Fluxblog Weekly #37: Rozi Plain, 30/70, Anchorsong, Teen
January 11th, 2016
Solid State Solid Skin
Rozi Plain “Actually”
The tones in this song remind of cold metal pressed to your hand, and the odd not-quite taste of frigid air on your tongue. I imagine this woman standing on a hill, and wind is whipping about but not enough to seem particularly dramatic. And she’s just thinking about all the little things, and is surprised by what her own brain decides is important in that moment. Him? That? What? The whole song feels like a clear sober thought coming into focus, and ends on a vague epiphany: “Don’t get over it / this is actually it.” And I think “this” is just the state of just being, and breathing, and touching cold things and feeling the wind and thinking little thoughts.
Buy it from Amazon.
January 12th, 2016
Removed In Time
30/70 “Local Knowledge”
30/70’s new album Cold Radish Coma is similar in tone and style to beloved classics by Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, and Lauryn Hill, but the execution is stranger and more abstracted than anything they’ve put out. On a structural level it’s closer to what someone like Flying Lotus does, with fragments and songs blurring together into a single extended jazzy stoner suite. “Local Knowledge” can stand on its own, but even outside the context, it’s like a microcosm of the larger piece in the way the proper pop song structure is buffered on both sides by more elliptical passages. The main chorus hook of “Local Knowledge” is just glorious – it hits you with this feeling of great relief, like this trigger that can make your body immediately go loose and relax. This is the centerpiece of the record, and you can feel the mood shift carry over into the tone of the album’s second half.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
January 13th, 2016
Say Say Say Say Say
Anchorsong “Oriental Suite”
Anchorsong’s music bears a striking resemblance to that of Four Tet, at least in the sense that they’re both working within the same set of rhythmic, melodic, and textural parameters, and have similar ideas about how a song should progress. There’s a shared internal logic, and a similar way of conveying a lot of soulfulness and emotional nuance in the tiny fragments of the human voice. “Oriental Suite” is mainly focused on its instrumental melody line – I think it’s some sort of mallet instrument? – but those vocal snippets give the song its depth. It’s rarely anything more than a syllable, but it suggests a mindset somewhere between focus and distraction, like fading out from the world around you to zone out on some random thing in your line of sight.
Buy it from Amazon.
January 14th, 2016
So Troubled So Shy
Teen “All About Us”
Teeny Lieberson’s sense of melody has been strong from the start, but improves with every new Teen record, to the point that we now have a song like this which could easily pass as a Girls Aloud tune. (High praise, trust me.) “All About Us” is a rather harsh break up song that dissects a man’s unawareness of his own sexist impulses, and asks him to own up to his “lack of confidence and sexuality” rather than blame it on her. I like how blunt this song is, and honestly, if you’re going to try to get through to men who’ve convinced themselves that they’re “nice guys,” you have to be this direct and question their assumption that they’re not “that type of guy.” As much as this song can sting, I don’t think Lieberson is coming a cruel place at all – it’s more about resenting having to delude oneself to deal with someone, and deciding it’s better for everyone involved to break out of delusions altogether.
Pre-order it from Amazon.