The Answer Is In The Beat

nephew lagoon: isPlorica (self-released, 2019)

November 24, 2019 at 5:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The newest album from the elusive nephew lagoon is another dream montage of ghostly textures, half-formed rhythms, and suggestions rather than concrete ideas. Like the artist’s previous releases, this one flows between longer and shorter pieces, but time doesn’t really matter here — all of these tracks feel like trap doors to other chambers in your mind, and none of this feels like a direct path from point A to point B. I could pick apart the characteristics of some of the individual tracks, but that really seems beside the point here. I encourage you to just take the entire trip yourself and see what you can find. Fans of Orange Milk’s hazier releases will be deep into this.

Eki Shola: Drift (self-released, 2019)

November 24, 2019 at 4:41 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Eki Shola follows her excellent album Possible from earlier this year with Drift, another volume of songs created for the purpose of healing, comfort, and motivation. Much of it falls somewhere in the ballpark of trip-hop and future soul, with heavy, soothing bass, dubby effects, and highly encouraging lyrics, particularly on songs like “Take It Easy” and “Ancient Cry”. “Recoverie” is the only track to acknowledge loss and feelings of grief and sorrow, but it’s all about rebuilding and never giving up hope. Shola’s cello playing elevates the opening tune “Grounding”, and adds flavor to other tracks like “No Worry” and the dubstep-like “Compass”. “True Deja Vu” is a definite highlight, with jazzy keyboard melodies adventurously playing with a backwards, non-recursive beat. “Movements” is both delicate and playful, with detailed beats which dance around carefully applied keyboard notes and bass textures. Super creative music to relax and decompress to.

K-6000: Bloodsport LP (100 Limousines, 2019)

November 23, 2019 at 6:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The second release on Hamtramck label 100 Limousines is an LP of “lore-core” (according to Discogs) from K-6000. Each side flows continuously, and the tracks sound somewhere in between Andy Stott’s knackered house and the cinematic creepiness of Snakepiss. Samples loop and flutter by, and there’s one overt hip-hop flashback near the beginning of the record, but nothing here really holds on for long. It’s just a mind-blurring drift set mostly to a midtempo thump, flashing past some dark thoughts but never dwelling on them. The second side gets a bit harder, especially with the hammering drums of “Veiled Threats”, although it veers closer to synth-funk after that. The record is filled with unexplained phenomena and it’s over before you know it, but it sounds utterly fantastic. The Bandcamp page doesn’t include audio, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

LAZ: Let’s Rock 7″ (Animal Rights Records, 2019)

November 21, 2019 at 9:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The fourth release on Detroit’s Animal Rights Records is a low-key party on wax from rapper LAZ and producer Moppy, limited to 200 copies with hand-markered white labels. “Let’s Rock” is no-nonsense boogie funk with guest chorus vocals by Laila Reich and a few partygoers getting down in the background. Nothing too sophisticated here, just joy and good spirits. The B-side, “What!!!”, is sort of a spacey G-funk joint, with more aggressive rapping but still a heavy party vibe, and plenty of warped, bouncy effects. Without a date listed on the sleeve, you could easily uncover this at a record shop somewhere and assume it was an obscure private press from the early ’90s, instead of nearly three decades later, and it sounds just as fresh either way.

v/a: Remove Records Record Collection #3 tape (Remove Records, 2019)

November 21, 2019 at 8:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

In less than two years, Detroit’s Remove Records have already put out a few dozen releases, all cassettes and/or Bandcamp downloads. This is honestly the first release I’ve heard from the label, and the 15 bands on it cover a lot of ground, but they all seem to share a sense of spontaneous and restless creative spirit. Sugar Tradition open the tape with a track which somewhat hilariously sounds equally like prime Led Zeppelin and a just-formed garage band. Sovet Girls deliver some fine dream pop, and Psychic Void bring the acid-drenched psych-punk (extra credit for having the shortest song on the tape). Sisters of Your Sunshien Vapor bring some entrancing electro-psych which thumps along at a bit of a faster pace than the average Spacemen 3-type act, and also ends abruptly at 4 minutes. Shireen M.’s “Running Out of Disk Space” is a brilliant oddity filled with scrambled vocals and a squished rhythm track, sort of like a nuttier Pod Blotz. Following a wistful indie folk tune by Craig Garwood, Just Guys Being Dudes play an anxious, messy song which sounds like it could’ve been recorded in a basement room of a boat rocking back and forth on choppy seas — there’s just something unhinged and seasick about it. Parallel People’s “Hot or Cold” sounds like Beat Happening going for a ’50s rock’n’roll waltz. On the second side, Zilched play a supremely muddy, dazed-out cover of VU’s “Sunday Morning”, the kind that could sound like a mess from a distance, but when you listen closely, you realize that they know exactly what they’re doing. After the synth-enhanced, partially narrated indie pop of Jonathan Franco’s “Wine Lips” comes the glitchy, lonesome dream pop of The Bothness. Tooth play another blistering acid punk song which slashes by in a minute and a half. The Waterheads add some warped vocal effects to their bleary fuzz-pop, and Anomaly’s “Honeymoon” bizarrely sounds like a punk group being hired as the house band for a wedding. The tape ends with “Whitesnake”, a pretty awesome lo-fi techno track from VVOLFGANG, which has a very analog, live band feel, and doesn’t sound out of place on a tape of mostly rock groups. Lots of good stuff worth checking out on here. Name-your-price DL at Bandcamp.

Von Hayes: Moderate Rock (self-released, 2019)

November 16, 2019 at 6:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The newest album from lo-fi group Von Hayes seems a little more straightforward than some of their others, with most of the songs being around 3 minutes long. There aren’t any brief, abstract fragments here, and the songs aren’t always as immediate as they’ve been in the past. That said, even if this album may be “moderate”, it still pays off in the end, as a lot of the songs do stick in your head after a while, particularly “Ghostrunners” (one of the more Tobin Sprout-esque songs here) and “Oscar’s Grind (Beth Goes for Broke)”. There’s also plenty of moments of inspired weirdness, such as the cranky trumpets and exuberant screaming during the brief opener “Urinal Cookies”, or the way “Man of Few Verbs” whittles its meaty groove down to an angular, skeletal instrumental. Not to mention the scattered piano in the background of “Pissanthemum” which almost sounds like a ringtone at one point. This could be the more streamlined, effective model of Von Hayes, or maybe it isn’t — the lyrics can still be cryptically poetic, and the guitars are often a splatter of untamed feedback. Either way, excellent stuff as always.