I always have mixed feelings about end-of-the-year lists. I guess my biggest issue is just how many of them are out there. So, the early lists get the worm (in this metaphor, the worm is me).
Sims Hardin, the Bandcamp punk specialist, released his Best of Punk list and there is a lot of stuff I'd never heard last year. In fact, his list provided a label I'd never heard of - General Speech (Lexington, Kentucky). The label releases current and reissued punk.
Die Öwan were a Japanese teenage punk band formed in the late 1970s and active for the first part of the 1980s. Hardin mentions that this release would be right up The Coneheads' Mark Winters alley (not exactly the words Hardin used). I would also add Mark Wynn to that sentiment. And clearly Die Öwan loved Wire - they cover "Ex-Lion Tamer" (at the end of Side A-2). The band were contemporaries of Aunt Sally - I can't imagine they weren't influenced.
In Memory Of John Peel Show: 20180914- Podcast & Playlist
In Memory Of John Peel Show: 20180914- Podcast & Playlist
William Eggleston @eggleston_art
A grand entry with aquatic themes before the eggs return to dominate
In Memory of John Peel Show – bringing the best new music to you in association with KFFP FM & on patreon GET behind what you believe in rebroadcast all over the planet to independent stations
https://radiopublic.com/in-memory-of-john-peel-show-6nVPd6/ep/s1!db01f
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Laurie Shaw is a young 21-year-old musician from Kenmare, Ireland.
“Felted Fruit” is a 2 LP release (not many left), but he also has a CD that is available. This album has a diversity of sounds, but a lot of it trends to garage (loud and fuzzy and sometimes soft and quiet).
His prolific ways and brash sound recall Mark Wynn, while the sound can recall Les Cox Sportifs, Billy Childish, Ray Davies or Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals). Some songs make me think he is the male version of Cate Le Bon (sometimes as DRINKS with Tim Presley). And finally, there is a definite vibe (maybe it’s the guitar) reminiscent of Bingo Trappers.
Patrick Masterson, Ian Mathers, Bill Meyer, Doug Mosurock, and Derek Taylor take on: the latest of Four Tet’s career retrospectives, the lo-fi labor laments of The Pheromoans, and Tyondai Braxton’s pay-what-you-will EP against gun violence. There’s also a new synth object from M. Geddes Gengras, a guzheng-infused solo statement from Jessica Pavone, and an electro-acoustic set from Dafne Vicente-Sandoval and Pascal Battus. We wrap the week up with new Whities from Quirke, a mock singles collection from the resurrected Mark Wynn, and a Waxahatchee throwback for new and old listeners alike.
Four Tet—Randoms DL (self-released)
Randoms by Four Tet
In typical fashion, Kieran Hebden decided a Monday afternoon in late June was good enough for him to release a compilation appropriately titled Randoms. No doubt about it, this one’s a huge helping hand for the Four Tet dilettantes who missed out on snagging the excellent Nonplus comp Think and Change (“For These Times”) or weren’t cognizant enough to nick Leaf Records compilations in 1996 (“Field” is the oldest track here and among Hebden’s first under the Four Tet name). Even if there are no new draws, stuff like “Both When I Am Alone and We Are” (from a Hella split in ’04), the vocally driven “Gillie Amma I Love You” (the album’s most recent song, from ‘13), Plastic People club tool “The Reservoir,” and sparkling eight-minute cut “Nothing to See” are consistently enjoyable in a way his recent live sets don’t seem to have been. “All the tracks here have been released before and I am sure some Internet searching will give you the full details if you are interested,” he says. Always a step ahead, Hebden knows you know the jig. That’s probably one of the main reasons he opted out of a physical release on Text... although with this guy, it’s never too late. Everything old is new again and time is flat rounds, am I right? (http://www.fourtet.net/)
– Patrick Masterson
The Pheromoans—I’m On Nights LP (Alter)
London’s Pheromoans have been active since the dawn of the lo-fi resurgence about a decade back, and it seems that they've tried to fit in at just about every phase of that style's ascent and decline. They haven't been an easy band for me to enjoy for a lot of reasons (entirely musical) but they have been ambitious on the UK DIY post-punk scene for years, and it seems like those ambitions have finally been tempered to the level of significance attained on their fourth album, I’m On Nights.
The six-piece band, fronted by vocalist Russell Walker, has consistently written songs about the workplace: wage slavery, go-getters, career tracks, and the mundanity of life built around the 40+ hour/week schedule. Here they've stripped down to a mostly electronic lineup, busy and claustrophobic, with a wild, stayed-up-all-night feel (the album title refers to working third shift), like the cubicles host their own disco, complete with light-up floors and hypnotic screen savers, and the employees are just trying to motivate enough to appear to have fun before things get really ominous around the brilliant “Cones Hotline” (seemingly about some responsibility to manage the position and uprightness of traffic cones in a demarcated area). Even the go-getter narrative of “Rodent Costume,” pitched to Shadow Ring levels of absurdity, devolve into daydreams about sex, marred with worries of personal inadequacy. Awesome record. Says more about the state of our lives than most of us care to acknowledge. “My books and albums cost so much money/But when it’s all said and done, will they cry for me?” questions Walker, intent on keeping us up all night, in worry, alongside him. (http://alterstock.bigcartel.com/)
– Doug Mosurock
M. Geddes Gengras—Interior Architecture LP/DL (Intercoastal Artists)
At this point, if you know the name M. Geddes Gengras, you have a decent idea of what you’re in for listening to his new self-dubbed “impossible object,” and that’s not a complaint. Analogue synthesizers are a resource music has gotten a lot from, but they still feel pretty untapped, especially presented as unvarnished as they are on Interior Architecture. Except for Seth Kasselman’s clarinet on the third track (well, the third side, the track indexing following Spiritualized circa Lazer Guided Melodies’ lead and only breaking where you have to flip the vinyl) it’s just Gengras and every synthesizer he can get his hands on, analogue and digital, although a lot of the more centerpiece sounds seem to be the former. Luckily enough he’s also experienced enough that this record plays like a genuine journal rather than a testing lab or proving grounds. Sometimes it burbles, sometimes it soars, sometimes it sounds like angelic voices or an organ or the ghosts from Pac-Man on a rampage. But it’s always involving, always going somewhere, and it always makes a strong case that these machines can be just as psychedelic as more traditional means can. (http://intercoastalartists.blogspot.com/)
– Ian Mathers
Tyondai Braxton—Oranged Out DL (Tyondai Braxton Music)
Oranged Out EP by Tyondai Braxton
Nearly a decade removed from his most visible artistic triumph (2007’s Mirrored for Battles), Tyondai Braxton has been quietly chipping away at the IDM abstractions of his solo work since leaving that band, including 2009’s Central Market for Warp, last year’s Hive1 for Nonesuch, and now Oranged Out, a five-tracker released in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shootings as a pay-what-you-want to support the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, a nonprofit you won’t be surprised to find advocates gun control and works to stop gun violence.
The music itself won’t be unfamiliar to long-time followers (and these were composed around the same time as Hive1). The title-track does break into a hyper-minimal 8-bit beat toward the last of its five minutes but Braxton’s knob-twiddling and post-production discombobulations dominate, both here and on the rest of the EP. Between burbling synths and coiling electronic detritus lies a lot of negative space, Braxton’s comfort with quiet in the mix evident. “Fifesine” is a descending daydream and three additional players assist with sounds for the first and only time on the nine-minute closer “Greencrop.” Willfully difficult, Tyondai’s a clever player with a space all his own for a reason. (http://www.tyondaibraxton.com/)
– Patrick Masterson
Jessica Pavone—Silent Spills CD (Relative Pitch)
[no samples available]
Home-recorded and intimate to the point of periodic comfort-compromising invasiveness, Silent Spills presents violist Jessica Pavone at her most pellucid and personal. The title piece trades on a simple see-sawing drone, gradually adding trilled inflections that accelerate in speed and density before imploding and transforming in a conflagration of distortion-washed electronic effects. Watercolor tones on “Shed the Themes of Broken Records” set a stark contrast, bleeding into the air with lingering resonance while “Dawn to Dark” traces a trajectory ripe to bursting with tonal weight and reach. Pavone stretches and torques a melancholy motif into supplicating submission, replacing it with strafing whistle effects and pizzicato patter as a frame for her wistful recitation. “Ugly Story” masks the natural sonorities of her strings in a sheen of amplified gloss while “Seeded and Seated” sounds like the pastoral musings of a guzheng before the arrival of a flanging processional of flanking dissonance. Twenty-four minutes is terse by typical solo statement standards, but the concentrated artistry in evidence ensures that every second counts. (http://relativepitchrecords.com/)
Bassoonist Dafne Vicente-Sandoval and surface agitator Pascal Battus practice electro-acoustic improvisation, and it’s hard to get more literal about it than they do on this double CD. The first disc, subtitled Marne, cites microphones and mixing desk amongst the two players’ instrumentation. The second, subtitled Seine (the session was recorded in a studio located near where the two rivers converge), duplicates the instrumentation (rotating surfaces, polystyrene, paper, plastic, and bassoon) except for the mics. On each, the musicians improvise performances that emphasize texture, tone, and presence, but concede nothing to beats, tunes, or conventional sonic building blocks. Instead they scrape and blow, generating sonic convergences that only occasionally remind you that people or intentionally played objects were involved in their creation. The amplified disc jabs at you while the acoustic one seems to recede as you approach it, but each forces the listener to reckon actively with the sounds and become aware of listening as an act. (http://www.potlatch.fr/)
– Bill Meyer
Quirke—Whities 007 12” (Whities)
It’s funny to think how quickly Josh Quirke stormed out of the gates in 2014 with Acid Beth, an EP on the XL-turned-Beggars imprint Young Turks. Amid an environment that was thriving on the detritus of Warp records past, Quirke melded breakneck Aphex Twin with the ultramodern synth decays of contemporaries like Arca, Aïsha Devi, and M.E.S.H. After that, nothing—he was quiet on every front for more than a year. Only recently have there been stirrings with a self-released vinyl/cassette offering and an appearance on NTS. And now, his finest moment, a new three-track release on the reputable Young Turks sub-label, Whities. Following in the footsteps of artists like Kowton (“Glock & Roll” was off 002) and Reckonwrong (005), the label’s seventh plate is stupendous — from the ambient in ‘n’ out of “Cylinders” to the deceptively short stopover “Cope,” to the juxtaposition of distorted percussion and pristine pastoralia on “Sa45 Circles,” not one song should be missed. Deliberately strict and always designed with care, Nic Tasker’s vision with Whities continues to reap notable artistic fruit. (http://www.whiti.es/)
– Patrick Masterson
Mark Wynn—'Singles - But They're Not Really Singles, I Just Sent Them to the Screen and Said They Were Singles' Singles by Mark Wynn CD/DL (self-released)
'Singles - But They're Not Really Singles, I Just Sent Them to the Screen and Said They Were Singles' Singles by Mark Wynn by Mark Wynn
I picked this up on a whim down at a shop in New Orleans and it's been on my mind more than I expected. Not more than a few years back, Wynn was a British folkie in line to ascend to a darker corner of the Mumford throne (check Spotify for his 2010 release if you don't believe me), acclaim from the NME, etc. After a series of breakdowns and left turns, he emerged in 2012 gone slightly wrong, and continued to do so for the next few years, releasing CD-R after CD-R and assaulting audiences at the local pub. The accolades returned, and Wynn responded by retiring from music full stop in 2015, only to have this compilation surface, while touring opportunities with labelmates Sleaford Mods put him back out there. He's like the Mods meets Dan Treacy/Television Personalities meets Mark E. Smith meets Johnny Moped, with a very manic, folk-punk quality, and when he's not cursing up a blue streak, Wynn cracks out a tune like “The Girl Who Looked Like Bobby Gillespie” and you're left standing there, dumbfounded, wondering where a song like this has been all your life. His tunes are short, much like life, so make the most of them. (https://markwynn.bandcamp.com)
– Doug Mosurock
Waxahatchee—Early Recordings CS/DL (Merge)
The most immediate appeal of Katie Crutchfield in the early days of Waxahatchee was her stark intimacy and wonderful, plainspoken poetry. Every time I go back to American Weekend, I think about those slivers of life before love, of just what it means to not know what the fuck you’re doing with yourself emotionally at a time when you’re young enough not to know better, even though you think you do. Thing is, even with Cerulean Salt and Ivy Tripp, the message hasn’t really changed—it’s just the way in which it’s conveyed that’s been amplified (literally). Early Recordings is a succinct throwback in new artwork covering “a super limited split cassette (with Plan-it-X’s Chris Clavin) that was mostly for friends and family,” songs so tucked away even she forgot all about them until a solo West Coast tour this spring. The four-track bedroom aesthetic will feel familiar to fans of her early days but there are some beautiful lines in here that match anything you’d hear on the full-band recs (“Sister Saint” is the most heartfelt performance for me). Benefiting DIY PHL’s First Time’s the Charm, an event promoting diversity in the music community, Early Recordings is just the tip of the Crutchfield iceberg in 2016: keep an eye out for that mammoth P.S. Eliot reissue in September on Don Giovanni. (http://www.mergerecords.com/)
I learned about The Yawns after buying Mark Wynn’s latest album. Once I downloaded the album, I got recommendations from Mark himself - Sleaford Mods and The Yawns.
The Yawns have an amazing mixture of influences - Pavement, Pixies, Cate Le Bon, and The Mantles. The CD is sold out. This was released on vinyl by Records Records Records, but it too is sold out. Fortunately (for me so I can comply with my rules), there is a limited cassette on Giant Hell.
