May 2023 - A Smattering of Artists Who Played in London During the Week Following the Coronation of Charles III (No Causal Relationship)

Albums

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan - Districts, Roads, Open Space

I share this guy’s love of overlong titles.

From the little I’ve read, Warrington and Runcorn are both extremely boring places. Not boring like, “oh man, rich suburbs like Lexington, MA are so boring; everyone is so predictable,” or even “oh man, the ravages of post-industrial decay have left former manufacturing towns like Lowell, MA almost entirely bereft of cultural gathering places, in spite of having a large and vibrant artistic population.” No, more like “um, well, I’m looking around Monroe, MI and it seems… fine? People are like, not rich, not poor… there’s mediocre architecture and a lot of concrete… I’m sure there’s some music here somewhere… right? Someone said there’s good hot dogs?” (I couldn’t think of an example in MA. Every town around here at least has a lake).

I think it’s interesting that boring places would generate music like this. WRNTDP is clearly making reference to the stately electronic music of the late 70’s (such as, notable for its commentary on boringness, Ambient 1: Music for Airports). Every individual sound is beautiful, and he works them into long, evolving, contemplative soundscapes, only occasionally gaining something like a drumtrack or a sound that’s not basically a sinewave. This isn’t music for you to stomp your feet to, it’s music to sit and stare into space with.

As an aside, for me, it’s impossible not to think of Mini Metro or Mini Motorways. Those games play magnificently with a similar sonic palate, but do so procedurally with each of the sounds representing the addition of a new subway stop or residential area. They’re also wonderfully minimalistic, and highly recommended. Also, maybe not coincidentally, once again, the theme of cities and towns. Someone should write a paper.

Beaches - Second of Spring

I suppose that Beaches falls loosely into the category of psych-rock. The melodies are hard to pick out of the wall of sound, and the vocals are way behind all the guitars and even drums. Apart from the occasional “ahhhhhh-ahhhhh,” that is. Generally speaking, you’ll have better luck singing along with the bassline than the vocals. In spite of that, they avoid the common pitfall of the genre being too abstract to really get into. the songs are easy to bob your head to and have a great energy to them. There’s no need to think about what the songs are “about” since they’re about the sound itself.

I find this band extremely confusing to google. Nearly every search box I’ve tried turns up the similarly-named Canadian band, The Beaches, and the official Beaches sites aren’t much more helpful. They’re almost all either broken or way out of date. Like, the official Beaches Facebook page has a pic of the band, but I’m not totally convinced that it’s a pic of Beaches instead of The Beaches?

Celeste - Not Your Muse

Celeste is something special in the world of singers - there’s a clear power in her voice, and she’s great at making the sudden ups and downs she throws into her verses seem spontaneous and fresh. It’s interesting that on this album, she keeps the instrumentation so minimal. It gives her a lot of space to work with, and she’s very much the star of the show. In the best cases (or my favorites, anyway), there’s a complex, interesting riff that just repeats over and over and she uses it as a launching pad for whatever it is that she feels like doing with it.

I feel completely different about the choruses, where she seems to opt for a much more straightforward anthemic approach. This is the part you’re supposed to sing along with, I guess.

Anyway, if you want a great example of both of those thoughts, try “Stop This Flame.” I dig piano vamps.

Molécule — -22.7°C

I don’t think I’ll ever do one of these without including an album of dark, cinematic electronic music. In this case, it’s as beautiful as it is dark, with lovely rounded arpeggios floating over the murk.

I suspect that Molécule would tell you that it sounds this way because it’s a concept album. He recorded samples during an expedition to Greenland, produced the entire album in situ, and changed nothing before he released it. -22.7°C is the lowest temp recorded during the trip. Hence the name.

Interesting to note that he has a previous album called 60°43’ North, which was recorded on a trawler at that latitude. That album sounds completely different, and much more conventional. 60°43’ north is like, the southern border of Alaska, and Greenland is something like 59° to 80°, so I guess like, maybe he gets more experimental as he goes further north?

Note: it turns out that this is extremely difficult to search for because he also did a soundtrack for a film with the same name, about this album! You're looking for the album on which the first track is called Aria. H/t to dear reader Sketch for catching this!

meat computer - social distancing from reality

Apologies for the poor-quality image. I think this is the only one in existence?

There’s no way around it - meat computer is super juvenile. The choice of samples, the repetitiveness, the buzzy bass, the indistinct mumblerap-esque vocals… it’s got kind of a punk vibe, in the sense of “punk-ass kid.” But there’s something here. It’s catchy and hard, and it’s got 2 or 3 tracks that I keep coming back to. Plus, it’s got a real DIY quality that I find appealing (for ex, not having a hi-res image).

I like this new generation of music.

Tracks

Brona McVittie, Isan, Miles Cochran - Falling for Icarus

There’s so much to love about this track. It moves at its own pace, swelling slowly over the course of its three and a half minutes. I think for me, the greatest part is that they have all these gorgeous vocal harmonies happening over some electronic production, but the synth is so well blended with the vocals that you might not even notice it until the vocals take a rest. There are a lot of people out there who are operating in the space between electronic music and more traditional forms like folk and bluegrass, but the emphasis almost always falls on the electronic side. This track shows how beautiful the results can be when the pendulum swings the other way.

WOOZE - Hello Can You Go

You may remember that WOOZE made an appearance here last month with “I’ll Have What She’s Having,” and I’m falling more and more in love with them every time one of their tracks comes on. They don’t have an album yet, afaik, but plenty of EPs. I’m going to spend some time with those in the coming weeks.

But anyway, here they are in DEVO/Of Montreal territory. I don’t think the DEVO thing is an accident. Do a Google Image Search and you’ll see what I mean.

Moderator - My Witch

Bluesy guitar/vocals with a breakbeat - pretty much always a good idea. This track adds some interesting underwatery delay effects. The album I pulled this from, Sinner’s Syndrome, is pretty solid as well.

dill - I Wanna Hurt U

I’m a sucker for haunting vocals, and also for oppressive buzzing, so this is an easy win for me. I was doing what research I could, and what I’ve gleaned is that this person is mostly a model and her music stuff is kind of a side thing. She also appears to be about 15 years old. Hopefully that’s the reason that I’ve only been able to find a few tracks, and it’s not because she’s just done making music.

Quick note: there are at least four or five different musical artists out there whose names are some variation of “dill.” There’s this dill, who is very good and interesting, but only has a couple tracks; there’s DiLL, who has some interesting hip-hop productions and some terrible rap; there’s a metal Dill, a buttrock Dill, a singer-songwriter Dill… Anyway, you’ll have to do some digging if you want to get all these people straight. Here’s a link to her linktree, which is probably the best way to find her.

Avsluta - Meditation 03

I guess one of the themes this month is ambient music. I love me a good bawwwwwwooooommmmm.

Ouri - Down

Ouri seems to do pretty much everything. A lot of the productions she’s released are kind of like this track - loose, ethereal electronic stuff with a little bit of effect-laden vocals peppered in there - but if you look around, you’ll find a lot more. She’s done DJ sets at Boiler Room, straight up R&B performances, some classical stuff…

Most exciting (and odd) to me, this video of her singing, using some midi controllers, and playing the cello while sitting on a rock by a stream. And like, I dunno, does she look comfortable sitting that way? Can someone get her a camp chair?

Fakear - Mantra

If you hear the phrase “world bass” and get a little wary, that’s a very reasonable reaction. But, when this stuff works, it’s spectacular. This track is a nice, chill, psychedelic time with some Japanese instrumentation, much in the vein of Bonobo’s Black Sands. I just picked up Fakear’s latest album, Talisman, and I’m pretty excited to spend some time with it.

Battle Tapes - Last Resort & Spa

This month hasn’t had enough buzzing yet.

Battle Tapes walk a difficult tightrope, trying to put rock melodies over buzzy dance instrumentation like this. Neither of those musical elements fade easily into the background, so there are a lot of artists who try to bring them together, and it just ends up sounding like one side of the equation can’t keep up. Here, though, it really works.

The production is interesting to me. Everything is really fuzzy, like it would have been in the bad old days of the 2000’s when everyone was moving to digital recording equipment, but the technology wasn’t really there yet. There’s definitely some musical touch-points from that era too. I wonder if that’s part of why this works so well - like the vocals become part of the music and vice versa? Just a thought.

Henrik Schwarz & Bugge Wesseltoft - In Spite of Everything

I think Henrik Schwarz is a genius - he’s one of the few people out there who’s able to bring jazz virtuosity into an electronic composition and not lose the vitality and spontaneity. The pianist on this track is Bugge Wesseltoft, a longtime collaborator. They’ve got a new collaborative album coming out that I’m pretty excited to hear as well.

Bully & Soccer Mommy - Lose You

I’m convinced 90’s-style alternative rock going to be cool from now until forever.

TEE MANGO - Leave You

Electronic music with heavy jazz/funk influence is familiar territory on this blog. I can’t say no to the menacing background hum and the messy, naturalistic drum samples.

Space Echo - Rainbow Power

I guess I would say that this is a modern take on the rhythm & blues sound of the 70’s. Funky bassline, horns, groovy vocals, and then some nice beep-boops.