Goddamn it’s hard to care about anything in this heat. If it ever felt like we were finally approaching the sharp-end of the climate-change stick, it’s now – a June less summery than apocalyptic. And it’s not just the weather. Blood boils in the taut neck of the chattering class, drunk on the wine of their faux drama, a guttural howl that eclipses the very real horrors made, hourly, by governments the world over. It’s bleak, consuming stuff – you can’t even enjoy a spot of contemporary music without someone chanting ‘Death to the IDF’ at you, even as we collectively struggle to agree on what that really means, or whether it may, in fact, be warranted.
Far be it from me to suggest art should be a distraction from the world, but in months like this it feels that adding yet another voice to the endless cacophony of bloated opinions might be just about the most counterproductive thing any human can do. Instead, perhaps, we should take it upon ourselves to listen: listen to each other, to out hearts, and to sounds and songs that might encourage us to, slowly and pensively, digest the nuance of the fractured earth. Perhaps such a move toward listen, rather than talking, might prove to be a more powerful act after all: providing us with strength so that, as July finally rolls around, we might actually do something about it.
With that minor pep talk out the way, here’s some music that we here at MEANS have found helpful this month – small rumination’s that have defended the embattled spirit.
Spirit Lights
Plinky synths and woozy drones loiter in the garden, the endless repetition of plodding arpeggios painting an intricate picture of the perfect summers day. Its jovial, heart-warming stuff – music for picnics and midday strolls through fairy-infested woodlands, all wistful melodies pointing to little more than a elegant gap in the hedge, a moldy overgrown bramble bush. But where such things might come off overtly saccharine, Spirit Lights ground the proceeding by the inclusion on a near-incongruous drum kit, an instruments that works, in ways big and small, to add just enough tension and grit to prevent any hazy stagnation.
Subtle rides and crashes frame synthetic horns and minimalist procession, building into aggressive patterns that live halfway between structural beat and endless fill, a lively and wayward voice that neatly juxtaposes the cyclical nature of the glassy synths its set against. Spirit Lights operate in a surprisingly tight aesthetic world: the synths never venture far from warm plinking textures and artificial horns, a limitation that is surprisingly effective, allowing the album to build strength in increments: trance-like evolutions of timbre and harmony, deviations in the long tails of reverb and delay.
There is an ever-growing urgency at work, as if the later tracks have taken on some added gravitas: ‘Darko’ and the titular ‘Spirit Lights’ are sombre and laden, stripped of any whimsy that might have once lingered in the lobby. The album pushes against the ambient genre, and against minimalism, perhaps borrowing from the likes of Tangerine Dream or Vangelis but without the dull poor-mans Bladerunner conceptual simplicity that is so often present in such things. I imagine this would be phenomenal live, which can’t be said of much ambient/minimalism, the percussion driving simple melodic/harmonic ideas to an almost euphoric crescendo, a sort of jazz-less Mouse on The Keys.
Forsaken Distruth
by JAEVEL
(Dugtrax)
Moody, monstrous post-hardcore all the way from Indonesia, Jaevel rip through a several competing shades of blistering fury, with a raw, lo-fi energy. I don’t know what they are so angry about but I’m convinced it matters. Sure, music exists with a tad more nuance than this, but the band absolutely destroy a certain breed of obtuse hardcore, acutely pained vocals strained over pummeling fists of distortion.
Not afraid to slow things down, the album balances 80’s hardcore with half-speed jams, almost post-metal in nature, though without the accompanying conceptual grandeur. Harmonic solos jostle with masculine chugs, arpeggiated guitars laying down a bed of forlorn regret, soon trampled by aggressive moans and punishingly single-minded drum-work.
If your not in the mood to be shouted at by an Indonesian fella then this is probably not for you – but if the currently tenor of the world – bitter, angular, a littler stupid – seems worth reflecting in song, Jaeval do it wonderfully, blasting out a chipper 17 minutes of fevered aggression.
Songs In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand
by Erica Eso
(Hausu Mountain)
Floating perilously between ‘very good’ and ‘quite annoying’, I find myself somewhat torn: in many respects this is an exceptionally well put together album, rich with woozy lo-fi synths and restrained vocal harmonies. The production too, is top-notch – obtusely filtered pianos knock out barmy arrangements of atonal chords, whilst waves of pitched reverb provide a haunting choir to support the Erica Eso’s at times erratic, quivering vocals. And yet, Songs in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand doesn’t always seem to achieve the level of greatness its individual parts suggest. It’s a strangely fragmented album, less a selection of songs than a handful of overlapping ideas – perhaps this is the rationale for the titular ‘grains of sand’.
Approaching it rationally, my unease with the album probably amounts to something rather simple – whilst I appreciate the quirky, off-kilter components, the sort of music that it is deconstructing is just not really something I get along with. Those with a greater tolerance will, however, be in for a treat – Eso has produced an album that tugs playfully at the threads of modern pop, weaving together shards of R’n’B and soul with avant tendencies, occasionally stretching out into a sound-world that might be occupied by Sufjan Stevens in his weirder moments. Perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s these weirder moments that work best, providing an underlying thread by which Eso escapes the mere emulation of genres already well-trodden elsewhere, and parries with something genuinely new and interesting. Indeed, by the final track ‘Loose Coollection’ rolls around, it is like all attempts at mimicry have been abandoned – leaving behind a breathtakingly unique lattice of spoken word and abstract woodwinds, all pulled together by the subtly complex production.
orcan cerulean
by Various Artists
(Orcan Cerulean)
There’s something about this rather fantastic Orcan Cerulean comp that just screams ‘knock-off PS4 soundtrack’ – and that’s no bad thing. From the playful, colorful cover-art, to the jaunty rhythm’s of the opener, Gamelan Guru’s / Transglobal Underground’s ‘Go South’, I can almost feel myself madly steering some weirdly-shaped creature about a 3d platform while trying to avoid being eaten by animated mushrooms, or being shot at by madcap neighbours with shotguns while attempting to complete an unfeasibly complex paper-round. The degree to which this all sounds like an unreleased Shawn Lee OST really is uncanny, and an aesthetic I am totally there for.
Later tracks deviate from this aesthetic, whilst retaining the same over-arcing formula. We get moments that descend into coffee-table trip-hop/break-beat/D’n’B, complete with rather cheesy synth sax and bass lines torn from a charming keyboard demo. The press release calls it ‘worldbeat fusion’, and whilst I am nothing if not rusty with my electronic music sub-genres, it seems a pretty fitting description. Expect a plethora of cut-up voice-overs, some pseudo world percussion, mechanical tabla preset et all. It’s all very stylistic, a homage to a very particular breed of 90’s dance music, albeit with some modern flourishes. It’s all certainly a knowing nod, an album that is near giddy in its revisitation of the sub-culture from which it has emerged. What is more, the whole endeavor comes on a fetching vinyl record, raising money for cancer research.
MEANS 