Deep Voices #20
More confusion
Deep Voices #20 on Apple Music
The other day my friend Felipe texted me about a song on last week’s playlist by the rapper God’s Wisdom. “LOL that shit is nuts. I had to listen to it like three times in a row. Just racking my brain to understand how this can exist,” he said. He then clarified, “I did not enjoy it.” What an amazing experience, to be confused. Sometimes music can be lulling, and distraction is not a compelling impulse for me to give into at the moment. I want to be a cheerleader for the world and that’s hard to do when you’re anesthetized by Drake. I don’t mean to sound too much like I’m saying listen to some freaky shit and you’ll see the Matrix for what it really is, but I guess I’m not not saying that either.
So as you’ll hear on this week’s playlist, I’ve been digging into a lot of brash music. I’ve always been taken by aggressive music, though the desire to rage through song has ebbed as my own rage has settled. In the recent weeks, though, I’ve had a heightened capacity for sonic busyness. It’s freeing to listen to something nonlinear. Most of the world feels nuts way right now, in a genuinely scary way. Right now I’m drawn in music that reflects that. I was talking with another friends this week who said he hasn’t been listening to much music at all, generally preferring the quiet. When he is listening to music, he said it’s mostly stuff that sounds pretty close to silence. That makes sense, a search for serenity. I don’t feel like that’s a plausible end goal for me. This week’s songs feel like a proper response to confusion: more confusion.
That’s not to say everything here is a noisy mess. I’ve included a track by Claude Yvans & Danou that starts with an airy synthesizer and accompanying wordless chant. It gets 20 seconds in before the song stops, replaced by the sound of a wave crashing. Then the song returns for another 20 seconds before the wave comes again, this time for longer. The pattern keeps happening, waves knocking over the melody. I love music like this, that keeps you on your toes. And more than that, I admire it. It doesn’t necessarily make sense, but it doesn’t have to. It feels powerful and weird and unafraid. I admire it.
Playlist notes:
Leif Jordsson makes film scores and was once in a band called Bad Liver that covered Tom Waits songs and translated them into Swedish. I stumbled onto his song “Bolon Bata” while searching Spotify for a record by a Swedish group named Bolon Bata, Trancedance. It is not on Spotify, but this song was a fine replacement. A bolon bata is a West African harp. Not sure why it’s such a big thing in Scandinavia.
Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing the producer Palmistry about his new mini-LP, Post Eternity. He mentioned another project he’s proud of, his work with the rapper Triad God. The two of of them are a strange match. Palmistry’s speciality is bubbly but icy synth melodies and Triad God likes to talk-rap quietly. It seems possible each of them did not hear the other’s parts of the songs when recording. “Baby don’t go,” he says quietly. Not going anywhere.
Boof is a house project of the severely under-discussed producer Maurice Fulton. He is fundamentally a techno producer, but his music explores every sphere of what that could mean, and always with a hefty dose of funk. He’s recorded three albums with singer Mim Suliemann that are so alive. Tons happening at all times, sometimes frenetic, sometimes blissful, very much compelling. He’s also a fantastic DJ, well worth seeing if the world ever allows that again. Anyway, this Boof track features some excellent flute work, a little bit of smooth with the rough.
I love the way the John Rea track sounds almost psychedelic. It’s just a hammer dulcimer, traditional Irish music, but with the reverb and insane speed it feels beamed in from the cosmos from some aliens on ketamine messing around.
Sewerslvt is an Australian producer with a predilection for anime avatars and song titles about depression and suicide. Her music is somewhere between jungle and vaporwave, with a touch of Burial-style haunting and that feels very modern. It also feels disconcerting. I think it’s possible that if I was a teenager now this is what I would be interested in. In college, I got really into free jazz. I remember ordering the CD of Peter Brotzmann’s Fuck de Boere, a large group recording from 1968 and ’70. It’s two pieces with a bunch of dudes wailing away on brass and reeds for a half an hour. It sounded insane. It didn’t make me give up on hardcore, but it did make me feel like it no longer was the only music able to lay claim to aggression. Intensity can have many forms and at this point I am interested in exploring all of them. Sewerslvt’s music, with its fervent dedication to bleakness is an impressive new form. Happy to have it sit alongside the one olds.
Speaking of hardcore, it would be difficult to undersell the influence the band Man Is the Bastard has had on my life. They introduced me to everything from the horrors of vivisection to the poetry of Allen Ginsberg (one of their song’s lyrics are literally just part of the Moloch section of “Howl”) to the history of the Freedom Riders to the ills of the death penalty. Their music is part of the cheekily named hardcore subgenre powerviolence, a bass heavy sound with gruff yelling, and a predilection to sound like prog rock as much as punk rock. I love them for their exploratory nature, their outspokenness, their disinterest in guitars, and their love for Hello Kitty. They taught me that a groove could be found in any song, as ugly as it may be. That justice should be done on the earth. And that a sense of humor could be had, too. There was once supposed to be a documentary about the band, and that was never released, but the trailer made it to the internet. It’s two minutes long and worth watching. “Are you sad the band didn’t work out?” singer Andy Beattie is asked while walking through the woods. “Sad?” he responds, “Sad isn’t even the term. I went through a year of depression where, in a sense, I became the bastard.” The song I’ve included here, “Tomb Ride,” from 1996, points towards a direction they briefly pursued before breaking up. It’s instrumental, fast-paced, and chunky. There’s a very steady drumbeat and it’s always reminded me of a runaway train careening down the track. I honestly have listened to this song so many times that I feel like it’s not too weird or unpleasant, but I put it all the way at the end in the likely case you disagree. And then I put a nice little hand drum outro to wash it away—a palate cleanser of sorts. Bon appétit!