The Five music things thing yet again (and again) for whatever it still might be worth. Five? There’s something rather compelling about five, five more? Do we need to do it again? Is there another way? A cure for pulling cats out of hats? A new editorial yet maybe? Is there a rhyme? Is there a reason? Was there ever? What do reasons make? Again and again and again (and again). Five more, same as last time (and the time before) five (or six or maybe seven) more musical things before the year ends and yeah, a bit of end of year catching up with The Melvins and whathaveyer and no, we never do and the proof of the pudding is in that proof reading. When we started this thing, oh never mind, it doesn’t matter and like we asked last time, does anyone bother reading the editorial? Does anyone ever actually look down the rabbit hole or is it all just method acting? Cut to the chase, we could just cut ‘n paste the editorial from the last time, there’s loads of music further down the page, well five or so pieces of music that have come our way in the last few days and cut to the damn chase, who needs an editorial? Anyone seen my contact lens? Who needs any of this? Who needs it, who needs it, Cynical who? Same what every day? Here’s your five for today. Five (or maybe six) recommended musical things then, in no particular order…
11: Yvette and a track From the album How the Garden Grows, out on Western Vinyl, it only really came our way today because of that Disassembler track further down the page, a track released on the same label. There’s a lot more about Yvette here
“How The Garden Grows is an intense, kinetic space where animosity is soothed by moments of beauty, and beauty is sharpened into a metallic spearpoint by animosity. “I wanted to see what new limits I could push myself and my instruments to,” Kardos-Fein explains. “I wanted to see how closely I might be able to capture to tape the physicality of a live experience with the clarity of a studio recording.”
Hang on, we need to investigate this a little more, hold the presses and the end of year lists. That’s a powerful start to an album, here comes the bluffing, we know nothing about Yvette – “For nearly a decade now, Noah Kardos-Fein has been making post-industrial / neo-no wave music under the name YVETTE, building a distinct and arresting repertoire along the way. To fully appreciate YVETTE’s latest release How The Garden Grows is to place it in context of the journey charted by Kardos-Fein.”
There’s some powerful sounds here, powerful textures, powerful songs, a dynamic, an experimental edge, rewarding atmospheres, melody, moves that aren’t obvious. There’s a lot of forward movement, a lot of positive forward movement. Besides is thrilling, there’s a richness running through the whole album and crucially, Yvette don’t obviously sound like anyone else – yes there are hints of things, nothing obvious though, Yvette have “it”. How the Garden Grows is different, this is good, textured electronics, poppy edges, a New York synth duo, crafted, clever, rewarding, proper art of noise., proper art, I guess post-industrial neo-no wave music is as good a description or label as anything you could put on it. Something has sparked…
More via Bandcamp or www.yvetteyvetteyvette.com
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And while we’re nailing things down before the year comes to an end and everything is listed and locked down and neatly put away so we can start it all again somewhere on the otherside (that’s if the new normal and the new year ever comes)
2; Melvins – Five Legged Dog – “The first ever acoustic record from Melvins clocking in at 2 1/2 hours, spanning the band’s career, plus covers of songs by bands such as The Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, Redd Kross and more” Wahat more do you need from us? Here it is, brilliant!
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3: Lomond Campbell – Did we actually ever get around to reviewing that sublimely beautiful Lomond Campbell album LŪP? I know we’ve been featuring bits of through the year, it really is something that looks and sounds rather special. Beautiful minimal, sculpted, quiety daring…
“Scottish multi-talented artificer Lomond Campbell presents his eagerly anticipated ‘LŪP’ album, out via One Little Independent Records.
Although his music is grounded in sound it often incorporates sculpture, engineering, product design, and visual art. Using a combination of hardware hacking and industrial manufacturing techniques, Lomond builds his own unique instruments and devices for creating sound which he combines with modular synths, piano and voice”.
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4: Keinemusik (&ME, Rampa, Adam Port) feat. Bell Towers and taken from the new studio album „Send Return“ by Keinemusik. The combination of earworms in the vide oand an earworm of a tune, really is what’s needed on a dull December morning, “Spectacular and infectious” said someone.
“Shot in various Berlin locations like Schönefeld and Frankfurter Allee on 16mm and produced by AKKURAT Studios, Max Siedentopf’s video takes the term ‘ear worm’ to a whole new level. The director, artist and founder of the Ordinary Magazine is known for his conceptual, whimsical and refreshingly humorous work, ranging from video and photography to creative direction, sculpture and installation. Siedentopf sees the world in a way that no one else does. For him, it consists of endless possibilities giving objects and situations an unexpected, satirical and sometimes provocative twist.
“In both German and English, a catchy song like this is called an “ear worm,” and I wanted to explore this further in the video. It revolves around a reptile enthusiast with a pet called “Little Dragon”. The man breeds his own ear worms. Throughout the song he takes one of the worms and places it into his ear. This is when he gets infected by the song until he slowly turns into a worm himself” Max Siedentopf
It’s been four years eventful years since Keinemusik’s Adam Port, &ME and Rampa joined forces and laid down their collaborative debut album ‘You Are Safe.’ Taking time to explore new territories and sourcing material for their second offering, the recently released ‘Send Return’ is the product of this creative ‘time-out:’ a positive message requiring positive feedback. To get that message across, the boys invited a variety of voices from both past collaborative projects and new ties built over the last few years, to take part.
With the wider playground of the album format, &ME, Rampa and Adam look beyond the beaten dancefloor-normative path and explore other cherished genres and sub-genres, pushing the boundaries of their sound in all directions. All in all ’Send Return’ is an impressive display of where things are at in the Keienemusik realm, and a more refined statement of intent from all three guys coming together in the studio and working their magic.
And the earworm has taken us to the rather lush November 2021 album
The album… The album has some great tracks on it, some maybe not so good, depends on the collaborations and the listeners taste, and these things never really work as albums with tracks and gaps. They come to life when things get stark and minimal, not so good when the diva-like vocalists dominate little too much, What You Expected is a real standout, when’s the remix version of the album out? What You Expected is a classic and Pay To Play kicking in straight after it is just right, that is a serious earworm somewhere on the other side of clarity
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5: Batang Frisco – “Self-titled debut of revelatory 80s DIY by San Francisco outliers Batang Frisco newly reissued…..A cult curio of homespun minimal synth music exploring Russian esotericism, magic, truth & transcendence….Haywire electronics, crude drum machines, irreverent, surrealistic lyricism & beguiling moments of reverie”. Never heard of them, rather like them though, lik the sparse sound, almost primative, we care a lot about sewing machines and sympathy and the minimal synth flow, that and the actual songs, songs are kind of important, like the last film you ever saw…
“Founded by Eric Jensen & the late Bill DiMichele (RIP), the lifespan of San Francisco based project Batang Frisco (‘San Francisco Kids’ in the Filipino dialect Tagalog) is inimitably distilled on this solitary self-titled record, an outlandish private press pearl of homespun minimal synth music.
Recorded over the course of 1985/6 and self-released in 1986, the one and only Batang Frisco LP was the product of an inconspicuous DIY existence spent in the margins of the Bay Area scene in the 1980s. Consequently, the duo’s defining debut remained an enigmatic article at the time, overlooked by many but admired by the lucky few. A miraculous curio of haywire electronics, crude drum machines, raucous 80s riffage, glistening soundscapes, irreverent, surrealistic lyricism and doctored samples, ‘Batang Frisco’ has since gained well-merited cult recognition….” read on
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Maybe six then….
6: Disassembler, This Will Destroy You co-founder Christopher Royal King (AKA Symbol) and violinist and composer Christopher Tignor, unite west coast ambient and east coast modern classical on their new single ‘In Devotion’, out now via Western Vinyl.
“The collaboration is a widescreen exploration of sound and texture, complimented by succinct instrumentation and orchestral flourishes that result in a prismatic auditory experience. Via tape loops and synth vignettes sent from Los Angeles to New York City, the duo looks towards richly timbral, emotionally gripping works of spontaneity that unfurl immense sonic details with each replay. ‘In Devotion’ is taken from their forthcoming debut album ‘A Wave From A Shore’, released 11th March 2022″
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‘In Devotion’ commences amid a storm of strings before almost immediately relaxing into a gently lapping tide of glassy, manipulated piano. From here, Tignor’s violin folds upon itself until it reaches the peaks above, radiating triumphantly outward from the cliff top by track’s end. The piece lands in spaces adjacent to both the fluttering sonic-bouquets of Bing & Ruth, and the raw orchestral devastation of Johnny Greenwood’s soundtracks for Paul Thomas Anderson, but with the clear vision and self-assuredness Tignor and King have earned in their respective careers, independent of ambient or contemporary classical touchstones. In Tignor’s own words, “Like the other pieces on Wave, I honed in on melodic and harmonic qualities and then orchestrated it out with a ton of violin tracks and low end string samples. For ‘In Devotion’ I also recorded these quartal piano arpeggios and transformed them with speed / direction shifts. Like the other cuts I tried to listen for the big form of the tune, to find its story, give it shape– that harmonic arrival that came out of a gesture from Chris [King’s] original improv. When I heard him go to that chord I knew it would be the big moment, so I used it as such.”
Debut album ‘A Wave From A Shore’ exhibits both artists’ sonic identities binding into a new entity distinct from either’s solitary palettes. The remote nature of this collaboration is notable: only audio downloads and periodic text messages were exchanged over the record’s 4-month development. While the record breathes with a sense of yearning easily identified with life in their respective cities, it also conveys a unique resonance between these artist’s distinct musical approaches.”
UK Tour Dates: 2nd Feb LONDON – Slaughtered Lamb, 3rd Feb BRISTON – Crofter’s Rights, 4th Feb MANCHESTER – Factory, 5th Feb GLASGOW – Hug & Pint @Celtic Connections, 6th Feb SHEFFIELD – Network
order detsils and more via Bandcamp
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And there you have it, more of this in a day or two…. maybe…
THE ORGAN 