Deep Voices 124
Cold plunge
Deep Voices 124 on Spotify
Deep Voices 124 on Apple Music
A friend of mine who lives in Iowa said he enjoyed listening to last week’s Deep Voices “driving around in a subzero dystopian landscape.” Funk music for a frozen apocalypse, I said. That mood largely continues this week, only with an added undertone of anxiety. Music for a cold plunge. Notes on the tracks below. But first…
Deep Voices is a newsletter featuring a one-hour playlist from me, Matthew Schnipper. These playlists and their accompanying text are always free. On the weekends, I publish an additional newsletter—musical revelations, recommendations—just for paying subscribers.
I’ve lowered the price of both monthly and yearly subscriptions. I know asking for a paid subscription is a big request. If you can afford it, and you feel like paying for one, know that I am hugely grateful for your support of this project, my writing career, and the quest to spotlight more artists who deserve it. Thank you.
Playlist notes:
A few weeks ago, I wrote a Pitchfork review for a reissue of an album by the Swedish duo Studio. Originally released in 2006, the album—a mix of house, disco, and indie rock—improbably still feels original. Working on that review, I struggled to think of too many current day artists to compare the group. It’s not that there haven’t been people who have tried to replicate that sound, seamlessly mixing an organic feel with drum machines, it’s that those who do all end up sounding pretty dated. But I should have thought of Yu Su.
I’ve always considered Yu Su, a Canadian musician, to be as much a one-woman band as an electronic music producer. Two of her early EPs, Roll With the Punches and Preparations For Departure feel particularly broad and exploratory. “Little Birds, Moonbath,” from Roll With the Punches, for example, has a rising and falling bass line, several overlapping lines of percussion, a foggy twinkle of guitar, and a semi-whispered vocal. There’s a lot going on. The entirety of her Preparations EP sounds like a house music producer trying to make a jazz record, or vice versa. That type of thing has actually happened quite a bit and it’s usually not very good. Yu Su pulls it off.
Going through her catalog, I came across a remix she did a few years ago for the singer Alyson McNamara. The original is a slow burning indie rock song accented by a bluesy guitar riff. On the remix, Yu Su makes the riff a repeated motif and loops a hushed bit of McNamara’s vocals. There’s a relaxed snare echo, and a bubbling synth. It sounds like she’s McNamara’s bandleader and she’s telling her to chill. Studio, who remixed many artists, were able to conjure similarly transformative sounds out of unexpected source material. They made Kylie Minogue sound demure. Both members of Studio are still making music—if either of them or Yu Su happens to read this, I’m begging you to collaborate. Like minds!It took me a bit of time to place what the song “Cleveland ’TheNews” by Daniel Paul reminded me of. It shouldn’t have: the clue is right there in the title. It’s the BBC News theme song. The resemblance cannot be a coincidence. Right? If I’m not imagining things, Paul’s version feels like a sweet homage, albeit with a bit more swing than the BBC theme. Some years ago, the theme song became a viral sound on TikTok with people using it to soundtrack dances. Paul’s song is from 2009, though, so he can’t be accused of trend hopping.
One thing I have consistently found while talking to musicians is that they all hate genres. A genre is a box, a reduction. I understand the disdain; don’t fence me in. But, as someone trying to communicate to an audience what music sounds like, genre can be a useful thing. I try to be respectful when writing about genre as a touchstone, and often go as widescreen as possible (say, using “electronic” instead of “post-acid house”) as I imagine the more minute you get the more room you leave for squabbles.
With this in mind, I laughed when I read that the producer Xylitol had coined her own genre for her music: “gutter komische.” Komishe, German for “cosmic,” is another name for Krautrock, the ecstatic, repetitive genre that emerged mostly out of Germany in the ’70s. It was a precursor to New Age music and adjacent to early experiments in rhythmic electronic music. The song I included here, “Monte Mare,” features two repetitive, intertwined keyboard melodies that make up the first half of the song. Classic Komische. The gutter part, though, that’s all her. So what does it mean? I think it’s a reference to her sound’s gruff patina. Many of her drums are slowed and broken-down Amen breaks, which disappear and reappear as her melodies flutter nervously. Komische is ecstatic music, ascendent. But her take is close to the ground, grimy, raw. Gutter. If that sounds like a dig, well, she said it, not me.