my pieces this year

Thought I'd do a post gathering together everything relatively major I wrote in 2013. Click the links to get either the relevant piece or a fuller description I put up here on the blog where you can click through to the piece itself. Happy New Year!

• Gonzo Circus: A New Manifesto for New Music - a manifesto-style statement on aims for the future of music, jumping off from Infinite Music.
• Dummy Essay: Shades of Ariel Pink - a rethink of the position of Ariel Pink in the history of indie music and in relation to the 'Altered Zones Generation' he is often considered to have influenced.
• Electronic Beats Pattern Recognition 1: The New Online Weird - a look at three interesting new beat producers, a i r s p o r t s, RAP/RAP/RAP and Karmelloz, who are exploring new forms of weirdness online.
• Dummy Essay: Matthew Herbert's Musical Shell - a critical look at Matthew Herbert's music-making process in light of futurism, war and his latest album The End of Silence.
• An Introduction to Robocop through the lens of John Maus and his music.
• A little write-up on Karmelloz for Subbacultcha.
• Dummy Essay: 'Messy' Techno and the Resurgence of Musical Abstraction - reflects on the messier kinds of techno that have recently emerged and how they represent a new enthusiasm for abstraction, taking in loads of artists.
• Dummy Essay: Have You Heard of Eugene Chadbourne? - examines avant-country clown and star of 1980s indie music Eugene Chadbourne, why he didn't quite make it into history and why he isn't cool any more.
• EB PR 2: The Evolving Architecture of the Underground - a primer on how underground music is moving online and why and how to follow it there.
• Dummy Essay: Sci-Fi, Hi-Tech, Future? - took in a number of recent artists in looking at the new vogue for hi-tech, its relationship to science fiction, and whether it's really the future or just a more-or-less traditional representation of it.
• Dummy Essay: Meanwhile in the UK's Dance Underground... - following the disappointment in the UK dance underground expressed in my 2012 piece on Texas, I take stock of the scene's recent trajectories and find several areas of promise. Not meant to be comprehensive.
• EB PR 3: The Fantasy Behind Veiled Musicians - in the wake of the meme about Burial being Four Tet, I look at how mystery about a musician influences listening, taking in 'veiled musicians' of the past, particularly Jandek, and of the present, particularly the weirdly wonderful Pepsi 7 Up.
• Dummy Essay: Invest in Vaporwave Futures! - a year on from my article on vaporwave, I look at how the genre is getting on with mixed feelings, particularly concerning the new wave of producers. Tbh, I was pretty much looking at vaporwave's recent developments the wrong way, and should've done more listening, thinking, and research in preparation for the piece - sorry.
• Blogpost: On the New OPN Video - kinda hotheadedly expressed response to the video for Oneohtrix Point Never's 'Still Life,' annoyed at the implicit message about computer usage and alternative sexualities being freakish. Comment box japes ensued. New years resolution: less sarcasm.
• EB PR 4: Indigo Beats - a euphoric, diverse, hi-tech kind of beat-making is developing in the online underground in the slipstream of cloud rap, witch house, trap and vaporwave. Included loads of lesser known artists and I made a mix for it too.
• Dummy Essay: 'Something Beautiful?' The Hardcore Pastiche of ADR and Yen Tech - a year on from my article on distroid, I look at what pastiche does and how heavy pastiche of pop in ADR's Chunky Monkey and Yen Tech's Revengeance creates an ambivalent reaction.
• Dummy Essay: London's Hi-Tech Noise - about an emerging network of hi-tech art-noise musicians based in London. Some great hidden gems there for the more avant-inclined.
• Little write-up on E+E for Subbacultcha.
• EB PR 5: Is 'Internet Music' the new 'Lo-Fi'? - compares the collapse of the cassette revolution of the 80s into the lo-fi of the 90s with the potential collapse of the online revolution into a superficial concept of 'internet music.'
• Dummy Essay: Modules in Machine Modernism with Oneohtrix Point Never - a look at OPN's R Plus Seven and the significance of the machine-like processes within.
• EB PR 6: The Vanishing Frame of Blondes and Huerco S. - how Blondes' Swisher and Huerco S.'s Colonial Patterns both create frames around dance music styles in their different ways
• EB PR 7: Jame's Ferraro's NYC, Hell 3:00am - basically an extended review of Ferraro's latest album, exploring its themes of exhaustion and dejection.
• Dummy Essay: Neo-Eski, Alien Shapes and the New Wave of Grime - on the new wave of grime, particularly its relationship to eski and sino-grime and its future tendencies. Includes some Rouge-classic technical talk about tonality.
• Liner Notes for Matthew Shlomowitz and Peter Ablinger - I wrote an essay for the liner notes on a CD of not-your-average contemporary classical music - compositions that radically reconstructs sonic forms.
• Wire magazine, January 2014 (#359), the Rewind Issue: included my end-of-2013 reflections, a piece on the year's trends in the online underground, and a review of 18+'s MIXTAP3
• My end-of-year list for Dummy, with little write-ups on each choice.
• EB PR 8: The Year in the Online Underground - ten great online releases from 2013 with write-ups, plus a list of other decent titles.
• EB PR 8.5: The Year in Vaporwave - ten great vaporwave releases from 2013 with write-ups, plus a list of other decent titles.
• End-of-year reflections for Electronic Beats, and other writers' too, including my 'Top 5 Fancy Breakfasts of 2013.'
• Musical Objects of the Year page by the No Fear of Pop blog, with an introduction to musical objects and ten choices written up by me, and great write-ups from other writers too. Lovely project.
• (... and this blogpost collecting together all my end-of-year stuff large and small).

End of 2013 Stuff

I loved 2013 for music - loads of huge and really fresh material. The second half of the year in particular was a constant stream of amazement, with Burial, Beyoncé and a new E+E release just missing the boat for most of the end-of-year coverage too. I did masses of lists and writings for the end of year, and here they are (in roughly chronological order). At the bottom I've jotted down another list of albums that were great but which you are less likely to have come across outside my writing and end-of-year contributions.

Wire

Wire's January 2014 issue (#359) was its annual Rewind issue. I contributed some reflections and an essay on the year in the online underground featuring vaporwave, newcomposed vaporwave (Eyeliner, PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises), hardcore pastiche (Yen Tech, Gatekeeper), post/para/quasi-vape beats (Contact Lens, Blank Banshee), weird beats (RAP/RAP/RAP, Karmelloz, Pazz Cherofoot, Suicideyear) and the new epic collagists (E+E, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, Total Freedom, TCF) with nice pics of Suicideyear, E+E and Diamond Black Hearted Boy. There's also a review of 18+'s MIXTAP3 by me, which I picked as my release of the year. And as ever, Wire's Rewind issue is worth a look, with a great list of best releases and everyone's reflections. At some point everyone's lists will be accessible online too.

Dummy

Dummy did a load of stuff, much of which I got involved in voting and writing for, including best albums (click here), best tracks (click here) (ft. me on Autre Ne Veut's 'Ego Free Sex Free'), best EPs (click here), best mixtapes (click here) (ft. me on James Ferraro's Cold and 18+'s MIXTAP3) and everyone's individual lists (click here). I did one of the 'Trends of 2013' pieces too, on Neo-Eski, Alien Shapes and the New Grime (click here).

Electronic Beats

My Pattern Recognition column for Electronic Beats became a couple of best-of-2013 lists covering the online underground, one for non-vaporwave (click here) and one for vaporwave (click here). These are pretty good for releases you might have missed, and the second one is a good intro to vaporwave and its recent activities.

I also wrote some reflections, which included a list of my 'Top 5 Fancy Breakfasts of 2013' (click here).

Boomkat

I did an end-of-year list for the online music shop Boomkat (click here to see it). It's probably the best list if you want to know what I liked this year, and features an almost lifesize and increasingly outdated pic of me. If you needed persuading.

No Fear of Pop

Top-notch mp3 blog No Fear of Pop came to me wanting to realise an offhand comment I once made (here, actually) that 'maybe one day the chart will rate musical objects of the year' and the result was a gorgeous page featuring lists contributed by myself and NFOP's writers (click here to read), with an introduction to musical objects written by me. The project ended up with a personal and thoughtful character, and was beautifully designed to - do check it out. I wrote about Burial, Janelle Monáe, war dubs, Laurel Halo, Autre ne Veut, Yen Tech, Metallic Ghosts, Lou Reed and Drake, the others picked a great range of specific musical tidbits and experiences.

Recommendations of Less Famous Stuff

18+: MIXTAP3

a i r s p o r t s: BE THE 1 I DREAM OF

Alak: Guardian Petted

AyGeeTee: Fools

Blank Banshee: Blank Banshee 1

Bloom: Maze Temple

Cakes Da Killa: The Eulogy

Contact Lens: Free Throw Banquet (CL keeps taking this one down from Bandcamp but it's worth seeking out. Much of it's on Youtube - e.g. here)

Cyan Kid: Free

Diamond Black Hearted Boy: Father, Protect Me

E+E: Recortes (currently down from Bandcamp)

E+E: The Light That You Gave Me To See You

Egyptrixx: A/B til Infinity

Eyeliner: LARP of Luxury

Glass Eyes: Cero

Infinity Frequencies: Computer Death (gorgeous bit of vaporwave, this)

Karmelloz: Bud Air

Luxury Elite // Saint Pepsi: Late Night Delight (gorgeous bit of vaporwave, this)

Magic Fades: Obsession

Marie Dior: Euphrates

Nima: Spirit Sign

Yearning Kru: Cracked Lacquer / Vanadium

Yen Tech: Revengeance

Longer lists of less famous stuff can be found in the Electronic Beats pieces (see above)

Liner Notes for Matthew Shlomowitz and Peter Ablinger

I wrote an essay for the liner notes of a great new CD of contemporary classical compositions by Matthew Shlomowitz and Peter Ablinger (click here for more info). The music is really worth a listen - both composers reconstruct and play with samples in absorbing and complex ways - Shlomowitz by comparing, contrasting and paralleling material between a piano and a sampler, Ablinger by replicating vocal samples on a piano in various different ways. Have a listen and read extracts from my essay below:

Matthew Shlomowitz - '1. Free Sound' from Popular Contexts

Peter Ablinger - 'Hanna Schygulla' from Voices and Piano

When first listening to the works of Matthew Shlomowitz and Peter Ablinger, it's tempting to reach for a well-worn concept and say that they take music or sound and 'deconstruct' it - but this would be a mistake. It's common to hear of how works playfully pick things apart piece by piece and layer by layer, whether found objects or objects of tradition, in gestures interpreted as knowing, self-aware, ironic. The work of Shlomowitz and Ablinger is more interesting - it reconstructs music, not merely by getting back to basics or back to where we came from, but one note at a time. The interest lies not just in what they manage to achieve, but in the nature of the task itself and the scope of its foundations.

Shlomowitz and Ablinger seem less 'knowing' than open-mindedly learning as they generate their material - composing as if beginning from an almost pre-intellectual or even pre-human starting point. They approach the world of music and sound like an intelligent but newborn child, a blank slate whose complex and confusing surroundings must be parsed and understood moment upon moment. Or like a pet starling, picking up sonic objects like household noises and human speech from its environment, perfectly replicating them, and incorporating them into its song wholly or in fragments but with little apparent understanding of their everyday meaning... Or like a complex artificial intelligence, designed in a lab, algorithmically building a knowledge base by tracking the trajectories of its stimuli, analysing spectral data, and haltingly interacting with technicians...

Emma by Chuck Close, an artist whose work was a point of comparison in the notes

Performances of the work of Matthew Shlomowitz (b. 1975) are often met with well-intentioned laughter - it's the natural reaction to suddenly hearing recognisable or banal sounds in rapid combination within a concert setting. His work is playful and flippant in this way, but sooner or later it asks to be taken more seriously. As the frisson of meaning in the sound effects dies down, as the 'jokes' outstay their welcomes, it's the processes of form and syntax that take centre stage, the purity of the latter all the more surprising given the down-to-earth nature of the former...

Each of the Voices and Piano pieces can be thought of as a photograph of somebody's face overlaid with a system of lines and shapes that is uniquely generated according to particular architectural rules, suggesting a structure in the face not obvious beforehand. Discovering this process anew in each piece is what makes hearing them so beguiling. In some, such as 'Amanaulik' and 'Alberto Giacometti', the texture is wrapped very closely and tightly around the voice, almost masking it. So scrunched and fine-grained is it in the latter that they evoke the thin but turbulent bronze sculptures of the eponymous artist. In 'Jacques Brel' and 'Carmen Baliero', Ablinger constructs a halo of pitches at some distance from the pitch of the recording. The latter features staccato pitches high above the voice, which is talking about the rain in Buenos Aires, and it's as if the raindrops were falling from the clouds in straight lines and constructing Baliero's voice where they fell...

Essay (Trends of 2013): Neo-Eski, Alien Shapes and the New Wave of Grime

Artwork by Educastelo

This Dummy essay was also one of a number of end-of-year 'Trends of 2013' pieces for the mag, and looked at this years' new wave of grime, particularly its eski, sino and alien elements (click here to read). Pleased with this one - feat. Wiley, Logos, Visionist, Bloom, Inkke, Slackk, Murlo, SD Laika, war dubs, grime tonality (chromaticism vs pentatonicism), squarewave, auto design now and tomorrow, yo-yos and more.

Of all the areas of underground music that seemed to surge forward this year, grime was one of the most obvious and most intense.. 2013 might have been one of the most exciting years in emergent grime for quite some time - a year when the genre reached back to its roots to create its future...

Ultimately all these pressures on grime - what commercial success means, smoother dance directions and US approaches - really begged the question: what is grime? And for the answer to that, many producers have looked to its early days circa 2003, discovering there a freshness that stands out sharply against the productions of more recent years...

Visionist

If eski was a car designed in 2002, neo-eski feels like what the car would look like after a redesign in 2032, and not just the car itself but also the bizarre social, technological and climatological violence you'll be able to see out of its windows...

Visionist seems to be the avant-garde spearhead of grime's new wave, eschewing pastiche almost entirely in developing a range of distinctive sounds that are powerfully modern and that lose none of their effect to failed experimentalism...

The all-round biggest success might have been Bloom's 'Maze Temple EP,' an intense neo-eski raid that takes the futurism of Logos and makes you move to it. Bloom is one of the strongest of the new wavers, and his war dub send for Samename might have been my favourite of the lot, firing weapons that aren't supposed to be invented until the 23rd century...

Pattern Recognition: James Ferraro’s NYC, Hell 3:00 AM

Pattern Recognition 7 was on James Ferraro's latest album NYC, Hell 3:00 AM (click here to read). I was particularly pleased with how this one came out. There's a running theme of exhaustion and damage.

Up there, there’s Drake and Kanye, raging and weeping in their gloomy fortresses. Down here, under the dust, sirens and steaming vents, under the sidewalk and the rattling subway, under the dripping pipes and skeletons, here’s our James Ferraro, standing guard over a kingdom of rats...

Sorry we ran out of milk, but here’s your shot of James Ferraro, now fuck off...

Rather than being amazed, dazzled and possessed, NYC, Hell 3:00 AM weighs you down like a ghoul on your back and a concrete block chained to your legs. Far from presenting a particular concept—you don’t know what it’s about, can’t put your finger on a unifying reference or a commentary, can’t quite make the ends meet—the album’s power is in its dragging you into darkness. It’s like a flashlight shone into a pool in an otherwise lightless cavern, illuminating a few motes in a dull greyish beam that fades several feet later, leaving little impression of how far down it goes...

As they perform, the speckled, downcast members of Ferraro’s arcane backing band don’t make eye contact with each other or anyone else, but somehow their disunity settles, like silt...

The urgent but numbed scrubbing of hands and forearms in slow motion of “QR JR”, a ritual intermittently pierced by clock chimes and anxiety. The thin, suspended vocal of “Beautiful Jon K”, a human monument. In “Upper East Side Pussy”, a monastic refrain rolled like a carpet and pushed up the stairs as if after the occupant of a home has passed away...

NYC, Hell 3:00 AM is not just what happens to a city, but what happens to the public façade, the lungs, the muscles, and the mind, too...

Pattern Recognition: The Vanishing Frame of Blondes and Huerco S

Pattern Recognition 6 is a piece looking at the different ways recent albums by Blondes and Huerco S. frame dance music (click here to read). This one was implicitly a response to the whole 'outsider house' thing, and had me trying out a slightly more unusual writing styles.

Though they sound pretty different on the surface, they’re complementary—both are working through the same process with different outcomes. This process involves expanding out from older conceptions of where the ‘music itself’ is located and incorporating the sonic and formal consequences of its context into the wider musical appeal...

[Swisher is] bathed in low-Celsius streams of improvisational electronic minimalism, the kosmische microwave background. It’s like stepping into the clubs of that world you always wanted to visit, the one lit by a giant blue star, the one where the humanoid creatures step along with a sad dignity and no-one quite notices or cares that you’re there. There’s an almost melancholy voyeurism when you visit this imaginary club, where heads are down and backs are turned...

While Swisher zooms out to show you the club, the frame in Colonial Patterns is a zooming in, showing you the grainy physical life of the sounds themselves leaking through boxes and wires, so close up that you no longer see the wood for the trees. The forces connecting the sounds begin to weaken and they float freely as autonomous objects, and aren’t trees lovely up close when we can feel the rough bark under our fingers and smell the sap? Where are we again?...

Goddamn it, we’ve been coasting on post-modernism for at least thirty years now—and the idea of it spreading into house and techno only seems fresh and interesting for about 0.2 seconds. Blondes and Huerco S. don’t need to be casualties to the assumption that their music is simply a reaction, because every time I listen the music seems to get more abstract, not less...