First Impressions 006: Scrambled sound-art, First Nations future music, technicolour pop, wrong ambient and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello!

Donald Trump has been using Sinéad O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U at his political rallies. It’s an unusual choice by any wrongheaded standard. It’s about someone who’s distant, gone from view, not someone who’s here for you when you need them. There doesn’t also appear to be much history of non-American campaign song choices, though Donald is showing some form with his recent use of The Smiths’ Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want. He may well be ushering in a new era of campaign songs for US politics by plundering the 80s UK single chart archives. Here are five more suggestions for Donald to use on his campaign trail:

Don’t You Want Me - Human League
Ashes To Ashes - David Bowie 
Careless Whisper – George Michael
Karma Chameleon – Culture Club
Going Underground (Deep Web version) – The Jam

Please suggest more in the comments below!
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OK, let’s go:

or valleys and – Nate Schieble: Washington, DC artist Nate Schieble’s albums are getting shorter, and with this newbie clocking in at 17 minutes it’s clear he’s here for a good time, not a long time. The first track constitutes nearly a quarter of the overall duration, a crackling dreamstate of textures that sets the tone for this high concept flurry of compositions that have the intimacy of being let in on an in-joke. The horns, percussion and piano bobbing up throughout Schieble’s sound-art scramble offer fleeting snatches of jazz communion and orchestral limbering for a bristling, soft and winkingly silly work that contains multitudes within Schieble’s distinct economy of scale.

Yirinda – Yirinda: I was lucky to see an in-studio performance from this duo last year at the mighty community station 4ZZZ. I think the few watching felt transfixed, as if rooted to the Earth as much as Fred Leone, the First Nations songman who here has found a sensitive, searching foil in multi-instrumentalist Samuel Pankhurst. Butchulla is the language of Leone’s people, now only spoken by a few individuals, and Leone is one of three custodians entrusted with the language to sing the stories of his people that stretch back 65,000 years. The depth of feeling and spirit in this music is uncommon. Leone’s voice soars, weaves, and plummets like the cycles of nature and animals, while Pankhurst’s musical settings capture the fertile, ever alive settings these songs evoke. Electronic patterns, both twinkling and intricate, blend with patient, mesmeric double bass rhythms, skitterish beats, strings that drone and peak, echoing horns, and starry percussion to create an abstract expanse where these songs imagine a future for their legacy.

The Earth Has Memory - Concepción Huerta: Following up on listening to the untamed and beautiful Amor Muere album talked up last week, here’s a solo album from the group’s tape manipulator. Sourcing sounds from synths to then process onto tape, this is a stark and elemental work to reflect the revolving axis of our connection and unknowing with the Earth. Capturing the slow rumbling of evolutionary shifts in metallic, granular, and glassy drone movements, its commanding presence is a heavy reminder that our planet is screaming in lament.    

Rooting For Love - Lætitia Sadier: While Stereolab feature weekly in my vibe uplift / comfort food listening needs, (pro tip: go-to gym soundtrack) I’ve not ventured too deeply into offshoots, including Sadier’s solo work. Similarly wedded to 60s and 70s orch-pop and lounge-music as melodramatic means to set against Sadier’s trademark cool delivery and critical gaze, the Stereolab rhythm engine is often switched out here for more bubblegum bounce and a quieter luminosity. There are percolators on here that would fit on any Stereolab album, too. That they sound so vivid and fresh shows Sadier’s energy in painting pop’s past in technicolour to remain high and exquisite.  

adore – Adrian Miles: Lovely, loping guitar figures from this Sydney artist that’ll always feel just right around dusk or dawn. Miles’ beautifully cascading style evoke some real favourites for me in Seaworthy and Talk West, even the gentler hues of Loren Connor’s work. This kind of playing – more warming than revelatory – is starting to feel like a lost art these days after peaking in the 2000s through the post-rock boom.  It’s heartening to hear this album and have it take me over for a short, sweet time.  

wrong geography / the never​-​never summer of different night – Richard Youngs: The Longform Editons alumni has embarked on what he calls a ‘wrong ambient’ series: ambient music that doesn’t feel quite right to him. To what ends I don’t quite know, though typical to Youngs’ form, I suggest hes looking for new resonances from a not disrespectful, but counterintuitive approach. These two pieces are decidedly wonky, patiently extracting a motion sickness effect from stretched, squiggly tones and icily deadpan rock vocal snatches. If ambient was an endurance test, this would be it.  Still, no matter what sort of funnies Youngs wants to make here, I never take him anything less than dead serious in his substantial pursuit of the not-so-obvious path.  A second piano-based set is a softer affair that dials down the oddity to the merely off-kilter, where Youngs’touch for evoking enigmatic feeling is in full effect.

Zither Suite - Organic Pulse Ensemble: A nod to the mighty Aquarium Drunkard for leading me to this one. Sweden’s Gustav Horneij comprises the entirety of this ensemble, and his apartment is the setting for his literal oneness. Without a hint of studio trickery or irony, Horneij crafts faithful odes to devotional jazz and the chemistry inherent in communal playing from the likes of Alice Coltrane and Phil Cohran. This music has always served as a compass for warmth and healing, and with humility and respect, Horneij conjures his own spirit and medicine within the magic he creates here.

Thanks for reading.
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Andrew Khedoori is the curator of Longform Editions.
First Impressions visual by Mark Gowing.