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Friends, please enjoy a complimentary Heathen D, because my ambitions got behind me in the face of flu B. I’ve just been sweating, shivering, aching, watching movies and going to the bathroom. I hope you don’t get this. I feel like I’m around the bend and will be pretty damn active here next week, but … yeah.
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OROROR a/k/a OR Adore Us LP (Notown Sound/Strange South)
Came across a great 12” EP by this Little Rock group years ago, when they were just going under the name Or, a very difficult-to-search handle which I guess is still technically their name. This was when Notown Sound was putting out lots of lathe cuts and limited tapes at a rapid clip in and around the pandemic, and I maintain that most of those releases were excellent, if near-impossible to source. Nice to see Nathan back at it with these guys. The five-piece’s stance is much as I recalled enjoying then, spindly night music with sinister dub style moves, needling synths and wispy vocals that sound like they belong to one wearing a frilly cuff attached to a velvet sleeve, a pale hand extended out holding a candle. Their debut full-length Adore Us follows a long period of activity and otherwise, across singles and EPs that didn’t afford them this concentration of their strengths in composition and sequencing. They are closest in spirit to long lost Houston band Balaclavas, but where that group leaned towards a debauched, heavier essence, OrOrOr dances around their web with nimble accuracy, indebted to the completist end of the Factory roster (Benelux releases mainly), and if they have a lighter touch they also boast some thoughtful, clean production and dense electronics/noise arranged throughout to create a real frenzied approach, bookended by a more solemn leadoff and closer. Loving it the more I listen, and anyone who was caught up in the GSL/31G era of new bands all the time (or ever wished for a gothier GogogoAirheart) will find their wish granted here. Now give us the remixes!
ULRIKA SPACEK EXPO LP (Full Time Hobby)
This Reading, UK band has seemed perilously close to collapsing over the years, each time returning with a record better than the last one, and it’s happened again – utilizing the space at London’s Total Refreshment Centre (from where those hyped jazz/fuzh LPs by Ill Considered originated), they’ve given into buried cybernetic impulses for a crisp, electronically-enhanced turn at their tight-wound patterns and syncopated trap drumming. The less listened among you will find some common ground with where Radiohead went on Kid A, and in ways this is that same kind of huge step forward, using rhythms to underline the emotions at play in their music, corralling in the listener to whatever corner they’re gonna whip around next. Easily their most involved album to date and kind of a small miracle at times.
DIAL ALASKA Joy CS (Earth Libraries)
From AL to AK, the poles touch – Alabama sound artist Dial Alaska envisions life in the fourth world (ice floe edition) with clockwork companions near the freezing point, solemn cheer spiking their gears despite being trapped by circumstance. Lynchian to a degree, perhaps more like Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, this is highly personal American music with a 1920s/1930s sort of dream ballad bent, haunted by history and living under circumstances, with dreams as an easy but perilous out. Gentle music but by no means fragile; this has a skein of gospel/true belief jettisoning into its core, a strange and uniquely comforting self-confidence. Allegedly this came out of not understanding the assignment of what vaporwave is, and an attempt to create it without hearing on the most roundabout assortment of gear – ancient laptops and USB mics among them. At this point I’d rather hear what someone outside the loop has to say about the music inside of one, and in that sense this is a real crown to wear.
Hang in there buds — Doug M
