First Impressions 008: Tender glitches, drone glows, abstract Euro-pop, jazz flotations and more.
Initial vibes on new music
Hello!
Anyone involved in music of any kind in Australia can feel the tyranny of distance. The internet has, of course, paved some way to closing the divide, but when you’re not on the ground in some major continent, it can be hard to cut through. Distance proved no barrier to Aaron Curnow, who has run Spunk Records for nearly 25 years, originally with Alyson West at its inception and during its early years. I can't imagine a single independent music-loving person in Australia growing up in the 90s and 2000s who hasn't been touched in some way by Aaron's work with Spunk. Spunk began releasing records in Australia simply because they liked them. Some of those records just happened to be from the likes of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Bill Callahan, Arcade Fire, Four Tet, Sufjan Stevens, and Big Thief. Many of those acts first came out to Australia on Spunk’s energy and time before they moved on to bigger promoters. It was no mean feat to get them here, but obviously Aaron’s enthusiasm and the chance to see Australia made it happen. Spunk releases and shows were a big deal to anyone previously trying to navigate the vast American and European independent music scenes through fanzines and slow mail order. Spunk made our corner of the world matter to the rest of it, which in turn allowed artists closer to home to gain global presence (think Aldous Harding, Tiny Ruins, Holly Throsby). Aaron has announced Spunk is winding down in the coming months. While many will see the last Spunk event at the Sydney Opera House in May as a fitting, deserved finale, this tribute obscures Aaron’s skill in conjuring ecstatic moments from gigs well outside any gala-style experience. He convinced Big Thief to play a bowls club 90 minutes out of Sydney in a space more typically used to hold meat raffles. Joanna Newsom, Bill Callahan, and Beach House all played a scout hall on the far north coast of NSW for Spunk’s 10th anniversary. Magic Dirt infamously creating a teen flick riot fantasy at a humble surf club. It may seem a world away from what we do at Longform Editions, but Spunk showed us how passion, fun and funding a way for what you beleive in can be keys to success on your own terms. Thank you, Aaron.
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OK, let’s go:
Particles, Peds & Pores – Mind Over Mirrors: The return of this project for Jaime Fennelly, more recently sighted in Setting. Since going all out with a full band on 2018’s Bellowing Sun to approach full-tilt reverie, these porous solo works for harmonium and synths don’t seek to peak. Aside from the rousing Suprachiasmatic and locomotive Sulfur Firedots, they emit a gentle glow, rarely catching a spark. Magnetic in its restraint, this feels like something approaching purity.
Under The Sun - Maya Shenfeld: Maya Shenfeld’s music ekes out with the solemn pace of a procession, lifting her weighted drones with a kind of cosmic energy in her detailing through a variety of melded woodwinds, synths and field recordings. That energy quickly turns into a dance of atomised electronics pulsating into voids of vocals and noise. The procession is now a transmission, and Shenfeld’s compositional magic is to absorb you right inside its epic contours, not knowing whether you’re coming or going.
The Great Bailout – Moor Mother: ‘Taxpayers of erasure’ are the first words uttered by poet, activist and sound artist Camae Ayewa on her ninth album as Moor Mother. In her expansive vision, this excavation of the British slave trade and its global reach is set to bleed into your conscious and remain as a living thing. This is industrial death machine music, unwavering and scarifying with throttled rhythms, noise, and dark, mournful blues and jazz in crushing juxtaposition. In pursuit of eternal truth in her stark verse, Moor Mother floats an anguished hallucination of the past as a mirror image of our present, where the immobilization of race is a currency of exchange.
Last Liasse – Helen Island: Shadowy abstract Euro-pop from this Parisien artist, cut with digital melodies that go glassy but glitch and sink under the weight of a murky intent and dramatic tide. The zippiest track (it’s so easy) sounds like an Xanaxed rip of a-ha’s Take On Me, and the album’s overall muted buzz serves its subterfuge and curious melancholy, vivid and blurred like rain on a neon-lit window.
YHWH is LOVE - Jahari Massamba Unit: A second offering from the duo of Madlib and drummer Karriem Riggins casts back to the strand of 70s jazz-fusion where open space served as a portal to the idealism of collectivity and connection. A movement introduced into that decade by the likes of vibraphone legend Bobby Hutcherson, vibes are a signal carrier for these tracks’ floating presence. They coast on velvety Latin rhythms and soul-jazz with an astral lilt before crisping up the edges with taut funk foundations, boosting their peerless hip-hop credentials into the mix.
Zwaard – Beans: Now here’s an inspired pairing – UK abstract rap poet Beans with the similarly singular techno-deconstructivist Vladislav Delay Strap in. Delay’s fidgety, splintering beats have the urgency of a cockroach scuttling up a wall, Beans going toe for toe with his trademark rapidfire observations running in a constant state of detour. Cutting through the ensuing freneticism is a very cool sense of command. It’s heavy in here, but never leaden, as these two send hip hop into new zones of dynamic dexterity.
Full Stop – Low Flung: Quietly magnetic new work from prolific Sydney artist Danny Wild, who loves to mine a trickling sense of subterfuge across his grainy ambient drift. These tracks are spooked with the idea that total escape from the noise around us is a mirage, reflecting that even when we take pause through by whatever means necessary, there’s always something flickering at or within us. The ensuing digital clutter bubbles with a surprising buoyancy, carrying Wild’s vision for this space to be for tenderness, even self-care.
Thanks for reading.
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Andrew Khedoori is the curator of Longform Editions.
First Impressions visual by Mark Gowing.