Reach @ Radio Punctum #2: Oct 2024
Reach is broadcasting live on Radio Punctum at 19:00 CET every 4th Tuesday. New and forthcoming music from DIEMAJIN, Sabiwa, Queimada & Nathan L, Jabu, memotone, mvd0ae & more...
For the second episode of Reach on Radio Punctum’s Winter season, I tried something a little different: instead of playing an array of tracks from as many different releases as I could, I played as many as I could from the same releases — without breaking (too many) press embargoes. You’ll hear me mutter something about the releases really matching, and I’ll elaborate that point a bit better in this post.
TRACKLIST
DIEMAJIN - MADARA [Drowned By Locals]
Sabiwa, Quiemada, Nathan L - What is true is not true -無明大夢 [Phantom Limb]
DIEMAJIN - GYAFOON [Drowned By Locals]
DIEMAJIN - MOSHI-MOSHI [Drowned By Locals]
96 Back - Rubber Knife [Forthcoming SVBKVLT]
Mvd0ae - Qiratomu [XION]
DIEMAJIN - Miz-Kicaz-Iwaz [Drowned By Locals]
Sabiwa, Quiemada, Nathan L - Nothing blue - 無憂無慮 [Phantom Limb]
DIEMAJIN - HIJOUSEN [Drowned By Locals]
Mvd0ae - Lixivia2 [XION]
96 Back - 96 Kisses [Forthcoming SVBKVLT]
Upsammy - Mazing [Forthcoming Topo2]
Jabu - Košice Flower [Do You Have Peace?]
Lamina - Aqualines [Forthcoming Mappa]
memotone - The Bus [Soda Gong]
memotone - When The Bakery Has What You Want, and It’s Cheap [Soda Gong]
Jabu - All Night ft. Rakhi Singh & Sebastien Gainsborough [Do You Have Peace?]
Jabu - Fool If [Blackest Ever Black]
Jabu - Lately ft. Sunun [Do You Have Peace?]
memotone - Walking Backwards [Patience / Impatience]
Jabu - In The Way [Do You Have Peace?]
I was so elated to find out that we were getting new Jabu and new memotone albums in the same month, and wrote about those two albums in the most recent Review post. What part of October I was forced to wait for those records to drop, I spent overdosing on the following collaborative albums. These are, as of today, both now released, with the Japanese horror soundtrack inspired DIEMAJIN coming out on October 31st (when else?), and the Sons of _ collaboration between SABIWA, Queimada, Nathan L. being freshly released today.
Whether or not you agree with my making a connection between these pairs of albums will be up to your taste, but I feel they each make a good match. The linking tracks I used from 96Back’s forthcoming album on SVBKVLT and the two pieces from mvd0ae (who, by the way, last week performed a stellar live AV set at Prague hotspot Petrohradská Kolektiv, with fellow Mexican visual artist stimu.lacra) seemed to me to provide the right balance between DIEMAJIN vocalist MA’s dada-ist, forceful phonetics, and the physical thump within Sons of _.
Don’t let Sabiwa’s scaaaary rasps on the blasting noise of the opening track scare you off; there’s a lot of grit, noise and high-sound-intensity throughout Sons of _, but it mellows out wondrously, if not immediately; What is true is not true -無明大夢 opens out of caustic white noise, and when the beat finally shudders into gripping clarity alongside Sabiwa’s acid-burned, self-eating raps, it is jaggedly beautiful, but still threatening; a falling knife has no handle they say.
Although my interest was absolutely won by the first three tracks — some of the most ferocious and imposing — there’s no fade to the quality as the tracklist progresses, and each track has something unique about it; the gold wasn’t not all lost on the opening gambit. Phantom Limb really knocked it out the park with this one; it’s heavy, but evenly balanced. For all the “ferocious”-and-similar descriptions I gave there’s also playfullness. It’s not full-frontal with the emotion, and therefore doesn’t lose the listener through forcing perspective.
The nervousness and the suggestive tension of highlights like Nothing Blue, and really most of this album, is something I’d normally say is really rare, but, as with the two albums covered already, Sons of _ had a fine partner in DIEMAJIN. I think I got both emails on the same day, and looped them together.
DIEMAJIN is DJ DIE SOON and Tokyo-based vocalist MA. I covered the first and last word I heard from MA in the second edition of Reach, where he won shedloads of brownie points for his bamboozlingly slick, near-onomatopoeic flowing-tongue raps over the heavily sedated stumbling footwork of Polish duo IFS.
IFSMA is still great, and fish it out of the link above if you’re new to it and after something fun and dancefloor-able (trust me), but DIEMAJIN is a much more “ferocious” option, so if blown-out oversaturated and redlined music ticks boxes for you, head to Drowned By Locals to satisfy that itch.
MA’s theatrical, over-exaggerated vocal style (“draw[ing] comparison with ancient Japanese vocal methods” per press release) really owns the scuzzy noise of Madara and the morning-after-still-feeling-it hallucinatory stumble of MIZ-KICAZ-IWAZ; where IFSMA was bright and impressive, this record shines brightest in the gloom. DIE SOON’s sound is punchy, effective, suggesting sophistication but feeling punk as hell. It’s a winning one-two, and as with Sons of _, doesn’t diminish in quality, and the returning playful brief hiphop skits show just how deep MA’s well of inspiration goes.
I also played something from a really pretty release from Upsammy that’s out soon, something from Lamina’s amazing forthcoming record on Mappa, and a couple of older Jabu and memotone cuts you’ll have to fish for yourselves.
