premiere: the racial past is the prologue on the captivating ‘magic boy’ by indie folk act bartees & the strange fruit
The ghosts of rural Oklahoma haunt the debut EP from indie folk group Bartees & The Strange Fruit. References to the sundown town of Yukon and the eponymous Strange Fruit fill in the spaces between the lines on this deeply personal debut record. The landscape of guys and their acoustic guitars is strewn with heartbreak, but few artists excel at connecting the personal and the societal as well as Bartees & The Strange Fruit.
A breakup becomes a meditation on the racist history of Bartees’ hometown on the stunning “Going Going” before the ballad evaporates in a wash of noise, like a tape left out in the sun. That curdled nostalgia frequently marks the best tracks on Magic Boy.
On “Little Brother,” Bartees learns to regret playing Lion King with his brother, wishing their relationship could have been different. The album’s biggest highlight comes with the driving “Eat Your Heart Out,” where Bartees and company go full folk punk before collapsing under the weight of their own angst, ceding space to Bartees’ mother, jazz singer Donna Cox. It’s a moment that’s at once haunting, ethereal, pissed off, and hopeful. I’m not really sure how that works, let alone as well as it does, but it does.
Bartees explains:
“Recording this was a lot fun and I learned a lot about myself tracking this record. I wanted to make sure that the first record I put out was a homage to the people I love from back home and I hope they’re happy to hear these songs. And for people who don’t really know me, I hope you can listen to this and find something you can connect with too. I’m really trying to open my arms up in this record and try some new things in an old way. I hope you catch it and thanks for checking me out.”
Magic Boy comes out December 8th. Look for it on bandcamp.
premiere: electro soul mastermind abslm vltn’s “jungle” is candy for your ears
Here’s something sweet for your ears. Mercurial alt soul singer ABSLM VLTN makes dreamy alt soul and electronica that swirls with retro vibes. His last single “LOVE” echoed back to some classic 80’s electro funk and pop with it’s massive drums and new romantic guitar. “Jungle” strips the sound back to a rhodes and bass beneath ABSLM VLTN’s entrancing baritone calling back more to the 70’s than anything. The song is hooks all the way down, layering sound on sound to tease an explosion that never comes. Stream it exclusively here and melt into the sound.
ABSLM VLTN explains:
“The song is about the raw, unpredictability of a new relationship and uses the imagery of the jungle as a metaphor for the fear of the unknown. It lays bare the struggle of a primitive romance, whose subject battles through a Jungle of vulnerability and emotional survival. The theme helped inform my production process, I went into it as organically as possible and ended up with this wonky sounding track that in some parts is quite sparse and other parts high energy.”
witness the inventively atmospheric shoegaze sound of soul legends the veldt on their new ep ‘thanks to the moth and areanna rose’
In an era where R&B and soul artists are often prizing ambiance and texture over traditional hooks, shoegaze / soul legends The Veldt are retroactively visionaries. The band has hung out on the outskirts of the shoegaze and dreampop scene since getting together in the late 80’s, but they’ve never gone away. They’ve hung out continuing to pump out lowkey classics whenever they feel like they’ve got one to share. It seems like they’ve got a lot to share in 2017. After dropping the spaced out The Shocking Fuzz of Your Electric Fur: The Drake Equation back in June, Chavis brothers and crew are back with their latest, Thanks to the Moth and Areanna Rose.
Thanks to the Moth and Areanna Rose by The Veldt
The EP rides their trademark wash of impeccable noise beneath Daniel Chavis’ ethereal croon. Thanks to the Moth and Areanna Rose accomplishes the rare feat of giving longtime fans a healthy meal, while adding new sounds and flavors. It’s surprising for a band that’s been around as long as The Veldt that the best songs aren’t the ones that could be called “a return to form” but the ones that look toward the future. Tracks like “Camus” and “Dakini” (particularly the Carlos Bess and Jason Furlow remix) integrate new sounds and ideas to The Veldt’s haze of texture and sound. Meanwhile the “I Like The Way You Talk” remix (courtesy of dreampop legends AR Kane) brings out the best in both groups of luminaries. In this moment where atmosphere counts for so much, it’s refreshing to hear an act like The Veldt step in to remind us how it’s done.
blow off some steam with the help of alt-rock quartet st. maurice’s impressive ‘hagiography’
Most of the time, when you take 4 years to make an album, running through as many engineers and studios, that’s a sign that something’s off. For Spartanburg, SC’s St. Maurice though, it’s a testament to their commitment to fine-tuning their craft. Their debut LP Hagiography runs through sounds and styles, each song teasing a dozen disparate influences, yet it never sounds fussed over or disjointed. Their blend of post-hardcore instrumentation, improvised flights of fancy, blues and R&B rhythms, and sonic exploration is a complex journey few bands ever take, let alone on their debut full length.
Opening with the 7 minute “Untitled (Dusky Hued Lady Satan)” the band builds a heavy guitar line into what might be their biggest hook, before jamming out the coda. In other hands a 3 minute outro might be self-indulgent, but the band layers dense textures and sounds in a way that makes it a perfect introduction to their ethos as a band: don’t worry about where you think the song is going, you’re in good hands, it’ll be worth the trip.
Tracks like “No Man, No Name,” “Vash the Stampede” and “M.A.Y.O.” shine by showcasing the band at their most focused and driven, but the highlights often come when St. Maurice stretch out a little. The closing duo of “Show Me Your Soul” and “After Credits Scene” were written through heavy improvisation, turning out some of the best riffs the record has to offer, courtesy of twin guitarists Will Robbins and Geordon Tullis. It’s this kind of musical chemistry that underpins St. Maurice’s tauter songs given room to stretch out and breathe. As “After Credits Scene” rolls to the end, the song evaporates. A post-credit scene in a movie is to whet your appetite for the sequel, leaving things just a little unfinished. This song does the same. I’m buying my tickets to Hagiography II now, before the line starts.
indie r&b icon van hunt’s lost album ‘popular’ is released after 10 years
Unreleased albums create an alternate universe of what-ifs. What would have happened if Hendrix had ever gotten to release Black Gold, or Prince’s Camille (or Dream Factory or or or or), or Zach de la Rocha’s solo album? The list is long and tied to complex webs of intellectual property law, estate control, and arcane label contracts. Some of these what-ifs were answered decades too late, like The Beach Boys’ Smile, and Death’s …For The Whole World To See…, but Van Hunt’s latest, Popular occupies a strange place in that land of alternate realities by being a decade late but sounding like it was recorded last week. Maybe in this case, it took the world a decade to catch up.
Van Hunt recorded Popular in 2007, but because of various label ownership drama, was shelved by Blue Note’s then parent company EMI. Hunt went on to release What Were You Hoping For and The Fun Rises, the Fun Sets, on his own label, but Popular sat tantalizingly unreleased in Blue Note’s vault. Hunt had declare the album his most personal and was reportedly devastated by the decision to shelve it. Fast forward a decade, and Blue Note is under new ownership. Recognizing that the sounds Van Hunt was pioneering 10 years ago are suddenly everywhere, the world was finally ready for Popular.
The album is definitely a document of a tumultuous period in Van Hunt’s life. The songs veer wildly between post-punk breakup anthems, folky reminiscence, and R&B seduction. It’s easy to hear the turmoil in his life, particularly on cuts like “Ur A Monster,” plays like a mini-opera.
Echoes of Prince abound, with “The Lowest 1 Of My Desires” mutating the future funk into an industrial-tinged fulfillment of Trent Reznor’s famous declaration that he was just trying to make a Prince album with Pretty Hate Machine. The come-ons aren’t just come-ons, there’s an acknowledgment of the hollowness of the whole thing. “Jump on the ground and wrestle with my shame / Because I don’t want to hide behind anything.”
When the weary optimism of “Finale (It All Ends In Tears)” rolls, it’s hard not to hear a metaphor for the album itself. It’s a love song that acknowledges that it’s all going to end in tears. Heartache is inevitable, but it’s worth the pain. The process of bringing Popular out of the shadows has been full of heartache too for Van Hunt, but hearing it after such a long wait, there’s no question it was worth the pain.
post-punk duo sacred paws find joy in their anxieties
This is what I want it to feel like inside my head all the time. There’s an infectious unabashed joy to Sacred Paws’ music. It jumps out of every chord and dance beat on their debut full length Strike A Match.
Lead singer and guitarist Rachel Aggs (also of the great post-punk outfit Shopping.) mixes highlife rhythms with a stark energy reminiscent of The Evens. Whether singing about love, anxiety, hope, or powerlessness, their music is the antidote to whatever anxious thoughts trouble Rachel Aggs in the lyrics. The vocal lines between her and drummer Eilidh Rogers are serpentine, criss-crossing at odd angles. The best moments tend to come not when they’re in perfect sync but when they play off eachother as on the title track and the stressed out “Empty Body.” Songs with lines like “When stuff goes wrong / It makes me feel useless,” has no business being so effervescent, but maybe they should.
indie-rocker tyler cole enlists willow smith in alt-rock revolution anthem “blow up your tv!”
Jumping from a croon to a yowl beneath a guitar distorted beyond comprehension, Tyler Cole delivers one hell of an opening salvo:
“Let’s get rid of it all / I’m sick of it all / There’s an answer here / We need to blow up our TVs.”
The singer / producer / director has been popping up on tracks for a few years now (particularly as a collaborator with Willow Smith), but truly comes into his own on his latest single. It’s an anthem for disaffected youth frustrated with a media that wants their views and clicks but doesn’t actually care about them. The sentiment is an old one: as long as there’s been media to co-opt youth culture and sell it back to them, there have been calls for revolution against it, but the sound and attitude are all new. Tyler Cole’s new record, We’re In Love and the World Is Ending, drops soon. If the single’s any indication it’s going to be a juggernaut.
interview: experimental punk band algiers talks about speaking truth in music #soundcheck
Algiers’ self-titled debut turned heads with its mix of punk rock intensity and gospel feel. Their latest, the jaw-dropping The Underside of Power turns those knobs up to 10, adding an impressive depth of atmosphere and energy. We recently got a chance to talk to lead singer Franklin James Fisher about making enemies and speaking truth to power through their music.
So you were just on tour in Europe?
Yeah for about a month.
I feel like your music is so uniquely and distinctly American in the mix of styles. How was it received there?
That’s weird because we really have a fan base; our music really resonates with people in Europe and not so much in the States. It’s like night and day.
Why do you think that is?
I don’t know. It may have something to do with the mixture of genres and styles which isn’t anything we do consciously or deliberately, but I think in America people need things to be more categorizable. I think it’s actually more problematic when you have a black vocalist who doesn’t do something immediately recognizable as R&B or hip-hop. So a lot of people, the first thing that comes to their mind when they see a multiracial band with a black vocalist, they just immediately compare us to TV On The Radio. And they’re a great band, but we don’t really have anything in common with them other than the fact that we’re a multi-racial band. So yeah, I think it may have something to do with that.
Yeah. I mean more that the mixing of gospel and punk rock is kind of as American as apple pie, you know?
[laughs] Yeah, I mean they definitely share a common lineage, for sure.
What is it about those two sounds that drew you to throw them together?
It’s just energy really. When Ryan and I started writing music together at the very beginning of this band, we just went to our respective references for what we knew and what came naturally to us. It kind of revealed itself to us that we had this shared energy of punk rock and not just gospel, but just like black music. Because on the real, you know, all modern pop music comes from black music anyway, whether it’s gospel or soul or negro spirituals. That continuous cross-pollination of cultures and musical styles is what makes new music and new art forms. That’s what contributes to the evolution of art. It’s something we embrace very openly.
NEW YORK, NY – JULY 22: Franklin James Fisher of Algiers performs onstage at the 2016 Panorama NYC Festival – Day 1 at Randall’s Island on July 22, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
Absolutely. So something that I’ve thought about a lot listening to your music—I got turned onto you with “But She Was Not Flying” 2 years ago—you have this sound that’s almost like a preacher preaching about secular things that I love. I’ve always wondered, was there ever a moment where you considered joining the clergy?
No, I’d never had any inclination of studying theology or becoming a minister or anything like that. I’m not that great of a role model, so I don’t really find myself in the position of telling other people how to live their lives. It’s hard enough for me to sort my own things out. [laughs] But I did grow up in the church and I do still go to church and I suppose that’s something that’s been embedded in my subconscious. But it’s really just me doing my shouty kind of thing. If I had a different throat or had come up with a different background, I might sound a bit different. When I shout instead of sounding like…
Like Ian Mackaye or whatever.
Yeah totally, instead of him I might sound like a preacher in a church, but it’s not a deliberate thing, it’s just my voice. I’m very loud. It’s fortunate, I guess. It’s the one time that being loud has worked to my advantage. So it’s not very intriguing, unfortunately, but that’s just how it comes out, you know.
No, that’s all right, you know I’d had this whole kinda mental narrative of you that you’re basically destroying. It’s cool though. So I want to talk about the new record The Underside of Power; the sonic palette is so ambitious and the shit that you’re talking about is so real. It seems like on the first record you were flirting with some of these ideas, and on this one, you’ve really taken some bold leaps and taken it to a whole new level. Was there a realization or a moment where it all clicked?
Well, thanks very much. I mean that first record it was sort of a monolith. We’d been writing those songs back and forth for a period of years.
You guys started in 07 right?
Yeah, I mean that’s when the very first beginnings happened. But I think you could say we really solidified as a group around 2011. But we’d been working on those songs and working on those songs, not really thinking we’d we would be afforded the opportunity to be a live touring band–let alone signed to a label to put out a record. These were just things that we were going to put out online. But by the time we found ourselves in the studio, we had very specific ideas of what we wanted to do. And for this record, what we wanted to do before the recording process began, was we just wanted to elaborate on all of the themes we set out on the first one. Not just in terms of lyrics or content but sonically. Anything that was harsh on the first record, we wanted to make even more aggressive or meaner. Anything that was soft, we wanted to elaborate on that and make it sweeter and more nuanced. And I think we achieved that to some extent.
I think you definitely did.
Well, thanks. I think it was just the result of a having been a band in some fashion or other for almost 10 years; we have a lot of music. We didn’t really have to worry about what some bands might go through when they have the dreaded sophomore record. Because we weren’t a particularly hyped band. So we didn’t have to rig our brains to figure out if we needed to make some unnatural move to fit in some progression. It was just something that had always been there. It worked out pretty well I think. Recording this album was anything but ideal in terms of the logistics and the circumstances. It’s far from a perfect record but I’m happy with the results. I think we all are.
In terms of lyrical content—I really want to talk about that—I feel like you really get explicit in terms of police violence and structural racism in a way that’s a lot more explicit and nuanced than a lot of other artists on this record. That’s what I mean when I say your songs kind of sounds like sermons, or essays even because you’re talking about that shit in a way that’s so dead on. How have people been responding to it?
Well, I’m not quite sure yet. I mean it’s still early in the game, you know? The only touring we’ve done since releasing this record is in Europe so far. It’ll be interesting. With “Cleveland,” for example, that was a bit of a detour in terms of process and approach to lyric writing, because it came from a very personal place. I have lost a lot of friends through random acts of violence and state sanctioned violence, and I referred to them in the first record, but not by name because I didn’t really want to go there. But when you’re reading stories in the news of people who fell victim to the same sorts of atrocities, and that resonates with you on a personal level, it can almost bring focus and attention to the larger picture. When you say the one case or the one name of somebody who’s been a victim, it almost magnifies the innumerable cases that you’ve never heard of. That was part of the motivation behind becoming more topical with “Cleveland.”
Absolutely. And even “The Underside of Power” particularly right now when we’re watching some of the most powerful people on the planet self-destruct, is so succinct in a way that outside of like Bad Religion or something, music tends not to be.
Well with “The Underside of Power,” that was written in the studio. I’ll try to give the short version. It was basically me trying to synopsize what the band is about, everything we talk about, and everything that we represent in a song, really.
So you were writing a thesis then!
Kind of yeah. If you look at it that way, I guess it makes sense. Each verse, the lyrics are just kind of snapshots of people in different situations that find themselves oppressed, and each situation may be more miserable than the next. But it’s also kind of our desperate attempt at optimism because no matter how bad things are, everything ends at some point. It might not be this rapturous Utopian ideal of overthrowing everybody and the good guys finally win, it might just be that society drives itself into the ground. But at least at that point, the suffering and pain and all of that are over. So it’s kind of like trying to find a little silver lining in what seems to be an extraordinarily dismal situation otherwise.
Well, a lot of your music tends to have this apocalyptic doom and gloom kind of sound to it. Is that generally your outlook on the world?
Not really. I mean, as a band the four of us are bound together by this thing that we’ve created. It’s our way of engaging with how dark the world actually is as a place. It’s kind of like a therapy for us. So by confronting the darkness that’s actually there, it enables us to cope better as individuals and it empowers us as a group. It gives us some sort of language that that helps us combat all these nasty things that occur in the world on a day-to-day basis. But also I do have a certain responsibility to that ethos of Algiers as a singer and as the primary lyric writer. I don’t want things to be ensconced in my own subjective viewpoint of the world. It’s a slippery slope to walk. So I do tend to focus my scope a bit more narrowly with regards to what I’m going to write about so it does align to some extent with what it is that we write about a band. But as a musician and as a person it’s only a small fraction of the things that I generally write music about or concentrate on.
So would you say there’s a mission statement for the band?
I mean we’re not really in the business of prescribing things to people. We’re more about just kind of expressing what our world view is, and how we interpret things and try to cope with them, and having a dialogue with people. And if that resonates with them on a level that’s positive for them, and they want to join us and we can talk about these things together, then that’s great. And I think that’s the most you can ask for with any kind of art, really. And if people don’t like it then that’s cool too. You know, cause you wanna have the right enemies. You don’t want everybody to like the music. Some people you want to hate the music. And that seems to be working at the moment too [laughs[
Who are your enemies right now? Do you have a list?
Oh, you know. Not a formal one. But there are certain people out there that do have it in for us. They do stick out from the crowd. If you pay attention you can find them.
Damn. I mean I don’t think there’s anyone out there that hates me, which makes me wonder if I’m living my life wrong, but how do you confront that person? How do you engage with someone that has it in for you like that?
It all kind of falls in that same filter, where if you endeavor to make art, if you make music, then that is your way of addressing the whole gamut of human emotion. Even anger and conflict. And I think the best thing you can do at the end of the day is just to ask yourself “have I made good work?” And if the answer is yes then that’s what enables you to sleep at night. That’s the only thing you have to answer for. That’s the only thing you have to do. You put it out into the world and it’s there forever. But when you perform these songs, they have a different living breathing soul each time. For that one song, for that 4 minutes, or for that hour and a half that you’re there on stage you’re totally vindicated by performing and doing it. Then you can walk away from it. Anybody who gets riled up, who has it in for you, they have to deal with it after that. It’s no longer your problem. And that’s one of the great things about being in a band and making music.
I like that. That’s a good way to look at it. It’s an impressively healthy outlook.
I hope so. It seems to work so far.
So what’s next for you guys after the tour?
So the proper tour for the record doesn’t actually start until September. We’re gonna do about half of the month of September with !!!
Awesome!
Yeah, we’re really excited about that. It’s gonna be fun. Then we’re gonna do our own thing from mid-October to mid-November in the US. And then we’re gonna tour for about a month in Europe pretty heavily. Before all of that, just keep writing. Some of us are in different places in terms of head space after just releasing this record, but I’m personally just really looking forward to writing again, and to carry on making music, and to keep taking what we’ve done with this record to the next level.
toro y moi drops his most personal album to date ‘boo boo’ a day early
What do you do when you finally get everything you ever wanted? Are you happy now? Or do you just have a whole new set of surreal problems you could never have imagined before? Would that warp your sense of reality? Good problems to have, I guess, but for Chaz Bear (formerly Chaz Bundick) of Toro Y Moi, they were very real. The identity crisis drove him back to ambient music as a cushion against a reality that was becoming increasingly incomprehensible. The end result is Boo Boo, Toro Y Moi’s most emotional and personal record to date.
A constant feeling of emptiness haunts this record. The washed out retro synths and stripped down drums keep the focus on a sense of space. It’s no surprise that the video released with the record follows an uneventful drive, or that the album’s emotional heart is a song about staring forlornly out a window. Bear’s often kept emotions at arm’s length on previous records, but on tracks like “Mirage” and “Windows,” his dispassion is the point and surprisingly captivating. This is a record that uses AutoTune to emphasize alienation and it fucking works. This is a record more obsessed with the space between notes than the notes themselves; melodies and phrases rarely end, they just evaporate. Even the unabashed pop songs like “Girl Like You” and “Labyrinth” have an undercurrent of melancholy. That’s not to say it’s miserable, so much as it’s a late night drive in search of somewhere to go.
Chaz Bear explains the album: “After 7 years of touring and recording, I found myself becoming self conscious about my position in life as a ‘famous’ person, or at least my version of whatever that is. My dreams had become my reality, yet I was somehow unable to accept this new environment. I couldn’t help but fall into what might be described as an identity crisis. A feedback loop of fearful thoughts left me feeling confused. I felt as though I no longer knew what it was that I actually wanted and needed in and out of life, and at times I felt unable to even tell what was real.
During this time of personal turmoil, I turned to music as a form of therapy, and it helped me cope with the pain that I was feeling. I’d listen to the same ambient song over and over again, trying to insulate myself from reality. I fell in love with space again.
By the time I felt ready to begin working on a new record, I knew that this idea of space within music would be something that propelled my new work forward. The artists that were influencing what I was making included everyone from Travis Scott to Daft Punk, Frank Ocean to Oneohtrix Point Never, Kashif and Gigi Masin. I recognized that the common thread between these artists was their attention to a feeling of space, or lack thereof. I decided that I wanted to make a Pop record with these ideas in mind. That idea for a record is what eventually became Boo Boo.”
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black metal band zeal and ardor conjure a satanic slave rebellion on debut
Imagine for a second, if Nat Turner hadn’t fueled his slave rebellion by turning to his white-imposed Christian faith in messianic fervor, but instead by turning on it and going full metal. Imagine Turner’s army chanting “the river bed will run red with the blood of the saints and the blood of the holy” as they went about their bloody business beneath Satanic sigils. That’s the idea behind Zeal and Ardor’s debut full-length Devil is Fine: a Satanic slave rebellion. Started as something of a joke, the project took on a life of its own as Manuel Gagneux found unexpected depth in the concept. It’s a black metal album that merges spirituals, metal riffs, and electronic melodies into something totally unique and captivating.
Devil is Fine by Zeal and Ardor
First things first: there are no samples. Influenced by the sound of Lomax’s field recordings of prison work songs, Gagneux set about writing his own Satanic spirituals, making lofi recordings of them and sampling himself. The best of them “Devil Is Fine,” “Come On Down,” and “Blood In The River” build off these imagined classic recordings, willing his alternate history into being through the vividness of his imagination and sheer force of loudness. The songs are flanked by a trio of instrumentals titled “Sacrilegium” which cut against the epic bloody scale of the album by sounding something like the soundtrack to the most fucked up Square SNES RPG ever. (But also maybe the best one?) It’s an odd choice, on an album deep with unexpected choice, and maybe none of them should work on paper, but somehow they add up to something profound.