First Impressions 055: A filmy residue of echoes.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

A public service announcement: longformeditions.com will come down after this weekend. The site is unfortunately incredibly expensive to run and cannot remain as an archive. This tumblr is where you’ll find the full list of LE works, including informtion and artist notes on each. Links aren’t included, because, hey, they change. Go a little further to get at them when you need to. Thanks to Mark for putting this together - and of course for everything else. Our Bandcamp will also cease to be active. It’s been grand.

Thank you.

Andrew
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OK, let’s go:

False 03 - Externalism: If the current dubwards trajectory towards ambient and club fusions hasn’t dulled for you as yet, Externalism is a new project delivered by the nascent False Aralia label that’s well plugged into boogie-down productions rendered in the abstract. Both slick and slippery, Externalism’s tracks move with the rhythmic shuffle of Quincy Jones’ 80s productions, but with most of the faders down or muffled. Loveshadow’s Anya Prisk’s vocals complete the R&B reference, gliding over deep bass pulses and synths that ripple like sun rays against water.

My Inner Rest – Briana Marela: “Value of what defines you / what is worthwhile / or confines you,” sings Briana Marela on Value, from the California-based Peruvian-American composer’s new work. My Inner Rest is a stately meditation on the essence of being. These twelve tracks unfold like a two-part act, where dotting, busy electronics whirl and trail around Marela’s keening, stretching, manipulated voice in a gorgeous turbulence, dissolving into vaporous synth patterns with the hymnal air of a church organ. The effect is something like the glassy cool edges of Laurie Anderson channelled through the softer melancholic ends of The Beach Boys’ late 70s output - expressing the resilience of the human spirit through the continuously abstracting elements of our times.

Second - Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty, Hahn Rowe: We may be getting the benefit of a mutual admiration society of three here, or a very specific Venn diagram: one that could only be drawn by certain people from bygone eras but still very much active. This album cohesively draws upon fertile ground not continually sowed inr some time - that is, the period of 80s music experimentalism where the melting pot was bigger, bubbling with challenging but thrilling cross-pollinations. Violinist, guitarist and engineer Hahn Rowe was at the coalface in that era, having worked with Glenn Branca, John Zorn and Yoko Ono, as well as being a member of revered avant-rock outfit Hugo Largo. Vitiello and Canty were likely in that orbit as listeners before entering their own creative trajectories - Canty springloading punk into new realms with Fugazi, Vitiello finding reservoirs of feeling in rich microtonal spaces. Their initial outing, First (for Longform Editions), was a flex from these three heads feeling each other out - a righteous blast of post-punk and post-rock collaging from a post-70s fusion mindset. Second approaches full-blown synthesis, building towards freewheeling ecstasy of group sound. It's controlled chaos founded on rock rattle, dub twinkle and throb, with thick, twisted rhythms that give wildcard improv its feral streak. Yet there's a measure of patience coursing through Second that underscores its true craft - plain damn elegant.

Island Slang - Lagoss & Abagwagwa: If heavy percussive drive is not your kind of ride, stop reading now – this is not a polyrhythmic spree for all. This live set, pairing Tenerife sub-tropical shapeshifters Lagoss and Kampala East African futurists Abagwagwa (aka Nihiloxica), arrives at a sound both uncanny and unplaced, except within the imagination. Charged on primal pummelling and cranking electronics that respond in kind with near-industrial-weight techno bombast - and also freewheeling on collective cosmic jazz vibes and psychedelic wooze - it may be Jon Hassell’s fourth world theory at peak density. At its pace, it doesn’t negate light and shade so much as blast through it, like a lightbulb that flickers before it cracks, releasing its last burst of glow into the dark.

Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels (Versions) - Civilistjävel! x Mayssa Jallad: Swedish producer Civilistjävel!, aka Tomas Bodén, places a new lens on Lebanese singer Mayssa Jallad's fever-dream retelling of The Battle of the Hotels – where military strategy and prosperity foundered with the Lebanese Civil War of the 1970s. He casts the source material with stark effect and spectral presence, reducing the original's elements but not the gravity, leaving Jallad's voice unanchored in a tension of tonal nubs and beats that tick like a clock in a horror film - taut and suspenseful. In its filmy residue of echoes, Bodén's use of techno is more insidious than relentless, and in dub he finds dimensions of consciousness. With these versions, he has tapped into how history lingers and prowls in our present.

Spilla – Ensemble Nist-Nah: While borne of his fascination with Javanese gamelan, Will Guthrie’s Ensemble Nist-Nah has come to be defined not by tradition, but by the possibilities of percussion and a fluidity of purpose. Spilla’s heady rush is both humbling and a feat. Guthrie isn’t seeking to elevate gamelan music outside Indonesia or South East Asia - he simply wants to play it with a cast of others and see where it leads. The bio suggests a dexterous balance of gamelan’s hypnotic measure with hip hop cadence and free jazz adventure, which could read as offputting on paper. Nothing here is touched by the grotesquerie of virtuosity - important to note, as this could easily have turned into a transatlantic A&R confection between Rounder, Real World, and Luaka Bop. Thankfully, this nine-piece delivers a visceral evocation of unbounded exploration that never needs a reference check. That said, I love the common ground Guthrie finds in versioning the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Uncle (from the live album Urban Bushmen) - a real-time collective collage that creates a moment as vital and unknowable as the air in which it was made.

Thanks for reading.

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