Tag Archives: dub

Check Out “Some Beautiful Species Left”, the New Album from Melbourne’s EXEK

Cover photo by Robyn Daly

EXEK, Some Beautiful Species Left (SDZ; Anti-Fade; Digital Regress)

Melbourne, AUS five-piece EXEK released their latest long-player, Some Beautiful Species Left,  last month. A follow up to last year’s double, A Casual Assembly and Ahead of Two Thoughts, the album finds the band further fine-tuning their kitchen sink production approach (the promo for the album mentions use of kitchen appliances in the recording, so I couldn’t resist) – and the results are phenomenal.

“Hobbyist” opens the proceedings along a discordant whine that sounds produced by something hand-cranked, unfurling into a full-on motorik headbuzz. Amidst the din, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Albert Wolski teasingly invites the listener to ‘go on/have a second guess’, like a spaced out Mark E. Smith fronting Clinic. It’s a fittingly bewildering start to a record that’s equal turns arresting, unsettling, chaotic, caustically hilarious and inspiring. Strings, horns, guitars, bass, drums, and persistent echo chambah effects swirl into a musical trail mix including dub, abrasive post-punk (pre-Brix The Fall, Wire, Metal Box-era PiL), jazz, and Syd-led Floyd experimentalism.

Highlights are many: the jittery dub of “Lobbyist”; the intriguing guitar/vibraphone (I think?) interplay on “Plastic Sword Retractable”; “Iron Efficiency”’s rugged narco-psych; the lightheaded, infectious melody of “Unetiquetted”. Instruments traditional and non- at times sound as if they’re being played forwards and backward simultaneously, Wolski’s gnomic sing-chant recalling bits of the aforementioned Barrett and Smith, Robyn Hitchcock and Jah Wobble in tone. 

The magic of Some Beautiful Species Left lies in how it all hangs together – even for a listener who maybe has a more punk-inclined/birdlike musical attention span (cough). Veering from sprawling to terse, short blasts, the album’s eight tracks go in many directions. But for all the experimentalism on display, EXEK’s jammier tendencies enthrall rather than disappear too far into the navel. Perhaps a cheeky reference can be found in closer, “How the Curve Helps” (at 8:11, the longest track on the album), Wolski intoning ‘about an hour ago/I should have left’. We’re good to hang out longer.

Some Beautiful Species Left is out now, courtesy of the good folks at SDZ (Europe/Africa), Anti-Fade (AUS/Asia) and Digital Regress (North America).

Highlights include: “Iron Efficiency”; “Commercial Fishing”; “Lobbyist”; “Unetiquetted”.

Web: bcamp fbook label label label

Mr. Twin Sister Unleash the Post-Punk Dub of “Poor Relations”, Donate Proceeds to Standing Rock Sioux Tribe

Mr. Twin Sister, “Poor Relations”

New York quintet Mr. Twin Sister returns with “Poor Relations”.  Eschewing the smoothed out, continental r&b and squelchy indie electronica of 2014’s self-titled album (which, btw, is fantastic) “Poor Relations” fires up a downtown, post-punk dub party.  The band’s rhythmic sensibility, so strong through all of the prior releases I’ve heard, is more aggressive – more ESG than Sweetback.  The lyrics, also, are more forceful, seeming to rail against the dangers of the acceptance of an abusive relationship.  In the band’s own words: “[T]his song meant something else when we first wrote it years ago; recent events have made us hear it differently.  We believe in compassion, empathy, and tolerance, and hope that you will join us in speaking out against the erosion of their importance in our world”.

In that spirit, Mr. Twin Sister will donate all proceeds from the download of “Poor Relations” to standingrock.org – do it at their Bandcamp page (linger, and browse through their catalogue).  You know what to do…and, while you’re at it, keep up with all things Mr. Twin Sister on fbook and the twit.

Album Review: Higher Authorities, Neptune

Higher Authorities, Neptune (Domino, 4/20/2016)

Higher Authorities is a side project of Ade Blackburn and Jonathan Hartley, founders of Liverpool paranoid psych-rockers, Clinic.  Joined by ace dub producer Adrian Sherwood, the three have created a fantastic dub/psych meltdown in Neptune.

To put the paraphernalia on the table, then:  yes, the use of “higher” in the moniker is likely not a coincidence and, yes, the album was purposely released on 4/20.  Waiting to exhale, apparently, was rejected as an album title.

The link up with Sherwood as a production partner is inspired, with him raiding the Black Ark and adding his trademark foreboding atmospherics to every track, from skittery echo chaymbah vocal samples, squelchy keys, and burbling bong water (er, “found sounds”).  While dub and psych, while both constant reference points (see “Colours”, with it’s killer dub drum and bass rhythm), are not the only influences on show here.  Cheesy, lo-tech synth tones abound, with shuffling rhythms and typically mumbled vocalizations from Blackburn.  Tracks like “…and why not” are hazily dreamlike and pastoral, recalling not so much “Black Gun” as a tripped out take on gloriously cheesy 70s AM gold staple, “Loving You” – and it absolutely works.  “Monocle Man” strides along like some kind of demented cabaret number; “Abracadabra”, a lascivious, lost disco deep cut.  “Neptune” oozes, at around the 2:15 mark, into a middle tiptoe through the elysian fields; lovely stuff.

Overall, the album seems a bit less structured than the recent output of Blackburn’s and Harley’s main gig.  Highlights abound here, the overall sense being of musicians having a really freaking good time making music together.

Neptune is available now, on Domino.   While their internet presence is elusive, you can check out the band on fbook and their website.

Highlights include: “and why not”, “Colours”, “Neptune”, “Twilight (In the Luminous Lodge)”, “If”.

New Music: Andy Stott, Butterflies

Andy Stott, “Butterflies” (3/30/16, Modern Love)

Like fellow traveller Burial, much of Andy Stott’s earlier work is characterized by a palpable sense of decay and loss – paranoiac dub echoes, muted sounds, imploding beats, signs of brightness struggling to be heard from under dense layers.  Both artists, since, have taken their music out from behind these gauzy curtains, allowing more and more light to penetrate.  For Stott, this process began with 2014’s wonderful Faith In Strangers (check out our write up, here) and continues apace with his latest single, “Butterflies”.

Taken from forthcoming new album, Too Many Voices, “Butterflies” features bent, glassy synths over an insistent, almost playful beat – the whipsnap snare even threatens to go “full banger”, but holds its fire; breathy, hushed vocals in the Sampha mode more prominent in the mix.  Sounds a bit closer to the kind of outré r&b offerings of artists like Jessy Lanza, and sounds positively, er, luxurious compared to tracks from Stott’s 2012 opus, Luxury Problems…and it’s fantastic.  Another notch in the belt, then, for M. Stott; bring on the new album.

Upcoming tour dates:

April 13, @Patterns, Brighton, UK
April 15, @Church of St. John-at-Hackney, London, UK
April 29, @Echoplex, Los Angeles, CA, US
April 30-May 1, @Further Future Festival, Las Vegas, NV, US
May 7, @Pappy & Harriet’s, Pioneerstown, CA, US
May 8, @Music Box, San Diego, CA, US
June 11, @Funkhaus, Berlin, GER
July 15, @Ferropolis, Leipzig, GER
August 27, @FYFest, Los Angeles, CA

Too Many Voices is released April 22, on Modern Love.