First Impressions 038: Soft-lens prog vibes, dub frequencies, guitar panoramas, psychotropical heatstroke and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

I was out walking early yesterday, listening to another fab edition of Mikey Young’s show for NTS. Mikey’s selections go deep into previously entombed sounds from the 60s and 70s. They’re mostly songs that have the warmth, spark, and spirit of the era, though each one leans a little away from the surefire hit formula that stopped them from being conventional hits. For the most part, that’s what makes them great – their idiosyncrasy. I think of them as ‘not-quite-classics’, underdogs I have a lot of love for. (here’s an example of a personal favourite I’m not sure Mikey has ever played) Mikey’s show prompted me to wonder why I use the idea of a ‘classic’ in my thinking about music. Reissue labels are forever posing as doing the work of rewriting history, citing each offering with cool, familiar language: ‘This is a stone-cold classic.’ Reissue label personnel assume a benevolent form somewhere between an art collector and an archaeologist, though surely the notion of a classic is tied to old-world consumption driven by mass radio airplay, press coverage, and, of course, the money to generate both and sustain them for a very long time. Designated classics were also minted on vinyl or CD – something you could hold. The weight of a classic is real. A friend who is moving house this week told me of their plans to downsize their record collection. “Only the classics,” he said. (good luck.)

The night before my walk, I was reading Stephan Kunze’s zensounds newsletter, discussing rapper Cavalier’s Different Type Time album within what I took to be a wider context: that a seminal hip-hop album in the modern era may not be at all possible, as it was in the 90s with works from, say, Public Enemy and Nas. It may be my default conditioning, and he wasn’t explicit as such, but deep down I thought Stephan was asking when, if ever, this vital art form might produce its next classic. The streaming era, with its need for tonnage and the mirage of options, will never produce what many of us understand to be a classic. Numbers, and not artistry, deem success, and the cynic in me suggests that the use of ‘classic’ in a review is now just classic clickbait. This awful video from Spotify says a classic is ‘a sound spoken into the universe – new in that moment and then permanent, forever.’ This vapid, empty, self-serving platitude is embarrassing to any artist offering recorded music today. As old-world capitalist lionising is subsumed by newer models to the degree where 'classic' is just another nebulous category devoid of any true meaning within depersonalised listening platforms, the sooner I lose ‘classic’ from my music vocabulary, the better.
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OK, let’s go:

Nutrition – Carmen Villain: The rhythmic skank cutting across these three new tracks outlines the Norwegian’s ever-expanding production, inhabited by the pull of dub as a mindset, filtering planes of possibility. Each one feels like a zippy but cool flex of clubby clicks and wonky abstracts, buzzing together like the reflexive loops of a strobe light. Villian is really starting to bump on her own frequency – growing out of the shadows of her inspirations to make her own shade.

Lifetime - Sun Araw: For all its variant forms, Cameron Stallones’ Sun Araw project always runs high in temperature, at the point of heatstroke to reach other states of being. On this tenth album, their psychotropical synth bounce and dub guitar wooze grooves are in crash-and-burn mode, like how a pinball machine sounds when it tilts. When Stallones wilds out with cyberfunk sputum and vocoder, Lifetime projects an alternative 1980s LA, where Tron is programmed to play Glenn Frey songs. Understand, it’s no bad thing. The more cartoon, the better the tune. This is Sun Araw beaming in with their ear-popping best.

Eye Frame – Mukqs: The assemblage of sound sources Max Allison ekes out into existence on Eye Frame is alive and bristling. Approaching its mass and unruly essence with the impulsive reverence of a wizard on heat, this hour-long live recording is a rustling reminder of how electronic music rarely leaks anymore. Eye Frame is not a grab at your attention deficit, but more of a cool-headed stream, where non-linear, rapid movements reflect our real-time internal vibrancy in the supposed dead of night. A Little Night Fishing is one apt title – ripe with the tickle of anticipation and the sudden rupture of energies. Eye Frame is no smash-and-grab speed mission, as Allison’s command is beautifully ordained to create a space where the twitching of the soul is something to love and nurture.

2 - First Tone: Duane Pitre has produced mesmerising, slow-winding compositions of guitar-based minimalism using the Just Intonation method (with Feel Free being a modern milestone for me), while Turk Dietrich distils both precision and chaos energy into melting guitar dissonance in Belong and Second Woman’s decomposed techno. The core of their connection may lie in their ability to inhabit space with a buzzing presence and constant drive. These two longform pieces hang, surge, and flutter with an energy that a film bro might describe as “well-directed.” The first feels more primal, its textures seemingly swallowed whole by its oncoming movements coursing through its guttural pace. The second casts a lower, slower creep of ominous import, as if the power of the universe is about to drain out.

Devotional Drift: Vol 1 - SW Hedrick: Trading decibels for debonair with this first solo outing, the guitarist for thrash metal matrix makers Skeletonwitch couples these unbridled soft-lens prog compositions with a kind of humility that hints at the higher powers at the heart of its title. Too earthy to be psychedelic but always a few feet off the ground, Hedrick’s compositions – ringing with glistening, crying guitar - are graciously played out, even as they roll over and over like a Grateful Dead jam, carefully wound out towards a sunset I imagine is tinged purple and pink. As bubbling saxophone notes feel as though they could form puddles, Hedrick somehow finds the golden moment where new age meditation tapes cross with 80s ballad excess in this mind’s eye reverberation of dusty Americana.

Fortune’s Mirror - Barrie Archie Johnson: Ohio composer Barrie Archie Johnson’s debut album slowly rolls toward the crossroads of country-blues drawl and impressionistic Windham Hill-style folk. Johnson’s playing is spare yet swirling and rich, finding an expanse between space and light with his surprising turns of pace. While his feathery flute layers coax elevated moods, the ripe, lush cameo from saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi on the closing I’ll See You Soon has Johnson poised for a more panoramic vision ahead.

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