Fluxblog 464: 1980s Cocaine Psychosis
Plus new songs by Mount Kimbie and King Krule, Bolis Popul, and Yaya Bey
This week's playlist is 1980s COKE PSYCHOSIS, two hours of maximalist high-gloss 80s pop with a crazed energy or manic intensity. It's a sibling to another playlist I made four years ago called THE HIGH 80s: GLOSSY POP 1986-1987, so if you're like "hey what about...," it's probably on that one. Or just never tell me! I love it when people just keep that to themselves.
[Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube]
The Rhythm Of The Routines
Mount Kimbie featuring King Krule “Empty and Silent”
Mount Kimbie’s new album is their third in a row with at least one song featuring King Krule, which is a pretty cool tradition for them. It’s kinda sorta like if Crosby, Stills, and Nash had figured out a way to make sure they could always get a Neil Young song on every record. I like the way Mount Kimbie push King Krule into arrangements that are more dynamic than what he often makes on his own – I think of the beats tumbling and thumping around his voice on “Meter, Pale, Tone,” or the way “Blue Train Lines” accelerates in its second half. “Empty and Silent” starts off ambient but shifts into an intriguing combination of 80s indie rock and motorik groove. The music is fairly busy but the atmosphere feels very light, as though there’s a wide open space at the center of the song and everything is moving on the periphery. King Krule’s voice sounds vaguely serene in this one, as though he’s reaching some zen state by meditating on a city that turns into a ghost town once the working day is through, or finding some peace as he lets go of painful memories of being sick and depressed.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Weighs Heavy On Me
Bolis Pupul “Kowloon”
“Kowloon” is in banger mode for most of its run time but as much as I enjoy the parts that go hard in a very Justice sort of way, the parts that really pull me in are the more mellow sections with ambient vocal chatter in the background. There’s a wonderful sense of atmosphere and space in those moments, like you’re immediately zapped to some unfamiliar street corner in, presumably, Kowloon City.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Yaya Bey “Crying Through My Teeth”
The equivalent of the indistinct chatter in “Kowloon” in “Crying Through My Teeth” is the droning organ part, which feels like frigid air gradually chilling everything else in the mix. The arrangement is very strong in general, mostly a lot of understated parts that sketch out a very specific mood and sense of physical space. Yaya Bey’s vocal tends towards the understated too, though there’s some excellent phrasing here, particularly in the second verse with the extended metaphor about telling jokes.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• I make a few cameo appearances in Slate’s oral history of Pitchfork feature put together by Dan Kois, Nitish Pahwa, and Luke Winkie.
• Rob Sheffield, the rock critic king of karaoke, wrote a tribute to Shigeichi Negishi, the recently deceased inventor of karaoke.
• Here’s Kurt Loder hosting MTV’s The Year In Rock 1990, an incredible time capsule with some great Madonna stuff at the top of the show.