Despite my frequent claim that genres are essentially bullshit concepts, I kind of have to grudgingly admit that they can be handy as vague guidelines. Mainly because when I come across something like this which is absolutely nowt like the stuff I usually post (question: what is the stuff I usually post like? There’ll be an exam later) then I suppose I should be able to say what it is like. And with this, I don’t think I can. By that I mean that I am even more at a loss for descripttors than usual.
It’s probably dubstep adjacent, but more gnarly? Reminds me somewhat of Demdike Stare but, again, gnarlier? A bit like The Bug? Gah! But then, maybe there is no real handy label for this? I think that is ultimately the fate of all music, anyway.
I believe the cheeky chappy on the cover of this is also a member of Gnod, however. That I am confident in saying.
The positives of working from home. Once I got over the initial connecting to my institution’s systems, I started cranking out some tunes. Much better to listen to music on semi-decent speakers whilst you work than headphones; they cramp my ears after a while. Also, No worries about nearby colleagues telling me to turn that racket down.
This is an electronic racket, albeit not hard work for the uninitiated. Reminds me of certain 90s dance peeps I sometimes still listen to – not exactly unadjacent to Banco de Gaia, for example, though contemporary stuff like Octo Octa also springs to mind.
It’s only an EP, so my one criticism is that it ain’t long enough. I could quite easily have an album of this.
As I have a very rare Sunday afternoon to myself in the wake of last nights shenanigans, I had been planning to record some acoustic guitar parts. But I’m a bit hungover, so instead here’s a couple of albums I’ve been saving up until that moment when I feel like posting something.
Subduxtion are on Aagoo Records, and Aagoo have form here on Soundbergs; the marvellous Zulus and Inutili, to be precise.
This thing sits in my head under the category ‘doom-dubstep.’ Probably it’s nothing like dubstep since my knowledge of dubstep is very superficial.
A good thing or two to read whilst you listen to this: Groupname for Grapejuice‘s most recentposts have been right up my alley, philosophically speaking.
So, Russians have a way of doing buses in a different way. The Тихие улицы Греты Гарбо bus has just one stop on the journey, although it’s a big stop and really contains two stops when you ride the journey it offers. The first five minutes of the journey are an actual song and the second 11 minutes of the ride are a different thing altogether, really, but by God! Most effective.
They only seem to do one stop rides. It would be good to take a journey on one of their buses with a larger number of stops.
Another completely contrasting Soundberg, this is from Brazil. We have previous with Brazil, but this is a completely different kettle of sonic fish; although, in common with Rakta the tags on the bandcamp page are: Brazil, world…. gotta love it.
The music is impossible to put a single simple label on. One tune will be a sort of loungey-jazzy feel with mild inflections of dub, beats, etc and the next will have a low key Garbage-like synth-grunge feel to it. The predominant mood is downbeat electro with guitars and hints of r’n’b (the modern iteration of that genre), I suppose, but as this isn’t my usual area I am even less knowledgeable than is usually the case.
Back at the beginning of the millennium, I used to spend a lot of time listening to the Nortec Collective. Through them, I discovered the wonderful Julieta Venegas, who has a voice to die for, or at least, listen to in pleasure. And the reason I tell you this is because I thought of her whilst listening to this. Another artist I think of is Cibelle,who is also Brazilian (which I didn’t know until just now – I thought she was Portuguese!)
Because 2016 was so very, very interesting in so many ways, I am now in the position where I am unlikely to be buying much in the way of new music for a while. I mean, my finger and the pulse are better described as acquaintances rather than friends under the best of normal circumstances anyway, but it’s going to be straying far and wide as I do the next best thing to finding new music by rediscovering stuff I’d forgotten about.
Equally as much fun is music that other people recommend because they get a platform on which to do so; Dusted’s Listed feature is such an example and I recommend it to those who don’t reckon their music taste in terms of genre.
And, completely without planning, I’ve somehow made the following flow quite well…
I’m going to start with something poppy and popular because I love it. We did a kind of stoner version of it in my old One Dog Clapping band back in 2005 which was riotous fun to play (I ‘sang’ it an octave lower), but I make no secret of my love for the mighty Goldfrapp:
It is disappointingly hard to find any music by Appliance over the web – Mute Records, aren’t you supposed to playas? What are you playing at? So you’ll just have to take my word for it that if you spot one of their albums somewhere, snap it up. Amongst the very best artists from the turn of millennium.
I first discovered Kaophonic Tribu on MySpazz back in the Noughties (do peope call it that?), and I downloaded a song from their page which I played many, many times. Sods law, I can’t find it now, but I have found the album éliso déli, a delicious mix of electronics and ‘ethnic’ (i.e. not your standard dadrock bands instruments) sound sources. There’s a few of their tunes on the Googletube, this is one and rather good:
Because of this Listed, I found this, which I subsequently found is also on Bandcamp, and has been added to my hopelessly long wishlist:
It seems a bit lazy to then put the next song from the same feature, but damn this is good:
Henry Flynt is my kind of outsider, having rejected places in some ‘cool’ crowds over the years. I could wax on about why I personally think that’s a good thing, but I don’t think he did it to impress anyone, least of all me. Listen to this, though, all 15 minutes of it:
Words cannot describe Catherine Ribeiro’s wonderfully true singing, and since I’ve brought you into the realm of the epically hypnotic, then let’s finish with this:
My favourite thing about time passing is when an artist you liked a while back but haven’t kept track of turns out not to have stopped just because I stopped paying attention. Item: on the mix cd in my car came on ‘Devil’s Playground’ by the wonderfully fun Gram Rabbit, a piece of very high quality songwriting from a seriously good album, Music to Start a Cult to. ‘Damn, I love that tune,’ I said to myself, and not for the first time, so off I trotted to the internets to find out what Jesika von Rabbit and Todd Rutherford have been up to since I last paid them attention.
They have not been idle, and the good news is, they’re still bloody good.
I should first warn you that this is fun, first and foremost. Why do I have to warn people when music is fun? THAT is screwed up. Anywho, it is shit-eating grin levels of fun to my ears. Mixtures of Electro-rock, alt-country, psych-pop, western-music, and a bloody large sense of humour. Their version of ‘Song 2’ is outrageously good. But so is their own songwriting, and this is why they get to smear a sense of humour all over their music and still have you want to listen to more, and to listen to it again. Just because someone has a smile on their face is no reason to believe they don’t take what they do seriously.
So I bought the digital download of Braised & Confused (embedded below) and am going to check out their other post 2007ish output in good order, although it looks like I’ll have to order the CDs of some of it if I like it as much as I like that, as I really don’t like itunes.
Another completely contrasting Soundberg, this is from Brazil. We have 
They have not been idle, and the good news is, they’re still bloody good.
Soundbergs 