Max Cooper – “Forgotten Places” ft. Kathrin deBoer (bc)
Pari Eskandari – “Chador” (bc)
Benson Taylor & James Adrian Brown – “Church Of First” (bc)
I revived an old music blog from the early 2000s?
Maybe it’s been a foolish endeavor, and maybe I’m the only one who misses the blog ol’ days, but I’ve been giving it a shot. I’ve been working on restoring some of the old content, though much of it was lost. I’ve slowly been rebuilding the old remix sunday archives, and even posting the occasional new edition. And I’ve been writing again.
You can find all the label’s releases here, on bandcamp, or most anywhere you listen to music these days. I’ve still got copies of some of the old vinyl releases, and I recently released the first in a set of charitable cassette compilations to raise awareness about the continued [mis]use of broken windows policing methods.
Plus, I put together a playlists section with a handful of spotify lists that hopefully start to capture a [slightly] updated version of the moods we used to peddle. Give those a listen and a ❤ if you would be so kind. If you want to get in touch, just give me a holler.
– Haldan/Boody
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Mailbox: MangoMangoMango – Body
I’m having a great time. I’m in love with my body.
MangoMangoMango is Chicago-based Tanner Uselmann. After years of playing guitar in bands in Minneapolis, his move to Chicago was accompanied by a shift towards self-produced electronic music. (Chicago’s a good place for that.) He released his first record as MangoMangoMango in 2021, but this one is the first from a new batch of songs he’s getting ready to release in 2024. I know we tend towards the darker on this site, but there’s always room for this kind of self affirmation. It’s hard to love yourself. But bodies are just as fucking cool and gorgeous as they can be woefully complicated, and that should be celebrated. Apropos, my two-year-old daughter Iris told me today: “Iris loves Iris,” and I couldn’t have been prouder.
Grab “Body” for free on bandcamp, or stream it wherever. And look out for more from Uselmann in the new year.
MangoMangoMango – Body (bc)
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Vromm – Horizon
Hi-res shattered breakbeat from London-based Vromm. From the plainest of square waves into twisted mutant orchestral jazz storms and through the inverse thunderclaps of an hyperreal cirrus cloud pattern. The title of this song is fitting, this is music for the sky.
Out now for purchase on bandcamp or stream it all over.
Vromm – “Horizon” (sc)
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Solbore – Seemingly Magic Things
Solbore – “Seemingly Magic Things” Tectonic plates move because they’re dragged along as the molten mantle flows beneath them. The mantle flows because of convection currents created by the heat of the Earth’s core. The earth’s core is hot because it’s full of radioactive elements in a state of perpetual decay.
If the first half of this song sounds like anything identifiable, it’s probably some part of that process. Maybe the crush of the plates colliding; or the drag as they slip off the mantle; or the hyper-rapid boil of the heavy metals in the core; or maybe the embodiment of decay itself. After three minutes of all that heat, the song gives way to a kobyz solo that feels like water pouring into the tectonic gash, eventually petering off like steam disappearing into the atmosphere.
From Brighton-based Czech/Argentinian producer Solbore, from his yet-released album, Never Alone, Often Lonely (out in Febrary). I’ve also selected another prerelease piece that features one of my favorite artists of the past few years, Varsity Star (I wrote about him last year)–a much sweeter affair, but no less compelling.
Preorder Never Alone, Often Lonely on bandcamp, or stream the singles all over.
Solbore – “Seemingly Magic Things” ft. Inwards, Neil Cosgrove, Lachlan R. Dale, Nurbolat Kadyrbayev (bc)
Solbore – “Back in Time” ft. Varsity Star (bc)
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Mailbox: Ainonow – Exile
Ainonow – “Exile” ***Photosensitivity warning*** Ainonow, real name Kyle Kroeck, is a Boston-based artist seeking to provide catharsis to his listeners. He aims to do this through razor-precise sound design at high tempos. He says he wants his music to allow listeners to embrace their dark sides–recognizing that darkness is part of being human–meanwhile providing a healthy and comforting space to channel those feelings. It’s not so often you hear this kind of emotional ambition from an artist working at the harder fringes of stateside Drum & Bass. And I’ll admit, I’m overall pretty cautious about dipping my toes into the vat of US bass music that includes Neuro, Mainline, and US-breaks. That stuff has just never been my bag. Above 160bpm, I’m just usually far more partial to the UK stuff: the grit and tangle of Jungle, the silkiness of old school Liquid.
But credit where credit is due, Ainonow is using some of the conventions of those US sub-genres to make something truly refined. This is incredibly intricately programmed music, with an impressive amount of patience and a refreshing lack of reliance on the standard build up+drop+breakdown/repeat structure. This is without doubt music for the dancefloor, but for all that the basslines may growl, they never stay in one place for long or quite repeat themselves. And those drums sound less like the lonely loopy staccato of typical D&B drum programming, and more as if someone spiked a marching band’s gatorade with adderall and convinced them the floor was lava. It’s refreshing to hear this level of thoughtful experimentation in this kind of packaging, especially from a producer so clearly concerned about how his music affects people emotionally. Big pad breakdowns, 90s nostalgia, ePiC dRoPs, and massive over-compression aren’t the only ways for an American bass music producer to coax strong feelings from people, and Ainonow is evidence of that.
Ainonow is current with two-tracker Exile. Grab it on bandcamp for free, or steam it on your outlet of choice.
Ainonow – “Exile” (sc)
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This review was written in support of the artist’s promotional campaign.
Bonsi – Four Faces
All I need is to be where I wasn’t
Bristol-based producer and vocalist bonsi is current with this arresting new single, her first solo work since her 2020 album Sustain (there was a great collaboration with Harvey Causon in 2021 that I’m also sharing below).
Clocking in at just over two and a half minutes, “Four Faces” is minimalist both compositionally and temporally, but it’s rich nonetheless. There are plenty of checkbox elements: found-sound rattles and scrapes, truncated sliding organ licks, hollowed-out bass stabs, all anchored by a nice sludgy kick rhythm. But it’s bonsi’s vocals that shine here. Instead of succumbing to the temptation to soak a pretty vocal like this in reverb, they’re just the right amount of dry, which gives them an immediacy; like someone singing to themselves at the bus stop or under an umbrella walking across town. Combined with a set of occasional up-and-down-pitched backing vocals, that immediacy takes on an almost dissociative quality, as if bonsi is right here next to you, but also slipping down a storm drain or up a chimney.
Grab the single on bandcamp or stream it all over.
bonsi – “Four Faces” (bc)
bonsi – “Mouth of Shame” ft. Harvey Causon (bc)
Mailbox: Amy Godsey – Ananta
In pursuit of expressing and preserving nature
Amy Godsey is a musician and apparel designer currently based in Los Angeles. Her latest album Ananta was written in the wake of loss: her best friend died, COVID exploded, and she left New York with just a suitcase and “no plans except to head west.” Despite the tumult of a time like that, Ananta isn’t sad or even what I’d call an exploration of grief exactly, but it does seem to reflect what Godsey was experiencing in its emotional ambivalence. It has an aimless quality about it, as if it was made as a cautious exercise in exploring newly available freedom. Songs and titles like “No Plans” address this notion most squarely, but a song like “Should I Meet You” expresses this peregrination best through a gently bubbling tomtom pattern that you can never quite catch hold of, sitting safely under a constantly undulating harp that keeps intersecting itself and occasionally collapses under the weight of its delay. Godsey is following her nose, letting the process dictate the result.
Ananta has its more straightforward moments too, no doubt; songs like “Mental Vibrations” and “Heartless in the Sea” rest on grounded drum machine patterns and riffs that feel familiar. But Godsey seems most lucid when she lets down these guardrails and allows the mess to spill out more. The album is strongest at its most meandering.
That’s not to say this is messy music; to the contrary, it’s meticulous music that–despite its reliance on electronic instruments–seems intended to address nature, both floral and faunal (and human). Nature is chaotic too, for all its perfection and beauty. This dichotomy is reflected on a song like “Windy”, which vacillates between breezy cascades of sine waves and the near-disconcerting babble of what sounds sort of like a digital didgeridoo. This subject matter is no coincidence. When Godsey left New York, she didn’t land in LA right away. The album was written while she was nomadic, living alone surrounded by wilderness. Ananta bottles some of the inspiration and serenity of that kind of setting, but also some of its danger. It’s freeing to breathe in cold forest air, but there are beasts out there too.
Amy Godsey – “Windy” (bc)
Amy Godsey – “Heartless in the Sea” (bc)
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This review was written in support of the artist’s promotional campaign.
Big Dope P – Pop My Shit ft. NaylahDMP
Brilliant 160bpm stutter g-tech from the ever-prolific London-based Parisian, Big Dope P. I’m not sure who NaylahDMP is, but she’s not wrong when she says she’s doing top notch shit. Moveltraxx and Doppie remain as strong as ever.
Grab this on bandcamp and play it out loud. Or stream it at home wherever you do that. Just don’t do it seated.
Big Dope P – “Pop My Shit” ft. NaylahDMP (bc)
Mailbox: Fritz Kalkbrenner – “Set You Free”
You might recognize Berliner Fritz Kalkbrenner from his numerous features on early-aughts Sascha Funke records on BPitch, though many of those were officially uncredited. Kalkbrenner appears to have had a very healthy career since then, though mostly in a more progressive and mainstream vocal house and techno space than I tend to enjoy. Nonetheless, he’s current with a song that steps wholeheartedly into the warmer side of German house traditions, evocative somewhat of an older Henrik Schwartz record. That’s high praise from me.
No bandcamp for this, but you can find it on all the usual streaming outlets. Or if you want to play it out, grab the file on beatport.
Fritz Kalkbrenner – “Set You Free” (sc)
Mailbox: Dawn Chorus – Parallel Realities
You might be familiar with the concept of a dawn chorus — the euphony caused by birds’ morning mating and flock return calls. It’s also a term that refers to a naturally occurring electromagnetic phenomenon that occurs shortly after sunrise as a result of energized electrons entering into the inner magnetosphere, which–when converted into audio–sounds an awful lot like the avian dawn chorus.
Perhaps the natural similarity of these homonymous concepts, and their shared pleasance, make the concept ripe for exploration by musicians. Indeed some fabulous ones have dedicated songs and albums to the idea (e.g., Jacques Greene, Boards of Canada, Thom Yorke, Jon Hopkins, Beth Orton, to name just a few). But Greg Jung, a producer based in Baltimore, has made the Dawn Chorus his name. According to Jung, the project is a celebration of a sense of newly opened doors following several years of self-doubt and writer’s block. It’s fitting, then, that the project is named after two of nature’s early morning rebirth cycles.
The song that speaks most directly to this sense of a.m. optimism is fittingly titled “Sunbeams” — a skittering wake up call that rests on pillowy pads. That song, as well as the lead single “Changes,” and ultimately all of Jung’s new EP, Parallel Realities, definitely shares stylistic references with the other artists mentioned above who have also been fascinated by the concept of the dawn chorus. Particularly, you’ll hear the instant nostalgia of BoC-style tape warble throughout, and a reasonable dose of jagged Yorke-influenced drum programming. A respectable, if early, rebirth for an artist who claims to never have really let himself open up until now. We should all try to muster the courage to spread our wings and join the chorus.
Parallel Realities is the new EP from Dawn Chorus. Purchase it on bandcamp. “Changes” is also available separately for download as a pay-what-you-wish.
Dawn Chorus – “Sunbeams” (bc)
Dawn Chorus – “Changes” (bc)
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This review was written in support of the artist’s promotional campaign.
Visual Velcro 19
L E M F R E C K – “U Gd? (GOD/GOOD)”
El Búho – “Cenizas de Agua” ft. Nita
FVLCRVM & Annet X – “Do It All Again” Mailbox: Ear Mind Eye – Onism
One of the first posts I wrote after returning to this site post-decade-long-hiatus was about how nice it can be to encounter artists who long to hear more of one of their hero’s signature style so much they are willing to fully embrace reviving that style themselves. These artists are practicing a form of nostalgic manifestation that I can’t help but respect. It’s especially not fair to deride them as copycats if the artist’s style in question has been abandoned. They miss hearing new work by artists who are no longer productive (or exist in a new form altogether), so they put in the work necessary to manifest those unwritten songs’ existence. I know it might sound silly, but I think these dedicated emulators are doing the rest of us fans a true service.
Last time, I wrote about the Boards of Canada tribute album by members of the Kahvi Collective. There, it was a bunch of artists doing their best to summon the spirit of BoC. In this case, it’s one artist essentially imagining a sequel track to Aphex Twin’s breakthrough song, “On”. I hope Ear Mind Eye, an artist from Canberra, Australia, doesn’t mind me framing it this way, but I don’t say any of this as a slight. Richard D James’s style in the early 90s was deceptively simple. It’s easy enough to put all of the elements he was working with together in a pot, but it’s another thing altogether to bottle even a fraction of the lightning James did around that time. He isn’t going to return to making music in the style he was pursuing back then–despite his generosity in giving us so much new work after so long–so we should be thankful to the devotees who are willing to try. In this case Ear Mind Eye makes a noble attempt.
Grab the track on bandcamp, as part of the Instant Slack EP. Or find it on your local streaming service.
Ear Mind Eye – “Onism” (bc)
Mailbox: FVLCRVM – Till
FVLCRVM – “Till” I’ll be honest, I’m usually really turned off when I see an all-caps artist name with a V used in place of a U (or similar conventions like skipping all the vowels or whatever), but it just so happens that my father was in Bratislava for the last couple of weeks teaching a course at the Uni there, so I overcame my bias and checked the submission when I saw the Slovakian connection. I’m really glad I did. Bratislava-based FVLCRVM is the kind of artist who–at least from the outside looking in–seems like he’s drawing from a really deep well of natural talent and innate energy. As I mentioned the other day, I’m also a little dubious about stuff people label as hyperpop (to his credit I haven’t seen FVLCRVM himself use that term, but I’ve seen others do it). In this case, that label is really reductive. For one thing, a browse through FVLCRVM’s back catalog reveals a pretty broad stylistic approach, but also what makes these songs good is really the songwriting, not the packaging. This is just solid pop music, as far as I’m concerned, so it’s no real wonder that his work remains good across his genre shifts over time.
I’ve selected two tracks for you, but I recommend checking all his previous work too. And if you couldn’t tell how much I like the first song, I’m posting it despite the fact the only public embeddable version is a youtube stream. It takes a lot for me to get over my fastidiousness when writing here, but “Till”–released a few weeks ago on a major label (that’s why there’s no proper public stream available)–is truly jubilant 90s breakbeat revival pop. It’s simply sparkly enough for me to just get over myself and post it anyway. Definitely do yourself a favor and listen through until that key shift around 2:30. The second one, “Wildfire”, is about a year old, and as good as the first, but is also a good example of FVLCRVM’s genre-chameleon quality. It’s hazier and warmer–almost grunge music at times–but it’s no less of an earworm, and still somehow open and energetic despite all of its warble. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before we see a top40 hit stateside written by this guy (if we haven’t already…?).
FVLCRVM – “Till” (yt) stream above
FVLCRVM – “Wildfire” (sc)
Mailbox: Sound of Fractures – Willow’s Heartbeat
Those early scans can be a terrifying time, you are a bundle of nerves and heading into this great big unknown, and there is something so visceral about hearing that living heartbeat the first time. It’s one of those life moments where you are overwhelmed by emotions that you don’t quite understand, and yet you are also scared to let yourself feel them in case something goes wrong.
That nice sweet sort of sentimentality on this track from North London’s Sound of Fractures, real name Jamie Reddington. This song was built around a recording Reddington made of his daughter’s heartbeat in utero. Hearing my daughter’s heartbeat gave me the same kind of combination of feelings. Wild excitement and anticipation, coupled with an instinct to hold it all in as much as possible. Both out of fear of the worst, but also a sort of self-doubt–because you no have real idea what you’re about to experience or whether you’ll be able to handle it when it happens. But it turned out that I was. If you’re in that spot, the mere fact you’re wondering those things about yourself and your baby means you probably will be too.
The track is out now on bandcamp and streaming. Also check another nice one from Sound of Fractures released early this year.
Sound of Fractures – “Willow’s Heartbeat” (bc)
Sound of Fractures – “Let Go” (bc)
Palms
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