Fluxblog Weekly #239: Call for Donations + Lulileela • Divino Niño • Animal Collective • んoon • Letherette
I’ve been doing Fluxblog for almost 18 years now and, aside from one short-term experiment in selling t-shirts a decade ago, I’ve never asked my audience for money and I’ve never monetized the site. It’s never felt right to me, or legally defensible given the whole “sharing copyrighted works” aspect of it. However I’m in a very tight spot at the moment, so at the suggestion of a friend I’ve set up a Ko-Fi account, so if you are inclined and/or can afford to do so, you can donate whatever you’d like. This is, I think/hope, a temporary situation, so I don’t have any plans to set up long term thing like a Patreon. I’m just trying to get through a few bad months, so if you’ve ever wanted to support the site, this is the time. Here’s a link to the Fluxblog Ko-Fi page – thank you!
November 25th, 2019
I Want To Be Forever
Lulileela “Dive”
I’m not sure exactly where Lulileela is coming from in terms of her musical influences but to my American ears “Dive” sounds sorta like the quasi-80s hyper-romantic aesthetics of M83 at their commercial peak, but with the rock boy melodrama cut out and the slick sophistication dialed way up. Her voice is soft and airy, but her bass playing is very loud and assertive in the mix, driving the song while also providing popping flourishes along the way. A lot of artists aim for this mark but don’t nail it the way she does here, and I think it comes down to her composing like a bassist. Anyone with the right keyboards and presets can go for this sort of atmosphere, but not everyone can lay down a groove as dynamic as this. She centers the drama of the music in the hips rather than leaving it all to your head.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 26th, 2019
Feeling Single Tonight
Divino Niño “Coca Cola”
Divino Niño have a rowdy sort of elegance on stage that plays up their casual charisma and clever guitar playing, but their studio recordings have a different feeling – hazier, nostalgic, and much more introverted in tone. A song like “Coca Cola” certainly benefits from the hyper-romantic atmosphere of this production aesthetic, but it’s frustrating to listen to their record after seeing them live and feeling like their personality and energy is lost in the translation somewhere, or just overpowered by reverb and synths. But either way this song nails a specific feeling of being young and desperate to make something happen if just to alleviate boredom.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
November 27th, 2019
Bouncing Along Every Crack
Animal Collective “Daily Routine” (Live in Las Vegas, May 30 2009)
The version of Animal Collective that recorded and toured in support of Merriweather Post Pavilion was a trio – Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist – performing almost entirely with electronic instruments. This isn’t unusual, but the band’s approach was. The core of the band’s music was rooted in folk and psychedelic rock, but they mutated it all by forcing it all to work within the limitations of their instruments and, more specifically, what could be done when approaching machines that were not necessarily designed to be played “live” with the improvisational spirit they would bring to guitars and drums.
The studio versions of the MPP material are very focused on conveying Avey and Panda’s songwriting, which by this point in their career had fully matured structurally and melodically. The live versions were far more chaotic, sometimes seeming as though they could collapse or deviate wildly off course at any moment. Ballet Slippers, the new live album collecting recordings from this period, isn’t always easy to listen to, as the more improvisational elements of the performances are more compelling in the moment and sometimes rather tedious outside of that context. But even still, the energy is there – often disorienting, vaguely mystical, sometimes mesmerizing, and totally dazzling when those gorgeous melodies settled into the foreground.
“Daily Routine” translated particularly well to the stage as the trio could click together well in the more traditionally structured chunks of the song, and the composition allowed a lot of space to drift off into ambiance and abstraction in the second half. This coda sequence is rather lovely in this performance and emphasizes a sensuous shoegaze quality that’s less pronounced in the studio recording. The song’s lyrics are written from the perspective of a young parent getting used to the seismic lifestyle shift of caring for a child and the anxiety around trying to do it right, but in this wordless sequence Panda’s voice conveys a mix of joy, love, and fear that’s beyond what could be communicated with words.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 28th, 2019
It Took A While But Eventually
んoon “Lumen”
“Lumen” is essentially an R&B song, but んoon’s arrangement is so peculiar in its rhythms and contrasts of textures that it comes out sounding sorta alien. It’s like Aaliyah/Timbaland music reinterpreted as post-rock – two concurrent off-kilter turn-of-the-millennium aesthetics merged into something both sleek and slightly awkward, but entirely mesmerizing. The band convey absolute confidence on this track, with every unusual choice played with an elegance that smooths out the tentative feeling of the beat.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Letherette “Hornty”
Letherette’s music is like a much hornier version of J. Dilla, like it’s all deliberately constructed as sex music. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s all a tribute to the sensuous, luxuriant sex music of the 70s – everything they do is so rooted in those aesthetics that it’s hard not to approach this music as something that’s so earnestly enamored with its source material that it moves beyond the point of kitsch. “Hornty” is a particularly smooth track that holds up better as a discrete composition than most of Brown Lounge Vol. 5, which is clearly intended to be experienced as a suite. It’s a real “does-what-it-says-on-the-tin” sort of song: It’s obviously a horny reconfigured jazz song featuring horns. Would you want it to be anything else?
Buy it from Bandcamp.