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  • Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0061 (January 21, 2024)

Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0061 (January 21, 2024)

FREE POST: Hard Drive Dump lookin' back at March 2024: Jim White, Black Decelerant, East Village, much more

Hello to the handful of new subscribers. You come here for music writing and I give it to you, dimensionally, working through how and why a record works, and why some don’t. No lovefests here; it’s respect where due (and it’s due in more places than you’d imagine). Something below is going to be new to you and you’re given the opportunity to listen to it, and that’s how it goes.

Keep sending in the music so I can keep doing this: PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA // [email protected] — many have, many more should.

This is a FREE edition to show you what you’re missing behind the paywall. In this case, it’s me, methodically going through my hard drive and covering everything I didn’t cover last year. One non-musical segment in there was the late R. Lee Ermey being interviewed for a DVD extra on a Spanish underwater horror movie called The Rift. He had some choice words for his co-star Ray Wise. I should put it out as a lathe cut or a flexi; it’s just that good. He doesn’t seem to remember much of the movie, other than it was awful, and that Ray was less of a man.

Anyway. Subscribe, please. Cheap and plentiful thoughts about the music that will shape your next day.

JIM WHITE All Hits: Memories LP (Drag City, 2024)

We’re really fortunate to have drummers like Jim White in this timeline, and overly lucky that he’s been a presence since 1980 and still going. He’s cycled back in lately, with a lovely return for the Dirty Three, positions in two veritable supergroups (The Hard Quartet for rock, Beings for improv), and session work galore in all the right places for the likes of Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Ned Collette, Bill Callahan and Myriam Gendron. This is the kind of solo record I’d hoped he’d make; pure statements from behind the kit, the mechanics of his wrists, his mastery of gravity, an occasional synth or sample from a drum pad to leaven dense, Milford Graves-esque moments (“Marketplace”). Relatively short at 24 minutes, it feels longer, as tracks lilt into one another, it is far too easy to lose yourself in the vistas he paints up, the man’s thought processes left to play out with no responsibility to anyone but himself.

 

BLACK DECELERANT Reflections Vol. 2 LP (RVNG Intl., 2023)

Exquisite, kinetic, quasi-aquatic ambient works from a bicoastal collaborative duo of Khari Lewis (Contour) and Omari Jazz. Works well beyond the confines of spa music in how the icy backgrounds work with the tension in arpeggiated notes halving the distance and synth runs that speed up and slow down throughout, like sonar pings on solar heights. The chord clusters that appear and vanish here do so with a heavy purpose that builds a constant evolution through pattern repetition and deviation, making me think about how long it takes for light to travel from space to here, and how it stays in view. Which any good ambient music should do: transport you from here to somewhere else.

 

KA BAIRD Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos LP (RVNG Intl., 2024)

Why are all these RVNG releases stacked up? This was probably me looking for promos sent to my inbox, downloading them all at once and lining them up. Of course some time has passed, but who else is talking up this Ka Baird record now? Conceived as a greater work around the passing of a parent, and the performative aspects of impermanence leading up to each of the 11 gates between this realm and the next, this is a subtly rhythmic jump through Baird’s trademark flute/electronics/voice practice to explore these areas. It’s a big one, with lots of collaborators (Horse Lords folks and more), and might benefit from the visuals and live aspect, but as it stands it’s a big, physical work writ small, requiring close listening in the quiet, active parts and a big standback through the angelic drone portions. Will take some more listens and some witness to fully process but this artist has come so far since Spires That In The Sunset Rise, and is carrying the torch for vocal improv as a spectrum from Jaap Blonk to Shelly Hirsch.

 

DISCOVERY ZONE Quantum Web LP (RVNG Intl., 2024)

Synthy pop landscape scanner, enough abstraction and ‘80s Japanese tone/synth demeanor to keep most people entertained. Artist JJ Weihl seems to know a good bit about these zones and makes for a convincing “yes and” electronic ballad/plangent technology enjoyer.

 

STEVE GUNN & DAVID MOORE Live in London LP (RVNG Intl., 2024)

I take it “Reflections” is meant to be a series of duos working in a zone of quietude and landscape – the studio version of Let the Moon Be a Planet, the debut release, influenced the pieces played here, with Steve Gunn adding textures to the grand piano of Bing and Ruth’s David Moore’s. The amount of overpowering done here makes me question how these instruments were meant to fit together, but they bring down a storm upon Café OTO at points, and they understand one another enough to make something that’d blow the Windham Hill hat off your uncle, leaving them astonished and flappin’ in the breeze.

 

VERITY DEN s/t LP (Amish, 2024)

Read the review here, from Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0001. Probably the last mention this one’ll get until a new one. 2024 spoke and this was on top.

 

WINSTON HIGHTOWER Winston Hytwr LP (Perennial/K, 2024)

Covered here in #0043 (subscription required); great record, don’t trip.

 

HORSE LORDS As It Happened: Horse Lords Live LP (RVNG Intl., 2024)

More of that thumb music from the Lords. Good gnaw of guitar, clever use of synths, Konono rhythms brought forth for the Anglo set. You make a live record in Europe, see what happens.

 

KEVLAR UPPER Demo CS (Iron Lung, 2024)

Band of few words and less time. Great single-minded hardcore prowl/pummel, excellent drumming (on it, fast pressure fills, no reverb, sounds like someone really angry at a pile of cardboard). Great vocals, precision all around, a cool five minutes hate.

 

AUS Der Schöne Schein 7” EP (Static Age, 2024)

Haven’t heard from this Berlin postpunk trio in a while. First song just felt kinda uninspired, but the gloom is the thing, and the pressure from those whining synths/theremin sounds over that repetitive churn on “Zugvögel” carries over to the grindstone push of “LSD.” Good sweeping bass and guitar tones, greyrocking otherisms for your leave-me-aloniest of days.

 

THE SLEEVEENS s/t LP (Dirtnap, 2024)

Street/pub punk with HOOKS from Nashville, with an Irish frontman and the former drummer of Cheap Time. Just bashin’ em out down there. Really feelin’ it down there. Great tone, great low-register vocals, this is why people keep doing it and keep coming back.

 

DARTZ Dangerous Day to Be a Cold One LP (Flying Nun, 2024)

Why is it dangerous? Because the beer will lose its life by someone in this band or one of their fans drinking it? Punk quality sits on a knife edge, and this one ain’t no Sleeveens. It’s no Chats either. Too clean, wrong bass sound, goofy vocals, would want this to be Australian and dustier, but it’s Wellington. It’s so weird to hear Flying Nun bands and not automatically be in love with them; that started with Mint Chicks and keeps going.

 

COFFIN PRICK Energy Crisis EP DL (Sophomore Lounge, 2023)

Couple outtakes and the first track off the Coffin Prick remix record Side Splits. Busier and more butt-shakin’ than a lot of that album, which covered a lot of ground in so little time and earned Ryan Weinstein a place on a label that til now had mostly been doing the Les Rallizes Denudes reissues. The catbird seat? Landing Johnny Machine on drums for the title track is a coup, and it grooves and grooves. “In a Field” drops us back into the slack keys of the new fourth world estate.

 

EAST VILLAGE Drop Out 30th Anniversary Edition LP (Heavenly, 2024)

Perfect record here, one of the most forward-thinking bands in the Britpop era. Flawless, timeless, coulda been from 1971 or 1982, or 2001, or yesterday – who knows, who cares. Download includes all the tracks from their singles comp Hotrod Hotel, so if you didn’t get that, it’s here now. I’m selling off most of my records but I think I’ll keep this one. One record that takes the place of a few hundred in terms of quality and intent is the record for me. Up there with Teenage Fanclub in terms of knockouts, and maybe even better, because making a record this good and then breaking up is just too good of a move.

 

L Marilyn Monroe – All of Us LP (Radical Documents, 2024)

Radical Documents has been pretty quiet (or maybe just cut me off) and for a label that’s taken nothing but chances over the years I hope this isn’t the record that did them in. I’ve been struggling with this one for about a year. Scottish spoken word performance with a jagged postpunk band firing off behind it, and this is the most outward example of this I’ve heard in a while, like the ComedySportz version of Still House Plants. Makes time melt and extend, but not in the way you can control, in the way where there’s a lot of silence, just one jumpscare after another. A good example of a performance outfit doing exactly what they want, almost like a provocation or dare. But the audience does what it wants, too.

The struggle is real?!? – Doug M