Fluxblog Weekly #154: No Joy/Sonic Boom, Cavern of Anti-Matter, Cherophobiac, Jean Grae/Quelle Chris
April 1st, 2018 1:00pm
One Two Let Me Go
No Joy / Sonic Boom “Obsession”
Brian Eno famously described My Bloody Valentine’s “To Here Knows When” as “the vaguest music ever to have been a hit” in the United Kingdom. I love this description, and wish that shoegaze – a meaningless and derisive genre term from the U.K. press – could instead simply be called “vague music.” (Or, if you absolutely must, vaguewave.) Vagueness is more central to this sort of music than the implied shyness of the shoegaze term – it’s music about foregrounding accompaniment but keeping vocals for purely textural and emotional reasons. It’s music about expressing sensation and feelings that would not be adequately serviced by words but still need a vocal presence.
No Joy’s Jasamine White-Gluz is her generation’s finest artist working in this milieu, and over the course of the past three years has zoomed beyond solid entry-level shoegaze rock to master textural juxtapositions and dramatically improve her craft as a writer of melodies and harmonies. No Joy’s 2015 album More Faithful is the breakthrough masterpiece, but her EPs since then have pushed her aesthetic to different extremes – more aggro, more pop, more meditative, more electronic.
Her new collaboration with Sonic Boom is her most far-out experiment yet, with the lead track “Obsession” starting off in a sort of “Blue Monday”-ish indie house music zone before drifting out into a more ambient phase that reminds me of Terry Riley. This music is vague, oh so beautifully vague! The song often sounds like a remix of some other more straightforward tune, with White-Gluz’s vocal parts sounding like they’re just snippets from verses and choruses pasted together into something new. There’s an implication of form and feeling, but that’s about all you really get. The song almost completely dissolves just before the 7 minute mark but then comes back to the original groove, which is somehow both a huge payoff and incredibly disorienting.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
April 2nd, 2018
Hohner Eko Taktron Arp
Caverns of Anti-Matter “Solarised Sound”
Cave of Anti-Matter make music primarily built around vintage and homemade electronic instruments – drum machines, modular synths, sequencers – and while that is quite compelling, it’s notable that Tim Gane’s guitar is often the most captivating element of their compositions. That’s certainly the case for “Solarised Sound,” a track in which nearly three minutes of expertly crafted syncopated beats and synth parts herald the arrival of a glorious guitar hook that becomes the center of the piece from there on out. I’m a big Stereolab fan going way back, and I would rate this among the very best musical motifs and overall compositions of Gane’s career. Like a lot of his all-time best songs, there’s something about the structure of the piece that sounds literally urban to me, like an entire sprawling city rendered in music.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
April 3rd, 2018
Talk About The Findings
Cherophobiac “Unknown Liquid Substance”
“Unknown Liquid Substance” is as cold and creepy as its title implies. The vocals sound aloof, the percussion is a dense churn of electronic clicks, and the piano part has the grim, vaguely hesitant quality of Thom Yorke’s playing on Radiohead songs like “Pyramid Song” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief.” The composition is elegant and pretty, but the mood is all muted anxiety and desperation. The lyrics express an unwanted passivity in terms of what happens within your own body, but then also crave the passivity of not needing to confront or deal with dark realities. The refrain is particularly bleak: “Close your eyes now and pray not to have a choice.”
Buy it from Bandcamp.
April 6th, 2018
Took Time Like Duck Confit
Jean Grae & Quelle Chris “Gold Purple Orange”
Quelle Chris produced this track, and it really knocks me out – the repetition of that creeping bass line, the organ drones and vamps, the flute, the sax, the wordless vocal, the way the high hat sounds a bit off in the mix. It’s like a funky jazz tune that’s been ripped up and flipped sideways, broken and awkward but still retaining some groove and grace. Quelle Chris and Jean Grae’s verses sharply contrast their styles – he’s laid back and sarcastic, she’s more aggressive and technically precise – but mirror each other in structure. They spend the first half of their respective verses meditating on stereotypes and the ways one’s control over their own identity and personal narrative is limited by other people’s perceptions. “You can be the things they say to be and get killed,” as Grae puts it. But regardless of that, their verses reach the same conclusion: “I ain’t gotta be nothing for you but me.”
Buy it from Amazon.