#3: xtclvr, James Emrick, Tetsuya Nakayama, & more...
The Vernal Equinox has wrought many changes; a warmer mood, and the farewell of Winter's grip, brings with it a shift to energy that is hard to deny. Here's the music to enjoy Spring's renewal.
After the snail’s pace of January and February, March is/was a blur. Thankfully, unlike with the winter months, Spring’23 seems to be sailing under a fairer wind — so far, knock on wood, etcetera etcetera.
April’s arrival signals the end of Reach’s ‘soft-launch’ — the grace period I granted myself to get my feet under the rug with Substack, and the flow of writing regularly. While I can’t profess to have got a full grasp of things, I’ve certainly learnt a lot about the challenges of running a regular newsletter. This edition of Reach comes with some (hopefully) nice image-based section markers, still a working draft, but a step towards making the newsletter sweeter on the eye.
Before I tuck into the meat of this month’s write-ups I want to share with you some more of my thinkings and strategy with the newsletter, beginning with a huge thanks to everyone who has subscribed, read and shared pieces so far. When I began planning the launch of Reach, I made a decision to start soft, to build up my own confidence and voice. There are a number of other reasons, though, and one of these was to test the strength of organic (unpaid) growth of a platform with minimal social media posting. At the time of writing, the Reach IG account has 162 followers, and Reach Substack itself has 120 subscribers.
I made this decision as I for one am exhausted of seeing my most-used social media slowly become a proxy for self-advertising. I wanted to test how many subscribers I could collect from just one post per published piece, and sharing tagged stories from happy musicians I’ve covered. The good old ways: back at University I ran a small blog talking mostly about the Bristol/UK dubstep scene’s ‘second wave’, and I quickly managed to get a following of about 500 worldwide readers using only this tactic of tagging artists, then on Twitter. It’s pretty apparent that things don’t work so well this way anymore: competition for space on social media is becoming more and more fierce, and it seems to be the case that people are far less likely to leave Instagram to read an article than Twitter users of circa 2016 were. IG’s algorithmic capping of promotional-based posts is definitely in effect, which negatively impacts Reach’s (unpromoted) graphics.
Still, my time is tight, and Reach is unprofitable for now. It’ll remain completely free until I’m happy with the regularity and presentation of the writing, the writing style, and the sharing and delivery of the pieces through other channels. I’ll leave with a final request to share the pieces here with your friends and networks, as each share can have a great impact on the growth of my audience. Anyway, onto the good stuff; there’s so much this month!
xtclvr - blurred days
Pep Gaffe - 16/03/23
I’m fast becoming obsessed with xtclvr. The Ukrainian producer’s last EP, the self-released ‘Toys’, features four tracks which fluff up our tastes for this album of icy trap-tinged beat-ambient.
At first listen the briefness of some of the tracks (plus some rather abrupt endings) made me feel there was something incomplete about this: a collection of advanced sketches maybe, but less of a fully finalised work than ‘Toys’. Throughout multiple re-listens this thought perished — these pieces are inherently fractured, and their presentation, replete with absolute cut-finishes, reflects and enhances this characteristic.
It seems like fate, or serendipity if you’re a non-believer, that nueen’s ‘Link’ for 3XL arrived at the same moment in time as this album. Both envisage a frozen spectre of ambient soundforms with telltale notes of trap music influence in the rich bass and sampling. They’re very different though, and I’ll leave you to hear the difference between xtclvr and nueen’s music in the track selected in the Picks section.
What makes this album great is the veering focus of music — compare the chaos of ‘mystery remains’ with the serenity of ‘moon blush’ — which remain interlinked by the artist’s own colour palette. The mindstate this album causes doesn’t ever necessarily leave, throughout the 11 short pieces, but is instead enriched and given ever-more precise detail, revealed only by experiencing the whole thing. If you’re in need of being convinced quickly, ‘nervous perc’ should serve as the ideal amouse bouche.
James Emrick - Actoma
Soda Gong / Students of Decay - 17/03/23
Whoever runs Soda Gong needs a slap; they don’t release nearly enough music, and I hate them for it. Everything on the label is just incredible, an exploratory offshoot branch to the type of sound we’re loving from 3XL / West Mineral, but completely in its own key. ‘Actoma’ is a sometimes alarmingly eclectic selection of songs that begins with the reclining ambience of ‘MWLHWOF-4’ before pitch-shifting into resplendent abstraction.
Not unlike a previous Soda Gong gem, Eric Lanham’s ‘Objet Dirt’, there are a few moments where I am somewhat surprised at myself for liking it so much. Discordant ambient music can be rough territory in my music taste, and I’ve not yet learned what makes certain releases stand out and be enjoyable to me. Lanham won me over with the brutal overturning of his own form, devolving phrases into utterly different ones in an eye’s blink. Emrick wins my heart with an absolute precision which is only ever displayed by someone in total command of their sound.
‘Actoma’ settles into itself gently, and doesn’t grant new insights freely or without commitment from listeners. It earns its fans through their own volition; nothing is demanded. ‘Nooumenon’ is a showcase of what I mean: febrile micro-sounds decay into grander, richer textures, suddenly heaving up great basses and fractal highs, before letting them go.
This album is not for the faint of heart, nor for the casual listener. It’s unsuitable for a first listen on your commute to work, filled with distractions, but once you’re familiar you may find yourself, like I do, obssessing over the textures that freeze and thaw with a life of their own.
Tetsuya Nakayama - Vestige
ENMS (enmossed) - 20/03/23
One day I may be able to curb my enthusiasm for the enmossed label’s various outputs, but this is not that day. ENMS is a new sub-label, dedicated to tape much like the essential enmossed x Psychic Liberation collaboration series, but this time curated by label head Glyn Maier in collaboration with Florian T M Zeisig and perfumer Daisy Paradise.
Each tape comes adorned with a flower, chosen by the artist, as well as a short interview. Nakayama chooses the red spider lily for ‘Vestige’ (already scoring points as one of my favourite words), which relates — in Japanese culture — to death, and visiting the graves of your ancestors. This is a powerful relational metaphor for the music of ‘Vestige’, which is something of a lamentation for the way early modern Japanese society “conquered nature” [quoted from the interview with Nakamaya in the J-card liner of the tape]. To give two examples, almost all rivers in Japan are dammed, which has caused catastrophic loss of natural ecological systems to an unknown degree, and whaling/fishing policies, the result of a nuance of Japanese heritage (as I understand), are condemned internationally to little avail.
Despite this mindset seeping from historical Japanese culture into the modern day, the Japanese medieval working class have long preserved a respect for environmental sounds: the sound of leaves beating against another, or a branch scraping a treetrunk, might be the voices of your ancestors calling to you. Listen closely, then, and you may find advice whispered by green things, by the wind bellowing in the hollow of mountains.
‘Vestige’ summons these spirits to conversation in exquisitely curated form; spectral, haunting at times, but not in the Western view of ghosts and ghouls as fearsome images and reminders of death. Nakayama doesn’t so much draw these forms directly, but rather paints a canvas in a shade that reveals their presence — they are already all about us — and lets the messages of the forest, of ancestry and history, be heard.
Track Picks are playlisted via Buy Music Club, an online Bandcamp interfacing site that lets you create playlists where Bandcamp’s website doesn’t. You can visit the playlist by links here and in the banner image, and you’ll be able to listen to these songs in the curated order.
Oishi - once upon a time there was a mountain [Bezirk Tapes]
‘Oishi’ means delicious or tasty in Japanese, and this found-sound tape certainly is. Like a moment by a mountain lake, in the long grass, remixed (lightly) into a more artistic form. This compliments Tatsuya’s release on ENMS very nicely, and I recommend enjoying them side by side.
Pagan Red - Purrus Terrae [Titrate Records]
O.utlier delivers a tripartite drone EP for London’s Titrate label — stirring and direct ambience, in place of grand flairs there’s nothing but a dedicated and exact angle of approach, delivered as promised. An immacculate stasis field of sound.
Isuru Kumarasinghe - Light & Water
I only barely covered Isuru Kumarasinghe’s installation in my recent review of CTM Festival, but it was a very special and restorative experience, so I did some digging to investigate the artist a little more and found this great self-released album from 2016. This is a brilliant piece of avant-garde / deep listening music which wholly and entirely evokes the two themes of the title, and instills an almost psychedelic experience by the end.
CS & Kreme - Would You Like A Vampire (ft. Bridget St. John) [The Trilogy Tapes]
For my sins, the ‘Snoopy’ album by this Melbourne duo interested me, but I didn’t fall in love in the way so many did. This, the follow-up, ‘Orange’, warmed on me significantly more through my first listen, and the rough/smooth dualism in this track leaped out at me.
Trauma - The New Sentience [LTE]
I’m trying to keep myself from going full friendship-bias mode with the newsletter, but I can’t resist this track from my housemate, Trauma. This is from a really solid compilation of Czech(-based) musicians on LTE (Long Term Evolution), a label ran from the heart of Prague’s nightlife. The whole thing is great, and a brilliant insight into some of my adoptive city’s less-released musicians (such as In Abyss), all in an ambient vein. Qow, Rlung, Aestum and Avsluta all deliver brilliant work, but ‘The New Sentience’ steals it for me — coruscating melodies, piercing brightness, a determined advance towards an unknown something...
Roger Robinson - Summer [Do You Have Peace?]
Do You Have Peace? continue their methodical process of releasing music as and when it feels natural, as unhurried as most of the music seems to be. This track, produced by Amos of Jabu / O$VMV$M, features Roger Robinson, a T S Elliot prize-awarded poet who may be familiar musically from the King Midas Sound project or flying solo on the Jahtari label. Here his voice is strung tight, an opposite reflection to the drenching baritone of his work on KMS’s last LP, Without You. Greyscale summer sadness; early for the season, but always timely when this good.
SeekersInternational - 2 Gold Chain (Drive You Crazy) [Sneaker Social Club]
SeekersInternational have ridden high on my list of favourites for many a long year now, and they never disappoint. This EP for breaky club music kings Sneaker Social Club is mostly on their unique breakbeat shock-out/bruk-out spectrum, but this piece summons the mysterious SKRS conglomerate’s most playful and fun spirits, then twists into one of the grooviest run-outs.
I can’t resist a second paragraph for SKRS: their sound is so inimitable (def. — completely in a world of their own). Their sampling research and technique is without equal (in my spheres of knowledge), rewarding the full-discography divers while remaining enjoyable in each track’s isolation. Spring never comes for me without a renewed SKRS obsession, and Spring has indeed now sprung, I’m falling in love again, and this soundtracked the melting of my Winter. Maybe it’ll work for you too.
Zöe Mc Pherson - Lamella [SFX]
Lamella is the clear stand-out piece from Zöe’s stellar new album. The frenetic perfection of their live performances is distilled on this centrepiece: treacle-thick bass stabs drop in, laconic and on a timing of their own, as scattered breaks raise the blood pressure. There are few doin’ it like Zöe right now, and while this album is nothing on their live shows it’s a very close second, and still towers above the many foothills of uninspiring music.
Shackleton & DJ Scotch Bonnet - Opium Vibration
The upcoming LP from Skull Disco’s Shackleton and DJ Scotch Bonnet (Waq Waq Kingdom) is just great: it seems to align with the early Shackleton sound much more than other collaborative LP's he’s released in the last few years, and if that’s not persuasive enough, I’m not sure what will be. This one reminds me of Jay Glass Dubs’ stoned anthemic sound, and it’ll serve as an excellent taster for what’s to come…
E-Saggila - Utopia Mod
If you’re not already familiar with the sound force that is E-Saggila then I am ashamed on your behalf. A spontaneously released EP landed out of the blue, hopefully as a forewarning of another 10/10 album, and each track has its own characteristic angle of attack. ‘Utopia Mod’ is dauntless, unwavering, atmospheric. What’s not to like?
Konduku - Hayal [Bitta]
Konduku remains one of the most inspiring acts innovating techno right now, and this apt and timely release for DJ Nobu’s Bitta label demonstrates why. ‘Hayal’, the lead track and my favourite of the four on offer, was a prominent track among the psychic mind-knives the Japanese wizard was hurling about during his three-hour trip at Ankali last weekend. For insatiable dancing.
nueen - IV [3XL]
Not reviewing the entirety of nueen’s release for 3XL was a tough call: the whole EP from the Argentine producer is magnetic, but ‘IV’ is undeniably the highlight. Iced-out, like the xtclvr release, with trap vocal motifs twisted into the mix. Essential post-party music that frankly needs little declaration. I’m on my 10,000th play already.
Fausto Mercier - Glare (Genot Centre)
‘Glare’ might be the least Fausto Mercier tune in ‘Misinput Tycoon’, the artist’s latest album for the impeccably curious Genot Centre (Prague again, get to know). What does this mean? The PVC-wrapped staccato mindblasts present on the album (check the collab with Francesco Corvi, wild) are tuned right down, leaving beautifully sculpted plucks of an ambient gradient, yet remain of a sound so distant in aspect to the ambient music selected at the start of this month’s Picks. This reharnessing of energy, the convolution of expectations at the end of the record, makes it my favourite, for now.
That’s it for March! This one comes fairly quick-fire after the CTM review as I’m already heading back to Berlin tomorrow morning to hold a few interviews which will hopefully see light here, either in entirety or in discussion of the published outcome.
Once again, if you like the newsletter, do share it out — it does wonders for Reach’s reach and subscribers, and redeems some of Instagram/Facebook’s dread-capitalist algorithmic siphoning of content — it’s those little wins, hey?!