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dustedmagazine · 4 months

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Andrew Forell 2023 End of Year

Robert Forster, photo by Stephen Booth

2023 buzzed by in a whirl of too much work and music. So many records and so many missed. I kept going down rabbit holes of genre and artists, chasing and never quite hauling in all the things I wanted to, or felt I should, listen to. In the end, music being so difficult to rank, here, in alphabetical order are the records I spent most time with a bunch of others I’ve been recommending to anyone who would listen.

The Feelies – Some Kinda Love (Bar/None)

2023 has been a good year for guitar music. New albums from Teenage Tom Petties, The Reds, Pinks and Purples, The Drin, The Tubs and The Murder Capital have been on high rotation here. So why a 2018 live tribute to a band who broke up in 1973 by a group in their fifth decade? First, these are songs are from The Velvet Underground, and second, simply, The Feelies. Joined by Richard Barone and Joey Maestro from The Bongos, they rip through a set that features the “hits” and some lesser-known songs with affection but not awe. Glenn Mercer and Bill Million’s guitars thrum in the style we are accustomed to, while Stanley Demeski, Dave Weckerman and Brenda Sauter provide rhythmic support which adds a dynamic swing to songs like “There She Goes Again,” “Head Held High” and “I’m Waiting For the Man.” Some Kinda Love is a pure dopamine hit of great songs played by a brilliant band. Joy and fun in equal measure.

Robert Forster – The Candle and the Flame (Tapete)

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On The Candle and the Flame Robert Forster produces some of the most emotionally direct and effecting songs of his career. Recorded in the shadow of his wife, Karen Bäumer’s diagnosis of, and treatment for ovarian cancer, Forster writes with grace about family, friendship, love and the past. The only song written in direct response to the illness “She’s A Fighter” contains only six words but the propulsive tension of the music expresses everything Forster doesn’t attempt to say. It’s an extraordinarily powerful performance, a cathartic blast, and for me, one of the songs of the year. “Tender Years,, “The Roads” and “When I Was A Young Man” are also up there. As I said in my review “few (songwriters) imbue the quotidian joys of domestic life and the power of memory with such poetry.”

Iceboy Violet – Not a Dream But a Controlled Explosion (Fixed Abode)

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On their self-produced album Not a Dream But A Controlled Explosion Iceboy Violet mixes rap, grime and swathes of liminal ambience into an emotionally purgative chronicle of identity, desire and fantasy which flows with a dreamlike intensity. Over deep pulses of sub-bass, taiko influenced percussion and concrete noise, their voice shifts in and out of focus, here a background whisper, there an urgent Northern accented boom. The music, like the vocals, is in constant flux, slipping between hard club beats and eerie ambience. At just 17 minutes, the eight tracks here stay with you for far longer.

The Inward Circles – Before We Lie Down in Darknesse (Stone Corbel Press)

Scottish composer Richard Skelton manipulates a six second fragment of Baroque recorder music taken from the run-out groove of a battered 50-year-old vinyl recording into haunted soundscapes that to tap into something primordial and elemental within layers built like geological strata. This is music to lose yourself in. Obsidian and glacial, Skelton’s work captures and preserves trace elements of melody and rhythm so imperceptible that you feel as much as hear them. Before We Lie Down in Darkness is a beautiful, timeless voyage andhas often eased me from insomniac anxiety to sleep in the last few months.

King Vision Ultra – Shook World (hosted by Algiers)

Using musical stems from Algiers’ Shook, found sound and collaborations with artists including ELUCID, Matana Roberts, DJ Haram, Dis Fig and Bigg Jus, King Vision Ultra’s self-styled mixtape is a companion piece and conversation with its source rather than a remix. A shifting sound collage that explores and interrogates race, class, gentrification, violence, love and community, Shook World digs into the core of New York City. Recordings of subway announcements, overheard conversations and confrontations lend a bracing realism and more than once Shook World has merged with the noise and incident of daily trips on the 1 train. A brilliant, often disorientating and abrasive sound portrait of NYC from some of its most interesting musicians.

Kofi Flexxx – Flowers in the Dark (Native Rebel)

Native Rebel founder Shabaka Hutchings has been in the vanguard of the English jazz scene with his bands Sons of Kemet, Shabaka & The Ancestors and The Comet Is Coming and as a cross-genre collaborator with artists on three continents. Posited as a “creative principle” rather than a band, Kofi Flexxx, Hutchings acts as guide and producer. Flowers in the Dark is anchored by pianist Alex Hawkins, flautist Ross Harris and a dynamite rhythm section of bassist Daisy George and drummer Jas Kayser. Backing guest vocalists including rappers billy woods and ELUCID, singers Siyabonga Mthembu from South Africa and Tamil born Ganavye and poet Anthony Joseph on album highlight “By Now (Accused of Magic)”, the quartet provide a fulcrum that draws together the strands of black music into sinuous unity. The instrumental tracks are equally good. “It Was All a Dream” has the rhythmic power of Sons Of Kemet with Hawkins’ percussive piano and George’s bass bounding along ahead of a wall of horns and Harris flying above them while managing to find a gritty rasp the bottom end of the flute. “Fire” is a bluesy spiritual jazz with George and Harris both prominent. An album that exemplifies Hutchings’ holistic approach to music.

Seablite – Lemon Lights (Mt St Mtn)

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San Francisco band Seablite’s second album Lemon Lights delves deeper into their love for 1990s English sounds. The quartet of vocalist/guitarist Lauren Matsui, vocalist/bassist Galine Tumasyan (bass), guitarist Jen Mundy and drummer Andy Pastalaniec channel the lush end of 1990s British indie. Ride guitarist Mark Gardener mastered Lemon Lights and the result is an album of shoegaze adjacent songs which incorporate the jangling sound of Seablite’s Bay Area contemporaries. It’s a deeply satisfying combination elevated by vocal harmonies, serpentine bass lines and Pastalaniec’s driving percussion. Lead single “Melancholy Molly” has the rollicking rhythm of Ride’s “Leave Them All Behind” overlaid with Matsui and Tumasyan’s lush harmonies and the twin guitars sparking from the mix. The sound is dense but melodic, allowing the guitars to chime and shimmer than rather fuzz and the melancholic edge to tracks like “Pot of Boiling Water” and the dreamy closer “Orbiting My Sleep” make Lemon Lights resonate.

Sinaïve – Répétition (Antimatière)

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When Sinaïve released Répétition in April, I had a cursory listen, filed it away and promptly forgot about it for several weeks. My mistake. On second listen, their combination of Gallic cool, psychedelic pyrotechnics, VU drone and the distant echoes of Ye-Ye and the French underground was irresistible. The Strasbourg trio - Calvin Keller on vocals/guitar/keys, Alicia Lovich drums /vocals/organ and bassist Alaoui O - make a wholly satisfying racket. On the 11 plus minutes of “Citadelle/Bis Repetita”, Sinaïve ride Lovich’s robotic rockabilly beat and Alaoui’s throbbing bass though a suite that sounds among other things like “Ghost Rider”, “Sister Ray” and Love at their wiggiest before Keller’s freight train riffs entangle themselves as if on a lock groove. It’s a terrific piece of sonic détournement. “Les Diaboliques” finds Keller crooning over a squalling guitar and molasses bass line before guest singer Raphaëlle Albane enters, an earthbound angel amidst the feedback. Albane appears again on “Cela ne Fait que Commencer” to close the album duetting with Keller over a quiet pulsing beat, organ and strummed guitar.

99Letters – Makafushigi (Disciples)

Osaka producer Takahiro Kinoshita’s Makafushigi (Mystery Tape)is built on samples of the instruments and vocal styles used in Japanese Imperial Court music. As 99Letters, Kinoshita fuses these ancient sounds with modern electronic music in ways that are as malevolent as the demons of mythology and as sinister as the organized crime and ultranationalism in contemporary Japan. The tracks on Makafushigi are washed in a seamy mix of grit and clamor, a grim, grimy world of back alleys, dingy bars and low-tech manufacturing. On discovering this I went on to a deep dive into 99Letters’ back catalogue and emerged when Kinoshita put out his most recent album Zigoku on Phantom Limb in November. He is the artist I’ve been most thrilled to discover this year.

The Others:

Algiers – Shook (Matador

Armand Hammer – We Buy Diabetic Test Strips (Fat Possum)

jaimie branch – Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) (International Anthem)

John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy – Evenings At the Village Gate (Impulse)

Comet Gain – The Misfit Jukebox (Tapete)

The Drin – Today My Friend You Drunk The Venom (Drunken Sailor)

Euglossine – Bug Planet is the Current Timeline (Hausu Mountain)

Asher Gamedze – Turbulence and Pulse (international Anthem)

Gods Gift – Turn All the Lights Out (Play Loud!)

Laurel Halo – Atlas (Awe)

The Reverend Michael Kristen Hayter – SAVED! (Perpetual Flame Ministries)

Irreversible Entanglements – Protect Your Light (Impulse)

Life Strike – Peak Dystopia (Bobo Integral)

Kevin Richard Martin – Black (Intercranial)

OXBOW – Love’s Holiday (Ipecac)

Purelink – Signs (Peak Oil)

Quicksails – Surface (Hausu Mountain)

Rainy Miller x Space Africa – A Grissaille Wedding (Fixed Abode)

Speaker Music – Techxodus (Planet Mu)

Strategy – Graffiti in Space (Constellation Tatsu)

The Tubs – Dead Meat (Trouble In Mind)

billy woods & Kenny Segal – Maps (Backwoodz Studioz)

99Letters – Zigoku (Phantom Limb)

#dusted magazine #yearend 2023 #andrew forell #robert forster #the feelies #iceboy violet #the inward circles #king vision ultra #kofi flexxx #seablite #Sinaïve #99letters

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dustedmagazine · 5 months

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Rainy Miller x Space Afrika — A Grissaille Wedding (Fixed Abode)

Photo by Timon Benson

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As performers, writers and producers Rainy Miller and Space Afrika (Joshua Inyang and Joshua Reid) are key figures in an eclectic Manchester centered electronic, avant-pop scene that includes artists Blackhaine, Iceboy Violet and Richie Culver. Grissaille is a style of painting done exclusively in shades of grey. It can serve as a base upon which color is overpainted and/or as method of imitating (sculptural) relief. Both aspects are present on this collaboration, A Grissaille Wedding where the songs whisper from doorways, alleys, industrial wastelands. Foggy, weakly lit by the reflection of rain splattered streetlamps on oil slicked asphalt. A new version of Northern soul built from grime, dubstep, machines both shiny and decrepit. With Miller’s vocal often autotuned these songs flicker between despair and hope, soliloquys of love, loss and trauma blooming into a cruel world framed by Space Afrika’s impressionist soundscapes, which highlight the vulnerability and quiet defiance of the narrators.

“Summon the Spirit/Demon” opens as an invocation. Miller’s whispers and coos shrouded in a murky Burial like atmosphere as Voice Actor intones invitingly. Miller’s multitracked singing follows, pitched high to emphasize his fragility. “Maybe It’s Time to Lay Down the Arms” features Mica Levi and Miller over a stumbling trip hop beat and lysergic swirls of synth and backing vocals. A lonely plea for inner peace. On “Sweet (I’m Free)” RenzNiro and Iceboy Violet reflect on finding self-acceptance and love amongst damaged lives in ruined towns as Space Afrika’s soundscape slips and churns beneath them. Celestial backing vocals, billowing synth pads, violins and a simple cyclical acoustic guitar riff give the “The Graves at Charleroi” a hymnal intensity as Coby Sey sings of the passage through grief. Richie Culver delivers the spoken word piece “I Believe in God, When Things are Going My Way” against a background of quavering strings and beatless ambience. He plays with the ambiguity of his interlocutor, is it God? A lover? Himself?

“I need rules, false promises/The laws keep me safe/Safe by your side/4th of December, a victim of my own thoughts” feels like a summary of the project’s main theme. Paradox, complexity, hope and despair are ever present. The greyness throws trauma into stark silhouette but splashes of color, hard won knowledge and the will to express the fragility of self can lead to some form of acceptance and allow one to move forward. A Grissaille Wedding forges all this into a hauntingly beautiful set of songs which aren’t afraid to bare teeth as well as wounds.

Andrew Forell

#rainy miller #space afrika #a grissaile wedding #fixed abode #andrew forell #albumreview #dusted magazine #electronic #soul #manchester #mica level #voice actor #iceboy violet #renzniro #coby sey #richie culver

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