You know, I used to do a lot of sharing about my personal life in these pages but lately I’ve been all business — here to win, not to make friends. Perhaps I’ll try and be a little softer and more human in 2024, please let my assistant know what you think. So I went to Park City for Slamdance like I do every January, and I got an opportunity to DJ some of the parties and happy hours alongside my buddy Skizz Cyzyk (check out his Point Me At The Sky show on Radio Plastique). As always, I played a lot of semi-obscure stuff I like over the din of conversation and occasionally connected with nodules of partiers. This year early ’00s electroclash was trending — Fischerspooner and Ladytron generated maximum heat with the Brooklyn crowd. I got a little carried away playing my favorite 70s chestnut “Per un’ora d’amore” by Matia Bazar for my new filmmaker friends from Italy and the festival’s hard rocking producer actually asked me to turn it down (a first). I learned that if you want people to dance all you have to do is play hip-hop (or I guess the kids are calling it trap these days). People were pretty shocked and delighted to see someone who looks like me playing Playboi Carti.
So the big tentpole album of early ’24 is Wall of Eyes by The Smile, who, if you recall, are basically Radiohead 2.0. According to all my personal algorithms it should suck, but in fact it’s sprawling and magnificent, eight tracks eight bangers, with little Thom crooning and billowing and tortured in the lineage of Tim and Jeff Buckley. His lyrics as per usual chronicle the heavy burden of life as a rich and revered artist superstar: “From our window balconies, we take a tumble / As our friends step out to talk and wave and catch a piece of sun / All of that money, where did it go? / Where did it go? / In somebody’s pocket, a friend of a friend / All the loose change, loose change…”
Anyway. Not content with colonizing the pop charts with their BTSs and Blackpinks and their crazy Gangnam Style, the South Koreans are now setting up a beachhead on slowgraffitti land. Park Hye Jin has a moody, clubby, slightly seasick one called “Foreigner” that belies its mouthy lyrics: “Let me get green card, fuck / Let me get green card / I don’t wanna marry you / I don’t need you for green card / I’m fucking talented, I’m so fucking talented / I’m so fucking talented for green card / I pay all my shit by my music / I pay all my shit by my music, okay? / Then shut up / You got to shut up…”
Minhwi Lee meanwhile floats by on folky watercolor melancholia; she’s a bit old-timey and baroque, and with song titles like “Penitentiary,” “Lost Land” and “Mirror Therapy for Phantom Pain,” she’s probably not someone Park Hye Jin would want to party with. On “The Station” she muses (in Korean), “There are people coming / People are disappearing again / As if I’ve never been hurt / Still with a completely innocent face / So I start traveling again / As if we will eventually reach somewhere…”
Fortunately we have Chelsea Wolfe working hard to keep the USA number one with her She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She album, on which she conjures up witchy firestorms of metal adjacent horror. And — dare I say it — the odd note of Tori Amos suburban outcast goth? Chelsea‘s a fellow Scorpio, and I’ll admit her dating experience on “Dusk” rings a bell: “Angels, vampires / One breathes life unto the other / Branded, baptized / By your love and by your hunger / And I would give you my life / One sin leads to another…”
Voice Actor‘s 2022 album Sent from My Telephone had 109 songs on it; I haven’t had a chance to fit it into my busy schedule, but their new one Fake Sleep is a brisk 16 tracks and leans heavily into the dream-state, with Noa Kurzweil‘s groggy, Dutch-accented vocals hanging over foggy sound blankets like a muffled and comfy Laurie Anderson. And when I say sound blankets I mean richly embroidered and inventive ones; Kurzweil and Levi Lanser texture their work in deep sea dives of oneiria. Their lyrics can be disturbing, as on “Camden,” in which Noa finds herself on a crowded bus stopped in traffic: “I look back and I see a woman marching ahead with a long stride, determined. She’s got a long scar on her forearm and this energy to her that grabs my attention, so I look, I follow her marching to the front, and before I know it she’s standing next to us; I’m by the windows so she’s standing next to my friend, and she slaps me in the face, so hard, so hard I can almost hear ringing and she says something along the lines of ‘now you know how I feel’…” And then there’s a helicopter in the road and, well, check it out:
Oh man, I just saw on Instagram that the amazing singer and party goddess Merve is quitting Altin Gün! Truly sad news — the Gün have been slowgraffitti’s reigning world’s greatest band for the past several years. I have to say there was a noticeable drop in energy between their 2022 Roxy show, where Merve was the life of the party, and last November’s show at the Belasco where she seemed a bit exhausted. I had chalked it up to months of non-stop touring, but now I’m wondering what drama was brewing behind the scenes… In any case… shedding a tear… thanks for the memories Merve!!!
Burial has always to my mind epitomized the kind of Very Serious Artist that gets over-hyped and quickly canonized by chin-stroker gatekeeper types. The kind of music that’s supposed to be good for you. His driver’s license name is William Emmanuel Bevan ferchrissakes. You can imagine my eager anticipation to sample his new 13 minute track, but somehow I braved it and I’m mortified to say it’s giving me unseemly joy. Who am I? Who have I become? It’s called “Boy Sent from Above,” so admittedly it’s on brand for me. It’s a multi-parter, sort of melancholy and sort of fun, and incorporates a “Rhythm Is a Dancer“-esque keyboard riff and eventually some 90s rapping. Sigh. They say that when you’ve done something unforgivable, you must forgive yourself.
Saramaccan Sound are two brothers from Suriname who craft sweetly pristine folk songs, mostly just harmonizing with their voices and a strummed guitar. Apparently their album Where the River Bends Is Only the Beginning was recorded on their porch, deep in the Amazon, and a lot of it was improvised on the spot. The songs are in the local creole, Saramaccan; they speak of hardships and endurance and they’re are all just so lovely it’s hard to single one out, but this one’s called “Please, Save Me.”
Amiture‘s default setting on Mother Engine is bluesy, pre-Guiliani-New-York textured rockscapes with swoony soft boy vocals from Jack Whitescarver; not a million meters from the headiness of Palo Santo-era Shearwater. But on “Billy’s Dream” they take things to another level, channeling Suicide and dripping hot menace: “I need remote control / I’m howling in the hole / I got a ride on the devils back […] Take my camera, pretty thing / Make me a slot machine / I like ’em handsome, I like ’em mean…”
OK please don’t get mad at me — I realize this one came out a full year ago, but it’s just recently been lighting up my life like Debbie Boone in a keffiyeh. Franco-Algerian band Acid Arab‘s ٣ (Trois) album will snake-charm your booty into all manner of bouncy activities. I’m talking about dancing, jeez. Döne Döne is a pulsating adrenaline seduction, sung in Turkish by Cem Yildiz, that translates to “Wow, what’s the problem? / There is no cure / No one can help but help / My strange heart never gets tired of love / The broken wound never comes back…”
They follow that up with the absurdly propulsive Ya Mahla, sung in Arabic by Wael Alkak: “What a beautiful word, ‘Freedom’ / I salute the Arab people / What a beautiful word, ‘Freedom’ / I salute the Arab revolutionaries…”
Aaaand just before press time I got hooked up with an opportunity to witness the other-dimensional presence of Lucinda Chua, truly a sensation, doing a one-off show at Zebulon. The intensity was off the charts; she actually gave off a kind of Kate Bush vibe. There’s very little live Lucinda up on YouTube; this one’s from a couple years ago but it’ll give you an idea… Big thanks to my bestie Scenery!!