine James, India Jordan and Fuckingelle, a London-based DJ who I believe is showcasing her production talents for the first time here. The comp is celebrating INTERVENTION's fourth birthday and is raising money for two charities that are providing specialist mental health care black people and people of colour in London. 

Shida Shahabi - Lake On Fire
This is so short it's painful. Lake On Fire is a short film from a director named Jennifer Rainsford, and this is music from that film. I haven't been able to see it yet sadly but if it's anything like the music here it must be sublime. Hushed organ tones, gentle chords that evoke both yearning and serenity, sweet moments of calm, I just find myself listening to these pieces over and over again. There's also a piano version, featuring every creak and touch of that instrument, and just everything about the four tracks here makes my heart melt. Maybe I'm overly emotional right now but can you blame me?

As a sign-off this week, I would urge you to read this article in Mixmag by DeForrest Brown, Jr. entitled HOW THE DANCE MUSIC INDUSTRY FAILED BLACK ARTISTS.