The irony that Blanck Mass has created the film score for Ted K, a film about Ted “The Unabomber” Kaczynski – the man responsible for multiple bombings done as a form of protest against modern technology – isn’t lost on Benjamin John Power (AKA Blanck Mass) or the film’s director, Tony Stone. Blanck Mass is known for creating bold, wild electro soundscapes that mix industrial sounds with ambient noise (or is it industrial noise with ambient sounds?) and being able to play an entire set with a laptop, a sequencer, a DAW, and a couple thumb drives. There are no wood winds on this score. There are no natural strings, drums made of scrap metal, or acoustic guitars. It’s all electronic.
It’s also all good. The main theme (“Montana”) is menacing. “Noise Destroys Something Wonderful” is surprisingly soft, while “Pesticides” creeps around you like a deadly fog. The first half of “ComTech” sounds like a kaiju approaching an oil refinery on the west coast of Japan, and the second sounds like the rolling smoke seen in its aftermath. “Greyhound” has a fuzzy edge to it that unnerves you just a bit. “Tell Me Your Heart” is a slow-dance song for tired robots.
“Dark Materials” is the soundtrack to a robot cat’s dream. “Becky’s Theme” is a song for a Montana woman who worked at a general store near the remote area where Kacyznski lived and befriended him somewhat. “Manifesto” starts out like an old single-propeller plane warming up and then becomes the sound of rising tension and smoldering rage. “Ranger Gary” is peaceful enough to enjoy while meditating next to a mountain stream, while and “At Peace / Freedom Club” starts that way but drifts into dread. By the time we get to “Skidders,” we’re into full-blown madness.
It’s another fine piece of work from Blanck Mass. I need to check out this film, which has garnered many good reviews – as should its score.
Combining the talents of members of Pill and Eaters, NYC’s P.E. easily weave in and out of psychedelia, post-punk, no wave, bedroom rock, and dream pop on their second album, The Leather Lemon.
Benjamin Jaffe‘s opening saxophone on “Blue Nude (Reclined)” automatically takes you into a cool headspace while Veronica Torres sings sexy lyrics. “Contradiction of Wants” is a perfect song for 2022. It’s about not knowing what you want, even though you already have everything you need. The bass line on it is wicked. I can’t tell you who plays it, because all the band members (Jonny Campolo, Jaffe, Bob Jones, Jonathan Schenke, Torres) are multi-instrumentalists and often switch axes from track to track. “Lying with the Wolf” goes into low rock and mixes it with synthwave and old school techno beats.
The title track is a short, proto-industrial puzzler. “Tears in the Rain” does invoke some Blade Runner imagery and has guest vocals from Parquet Courts‘ Adam Savage as he teams with Torres to give us a song of romantic hope in times that can be gray and bleak. “The Reason for My Love” is a hot dance track with yet another great bass line (The album is full of them.).
“Magic Hands” has plucked string instruments dancing around slightly loopy synths and drunken android vocals. The darkwave sound of “New Kind of Zen” is powerful and haunting. You’re never sure where the track is going to lead, especially when it floats into spoken word psychedelia. The instrumental “86ed” drifts into “Majesty,” which returns some of the musical themes from other tracks as Torres sings, “I don’t want that life. I don’t want that majesty.” and her bandmates reply, “I want everything.” It’s a neat loop to be in for a couple minutes.
The whole album is worth a visit. It sizzles, saunters, and seduces.
Emily Jane White‘s new album, Alluvion, might win the award for the Most Accurate Cover Image of the Year. Ms. White stands on a stark beach surrounded by towering rocks and watched over by a blue sky that you can only see at certain moments during dusk. She appears to be holding, or perhaps projecting, a single light in the gothic landscape. Her black dress melds into the water and mud below her feet and reflects her image below her, as if she arose from this salty, sandy, chilled landscape like a ghost searching for a lover whose ship crashed on the pictured shore.
And the whole album sounds like this image – haunting synths, cold-wave beats, and White’s alluring, hypnotic vocals.
On “Show Me the War,” White sings about “life’s blood raining down on me” while she craves for explanations and reasons behind the chaos she sees in the world every day. “Crepuscule” is a song about loss and embracing the grief when it hits so hard (“This mourning lives in everyone who has lost someone. Aurora in lightning, the living and the dying.”). The sparse guitar notes in it are perfect. “Heresy” is full of stark piano and White’s vocals sliding around you like a cold wind that signals an approaching storm.
“Poisoned” takes on a goth-western feel with echoed guitars and countrified beats while White sings about a friend carrying grief that she recognizes as they walked through “harm drenched fields.” “Body Against the Gun” is about a friend having to flee to another state for a medical procedure and White remembering her upbringing “in light so dim with those who sang assailing hymns.”
White calls out to a higher power on “The Hands Above Me,” a lovely gothic track of longing for peace and understanding (“Gonna write a note to the hands above me. Gonna ask them on which side do they air.”). “Mute Swan” is a song about carrying the wounds of a relationship gone, probably caused by a death (judging from White’s lyrics about how even uttering her lover’s name causes her pain).
“Hold Them Alive,” while sounding bleak, is actually uplifting if you examine the lyrics. White sings about carrying loss, and the physical and mental wounds of it, with grace through life and remembering the love that was there: “The flora and fauna, incantations surround you. It lives in a stark liminal space within you.” The love is there, disguised as grief. “Hollow Earth” has the peppiest beats on the album, but it doesn’t lose any of the heavy themes of loss and longing.
“I Spent the Years Frozen” is a powerful track about desire and how it can so intensely burn that it might consume you. The quick fade-out is like someone blowing out a candle flame. “Battle Call” ends the album with lyrics of hope, of being able to rise up from the mud and heal from scars on our bodies and our souls.
Ms. White isn’t screwing around. She’s here to entrance us and be a guiding light out of a murky darkness (See the album cover?). She’s been there. She’s found the tricky, sometimes treacherous path out of the swamp, and Alluvion is a map to dry land and brighter skies.
Producer/musician Kelly Lee Owens announces a new album, LP.8, out April 29th (digital) and June 10th (physical) on Smalltown Supersound, and today presents two of its tracks, “Sonic 8” and “Olga.” Born out of a series of studio sessions, LP.8 was created with no preconceptions or expectations: an unbridled exploration into the creative subconscious.
After releasing her acclaimed sophomore album Inner Song in the early days of the pandemic, Owens was faced with the sudden realization that her world tour could no longer go ahead. Keen to make use of this untapped creative energy, she made the spontaneous decision to go to Oslo for a change of scenery and some undisturbed studio time. Arriving to snowglobe conditions and sub-zero temperatures with the borders closed once again, she began spending time in the studio with esteemed avant-noise Lasse Marhaug (known for his work with Merzbow, Sunn O))) and Jenny Hval).
Together, Owens and Marhaug envisioned making music somewhere in between Throbbing Gristle and Enya, artists who have had an enduring impact on Owens’ creative being. In doing so, they paired tough, industrial sounds with ethereal Celtic mysticism, creating music that ebbs and flows between tension and release. One month later, Owens called her label to tell them she had created something of an outlier, her “eighth album.” In Owens’ words, “For me, 8 meant completion – an album that will ripple infinitely with me personally.”
LP.8 Tracklist 1. Release 2. Voice 3. Anadlu 4. S.O (2) 5. Olga 6. Nana Piano 7. Quickening 8. One 9. Sonic 8
Kelly Lee Owens Tour Dates Fri. June 3 – Melbourne, AU @ Rising Festival Hub Sat. June 4 – Sydney, AU @ Motorik [DJ Set] Wed. June 15 – Milan, IT @ Magnolia Fest Sun. June 19 – Dublin, IE @ Body & Soul Festival Sat. June 25 – Bristol, UK @ Bristol Sounds Sat. July 2 – Roskilde, DK @ Roskilde Festival Fri. July 8 – Bilbao, ES @ Bilbao BBK Live Fest Sun. July 10 – Modena, IT @ Artivive Festival Fri. July 22 – Macclesfield, UK @ Bluedot Sat. July 23 – Hertfordshire, UK @ Standon Calling Festival Sat. July 30 – London, UK @ South Facing Sun. July 31 – Sicily, IT @ Ortigia Sound System Festival [DJ Set] Sat. Aug. 20 – Hasselt, BE @ Pukkelpop Sun. Aug. 21 – Biddinghuizen, NE @ Lowlands Festival
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to Jessica and Ahmad at Pitch Perfect PR.]
This was my third time seeing Gary Numan live, and it was the smallest venue I’ve seen him in so far. It was good to see a crowd of people happy to be experiencing live music again, and even better to see Numan and his band having a good time on stage.
His opening act was the one-woman band I Speak Machine, who came out looking like a Black Widow assassin and throwing down a set of darkwave mixed with kabuki, opera, and industrial grind. One of the best parts of her set was watching the reactions of some in the audience who didn’t know what to make of her, and of her not giving a damn what people thought.
I Speak Machine belting out operatic vocals for a dumbfounded crowd.
Mr. Numan came out to an appreciative crowd and proceeded to belt out a loud, sometimes furious set that mixed classics with hot tracks from his last two albums, Savageand Intruder.
Gary Numan being a rock god.
It was great to see him and his four-piece band having a good time. There were many moments when they were smiling or laughing. You could tell they were excited to be on tour. Numan’s guitarist, Steve Harris, was all over the stage, often mixing shredding solos with performance art antics. I’m fairly certain he broke a string or two just a few songs into the set from playing so hard.
Numan and crew
It was a great set, with standouts like “The Promise,” “Films,” “Ghost Nation,” “Love Hurt Bleed,” “Bed of Thorns,” “My Name Is Ruin,” “A Prayer for the Unborn,” and “Are Friends ‘Electric’?” Catch him if you can. He’s having a blast right now, and so will you.
Thanks to the woman who let me snap this photo of the set list she scored.
Pow Wow singer Joe Rainey announces his debut album, Niineta, out May 20th on 37d03d (the label founded by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, and Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National), and shares the first single/video, “no chants.” On Niineta, Rainey demonstrates his command of the Pow Wow style, descending from Indigenous singing that’s been heard across the waters of what is now called Minnesota for centuries, and accompanied by cinematic, bass-heavy production from Minneapolis producer Andrew Broder. Depending on the song or the pattern, his voice can celebrate or console, welcome or intimidate, wake you up with a start or lull your babies to sleep. Each note conveys a clear message, no matter the inflection: We’re still here. We were here before you were, and we never left.
Rainey grew up a Red Lake Ojibwe in Minneapolis, a city with one of the largest and proudest Native American populations in the country. The Red Lake Reservation sits five hours to the North, a sovereign state unto itself, but Rainey grew up down in what Northerners call “The Cities,” in his mom’s house on historic Milwaukee Avenue on Minneapolis’ South Side. He was raised less than a mile away from Franklin Avenue, the post-Reorganization Act urban nexus of local Native American life, a community centered in the Little Earth housing projects and the Minneapolis American Indian Center. The neighborhood still serves as a home for both the housed and the un-housed, and the don’t-even-wanna-be-housed Native. It is the birthplace of the American Indian Movement (AIM), the pioneering grassroots civil rights organization founded to combat the colonizing forces of police brutality. Rainey came of age in the heart of this community, but always felt like he was living in a liminal space—not that he was uncomfortable with that. “Growing up, knowing that you weren’t from the Rez, but you were repping them, was kind of weird,” he says. “But I liked that.”
Rainey became interested in Pow Wow singing as a child—at the age of five, he started recording Pow Wow singing groups with his GE tape recorder, and his mom enrolled him in a dancing and singing practice with the Little Earth Juniors soon thereafter. As a pre-teen he began hanging out around The Boyz (a legendary Minneapolis drum group) at a house some of them stayed at in the Little Earth projects. By the time he was a teenager he had found enough courage to help start The Boyz Juniors, his first drum group, before going on to sing with Big Cedar, Wolf Spirit, Raining Thunder, Iron Boy, and eventually, Midnite Express, a new drum group featuring some of The Boyz themselves. Rainey was always just as much of a fan as he was a participant—when he wasn’t at his own drum, he was recording other drums, then studying the tapes when he got home, admiring and cataloging the different singing styles, whether it was Northern Cree, Cozad or Eyabay.
On Niineta, Rainey finds himself in between cultures again. This time collaborating with Andrew Broder, who brought his multi-instrumentalist, turntablist sensibility to the project. The two of them first met backstage at Justin Vernon’s hometown Eaux Claires music festival before encountering each other more frequently through Vernon and Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s 37d03d collective—both contributing to the last Bon Iver album before broaching the possibility of working together sometime in the future. “At first I didn’t know what I could add to Joe’s incredible recordings,” Broder says. “But eventually I came to understand everything is rooted in the drum—even the songs on our record that have no drum, they’re still rooted in the drum.” So each song started with Broder’s beats, the two of them experimenting with various sounds and tempos, before bringing in other 37d03d collaborators to orchestrate and recontextualize the ancient Pow Wow sound in strange, new in-between places. The album pulls from Rainey’s vast sample folder of Pow Wow recordings, layering and remixing slices of his life of singing in venues across the upper Midwest and Canada.
Rainey got his title, Niineta, from his drum brother Michael Migizi Sullivan, who suggested a short version of the Ojibwe term meaning, “just me.” But he’s using the term only in the sense that he’s taking sole responsibility for its content. Rainey is protective of Pow Wow culture—which was outlawed by the United States government for a generation, defiantly maintained in secret by Native elders he deeply respects—while trying to figure out exactly where he fits into it and how he can fuck with it on his own terms. He uses the analogy of working the hotel room door at a Pow Wow. “You can think of this like, hey man, if all these people are going to be fucking knocking and I’m the one answering the door, you’re going to realize that I’m not the only one in this motherfucker. There’s tons of people in here. So if I’m answering that door, I want to be like, hey, yeah, come on in. There’s fucking tons of us in here. It ain’t just me.” Watch/Stream “no chants”
Anika has openly discussed how much she loves the dance floor as well as the dark corners of a night club, so putting out a remix album of her killer 2021 record, Change, was a no-brainer for her.
The “Planningtorock remix” of “Planningtochange” drops the pitch of her vocals and ups the beats to create a track that’s perfect for dancing in a dark basement full of sexy, sweaty people. Dave Clark‘s remix of “Never Coming Back” is somehow darker than the original. Lauren Flax‘s remix of “Critical” becomes slightly hardcore make-out music. Maral at the Controls‘ dux mix of “Finger Pies” is outstanding, mixing dub with industrial like a sexy glitch-bot.
PDBY‘s remix of “Freedom” strips the song down to a haunted house drone, like something you’d hear in a dimly lit ballroom with peeling wallpaper and warped floorboards. Lauren Flax comes back for a remix of “Change,” and it’s the closest one to a straight-up house music banger on the whole EP.
Don’t miss this is you’re a fan of Anika. It’s an interesting look at her different influences and how she’s influenced (and influencing) others.
Hailing from Manchester and not Indiana, Mandy, Indiana, formerly known as Gary Indiana, make post-punk that bends and warps the genre on their …EP. As guitarist Scott Fair put it, “We’ve scrapped anything that sounded too normal.”
Opening track “Bottle Episode” starts off with Liam Stewart‘s snare drum rolls that sound like a swarm of angry bees attacking a hulking robot and then it switches to thumping synth bass and horror movie sounds, all with Valentine Caulfield singing in her native French. The percussion on “Nike of Samothrace” sounds like a drunk guy stumbling down a flight of stairs – and I mean that in the best possible sense – while Fair’s guitar and synths remind one of revving, and possibly failing, jet engines. I don’t know if “Alien 3” is inspired by the movie of the same name, but I do know that it’s over six minutes of industrial techno that slays as hard as a Xenomorph.
The EP comes with a remix of “Alien 3” by Daniel Avery that somehow makes the track heavier and, dare I say it, sexier, and the “Club Eat” remix of “Nike of Samothrace” – which ups the speed and would be perfect for a fight scene in whatever Matrix film comes next.
Let’s hope Mandy, Indiana puts out a full LP soon, because this EP will leave you craving more of their work.
Fhedesh is an American dark frequency artist and producer based in DTLA. His industrial trap sound and experimental visuals, inspired by elements of vampirism, provide a musical backdrop that inspires the freedom to bend and not only break, but demolish the rules. Talented musician turned vampire, Fhedesh is an artist in his own caliber. Fhedesh’s music explores facets of an underground lifestyle, one that embraces unapologetic creative exploration. He emerged on the scene of late night DTLA after packing out after hours parties in warehouses across Southern California and has since established himself as an artist. His sound evokes the desire to welcome darkness rather than run from it, as Fhedesh explores concepts of immorality, sexuality, mystery, and luxury in ways no other local artist has. Since the pandemic, Fhedesh has begun to channel his creative energy into his music videos rather than live performances.
Fhedesh released a single and music video called “Wake Up! IT’S A BLOODBATH”, a hard-hitting, edgy tune inspired by the current state of the world in all its misery.
Boy Harsher – comprised of vocalist/lyricist Jae Matthews and producer Augustus Muller – present “Machina,” the latest offering from their new album The Runner (Original Soundtrack) out next Friday,January 21st via Nude Club/City Slang. Following singles “Tower” and “Give Me a Reason,” “Machina” continues teasing the cinematic universe of The Runner, the short horror film written and directed by Boy Harsher.
Featuring guest vocalist Mariana Saldaña of BOAN singing in Spanish and English, “Machina” is a playful yet cautionary tale about companionship and dependency. Saldaña describes a cold, sterile entity, the Machine, that is soulless and without a heartbeat. The track blends the bright palette of HI-NRG and Italo with Boy Harsher’s shadowy aesthetic and was sonically inspired by Muller’s time at the renowned Mexico City club Patrick Miller. Muller elaborates: “I was reminiscing about Friday nights at Patrick Miller. I was trying to create an artifact from a club in a far off place and an unknown time.” The electrifying self-directed video produced by Muted Widows comes from the world of The Runner, presented as an exclusive NUDE TV studio performance by Saldaña.
Boy Harsher’s fifth release is not a traditional album — it’s a soundtrack that balances eerie instrumentals with pop songs that push the boundaries of the duo’s sound. In the midst of last year’s chaos and Matthews’ MS diagnosis, she kept thinking about a sinister character: a woman running through the woods. The duo developed this idea further into The Runner, a film that follows a strange woman as she travels to a secluded, rural town where her violent compulsions are slowly revealed. The story intertwines with Boy Harsher performing on a public access channel. Their music scores the strange woman’s descent deeper into the unknown. The Runner features break-out performances by musician Kris Esfandiari (King Woman), performance artist Sigrid Lauren (FlucT), and musician Cooper B. Handy (Lucy). The Runner and its soundtrack are both a return to form and an evolution for Boy Harsher.
The Runner will begin screening in select theaters this Friday, January 14th and streaming via Shudder (North America, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) and Mandolin (rest of the world) on Sunday, January 16th. Visit therunner.film for more info on screenings and tickets.
