Songs Vol. 4/8 - 4/12 — Jim White, Mandy Indiana, Cola, Eiko Ishibashi, Russian Baths, Thou, The Antikaroshi
I find myself often overwhelmed by the amount of music that’s available to sample these days, worried/scared that I’m missing out as I peruse the daily influx of PR that I receive touting X band promoting X track from X album featured on X label.
This is a good problem to have.
I’ve had my headphones on for most of the day as I’ve been combing through press release after press release, trying to do the impossible and give every artist, performer, or band the time necessary to absorb the work. My selections were pulled from the second week in April. These tracks stood out:
One of the more stunning and idiosyncratic albums to emerge in 2023 was The Forest In Me by Xylorious White, which was produced by Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto. The percussion half of the duo, Jim White (also of Dirty Three) has released a solo album titled All Hits: Memories on Drag City. Initially, I was expecting something akin to portions of Max Roach’s Drums Unlimited LP, a solo showcase with White simply demonstrating his skills behind the kit. It’s impressive how much more varied the LP truly is. Shame on me for having narrow expectations.
“Uncoverup / Jully” are separate tracks featured on the record, though stitched together for the video. You can get a sense of tonal explorations and snare textures as White switches sticks for brushes, dragging them in circles and pushing the bristles outward. You’re treated to a black & white visual close up of his hands as they work, the sounds somehow reserved in spite of how rapid and seemingly frantic his movements are.
All Hits: Memories is available from Drag City.
Links:
Jim White — Bandcamp
Links and sounds were handed over courtesy of Drag City.
A manic dance single from Mandy, Indiana surfaced titled “Idea Is Best”. The accompanying video is composed of live footage of the band performing, the visuals warped and prismatically-charged to match the energy and glitch-addled propulsion of the track. The vocals are heavily processed, mostly indecipherable as every sung or spoken utterance is embellished with some effect and multi-layered at points. Again, the energy is central to this track and I imagine that crowd response would be appropriately physical.
“Idea Is Beat” is available to purchase digitally from Fire Talk.
Links:
Mandy, Indiana — Bandcamp / Instagram / Facebook
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Stereo Sanctity:
Ahead of their return to the US this weekend, Manchester quartet Mandy, Indiana release a new single, “Idea Is Best". This is the first taste of new music from Mandy, Indiana since the release of their debut album via Fire Talk, i’ve seen a way, named one of 2023’s best albums by New York Times, Pitchfork, The Guardian, Crack, Loud and Quiet, The List of Best Fit and more. “Idea Is Best” is an industrial club-ready track with deep, thumping bass rumbling underneath sweeping synths and singer Valentine Caufield’s haunting whisper echoing throughout. The accompanying video features kaleidoscopic live footage of the band shot by Hitness Club and edited by Harry Steel.
This month, Mandy, Indiana will bring their “physically — yet brilliantly — overwhelming” (NME) live set to Coachella Music & Arts Festival and Elsewhere in New York. This is their largest headlining US show to date and will feature special guests Mary Jane Dunphe and Water from Your Eyes (DJ set). Mandy, Indiana thrive in the unexpected, and their performances have become a vehicle to explore the boundaries of tension and release. A full list of upcoming dates are below and tickets are on sale now.
The Wire-y bounce and Feelies tension heard in Cola’s “Pallor Tricks” admittedly stuck to the regions of my brain happy to experience something familiar and evocative. A sweet update of the post-punk sounds of yore, “Pallor Tricks” carries some light six-string abrasiveness, thudding low end, and a well-placed woodwind adds some nice melodic touches.
“Pallor Tricks” is featured in Cola’s upcoming album, The Gloss, which be out via Fire Talk on 6/14.
Links:
Cola — Official / Bandcamp / Instagram
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Terrorbird Media:
From their inception Cola have expanded on the d.i.y. ethic of the Dischord and SST eras, creating potent sounds from a minimal palette of drums/bass/guitar and lacing their songs with winsome one-liners and societal commentary. What’s another word for commentary? Gloss, apparently. Never basic, the lyrics reward repeated listening for deeper meanings. David Berman’s poetry-via-garage light pennings are an inspiration, as equally so are the lighter side of UK first-wave New Wave and the Dunedin sound. The results are in the pudding: at times sparse and poetic, at others a thrilling, hook-laden good time, as with the cheeky romantic sketch of a one-night stand that is so overflowing with innuendo-cum-journalism talk that it almost teeters over into self-parody. It's an album bursting with energy and wit and ideas–filled to the margins.
While the band's singles since their last LP, "Keys Down If You Stay" and last month's "Bitter Melon" (both of which appear on their new LP) saw the band in a looser and more exploratory mode than their debut, "Pallor Tricks" ups the tempo, seeing the band at perhaps the most volatile point in their catalog to date, with nervous rhythms desperately chasing different shades of distortion in search of equilibrium.
When I first listened to composer Eiko Ishibashi’s track “Smoke”, I wasn’t aware that the piece was part of a score. The discovery of this wasn’t shocking. Evil Does Not Exist is a soundtrack for a film of the same name by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the film itself a result of having been inspired by music Ishibashi performed for a video that Hamaguchi was asked to produce. In addition to his scripted film, Hamaguchi also developed a silent film called GIFT to act as a visual backdrop for live performances of Ishibashi’s score.
Evil Does Not Exist is not the first collaboration for Ishibashi and Hamaguchi, having worked together for 2021’s Drive My Car, which won an Oscar.
With assistance from Jim O’Rourke, the track itself is lush and rather ambient, a heightened tempo from a solitary drum kit with a cranked hi-hat set to a whisper providing motion while the music swells and hangs in the air.
Evil Does Not Exist is releasing via Drag City on 6/28.
Links:
Eiko Ishibashi — Bandcamp
Drag City — Pre-order / Artist Page
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Drag City:
Out June 28th, Evil Does Not Exist is an expansive new soundtrack undertaking from Eiko Ishibashi. Her score harmonizes effortlessly with the state of nature as depicted in the new Ryusuke Hamaguchi feature, a nuanced tale of humans’ uneasy efforts to maintain co-existence with the delicate state of the planet. Following her marvellous 2018 Drag City album, The Dream My Bones Dream, and her score for Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning 2021 film, Drive My Car, Evil Does Not Exist is a stellar further display of her ability to explicate the depths of the un-spoken in Eiko’s music.
Eiko’s compositions are scored for violin, cello, guitar, drums and keyboards; her longtime partner Jim O’Rourke played the guitar while handling mixing and mastering. The lead single, "Smoke", sets the scene with ominous, insistent shimmering of cymbals over placid breaths of flute. As kick drum sounds approach thunder and flutes edge ambiently into the red, panic sets in — rolling restive over the trapkit, until Ishibashi’s orchestration thickens the drone and burgeons invisibly into microtones.
A vital recomposition of the relationship of sound to narrative, and composer to filmmaker, Eiko’s newest body of work started when she asked Hamaguchi to make a video for a live performance. For Hamaguchi, the core of the resulting production was creating footage for Eiko’s work, initially setting out to create a silent film: “I couldn’t develop the film through dialogue as I had done before,” Hamaguchi shares. “I felt that the actors existing powerfully and largely independent of Eiko’s music would create the most compelling synergy when eventually combined with her music.” The resulting performances from each actor led Hamaguchi to develop the script further and add sequences of dialogue, creating two distinct works in the end: GIFT, a silent film to act as a visual score for a live performance by Ishibashi, and the narrative feature film Evil Does Not Exist, which provided the visual material for the silent film GIFT and features Eiko’s music as its soundtrack.
“Bind” by Russian Baths begins with an enveloping and ethereal overlay of haunting sonic aura, a clean drum beat and sturdy bass riff at odds with the song’s projected midnight. What drew me in was the track’s charged hook, a discernibly severe buzzing of guitar generating intensity. The song’s title is repeated, the vocal melody effectively drowned in the dialed-up mire of guitar sounds.
“Bind” is the second single from the upcoming album Mirror, which is releasing 6/14 via Good Eye Records.
Links:
Russian Baths — Bandcamp
Good Eye Records — Pre-order / Artist Page
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Good Eye Records:
Russian Baths fuses the abrasive sounds of New York in the eighties, the angular outbursts of DC hardcore, shoegaze’s torrents of noise and the suffocating anxiety of the Information Age. One part horror movie soundtrack, and one part personal confession, the band’s music is at once imposing and intimate.
New Thou!
“I Feel Nothing When You Cry” announces the upcoming new Thou album, Umbilical. I keep coming back to Therapy? on this one, the thematic riff and drum production leaning a bit on 90s sound aesthetics that evoke memories of my first spin of 1992’s Nurse, specifically “Teethgrinder”. Evidently, Thou have decided to remove themselves from the ultra-immersive sonic swamp they normally inhabit and give hardcore a go. I’m all in on an in-the-red, high-speed Thou record.
Umbilical is releasing 5/31 via Sacred Bones.
Links:
Thou — Bandcamp / Instagram
Sacred Bones Records — Pre-order / Artist Page
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Rarely Unable:
Thou has always been a force of raw energy and unapologetic dissent, defying easy categorisation and challenging listeners to confront the complexities of existence. Their forthcoming album, Umbilical, is their firmest nod to the raw intensity of obscure '90s DIY hardcore punk. It’s a record filled with mosh-ready riffs, heavy breakdowns and scathing vocals. The band’s aesthetic and political impulses have always been punk and like anyone embroiled in the subculture Thou have been exploring what it means to exist within and without a rigid morality. That exploration takes thematic centre on Umbilical and their self-assessment is as harsh as that of the world around them.
Today Thou share their seething lead single and album centrepiece, “I Feel Nothing When You Cry” of which the band tell is “A throwaway mantra scraped from the necrotic skin of syndicated television. A lugubrious nod to our favourite commode-crooning diva, one of her most diabolically terse lines. With the sweet, sultry whispers of a legendary New Orleans faerie. This might be as close as we’ll get to a positive, youth crew anthem. ‘This song has nothing original or of value. It’s a steady beat for dancing feet. You got what you wanted, now say the words…’”
Elements of The Feelies and Fugazi, The Antikaroshi’s “Shiny White Teeth” contains the artful nerves of a yesteryear college rock staple. With an infectious energy and wispy notes, “Shiny White Teeth” is featured in the band’s upcoming sixth LP, L’inertie Polaire. While evocative, The Antikaroshi’s New Wave’ish take on post-hardcore has a revitalizing edge and good energy.
New Noise magazine premiered “Shiny White Teeth” on 4/17.
L’inertie Polaire releases 5/31 Via Exile On Mainstream Records.
Links:
The Antikaroshi — Official / Bandcamp / Instagram
Exile On Mainstream — Pre-order / Artist Page
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Earsplit PR:
Exile On Mainstream Records presents the sixth from their longtime allies in Potsdam, Germany-based THE ANTIKAROSHI, today announcing L’inertie Polaire.
Creating a record is two things: music captured as a snapshot, as well as a documentation of the longer time span in which the songs were created. If you want to give that documentation and time span a name (as in a record title) the question is obvious: what has happened in the time since the last recording? On a personal scale, socially, politically, or beyond? Are things changing in directions in which they should be evolving, or is it just more of the same but with more speed and efficiency? The phrase “L’inertie polaire,” inspired by the book of the same name by Paul Virilio, approaches the uncomfortable state of postmodern society capitulating before the increasing acceleration of technological progress.
Three years after their Extract.Transform.Debase LP, THE ANTIKAROSHI is releasing album number six, which can be considered as a successor in terms of content. The trio continues exactly where they left off on L’inertie Polaire: songs that take their time to breathe, only to start up again frantically the next moment and indulge in the noise. Their volume is always a means to an end, but overall, it’s about dragging you into the moment. While the drums and bass prove to be the foundation and yet try to break through the all too familiar, the guitar is often hypnotic and imaginatively searching, while vocals consciously wander between spoken word-esque snapshots and contained phrases.
Either way, the world is frantic, yet at a standstill, and this is exemplified in L’inertie Polaire. While a handful of exceptionally wealthy people are already saying goodbye to this planet with “Lost In Compassion”, the media machine is running like clockwork and has learned to sell bad news as good news in “Shiny White Teeth”. Wars are becoming peace missions in “Authority,” and the end all too often justifies the means when it comes to defying one’s own weight in “Gravity.” Even lakes are now for sale in “Thousand Lakes,” all available means are used in “Sticky Hands,” and people oscillate between all/opposite poles against their better judgment with “Doxa.” All that remains is to sing the high song of solidarity and drive out the wolves with “Homohominilupus” while struggling within the paradox of capitalist culture described in “Major Light, and join in protest, delivered in “Tang Ping.”
L’inertie Polaire was recorded and mixed between November 2023 and February 2024 by Nikolaus Schwab at Chaosaudio Potsdam, mastered and cut by Stefan Betke at Scape Mastering Berlin, and completed with artwork by Matt Irwin (A Whisper In The Noise), and the song “Major Light” features guest appearances by Marco Henschke (guitar) and Judith Kuehne (spoken words).
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
