Ducktails – the solo project of Real Estate's Matt Mondanile – has played a very important role in my life for reasons that I'm still unable to really put my finger on. Perhaps it's because Mondanile's earliest music never took itself too seriously; Ducktails' first few albums were filled with nothing more than the joy of experiment – lo-fi bedroom pop made by and for the 21st century suburban daydream. Mondanile wrote songs about pizza, the mall, about everyone's favorite importer/exporter, about the vibe and how not to kill it. When I first got on the Ducktails train some six years ago, I fell for Mondanile's effortless, even coy ability to produce no-pressure songs for no-pressure times – songs to get stoned, borrow your mom's honda and drive around the suburbs to.
Since signing with Domino in 2011, Mondanile has left his hazy bedroom pop behind for a cleaner sound, more complex song structure, and, on his latest LP St. Catherine, a lyrical honesty that's been unseen in any of his catalogue up to date. St. Catherine is, in his own words, “mostly a breakup record. It’s a story, the beginning of the record is moving to the west coast and experiencing that, and then falling in love and then falling out of love, and then going back into it and then eventually it dissolves at the end.” It is in this effort to tell a story through an entire album that we find Mondanile pushing Ducktails into a completely new direction – one driven more by honesty and emotional exposure than by effortless, tongue-in-cheek pop experiment.
As far as production goes, St. Catherine is impeccably clean. Songs like "Surreal Exposure" are formally straightforward, combining baroque countermelodies with the Ducktails' classic phaser-ed guitar tone. "Heavens Room" – perhaps the most impressive song on St. Catherine – pairs a silky bass line with Romantic string orchestration and a chorus hook distantly sung by Julia Holter (the song is slowed down and revisioned on the last track of the album, "Reprise", which ends the record with a melancholic and nostalgic shudder). Mondanile's voice is equally present and his lyrics precise – he approaches feelings of frustration ("Headbanging in the Mirror"), amorous captivation ("Heavens Room") and jealousy ("Medieval") with unabashed emotional transparency – and he's no longer afraid to hide his voice behind a multiplicity of effects.
Yet it is the very concept of St. Catherine that sets the album apart from any other Ducktails release. The motif of religiosity is abundant; song titles like "Heavens Room", "Church" and "St. Catherine", as well as the cover art – a photo of religious sculptures in a seemingly Italian Renaissance church (pardon my inability to distinguish classic works of art from a distance) – point to a certain holiness, and assert that the entire album should be taken as a work or "high(er)" art. St. Catherine is certainly sentimental, and even a bit melodramatic at times, yet it is precisely this fearless sentimentality that makes it Ducktails' most riveting album to date.
Some time back Henning mused on the death of the music blog, and the rise of the micro label in its place. I'd say this is a fair assumption. A good case in point would be London's Seagrave – a steady stream of neon-tinged cassettes and the occasional 12", etched with everything from harsh noise (Cementimental) to rough-around-the-edges hip-hop instrumentals (Mute-Tiny). Cycling through these releases is a bit like tapping into a stranger's iTunes playlists, or indeed blog – except you now make a small donation, and are sent a colourful artifact in return. It's this inclusiveness and affordability that marks the transfer from 'blogosphere' to a DIY democracy of small imprints.
Seagrave's recent digital comp is a good example of this shift. An extensive collection of lolloping, transgressive electronics, hand-picked by label founder Tim Matts, Agave Res can be yours for three quid. These tunes fizz with the awkward menace of a pirate radio rip, or some discarded demo that came too hot through the mixer. Perhaps the centrepiece is Graham Dunning's "Retort" – a cut from his mad mechanical techno project. That's right, Dunning stacks records like pancakes, adorning the tower with contact mics and other gizmos – swinging like the arms of some deranged Rube Goldberg machine – to create woozy, aleatoric techno. Long live little labels.
Between her freshman release and upcoming tape, San Francisco's Chelsea Faith aka Cherushii has been busy applying her distinctive style to a variety of areas. Given that she is an active DJ and music maker, we can find plenty of self-released material on her Bandcamp, such as delightful Nobody's Fool EP and Starlight Express EP, whose feelgood watercolor artwork is provided by Faith's sister. Her one-year old remix of Fina Fisken's "Save The Day" is a strongwilled, trancey must-have, even if "trancey" steers you clear.
While it's laughably typical to describe the world of Cherushii as glitter-filled, SF to a T, rave pop, or techno textbook, these catchphrases nonetheless fit the bill, although Faith has an easy time excercizing her broader musicality. Memory of Water, for example, is a melodic journey within pop framework and solacing ambient overtones. It departs from 4-to the floor confetti and eases the listener into a sweet, warm storyline. Starting off with "I Dreamed I Saw You By The Lake," an absorbent, beatless anthem, our ears are effortlessly nestled into this album's particular mood and tuning. By the time "Pillow Palace" begins, sentiments like smiling and intrigue are submitted to. "Thin Line" features Not Not Fun all-star Maria Minerva, a real life homegirl and tour companion of Faith. It's really nice to hear Minerva within this context, and I would love to see a music video for this piece which feels like a long-lost Petshop Boys hit. Other tracks like "Ultraviolet Nights" and "Moonflower Galaxy" have their appositeness to the dancefloor, but, supplant tracks always take us back to a spacious, at-ease destination. "Everything Is In Color" is a Neverending Story, Moroder-esque statement of vibrant severity, a testament of how intensely enrapturous - and fun - space and time can be (if you think about it). That's an utterly Sagittarian quality.
Memory Of Water is highly recommended and out as soon as August 14th on 100% Silk.
After years of working with traditional instruments in bands and on soundtracks, David Sheenan decided to see what music he could make using only his laptop. In 2013, Sheenan relocated from Ireland to Berlin to study history at university, leaving all his instruments, equipment and synthesizers at home. Without these by his side, he gave himself the challenge of creating a record digitally. Under his producer name of Vogelbat, his abstract electronic style is beat-driven with manipulated vocals and treated samples. His self-titled debut album, expected later this year, features glitchy hip-hop ("OXI", "Spectred Pile"), silky ominous trip-hop ("Barred From Berghain") with moments of sweetness like the string sounds on "Kita-Ku". "Nuuk" is an initial taste of the album and a promising start for Vogelbat. Take a listen below.
Montreal's Hua Li, who've we posted about on this site before, released a new EP, called Za Zhong, at the end of June on fellow Montrealer's Charlie Twitch's (also known as ¡FLIST!) label, Art Not Love. Za Zhong, all with production by Gloze, abounds with charisma with "Double Trouble" starting things off in a chiming, rippling, swarming, and swarthy manner that flows into "Luxury"'s dithering and teasing nature and grind. Hua Li goes from singing to rapping with palpable panache. Singer Zyhkeira makes a very impressive appearance on "How Bad" with a quick, darting vocal turn amidst the song's wafting backdrop and "Faded in the Night" is snappy and jumpy. Four wonderfully lackadaisical tracks here, all with potent grooves.
There’s something boyish yet deeply self-aware about the single and opening track on Pat Keen’s debut album Leaving. Its narrative is one of growing up and giving in to apathy—finding hope and fucking it all away—catching yourself in stubbornness and trying to rise higher—failing. With lyrics like “I took a chance and grew out of my turtle shell/And flew right out of living hell” it's singsongy on a first listen, but it’s the earnestness in Keen’s voice paired with those strange chord progressions that make something sort of affected sincerely affecting. Musicianship is apparent throughout; the track’s closing breakdown hits all those sweet American places. “Morning” is a lullaby for adults, a nursery rhyme on acid.
The bass groove on "Inner Demon" might be the first 4-second loop of music to ever psychologically dominate my entire summer, so ceaseless is its almost perfect infectuousness. This sly dance track from New York multi-instrumentalist Doug Bleek is not without its NFOP-worthy weirdness, either: the lyrics seem to be premised around literally becoming someone's inner demon, an escalation of the forthright sexuality of Miguel that I wish we were getting more of. Bleek's knifepoint vocals hang taught against guitars that whip through the track with a glee that could only be chalked up to a degree of insanity. At 2:04 is a melody for which this track deserves to be pinned to the frontpage of the blog for the rest of the summer. At the center of "Inner Demon" is a guitar solo that channels Prince's ability to grandstand without ever feeling didactic: it's not teaching you a lesson about fun, it's just joining in.
"Inner Demon" is an absolute blast. Smart without being too heady, and a nice (and rare) reminder that yes, you can make fun, danceable pop songs with "rock band" instruments. This, dear readers, is how you write a pop song on a guitar.
Stroboscopic Artefacts' Monad series continues to hone in on itself as well as the label's specificity, its taut black and white techno aesthetic. The Monad series is adorned with sketches of geometrically interesting surrealistic desert fruits and/or oceanic creatures. They are somewhat cute though prickly and pokey, an observation which serves as insight into the style of the series. Having featured releases from Kangding Ray, Perc, Rrose, AOKI Takamasa, and label runner Lucy, the next deposition features Zeitgeber, an act comprised of the legendary Speedy J and Lucy. "Monad XX" is abstract, muddy, and replete with eccentric design. It is both crude and cartoonish. I'm not sure I hear anything in the release that gives either of the producers away, apart from Lucy's military-marching, repetitious percussive work. The first time I heard Zeitgeber, I imagined that it was a mask-on-only solo artist who keeps his real identity concealed; alas, the producers behind the project are extremely recognizable. Pity they didn't take this as an opportunity to go incognito. The music, I think, wants disguise from distinction.
The final track on the EP, "Quantum Verse," wonders happily into a curious and echoey melodic zone. It occassionally trips over itself and stammers while we move through cool, damp air, further into even more shimmering ambience, such that is similar to a seaside sunset. It is a sensitive and brief track, one that reminds me of Lucy's "Falling," a dreamy track that wraps up the persistent Churches Schools and Guns. Lucy has a side to his music-creating self that is housey, hopeful, haunted by moments of innocence, for, why otherwsie would this sound sneak its way in as closing tracks on several of his recent releases?
Reviewing the labels' careful roster, I wonder if a female producer will land an EP on either Stroboscopic or the Monad series. Maybe none have submitted works to the label? At least it's run by someone who performs under a female name, so it's slightly bent towards some costuming as well as acknowledgment that things seem a bit chauvinistic.
