Deep Voices #84
vibe after vibe after vibe
Deep Voices #84 on Spotify
Deep Voices #84 on Apple Music
This edition of Deep Voices starts with a preamble on my time working Pitchfork and the impossibility of being all things to all people as one person. If you’d like to skip my self-aggrandizing and read about the music, scroll down to the playlist notes. You can also not read those and just listen. The music on this week’s playlist, in my opinion, is really good, and the amount of listeners (based on Spotify’s monthly listeners) is really low; only two of the artists make it into the quadruple digits. I hope most of what you hear will be a welcome discovery.
My role, when I began working at Pitchfork, in September of 2015, a few months before the publication was purchased by Conde Nast, was managing editor, and, the first thing I did, along with the then-editor-in-chief, Mark Richardson, was go on a listening tour, asking the editors of each section what they needed help with. This was viewed by some as helpful and some as annoying. By some, both. It was a much needed opportunity for structural assistance, or an imposition on their autonomy. I wanted my new colleagues to like me, and many did, but it took some time for them to believe in my dedication to the publication and its possibilities. My fealty was to music.
The thing that sticks out in my memory as my biggest accomplishment is the work I did in the album review section. Running as many well-written and well-researched reviews daily as Pitchfork does is an incredibly difficult job. Getting it done in a way that would give a reader a 360 view of music required a lot of foresight into what albums were going to be released in the coming weeks. We were too often behind, sometimes missing important releases entirely. So I introduced a new calendar system, using a database tool called Trello. Imagine a game of solitaire—seven columns across, five cards down. Each column represented a day, each card, an album. There were columns for each release week (albums are typically released on Fridays), with upcoming releases parked there for planning ahead. You could label each album if it was a priority review, make notes to suggest potential reviewers. It simplified the task of giving the readers a robust, holistic picture of the world of music. Though I left Pitchfork nearly four years ago, laid off at the start of the pandemic, I asked reviews editor Jeremy Larson if he’s still using Trello and I’m proud to say he still is.
As I’m sure you’ve heard, it was announced last week that Pitchfork will be folded into GQ, with many of the writers and editors laid off. Jeremy is still there, and reviews are running daily, as they have been for years. The news department retained staff but there are no longer any editors or writers dedicated to features, or the Pitch, the section that published mid-length pieces, like op-eds and shorter columns. It’s unclear what the future of the site will be. Jeremy has said he’s been assured, at least, that reviews will still run. I hope so.
The reason the introduction of Trello feels so important to me is because it’s the kind of functional work you need to run a well-rounded publication. You need dorks who make calendars. You need fact checkers and copy editors, critics and features editors. You need an art department. You need pop music specialists, noise music specialists, electronic music specialists. People with broad taste and deep knowledge. You need them to work in harmony. To make something that even attempts to tackle a broad subject matter, you need investment and resources. For a while, it seemed like Pitchfork, well-staffed and well-oiled, had obtained something truly harmonic. What comes next will be more singular.
There’s a lot of singular out there these days, Deep Voices included. I started this publication after I was laid off, hoping to find space for my niche as a writer, the overlap of experimental music discovery and feelings-forward writing based in cultural context. You know, a field with a lot of growth potential. I brought a version of this to Fader in my time there, in a weekly column called Slept On, and then briefly to Pitchfork in a column called Schnip’s Picks. At each, this was complementary to the overall coverage. As a newsletter, Deep Voices is the whole thing. It’s 360 coverage, sure, but of a much smaller world. There are no fact checkers. No art department. No Trello. Sometimes my wife gives me edits. Sometimes I send the playlist ahead to two friends to see if it flows well. Almost always, I manage to fuck up the Apple Music link. I don’t know how this is possible. But there’s no one to check my work. It is what it is.
I believe deeply in the transformational power of music and in the project of cataloging the sources and effects of that power. I’m doing my best, week after week, to bring you music that you may have missed, and to describe why I think you should take the time to listen. There’s too much that’s too good with too few listeners. I’m doing what I can to change that, to spotlight the underdog. So while it’s a small job, I take it seriously. I know, by definition, it’s not enough. The array of voices you used to get under one umbrella are now spread out, across newsletters, newspapers, social media, blogs, chat rooms, group texts, etc. Music writing isn’t going away. Unfortunately, finding trusted voices is now going to be that much harder. It’s worth the work to find them.
Each edition of Deep Voices is a one-hour playlist, with a mix of personal writing and music criticism. A paid subscription gets you access to exclusive playlists, including Deep Voices deep cuts on YouTube. It also supports my writing, for which I am extremely grateful. If you read and listen to Deep Voices, please consider a paid subscription. It would mean a lot. Thank you!
Playlist notes:
•In 2014, John Lafia uploaded one of the releases, a tape called Secret Dreams, to YouTube himself in 2014 and, in a comment, said he had “a stack of old tapes I haven't gone through yet.” It’s possible that those are the other three albums, all dated between 1981 and 1984 now available on streaming. It appears those were uploaded in 2021, via the distribution service DistroKid, which would have been a year after he died by suicide.
I was crushed, of course, to find, after recently discovering Lafia’s music, that he had died. I imagined a lavish reissue treatment (one compilation of his music, released in 2019, flew under the—or at least my—radar) and comeback shows. I’d still like to celebrate his strange and excellent music, consisting of primitive drum machines, decrepit bass lines, and slinky guitars. Some songs feel more sketchlike than complete, glimpses of a wonky genius at work. I’m reminded of the homemade earnestness of both Arthur Russell and Steve Hiett, but if their music was done with shades drawn and the light beaming in, Lafia’s was done in the darkness. It’s gothic and droning, bordering on unsettling. His track “4 AM,” for example, could only have been recorded then. But with 40 years since it was produced, what may have then sounded state of the art, sounds precious, lo-fi.
The same could probably be said of Lafia’s better known artistic outlet, the Chucky films. As a screenwriter, Lafia is the co-creator of the ’90s horror film franchise, having co-written several of the screenplays, and directed the second film in the series, Child’s Play 2. Hearing his music, being enraptured by it, and then looking for information about him, only to find out he’s the Chucky guy, I was delighted, but—and I mean this with love—I was not surprised. The guy had a wickedly deranged sense of creativity. It’s a pleasure to still have access to it.
A semi-related side note: Sometimes, I see the Saturday Night Live star Sarah Sherman on the street. We must live in the same neighborhood. I am a huge fan. Once I saw her sitting alone, wearing clown colors, in the park early in the morning. I was out with my daughter, while she watched the dogs running around off leash. Sometimes, when she’s walking around, she’ll go up to strangers and wave. She’s very social. I was like, please, Coco, go say hi to Sarah Sherman. Alas. But I am wondering, is anyone reading this friends with Sarah Sherman? I know she loves fucked up music and Chucky. If you could send her John Lafia’s music and ask her to subscribe to Deep Voices I would be grateful. Thank you.
•There is a guitar tone that makes you think of sunsets and lost love, fireflies and fog. It sits on the fine line between wistfulness and reverence, a dangerous place for those of us, like me, prone to indulgence of self-seriousness. It’s a sweet sound perfected by Vini Reilly of Durutti Column, Maurice Deebank of Felt, Christopher Owens of Girls. The best songs by Washed Out or Real Estate have touches of it. Cocteau Twins have it in spades. If you wonder why people simultaneously love them and mock them, it's that they sometimes wade into the deep end of that shimmer. Whether it’s too far is up to you.
That sound of love and echo is what Spanish outfit Belver Yin have to offer. It’s more than enough. On the (then duo’s) 1991 album, Luz Bel, they smartly eschew vocals and bring only the riff. If you’re looking for diversity of sound, look elsewhere. These tracks bleed together with little delineation between composition, just vibe after vibe after vibe. It’s magical stuff, sweetly composed and gently played. Luz Bel was reissued in 2020 by Australian label Efficient Space and, after that resurgence of interest, Belver Yin’s primary player, Pedro L. Ortega, released a new album, Para Mi Madre. The recording quality is a bit better, the playing a bit tighter, but, overall, it’s a twin release to Luz Bel, powerful and haunted. The sound is still fresh, the guitar still sings. Music for when you need to swoon or cry, or, more likely, do whatever it is that comes in between.
•A lightning round on three of the other tracks, because they are too good:
I wanted to highlight Daniel Kane, a one time San Francisco street performer, is a guru of the Chapman stick, an instrument that looks like a beefy guitar neck with no body. You play it with finger taps. I discovered his music when I found a cassette of his music, home dubbed, at a Salvation Army in Long Island. Some songs were effects-laden and a little cheesy, and some were simple, bluesy and sad. That album isn’t on streaming, but another similar one is, and I’ve included here the best song, “The Weave,” which actually, now that I think about it, sounds kind of like Belver Yin.
I discovered the excellently jazzy ’90s Canadian house outfit Mystic Phases after going down a fun rabbit hole. Let me work my way out of it backwards: Mystic Phases is on High Bias records. I was going through that label’s catalog because they released the Cessation EP by Opious Project. I found out about Opious Project because a helpful Discogs commenter noted that two tracks by Len Grant, half the Opious Project, were rereleased on the Cessation EP, and available on streaming. I was looking for streaming music by Len Grant because I heard his track under the name Molima, “Think’in About U” on TikTok of all places, posted by the DJ Primo Pitino, man of unparalleled taste. “Thinkin’ About U” is about the breeziest, loveliest house songs I’ve ever heard. “Thinking about you from time to time/Spend all my days, thinking about you.” Well, which one is it? Both. You know how it is. Unfortunately, “Think’in About U” is not on streaming services and the vinyl is extremely expensive. As one unhelpful Discogs commenter noted, “This is a nice pleasant track but not worth £140.” I disagree with this sour British man! It’s priceless.
And, finally, I think it’s worth noting that “Sally’s Blues” by Actual is almost certainly the first jungle track to sample the Peanuts. I love that he didn’t even bother to change the song title.
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so good, glad to get your perspective here
Loved your intro. Didn’t know you introduced Trello! Man, we would be lost without it.