The Answer Is In The Beat

Todd Osborn: SuperDisc 12″ EP (Portage Garage Sounds, 2018)

December 2, 2018 at 5:22 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Shigeto’s label’s newest release comes from former Crush Collision host/current Technical Equipment Supply owner Todd Osborn. First surfacing as a white label with no information, the full release is out in stores now. The first side of the record contains two electro cuts. “Not Too Real” has heavy beats, some guitar-ish melodies in the background, and a general happy-yet-subdued feel. “Z-Lock” is weirder and more Drexciyan, but also kind of spare and not super melodic. The B-side is taken up by “Ambget”, which has a slow beat and a very minimal amount of looped samples, sounding a bit closer to Gas than anything from Detroit. It was actually recorded in 1997 but it makes a lot more sense coming out now than two decades ago. Available now from Bandcamp.

c.Kostra: Parallel Murderverse + Parallel Partyverse (Pytch Records, 2018)

November 29, 2018 at 6:46 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

c.Kostra (Ryan Olcott) is behind the dreamy, tape-smudged sound of Devata Daun‘s magnificent music. His solo material is just as woozy and trippy, but he masks his singing with vocoders and glitches, and there’s perhaps a bit more touch of Prince to the home-baked chillwave funk of his 2016 debut, Now I Feel It. He’s released two EPs this fall, both of which are similar in tone but vastly different in mood. Parallel Murderverse (which came out on Halloween) is the devil over his shoulder, coaxing out his darkest impulses. It’s still danceable, but it’s creepy and sinister, sort of in between twitchy electro-funk and Tobacco. The few comprehensible lyrics are paranoid and haunted, but still a bit tongue-in-cheek (just check the gleefully vicious “Psychosis On the Playground”). Throughout, ultra-compressed shoegaze guitars blare out from the carefully crafted rhythms. The EP’s final song, “Barely See Me At All”, nails an early-’80s goth/minimal wave sound, but with the producer’s ghostly vocoders intact.
Parallel Partyverse is perhaps the angel to Murderverse‘s devil, but more accurately, it’s a surrealist party record with a heavy dose of romanticism. “Holiday Music Stream” loops found samples into a fantastically blown-out, half-melted disco jam. “It’s the Way I Feel” sounds even more scrambled, yet the sentiment is strong enough that it can’t totally be obscured. A brief snippet of a “bad take” of “Holiday Music Stream” provides a tiny behind-the-scenes glimpse of the process behind his tape-warped sound. It all ends with the squishy slow jam “Candlelight”.

Devata Daun: Pye Luis (Pytch Records, 2018)

November 28, 2018 at 10:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Devata Daun’s first album, L o o k, was one of my favorite out-of-nowhere surprises of 2016, and one of the best lo-fi pop releases in recent memory. I wrote up a review of it for Decoder, but that site seems to be down indefinitely, so I can’t link to it, but the album is a must-hear (and a name-your-price DL on Bandcamp). Pye Luis is the follow-up EP, and it retains the distinctive warbling-tape sound, but the vocals are clearer, and there’s more slow jams. Songs like “Mademosielle” have warped textures and haunting melodies, but an undeniable R&B/pop core. “Weakening” is just magical, and the lyrics capture that restless crush feeling. The last two songs even include saxophone, for that extra romantic touch. Also available from Bandcamp.

Anna Burch/Fred Thomas: split 7″ (Polyvinyl, 2018)

November 24, 2018 at 7:24 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Anna and Fred both released fantastic albums this year, and they recently toured and put out this tour-only single. Anna’s side is a steady, lovely tune with lots of snowy echo over the vocals, and a general easygoing tone but typically cutting lyrics (“said a little Irish prayer, when all I wanted was for you to care”). Fred’s side is in the vein of his recent albums, pairing hooky indie rock with wordy narratives about touring, avoiding cops, and more importantly, the thoughts, feelings, and realizations surrounding all of these, eventually arriving at the point that “you could be happy”.

Bonnie Baxter: Ask Me How Satan Started tape (Hausu Mountain, 2018)

November 24, 2018 at 7:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Kill Alters’ Bonnie Baxter goes solo with this astounding tape of overloaded rhythms and fractured vocals. This one builds gigantic boulders of thunderous, speaker-ripping beats, all polyrhythmic and constantly building and mutating, amalgamating juke, industrial, techno, and punk. The distortion on this album is just absolutely delicious. “Vivid” is the hair-raising centerpiece, and a glorious nightmare that I never want to end. At a couple points throughout the album, excerpts of a childhood conversation where Baxter asks her mom to, yes, “ask me how Satan started” pop up, balancing innocence with evil. The first three tracks on the second side stand alone as their own majestic hell-suite, and the tape ends with “Satan’s Angels”, a frightening yet somehow soothing collage of an evangelism broadcast, ethereal cooing, and hazy industrial droning. A very fresh, original take on rhythmic noise, and a flat-out exciting release.