Futurism Restated #59: Horror, Meteors, Wildfire
New releases from 9T Antiope, Longform Editions, St. Abdullah & Eomac, and more
This week’s releases are a dark bunch, by and large. Iranian expat duo 9T Antiope explore gothic folk on Horror Vacui, St. Abdullah & Eomac suffuse beats and samples in furious chaos, and Daniel Bachman tracks the course of a forest fire in his Longform Editions installment.
Read on for all this issue’s reviews, plus a teaser of Balmat’s next release.
[UPDATED: I can’t believe I forgot to mention this before sending out the newsletter, but if you’ve ever thought about making the trip to Menorca, I’m helping put together a solo gig for Polish guitarist Raphael Rogiński at Maó’s Es Claustre, an incredible open-air venue at the center of the city’s old market. It’s going to be a beautiful night.]
For all you paying subscribers out there—you beautiful souls, you—the playlists have been updated, and there’s a fresh edition of the Mixes Digest brimming with energy, too.
Record of the Week
9T Antiope: Horror Vacui (American Dreams)
I first heard 9T Antiope—the Iranian expat duo of Sara Bigdeli Shamloo and Nima Aghiani—in 2016, with Syzygys and the revelatory Of Murk and Shallow Water, which I reviewed for Pitchfork. Their music then sounded unlike anything else I’d heard, a mixture of shadowy dark ambient and, thanks to the Shamloo’s vocals, a desolate beauty redolent of ancient folk music. The duo’s latest, released via Chicago’s American Dreams label, is their most ambitious yet: a concept album about a tumbledown haunted house that holds a monstrous absence—a void that gestures at the liminality in which the Paris-based musicians find themselves as members of the diaspora. Their music has never sounded more focused. Using just violin, octave violin, and octave mandolin, Aghiani writes music that is both skeletal and supple, by turns brooding, melancholy, and ominous, with plucked loops warily circling scraped pedal tones; Shamloo makes the most of that velvety backdrop, exploring every possible corner of her register—hissed whispers, guttural consonants, bellowing low end, and sweet soprano refrains. There’s an unmistakably gothic cast to their music, but never in a way that might feel affected or contrived—just that their natural predilection for somber moods leads them inevitably toward eerie ends. Like Lucrecia Dalt on Anticlines and No Era Sólida, they have a keen ear for the ways that other dimensions seem to sneak into our own on the backs of curved waveforms. If horror loves a vacuum, Horror Vacui feels like an attempt to make peace with that same dread.
(A small update: I forgot to link Foxy Digitalis’ interview with the duo, which you should read!)
Albums
Saint Abdullah & Eomac: Light meteors crashing around you will not confuse you (Drowned by Locals)
New York-based Iranian-Canadian sibling duo Saint Abdullah (Mohammad and Mehdi Mehrabani-Yeganeh) and Irish producer Eomac (Ian McDonnell) have turned out an increasingly heavy series of releases over the past couple of years, fusing heavily distorted beats with field recordings and found sounds. Their new one, released not six months after last year’s Chasing Stateless, is the trio’s most blistering statement yet. They recorded the album quickly last October, as Israel mounted its genocidal campaign against Palestine, and you can feel the feelings of sorrow, rage, indignation, and horror seeping through the music. Their work together has always been full-on, but this is something else–a twisted wreck of blasted drums, warped samples, and instrumental and vocal scraps from the Middle East. Beats lurch forward before crumpling; loops surge again and then are torn violently from the rails. “Overexposure will kill a pornstar” sounds like a charred Bomb Squad production; in “Old enough to log in,” a plucked string refrain provides the throughline to a loping groove buffeted by pile drivers. “Cement skin”—a horrifying title, given the context—takes a single scrap of voice and drums and flogs it until the speakers seem to bleed. Despite the sheer (intentional) ugliness of it all, the sound design—particularly the way they work their sampled material into the percussive industrial hellscape—is breathtaking. A potent cocktail of anguish and fury. (All proceeds go to the UNRWA in Gaza.)
Daniel Bachman: Quaker Run Wildfire (Longform Editions)
Chuck Johnson: Cypress Suite (Longform Editions)
Weston Olencki: I Went to the Dance (Longform Editions)
Piotr Kurek: The night we slept under an overhanging cliff (Longform Editions)
The always worthy Longform Editions label comes up with a banner crop of releases this month—and not just because one of the artists showcased is a passionate (and clearly talented) gardener: Daniel Bachman, a Virginia guitarist whose music has evolved from folk, bluegrass, and fingerstyle to increasingly ambitious digital collage pieces. A folklorist and historian, Bachman is keenly attuned to the land around him, and on Quaker Run Wildfire (10/24/23/ - 11/17/23) he turns his attention to a wildfire that burned for 25 days across a mountaintop visible from his home. The piece is structured around his field recordings of the fire and its environs, with digitally fragmented fiddle and guitar woven in to create a cascading drone. Its 25-minute run—from its tranquil, almost bucolic opening through passages of harsh noise and strident chaos, and on through its pensive denouement—is a real journey. His notes for the piece explain the way that wildfires are but the latest front in an assault on the land and its native inhabitants that has been going on for hundreds of years.
As always, Longform Editions releases its new drop in a simultaneous batch of four; Chuck Johnson’s Cypress Suite makes a provocative companion to Bachman’s piece, if only because Johnson is also a guitarist whose practice fuses folk techniques and avant-garde composition. He recorded Cypress Suite on the 1968 Holtkamp pipe organ at Oakland’s Mills College, where he studied; reedist Patrick Shiroishi and fellow Mills alums Kristine Barrett (voice) and Marielle Jakobsons (piano) contribute to a 22-minute piece that passes from consonant drones and subtle beating pulses through rushing pulse-minimalist arpeggiations and back to an almost liturgical state of contemplative grace as drawn-out tones seem to slow the pace of time.
South Carolina native Weston Olencki also channels American folk traditions on I Went to the Dance (feat. Jules Reidy), in which Appalachian mountain music and Cajun forms are filtered into a shimmering piece for guitar and fiddle that cycles through extended silences and eventually builds to an epic, coruscating climax whose every-sound-all-at-once brightness reminds me a little bit of Laurie Spiegel’s own translation of Appalachian music into electronic forms.
Poland’s Piotr Kurek—whose music I reviewed twice last year—is perhaps the odd man out of the bunch, being the only one whose music isn’t informed by American folk forms. Yet his own fusion of acoustic and digital elements, wending an uneasy path between baroque music and jazz, addresses similar ideas of tradition and metamorphosis. The night we slept under an overhanging cliff combines seven different unfinished pieces from his archive into what feels like a one-room gallery exhibition: seven pictures with distinct yet complementary styles—aquatic R&B, vocaloid chamber choir, symphonic minimalism—that mirror their neighbors’ supersaturated tones.
Fax: Forma y Fondo (Faxmusik)
Mexicali’s Fax (Rubén Alonso Tamayo) got his start more than two decades ago making wispy glitch techno in keeping with the era’s clicks + cuts movement. It had been a while since I had heard material of his—that’s on me, not him; he’s remained remarkably prolific over the years—so I was surprised to hear just how burly the first track on his new one sounds. Utilizing a relatively stripped-down setup of synthesizers, electric guitar, and effects, Tamayo summons up a resolutely unvarnished sound—lumpy modular bass squelch, lurching white-noise thwacks, skeletal pads and stuttering pulses. The severity of a track like “Forma y Fondo” reminds me, faintly, of Ben Frost—but where Frost emphasizes overload, Fax strips back till the electric guitar is little more than a sliver of crescent moon. At first chilly, the album warms as it goes; “Ejercicio 3” is a gorgeous swatch of Muscut- or Faitiche-esque ambient brooding, while the flickering “Flex” is one of the loveliest bits of pop ambient I’ve heard this year.
Low End Activist: Airdrop (Peak Oil)
I don’t think I ever expected to hear a rave stab on a Peak Oil release, yet here they are, tearing across the opening track of UK producer Low End Activist’s new one for the label. Airdrop pays tribute to the open-air raves of the 1990s, but what differentiates this from so many retrospectively inclined records is the fact that it’s mostly empty space; breakbeats lash out only to be subsumed into the silence again. The effect is a little like a vintage jungle tape that has corroded in ways that would be, of course, physically impossible, with big chunks of breaks flaking to dust and leaving behind a suggestive, yawning absence.
Château Flight: La Folie Studio (Versatile)
It’s been 18 years since Gilb’r and I:Cube last put out a studio album as Château Flight—20, if you don’t count 2006’s Les Vampires OST. Rather than letting them psyche them out, they clearly took a relaxed approach to the two years of studio sessions that produced La Folie Studio. They describe these tracks as a musical dialogue governed by certain basic principles (“Playing electronic music, whether alone or not, must be joyous, fun, and make you feel good”; “The studio is not a sanctuary but a place of life. Technology must not be intimidating”). As is often the case for these two, they cut a sidewinding path, taking in cosmic vistas on “Clair de Lune à Mykonos,” digging into shimmering Detroit techno on the aptly titled “Fordizm,” and unleashing a kind of spectral clang—the ghost of the Ostgut-Ton sound?—on the eerie, thumping “Mange.” Best of all might be the radiant “Theâtre de Verdure,” a ’90s-via-the-’70s gem (think: Global Communication channeling Tangerine Dream) that runs at a delirious 75 BPM—a relaxed andante—festooned with double-time accents.
EPs & Singles
Sami.moe: Crash and Build (1432R)
Celebrating 10 years of DC’s 1432R label, Sami Yenigun teams up with Dreamcast Moe on four tracks of crisp, spring-loaded house balancing muscular basslines with dreamy, stargazing pads.
Dolo Percussion: DOLO 6 (Future Times)
Speaking of DC, the one and only Andrew Field-Pickering (aka Maxmillion Dunbar) dusts off his Dolo Percussion alias for the first time in four years, doling out (doloing out?) six cuts of tightly coiled drum tools. I particularly like them when they slow down, like the relaxed lope of “DOLO 28,” or the disorientingly dubbed-out “DOLO 29,” which deploys its reversed hits, gated decay, and offbeat syncopation so trickly that parsing its 93-BPM tempo could make your head hurt. Then again, there’s no “dolor” without DOLO.
Peder Mannerfelt: Big Ball Variations (Peder Mannerfelt Produktion)
Revisiting his 2023 anthem “Big Ball,” Peder Mannerfelt taps Roman Flügel for a remix that bets the bank on maximalist rave energy. The trick is the way he skirts the 4/4 groove, keeping the tune light on its feet even at its most full on. On the “No Bounce Mix,” Mannerfelt goes one further, muting the drums entirely to turn the central riff into a four-minute arp tool charged with nervous energy. (And just waiting, perhaps, to be mixed with Dolo Percussion.)
Khotin: Alterac Acid / Mornings II (Khotin Industries)
Edmonton’s Dylan Khotin-Foote is no stranger to woozy vibes. On this new two-tracker, he takes the starry-eyed ambient drift of records like New Tab and laces it with unvarnished machine rhythms. The effect isn’t far from what he did on last year’s Release Spirit, but murkier and more unstable—particularly on “Alterac Acid,” whose tape-warped synths and wistful 303 line feel dangerously untethered from the muffled groove, as though the whole thing could fall to pieces at any minute. “Mornings II” is just as lumpy but warmer and cozier—like a tangled duvet, perhaps.
Balmat News
Panoram: Great Times (Balmat)
Hot on the heels of Coral Morphologic & Nick León’s Projections of a Coral City, we’re back with our next release, this time from Panoram. His Great Times doesn’t sound anything like anything we’ve released to date; it’s too squirrelly to be called ambient, yet it’s not not ambient, either. I quite like the press text I wrote for this one, so I’m going to go ahead an reprint it here in full. The album’s out May 17; listen to “Limbo” and “Cameos” now.
Panoram makes soundtracks for daydreams gone sideways. Picture the scene: an afternoon nap with the television on, quietly, in the corner; snatches of conversation drift in through the open window. Wandering, half-formed thoughts take unexpected detours; before you know it, there’s a movie playing out against closed lids, the colors bright, the characters unfamiliar. Accidental rhythms, incidental melodies, imitations of life, messages in code.
Across 17 fragmentary, sketch-like tracks, Panoram carves a labyrinthine path in which nothing is what it seems: a fantasy world of breathy vox pads, faux guitar, detuned synths, bursts of flute and orchestral percussion, and even the occasional cheeky cartoon sample. It’s chillout music with a chilly edge, ambient with a darkly ironic undertone. (The briefest glance at your news outlet of choice should be enough to confirm that the title—Great Times—ought to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.)
Panoram has been making music under his principal alias for more than a decade now, releasing albums on labels like Firecracker, Running Back, and his own Wandering Eye. (He has also performed and recorded with Amen Dunes, and has co-production credits on Amen Dunes’ forthcoming Sub Pop album Death Jokes.) Panoram’s output has ranged widely, taking in abstract pop, classical composition, twisted takes on library music, and cyborg funk. One record of “bio-acoustic transmissions” came with a cannabis leaf pressed in clear wax; his 2021 album Pianosequenza Vol. 1 gathers his experiments on the Yamaha Disklavier. But Great Times offers the truest picture yet of a project that has never been easy to pin down.
Loath to overshare details about his personal life, Panoram instead lets the music do the talking, using his cryptic tracks to express the slipperiest sorts of ideas—the thoughts that take root where anxiety, distraction, and the most fleeting traces of grace commingle. Panoram’s approach flies in the face of contemporary ambient orthodoxy, with its emphasis on immersion and uplift. Great Times expresses something thornier, more difficult to translate, yet also more tantalizing to contend with. Its 17 tracks offer a chance to get lost—and an invitation to remain in the maze as long as you like.
Recommended Reading
Andy Cush on Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee
I spent much of last weekend listening to this remarkable album, which reminds me of the Velvet Underground and Guided by Voices and, of course, any number of Phil Spector-produced girl groups from the ’60s. Andy Cush’s review does a wonderful job of capturing exactly what’s so captivating about it. (If you don’t trust me, then listen to Elijah Wood!)
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/cindy-lee-diamond-jubilee/
Adam Badí Donoval Interviews Piotr Kurek
For his Táto Strana Európy newsletter, the Warm Winters Ltd. boss talks to Warsaw’s Piotr Kurek, who made two of my favorite records last year. I appreciate his candor:
It’s always a bit difficult for me to talk about the music because I don’t really understand it to be honest (laughs). You know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I have some basic skills and through years of working on music I kind of know where to go or where to not go, how to not make the process more difficult for myself, so that I can finish a project.
I probably repeat this every time someone asks me about it, but I really try to keep this naive element in my music. To have this spontaneous, almost amateur approach to making music, even if it doesn’t always sound like that.
Andy Beta on Italian Minimalism
Andy Beta goes deep on Giusto Pio’s Motore Immobile, which serenaded him on a backpacking trip across Europe nearly a quarter-century ago.
In the year 2000, I backpacked around Europe, making space for a few precious mixtapes in my pack. One was for sleeping, the first track a demo of the Who’s “Pure and Easy,” and its line: “There once was a note pure and easy/ Playing so free like a breath rippling by/ The note is eternal, I hear it, it sees me.” That carried over to the blast of a major C chord on two church organs, the pure and easy note that ushers in the sublime 17 minutes of Pio’s “Motore Immobile.”
It never failed to slow and deepen my breath and usher me off to a dreamstate. The piece itself takes its measure and pacing from breath, the result of the long wordless tones by vocalist Martin Kleist (which Gryphon informed me is an alias of Franco Battiato). It’s so subtle and intimate, it’s ASMR decades before ASMR became a sound concept. It draws you in, your breath becoming slower and slower, and before you know it, the cosmos breathes with you. I went to sleep to it for many months, in many different countries, more often than not being pulled right back out when that C chord sounds once more in its waning moments, coming full circle. Heaven was instead just a hostel bed. “Motore Immobile” remains as much a landmark of my trip as visiting the Eiffel Tower, the Sistine Chapel, the Cinque Terre coastline, or the lasting memories and friendships.
Shawn Reynaldo on Dance Music Discourse
Thank goodness that Shawn wrote about that article, so that I don’t have to.
That’s it for this week—thanks for reading!