Deep Voices #29
Sparing no effort in the search of building a fortress around right now
Deep Voices #29 on Apple Music
Playlist notes:
Ten years ago, Light Asylum was a constant presence in New York, playing unforgettable shows seemingly every weekend. On stage, off to the side, would be Bruno Coviello, playing frantic, gothic keyboard lines while the drum machines jackhammered away. The focus was on his co-producer, singer Shannon Funchess, moving frantically as she bellowed. They felt so totally combustible live, with Funchess about to explode and Coviello keeping the machine running. But it was about danger, but not chaos. The wildness was passionate not sloppy. The songs were immaculately composed, and “A Certain Person” is arguably their best. It features blissful chords undergirded by herky jerky drums and a repeated sample of a horse neighing. It could be a love song, but with the searchingness Funchess brings to it, it feels like something grander, like a quest to know god. “To love him is to know him/To know him is to love him,” she sings, “If you love him then you know him/If you know him then you loved him.” Watch this video of them performing the song 10 years ago this month. The crowd is ready to follow them to Valhalla.
I don’t know if Light Asylum broke up or fizzled out. In 2012 they released an album that was good, but that lacked the hysterical beauty of “A Certain Person.” (The band seemed to know this, and though the song had been released previously on an EP, included it as the album’s closing track.) The new songs replicated “A Certain Person”’s high stakes, but their tenseness didn’t always offer the reward of catharsis. The album was received well, if not rapturously, and they never released another record. A decade later, they’re stuck in a funny point in history, too old to be contemporary, too new to be rediscovered. Before quarantine, they’d begun to perform again and I feel certain that, at their best, they have more than enough skill and charisma to be a huge presence in music. It would be incredible if their best is yet to come. But even if that best is “A Certain Person,” it’s an impossible high to have hit.
Unraveling the connections between a small group of musicians from Copenhagen is unquestionably the first time in my life I wished I spoke Danish. Over time, Deep Voices has featured Ydegirl, X & YDE, CTM, LOL Beslutning, Croatian Amor, Rune Bagge, and Sugar, all contemporary Danish artists, many of whom have collaborated and most of whom have released music on three labels, Posh Isolation, Kulør, and Visage. Though their music largely falls under the umbrella of “electronic” the scope varies from hyperspeed techno to abstract pop. My new Danish obsession is Brynje, also known as Brynje 1&2, which is comprised of two very square-jawed brothers, Asger and Holger Hartvig. Their 2015 album, Til de der vil lave museum, is truly bizarre, a collection of song scraps that is clearly indebted to rap music, but sounds as though they’ve never actually heard any, only read descriptions of it on Tumblr.
One song, “Flyfunktion,” has, at moments, a coherent forward motion, with hi-hats and eerie keys that might work for Travis Scott. The vocals are heavily autotuned, befitting rap’s 2015 sound, but they sound mopey, especially so to me, as they are in Danish, so I can’t understand when one word stops and another begins. At times, the song is augmented by lazy strums of acoustic guitar. The music is a distant cousin of their Scandanavian neighbor, Swedish rapper Yung Lean, but where his music is a tribute by emulation, theirs is pure pastiche. The track I’ve included here, “@havebillede” includes some piano riffing, the sound of an iPhone taking photos, the crackle of fire, and more dramatic autotuned vocals. It’s playful music, if lacking in a sense of humor. Til de der vil lave museum translates to “For those who want to make a museum,” and, according to the Visasge Soundcloud, the brothers are, “overcoming the limits and dark challenges of contemporary culture in a character based mixtape executed with a style present of painfully precise lyricism, musicism, vocalism and production.” It continues, “Sparing no effort in the search of building a fortress around right now, [Brynje 1&2] reveal an architectural vision, a detailed building plan.” It’s super pretentious, but it also feels achingly earnest, like they have something inside they absolutely must get out. Brynje translates to “armor” and I think they are trying to chip away at their own.
Walt Dickerson was a prolific vibes player from Philadelphia. Much of his music is post-bop jazz, but he had an adventurous streak in his later career, including an album with Sun Ra, a duo album with a Danish guitarist, and, best of all, Life Rays, a 1982 album as a trio featuring drummer Andrew Cyrille and bassist Sirone, two musicians more commonly associated with free jazz than anything with a steady time signature. On the title track, Dickerson’s playing is totally ecstatic; it sounds somehow as if he’s strumming the xylophone like a guitar. Sirone offers some lone notes here and there, and Cyrille doesn’t even show up until almost three minutes into the song with some nearly imperceptible thumping. Other songs on the album have a more traditional setup, but this track is jazz deconstructed. It’s a great example of the kind of beauty that can be achieved with the barest minimum.
Has anyone watched “Industry”? I’ve seen three episodes which I believe took a solid 10 years off my life. It’s stressful! The show’s theme song is expertly composed by Nathan Micay and if I was Nicholas Brittell I would feel slightly shook. All the music on the show has been great and I was especially excited to discover Swan Lingo when I Shazaam’d the song playing in the background of a stressful scene. Swan Lingo is not the kind of singer you hear on TV much, one whose strength comes more from conviction than precision. The music is nominally R&B, but it feels as close to the Weeknd as it does to Bad Brains. I was pleasantly surprised to find out the beat was made by Fish Narc, a punk rocker turned producer who worked on a handful of songs with Lil Peep and whose tracks always have the right amount of drunken rhythm to them. I’m looking forward to seeing what music is on next episode, where they are almost certainly going to be doing bloodletting rituals to make exchange rates go up.
Every year I look forward to Boomkat’s freewheeling annual best of lists from artists and people in the music business. This week, the Lila Tirando a Violenta and Sockethead tracks come from music I discovered there. I have a bunch of tabs open with different lists and I’m slowly making my way through. Though they’re all fun to explore, I want to specifically shout out Helena Hauff’s top ten, which is television only. If you’re not familiar with Hauff, she’s an incredibly renowned techno DJ who plays largely raw sets with a sound that can border on industrial. It’s not exactly the kind of music that suggests a hearty sense of humor. Yet it seems like in 2020 she’s been laughing up a storm, watching 19 (!) seasons of “Family Guy,” 10 of “Taskmaster” (a show my parents have repeatedly urged me to watch), and “Mighty Boosh” (“again”). I haven’t watched “Father Ted,” but the “Jungle Hitler” episode she recommends seems like it might be worth it. She ends her list by saying “lockdown was long” and, unfortunately for her, it doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon. Maybe she’d like “Industry”?