Reviews – Page 8 – The Resident Sound

REVIEW: DJ Seinfeld – Season 1 EP (2016)

DJ Seinfeld is a Swedish acid house DJ, sometimes working under other names such as Rimbaudian or Birds of Sweden. Part of the lo-fi house craze, Season 1 EP is built of squelching, grooving bass lines and smooth synth swells that sound like a dusty PS1 starting up. Even digitally, the whole record hisses with the warmth of a well-loved vinyl record. Perhaps the digital release is in fact a direct rip recording from the original pressing.

“It’s a bit strange innit tho?… ….The story of [Season 1 EP] is that I made all of these in one day, somewhere around early spring [2016] when my first love left me. These tracks were pressed and then the original files were destroyed, and like my relationship I had to move on, even though it’s hard u know? I still don’t know how, but I’m trying,” wrote DJ Seinfeld on the album’s Bandcamp listing.

Being part of the lo-fi house craze, Season 1 EP gained both popularity and scrutiny for its pop-art (or meme culture) and vaporwave aesthetics, seen as some kind of joke amongst the old guard of electronic music. Was it novelty? No. But on the heels of ‘norm core’ fashion trends and the disingenuous leftover behaviors of hipster culture still floating around, feelings of authenticity and sincerity dispersed through irony were hard to come by. What is now understood is when privatized entities act as society’s public institutions by way of communities (fandoms) and mythologies (story arches engrained within popular culture), individuals and communities will appropriate from private entities’ iconography to use as culturally understood symbolism.

“All I do know is that I want to live life as uncompromisingly as Kramer does, the way he throws himself without fear into the next adventure.”

While its cover art may be right up the alley of vaporwave and nostalgia enthusiasts, Season 1 EP is an enticing acid house work with lush lo-fi production.

DJ Seinfeld – Season 1 EP was mentioned on Bandcamp’s Starter Guide to the Lo-Fi House Scene.

For fans of: Mall Grab, DJ Boring, COMPUTER DATA

Like DJ Seinfeld? Give these a listen: Ross From Friends, No_4mat, Acetantina

REVIEW: Yeongrak – ASCII GIRLS (2014)

ASCII Girls is an album completely directed by Yeongrak’s use of reverb. To build ground up starting with such density can be quite limiting, and it’s a decision that we’ve seen fall flat time and time again. That said, all the tracks on ASCII Girls are incredibly well tailored. This album simply wouldn’t work otherwise.

Released on illustrious vaporwave label Business Casual in 2014, Yeongrak’s association with vaporwave has more to do with what vaporwave took from earlier artists. Notably, one can see similarities between Yeongrak ASCII Girls and established WARP Records artists such as Autechre and Boards of Canada, although drenched in reverb. Ambient, glitch-hop, and beat maker culture are blended into something new; a record that accomplishes so much more than its ‘lo-fi beats and chill’ contemporaries. Listeners are presented with fully fleshed out tracks, and after a satisfying 18 minutes Yeongrak knows when to fold them.

Artistic choices have degrees of consequence. They change the state of the piece as we continue to sculpt the parts into a final whole. Delay and (especially in this case) reverb may be the best examples of obvious artistic consequences. Now, a note is a much different material to work with; its consequence being a long tail after each note. Things can quickly spiral into a muddy, cacophonous mess which can weaken the execution of the composition. So, all artistic choices within a work will typically yield to the choice with the greatest consequences.

While its weeaboo cover art is something I neither understand nor care for, Yeongrak’s ASCII Girls is an otherwise relaxing trip of self-transcendence in an age of internet.

For fans of: Boards of Canada, Bowery Electric, Alpha

Like Yeongrak? Give these a listen: Acetantina, Tropic of Cancer, Lindsheaven Virtual Plaza

REVIEW: Grouper – Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill (2008)

Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill opens with Disengaged, an appropriately titled grief-riddled song popular to certain streaming algorithms. Every note is obscured in muddied overdrive and cavernous reverb. Unlike the music it serves so well, it’s an artistic choice that is far from subtle.

By synth or silence, tracks flow seamlessly into the next. After Disengaged, the listener is treated to a suite of dreamy acoustic guitar oriented songs, layers upon layers of delicate vocal tracks serve more as a chorus than self-backing. Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill is a floral tapestry of ethereal agony. It’s psychedelic doom channeled through folk and singer/songwriter sensibilities.

Grouper is Liz Harris, an American musician born in 1980 and raised in a Fourth Way commune in the Bay Area of California. This, and how she chose the name Grouper (members of the commune were called “groupers”) is an oft echoed anecdote of her life in which the greater story of Grouper’s work is generally affixed to by fans and reporters alike.

Pulled from a 2008 article by Cary Clarke for the Portland Mercury, a quote from Harris: “I guess this album partly ended up being me thinking about the past, and the way we carry around the dead festering weight of it for a long time, or I did anyway, and how maybe we have to leave it off somewhere at some point, even if the ghosts of its carcass come back to haunt and talk to us at night.”

The album crashes to a close with engulfing waves of delay on track Tidal Wave before drifting away on the outgoing tide that is We’ve All Gone To Sleep.

For fans of: Chelsea Wolfe, Cocteau Twins, Snail Mail

Like Grouper? Give these a listen: Charlie Megira, Last Frost, Polyphonic Shooting Spree

REVIEW: Cardi B feat. Megan Thee Stallion – WAP (Asquith 90s Techno Remix) (2020)

It was a song, then a hit, then a meme, and now a variant of that meme can be bought for 2 pounds online.

Now backed by fast pounding techno rhythms and a high-hat that sounds like Spongebob’s shoe, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s already hyper-sexual lyrical delivery is pushed to it’s cartoonish climax (no pun intended).

Seriously though, the Asquith techno remix of WAP is cartoonish, and almost not worth mentioning if it wasn’t for how absurd it is. But maybe that’s what it takes in today’s day and age to achieve independent success. Aside from those backed heavily by the industry (and even then), what success now isn’t a child of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s 1988 book The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)?

For fans of: Peaches, Benny Benassi, Machine Girl

Enjoy WAP (Asquith 90s Techno Remix)? Give these a listen: Chicks on Speed, Faces of Bass, Ulisess

REVIEW: Lyon Estates – Tutto o Niente (2008)

Lyon Estates, not to be confused by the pop punk group in England, were a hardcore band originating in 2007 in Bologna, Italy. Tutto O Niente (‘All or Nothing’) was released in 2008 on Here And Now! Records, a DIY label based in Padova. They would put out 2 EPs and 1 split EP before disbanding in 2014.

What’s great about non-anglophonic hardcore bands is getting to experience the language’s natural musicality. Frontman Claudio Quinzi’s vocals cheep like a bird yet hit like a sucker-punch in a street fight. Everything is full-throttle. Guitar and bass fly by. At their slowest, the drums sound like an engine about to take off. Most importantly, it didn’t meet the sonic conformity of anglophonic ‘punk’ and hardcore bands who hypocritically pride themselves on their self-perceived musical rebelliousness.

Tutto O Niente is a great album, and if you want to get into contemporary hardcore, start here.

For fans of: Rites of Spring, Reagan Youth, Youth Brigade

Like Lyon Estates? Give these a listen: Beefeater, No No No, DiMarcos

If you enjoyed this and can also read Italian, check out this interview with frontman Claudio Quinzi on the band’s decision to split: Intervista ai Lyon Estates: l’ eccellenza del Punk/Hardcore

REVIEW: Igorrr – Moisissure (2008)

To varying degrees, there is a level of humor preinstalled in absurdity, albeit sometimes morbid. Released in 2008, Igorrr’s Moisissure is a complex mix of glitched-out neoclassical, death metal, breakbeats and 1920s/30s pop music. Above all else, Moisissure is an electronic musique concrete hybrid; a grotesque showcase of eccentric source material and contrasting influences. Haunting layers of piano, pitched and digitally shredded drums, and the circling sound of flies will leave you feeling like you’re in a German expressionist Crash Bandicoot level.

It wouldn’t be entirely off-base to call it a bit of a novelty album. Moisissure did in fact come from the same person who created Chicken Sonata. But perhaps a more appropriate lens to view Moisissure through is that of a modernized take on surrealism.

However you frame it, Igorrr is not for everyone nor for every occasion. But if you’re looking for something genuinely spooky with just a degree of cartoon staging, this album is for you.

For fans of: Meat Beat Manifesto, Nurse With Wound, Flying Lotus

Like Igorrr? Give these a listen: Ningen Isu, skintape, Andrew Liles

REVIEW: Frankie and The Witch Fingers – Sidewalk (2013)

Having never heard Frankie and The Witch Fingers before, I expected the proceeding 34 minutes to be a morose journey of cinematic surrealism. Even the album’s cover, a naked torso and head with eyes obscured by flowers laying atop rugged concrete doused in red, lead me to believe it would be some sort of Black Dahlia; a homage to the grotesque photography of Man Ray.

In a way, what I did hear was kinda grotesque. Sidewalk is yet another disappointing add-on of the 4th wave of garage rock, indistinguishable from all its contemporaries in the only genre to have become more of a parody of oneself than contemporary death rock. This album is in many ways the same as Shark?’s album Savior, also released in 2013, only with weaker songwriting and overindulgence of rock’n’roll antics.

The only redeemable tracks (out of 12) are Ferris Wheel, a slightly unique song with Nick Nicely or Holger Czukay-esque psychedelia and song My Love, in which the singer’s incessant wailing gives it a go at making me not mention the song entirely. Seemingly undeterred, over the rest of the album Frankie and The Witch Fingers give it their all at getting me to stop listening entirely! I didn’t. I kinda wish I did, but I didn’t.

Comparatively, originality came in spades from the original incarnation of garage rock grappling with beatlemania, its 80s and 90s counterparts reinvigorated by punk, and 00s by degrees of commercial accessibility and further artistic success. Why has garage rock become such a bad joke? Every guy and gal an Easy Rider wannabe, drenched in high-waisted denim and leather tasseled jackets. I once saw the frontman of a garage rock band leave after load-in, only so he could ride up to the venue on his motorcycle, inevitably pushing everyone’s collective set-times back by 15 minutes.

In an interview with Jesse Thorn in 2011, music cultural theorist and author Simon Reynolds observed that “…[ideas of] authenticity came from feeling that someone else has more of it than you, that you don’t have it. A lot of it relates to white middle class people feeling a little hollow in some way. They feel like other people are leading realer lives than them. In the early days of rock music, rock and pop, used to be a real-time thing, it would be like The Rolling Stones admiring Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters, relatively recent records. But now it’s much more likely to be located in the past…

…I thought things would be weirder and stranger in the 21st century than that. Some trouble with that assuming of authenticity through somebody else’s style is that you inevitably produce something that’s false. It doesn’t have anything of you in it, that’s the crucial difference I think.”

If you’re looking for the anti-chic records of days gone by, you can check out our article CHASING GHOSTS: An Interview With Lost RPM’s Jeffrey Harvey.

For fans of: Thee Oh Sees, Shark?, Caesars

Like Frankie and The Witch Fingers? Give these a listen: The Monarchs, Clinic, Didjits

REVIEW: Oxbow – Serenade in Red (1996)

The sonic equivalent to Sunset Boulevard’s floating-pool opening, the unhinged bordering on infantile murmurs of outspoken vocalist Eugene S. Robinson creep into frame. Waves form and relax without ever breaking. That is, until they do, and opening track Over slams into slide guitar swells and low horn rumbling. Drummer Greg Davis commands every puncturing beat, subsiding only while guitarist Niko Wenner and bassist Dan Adams quilt the listener in delicate mystique; every touch of the ride cymbal a looming threat (or promise) of what could come back at any moment.

Eugene S. Robinson’s vocals can be hard to explain. He subverts macho-man standards of barked yelling with something deeply human, unique while simultaneously universal. Never seeming to follow a basic verse to chorus lyrical delivery, Robinson could be considered an example of Cathy Berberian’s idea of New Vocality, sometimes sounding like the Russian futurists’ idea of Zaum, or dadaist sound poems. But the lyrics that do clearly present themselves upon first listening add yet another layer of eerie mystique. To take a line from Benjamin Louche’s blog, “[Serenade in Red] is worth a purchase should you wish to hear what it sounds like when a man turns himself inside out over the course of an album…”

Just when you’re starting to settle into the shadow of Serenade in Red’s opening half, midway track La Luna comes barging through the door like a violent behemoth. Oxbow makes you wait in the noise they buried you in. Constantly destroying any resemblance to a basic verse-chorus and so on structure.

An untitled track of cinematic ambience leads into Babydoll. Piano layers film noir cinematic atmosphere, broken by hard-boiled grey-scale psychedelia. Wenner’s guitar cries and wails, while Oxbow’s rhythm section creates Stravinsky-esque levels of dramatic rhythmic tension.

Oxbow is, among other things, a band not to fuck with. Working at their own pace, with their own sounds, even an Oxbow song of lesser quality holds more merit than most Melvins ‘hits’. Their willingness to experiment with poetry and uncommon instruments (from a rock stand point), while completely disregarding conventional structuring allows them to craft work with such emotional potency as to make most notable rock groups banal.

You can read a great Bandcamp Daily article about Oxbow here: Oxbow’s Avant-Rock Experiments With Light and Shadow.

If you enjoyed the more David Lynchian elements of Serenade in Red, you may enjoy our Guide to The Fast Paced, Lighthearted World of DOOM JAZZ.

For fans of: Chelsea Wolfe, Unsane, Swans

Like Oxbow? Give these a listen: Racebannon, Loudspeaker, Bohren & der Club of Gore

REVIEW: Cal Folger Day – At The Roots of The Stars (Solo Edition) (2017)

I once met Cal Folger Day at a show in NC. She was on tour with The Bonk from Ireland, herself an American living abroad for at least a couple of years as I remember. Another rainy weekday, which meant maybe 5 people showed up. I had just witnessed one of the best shows I had ever seen up to that point, and with the little cash I had that night I bought as much Cal Folger Day merch as I could.

Enter At The Roots of The Stars (Solo Edition); a download card made of thick bevel-cut mat board and printed on with rich pink and black inks. None of this is important to the musical qualities of the album itself, obviously. Consider it an appreciation for the artists who put a level of care into their download cards and, as of now, the only download card I have kept after use.

Cal Folger Day’s use of text-to-speech accompanying ‘vocals’ bring a level of subversiveness to At The Roots of The Stars. The integration of text-to-speech in music has been marred by meme-culture association and general reluctance in classically trained circles to integrate with new sounds or experiment. But Cal Folger Day commands a level of mastery over it. The text-to-speech ‘vocals’ add a dimension of emotional coldness and disdain which is repeatedly overcome by the warmth and humanity of Day’s dynamic singing.

“The text is a short play written in 1919 called ‘At The Roots of The Stars’ by Djuna Barnes. I have such an utterly unshakable confidence in the beauty of the language that the work every day of finding the most nimble, pleasant, natural melody for the words was terribly easy. As if I needed additional motivation, this feeling that I have, of being simply abashed that Djuna Barnes is today a relatively unknown name, lent a strong sense of justification and indeed obligation, less to her ghost than to myself and other readers/listeners,” wrote Cal Folger Day for An Áit Eile, a culture, society and ecology site based in Ireland.

At The Roots of The Stars (Solo Edition) is currently unavailable online. If ever given the chance to stream or get a copy of this album, take it. Until then you can check out Cal Folger Day’s site here or their Bandcamp where other beautiful works of theirs are available.

For fans of: Karen Dalton, Vashti Bunyan, Sibylle Baier

Like Cal Folger Day? Give these a listen: Myles Manley, András Cséfalvay, Concette Abbate

REVIEW: Myles Manley – AAA (2020)

Myles Manley’s 2020 EP release AAA is what Of Montreal and other indie bands of the late-naughts would have tried to be if they had carried higher artistic aspirations. A lush yet intimate recording, AAA is an intricate tapestry of emotion.

Myles Manley’s work is a great example of metamodernist ‘new sincerity’ within music. Humor briefly flourishes before being struck back down by underlying pain, all made very real by a high-degree of sonic intimacy. AAA is by no means a record that will be playing over the grandstands of your sporting locale. No, this one is best heard in your room, at night, speaker in reach. Opening track I Took On America And Won has been through my headphones a couple dozen times while wandering the local graveyards, and if you’re given the chance to do so I would highly recommend it.

Sometimes it can be difficult to understand if the lyrics should be interpreted in an abstract, surreal manner, or painfully direct and honest. While maybe not intended, this does allow for AAA to burn slowly with layered re-listening and reinterpretation. What is certain is that AAA is a triumph of the extended-play format, and ought to make it into your listening rotation should you find yourself alone anytime in the near future.

For fans of: Why?, The Angst, Sibylle Baier

Like Myles Manley? Give these a listen: Cal Folger Day, Concetta Abbate, András Cséfalvay