First Impressions 042: experimental communion, humid hip-hop, jazzy joys, moonwalking techno and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

I hope everyone has had a good year in music at a time when good things don't feel like the flavour of the time. What we can find in the music we love is our willingness to listen, to share and to find common ground. To keep things going. Thank you to everyone who created the music that made up First Impressions this year and to everyone who made music that didn't, but found their way to me all the same. Thanks to everyone who's read First Impressions and sent messages. Best of the season to you all in rest and renewal. See you sometime next year.

Andrew

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OK, let’s go:

Mosaic – Fennesz: By now, Christian Fennesz’s way of stretching and heightening the emotional core of classic pop music into communion for the experimental set is no longer revelatory, to the point of persistently pale imitation. Like mafia films from Scorsese, he is still yet to be overtaken in his lane. Mosaic doesn’t hesitate to fall straight into the cinematic sweep and oceanic surge Fennesz has long cast as his trademarks, and here the tracks spring up with a newfound immediacy in their force that never undercuts the measure in his detailing. It’s that detailing that allows for the sublime fluency in Fennesz’s composition, where narrative is equal to sound. Mosaic is like a fireworks display and its afterglow.

Smetana – Richter Band: A fixture in the Czech Republic’s experimental rock circles in the 70s and 80s, the exacting Pavel Richter simmered down and found patience in minimalism. Initially inspired by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s Evening Star, Richter began to create loops to infinity as a way of unanchoring himself from the crushing weight of communism that eventually ended his rock career. Expressing a new sense of freedom from the confines of his apartment after leaving then-Czechoslovakia, Richter Band was formed, using guitar, tape echo and Luboš Fidler’s fidlerophone, a percussion instrument played by striking jars with plastic strainers. Smetana – reissued twice now in the last year on cassette and vinyl – holds a curiously commanding presence given its soft and spacious resonance. It’s disarmingly unvarnished. If you have ever felt stopped in place by Gamelan music, where the percussive notes and their tuning may feel off-kilter (to Western ears) but uncannily hypnotic, be onto this.

Genuine Dexterity - Kenny Segal and K-the-I???: Glad to see this one tear a hole into the sleepier end of the year in releases. Segal plays up his rattling boom-bap style with jazzy rolls and rock crunch, only to let it run like a humid ooze towards the more organised chaos of a Bomb Squad production. K-the-I???’s rhyming style appropriately bounces off these productions with the cheek and glee of a wag with a self-knowing existential lurch. Mastery loves company, and spots from Armand Hammer, ShrapKnel and Open Mike Eagle ably assist in making this a sharper-than-smart party record strapped into the abstract.

The Way Out of Easy - Jeff Parker ETA IVtet: Picking another night to document from his now storied quartet shows at Los Angeles' Enfield Tennis Academy — the first Monday of 2023, no less — it feels as though Jeff Parker (on guitar, electronics, and sampler here) could carry his career forward with these live tapes alone. The four pieces here absorb both Parker's jazz instincts and the fluid cross-pollinations of his other well-known gig in Tortoise with languid purpose. With Anna Butterss (double bass), Jay Bellerose (drums), and Josh Johnson (saxophone, electronics), Parker doesn’t so much lead as gently nurture a hypnotic, percolating vibe, using the signature subtlety in his playing, finding notes that ring out and push the band further without breaking the spell. As serious as this set is, it luxuriates in an idyllic whimsy, recorded to radiate with the intimate joys constantly in bloom throughout.

Soft Focus – pondlicker: A new guise from Montreal producer Adam Feingold (Ex-Terrestial), delivering techno cuts that don’t so much shuffle as moonwalk—rife with liquid melodies that swell, twinkle, and ride high. If it weren’t for the carbonated bottom end, I’d be lightheaded. It floated by like a fine mist on first listen, but it’s as deep as it is nimble.

Public Detail - the concept horse: For this latest work, the Viennese composer places the halting nature of his loop patterning within a vision of the end of the world. Quietly apocalyptic, sounds crackle, rattle, hum, and dissolve, throttled into a claustrophobic surrealism that runs through the domestic settings of Claire Rousay’s work. I also can’t help but think of the willingly rudimentary and stark industrial work of Sydney’s Ian Andrews and his project, The Horse He’s Sick—cutting and pasting a path toward new realms with stuttering speed. Of course, both project names are equally equine, though each one runs its own course.

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