#39: Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for work
New music from an enmossed compilation + Hinode Tapes, Hiroki Chiba, Heith, Lorenzo Senni, and more
This week’s new music:
Spotify
Apple Music
It’s been a hectic, lopsided week. More downs than ups. Too much awake and not enough the other thing. A week where this newsletter was supposed to go out on Monday and where I’ve also been watching the new season of Black Mirror and thinking these guys have some good ideas about the future and we should hear them out.
But until that happens, let’s enjoy some music.
Albums
enmossed, affirmations
Listen:
Secret Boyfriend, “Blue Annil (Part 4)”
Chaperone, “revisionary history of my last known whereabouts”
Album of the week: Of all the albums I’ve heard so far this year, this compilation is perhaps the most exciting, and certainly the most rewarding—due in no small part to the fact that, at their best, compilations are an inherently exciting, rewarding format for music discovery, where you never know what you’re going to find around the next corner. And when I ran into that Secret Boyfriend track, I was hooked.
As a label, enmossed is ridiculously good, and this collection is equally, ridiculously good. Veering between ambient and symphonic, tender and abrasive, but always with an organic, humanistic core. I’m not sure how many times a song would stop me and force me to relisten, and relisten again. This came out back in February, and I believe it’s taken me so long to get around to posting about it because I kept discovering new things to hear.
Also, this particular compilation is a fundraiser for musician Lauren Tosswill, who was recently diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and who curated the tracks and created the lovely cover art of the contributors’ portraits. / Bandcamp
Hinode Tapes & Hiroki Chiba, Ita
Maybe it was just this week, maybe it was everything, but the playful mood of this album is a real balm. In particular, the way Hiroki Chiba’s bass dances across Hinode Tapes’ mediative bliss-out on “Hinode Tapes #11” had me grinning between my headphones. / Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify
BIG|BRAVE, OST
The “soundtrack to an imaginary movie” concept is overdone, but what’s not is taking the idea to its furthest end point, which is to say this isn’t music that attempts a story or a theme, it’s the incidental music you feel more than you hear—dark, organic, ambient noise backdrops to accompany whatever’s playing in your mind. / Bandcamp, Boomkat, Apple Music, Spotify
Natural Information Society, Bitchin Bajas, Totality
Longform orchestral jazz psychedelia that, if it isn’t entirely redundant to say, goes places. RIYL: long walks on the moon. / Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat, Apple Music, Spotify
goat (jp), Without References / Cindy Van Acker
Abrasive and primal on its own—and once I got to know it, hearing it is more than a little disorienting when seen in its original context as the score for Cindy Van Acker’s dance piece, Without References. And it’s a small technical thing, but the way the bass riff on “Quest” hits those harmonics, it hits me every time. Like a kinder, gentler Ministry. / Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat, Apple Music, Spotify
Heith, Escape Lounge
Wildly experimental, highly deranged electro-pop. Deceptively accessible, right down to the avant-folk that’s been taking over villages from coast to coast. / Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat, Apple Music, Spotify
Lorenzo Senni, Canone Infinito Xtended
The first full-length from Lorenzo Senni since 2020 is seven different re-imaginings/deconstructions of that year’s epic “Canone Infinito”—and they all succeed in finding new glimmers within their ancestral track. The original song is wonderful on its own merits, but it is also a lot, and to hear its many motifs explored with such nuance and care really does feel special. / Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat, Apple Music, Spotify
Spool, Spool
The first 300 physical copies of this album include a sample of a namesake fragrance, and at first I wondered if I’d classify this under “gimmick.” When Godspeed You Black Emperor! shipped F#A#∞ with a penny mashed on Montreal railroad tracks, that’s “interesting.” When the Beatles included 8x10 headshots with the White Album, that’s “marketing.” When, as my friend told me, Spacemen 3 included a tab of acid with The Perfect Prescription, well either that’s “not real” or someone gave him a tab of acid along with the album, which I’ll classify as a “nice gesture.”
But this is different, because all physical music has a scent, and it enhances the listening experience—whether that’s the new record smell of fresh vinyl, the decomposing redolence of a aging sleeve, or, in the case of a mix tape I was gifted long ago, a spray of fragrance that lingered in the air every time I listened. This is all to say, what Florian TM Zeisig and artist and perfumer Angel Paradise have done here is gorgeous when streamed from a distance, and I can only imagine how the full package completes the experience. / Bandcamp, Boomkat
Theresa Wong, Journey to the Cave of Guanyin
Across these seven tracks, cellist Theresa Wong pulls every imaginable sort of music from her instrument. The mood starts somewhere in the neighborhood of contemporary classical, but quickly diverts to explore odder corners, where her unique plucking and bowing techniques layer in a kind of tension that’s reserved at first—then goes absolutely full blown. / Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat, Apple Music, Spotify
Tracks
Jamael Dean, “Light Blue”
What’s so impressive about this solo avant-jazz piano track is how you can hear the sheer confidence in Jamael Dean’s fingertips, the intentionality he brings down upon every key, even as it honestly sounds like he’s playing nothing but wrong notes. / Bandcamp, Bleep, Apple Music, Spotify
Kevin Richard Martin / Dis Fig, “Silent”
A little Mezzanine-era Massive Attack, kind of a little Nine Inch Nails (kind of!), and a lot of xx all over these chilling 11 minutes that don’t feel like 11 minutes. / Bandcamp
She’s Analog, “danse macabre”
A driving, tense, jazz-rock-adjacent track out on Carton Records, which between releases by Simon Henocq and RZWD, I’ve been growing quite fond of lately. / Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify
