First Impressions 036: Hallucinatory pop visions, earthly solo harp, ECM on a bender, zero gravity ambient and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

The newsletter took a break in lieu of some heavy day job details, and it’s nice to be back in the swing of dedicated listening. I have succumbed to peer pressure (you know who you are!) and put the Bandcamp links before each review—I’m all for a smoother experience. On another note, with Live Nation being sued by the US Department of Justice for monopolising markets in the live music industry, overseas readers may want to see how such concerted activity affects a smaller territory like Australia, via this recent extended report from the ABC’s Four Corners. The problems embedded in live music here have only been expedited by Live Nation, as hopes and possibilities for Australian music culture are bundled and funnelled into their business model. In some ways, it should be exciting to start again from ground zero, but the industry is bottlenecked in old infrastructure and will find it difficult to reconfigure the terms of real-time music engagement.
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OK, let’s go:

Leave Another Day - Milan W: Antwerp’s Milan W makes moody pop with louche cool. Think of The Church’s classic era in starry, romantic pop moving from narcotic towards narcoleptic, and you’re in the realm of his hallucinatory vision. His elegant songs are haunted by the idea that the dark of night can make for unwanted company, but also where you can be your true self. It’s the tension between that clarity and what it brings that underscores the beauty of these songs, accompanied by a sense of dread. If Milan W wanted to make dream pop where the dream may well be over yet still hangs over us, consider me suspended in his world.

Wanting Less - mu tate: Why stop at dark when you can go darker? Cradling grain, static, and haze into a swamp of clotting ambient textures, the Latvian producer now based in London slides deepened bass and twitching rhythms into a work that remains defiantly dimmed. The hypnotic, lumbering grooves and scalpel-like handling of Mu Tate’s source material ensure that once you’re submerged in his netherzone, you won’t want to come up for air.

Breaking The Shell - Andrew Cyrille - Bill Frisell - Kit Downes: Props to Zen Sounds' Stephan Kunze for leading me with his jazz hands to this latest offering from the Red Hook label, dedicated to "encounters" and "creative wayfaring." Breaking The Shell positions pianist/organist Kit Downes as an anchor point for the wicked sparring of Andrew Cyrille on drums and guitarist Bill Frisell. I'm tempted to call this crack den ECM, but in case that doesn't ping with positivity for you, suffice to say the atmosphere here is thrillingly wayward and tense. Frisell’s spindly lines feel joyfully, wilfully scattershot, relishing Cyrille’s hushed or pummeling approach. Downes’ organ is a humid, charred presence, either chewing up the scenery with mammoth tones or nipping at the squall like an anxious puppy dog during fireworks. There's something about seasoned jazzers going out into the wild without a map—these three zigzag and ramble but are always surefooted in their way.

Demeter In Aexone - Sissi Rada: Produced in an afternoon in her Athens studio, the Greek artist’s second album is a suite of solo improvised harp, inspired by the legend of Persephone, the Greek goddess of spring, harvest, and nature. Each piece is resplendent in its overflow - I have no doubt Rada aimed for her playing to be rich, caressing, and anything but genteel in summoning the power of Persephone’s presence in Greek mythology. Positively visceral and spellbinding, these pieces never follow the harp’s typical navigations between earth and sky. Instead, they feel like something sprouting from the ground, ready to be witnessed as something unusual, new, and welcome.

Ringing In An Open Sky - Channelers: The Inner Islands label founder improvised these pieces for his dulcimer and Electronic Wind Instrument to transcend the limitations of preconceived performances in variable live spaces. They are patient, open, and freeing in their approach, gently swelling with layers of looped and echoing strings that twinkle in their own ether. In the pursuit of simply letting go of everything that shrouds and surrounds us, Conrad’s music wonderfully evokes a sense of zero gravity while filling the inevitable void. It’s more relief than revelatory, yet way more buoyant than banal.

Forge - KMRU: I was looking for something to wind up this week’s set, and last night, this new KMRU set popped up to make the decision easy. I love how these pieces don’t seek to draw you in with the visceral pull that Joseph Kamaru often constructs from the small sonic details that surround and capture him each day. He mentions he can’t recall how and where he drew these pieces from, and I’d like to think Forge makes a home for stray sounds we’re all familiar with but can’t quite place. Its billowy tones drift in soft washes of static, content to hang and be still, like giving in to dozing off into a half-dream.

We also released Longform Editions 40 last week! There are some vast and searching works here – I implore you to absorb them all:

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