There’s a lot of really interesting & strange pop, r’n’b, grime or even folk music tonight, proving perhaps that this is an era where flouting norms is the standard, and the paradox within that is celebrated.
helen island – stalker guardian angel (2nd mix) [Knekelhuis/Bandcamp]
This is the second single off the silence extended EP from Parisian enigma helen island. The original of “Stalker Guardian Angle” (a kind of paradox in itself) was on their album silence is priceless released earlier this year by eclectic Amsterdam label Knekelhuis. This is some kind of vapor-pop with trip-hop influences, although a slowed-down amen break isn’t your usual back-beat. I don’t think this is a person called helen, but I also don’t know if it’s a woman singing or much else! Cool doe.
EYDN – Gold (feat. Rainy Miller) [Fixed Abode/SUPERNATURE/Bandcamp]
The now-Belgium-based duo EYDN, made up of Emma van Os (Bobbie Orkid) and Thomas Parigi (Tumy), have their debut EP As Can Be coming out from Rainy Miller‘s Fixed Abode & SUPERNATURE in September. First single “Gold” has extra vocals from Miller, with a breakbeat and fizzly hi-hats dropping in and out around an acoustic guitar loop. It’s a swirly piece showing that contemporary trip-hop is finding its own sound.
Tony Njoku – SPIRIT WAR DUB (feat. Gaika) [Studio Njoku Bandcamp]
Tony Njoku – WEAPON [Studio Njoku Bandcamp]
Tony Njoku – CATATONIA (feat. James Massiah) [Studio Njoku Bandcamp]
British Nigerian musician Tony Njoku also draws from trip-hop in his post-everything r’n’b melange. Njokou’s productions favour crystalline piano and hazy synths, with unexpected explosions of bass heralded by creepily-distorted metal vox at the edge of hearing. The trip-hop cred is signalled by the presence of Tricky on one track, the nebulous dub atmospherics connected via Space Afrika, while experimental r’n’b & dancehall would be suggested by the presence of Warp & Big Dada’s Gaika. London poet, rapper & musician James Massiah (also known as noisenik and Dean Blunt collaborator DJ Escrow) lends his voice to one track too, as do Coby Sey and Ghostpoet, making this a substantial meeting of black British auteurs – albeit overwhelmingly male. In any case, this is a highly creative album and one that rewards multiple listens.
anrimeal – 4. Chapter I – Small things [Lost Wisdom/demo records/anrimeal Bandcamp]
London-based Portuguese musician Ana Rita de Melo Alves has appeared on this show under her anrimeal alias a lot since I discovered her music via The Leaf Library‘s Objects Forever label. On January 1st she released the intriguing 56-second track “1. Title – Half Fool Half Empty” as a teaser for an album / book / soundtrack which she is announcing today, on her 30th birthday! The album is also titled Half Fool Half Empty, and is arranged in two halves – one more playful, one more serious – although all of Alves’ work can be seen as a combination of those two creative impulses. Beautiful acoustic songwriting is digitally interrupted or corrupted, gorgeous layered vocals hang in frozen stasis, musical elements appear in the midst of a field recording. This album will accompany a book, and the track titles are a guide to the sections of the text they mirror. It’s a wondrous album and I’m glad to bring you one of the initial pair of singles tonight.
Herbalistek – Ego [YUKU/Bandcamp]
The first of two new releases on YUKU this week is from Japanese bass music duo Herbalistek. Experimental tracks rooted in sub-bass, with glitched beats and vocal samples, for deep home listening or adventurous sound systems.
Distance – Shut Them Down [Chestplate]
One of the original heavy-hitters of dubstep, (DJ) Distance is still slipping out new tunes influenced by metal riffage and cyberpunk atmospherics. Melodic basslines and rhythms you can’t deny.
Rarelyalways – Paid (feat. Nia J) [Innovative Leasure/Bandcamp]
London’s Rarelyalways aka Ricco Komolafe is a jazz musician as well as grime producer and rapper. His Paid Annual Leave EP focuses on work – the drudgery and effort behind wage-slavery. Jazz trumpet and flittery footwork percussion accompany his sing-song rapping and various guests, including Charlotte rapper Nia J.
Labake Sabbath – Life And Struggle [The Gate/courtesy of The Wire]
London’s Labake Sabbath is a member of The Gate, based in Shepherd’s Bush, providing arts and other resources for people with learning disabilities. This track, which appeared in this month’s Below The Radar Vol. 48 from The Wire, was originally released on her METAL MADNESS album, which uses various styles (mostly hip-hop built from funk loops and the like) to evoke the constant… well, struggle of living with a disability.
A.Fruit – Hours in Between [A.Fruit Bandcamp]
Anna A.Fruit reached 10,000 followers on SoundCloud, so she’s uploaded a free (or pay-what-you-want) track on her Bandcamp. It’s as usual a melding of bass genres, mostly I guess dubstep? She has lots of great tutorials on her YouTube and also an active Patreon, if you’re looking to learn or improve your skills in bass music.
Jasper Byrne – UK Gqom [YUKU/Space Recordings Bandcamp]
For more than 2 decades, Jasper Byrne has made drum’n’bass under the Sonic alias, much of which can be found on his Space Recordings Bandcamp. Now shifting to a broader genre remit under his own name, his full album Escape is the second release of the week on YUKU. There’s everything here from jungle techno to ambient, and “UK Gqom” really is a hybrid of South African gqom and UK bass. Nice.
Neinzer – Parabol [Neinzer Bandcamp]
After a pair of jazzy deep house EPs on Yumé in 2013–14, and more of a dub techno foray in 2016, Emil Lewandowski’s Neinzer released two remarkable EPs in 2020: Whities 025 on the label now known as AD 93 and the sublime Shifting Values on the sadly defunct Where To Now? Records. The dub and jazz influences are very much to the front, along with a psychedelic ambient tilt. Especially the second half of both releases use empty space to their advantage, and the final track on Shifting Values, “Cause Pan Tact Insoluble“, is a remarkable study in poise and slow evolution. Lewandowski’s upcoming Voil EP, self-released this time, is somewhere in between that earlier minimalism and 2023’s resolutely techno return to Yumé. “Parabol” has both poise and forward momentum, based around a shuffling, head-nodding house beat, with chiming vibraphone chords and subtle changes to the beat throughout.
Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das – Cracked [Bios Contrast Bandcamp]
Only a month and a half after his SSAC42 album came out on Mexico’s Infinite Machine, Bios Contrast & Nilotpal Das is back with the controlled chaos of “Cracked”, with jittery beats never wanting to rest.
Pulse Emitter – Energy Flying [Hausu Mountain/Bandcamp]
Portland, Oregon-based composer & synthesist Daryl Groetsch is a classically-trained composer, who uses an extensive number of analog and digital synths in his combination of new age, kosmische, progressive music. Hausu Mountain are releasing Tide Pools, his third album on the label, and honestly it’s got that Hausu aesthetic (as much as they have one), in keeping with the pixellated art of the label’s Max Allison aka Mukqs. Rhythmically driving despite being beatless.
Monrroe – Understand [Gutterfunk/Bandcamp]
DJ Die‘s Gutterfunk brings its first single from Elijah Symons aka junglist Monrroe. It’s two tracks of precision-tooled breaks and immense but tight bass. Corker.
Conrad Subs – Texture [Metalheadz/Bandcamp]
Man like Conrad Subs, back on Metalheadz with three tracks of smooth, expansive drum’n’bass, peppered with lovely vocal samples and synth pads. These are DJ tools but equally pleasurable on a late-night drive.
Braille x Pleaxure – Mirror Boys [Hotflush Recordings/Bandcamp]
Whirling breakbeat’n’bass from New York’s Praveen Sharma aka Braille and Baltimore’s Grant Wheeler aka Pleaxure, released on Paul Rose aka Scuba’s Hotflush Recordings. The pulsing synths and skittery beats here recall nothing less than the self-titled album from Sepalcure, Praveen’s collaboration with Machinedrum.
Matthew Ryals – etude no. 10 (take 7) [Matthew Ryals Bandcamp]
Matthew Ryals – etude no. 30 (take 2) [3OP/Bandcamp]
Matthew Ryals – Knots [Infrequent Seams/Bandcamp]
Out in early September is the challenging & rewarding album Exalge from UK modular synthesist Matthew Ryals, recorded live with Italian violist & electronic producer effe effe aka Federica Furlani. The latest single, “Knots”, is Ryals solo, although I’ll have the opportunity to play the duo soon. Meanwhile, I wanted to add in a couple of tracks from the third and last volume of Matthew’s Generative Etudes. Each “volume” is made up of three EPs, hence Generative Etudes Vol. 3.0, which came out on Feb 15th, Vol. 3.1 in March and Vol. 3.2 in April. Each trio of EPs features different version of each track – this is generative music, which proceeds from the same setup in similar-but-different ways, so I recommend setting the three EPs next to each other and feeling how their elements play out. For what it’s worth, I felt that take 7 of “etude no. 10”, found on Vol. 3.2, and take 2 of “etude no. 30”, from Vol. 3.0, were highlights, but hey – you might like a different take of each. However you cut it, this is strangely melodic and rhythmically complex IDM. On “Knots”, Ryals loosens things up further, and broadens the sound palette to make his machines sound weirdly naturalistic at times.
Reuben Ingall – Haircut Neutrality [Gastric Acid]
Canberra’s Reuben Ingall has released some of my favourite experimental indie music over the years, mournful lo-fi guitar songs played through glitching Max/MSP patches – see 2010’s don’t give up or 2011’s Dealt – but also riotous mashups as Dead DJ Joke and more recently Pav Dundee, and the notorious live-pie-reheating opus Microwave Drone Ritual… among other things. Since 2019 he’s been doing a series of no-input mixing-board EPs (hence NIMBY), the latest of which is NIMBY #5, this one released on Gastric Acid, a label apparently located in the central-Western NSW town of Dunedoo. Here Reuben’s no-input mixer is not always no-input, with primitive drum machine, pedals and other sound sources also involved. You can watch Reuben creating this very track live on YouTube!
rosza daniel lang/levitsky – a tkhine far di yorn fun sirenes, fun bruklin tsu khan yunis (A Tkhine for the Years of Sirens, from Brooklyn to Khan Yunis) [lider mit palestine]
Isabel Frey, Esther Wratschko & Benjy Fox-Rosen – goles-himen (Diaspora Hymn) [lider mit palestine]
OK, so. Hebrew was for most of the last 2 millennia a language only used in liturgy and Talmudic study. The language was revived in the late 19th and early 20th century as part of the Zionist push to establish a Jewish homeland in the so-called Land of Israel (a contested idea even then, as “Eretz Yisrael” is not equivalent to a geographical area or nation-state). The establishment of this modernised Hebrew as the official language of Israel made it the default “Jewish language”, but for centuries a polyglot Germanic-based language, Yiddish, was the primary language of Jews in much of Europe. Yiddish mashes up German with a lot of Slavic languages and bits of Hebrew (and it was traditional written in the Hebrew alphabet, albeit idiosyncratically). Wikipedia records some 85% of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust as being Yiddish speakers. Second to the Holocaust in the decline of Yiddish was, I would say, the highly politicised adoption of Modern Hebrew as the Jewish language in the British Mandate of Palestine and then the new nation-state of Israel. In the diaspora, Yiddish was brought to the English-speaking world through the mass migration of Jews from Nazi Europe, and many loan-words from Yiddish became common (you’ll know a lot of them: schlep, shlemazel (“shermozzle”), chutzpah, dreck, glitch(!), mensch, meshugge, nebbish, shtick, shtum, tush, and many more).
Why is any of this relevant? Well, along with Yiddish came the celebratory Eastern-European music called klezmer, which flourished in amongst the jazz and gypsy music in the States, and was revived from the 1970s & 1980s, blending it with jazz and avant-garde styles. As a form of music associated with the Jewish diaspora, and connected to Yiddish – a language pushed to the periphery in Israel – these musical and linguistic traditions have also been connected with left-wing politics, and one often finds solidarity with Palestine and outright anti-Zionism in the Yiddish world. You may recall the Godspeed-related Constellation band Black Ox Orkestar reaffirmed their non-nationalist, diasporic music with their 2022 album Everything Returns.
Post-October 7, a number of Yiddish musicians from the US and Europe created a collection of “New Yiddish Songs of Grief, Fury and Love”, LIDER MIT PALESTINE, collected now on Bandcamp with all profits going to Gaza Birds Singing, an on-the-ground initiative in southern Gaza to bring music therapy to kids living in the unimaginable conditions there. The compilation is quite varied: there’s fragile a capella music, recalling the cantorial singing in shul (synagogue); there are songs with accordion and violin, cello and the very klezmerish clarinet; and then there are some quite experimental pieces – this is a welcoming community despite some Zionists’ likely fear & hate on encountering it. I love a lot of this album, and felt two tracks particularly suited being given an airing here. rosza daniel lang/levitsky was a member of queer Yiddish anarchist/anti-Zionist punk band Koyt Far Dayn Fardakht. Their song is a tkhine – a Yiddish prayer usually from a woman’s point of view, here sung against a discordant synth drone, recalling the proto-punk antagonism of Suicide (both members of which were Jewish). And then we hear a stunning a capella setting of Hatikva, an ancient melody adopted as the Israel national anthem. Here Austrian singer and activist Isabel Frey adapts the song as an anti-nationalist, Bundist hymn for the Jewish diaspora, sung with Esther Wratschko & Benjy Fox-Rosen. Here is the English translation of the lyrics:
There, where we live, there is our homeland.
Our task is resistance.
We don’t need armies, we don’t want a state.
Our strength doesn’t come from artillery.
Here in diaspora, here is our home.
Freedom is the brick, and love is the clay.
Out of the prisons of all the nation-states.
All around is yerushalayim.
Giulio Aldinucci & Matteo Uggeri – I Felt I Deserved More than That [Fluid Audio/Facture Bandcamp]
Giulio Aldinucci & Matteo Uggeri – So I Held My Breath to Listen [Fluid Audio/Facture Bandcamp]
Finally tonight, two amazing tracks from the second collaboration between two Italian musicians: the prolific Matteo Uggeri is an inveterate collaborator, and his projects like Open To the Sea create music that sits between classical, folk, ambient and electro-acoustic; Giulio Aldinucci is a master at creating moving drone music from choral samples. Moreso than their previous album together, The Promise of a Threat blends their two styles, creating something exquisitely new. Uggeri isn’t averse to using beats, so we find a dulled but noticeable, slow rhythmic cycle to these electro-acoustic pieces, with Aldinucci’s ghostly choirs floating in the ether. This really is one of the loveliest drone/sound-art albums I’ve heard recently.