Bay Area producer Choongum has been steadily releasing music for several years. In his new one, he channels melancholy and feelings of loneliness perpetuated by long, cold winter months. Choongum's sullen voice melts perfect with the smooth piano sample grounding the entire track. It's a great song to soundtrack the upcoming months.
"Cold World" is available on cassette or free download as part of Portland label STYLSS's tenth edition of their Suicide Pact compilation. Stream below, and grab the whole album through STYLSS.
Read more →
Earlier this year we fell in love with Tokyo dream pop artist Cuushe with "I Love You"'s shimmery brand of pop. Watch the video for said song below, which perfectly captures Cuushe's innocence with bright colors, images of spaghetti and meatballs, and an overall abundance of cuteness and sparkles.
Flau's second full-length, Butterfly Case, is now available through Flau Records.
The word “drama” confuses the message of this song: isn't drama something to be avoided in love affairs? Don't we want drama-free, stakeless exchange with our lovers these days? Perhaps the song actualizes a more general or traditional definition of the word, or utilizes an alternative connotation which allows for listeners to comtemplate the nonconventional. Basic definitions of "drama" are along the lines of a scene, a play, incident, or spectacle; yet, none of these synonyms suggest the negative social drama that comes to mind when we think of friends who are dramatic, or attracted to dramatic relationships.
While romantic drama, that is, heavy entangling of individual boundaries and uncomfortable social spectacles, is something avoided by an outstanding amount of gender-aware individuals and activists, via polyamory, non-definitive dating cycles and sexual preferences, human drama is by contrast strongly desirable. Planningtorock wants an anthropic, fluid, perfectly erroneous and natural sexual scenario, hence, human drama, a type that is free from grinding against manmade barriers, generating discomfort and existential unease. With the lyrics “Trying to find the words to explain my sexuality/
It's liquid, it's living, a moving love defined by itself/
There's no rules, no convention,” we begin to think that letting human sexuality be what it will is the preferred gender: an undulating, unpredictable, incidental, fluent process that does not mold or follow directions well. This is conveyed by the simplistic melancholy of the song's loud melody.
We can anticipate these types of political affects and contemporary themes from the whole of PTR's All Love's Legal, out on Human Level Records February 10, 2014. For now, let us meditate on what is meant by the provocative title and phrase “human drama.”
It seems the more I hear about Charlatan, the less I know about it, which can be an interesting standpoint with which to approach scribbling out these write-ups, especially for an artist so buried in abstract compositions. Funny how my initial reaction in this case is to write about what I “see” when I listen to it. That being said, there is certainly a lot more “night” in Night Circus than there is “circus.” The bleeps and bloops swinging in like trapeze artists over the top of constructed canvas walls of drone being the only semblance of typical circus acts to make their way to the surface of this nocturne. It’s creepy, encompassing, and a fantastic addition to the already impressive Charlatan discography and enormous list of Digitalis Recordings releases.
Listen to the title track from Night Circus below and buy the album digitally for however much you want from Digitalis Recordings.
Read more →
Following our label profile on Orchid Tapes yesterday, we are thrilled to share the first single from what will be their beginning of vinyl releases; Ricky Eat Acid's, Three Love Songs. "Inside your house; it will swallow us too" is the first step into a world of ambient dreams, transcendent sampling, and thoughts of 22-year-old Maryland producer/artist, Sam Ray. Even though Ray has had many releases under Ricky Eat Acid, the upcoming LP will be considered his debut album. Close your eyes and take a step back from reality. It's easy to drift toward an unknown consciousness equate to the divulgance you feel from REA's seeing little ghosts everywhere or april. Although, this track shows an immense growth in production and use of contemporary elements in comparison to past recordings.
Words from Sam Ray regarding his forthcoming release, "Three Love Songs is an album I started writing about a year & a half ago without much thought to what it would be or how it would sound or anything really. I had a very loose idea of a narrative for it, and a much looser idea for how I wanted it to sound. As I continued working on it over time, everything started to coalesce until it all made a lot more sense. I could probably talk forever about the narrative of the album and the theme(s) explored by it, but I think that would take away from the initial listening experience.
It's definitely an album to be taken in as a whole but I also wanted each individual track to be able to stand on its own.
The album's narrative focuses on loss, both personal and more universal. Loss as a purely abstract concept and as a very real and specific force. Maybe the loss of people or things, or maybe just the vague and concerning feeling of an ending, be it big or small. The three key songs that both set up the narrative as well as signal the main three shifts in tone through the album are the tracks "Inside my house; some place I keep dreaming about", "Inside your house; it will swallow us too", and "Outside your house; the lights went out & there was nothing."
Dabbling in a widespread and unique collection of bands/monikers, Ray does not only compose beautiful ambient sounds, but also noise, drone, pop, and whatever he's in the mood for. His other past/current projects include: Julia Brown, Starry Cat, Teen Suicide, and more that we are probably forgetting to mention.
Stream and download "Inside your house; it will swallow us too" below. Three Love Songs will be a 12-track album released as a 12" vinyl record from Orchid Tapes on January 21st.
Track listing:
1. There is only you in the light & nothing else
2. Driving alone past roadwork at night
3. Inside my house; some place I keep dreaming about
4. Big man's last trip outside
5. In rural virginia; watching glowing lights crawl from the dark corners of the room
6. Inside your house; it will swallow us too
7. It will draw me over to it like it always does
8. In my dreams we're almost touching
9. God puts us all in the swimming pool
10. Outside your house; the lights went out & there was nothing
11. I can hear the heart breaking as one
12. Starting over
Read more →
After the particularly murky "Tractor Man", here's the second song off of Ariel Pink's compilation of early live recordings, Gorilla / Appleasians, for you to check out. Compared to "Tractor Man", "My Cutie" – a cover of the classic by The Shaggs – is much more hinting towards the twisted, ambiguous intimacy that we know from Pink's more recent work and that we've come to admire so relentlessly. Like the first song, however, "My Cutie" was also performed/recorded as part of the artist's Appleasians project that he pursued in collaboration with Sonya Edelman for a while, and whose collected work makes up the second of the two CDs of this reissue. The other of Pink's pre-Haunted Graffiti outfit, Gorilla, is just as raw and unadorned yet follows a slightly different path with a much larger setup, besides Pink comprising Pink, Paul Choe, Ivan Sato, Rueben Einstein, and Gil Biberstein.
For the time being, take an exclusive listen to "My Cutie" below, a cover version the press release calls both "stunningly efficient" and probably one of "Pink's most effective pop moments"; and indeed, it's surprising how touching Pink's interpretation of the brief tune is despite all the hiss and the simplistic roughness. We should probably take it as just another indication of his infinite musical talent.
Early Live Recordings: Gorilla / Appleasians is out 17 December on Human Ear Music. Pre-order the 2xCD now over here and receive an immediate download of "My Cutie" plus a surprise track from the album.
Read more →
Kallisti is the new side project of Montreal-based d’Eon, whose music tackles the intersection of technology and spirituality. His 2012 release, LP, was a sprawling concept album that at once positioned the Internet as an alienating force and as a potential spiritual liberator. At first listen to “Michael Douglas,” the first taste of Kallisti’s forthcoming EP, Arc of Fire, it might seem as though d’Eon’s put aside his more spiritual concerns. The song is decidedly for the dancefloor, a euphoric cut that borders on becoming a sort of manic sonic candy. Yet, with a name that apparently refers to “Eris’ golden apple as presented at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis,” Kallisti might be more conceptually-geared than “Michael Douglas” initially suggests. Indeed, as the track nears its end, its rave rhythms feel as though they were about to stumble over themselves, and the dancefloor becomes a chaotic world that isn’t exactly inviting.
Stream “Michael Douglas” below. Arc of Fire is available from UNO NYC’s NORELATION imprint on November 19.
Read more →
When it comes to names for musical ventures, Cuddle Formation – Los Angeles native Noah Klein’s guise ever since discarding his former project Philip Seymour Hoffman – is as harmless and reassuring as it gets. The artist’s latest release, a fifteen-minute side on a split tape with Dan Goldberg aka The Spookfish named Earthbound, appears to confirm all images of withdrawn coziness his nom de plume might evoke. Starting with the fittingly entitled “Dreamhaus”, the music quickly evolves into a calming maelstrom of unobtrusive drones and layered, reverberating vocal tracks that instantly creates an atmosphere of peaceful introspection. The tone is kept up for the entirety of the four tracks; even more tellingly than “Dreamhaus”, the opener is followed by “Lullaby for Twenty-Somethings”, and who’d argue with Portals’ verdict of describing the loop-based, meditative composition as “anxiety-soothing”? At least on the face of it, there’s no question that Cuddle Formation is almost a textbook example of that ubiquitous undercurrent that we’ve learned to call “dream pop”.
Commonly associated with bedroom production, for most dream pop has become the epitome of romanticist escapism, an indistinct longing for an alternate, unburdened reality or state of being, as exemplified by songs such as Washed Out’s early ‘classic’ “Feel It All Around”. And even more than the music itself, it is the by now clichéd means of production that has become paradigmatic for the denial of reality connected to the genre: the archetypical locus for the creation of dream pop is the bedroom, hence the quintessence of the domestic. Perceived as a shelter, the frightening outside world is debarred.
The thus observed orientation towards the domestic safe haven might even warrant a careful comparison with the epoch of Biedermeier in post-Vienna Congress Central Europe, when the political oppression that followed the restorative backlash after the revolutionary uprisings at the end of the 18th century and the subsequent Napoleonic wars constrained artists to avoid open politics and to focus on the retreat of their own homes. Considering societal developments of the last twenty years, it does not seem entirely far-fetched to see similar mechanisms at work today. Indeed, the surge (or resurgence) of music that might fit the umbrella term of “dream pop” in recent years, together with other, related backward-looking or even implicitly reactionary genres and sub-genres such as chillwave or hypnagogic pop, is probably not entirely incidental.
Read more →The paranoid post-9/11 society that superseded the brief glimpse of jaded optimism following the fall of the Berlin Wall has produced and by now firmly established conditions that oh so perfectly suit the restorative forces’ aspirations for ever more authority and ever less freedom of the individual whose dignity is reduced to the role they ought to play within the ingrained mechanisms of late capitalism, and dream pop’s remarkable success since the late noughties may at least to some degree be read as a tacit reaction to the forces that govern the society at large. It is music that inherits and adopts some of Biedermeier’s functions of providing a refuge where the harsh reality is ultimately shut out: thus understood, dream pop becomes the lullaby for that part of society that is usually observed as the most uncompromisingly political.
Listening to Earthbound, in particular the gently soothing, mesmerizing “Duckfangs Tickle my Ankles” – sort of a Klein classic, as other versions of the song were already part of his repertoire as Philip Seymour Hoffman – there’s probably no harm per se in perceiving his music a place to seek comfort in, as a form of art that allows the listener to enter a state of disconnected contemplation.
But the sleep of reason produces monsters, as Francisco de Goya reminds us with the most famous of his Caprichos from 1799. And a more careful examination of the music on Earthbound reveals that it would be all too easy to dismiss Klein’s take on dream pop as just another manifestation of the opium for an agonized generation.
Upon closer listen, it becomes clear that despite singing berceuses for his peers, Klein – he himself now in his mid-twenties – isn’t here to put his contemporaries to sleep. One minute and fifty seconds into “Lullaby”, the voice of an old man unexpectedly disrupts the track’s encompassing, gentle delirium, stating that “every person must have a star, an ideal to which they cling. The ideal may not be realized today or tomorrow but you must have an ideal which will carry you forward in life, to inspire you to do deeds and act”. The words taken by themselves may not stir revolution, neither today nor in the near future; though the source of the audio clip is certainly noteworthy. But nevertheless, with this sample it takes Klein a mere thirty seconds to undermine any desires of surrendering escapism that dream pop so easily evokes. More than the reference to the necessary ideal that everyone should have, it is the ideal’s connection to the deed that substantiates Klein’s music as a rejection of the denial of today’s realities.
In this vein, “Lullaby for Twenty-Somethings” becomes the starting point for a more comprehensive look at the artist’s agenda and his work. As founder and integral part of the FMLY collective, Klein’s music has always been aimed at something that necessarily leaves the bedroom behind, that transcends notions of the private and domestic to create a unifying, collective and thus progressive experience. It is here, beyond the obvious, where Noah’s art becomes political and thus unfolds its emancipatory momentum. Significantly, the “Dreamhaus” that is the subject of the cassette’s opening track is not a place for withdrawal for the tormented individual, but a very real (though now sadly defunct) location in Allston, Massachusetts, that served as the cradle for the building of a politically aware community.
To be sure, all this does not delegitimize dreaming as such. Idealism necessarily depends on the ability to conceptualize the counter-factual, but as explained by Goya in view of “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos”, if fantasy (i.e., dreaming) is united with reason, it may become the origin of the art’s marvels (“unida con ella, es madre de las artes y origen de sus marabillas”) – and one of those marvels certainly is its inherent ability to trigger change. After all, the post-Vienna Congress period of oppressive Restauration not only spawned the subjects’ weltflucht into the introspective Biedermeier but also the pre-revolutionary Vormärz, not only Schubert’s soothing and reclusive “Winterreise” but also Heine’s subversive “Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen”. And there’s more than a subtle hint that Klein’s work – as that of the FMLY collective as a whole – is conceptually much closer to the latter piece of art.
With his own interpretation of common dream pop tropes, Cuddle Formation’s music actualizes Goya’s insistence on the necessary interplay between escapist dreaming and reason. As a consequence, his dream pop may serve not as a safe haven but as the nucleus for the emergence of true consciousness as the necessary condition of the possibility of the political in a 21st century that is ridden by post-modernist disorientation. Skip to Earthbound’s closing track: it is in this sense that ending an EP with one minute and thirty seconds of voices repeating “We will love each other” does ultimately imply more urge towards a profound change of society than the ancien régime might be ready to accept.
Listen to all four songs from Klein's part of Earthbound below. The split cassette was released in September by Colorado's Patient Sounds. There might be a few copies left, so be quick and head over here.
Picture: Francisco de Goya, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, c. 1799, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (source)
