Futurism Restated #62: Tropical Ambient, Balearic Jazz, and the Death of an Icon
New music from Jan Jelinek, Ezmeralda, Shabason/Gunning, and more
Steve Albini—what’s to say? I grew up on Big Black; they never felt like my band in the way that some groups of a similar vintage (Sonic Youth, Rites of Spring) did, but I loved Songs About Fucking, which I must have taped off a friend in high school. It conveyed a defiant, don’t-give-a-fuck thrill that none of the other (plenty defiant) punk rock I listened to could muster. I vividly remember the 1994 Maximum Rocknroll special issue (on the cover: “major labels: some of your friends are already this fucked,” superimposed over the photograph of someone putting a gun in his mouth), which ran Albini’s essay (also published the year before in The Baffler, IIRC) laying out—in hard numerical detail—the ways that major-label contracts set up bands to fail. The context was the fraying of the underground and the wave of artists looking to make it big on the majors—the “sellout” debate that has largely disappeared from the discourse. But his argument wasn’t made out of some kind of dogmatic stubbornness or holier-than-though purism; it was largely pragmatic, concerned with ensuring artists’ very survival—a moral position rooted in lived experience.
In 1993, I also stumbled upon Shellac’s first few seven-inches, and shortly thereafter their debut album, which turned my brain inside out a few times in quick succession. I was steeped in lots of heavy, ugly music in those years, but I’d never heard anything with quite the same lacerating intensity as Albini’s guitars on that record, not to say the production itself, with its claustrophobic room tone and krautrock-on-Adderal grooves; the whole thing felt as volatile and dangerous as a weasel in a shoebox—barely contained, ready to take your head off at any moment.
I won’t even get into the mark he left on (indie) rock, broadly speaking, as a producer and philosopher, not to mention the moral turn of the past decade, in which he began reckoning with his youthful edgelord shenanigans. Jeremy Gordon wrote a phenomenal profile of Albini for The Guardian last year in which Albini discussed his conversion:
As the years wore on, his perspective started to shift. “I can’t defend any of it,” he told me. “It was all coming from a privileged position of someone who would never have to suffer any of the hatred that’s embodied in any of that language.” For years, Albini had always believed himself to have airtight artistic and political motivations behind his offensive music and public statements. But as he observed others in the scene who seemed to luxuriate in being crass and offensive, who seemed to really believe the stuff they were saying, he began to reconsider. “That was the beginning of a sort of awakening in me,” he said. “When you realise that the dumbest person in the argument is on your side, that means you’re on the wrong side.”
[...]
On top of his work as musician and engineer, Albini is an accomplished poker player: last summer he won $196,089 and earned his second bracelet at the World Series of Poker, which in layman’s terms is an award you get for being really, really good at playing poker. But there was a deeper meaning behind his attraction to the game, he explained. “In poker, there’s a layer of deception where you sometimes do things that are intended to be misleading,” he said. “In my regular life, if I tell somebody something, I want them to believe me. I’m not trying to induce mistakes in the people I interact with.” Poker was the only realm in which it felt appropriate to lie.
It was a neat summation of why he was talking so directly about his past pronouncements, and why he regretted them now. “It’s not about being liked,” he said, as we sat at Electrical Audio. “It’s me owning up to my role in a shift in culture that directly caused harm to people I’m sympathetic with, and people I want to be a comrade to.
“The one thing I don’t want to do is say: ‘The culture shifted – excuse my behaviour.’ It provides a context for why I was wrong at the time, but I was wrong at the time.”
It was a clear and honest apology, and it was the truth. And with that, we both fell silent for what felt like the first time since we’d met.
Yesterday, in the span of a few hours, Jeremy wrote and published an obit for The Atlantic, where he’s an editor.
Albini did too much to be neatly summarized in any profile; I didn’t have the space in mine to dive too deeply into his most recent band, Shellac, which in a terrible coincidence is releasing a new record next week. But as I drafted, two things kept coming back to me: The first was that Albini had been unafraid to own up to his past rather than wave it off or double down on his positions. The second was that he talked about music not as some expression of ego but as a creative practice worth maintaining because it enriched your life. To hear this—and in such an unpretentious way—was no small thing. This was not mere plate-spinning from a guy who liked to hear himself talk; these were tightly reasoned, directly stated beliefs that he’d stress-tested in his own life and were reflected in how he carried himself.
I’d urge you to read the whole thing, all the way to the end.
This week I’m having one of those weeks where I feel like I’m slipping behind in my listening. That’s always a situation fraught with guilt. I feel like I’m letting down the musicians and labels who have entrusted me with their music, who rely on people like me to get the word out about them. And now that I’m publishing this newsletter, and especially now that a number of you exceedingly kind folks actually pay money for it, there’s the guilt that I’m letting you down, too. But still: The promos pile up, and the days stay the same length. The anxiety builds. I stopped biting my fingernails years ago, but scrolling through the inbox is rough to make me start eyeing those pearly half moons hungrily.
But then, sometimes, something clicks. One of the ways I try to stay on top of my listening is to periodically load up my phone with albums I’m considering for the newsletter, then dial up a random album when I’m in the car. This past week, that album was Shabason / Gunning’s Ample Habitat. I’ve already got a fair amount of listener’s guilt attached to Joseph Shabason, because he’s so prolific, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of his catalog. I feel like I should be doing more, doing better. But I put this record on, and a lot of those feelings of guilt melted away. The rest of it didn’t matter—this was music! This was listening! This was ideas pushing air in real time, and it was all around me, and I was in it, and it felt good and right and true in a totally non-critical way—the way, I’m guessing, the artists would want it to feel, probably more than they’d care about a “good review” or anything like that. So I drove my car and I let their cottony blend of saxophone and electronics enfold me, and for a while, anyway, that felt like enough.
Since this issue is already getting uncharacteristically, shall we say, bloggy, I’ll just take a moment to note, with no small degree of wonder, that Futurism Restated is now more than a year old; the first proper issue ran back on April 18, 2023. Enormous thanks to everyone that’s read, subscribed, and shared.
Scroll on for this week’s recommendation, including a mischievous audio portrait of internet scams from Jan Jelinek, Ezmeralda’s gauzy inaugural installment for TraTraTrax’s new ambient sublabel, a crucial benefit compilation for Palestine, and much more. For paying subscribers, the playlists have been updated and there are now four Mixes Digests for all your running/road-dripping/BBQing/house-partying/housekeeping/ needs.
Record of the Week
Firnis DC: Firnis der Civilisation (FELT)
The Cologne-based artist Fedor Servolenko (or is it Gregor Keuthage?) is not, let’s say, a fan of oversharing. His Blackest Ever Black album Sekundenschlaf, which I reviewed back in 2018, was ostensibly recomposed from audio recovered from a secondhand hard drive; when I contacted him, trying to get to the bottom of the story, I received emails ostensibly from both Servolenko and Keuthage; at the time, I wrote, “Their accounts suggested stories nested within other stories, unreliable narrators ceding the stage to other, even sketchier narrators, like the introduction to a novel by Melville or Conrad.” Firnis DC is Keuthage/Servolenko’s latest alias; Firnis der Civilization appears via FELT, a Copenhagen label, run by Fergus Jones, aka Perko, that just gets more fascinating with every oblique missive. The album—the title’s German for “the veneer of civilization”—comes with a booklet filled with short texts in German and English that read like philosophical tracts from obscure creeds. (“Mirrors do not show The True. Mirrors Show only a travesty thereof: A hundred-and-eighty Degrees turned Perversion of The Truth You accept as the exemplary Image of What Is. It would be daring to insist this could be more than a pious Hope. So it is The Photo, which rips You out of Your Dream. But even this is only a violent Pressing of Reality into a two-dimensional Plane. Ask a Friend: So He will confirm, that The Photo as well only de-picts a mere One of Your many-numbered Facets. Which Image is to believe, if any Images were to believe?”)
I enjoy the additional layer of mystique, but it’s hardly necessary to appreciate the depth of Firnis DC’s music, which feels both familiar yet surprising at every turn. What do you even call this stuff? “Zweite Trommel” is a kind of cat-footed downtempo, rich with spatial information and field-recorded detritus, in the vein of Huerco S., perhaps; the gothic world-folk of “Augen Offen” calls back to the artist’s Blackest Ever Black roots; “Funktion Form” is reminiscent of Aphex Twin’s SAW II; “Mutter Maria” could almost be an outtake from Seefeel’s Succour. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, the gauzy atmospheres give way to flickering trance arps and then Philip Glass gone footwork; the closing “Innozenz Jahr” sounds like vintage Arovane with a little Latin drum machine layered over the top. Traversing nine tracks in just 33 minutes, the album slips and sidewinds its way through moods and reference points, flirting with deja vu and then feinting sideways once again. It’s a spellbinding album.
Albums
Ezmeralda: Ruido y Flor (AMBIE—TÓN)
Ezmeralda’s music until now has felt like a gradual process of dissolution. On 2021’s Patriomonio immaterial de la nada, for Quito’s También label, the Colombian musician born Nicolás Vallejo took the slowed-down sounds of cumbia rebajada and smeared them into an ambient haze; on the following year’s En átomos volando, likewise released on Quito’s También label [correction: for Medellín’s Ediciones Eter] (I reviewed it for Pitchfork), he rendered the genre’s loping contours in an even softer blur. Now, on Ruido y Flor—the inaugural release on TraTraTrax’s AMBIE—TÓN sublabel)—he sands away all but the faintest vestiges of rhythm, yielding his most atmospheric album yet. As always, fog remains the music’s organizing principle; you don’t so much listen to it as into it, as though peering into the depths, trying to make out the outline of something you can’t quite grasp. And as soon as you’ve gotten a fix on a given element—a murky voice, or a pinwheeling synth arpeggio, or what might be the rustle of running water—you realize that there are further shapes looming further in the distance, each one more indistinct than the last.
Al Wootton: Lifted From the Earth (Berceuse Heroique)
Since retiring his Deadboy alias, Al Wootton has been busy, stretching the limits of his bassy sound on labels like Livity, ZamZam, Optimo, and, particularly, his own Trule. His music has generally hung in that dubby, flickering interzone called UK techno, for lack of a better term; his signature lies in the subtlety of his rhythms: Just check the lithe movements of his Snake Dance and Callers Spring EPs, which bring all the shadowy bump’n’flex of garage, and the stealthy swells of dubstep, to the tightly stepping grooves of contemporary techno. With last year’s excellent We Have Come to Banish the Dark he kept his foot on the gas while pushing into increasingly experimental territory; now, for Berceuse Heroique’s tape series, he goes off road entirely, delving into dank and humid bogs (“Peace of Passau”), Miles Davis-meets-Theo Parrish ripplers (“Break the Teeth of the Wicked”), new-age meditations (“First Words After Sunrise”), Middle Eastern dnb (“The Cedars of Lebanon”), and, best of all, a strong run of low-slung house jams steeped in stumbling rhythms and vaporous psychedelia (“An Owl of the Desert,” “Hospital of the Five Wounds”). Heavy Shackleton vibes abound, yet as ominous as it can be, there are also moments (like “A Novena to the Purisima”) where the sun comes beaming through and all feels right with the world, however briefly.
Jan Jelinek: Social Engineering (Faitiche)
A word of warning: Quite unlike the blissfully fuzzed-out fantasias of Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, Kosmischer Pitch, etc. Jan Jelinek’s latest is not at all suited to background listening while, say, editing or writing. Social Engineering’s raw material is a collection of phishing emails and related ephemera that Jelinek has run through text-to-speech translators and then stretched and smeared into unsettling drone fugues. (A related word of warning: Track three, “ALERT!,” begins with an unnerving security alert that makes it sound like your computer has been compromised; if it weren’t for the request to “please call us immediately at the toll-free number listed,” I might have fallen for Jelinek’s ruse.) Given how much of our lives are spent online, there’s shockingly little music about the internet, which makes Social Engineering feel all the more welcome. It might make terrible dinner-party listening, but as a piece of sound art—I think of it almost like a radio play—it’s fascinating.
Various: We Will Stay Here – Music for Palestine (Love Boat Records & Buttons)
Benefit compilations can sometimes feel like they’re more about the benefit than the music, which is fine—any vehicle to raise funds or awareness for an urgent cause is worth pursuing. But We Will Stay Here – Music for Palestine, curated by Andrea Pomini, is the rare comp where the music doesn’t feel like an afterthought. Not only are all the submissions exclusive to the compilation; all were created expressly for it, in reaction to Israel’s unconscionable and genocidal war on the people of Gaza.
The mood is appropriately heavy—crosscut with anxiety, anguish, and sometimes rage; and shot through with ominous voices and bursts of noise. The artists selected cover a fair amount of ground, from Sara Persico’s ambient dread to Mai Mai Mai’s reworked folk to Bono / Burattini’s proggy krautrock. (The common denominator for most of these artists is their Italian nationality.) But even so, I think the feeling of shared purpose is enough that even disparate sounds find common cause. Immediate standouts include the lumbering, deconstructed dancehall of STILL’s “Resistance Riddim,” the percussive frenzy of Bawrut’s “Collateral Damage,” and the meditative dub of Holy Tongue feat. Dali de Saint Paul’s “Breicha Version.” Egyptian producer 3Phaz delivers the comp’s heaviest club track, while Not Waving’s “If I Must Die”—which samples actor Brian Cox’s recitation of the murdered Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer’s poem of the same name—makes for a heartbreaking conclusion. (All funds to go Medical Aid for Palestinians.)
Double Geography: Open Water (Invisible Inc.)
A tip of the hat to Max Read (of the highly recommended newsletter Read Max, the first newsletter I ever paid money for) for hipping me to this entirely vibey album of Balearic jazz/funk/ambient fusion, complete with fretless bass, woodwinds, and the holy roto-toms. A real 1980s big-budget studio vibe prevails here in the FM synths, opulent reverb, and soprano sax; I can hear affinities with Growing Bin, Music From Memory, Lemon Quartet, and Balmat’s own Anagrams. It helps that the musicians involved (pianist Greg Foat, who sits in on one song, is the only name I recognize, but apparently it’s primarily Duncan Thornley’s project) are clearly crack players. (A stray thought: I’d love to hear Thornley team up with Bullion.) I’ve only listened through a few times but there’s clearly so much to discover here; the closing “The Return Leg,” in particular, is the kind of ambient clarinet gem that never fails to bring me joy. I actually sprang for the wax on this one; there’s a vermutería in the port that hosts vinyl-only DJ sessions that I’ve been meaning to hit up about a gig, and this record seems like it would fit perfectly.
Shabason / Gunning: Ample Habitat (Séance Centre)
As mentioned in the intro, there’s a breezy sort of magic to this collaboration between multi-instrumentalists Ben Gunning and Joseph Shabason, who retreated to a “remote cottage in northern Ontario” and worked up every sound on the album from scratch. I have no idea what they’re actually doing here, but the abiding impression is of Shabason’s woodwinds being spun through various electronics, stretched and smeared into fluid, gestural shapes, then paired with synths, the occasional guitar, and, on “Is Jubilee,” drums, piano, and bass, yielding a Tortoise-like vibe. For all the music’s below-the-hood complexity, it feels beautifully uncomplicated.
Recent Pitchfork Reviews
Bullion: Affection (Ghostly)
My review of Bullion’s Affection, which went up last week, is one of my favorite things I’ve written lately, which is a nice feeling, since the album’s one of my favorites so far this year—beautifully nuanced electronic pop with canny dose of ’80s deja vu and a surprisingly sophisticated lyrical sensibility.
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bullion-affection/
Dettinger: Intershop / Oasis (Kompakt)
Sometimes, you wait 26 years for the opportunity to review a record you love—or, in this case, two records you love. Dettinger’s music has always occupied a singular place in my listening, and I loved trying to figure out why. The double BNR is a nice bonus, too.
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dettinger-intershop-oasis/
Ka Baird: Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos (Rvng Intl.)
I don’t remember if I linked this one here or not, but Ka Baird’s latest album is a deeply moving investigation of grief as viewed through the lens of Tibetan Buddhism. I loved writing about this record; getting to engage with a work as deeply considered and deeply felt as this one always feels like a privilege.
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ka-baird-bearings-soundtracks-for-the-bardos/
Recommended Reading
Deep Voices #97: Matthew Schnipper on gentleness
Schnipper’s Deep Voices newsletter/playlist is always a must-read/must-listen, and this one’s no exception. (While you’re at it, don’t miss #96, on the push-and-pull between obsession and discovery.) What begins as a meditation on his turn away from abrasive music toward the gentler sounds showcased here becomes something else, something that some might call “political” but really is a simple matter of humanism, put in the kinds of overwhelmingly personal terms that distinguish all of his writing. You should read his newsletter, but I’ll repeat his conclusion here: Ceasefire now.
Last Donut of the Night: Bullion interview
I very much enjoyed this interview that Larry Fitzmaurice conducted with Bullion’s Nathan Jenkins, particularly this quote, which, now that I think of it, strongly resonates with the Albini quote with which Jeremy Gordon closes his obit:
The scenes within music are something that I've never been drawn to. I've never really wanted to be part of a scene. I've deliberately gone out of my way to make music away from any scenes. Those scenes remind me of the fact that we're part of an industry, somehow. When I'm doing music away from feeling like I'm part of something, it feels way more romantic, and I like the naivete of existing in a bit of a, a vacuum—even though I'm the sum of all these influences.
https://last-donut-of-the-night.ghost.io/bullion-interview/
Andy Beta on Jessica Pratt and Trish Keenan
“Some people chip away time more than they understand,” Jessica Pratt sings on her wonderful new album Here in the Pitch, which I’ve had on pretty steady rotation in the kitchen and the living room (and which I really need to write about before long); Andy Beta takes the inspired tack of comparing Pratt with the late Trish Keenan, of Broadcast—her posthumous Spell Blanket - Collected Demos 2006-2009 is one of the best things I’ve heard all year, and Dash Lewis wrote a wonderful and moving review—and looking at the ways both artists engage with nostalgia and the passage of time more generally, how those implied echoes register in his own listening.
That’s it for this week—thank you, as always, for reading.
That's a hell of a week. Al Wootton is one of my favorite discoveries of the past couple of years. Especially love his collab with Azu Tiwaline and can't wait to dig into the new one. Just read the Dettinger review and album, great stuff. Thank you!
Your newsletter is a weekly hightlight in an otherwise predicably cluttered and annoyingly stuffed mailbox, and a beacon in the ocean that is music on the internet 2024, thank you ever so much. You'd be raking in the cash if you'd get a referral-bonus on all the music you highlight, from me alone! But let's go with Albini's spirit: I pay for you 'engineering' the newsletter, the money is for the artists ;) Muchos gracias!