Fluxblog 383: Brijean • Low Hummer • Lynks • Desire
Plus a playlist documenting the emerging Nu Indie Sleaze scene
This week’s playlist is INDIE SLEAZE IS BACK, BABY!, an ongoing playlist compiling new music that fits into the old indie sleaze and electroclash aesthetics. This is most definitely a thing that’s happening right now – there’s already more than enough music in this playlist for a long DJ set! This one is only available on Spotify since it’s continuously updated and I simply can’t maintain that on multiple platforms. Sorry! If you are not a Spotify user I recommend just checking in and dropping the songs you like into whatever personal playlists you have elsewhere.
A Calming Dose
Brijean “Take A Trip”
Brijean’s music always sounds like paradise. It sounds like a world where the temperature is perfect, the light is just right, there’s lovely flora all over, there’s amazing food and drinks and everyone is either dancing or just kinda grooving. It’s a place you can immediately envision upon hearing a song like “Take A Trip,” and it’s something that can and does exist but it’s also something that mostly lives in the imagination. Pretty much every Brijean song feels this way, it’s like they’re gradually building out an alternate world they can live in when playing and recording this music. It’s an act of escapism that’s also something that also generously serves as escapist art for everyone who listens. Knowing that this particular record was made during a spell of serious loss and grief for the band only makes it more powerful and poignant. In a harsh and hostile world, they created their own beautiful mind palace to retreat to.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Your Funding Got Cut
Low Hummer “Talk Shows”
Aimee Duncan’s vocal delivery on the verses of “Talk Shows” is very wry and a little bit cute, she sounds as though she hasn’t quite decided whether she’s telling someone they’re a loser or if she’s just flirting with them. Both, I guess? The verses shift gears into something closer to a breakup song, but one stuck in a frustrated stalemate state in which neither party has walked out just yet. The music conveys a lot of complementary energy – some nervous tension in the groove, a light and playful tone in the guitar. The overall mood of the song is basically “hey, we both know we’re stuck in purgatory and it mostly sucks, but we can figure out how to have some fun here.”
Buy it from Amazon.
Get In The Bin
Lynks “Silly Boy”
“Silly Boy” is basically a banger entirely devoted to Lynks mercilessly roasting some obnoxious straight guy who everyone loathes for his consistent awful behavior. Actually “roasting” seems too benign to describe the goal here – it’s much more like gleefully humiliating this guy, maybe with some dim hope that he actually reflects on how he lives and course corrects. You know, maybe! For the most part this is just wild energy and vicious bile, and any ugliness to the overall vibe is pardoned by Lynks bullying exactly the type of person in the world who it’s totally justified to shame and belittle.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
These Shiny Things Come To Steal Your Dreams
Desire “Black Latex”
The best thing I can say about “Black Latex” is that it’s a song that fully delivers on the promise of naming a song “Black Latex.” Johnny Jewel’s arrangement is a strict machine built around a single menacing synth chord and electronic syncopation that gets off on witholding the funk but gives you just enough to groove. Desire’s spoken word vocal walks a similar tightrope – obviously sexy but not crassly sexual, flirtatious but not cute, romantic but not precious, intellectual but not nerdy. It’s more a scene than a song, a vision of an alternate reality created by two people with an intense bond and shared taste.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• I strongly recommend Emma Baker’s recently launched podcast STARGIRL, in which she essentially freestyles smart critical essays about intriguing zeitgeist defining figures in pop culture and media including Addison Rae, Alison Roman, Emily Ratajkowski, and Jia Tolentino. I recommend listening to the six episodes in the order they were published so you can hear Emma work through themes as they come to her.
• Devon Ivie of Vulture’s ongoing series of in-depth conversations with veteran musicians continues this week with a nice chat with Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry.