Fluxblog 453: the Flood and Alan Moulder sound
Plus new music by Lael Neale, Snooper, Paul Grimstad & Talia Ryder, and Courting
This week’s playlist is THE FLOOD/ALAN MOULDER SOUND, a retrospective of the two English producer/mixer/engineers who, together and in tandem, were crucial in establishing the aesthetics of industrial, shoegaze, and what I’d call the “high end” of alternative rock in the 80s and 90s. This set features their hugely influential collaborations with Depeche Mode, Nitzer Ebb, Nine Inch Nails, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, U2, My Bloody Valentine, PJ Harvey, Ride, The Smashing Pumpkins, Swervedriver, and Erasure along with later work with the likes of Foals, The Killers, Warpaint, Interpol, Beach House, Shame, and Yves Tumor.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how you can recognize something as abstract as a producer/mixer's aesthetic but trying to describe what you're recognizing is so difficult. Flood and Moulder are the ultimate example of this – you will absolutely hear their presence in this music.
Here is the full track listing with Flood and Moulder’s credits on each song. Unfortunately I could not include anything by Curve, which is kinda brutal as Moulder actually married a member of that band.
What A Name Meant
Lael Neale “In Verona”
“In Verona” is, among other things, a song about how difficult it can be to comprehend the full expanse of history and one’s place in a story that sprawls out in every direction. Lael Neale sings this song as though she’s reciting notes she scrawled out in a notebook while visiting Verona in chronological order, connecting the dots between thoughts she had in the moment and where those led her up to that point. She lets you hear the process of making those connections, but doesn’t spell anything out for you. A lot of it isn’t even full thoughts. It mostly feels like she’s stopping to appreciate little moments when some object or notion resonated deeply, whether by recognizing something from her life or being struck by something from the past that seems totally alien.
The song moves at a brisk walking pace, with piano chords circling the center of the mix like a hypno-spiral. The accompaniment gets more soaring and dramatic, but there’s no rhythmic catharis. You steadily move ahead for eight minutes, passing through inclines, epiphanies, storms, and little moments of grace, and eventually you stop at some mysterious destination.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Moving So Fast With Nowhere To Go
Snooper “Company Car”
“Company Car,” like pretty much everything Snooper has released thus far, really zooms. This is a band with a monomaniacal focus on acceleration and the thrill of speed, so it makes sense that they would just go ahead and make a song that’s literally about driving really fast to nowhere for the sake of it. The arrangement is perfectly calibrated for momentum without letting any fussiness get in the way of its manic punk thrills but what really puts this song over the top is the way Blair Tramel delivers the line “I really wanna see you” with a little burst of energy, cute and flirty but also a little bashful.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
A Cat That Lost Its Black
Paul Grimstad featuring Talia Ryder “Evening Mirror”
“Evening Mirror” is a psychedelic ballad written for Sean Price Williams’ new film The Sweet East and is sung by the lead actress Talia Ryder in a title sequence that arrives just before her character Lillian makes the decision to walk away from her life. The story is a bit like Alice In Wonderland set in contemporary America; the restaurant bathroom mirror Lillian sings to is her looking glass. Ryder’s vocal performance is shaky and uncertain, she sounds like an ordinary girl rather than a proper singer. She’s vulnerable yet poised, whimsical but grounded. You get a sense of the character’s curiosity and passivity, her eagerness to escape and be transformed by circumstances thrust upon her. This is the only song in the movie so it’s not a musical, but it is something of an “I want” song, albeit one in which the protagonist is extremely vague about her desires.
Buy it from Amazon.
It Looks Good On Paper
Courting “Emily G”
You know Babe Ruth’s famous “called shot,” when he pointed to center field while at bat and then hit a home run to that part of the field? I like to think Courting did something like that before writing this song, but the gesture was indicating “we’re gonna write our own ‘Mr. Brightside.’” But y’know, better. “Emily G” is a portrait of a guy who can’t get over missing his shot with a woman who’s become famous, and in a moment of desperation reaches out to reconnect but she’s moved on and settled down. Sad, sure, but the potent emotional charge here is in the way he clings to this memory of her as a way of reminding himself that he once had proximity to her glamour and beauty. It’s not about her, really, it’s about trying to preserve a sense of potential in his life even after the window for those possibilities are probably closed forever unless he changes something.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
