12 Mar 2014 — Trey Reis
I used to see that Dropping Gems label diamond around the streets of Portland, although sometimes I was confusing the symbol for the ones on those Diamond Supply Co hats. What is that, Pac-Sun? Like Pacific Sun? Not in the Pacific Northwest. It might not actually rain here all the time like we tell everyone, but that doesn’t mean it’s sunny. But through the gloom shone that diamond. And these people were dropping gems.
Philip Grass have been beating the rainy streets of Portland, OR for a couple of years now. I remember seeing them play one of the Dropping Gems showcases at the Holocene, and everyone basically went nuts when they started sputtering 50 Cent samples into the mix. Implants from Massachusetts, the duo met at the University of Massachusetts, before relocating to the Pacific Northwest. There, alongside the burgeoning beat scene, they began releasing material as small as Soundcloud streams or compilation contributions and as large as entire self-released albums, and now label-backed EPs like this one; the four track Find EP from Dropping Gems.
Each of the tracks sputters with that familiar Philip Grass fog of jazz clips of department store piano and flute swirls. The beats sprinkled in like rain drops from clouds of soft, gray synthesizer hums. Dance music for the soft carpet of the bedroom floor. No birds outside. Those twitters are coming from the speakers.
The digital version of the EP is available now from label’s Bandcamp page. RIYL: Softening the blow of what’s left of your winter blues.
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12 Mar 2014 — Henning Lahmann
While elusive London collective Old Apparatus kept things relatively low-key last year, merely putting out one – albeit excellent – free EP in October, founding member Asher Levitas had quite a busy 2013, producing some commissioned remixes and above all releasing a very compelling EP as Saa together with Oslo vocalist Linn Carin Dirdal on left_blank. But as two projects don't appear to be enough, Levitas has come up with Penny, a joint venture with visual artist and writer Michael Crowe.
Sonically, the duo's first, self-titled EP does share quite a few significant resemblances with both Old Apparatus and Saa – nocturnal sounds and melodies suitable for scoring any latter-day film noire, inspired as much by contemporary UK bass as by more continental varieties of techno and house, all spiced up with same dashes of post-modern grittiness. Which is all fine and still amounts to a listening experience that outshines most experimental electronic music of today. The focus of Penny however is its integrated audiovisual concept, though Old Apparatus, too, always has been more than the music alone. Still, Michael Crowe manages to genuinely elevate the project, coming up with a visual language that not simply accompanies but truly complements Levitas' productions. Watch the piece for first track "Pen#1":
The Penny EP is out next Monday, March 17, via Overshare Records. More material is set to follow later this year. Below, you may exclusively stream all three (aptly untitled) tracks from the EP:
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12 Mar 2014 — Parker Bruce
The whole vague-band-sends-vague-email-with-link-to-music-thing has been done a million times but Belgian duo drömbild put a new spin on it. When I asked them for more information I found out they were just 16 and just had their first practice as a group a few Sundays ago. With scraping bass guitar that sounds like it's dredging up rust, drömbild manage to create a very distinct, trilling moment with their song "Blank Letter." The keyboard sounds like a tiny bell ringing or glass chandelier tinkling, and the vocals are expansive. You can download it on their Soundcloud and hear it below. Excited to see what drömbild comes up with next.
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10 Mar 2014 — Andrew Wagner
On “Ethernet/Telegraph,” the new London-based trio Standard Planets team up with the highly influential synth pioneer Harald Grosskopf. The results are two pieces of shimmering synth pop. “Ethernet” is the dancier song, with its pulsating base line and near-cosmic synth arpeggios. The more subdued “Telegraph,” meanwhile, is something of a slow-burner, its vocals being almost methodically delivered as the song adds layer upon layer of krautrock synths. Living up to Standard Planets’ name, both “Ethernet” and “Telegraph” create out-of-this-world soundscapes. Yet, even if Standard Planets may reach for the celestial, there’s something thrillingly grounded about their music, and they never lose sight of a good pop song.
Stream "Ethernet/Telegraph" below. The debut single will be released on March 24th.
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07 Mar 2014 — Noah Klein
“Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with land surveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.”
-Gilles Deleuze
Approaching M. Sage’s tapestry of field recordings, gentle electronics, and affected instrumentation is to unravel a poetics of space. Regardless of the intent behind dissecting the letter, syllable, or phrase, the words will bloom and become new formations.
M. Sage’s latest, A Singular Continent, is just that, “singular”. Outside of Matthew’s own archive from his former RxRy universe I cannot say that I have ever approached an album so dense, so total, so heart-achingly flawless in its multidisciplinary execution. Less a purely aural experience than a cartography of interaction subject to emotionally driven plate shifts and territories whose environments fluctuate in rhythm, each track within A Singular Continent expounds upon a happening from the smallest of observations to the feelings trapped within memories of existence. A genuine practice in the prophetic potential of what music can achieve as an art form, exercising breath beyond relatively futile politics and projecting the foundation for an alternative reality where all directions are plausible.
In addition to the 12” release, A Singular Continent encompasses a collaboration of collage, by Nathaniel Whitcomb, and a collaboration of prose, by Grant Souders. As well as creating wondrous worlds of sonic exploration Matthew is also the curatorial and organizational force behind Patient Sounds, a music label and small press headquartered out of Matthew’s home. Purchase A Singular Continent here, and while you wait for the USPS to knock on your door make sure to visit the stunning imaginary webscape for the collection ~ I’ve certainly spent more time there in the last two weeks than I care to share.
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07 Mar 2014 — Evelyn Malinowski
You guys, this EP is amazing. Just sit, start with the second track "Better," and look at the artwork. Doesn't that fill your heart with joy? Slava's quite impressive handle on Chicago clubby breaks mixes delightfully well with the kink-awareness overtone of Comma Sutra. I wonder whether the chapter from the Kama Sutra about using "the accessory" to sodomize the male after his selfish climax to re-arouse him so she can get hers plays into this concept at all. No matter the case, Slava's new work is danceable, edible, and maybe fuckable.
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07 Mar 2014 — Henry Schiller
On Litanic Mask’s “u release me” the Portland band initially seem to be gesturing at a chopped-to-bits trap synth reinterpretation of the surf rock classic “Misirlou.” Ultimately, each jolt of the fractured opening riff kaleidoscopes off into shimmering, honeyed wallpapers of sound, patterend with sub rosa nods to more experimental fare. The dissonant bending of synth chords in the song's chorus reminds me of a similar technique employed on Beach House’s Teen Dream, but Litanic Mask aim less for the elusive emotional pangs of digital folk and far more comfortable in the blissful honeymoon era of a marriage between post-dub wetwork and early-90s OMD.
Kenna Jean inflicts palpable ounces of mythology and personal turmoil onto Mark Burden and Andrea Kulish’s landscape of synthesized percussion and piano work. The trio manipulates traditional synth-pop machinery into a swampy digital ruin of hip-hop, sending out interstellar winks to northern English pop. "u release me" is taken from Litanic Mask's upcoming Vampire LP, for which Jean has drawn on iconic vampire myths (probably more Vlad the Impaler than Anne Rice) in crafting her lyrics. Vampire is out April 8 on Audraglint.
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07 Mar 2014 — Trey Reis
Music defined by its mood and compositions for film soundtracks have always gone hand-in-hand. The hum of music can play just as much of a role in shaping the mood of a scene as the choice of lighting, the acting, or the cinematography. I have this habit of creating visuals for the music I listen to. My mind has always listened cinematically. It’s a habit I’d like to be able to shut off, to experience a piece of music unfiltered and unconsidered. Just heard. Although, the creation of visual cues for much of the new music I hear, spread like branches across the horizon of the Internet, certainly helps with these write-ups.
This new Imperial Topaz album, Full of Grace, certainly has a cinematic nature to it, insofar as each of the album’s eight tracks are dripping with moody synthesizer melodies, echoing alone underneath the haunting thump of drum machines, and vocalist Caroline Teagle’s will-o’-the-wisp vocals glowing in the distance as they fade down the foggy path. It’s the general formula for the album, yet the vocals don’t appear in the mix until nearly five minutes into the album. It's the slow-burn of an empty, isolated introduction scene, and like any good introduction, it sets the stage for everything to come.
As the album progresses, the qualities which bind each song in the consistency of the mood, are delicately placed and withdrawn, the whole sound often devolving into its most skeletal forms, before the fog settles in again. It’s a practice in transparency, as the knob on the mix moves between the extremes of opaque concealment and clarity in vision spreading for miles in every direction, your feet sinking into the coolness of the “Wet Sand” as waves crash down and recede according to the universal settings of tempo, obscured and set by the essence of the length of scenes, the thumping pace in the mood, and the frame as a definition of sound space.
Listen to album closer, “Wet Sand” below, and buy the entirety of Full of Grace on limited edition vinyl over at Tranquility Tapes.
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