#2: IFSMA, SØS Gunver Ryberg, Saint Abdullah & Jason Nazary
Reach's second edition dives deeper with the album reviews, with more analysis and introspection! Picks lean into the dancefloor experience with highlights from Ehua, exael, and more.
Welcome back to Reach — This mailer marks the return of your for-now monthly reviews and track selections, after the longer think-piece published last month.
I say “for now” as the music “industry” is very apparently thawing after the winter, with more decent new albums than I can keep on top of, try as I dare with my fancy and already-convoluted Google Sheet, arriving soon or having already arrived. So, “for now” might indicate a more regular reviews section to follow.
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on the first edition of Reach, also — generally there was a consensus (with my own opinion) that there was quite a lot of writing to get through for a newsletter mailer, so this time around there’ll be less to get through, but with more detail than the rather cursory glances given last month.
Further signs of meltwater around the joints of the unslowable-but-for-winter music industry include the annual CTM festival in Berlin, which put something of a spanner in the smooth publishing of this second edition of Reach. It was my first time attending, and there was much to see and do across the one week I was around Berlin, most of which will be saved for a longer piece where I’ll flex my travel-writing muscles and sleep-addled brain to bring you some of my festival favourites, highlights, and perhaps even disappointments - gasp!
All the fun and games I’ve had lately means I’m still behind on making some nice image headers for the newsletter, so one more month of drab written sub-headings will have to do — condolences, visually-minded people of my subscription list.
Album Reviews
IFS MA - REIFSMA
Outlines / Guides — 17/02/23
Polish label Outlines are absolutely smashing things lately, although at the same time it’s hard to draw a line around the time when they weren’t releasing top-shelf material. The last handful of releases for their sub label Guides, from otomoni, SNKLS, DJ Strawberry, are impeccable contemporary explorations of music within (roughly) a 160 framework: warped, hybrid, shapeshifting dance music that defies increasingly dull production conventions, geared towards DJs and being mixed rather than being whole, of itself.
This latest LP from Polish duo IFS and, impressively via exclusively remote collaboration, Japanese vocalist MA, honours the inventive nature of the label’s preceding output, while building its own mythos within the catalogue of the label. Taking almost nothing as inspiration from the glut of stale club collaborations with vocalists, REIFSMA is singular.
Non-standard beats leap up and grip you, changing tack and emphasis — the screech-halt marking the mid-point of ‘Hanpuku’, or ‘Uruoi’’s punch-drunk rhythm, never tiresome, clobbering the head —rather than simply roll and roll forward, adding nothing new and downright thought-muddling Japanese vocalisations, wrung out and smashed into the stereofield like bugs to a windshield.
There’s a sonic tongue spoken on the record that is cohesive unto itself, a kind of sometime-clarity, a taking of turns being revealing and secretive. This applies both to IFS’ productions and MA’s words, in a chosen moment, and it’s chiefly applied through effects, from the doubling of MA’s over-dramaticised lyrics into multiple voices to the slurred basslines that are all of a sudden overwhelmed by countless environmental distractions, before snapping back into focus.
It’s hard to understate how essential MA is to the success of this project. This isn’t to say that it would be a flop without: the instrumentals here would still constitute something truly inventive, relative to a lot of club music. It’s equally true, though, that MA’s presence graduates the release above the surface noise. MA speaks in a stylised Japanese that evokes imagery in a truly independent way, a kind of spoken-word Kabuki theatrical that injects an image into the mind of a mouth speaking each syllable with real emphasis, real meaning. Even if you have no idea what he’s saying, MA’s words are DNA embedded into the entire record.
Hard to pick a favourite cut here: I’ve mentioned ‘Uruoi’ already for the downright punishing beat, and it’s certainly up there in my top 5; ‘Shinnyu’ hits a little different — more brain-melting psychic tricks than blunt force — but with the same heavy payload; ‘Enshooritz’, certainly the outlier of the release, is aesthetically far more dub than club, but also shows that going in is not all that REIFSMA is about.
All this to say that Outlines are fucking on one and you’re a fool to sleep on them.
SØS Gunver Ryberg - SPINE
Arterial - 07/02/23
Aware of how tiresome it is to hear press people talking about their inbox of privilege, I can’t resist this one instance: since this landed on my digital desk at the end of last year I’ve been barely able to bite my lip hard enough to keep from telling too much about this album too soon. And now, I’m almost a whole half-month late to the party.
SØS Gunver Ryberg popped up large on my radar from the AD93 release (perhaps the last the label released under the Whities tab?), which was an interesting listen, verging on arresting, but in retrospect was perhaps missing some ingredient to make it jaw-dropping. Maybe the Danish musician has been taking cooking lessons, because ‘SPINE’ has no lack of flavour keeping it from the top tier.
Moving on from the beat-up cooking metaphor, ‘SPINE’ truly is a brilliant album — something about it feels like a debut, the first motion of a new train of thought from the artist. You can find a lot that could be said to be shared with the AD93 12”, from the nearly-hardcore synth leads to the trommel of the percussion, but there’s really far more distinguishing this new album from the older material.
It starts with the first track’s opening statement: ‘Unfolding’ bursts in with a rushed step, but is more nimble than purely fast; a sharp intake of misted air rounded with crisp, near-random percussion. Smokey ambience curls in the atmosphere, but doesn’t cloud the view completely.
The album leads us in many directions, but that roughly describes the album’s core experience: evolving and more expansive than a single-window view. It sounds something like an amalgam of Vladislav Delay’s oldest and newest material — which is a huge compliment from me — with cloud-made ambience electrified with countless volts, until it turns into some tangibly existing thing. More than simple decoration pasted on the sky, but darkly physical, a sense of formidable natural movements pulled by serendipity into an explosive moment.
‘Mirrored Madness’ displays the elemental experience of ‘SPINE”, too, in a coiling narrative difficult to extricate oneself from. ‘Levitating Fluid’, the album’s closing piece, perhaps best captures the imaginative essence I’m attempting to describe (even in just the title) — this is light-touch music, where the imperceptible changes are felt more than heard, where each movement contributes mostly toward texture, rather than trying to make a standalone painting from a single stroke of the brush.
I value this album very highly: it exemplifies the nature of music I sought to describe in the first long-form article on Reach regarding a shifting tone in the ambient paradigm, a music of endless heritage and multiple personalities, perfect for solo listening in one moment, arresting, full-charge experiential sound design the next. And, crucially, music that is moving away from using the entire strata of techno as a directly referenced source of inspiration. Here’s hoping Ryberg’s newly-minted Arterial imprint continues to serve such delights.
Saint Abdullah & Jason Nazary - Evicted in the Morning
Disciples — 24/02/23
Saint Abdullah (which I’ll abbreviate to St Abdullah) are one of my favourite entities in electronic music of late. Masters of the controlled clamour, the Iranian duo have carved their niche through stellar releases for truly excellent labels: Psychic Liberation, Purple Tape Pedigree, Important Records, a whole heap more. Really, every one of their ventures is worth delving into, and the more you can confine your experience to the real-life chronology of the pair‘s output the more you’ll feel their recent releases, in my opinion. Which is to say, they just keep getting better.
Collaborations are slowly becoming more of a staple in their music. Last time it was with Eomac, and now it’s with Jason Nazary, a Brooklyn-based percussionist. Decent first time collaborations aren’t really a rarity in electronic music — so much of the culture is about musicians speaking their own language, together on record, and exploring the nuance between two “speakers” — but nonetheless ‘Evicted in the Morning’ does feel like a rarity in its completedness, a finished statement which still leaves room for new and implied meanings to be added by the listener.
I said before that St Abdullah have a mastery of chaotic musical elements: this is becoming self-evident not through their overuse, but rather in the moments and methods by which they are used, sparingly. Plaintive melody is close to the centre of just about everything they’re doing, at least lately, and here, on ‘Evicted in the Morning’, both the album at large and the titular track, that structure is nailed down and made concrete. Melody is so often glanced over in electronic music, or delivered within nicely segmentable divisions or multiplications of 8-bar loops: all over St Abdullah’s work that trope is discarded in favour of meandering and evolving harmonic hooks that stride over the rhythm section.
That rhythm section is the crucible of ‘Evicted…’, unsurprisingly given Nazary’s involvement — ‘The Azure Sky’, resplendent and sun-kissed, an image of the pinnacles of Brooklyn high-rises catching the light as it fades through orange to red, rides on the subtlety of Nazary’s performance on the kit, a code-switching performance that veers from barely-there to a staccato block of sound and improvisation. There’s more collaborations here than just Nazary, though: Petter Eldh on bass in ‘The Butcher’s Shop’ makes the track, and NAPPYNAPPA, from the Disciples-released rap duo Model Home, ensures ‘Mirror of Infinity’ is an album highlight. These further additions to the ensemble, on the rawest, most simplistic level, add the harmonic colour of their instruments to the palette: the genuine, irreplicable thrum of a bass string, the coarse emotions incumbent in a human voice. Thinking, listening, deeper, and there’s a realisation that their inclusion offers far more than a dash of paint to the overall image.
I think a huge amount of my appreciation for St Abdullah comes in their political language, which one can clearly hear being developed through their albums. Initially, on early releases for Boomarm Nation or the coarsest screams of ‘In God’s Image’ (Psychic Liberation), this politics was worn openly — one only has to listen to ‘Broke My Heart in ‘52’ (from the Purple Tape Pedigree release) once to feel the sadness and anger sewn into each seam. ‘Evicted in the Morning’ is a political album too, or a sociologically-focused one in the most stringent evaluation. The message concerns an increase of homelessness (particularly in Brooklyn), of unaffordable costs of living rising higher, of two day jobs and a night shift and still the struggle to eat well each day. This is a difficult and abstract notion, but one which, I find, is seeded into the essence of the album in such a way that it becomes hard to ignore, once you have tasted the flavour. It’s something about the flavour of the harmonies, of the nature of each flare-up of rugged drums. A rare skill indeed, for such commentary to be reflected in a largely instrumental record.
Track Picks
Track Picks are playlisted via Buy Music Club, an online Bandcamp interfacing site that lets you create playlists where Bandcamp’s software doesn’t. You can visit the playlist by links here and in the subheading, and you’ll be able to listen to these songs unbroken and in the curated order.
Scanner - Sleeping, I'm Blind to Life (Variation) [Room 40]
Ambient lovers, I've not forgotten you! This release on Lawrence English’s Room40 is perfect for slow-burning midnight oil — recorded on an ancient piano on an Easter retreat, øjeRum inadvertently captured a sonic picture of radio static ghosts, which creep into the original piece in the most surprising and haunting way. Scanner's reworks are a little more electronically aligned, but still capture that essence, perhaps even a bit better on this variation.
Omeed Norouzi - Untitled ft. Racine [Self Released]
Omeed Norouzi is a new name to me, but, enough friends that do know shared this, and I was curious to hear this collaboration with Racine, whose name I'm very familiar with. Racine just *really* gets spooky, spectral music, and that fingerprint is all over this track. The rest, all Norouzi's own material, is absolutely worth staying for: 'Reverse Vignette' is stunning ambient trip-hop, sounding a bit like something perhaps made from inverted grime instrumentals and choral ensembles.
Brenda Ray & the Punjabi Orchestra - Pandrah [Causey Cuts Recordings]
The essential EM Records from Japan released a compilation of British weirdo-popstar (?) Brenda Ray's catalogue that I dip into on days that feel like Sundays, and since I've been pretty hooked — the track selected here is a riff on a proper old classic tune that you'll be familiar with, but rendered in Brenda's DIY-dub stylistics. The first track on this mini-EP is from that brilliant EM compilation, and it's a tip too, if a little on the short side.
Romance & Dean Hurley - Cast A Spell [ECSTATIC]
This stunning return of Romance & Dean Hurley's collaboration is somehow brutally heart-wrenching. "Their prismatic dissection of the daytime soap genre" sees them extract thought-provoking and emotional sample bites and place them in an ambient nest to sprout...
теплота - Limit Cycle (Version Chop) [Accidental Meetings]
Accidental Meetings' first missive of the year is described as "half techno, half free jazz", and while there's no word of a lie there, it seems to do the release something of a disservice — another situation where 2+2 doesn't equal 4. There's a few tracks on here that'll set the pulse faster ('Apical' has hair-on-end moments), but I find myself returning for the more ambient-leaning interludes, such as this one. Mechanical expressions, but distinct and personal, not generic and overdone.
SØS Gunver Ryberg - Unfolding [Arterial]
That sterling opening piece from SØS Gunver Ryberg's reinventive LP, for those not already tempted to listen.
Kelela - Missed Call [Warp Records]
The idea that some kid somewhere will listen to the new Kelela album and fall in love with UK garage is a beautiful one that I won't allow to be wrestled from me. Pop averse fools can be comforted by the fact that Kelela recruited (at least) two top-flight musicians to make her beats: AceMo and Florian T M Zeisig. The latter of those two did two of my favourite albums last year and didn't seem to even be sweating, so natural and effortless-seeming his musicianship. Hopefully I don't have to tell any club-music listeners about AceMo.
King Softy - E-mos (ft. Nita) [INDEX:Records]
Heaps to pick from in here: INDEX:Records come correct with their second annual Valentine's Day selection of ambient-romance music from their friends and loved ones, and for Pay What You Like, you're a fool not to drop a few quid their way to say thanks for the music. Alternatively, go pro and grab the buttplug made in collab with Berlin's diLco — indisputably the best physical edition ever to accompany a compilation of music (especially released on Valentines’).
Toumba - Hazzeh [Hessle Audio]
Jordanian Toumba is enjoying some well-deserved limelight lately, and this statement for Hessle gives good reasons why for those not familiar with his uniquely individual sound (highly recommend the VIP / Edit pack he put out). 'Hazzeh' is controlled perfectly, a gently simmering dance groove that stays just below boiling temperature — wait for the bubbly bassline that comes in around halfway, and you'll be hooked.
PVAS - Dream Resumption (ft. PS) [ISLA]
Only one to pick from this EP so far, but I've been lucky enough to clap ears on the full release for a week or so now and I can't fault this new one from PVAS — beautiful sound curation and design, playfully off-grid, and a belter for the club all in one stroke. Hold tight for the Florian T M Zeisig collab on this, ridiculous.
Joe Koshin - Astro Wax [Jugaar Records]
Really happy to see this record announced recently: Jugaar records are a pretty trailblazing bunch in their corner of the world (primarily or originally Pakistan), and while the two EPs they've released so far have been good, this compilation is something of a highlight reel of brilliant dance music producers like Hassan Abou Alam (big tip!), Shedbug, Yak and Jugaar's own Rudoh. Koshin's track isn't my favourite off the release, but it sets a good tone and hopefully will capture one or two of your tastebuds, to get ready for the full course when it's released in March.
Ehua - Leggera [3024]
Ehua played at last year's annual Lunchmeat Festival and ever since I've been utterly convinced. The London-based producer debuts on Martyn's 3024 label with four cuts for the movers and shakers — 'Leggera' is crammed with shuffly breakbeat moments and moody atmospherics, but the whole EP's diversity in sound and experience is its key highlight
exael - wet look [SE:CD]
Almost the very day I hit send on the longform piece about ambient music and mention exael as a point of quality in the field, and music from exael lands, via a new label from Arad Acid. Know this: as long as I'm aware of each release by this musician, I'll be slapping them in BMC lists till kingdom come. This is on coarser ground than some of their ambient pieces I pulled out in the aforementioned article, but still demonstrates very nicely the fabric of my obsession with their music.
Filter Dread - XTC 555 [Self Released]
Bristol's Filter Dread doesn't pop his head up often, and when he does it's just by an inch or so, before ducking back into a tangle of patch cables and a fog of burnt-out motherboards. Probably one of the UK's best shifters when it comes to the kind of grimey, bassy goodness Bristol is often tethered to, the latest EP feels a bit like a late-night hardware jam and a bit like a live-set extract, in that it has characteristically unrefined edges and there's a lot of carry-through between the individual tracks. The sound design is far from live-set levels though: dig into this.
awoo - fugitive [BCAA System]
AWOO's 'Lost' is a real Prague affair: Released on local arts collective BCAA System and featuring two of their artists (in the very literal sense, rather than simply just meaning musician), and co-produced by Oliver Torr, this entire album (buy it) is a proper statement and a genuine breath of fresh air. Pop/Club hybrid albums are rarely such a treat, and Torr's production skills in the club environment are integral to ensuring Awoo's massive amount of musical influences actually gel together in a cohesive ball. The tracks flit by, and there's plenty of highlight moments, but in the interest of sharing more than personal fave 'Yabi', this time I'll get you to listen to 'Fugitive'. Seriously a brilliant album from a very creative and inspired group of people.
And there we are for another month — hope you enjoyed the deeper look into the monthly reviews, and the slightly more dancey picks for this round. The second longer-form piece will, as mentioned, be covering the music and events of CTM festival: expect words on Ruhail Qaisar’s performance vs the recorded album, out now on Danse Noir, on Stefanie Egedy’s subbass experiences, and on NZIRIA’s spell-binding performance.
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