Many of the tracks found on
Burn The Night / Bruciare La Notte have something rough and ready about them; elements that are swiftly assembled and presented, both for maximum effect and as a way of capturing the essence of the creative impulse. Fun to play, or to clear your head out while you burn up the night, in other words. Opening track ‘Twist’ reveals itself as a montage of chopped up voices, the cadences and pitches hacked and hustled into a brisk rhythm. These vocal clips morph into the sort of humanoid bleeps that could have been made by contemporaries such as Mantronix or Jean Michel Jarre, as well as the cut ups of more academic sound artists. Tracks like ‘Twist’ and the mysterious title track also betray a distinct feeling of the brashness of the 1980s: all those bold colours, programmed beats and angular shapes, sound and sonic imagery there to shock and sell the latest upgrade in Western pop culture.
There is something incredibly vibrant to these recordings. The songs are tight and constructed around a repeating, almost droning riff. These aren’t dark or ominous drones. Instead, they are filled with life and ecstatic energy. Take ‘Obviemama’ by Sir Victor Uwaifo and his Titibitis or ‘Who No Man’ by Osayomore Joseph and the Ulele Power Sound for example. They sound massive. The verses are sung over these bouncy drones until the chorus. Then the main motif is changed and elongated before the band slot back into the original groove again and just play for all their worth.
Aastiage is the duo Ata ‘Sote’ Ebtekar and Shadi Ziaei, and
1996/2000 compiles tracks they recorded over those years while they were both living in San Francisco. According to Ebtekar, the project aimed to reunite lyrical content with electronic music, creating genuine electronic pop instead of dance music with acapella vocals over the top. As Sote, Ebtekar has released a stunning sprawl of zeitgeist twisting music over the last two decades, and it’s fascinating getting access to these tracks and hearing another angle on his work. There’s a nocturnal warmth suffusing these songs which brings to mind the vibe found on Leslie Winer’s ‘Witch’, while the music constantly feels like it’s straining at the boundaries of what a pop song is. ‘Flesh & Blood’’s beat and synth bass funk seems like it’s constantly trying to shuffle off into a new plane. ‘Just Fine’ sits somewhere between industrial and trip hop, slithers of distortion adding a layer of blistered harmony. Ziaei is the perfect foil for Sote, her gorgeous vocals somewhere between dreamy shoegaze bliss and post-grunge angst, while her guitar playing has a ruthless efficiency. She ends up a powerful centre of soulful gravity, so that even when ‘Color A Dream’ throws in a barrage of beat jumps and twists, it’s never able to override the melodic heart.
Tezeta captures the great Ethiopian organist Hailu Mergia and his band performing at the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa during their 1970s residency there. After the authoritarian Derg regime took power in the country in 1974 and swiftly banned much live music performance, thanks in part to its American owners and well-connected guests the hotel became a refuge for live music and creativity. This tape, long-considered lost until its Analog Africa reissue, was recorded by the band during their downtime in the hotel, and finds them at the peak of their creative powers.
Batu is one of the UK’s very best DJs right now, having blown me away on club and festival dancefloors on umpteen occasions in recent years – most recently London’s inaugural Waterworks festival this past summer. His debut Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1 goes some way to summing up why, expertly capturing his forward-thinking brand of bass-heavy music and ear for tight mixing. Across two hours, he brings together a number of the UK’s best upcoming club music producers in Metrist, Bruce, Lurka and himself with a wide global cast of figures pushing myriad forms of electronic music forward, whether that’s Lyra Pramuk, DJ SWISHA, Kush Jones, Jay Mitta, Siete Catorce, or a whole host of others.
This is music with aspirations beyond any boundaries. Never mind genre bracketing, this is work that gleefully tramples the fences we generally use to divide art forms. One disc (
Lights In The Rain) features a suite of compositions inspired by and dedicated to Italian film directors. Poems are deployed as lyrics in some places, cited as inspirational source texts in others. Jo Wood-Brown’s paintings (appearing on the cover and in the booklet) of migrant workers have been chosen carefully, and two pages of the booklet are devoted to her work. Different disciplines seep into one another: Parker associates tones with colours, sounds with imagery, notes with poetry. The end results are less music than a kind of magic.
The individual volume names and covers of
Swirling In The Backyard –
Laos covering his solo work and
Sulawesi that of One More Grain – also hint at other, unmapped transitory states of existence that Quinn likes to invoke. Laos and Sulawesi refer to the locations of the mysterious ancient stone jars featured on the sleeves. Doubtless Quinn has mapped them on his travels. Jars, of course, often held grave goods that spoke of “memories, all packed into one time” and offered support in the journeys those departed from this world had yet to negotiate. Other states are suggested to the listener through Quinn’s assertion that he “rarely records without some beer or wine to help multiply the number of illusory choices.” A number of the One More Grain tracks found on both volumes of
Swirling In The Backyard suggest this forcibly; especially the live cuts ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ and ‘Tropical Mother-In-Law’, and the gloriously ragged take of ‘Leg Stomper’ we find on
Sulawesi. These are ones where the listener can easily picture the damp fug of whisky and beer seeping into the amp cables and loosening the instrument strings.
Overmono’s entry into the
fabric presents series is the Russell brothers at their very best, distilling various headsy dance music classics and a healthy dose of some of the best new music you could hope to hear in a club of a weekend evening into a sharp 65-minute mix. It’s a mix that sees them move through various gears when it comes to tempo and sub-genre, as loopy ‘90s techno from DJ Zank and Surgeon & James Ruskin early into the mix ultimately give way to rude bass tracks from LCY and Vex’d, killer D&B cuts from Orca and Ed Rush & Optical, and the sumptuous melodies of recent Blawan cut ‘Fourth Dimensional’ in the mix’s dying moments. There’s also a healthy dose of their own recent club cuts, and when they’re as good as ‘So U Kno’ and ‘BMW Track’, that’s certainly no bad thing.
Amongst out and out bangers like the 12” edit of Harry Thurmann’s ‘Underwater’, Jon Savage teases out the points at which the head music impulse in electronic music becomes more sophisticated. All phased percussion and ambient funk, I can still hear ideas from ‘Steam Away’ by Flying Lizards (from their still under-regarded 1981 album Fourth Wall) being mined as recently as this week on the new Virginia Wing album. BGM’s ‘And’ swaggers brilliantly, whilst Rayon Laser’s ‘Funky Meteor’ does little of what it says on the tin with a stern, futuristic mood piece.
Rupt + Flex collates Seefeel’s recordings from ’94 to ’96: two brilliant EPs (
Starethrough and
Fractured/Tied), their second and third albums
Succour and (
Ch-Vox) (the latter released on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex imprint) and a host of rarities and unreleased tracks, including an Autechre remix of ‘Spangle’. It’s not their full Warp history, since they returned in 2010 with an excellent, eponymous album, but it marks the point where Mark Clifford in particular became both absorbed by the possibilities offered by digital tools and, in the time-honoured tradition of the production obsessive, disenchanted with touring and promotional duties.
Succour and its associated bonus tracks, remastered by Pole (Stephen Betke), are full of chest cavity-probing bass and gleaming, metallic percussion – especially striking on the likes of ‘When Face Was Face’ and the imperious ‘Vex’ – highly sculpted, digitally buffed textures from indeterminate sources (occasionally a guitar is recognisable), and Sarah Peacock’s by-then almost evaporating vocals. And there are constants from the Quique era, such as the Aphex-like drones and the dub chassis that so much of their work rests on.
Touring has turned Fly Or Die into a working band, and that sound is captured on
FLY Or DIE LIVE. Released in May, the double album complements and surpasses its predecessors. Taped in Zurich shortly before COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill, it finds the band on inspired form. Jaimie Branch has truly come into her own as a bandleader, adding soulful vocals and charismatic spiels to her brilliant trumpet playing. ‘Prayer For Amerikkka Pt 1 & 2’ is positively charged, going from a slow stalking blues to a Morricone western storm. The more abstract and drone-based pieces are radically expanded, reflecting a group of musicians who are totally at one in their collective explorations.
This really does capture something of our shared experience, the alarming isolation of our friends – or ourselves – the loss of family time, young dads separated from newborns, childless couples losing their patience with broken parents because it’s fucking hard for them too, the denial, the hypocrisy, the utter cruelty of how we have sometimes treated each other. But then the kindness, the community spirit, the support through grief, the gifted work-time gin and tonics on middle-class balconies. All this while we watch despots, thieves, liars, and corrupt officials thrash around their fiscal woes across the globe. We compare everything that disgruntles us with Nazism from both sides of the political spectrum. The project of Woke was turned into a pejorative so fast that all discourse descends immediately into online bickering and omnidirectional calls for cancellation. Oh, and sourdough. It has been, and remains a deeply troubling time, where we see the worst and the best in ourselves.
Inevitably, there will be lots of lockdown art made. Inevitably, we’ll be super cynical about all of it. But, if my previous paragraph chimes with anyone, it will hopefully underscore the emotional need for a beautifully indulgent 40-minute space rock jam. Thank you, Bulbils. As we continue to hurtle through a world that openly lies to us, where we attack each other from safe anonymous social media accounts, where we send death threats to doctors for trying to vaccinate us, the chance to be lost in a repeating major key riff is like being handed a Valium and told to take the day off. I genuinely welcome this release and the time I’ve spent with it. Just Sally Pilkington’s chuckle at the end of the opening track is balm to the noise of our current lives.
At its best, a Tresor Records release completely takes you over and reprograms your cultural receptors to the point where you don’t just find yourself thinking “this is the best shit
ever,” you’re in the zone of “I am never going to listen to any other type of music again.” I guess that’s the rave mentality in effect – like, doubtless all kinds of music can induce it in different people, but something about being hours deep into a ripper techno club night really brings that feeling to the surface. Right?
I tangibly caught it a few times while listening to Tresor 30, which I have not been doing in a club but which, at around five hours, lasts as long as you might expect a visit to a club to. (Non-British and/or well-travelled techno consumers might consider this the observation of someone living under the yoke of misery guts UK licensing laws – and they’d be right.) An immense undertaking, combining classic tracks from this Berlin label’s back catalogue and new, specially recorded ones from contemporary producers continuing its legacy, it’s by no means wall-to-wall bangers and doesn’t attempt any ‘story of a night out’ type overarching, although the sequencing is at times worthy of praise in itself. The physical version is a box containing a dozen 12-inch records, meaning that the final three tracks of 52 (!) – Carlota’s ‘Breakfast On The Moon’, ‘Deep Mid’ by Torus and Mareena & JakoJako’s ‘30 Perlen’, all varyingly calm and ambient – sit on Side X.
Regardless of context, Grauzone are still in many pop mythologies a band that appeared and then disappeared, leaving four singles (one posthumous) and one great album in their wake. With the singer living in a hut up a Swiss mountain. This is the sort of story that can, in the current climate, allow itself a number of sequels with the same material. The original LP had been re-released ten years previously but now, with the masters in the possession of Stephen Eicher, it appears again as an extended anniversary edition in a box set format, full of tantalising Xerox art and with a live gig from 1980 in tow, released on the very aptly named, (for Grauzone), We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want.
What can be heard when live tape and album are played in chronological order, is a band completely reforming and remodelling itself as a concept. The bonus live gig, recorded at Gaskessel in Bern on April 12, 1980, is very loose and very enjoyable; merely because it feels “alive,” human, and at the mercy of chance. Plus there are tracks you would never associate with Grauzone if your introduction was ‘Eisbär’ or ‘Moskau’. The band rip through a set of numbers that never make their legendary LP with aplomb. Power chords slash and jab through these overheated art punk tracks, making a great counterpoint to some fevered, attempted on-the-one beats and hollered repeat choruses. This really is performance punk, hammered into shape on the creative anvil there and then. Tracks like ‘I Live In A Jungle’ are messy, arty and glam racket yelpalongs. Stripping away another layer of the Grauzone myth we find that most of the numbers are howled out in English. The band, then, sounds more like a punk Palais Schaumberg or a chaotic Subway Sect than the Ice Men of legend. And there is more than a nod now and again, however ill-formed or wayward, to The Velvet Underground, though we do get a recognisable album track in ‘Moskau’ and the opening ‘Grauzone’.
Trust No Wave reminds me of when I first started going to indie clubs. I’d wade on to the dancefloor to be with my friends. It was all bouncy and gleeful. Then the song changed and something harder would come on. My friends would disappear. I’d be stuck either in the mosh or next to the slam dancers. Throughout the duration of the song, I’d be getting it on all sides, then at the end my musical tormentors would pat me on the back, and we’d walk off together. The aggression was left on the dancefloor. It was exhilarating. This is how I feel after
Trust No Wave finishes. It’s aggressive in places, but not malicious. At no point do you feel threatened during its 20-minute runtime.
The real joy to Trust No Wave is that Special Interest are still active and releasing music that is as good as their searing 2016 demo. 2018’s Spiraling and 2020’s The Passion Of showed they have grown musically but still possess that special quality that made their original demo such a delight in the first place. Not a lot of bands can say that, and that’s why they still deserve our special interest.
Dancehall rhythms were an ever-present in UK electronic music throughout 2021 as numerous producers sought to build on the ‘techno dancehall’ framework that Mr. Mitch coined in 2018.
Now Thing 2, a compilation compiled by Felix Hall, producer Richard Browne and Lil’ Toby, looked back further though to some of the turn-of-the-century dancehall riddims that have inspired new producers probing the sound today, with the sounds featured across the record spanning nearly two decades. Following up on the release of the first instalment of the
Now Thing series for the Mo Wax label in 2001,
Now Thing 2 presents a journey through the minimalist, bass-heavy instrumentals that light up the dancehall floors that DJs like Felix Hall play on today, from the hypnotically repetitive ‘Heart Attack’ from Dave Kelly to the sub-shattering, canine-sampling sounds of veteran producers Lenky and Andrew Thomas’ ‘Bad Mongrell’.
Unsurprisingly, this live document isn’t Sunn O)))’s first rodeo. They have amassed an archive of over 130 concert recordings captured throughout the course of their career. So many, in fact, that they had to start a dedicated Bandcamp page just to cater for their live output. Hell, this isn’t even their first BBC recording at Maida Vale. Back in ’04 they were invited to perform on one of the final Peel Sessions commissioned prior to John Peel’s death. Compared to their previous outing, which sounds like a shredder going potty atop deep, flappy bass,
Metta, Benevolence… is stocky. The mids elbow their way through the murk of the low-end and the trebly peaks are given space to warp and expand. 2004’s Peel Session is a physical experience not to be written off, however. It is more than capable of palpitating your eardrums with such a convulsive energy that they’ll feel like they’re attempting to take off.
What Metta, Benevolence… so adroitly achieves is a reproduction of the battering sonic pressure weathered at a Sunn O))) live show. An experience that Harry Sword has referred to as “A juddering blanket of weight that was akin to Deep South humidity” in his drone bible, Monolithic Undertow. People often talk about volume in relation to their performances which, let’s be fair, is an intrinsic element, but it’s the condensing of sound by continual layering, live overdubs and loops, that form the tumultuous physicality. What is felt is practically solid. This is what separates their physical magnitude from, say, the maximal ear-clattering of Swans. Plenty of bands can crank their amps one louder but few pretenders are capable of recreating the sheer sonic intensity, the atmospheric oppression of a Sunn O))) concert.
The reissues put out by Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle label are never less than great, but
Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri is a particularly special release. Originally released in 1978 on a label run by Curran, Roberto Laneri, and Giacinto Scelsi, and consisting of a single long track by the great American composer, former member of Musica Elettronica Viva, and student of Elliott Carter, the album has a dreamlike, almost diaristic quality, dissolving from a cat’s purr to playful vamps upon a toy piano, a child’s voice (apparently Fred Rzewski’s son), a woozy, fluttery synthesiser, a cacophony of birds and bells and playground whoops. Never has musique concrète felt so personal or so revelatory.
I don’t think there’s anything more quintessentially
Cameroon Garage Funk – that fulfils each word of its title most completely – than ‘Sie Tcheu’, by Joseph Kamga. A minute-long instrumental intro builds anticipation, and though there’s not actually a lot of vocal thereafter, the lead guitarist (presumably Kamga himself) dazzles with some hard blues riffs worthy of the most basement-dwelling teen pimplies, which again I naturally mean in a good way. The organ solo, when it hits, is pure wavy gravy
Nuggets psych idealism.
The 1970s Cameroon bandscape had its own specifics, quirks and idiosyncrasies, just like that of any country from any era, and Analog Africa have ably captured this without going overboard. There’s no obvious reason, short of national affiliation, for someone to focus on its music – which of course cross pollinated with that of its neighbours, plus France later on with the 1980s makossa boom, this perhaps being a colonialist hangover – to the exclusion of others. It’s just full of slinky rhythm, stone funk and some really cool origin stories, the sort of stuff that justifies the continuing existence of the archive reissue market.
New York-born T.L. Barrett had lived many different lives before he took charge of Mount Zion Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side, where he would later minister to the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire’s Philip Bailey and AACM co-founder Phil Cohran. He had worked in a morgue, shined shoes, become a jazz singer and mostly self-taught pianist inspired by Errol Garner among others. But being the distant cousin and former student of preacher and activist Reverend CL Franklin, father of soul icon Aretha, it wasn’t long before he heard the call.
He would develop ideas with his Youth For Christ Choir, a Tuesday after-school programme for children aged between 12 and 19. It caused quite a stir. Earth, Wind & Fire’s Larry Dunn and Andrew Woolfolk passed through; (the group’s legendary horns feature on Barrett’s ‘Do Not Pass Me By’). Donny Hathaway visited and pulled out his tape recorder.
The album bristles with spontaneity, and much of that is down to its chief architect. “He plays what he hears and writes what he feels,” states Reverend Edmond Blair – the pastor’s pastor – on the back of the original release of Like A Ship. Apparently critics have questioned the quality of the record because the choir aren’t professionals. Barrett believes that one can do all the things through Christ that strengthens him. The Youth for Christ believe it also.
The Quietus Reissues Etc Of The Year 2021
- 1: Pastor T.L. Barrett And The Youth For Christ Choir – I Shall Wear A Crown
- 2: Various Artists – Cameroon Garage Funk
- 3: Alvin Curran – Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri
- 4: Sunn O))) – Metta, Benevolence: BBC 6Music Live On The Invitation Of Mary Anne Hobbs
- 5: Various Artists – Now Thing 2
- 6: Special Interest – Trust No Wave
- 7: Grauzone – 40 Years Anniversary Box Set
- 8: Various Artists – Tresor 30
- 9:Bulbils – Blue Forty
- 10: Jaimie Branch – FLY Or DIE LIVE
- 11: Seefeel – Rupt + Flex (1994 – 96)
- 12: Various Artists – Do You Have The Force? (Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Electronica 1978-82)
- 13: Overmono – fabric presents
- 14: One More Grain – Swirling In The Backyard: Volume 2 / Sulawesi
- 15: William Parker – Migration Of Silence Into And Out Of The Tone World
- 16: Faust – 1971-1974
- 17: Batu – BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix
- 18: Hailu Mergia And The Walias – Tezeta
- 19: Aastiage – 1996/2000
- 20: Various Artists – Edo Funk Explosion Vol. 1
- 21: Tiziano Popoli – Burn The Night / Bruciare La Notte (Original Recordings)
- 22: Objekt – All Night @ Nowadays, NYC
- 23: Various Artists – La Ola Interior (Spanish Ambient & Acid Exoticism 1983 – 1990)
- 24: GNOD – Easy To Build, Hard To Destroy
- 25: Regis – Let The Night Return
- 26: Tchiss-Lopes – Já Bô Corre D’Mim
- 27: Arthur Russell – World Of Echo
- 28: Kling Klang – The Esthetik Of Destruction
- 29: Joseph Spence – Encore: Unheard Recordings Of Bahamian Guitar And Singing
- 30: Beatriz Ferreyra – CANTO+
- 31: 4Mars – Super Somali Sounds From The Gulf Of Tadjoura
- 32: Space Afrika – RA.772
- 33: Shovel Dance Collective / C Joynes – Betwixt & Between 7
- 34: Various Artists – Duppy Vaulted (2011 – 2021)
- 35: Spiritualized – Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
- 36: Sexual Harassment – I Need A Freak
- 37: New Life – Visions Of The Third Eye
- 38: Unsound – Intermission
- 39: Anz – Spring/Summer Dubs 2021
- 40: Rakta & DEAFKIDS – Live At Sesc Pompéia
- 41: Hawthonn – Vulva Caelestis
- 42: Various Artists – Strain Crack & Break: Music From The Nurse With Wound List Volume Two (Germany)
- 43: Various Artists – Essiebons Special: 1973 – 1984 Ghana Music Power House
- 44: DJ Sprinkles – Gayest Tits & Greyest Shits: 1998-2017 12-Inches & One-Offs
- 45: Depeche Mode – 101
- 46: Hood – The Hood Tapes
- 47: Joseph Nechvatal – Selected Sound Works 1981–2021
- 48: Chris Carter – Electronic Ambient Remixes One & Three
- 49: John Coltrane – A Love Supreme Live In Seattle
- 50: SHERELLE – fabric presents
- 51: Bill Callahan & Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Blind Date Party
- 52: Darwin – Dekmantel Podcast 351
- 53: The Long Blondes – Someone To Drive You Home
- 54: Various Artists – Zanzibara 10: First Modern Taarab Vibes From Mombasa & Tanga / 1970-1990
- 55: PJ Harvey – Is This Desire?
- 56: object blue With Kornet – Rinse FM Mix
- 57: Lovett – The Night House (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- 58: David Tudor – Monobirds
- 59: Michèle Bokanowski – Rhapsodia / Battements Solaires
- 60: Grand Veymont – Grand Veymont
- 61: Les Rallizes Dénudés – Double Heads: Maximum Psychedelic Blues Years
- 62: Okyerema Asante – Drum Message
- 63: Black Sabbath – Sabotage Super Deluxe
- 64: Various Artists – Sounds Of Pamoja
- 65: Bardo Pond – Amanita
- 66: Various Artists – Lee Lines (Landscape Mixtape)
- 67: Radiohead – KID A MNESIA
- 68: Marco Shuttle – Rhythm Büro Podcast 016
- 69: Squarepusher – Feed Me Weird Things
- 70: The Sisters Of Mercy – BBC Sessions 1982 – 1984
- 71: Various Artists – Back Up: Mexican Tecno Pop 1980-1989
- 72: Clint Mansell – In The Earth (Original Music)
- 73: DJ Stryda – Cream Of Bristol Roots Pirate!
- 74: Can – Live In Brighton 1975
- 75: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – Candyman (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- 76: Julius Hemphill – The Boyé Multinational Crusade for Harmony
- 77: My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
- 78: Various Artists – Bills & Aches & Blues (40 Years Of 4AD)
- 79: Le Blaze – La Tape
- 80: Djrum – London Unlocked: At Tower Bridge
- 81: Various Artists – Molten Mirrors: A Decade Of Livity Sound
- 82: Phew – Phew
- 83: Coil – Love’s Secret Domain (30th Anniversary Edition)
- 84: Magma – Simples
- 85: Bambounou – SPND20 Mixtape
- 86: LCD Soundsystem – The Long Goodbye: Live At Madison Square Garden
- 87: “Blue” Gene Tyranny – Degrees Of Freedom Found
- 88: Perko – DIM249
- 89: Various Artists – Resist To Exist قاوم لِوجودك
- 90: Psychic Hotline – The Wild World Of Psychic Hotline
- 91: The KLF, The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu – Come Down Dawn
- 92: Daniel Hart – The Green Knight (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- 93: Various Artists – Longing For The Shadow: Ryūkōka Recordings, 1921-1939
- 94: Nadsat – Nadsat
- 95: The Ecliptic Newsletter – Lidl Museum Of Ancient And Contemporary Art Audio Tour
- 96: Sun Ra – Lanquidity (Definitive Edition)
- 97: Suburban Lawns – Suburban Lawns
- 98: Ben UFO – At Friendly Potential, Wellington
- 99: Leven Signs – Hemp Is Here
- 100: Tara Busch – Jakob’s Wife (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
