First Impressions 011: Life rhythms, dub flubs, homely harp and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello!

Somewhat timepoor this week, so I’ll use this space to mention that we released Longform Editions 37 yesterday! Take time to discover these singular and awesome new works -     

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OK, let’s go:

Aporia – Sissi Rada: At home in Athens with her harp and synth, Sissi Rada’s songs gently come down like treacle dripping from heaven. Her spare playing only ever glints at the fantastical, alluringly earthy over the more typical extravagant ends the harp can gratify. While her synth is set to roam with floating textures, it’s the overt joy in Rada’s voice where this really takes flight. She mostly does so in Greek, but you won’t miss the wonder she casts into the air with this perfectly cradled concoction of simple, stately, and slightly surreal pleasures.

Yö näkyy - Olli Aarni: This underrated Finnish sound artist has a winning tendency to produce an idiosyncratic and expertly rendered casting of an ever-growing list of divergent interests, including dub-techno, the kantele – a traditional Finnish string instrument - and field recordings. His sense of precision and detail marks him in parallel to fellow Finn Vladislav Delay, but with subtler tidings. Using tape loops as their compositional core, these two fine longform pieces roll with ease, warm and enveloping yet undercut with enough audio subterfuge to kindle a curious edge of decay. Played together, they evoke a reading of day becoming night; natural phenomena coursing through time.

All Hits: Memories - Jim White: Any of drummer Jim White’s many collaborators surely enlist him not just for the idiosyncratic flair of his playing, but for the way he can call the shots at his kit without overshadowing the song. What he does on his first solo album, a modest set of instrumentals where his staccato-like drums and percussion are beset with liquid electronic flourishes, isn’t about a spotlight on his style to make it the song itself. What it does so well is display the essence of his work not as a timekeeper but a chronicler of motion – velocity and acceleration, slowing down, putting on the brakes. Cheesy as this may sound, the way this hits is the reason White’s many fans connect with his work: we’re all in step with the rhythm of life

Bong Boat - Nug: It’s not exactly the digital Dutch oven the title might promise, but this absorbing second outing from PVAS and Florian T M Zeisig is full of blotched textures and foggy fades radiating from many angles. The pair concoct a kind of knowingly flubbed dub where rhythms appear more like apparitions, and the whole thing ticks over with just enough compositional steps for this to coalesce well past a set of flickering sensations. 

Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothal - Adam Wiltzie: Like someone dirtying his own pipes, the Stars of the Lid founder takes to the clean lines of his signature sense of drift on this new work with an urgent dread. It’s an ominous shift on Wiltze’s ongoing reach for the majestic, most notably heard on his string arrangements which are stormy and spearing. Emerging out an indie rock scene in love with the gut punch, Stars of the Lid opted for flight over fight. Now it seems that Wiltze makes time for both.  

Delight – Arushi Jain:  Indian Classical Music practitioners are bound by discipline and devotion in reaching deep resonance with the raga form. The note-bending melodies sustaining the foundation of any raga are written into the work of Indian artist Arushi Jain, distilling their openness into the infinite possibilities of the modular synthesiser. Underscoring though not undermining the heritage of her key inspiration, Raga Bageshri, Delight’s heavy emotional sweep is wrought up in the kind of yearning to luxuriate in. Jain’s gliding voice and lyrics signal the fusions at play and maybe a knowing nod that nothing here is about purity. It’s about feeling – that subjective experience sprung from the well of personal history.         

Adorations - Marsha Fisher: The latest in a series of works using old evangelical tapes as source material from the Minneapolis artist summoning an uneasy but elevated ambience. Fracturing the gospel baked into these recordings, Fisher upends their mass-produced magneticism with a tender approach accenting the fragility of their previous audience. These laments capture a spiritual abyss, born again as exquisite sound art.   

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