#the phermoans

[dustedmagazine]

The Third Annual Dusted Midyear Music Exchange: Nap Eyes to Mark Wynn

Here’s part two of our annual midyear assessment.  If you haven’t already, check out part one from yesterday.   

Nap Eyes – Thought Rock Fish Scale (Paradise of Bachelors) 

Who recommended it?  Ben Donnelly

Did we review it? No. 

Derek Taylor’s take:

Knowing next to nothing about the group going in, Nap Eyes instantly sparked vague adolescent memories of those Random Band Name Generator notes that we used to pass around with feigned profundity in English comp class (cf. 1.) Something you’d rather be doing right now + 2.) Favorite physical feature of your significant other). Similar thoughts swirled with the non sequitur album title, which serves as bellwether for the more abstruse turns of phrase in the songs. Turning on and tuning in like a kinder, gentler, more dialed back descendant of the Velvet Underground, singer Nigel Chapman’s wry Lou Reed-leaning slouch/smirk delivery, twangy swells of twining guitars, ripe bubbling bass lines and steady, spare beat drums that frame each of the album’s eight songs deliver an exercise in imagery-driven introspection and observation. Chapman rues calmly against a shortlist of life’s insecurities and injustices, but never really seems all that concerned with sustaining any lasting indignation. Instead, it’s about catharsis through acceptance and trumpeting the simple truth that being bummed out is often at its root a personal choice.

  Tim Olive/Ben Owen – 63-66 (845 Audio)

Sound samples are here.

Who recommended it? Lucas Schleicher

Did we review it? Yes. Lucas said: “63-66 operates on a continuum of color, light, and weight, from bright streaks of white and grey that hover in the middle distance to hard flashes of opaque yellow and scrambled red, sounds that cut or fall inward or swallow up space.” 

Patrick Masterson’s take:

I’m not surprised that Lucas liberally deploys the language of the visual in his review of 63-66. This is a record that requires not just buying in but buying all the way in; it is not enough merely to hear it, you must also see it, smell it, touch it – in short, you must use your entire being to get the full experience. Olive and Owen utilize very little (magnetic pickups, shortwave radio, oscillators, paper) in very few ways and it’s impossible not to strain your eyes along with your ears to hear more. “63” comes in so gently from the left channel that you’re taken by surprise when there is further sound from the right two minutes later. The oscillator ring on “64” is like the aftermath of the loudest show you’ve ever been to and the wandering transistor radio frolics while the bass tone slowly creeps in. The comparatively succinct hum of “65” burbles low and slow like a bayou swamp thing. I found myself wondering what grade of paper they use on “66” because that’s where it has to be, right? Which of the spartan disruptions is it? And then there are stretches where I’m convinced I’m not listening to anything but myself struggling to listen, to see, to feel the sound at arm’s length (a tactic also notably exercised by Giuseppe Ielasi, who mastered the album). 

It’s unclear what Olive and Owen’s endgame was. Perhaps the idea was listener self-absorption, or self-understanding, or maybe just frustration. Perhaps it was music designed to be devoid of reference, just four pieces amid (at least) 62 others. Whatever the case, the onus is on us to unpack. 

The Pheromoans — I’m On Nights (Alter) 

Who recommended it: Doug Mosurock

Did we review it:  Yes, Doug said, “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.”

 Ben Donnelly’s take:

Front ’moan Russell Walker can’t sing at all, but that doesn’t stop him. As he’s forcing his bleats over beats, he ekes out melodies that bend upward like questions before they deflate back into declarations. Owning the awkwardness like a king, his tales of woe are delivered with transcendent wussiness. Yet he banishes the miserable persona for a single track, “Rodent Costume”, where he becomes something like a BBC announcer reading from William S. Burroughs. As with the best of post-punk, he makes irritation adorable. 

In the past, the Pheromones resembled the jumbled and lonely rock of Clinic. The guitars are reduced to traces here, and added to traces of synthesizer. Walker adds his fragments of memory that don’t add up, chancing that meaning might emerge. All these ice floes can do is drift together towards the warmer waters that will be their destruction. Smoldering refreshment, like a shard of frozen CO2 in your lemonade. 

Scroll Downers – Hot Winter (Ehse) 

Hot Winter by Scroll Downers

Who recommended it: Ben Donnelly 

Did we review it?  No. 

Doug Mosurock’s take:

This Baltimore trio is comprised of Lexie Mountain Macchi (Lexie Mountain Boys, Crazy Dreams Band), and guitarist Zachary Utz and drummer Dave Jacober, both formerly of Dope Body. Forging dark/witchy post-punk against power trio dynamics, Scroll Downers give Lexie full reign to dominate with her masterful voice and all manner of electronics and noise devices, as well as guitar and bass, and dominate she does, raising the dead with a commanding Grace Slick-on-steroids performance and unmistakable presence. She’d be carrying these guys if the whole band wasn't already firing on all cylinders, reaching across the table from psychotropic Goth to raging stoner rock. If you took the folk element out of Heron Oblivion and applied intense pressure, you'd end up here. I’m tempted to brand them “Siouxsie and the Burnouts,” but that would play down how hard this thing rocks, successfully crossing the streams between forms of music that don't normally play nicely together. There are a couple tracks of pace-setting psychedelic chanting, but the rest is all GO. If you think most modern dark rock bands rely too much on formalism and not enough on fire, but you don’t wanna deal with something reaching over the wall of nihilism (a la Swans, because you actually care about other people), Scroll Downers are the searing coals under your hibachi. 

Andy Stott — Too Many Voices (Modern Love)          

Who recommended it:  Joseph Burnett

Did we review it:  Yes, Joseph wrote that, “Stott improves with every release, and Too Many Voices gradually resolves itself into his most effective and beautiful cry in the dark to date.” 

Ben Donnelly’s take:

When I got to the third track on Too Many Voices, an easy thump with glassy Quiet Storm keys and door spring twangs, I was struck with an emotional picture: two future lovers circling each other that first evening, eyes locked, hearts pounding. The vocal bit, cooing by Alison Skidmore that lays just beyond reach, is like bottled up flirting, nervous and natural. I hadn’t looked at the track list. The title? “New Romantic”. 

Andy Stott is vivid like that, getting abstractions to strike specific feelings. “Selfish”, is built around machine-gun bursts of snare, strafing over innocent vocal loops. The descending jetliner whoosh on “Over” feels like resignation. He can take guidelines of deep house and summon the response of one-act plays.   

Thumbscrew—Convallaria (Cuneiform) 

Who recommended it? Justin Cober-Lake 

Did we review it? Yes. Justin Cober-Lake said “Whatever the reason, Thumbscrew has an incredible ability to keep all three members constantly active in highly integrated ways. On new release Convallaria, no one ever gets a down moment, yet nothing ever seems strained. ”

Bill Meyer’s take:

I can’t argue with Justin’s enthusiasm for this record, which is one of the best jazz albums to come out in 2016. Nor can I take issue with his appreciation for their egalitarian dynamic. He rightly notices the care that the ensemble applies to the interlocking structures of the record’s eleven pieces; permit me to add that said structures nonetheless leave room for solo turns that apply virtuosity to creative rather than egotistical ends. And he may not have singled out Tomas Fujiwara’s faux-dub snare playing at the beginning of “The Cardinal and the Weathervane” or Mary Halvorson’s electronically enhanced space-out on “Screaming Piha,” but I suspect that if we sat and listened to the record together you’d catch us grinning at the same slippery licks, rabbit-out-of-hat transitions and elegant denouements. But while I second his appreciation, I will nonetheless raise two objections. The first is that the album’s dubious cover design seems like the sort of needless backhanded compliment that groups get when they’ve attained a certain level of success; “you’re big enough that we’ll spend more money than you’ve ever spent on an album cover before and come up with the worst of your collective careers.” Second, as good as this record is, it isn’t as good as seeing this trio live. 

Träd Rec, Gräs Och Stenar—Träd, Gräs Och Stenar (Anthology recordings) 

Träd, Gräs och Stenar by Träd, Gräs och Stenar

Who recommended it: Ethan Covey 

Did we review it:  Doug Mosurock reviewed it for Still Single. He said, “It’s a metric fuckton of music by almost any measure, and not a moment feels like a waste of time. This is music that, if it could, would reach out and hand you a bowl of ratatouille over cracked bulgur wheat, a wooden spoon, and a big fat joint. Dig deep down.” 

Lucas Schleicher’s take:

Bo Anders Persson, Torbjörn Abelli, Arne Ericsson, and Thomas Mera Gartz were all members of a Terry Riley-inspired sextet that, from 1967 until 1969, was known as Pärson Sound, International Harvester, and Harvester. During the summer of ‘69, not too long after Led Zeppelin, MC5, and Neil Young released their debut albums—and around the same time The Stooges released their first LP—the band changed names yet again. Up until the recording of their first full-length, Träd, Gräs Och Stenar performed as a quintet, minus violinist Urban Yman. By 1970 saxophonist/flautist Thomas Tidholm was gone too, leaving the group looking a lot like the psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll quartet they would soon become. They still put electric pianos, flutes, and cellos to work, but their transformation from tape-loop-using experimentalists to blues-based, guitar-focused jammers was essentially sealed with the covers of “All Along the Watchtower” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” that opened their first LP. Anthology Recording’s triple CD (or limited edition six-LP) TGOS box set collects the band’s next two self-released live albums, Djungelns Lag and Mors Mors, from 1971 and ‘72 and adds to them previously unreleased live tracks gathered under the name Kom Tillsammans (Come Together). 

Never mind that a fifth member, guitarist Jakob Sjöholm, joined the band during this time. It didn’t alter their direction one bit. Both Djungelns Lag and Mors Mors capture the group in all-out rock improvisation form. Like many of their contemporaries, they sometimes veered into acoustic or balladic territory (check out “Hälsa Ulla” and the beginning of “Tidigt Om Morgonen” for two beautiful examples), and sometimes exhibited signs of their less conventional roots (as on decorative tracks like “Munfiol” and “Sångbron”) but playing fuzz-filled extemporizations is where the excelled, and there’s a ton of that here for anyone willing to take the deep dive. “Amithaba/In Kommer Gösta” alone represents over 30 minutes of the collection’s nearly five-hour running time, and other songs, such as “Ofullständiga Rättigheter” and the show-stopping “Sommarlåten,” breach the 20-minute mark, which means that three songs comprise roughly one-fifth of the set’s total running time. Almost every minute of that five hours is melodic and energetic, ranging from the tightly played and propulsive to the spacious, reflective, and almost static. 

Taken in large enough chunks, however, it can all begin to blur into a single noodley soup. I’ve enjoyed the set more by dipping in four and five songs at a time. At their best, Träd, Gräs Och Stenar pushed their solos and rhythms into fractal, trance-like territory. Once there, they seemed capable of sustaining the illusion forever, or at least for the length of an entire concert. Who needs Dylan and Stones covers when such inner and outer spaces are within arm’s reach?

  Underworld — Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future (Astralwerks) 

Who recommended it? Ian Mathers. 

Did we review it? No. 

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Two decades on from its “Born Slippy.NUXX” trip to the mainstream, well past the big beat techno heyday that made even non-IDM-ists notice Underworld (and Chemical Brothers and Prodigy) and into a second wave of mass synthetic dance popularity (EDM now, not IDM, and you say nothing ever changes), Underworld returns to the fray with a more organic, voice-driven record that sounds very little like what you’d expect. Especially in the early going, with the Fall-like “I Exhale” and “If Rah,” Barbara Barbara sounds like rough, chanted and churned post-punk, something Adrian Sherwood might have been at the controls for. There are guitars, for one thing, and voices that are not particularly denatured or ethereal. A big beat thumps away, but in a grounded, drum-on-the-floor sense. It feels like Underworld has come to earth. The disc’s second half is more contemplative, beginning with the only slightly abstracted acoustic guitar work on “Santiago Cuatro” and continuing through the drone-laced calm of “Motorhome.” “Ova Nova” sets up a glowing semaphore of beat and keyboard tone that pushes forward steadily without audible strain; its smooth undulating rhythm reminds me of some stellar athletes whose perfect form allows them to hurtle forward effortlessly while hardly disturbing the air. 

Leon Vynehall - Rojus (Designed to Dance)  

Who recommended it? Patrick Masterson 

Did we review it? No 

Ian Mathers’ take:

The first time my wife overheard the bright, lush house of Leon Vynehall’s second “mini-album” (electronic music being a place where you can say that about a 50-minute LP, not to mention Music for the Uninvited’s 39 minutes) she asked me, only partly joking, if this was soundtrack music for a sexy hotel. I think it was probably the swaying vocals and Marsen Jules-style, almost parodical vivid string hits of “Saxony”, but come to think of it, it could have been impeccably marshalled piano loop on “Paradisea” or the endlessly peaking, intermittently wailing “Blush” or… pretty much anything here. That’s not a complaint. If Rojus has shed a bit of the sentimentality that made Music for the Uninvited sparkle so, Vynehall more than makes up for it with an even deeper palette and an increasingly precise sense of craftsmanship. By the time “Kiburu’s” is marrying the most compelling cowbell not found in a comedy sketch with several other layers of percussion and an insistent little synth trumpet riff, it’s hard not to want to see what Vynehall can come up with once he commits to what he thinks of as a full length LP. 

Mark Wynn – 'Singles - But They're Not Really Singles, I Just Sent Them to the Screen and Said They Were Singles' Singles (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

Who recommended it? Doug Mosurock 

Did we review it? Yes, in the last DUST, Doug Mosurock said, “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.” 

Justin Cober-Lake's take:

Mark Wynn's outsider approach to music might be revelatory. It might be blunt commentary on the music industry (“Rip Off the Fall”) or incisive observation or avoidance (“Tabby Cats Instead”) or an authentic portrayal of the quotidian (pretty much everything). It often feels like simply a big joke, as with “Real Sausages Made by a Real Butcher,” a silly bit of conversation placed so early on the collection that it sets the tone for what's to come. That cosmic joke comprises much of the worldview, so it's not exactly an either/or situation. Within that framework, the album is surprisingly listening, especially once you settle into that particularly British, particularly bleak mindset that lets humor be a guide. Wynn could write pop songs —  “The Girl Who Looked Like Bobby Gillespie” is an example of that — but he might not be able to title them, so maybe it's best that he's doing what he's doing.