It’s been a long cold winter in my summery LA apartment and I’ve got a backlog of little masterpieces I’ve been meaning to talk about…
Liv.e reminds me of Erykah Badu when I first saw her on the Jenny McCarthy Show way back in ‘97 — fully steeped in the lineage of R&B but also shrooming freely in all directions and ready to bite when it’s warranted, like on “Wild Animals”: “The man always gotta have a bitch on a leash / But they the ones always playin’ in the field / Imma be that bitch to tell u personally / That most of these dogs donʼt deserve a meal.”
Pole, AKA Düsseldorfian Stefan Betke, has been kicking around the glitchiverse for decades and he has a new album called Tempus with a funky-gangrenous jam on it that really gets me going called “Stechmück.”
Back in the world of voice and guitar, there’s a stunning track on the new one from Pretty V called Aqrxvst (29) — it’s all drawled alpha state vocals over a sweet/sour wash of distorted guitar and shoe box drumming. “As lights flicker / In the room / A lost man screaming / But nobody can hear him / ‘Cause nobody can see him / He’s going to a prison / No one wants to be there / They’re about to go home / To talk about the ceiling / And why it hasn’t moulded / Even though it’s peeling…”
Cutecore London dance duo Two Shell have a très cute new EP out called lil spirits with an oh so elegantly produced banger on it called “love him” with julienned and reassembled vocals and a twinkly, pre-teen vibe.
It led me back to their 2022 track “home,” which is giving me ridiculous pleasure with its feathery-girly vocal over a bubbly hyperspeed beat: “You keep me awake, it’s where I wanna be / Please don’t let me sleep on all my stolen dreams / The winter has made me wanted more, oh / You can’t walk away from me / I’m thinking about your childhood gift, oh / You can’t walk away from me.” And the yummy chorus: “You’ll never complete me though I like your kind / Somehow it would change the way we feel inside.” There’s a warmth and innocence to it that reminds me a lot of Jai Paul when he had his moment (ten years ago already!)
Orbital and Leftfield both have new releases and they’ve got me reminiscing about early 90s San Francisco. The kings of the scene were Lewis Walden and Michael Blue, who put on the legendary Club Uranus, famous for the mind-bending performance art go-go dancing of Jerome Caja, San Francisco’s messy answer to Leigh Bowery. Jerome would perform some beautifully violent new sacrilege every Sunday, usually wearing chicken feet footwear.
At Uranus there was usually one song that got absolutely everyone on the dance floor — in the summer of ‘90 it was hard techno track Cubik by 808 State; the following year it was the trancey Papua New Guinea by The Future Sound of London. I had been mostly a rock guy but I started hanging with a dance music crowd — we would crate-dig at DJ-oriented record stores and sample white-label vinyl at listening stations, on a quest to discover the next underground club hit.
Good times, ish, but to be honest 90s acid house is about the last thing I had an appetite to revisit in 2023, and yet somehow the new stuff from Orbital and Leftfield really hits the spot. Orbital’s “Ringa Ringa” uses the lyrics of “Ring Around the Rosie” and wow I just found out a lot of experts believe that sweet little nursery rhyme is actually about death and dying during the Great Plague of 1665. And “Ringa Ringa” is the band’s nod from COVID lockdown to the horrors of earlier pandemics. Very Siouxsie and the Banshees. On Wikipedia they mention a theory about the meaning of the nursery rhyme: “A rosy rash […] was a symptom of the plague, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease […] and ‘all fall down’ was exactly what happened.” But then some people think the whole plague theory is full of shit. Just so you know.
Meanwhile Leftfield put out a monster of a track called “Pulse” that’s built around a timeless, druggy wwwaaawwwaaawwwaaa riff that pretty much commands you to fly to Goa in a time machine and rage all night with young, glowing Europeans. I guess I never really got into them back in the day, but by George do they have a catalog. “Release the Pressure” and “Open Up” (with John Lydon sneering “Burn Down Tinsel Town!”) off their first album are ecstatic bone rattlers, and “Phat Planet” is what Melody Maker used to call an “arsequake.”
But seriously can we get back to the present day? I told you I have like a MILLION new releases to talk about and you got me off on another tangent. Sorry for raising my voice. I DO care about you, why would you even say that? Umm, OK, so veteran British/Armenian/Turkish producer Hagop Tchaparian has put out a hybrid of traditional Armenian folk music and clubby techno called Bolts which is delicious and satisfying throughout but hits a stomping pinnacle on “Right to Riot,” a commanding dance track with warlike dhol drums and bright, bleating zurna (a short, tart, middle-eastern horn).
Memphisite rapper Gloss Up’s new album Before the Gloss Up delivers the fierceness right up front, reiterating a timeless truism: “Take your li’l nigga, can’t get him back (You can’t) / Broke niggas don’t get no pussycat (Uh-uh, what?).” But let’s go back to her truly sublime, filthy take on the schoolyard chant “Shabooya,” with Aleza, Slimeroni, and K Carbon, produced by Hitkidd. I’m tempted to share the entirety of the lyrics but here’s a sample: “I’m Slimeroni (Queen Slime), the one and only (the one and only) / You might’ve seen me (you might’ve seen me), but you don’t know me (ho, you don’t know me) […] / It’s only one Aleza (uh-huh), on my neck a freezer / I been the shit since they was pagin’ through them beepers (beep-beep, beep-beep) […] Bitch, I’m Big Carbon (it’s Carbon), break him and send him back (brrd, brrd) / I’ma take her nigga, come here bitch, and give me that (snatch it) / Now she cryin’ in her pillow, hoes silly, hoes mad (ho, shut up) / Made him eat my ass, give me all his cash, break him down bad, bitch (facts).”
I think we need a little dance break here, so let me queue up “Take a Chance” by Mr. Flagio, ©1983. The thing about Italo Disco is that I keep feeling like I’ve strip-mined the entire genre, found every glittering zirconium gem there is to find, and then some new nugget of vapid genius pops up that everyone seems to already know about. “Take a Chance” has the 80s futuristic drama of Vangelis, the irresistible throb of Giorgio Moroder, and of course the motivational ESL lyrics that elevate the genre: “I feel it’s coming / Down to the bone / Let’s get to work / Or leave it alone / Sooner or later / Enough is enough / I gotta know / If we can be in love…” And a call to action: “Oh! / What’s it gonna be? / Let’s break away, take a chance with me.”
OK, deep breath, what else? Oh oh, Oakland’s Non Plus Temps manage to breathe new life into the much-shoplifted post-punk canon, spot-welding a dusty, dreamy vocal onto a steely, political, Gang of Four-esque rhythm section on “Continuous Hinge.”
And on “I Am the Earth,” Bristol experimentalist Sarahsson creates the atmosphere of a dark medieval ritual with bagpipe-like drones and an otherworldly choir, resolving into a gnarly, metal vocal coda.
Mmm, digging this glowing coal of romantic pain from Belgian/Congolese producer Petite Noir called “Blurry,” with rapping by force of nature Sampa the Great: “Under spoken / Promise broken / Love to see you / Love to be you…” Reminds me a bit of Tricky actually.
Bands like Trace Mountains and Hovvdy have been favorite warm blankets of slow and soft melodic folk rock in recent times, and it feels so good to have a new extra soft and fuzzy one: Free Range from Chicago, fronted by 18-year-old Sofia Jensen. Their debut album Practice is bruises taking form, spreading and shifting, purple, yellow and green. It’s a breakup album, anchored by the quiet power of Jensen’s stoic, androgynous vocals. Such confidence, and such an uncanny ear for melody and the chord changes that save your life. “I’m moving / Through a wave and I passed you, maybe you saw me / I’m thinking in a different time maybe you’d tell me / About how close you got to saying sorry / But that’s just something I think of when I’m breathing…”
Andy Shauf does soft rock in the soft 70s style, or honestly maybe it’s not really rock at all, more like Johnny Mathis easy listening with a dark twist. His Norm album is a kind of diffracted short story told through a series of song vignettes with shifting narrators (including God) and narratives. At first the vibe is sad romantic longing with an edge of resentment, and opening track “Wasted on You” has a super goofy video, just to throw you off. But things quickly take a turn into stalker territory, and by track 8, “Sunset,” it’s become a horror scenario: “Are we leaving the city?” / We’re leaving the city / Where did your phone go? / You get quiet, you are scared / Just watching the sunset / And I’m letting you know / Just how long I’ve loved you for / Oh my / Never want to leave your side…” Then thankfully on track 9 — spoiler — there’s an alternate narrative: “…it all goes to plan / But when you come out / You are not alone / Oh send strength to me God Almighty / You looked in my eye / As you placed your bags / In his trunk and left / And now I’m alone…”
Oh man, I keep meaning to write about Dawn Richards and Spencer Zahn’s “Sandstone” off their dreamy Pigments album — it’s been giving me shivers for a minute. It sounds like the sun rising, Zahn streaking the sky with pink clarinet tones as our Dawn (Dawn!) transforms her being into a vaporous love prayer: “Dreamer / I wanna love like you / I wanna see the world through your eyes / If I could be more / If I could be more / More through you / I wanna be more through you / Constant dreamer / I want to be more / be more than / See more than, see more through / Your eyes…”