#diner coffee

[technomancer-01]

A chipped cup of black coffee offered up by the Bath Messengers. A cream packet spilled before it could be poured into the thin, acrid brew. Restores some amount of wakefulness

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[williammarksommer]

Diner Coffee

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[pamietniko]

damn good coffee

North Bend, Washington

[so-this-is-my-blog-i-guess]

[dustedmagazine]

Mamaleek — Diner Coffee (The Flenser)

Diner Coffee by Mamaleek

Many bands in contemporary metal are crafting hybrid forms with genres outside of heavy music’s customary ambit. Lately Blood Incantation and Dream Unending have received attention and acclaim for their proggy, pretty soundscapes, and there’s an even more venerable set of explorations of the terrain between black metal and shoegaze (Alcest and Blut Aus Nord have made some interesting music, Deafheaven has made a bunch of money…). The list of bands and genres goes on, at some length. But few of those bands can match the idiosyncratic imagination and spiritual searching that have inspired Mamaleek. The San Francisco-based project has variously engaged trip hop, shamanistic tribal percussion, industrial noise and jazz, always working from a dour, blackened sensibility. With this new LP, Diner Coffee, things have gotten decidedly weirder. Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942) if painted by George Grosz? The early, beatnik version of Tom Waits, jamming with Teitanblood? Sort of, but not really. Nothing else sounds like Diner Coffee.

The new record is in aesthetic and thematic conversation with Mamaleek’s previous LP, Come and See (2020). That record felt less like a project and more like the work of a band, producing an agonized aggregate of doomy skronk and sludgy free jazz. Diner Coffee intensifies the engagement with jazz, but favors the 1950s, with its cooler tones and refinements of the wilds that hard bop had opened. You can hear that in the opening minutes of “Boiler Room” and throughout the title track, which features nightmarish nods to Wes Montgomery’s playing. There’s a dominant musical mood at work, which seems intent on constructing a milieu: murky late night bleeding into bleary early morning, second-shifters mingling with drunks on benders, blue-plate specials and bottomless mugs of joe. 

So far, so good, and fairly scannable. Many artworks that seek to uncover an urban American night world go noirish, romanticizing its darkness and dangers. Characteristically, Mamaleek makes different choices. The record starts with spates of lunatic laughter, contrasted with gritty, doomy crashes of metal volume. Those contrasts continue: the atmospheric, haunted piano runs of “Badtimers” with the song’s hyperbolic, howling vocals; the Mingus-like pulses of bass and fluttering woodwinds in “Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage” with slithering, creepy guitar lines. The unpredictable oddness of the compositions undoes any stylized distancing, so essential to noir’s aesthetics, and when the darkness gets deep, it’s too full of nervy risk or addled hilarity to be romantic. 

Like Come and See, Diner Coffee has an American space in mind. Come and See focused on Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, the attendant intensities of closed-in places and the mordant horror of feeling trapped. Diners are transient, you come and go. Even the regular customer may be surprised by who shows up on the next stool at the counter. The restlessness of Diner Coffee’s songs seems to want to dramatize that mobility. The resulting music is interesting and strange, evocative and unsettling. It’s a challenging record — but that’s no surprise, it’s a Mamaleek LP. It’s also very, very good. 

Jonathan Shaw

[thethirdman8]

Come unto me sweet elixir 😎

[williammarksommer]

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[thethirdman8]

Lunch today at O'rourke's Diner located in glorious Middletown, CT. Also the home of Wesleyan University a fine liberal arts institution. I love Middletown. Has a great bookstore and red stone and brick everywhere you look. Cerd mile failte - gaelic for one hundred thousand welcomes. Good food too.