First Impressions 004: soft-pop sambas, dustbowl drone-rock, techno-spirituals and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello!

Reading the Henry Threadgill bio I mentioned a couple of weeks back has sent me down an AACM-related rabbithole. I’ve been asked a few times for some suggestions. There is so much amazing music from this ever-evolving community of artists. This is the set I keep returning to -

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OK, let’s go:

Phasor - Helado Negro: How is it that this sounds like it was made with one foot in a milk bath and be so effortlessly cool?  Phasor feels like the third part in Helado Negro’s joy trilogy, following the exquisite, loved-up How To Smile and Far In. Roberto Carlos Lange’s unabashedly squishy sensibilities are rendered into something like searching soft-pop sambas here: the gentle charm of Caetano Veloso warmed up with synths and a Terry Riley mindset. 

The Closest Thing to Silence  - Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer: The free spirit approach all three artists share towards synth and acoustic exploration is their common bond, and this debut collaboration distills that into these fine pieces of kaleidoscopic collage. The fluid interplay between all the elements – bells, viola, saxophone and flute swooping around interlocking synth waves – moves between giddy and calming, especially marking Chiu’s compositional footprint for giddy and warm melodic patterns that echo the feeling of chance that spring from the flow of life.

Timing Birds - Silvia Bolognesi, Dudù Kouate, Griffin Rodriguez: This recording comes from late 2023 though it’s getting a vinyl reboot in April from free jazz pundits Astral Spirits. And with good reason – this trio conjure an inspired, ecstatic space where lustrous bass lines wrap around splashing African-style finger percussion, fluttering electronics, ngoni (a West African style guitar) and poetic incantations with the kind of communal togetherness founded by Art Ensemble of Chicago or Phil Cohran.  If that’s your kind of collective cool, this one’s for you. You can hear it all now via Bolognesi’s label where it originally came out.

nina harker – nina harker: Spied this on Jennifer Lucy Allan’s fringe-dwelling Rum Music column for The Quietus. Jennifer is an excellent excavator of the oddly alluring, and here we are with this French duo’s freewheeling, absurdist, primitive songs, as fractured as it is devotional to a spread of different sounds they lovingly mulch together. Late night piano, muffled, skittierish beats, digital scribbles, lo-fi hyperpop, eerie harmonising and monotonic poetry recital are just some of the elements leaking out of this delightfully weird grab-bag that makes a serious case for a stretched kind of outsider pop in a most curious form of fizzing dissolve.   

At Black College Mountain Museum – Setting: A new live document from this trio of deep heatseekers Nathan Bowles (Pelt), Joe Westerlund (Califone), and Jaime Fennelly (Mind over Mirrors). Certainly a looser unit here than on their recent album, this set is one long hallucinatory improvisation anchored in dustbowl drone, propelled by harmonium and synths while surging on circling, pummelling rhythms teetering with percussive texturing and bell-ringing strings. Throbbing and swelling towards an ultimate resonance, I haven’t heard this kind of primal urge communion hit so well since The Dirty Three landed on Earth.   

Essential Tremors – Hooper Crescent: This Melbourne band have peak aims on their second album, sprouting from the seeds of classically scratchy, wry punk by way that runs a line from The Victims to Eddy Current Suppression Ring in surefire fashion. The palette quickly expands on tight, exalted funk riffing (hello Gang of Four) paving a way for snaking basslines, tripping synths and hopped-up rhythms to make things positively pogo. These wicked, witty songs crack open new life from familiar fusions by going full tilt and making a party of it.

blue on a green world – SUNJIRŨ: I’m immediately fascinated by this self-described ‘techno-spiritualist’ from Nairobi, transmitting enigmatic signals all their own on this short work. The elements are very simple, long-lingering, sqiggling and often detuned electronic melodies and tones hoveing around one-note percussion (one piece has bird noises, too), though the effect is eerily intoxicating. It’s minimal, it’s liminal and the air is very thick with suspense throughout. I’m keen to know more, but in the meantime, props to Foxy Digitalis for bringing it to my attention.  

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