Album of the month(s)
A few months ago, I tweeted something about introducing a new "album of the month" feature. Whether that would just be a tumblr post or a separate mail, well, I never got as far as deciding that. It's April now, one quarter down, so I should have three albums written about, and yet. Life etc.
The first album that grabbed me in 2018 actually came out last year on a limited CDr run of 60 copies from Chocolate Monk. It's called Scchh...phh and it's by Natalia Beylis. The artist shared it on Bandcamp early in January and I was grabbed by the accompanying text: "These two tracks here are made from tapes gathered and recorded throughout my days including home recordings made by my dad & by Willie. The earliest tape is one my father made of when I was just learning to speak." Naturally it’s a lot of weird stuff and garbled voices; indeed, the opening track is titled after a vocal sample that appears at one point – ‘They eat them head fucking first’. Instructional tapes, film soundtracks, field recordings, wavering musics, animal shrieks that seem to predict a coming earthquake or weather disaster, preachermans, rivers, having the chats, poetry. “The walls seem to be made of a material that glows with a light of its own, and the vast floor of the hall is composed of amethyst, looking like a luminous purple light. At first it seems so hushed and silent, but now that our inner ears are beginning to open, we can begin to hear the voices… like a choir of angels. Listen.” Opera, olde timey piano. “They swallow the entire snake. It’s the weirdest thing on the planet. Starting at the mouth. They eat them head fucking first. It doesn’t make any sense to me.” Glistening bells, radio phone-in conversations, prayer circles, answer-phone recordings, all of the above colliding, layer upon layer of confusion and belligerence. “She’s a good skin, one of the good ones. Not like Jamie.” What the fuck is it? It’s not music. It’s non-music. It’s brilliant. “I’m at home in Ireland with all my friends.”
The second track, ‘Kukalka, Kukalka’, is (even) more abstract. It continues with animal sounds and tape hiss, but other tape sounds are more difficult to pin down. Muffled and muted recordings are played at low speeds and stop and start in confusing fashion. It sounds like a squabble, if that word meant the onomatopoeic sound of a tape wobbling along, rather than a petty argument. Clean sounds of nature meet television adverts and spooky vocals. “I used to be obsessed with owls.” Folk music. Backwards talk. Children babbling with their parents. There’s a point towards the end where that tape stretch is being played like an instrument. It’s the most fascinating part of what’s already a fascinating piece of work. It’s safe to say it’s not like anything you’ve heard lately. Thank you, Natalia. It’s also unlikely you’ll have it on repeat like ‘Blue Pedro’ or the latest ‘Peggy Gou’ release*. Sometimes you just need a galaxy brain release to make more sense of everything else.
On The Illusion of an Alternative Choice, Simon Haydo used just one instrument, a Korg MS-20. I couldn’t give less of a shit. I heard the album before I knew this fact, and knowing it didn’t change anything for me. I typed this article on just one laptop. And? The whining theme of ‘Let Know’ is heart wrenching, a searing wail that cuts through the tough rumble of beats to claw at your brain and shred your heart. ‘Not For You?’ is a challenge, its title a rebuke to hastily written promo feedback. Some tracks bang like lusty industrial mechanisms, power and commerce embodied in mass production. Some shuffle awkwardly like a drunk making his way home. ‘Parade of Unhappy’ combines all these impulses, rattling like an out-of-control wind-up toy, marching towards the dance floor with brain-fucking aplomb. Overall this album just sounds cool. Maybe it’s because of the MS-20. Maybe it’s because Haydo has great ideas and a great ear. The titles lend meaning and credence to the idea that it’s all a fucking joke, somewhere between that big Unilever picture you see on Twitter and Mr Burns in a supermarket. The sounds bang and whir and sizzle. Don’t buy that album, buy this one.
Unlike the two listed above, I actually featured Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton’s Music and Poetry of the Kesh in one of the mails:
Sadly I can't say I've read anything by Ursula K. Le Guin. Her 1985 work Always Coming Home tells of imagined peoples in California, one of them called the Kesh. On this album, originally released to accompany the book and now reissued by Freedom To Spend, she performed songs, music and poetry of these people, together with her collaborator Todd Barton. Folk songs, speech, music, it's a magical journey into another world, almost unfathomable how a human mind could create such wonder.
My understanding of the work is limited to the experience of listening to it, but that experience itself has been magical. It opens with ‘Heron Dance’, a glorious stomp around a campfire led by thumping chords and a flute (?) line that’s just on the right side of irritating. Crickets and claps accompany ‘Yes – Singing’, its repeated chant almost religious in its incessance. Part of me yearns to understand but the rest of sits back and allows my mind to sink into the experience. A bit like with the MS-20, perhaps context might enhance or alter my appreciation of the work, but this is me now, listening and shaking my head in wonder. The laughter and silliness at the end of this one gives a real lived experience quality to the track, taking it from a performance within a performance and throwing out the artifice in place of sheer enjoyment and pleasure. The solo ‘Dragonfly Song’ feels like a recording of an innocent moment of private expression, something to be savoured with guilt, a bold intrusion. The doleful rumbling of ‘A Homesick Song’, meanwhile, begs to be shared, a repeated mantra making supplication clear in any language. Eeri woah**; Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? It’s hard to know whose voice we’re hearing, as the liner notes simply credit “the Kesh”. As above, it sounds great. It’s an enriching experience (and I realise I’m using that word a lot here). The rich composition and sumptuous harmonies surpass the brilliance of its conception, meaning this is more than just a cool tape to go with a book. It’s a magnificent album that’s both a companion piece and a stellar work in its own right.
*No disrespect to either artist. **A total guess at the spelling.
