First Impressions 028: dub-techno rapture, cracked country dreaming, late-night American Primitive, new age soup and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

There are rumblings in the music industry this week that Spotify may be forced to remove the free tier from its platform. This talk stems from one of Spotify’s main partners in the streaming market, Universal Music Group, looking to improve profits. Their own research indicates there are around 180 million people who could be converted into paying users of a streaming service if the free option were taken away from them. This would level Spotify with other platforms that are fee-only, leading to a new race – some might suggest toward the bottom – for your dollar.

The free tier clearly made Spotify the dominant player, but what would losing free access mean for music listening in the post-piracy world? Such an intervention by a major label – playing both the poacher and gamekeeper – shows that streaming services aren’t for everyone, though they are conceived to offer that perception. (Spotify’s slogan is ‘music for everyone’) Once further monetisation is realised, ways to make it flow in one direction only will follow. In the New Yorker last week, Kyle Chayka wrote about finally disconnecting from Spotify, outlining how it has beefed up its self-serving steering nature by what it feeds you from the point of entry or from its search. To wit, I listened to the Charli XCX album without any preceding anticipation or desire, just because it was staring at me when opening the app. (tick) Even if you use Spotify to listen to things you have been tipped off about, what happens once that’s over? You are likely thrust back into a zone of passive listening and exposed to music unrelated to the reason you started there.

There’s a lot of back and forth if you use streaming as your funnel to discover new music – it’s not a continual process. The free tier is not just a loss leader for the labels that prop up Spotify; it’s a loss for music culture. Streaming purports to be a mere reflection of popular culture, but within the context of Spotify’s business model, suggesting Taylor Swift is a crowd-sourced phenomenon is disingenuous. Free users of streaming may be the most passive – a passionate music fan would not stand for the ads. When the major music industry gave up its product for free, unlike the film industry, they also created a new tier of consumer: one who doesn’t care too much about it. They can hear everything, and yet, they’ve listened to nothing.
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OK, let’s go:

One Day – Loidis: Bringing back this alias for its first full-length, Brian Leeds (best known as Huerco S.) Loidis sets the controls high on this set of dub-techno and deep house for both club moves and cerebral ends. The dub glimmers in these sure-footed, stone-cold grooves, offsetting their primal kick with micro-melodies that bubble and squish towards melting point. Leeds’ trick is to keep skinny on detail—this is tighter than two coats of paint—and just press forward until achieving total lockstep. Leeds subtly flips the script halfway through to shift more focus to the top end of proceedings over the bottom, opening up the template for fluid, warm, and gorgeous textures to skitter and slalom around in jubilant rapture.

Pre Country - Lucy Sissy Miller: You know the joke: if you had to completely eliminate one genre of music and all songs under it from existence, what would you choose, and why would it be country? That’s one extreme take on country music, and Lucy Sissy Miller’s is another, though it comes from love and not hate. Country music is all around us, entwined in romantic notions of life we often see in film—the rural diner and its jukebox, both untouched since the 50s, and a shining signal of the truth tales we all need with our slice of key lime pie in our escape from urban reality. Listening to Pre Country, maybe Miller loves country music but hates the lie it’s become in a world where purity is a commodity and, at best, a dream. Mapping the coordinates of this album through a self-avowed inspiration from Twin Peaks and Laurie Anderson’s philosophical mirage-visions for America means much of it doesn’t sound like country at all. DIY folk, dialled-up Auto-Tune, old-timey samples, and chamber organs create Miller’s netherworld of song, centred by layered, soft vocals that shape an emotional core ghosting over their continually ruptured path. I feel like I don’t quite know how to hold onto these songs, and I feel like that’s their point—casting desire as slippery and confounding in Miller’s search for love with a soundtrack for all the wrong places.

Cygnus A – Drew Gardner: A debut solo album from the multi-instrumentalist known as a key figure in the extending continuum of American Primitive through the expanse of his work with Elkhorn, The Heavy Lidders, and Flowers in Space. Cygnus A is more home recording than downhome, full of hushed and unfurling pieces to dwell and drift in. Gardner’s dexterity and freewheeling touch flow through his rippling zither lines with a pinwheel-like effect, while the anchoring presence of guitar and mbira has the patient measure of a loom weaver in hypnotic repose. There’s a sweetness to the sensation of these late-night reveries, where the surprise of Gardner’s newfound subdued energy never dims his continuing pathways to wide and open-hearted pleasure.

Spaghetti Whie Swimming - Loris S. Sarid:  Another more recent Longform Editions alumnus, whose piece from February this year was a beautiful procession of environmental tone and texture that turned and coiled into kaleidoscopic patterns. This collection may be both a casual upload and unload of bits and pieces previously sat dormant, but Sarid’s way of winding familiar ambient tropes up with playful quirks is ever-present and plentiful. A touch of the surreal, coupled with the self-awareness of his fingerprints on the elements of nature, is the fun and constant surprise of his work, finding an absurdist bent that nips at its gentility. Some titles here—like Liver Tennis and New Age Soup—seal the deal for an artist who understands that using a laptop to view the world around him is an irony too delicious to pass by.

Wave - Ruven Nunez: For me, Switzerland’s Ruven Nunez is one of the most slept-on artists to have taken part in Longform Editions. Nunez’s Bandcamp page holds a prolific body of work, spanning spacious, stirring, and ringing acoustic guitar compositions to more Eno-like ambient movements with his Mental Music series. Featuring 60 works, it invests in simplicity towards a pure dissolution of calm. On Wave, Nunez has distilled the energies of both phases to settle these pieces into a slow, visceral experience, with vibrating guitar chords and shimmering percussion quietly levitating towards a trance state. It’s one thing to play in the moment, but Nunez inhabits space with a humble grace and spiritual air, making his works acts of communion.

Leaving/Returning – Mike Nigro: Mike Nigro started his Oxtail Recordings label in his US homeland before moving to Sydney, where it maintains a global view on the softer side of electronica while also becoming a focal point for a bustling local underground that could use a nucleus. Oxtail is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Nigro’s latest solo work is an unashamed exploration of 70s and 80s synth expanse, where machines meet the motions of travel, twisting sets of cloudy patterns and tingling sensations to tune into twin narratives of interconnection and dislocation. Sydney people can see Nigro perform this weekend as part of Oxtail’s birthday bash, featuring fine acts who have also appeared on Longform Editions, including Alexandra Spence, JW Paton, and Zoltan Fecso. A New York show follows soon after, with another LE alumnus, More Eaze, on the bill.

We also announced Longform Editions 39 yesterday. Looking forward to having these works out in the world next week

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