You really got me Bandcamp. After the July Bandcamp Day, I was positive that you would immediately announce that your first Friday celebration of musicians and labels would continue for the rest of the year. A few weeks came and went and we didn’t hear anything. I was almost convinced that it was over and it would be business as usual from here on out, but then at the end of July word finally came: we get Bandcamp Friday for the rest of the year!
Maybe you’re thinking this is too much of a good thing. Has finding music to purchase on these days become overwhelming? Do you hear the words Bandcamp and Friday used in a sentence and start to spiral? How are you going to handle this for the rest of the calendar year?
Well, fear not. We at Undrcurrents have got you covered. Once again we’ve assembled a star studded cast of contributors who have generously agreed to name some names and tell us about the music they’ve been enjoying lately. A huge thanks to all of our contributors; these pieces are so special because of your time and effort. Putting them together is one of my favorite parts of running the site.
We’ll be following Bandcamp’s lead and continuing this series for the rest of the year. If you (yes YOU) see this and think “This seems fun, I want to recommend some records”, get in touch. We’d love to have you in a future iteration. To check out previous recommendations (which I’d strongly suggest as each piece features a different set of contributors with distinct musical interests and taste) head over here
And now, without further ado, the picks.
Abby Thomas Abby runs Bison, one of the most impeccably curated young labels around. Their next release, Still House Plants’ Fast Edit (a joint release with Blank Forms Editions here in the US), comes out August 14th and is already a contender for my favorite album of the year (more on that in my picks). Abby also works on Cafe OTO’s in house label Otoroku which is also home to Takuroku, a new digital only label which has been releasing some incredible recordings from artists in quarantine. Be sure to check all this out, and see Abby’s picks below
WAKE UP: RELOADED | DJ SLIM K Chopped Not Slopped descendant of DJ Screw Slim K started a new series after George Floyd was murdered. This one opens with a track Floyd is on – ‘Sittin On Top Of The World’ – DJ Screw, Big Floyd, ft Chris Ward & AD. Whole tape is heartbreaking and wildly good. Chopped Beyonce is amazing too.
CALL TIME / HARD OUT | @XCRXWS The first of hopefully many 7″ put out by Conal Blake who is also part of Domestic Exile. Consistently one of my favourite acts to see live (R.I.P) over the last year or so, Seymour plays saxophone and Crystabel Riley plays ‘drum-/human-skin’ (!) Totally arresting fucked and fed back improvisation which blasts the dust off bowed cymbals and tedious honk.
ORK MUSIK 20K | DJ DAVID GOBLIN AND THE HORDE I chuckle every time I press play on the lead track to this Belgian party crew’s latest, and then immediately wish I was in a club (R.I.P) with a crowd mad for it. It’s ridiculous & stupid, I love it. I think because it smashes together rave, industrial, grime, techno, trance and gabber with no worries. My favourite part is it comes out on CD so while I can’t dance to it, I can put it on in the car and drive round Stratford’s Olympic Park goblin style (be careful).
FRANCO-PRUSSIAN FILLETS | FRANCIS PLAGNE Back catalogue Francis Plagne. Ideas played out and saved, thankfully. Francis playing all manner of instruments and putting down 26 sketches easy as that. I guess I like it because of the keen editing – the stuff that made his brilliant song record Idle Bones and the substance to the honestly freaky Moss Trumpet on Penultimate Press.
SPLIT | TARANTULA / 2PLY No wave rumbles out of Glasgow excite me again! First of all what an absolute sad storm that these two bands couldn’t do any tours this summer. Tarantula particularly took me: they remind me of Sweat Tongue and Invisible Boy Clams & what a great webpage.
PERSONAL PROBLEMS | CARMAN MOORE Totally taken by this, though I’ve not had the chance to see the video it soundtracks. Apparently Moore was described by Ornette Coleman as “the greatest composer, not just in New York, but in the whole world”, and from the soft and woozy suite of misted groove on the first side of the LP I reckon the feeling was mutual. The second side is the piano versions of the score and reminds me of Mal Waldon on The Quest. If you’re into this then Derek Baron who is behind the label ‘Reading Group’ which put this out did a beautiful record of Satie renditions called ‘Crooked Dances’ which is not on Bandcamp but should be picked up some other way.
SATIE SLOWLY | PHILIP CORNER Which reminds me I got this a few weeks ago. Probably the opposite to ‘Crooked Dances’, where Satie is played quickly in a moment’s quiet, interrupted and edited out. Instead, Phillip Corner puts the brakes on Satie’s compositions, drawing them out and clarifying them. Also very beautiful.
UZUN HAVALAR | ANADOL Stretched out synth folk from a Turkish sound artist Gözen Atila. Parts of it feel like a neon video game, others a low fi French movie scene – most of it is a brilliant balance of sultry, serious and silly. They never perform live apparently but maybe it works best to listen lying down in bed anyway.
FARMERS MANUAL Bandcamp home of Famers Manual, who cross through electronic music, live visuals & experimental graphics. I never warmed to what my brain had sectioned under ‘computer music’: the scene felt dry and bro so I never really explored experimental electronic music much. I saw Farmers Manual once at Counterflows though and was totally floored. It was playful and relaxing and smart. Since finding their Bandcamp I’ve enjoyed something different every time I’ve dug into it. tsx1, test code for the measurement of airborne noise and no back up are my current repeats. I couldn’t embrace ‘while(p){print”.”,” “x$p++}‘ but even that is working on me now. Fuck knows what they’re doing.
John Linger John Linger does double duty as vocalist and bassist in the London based band Girls in Synthesis. The group’s debut album, Now Here’s An Echo From Your Future, hits shelves August 28th via Harbinger Sound. It’s an absolute killer slab of noise rock, sure to be one of the finest punk albums you hear this year. Head here to pre-order the album, and check out John’s picks below
DESPAIR | ACRYLICS This came out a few years back, but I’ve only heard it in the last year or so. Amazing, weird hardcore from the US. Because of the skewed guitars and unorthodox structure, it avoids being anonymous like most hardcore is to my ears. They’ve just released an album, which is also amazing.
DISCO ILLUSION | STEPHEN ENCINAS Absolutely fucking killer Barbaian disco from the 1970s, with a bit of a psychedelic edge. Again, a fairly recent discovery. I love disco, it’s the ultimate dance music for me. Apparently this record went completely undiscovered until recently. It really is quite groundbreaking.
EXILED | BAD BREEDING My favourite current band. In all honesty, I don’t listen to a great deal of new music, or at least music that’s being made now. I don’t want to get distracted from what we’re doing. They really are amazing, though. They seem to be travelling the opposite path to most bands; they started out their career with arguably their most accessible music, and with every new release the music is getting more heavy and impenetrable. That suits me down to the ground.
THE TRAPPERS PELT’S | YARD ACT The Fall really are de rigueur for young musicians these day, aren’t they? To be honest, it’s a nice change from My Bloody Valentine, Ride etc. That shoegaze revival seemed to last forever. This has got a lot of early 2000’s Fall influence and also a bit of early baggy thrown in. It’s great, though. Looking forward to hearing more from them.
A WEALTH OF INFORMATION | ROXY GIRLS Another young group, recently signed to Moshi Moshi. They supported us a year or so ago in Leeds in a tiny little rehearsal room. They were absolutely lovely, and their show that night was a proper shot in the arm. They’re very much influenced by Futureheads and XTC, which is no bad thing. Dig both of those bands. With every release you can hear the music expanding and getting more and more confident, so I think they’ve got a bright future. Should have asked me to produce them though, that would have been amazing.
YOU CAN WIN | BILEO Another rare disco obscurity, absolute killer. I love coming across stuff like this, then playing it to my friends whether they like it or not. But most do, you can’t really argue with a track like this. It’s still got the rough edges that most major label disco (as good as it is) polishes off.
Hausu Mountian Hausu Mountain has released many personal favorite records over the years (check out our label profile to see some of them). The label is run jointly by Doug Kaplan and Max Allison, who are both prolific musicians in their own right. They play in Good Willsmith and BBsitters Club, record as a duo in Pepper Mill Rondo, and also each have solo projects (Max records as Mukqs and Doug as MrDougDoug). Both of them have provided some Bandcamp recommendations below.
Doug Kaplan’s Picks
IF I DON’T LET MYSELF BE HAPPY NOW THEN WHEN? | MORE EAZE & CLAIRE ROUSAY Burbling digital collages mixed with field recordings, auto-tuned and glitched vocals, straight-up guitar ballads, cloudy drones and cymbal rolls, and ancient echoes of EDM bangers. Truly original zones from friends of the label.
AMBLYOPIAC | TIGER VILLAGE Brand-spanking-new zones from long-term HausMoNaut Tim Thornton. Hyper-intricate beat salad that constantly rearranges and reconfigures itself as it propels through the wormhole at the speed of sound.
HARRY BERTOIA’S COMPLETE SONAMBIENT COLLECTION | HARRY BERTOIA During the last weekend before lockdown, I spent about an hour listening to the Harry Bertoia sounding sculpture in front of the Standard Oil Building in Chicago at 200 E. Randolph. I often think about this afternoon and reflect on how relaxed and free I felt – and haven’t quite felt that way since.
EMS HALLUCINATIONS | BRETT NAUCKE Another premium zone from a HausMo alum. Brett had a residency at EMS last year and recorded this album on oldschool Buchla and Serge systems. I always love Brett’s “hallucination” albums, which are side-length pieces made up of many shorter tracks that he edits together seamlessly.
CHURCHICAL CHANT OF THE IYABINGHI | AFRICAN HEAD CHANGE Outtakes and B-sides from my favorite two African Head Charge records – Songs of Praise (1990) and In Pursuit of Shashamane Land (1993). This amazing look into Adrian Sherwood’s production shows off both more adventurous/progressive and sparser dubs than what ended up as the album versions.
KESARBAI KERKAR: 1944-1953 | KESARBAI KERKAR When Max and I were starting the label, we were listening to as many records from India as possible. This record stands out as one of the best we encountered. Kesarbai Kerkar has a truly sublime voice and vocal control unlike any other.
Max Allison’s Picks
PALIMPSEST | LAUREN BOUSFIELD I’m so inspired by the way that Lauren Bousfield constructs her tracks from mutated “pop” vocal lines and serrated shards of breakcore, while keeping everything flowing along a blistering forward trajectory. The tones and rhythms she weaves together are all so high-definition and surprising, like holographic threads of some shimmering 3D quilt that she drapes over us – but our bodies pass right through it.
SKINNED | ML BUCH This album by Danish experimentalist / guitarist / pop queen ML Buch forms memorable tunes out of some unexpected building blocks: chintzy preset MIDI tones, synthesized fretless bass runs, and lo-fi electric guitar chord progressions. All of her lyrics, delivered in her lovely yet deadpan vocal style, catch in your brain: “I’m a nice little cooing dove / that you can get a hold of.”
LUST$ICKPUPPY | COSMIC BROWNIE This EP by Brooklyn vocalist/rapper/producer Lust$ickPuppy came out at the start of June and I’ve been jamming it ever since. Somewhere within the “mutant” underground spearheaded by Machine Girl, Kill Alters, and so many buds in the NYC / Pittsburgh axis, L$P’s tracks are so fierce and so fun all at once. I love her aggro delivery on the mic and I love the unpredictable directions her productions streak off into.
MUSIQUE HAUKA | LINGO SEINI ET SON GROUPE Sahel Sounds never misses. This release documents the ritual music of the Hauka culture in Niger, which combines throbbing percussion lines with cyclical lute figures and incredible, powerful vocal chants. This artist Lingo Seini has been making music for over 60 years, and it feels like a rare honor to hear these recordings which clearly testify to his mastery of the music he’s devoted his life to.
MICROCLIMATES | HUPATA! I wish there were more hours in the day to keep up with the constant stream of brilliance that comes out of the Astral Spirits label. This newish one by free-jazz trio Hupata! is so mesmerizing. Any given track might feature warp-speed sax runs, clattering hand percussion, and unreal mania on the piano – plus words spoken in so many different languages. Other moments dip into total nothingness. Seriously stunning.
Michael Cormier In addition to playing in the bands Friendship and Hour and recording under his own name, Michael runs Dear Life Records. On August 14th, the label will release a new solo record from absolute legend Kath Bloom that is hotly anticipated in Undrcurrents HQ. I highly recommend checking out that album in addition to his Bandcamp picks below.
RONALD’S RHYTHM | RJ MILLER Brunswick, Maine-based drummer RJ Miller is one of the flag-bearers of Southern Maine’s microscopic ambient jazz community [see Robert Stillman below, raised in Portland]. Miller had long been a part of jazz and experimental scenes in Brooklyn, and 2013’s ‘Ronald’s Rhythm’ is a confident synthesis of these disparate modes. He is keenly aware of texture and sustaining a harmonic universe, while being anchored by sparse, elegant compositions. Grouper meets Metheny without the solos.
O LA LUNE | LUNE TRES BELLE I came across this record after diving into the music of Delphine Dora, who runs the Wild Silence label and has become a go-to resource for me for incisive piano music. The Montreal-based quartet, led by Frédérique Roy, presents an enchanting and cavernous world. ‘O La Lune’ is lush, seething but always deliberate with never a note out of place. It’s a rare gem of a record that seems to give regeneratively with every listen. Probably what ‘folklore’ wanted to be if anyone involved knew where to look.
BLANK WALL | JETTIE WILCE My favorite unearthed treasure. Released in 2017 by my friend Theo Krantz, whose label (Cry Like Donna) was one of the inspirations behind starting a label of my own (Dear Life Records), this is music peeled back to its core in every way. Recorded straight to tape, Wilce presents nine Satie-esque piano requiems for the 21st century paired with Frantz’s field recordings that shock but never snap us out of the overall dreamscape. One of the first cassettes I bought when I realized tapes were worth listening to, and probably my most listened cassette. Music for the desolate, the romantic, and the noble.
ARREST | POWERDOVE Annie Lewandowski’s Powerdove project was introduced to me by a friend who lived in Ithaca, NY, where Lewandowski is a senior lecturer at Cornell. Her’s is music I didn’t know I needed to hear, and now I lament that most music is not her’s. 2015’s ‘Arrest’ is the record I return to with most regularity, besides a Bandcamp-only live album that features Annie performing solo playing guitar and singing (a blurb for another day). ‘Arrest’ was recorded in a single day alongside Deerhoof’s John Dietrich and Annie’s longtime percussive collaborator Thomas Bonvalet. She pairs her vocal acuity and poetic economy with a mastery of sonic and improvisatory exploration. One of the many instruments Bonvalet is credited with playing is the “dry poppy pod plectrum,” and that is as apt a description of this music as I could possible generate here.
TO CY & LEE: INSTRUMENTALS VOL. 1 | ALABASTER DEPLUME I am proud to know that a lot of the collaborators here at Undrcurrents and Real Deep Radio devour the releases of Chicago’s International Anthem. They have set the bar exceptionally high for what jazz can be when unchained from nagging Blue Note prestige and the endless rehashing of James Bond theme songs. I could have picked any of their numerous releases, but Alabaster DePlume’s ‘To Cy & Lee – Instrumentals’ checks all the boxes I am typically looking for. Smart arrangements, interesting instrumentation (I will always show up for sax, strings, vocals that don’t sound like vocals), and compositional meat. The band is huge, but their sound is hyper-focused, like all the players fused together to form a tight quartet of octopuses, multiple instruments in each tentacle, in permanent residency at an empty bar.
RAINBOW | ROBERT STILLMAN All I can say is Robert Stillman is a multi-faceted genius. A virtuoso of DIY, one-player improvisation. A master of color, restraint, and powerful world-building, ‘Rainbow’ is his most tragic, and ultimately most transcendent release. It cannot be overstated that the music of Robert Stillman embodies all that is possible, a living manifestation of the outer most regions of our imaginations. If when we die we arrive not at some gaudy gates, but a near-endless expanse of blue and green, I am convinced Stillman’s cut of “As He Walked Into The Field” will reverberate all around, down into our everlasting bones. Five minutes into the track, a faint, wailing scream can be heard as the piece dissolves into an extended drone passage. It’s the pain of life, and ‘Rainbow’ guides us through it.
Kevin McKinney Kevin McKinney is a contributor to Undrcurrents and a co-founder of Real Deep Radio. The station burst to life during quarantine and provides some of the most adventurous listening you’ll find on the interwebs. Head over to their Substack and hit subscribe to get weekly schedules and listening recommendations sent straight to your inbox.
SUFI HISPANO-PAKISTANI | AZIZ BALOUCH Over the last few weeks, I’ve been slowly digging into flamenco music, aided by recommendations from a Lorca-head friend of mine, Folkways compilations, and all the episodes of the stunning TV series Rito y Geografía del Cante available on YouTube. (Seriously, click that link and watch an episode.) In his lecture on cante jondo, the “deep song” from which flamenco springs, Lorca traces the cante to its Arabic, Persian, and Indian roots. On Sufi Hispano-Pakistani, recorded in 1962 and re-released on Death Is Not The End, Aziz Balouch helps us hear this pathway. Balouch sings Sufi poetry over various cante forms. Lorca, talking about cante jondo in general, provides a better description for Balouch’s voice than I ever could: “a marvelous buccal undulation, that breaks out of the echoing prison of our tempered scale, will not suffer the cold rigid pentagram of our modern music, and makes the hermetic flowers of semitones open in a thousand petals.”
MOT | ANDREA BORGHI / GIACOMO SALIS / PAOLO SANNA I’m so excited about Italy’s tsss tapes, who describe themselves as “quiet and weird and free.” Three things we all love. This is their latest release, but everything they’ve put out is worth your time. MOT is a group improvisation with percussion, electronics, a turntable, and various objects. It’s teeming with tiny rhythms, melodies, and textures. As with most tsss tapes releases, MOT is warm and welcoming, striking the perfect balance between adventure and accessibility. Why don’t you come on in?
CURLING | JEAN-PHILIPPE GROSS I heard this for the first time a few weeks ago on an old episode of Framework Radio, a long-standing radio show that highlights field recordists from around the world. This recording of a game of curling is hilarious/beautiful/hilarious to me in the way the athletic performance functions as a musical one. We hear the drone of some kind of machinery at the rink—maybe the lighting or cooling system, we hear percussive sounds and the slipping and scraping of the stone and brooms on the ice. Occasionally a crowd applauds. And the whole time the players speak to each other, their words never quite adding up to those of us who don’t know our curling. Curling is somehow quite calming. And on these hot and lonely summer days, isn’t it nice to dream of the cool rink, of watching anything closely with a crowd of strangers?
GOD GOD ALABAKDANNAGSBA | OK PUTRID I have been on a bit of a noise kick recently and this is one of my better noise albums I’ve heard in a long time. This tape, from the duo of Kaitlyn Prochazka and Angel Marcloid, is harsh and heavy, with plenty of variation throughout and what I hear as a good sense of humor. This is play with sound to the extreme, undiluted by boring ideas. There’s no self-serious posturing here, no “mood” or “atmosphere.” And OK Putrid is one of the funnier names in music.
DRUGS ARE NICE | SUCKDOG There’s not much that puts me to sleep more quickly than art about drugs. Of course, as I write this, I realize there are obviously endless exceptions to this rule—I couldn’t even begin to list them here. This is just to say that I hope you don’t, as I nearly did, let the title of Suckdog’s Drugs Are Nice scare you away. If you let anything about this gem of an album scare you away, let it be the fact that Suckdog—who in 1989 were something between a punk band, a performance piece, and a prank—are obnoxious, juvenile, and incoherent. But of course, Drugs Are Nice is brilliant. It’s all one big inside joke, but if you open your ears, you can be in on it, too. And once you’re there, you’ll find there’s plenty to hear that’s sincere and touching.
Hugh Wilikofsky Hugh is also an occasional contributor to Undrcurrents and co-founder of Real Deep Radio. In case you ignored me moments ago, head over to their Substack right now to subscribe!
RECORDINGS 1987-1991, VOL. 1 | VALENTINA GONCHAROVA Ghostly string experiments from a little-known virtuoso Valentina Goncharova. Having spent her youth rigorously studying classical music, over time her musical curiosity saw her dabbling in contemporary composition, avant-rock, free improv, and eventually electro-acoustic experimentation, the lattermost of which is captured on this revelatory compilation. Using an augmented reel-to-reel recorder and pickups developed by her and her husband, an electrical engineer, what Goncharova teases out feels uniquely boundless, cosmic. Moments might recall meditative zones of Laraaji (“Maitreya”), the playful electronics of Paul DeMarinis (“Zen Garden”), the exploratory sides shoegazers like Jessica Bailiff and Flying Saucer Attack (standout “Insight”), even the garbled jaw harp rippers of Chik White (“Contemplation”), but these are really just some thin RIYL points of reference. This is Goncharova’s sonic world and it’s a gift to be invited in all these years later.
LIVE ABOARD THE SINKING SHIP | IDEA FIRE COMPANY I simply can’t get enough of those Anti-Naturals, so when I found out this 2018 gem slipped by my radar I just chucked that damn thing out the window. The title’s supposedly literal, though the clipped applause and sloshing sounds jammed at the end of each piece make me wonder. Regardless, it seems clear the pair has an affinity for the nautical (see 2017’s Lost at Sea) and it suits them. The gentle, looping insistence of Karla Borecky’s piano evokes the tides, and the hazy atmospherics conjured by Scott Foust’s radio and synth manipulations—not to mention his fragile, cheeky trumpet work, which recall foghorns in this context—make it easy to imagine yourself adrift on some fog-cloaked pontoon as dusk settles. A much more whimsical form of isolation than what many of us are experiencing, and one I’ve enjoyed sinking into. While you’re on Regional Bears’ page, check out their latest compilation New Tulips, featuring a contribution from Foust as well as many more masters of murky tape-based sound art.
COULDN’T WAIT TO TELL YOU… | (LIV).E I’ve been a big fan of (Liv).e since I heard her rapping as Jade Fox in Memphis/Houston throwback supergroup KRYPTONYTE, but I only discovered her psych-soul side earlier this year, just in time for this stunning full-length. Opening with a self-interrogation (“So tell me, everybody got a love story, right?”), the album unfolds as a pointedly scattered audio diary, one in which love, particularly self-love, and the patience it requires, is explored from a multitude of angles, employing a multitude of voices, almost all of them (Liv).e’s. A versatile vocalist with a masterful grip on how best to warp her voice further in the studio, she renders competing impulses that drive our conscious minds tangible. The loose, quiet stormy beats provided largely by mejiwahn tumble into each other beautifully, and coupled with (Liv).e’s introspective lyrics CWTTY captures the feeling of inadvertently yearning your way into a daydream, getting lost chasing down one train of thought only to have another barrel into you. She doesn’t seek to square all these facets of herself into something polished and linear, nor should she. Better—and realer—to revel in their messiness, their beauty.
EVERYDAY MADNESS | BASIL KIRCHIN I’ve gotta stop referring to music as “ahead of its time,” because without proper care that kind of exceptionalism just reinforces misleadingly linear narratives, positioning anomalous sounds as somehow out of their time, rather than products of it. No one’s creating in a vacuum. But I digress: Basil Kirchin. The latest in a long-running series of reissues from Trunk Records rescues three vastly different pieces from the composer’s archives, further revealing just how deeply attuned he was to the potentials of the “non-musical” (read those quotation marks as facetiously as possible) before it was cool. “Electronic” is a red herring of a title, as the piece is largely built around recordings of children with autism from a school in Switzerland singing and vocalizing, accompanied by Kirchin’s wife who worked at the school. “Pat’s Pigs” offers some sparse, paranoid musique concrète that could feature highly treated recordings of pigs as suggested by the title, but you’d never know it. “The Suspended Fourth” is the most accessible of the three pieces, serving up some serene spiritual jazz with shades of Sanders and a few knotty asides. It’s a collection that further affirms Kirchin’s status as a quietly revolutionary artist, my favorite kind.
BABY; BABY: – EXPLORES THE REASONS WHY THAT GUM IS STILL ON THE SIDEWALK | S/T I missed these babies earlier this year when they came through town supporting Lightning Bolt cos I was too busy stuffing my pockets with free quarters at a company party, and I’m still kicking myself for that. This Providence trio is making the kind of nervy jams that fit my post-6pm mood these days, right about the time when I oughta be getting up to SOMEthing, instead of pacing around all this nothing. This is just a demo from last year, supposedly they’ve got a debut full-length in the works, but until (and probably even) then this’ll do just fine. The sound reminds me of Kassie Carlson’s old solo work as Jane La Onda, Size Queen, and Muriel, and the attitude and irreverence makes me think of Inflatable Boy Clams. Never mind the precedents though cos these mutagenic jams go down just fine on their own. And as much as I would’ve loved to catch them in person, I did manage to catch the Bolt’s set and do laundry for free for a couple months. Gotta find reasons to be grateful these days.
CASSETTE ART CLASSICS I wasn’t familiar with Hal McGee when I stumbled upon his Cassette Art Classics Bandcamp, but I’ve since learned he was a major force in the homemade cassette movement of the ‘80s and ‘90s here in the US via his label Cause and Effect and a number of collaborative and solo projects. Having recently dug into the Dutch tape underground via Hessel Veldman and his Exart label, this bottomless cache of outré classics McGee’s been building since 2012 was a welcome discovery. I knew I’d stumbled on a goldmine when I saw old favorites like noise legend Minóy’s 1986 tapes The Art of Egyptian Bathing and In Search of Tarkovsky, ONO’s 1982 debut cassette Kate Cincinnati, and the Alain Neffe centered compilation Insane Music for Insane People Vol. 1. Some recommended discoveries include the compilation Music from a Divided Germany from Harsh Reality Music (instantly sold on those names alone), experimental poet John M. Bennett’s The Spitter, midwest post-post-punks Bright Too Late’s Exercises In Style, and the jarringly laid-back (at least relative to the harsher bent of many of these releases) acoustic jams of Evan Cantor’s Just Sittin’ Around the House. Everything on there has been authorized by the artists and/or labels and goes for a mere $1, so you really have no excuse not to gorge yourself on all this seminal DIY mishegas, made back when that acronym was a bit more literal.
David Wilikofsky Finally, here are a few picks from yours truly this Bandcamp Day. As always, feel free to pop over to my Bandcamp profile for more recommendations
DUMA | DUMA Nyege Nyege Tapes never miss and their newest release from Kenyan grindcore duo Duma is no exception. Although the group has roots in metal, the album is truly unclassifiable experimental music that’s atmospheric and intense and visceral and beautiful. An early contender for my album of the year, we’ll have a full review in the next few days. Don’t wait; do yourself a favor and pick it up now.
FAST EDIT | STILL HOUSE PLANTS Another contender for album of the year hits shelves next week (at which point we’ll say much more about it). I highly recommend taking advantage of Bandcamp day to smash that pre-order button on this one. Still House Plants are rock deconstructionists, creating songs at once stripped down and completely distorted. Instruments and vocal push and pull against each other, falling into a natural ebb and flow. Honestly, it feels closer to dance performance than a rock album. Absolutely essential listening.
SERVE TO SERVE AGAIN | VINTAGE CROP I don’t know what’s in the water down under, but Australia consistently turns out some of the best guitar rock in the world. This album by Vintage Crop (a joint release by Anti-Fade and Upset the Rhythm, another two labels that consistently hit it out of the park) continues that tradition. Killer riffs and sardonic lyrics make this a can’t miss release.
LOVE AND TECHNOLOGY | INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECTURE My brother knows way more about music than me; it’s probably evident from whatever amazing thing he’s written above my picks. I’m constantly amazed at how much music he’s able to absorb, and his show on Real Deep Radio, Mondo Alienation, is a testament to the breath and depth of his knowledge. A recent episode focused on funk and dance music, and a track from Industrial Architecture prompted me to go looking for the entire album. It’s nine tracks of knotty, industrial tinged post-punk that remains highly danceable. The label that did this reissue, 12 Chasov, has other Russian and Japanese reissues that are all worth checking out.
LUZ BEL | BÉLVER YIN Originally released in 1991, Luz Bel was recently unearthed by master crate diggers Efficient Space. The Salamanca based band’s debut album failed to make an impact at the time, and in retrospect it’s hard to understand why. This is gauzy, etherial instrumental rock that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Red House Painters album. Spine tinglingly beautiful.
SOMETHING IN THE WAY | PALBERTA The Palberta universe is vast and wide, with the members being involved in so many great projects that it can be hard to keep tabs on them all (see Lily Konigsberg’s latest EP on Wharf Cat, Shimmer, Data, and Lily on Horn Horse for a few great examples). At the center of that world is their primitive rock trio, a modern DIY version of The Raincoats. This latest missive is their most pop statement yet, sanding down some of the charmingly rough edges of previous releases but still maintaining the core essence of the band. If this signals a new direction for them I can’t wait to hear more.