Favorites this week:
Vladislav Delay - Rakka (Cosmo Rhythmatic)
More abrasive than the work Delay is perhaps most known for, Rakka is the sound of self-iso (before it was fashionable) in a post-nuke tundra doubly ravaged by a now-dead industrialism and nature at its most severe. Sonically, it’s often as punishing as a windstorm (“Raajat” in particular offers little peace), but still conjures the layered, evocative beauty of, say, The Present Lover, just set in a much darker world. Though in a way “industrial,” the music remains organic; very much natural, of and about nature. Initially conceived as the soundtrack to a Finnish TV show in which an evil-making virus spreads outward from an icy landscape, Rakka fittingly sounds like being swallowed alive by the most terrifying shit the Earth has on offer. Scary music for scary times. Might as well yield to it! There’s no escape.
Leo Takami - Felis Catus and Silence (Unseen Worlds)
The world of Felis Catus and Silence is a small garden, bound by pastel concrete and just coming to life on a spring morning. With pizzicato guitar against a backdrop of hazy synths, the music is light, bucolic, and comforting — in some ways, the aural equivalent of Animal Crossing (though the video game comparison I’m most compelled to draw is this: this record has the exact mood of the earliest parts of a Zelda game, when Link is still home, still learning how to throw rocks, not yet involved in any sinister goings-on). Though the record often uncannily captures a specific Windham Hill Records, guitar-led-new-age moment, and the listener could easily believe they were taking in a mid-eighties John Doan joint (other times, Takami takes us even further back and nearly gives us 60s production music), the music is modern, beautifully arranged, and brilliantly conceived: its own thing.
Henry Birdsey - Catacomb Relay
These are deep, organic double bass drones comprising one long track; I recommend loud, immersive listening. Though there are varying levels of grit in these drones (the bow scrapes often become more audible than anything tonal), there’s otherwise not a lot of build or dynamic here for the first good third — it’s the constancy that makes it what it is (read: an inner ear massage). Toward the middle of the track things get a bit more frantic — quicker strikes and some destabilizing pitch shifts; taps and stabs. The weirdness and intensity build (the instrument begins to sound like a chainsaw struggling to start; at another point, like a chopper overhead) before it goes quiet, thundering and grinding menacingly, then seemingly transforming into a singing bowl. We end up on two drones nearly identical in pitch but not quite, carving an aural niche with their dissonance. Satisfying shit.
Lie - You Want It Real (Mint Records)
Half angular, Wire-y, economical post-punk, half atonal, jagged almost-avant noise rock, all with a just a hint of darkwave on top (they call it “cold punk,” a totally appropriate name), You Want It Real is a lean and hungry record. On occasion (“Good Boy” for example) the complex interplay between guitar and bass isn’t unlike Sebadoh at their most raucous. It’s intense, trimmed of everything extraneous, and sounds like every player is doing the absolute most — I don’t know about y’all, but that’s everything I want in a power trio. Love this.
Other stuff released this week:
AKB - Marianergraven
On Marianergraven, Swedish dj Anna-Karin Berglund, or AKB, delivers lush ambient from the watery depths. Each track seems to transmit a scene report from a different oceanic layer via synths and loops: “Sedimentar” starts so low in pitch it approaches subaudibility, while “Tropikerna” lassos the radiant luminosity of the water’s surface. Among the aqueous layers are distant sounds reminiscient of whale vocalizations and glitching tech — things are moving through this water. If minimalist but immersive soundscapes are your thing, dive into Marianergraven and lose yourself.
Fluisteraars - Bloem
While these are reliable, well-written black metal songs that go places, I find myself wishing for a lot more of what was promised by coverage of this album (that it sounds “rural,” that it’s atypical, “next level,” really out of the box). Some of it does succeed in disregarding genre expectations (“Nasleep” and its odd glitching; “Eeuwige ram” going to an almost classic rock place with its yelling, clean-ish vocal), but these moments are few and far between for me. Some of the surprises miss altogether (the symphonic elements on “Viek” are just dorky). Still, it’s not a bad album — just a bit of a flavorless pudding at times.