Angel Olsen Crack Magazine | Issue 104
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023
Contents
Angel Olsen (Sandy) Alex G 38
crackmagazine.net
30
Freddie Gibbs and Madlib 44
Biig Piig 50
Reviews – p.73
Recommended – p.26
Rising: Oli XL - p.29
Retrospective: Disintegration Loops – p.79
20 Questions: Lykke Li – p.81
The Click: Pixies – p.71
Downtime: Metronomy– p.80
Meditations… on pop's butch icons – p.82
CONTENTS
Editor's Letter – p.25
Jenny Hval 54
28.09.19 — FOLD
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If there’s one thing we’ve learned this month, it’s that Angel Olsen is excellent at composing a scene. In our cover feature, the St Louis singer-songwriter, whose new album is surely one of the finest of the year so far, makes a confession. Sometimes, she says, she puts on her favourite dress and out out makeup for mundane meet-ups with her mates. Her friends, perhaps less high glamour-adjacent than Olsen, respond with confusion which causes her to wonder, “Why can't I just have that day, or that kind of experience in my life... performance – the way I play music?” In my head, this idle question is delivered with a flourish, backed by a swell of Max Steiner strings, maybe. Tight close-up. You get the picture.
Fuck it I love you Lana Del Rey Ceremony Presaging The End Normani Motivation Hatchie Her Own Heart Uffie Drugs Freddie Gibbs & Madlib Fake Names Sonic Youth Becuz Eris Drew Trans Love Vibration (Eris Goes to Church) Tom of England Be Me Charli XCX I Don’t Wanna Know Bat for Lashes The Hunger Caterina Barbieri Fantas Stephen Malkmus Come Get Me DJ Python Tímbrame Rosa Pistola Papi Chulo
It’s one of many revealing asides in Leah Mandel’s profile. There’s something appealing about the idea that, even faced with the gunmetal grey of reality, you can find your best light. If you squint hard and are so inclined, there’s a streak of this kind of self-actualisation – a radical kind of mythmaking – present throughout this issue, from Biig Piig’s newfound artistic clarity and hard-won selfsufficiency, to Jenny Hval’s auteur vision mustered from her own dressing-up box of concepts and references. Freddie Gibbs, storyteller par excellence, knows a thing about penning his own legend, while the enigmatic Madlib prefers to hang back a little; Quasimoto in the shadow of the Hollywood sign.
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But it’s that image of Olsen that I keep returning to. Alfred Hitchcock – who had a better way with intros than me – once said that drama was life with the dull bits cut out. I think in today’s era of ambient chaos, we could say life is drama, with the dull bits a blessed relief. If this is the case, I hope this issue furnishes you with some inspiration, even if it’s just to stick on your finest clothes, apply some makeup and veer irrevocably, delightfully off-script.
Angel Olsen shot exclusively for Crack Magazine by Davey Adesida in New York, August, 2019
EDITORIAL
Louise Brailey, Editor
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Maurice Fulton The Cause 7 September
Recommended
Objekt x Ezra Miller Islington Assembly Hall 12 September
O ur g ui d e to wh at's goi n g on i n y ou r c i ty
Oh Sees Troxy 6 September Le Guess Who? Jenny Hval, The Bug, Moon Duo Various venues, Utrecht 7-10 November
No Bounds Courtesy, Mark Fell, The Black Madonna Various venues, Sheffield 11-13 October 25 Years of Metalheadz Goldie, DJ Storm b2b Flight, David Rodigan Printworks 5 October Metalheadz mark 25 years in the game the only way they know how: a massive rave in a massive club with a massive line-up. Former Bond villain Goldie tops the bill – obviously – but the mix of absolute legends (David Rodigan, DJ Zinc, Fabio & Grooverider) and fresh, standout talent (Om Unit, My Nu Leng) proves that this will be the show for anyone with even a passing interest in all things bassweight and/or 170 BPM+. Oh my dayzzz!
No Bounds aren’t messing around. Their 2019 line-up could be one of the most formidable on offer this autumnal festival season, with a programme that spotlights a spread of DJs at the very top of their game.There’s a wealth of giddy intensity from Courtesy, Zed Bias, dBridge, The Black Madonna, LSDXOXO and rRoxymore b2b Violet, alongside avant-garde leanings from Mark Fell, Nkisi and Lanark Artefax. Our tip: CEM and SPFDJ, who play blinding techno at Berlin’s Herrensauna nights. Bangers galore.
Doe The Lexington 7 September
Once again, Le Guess Who?’s concept – handing over to select musicians to each curate a day – allows them to escape the festival booking hivemind. This year it’s the turn of Jenny Hval, The Bug, Malian actress and Grammy-nominated musician Fatoumata Diawara, experimental composer Patrick Higgins and Sacred Bones-affiliated psychedelic outfit Moon Duo. What's more, each act will put in a stint performing at the event too. Dutch fashion radical Iris van Herpen, accompanied by her partner, sound designer Salvador Breed, will also expand the festival’s reach, bringing even more novel and intriguing combinations into its fold.
Richard Devine E1 London 6 September
Tyler, the Creator O2 Academy Brixton 16+17 September
Jensen Interceptor & DEBONAIR Patterns, Brighton 14 September
Lust for Youth Dingwalls 9 September
Metronomy Rough Trade East 13 September
Named after a boxy classic car, Jensen Interceptor doesn’t have the typically angular, all-caps techno moniker you’d associate with someone whose sound is described as ‘thrilling’, ‘electrifying’ and ‘menacing’. But the dude can thrash it out with the best of them. His sets are a wild surge of whiplash electro, and he’s joined by NTS favourite DEBONAIR for this night at Patterns, which sits snug in their autumn calendar. Take the joy ride.
Shabaka Hutchings EartH 21 September Semibreve Avalon Emerson, Kode9, Suzanne Ciani Various venues, Braga 25–27 October
Beautiful Swimmers Phonox 13 September
EVENTS
Semibreve is deftly timed, landing in the middle of alternative festival season – that patch of autumn where you’ve firmly come down from summer’s sticky adrenaline and you’re open for some inspiration before the mulled-everything festive rush kicks in. Semibreve, a lowkey Portuguese staple, serves this sweet spot, hosting a modest cluster of adventurous electronic music. Catch heady dancefloor favourites Avalon Emerson, Kode9 and Rian Treanor alongside avant-garde synth-wielders Félicia Atkinson, Alessandro Cortini and Suzanne Ciani. And who better to round things off than one of electronic music’s true pioneers, Morton Subotnick.
Aphex Twin Printworks 14 September
027 Jeffrey Lewis Oslo 16 September
Coucou Chloe Electrowerkz 18 September
Laurel Halo Secret location, London 21 September
Stephen Malkmus Moth Club 18 September Earlier this year, Pavement announced a reunion show at Primavera Sound 2020. What happened next was a seismic ripple of people reaching into the dark corners of their wardrobes for their plaid flannel shirts (ourselves included). But when frontman Stephen Malkmus isn’t strumming his guitar and singing moody, deadpan indie tunes, he’s experimenting with electronic music as part of his eponymous solo project. This year’s Groove Denied saw Malkmus shapeshift once more, bringing his angular synth cuts to the forefront. Come and get weird.
Julia Holter Round Chapel 18 September
Freerotation Presents Steevio & Suzybee, Duckett, Leif Pickle Factory 27 September
Ty Segall Oval Space 11+12+13 October The patron saint of shredding heads down to Oval Space with his Freedom Band in tow for three nights of psychedelic riffery. Night one will focus on Segall’s 2010 classic album Melted, while the following evening sees them perform Manipulator – undisputed high points in his expansive (and ever expanding) discography. Both nights will also feature a playthrough of his latest record First Taste, which, having only been released last month, will be the first chance for pretty much everybody to hear it belted out IRL. Horns up for Segall!
One of the UK’s most beloved small festivals makes its annual return to one of the UK’s most beloved small clubs. Topping the bill is Steevio & Suzybee, the couple responsible for bringing Freerotation into being back in the early 2000s. Their yearly sets at the festival are the stuff of legend – the writhing polyrhythms emitted from Steevio’s wall of modular gear teamed with Suzybee’s amorphous, trippy visuals makes for an immersive, wormholing experience that’s hard to explain and harder to forget. They’re joined by Freero residents Duckett, Sam Watson, Tom Ellis and Leif, whose recent album for Whities gave us the real body tingles. Come join the family.
Superstition Village Underground 7-20 September
Steve Gunn Omeara 17 September
Four Tet Curates WHP Four Tet b2b Skrillex, Peggy Gou, Hessle Audio Mayfield Depot 26 October
Techno can take a backseat in the summer party schedule, so if you’re craving some doof this September, Village Underground’s Superstition programme has you covered. The series features the likes of DJ Nobu, Anthony Child (aka Surgeon), Samuel Kerridge and Mind Against, who’ll flit between VU and their sister venue EartH for a month of dank sounds. Buckle up.
Wysing Polyphonic Beatrice Dillon, Ziúr, Mun Sing Wysing Arts Centre 7 September Springing up in middle-of-nowhere south Cambridgeshire in 1989, Wysing Arts Centre has since become a beacon for experimental art practice, with a particular emphasis on the fringes of electronic music. This year’s annual festival is curated by Somerset House Studios, who’ve selected a broad spectrum of boundary-pushing acts to play across the day. Beatrice Dillon, a former resident of Wysing Arts Centre and current resident of Somerset House Studios, is something of a no-brainer to perform here, while the fullon assault of Mun Sing and ZULI, the deep, melting sonics of Flora Yin-Wong and the who-knows-what of Jacob Samuel provide the broad range of sound and experience we’ve come to expect from the meeting of these two powerhouses of UK artistic patronage.
Cristeene and Fever Ray Barbican Centre 22 September
Thurston Moore Rough Trade East 20 September
EVENTS
It feels a bit odd trying to recommend this monstrous all dayer – a quick glance at the depth of talent on display should be more than enough to have you slamming that ‘buy tickets’ button quicker than Boris can sap your will to live. No time to dwell on the Sisyphean nature of modern politics on this fine day though, what with Four Tet having another bash at a b2b with Skrillex, the wild bassline flavours of DJ Q, Flava D and DJ Champion or the 160 BPM madness of Sherelle all on display. You won’t find a more action-packed 12 hours this year.
SASAMI Moth Club 24 September
028
EKKO FESTIVAL FOR ELECTRONIC & EXPERIMENTAL SOUNDS
23 — 26 OCT 2019 BERGEN, NORWAY
Dj Nobu (JP) Deathprod (NO) Dj Marcelle (NL) William Basinski “On Time Out Of Time” (US) Giant Swan (UK) Ellen Arkbro “Organ & Electronics” (SE) Mim Suleiman (TZ) Beta Librae (US) Carla Dal Forno (AU) Lindstrøm “On A Clear Day I Can See You Forever” (NO) Sugai Ken (JP) Bergen Techno City Crew (Commision Work - NO) Dj Flugvél Og Geimskip (IS) Astrid Sonne (DK) Ceephax Acid Crew (UK) Buttechno (RU) Céline Gillain (BE) Karima F (NO) El Syntax To! (NO) O.M. Theorem (NO) The Secret Sound (NO) Admir Korjenic & Joakim Blattman (NO) Ekko Djs (NO)
EVENTS
The festival is funded by The Norwegian Arts Council, The Nordic Culture Fond – Puls, The City of Bergen and Vestland County.
WWW.EKKO.NO
There’s an air of mystery surrounding every aspect of Oli XL. Last September, during a live performance, the Swedish producer placed a nineyear-old lookalike centre stage to tinker with a set of prop controllers as he hid out of sight, triggering a series of sonic arrangements backstage. It’s only very recently that we’ve come to learn more about the self-proclaimed recluse behind the sound design-y pop and club cuts that have landed on PAN, Posh Isolation and his now-defunct W-I label. Since laying the W-I imprint to rest, Oli XL has been crafting a new outlet that’s emerged as a sublabel of Stockholm-based operation YEAR0001. “It’s Bloom. It’s not a label, and it’s not a creative platform. Bloom is Bloom,” he insists.
XL points past the frequently stated Basement Jaxx influence, citing jazz fusion and more notably the work of Herbie Hancock as some of the record’s main stylistic influences. “I don't know if anyone else hears that,” he admits. “Listen closely, and you may just be able to identify the chopped up drumming phrases of a famous jazz percussionist who has a very distinct thrumming style.” Since the release of his debut album, Oli XL has been focusing solely on Bloom’s growth: “I want to release work that explores the intersection of music and art, alongside projects that
have nothing to do with sound.” And while he plans to take a break from performing live, Oli XL can’t help but tease some ideas for a new show that have transpired since his involvement in Varg’s Nordic Flora programme at Berlin Atonal in 2017. “I think it would be fun to evolve my previous live concepts even further. Maybe add some professional-level group dance choreography. I like to stay in the back and control the music and let actual performers be in charge of the entertainment aspects of the show.”
Words: Claire Mouchemore
Rogue Intruder, Soul Enhancer is out now via Bloom
Rogue Intruder, Soul Enhancer is Bloom’s first release, and above all, Oli XL’s debut album. Released in July, the 11-track record is a collection of nonsensical vocal samples that bend, creak and snap amid momentous melodies. “The entire album is 100 percent samples. I've been really into having the melodies feel as though they accidentally form via seemingly unrelated sounds,” he exclaims. Each track embraces a new sonic texture, darting between experimental interludes, bass-heavy rhythms and orchestrated jazz fusion phrases. Oli XL avoids intellectualising his discography, though it’s evident that his sound has evolved since his debut EP 005 / Wish We Could Zone. “I always knew exactly how I wanted my music to sound. It just took me some time to figure out how to get there. With this release, I finally arrived,” he expresses, reflecting on his ever-changing sonic footprint. After spending years trying to imitate Actress’ productions, Oli XL found deeper connections with the output of M.E.S.H. and Flying Lotus, entranced by their approach to textural rhythms. While his debut album has been likened to UK garage and hardcore, Oli
Sounds Like: Next gen, high-concept club music Soundtrack For: Late night drifting through uncanny valley File Next To: M.E.S.H., Laurel Halo Our Favourite Song: Orchid Itch Where to Find Him: @Oli_XL
MUSIC
“I want to make the kind of music where you have no idea how it was made, what it was made with, and if it's even electronic. I hate synths. You know exactly what you’re getting. With samples, there will always be something extra lying beneath the surface.”
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Oli XL
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Angel Olsen
Words: Leah Mandel Photography: Davey Adesida Styling: Shayna Arnold Makeup: Mariko Hirano Hair: Dana Boyer Location: Milk Studios, New York
MUSIC
Life, death, love and dressing up. The singersongwriter is embracing high drama in the wake of her fourth album All Mirrors
On a block in the neighbourhood of St Louis, Missouri’s Richmond Heights, there’s a red brick house Angel Olsen walks by every time she returns to her hometown. This is the house Old Lady Chris lived in with her many cats. Once a week, every week, when she was growing up, Olsen’s mom, a good Christian woman, would go to the grocery store and pick up two bags of ice, a six-pack of Coors beer, cat food, and deli meats. She’d leave the groceries on Old Lady Chris’s front porch, and pick up the cheque left for her, which Olsen remembers always smelled “like cat piss”. Olsen never once saw this woman in the flesh, and Old Lady Chris remains a mystery, long after her death and the gutting of her house. “Who was Old Lady Chris?” Olsen muses, with a pressing look. “And why did she need those exact items every week?” It’s an early August evening in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. A brief thunderstorm had burst not 30 minutes before Olsen and I meet, leaving the chairs in the backyard of this bar pretty wet. Olsen, with her hair falling loose from a big, bouffant-y bun done up for a video interview recorded earlier that day, took the bottom of her striped linen dress and wiped off a seat, so my skirt wouldn’t get too damp while we discussed death, love and her striking fourth studio album, All Mirrors.
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By this time, Olsen’s been in New York for almost a week, her days stacked with interviews like this one. But
when she’s home in Asheville, North Carolina, where she moved about six years ago, mostly Olsen hangs out with her cat, Violet, and goes to watch her best friend DJ. Sometimes she goes on hikes, or to dinner with friends. And now that she’s just bought a house, she has a lot on her to-do list (actually, she says she has multiple, categorised to-do lists). “I gotta like, buy air filters,” she tells me. “I'm like, calling the lady who owned the house before me, ‘What air filters did you use, biatch? Those are expensive! Who do I call? You mean I gotta call somebody to have him in my house to fix it? And then hopefully it goes well? This is a lot!’” Angel Olsen is funny and acerbic and she’s dramatic in this casual way. It’s like, she doesn’t get why everyone won’t just let her have her drama. She tells me she does all this press because she wants to talk about her music, but also because she loves to dress up. “Don't you just wanna wake up and dress up sometimes?” she asks. “When I run out of clothes or laundry, sometimes I wear a lot of makeup and put on my nicest dress, 'cause it's the only one that's clean. And everyone's like, ‘Why do you look so good today?’ Because I didn't do my laundry! Why can't I just have that day, or that kind of experience in my life… performance – the way I play music? She ends most of her thoughts with, “You know what I mean?” Like she wants to be understood. Sipping soda water and lemon, Olsen tells me she likes fashion that’s
vampiric, romantic, big. Like the video for All Mirrors’ titular lead single, in which Olsen first wears an ethereal white dress, before she’s transformed by black patent-clad hands and hooded figures into a version of herself in a black lace gown, who faces another version of herself in black velvet and an illustrious, spiky crown. (“I wore a crown in my video, I don't think I'm a queen,” she says later. “But I do have to rule my own life. I have to rule my own thoughts, and that's important to me to know that I can.”) Olsen says she and director Ashley Connor created a minimalist, surrealist “mindspace” for All Mirrors, a sweeping, building track in which Olsen sings about being buried alive in someone’s smile. “At least at times it knew me,” she repeats until the strings ebb. It recalls the films of Man Ray and Luis Buñuel; Olsen stuck in a dream
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feel so smart, but when it comes to love, I have such an imagination�
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that's why I feel like I am a true goth. I'm just always thinking about time, and then I start thinking about death”
She takes a pause from deconstructing the video and asks if I’ve ever seen Sunset Boulevard. And even though my answer is yes, Olsen recounts the plot of the 1950 Billy Wilder film – about an ageing silent film actress stuck in the past, obsessed with her former celebrity, unable to move on – with her characteristic, rhythmic run-on sentences. “She's lost everyone,” Olsen says, “because she spent all this time being the perfect self, to herself.” All Mirrors is grander in sound than anything Olsen has done before. She’s leaned into the drama, the synths and strings and high production. She says she wanted to be “sonically playful,” and thus there are rumbling, emotive tracks like Impasse, and the seven-minute opus of an opener, Lark; straight-up jams, like What It Is, which is successfully both synthy and orchestral and contains the standout line, “You just wanted to forget that your heart was full of shit.” And Endgame, which could be a ballad from a tear-jerking 70s romance soundtrack, like Barbra Streisand’s The Way We Were – “Made a life, made a scene, made up everything/ Life carries on just like a song I sing but I don't know/ I walk away from all the noise/ and I’m on my own.”
On her last album cycle, Olsen was questioned endlessly about the synth pop of Intern, the tinsel wig she wore in videos (she tells me interviewers would ask if she was “afraid to be herself”), about being a woman. She’s even been accused of relinquishing her creative control, after the release of her recent collaboration with Mark Ronson, True Blue, which is about fucking around and falling in love. “If you know me personally,” she says, “You would know that I'm the last person that's a pushover. I am so in control. Maybe my writing's changing, but I don't feel like I've lost myself to the industry.” Olsen, unlike Norma Desmond, knows exactly who she is. And she is not afraid of change. This is clear, not only by her demeanor and her artistic choices but because she says it to me multiple times, in various ways. It’s because she knows that time is wild. That a person changes not only over a lifetime but every single day. “Yes, I know myself, but I also know that the nature of the self, and the nature of the world, and what time does really changes how you view the things you think you know.” For example, she says, when she was in her 20s she found the idea of dying alone with cats upsetting. Now that she’s 32, her tune’s changed. It wouldn’t be so bad, after all, to be an Old Lady Chris type. “I've been with
wonderful partners,” she says. “But it didn't work out. And then I'd go out on dates and try to meet people, and I'm very much like, ‘I'd rather be at home with my cat right now!’ And that's not sad to me. I'm actually not sad to lose you, because I get all this,” she says, gesturing boldly toward herself. “Whereas before, I was always like,” – Olsen puts on one of her voices; this one is droopy, comically sad – “‘I'll never find the right partner.’” The right partner, she realises, would be like a jade plant, or a cactus, the kind of flora she has at her house in Asheville because it will be fine while she’s on tour. “Something that can grow on its own without being nourished for many weeks. I'm looking for that in a partner, if you know anyone.” She also says if you ever notice one of your relationships sapping energy, you should “fire” them from your life. “Sometimes people are in the way. They're vacuums, in fact. They take from you and they never give back, they don't listen, they don't ask questions, they don't give anything.” Olsen is emphatic on the topic of love. In the music of All Mirrors, and in our conversation. She’s learned so much from others in relationships, and so much about herself – like that she has to be patient, not go headlong into situations expecting it to be perfect. Love takes time, and often you see
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she can’t escape, she explains, and the dream is a like an unsolvable puzzle: “Which part of myself is the truest?”
036 you're an idiot and didn't notice, it's my fault you're an idiot and I didn't notice.” She laughs. “I don't know why I didn't notice that!" And then she really laughs.
what you want to see in another person, not what’s truly there. “I feel so smart, but when it comes to love, I have such an imagination!” she says. “‘You don't need to worry, I'll imagine that you're someone else, and we'll get through this for another few years.’ Just completely on the magic carpet of my imagination about you, and us. That's not healthy!” She’s searching through her bag as she says this, looking for a lighter for a yellow American Spirit. “I have a bra in here, I have some panties. I got two bras! I got some almonds, I have some shoes, some cheap concealer, a little bag from Istanbul.”
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Here, I scramble through my notes to find what lyric she’s reminded me of, and she teases me: “Is it a goth lyric?” (It wasn’t a lyric, actually, it was something she’d written about All Mirrors: “We are all mirrors to and for each other… I just want to know that what I’m seeing is what I’m seeing and not what I’m looking for.”) And then starts to sing a line from My Woman’s Heart Shaped Face, the one that goes, “Was it me you were thinking of?/ All the time when you thought of me.” A lot of the lines in her music that sound directed at someone else, she says, are really about herself. “It's not your fault
“Wow, time has revealed how little we know us/ I’ve been too busy, I should’ve noticed,” she croons on Spring, a charming, echoey tune from All Mirrors that wishes for true love, with a music box twinkle. Olsen thinks a lot about time. About evolving through it, how it leads to death. “I've always been kinda goth and now I'm just fully embracing it.” She laughs another one of her big laughs. “I've always been someone who obsesses over life and death and darkness and brightness. And the way I see things and if they're real. I was thinking, if the world ends today, and the last thing I do is this photoshoot, just like watching a bunch of people run around – ‘Hold the rose, don't hold the rose, can you do a little bit of this?’ – and then all of a sudden the world is ending. The last thing I watched is The Princess Diaries, and that's the last thing my brain processed before I died on this plane. Maybe that's why I feel like I am a true goth. I'm just always thinking about time, and then I start thinking about death.” In thinking a lot about Angel Olsen I have wound up thinking a lot about myself. It’s in the music, the urgent, stretchy quality of her voice (a voice Jenn Pelly once called “anarchic”); the way she sings “I just want to see some beauty, try and understand,” with a pained, almost operatic tone, on the
breathtaking All Mirrors finale Chance. And then how she switches her delivery, and sings, Broadway-esque, “I’m walking through the scenes/ I’m saying all the lines.” Getting lost in the piercing delicacy of Tonight, I’m reminded to “like the thoughts that I think,” and the “life that I lead.” And Summer – a stunning, Westernsounding track that feels windy and drenched, like the storm earlier that day – well, it makes me want to fire everyone from my life who doesn’t enrich it. Olsen and I don’t really talk all that much about her music in the hour we have. Mostly we talk about life. Her cat, her plants, her take on love. Getting older and closer to death. How buying a house is like taking on a second job; about the upkeep required for her appliances, her yard, health, relationships. “This is the songs. You know?” she says. She’s right. “Maybe my life is really fuckin' boring. But, Old Lady Chris is a real story! I'm still wondering about her! I walk past that house every day I visit. I wonder what they do on the inside. I wanna know if it still smells like that. Or if somebody lives there now and kept something of hers. Or what she named her cats, what her story was. I don't think it's sad. I think the only thing that's sad about living alone is that, eventually, sometimes these things happen and sometimes it's not your foot or your ears, it's your brain that's deteriorating. I imagine her eating cat food on accident, thinking it's real food. But then, I don't feel bad for her – if she likes it, she likes it!” All Mirrors is released on 4 October via Jagjaguwar
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He’s worked with Frank Ocean, attracted ardent fans and amassed a genre-defying body of work. Still, (Sandy) Alex G hasn’t got used to talking about his music
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Words: Lauren O’Neill Photography: Gray Lee Brame
Interviewing Alex Giannascoli is difficult. That’s nothing to do with the 26-year-old Philadelphia native’s demeanour – he’s easy-going and friendly when we meet on a humid day in London’s Granary Square – but more because the sprawling, complicated music Giannascoli makes under his alias (Sandy) Alex G is very hard to assign words to – especially for him. His new record House of Sugar might just present the biggest challenge yet.
evolved from self-released, emoadjacent bedroom ruminations to the multifaceted soundscapes of 2017’s Rocket with a slow ease, a rumbling of something more – more uneasy, more complex – present in even his earliest work. The first lyric you hear on his 2010 album Race, “I’m here to kill my maker,” now feels like a premonition about his entire career, which has bloomed into something genre-defiant and unique. Though he has spread his wings considerably over the past decade, Giannascoli is still best known within emo, and the response to his work still carries the precise, music-nerd enthusiasm characteristic of the genre. His fans know every song in his catalogue, and seize on bootleg recordings of new tracks with the enthusiasm of pole vaulters. He inspires this sort of devotion because he feels both familiar and far away; he is unassuming enough to seem like a guy you’d drink a beer with, and his lyrics can be disarming in their candour (new track Hope describes the loss of a friend to fentanyl, for example). But he is also withdrawn enough that when he does reappear, there’s a stir over what he might do next.
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Today Giannascoli is chill, baseballcapped and starfishing in his chair, his comically omnipresent guitar cased up and strewn at his side. He’s on a European press tour in service of House of Sugar – today London, then Paris, Berlin, Madrid – and tonight he’ll play a sold-out show which will basically devolve into a requests set, a characteristically rabid crowd of fans yelling the titles of deep cuts, many of which he can reel off without a second thought. Over the past decade, Giannascoli has created prolifically. His work has
The zealousness of his supporters is one reason why Giannascoli finds his music difficult to discuss, at least publicly. For the most part, he thinks that his music should be what the listener makes of it. “That’s what makes me so hesitant in interviews,” he acknowledges, squirming slightly, presumably because he’s speaking to me, an interviewer. “To be talking about [the music] in a way that’s going to be digested by people before they hear the album, or even after they hear the album? That’s something that makes me – I hate saying ‘nervous’ – because the point is the thing. And everything I say about it is not the point.” He wants everyone to hear his music
without any interference, including his own. The only problem is: “I accidentally fuck that up all the time by talking about it. The way the music press works is that one small nugget of information becomes the mantra for the whole work,” he says. This type of apparently unwelcome assessment from the media is something that Giannascoli has attracted much more since 2016. That year, he was named as a collaborator on Frank Ocean’s desperately awaited records Endless and Blonde, amongst musicians like Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Kanye West. His profile was inevitably raised, and his press obligations grew. “I understand it, because I’m trying to make money doing this. So I gotta advertise. And that’s what you gotta do to advertise,” he says. But as a kindred spirit with the musically experimental but press-avoidant Ocean, it can’t be easy. After all, Giannascoli has always made music within tight-knit scenes and communities, and struggles to discuss his work publicly in a way he’s happy for his fans to hear. He searches long and slow for the right words now, contorting his face like he’s trying to work out how to split an especially annoying restaurant bill. Eventually, he just shrugs, his shoulders rising and falling in his button-down. “I’m still trying to figure out how to navigate it.” Giannascoli tells me about a book he enjoyed during his most recent period between albums, a collection of short stories called Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo. “As an author she uses really opaque symbols. She was a painter first, so I just liked how colourful her stories were without going out of her way.” He read this book how he reads a lot of things, he says. “It’s face value. It’s just like, ‘That was a really cool image.’ Next story.” The idea of imagery comes up a lot throughout our conversation, and seems to inform Giannascoli’s work to no end. “The song is just like, me flicking paint at a canvas,” is how he describes his writing process. He says that Walk Away, the first song on House of Sugar, is where “I show you all the colours that I use.” Like visual art, (Sandy) Alex G’s music often communicates all it needs to non-verbally. Like well-crafted short
stories, his songs coalesce around one overriding idea or mood. In the same way as both of these art forms, Giannascoli’s music lends itself best to personal reflection, rather than outward over-articulation. One of the stories in Thus Were the Faces is called The House Made of Sugar. It opens, right enough, with bold images – “The moon seen through two panes of glass, the initials of her name carved by chance on the trunk of a cedar” – which fold out into a disquieting narrative about identity and fate. In the way that the story suggests that life’s sinister side is always lurking close by, it feels not unlike Giannascoli’s own creations – in particular, how they map an underlying sense of unease onto genres we thought we knew. Indeed, on House of Sugar he runs the gauntlet of genre more masterfully than ever – this time around, he felt “able to pinpoint how to do that a little better.” One track, Near, sounds like Boys of Summer if it played on a ghost train; In My Arms is Weezer doing a Bonnie Raitt cover. The final track Sugar House is a wide-open Springsteener, all horns and resignation. He accurately describes his approach to genre as “like a wink.” For Giannascoli, the genre is part of the narrative. And the mood is part of the narrative, and the big, bold brushstrokes of synth and guitar and percussion too, are part of the narrative. It’s as important, if not more so, than words. He really does use instruments like an artist uses watercolours, adding a little red here and some yellow there, until he achieves something that catches the light the way he likes it. You understand it best just by feeling it – in fact, talking about it is beside the point. He’d say so himself. House of Sugar is released on 13 September via Domino
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“THE SONG IS JUST LIKE, ME FLICKING PAINT AT A CANVAS”
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Produced exclusively for Crack Magazine by Sepus Noordmans - @sepusnoordmans
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A Classic
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Words: David Kane Photography: Michelle Helena Janssen Location: Sager + Wilde, London
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Pairing
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We invited Freddie Gibbs and Madlib to a well-stocked wine bar to discuss their new album, deconstruct their unique partnership and, of course, sample the wares
046 Freddie Gibbs
A Mexican guy tried to cut my eye out once...” Freddie Gibbs is holding court in a slick wine bar on Hackney Road in east London. He is cracking jokes and telling war stories to a small crowd, including Madlib, Eothen ‘Egon’ Alapatt (Madlib’s manager and Now-Again Records boss), the photographer, crew, a sommelier, myself and a local drunk who is swiftly shown the door by Gibbs’ tour manager. The venue is chosen as the duo, rapper Gibbs and cult producer Madlib, have a shared love of wine. Madlib's tastes reflect his sampling choices: "I look for something a bit funky, something people might not really like. Rare like." While Gibbs is "a little bit opposite. I like it sweet. I like that Riesling."
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Wine aside, we’re here to talk about Bandana, an album released earlier this summer by the pair occasionally known as MadGibbs. Five years in the making, it is the follow up to Piñata – a record that feels like it has deepened over time, like a good wine, and one
that helped establish Gibbs in wider rap circles. Bandana finds Madlib crossing over further into Gibbs’ world, using spliced beats to devastating effect, as in tracks like Half Manne, Half Cocaine. Despite the big name guests – Black Thought, Killer Mike, Pusha T – Gibbs is the undoubted star of the show, rapping as if his life depends on it. On the vinyl edition of the album there is a sticker stating: ‘Movie – Western/ Adventure’. While the artwork features Quasimoto (Madlib’s cartoon alias) sat upon a zebra, both smoking on a joint, peering out from behind the Hollywood sign at a city in flames. Freddie Gibbs and Madlib as frontiersmen, looking for adventure, money, drugs, power and catharsis. Is this record about the pursuit of a dystopian American Dream? Gibbs is unequivocal: “This album is a manifesto. I wrote the majority of it when I was incarcerated. I thought I was gonna go away for ten years.” “We didn’t even think we were gonna have this album out,” Madlib adds.
“I wrote from memory [while in jail]. I’ve got a good memory when it comes to Madlib beats. They stick to your ears. I look at this shit like sport. He’s like a good coach, making me sharper.” As a huge sports fan and natural competitor, Gibbs compares himself to the Brooklyn Nets forward, Kevin Durant. “‘I score when I want to. I have my way with the track. I embody that when I get in the booth. I have my way with a rapper. I’m waiting on a rapper to diss me, ‘cause I want to get in a rap battle.” Where does he see himself in the 2019 rap canon? “Kendrick and J. Cole hold the measuring stick. But right now, I’m the best rapper. I’m also the most slept on. Technically nobody can rap as good as I rap.”
It’s a typically confident response. Yet in terms of Gibbs’ ability as a raconteur, it’s probably an accurate one. Bandana is a comprehensive body of work. The album presents a mirror to society, reflecting our hopes, dreams and flaws. Gibbs’ stories, told through his gruff cadence and double time raps, veer between cynicism and empathy, often in the same track. This sense of conflict is present throughout the album, and highlighted in songs like Crime Pays – “Diamonds in my chain/ Yeah I slang/ But I’m still a slave” — as he laments, and begrudgingly accepts, being part of a broken system over Madlib’s sample of Walt Barr’s Free Spirit, a saccharine soft rock track.
Gibbs appreciates the influence Madlib has had on him musically, and beyond. “He’s challenged me as an MC, and made me a better rapper. He’s widened my palette.” Right on cue, the sommelier pours out three glasses of wine from a fresh bottle of Chardonnay ‘Guille Bouton’. When the ‘MadGibbs’ collaboration was first announced back in 2011, eyebrows were raised. They seemed like an incongruous pairing. Lyrically, Gibbs is miles away from the style of Madlib’s previous collaborators, like the abstract wordplay of DOOM, and further still from Talib Kweli’s conscious rap. If anything, Bandana is
conceptually closer to the legendary Jaylib project, Champion Sound, that Madlib produced with J Dilla. There are strip clubs, parties and consumption but somehow – depressingly or otherwise – Bandana is further steeped in reality.
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Endorsements from a producer as revered as Madlib speaks volumes, and Gibbs remains the only MC with whom he’s released a second album. Madlib elaborates: “I listen to this n****a so much. He’s made me make music differently. My beats can speed up and slow down and he’s one of the only [MCs] that can keep up. That’s why he’s one of the best.”
Madlib emerged in the early 90s, producing records for Tha Alkaholiks and his own group Lootpack, alongside Wildchild and DJ Gomes. It’s music that “makes me cringe now” according to the man himself, but back then it was good enough to catch the ear of Peanut Butter Wolf. Wolf released the first Lootpack album on his nascent label, Stones Throw Records, in 1999. There was a triumvirate of seminal Madlib records in the early part of the noughties – The Unseen (via Quasimoto, his sped-up rap alias), Champion Sound, and the storied Madvillainy alongside MF DOOM. By this point Stones Throw had developed a cult following, and in Madlib they had their totemic leader. The beat conductor has been notoriously
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“Kendrick and J. Cole hold the measuring stick. But right now, I’m the best rapper. I’m also the most slept on. Technically nobody can rap as good as I rap”
048 Freddie Gibbs
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then I’m not Freddie Gibbs no more. I’m not into rap crowds, or cliques, none of that shit. Fuck a good look, I’m all about making good music.”
Freddie Gibbs’ career has been less straightforward. Born in Gary, Indiana, he spent much of his teenage years and 20s selling crack cocaine. His major label debut was cancelled after a change of senior management, and he was shot at after a record store performance in Brooklyn in 2014. In 2016, he was briefly jailed in France, accused and soon acquitted of all sexual abuse charges relating to a case in Austria.
Freddie seems to be turning his life around. Leveraging his profile to help fundraising efforts for high school supplies in his hometown. Bandana, like much of his recent output, does possess tender moments of introspection like the soulful Practice. He is charismatic company and open-minded. After a transatlantic misunderstanding when I refer to a local weed dealer as being ‘a bit of a freak’, he retorts with “you should love who you love, it’s 2019.”
Gibbs explains: “I ain’t that far removed from the streets. I couldn’t get a record deal for years. It may seem like I move like a major artist, but I’m just really getting out of the drug game.” “If shit was bumpy it’s ‘cause I was halfway in the streets and halfway in the music. It’s been a difficult balance; a lot of these rappers didn’t have to deal with what I had to deal with. From 10-6 I’d be in the crack house. When Piñata came out I was still selling dope, bro.” Madlib takes a deep gulp of his glass of Chardonnay, before adding: “That’s why it was supposed to be called Cocaine Piñata.” “It is what it is,” Gibbs sighs. “I’m not gonna bite my tongue, or kiss nobody’s ass, so I feel I get left out of certain conversations in rap circles.” “That’s why I fuck with him,” Madlib says with a brotherly smile. “Hip-hop fans like him, and street people like him. Not too many people can do that.”
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press-shy throughout his career, only perpetuating the myth that surrounds him. Madlib has often let his music do the talking.
While Madlib may look like the coolest man on the planet, he comes across humble and approachable. In Freddie Gibbs, Madlib has found an unlikely foil; a hungry, uncompromising and authentic rapper, and his most potent collaboration since Madvillain. In their solo guises, Gibbs is “about to start working on an album with Alchemist.” Madlib mentions he would love to write film scores: “Martin Scorsese needs to call this n***a right now!” Gibbs excitedly responds. But right now, it’s all about MadGibbs. With a third album in the works, reportedly called Montana, the future is bright for the duo. Madlib explains they have a surprise release in store for fans. “We got champagne coming out, Bandana Champagne. It’s good shit. We’re testing it at the moment.” Freddie hastens to add: “Fuck an album, we sell liquors. From selling dope, a couple albums, to selling wine! If that isn’t a success story, I don’t know what is.” Bandana is out now via RCA Records
“I look at this shit like sport. Madlib’s like a good coach, making me sharper”
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“But I don’t give a fuck about being politically correct. If I start conforming
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After a nomadic upbringing in Ireland and Spain, Biig Piig found her home, and her sound, in south London
Words: Gemma Samways Photography: Oscar Eckel
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Jess Smyth is great at introductions. Affable and disarmingly laid-back, she often finds the process of forging new connections more rewarding than the connection itself. “I love going for a night out, meeting a group of people, and then you walk away and never see them again,” the 21-year-old singer beams between sips of wine on a sunny restaurant terrace. “Kind of like having a day in their life? It's my favourite thing.” Surely time is running out for Smyth to enjoy anonymity. In the past two years she’s amassed a fervent following for her work as Biig Piig, which favours smoky, soporific soul and jazz-tinged hip-hop, and features lyrics that shift fluently between English and Spanish. And as much as Vice City and Perdida established Smyth as a standalone voice, these early singles only confirmed her status as a natural collaborator too, featuring production from YSK Jamie and Puma Blue respectively.
She remains a key player in south London’s thriving, youthful scene; she’s well respected by her peers, despite preferring the company of strangers. But then Smyth’s attraction to fleeting friendships isn’t just some anthropological fascination – it’s a survival technique she picked up during her nomadic upbringing. The oldest of four, she was born in Cork but spent her formative years in Spain, where her family relocated on advice that a warmer climate might improve her brother Paddy’s severe asthma. Her parents got by running
bars and restaurants in Marbella and the Costa del Sol, before being forced to move back to Ireland around the time of the financial crash, when the local council revoked their property without warning. Smyth is impressively relaxed about the whole experience today, be it Spanish bureaucrats forcing her family into bankruptcy or the wrench of starting all over again in Ireland while on the cusp of adolescence. Then there were the subsequent moves to Waterford and eventually west London, where her father still runs a pub today.
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Some things do stick though, like her relationships with Lava La Rue and Mac Wetha, fellow members of multidisciplinary arts collective NiNE8. They met in a music tech class at Richmond College, but fell out of touch when Smyth quit aged 17 to move in with her then-boyfriend (a period she now refers to as “a rough patch”). When the relationship ended, Smyth found herself back in touch with her old classmates by chance, when La Rue invited her to a party. It proved a pivotal encounter. “[La Rue and Wetha] were having a cypher in the next room,” she recalls. “I'd been in jams at open mics but I'd never seen one like that before, where you have an instrumental playing. I walked into the room, sat down and was having a great time, and then they passed me the mic. I just improvised, and they were like, ‘Woah.’ I thought, ‘This feels sick.’” The experience reignited Smyth’s creativity after having “completely fallen out of love with music” around the time of leaving college. Where it had previously been pop-punk bands or acoustic balladeers like Lewis Watson and Ben Howard that fed her imagination, she now found herself
gravitating towards hip-hop and neosoul. “I loved the way it was a lot more of a mellow vibe,” she explains. “The way that stories were told and the sounds they used... It just suddenly made sense.” From then on, Smyth dedicated the hours that she wasn’t waitressing or working in casinos to writing music with Mac Wetha, singing and rapping over the beats he’d crafted in his bedroom. “Once everything clicked it just didn't stop,” she tells me, still sounding astonished at the speed with which she found her sound. “And, looking back, without [NiNE8] being as supportive as they are, I might have followed music but it would have been a lot harder, and I would have lost a lot of myself on the way.” Currently composed of eight members spread across London, the DIY collective remains a huge source of inspiration for Smyth, bringing together a group of like-minded outsiders, all born in 1998. As she puts it, “we’re like the loose ends: we've all come from places where we never really felt like we fit in.” NiNE8 provides a vital platform for experimentation too, and it’s notable that on the group’s recent mixtape, No Smoke, Smyth is more likely to be found rapping than singing. It’s no wonder then that when she joined RCA Records in June, one of the most important prerequisites of signing was that she could continue to collaborate freely with NiNE8. Her first release for RCA is Sunny, a burst of shimmering yacht-pop that was fortuitously dropped in the middle of the UK’s recent heatwave. With its blissed-out beats and hook-heavy melody, the balmy single is a deviation
from the after-hours vibes of Smyth’s catalogue to date. She’s excited about the development, her face lighting up when she talks about it. “I haven't made any happy songs in my whole career, which is mad, so I was like, ‘Let's take a different route with it.’ Having grown up in Spain, around those little beach huts with people playing tunes, I'd love to imagine someone walking through one of those and hearing my song.” Whether Sunny is representative of Smyth’s forthcoming third EP, she won’t say. But she does let slip she hopes to have the collection out by October, that it features “higher production values” and already has a name. “It's going to be called No Place for Patience,” she smiles, pausing to draw slowly on a cigarette. “It’s like, at this point in my life, I know what I want to do and there's no more time for fucking around, do you know what I mean? Because the clock in my head has very subtly started ticking, in the sense that I’m not a kid anymore. This is the rest of my life. And it's scary but it's exciting. Because it’s my future.” Biig Piig plays at Simple Things Festival, Bristol, on 19 October
MUSIC
“[Moving around] was isolating, but it's shaped me in good ways,” she muses, sounding as easygoing as she does in her breezy bars. “I don't ever feel scared to go out on my own. I'm always out and about trying to make friends. And I'm always losing shit like my phone all the time, but I don't really have attachments to things. Even with people, I think I get attached very quickly and then detach just as quickly.”
053
“I don't ever feel scared to go out on my own. I don't really have attachments to things. Even with people, I think I get attached very quickly and then detach just as quickly”
054 Disembodied arms flash up on Jenny Hval’s phone screen. With synthetic fingers crooked in a petting motion, they’re so-called ‘assessor hands’, used to interact with touch-sensitive dogs. “I’m into that fake intimacy, this play at connection to establish trust,” she tells me, leaning across the table of a Hackney coffee shop as she scrolls through visual references for her new interdisciplinary live show. Past performances have seen the Norwegian musician, author and artist costumed as if her skin had been turned inside out, veins and intestines on display, or caped like a huge bat. Hval flicks through the iMessage conversation with her costume designer, pulling up occult imagery; etchings of women sprouting extra limbs, surrounded by blackberries the size of watermelons; the hand of God emerging from clouds to be bitten by a snake in an image archived by 16th century French writer and emblem collector Claude Paradin. It’s a gallery of the wide-ranging inspirations that feed into the aesthetic of the pop experimentalist, bringing life to her new album, The Practice of Love. On her seventh album, Hval explores the love of outsiders, how those on the fringes fight to feel secure. It’s a familiar struggle to Hval, having grown up as an out-of-place punk kid kitted out in leather and velvet in Oslo, finding solace in local goths and her doom metal band. On this record, Hval continues this search for community, which plays out in thoughtful and fruitful collaborations with artists like Vivian Wang, Félicia Atkinson and Laura Jean. The Practice of Love, Hval says, picks up on the protagonist voice of her forthcoming book Girls Against God – her second English language novel. It traverses the lines of queerness, sensuality and desire that Hval has drawn and redrawn, this time from within an Oslo witch coven. On this LP, Hval imagines the same character’s perspective but years later, calmer and reflective, interrogating connectedness and how we move through the world. To describe the album, Hval uses an allegory of a porn magazine in the woods, a salacious object known to all the locals, that will soon rot into the ground – and yet, “I was not going for bold statements this time,” she asserts. “I’m striving for nuance.” “People often think about sexual or familial intimacy, but I am much more fascinated by that between strangers. Maybe you catch a disease
Words: Anna Cafolla Photographer: Henry Gorse Styling: Ade Udoma Makeup: Eri Sawamoto Hair: Yusuke Morioka or get injured, and a doctor mends your broken body. I want to reflect on the more bizarre experiences of connectedness – some of your most fragile moments you'll spend with strangers.” The sepia-toned album artwork depicts a woman, her third eye chakra open. The collage features a decapitated arm, reaching into the tarot card border to caress the woman’s cheek. It’s a startling illustration that suggests both closeness and distance. This paradox expands across eight tracks, as Hval harnesses lilting synths to touch on tough topics, from childlessness to alienation as a woman in art. Not that she’s ever shied away from the intimate and uncomfortable. “I arrived in town with an electric toothbrush pressed against my clitoris,” opens her 2011 album Viscera. Her celebrated 2016 record Blood Bitch meditated on
would blast the big hits from their cars, or rave in nearby forests. With those soul-affirming sonics, Hval weaves in armageddon-laced anxieties, personal truths and hopes. “More music needs those empathic tones. I think it is the perfect vehicle to question our mortality, our binary ways of thinking about gender and sex.” Hval says she wrote two further albums worth of music before distilling it. “It sounds nice to have an idea of what you want, but that's not how things unfold. The listener or reader should know how messy it gets,” she says, combing a hand theatrically through her hair, covered in wax from the Crack Magazine photoshoot. “It's the joy of making art.” Messy is right. The photoshoot features more than a dozen bananas and punnets of strawberries as props, the former being a recurring motif in her
Aesthetic:
the mystical female body, desire and death. With The Practice of Love, Hval leaves behind the frantic gore for something more gentle and profoundly human. The album is named after Vallie Export’s 1985 Der Praxis de Liebe, a conceptual anti-romance film with a ferocious female gaze. Shrouded in its murder mystery plot are questions about sexual repression and how language is insufficient in articulating personal moments. A record that percolates with pop cadence, The Practice of Love employs the structures of 90s trance. Six Red Cannas could soundtrack a DC10 sunrise rave on the cusp of the millennium. I point to one Ashes to Ashes YouTube comment that reads “EDM in a world without humans.” “That’s perfect!” she laughs. “Trance is cinematic. I like that trance songs don’t offer solutions – just pure euphoria, a neverending screensaver of an Ibiza beach.” Hval recalls respecting trance culture from afar; Norwegian teens
work. In one show, a supporting dancer aggressively ate a banana onstage, meanwhile 2015’s Kingsize used a confrontational visual allegory of the rotting fruit as the stigmatised human body. On Ashes to Ashes, Hval sings: “Put two fingers in the earth/ Into the honeypot/ I was digging my own grave.” Like a decomposing banana, she looks to the earth for a biological end. Hval says it’s her way of connecting with the world. “Digging into the earth is my instrument,” she explains. “It’s my vocation, to connect with my mortality in that dirt. I want to destroy the Western, Christian ideas of fear and death the same way I do the ideals placed on our bodies. Ashes to ashes, image by image.” The Practice of Love is released on 13 September via Sacred Bones
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25 Oct
13 Nov
JACKIE MENDOZA BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND
CHARLES GREEN PRESENTS (Ostgut Ton)
Sebright Arms 26 Oct
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(Workshop Records)
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MELT YOURSELF DOWN
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25 Nov
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!!!
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UPSTAIRS SOUNDTRACK BY
27 Oct
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WHY?
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Bush Hall 19 Nov
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25 Oct
12 Nov
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UT WED.27.NOV.19 SOLD O
UT THU.28.NOV.19 SOLD O
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LNZRT sept oct lanzaroteworks.com—@lnzrt MOTH CLUB Holiday Sidewinder • Beach Baby • Pile • Sasami • Sarathy Korwar • Exek • Du Blonde • Stephen Malkmus • Skinny Pelembe THE SHACKLEWELL ARMS Scott Yoder • The Pearl Harts • Nasty Cherry • Bad Nerves • Together Pangea • Faux Ferocious • Servo • The Gluts • K-X-P THE WAITING ROOM Private Agenda • The Wants • Pelicandy • Ben Shemie (SUUNS) • Laoise • Las Aves • Havelock • Tayne • Friedberg STUDIO 9294 Froth • Faust • Sleep Eaters • Jacuzzi Boys • Murkage Dave • Sonny And The Sunsets • Model Man • Flamingods MOTH CLUB mothclub.co.uk / THE SHACKLEWELL shacklewellarms.com / THE WAITING ROOM waitingroomn16.com STUDIO studio9294.co.uk
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071
The Click: Pixies
In his own words, Frank Black looks back at the transient spell that inspired him to form Pixies
was going to travel around the world. I asked my dad to give me some money to buy a plane ticket where you always keep going in the same direction. It was a cheap ticket, you can basically go around the world for $500. I planned to go to New Zealand, because Halley's Comet was passing by. I thought, ‘Oh, that's kind of romantic or whatever, I'll go do that.’
One day while I was at school, someone walked into my Spanish class and said, “Anyone that would like to go to Puerto Rico for an exchange programme, sign up here.” It was like joining the army or something. I said, “I'm gonna do it!” I didn't know anything about Puerto Rico, but I decided to live in San Juan for six months.
I liked it there. It's kind of a crazy place – a place where I learned about salsa music, a place that totally expanded my musical mind. But I didn't speak Spanish well enough to be taking the classes I was taking, so I was just failing. All I did was go to the beach and go to the movies, or hang out with my Puerto Rican friends at the café. I was enjoying it but I wasn't really doing anything other than hanging out. It caused me to ask myself what I was doing with my life. So I decided I
Beneath the Eyrie is released on 13 September via BMG
MUSIC
When I was in college, I was really restless. I wanted to get out of my hometown and just travel, everywhere and anywhere.
Before leaving, I was hanging out with a friend and we sat down like you would with a therapist. I just started talking out loud. I said, “You know what I've always wanted to do, actually? I just want to be in a band. That's all I really care about.” So I wrote Joey [Santiago] a letter and said, “Meet me in Boston and we'll start a band.” He wrote back saying, “I'll see you there.” And that was it, that’s how this whole thing started.
GIANT PARTY TUES 17 SEPT ELECTROWERKZ
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073
Lives
VIVA! Festival Locorotondo, Italy 1-4 August
SOPHIE suits the Southbank Centre, where on the Saturday night of Meltdown Festival she took a headline spot. Like the venue, SOPHIE’s trademark sound grafts tinny colour onto harsh structures. But SOPHIE’s 2018 debut, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-insides, was compelling in part for owing as much to the Cocteau Twins as it did to the peppy PC Music scene. If her old live sets centred a heady rush of dance, keeping her sometimes literally offstage, where would the shows go now? This was a question even more pertinent for this performance at the Royal Festival Hall. SOPHIE was introduced by Nile Rodgers, curator of the festival. He was effusive, heralding her production as didactic, primal. It suggested a moving connection between two dance music trailblazers. But while earlier in the week Rodgers and Chic used the space for a victory lap of their disco revolution, SOPHIE delivered a provocative audiovisual experiment. That experiment arrived in three parts. Act One, entitled OUTSIDE OF TIME, featured an installation of massive nylon sheets stretched across wire. A lone, dancing androgyne formed the focal point, with SOPHIE remaining in the shadows and to the side. After that cocktail, ABOUT 600 MILLION YEARS AGO – the show’s mid-section – was like an ocean plunge, with a million riffs on ethereal album centrepiece Is It Cold in the Water?. Over strangely inhuman sounds, there was footage of waves and grotesque sea creatures which provoked a horror that only the vast unknown of the sea can. SOPHIE is loved in part because she does not turn away from the disorienting inexpressibility of queerness: here, she placed that feeling, and those who feel it, right back at the start of life itself. The last section THE PRESENT DAY was nothing like a reprieve. We saw the nylon landscape ripped apart and tangled into neon tape. Hard techno erupted across the hall in darkness while strobe lights dared the beat to catch up. The resulting showpiece was so frantic that Instagramming it seemed futile. Then, just when you had accepted SOPHIE as an artist who refuses to kowtow to the demands of conventional pop, she paid homage to her curator by exiting to Diana Ross’ I’m Coming Out. No complaints – we were all too busy dancing.
N
! Sean O’Neill Viktor Frankowski
Flow Festival Helsinki, Finland 9-11 August It is said that there are more saunas than cars in Finland. Apologies for trotting out this hoary factoid, but there’s something about it that feels germane to understanding Flow. Fifteen editions in, this popular Helsinki festival prides itself on being one of the world’s first carbon neutral festivals. The site itself, despite its location amidst chimney stacks, is tranquil and navigable. There’s no sauna, but there is a cinema. In short, it feels nice. Still, this atmosphere of Nordic wholesomeness can sometimes be a barrier. When we arrive on Thursday, Earl Sweatshirt is struggling to connect to a reserved crowd. His insular performance feels adrift on the expansive main stage, although the crowd whoops when he reveals that the gasping sample in Grief is Erykah Badu, due on the same stage later that evening. It is Solange who finally breaks through, with a set defined by control and precision. Against a gallery-white set and flanked by a besuited band, Solange suffuses material from A Seat at the Table and When I Get Home with low-key theatricality. Spectacularly, she directs the empowering FUBU to Erykah Badu, who’s watching from the wings. Such a shame, then, that Solange’s microphone is switched off when she spills over the midnight curfew. It’s chaotic ending for such a carefully plotted performance. For all of Flow’s crowd-pleasing programming, the most interesting aspects of the festival lies at its margins. The Reaktor stage, a garden tucked away at the back of the site, boasts a line-up of underground DJs that is genuinely thrilling. Belgium DJ Nosedrip drops Chris and Cosey and Clan of Xymox to an up-for-it early doors crowd while Lena Willikens and Vladimir Ivkovic turn a blind eye to the civilised start time of 10:15pm on Sunday to dig deep into the folds of their trademark wigginess. Overcast skies embellish The Cure’s set on Sunday with an elemental poetry. Despite some sound issues, the band move nimbly through their discography, from the psychedelia of A Forest to the chiming pop of In Between Days, with the darkest reaches of their oeuvre mainly represented by Play for Today, One Hundred Years and the surfeit of middle-aged goths in the audience. Sunday, though, belongs to Flohio. Quite literally: “This is my festival: Flo festival!” she declares, from the centre of an in-the-round auditorium. Blessed with a spiky charisma, she orchestrates one of the most rapturous receptions of the entire weekend, demanding that the crowd unleash their inner beasts for Wild Yout. It provides the release we’ve been craving. Now, about that sauna.
N
! Louise Brailey Konstantin Kondrukhov
! Mike Vinti N Clarissa Ceci
REVIEWS
SOPHIE Meltdown Festival, Royal Festival Hall, London 11 August
VIVA! Festival may be the perfect way to spend a long weekend. Situated in Locorotondo, or more accurately at the foot of the hill on which the historical town sits, it’s a relaxed, highly social festival. Powder and Jon Hopkins were charged with opening proceedings on Thursday night. Inspired by the laid-back surroundings, Powder’s set was a largely chilled affair building up organic grooves and layers of guitar solos before reaching a rapturous conclusion with the Ex Voto remix of Enzo Avitable’s Neapolitan anthem, Devozioni Dialettali. Jon Hopkins meanwhile opted to debut a new audiovisual show with custom animations and cinematic clips projected behind the producer. Joined on stage by a pair of dancers, who wielded flashing light sticks like semaphore flags, Hopkins filled the Puglian hills with his gargantuan electro until the small hours of Friday morning. While only running for two of the festival’s three days, the second stage played host to more than its fair share of unexpected highlights. On Friday night, Nyege Nyege Tape’s Bamba Pana transformed the stage into a hyperactive singeli wonderland, pushing the BPM well above 160. The following night, Ninos du Brasil – a pair of drummers and visual artists from Venetto – transformed the stage into a carnival. If Saturday made one thing clear, it was that there was only ever going to be one real star at VIVA! – Erykah Badu. Performing under her DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown alias, Badu was selector, MC and singer all rolled into one, switching between her own music, hip-hop classics and funk deep cuts with expert precision, hopping on the mic at precisely the right moments. To close the final hours of the festival, VIVA! gave both stages over to showcases of Italian nostalgia. Filling in for Jayda G, whose set was cancelled due to an emergency landing in Belgium, Napoli Segreta provided the deepest cuts of Neapolitan-language disco on the mainstage, while amidst the dry ice Ciao, Discoteca Italiana had the crowds in full voice with a set of the finest 60s-80s Italian pop. For those in the know, the party didn’t stop at 4am on Saturday though – it merely shifted 20 minutes down the road. In the coastal town of Savelletri, a third stage appeared to soundtrack the sunrise. Fuelled by free brioche and a shot of espresso or, if you preferred, a bottle of vino bianco, VIVA!’s hardcore party-goers gathered on the beach to end their festival together. It was a suitably communal closing moment for a festival that, at its best, encouraged its guests to take a step back from the chaos of festival season, take stock of their surroundings and indulge in a little dolce vita.
074
Releases
07
Charli XCX Charli Atlantic Records
09
09
Lana Del Rey Norman Fucking Rockwell! Polydor Metronomy Metronomy Forever Because Music
REVIEWS
Is there a pop star better suited to soundtrack these disorienting and hedonistic times than Charli XCX? Our patron saint of partying can craft a ballad about dropping ecstasy with a depth of feeling unrivalled in any of her peers, and while fans have prophesied her ascendance to pop royalty for some time, she has never sounded so sure of assuming this role herself than she does on Charli. Her third studio album is more immersive and exudes more confidence than anything in her catalogue thus far. Doubling down on the lessons learned from her pair of 2017 mixtapes (specifically, how to effectively wrangle a corps of disparate guest artists), Charli elevates her artistry with an added emphasis on honest and vulnerable songwriting. The swoon-worthy croon on the tender White Mercedes and the melancholic new wave strut which fuels Cross You Out and Official all exemplify this tonal shift, but nothing comes close to the totemic power of Gone. Producer AG Cook’s cannon fire beats, a mesmerising appearance from Christine and the Queens, and a hook with brutally candid lyrics combine to make what already sounds like an instant classic. Truthfully, Gone is such a strong offering that it can’t help but weaken the record’s ensuing mix of champagnesoaked floor-fillers and tearstained confessionals. 1999 is a bop with a capital B-O-P and Shake It is a queer posse cut so futuristic it actually instills terror, but Charli’s most personal album functions best when it zeroes in on what drew us to her in the first place: her utterly captivating, wholly unique sense of self.
Metronomy’s last album, 2016’s Summer 08, saw frontman Joe Mount on a nostalgic trip back to the release of Nights Out, the record that cemented their position at the forefront of a wave of squelchy, esoteric alt-pop. Over a decade later, the band’s latest effort (effort being the operative word – Metronomy Forever weighs in at a hefty 17 tracks), has Mount making music to appreciate the now; basking in a period of idyll brought on by his relocation from the bustle of Paris to a hilltop in Kent. Rather than producing a more compact record that packs hit against hit, Metronomy Forever allows for breathing and room to experiment. Tracks like Whitsand Bay and Wedding Bells are “classic” Metronomy in their slick, funky basslines, snappy percussion and bright synthpop melodies. Then there’s the sapid flirtation in tongue-incheek cut Sex Emoji and the upbeat pop sensibility of Salted Caramel Ice Cream, peppered with such gratifying lyricism as “She’s sparkling/ Like a fresh glass of Perrier.” Lying Low and Miracle Rooftop deliver a fuzzy, lo-fi take on house and jazzy funk respectively, and closer Ur Mixtape, much like Summer 08’s final track Summer Jam, is bittersweet and introspective. “After the drum‘n’bass night/ I never heard from her again” Mount sings like a teen bereft. Moody ambient interludes (Driving, Forever Is a Long Time, Insecure) punctuate a record that Mount wants you to experience like the radio – a non-stop confluence of sounds and styles, your mood brightening, and then dimming, as the presenter sees fit.
Jake Indiana
! Katie Thomas
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There’s nobody who evokes America the way Lana Del Rey can. For over a decade, through a combination of classic songwriting styles and an almost supernatural gift for imagery (some blue jeans here, a fast car there), she’s made the case that she has no one but Springsteen to compete with as the great chronicler of the USA; its psyche, all its dreams. On Norman Fucking Rockwell!, her sixth album, she proves this once and for all. America, and particularly its coasts, is as important a player on this record as it always has been for Del Rey. But the version of her that we meet on Norman Fucking Rockwell! is one who has hot-footed it across the country. She’s long quit the sharp-edged glamour of New York – the affairs, the drugs, the sparkly, sleazy Born to Die-ness of it all – for something earthier. You hear this in the lyrics (“I was one thing, now I’m being another,” she laments on Happiness is a butterfly), but mostly you feel it, in the lush expansiveness of these 14 songs. That spaciousness comes in various forms, as you’d expect from an album that sounds like moving to a ranch where there’s nothing but the sound of your voice for acres. There’s length (all nine minutes and 37 seconds of Venice Bitch are just as headlollingly good as they were a year ago), there’s introspection, and most especially, there’s roomy, broad production courtesy of Jack Antonoff. Antonoff’s involvement with Del Rey and Norman Fucking Rockwell! was initially met with cynicism from some who felt he’d been too omnipresent on recent major releases (Lorde, Taylor Swift, St Vincent’s 2017 swerve into a poppier lane). To suppose this, however, was to underestimate the largesse of the Lana Del Rey aesthetic, now so well-established that no producer could dream of squashing it. Instead, Antonoff inherently understands her web of Americana influences, as it stretches here to a yet more classic-sounding place – prominent pianos, noodly rock riffs, songbook structures. Nowhere is this place better occupied than on Love song, which is possibly the best song Lana Del Rey has ever made, so distilled is it with both her very essence (“Oh, be my once in a lifetime/ Lying on your chest in my party dress/ I'm a fucking mess”), and quintessential chord progressions which give an inevitable, timeless feel. Indeed, musically Norman Fucking Rockwell! feels like an album built to resist time – one of those songwriters’ records that could have been made whenever: Graceland, Blue, Tapestry. Like much of Del Rey’s catalogue, however, these are also songs rooted in nostalgia: the good old days, the way she’d drink whiskey ‘til dawn and dance ‘til sunrise; when things were gilded, and better. Previously, her sometime rose-tinted glasses had felt like a wellpositioned device that allowed her to conjure a mood. Now, there’s something else. Namely: real, irrefutable proof that our best days really are past us. Because in 2019, America, the love of Lana Del Rey’s life, is burning, just like the rest of the world: “LA’s in flames, it’s getting hot,” she acknowledges on The greatest. Finally – heartbreakingly – the stakes are as dramatic in real life as the quiet tragedy of Lana Del Rey’s work has always demanded. On Norman Fucking Rockwell! she invites us to escape with her, just for an hour: to stretch out on the plains and think about love and how life used to be. You go there with her, you lie back, shut your eyes. And you think, “there are much worse ways to go.” !
Lauren O’Neill
Perera Elsewhere Thrill EP Friends of Friends For her solo project Perera Elsewhere, Berlin experimentalist Sasha Perera captures a dark intimacy. Her glitchy trip-hop and freakfolk tracks often feel cold yet exploratory, like they’re peeling back layers of the human condition with a sterile scalpel and a rigid hand. On her new Thrill EP, the first project since her 2017 full-length All of This, Perera exudes more of this off-kilter seductive energy. Her voice slinks in like a snake on opening track Yeah Yeah, and it’s immediately transfixing, as if she’s casting a spell through her undulating melodies in order to lure the listener into her eerie soundscape. She’s proved before that she has a penchant for crafting hypnotic pop tunes that turn into something sinister and strange – this is, after all, the same musician who interpolated 50 Cent’s Candy Shop and made it come across like a Portishead song. But never has she done it with such slyness and subtlety in its execution. Thrill also sees Perera bordering on the destructive and ominous on Sunk in Motion, enlisting producer Dis Fig, whose dance music mirrors the cathartic violence of industrial music. As Perera chants in hip-hop rhythms, Dis Fig’s beat obscures her with glitchy noise and doom-andgloom synths, like it’s lurching towards a certain apocalyptic end. But Perera also inhibits the antithetical form on Wait N See, a gorgeous and sombre space ballad on which she seems to be yearning to be more self-sufficient and strong. By pushing her moods and sounds to opposite extremes on Thrill, Perera only further intrigues. !
Michelle Kim
Jenny Hval The Practice of Love Sacred Bones After the decadent textures of 2016 album Blood Bitch, an explication on menstruation via vampire tropes, where Jenny Hval would go next was anyone’s guess. The answer, it seems, is an all-encompassing dissertation on intimacy and desire expressed over a sonic palette which recalibrates her woozy synth-rock through the prism of 90s trance music. The Practice of Love is an ambitious undertaking and a bold new direction for Hval. It is, in a word, spellbinding. Gone is the coarse mixing and homespun production hallmarks that marked her previous releases, replaced here by an acoustic clarity that prioritises the album’s array of crisp beats, a range that spans the thunderous techno of Accident to the hypnotic bell chimes of Ordinary. Hval employs these beats with a keen sense of their dramatic impact, letting the percussive line of album opener Lions explode without warning and submerging the circulatory thrum of Ashes to Ashes in dense reverb to pillow its feather-light aspirations. The record’s bewitching chasm of hard dance rhythms and arpeggiated synths runs parallel with its lyrical dichotomy. Concerns of women’s abilities to pursue non-heteronormative trajectories in their relationships are validated even as Hval exalts the transcendent, almost clichéd bliss of “giving into the ordinary.” It’s an apt analogy for the album itself – The Practice of Love takes on a subject matter exhausted beyond belief and emerges with a work of radiant profundity. !
Jake Indiana
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Girl Band The Talkies Rough Trade
08 (Sandy) Alex G House of Sugar Domino Since signing to Domino five years ago, Alex Giannascoli’s output as (Sandy) Alex G has slowed down. In his teenage years, he was throwing an album onto Bandcamp what felt like every other week. Now we get steady, deliberate steps forward from an artist who’s continuing to grow into a cult hero. New album House of Sugar follows this trajectory. 2017’s Rocket saw Giannascoli pushed his sound to its extremes, from jangly country bops to Death Gripsesque thrashes. Songs are less out there on House of Sugar – but rather than becoming a middle-of-the-road listen, it sees the Philadelphia native settling into an unstoppable groove, with a clear intention to every note. Comparisons to Elliott Smith have followed Giannascoli around for most of his career, and they’re more unsurprising on House of Sugar than ever. Stunning first single Gretel possesses the catchiest chorus he’s penned yet, and though he’s always been seen as somewhat of an evasive songwriter, he knows his way around a killer hook. But like Smith, he knows how to not exhaust this formula. Plenty of weirdness still exists on House of Sugar, from the experimental jam of Project 2 to glitchy opener Walk Away, but as a whole, this feels like a cohesive statement. It could be tempting to read this as a lack of ambition, but instead this record presents (Sandy) Alex G at his most realised. !
Will Richards
Violet Bed of Roses Dark Entries
Thurston Moore Spirit Counsel The Daydream Library Series Thurston Moore’s output since the curtain came down abruptly for Sonic Youth in 2011 has been unquestionably solid – and perhaps almost strangely so. He seemed to bristle at suggestions that The Best Day, the honest-to-god 2014 art rock LP that represents his solo peak to date, might have represented him playing it safe. Perhaps that’s why he appears to be striving for the precise opposite with his latest epic effort. If you like Moore at his weirdest, you’re going to love Spirit Counsel, a threepart monolith. The first third, Alice Moki Jayne, pays tribute to three of the great female jazz players in a noise rock style that recalls Sonic Youth’s more adventurous SYR cuts, without ever really doing justice to the three giants it’s in thrall to. Elsewhere, we get Galaxies, Moore’s take on the guitars-asorchestra concept that Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs pioneered earlier this decade with his 41 Strings project. It’s handsome and stately, but the kind of sweeping drama that feels necessary is ultimately missing. The best, it turns out, is saved for last. 8 Spring Street is a truly lovely paean to the great experimentalist Glenn Branca, and it feels like Moore is dropping the pretence for the first time; his love of the style is palpable. Ultimately, though, Spirit Counsel is his reaffirmation of faith in the pushing of boundaries, it hits more than it misses. But even if it didn’t, it feels like a breakthrough. !
Joe Goggins
Bat for Lashes Lost Girls AWAL Records On Lost Girls, Natasha Khan’s fifth studio album as Bat for Lashes, love and lust come to heads atop rich, layered instrumentation. If 2016’s The Bride was sober and seen through clear eyes, Lost Girls is drunk, exploding with feeling and spinning with small truths. Khan’s voice is both stronger and more delicate on this album than it has been before. Whereas her heart-gripping highs wobbled with emotion on previous standouts like Laura, the Persian-influenced runs and ascent into a clear falsetto come through as less of a plea and more of a declaration. The instrumentation follows suit: centrepiece instrumental track Vampires offers cool-headed 80s synth lines under a velvety sax solo before diving into the decidedly vintage So Good. This album feels written for singing along. Choruses are catchy, verses are inviting and basslines lend themselves to snapping your neck back and forth in time, invoking a feeling of driving with the roof down without the bells and whistles of more radio-friendly pop. Khan’s work has always been arresting in its honesty and immediacy; on Lost Girls, she feels her freest yet. !
Nathan Ma
07
Violet is something of an unofficial ambassador for Lisbon’s underground music scene. Since moving back to her home city in 2016, she has been responsible for founding Portugal's primary underground music platform Radio Quantica, established her Naive Records imprint – boasting releases from local talent as well as Octo Octa, Eris Drew and Ilana Bryne – and held a residency at queer party Mina. With such a present role in the scene, it’s incredible that she has found the time to produce debut album, Bed of Roses. Across 10 tracks, she explores themes of selfforgiveness, simultaneously instilling both dread and optimism. The deeply nostalgic record is inspired by Violet’s adolescence, conjuring memories through dark drum beats and angular acid bass. Titular track Bed of Roses kicks up the wistfulness with lo-fi jingles, reminiscent of ancient Nokia chimes. Tears in 1993 transports us back in time through a synth wormhole, with broken radio static invoking a sinister, foreboding mood. Half Crazy teems with the carefree rhythm you’d find in the poprock riffs that dominated MTV in the late 80s. In Bed of Roses Part II, Violet faintly repeats: “Life is like a bed of roses/ But there are thorns too” – a neat encapsulation of the record’s pivotal motif. Here, Violet looks back at her life through rosetinted glasses while accepting the more difficult aspects. The result is a record that is wholly personal but with potential to resonate universally. !
Megan Townsend
The Talkies begins with Prolix, a track built around singer Dara Kiely’s increasingly rapid, erratic breathing captured in a rehearsal. It sets the scene for an unsettling, seismic record that lives inside its own singular, strange orbit. The album arrives four years after the Dublin band’s startlingly superb debut, Holding Hands With Jamie, during that time there was a period of poor mental health and cancelled tours. Excitingly, The Talkies is as writhing, challenging and explosive as its predecessor. A shapeshifting, cacophonous record, at times The Talkies feels unmoored and discomfiting, the band unleashing discordant shards of guitar and jarring mechanical screeches which push and pull around Adam Faulkner’s sharp percussion. Sometimes, they lock into woozy, oiled-up grooves. The sprawling Prefab Castle does all of this at once in its seven minutes. Kiely's absurdist wordplay teases abstract images: “Acrobats stab orcas/ Do geese see God?/ Party booby trap” goes Aibohphobia, almost certainly the only song written solely in palindromes. But more poignant moments also come into focus. On Salmon of Knowledge, Kiely sighs: “Who shouldn’t look for advice?/ All tired and want to go home” and over Going Norway’s no wave dance, with percussion like broken glass, he screams “That’s just mental/ What is normal?” The record ends with breathing again on Ereignis. This time it’s calm and controlled. As a listener you need to catch your breath, too. The Talkies is an album so viscerally brilliant it stays with you long after you’ve stopped listening, the silence ringing in your ears.
How many rap stars can Great Britain support? In an already blistering year for rap releases, into the mix comes Tottenham’s Headie One. This year’s single 18HUNNA, featuring fellow emerging powerhouse Dave, was a minor hit, not only ramping interest in his latest project Music x Road, but also setting the album’s tone. Here we have 46 minutes of creeping trap rap. With Skepta and Krept and Konan among the guests, it feels like Headie One is purposefully seeing how his powers stack up next to some of the UK’s premier stars. It’s a methodology that pays out handsomely. Headie One is an effective trap slinger, his jagged voice proving a cutting instrument on the murky Ball in Peace and Young Thug pastiche Rubbery Bands. But it’s the little memorable flourishes that helps Music x Road stand out in a crowded field. Both summons a sample of Ultra Naté’s Free, melding the throwback dance anthem’s gut-busting soul vocals with Headie One’s modern sound. Elsewhere, All Day mirrors Kanye West’s record of the same name – he even shouts out Yeezy – snatching an anthem that drew strength from London and fully relocating it to the city’s northern corners. So while the album artwork accompanying Music x Road – which features the rapper’s face disguised behind a mask – might suggest namelessness, there’s enough here to suggest Headie One won’t be lost in the crowd.
Danny Wright
! Dean Van Nguyen
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Headie One Music x Road Sony Music
REVIEWS
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1BTN___ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE___ ANCHORSONG___ANZ___BKLAVA___ BRAD STANK___BRYONY JARMANPINTO___CHAOS IN THE CBD___ CHARLES GREEN___CHARLY BLISS___ CHASTITY BELT___CHIMPO (ALL NIGHT LONG)___ CHLOÉ BODUR___CHRIS HEADCOUNT___ CONDUCTA__DAISHA___ DJ BORING___ DJ FETT BURGER___ DJ FLIGHT (DISCO SET)___ EBI SODA___ECLAIR FIFI___FACTA___ FARO___ FAUZIA___ FEET___ HARRISON BDP___HENGE___ HIDDEN ORCHESTRA REORCHESTRATIONS SET HOUSE OF PHARAOHS___I-SHA___IMPEY___ INJURY RESERVE___ J-FELIX___ JAMILA WOODS___JAY SOM___JON SABLE___ JOY ORBISON___ KAHN & NEEK (ALL NIGHT LONG)___ MANARA___MAURICE FULTON___ MAX MILIAN___MEHTOLA___ MISSING PEOPLE___MOMO___MOVEMENT___ MR BONGO___OFFIE MAG___OR:LA___ OVRE___PALMS TRAX___PARRY___PENYA___ PRESCRIBE DA VIBE___ PROJECT KARNAK___ PUMAROSA___PYJÆN___ RAPHAËL TOP-SECRET___RHI___ ROBERT LUIS___RODNEY P___RYAN ELLIOTT___ SALLY C___SCRATCHA DVA___SHARDA___ SICARIA SOUND___SKINNY PELEMBE___ STRATEGY (DJ SET)___SWEET NOTHINGS___ THE MAUSKOVIC DANCE BAND___ TINA EDWARDS___VANT___ WH LUNG___WHEELUP___WHY?___ WILD FANTASY____WILLOW___ WRONGTOM___YADASOFI___YAK___
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Kano Hoodies All Summer Parlophone
Three years after the release of the exceptional Made in the Manor, Kano has returned with a new album – and a good way to assess Hoodies All Summer, his latest work, is by looking at a track by Ghetts, his favourite coconspirator on the mic. On his 2010 LP, Calm Before the Storm, Ghetts has a song called Back From the Mountain, where he talks of having spent a great deal of time away from the public eye, honing his craft as an MC. This is a hermetic process, recalling that time when a young Bruce Wayne left Gotham City to receive elite training. By this analogy, Kano is the Dark Knight of grime; every so often
he disappears from view, and, once fully renewed, he duly re-emerges as a hero. It’s easy to trace Kano’s artistic mood by where he chooses to showcase his albums live. In 2016, for the release of his fifth studio album, he blew the roof off O2 Brixton Academy; a homecoming show that reminded fans of his cataclysmic power. Now he’s presenting Hoodies All Summer in the regal setting of the Royal Albert Hall, swapping the moshpit for something more orchestral and meditative. While this record may be less immediately thrilling than its predecessor, Hoodies All Summer is no less compelling. Like Solange’s A Seat at the Table, it’s a work written first and foremost for those from the artist’s background, with everyone else just lucky to be allowed to listen. As suggested by the first release from this record – a 19-minute music video containing two singles, the poignant Trouble and Class of Deja – Hoodies All Summer is not so much an album as it is a superbly-sequenced collection of short films. Each track is strikingly vivid, and several are accompanied with snippets of speech, as if they are intended to be experienced as intimate documentaries. Kano has taken the central themes from his last musical outing – joy and trauma, the clash of solidarity and claustrophobia of living in a close-knit community – and delved yet deeper. If the Hoodies All Summer manifesto is to be found anywhere, it is in the opening verse of Good Youtes Walk Amongst Evil, where Kano observes: “Life of a lyricist/ In the times that we’re livin’ in/ Gotta speak mind of the bigger things/ Shine is irrelevant, the grind is imperative/ Got to put pride before millions.” He could have made an album full of party anthems, but our current political moment called for more.
Words: Musa Okwonga
And so in just 10 tracks – featuring Popcaan, D Double E, Ghetts and more – Kano effortlessly sweeps through a range of our era’s major themes. Vitally, though, he never preaches. He laments the ravages of knife crime, yet understands it to be the product of a zero-sum game. He mocks politicians who tell immigrants to “go home” to their colonised countries, noting that those same politicians still crave to maintain an economic hold over those countries. He sympathises with the families forced from their homes by gentrification, while spitting scathing bars towards those who assume that black people are content being victims of systemic poverty and crime. A work that unfurls in new ways with each listen, this album won’t yield itself easily to listeners whose idea of Kano is him going back-to-back with Ghetts at Butterz. What is clear, though, is that Kano almost delights in wrongfooting his audience – you only have to look to his legendary Fire in the Booth for evidence. It would have been easy for him to give us 10 equally vigorous sequels to Garage Skank, but instead, as he says in that famous freestyle, “I’m Mr Everyone-Went-Right-I-TookThe-Left”. Kano seems concerned with showcasing the broadest range of what grime can be. He reminds us all that grime isn’t just gunfingers and unrestrained energy, as euphoric and cathartic as that is. Grime is heritage; it is tender; it is pensive and melancholic. Sometimes, grime doesn’t just sound like a full-bodied rave; it also sounds like the exhausted drive home at dawn after Eskimo Dance. It is as multidimensional as the characters at the centre of its lovingly-drawn stories. And in a time where black lives are increasingly stereotyped, Kano pays them the most radical tribute of all – he renders them infinitely textured, and thus utterly human.
REVIEWS
The grime pioneer returns with a vivid, radical album that meets our current political moment head-on
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Kano
Curated by Fatoumata Diawara Ahmed ag Kaedy → Fatoumata Diawara → Master Soumy → MO DJ → roberto SOLO fonseca
Curated by Iris van Herpen & Salvador Breed Amnesia Scanner → Blazing Suns (live) → Coucou Chloe → Djrum (live) → Efterklang → FIS → Holly Herndon: PROTO → J-E-T-S (Jimmy Edgar x Machinedrum) → Klavikon → Lafawndah → Maarten Vos + scenography by Nick Verstand → Murcof → Mykki Blanco
Curated by Jenny Hval DNA? AND? → Felicia Atkinson → Haco → Jenny Hval’s The Practice Of Love → Lasse Marhaug → Lolina → Lone Taxidermist presents BodyVice → Moon Relay → Oorutaichi → Richard Youngs → Sarah Davachi → Sofia Jernberg → Vilde Tuv → Vivian Wang → Zia Anger’s My First Film
Curated by Moon Duo Bbymutha → Bridget Hayden → Holly Herndon: PROTO → Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids → Mary Lattimore → Michele Mercure → Moon Duo → Mueran Humanos → Nivhek → Prana Crafter → Sonic Boom → Sudan Archives → TENGGER → Träd, Gräs och Stenar (Träden)
Curated by Patrick Higgins Conrad Tao → Holly Herndon: PROTO → Leila Bordreuil → LEYA → Lightning Bolt → Mariel Roberts → Miranda Cuckson → Stine Janvin → Tyondai Braxton → Vicky Chow
Curated by The Bug Caspar Brötzmann Massaker → Drew McDowall + Florence To present Time Machines A/V Live → Earth → Godflesh → Jah Shaka Sound System → JK Flesh B2B Goth-Trad → Kali Malone → Kevin Richard Martin & Hatis Noit → King Midas Sound → LOTTO → Mala → Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force → Rabih Beaini → Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe → Slikback → ZONAL feat. Moor Mother & Nazamba
General Line-up Acid Mothers Temple → Angel Bat Dawid → Arp Frique presents Improvised Suites for Analog Machines → Asha Puthli → Ayalew Mesfin & Debo Band → Cate Le Bon → Crossing Avenue (live) → Deerhunter → DJ Firmeza → DJ Marfox → DJINN → Donato Dozzy → Doug Hream Blunt → Dur-Dur Band → Eiko Ishibashi → Faten Kanaan → Föllakzoid → Girl Band → Grand River (live) → Gruff Rhys → Gyedu-Blay Ambolley & His Sekondi Band → Joseph Shabason → Khana Bierbood → La Bruja de Texcoco → Lakha Khan → Lalalar → Los Pirañas → Makaya McCraven → Melissa Laveaux → Minyo Crusaders → Mohamed Lamouri → Mythic Sunship → Neel → Negativland → Nídia → Oiseaux-Tempête & Friends → Petbrick → Prison Religion → Surfbort → The Raincoats → Tropical Fuck Storm → Ustad Saami → Visible Cloaks, Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano → Vladimir Ivkovic presents: 20 years after Suba / Rex Ilusivii’s death → YĪN YĪN → Yves Jarvis + more artists to be announced
Le Guess Who? November 7–10, 2019 Utrecht, the Netherlands leguesswho.com
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Disintegration Loops
Tachypsychia has been rendered visually ad infinitum – just take a look at any car commercial that’s showing off the impressive reaction rate of their air bags. But a more unlikely, musical portrayal of the phenomenon can be heard in William Basinksi’s The Disintegration Loops, one of the most poignant, devastating pieces of ambient music that has come to serve the tragedy of 9/11. In 2001, the New York-based composer Basinski was looking to archive some “sweeping pastoral pieces” that he had recorded in the 80s onto analogue tape. After one particular piece was looping for a while, he realized that the tape was gradually crumbling with each pass around the head of his digital recorder. The iron oxide particles that coated the plastic tape were turning into dust, and more gaps of silence were breaking into the piece of music. Shortly after he digitised these new sound pieces, Basinski found himself watching the September 11 attacks from his Brooklyn loft, and started
videotaping the twin towers crumbling across the water. The next day, he reviewed the footage and paired it with his newly made sound piece, beginning to ascribe a new meaning to the music. The deteriorated composition, which was once an orchestral piece that stood for romantic American ideals, now represented one of the most cataclysmic and fatal events in the country’s history. It became “the soundtrack to the end of the world,” as Basinski once described it. The following year, the tapes were issued as The Disintegration Loops, nearly five hours’ worth of extremely haunting noise, borne from audio snippets that were originally only five to 10 seconds long. The meditative four-part collection can be seen as a manifestation of the slow motion effect that happens in people’s heads when they’re processing and remembering instantaneous destruction. Dlp 1, a piece that’s over an hour long, tracks the gradual decomposition of an audio segment that once held the sound of a trumpet. Akin to the slowburning mournfulness of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies, Basinski’s work exhibits change in minute, almost imperceptible increments until the music no longer bears the imprint of an instrument. Instead it sounds like noises that you would hear in the world: the sound of a bomb exploding in the distance, a crashing wave, and eventually, silence. Meanwhile, the emotional arc of Dlp 4 is more brutal, as it moves faster over the course of 20 minutes. As the sound of an orchestra begins to splinter apart, the resulting noise sounds like concrete collapsing – after all, it is the literal noise of the tape’s metallic material fragmenting. It evokes a
wondrous sense of loss, capturing the same sort of power of Vangelis’ rippling Chariot of Fire score, but none of its triumph. Ambient music has always aimed to depict the human experience by capturing the sound of various environments, moods and feelings.
But truly sublime ambient music also grapples with truths about the human condition on a more metaphysical or spiritual level. Disintegration Loops proves itself timeless because it confronts ideas of death, decay and cyclical change. And it also reveals a scientific truth about how humans remember loss: painfully, vividly, and sometimes supernaturally slowly.
REVIEWS
When people are enduring a particularly emotionally intense event, their perception of time can begin to slow down. An event that passes in the blink of an eye can feel like it goes on for minutes. This neurological phenomenon is called tachypsychia, and it can come on when someone undergoes a near death experience, like a car crash. Scientists say that this temporary sense of “slow motion” is triggered when a person is bombarded with so much information at one time, their memories become more densely packed in order to process all the stimuli.
William Basinski’s ambient masterpiece captured a world crumbling around us in slow motion
Original release date: 2002-2003 Label: 2062
Words: Michelle Kim
With METRONOMY Welcome to Downtime: a series in which we ask our favourite artists for their cultural recommendations. This month, we catch up with Metronomy frontman Joe Mount.
For the last decade, Metronomy have been the unofficial soundtrack to wistful coming-ofage drives along the coast with your mates – even if they’re just imaginary. The Devon five-piece, led by Joe Mount, are known for their slick brand of electronic-leaning pop that invokes a certain small-town escapism. Last year, Mount expanded on these skills, earning production and co-writing credits on Robyn’s long-awaited comeback album Honey – a life-affirming collection of songs, shimmering with his electro-pop touch. But a recent relocation from Paris to a hilltop in Kent has found him enjoying a quieter life. Here, he tells us what watches to wind down at home.
Gentleman Jack Dir: Susie Wainwright It’s that time of year when you have festivals and your life is basically just fitting around music. Lately I've been coming back from tour and watching this series called Gentleman Jack. It’s a series about a kind of gentrified landowner who was a lesbian in a time when people could be killed for being gay. The fun thing about this show is that it goes against the trend of binge watching that everyone does. It's sort of like watching a proper TV series, with the correct intervals, which I enjoy after an intense few weeks.
Le Daim Dir: Quentin Dupieux This film by Quentin Dupieux – or Mr Oizo – is about a man who becomes possessed by this jacket he owns. “Le Daim” translates to “deerskin” – the material of the jacket – and it just totally takes over his life and starts controlling him. It’s a French comedy featuring Jean Dujardin who was also in The Artist. In short, it’s an absurd but quite intense film about a man and a jacket.
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared Written by Joseph Pelling I directed the last couple of Metronomy videos, and when I was talking about an idea for the latest one, Salted Caramel Ice Cream, I turned to Michael [Lovett] in the band with an idea for a character who was like a little monster. He said, ‘Oh that sounds like Don't Hug Me I'm Scared.’ So, I’m totally late to the party – like really late – but I started watching it and it's incredible. The whole concept of the show seems like such an amazingly obvious idea and one of those things that you're just like, ‘God, I can't believe it took this long for somebody to make this’ because it's been staring everyone in the face for so long. They make me laugh, those weird puppets.
Pool Scum Written by Roy Minton Pool Scum is made by a studio called Movie Mountain and it’s this cool little animated series. It's stop motion animation, and has this super cool kind of MTV 2 aesthetic, it's very stylish. The reason I've been properly getting into this kind of handmade art is because when I was younger, I used to really love making model airplanes. There's just something about making a little world and being able to see it come to life. When you get into making animation, which is really technically brilliant, it’s such a satisfying process.
REVIEWS
Metronomy Forever is released on 13 September via Because Music
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Lykke L i LYKKE LI
When Lykke Li made her debut with the quickly-iconic Little Bit in 2007, she established herself as an alt-pop enigma. Introverted by nature, the Swedish singer and songwriter creates a curious blend of pop, folk and electro - an intoxicating sound which would eventually cement her name as an unlikely pop powerhouse. And despite her current star status, Li doesn’t give too much away. We try to get to know her a little better. What would you want written on your tombstone? I loved and lost. No. 1 tip for looking chic? Moisturise your face!!! What’s the hardest part of motherhood? It’s hard to choose - 80 percent of it is hard. What’s the biggest realisation you’ve had in the past year? I know nothing about self love. Best survival tip for 2019? Meditate, hydrate and enjoy what you have in the moment. If you were trying to seduce a potential lover, what meal would you cook? Caviar and champagne.
What makes you laugh the hardest? Unfortunately, I laugh when people fall off things on YouTube.
Sexiest song of all time? Purple Rain by Prince.
Is there a particular movement inspiring you right now? Our Yola Mezcal movement; strong women, strong drink. Who is your dream collaborator? Always and forever, Bon Iver. What’s the furthest you’ll go for love? I’ll cross a river if it me on the bridge. What’s something mostmeets people don’t know about you? People still seem to get surprised antisocial If youbycould goI am. back in time and change one thing, what would it be? What makes you laugh the hardest? I would have probably had Unfortunately, I still laugh whenpasta people fall off things on more when I was younger. YouTube. Is there a particular movement inspiring you right now? sad,strong stilldrink. sexy is Our Yola Mezcal movement; strong still women,
What do you do to relax? I close the curtains and don’t leave my bed. And sleep? No, order a lot of pizza and watch Netflix.
Saddest song of all time? I Can’t Make You Love Me by Bonnie Raitt. What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done to get attention? I don’t like attention. What makes you feel nostalgic? The movie Paris, Texas. Have you ever written someone a love letter? Too many times. What’s something that makes you immediately nervous? I cannot for my life hold a speech.
out now via RCA Records.
REVIEWS
What’s something most people don’t know about you? People still seem surprised by how antisocial I am.
butch icons
on pop's
Words: Gina Tonic Illustration: Lia Kantrowitz
Historically erased by the mainstream, queer female masculinity is now being celebrated online and in music. It’s about time, says Gina Tonic Between Cara Delevingne and Ashley Benson being papped with a sex bench and Kristen Stewart spotted making out with Stella Maxwell on a yacht, pop culture is currently experiencing a wave of pronounced lesbian visibility. Finally, the press have stopped calling lesbian relationships by the public friendly (read: homophobic) term “gal pals” and we have more than one standalone lesbian celebrity to refer to in pop culture. Perhaps most excitingly of all is the new generation of visibly queer female artists gatecrashing Spotify playlists and dancefloors. From Young M.A’s stud aesthetic, right through to the fluid androgyny of Chris – aka Christine and the Queens – via the louche andogyny of King Princess, we’re seeing something of a butch renaissance. Note that here I am using the term butch when referring to masculine presenting woman or non-binary queer person. In particular, those in the public eye who have spoken about their purposeful masculine presentation. Clarity is needed: despite the mainstream’s semi-fluency in gay slang – your mum probably knows the difference between bottoms and bears and what it means to spill the T – queer female code and culture still eludes many. But, depressingly, this heightened visibility for our masculine of centre stars has come with a pushback, at least in some quarters – something familiar to many gender-nonconforming queer or lesbian women.
OPINION
A recent viral tweet came from account @HoodStarzMusic trying simultaneously to desexualise lesbian rapper Young M.A while degrading female rappers who are sexual in their music. They comment, “Young
MA is the ONLY Female Rapper Not Using Her Body To Sell RECORDS.” Quickly, the tweet was picked up by Twitter’s queer community and user @ PillowPrincesse went on to get more likes and RTs than the original tweet with a simple clapback: “Young MA is most def using sex appeal. It’s just not for you...” Similarly, when boasting shorter hair and a second album titled Chris, Héloïse Letissier of Christine and the Queens found herself facing headlines like “Is Christine and the Queens a girl” – thanks PinkNews – and assumptions she was transitioning. When asked if she was a man now, Letissier told iNews, “I’m just working on a different version of femininity.” It seems as the world opens up to representing different gender presentations, the age-old battle cry of ‘are you a guy or a girl’ remains.
Doesn’t it sound familiar? Queerness has a long history in the pop charts. From the 70s onwards, male rock stars subverted convention by donning feminine clothing, shocking audiences into paying attention. But this league of glamorous men – David Bowie, Lou Reed, Bryan Ferry – always kept their sexuality aloof enough to
shag women and make bank from their mix of masculine bodies and femme fashion. Conversely, when women have done the opposite, it hasn’t been quite so celebrated. Of course, the presence of a woman presenting as masculine is destabilising: being butch – especially publicly so – directly disrupts a hierarchy built to reward masculinity by proving that anyone can be masculine. As Judith Butler – and over 100 items on Etsy – would have it, gender is a construct. And that’s threatening. In years past, you’d be hard pushed to see any butchness at all, let alone find celebration in it. There were exceptions, of course: kd lang, who is having her own renaissance in 2019, covered Vanity Fair
with supermodel Cindy Crawford in 1993. Tracy Chapman, who paved the way for representing black lesbian relationships in her music, used her lyrics to speak out against the specific blend of misogyny and homophobia that only affects queer women. While standalone representation is better than none at all, it feels truly revolutionary that 2019 is gifting us a wealth of gender non-conformists. After all, this kind of specific representation, both in the 90s and the present, has always felt like a rebellion against a music industry focused on celebrating women through the male gaze. Now, there are more rebellions than ever: online, particularly on Instagram, the butch community is thriving. Fat butches, black butches, disabled butches – all are representing themselves in a manner that is created by and for a specific queer gaze. What’s more, with the normalisation of different queer aesthetics on social media, more women have felt comfortable coming out and being true to their butchness IRL. A positive not just for the futches of the celebrity world who sip champagne on yachts in Gucci bikinis, but the butches found on Canal Street, working in CEX or tagging #stud on their Instagrams.
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2manydjs African Acid Is The Future Afrodeutsche Alex Virgo Alienata Alison Wonderland Amelie Lens Ant TC1 Antal Artificial Intelligence Artwork Auntie Flo B.Traits Benny L Blasha & Allatt Bonobo DJ Carnage Cause & Affect Ceri Champion Conducta Clap! Clap! Live Crazy P Soundsystem Crucast D Double E Daniel Avery
Darwin Dauwd Dave Clarke David Rodigan Deniro Denis Sulta Derrick Carter Derrick May Dismantle Distress Signal DLR Doc Scott DJ Bone DJ Die DJ GQ DJ Randall DJ Richard DJ Stingray DJ Storm DMX Krew Dusky Eclair Fifi Elliot Adamson Erol Alkan Fabio & Grooverider Farrago faux naïf
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OPINION
30 SHOWS 230 ARTISTS 20 WEEKS
Fleetmac Wood Flux Pavilion Gerd Janson Goldie Green Velvet Greg Wilson DJ Guv HAAi Hardy Caprio Hedex Holly Lester Hunee Jamie Duggan Jay Carder Jaye Ward Jennifer Cardini Jon Hopkins DJ Julio Victoria Jungle DJ Jungle Cakes K-HAND Kelly Lee Owens DJ Khotin Live Kiara Scuro Kiasmos DJ Laurel Halo Len Faki Leo Pol Live Leon Vynehall Levon Vincent LNS Lone Luigi Madonna Manami Marcel Dettmann Mastadon Melé Modeselektor DJ Motor City Drum Ensemble Michael Bibi Michelle Mannetti Milo Spykers Mr Scruff My Nu Leng Nancy Live
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