Futurism Restated #60: Means, Messengers, Midnight
Ambient dream pop, hazed-out cumbia, microtonal pump organ, and more
This week’s new releases are a largely supine bunch. We’ve got:
foggy, Cocteaus-adjacent ambient from Motion Ward’s Ulla & Ultrafog
lowercase collage works from Manja Ristić
divine Western vistas from More Eaze, Pardo, and Glass
tea-kettle sonatas from organist FUJI||||||||||TA
downbeat cumbia for the 4/20 celebrants
And much more. Read on for the goods; for paying subscribers, the playlists have been updated, with more than 20 hours of combined playing time—including quite a few tracks that I haven’t written about here—and a new Mixes Digest is coming soon!
Record of the Week
Ulla & Ultrafog: It Means a Lot (Motion Ward)
I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it is that separates Ulla & Ultrafog’s debut collaboration from scads of other releases—from among their peer group, and perhaps even within their own catalogs—that similarly combine hazy ambient with an unmistakable dream-pop spirit. It’s more a hunch than an arguable theory, given how hard to pin down the duo’s music is in the first place, but I think it has to do with the way It Means a Lot seems to move in fits and starts; the album balances ambient music’s habitual fluidness with a halting, unpredictable energy. No cloud of fogged-out vocals is left to drift long before a truncated bassline rises up from the murk and splashes back into the unseen depths again, like an ambient Loch Ness Monster; no expanse of pastel sky is long left unpunctuated by tufts of guitar, chopped-up piano, scritchy-scratch percussion. Make no mistake, it’s as tranquil as you could ask for; melancholy, heavily abstracted ambient doesn’t come much dreamier. But it stumbles forward in a fragmentary way that feels unusual, maybe even unique—a series of disconnected moments, like foggy strobe-lit freeze frames knit together by tendrils of mist. Los Angeles’ Motion Ward label isn’t quite as well known, perhaps, as Huerco S.’s West Mineral Ltd., despite the fact that both share an aesthetic (and, at times, personnel), but with It Means a Lot they confirm their place as one of the prime movers in the ambient fringe.
Albums
Manja Ristić: Ma (LINE)
Like Bernhard Günter or the late Steve Roden, Serbian sound artist Manja Ristić makes music for people with keen ears. Even the most perceptive listener will need to turn the volume dial considerably past its usual resting place in order to appreciate the depth of the sound world she conjures. But once you do, what a world it is: an endless field of the gentlest fizz and drone, of crickets and birdsong but also industrial hum, a million frequencies from across the cosmos weaving into a single rippling membrane. (As I listen, a considerable tramuntana wind is whipping against the windows, adding its own whine to the chorus, which feels appropriate; Ristić’s field-recorded collage feels open to the possibility of aleatory collaborations.) The sources of her music, as detailed in the album notes, are staggering: a giant anthill in an abandoned forest quarry; hydrophone recordings of rivers and lakes; a bowed glass vase; a broiler; the electromagnetic field buzzing around a broken socket; the ventilation system in the men’s restroom in Ljubljana’s Museum of Contemporary Art. These, then, are not scientific studies; they’re impressionistic glimpses of the world around the artist, fused into a softly shimmering four-dimensional soundscape—a poetics of pure vibration.
More Eaze, Pardo & Glass: Paris Paris, texas texas (OOH-sounds)
It’s virtually impossible to put steel guitar in ambient music and not bring to mind the KLF’s Chill Out, or for that matter, Daniel Lanois’ work with Brian Eno. At least, those are my immediate reference points upon hearing this collaboration between OOH-sounds head Pardo, someone named Glass, and More Eaze. Yet the moods they conjure are so dreamy, so absolutely untaxing, I couldn’t care less. The album apparently began as a collaborative effort between Pardo and Glass, who wanted to make a guitar record, but More Eaze’s silkily Auto-Tuned vocals tip it into more delectably unfamiliar territory; her voice takes the post-rock/ambient country textures of the original sessions and slicks them with chrome. (She also contributed pedal steel, 12-string guitar, violin, and additional electronics, rounding out the record’s unusually lush feel.) I’m cooking dinner as I write this, with the sun just about to dip below the horizon, and it’s the perfect setting—although daybreak in a field would probably be even better.
FUJI||||||||||TA: MMM (Hallow Ground)
Yosuke Fujita says that the title MMM has multiple meanings—including a tribute to his wife and daughter, whose names both begin with “M.”—so I’m gonna go with Minimalist Masterpiece of the Month. I don’t entirely follow how Fujita has made this stuff—I know he works with a homebuilt organ with an electric air pump, which accounts for the music’s spectral, wheezy tone, and he also recorded the instrument by waving a gun mic in front of it, which could account for the unpredictable, tremolo-like fluctuations in volume and tone. The overall effect is a bit like a chorus of tea kettles run through an array of broken Leslie cabinets; over the course of 21 minutes, innumerable loops—erratic, imperfect, mercurial—weave together into a living, breathing organism of sound that just keeps twisting in the wind, like an enchanted spiderweb. For fans of Éliane Radigue, Kaffe Matthews, Folke Rabe, et al., it’s a stunning piece of work.
Dekalb Works: For Barney, Who Was a Bad Dog, But a Good Boy, and Very Much Loved
This album from the duo of Radio alHara residents Austin Peru and Daniel Creahan is supposedly based on reconfigured samples of country music, though you’d never know it—proof, perhaps, that if you slow anything down far enough, it’ll turn to mush. Along the course of its run, For Barney, Who Was a Bad Dog, But a Good Boy, and Very Much Loved (title of the month, by the way) meanders between smoky ambient passages and illbient murk; “At a Canter,” despite the title, plods sullenly along atop a heavy breakbeat groove, while standout “Sioux Falls” sounds like Dettinger with a little steel guitar woven woozily in. The whole thing’s a perfect match for the unseasonably wet, cold winter weather that’s gripping much of Europe in its fist right now.
Manuel Troller: Halcyon Future (Meakusma / three:four)
I first became aware of Lausanne’s three:four thanks to Filipe Felizardo’s John Fahey-referencing 2014 album Volume II - Sede e Morte - Guitar Variations for the Thirsty and the Dead, and since then I’ve often been impressed by their output, which seems quite heavy on experimental guitar music (unless that’s just the releases I’ve happened to pay attention to?). This new album from Switzerland’s Manuel Troller certainly falls under that umbrella, though it’s much more, too. While the relatively short solo guitar piece “DNA” reminds me of Gastr del Sol at their most emotionally direct, it’s the three-part “Halcyon Future” that’s the real showstopper here: a churning, chugging fantasia for overdubbed guitars and acoustic drums (courtesy Mario Hänni), as well as, eventually, trombone (Michael flury) and soprano sax (Hans Koch) that begins with trim, staccato plucks and just grows and grows and grows, surging and swelling. Manuel Göttsching is an obvious reference point; even more so is Oren Ambarchi, particularly his longform pieces like Knots. It’s a wild ride, a breathtaking slalom between abandon and control.
Marine Eyes: to belong (Past Inside the Present)
As Marine Eyes, Cynthia Bernard makes ambient music that’s tranquil, grounded, optimistic, and unabashedly beautiful—I even want to say wholesome, somehow. It’s a lush, sentimental sound, fashioned out of jewel-toned synths and endless reverb. The pieces where she sings in a high, breathy tone remind me, faintly, of Ana Roxanne; I particularly like the tracks built around her guitar, like “cemented,” in which a circular plucked melody dissolves into silvery backmasking. As someone who’s usually drawn to darker sounds, I’d like a few of these tracks (like “mended own”) more if they were perhaps a smidgen less sweet. But at its best, to belong is a lovely encapsulation of wistful bliss.
DJ Gonz: Messenger (Wain)
I already felt like I barely had a grasp on what Guy Gormley and Rory Gleeson’s Jolly Records was all about; “leftfield dance” doesn’t quite sum up the mysterious undercurrent running beneath releases from Enchante, Thomas Bush, and RAP (who I reviewed for Pitchfork in 2019—a BNM at that!). Now it turns out that they have a sublabel that’s just as cryptic, if not more so. Wain seems to have launched in 2020 with a muggy, nervous 12-inch from Gormley’s Leeway alias, then kicked back into gear last November with an EP from one DJ Gonz (no idea) that put a similarly nail-bitten spin on speedy, lo-fi techno soaked in a washed-out synth haze. Gonz’s new album Messenger picks up where that EP left off, bounding across chattering technoid pulses crosscut with a hint of doubletime dembow; the Casio-strength string pads lend a faint grime air, and the fidelity of the drums is somewhere between “chipped limestone” and “wet cardboard.” But it’s precisely that collision of high-strung and low-polish—like a post-punk Errorsmith, maybe—that allows the music to get its hooks into you.
EPs & Singles
Tom Ellis: Midnight Scientists (KANN)
There’s a faint DJ Sprinkles air to Freerotation resident Tom Ellis’ “Breakout,” which smears wordless house-diva exclamations mournfully over hazed-out arps and a shuffling drum groove. Something about the funk bassline and jazzy keys also reminds me of San Francisco house music of the 1990s; it’s within a hair’s breadth of sounding too tasteful for my liking, yet something about the murk beneath the surface keeps it mysterious. “Paper Tigers” (perhaps inspired by Luomo’s album of the same name?) is more stone-faced, rolling out dubby chords over a crisp, stuttering, sneakily syncopated groove—one for the early (or very late) hours, which is to say, right up my alley. But my favorite track of all is a “Breakout” remix by fellow Freero resident Leif (I’ve reviewed him twice now), who zeroes in on the song’s slightly eerie arpeggios and strips away everything else, applying layers of shakers, bells, and delay to create a dizzyingly immersive and virtually drum-free dub. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Drumless techno is one of my very favorite strains of dance music, and this mix is an instant classic for the canon.
Silvestre: It’s 2024!! (Studio Barnhus)
Stockholm’s Studio Barnhus label typically leans toward cheerful, summery house music with a sly grin, so “Bruxas,” the standout track on the new EP from Lisbon’s Silvestre, comes as a surprise: It’s a lean, spring-loaded electro track driven by gnarled waves of FM bass and streaked with amoebic splotches of sub. The Korg M1-led “Kika” is more in keeping with Barnhus’ tongue-in-cheek style, with its sing-song refrain of “Catalina, Catalina, cocaina, cocaina,” but “Bruxas” isn’t the only surprise; “Polvo” is a lush ambient dembow brooder, and “Whoever You Are” a delightfully hazy downtempo snippet that snaps to percussive attention in its final moments.
NAP: Cueva EP (Virtuaca)
Speaking of ambient takes on Afro-Caribbean styles, this new two-tracker from ACA label co-founder Daniel Rincón is a real gem. Until now, ACA (co-founded by Phran) has focused principally on the sounds of Venezuelan raptor house and changa tuki, but with this release, which inaugurates the digital-only sublabel Virtuaca, Rincón sinks his teeth into lanky cumbia rhythms and dials up the fuzz. Despite the title, “Cumbia al Sol” is anything but sunny; it’s a smoked-out, shadow-soaked jam suffused in dub delay and veined with snaky guitar lines. “Tambor y Piedra,” on the other hand, wields its synths almost like a shoegaze guitar, blowing out the distortion until the harmonics seem to shimmer in the heat.
Pump Media Unlimited: Chessy! (Sorry Records)
Pump Media Unlimited is the duo of Portland’s C Powers and New York’s CH Rom; their new EP for NYC’s Sorry Records is five tracks of lo-fi cut-up techno-funk that reminds me a little bit of the kind of thing that Safety Scissors, Sutekh, and Kit Clayton were doing back in SF in the early 2000s (anyone remember PJ Pooterhoots?). The fidelity is nil and the tongue is decidedly in cheek, but the tracks still bang. Imagine Errorsmith on a more unhinged tip (particularly the slash-and-burn disco of “My Ride”), or Plaid recording for Hausu Mountain/Orange Milk (“AMX-163 Resistance Chess Starfighter”).
Pretty Sneaky: PRSN7.1/7.2 (Pretty Sneaky)
More skewed drum tools from Berlin’s Pretty Sneaky on their first release in nearly two years. Since 2021, they’ve been putting out no-frills white-labels with an emphasis on serpentine grooves and faintly psychedelic overtones (just check the krautrock/jam-band vibes of PRSN2-A1). Their releases have gradually been getting weirder, traipsing into Wah Wah Wino-adjacent territory, and this new five-tracker is no exception. “7.1-A” begins with two minutes of what sounds like a smartphone recording of someone’s front room before the drums kick in, and from there it’s eight minutes of side-winding, freeform pattern sculpting. “7.1-B1” and “7.1-B2” both seem to sample the water drumming of the Baka people, just cut up in a way that sounds like Thomas Brinkmann, in the former, and overlaid with Seefeel like drones in the latter. (I have fond memories of discovering Hannibal Records’ Heart of the Forest - The Music of the Baka Forest People of Southeast Cameroon in the 1990s, so I was happy to discover that Orchéstre Baka Gbiné now have multiple albums of their own music on Bandcamp.) “7.2-A” is 10 minutes of what sounds like a field-recorded campfire that eventually builds into a loping water-drumming rhythm; “7.2-B” starts out with three minutes of bells and insect noise before it grows into a surly drum-machine jam. As DJ tools go, they’re esoteric as hell, but those can be the best kinds.
A Recommended Concert
On the off chance that you’re considering a trip to Menorca in the near future, the one and only Raphael Rogiński—about whom I’ve been proselytizing for years now—plays a solo concert at Maó’s Es Claustre, a stunning open-air venue at the heart of the city’s historic market, on Thursday May 30 (9pm, 10€). For a taste of his playing, check out this incredible 30-minute live-in-the-studio session from a few years back.
Balmat News
Panoram: Great Times (Balmat)
Balmat’s 10th (!) album is out May 17: a squirrely, labyrinthine set of ambient-not-ambient from trickster extraordinaire Panoram.
That’s it for this week—thanks for reading!
catching up on my reads and so lovely to see ‘to belong’ included here! thanks, philip!
Much love ! Thanks for featuring Pump Media Unlimited