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Music criticism by Patryk Mrozek

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The Clientele's Alasdair MacLean talks rise of the irrationals and the origins of "Music for the Age of Miracles" - Prefixmag.com

Over the last twenty-odd years The Clientele have been diligently sculpting a world of their own: a unique, autumnal sound experience that straddles the line between the sensation of lying half-asleep in a warm, dimly-lit room, and battling torrential rain in the streets of London. Since the premiere of 2005’s Strange Geometry, the trio’s most …

Click above for my interview with the Clientele’s Alasdair MacLean.

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Beyond Tropicália: 10 Representative Songs from Brazil’s Clube da Esquina

My feature article about Clube da Esquina, a Brazilian rock collective that gave voice to some of my favorite musicians and songwriters in all of pop music, is up now on Ad Hoc. 

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Der Klang Der Familie

I just finished reading Felix Denk and Sven von Thülen’s oral history of the birth of Berlin’s post-1989 techno scene, and was really struck by a couple of things about it. 

I think the interviews they compiled did a swell job of painting a vivid, breathing picture of the city during and after reunification. That’s certainly what most oral narratives about music succeed at (to some degree at least), but in this case I felt especially transported to a different time and place, with precious insight into the then lifestyles of the DJs and the club owners and the promoters. I was impressed with how palpably they portrayed the excitement, confusion, and fear that permeated the city at the time. And, what’s even more powerful, is that the book succeeds at doing so without focusing too much of the narrative on the actual music that was played. It would be easy to paint a picture by name-dropping evocative tracks, but the interviewees recreated the era with detailed descriptions of the place and the people alone. 

What I enjoyed even more though was the way the book dealt with Berlin techno’s gradual transformation; it traced the progression of the scene from an insider-only clique of the city’s elitist record collectors and hipsters, through a phase of it being an all-inclusive, love-affirming soundtrack to Berlin’s (literal) coming together, all the way to its eventual dissolution into a rather grim spectacle, rife with internal conflict and bad blood. Again, there’s no going back once big money gets involved. It’s a cliche and an age-old narrative, but it was fascinating for me to see the mechanism of cooptation of counter-culture play out outside of rock/rap contexts (which I’m much more familiar with). 

Here’s a link to the book if you’d like to check it out; it’s definitely worth it: http://www.amazon.com/Der-Klang-Familie-Felix-Denk/dp/3738604294. Pitchfork has some excerpts on their site (along with a neat playlist), too.

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FALA: Moon Canyon EP

My band and I have released our second EP today as FALA. Although it’s only five songs and they were all home-recorded, putting the whole thing together has probably been the most elaborate, work-intensive, and at times frustrating project I’ve ever partaken in. I’m immensely grateful and relieved that these songs did eventually get to see the light of day, as well as super proud of the music we wrote. Give it a listen via Bandcamp, or check out one of the new cuts below:

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Recent write-ups

- Mild High Club: "Undeniable" (AdHoc) - Draper: "On You" Feat. Alby Hobbs (Prefix) - Ben Varian: "Float Day" (AdHoc) - Better Person: "Sentiment" (Prefix) - Holly Waxwing: Peach Winks EP (AdHoc Premiere)

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Interview: Ducktails

I recently got to sit down with Real Estate's lead guitarist, Matt Mondanile, to chat about his upcoming album as Ducktails. I've been a fan of Mondanile's solo work for quite a few years now; I'm always amazed at his ability to push the form of the 3-minute song to its limits (harmonically & sonically) without it ever becoming anything less or more than an infectious pop number. Read more after the jump.

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Saffron: Petra I (via AdHoc)

AdHoc premiered a stream of this excellent tape today, along with my write-up: “Vancouver tape-and-digital powerhouse 1080p has signed off on plenty of eclectic work over the two years of its existence. Petra I, the first part of a double cassette release by New York-based artist Saffron (formerly Spirit Guide), gravitates around a decadent microhouse aesthetic, yet strives to encompass a lot more.” - Patryk Mrozek, Ad Hoc [Read More]

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Poland's 10 Best Albums of 2014

Better late than never: I put together a recap of what I think were the greatest Polish albums released last year. The list includes We Will Fail's Verstörung 2.0, whose amazing cover art you can see above, and is up now on Prefix. It's a pretty eclectic assemblage, too, in genres ranging from hardcore punk to avant-garde jazz, and might as well serve you as a cursory introduction to the most interesting trends and tendencies at play in Polish music right now. Read after the jump. 

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#2014

ALBUMS

Sun Kill Moon: Benji Flying Lotus: You're Dead Homeshake: In The Shower Traxman: Da Mind of Traxman Vol. 2 Farben & James DIN A4: Farben Presents James DIN A4 Maurice Louca: Salute the Parrot Kassem Mosse: Workshop 19 Arca: Xen Liz: Just Like You EP East India Youth: Total Strife Forever Lee Gamble: Koch Dntel: Human Voice Ninos Du Brazil: Novos Misterios Ariel Pink: pom pom Freddie Gibbs & Madlib: Piñata Leon Vynehall: Music for the Uninvited A Sunny Day in Glasgow: Sea When Absent FKA twigs: LP1 D'Angelo: Black Messiah Fennesz: Bécs

SONGS

Splash: "Don't Look Back" Knower: "I Must Be Dreaming" Moodyman: "No" Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks: "Little Fang" Tielsie: "Palette" L.A. Takedown: "Night Skiing" Lipgloss Twins: "Wannabe" Jack J: "Looking Forward to You" Doss: "The Way I Feel" Ricky Eat Acid: "In My Dreams We're Almost Touching" Bok Bok: "Melba's Call" Feat. Kalela Yuki: "Daredemo Lonely" A.G. Cook: "Keri Baby feat. Hannah Diamond" Maxo: "Snow Other" TOPS: "Way To Be Loved" Bok Bok: "Funkiest (Be Yourself)" QT: "Hey QT" Todd Osborn: "5thep" Mac DeMarco: "Brother" FKA twigs: "Two Weeks"

LIVE

Corey Fogel We Will Fail Big Freedia Robert Hood Księżyc SK Kakraba Band L.A. Takedown Mac DeMarco Egyptian Lover Slowdive Kirin J. Callinan TOPS Maher Shalal Hash Baz Bok Bok Sophie & QT DJ Rashad & DJ Spinn

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Ad Hoc's Favorite Albums of 2014

Some of my absolute favorite records of the last twelve months ended up in this strapping end-of-year roundup by Ad Hoc. Among them the one I've enjoyed immersing myself in the most-- Bécs by Austrian experimental guitarist Fennesz. I wrote a short blurb about the album, and cannot recommend checking out all the other write-ups by Ad Hoc's stellar crew of writers enough. 

Read the whole article here.

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Album Review: Ariel Pink's "pom pom"

Wrote this up for Prefix Magazine!

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Label profile: PC Music (in Polish)

I penned a long-format article in Polish about happening London label PC Music. It is a profile as well as an opinion piece, in which I compare the online imprint's MO to the new pop movement of early 1980s Britain, as well as make some foolhardy guesses about the implications of PC Music's existence for the future of pop. Read it over at Porcys. 

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Album Review: FKA twigs, LP1

Wrote a review for Prefix of FKA twigs' wonderful, far out debut album. It is certainly the longest and likely the most difficult review I've written in English so far; I'm super happy to have been given the opportunity though! Read on. 

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Knower: "I Must Be Dreaming" (Track review)

My favorite spaz-pop LA duo Knower have a new song out, and I reviewed it for Porcys in both Polish and English. Here's the latter: "Within the modish framework of Windows 95-spawned digitalism (sprinkled with a dash of J-pop reverence), Genevieve Artadi and Louis Cole’s aesthetic comes off as a post-hipster equivalent of twee. On their latest single, “I Must Be Dreaming,” the pair’s life- and love-affirming stance traverses all, from an earnestly infantile video and lyrics that seriously hold their heart on the sleeve, to a repetitive, nursery rhyme quality of the chorus. A quality that does not, however, clash with Knower’s insane skill of harmonizing jazzy chords of organs and string pads with Artadi’s Bacharachian vocal melodies. With “I Must Be Dreaming” Knower have added “catchy” and “classicistic” (for lack of a better word) to an already long list of positive adjectives one might use to describe their ecstatically-eclectic music. "

Check out the (longer) write-up in Polish here.

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Porcys

Porcys, the indie rock-turned-poptimist website I've been writing, editing, and translating for for nearly ten years now (has it really been that long?!) is back with a slick new design. Most of the content's in Polish, but English translations of selected write-ups will be available (here's one, for starters). I'm super stoked to see the website back up and looking better than ever, and you should be too. 

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"Admit It"  by Ambitious Lovers from Greed (Live, 1988)

Having started with Arto Lindsay’s ’90s solo albums, going backwards in time in his discography is strange. I don’t remember Lust (1991) clearly and I’d have to re-listen to it to compare it with Greed, but I remember enjoying it too. Although Ambitious Lovers could be fit into the New Wave genre, Matthew Weiner was very accurate when he wrote for Stylus in 2004 that this was actually an ambitious project for Arto Lindsay.

I think this performance shows pretty well that he had to adapt his style to the music and viceversa. Not only because of his characteristic guitar, but also notice, for example, that at the end of the song, the percussionist on the right start banging a cymbal and that it goes unnoticed until you see him and realize of that noise at the back.

Another observation that Matthew Weiner does is that the tracklist is greatly balanced, especially for a listener — like him — who wasn’t used to hear Arto Lindsay doing New Wave: “And just as you start to think you can’t stand it anymore, on comes on Brazilian tracks like ‘Caso’ or ‘It Only Has To Happen Once’, where you forget where you are and how you got there and just get…lost”.  

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This is so awesome. I had literally no idea Lindsay did anything between DNA and his solo albums... "Admit It" reminds me of all the reasons why I love Talking Heads' '80s albums: the idea of pushing the envelope of post-punk as far as it could possibly go while still packaging it as crossover music is very much at work here. I have a feeling I will be listening to Greed a lot in the next couple of weeks. 

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Album Review: Pharoahe Monch's "PTSD"

I recently reviewed Pharoahe Monch's new album for Prefix. PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is sort of a return to form for Monch (who's regarded as a conscious hip-hop icon at this point), especially lyrically; it also has "Rapid Eye Movement" with the Roots' Black Thought, a song that really sounds like a classic rap number from 15-20 years back. Listen to it below: