The new LP from psych-kraut twosome Moon Duo was released on Sacred Bones Records this week. It’s a fantastic addition to the Brooklyn label’s roster and another brilliant example of the kind of minimally repetitive, yet dynamically expansive sound that’s flicking a lot of our switches at the moment. Check out the title track here.
This weekend the Bussey Buildings play host to a stellar lineup of bands, corralled together by the ever-reliable Upset the Rhythm for the inaugural Spaghetti Tree weekender. Combining acts from their own stable with some transatlantic treats, UTR have made it pretty hard to find a better reason to spend the weekend in Peckham, or anywhere else in London for that matter.
The biggest draw of Friday night’s entertainment, and possibly the weekend’s, has to be bespectacled electronic experimentalist and new partner in crime of Francis Ford Coppola, Dan Deacon. The man has a preternatural ability to make a crowd do whatever he deigns; whether it’s inter-audience member grind-offs, synchronized, interpretative dancing or just whipping everyone up into a swirling euphoric mass, there’s few people who command the floor better.
Dan Deacon – Woof Woof
Also playing on the Friday are Bristolians Munch Munch, whose album, Double Visions, came out on UTR’s own label not so long ago. Having missed their last two support slots with Marnie Stern, it will be an absolute pleasure to finally witness these guys in the flesh.
Munch Munch – Wolfman’s Wife
Saturday’s got a couple of big hitters, too. Top of the bill are raucous West Coast two-piece No Age whose take on frantic skate punk should loosen a few collars, limbs and teeth. Or, depending on age, send you, terrified, to the bar.
No Age – Every Artist Needs A Tragedy
Whilst most of the Saturday bands have a pretty rough, punky feel to them, there should be a few moments of quiet, introspective beauty, from the previously featured Ignatz and the consistently wonderful Ducktails.
Ducktails – Deck Observatory
Ducktails – Killin The Vibe feat. Panda Bear
And last up is this fantastic bit of subaqueous weirdo trance from London’s own Peepholes. Should be wonderful.
Peepholes – Carnivore
Bit of a surprise this one. For two reasons, I suppose. Firstly, that it’s a new single from the Odd Future collective yet doesn’t feature their now trademark dark beats and abrasive lyrics. Secondly, that it’s the first time we’ve featured a song so heavily treated by autotune. Despite these unusualities though, it’s a beautiful little track. Delicate, responsive, funky and smooth. And all from an 18-year-old producer. Pesky kids.
A short while ago we published a couple of videos by the wonderful Belgian video artist Nicolas Provost. In response to this, a friend replied with a few links to videos by an Austrian filmmaker, Martin Arnold, who he said reminded him very much of Provost’s work (or vice versa). We watched, thoroughly enjoyed and so thought we’d post here for you to help while away a few minutes, waiting for the clock to tick down until weekend time.
Arnold takes strips of archive film and manipulates them, flipping back and forth over particular shots, repeating instances and extending time duration. By exposing shots to greater scrutiny this process reveals previously unseen narratives – individual fears, inter-personal tensions, subconscious yearnings – and involves the viewer further within the text. It also forces the viewer to investigate and deconstruct the cinematic apparatus, unearthing the inherently surreal, disturbing nature of the art form.
Granted, though, it is quite long. If you’re pushed for time I’d recommend skipping to 3.34 and watching through until 6.47. It’s like David Lynch has cast Judy Garland. Fantastic.
Image is by Eadweard Muybridge.
There’s a lot of great stuff spilling out of the 100% Silk cup at the moment. We covered one of their early releases, the debut track from disco-shimmerist Ital, in our Warmth 3 post back in January and Estonian/Londoner Maria Minerva is grabbing a lot of blog inches at the moment too. But our attention has been more recently captured by the brilliantly uncategorisable Cuticle.
Ranging from epic, retro-futuristic moodscapes to back-room, slo-mo love scenes, its tech thuds, glittering electronics and fibrous strands of stop-motion distortion create a wonderfully eclectic, genre-bashing sound. The kind of thing you’d expect really, coming from the incredible combined talent of Jeff Witscher (Rene Hell), Daren Ho (Driphouse) and Brendan O’Keefe (Nimby).
You can catch a glimpse of their greatness below, but for the full experience we’d highly recommend you purchase the EP.
Image is by Guy Bourdin.
Two new tracks for you from Spectrum Spools, an offshoot of the consistently brilliant Editions Mego label. The project is being curated by John Elliott, of Emeralds fame, and promises to bring you the finest in forward-thinking modern music. The tracks that popped up on his Soundcloud yesterday both attest strongly to this credo.
We featured Forma’s hypnotic Forma237B on one of our Best Of 2010 compilations and now it seems it’s going to be released as part of the Brooklyn trio’s first full LP. If this track’s anything to go by, the album could be one of the highlights of the year.
The second track comes from Mist, a side project of Elliott’s that also features Radio People’s Sam Goldberg. As you might expect from an Emerald, the track maintains a futuristic aesthetic, dealing in familiarly coruscating sequencers and warm synth washes. It’s the first track from the duo’s album, House, which arrives with us in May. It’s certainly part of a roster that we’ll have our eyes on in the coming months.
The photo is by Stephan Tillmans, from a series of photographs taken of tube televisions the moment they are switched off.
Like they say, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Or your grandmother to suck eggs. But apparently you can teach an old band new tricks. Or at least they can learn them. Or decide that they want to learn a different trick. Or suck instead of chew. Or something.
Cut to the chase. Belong have been fairly quiet since their emotionally draining 2006 album of vehemently extreme yet subtly intricate noise, October Language. Now they’ve returned on a totally different tack (or with a totally different trick, if we’re going to maintain the metaphor), producing a set of driving, lyrical Krautrock tracks overlaid with drifting drones of white noise. Think Deerhunter or Neu! Or My Bloody Valentine. Think different than before. Think good nonetheless. And think listen here.
(And just to show you how different their new sound is, check out this track off their previous LP.)
I’m pretty sure if the term wombcore wasn’t quite so graphic it’d be an accepted genre name. How else to describe music that transports you to that warm, fuzzy place where every note is lilting and soporific and songs drift lazily into each other? Umbilicalia? Amnio-gaze? Probably best to leave the categorizing to those who need it, but suffice to say that Japanese solo artist, Ex Confusion, bears this brand of uterine nomenclature better than most…
Egg sculpture is by Peter Randall-Page.
Time Wharp’s been close to our hearts here at Add Void ever since last year’s fantastically imaginative Helvetica EP. The appreciation was further compounded earlier this year thanks to an exclusive mix with which he graced our humble pages. So of course it’s no surprise that we’re excited about his newest offering and first LP, later.
But forget our biassed ramblings. Listen to it for yourselves. Here. In its entirety.
Buds on trees, daffodils in bloom, Easter eggs on the BOGOF shelf in Tesco – plenty of seasonal signs that spring is in the air. Which means (however tenuously) that it’s time for another influx of Warmth, courtesy of the finest dance music makers currently gracing our ears. Here goes…
First up is what I’d consider to be my favourite dance track of the year so far, from man-of-the-moment Blawan’s incredible new EP on R&S, Bohla. Snapping, crackling and popping all over the place with some incredibly funky syncopated bleeps, bips, hits and kicks, it’s an absolute peach.
Blawan – Lavender
Next in line is the highly anticipated but highly surprising new single from Joy O, previously known as Joy Orbison (WHY OH WHY DID YOU CHANGE YOUR NAME? IT WAS BRILLIANT!). Gone are any notions of post-dubstep trappings. Here to stay, it appears, is his own minimal take on early 90s house, stripped and funkified and made very, very good.
Joy O – Wade In
After all this exuberance I think it’s only right to balance it out with something a bit darker and nastier. Cue Bethany Skirt’s terrifying end-of-the-night industrial techno banger from her recent EP, In The Meadow Under The Stars.
Skirt – Ikaros
Up next is the new track from breakbeat revisionist Midland. A sound I (and I imagine many people) had thought to be long dead, this take on the genre seems absolutely brimming with new life and fresh ideas. Great stuff.
Midland – Bring Joy
And finally is a bit of fantastic throwback glee from the ubiquitously brilliant Ostgut Ton label, courtesy of Steffi.
Steffi – Yours (feat. Virginia)
Image is by Aimei Ozaki, found on the fantastic but does it float.
There’s something comforting about tripping through Type recordings’ website. Nestled innocuously in the back catalogue of releases are luminous offerings from Grouper, Deaf Center, Richard Skelton, Machinefabriek, Aaron Martin and Yellow Swans as well as a slew of freely downloadable mixtapes and podcasts. Better still, all their releases are available to stream for free on their Soundcloud. Go there, browse, listen, spend some money.
Newly added to the catalogue today is The Terminal Symphony by Rene Hell, who was responsible for last year’s gorgeous Porcelain Opera. Check below for a few sample tracks and click here to stream the album in full.
E.S. Des Grauens in Fifths
Juliard op.66
Adagio for String Portrait
Addendum:
Check out the hypnotic, seizure-inducing video that accompanies E.S Des Grauens in Fifths. Brilliant.
Image is by Ed Ruscha
I recently stumbled across this guy due to a tip-off from Ducktails. Figured that anything he publicised a personal thumbs up for must be pretty good. And so it was. A 25 minute-long, rollocking great megalith of sound, sitting somewhere between the mad beat-freneticism of White Rainbow, the slurring electronic noise-mess of Lucky Dragons’ recent solo show at Café Oto and the simple basslines and tribalist beats of Chicago House. It’s a pretty infectious concoction and one that I’d be more than happy to imbibe for hours at a time.
So, without further ado, please welcome Steven Warwick, aka Heatsick, aka one half of Birds of Delay, here playing alongside Kouhei Matsunaga (I know, I’m confused too – let’s just call him Heatsick), to the stand.
Upset the Rhythm‘s upcoming Spaghetti Tree weekender at the Bussey Building in Peckham has been a cause for excitement recently, featuring as it does a slew of really excellent acts. We’ll be putting together a more comprehensive preview in the coming weeks, but for now here’s a short showcase of a recent discovery that we’re really looking forward to seeing there: Ignatz.
This solo project of Belgian artist Bram Devens centres on a trad blues scale treated to layers of loops, effects and occasional drum machines to give it a creepy, otherworldly sound, somewhere between Ry Cooder, Mississippi John Hurt, Suicide and Yellow Swans. It’s psychedelic in an introverted way, singalong in a not-quite-there fashion and old-timey in a totally anachronistic manner. Riven with contradictions, but brilliant for it.
Here’s a short selection we’ve put together to give a feel for his breadth and beauty of output. Hope you enjoy.
Image is by the wonderfully ethereal landscape photographer Misha de Ridder.
ATP have recently put together a youtube playlist of videos by all the bands that are playing at the Animal Collective curated festival at Minehead this May. It’s a pretty great line-up and there are a lot of really nice videos on there, not to mention this one, by Finnish electronic experimenter, Vladislav Delay:
This reminded me of a series of films currently on exhibit at the the fantastic online film gallery, Animate Projects, entitled Lapse. As well as being a set of mysterious and mesmerising films, the project comes at a symbolic moment in time, as the cleaver of Conservative cuts has recently fallen onto Animate Projects’ digital neck, leaving them to soon lapse into obscurity. And so it seems, unlike the manipulated reality of Vladislav’s reforming ice cubes, we are all doomed to entropy…
Image is by our old fave Walker Evans.
Ah, remember those heady adolescent days when you wiled away your time playing footy, trying to talk to girls and churning out bone-jarring dubstep bangers? You’d get home from school, have a peanut butter sandwich, chat with your pals for a bit on MSN messenger and then dust off Ableton Live to blurt out caustic slabs of R&B tinged two-step before Byker Grove started. Yeah. Those days were great.
Weirdly, it turns out kids are still doing that. Three tracks for you here from Will Neibergall aka Glass Popcorn. Who is 14. Sure.
Image is by the brilliant Mark Warren Jacques
As we languish on through one of the most depressing parts of the year it can often seem that there’s very little in the outside world to make us feel good. The onset of spring (despite how fucking long it’s taking in actually turning up) is probably one of them. Another has to be the early bumper crop of stunning new music that’s recently sprung into bloom (sorry, enough with the harvest metaphors). We’ve been totally blown away by the number of fantastic tracks released this month, to the extent that the mix has required various omissions to maintain linearity of style and an acceptable duration (pretty sure we could have done a sprawling two hour-long one if we’d wanted). So if there’s a personal favourite that we’ve neglected to include, please don’t consider it a dismissal, simply an avowal of how great things have been and how many things there are to be happy about. Yay!!!
Image is called Touched By The Hand of God and is by David Benjamin Sherry.
“I can hear everything. It’s everything time.”
As announcements to the world after a 3 year hiatus go, this one’s pretty balls-out-the-bath. But immerse yourself in the all-encompassing everythingness of this 11 minute rhapsody and you’ll realise there’s not a scratch of hyperbole in it; it’s not dressed up, it’s not embellished and it’s not over-stated. It’s everything time.
Yesterday Philadelphia-based strumster Kurt Vile announced the release of his fourth LP, Smoke Ring For My Halo, on March 8th via Matador Records. If you’re too impatient to wait until then though it’s available to stream in full now over on the wonderful NPR.
Whilst the new record has lost a lot of the dreamy reverb and ethereal fuzz that made his breakthrough release, Childish Prodigy, stand out so prominently from the rest of the ‘singer-songwriter’ crowd, the new album only serves as proof of his underlying songwriting talent. Simply crafted but achingly heartfelt, his tender impressions of bluesy melancholy conjure slo-mo montages of lazy dustbowl towns and grizzled frontier-bound locals steeped in nostalgia. Think an eternal Wim Wenders roadtrip to nowhere. Kurt, you can soundtrack me any time.
Image is Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth.
Nice bit of ambient drone for you here. Really quite simple in its scope but really quite beautiful in its effect. Basically a number of treatments/remixes/re-workings (call them what you will) of French impressionist piano pieces, manipulated, distorted and pulled apart into lengthy noise tracks. It creates some wonderfully celestial moments, perfect for getting you through the midweek lull.
Image is by Swedish photographer Thobias Fäldt, who’s absolutely amazing. Check out more of his stuff here.
