#eureka dj you figured it out

[redwoodforestwiki]

matbe this night would be better if they werent playing a 15 minute remix of another one bites the dust

[maxheimer-feral]

Where/How do you get Eureka items?

i think ive answered this in another post? but i don’t mind responding again.

eureka items are an item that is a random drop from another item you can craft in reputable goods, fera fashions and twigla’s workshop. right now the only ones that exist are:

(key: -available item-eureka item)

——————— reputable goods———————

-alchemist vials-rare alchemist bottle belt

-grunge tail chain-rare barbed tail chain

-travel anvil-rare blacksmith bag

-pointed fae collar-rare posh seraph collar

-jet amulet-rare woodland collar

-kobold sword-wooden sword

-western lasso-cactus buddy

———————fera fashions———————

-tail eye charm-rare sinister bone string(out of stores!)

-shoulder bag-rare back pouches(out of stores!)

-tail petals-rare tulip tail(out of stores!)

-sharp bone necklace-rare dreadtie(out of stores!)

-ribbon cuffs-rare bangles(out of stores!)

-lace anklet-rare dapper lace(out of stores!)

-forest tail bells-rare woodland tail bells(out of stores!)

-apple brooch-rare poison apple brooch(out of stores!)

-tail furhawk-rare elegant furhawk(out of stores!)

-vineyard earrings-rare spine earrings(out of stores!)

-star clip bracelet-rare ruin stone cuffs(out of stores!)

-alchemist staff-rare fae lantern staff(out of stores!)

-cozy bomber hat-rare kitty bomber hat(out of stores!)

-goldenwood armor-rare royal piked armor(out of stores!)

-lantern lattice cuffs-rare elegant lattice leggings(out of stores!)

-flower headband-rare marsh flower headband(out of stores!)

-alchemist tome-rare dark arts tome(out of stores!)

-stately cuffs-rare thorn cuffs(out of stores!)

-alchemist heavy chain-rare royal neck plate(out of stores!)

-buttercuffs-rare fera fly cuffs(out of stores!)

-tail flipper-rare feathered tail flipper

-commoner shoulder pads-rare regal shoulder pads

-flower bands-rare candle flower bands

-mustache-rare mustache with beard(out of stores!)

-fish kite-rare epic fish kite(out of stores!)

-school bag-rare wood nymph bag(out of stores!)

-parasol-rare wagasa parasol(out of stores!)

-blizzard hat-rare epic blizzard hat(out of stores!)

-woodland antlers-rare woodland nymph antlers(out of stores!)

-tail blades-rare epic tail blades(out of stores!)

-floating crown-rare elegant floating crown

-flame rune tail-rare regal flame rune tail

-bell collar-rare ribbon bell collar

-halo-rare winged halo(out of stores!)

-spring hood-rare gothic hood(out of stores!)

-autumn brooch-rare skull brooch(out of stores!)

-hunter wraps-rare garden snake wraps(out of stores!)

-eggshell hat-rare decorative eggshell hat(out of stores!)

-tail pillow-rare royal worm(out of stores!)

-rounded collar-rare lace rounded collar(out of stores!)

-knife necklace-rare knife brooch(out of stores!)

-spacer adornment-dark space cheek guards(out of stores!)

-spacer collar-dark space collar(out of stores!)

-spacer gauntlets-dark space gauntlets(out of stores!)

-spacer league mohawk-dark space mohawk(out of stores!)

-spacer suit-dark space spaulders(out of stores!)

-spacer tail guard-dark space tail guard(out of stores!)

-voyager armor-dark voyager armor

-voyager helm-dark voyager helm

-voyagers mustache-dark voyager mustache

-voyager shield-dark voyager shield

-voyager shin guards-dark voyager shin greaves

-team delilah cap-antlered team delilah cap

-team aradia cap-horned team aradia cap

-winged cuff-durable winged cuff

-beetle helm-majestic beetle helm(out of stores!)

-beetle pauldrons-majestic beetle pauldrons(out of stores!)

-beetle skirt-majestic beetle skirt(out of stores!)

-planetary crown-attis crown

-authoritative cap-fancy authoritative cap(out of stores!)

-striped socks-floating striped socks

-frosted leaf crown-frosted leaf skull crown(out of stores!)

-gothic frilled hat-gothic bone hat

-gothic haunch bows-gothic bone haunch

-gothic lace choker-gothic bone lace choker

-gothic night bands-gothic bone night bands

-gothic shoulder frills-gothic bone shoulder frills

-gothic tail frill-gothic bone tail frill

-winter collar-plaid winter collar(out of stores!)

-winter cuffs-plaid winter cuffs(out of stores!)

-daunting adornment-woodland adornment

-daunting armor-woodland branch pauldrons

-daunting claws-woodland cuffs

-daunting amulet-woodland lavalliere

-daunting toptail-woodland tree hat

-striped neck collar-tuxedo collar

-metal shoulder cuffs-floating striped shoulder cuffs

-rogue cuff crossbow-bard anklets(out of stores!)

-rogue collar-bard purse(out of stores!)

-matryoshka hat-DJ earmuffs

-icy climbing pick-drill tail(out of stores!)

-frigid rose-kitchen shield(out of stores!)

-classy earrings-fairy k earrings

-classy glasses-fairy k glasses

-classy brooch-fairy k brooch

-classy tail flower-fairy k tail flower

-twigla back buddy-exclusive twigla back buddy(enigma items)

-punk face piercings-punk ear piercings

-explorer dish-wooden shield

———————twigla’s workshop———————

-midnight moon chair-rare midnight moon chair

-midnight moon lounge-rare midnight moon lounge

-evening chair-rare evening chair(out of stores!)

-evening lounge-rare evening lounge(out of stores!)

-apparition armoire-rare apparition armoire

-leaping kitsune statue-rare leaping kitsune statue

-treasure trunk-rare treasure trunk(out of stores!)

-indominable throne-rare indominable throne(out of stores!)

-twiggle-os breakfast cereal-rare twiggle-os cereal with prize(enigma items)

-epic ocean lamp-rare axoly ocean lamp

-mandrake-rare fruitful mandrake(out of stores!)

-old dead tree-rare old dead tree(out of stores!)

-ocean lamp-rare uniseahorse lamp

-sushi-rare sushi & musubi(out of stores!)

-mystic lamp-rare mystic twiggle lamp(out of stores!)

-feral pho-rare jumbo shrimp feral pho(out of stores!)

-mother-in-law’s tongue-rare mother-in-law’s tongue of wrath(out of stores!)

-carnivorous larry-rare fire breathing carnivorous larry(out of stores!)

-shimmer blade vanity-shattered shimmer blade vanity(out of stores!)

-pinata-senri pinata(out of stores!)

-academic bookcase-graduate academic bookcase(out of stores!)

-gnarled archway-twintree gnarled archway(out of stores!)

-lanternberry lantern-refined lanternberry lantern(out of stores!)

-art deco ottoman-embellished deco ottoman(out of stores!)

-cottage trunk-open cottage trunk(out of stores!)

-log shelves-tiered log shelves(out of stores!)

-snazzy shelves-four crows branch

-snazzy window-lunar phases rug

-slushy market stall-city fera closed sign(out of stores!)

-moonsea painting-city fera game posters(out of stores!)

-moonsea chest-alchemy cauldron(out of stores!)

-kino action figure-epic kino figure

-kotatsu table-spring tsukue

-slushy bridge-spring fable bridge(out of stores!)

-slushy log bench-spring market stall

-slushy frost fire spit-spring roast fire spit(out of stores!)

-slushy tent-spring tent(out of stores!)

-appleseed tree-blender with fruits(enigma items)

-dreambow flag-custom flag(out of stores!)

-deep sea aquarium-dark light aquarium(enigma items)

-figpear tree-garden café sign(enigma items)

-classic shelves-classic baking essentials

-classic sink-classic counter

-classic washer-classic dishwasher

-classic shower-classic tub

-beach towels-beach lounger

-shovel and bucket-sandcastle(enigma items)

-beach ball-volleyball net(enigma items)

it’s not a very common occurrence, but i got lucky with a few of mine, getting them within 1-3 attempts, but others not so much(it took me 37 tries with the leaping kitsune statue).

so- yeah. they’re fun- you can try yourself, it’s pretty cool, and a very nice feeling when you get them.

[vapormaison]

Best of 2019 Vaporwave Release 2/4: Hypnagogia by Dan Mason

When I go to vaporwave and future funk shows throughout Asia, I run into many truly serious vinyl collectors and hardcore audiophiles who I respect immensely. They have been, in many respects, my introduction to and informal educators in the hi-fi world. This is not to throw shade at my Western vapor-vinyl friends, but I’ve always felt that there is a natural predisposition — perhaps imbued by traditions of archival curation and letters spanning five millennia — for Asian collectors to have the most discerning taste, and when it comes to audiophilia, the most exacting specifications.

I don’t know any fellas or fems in Hong Kong, Yokohoma, or Seoul with a substantial vinyl collection who rock a set of expensive, vintage B&Os handed down by their father, but are spinning the records on a Crossley suitcase turntable or an ATP-LX60. There’s a sincere reverence for the physical media there would naturally disincline a hobbyist from actively damaging their own material — a form of wax homicide that is all too common with my pals in Brooklyn. I’m able to put in context, however, whenever one of my countrymen mentions the cost of seeing a doctor, of course. Just staying alive is an expensive enough proposition — which explains why hi-fi enjoyment tends to skew boomer in America. Everyone else has a sword of Damocles hanging above their head.

That all said, when a particular artist is held in reverence by those Asia-oriented pals of mine, I take note and listen. Recently, when I stopped off in my usual haunts in Kanagawa early on this year, there was a name that was on all of their lips: Dan Mason. More specifically, his recent work, Hypnagogia. Admittedly, it was a release that had evaded me at first, corresponding with the peak of the IELTS testing season. And unfortunately, while I was jet-setting from university advisement here to consultancy there, the vinyl drop completely fell out of my grasp.

I spent a few weeks on discogs, but to no avail. Not even the scalpers were selling them anymore. It was this that first clued me into the idea that I might have been absent for something legendary. So shortly before I left Japan, I was able to meet a friend of a friend who was in possession of the record. It required a train ride all the way out to Osaka (in context: it’s not all that bad, Honshu’s roughly the size of Cali) to get a listen to this record.

That day, I was treated to one of the warmest, most enjoyable listening experiences of my life. The woman who welcomed us into her traditionally designed home was truly an audiophile extradonarii. As we crossed a sliding doorway into her listening room, I was met with a pair of beautiful Yamaha NS-6HX speakers in rosewood cases flanking a tower of clean, shining, silver-faced Technics separates —the SE-C01, SU-C01, and the S91 power supply. Perfectly understated, mini — but also powerful — especially for a cozy place like hers. Added for good measure was the M02 tape deck and above those was a classic 1200 turntable. It was a family of DJs, I later learned— and her nine year old daughter had recently taking up spinning on their set upstairs!

As the album begun, I closed my eyes and let the almost overwhelming brightness from the technics/yamaha combo wash over me. And after a few seconds, I got past the uniqueness of the set and had my Eureka moment — I was listening to one of the best albums in the genre that I had ever heard. Not just an iconic album for 2019 — but for the genre as a whole. Here are my thoughts on it here:

Part 1: The Music

Insomnia begins in a very iconic Dan-Masonish style. It was exactly what I expected, in a way, and almost comforting. As the track rises like a loaf of artisan bread through its first minute we’re treated with a procession of synth, chimes, a muted drum kit and powerfully distorted, bass-heavy vocals that manage to both lull and unsettle in equal measures.

Melatonin High definitely hits on an unconscious neural pathway related to my own history with hallucinogenic experimentation. The array of synths, skewed vocals, and soft percussion hits feels very apropos for both the title and its position on the LP. Atmospheric tracks like this always just vibe better early, in my view.

Shade feels the most “poppy” of the album, with a clean but entrancing chord arrangement, prominent vocal track, jungle drum loops and the sparingly used but extremely heavy and robust synth chimes. In a rare moment, I found myself enjoying the vocal-less denouement in the last quarter of the track just as much as the rest of the piece.

Fade exists sonically like a relic of dreams of vapor past — like a throwback to Mason’s earlier, much more distinctly “early vaporwave” sound profile. This is not to say that it doesn’t innovate in its own way, with clever vocal layers and an impressive synth array, but it echoes towards an aura that is more like a return to form, or perhaps more artistically realized — a fade away to a flashback. For these reasons, it’s my favorite on the LP and speaks to thematic thrust of the album in what I think is its strongest sonic affirmation.

Go Away is a robust vapor-hop, future-oriented throwback, speaking first to a very distinct “Bridge war” New York flow roughly concurrent to the rap sound I personally grew up with in Queens, NY. But the genius present here is that it takes this very distinctly late 80s/onset of the 90s East Coast flow and merges it with lyrics that feel distinctly at home in a mid-millennial rapper’s sound-cloud. We’re treated to desires of Robatussin lean (not available until the mid 90s in NYC because of some big pharma legal war I was only peripherally aware of) effortlessly weaved in with moments of millennial malaise. This track should sufficiently hit home with that particular crowd born in that ’88-’93 set.

Visions features an arresting synth array that carries you down the contact high of Go Away brilliantly. The vocals here tend to swing towards the sort of low-end distorted profile of Tyler the Creator’s “therapist” character in Goblin — with was made an ever-more prominent association by virtue of the quasi-existential and psychological overtones that developed in the piece lyrically.

Stop Me manifests itself initially as a sort of clever synth-wave throwback, and then slows its chord progression to a screeching halt fleshing it out more fully as a “true” vapor piece — aided by a perfectly arranged vocal track that comes out as W-I-D-E on a good stereo set. This is definitely the type of track whose mastering for vinyl can either be used as a master class on mix & master or a cautionary tale. Thankfully, it’s certainly the former!

Good Night starts with an echo of ghosts of lo-fi’s past, with compressed percussion hits, and tinny snares, but we are treated soon after with a remarkably hypnotic trail of synths that absolutely dance at the high end, sending the Yamaha’s tweeters into overdrive. it’s also one of those tracks that, by virtue of brilliant progression and arrangement, feels much shorter than its run-time — a key feature for any good penultimate LP track.

Hopefully Forever is a remarkable track to end the album on. To take the listener from the “chill” vibes of Good Night and then hit them with the Ryuchi Sakamoto-esque electronic array (Am I detecting a possible ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’ inspiration?) and raspy, almost -screamo lyrics imbued with frustration, dread, and longing is a dichotomy worthy of an article all its own. It’s certainly not my particular favorite sound profile, but even I can recognize it for what it truly is: stupendous.

Part 2: The Vinyl Listening Experience

As stated previously, I’m a pretty firm believer in the “audiophile” bones of Hypnagogia, and obviously many audiophiles have literally and figuratively bought in as well. What impressed me about the mix in my limited listening context is that it somewhat antithetical to the tastes of many local audiophiles there, and the general sound profile of Japanese stereos and speaker systems. Technics especially seems to me to take great effort to widen and max-out the low end of the spectrum — which in principle, would work on something like a french house record, but with something like Hypnagogia requires a bit more precision, in my view. The Yamahas did a bit to neutralize this tendency, I think — and my particular listen retained much of the dynamic range that I’ve appreciated in previous releases by Dan.

Nevertheless, I found myself progressively disarmed by the quality of the mix & mastering work. A vinyl experience this clean — and not to overuse this word — but precise in its appreciation and maximization of dynamic range deserves makes this LP deserve serious consideration whenever it comes up on discogs retailing for $300 or something insane like that.

On the physical quality — I have to say I was not expecting a wax release this nice from Business Casual. Perhaps this is my natural bias, but I’ve always associated them as a high-end cassette label. Masters of that craft, no doubt. But I think this excellent press and physical product (along with sales, I imagine!) sends a pretty clear message to the folks at Business Casual that they should be getting into the vinyl game as aggressively as they do cassettes.

[daggerzine]

A HEARTY CHAT WITH THOMAS ANDREW OF A CERTAIN SMILE

I’m not even sure how or when Thomas Andrew and I became Facebook friends a few years ago. Probably through a mutual friend, but then I started seeing posts how he had a band, called A Certain Smile. Hey, I loved Rocketship too so I had to investigate. There were a few songs here and there but he and the band were working on their debut full length, Fits & Starts. Well the record came out a few months ago and it’s a terrific little pop record. Jangle pop with solid songwriting, a healthy amount of fuzz and Andrew’s strong and sturdy vocals. Fans of records on labels like Slumberland and Creation will certainly approve. I tossed some questions Thomas’ way and he gave me the skinny on his musical journey, his love of Scottish women and the beginnings of A Certain Smile.. Read on good people….

 Were you born in Philly? Did you grow up there?

Nope, I’m from NY. We moved around a bit. Born in NY then moved to Texas for my first few years, then Long Island, then Upstate. It was a bit of a constant back and forth between the two. And pretty much as soon as I could be mobile on my own, I spent as much time as I could in the City.

What was your first exposure to music? Were your parents into music? Siblings?

Don’t have any siblings, but yeah, My parents were pretty young so most of my first music exposure was 80’s college rock mix tapes my Dad’s best friend made while a DJ at SUNY Albany. I still have a bunch of them. It’s weird, but family road trips were usually marked listening to tapes with New Order, The Cure, Violent Femmes, The Velvets, JAMC, 7 Seconds, old Lemonheads stuff, the Church, and whatnot. My dad also used to like quiz me on what was playing on the local left of the dial station: 102.7 WEQX out of Vermont.

At what age did you pick up your first instrument?

I played Saxophone in grade school, and I always would just sing all the time. I guess I got a bass when I was 16 and played my first show like 2 weeks later. We opened for Violent Society and the Causalities…I was the secret pop kid at the punk shows. I went back to just singing from like 18-20 and then got my first guitar when I was about 21.

Do you remember the first record you ever bought?

I bought 2 tapes simultaneously when I was about 11 or 12: Sir-Mix-A lot’s Mac Daddy and Tom Cochrane Mad Mad World. I can honestly remember everything about that experience. I liked that Life is a Highway song I guess. And I played the crap outta that entire Sir Mix-A lot record. The first actual LP I purchased myself was Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary. I’d had records that were my parents, and I bought a bunch of CD’s but the first piece of vinyl was at the record store I’d end up working for years, and it was Sunny Day.

Had you been in bands back east? Anything the readers might’ve heard of?

I was in some crappy poppy punk/HC bands until I moved to Philly. There I started Ports of Call with my best friend. Ports started out as the original a certain smile, we recorded 4 songs and played a show, and then our bass player bailed and when we started going again we took on different names, till finally Ports happened. We released 2 records, got a little press and stuff. People may have heard of us, we’re on Spotify and Itunes…it’s pretty basic neo-shoegaze stuff, but with a lot of melody and what not. Nicest compliment I ever got was when playing this really kinda boring shoegaze fest thing, someone came up after and was like “you guys totally have a Pale Saints thing I really dig” and as everyone knows the Pale Saints are hands down the GREATEST Shoegaze band there is….so that made my life a little

When/why did you move to Portland, Oregon?

I moved to Portland about 3 years ago. Followed my Ex here for her job. I figured what I do is pretty portable and I had a record about ready, so I could just record it here and find a band…things don’t always work out as planned though. However, in the end the record is out, the band is sorted, the Ex is now just that, and I’m pretty happy in life.

 When did you form A Certain Smile? Does the name come from the Rocketship record (I’ve always assumed so)?

A Certain Smile started in 2002 as a bedroom project in college. My best friend Tom and I started recording songs and started a little label with us and our friends. We had a handful of songs and got offered a show with a band I really loved, problem was we needed a name. So we started going through name ideas, and I started flipping through records I had. We would check names online to see if they were taken. Went through a handful of ideas and then hit A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness. I liked how A Certain Smile rolled off the tongue (especially how it may sound coming from an adorable Scottish girl…if ya know any…) looked it up and no one had taken it. So with 3 days to spare we took the name. I shelved it for a while, but would always bring it back out for little one off shows or some new recording ideas I’d have. When I moved to Portland I decided to just use that going forward.

 Tell me about the recording of Fits & Starts? Did it take a long while to record? Any watershed moments?

We recorded it in Portland over about 3 days all together. But the songs come from about 10 years of writing. Smile was something Tom and I wrote in college, and Summer Blonde was one of the last songs I wrote for Ports. Most everything else was written before moving to Portland for the record I was about to put out before moving. I think Leisure Class is the only “new” song, written after I got here. Zach had the music for it.

The recording was super smooth at this little studio in Portland, the Magic Closet. Hold on Call and Hushed were recorded with an earlier drummer in 1 day, and then the rest a few months later with Ian over 2 days. No real watershed moments, but a lot of caffeine fueled fun. There is a great little piano thing Zach and Ian did that I’d love to put on something, we almost hid it on the Duffle Coat Single we did.

Do you feel like you fit into any kind of scene in Portland? Any bands in town doing similar stuff?

Yes and No, Portland isn’t the pop town of yore, but there are some bands that I think we fit well with. Like No Aloha and bed. , and a bunch of amazing  bands that I think we fit close enough for stuff like Mini Blinds, Havania Wall, Airport, Tender Age, and more. There is a lot of good music in town. But I missed All Girl Summer Fun Band being a thing here…and I will forever be heartbroken over that. I keep trying to push Jen to make it happen again!!!

Tell us about the influence of labels like Sarah and Slumberland on your musical life.

Woosh, I don’t even know if there are words to express that. Finding Sarah and Slumberland was like finding a home, ya know? I remember the first time I heard Another Sunny Day, and the Field Mice. It was like finally hearing something that I’d been looking for forever. Something sweeter and softer than the pop punk I’d keep getting pushed on me in upstate NY. And finding Hood, the Lilys, and Boyracer…it gave me something that felt mine, and when I found people who knew these bands and labels I found instant friends and family.  I used to read liner notes a lot as a kid, and pour over the thank yous for recommendations of bands I needed to check out. That’s why I included a bunch of bands we’ve played with or who’ve just influenced us in the liner notes. Cause I’d love to be that door for someone else someday!

Who are some of your favorite current bands?

I really love so many bands right now, like Martha, Kids on a Crime Spree, Rat Fancy, Eureka California, Tunabunny, Suburban Living, Star Tropics, The Fireworks…this list could go on and on. I listen to a lot of music. Recently I’ve been getting a lot of old singles that I never heard so I can play them on my radio show or at my indiepop brunch. I got so many amazing old records from Chris at Jigsaw it’s been amazing!

Who do you think is the single greatest songwriter working today?

I have to say I’m kinda amazed I have an immediate answer to this, like it just came right to my head: Neil Halstead! I swear I love everything he does, even stuff I was meh on for a while I come back and realize it is just amazing. I love Mojave 3, his solo stuff, the Black Hearted Brother record…and obviously Slowdive….though I think I’m one of 10 people who prefer Mojave to Slowdive…but whatever. Yeah Neil Halstead comes to mind immediately.

What’s next for a certain smile? Touring? More recordings?

Well first we have a second press of Fits & Starts, cause we sold the first batch in like 3 weeks. We’re doing a Pacific NW tour with Rat Fancy in December, and we’re hoping to set up a tour down through California soon as well. We’re hoping to play Athens Popfest next year, and if we can we’d love to do Indietracks and play some shows in Spain. We sold a bunch of records in Spain so it’d be rad to go over there. We have a little 3 song EP we’re putting together with the first 3 songs I wrote here in Portland, and we have another like 8 or so songs ready to go. We’re hoping to maybe put out some singles (would love to find a label who may want to help with that *wink wink to any labels reading!) yeah, that’s about it for now. Just playing as much as we can and trying to tour a bit this year.

Any final thoughts?  Closing comments? Anything you wanted to mention that I didn’t ask?

Thanks for taking the time to interview us, and for listening to the record. Also for the AMAZING single you sold me J I don’t know, beyond that I guess just thanks to anyone and everyone who’ve checked out the record, it means a lot. We’re really excited to get more stuff out and hopefully meet some of you out on the road soon. Cheers!

www.acertainsmile.bandcamp.com 

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

My First Time in Los Angeles

This past April, I visited California for the very first time with my girlfriend, Em. It was also her first time there - in short - it was our first time venturing OUT WEST beyond Pennsylvania.

Vacations have always been somewhat of a bum rap for me.

I only ever spent vacations with my parents, and as the years went by and the money became short, we went on fewer and fewer vacations. But even when I went on vacation, my strained relationship with them made the time drag by ever so slowly, especially through their arguments, and I often found myself saying, “God, I need a vacation. Oh, wait.”

Our trip was really a double feature - 4 days in Los Angeles and 3 days in San Francisco. We each had friends from college we wanted to visit, whom we hadn’t seen in years.

The first thing I had in mind was to visit film locations. There was the Griffith’s Observatory, featured in Rebel without a Cause and La La Land. The Bradbury Building at 304 South Broadway, where Blade Runner was filmed. Pacific Park, where Bean was filmed. The Bronson Cave Trail in Griffith’s Park, where the original 1960′s Batcave was filmed. And about 30 miles north of L.A. are some unassuming rock formations in Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park where Captain James T. Kirk battled a Gorn in the Star Trek episode Arena.

                       (Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean in 1997′s Bean)

Unfortunately, from my list I only got to see the Griffith’s Observatory and Pacific Park, but that didn’t mean my time in Los Angels wasn’t what I wanted. Oh, far more than that. My friend Carlos could practically make money as a tour-guide. He live a couple towns over but was familiar with Los Angeles, its subway system, its atmosphere. He took us to the Los Angeles City Hall, where we could see nearly everything, even the Griffith’s Observatory in the distance.

Pictures made possible by my lovable Nikon P510. The zoom on it is amazing and has been the envy of all my friends (penis envy - zoom envy). 

We even stumbled upon an enlightening talk on affordable housing development. While we wandered around Los Angeles City Hall, we noticed many nicely-dressed people gathering. Even though we felt out of place - post-graduate 20-somethings haggard from walking in the sun all day long - nobody gave us weird looks. We slipped into the crowd inside the main hall and listened to a talk some guy gave about why people in Los Angeles hate poor people.

Seriously.

For those of you unfamiliar with the homeless problem, Los Angeles has a huge one. It’s notorious for having the most homeless people, Skid Row in particular. Carlos told me that it’s nothing to be afraid of though - it’s just smelly and disgusting - and the homeless people only fight among themselves if they ever fight.

Part of the reason for Los Angeles’ dragging homeless issue is that nobody wants affordable housing to be built in their backyards and neighborhoods. They believe in this stigma that homeless people bring violence, drugs and crime. In reality, they need mental aide and a place to live. But people keep voting no. And so the homeless continue to fill the streets.

Well.

Fuck.

While my memories of L.A. are grounded, I remember feeling as if I wasn’t really there, and yet active at the same time. An engaging observer. I felt it most when Carlos, Em and I sifted through the crowd of the affordable housing presentation. Nobody bat an eye at us despite us dressed so differently. I felt like I was in an episode of Doctor Who where The Doctor takes his companions to witness some fantastic historical event and few people are paying attention to them.

After that, Carlos took us to Little Tokyo, where I gushed with nerdiness at finding trading cards from JRPGs like Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Xilia.

Carlos is an interesting individual - unconventional but very fun. Many people back in college thought he was too crazy but I could deal with crazy. He had an idea to buy 32 oz. bottles of Asahi beer and hide them in these funny, wool socks he bought. He drank with Em and as our shopping progressed, Carlos became Carlos to the third power. He binged on shopping for anime, and his favorite is Eureka Seven.

“Dude,” he said aloud, holding the special edition box set. “I love this. It’s a great romance. Oh, man, I’m a sucker for romances like this. This boy, the main character right, he’s young and full of semen. You know what I mean?”

That day was probably the best time I ever had on a vacation. My parents were a practically non-existent thought somewhere in the back of my head. I didn’t have two pairs of eyes judging me. I could be myself, experience a new place the way I wanted.

Los Angeles Nightlife (and meeting a celebrity)

Em’s friend told us a couple places where we could have a good time. Well, the place we hung out one night was appropriately called Good Times at Davey Wayne’s. We waited in line in some alleyway with this annoying jagoff of a bouncer who literally looked like Jared Leto. Maybe he was Jared Leto now that I think about it. I don’t know. He really looked like Jared Leto - he had the white Jesus thing going on. Maybe he was a nice guy, I thought, until he was completely enamored with this one girl who cut in line. She flirted with him for five seconds and he let her in.

The one thing that struck me immediately upon entering Good Times at Davey Wayne’s was not the hipster, 70′s theme, but the fact that people were actually dancing. Like really dancing. Not the grinding shit East Coasters do everywhere, nor the awkward wedding dances where old people try to be hip. It was seriously the best time I ever had clubbing.

When I prepared for Los Angeles, I bought a small green notebook. I’m very anal about my notebooks. Each notebook is color-coded based on the topic. This slim green notebook is reserved for autographs. I chose green because it’s the color of envy, which is usually how you feel about celebrities.

I imagined at first that running into even mildly famous people would be a frequent occurrence in Los Angeles. But right before we left for L.A., I read someone’s post about how it’s not at all like that. Regardless, I brought the book with me.

When we were at Good Times at Davey Wayne’s, my ears caught a particular voice that struck me. I knew I heard that voice somewhere. I honed in on it and saw this blond girl and her friends. I immediately recognized the famous YouTuber Meghan McCarthy.

I told Em about it but I wasn’t 100% sure. Yet Meghan has a distinctive voice she’s known for and I was sure about the voice. Em approached her anyway and lo and behold - she was Meghan McCarthy. 

So I got my very first celebrity autograph!

And I was also an idiot for not remembering to take a picture. To be fair, our phones were in a constant state of dying during our vacation from all the picture-taking. I almost didn’t get any pictures of the Griffith’s Observatory. Both our phones AND my camera died. I got really bummed out - but then - I remembered I was carrying my Nintendo 3DS! It takes low-res pictures but - hey - better than nothing.

The Getty

On my last day I visited my old friend Seb - whom I hadn’t seen since my college graduation of ‘12. He already has a wife and a son. The guy’s already living it. He was my college pal since Day 1 of freshman year. We were DJs together for WMNJ at Drew University. Well, he was a DJ, I was really a talk show host. We had always meant to hang out together but life drew us apart.

Seb is an artist. As such, he took us to The Getty - quite possibly the most expansive, beautiful art museum I’ve ever been to. It’s also free (well, except for parking but still). The Getty is nestled up in a mountain, so you take a tram car ride up there.

So overall, what’s L.A. like?

Miami, but on steroids.

And with the movie theme going on.

I’ve been to Miami many times. It’s hot. There are homeless people. Driving sucks. And there are palm trees everywhere.

The driving is atrocious.

People who live there also have this strange aversion to the subway system, which I actually found affordable, easy to use and fast. I guess it’s just overshadowed now by Uber. Another reason why the subway could be overshadowed is that it takes you to mostly touristy areas.

There’s also weed everywhere and nobody cares. Nobody ever cared even when it was illegal. It’s now legal but legislation is taking its jolly old time to figure out how to regulate it and sell it, etc. So you can’t find a store to walk in and get some weed. Still, there are “marijuana doctors” at nearly every corner of every street.

Hollywood Blvd. is equivalent to NYC’s Times Square. Once you start seeing chain restaurants and street performers, you know it’s touristy.

Pacific Park is further away in Santa Monica, next to Venice Beach. If you are from New Jersey or at least familiar with the Jersey Shore, think of Venice Beach as Seaside Heights but on steroids.

(Almost anything in L.A. can be summed up as ‘Like X but on steroids’ - ESPECIALLY the movie theaters. I really wanted to see a movie in the Chinese Theater but we didn’t have the time.)

Pacific Park - to be brutally honest - was not as exciting as Em and I thought it’d be. It’s a tiny little amusement park. The roller coaster is so short that they let you ride twice. While everyone else around us beamed with excitement, we were really spoiled East Coasters having experienced Six Flags with fucking death-defying drops in Nitro, and even the Jersey Shore with all its piers clogged with amusements. Pacific Park is the only amusement park on the West Coast. The reason being, well, earthquakes and erosion.

We could never seem to get a general consensus on how frequent earthquakes occurred. One Uber driver told us once a week, another said once a month, some passerby told us once every couple months. People blatantly contradicted each other - especially since one person said they hadn’t had a major earthquake in decades while another said the last major earthquake was in 2014. People contradicted each other on what public transportation was like. The food. The stores.

But they never contradicted what it was like about each other. Everybody in L.A. is truly trying to be somebody, and I could tell right away when that girl cut us and had Mr. Jared Leto Lookalike flirt with her by asking him to take her phone out of her back pocket. I overheard it all the time when people talked about their comedy acts and meetings with friends to get this film shoot down.

And while I was annoyed by that instance, it’s a far cry from the overall good vibe. Strangers are friendly. Nobody is suspicious of you for anything. There are dozens of “Love trumps hate” signs and the like. When I took a picture of Em in from of Pacific Park, two strangers wanted to get in the picture, which resulted in an amusing progression of photos.

Where did you stay?

An AirBnB. I actually feel horrible because I still haven’t left a review for our hosts, now that I reminded myself.

AirBnB is basically Uber for hotels. It’s getting really famous now. We got a really sweet cheap deal for the time we spent there.

I’ll actually shout out to them - we stayed at the Chaplin Room at Limelight Manor, hosted by Joan & Luis.

It was our first time using AirBnB. Joan’s parents apparently take care of the place. They were sweet and helpful. We were apprehensive at first because we weren’t sure what we could use and what we couldn’t use. Em assumed everything was owned by Joan and Luis. I thought otherwise. The sign clearly says “Put your name on whatever you don’t want other people to use.” There were unmarked bottles of wine. So I drank one. Logical.

We never saw the hosts, only Joan’s parents, who took care of the place like the maids of a hotel would.

The guests at the AirBnB tended to keep to themselves, just like a regular hotel. At first I was weirded out because I always heard people scurry here and there but when I left the room nobody was around.

BONUS ROUND:

On our way to California during the plane ride, Em and I saw these very strange lights as we neared Las Vegas.

Bio-dome? Science facility? Area 51? Aliens?

If anyone knows - feel free to share.

Ciao.

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: 2017: First Quarter Favorites

Three months in, and we haven’t destroyed ourselves! To celebrate this achievement, we’re once again sharing our favorite releases from the last few months. A lot of it is pretty heavy, focusing on grief (Mount Eerie), cruelty (Lawrence English), and self-loathing (Xiu Xiu), with other fun stuff like ritual guitar abuse (Skullflower) and the glowing horror of reanimation (Rashad Becker). But we also loved everything from urban gallery funk (Cybervision Simulcast) and philosophic horse opera (Sun Araw) to playful Afromutations (Riddlore) and pop so sugary sweet it’ll rot your teeth (Charli XCX). Something for everyone. ;) Since these quarter lists are more informal than our year-end features, the shortlist before the list proper is equally important (especially Dasychira’s Immolated EP, which got a lot of love since assembling this list). Check ‘em all out below, and maybe see you in another three? Shortlist: Moon B’s Lifeworld 2: Udaya, nekomimi + luvfexxx, LUVISCOLD, Sophiaaaahjkl;8901’s Toilet Abstraction Tapes, Gabor Lazar’s Crisis of Representation, Darren Keen, It’s Never Too Late To Say You’re Welcome, Mega Bog’s Happy Together, Tonstartssbandht’s Sorcerer, Dasychira’s Immolated, Drake’s More Life, William Basinski’s A Shadow in Time, Roc Marciano’s Rosebudd’s Revenge, Future’s HNDRXX, Blanck Mass’ World Eater, and PAN’s mono no aware compilation. --- Mount Eerie A Crow Looked At Me [P.W. Elverum & Sun] I can barely listen to A Crow Looked At Me, an album with little room for novelty, one I’m sure Phil Elverum never wanted to make. Death is the least novel thing in life, but it makes a novelty out of what never was before. Phil (who I feel maybe too close to now) makes white noise of branches, canyons of grocery store aisles, a sunset of what is not dust. He doesn’t have to make meaning of Death, because words become futile when confronted with something so simple and absolute. His grief seems just to be here, contained by the same microphone as guitar, the way someone who dies just can’t be. I don’t think music had ever made me cry only for someone else, but none of this sounds like it was made for anyone but Geneviève and himself. He says he doesn’t want to learn anything from his wife’s death, but by the time you’ve shut your eyes for 40 minutes, alone with the creaking floor and counted days and Pacific birds and spoken dreams, I can’t imagine not coming away with (something) more. It’s springtime. –Pat Beane --- Riddlore Afromutation [Nyege Nyege Tapes] The modest genius of Riddlore’s Afromutations, the January offering from Ugandan cassette label Nyege Nyege Tapes, stems from a certain perspectival grace. A longstanding figure of the Los Angeles hip-hop underground, Riddlore is known first as an emcee and second as a beatmaker. Afromutations sees the artist sketching a playful, iterative bass style drawn from samples of African field recordings, a hauntological gesture that in less subtle hands might fall into a self-serious wormhole. The tape’s beauty is in how the timbral mood of the samples gesture at and usher into place the recombinant scaffolding of the relatively untreated percussion, like how the choral tension that opens “Bakka Pygmies Riddim” blossoms into an eerie kuduro strut. Elsewhere, on “Afroed” and “The Crush,” drums and overlapping harmonies flange into natural psychedelias. Riddlore’s agenda-absent play allows the samples to mutate freely, and Nyege Nyege serves an adept platform for the project. –Nick Henderson Afromutations by RiddloreAfromutations by Riddlore --- The Necks Unfold [Ideologic Organ] To unfold, usually, is to grow, to expand; to sprawl. On their 19th release, The Necks have instead tightened their improvisational nous to four standalone pieces, invoking the mysticism of Cusanus: “unfolding is enfolding.” These anti-compositions unfold insofar as they protrude into space-time and become of-the-world, cosmological chaos and all; they enfold into the broader scheme of the album, all unified through the articulate chops of Messrs Abrahams, Swanton, and Buck. Between balance and imbalance, serenity and turbulence, the respective instrumental forces of the players here circumnavigate these side-long miniatures with microscopic focus and reticence, in characteristically Necks-ian fashion. And, even when compared with classics past, there’s no compromise on ambition, not a single wasted moment. Such is the dynamism of Unfold; what initially struck as blissful stasis, best suited for gazing into the pale blue yonder, gently opens up — and, yeah, unfolds — to yield four of the most self-contained, wholly busy musics that 2017 has had to offer thus far. –Soe Jherwood Cybervision Simulcast Sewer City [H.V.R.F. CENTRAL COMMAND] Sewer City kicks up all the residual funk of an urban galley. Where oil encrusted kebab meat sweats on rotation, busted street lights stutter into the night, and ripple-rich puddles highlight the only natural quality to animate the scene, as thick droplets of rain are spat down from the stubborn grey heavens above. Cybervision Simulcast drape this grizzly vision through the innards of a pitch-black bypass drenched in alarms, sirens, and ricochet. Everything points to a breakdown or dysfunction, as this bleak snapshot of municipal decay melts to nothingness through our slime-smeared fingers. But those signals of distress are incorporated within the process, and they are not to be heeded for what they might otherwise signify; they orchestrate the bass-inverted crank that punctuates the residue of samples, synths, and storyline. To suggest that this grizzled and failing image results in a perfect album would be distasteful — obscene, even. And yet, that’s precisely what’s happened every time I’ve taken the plunge so far. There is no light at the end of this tunnel. Let’s keep it that way. –Birkut SewerCity by Cybervision SimulcastSewerCity by Cybervision Simulcast --- Charli XCX Number 1 Angel [Asylum] Out of the cold dark dust, the Number 1 Angel spreads her wings for Utopia, so emotional and so sugary sweet it’ll rot your teeth. After one of the strangest ascensions (“I! Don’t! Care!”) in the pop industry, Charli XCX is thriving. VROOM VROOM’s EUREKA! production was Charli at a 100% synchronization rate, and now she’s spun a 40-minute pop slipstream, an outside World of babygirls and babyboys. The PC Music crew sheds some of the hyperreal, sourcing Charli’s charisma and songwriting prowess to shoot for real stars: color-coded bangers, sweatsoaked and tearstained, a clarity of vision that at once opens avataric and musical possibilities in the channel of Rihanna and Kesha. The party’s enfolding. Number 1 Angel is Charli’s every intuition refined in hi-fi, the best-yet gateway for anyone not already along for the ride. Ten songs for one night. Glitter in your underwear, left on red. Let’s ride! The closing trilogy of features (Uffie, ABRA, cupcakKe) is fucked-up perfect. Each outrunning the last, headfirst till the 90s bubblegum pops. The synths kick up cinnamon for a minute-long Secret Mix outro. Inextinguishable, enlightening. It’s Charli, baby. –Pat Beane [pagebreak] --- Various Artists Club Chai Vol. 1 [Club Chai] When you’re in the right club, with the right music, with the right crowd, you can feel your body. You’re present in it, in its creases and protrusions, in its decorations and accoutrements, in its movements and vibrations in space, in its careful caressings and navigations around and through other bodies. You can feel it as something fluid, the cells and lipstick and lungs and heels and bass and drugs and genders and hi-hats and drifting and splitting melodies and languages morphing the movement of your limbs into a movement of potentials. You think, “I am in this body and I am feeling these other bodies and I know that this body can be something else, it can be what it wants to be, it can be what it doesn’t want to be, this shell is the end and the beginning and I am going to be fucking gorgeous.” Club Chai is a loose collective of queer and trans club DJs and producers out of Oakland pushing that continuum into the right-now-right-now-right-now of sonic uncertainty, gender uncertainty, national uncertainty. And it feels right. –Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli Club Chai Vol. 1 by Club ChaiClub Chai Vol. 1 by Club Chai --- Lawrence English Cruel Optimism [Room40] I consider myself an optimist, but I haven’t always been positive. My sense of trust in goodness has grown as I’ve unpacked how cynicism has poisoned many of my relationships (with partners, with friends, with art). Then again, being an optimist, as Louis CK once asserted, means being stupid. There’s a delicate balance between being confident in humanity’s potential for good and accepting humanity’s cruelty as simply the cost of business. Lawrence English’s latest release is music for contemplating what’s writhing around deep in humanity’s psyche. Its requiem is solemn, because nobody’s sense of “goodness” has won yet, its negative drones promising because they still have matter to vibrate through. Cruel Optimism is nominally a meditation on how human desire often breeds cruelty at humanity’s own expense, but as a sound work, it is also a reminder that optimism, shed of its colonizing skin, can overcome cruelty. –Jackson Scott Cruel Optimism by Lawrence EnglishCruel Optimism by Lawrence English --- Quelle Chris Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often [Mello Music Group] In college, a friend of mine had a line that went something like, “Your shit is wacker than the ‘you’ that every rapper writes about.” Although I can’t remember exactly how it went, or if it was ever even put to record, I always thought that was so dope: taking aim at the proverbial second person by acknowledging its ubiquitous metanarrative; uplifting recorded battle rap by breaking its third wall. Doper still, the idea that an omnipresent, sucker MC named “You” might actually exist. Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often complicates the above concept by incorporating hip-hop’s superego, the proverbial I, and framing that id character as both a role model for personal success and a self-destructive nemesis. Like “Who Am I” as a slapstick comedy about the creative process. –Samuel Diamond Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often by Quelle ChrisBeing You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often by Quelle Chris --- Sun Araw The Saddle of the Increate [Sun Ark/Drag City] The Saddle of the Increate shuffles the few short steps across from Belomancie’s chambers of internal refraction to twitch and twinge its way through into the shining territory of the lonesome whippoorwill — outdoors, that is. Well, at least there’s a pedal steel or two, a cactus, and a 10-gallon hat — it’s a [“psychedelic”] philosophic horse opera, tough as an actor, distracted but gruffly tender, especially in its latter sections. There’s a space and a half between every point; we can give names to/for every constellation, a classical reference or two even, but it’s still… complex — and how is the soul (your soul) distinct from its powers anyway? Spatially disorienting, temporally atomistic, concrete in image, plastic in execution: seven lampstands have become seven horses (and four hats, a head of cattle, one bowl, etc. etc.). Like pulling a wishbone with yourself, be 100% ready to spit in the skillet. –Michael J --- Graham Lambkin Community [ErstSolo/Kye] As Jackson Scott so rightly put, Graham Lambkin’s Community is “a document of what a community can create without dictating what a community should entail; it is evidence without the arrogance of conclusion.” Not community, but the evidence of community. In fact, the trace audible evidences of sound becoming located in new environments is exactly what establishes Lambkin’s practice and medium — a medium that so mysteriously auditions sonic evidence into richly communicative listening spaces. In Community, we are bathed by this evidence, in communion with it; it is threaded inside of the spaces we inhabit, our daily lives and interactions — those already in articulation. Voiced as such, the album is a masterclass in Lambkin’s quotidian character, flattened into a natural, weathered state close to the void — close to how impossible and brilliant our communities are. It reminds us that our communities exist often without us, within and without our human attempts to locate them. –scvscv --- Camedor En Ut / Alba [Debacle] The scoff that is heard ‘round the world at any mention of “world” music may not be the constructive criticism the catch-all term deserves, but it is the noise necessary to make a greater point. But may we suggest replacing that negativity with a positive denotation? Enter Camedor’s debut 12-inch, which is the sound of the world sucked into a wormhole wherein time, space, and location matter little. In a nutshell, it represents the “new” idea of world music, where we no longer place such a limiting genre marker on what is music now easily accessible to all. Both songs borrow from mid-century composers (including a “cover” of Terry Riley’s “In C”), but also pull everything out of the grab bag of motorik, drone, and pop. José Orozco Mora has layered it all into a wondrous noise that may heavily borrow from Western tropes and styles, but is music from parts (un)known. You may not catch much Berber or Aboriginal influence, but what matters is how Mora’s Camedor speaks to building bridges between cultures through music. It’s a shared form of expression, and the joyous, raucous nature of En Ut / Alba is a celebration of worlds colliding into symphonic harmony. –Jspicer En Ut / Alba by CamedorEn Ut / Alba by Camedor [pagebreak] --- Skullflower The Spirals of Great Harm [Cold Spring] The Spirals of Great Harm has a clear lineage in the Skullflower discography. It’s a step beyond Strange Keys to Untune Gods Firmament (also a double album) and Taste the Blood of the Deceiver, though it follows a similar trek down the left-hand path. Played at a low volume, its minor key melodies and themes are apparent enough, but turn it up and its lacerating feedback has a much harsher effect. Bower and collaborator Samantha Davies (the only other constant in the modern Skullflower lineup) unleash hell through ritual guitar abuse. Outsiders may not readily understand how much different this album is from 2014’s dragon-themed Draconis, but to longtime admirers, it’s a step away from that album’s meandering psych, the style of which Bower used to reserve for his Sunroof! project. Kneeling in worship at the altar of the underworld, stacks of amplifiers in tow, Bower and Davies have crafted another indispensable addition to their canon. –Joe Davenport --- Xiu Xiu FORGET [Polyvinyl] Pray for Xiu Xiu. As many of their contemporaries have either faded from the record and/or embraced a life as background material for iPod commercials [ed: NO SHADE ON IPODS], Jamie Stewart’s long-running project has — like unchecked tooth decay — only deepened with age. Delivering maybe their most “accessible” album since formative hit Fabulous Muscles (a record whose key lyric was still “Cremate me after you cum on my lips”), FORGET brings all the self-loathing, harsh sarcasm, wonky instrumentation, and harrowing Dennis Cooperisms we have come to depend on from the Xiuverse. Whether you love it or not, Stewart and his gang have sustained a distinct interpretation of the world through what can feel like a lifetime’s worth of trend-shifting; for this alone, the band’s persistence should be cherished. That FORGET is one of their best albums to date is a surprise and a delight, the sign of a legacy act finding new life (the light, New Order-echoing “Get Up” is an album highlight) and handing us a deceptively poppy, booby-trapped gift to both longtime fans and newcomers. –Dylan Pasture FORGET by Xiu XiuFORGET by Xiu Xiu --- Rashad Becker Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II [PAN] Rashad Becker is a musician who is known for mastering other musicians’ work. His operation at Dubplates & Mastering is prolific and now famous in the world of experimental and electronic music, its most recent accomplishments including masters of The Necks’ Unfold, Visible Cloaks’ Reassemblage, and the great new PAN compilation Mono No Aware, but probably the most adventurous and distinctive of the records Becker has engineered of late is his own. He makes music with the freedom of a person who spends a lot of time thinking about the relationship between music and media of expression. PAN officially describes Becker’s Notions as “synthesized sounds that appear to exist hauntingly physical,” alluding to the tension between creativity and materials that enters always into the musical imagination, the tension that Becker gets paid to negotiate on artists’ behalf. The physical “haunts” music, not as an antagonist as if all music were not physical at least in origin, but because of what is risked, what is lost, and what is made when music passes from one physical medium to another, as in the representation of the rapid movements of a trombone’s bell as bumps on a slab of vinyl. Where his first volume of Traditional Music was a bit more self-similar, built from the whirring of buglike tensions and releases, Becker’s second effort explores the glowing horror and breath of reanimation. With species even more personable and diverse than those of its far-out predecessor, Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II is nothing short of an event in electronic music. –Will Neibergall Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II (PAN 74) by Rashad BeckerTraditional Music of Notional Species Vol. II (PAN 74) by Rashad Becker --- We’ll See x Treece (Prod Hyro) Constructions Tape [SWMS/Self-Released] Drizzy Aubrey may be hip-hop’s new international playboy, assembling identities like a collector on safari, but the UK hip-hop and grime scene has been strong for a while now. We’ll See and Treece, along with lo-fi necromancer Hyro, present an alternative to the rude glitz of Skepta, a drowsy, dour romp through England’s South West and Manchester, tagging walls, popping pills, and trading deft, witty wordplay. There’s something theatrical, entrancing about the scenes on Constructions Tape, and they fade in and out of view like fragments from a VHS tape in a Buckfast bottle. Hyro is as much a character as the MCs — the beats on “SNES-CD” and “Krylon” are loose and minimal. “Rizla” is a stunning example of his sizzling, ambient lo-fi technique. The drugs are the same, the liquor is the same (the slang a little different). For those who find it hard to relate to life on the other side of the Atlantic, you can dig the lads’ antics in a tape-length music video, which explores the highways, fallow fields, and windy beaches of Britain. We’ll See and Treece are practically alone in the entire piece, ghosts in a glittering, unforgiving city. –Ross Devlin Constructions Tape by We'll See x Treece (Prod Hyro)Constructions Tape by We'll See x Treece (Prod Hyro) --- Jon Mueller dHrAaNwDn [Rhythmplex] Jon Mueller’s dHrAaNwDn is deep and resonant, each quadrant of the 2xLP package filling a distinct void. Mueller is adept at bending innovative recording techniques to fit his drum-offs, and this might be one of his most elaborate schemes. The excerpts found on the wax were captured by a full mobile studio at the historically cogent meeting house of the Shaker Historical Society in Albany, NY. And if you’ve ever been to Albany (as I have, a ton), you know there’s an odd artistic energy enveloping the overlooked city. Using the cavernous environment to its aural advantage, dHrAaNwDn sprawls its percussive attacks out evenly, the dank toms thumping, jumping, and bumping. It’s akin to those loooong rows of files I used to sleep amid when I worked at a complex housing warehouses full of legal files: orderly, sequential, and all-encompassing in its grandeur. dHrAaNwDn hits harder than a drone-out and more comprehensively than the huge push of air that accompanies an explosion, the sound waves bouncing rustically off the “wood and white walls” of the house. So much more to say, so little space; white vinyl, only 200 copies, no digital version, gorgeous artwork, Mueller exploring yet another avant avenue that no one thought to truss. –Grant ‘Gumshoe’ Purdum --- Amnesia Scanner AS Truth [Self-Released] AS Truth provides a severely ungrounded experience. Leitmotifs abound (water, club, shifter, voice, trepan), Amnesia Scanner build a dizzying piece that is colossally unfathomable yet pragmatically short — done before its working becomes cruel. Living in the tiny turns and rarely caring for much larger than that, AS Truth is the pregame and the function (the buzz and the twitch [the trepanation across the nation (the boogie and the drop) that burrs the hole] that feeds the demon) that wakes you up. I love this album, and OK, in case you’re wondering, I found this for you: this. I guess the surgeon is “actually a quack” but look at him, funny guy. Oh, and apparently this guy trepanned himself. Only later do we find out that ~no~ he didn’t. –Ben Levinson AS TRUTH (MIXTAPE) by Amnesia ScannerAS TRUTH (MIXTAPE) by Amnesia Scanner [pagebreak] --- LAMPGOD GOD SHIT EP [Self-Released] “Hey: what’s happening?” is the sound, and it’s me looking for the voice source. “How y’all doing?” (really though how am I doing?) and I can’t put my finger on it (can’t touch a sound, Frank, duh.) What’s means? Someone put some solid white lines between lanes (as if you could keep things separate, as if we all moved in one direction at a time), someone ripped up all the pavement (“‘cause I’m negative”), killed all the streetlamps (“and I’m dark”) some LAMPGOD blows up the means and throws up me. Cause when you wrap all the pavement ‘round your waste, you get GOD SHIT, the influence of ecstasy of ecstasy. Can’t touch a sound, and in this dark, I don’t want to not resolve: “We gotta help each other out, man, renourish the soil.” It’s soil or soul, this driving both ways. It’s GOD SHIT, the garbage divine, the that that’s happening. –Frank Falisi LAMPGOD - GOD SHIT EP by LAMPGODLAMPGOD - GOD SHIT EP by LAMPGOD --- Dale Cornish Cut Sleeve [Halcyon Veil] Room to think is never enough space as you’ve imagined. And Cut Sleeve is just extra for “t-shirt.” So breathe. So much area to cover. So here we have Dale Cornish satirizing modern house music. Beyond that, the Winnipeggian is using Cut Sleeve to comment on a variety of “scene” motifs that continue with the club-politics of Halcyon Veil (i.e., queer culture, auteur vanity, architectural ouroboros, etc.). Only this time, Dale Cornish provides a brooding outsider mentality, blending dark alley grime and abstract dancefloor narration, settling Cut Sleeve in light of summer nights partying in the park, in a ditch or pond, and never quite coming back into reality as before. Ever. –C Monster Cut Sleeve by Dale CornishCut Sleeve by Dale Cornish --- HIRS YØU CAN’T KILL US [Get Better] The pink and purple hue line-blocking the resistant and persisting declaration in bold white-as-day fuck-you lettering YØU CAN’T KILL US. Through the five-track, five-minute EP and 100+ shows through LGBTQIA spaces and hundreds of tracks, HIRS have made further ground down the chaff of their enemies and turned the opposition into dust under their boot. And though they’ve already released a split with LIFES in dedication to all their lost friends, TRANS GIRL TAKE OVER 2K17, and an underheard release called MAGICal/WANDerful (from which all money made goes directly to Morris Home), we keep dedicating our five minute breaks at work to it. It’s raw and fervent, tearing the stitches out from the seams of their oppressor and dividing it among the trans community, leaving a powerful, anxious, angry, passionate residue that we will never wash off. –Monet Maker YØU CAN'T KILL US by HIRSYØU CAN'T KILL US by HIRS --- Dedekind Cut The Expanding Domain [Self-Released] $uccessor’s scion in every way, The Expanding Domain is simply the planar enlargement of Dedekind Cut’s starkly heterogeneous sound. Chimerizing practically every experimental electronic form one can imagine, each track blooms from chill aestivation into confounding calyces of spiraling noise and hyaline synths. Likewise in ontogeny, The Expanding Domain maintains a perennial coiling and uncoiling, as the final cut, “Das Expanded, Untitled Riff,” gives way to the EP’s opening in “Cold Bloom.” His strength is in grafting his raging and rimose rhythms to the divaricate New Age and ambient sounds his newest project has embraced. Simultaneously serrate and undulate, his sonic palette (complemented by the likes of Elysia Crampton, Dominick Fernow, and Mica Levi) unnerves and calms. The static-wreathed stabs of “LiL Puffy Coat” float atop a ponderous plod and the crushing-crushed breaks of the title cut find balance from a languishing wash and a hint of melody. It feels complete and self-sustaining yet always groping outward toward more. A sonic inflorescence, The Expanding Domain is the further coil of the tendril, the greater spread of the rhizome, the deeper growth of the genet. –Cynocephalus "The Expanding Domain (ded005)" EP by Dedekind Cut,"The Expanding Domain (ded005)" EP by Dedekind Cut, --- Pinkcourtesyphone Talk The Pleasure Out of It [Champion Version] Minimalist and ambient music are the aural equivalent of abstract art. Maligned by the uninitiated for their perceived simplicity (read: boring, easy to cobble together) when in actual fact anyone who has ever tried to paint an abstract on canvas finds quite quickly how difficult it is to decide what to put where — or more specifically, what not to put almost everywhere. And therein lies the art. Pinkcourtesyphone is fast establishing a reputation as the Mondrian of music minimalism. With so few concepts and sounds throughout Talk the Pleasure Out of It, it’s breathtaking how much emotion and mood is packed into this all-too-brief EP from the opening bars. –Marty Slattery talk the pleasure out of it by PINKCOURTESYPHONEtalk the pleasure out of it by PINKCOURTESYPHONE --- Demdike Stare Wonderland [Modern Love] Demdike Stare’s first album since 2012, Wonderland produces prismatic color from a grayscale jungle, crosshatching inert beat blocks and blunt chords into tight, combative spaces in order to glimpse a few seconds of beautiful moiré. Between stark silences and loud silver smacks, loose atoms offer subtle signs of life, suggesting endless, complex revisions — small but seminal shifts into new structures, trickled off from the eroding monolith of “industrial” and fully escaped from the aesthetic trappings of “hauntology.” Fans of past records will recognize the esoteric sampling and tough breaks (especially if they’re fans of the Testpressing series), but the level of abstraction on display is newly inspired, with new rhythms and juxtapositions hinting at new modes of expression at every turn. At its core is a pure love of creation, boundless energy picking up inertia amid extreme restraint, transforming all the techno it touches. The humanity is there, but it’s hidden, in corners and in shadows, as still as can be, confident someone will eventually find it anyway. Stay active. –Adam Devlin http://j.mp/2o8xWPc