First Impressions 014: Wandering jazz jams, techno bangers, frosted ambience and more.
Initial vibes on new music
Hello!
“Everything that we do is villain style. Everybody has the right to get it or not get it.” So said MF DOOM, the great masked rapper, on his apparently regular use of stand-ins for live shows. He argued his physical presence was not the point: “I tell you one thing - when you come to a Doom show, come expecting to hear music, don't come expecting to see." How does this relate to deepfakes? Popping up in the middle of the debate du jour surrounding AI regulation in music, FKA Twigs testified to a US Senate subcommittee that she is devleoping her own deepfake “to extend my reach and handle my online social media interactions”. She also wants to protect her artist spirit and its authenticity. I’m guessing with the work she is putting in here, she can afford to. The affordability of being a music artist is now in a do-si-do with the affordability being a music consumer. There is so much to reckon with on both sides.
As per DOOM’s comment, when it comes to music, online or on stage, what do we now expect to see? How do we get our expectations turned upside down in the face of something truly new and brilliant? Fair use and likeness need to be protected - godspeed FKA Twigs on your deepfake journey. Neither, though, will save music as it is now widely received, from its industry-at-large burying the true nature of creativity in the face of regulating commercial cannibalisation.
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OK, let’s go:
The Mountains Pass – Olivia Block: This work from the Longform Editions alumni is one of her most affecting, in a broad and distinct catalogue that marks her as a sound artist with the mindset of an orchestral arranger. It’s not just for the introduction of voice and drums alongside her stirring synth movements that The Mountains Pass is a surprising turn into singer-songwriter territory in a uniquely stretched sense. Moreover, the heft and melodrama typically inherent in her approach aligns on this album with the 70s work of Jack Nitzsche or Robert Wyatt: idiosyncratic and strangely beautiful in breaking open inner worlds.
dot points – Third Space: After the wilding, abstract mass of his piece for Longform Editions, Naarm (Melbourne) producer Matt Sabbadini cuts this fast-flying techno set, buzzing with grimy detail. I love the exacting, scalpel-like precision in Matt’s work, magnified here to brutalist ends. Countered with a polyrhythmic elasticity that smokes out some atmospherics ends out of its chokehold, this bumps and rolls like a tin can down a cliff face.
Where The Flowers Grow – Isabel Pine: Inspired by the oncoming of Autumn in her native British Columbia, there’s a comely air to Isabel Pine’s short work to have it linger longer than a host of minor moments. Folding over violin, viola and cello into softly swelling frosted ambience, Pine lifts these pieces by delicately unpicking their lapping radiance for a more disconcerting meditation. Such is the guise of nature, Pine’s continuing inspiration, and its ruse.
Perseids – somesurprises: Is the best kind of shoegaze the kind that casts outward with inner humility? Seattle’s somesurprises –ostensibly the work of Natasha El-Sergany - are right up there if so, extolling a set of humble concerns as a portal to big sky thinking on their fifth album, using a broad palette of propulsive dream-pop. All the classic tricks are present: gliding, double-tracked vocals atop guitars interweaving the glistening with the gritty, and a rhythm section committed to keeping a pulse, but often only just. As ever with any well-established sound, as well as one in some kind of never-ending revival, the thing is who calls the tune and how. El-Sergany gets the balance between horizontal and vertical in her songs on point.
Live at Villa Maximus, Mykonos - Greg Foat, Sokratis Votskos, Warren Hampshire & Ayo Salawu:
After the minimal Ibiza poolside jam earlier this year, here’s more Foat to float yr boat. These live sessions blow off the cream he lays on in the studio to reveal a little more bustle in his hedgerow. Foat’s self-described ‘Greek Quartet’ doesn’t fly too far from the Earth, levitating at a height with an eye on green pastures while keeping the other on the sky above. Wandering flute and bass clarinet lead the band to a nimble way, but when Foat has his synth lines cut through with funk thrust, it’s business time and the heat is on.
Impossibly distant, impossibly close - Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri: These two longform pieces quickly settle into a gentle sway, moving like a barely perceptible wind before unfolding with a continually surging presence. Countering textures that bristle against the calming drone waves underscore the dark routes taken toward any resolution, and this pair understand and present that journey with poignant measure.
Thanks for reading.
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Andrew Khedoori is the curator of Longform Editions.
First Impressions visual by Mark Gowing.