First Impressions 045: Swapping spit for sugar.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

There are reports in the past week quoting Spotify founder Daniel Ek placing the platform into a period of ‘accelerated execution’. This includes new options for paying customers such as a ‘superfan’ tier, allowing early bird access to concert tickets and an AI remixing tool. Spotify have now co-opted the term ‘superfan’, where previously it had been a phrase used to counter the pecuniary mechanisms of streaming platforms that fail artists with a counteroffer that gave artists’ audiences a status revolving around community and belonging, backed by a higher level of financial commitment. While we all know by now that Spotify doesn’t treat artists reasonably, in an egregious, cynical language grab, now you can become a Spotify superfan, conveniently bypassing the connective vein to artists the term originally envisioned. It certainly puts a different spin on the notion of ‘accelerated execution’. Running alongside this though, is the idea of patronage of the arts and what that means today. Recently, I ventured to Philip Sherburne in his excellent Futurism Restated newsletter that it may not be fair to suggest someone is not truly a fan of music if they haven’t paid for it. Music is like air - you cannot contain it. Years ago, when I presented an experimental radio show in Sydney, I had plenty of people say they were weekly devotees, though that was their regular fix, so to speak, and they never extended their relationship to the music by buying or seeing it. I was fine with that level of engagement. I think I still am, but is that fair? Do you have rules or feelings about where your level of fandom threshold sits in engaging with a piece of music before you commit funds of any sort? If you see a show or buy a t-shirt but haven’t bought the record or a download, does that pass? I have a friend who was approached on the street by a person expressing their huge love for his band. Would he sign an album that happened to be in his bag? Of course my friend said, only to discover it was in fact, a CD-R burn. I’d love your thoughts – please share them in the comments below!

Andrew
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OK, let’s go:

Laura AgnusdeiIt’s great to hear someone so committed to deep experimentalism also having a blast. On this third album from the Italian saxophonist and composer, the opener Ittiolalia is a cracking mutant jazz romp, sounding like something Tom Waits might deliver to the International Anthem label. Elsewhere, it pops as if Sun Ra had a technology upgrade, with a crash course from Jon Hassell in amorphous electronics. While all this name-dropping may not fully capture the originality and vitality of Agnusdei’s approach, it does point to a lineage she shares in engorging reality with fantasy. Agnusdei has previously described her work as an ongoing personal musical ecosystem, and on Flowers Are Blooming in Antarctica, every sound feels interconnected in its bristling energy, where her sounds sprout and mingle in open, constantly shifting spaces of bewitching disorientation.

Liquid Bones - Noémi Buchi: This new EP from the underrated Swiss synthesist is inspired by a verse of poetry penned by her mother:

"In the heat / gesticulate elastically /
their bodies / disappointing the desire to last."

These lines embody the density and fluidity of Buchi’s ever-teetering productions. Liquid Bones carries a feathery pop feel, woven through with her signature symphonic industrial-techno crunch. From the first jolt, I’m sensing the oddball melodicism and playfulness of Haruomi Hosono’s electronic works. Despite the precision of Buchi’s compositions, you could never accuse her work of being bloodless. She reaches a newfound intimacy in including live collaborator Joséphine de Weck’s voice and text on the final track, Fair Enough, glistening within Buchi’s sonic flux.

Like A Ribbon – John Glacier: “Never mind me, cos I’m icy”. Trust me – whatever she says, John Glacier is hard to ignore. On her debut album, the Hackney producer-vocalist continues to make connective tensions between two seminal totems of UK post-punk activity in Joy Division and Tricky, finding commonality in the contrasts with a delivery so deadpan it makes Ian Curtis sound like Chris Isaak. More blunt than Tricky’s blunted, and against synths that are stressed and stretched across sparse, clattering beats, Glacier is trying to make contact through the fugginess of it all - mainly with herself, and that’s where this really sticks. The mirror Glacier holds up to herself for all to see is far removed from plastic celebrity pain and its inevitable group hug. This album is a fight with no finish in sight, ever to be continued and compellingly so.

Hashish Hits - Ali Omar: It’s instructive that Ali Omar self-released all the music on this compilation at a time when there were many emerging scenes for underground dance music in Sydney. Atone, Omar’s duo with Andy Fitzgerald, released two albums on the central Clan Analogue label, though his own music didn’t seem to prioritize association or collective support. I had him on my radio show a few times and saw both a deep, unconventional spirit and independent nature, traits that filter through his tracks. Many of these could thrive at any warehouse rave but also feel like a bedroom-recording counterpart to Nightmares on Wax, with low-tech house rhythms, muted strings, bubble-and-squeal synths, and Black Ark-era dub daze. Omar’s Arabic heritage is stitched into these productions through brisk sampling, as is the Manchester acid wiggle that dominated his UK clubbing time before moving to Sydney. And if the title doesn’t give it away, Omar embraces the dark fantastic like a man who knows his way around a hot knife.

Phonetics On and On - Horsegirl: Damn, if this New York-based trio haven’t nailed a fantasy axis revolving around Beat Happening and much of the 90s Flying Nun catalogue. True, they’re tighter and sweeter, but to be fair, there’s not a lot of labels out there these days releasing records by bands still learning how to play their instruments. That’s the caveat of any 90s indie-pop revisionism – Horsegirl are sharp and tricksy in a way many of their forebearers could never be. Swapping spit for sugar doesn’t mean they shirk the quirk. As producer, Cate Le Bon may have a lot to do with the slick angularity and breezy balance, considering she knows how to brighten the corners. (yes, I did do that) This one’s a well-primed package.

Följd - Civilistjävel!: Slowly does it for the Swedish producer on this latest, vibrating on dub and techno echoes creeping towards a smoky realm of suspense and drift. The mood never heightens so much as tenses up when rhythms kick in, like a cold wind taking a biting turn. Its frayed ambience is quietly unrelenting, with a presence I don’t quite want to figure out or fully form.

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