Deep Voices - Playlist #6

Thanks for reading and listening. A new playlist with light annotation every Monday and Thursday morning. Subscribe if you’d like and please let me know what you’re enjoying.

Deep Voices #6 on Spotify

Anyone listening on Apple Music? My subscription lapsed. If there is a demand for it, I’ll renew and put the playlists there. Please let me know if you’re missing that.

Playlist notes:

• Recently stumbled onto the music of Robert Een, a vocalist and cellist who has worked extensively with Meredith Monk. His 2003 album, Mystery Dances, where the song “Premonition” comes from, is super rhythmic and playful, if ultimately a bit mournful. He has a distinct ability to make his cello sound like a drum.

• There was a march against Trump’s immigration policies a couple years on a billion degree day. A huge group filed over the Brooklyn Bridge, including a ragtag band. I looked to my right and saw legendary jazz bassist William Parker, whose “The Watermelon Song” is included here. My favorite celebrity sighting.

• There’s unfortunately not much music by From Scratch on streaming services. The small piece here by that group’s core member, Phil Dadson, gives an idea of the sounds he gets from homemade drums. This video, from 1980, shows the group pounding on huge contraptions made of PVC pipes of various lengths. Looks fun.

• I’ve been using photos for the mixes of artists I like. No real rhyme or reason. The band Damad popped into my head this week as my wife’s quarantine hair has gotten to be very long and it reminded me of that band’s singer’s insane hair. Victoria Scalisi, the band’s vocalist, is featured in this playlist’s photo. I heard them first on this compilation in 1996, with the song “Tinnitus.” You mostly can’t understand anything she is saying/yelling, but the phrase “And now it’s hard to hear/The sound of ringing noise/Inside my ears” has regularly run through my head for the last 24 years. Some of her delivery is a more typical metal/hardcore screech, but more unique and interesting is the ghostly slo-mo sounds she starts the song with. It sounds like the band is playing at regular speed and her vocals are beamed in from a tape player whose batteries are dying. A pretty extraordinary piece of music, if you’ve got the stomach for it—take a listen here. Some of the band members went on to form Kylesa, who were less interesting but more popular. Sclaisi died of cancer in 2017. Rest in peace.