Deep Voices #36
Some structure, some slack
Deep Voices #36 on Spotify
Deep Voices #36 on Apple Music
Tracklist:
Chris Watson, “Insect, Hidden”
Hexagone, “Sea Birds”
Ayesha, “The Club Is a Sea”
Ed Hartman, “Rivertrance”
Ed Blackwell, “Mallet Song”
People In Control, “When It’s War”
tamanaramen, “fake ID”
Plata, “I Can’t Sleep”
Big Bud, “Persian Blues”
Du Du A, “Romance”
Louis Hayes, “Loose Suite”
Liquid, “Feel 3 (Original Mix)
Nice Girl, “Whistling Thorn”
Cults Percussion Ensemble, “Circles”
Dustin Wong, “Cityscape Floated”
Chris Watson, “Red Deer Stag Roar”
Playlist notes:
A “Loose Suite” is an ideal mode for a song. Some structure, some slack. Kind of an ideal mode for a day, maybe even a life. I love this track by drummer Louis Hayes from his 1978 LP The Real Thing, featuring Woody Shaw on trumpet and René McClean, Jackie’s son, on sax. It’s largely led by Hayes solo, stomping around his kit with a few playful showoff moments. In between those, Shaw has a peppy moment in the spotlight where everything arranges around his orbit. It ends with a lopsided cry as each instrument overlaps, like everyone’s waving goodbye all at once.
The sound of the tracks from Liquid and Hexagone, very ’90s blissed out rave tracks with touches of ambient sound, are really where I spent my week. Hexagone is actually a little-used pseudonym of Ludovic Navarre who mostly goes by St. Germain when he makes jazzy house house tracks. “Sea Birds” isn’t so far from that style, but it has little dollops of acid thrown in from time to time as the track ebbs and flows. The sweeps on Liquid’s “Feel 3 (Original Mix)” are less romantic if only because they’ve got a more punishing drum track propelling them. But the main melody sounds somewhere between a hawk and a wooden flute. You can feel it swooping across the sound. Eventually a high pitched vocal sample enters and commands the vibe and while it’s catchy, a stuttered “make me feeeel,” it is also largely unnecessary. The song feels more than enough without it.
“How can I get BPM with a fake ID?” is not a particularly pertinent question during a pandemic. Presuming this is a lament tied up in a logistical question about getting access to the club, that’s not something anyone is getting. Still, I feel for tamanaramen, who wants it very badly. I love her track “fake ID” for its absolute earnestness. This is a brand new song and sometimes I can have trouble finding a toehold with the most sugary of today’s pop and while this song most certainly is that, I am pretty much legally obligated to support it because one of the lyrics is literally, “I am looking for new music.”
I love random songs like “When It’s War,” by People In Control, a group who put out just one single in 1981. I happened upon the track while making my way through the discography of Charles Bullen, guitar player for ramshackle punks This Heat and later the dubbed out experimental duo Lifetones. People In Control shares DNA with both those groups. The song is essentially demented chanting in a heavy British accent, dense and syncopated drums, and little electronic blips and blaps. It’s not an insult to say it feels a bit wobbly, like something people did on a Sunday afternoon for fun and somehow survived 40 years later, sent through a wormhole from happy weirdos past to happy weirdos future. It has the kind of patina of the past that can make great older visual art feel so vital, but not always older music, which can sometimes feel dated. The reason this song avoids that pitfall is that it happens to be very catchy, which is a timeless quality.