Water Damage plays a thick and noisy variety of drone, favoring looooooong compositions that the band refers to as âReelsâ; on Water Damageâs most recent LP, 2 Songs, you get two reels, subtitled âFUCK THISâ and âFUCK THATâ (bandâs caps). All those verbal antics feel appealingly playful, but the music is deadly serious stuff â not surprising, given the players involved. Members of this septet also play in Austin-associated bands like USA/Mexico, Marriage and Spray Paint. As the bandâs moniker suggests, the music is patient, persistent and often insidious. Here's some music the band has been listening to.
Travis Austin
Surface of the Earth â Surface of the Earth (1994/95, Reissued 2022 Thin Wrist Recordings)
New to me when it was reissued and the record Iâve played most since then. It feels as huge to me as it does microscopic â prehistoric as it does post-apocalyptic.
Jon Hassell â Aka/Darbari/Java: Magic Realism (1983, E.G. Records)
Start to finish, I donât know of anything else that sounds like this â the hazy atmosphere and way the rhythms tumble. From the liner notes: âa âcoffee-coloredâ classical music for the future.â And the cover is by the same artist who did the cover for Bitches Brew.
I heard this one for the first time just this past year. I canât believe Iâve missed it. By turns raw and beautiful, honest and evocative, whatâs here transcends genre while highlighting Black experience and struggle. Incredible work.
George Dishner
Clipse â Hell Hath No Fury (2006, Star Trak / Re Up Gang Records)
The most engaging rap record in history as far as Iâm concerned. Pusha, Malice, and the Neptunes peaked. Sonically HHNF is minimal and alien sounding, almost nonmusical at times. Lyrically, itâs bleak throughout and incredibly funny at times (some of the best punchlines ever recorded). At 12 songs and 48 minutes with only a few guests and skits, there is no fat whatsoever.
Remarc â Sound Murderer (2003, Planet Mu)
Iâm always looking for cheap electronic records at every record store. Mid 1990s Jungle scores are the best. Itâs a pretty narrow subgenre but one of my favorites. Remarc checks all my Jungle boxes â chaotic, lo-fi, dubby, rough. Itâs devoid of any pretentious jazziness or techy soullessness. His formula is pretty basic â supreme mastery of The Amen and sick ragga Bass shit. This is a comp of some of his best stuff of the era when Jungle was at its best.
Nate Cross
OmertĂ â Collection ParticuliĂšre (2022, Standard In-Fi, Zamzamrec)
Not to point out the obvious, but France is a huge influence for Water Damage. Iâve obsessively kept up with everything theyâve done and all their various related projects and their label Standard In-Fi. This is OmertĂ âs second LP; the group features members of France, Tanz Mein Herz, Societe Etrange and more. The album is a vibe, I can listen to it over and over. Really interesting to hear these folks do something more âsong orientedâ instead of the normal long-form style in their other groups. Also, you can never go wrong with two bass players.
Bumblebee Unlimited â Sting Like a Bee (1979, RCA Victor)
Always been a huge disco nerd and Patrick Adams was a genius. This one-off LP and group was about as close to perfect as you can get and is a sort of bridge between disco and house music. So much glorious repetition on this album, and the bass lines are minimal brilliance. The chipmunk-esque vocals are ridiculous, but still work so well (similar to another 1979 disco gem â Bryan Adamâs âLet Me Take You Dancingâ).
This is one of the first jazz albums I heard that had two bassists on it, Reggie Workman and Art Davis, Davis being a little lesser known I think and a really really amazing bassist. This whole album is great but the first side, 18 minutes of everyone going in and out, and there is space for the bassists to get weird with arco and pizzicato playing. Iâve known this album for a long time, but itâs been played a lot lately because both my 4-year-old and 16-month-old grab this record from the shelf all the time. Itâs really strange actually, I put it in a different spot each time and they still grab this record very frequently, itâs a French pressing and Reggie Workmanâs name is spelled âReggie Wokrmanâ and Eric Dolphy is âGeorge Lane.â
Love this record, and the repetition is something that I often thought about as we were still figuring out Water Damage ideas. I feel like some of the newer songs that we are working on sound like extended Lungfish songs. Much of that has to do with the influence of this band on my drumming. There is a part toward the end of this interview where Daniel Higgs talks about experiencing repetition as a listener, and how there isnât really a thing such as a repeated passage in time â that itâs unique every time⊠the listener is creating the pattern. That idea is foundational to me in relation to what we do as a band. Every time we play, I get lost and question how the pattern is even working.
Palace â West Palm Beach/Gulf Shores (1994, Drag City/Palace)
These two songs back-to-back are high on the list of my favorite things ever recorded. The mood here reminds me of all the rundown beach towns around the Gulf. The playing is great, it sounds like they just went in the studio and made it with very little effort. Many other recordings have that same vibe, Neil Youngâs Zuma, Songs: Ohiaâs Didnât It Rain, John Coltraneâs A Love Supreme⊠this list could get long. I guess a technical term for that vibe is magic. I had not listened to this for a few years and returned to it recently and instantly loved it again.
