Reach #12: Tegh & Adel Poursamadi, Michel Banabila, Old Grape God...
A mid-month review run-down with a broad taste, from deepest Iranian ambient to super-high hip hop from Portland, via a great new electronica LP on Knekelhuis.
Hello Reachers,
I’ve got a quick intersitial series of reviews for you in this edition of the newsletter, featuring a couple of albums which have really brushed me up the right way lately. I’m time-constrained, as I’ve got my Radio Punctum residency a week early this month, so please appreciate there’s much more to be written about these amazing records than I’ve managed here.
I’m off to Solstice Festival, a piece of paradise around where the Arctic Circle intersects the middle of Finland. I’m crossing everything for the unbroken sunshine of the previous two years, but frankly I’m up for just about any sort of conditions. It’s my first overseas festival in over a year and the lineup is just great. If you’re gonna be up the top of the fell, drop me a line, and let’s link over a glass of wine.
Before I get on with the reviews, I’d like to take a moment to thank all my subscribers, and float the idea of you sharing this little project of mine with a friend, or subscribing yourself if you’re not amongst the faithful (yet):
Tegh & Adel Poursamadi - After You Left
Purple Tape Pedigree - 06/06/24
The first collaboration between Iranian musicians Tegh and Adel Poursamadi was released via Injazero, sadly now defunct I believe, and it laid important foundations for this record, which soars a little closer to the sun than its forebear, by my measuring.
After You Left is a tense, emotional affair, blending deep, discomforted ambience with strained, plaintive string instruments. The connotation of the title reveals itself in sombre, almost morose music, leaning towards minor scales: the album’s official text reveals that the record explores a love story built on doubt, and upon leaving, the protaganist (you, for the journey) is left confused whether the relationship ever took place.
Loss, as in bereavement, has always found a partner in the sorrowful viola, and for as long as we’ve been hacking and bashing machines to make music, experimental production has as well. The two come together often, so why is this record in particular worth talking about?
I’m still searching my mind for the ultimate key to the very clear magic of this record, actually. Both musicians are incredibly accomplished (you should also listen to Tegh’s other project, Temp-Illusion), but that’s not the sole explanation. There could be something in the fact both musicians are from Iran, and those of us living in the West are still rarely (passively) exposed to music from this region, but reducing the source of the magic to the musician’s heritage is both reductive and extractive, and incorrect on top of that. Here, frankly, the music talks best. Your Wings, Your Feathers should be the point around which you begin to lose yourself utterly. Repeated trips encouraged.
Michel Banabila - Unspeakable Visions
Knekelhuis - 19/06/24
I’m smitten by this latest album for Knekelhuis: adventurous and playfully experimental electronica, chopped and diced up into a genuinely eclectic medley, this album reminds me of a kind of photomontage of me finding some of my early favourite albums on labels like Idle Hands, Warp, or Peak Oil (way back when they released early music from Strategy).
When so much music around these days is either polarising or the result of past polarisation, it’s really enjoyable to find an album so unfussed by whatever is cool right now. Lamusa II popped out an album like this recently, and it’s been doing the rounds, and music from Naemi on 3XL or the recent Downstairs People on INDEX:Records also fits this bill: very idiomatic, these records reward those with the fewest expectations.
There’s a clear blue vein of Krautrock influence flowing throughout Unspeakable Visions, as well as the thread of some aspects of spiritualised ambient music, and yet there’s not really any particular moment on the record than belongs solely to these labels. Banabila seems to have tuned a radio station to the global frequency of the Earth, and subtly edited vocal intrusions in all sorts of languages are found here and there throughout the album.
If you dig the planet-bound stargazing of Koyil, Jon Hassel, or Misha Sultan, this will be right up your street; organic and unhurried, there’s so much space to unwind on these compositions. Rattle rasps out of a flute above dank, curious basslines, while Little Star twinkles just so, fractioned guitar shimmering over gloriously relaxing swells. I’ve sunk into it repeatedly, and always find myself coming out of a stupor when it all stops, and suddenly the world sounds less comforting.
Old Grape God - Survival à la Mode
Self Released - 14/06/24
Old Grape God has been slurring his words over the weirdest hop hop I’ve clapped ears on for what feels like forever, and yet I’m far from a hardcore follower. That said, when Bandcamp popped up last week to say “new thing!” and it was OGG, I clicked quite excitedly, knowing it’d be a ride.
Taking “Acquired Taste” to whole new levels, Old Grape God’s art is Not 4 Anybody, “let alone everybody”. Still, Survival… is definitely something which more than 6 people, the current Bandcamp tally, should be in the market for.
There’s a longform piece to be written about a recent surge in idiomatic music — I mentioned a few names that are applicable here in the review above — but there’s something slightly different, more developed perhaps, that is missing from a lot of electronic music: what Sun Ra called the “myth”, the magic myth. Beyond making music that is true to the character, to the soul, myth-maker’s art is aligned with something unspeakable — were it not for the art itself.
One of the markers of myth is the art being less conveniently palateable by the majority of people. Even if you’re a fan of Sun Ra, you have to admit it’s a certain subclass of people, even of jazz lovers, that are in that group. Another is a longstanding thread of identity, explored and developed through the music/art over the years; an adherence to the message, and less a fixation on personal identity. The list of what makes “myth” music is inexhaustible, and no single element is mandatory.
Old Grape God is well aware of his appeals, and of the reasons why the art he’s made “in a fading town on a shoestring budget” hasn’t made him a global phenomenem [sic] yet, and maybe he also clocks the role of his weirdness as a cause of that. He doesn’t seem to mind. On Survival…, he’s frank and lucid, possessed with his own inimitable musical identity, but it’s at its peak.
Parts:Whole sealed it for me; driving, restless groove; smeared, spangled flow — and really meaning that word, flow — and it was strengthened over SHOOTMEINTHEFUNKINGFACE (I mean, come on, title alone). OGG has wisdom amongst the stoned ramble, and sharp wit where it matters (I think “Mr Fathomable” might be among my favourite disses ever).
You’re not all gonna like this, and fewer still will like all of it (hell, I don’t even like all of it), but there’s clear craft and art going on here, and it will surely capture the attention of some.
That’s it for this month! My bags are packed and I’m off on my holiday. There’s a Radio Punctum archival show about to go up, maybe Friday, for Reach, some sloppy mixing but the tunes are solid. And, as always, if you appreciate Reach, share it out amongst your friends. I’ll appreciate that doubly.