First Impressions 016: Albini's work for life, ambient burnouts, country-baroque, American Primitive ecstasy and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

The death of Steve Albini and the mass eulogising since has placed a clear perspective on today’s industry landscape by showing the distance Albini engineered (see what I did there?) from it, and successfully so. The US punk rock scene his band Big Black threw their lot into was where Albini found an honesty in music. From Michael Azerrad’s crucial book Our Band Could Be Your Life:

“The greatest thing about punk rock for me, as an outsider, was that the concept that you had to be allowed in was no longer valid. You could be operating in a vacuum, you could be as fucked up an individual as you cared to be, and if you did something of worth, all these external conditions were immaterial.”

It was from that community and its self-belief that Albini found his ethos of honesty in music and eventually, his sense of decency. His journey from self-righteous edgelord to righteous dude was a slow one, reaching a grace state where being oppositional was not diminished by losing his ferocious antagonism towards people who did not share his values. Those values were more than artistic choices for Albini – they aligned with corporate beh aviour he saw as music culture’s kryptonite.   

The divide Albini stood so firmly on between independent and mainstream music has now been well and truly fugged over, beginning with the inset of the internet and expedited by tech-capitalism in a one-size-fits-all-but-only-suits-some vision. Now that tech-capitalism has driven the conversation around music consumption, the economics around making music and living from it has become the primary driver. Tellingly, Albini’s band Shellac release a new album this week that you will not find on streaming services. He continued to work on essential recording projects, making him very much in the here and now as opposed to a voice from the past when things were different. Albini valued the chance for participation in music as an experience well over any perceived foundational tie to economic exchange. He saw they had to be parallel lines to be able to secure longevity in music creativity and he toiled for this opportunity. (he was unlikely to ever be the face for The Living Wage For Musicians Act: not the right fight)  If he was onto something, how do we get back to the vacuum?
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OK, let’s go:

Swallowtail – Jim White and Marisa Anderson: While Jim White brings something distinct to anything he’s involved in, his duo with guitarist Marisa Anderson marks a special measure of symbiosis. Citing the ocean rhythms of the Victorian coastal town where this was recorded as a great catalyst, Anderson’s guitar streams with currents of primal blues and drone, wholly wired to White’s rumbled underpinnings to summon an energy approaching the swirling jazz ecstasy of Albert Ayler and the electric frisson in Henry Flynt’s hillbilly ragas. Together in improvisation they have found a grace both magnetic and incantatory.

Close To The Mystery – Jackie West: “All dreams you made exist somewhere in the world”, Jackie West sings in the opening track of her debut album, and the way it sparkles from its first notes falling like shiny new dimes on a satin cushion, she may have collected most of them for inspiration. Pulling baroque shapes from cosmic country coordinates gives West’s pop classicism an alluring elasticity, echoed in her voice that goes from swooping to piercing to dewy, often in a few swift moves.  The dreaming West started with holds sway throughout, though the fight of reality in her widescreen songs are their anchoring force.         

occhiolism – ragenap + dathon: Two Chicago underground mainstays in Joel Berk and Corey Lyons come together to wring a kind of histrionic ambience from their six-string basses. Over these two longform pieces, the desert plain sounds of Daniel Lanois dragged along a virtual dirt track of digital debris come to mind, as does the idea of Michael Rother guitar burnouts, wailing long after Klaus Dinger had left the studio. Set to an ominous simmer, this is delicately stirred so as not to bubble over.  

Repeater - Marcia Bassett: One of New York city’s experimental lifers, Marcia Bassett has never been afraid of the dark, and Repeater is one hell of a howl from her ever-widening black hole of noise. Imagine the sound of lightning pitch shifted to a slow but ferocious growl – that’s the kind of menace Bassett invokes across these four pieces, thrillingly alive and electric to hold you in place. Whether you keep the lights on or off while listening may determine how you come out the other side.

Primordial Sky Palace – Natalie Rose LeBrecht: LeBrecht is a New Yorker who clearly still believes in the unbridled rhythm of the sprawling city as a dreamstate portal to creativity without inhibition. This might be a spiritual companion to the cascading elegance of her solo piano work for Longform Editions, adding vocals, woodwinds and drums over a six-song suite designed to enter your being as a whole. Her new age lean is as apparent as windchimes at the front of a crystal shop, but the fluidity of her compositions offers the kind of elevated purpose and pleasure that only comes from a deeper wellspring of desire and self-awareness.

Mirror Music - Michael A. Muller: When it comes to anything ambient, poise is often the best core compositional value. This latest from the Balmorhea member feels like a call to openness from a point of reflection, and it’s a balance Muller strikes well. It’s a palette that could turn things bloodless, though with each piece, Muller finds a sensitive collaborator equal to the cause - Danny Paul Grody, Chuck Johnson, Clarice Jensen, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma to name a few – to raise the spirit embedded within his tonal drifts towards points of pure elation.

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