For some reason, people fail to acknowledge the importance of the city of Providence, Rhode Island on music, art, design, and culture at large. Less we forget that Rhode Island School of Design has the most impressive creative alumni in the country: Artists Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, and Ryan Trecartin, designers Mary Katranzou and Eckhaus Latta, director Gus Van Zandt, animator Seth McFarland, and so many more all studied their vocations here. But nevertheless, much of the city’s creatives leave for other cities once they get their degrees: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, wherever. But there was a time that Providence was the most important city in the country for avant-garde music and radical art. That time was Fort Thunder.
Fort Thunder was a radical art and music space established in the late 1997 by artists and musicians Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt, Black Pus, Mindflayer, etc.) and Mat Brinkman (Mindflayer, Forcefield, etc.) in a former textile factory in the Olneyville district of the city. Though the venue closed in 2001, it was legendary in its short life span for shining light on a diverse array of fiercely individualistic and radical artists and musicians.
The music could largely be classified as noise rock, but all the bands were still measurably different. They were noisy, to be certain, and tended to work in a rock format, but all had unique approaches to the aural assault. Lightning Bolt, perhaps the most known of all the bands to emerge from the scene, used the fury of Chippendale’s drums and a heavily effected and distorted bass from Brian Gibson to punish the listener. Perhaps most impressive about the duo is that as brutal as they could be, there is a defined pattern to their sound, almost having as much to do with the spasms of early Boredoms as the mathematical approach of early King Crimson. Playing in the middle of a crowd, there are still few things on earth as thrilling as a Lightning Bolt concert. Perhaps that is why the band is still playing and enjoying an immense cult following today (their last record Fantasy Empire came out last year from Thrill Jockey Records).
The other band to get pseudo-famous was Black Dice. Originally formed by Hisham Bharoocha, Sebastian Blanck, Eric Copeland, and Bjorn Copeland in 1997, Black Dice was actually something of a screamo-reminding noise punk unit, vastly different from the band that they eventually come. The band was eventually signed by DFA and they released Beaches and Canyons. The record is made up of swirling and kaleidoscopic psychedelic electro-pop, and quite beautiful really. Blanck and Bharoocha eventually left and were replaced by Aaron Warren. The band still records today, and Eric enjoys quite a successful solo career as well.
Forcefield, led by Brinkman, were arguably the Fort Thunder house band cum art collective cum spiritual guides. Brinkman, along with Jim Drain, Ara Peterson, and Leif Goldberg, applied a conceptual approach to psychedelic stereotypes. They self-designed their own multi-colored seizure-inducing outfits, while using various light structures and set props to create a total experience. Sometimes the band used pure drawn out noise. Other times they used a degraded acid house beat and just looped it forever. The point was total agitation, making the viewer as uncomfortable as possible. This approach garnered the band an appearance at the 2002 Whitney Biennial, believe it or not.
And there was of course lots more music and much of it was released by Ben McOsker’s excellent Providence label Load Records. John Dwyer, who is now Pitchfork famous for his band The Oh Sees, originally played in a noise rock duo called Pink and Brown as well as noise garage band The Coachwhips at his Providence hometown venue (yes, Fort Thunder). Dissonant post-punk bands Six Finger Satellite and Arab on Radar made the warehouse their home. And less we forget, Fort Thunder became a base for American noise, hosting early shows by Prurient, Wolf Eyes, and so many more.
The musicians who played Fort Thunder were almost unanimously artists that played music and not musicians who painted, but don’t quote me on that. Despite his being preposterously good at drums, for instance, Chippendale has had an illustrious career in illustration, and his graphic novel Ninja has become a cult favorite. His partner in ear-splitting, Brian Gibson, works on video games in his time away from the band. Brinkman works in illustration and fine art. Hisham Bharoocha, who played in Black Dice and Lightning Bolt and has a solo music project called Soft Circle, is massively successful as a photographer and a painter. He has exhibited at Deitch Projects and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and his maximalist style is nothing less than delight for the eyeballs.
When is someone going to do a documentary on this space? Should I start a Kickstarter? Do it myself? That’s what the Fort Thunder crew would have done.
[Friday Playlist] A Celebration of Tri Angle Records
Text by Adam Lehrer
The best new record I heard this week, aside from The Life of Pablo obviously, is the newest release by London-based producer Brood Ma, Daze. A volatile collision of funk, noise, house, and techno, the album sounds viciously contemporary, indicative of the evolution of London and New York-based label Tri Angle.
Never in my life have I seen a label that has almost as much influence on the underground as it does on the mainstream. Label boss Robin Carolan has proven himself a gifted curator and arguably, an artist in his own right. Though the label has broadened its scope in its six years of existence, Carolan has a keen eye for fitting the acts he signs into his own world. A world where goth is funky and noise is fashion and anti-fashion is art. I sound pretentious here, maybe as per usual, but it is undeniable that the label has been profound in unleashing what are quite possibly the most excitingly contemporary forms of music: "alternative" R&B and abstract dance music.
It all started with 808z and Heartbreak, but before Frank Ocean, Drake, Kelela, and others all started breaking new ground in an R&B form, a Chicago philosophy student with a taste for the avant-garde and an angelic voice named Tom Krell found himself floored by Yeezy's baroque musings of self-loathe. Krell, re-named How to Dress Well, took the goth pop stylings of Kanye and Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope and incorporated it with his love of Aphex Twin and avant-garde 20th century composition to define the possibilities that can be explored within the context of rhythm, beat, and voice. Krell never gets as much recognition as other geniuses like Ocean or the Weeknd, but his first album released on Tri Angle, Love Remains, was an era-defining record. Not only did it set up Tri Angle as a label that would be beautifully balanced the realms of pop and avant-garde, but it also made people think, "Holy shit, why haven't people realized how fucking cool R&B can be with crackling electronics, tape hiss, and gut wrenching philosophical lyrics?" Hello 2010s.
On the flip side, Carolan's taste for noise and weirdo techno paved the path for artists like Arca, who is in his own way blurring boundaries between popular and niche taste. The Haxan Cloak's record Excavation, released in 2011, approached dance music as sound design. Within it, beats weave through landscapes of thick pulsating drones. You can dance to it, but you can also just get really high and get lost in it. The best electronic music of today, from Surgeon to Jlin, all try and find a beat to dance to within a warped sonic scape of weirdo sounds.
It isn't surprising that artists like Bjork and Kanye, the more willfully experimentally of our most famous musicians, have something of a reciprocal relationship with the artists that record for Tri Angle records. Bjork especially, rumored to be dating Carolan, has been particularly vocal in her fondness for the label. On Vulnicura, The Haxan Cloak was co-producer and Carolan provided creative support. Tri Angle is good for the music industry, period. The success of the label helps scared executives see the value in stars that skew more experimental, like FKA Twigz or even Sky Ferreira. Not to diminish the success of those two gifted artists, but Tri Angle is opening eyes while in no way dumbing down their roster: Brood Ma is as atonal and all out strange as anything the label has released.
[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Protest Songs
Text by Adam Lehrer
The widest margin of income inequality in the history of the United States. Rampant police brutality. The most overcrowded prisons in the western hemisphere. No guarantees of education or health care. Corporate greed. The mainstream media wants to tell me that I'm a sexist for not voting for Hilary Clinton. They say Bernie Sanders is too radical to be president, that people can't accept all that change at once? Fuck that. That is the military industrial complex keeping us complacent, telling us to make the sensible choice so that they can maintain the "natural order of things." If the sensible economic policies of Sen. Sanders are radical, then let's revolt away. President Obama was great for liberals and this country, but now is the time to take those epic policy changes and institute a full blown system overhaul. Protest away, my fellow Americans. It is our motherfucking right!
Music has always been a powerful tool of protest, bringing together disparate groups of people behind one message and one sound. The statement of protest can be clear, whether it be Rage Against the Machine encouraging us to bring down the system, or Ice Cube detailing the horrors of police brutality, or Killer Mike telling us that he's "Glad Reagan dead," or Beyoncé using her immortality to ally herself with feminism. Or it can be subtle, as in Miles Davis soundtracking the cold life of 1970s New York, Peaches celebrating her body and sexuality, or the very existence of Anarchist musical collectives like Test Dept, Can, or Crass (not available on Spotify, sadly).
Music brings us together, and together they will fall. The conservative right still seems to believe they hold all the power, but 86 percent of this country is made up of young people, minorities, and women. The rich white man is a dead monkey in the United States. It's time they realize it, and either stand with us or move out of the way. We all have the right to flourish in this beautiful country of ours. We all have the right to be healthy and to improve our minds. We all have the right to feel protected by law enforcement, and not vilified by it. We all have the right to see the corruption, and to declare it so. We have the right. And if that right is continuously denied to us, we will fight for it.
[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Autre Magazine's Favorite David Bowie Songs
Text by Adam Lehrer
What can I say about the late David Bowie that hasn’t already been eulogized at length by the great artists and writers of the world? Something personal, I suppose. I feel like every Bowie fan has that moment when the man’s music became something more to him/her than something they would passively hear on classic rock radio. My parents were big on Bowie, so naturally I had a natural instinct towards rejecting him. But I was big into skateboarding, and skateboarding videos introduced me to a whole world of art and even more so music (I got into Coltrane through the Mark Gonzalez part in Blind’s Video Days, Fugazi was introduced to me by Ed Templeton’s avowed love of the band, etc..). Perhaps some of you might remember a skateboarding video by a board company called Flip and its first big video, Sorry. Pro skater Arto Saari had the last part, and he used a one-two whammy of Bowie’s 1984 and Rock n’ Roll Suicide for the soundtrack. That was it. Bowie’s melodies provided an emotional resonance to the skateboarding that normally wouldn’t be there. Bowie’s music provides an emotional resonance to anything. The man seemed to just feel things more, and those hard-hitting and powerful feelings filtered from his mind through his music and into the world. Rock n’ roll would never be the same.
It might be an awful thing to write, but it doesn’t seem surprising that in the twilight of his life, that Bowie was able to record two of his greatest musical achievements. When I heard Blackstar for the first time, I was stunned at how experimentally powerful it sounded; it sounded like the beginning or something but in fact it was the end. Bowie’s best work always teetered on the edge of life, death, and re-birth. It was through death defyingly rampant cocaine use that Ziggy Stardust was birthed to the world, and the re-birth of his newly sober soul in Berlin gave us ‘Low.’ That vague flicker between life and the unknown was one of Bowie’s greatest creative sparks. It gave him purpose and resolution to leave lasting documents of his talent. In my opinion, The Next Day and Blackstar are the best pieces of music that Bowie put out since the ‘70s.
Growing up in a small and oppressively conservative town as an extroverted but geeky readerly type more concerned with finishing Infinite Jest than winning a basketball championship, Bowie was god. He taught us all how to be fiercely and commitedly ourselves. Seeing Bowie, dressed garish and flamboyant, with beautiful women on his arm gave me hope. I knew I could one day be a fairly weird and offbeat fella and still get laid one day once freed from the grips of the suburbs. That might sound callous and rude, but one must sympathize with the fact of how freeing that actually is. Bowie helped give me hope for a bright and excellent future.
There will never ever be a rock star so adept at the art of self-invention. Like Warhol, he made the state of famousness itself a sort of self-expression. He was the bridge that held together the art rock of Lou Reed and Iggy with the mainstream world. A masterful producer, a genius songwriter, and a multi-media genius, he was truly the best of us.
My Favorite Bowie Album: Eleven Creative People Choose Their Favorite David Bowie Album
If you ask any one what their favorite David Bowie album is, they'll have an almost immediate response. Even people that don't have a favorite color, favorite artist, movie or dish - they have a number one favorite Bowie album. Of course, there will be a second favorite, a third favorite, a fourth favorite and beyond, but there is only one Bowie album in someone's life that means the most to them. Sure, each and every one of Bowie's albums changed music forever (and that is not an understatement) – even his last and final album Blackstar will live in the time vortex of some of the greatest music ever made. But, again, there is usually only one that rings the truest, like a personal message from Bowie himself. And it may take a while for Blackstar to be a favorite album, but wait until the new generation grows up, wait until the album ages and gets finer and finer with future musical epochs. There was literally no one like David Bowie. You can imagine his arrival on earth like a meteor's arrival, with the soil rippling and the air in waves from the shockwaves. When he left, it was like a crucial element, like oxygen, was missing from the atmosphere. Below, we asked a number of creative people what their favorite Bowie album is and here are their answers.
1. Rosanna Arquette (Actress) / Favorite: Ziggy Stardust
2. Lucia Santina Ribisi (Artist) / Favorite: Hunky Dory
3. Sasha Frere-Jones (Writer and Music Critic) / Favorite: Station To Station
4. Clementine Creevy (Musician) / Favorite: Hunky Dory
5. Jim Smith (Founder of The Smell In Los Angeles) / Favorite: Ziggy Stardust
6. Enoc Perez (Artist) / Favorite: Young Americans
7. Oliver Maxwell Kupper (Editor-in-Chief of Autre Magazine) / Favorite: Scary Monsters
8. Andre Saraiva (Graffiti Artist and Hotelier) / Favorite: Heroes
9. Brad Elterman (Photographer) / Favorite: Hunky Dory
10. Avalon Lurks (Musician) / Favorite: Bowie At The Beeb
11. Devendra Banhart (Musian and Artist) / Favorite: Hunky Dory
When A Hero Dies: Lorde Recalls Her Encounter With The Late David Bowie
text by Lorde
When a hero dies, everyone wants a quote. I woke up this morning with a tender head from tears and that big red cup of Japanese whiskey, gulped last night just after the news came. People were already asking me what I thought. It feels kind of garish to talk about oneself at a time like this, when the thing that has happened is so distinctly world-sized. But everything I’ve read or seen since the news has been deeply intrinsic in tone, almost selfish, like therapy. That’s who he was to all of us. He was a piece of bright pleated silk we could stretch out or fold up small inside ourselves when we needed to.
Mr. Bowie, I guess right now we have to hang this thing up for a minute.
The night I met him I played at an expensive Vogue benefit with a lot of fresh flowers, honouring Tilda. I was not quite seventeen, America was very new to me, and I was distinctly uneasy and distrustful toward everything happening in my life that was putting me in these flat-voiced, narrow-eyed, champagneish rooms. I played my three songs, thrashing and twitching in platform boots. Afterward, Anna clasped my hand and said “David wants to meet you,” and led me through people and round tables with candles and glasses and louder and louder talk, and he was there.
"We'll always be crashing in that same car..."
I've never met a hero of mine and liked it. It just sucks, the pressure is too huge, you can't enjoy it. David was different. I'll never forget the caressing of our hands as we spoke, or the light in his eyes. That night something changed in me - i felt a calmness grow, a sureness. I think in those brief moments, he heralded me into my next new life, an old rock and roll alien angel in a perfect grey suit. I realized everything I’d ever done, or would do from then on, would be done like maybe he was watching. I realized I was proud of my spiky strangeness because he had been proud of his. And I know I'm never going to stop learning dances, brand new dances.
It's not going to change, how we feel about him. For the rest of our lives, we'll always be crashing in that same car.
Lorde is a musician and recording artist. Text taken from a public Facebook eulogy. Click here to follow Lorde on Facebook. Text by Gavin Doyle. Follow Autre magazine on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE
Music Videos You May Have Missed in 2015
Bubblegum goddesses. Wannabe Debbie Harrys. Dystopian mental illnesses. Solo rock shows in a mystical desert landscape...These are the videos that stood out in 2015 for their strangeness, abstraction, and beauty. And good tunes, of course.
1. Petite Noir - Chess
The Cape Town artist Petite Noir (Yannick Ilunga) sings cool, dramatic, hypnotic pop in what feels like a late-80s instructional VHS tape. The slowly bubbling (literally, bubbles) breakup song was the first single off Petite Noir’s first album, La Vie Est Belle / Life Is Beautiful.
2. Son Lux - You Don't Know Me
God, don’t you hate it when your boyfriend doesn’t understand you’re a terrifying bubblegum goddess? “You Don’t Know Me,” starring Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany, is creepy, but somehow relatable. Ultimately, says director Nathan Johnson says the video wants to explore the “empty rituals” of relationships, and to a larger degree, religion. “You Don’t Know Me” comes off Son Lux’s (Ryan Lott’s) fourth studio album Bones.
3. HONNE - Coastal Love
“Coastal Love” feels part fashion film, part white-collar crime, and part psychedelic deep-ocean love story. The words “I’ll be waiting for you, my love, on this New York City coast” play over images of a dark & dreamy Montauk motel. This is one of the few times I think, “If I’m going to pass out on the beach with a stranger, going in a lustful haze with a weird sea creature on my face might be the best way to do it.” “Coastal Love” comes off HONNE’s newest EP by the same name.
4. ABRA - U Know
Abra’s woozy R & B is paired with a ghost/love story between the Awful Records’ it-girl and skater Lil Phillips. The DIY-feely music video is a collaboration with UNIF clothing, and comes off Abra’s first album Roses.
5. Lower Dens - To Die in L.A.
Magic 8 balls, wannabe movie stars, Debbie Harry obsessions, and a dead buck floating in a swimming pool—such is the crazy world of “To Die in L.A.” by Lower Dens. The first single off Lower Dens’ second record Escape from Evil is a synth-rock dream of a vulnerable Los Angeles.
6. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Can't Keep Checking My Phone
We start with the subtitle, “It’s one of those rare, unexplainable things,” which suits the video well, in the best way. The video—directed by Dimitri Basil—features a semi-sci-fi catalogue of mental illnesses and unexplained phenomena, including “Meteorite Sickness” and “Virtual Gender Disphoria.” The song, which is full of catchy beats and seemingly-simple lyrics, becomes complicated against the “trading deck” of the abstract, the dystopian, and the strange. Can’t Keep Checking My Phone can be found on Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s newest album Multi-Love.
7. Hurts - Lights
“Lights” is the age-old tale of being too fucked up and too alone in a half-populated bar. This time, instead of the classic random hook-up we get a graceful dance between matador and bull. This bar’s patrons also include a woman wrapped in a giant plastic bag and a zombie baseball player. “Lights” was the first single off the Manchester duo Hurts’s third album Surrender.
8. The Soft Moon - Far
Is there anything more angsty than dark alleyways, disfigured men, and speeding down the 101 in a blue-and-red psychedelic daze? Dark and nostalgic, the video doesn’t lose its depth. “‘Far’ is the realm where unconscious desires reign, and the darkest tendencies take root and flourish. There, the ‘hIDeous’ clone assaults the ego, the shadow self stalks the night, and a third Shroud embodies the two hemispheres locked in perpetual battle,” director duo Y2K explains. “Far” comes off Soft Moon’s album Deeper, which was released this February.
9. Alex G - Brite Boy
A soft tune called “Brite Boy” off Alex G’s newest album entitled Beach Music might suggest happy, carefree vibes. Instead, we get a dark cartoon by Elliot Bech, featuring cemetery rituals, desert funerals, and a watertower that welcomes you to a ghost town called “Fuck.” Beach Music marks Alex Ginnascoli’s seventh full-length album, and he gets weirder and darker every time. “Brite Boy” zines made by Bech himself will be sold along Alex G’s next tour.
10. LA Priest - Oino
It’s a strange desert landscape where curious beasts lurk in the canyons, and Sam Eastgate (aka Samuel Dust) plays high-pitched riffs in the desolate dirt. Directed by his brother Isaac Eastgate, the video was apparently inspired by their granddad’s story of “a man imprisoned in the desert who escapes by singing to a wizard.” I feel the mystic vibes. “Oino” was LA Priest’s debut single for a solo album eight years in the making. His album Inji is out now.
11. Silicon - God Emoji
A papier maché robot drives out to the middle of the forest to lay down catchy beats on the keyboard and the drums. Meanwhile, a weird dismembered pixelated head floats about an apartment building while a soft voice sings, “Don’t wanna go out on a Saturday night.” “God Emoji” is weird, but sticks with you through its abstractions and grooves. New Zealand multi-instrumentalist Kody Nielson’s debut album Personal Computer is out now.
12. Hot Chip - Need You Now
Hot Chip’s newest album, Why Make Sense? fits well with the music video for “Need You Now.” It’s strange, abstract, cyclical, and convoluted. A man runs after his double (or is his double chasing him?). He disappears, reappears, runs away, and is chased by a third double. Ultimately, however, the complex and the metaphysical fade into a simple story of refusing to let love go, as the words, “Need you now,” repeat themselves in the background. “Need You Know” is off the British electronic music band’s sixth album.
13. Julia Holter - Silhouette
Julia Holter’s “Silhouette” is jumpy, grainy, and indulgent in its shadows. It is also sentimental, nostalgic, and a melancholy kind of sweet. Holter sings, “He can hear me sing, though he is far, I'll never lose sight of him, a silhouette.” The song and the video remind me how love can make you crazy--sprawled out across your desk with nothing to do but turn the lights on and off, close and open the blinds, and write clichés about him in your diary. Holter’s latest record Have You in my Wilderness was released this September.
Text by Keely Shinners
[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Best Pop Records of 2015
Text by Adam Lehrer
Earlier this year, I interviewed fashion designer Siki Im, and we discussed the ramifications of the term “elevated sportswear,” and his response was rather elegant: “Everything is elevated these days,” said Im. He was right. 10 years ago, when the phrase “pop music” conjured associations of Backstreet Boys and Britney, I would have never even thought to make a pop music list. But we are well into the Internet age at this point (it feels like just yesterday when I was on the Shoutweb message boards, discussing the excellence of KoRn and Slipknot with other pimply faced malcontents, but in reality it was 15 years ago), and the artists that grew up watching TRL and then reading Pitchfork on their desktops have come of age. Pop music has mutated into a variety of forms, only connected through an accessible, danceable, and sing-along quality. You can have the retro-psych R&B of Miguel, the post-modern alterna-pop of Bjork, or the British dancefloor celebration of Jamie XX, and it is all pop. Sub-culture has thoroughly been erased, and that isn’t a bad thing. It just means that individual taste has come to the forefront. You will have a much harder time finding someone who is only into black metal these days, but you might find a girl who has Grimes playing on her headphones sitting at the coffee shop wearing a Darkthrone t-shirt.
The point is, the artists making pop these days are very much artists, and not corporate drones. They by and large love music and are acquainted with at least some form of music history. In the words of Future and Drake, “What a time, TO BE ALIVE!”
D'Angelo - Black Messiah - Track: Betray My Heart
R&B has arguably become contemporary popular music’s most important genre: 808z, Frank Ocean, Miguel, Jeremih, the Weeknd, Kelela, Nao, How to Dress Well and the list goes on and on. But D’Angelo, as part of the neo-Soul movement in the mid-‘90s, was already demonstrating the inherent possibilities in groove-driven soul melodies matched with amazing vocals over 15 years ago. Black Messiah came out at the tail end of 2014, so it missed its chance for most year-end lists. I simply must pay respects to it here, because it is the best record that has come out since its release. People waited for 14 years for this thing, ever since the majestic Voodoo was unleashed upon the world in 2000, and Black Messiah immediately established D’Angelo once again at the forefront of the world’s most riveting entertainers. It took Voodoo’s abstract and far out grooves ever farther into the abyss, and the record sounds minimal but dense all the same. It re-established soul music as a powerful form of protest, possibly the first record of its kind to do so this well since Sly Stone put out There’s a Riot Goin’ On in the early ‘70s. D’Angelo has an amazing ability to pay homage to his forefathers while sounding utterly contemporary. D’Angelo spent a decade caught up in drug, legal, and financial problems, finally releasing that tension in this beautifully written record. “I been a witness to this game for ages, And if I stare death in face, no time to waste,” he sings on 1000 Deaths. D’Angelo pours his personal life into his sounds and uses it to indict a racist and unjust system. He is one of the last revolutionaries we have. And his voice hasn’t lost a step.
Björk - Vulnicura - Track: Black Lake
Bjork winds up labeled as experimental music just as much as she does pop, and that is testament to how utterly alien her fairly straight forward songwriting style sounds. Vulnicura is Bjork’s best album since her masterpiece, Homogenic. Consider the 18 years of Bjork musical domination that have transpired since 1997, and it’s staggering to think of another artist that has remained that relevant for that long. Of course we all know the story behind the record, that Matthew Barney jilted Bjork after a decade of domestic bliss leaving her utterly heartbroken. But Bjork is not the type to lie down, and instead belted out that frustration in this transcendent body of songs. Vulnicura finds Bjork at her most lyrically straight-forward, trading obtuse haiku for succinct declarations of strife: “ I did it for love, I honored my feelings, You betrayed your own heart, corrupted that organ.” Bjork, displaying eternally excellent taste, lets hot shot producers bring the weird, with Arca and the Haxan Cloak both bringing their abstract production techniques to an otherwise string oriented album. Bjork is simply Bjork, transcending any notion of popular music or trend, and she will always resonate.
The Weeknd - Beauty Behind the Madness - Track: As You Are
Toronto’s The Weeknd’s career exploded this year. But as he established himself as one of the world’s most popular artists, he also found himself as probably the least critically acclaimed of the contemporary R&B stars. Of course, Abel Testaye doesn’t make it easy for himself, with his occasional outright over-the-top misogyny, but I’ll be damned if Beauty Behind the Madness isn’t an absolutely perfect R&B record. Many of my friends said they have preferred The Weeknd’s earlier, weirder work. But you ask me, this is the type of music that Abel was meant to make: big, arena ready, anthemic pop music. It’s like a Phil Collins-led group playing R&B, and that is a compliment. The Hills, Can’t Feel my Face, and more were some of the tracks that had me putting a clinic on the dance floor all year. There also has to be something said of The Weeknd’s voice: there is nothing like it. It doesn’t even sound very trained, as if Abel just opens his mouth and that is what comes out of him.
Nao - February 15 - Track: Inhale, Exhale
With only an EP and a single to her name, the East London-born Nao has re-defined danceable R&B. Often compared to other transformative R&B artists FKA Twigs and Kelela, there is something undeniably less austere and far more youthful about Nao’s sound. From the opening glorious bassline of February 15’s first track Inhale, Exhale, Nao conjures up images of neighborhood block parties and dance-offs. Her voice is high-pitched and adolescent-sounding, Nao’s sound is completely all her own. Much less self-consciously arty than her peers, Nao’s sound almost comes off like an elevation of the bubblegum soul of Deniece Williams. It is more street-wise, to be sure, but this is music to dance to. I listened to these five songs dozens of times throughout the year, and never did I get sick of it. Nao is fully in control of her product (she even released her music on her own label, Little Tokyo).
Miguel - Wildheart - Track: Hollywood Dreams
Miguel’s deep love of music has always been apparent; he has equal adoration for artists as disparate as Prince and Led Zeppelin. As good as his 2012 release Kaleidoscope Dream was, Miguel needed to grow as a musician to fully embrace the retro-tinged neo-psychedelica soul that he has achieved on the excellent Wildheart. Miguel always felt like he might be the millennial answer to Prince, but with this sound he has gotten there. The album is dripping with sex, but like with Prince it comes off as more a celebration of sex than a misogynist fantasy. Miguel is as focused on the woman’s pleasure as he is his own, and somehow that comes through sonically. The album is fairly maximal, similar in production to big ‘70s rock albums, and Miguel has emerged as a guitar player to be reckoned with. Miguel is a big Lenny Kravitz fan, and Lenny appears on the excellent album closer face the sun. But Miguel’s sound feels like what Lenny’s music could be if Kravitz weren’t so concerned with making songs that can accompany car commercials (people often forget that Lenny’s first record was actually pretty fucking good though).
Jamie xx - In Colour - Track: Stranger in a Room (feat. Oliver Sim)
Perhaps some would feel more comfortable placing Jamie XX’s solo masterpiece In Colour on a list of electronic albums, but the record is far too joyously accessible to be taken as anything other than pop. Unlike bro DJs like Diplo and Steve Aoki that try and make dance music more pop, Jamie XX’s music feels both essentially pop and essentially dance. In Colour is a celebration of the UK’s deep history in dance music re-purposed for a magical conceptual pop record: Good Times channels grime, Stranger in a Room taps into Madchester dance pop, SeeSaw goes for trip-hop, and Sleep Sound re-ignites the acid house. So many styles filtered through such an unmistakable musical voice. Jamie XX is an obsessive fan of British music and has created a record that feels at once beautiful as much as it does culturally relevant. Though he got help from his cohorts from the XX on this album, Jamie XX seems to find much more joy behind a stack of records and a labtop than he does a guitar an a mic. There is more exuberance to this music than anything the man has ever been a part of. This is the future of dance music AND pop music.
Grimes - Art Angels - Track: Venus Fly (feat. Janelle Monae)
Remember that scene in Twin Peaks when they are all at the Roadhouse? Donna and James are making up. Ed and Norma are confirming their love. And Coop, just before the Giant tells him that is happening again, is tending to a beer while admiring the synth-y ‘80s goth pop group with a bleach blonde singer on the stage. Grimes to me is that fictional band made non-fiction. When profiled by Dazed earlier this year Grimes got a little defensive when pressed if she is reaching for a more accessible sound. But I think she was getting defensive because her music has always been quintessentially pop, but undeniably alien all the same. Venus Fly with Janelle Monae is ready for college kid catering night clubs, while California makes a grand case for the virtues of Bedroom Bubblegum, or some critic cliché to describe the sound of that song. The record is tight and well-sequenced, edited with the precision of a Hype Williams music video.
Jeremih - Late Night: The Album - Track: Planez (feat. J. Cole)
I had kind of given up hope on hearing anything new from Jeremih in 2015. The single for Don’t Tell ‘Em came out way back in summer of 2014 for chrissakes. But, the internet does it again and Jeremih’s excellent new collection of ‘90s R&B revitalizing tracks, Late Night: The Album, made it into our iTunes feeds a couple of weeks back. There are some beautiful melodies on this record. Opening track Planez finds a slow burning bass line under sequenced synths and utterly muscular vocal lines from the man himself. Actin Up takes a minimal beat with a sparse string section and lets Jeremih’s voice do all the talking. Jeremih, the man of a thousand hip-hop features, proves himself a capable album maker all on his own with Late Night: The Album.
Kelela - Hallucinogen - Track: Gomenasai
For whatever reason, Kelela’s brand of late period Aaaliyah-referencing dark and sexy R&B works really well in short bursts. The Hallucinogen EP, six tracks in all, feels fully fleshed out. Warp Records, legendary for their its with experimental electronic icons like Aphex Twin (a personal hero of mine) and Autechre, released this album. That alone provides some indication of the punk mentality Kelela exhibits. At this point in her career, she could start to shoot for RIhanna, or at least Janelle Monae-like, success. But that isn’t where she is at musically. Arca, the Venezuelan genius who basically popularized experimental music in 2015, produced the record and brings some delightful grit to the listening experience. That being said, Arca is a malleable producer, and the beats on this record feel more polished than anything he’s ever done before; almost sounding like Timbaland’s B-side deep cuts. Kelela regular Kingdom brings some dancier cuts to the mix, too. The record leaves you simultaneously satisfied and begging for more.
FKA Twigs - M3LL155X - Track: Figure 8
FKA twigs, the London-born former dancer, is a multi-media genius. She is a dancer for one thing, employing mesmerizing chereography into her performances. She knows her fashion, employing the looks of futuristic London-based designers Craig Green, Nasir Mazhar, Cottweiler and many more. Her 2015 EP, M3LL155X, came complete with a video spanning the record’s entirety utilizing bizarre images and close-ups of Rick Owens’ wife Michelle Lamy’s face. The film was directed by Twigs herself. All that versatile talent has potentital to distract from how utterly unique her music is. Twigs grew up listening to soul like Marvin Gaye and Ella Fitzgerald and punk and glam like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Adam Ant. Her music sounds nothing like that. She is the rare artist that is in no way bound by her influences. M3LL155X, though perhaps not as incendiary as 2014’s LP1, is another landmark record for the 27-year old artist. Abstract electronics collide with smoky R&B rhythms. The industrial tinge gives the sound a cold detachment, but the swirling soul grounds it in humanity.
Tame Impala - Currents - Track: The Moment
On any other record, I would have classified Tame Impala under rock n’ roll. Currents, Tame Impala’s 2015 release, is a pop record through and through. And if you ask me, they are all the better for it. I enjoyed Kevin Parker’s first couple of records, and especially admired his jaw dropping guitar playing, but Tame Impala always came off as a little too Arcade Fire-y to me. Not sonically, just in the sense that it was the type of rock guaranteed to be adored by Pitchfork and loved by a certain type of indie rock fan (the kind who has no clue what SST records is). Currents is Parker’s most accessible album, and it also feels like it’s his sweet spot. The record, while still featuring some stunning guitar work, emphasizes club-ready synths and beats. Parker has admitted that he was eager to hear Tame Impala in a dance setting, and it works. The album was recorded entirely at Parker’s home studio in Fremantle, Australia, but sounds like it could have been recorded at a Jay-Z studio. Polished, would be the best word for it. But Parker infuses big grand emotion into his music, and Currents is most confident and exuberant work yet.
Janet Jackson - Unbreakable - Track: BURNITUP! (feat. Missy Elliot)
Two years ago, when Beyoncé surprise released that stunning self-titled record, she was praised for blurring the boundaries of genre in efforts of pushing pop music into a more musically dense future. And she deserved it, that record is a masterpiece. Unfortunately, people seem to forget that Janet had already done that with her albums Rhythm Nation, and especially The Velvet Rope. Both those records are stunning masterpieces of auteur-driven pop music. Janet hadn’t put out anything close to hitting those records’ majestic heights since. 2015’s Unbreakable, though no Velvet Rope, is a thorough return to form for the icon. Janet has always reflected the music of the time into her music, as much as she has social issues. On this record she takes on EDM, that most maligned of popular music, but manages to not embarrass herself one iota (I wish we could say the same for Madonna). People often forget how tremendous a singer Janet is, and she reminds them of that undeniable range on After you Fall, a track that must be dedicated to her late brother, Michael. This is a woman going on her fourth decade of super stardom, not even her brother was making good music that long.
Adele - 25 - Track: Other Side
The criticism of Adele’s music (for example: Damon Albarn of Blur and Noel Gallagher of Oasis have both called her granny music, to paraphrase) I mostly agree with. Compared to where most of pop is at these days, her music feels conventional and safe. 25, like its predecessor, has some truly epic songs, like smash single Other Side. But it also has some skip overs. But all the criticism is undone when you consider that voice, which she has added even more range to with this new record. She hits some notes that leave you with goosebumps; a physical reaction that overrides critical conceptualization. And she also sold 4 million records in two weeks, so she is pretty much single-handedly keeping the record industry afloat (I exaggerate, but fuck that’s a lot of CDs).
Lana Del Rey - Honeymoon - Track: High by the Beach
I really have tried to avoid Lana del Rey’s whole thing. In no way do I think her deserving of the “Lynchian pop” description that critics have often tagged her with. Her music is more or less soul-driven pop with a smokier and sultrier voice than most of are used to. That being said, I really loved Ultraviolence; tracks like West Coast and Shades of Cool were full of darkly evocative mood and swagger. Honeymoon feels a bit rushed in comparison with its predecessor, but its first half is fairly flawless, with High by the Beach sounding like Lana at her most irreverently Lana-ness. Does Lana have many more records in her? It does sound like she is floundering a bit.
Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion - Track: I Really Like You
I avoided this record until last week. I was perfectly content to have Carly be that one girl with that one seductively annoying great pop song, Call Me Maybe. Then, at a party I heard that chorus, “I really really really really really really really like you,” and while initially offended, found myself singing along before I caught myself. Carly’s music gets IN YOUR HEAD. But while it’s there, you realize you don’t want it to go away, like a Britney Spears song infecting your brain like a tumor. You want those offensively catchy melodies to stay in there, like a safety blanket. I hate this record as much as I love it, and that’s what makes it so fun.
[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] The Best Electronic-Experimental Noise Records of 2015
text by Adam Lehrer
The most interesting development of the last few years of avant-garde and outer limits music (the kind of tunes that Wire Magazine writes about monthly) has been the convergence of noise and electronic music. Noise musicians like Dom Fernow (Prurient) and Ron Schofield (Container) have been making danceable tunes for some years, and record labels like Ron Morelli’s L.I.E.S. make their bread and butter by peddling this aesthetic. At some point the noise dudes got bored nodding their heads in a room full of sweaty dudes and very few women, but at the same time would rather kill themselves than be caught alive at EDC. Luckily, all you have to do is add beat and texture to the abrasive soundwalls of noise and you have some of the most seductive music being made in 2015. EDM didn’t kill electronic music, it just killed the mainstream public’s perception of it. But just as punk rock arose in protest of the bloated arena rock of the ‘70s, a more sonically varied and artfully crafted electronic music has risen in the face of Skrillex and Diplo.
But that’s certainly not all that experimental music has to offer these days. The deep underground is stronger than ever. With the trusty internet, this stuff has never been easier to find, either. There are no excuses. If you don’t like what you’re reading about in Spin and Pitchfork, then you need to search engine that shit, harder.
1. Arca, Mutant, Track: Snakes
Arca, now age 25, is one of the most important artists in the world. Consider the facts. This guy has made major contributions to four of the most important and forward thinking pop records of the last 15 years in Kanye’s Yeezus (the most influential album of this era, don’t front), FKA twigs’ LP1, Bjork’s Vulnicura, and most recently Kelela’s Hallucinogen. He’s the most interesting producer in the world right now. Then you take his actual solo records. Last year’s Xen was a visionary masterpiece, and this year’s Mutant was a step up in every sense. Still rooted in the bizarre hip-hop sound that he helped develop, his music has grown in scope and cacophony. Industrial buzzing and synth sirens coalesce and mutate into a sound so thick and dense you don’t know what else to do other than move.
2. Prurient, Frozen Niagra Falls, Track: Greenpoint
Dom Fernow, once a king of the No Fun scene of harsh noise revivalists, has greatly expanded his palette over the last few years. As Vatican Shadow, he dove head first into the rave with a harsh techno sound. With Vegas Matrys, he embraced his love of Nowregian black metal (his since closed East Village record shop, Hospital Productions, had one of the best extreme metal selections in the world). He even performed as a member of Cold Cave, thickening the band’s coldwave chills. Once again recording as Prurient, Fernow drew on all these styles and more to create his masterpiece, Frozen Niagra Falls. Recorded upon Fernow’s move back to New York after years in LA, Frozen Niagra Falls is about harsh and uncomfortable change. Drawing on Fernow touchstones like harsh noise, dark ambient, and screwed beats, it is an expansive and lonely record. Tracks like Greenpoint explore Fernow’s new found love of acoustic guitar, but you won’t exactly recognize it the way he uses it.
3. Jenny Hval, Apocalypse, girl, track: Freaky Eyes
Inspired by darker ‘80s pop and Kate Bush, Jenny Hval has taken the melodies of her forebears and made them more obtuse. On Apocalypse, girl, Hval is able to sound ominous and oddly hopeful all the same. Hval, once a member of experimental metal band Shellyz Raven, hasn’t foregone her connection to extreme music and avant-garde; noise legend Lasse Marhaug, Jaga Jazzist pianist Oystein Moen, and Swans percussionist Thor Harris all make cameos. Her collaborations with such towering figures are testaments to Hval’s confidence; though she embraces the sounds provided by these musicians never does this record sound like anything other than her. Though it’s perhaps the most art-pop record that she has recorded, it’s also perhaps her strangest. It’s a towering statement by an artist that only seems to be getting better.
4. Oneohtrix Point Never, Garden of Delete, track: Freaky Eyes
Daniel Lopatin’s Onehotrix Point Never project has not yet released a bad record, but Garden of Delete’s concept speaks directly towards me. Most boring white guys into art and music got heavily into music at around 12 to 14, and most times that music isn’t exactly critically lauded. Personally, I could have been one of those pimply faced kiddos in the Papa Roach video for Last Resort. Nu-metal was my bag: Tool was my favorite band and I also loved Korn, Slipknot, Deftones, System of a Down, etc.. Eventually, those bands would make way for concept-driven stuff like Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah, and then you re-discover Nirvana and Sonic Youth and whatever. At around 18, you get too pretentious for the nu-metal or stuff you liked as a teen, but when I turned 25, I chilled out and realized that Tool is actually an amazing and unique rock band. Garden of Delete, a concept record centered around a fictional alienated (and part alien) teen character named Ezra and his love of a fictional band called Kaoss Edge, seeks to elevate the art that obsessed our less taste-driven and more angst-ridden teenage minds. Lopatin has found taste in the tasteless, and no record this year better described the synthesis of artistic obsessions that have arisen in the information age. Listening to grunge on weekdays and going to raves on weekends is no longer a rarity. There is no sub-culture, just the individual taste. This is what the lush and dizzying sounds of Garden of Delete explains.
5. JLin, Dark Energy, track: Guantanamo
Rick Owens’ FW 2014 runway show was the most seminal fashion moment of the last 10 years. Having black sorority girls line dancing in sequence while wearing Owens’ garments saw an industry celebrating a culture more or less never even marketed towards in the high fashion world. Fitting then that JLin soundtracked that show, as her unique brand of pulsating footwork, as found on her full-length Dark Matter, celebrates the mind-set of going harder and faster than anyone on the dance floor. There is tremendous musicality on this record, and it begs the listener to consider oft-ignored sub-cutures in the realm of high art. Culture and its notions of high and low are rapidly changing and deteriorating, and Dark Matter proves that sweating it out in a packed basement of a dingy club is no less substantial than making beats in an art gallery. JLin’s blazing performance this year at MOMA PS1 showed that the art world and the fashion world need to open themselves up to new cultures or be rendered mote in due time. Thank Christ.
6. Lotic, Agitations, track: Carried
Agitations finds “beat”maker Lotic at his most exuberantly jarring. In an interview, Lotic said that the record was born out of a disillusionment with club culture, and as such these are very club-unfriendly tracks. There are still beats here, but they are chopped and sliced apart, connected only through stirring blasts of discordant noise. Lotic refuses to be trapped by the culture that he is a part of, and as a result pushes the sometimes limiting culture into its darkest depths.
7. Blanck Mass, Dumb Flesh, track: Dead Format
Fuck Buttons has always been a good gateway for indie rock kids to start fucking around in the world of noise. With the Blanck Mass project, Fuck Buttons’ Benjamin John Power has created a sound that might be a waypoint for EDM kids to start charting the outskirts of electronic music. It is loud and aggressive but always danceable. The beats pulsate on this record like few that have come out this year. And despite its relative accessibility, there is absolutely nothing watered down about it. Instead, Power has found his niche in towing the line between the dance floor and the avant-garde. It’s a delicate balancing act that many have flirted with, but only Blanck Mass has executed with such a swaggering confidence.
8. Circuit des Yeux, In Plain Speech, track: Fantasize the Scene
Circuit des Yeux has been labeled an experimental-folk project since its inception, but Haley Fohr’s sound was often so belabored in glorious hiss that it was hard to hear anything resembling folk music. On In Plain Speech, Fohr brings her operatic voice to the front of the mix and better pronounces her melodies creating a fuller and clearer sound that in no way hinders the darkness that she has always emanated. Her music has gotten better with each production. By incorporating strings and pianos into her psychedelic swirl, she has hinted at the long and incendiary career that is to come.
9. Mumdance and Logos, Proto, album: Border Dance
Grime producers Mumdance and Logos have never been hindered by their adherences to grime music. On both of their solo outings, they have incorporated the entirety of UK club culture into their music. On their first record as a duo, they incorporate that enthusiasm into one of the headiest dance releases of the year. The music is minimal but utterly effective. On standout track Border Dance, for example, the duo builds a steady acid house beat over a beat-less atmospheric hiss, building towards a climax that never really arrives. Orgasm is always the most boring part of sex, right? It’s all over after that. Border Dance is one long lead up to release that is an infinite space away.
10. Holly Herndon, Platform, track: Morning Sun
Despite its decidedly hi-brow aesthetic, Platform has ended up on numerous year-end lists: Noisey, Pitchfork, and even NPR have counted it among the best of 2015. What is immediately clear about Holly Herndon’s 2015 release is its unbridled ambition. On her blog, Herndon discusses method as an academic would (she is currently working towards a doctorate at Stanford’s Computer Research in Music and Accoustics), and espouses her theory that in the near future emotion and idea will be shared digitally. That is what makes her unique blend of electronic dance music and sound art so stirring and magnetic. At the center of all the academic and high-art collaborators is a profoundly emotional voice. That voice is often the one of Herndon herself.
11. Jam City, Dream a Garden, track: Black Friday
Dream a Garden is a major step away from Jack Latham’s first record as Jam City, Classical Curves. Where as that album found Latham digging into the jackhammer beats of grime and UK house, Dream a Garden is immediately discerned by vocals and washes of guitar. Latham is Night City’s most important and political artist, and this record shows him wanting to dig deeper into his influences, namely ‘80s goth and early ‘70s funk. The shimmery keys hint at Coteau twins, while the washed out funky guitars play like Kevin Shields doing Curtis Mayfied. This is a fuller celebration of UK music history. It is also a protest record, and while most protest records demonstrate in-you-face aggression, Dream a Garden asks to give peace a chance.
12. Chrononautz, Made in Time, track: Acid Empathy
Chrononautz members Dom Clare and Leon Carey have played in noise and free improv bands together since 2000. But it was in their Chops, an acidic dirge of a band veering between lo-fi electronics and the most outer limits of free jazz, that the duo really developed an interest in electronic sounds. In Chrononautz, and especially on the 2015 release Made in Time, Clare and Carey approach blazing techno sans abandoning the improvisational skills they have developed over the last 15 years of music composing. There appears to be interest in some of the headier aspects of the Detroit techno lineage on the record, but instead of the beats remaining tight and precise, they veer towards utter chaos. This is the sound of techno coming apart, and it’s glorious.
13. John Wiese, Deviate from Balance, track: Segmenting Process for Language
John Wiese has been something of the overlord of Los Angeles’ avant-garde music scene for some two decades now. With solo Project Sissy Spacek, he tests the improvisational limits of grindcore. Along with Troniks records head honcho and Cinemfamily curator Phil Blankenship, Wiese performs harsh noise as duo LMH. He’s also been a member of noise metal unit Bastard Noise and Sunn 0))). The guy has hundreds of titles bearing the fruits of his labor. But under his Christian name, Wiese has released more conceptually driven full-length records. Case in point: Deviate from Balance. Wiese, commonly associated with noise punkers, has emerged as a serious avant-garde composer on this record. Working with a long list of collaborators (members of Smegma, Los Angeles Free Music Society, Ikue Mori, Evan Parker, Spencer Yeh, and more), Deviate from Balance is far from easy-listening, but the sounds exert far more control than is commonly associated with free-wheeling outer limits music. Compositions can surely be scary.
14. Lakker, Tundra, track: Mountain Divide
Dublin duo Lakker employs big and bold production on their noise and techno hybrid of a record Mountain Divide. There is something tribal about the music: as if there is one steady beat that holds together the disparate soundscapes throughout. They are veering more towards electronic dance music more than anything experimental, but there are uncomfortable sounds that separate Lakker apart. The duo seems to have fully realized their sound on Tundra, letting tight beats build towards violent episodic explosions. The future holds much in store for Dara Smith and Ian McDonnell.
15. Sightings, Amusers and Puzzlers, track: Counterfeited
Of all the harsh noise bands of the ‘00s, Sightings Mark Morgan’s NYC trio was always the most ecstatically rock n’ roll. Taking cues from forebears like Harry Pussy and even Teenage and the Jerks, Sightings applied an angular and possibly math-y post-hardcore approach to noise. Actually recorded during the sessions of 2013’s also excellent Terribly Well, Amusers and Puzzlers finds Sightings cutting up between blasts of fractal guitar, dub-inspired rhythms, and large doses of psychedelic hypnosis. If this band is truly done for goods, Amusers and Puzzlers is an epic end for a band that truly never sounded like any other.
Soul Over Ego: Meet The Millennial Beatmaker and Street Artist Who Is Leading The New Feminist Electronic Music Revolution in Los Angeles
Callie Ryan, also known as Phat_Thighz, is an LA-based producer/beatmaker, intern for Dublab, and cofounder of a music and art collective known as Phull Gut Productions. This past year, she graduated from UC Santa Cruz, where discovered her deep love for sound synthesis––both analog and digital––while studying visual art and electronic music. Growing up in LA, Callie developed an abiding connection with the music emerging from the Los Angeles beat scene. According to the 22-year-old music producer, her desire to buy her first SP404 and immerse herself in the world of beat making was catalyzed by artists such as Teebs, Dibiase, Flying Lotus, SAMIYAM, Odd Nosdom, and Ras G.
The name Phat_Thighz originated from Callie’s tag name for street graffiti. Phat_Thighz’ tags could be seen on the inside of men and women’s bathroom stall doors, in the form of large scale images of naked, amorphic, female figures. Above these figures floated illustrative banners containing phrases such as “your phat is beautiful” or “tender.” These 3-5 foot tall tags had the intention of confronting the viewers with both the beauty and weight of one’s “own fleshy structure,” as well as identifying the body as a vessel holding all of one’s creative forces. Callie believes that without an appreciation and acknowledgment of one’s internal systems, such as the digestive system (which has a known link to one’s emotional patterns), one can never be fully at peace with one’s external image. Her art represents the acceptance of physical and emotional vulnerability, a theme that is widely present in her newest musical release, EP1.
EP1 documents the past year and a half of her life, including moments of both extreme empowerment as well as vulnerability. In discussing EP1, Callie descriptively expounds upon the sonic approach she took in order to reflect these thematic intentions: “I wanted to find a way to create a sonic landscape that would reflect both two important states of being: empowered and vulnerable. Sonically for this album, I became fascinated with the idea of creating tracks that borrowed rhythmic foundations that people are familiar with, such as Trap and Hip Hop, and then contrasting them with heavy lyrical content and aggressive noises, samples, and experimental vocal loops.
As an electronic musician, it is very important to me that the sounds and samples I use have a physicality to them. I aim to sample or create sounds which feel guttural, heavy, crunchy; I want them to be able to occupy their own physical space. I find a good amount of my samples searching through archives of public service announcements from the 1950s. I recently found a PSA from the 50s that was pretty disturbing. A man’s voice doused in vinyl distortion, spoke confidently, and explained that the job of a woman in the home is very hard. They work endlessly to keep the house clean for their families, and as a result, they don’t need to leave the house to be a part of the work force. Following this narration, the man’s voice spits a line saying, ‘women’s work is not for sissies’, and then, I am elated because a phrase like that is sampling gold. As an artist, I have the ability to take that phrase and re-appropriate it so that it becomes something empowering instead of sexist and vomit-inducing.”
The political foundation that drove Phat_Thighz’s vision for EP1 was built off of a desire to explore the myriad societal forces, which inhibit a woman’s ability to communicate honestly. We have been raised in a society where women are conditioned to avoid making others uncomfortable with their physical state, honest feelings, and general desires. Using both her lyrical content and choice of aggressive noise, Callie aims to challenge this societal restraint/reality which has been deeply ingrained in the consciousness of men and women alike.
Callie’s newest endeavor is working with Kat Lee to lay down the beginning groundwork for their music and art collective, Phull Gut Productions. Kat and Callie’s intentions for Phull Gut is to organize events within Los Angeles that help to create a community of visual artists and musicians who support one another, challenge one another, and most importantly, believe in the Phull Gut Productions mantra, “Soul over Ego.”
Click here to listen to Phat_Thighz's EP1. You can follow Phat_Thighz on Instagram here. text by Lucia Ribisi. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE
[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] The Best Rock N' Roll Records of 2015
Rock music isn’t dead. It’s just diversified. While so many complain about pop music (which also turned out a slew of good to fantastic records this year) being the only sellable music there is, take a moment to consider the wider impact that the Internet has actually had. Yes, record sales are basically nil, but the Internet has also given exposure to bands that would have never had it otherwise. Bands like Kurt Vile and Deerhunter woud have surely been relegated to cult status at best had they not been able to use the platform of the Internet to become the stadium filling juggernauts they have become. If we had the web in the ‘80s, can you imagine what the impact would have been on Hardcore Punk or bands like Sonic Youth? Rock is a very loose descriptor to bands that primarily make use of guitars. But aside from that, there isn’t much commonalites between any of the bands on this list. I decided to run the gamut from folksy type stuff all the way to extreme metal. So much easier to just classify things as rock music, I don’t have the time to do a Best Metal of 2015, Best Punk of 2015, best neo noir wave of 2015. No no. Also should note that this playlist is composed of bands that had new music available of Spotify, keeping with the theme of this column. That leaves out all music on labels like S-S Records and Drag City. So let me just name these other records right quick: The Silence’s Hark the Silence, Joanna Newsom’s ‘Divers,’ and Purling Hiss’s ‘Weirdon.’ Reviews of the records below...
1. The Membranes, Dark Matter/Dark Energy track: In the Graveyard
Out of all the noise and dub rhythm aping post-punk bands of the 1980s that came out of the United Kingdom, The Membranes were arguably the harshest. Consider where most of those bands are now: Gang of Four re-united to make a terrible record, PiL re-united to make terrible records, Mark Stewart of the Pop Group makes funk music, and the Fall is not what it used to be. The Membranes on the other hand released this viscerally explosive collection of new tunes, their first album since 1989; not sounding aged in the least bit. The violence of Dark Matter/Dark Energy is more physical than anything else going on in rock music. The Membranes were born out of Thatcher and the Cold War, and they are re-born out of the War on Terror. In The Graveyard finds the band building a funky collision of dub rhythm to an epic cacophonic crescendo. We need explosive and politically charged punk rock now more than ever.
2. Kurt Vile, b’lieve I’m goin down… track: I’m an Outlaw
Kurt Vile has far outgrown his grungy folk Neil Young comparisons. Though Young will always be a touchstone for the Philadelphia-based artist, Kurt Vile’s interest in free jazz and improvisational music becomes more evident than ever on this record, despite the fact that it’s also his most accessible and beautiful set of songs. He has an ability to stretch hooks out into unknown realms, where it sounds pleasantly familiar while still taking the listener into new sonic arenas. He is one of our most important musicians.
3. Torres, Sprinter, track: New Skin
Second times a charm for Torres, as the Brooklyn by way of Nashville artist propels her alarmingly beautiful lyrics in dense layers of feedback and white noise. She is easily one of the best writers in music right now, paying clear homage to scene forebears like PJ Harvey. But she still comes off as darker somehow, unafraid to let demons escape from her voice.
4. Bad Guys, Bad Guynaecology, track: World Murderer
Have you ever wondered what the lush desert rock of the first Queens of the Stone Age record would sound like replacing Josh Homme’s dreamy lullaby singing voice with a death metal fart growl? Well here you go. And while that may read as a bad review for some, it’s not. Bad Guys make some of the easiest to love traditional rock music around, despite it really not being traditional at all. The band pays homage to all the great stoner rock of yore: from Clutch and Kyuss all the way back to Hawkwind. But the darkness that envelopes their sound makes for something quite contemporary.
5. Deerhunter, Fading Frontier, track: Snakeskin
Bradford Cox was kind enough to map his influences on Fading Frontier for an article with Vulture this year. He has truly one of the most endearing network of tastes in the contemporary music world, a unique mix of high and low cultural references: R.E.M. to Pharoah Sanders, Laurie Spiegel to Japanese ceramics. But with Cox, you get the sense that his influences only form small pastiches of what must be a massive mind. Despite his great love of music and art, he hardly ever references them. Deerhunter is something all on its own, and Fading Frontier finds Deerhunter less gloomy but still quite strange, with melodies so rich they buzz in your head for eons.
6. Lightning Bolt, The Metal East, track: The Metal East
Providence noise rock band Lightning Bolt has been doing its thing since 1994. In that time, their music has never waned in its brutality. It has gotten tighter however, and the drums and bass-using duo made use of the state of the art recording gear of their new label at Thrill Jockey on 2015 release The Metal East. The prog rock influences of the band have never been more apparent, using complex time signatures referencing Ruins and King Crimson to dizzy and captivate the listener. And they are still very, very fucking loud.
7. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Multi-Love, track: Multi-Love
Multi-Love, Ruban Nielsen’s confessional record detailing a failed stab at poly-amorous love, was the most heartbreaking personal piece of music released in 2015. From its opening keyboard line and falsetto cooing, you know this won’t end well. You feel Nielsen’s highs and lows in love and life, and few male songwriters in this era are as comfortable baring their ugly flaws.
8. Wolf Eyes, I am a Problem: Mind in Pieces, track: Asbestos Youth
Around 2008 and 2009, I was into noise in a big way. Life was an endless quest for harsh noise and the extreme music that seemed to go with it: black metal, industrial, hardcore punk, etc.. Wolf Eyes was definitely my favorite, as they seemed to be relatably hard partying punk rock guys and their music veered towards guitar based rock music at times. They also looked really cool. But on I am a Problem, the Detroit legends have finally become the psychedelic caveman rock band they always were. Aligning themselves with Jack White’s Third Man records, we are entering a whole new phase to the Wolf Bros’ already storied career.
9. Protomartyr, The Agent Intellect, track: Dope Cloud
Another Detroit band keeping the city’s monumental rock history alive, Protomartyr took its post-punk leaning sound to its next logical extension on the band’s second record, the Agent Intellect. Though the sound is arguably more accessible (for the better) on the album, its content is harsher. The first track finds the band’s gifted frontman and songwriter Joe Casey literally talking to the devil, and fear of mortality is stamped all over the record. Casey lost both of his parents during the making of this record, and the album tries to find a way to live with that knowledge without thinking about having to prepare for that big inevitable.
10. Algiers, Black Eunuch, track: Black Eunuch
In a recent interview with the Wire, Jack Latham who records electronic music under the name Jam City (whose excellent record Dream a Garden was released this year, but that is for a different list) talks about the connection between goth post-punk music of the 1980s (from Bauhaus to the Cure) and the protest driven funk and soul music of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s (from Sly Stone to Curtis Mayfield). It’s all about the grooves, he says. He’s got a point, and Atlanta-based band Algiers directly explores that connection. Lead singer Franklin James Fisher is in the lineage of soul singers, and much of the rhythms can be traced towards Fela Kuti and afro-beat. But there is an industrial swarm underneath the funk. The resulting aggression makes for the most appropriate protest record of the year on Black Eunuch. Of all the experimental rock bands out there, Algiers feels very topical, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them get some mainstream attention.
11. Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love, track: No Cities to Love
Corin, Carrie, and Janet came back this year, indeed. And No Cities to Love, the trio’s first record in 10 years, is on-par with anything in the band’s catalog. More in line with the 2005 release The Woods, the record references big time stadium rock n’ roll and catchy as fuck melodies, with all the politics and radical thinking we’ve come to love and know from them. St. Vincent said it is her favorite Sleater record of all time. Always listen to Annie.
12. Hey Colossus, Radio Static High, track: Radio Static High
I have nothing against a band like say, Tame Impala, but I do object to the over-use of the term “psychedelic.” Psychedelic needs to confuse the senses and rattle the brain cells. Hence, I love the London-based band Hey Colossus. Piledriver riffis and piles of noise drown out what remain otherwise pretty formal song structures. Hey Colossus cites surprising influences like Cypress Hill and Fleetwood Mac, but they deliver the best transcendental metal you are likely to hear in 2015.
13. Leviathan, Scar Sighted, track: Breathless
Yes, this is going to be one of those Woody Allen/Roman Polanski/R. Kelly situations. You can’t really write about musician and tattoo artist Jef Whitehead sans the violent crime that he was convicted of. I did agonize about whether or not I should include this on the list, but the fact is, there isn’t a whole lot of metal that I get excited over these days. Scar Sighted caught my attention early in 2015 and held it throughout the year. You listen to this thing and it’s absolutely mind-boggling that you are listening to the work of one guy. There are a fuckload of one man black metal bands out there, but almost none hit the orchestral heights that Scar Sighted floats at for the majority of its duration. This is a musical maturation for Whitehead, with the music hitting the dense and complex arrangements known for second wave black metal bands like Emperor. It’s not a lo-fi record, by any stretch of the imagination.
14. Waxahatchee, Ivy Tripp, track: Breathless
Katie Crutchfield is becoming one of indie rock’s most revered songwriters, and Ivy Tripp is another massive leap forward for the Alabama-born artist. Ivy Tripp is an album grander in scope than its predecessor, partly due to Crutchfield bringing in a phenomenal crew of collaborative musicians. Despite the expansiveness of sound, Crutchfield still harnesses an intimacy rarely felt in contemporary music. She invites you to her world, and it’s beautiful.
15. Petite Noir, La Vie Est Belle/Life, track: Best
Some performers just have it. Lou Reed had it. Patti Smith had it. Jimi Hendrix had it. Bowie had it. Bjork has it. Kanye has it. Petite Noir has it, in spades. That indefinable thing that elevates a performer beyond the scope of a talented musician and into the scope of being a symbol for all that is righteous in popular art. I saw Petite Noir perform at Afropunk Festival over the summer. Dressed stylishly in a black t-shirt and Chelsea boots, dancing and flailing around the stage, belting his uniquely soulful baritone voice. In five songs he won me over. This record was released to not much fan fare, possibly even getting less press than his EP from earlier in the year. That’s a shame because there is truly nothing that sounds like this. Petite Noir will unite fans of the Smiths and Fela Kuti and serve as the new favorite artist to people who love both. A singular artistic vision.
Text and playlist by Adam Lehrer
[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] The Best Hip Hop Tracks Of 2015
I was speaking with Lily Mercer, Editor-in-Chief of the excellent UK-based Hip-Hop lifestyle magazine VIPER, about the idea of the “Golden Age of Hip-Hop.” This period, often referred to as the years between the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, has only been referred to as such in retrospect. When Wu Tang dropped 36 chambers and Biggie dropped Ready to Die and Nas dropped Illmatic and Public Enemy dropped ‘Fear of a Black Planet’ and Ice Cube dropped Amerikkkaz Most Wanted and 2pac dropped 2pacalypse Now, no critic said, “Fuck, I think we are living in the Golden Age of this Rap shit.”
That makes it even the more ironic now that people are so nostalgic for the last Golden Age that they are not realizing that we are living in our OWN GOLDEN AGE. I 100 percent believe that 2015 has been a landmark year for Hip-Hop. We have gotten massive releases from the world’s biggest stars: Drake, Future, Rocky, etc..; to experimental records from some of the game’s most genre-bending weirdos: Le1f, Milo, Oddisee, etc.
Vince Staples said in an interview this year that hip-hop is the most important contemporary art form. I tend to agree with him. Aside from the fact that spoken word poetry over music genre-bending beats is one of the most winning music formulas the world has ever seen, no other “artist” can really match the reach that rap stars have. Now that Hip-hop is starting to represent more than one type of background and perspective (Women, gays) it’s entering a new phase of sonic and thematic maturity.
Read up on the tracks below...
1. Earl Sweatshirt, I Don’t Like Shit I Don’t Go Outside, Track: "DNA"
The Odd Future collective has outgrown each other. Frank Ocean has become a generational icon. Tyler has diversified into a human brand. And Earl Sweatshirt has become the best rapper on Earth. Sony really fucked Earl on this one, releasing I Don’t Like Shit I Don’t Go Outside on iTunes with no prior promotion. That meant that heads had a new Earl record they didn’t know about for a couple of days, and the record didn’t have near the cultural impact that it should have had. The record is sparser than his previous release Doris, but even more polished in the wordplay. He is most certainly a millennial rapper, heeding influence to everything from early Eminem and MF Doom. In a year fat with great rap records, this one I consistently went back to.
2. Drake, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, Track: "Legend"
Drake owned 2015 from February onward: Hotline Bling, Meek Mill destruction, OVO X Jordan. And it all started with this record. It seems like Drake lost some of his fan boys with this disc that found him spit a bit more aggressive and lacking some of the Cure-ish melancholy “sad king” sounds from his earlier records. But that got me thinking. I once had a journalism professor who worked for EW and he said the coolest celebs were always the most famous ones: your Robert Downey, Jr’s, Brad Pitt’s, Clooney’s. Guys that are so fucking famous they are just used to people freaking out on them and no how to be cool about it. If You’re Reading This… has Drake acknowledging that he’s untouchable. If he died, he’d be a legend. And fuck if that isn’t the hottest opening hook I’ve ever heard.
3. Dr. Yen Lo, Days with Dr. Yen Lo, Track: "Day 1125"
Ka keeps the spirit of Brooklyn alive. With Night’s Gambit, he established himself as the logical successor to GZA as an MC that was equally meditative and streetwise. His whispered rhymes sometimes come at you more as a lullaby than street poetry. His Dr. Yen Lo project is collaboration with producer Preservation, perhaps previously best known for his work with Mos Def. The album finds them playing with the themes of the Manchurian Candidate. As with all Ka releases, it’s extremely minimal, pulling just the right bass line to keep a weed clouded head bopping ever so slowly. Day 11215 is a bit of an outlier on the album, with a beautiful guitar melody shimmering under Ka’s observations. It’s a shame that hip-hop like this will never be bigger.
4. Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly, Track: "The Blacker the Berry"
Kendrick’s importance to contemporary culture has been discussed at length, and there’s not much for me to add to it. So I’ll talk about the music. When I first heard the new record, I respected that he pushing his sound outward to the land of free jazz and Parliament, but it wasn’t nearly as immediately addictive as m.A.A.d. city. That was probably a good thing. Not many artists get to international superstar status and get MORE experimental. Kendrick is bold. And this record grows on you until the point that you’ve realized that you listened to the damn thing over 20 times. The Blacker the Berry is still the best track, channeling the aggressive spirit of Kendrick’s hero Tupac Shakur and turning it inward. Kendrick is the protagonist and the antagonist.
5. Vince Staples, Summertime ’06, Track: "Jump off the Roof"
I saw Vince Staples twice this year: once opening for Run the Jewels on the Williamsburg waterfront, and once at the Rocky/Tyler extravaganza. He was incendiary both times. No other artist, except for Run the Jewels most likely, right now is packing such a club banging intensity while espousing revolutionary thought. Staples is a wickedly smart kid and his interviews are as enjoyable to read, as his music is to listen to. He can also get personal with the best of them, as in ‘Jump of the Roof’ where he ponders whether or not his vices are taking over his life.
6. Future, DS2, Track: "The Percocet and Stripper Joint"
I always have liked Future, without taking him overtly serious. That changed in 2014, with the Monster mixtape. He really has developed a singular style. After his split from fiancé Ciara he has started to question his inflated bravado. Celebratory songs of drugs and sex have turned into self-chastising tails of addiction and heartbreak. This was undoubtedly the biggest year of his career, between DS2 and What a Time to be Alive with Drake. I feel like a lot of heads dismiss Auto-Tuners. They shouldn’t. It’s an instrument, a tool. And Future has reached a new level of artistry with it at his arsenal.
7. A$AP Rocky, AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP, Track: "Electric Body (ft. Schoolboy Q)"
Though Rocky is massively popular, he seems to get overlooked critically. On Long.Live.A$AP; perhaps deservedly so. But Rocky both went back to what we fell in love with him in the first place for, anthemic fashion gangsta club tracks, AND expanded his sound, with psychedelic guitar drenched beats and splashes of color. He’s still not the best rapper out there, but he’s gotten a fuckload better, and his music is just so fun to listen to. This was the best driving record of the year. Schoolboy Q and Rocky bring out the best of each other on Electric Body, if you can handle the unabashed misogyny.
8. Bodega Bamz, Sidewalk Exec, Track: "Bring em Out (featuring Flatbush Zombies)"
The Flatbush Zombies and A$AP-affiliated Bodega Bamz, of Spanish Harlem, is an integral piece of the New York Hip-Hop puzzle, but everybody sleeps. ‘Sidewalk Exec’ pays homage to the horrorcore of yesteryear: Geto Boys, early Three 6 Mafia. Produced by V-Don, Sidewalk Exec plays out as both foreboding and at times terrifying.
9. Le1f, Riot Boi, Track: "Koi"
People had been waiting for this one for a while, and Le1f did not disappoint. As openly gay man in hip-hop, there was bound to be automatic interest in Le1f from the art crowds, but he has won over hip-hop crowds almost just as easily. His flow is truly one of a kind, like a more flamboyant Skeptic. He also takes the trap genre to its logical conclusion, incorporating near-cheesy happy hardcore beats into his record that are banged so recklessly joyous that the sound is undeniable.
10. Milo, So the Flies Don’t Come, Track: "An Encyclopedia"
Born of the Los Angeles alt-rap club, Hellfyre Club (is the Nick Tosches reference purposeful?), Milo released his most interested record yet with So the Flies Don’t Come. His beats are barely beats. His rhymes are nearly spoken word. But everything is so oft-kilter and chalk full of pop cultural references that everything comes together full circle. He delivers lines like, “People of Color coloring,” in an onslaught of repetition. His music gets under your skin.
11. Young Thug, Barter 6, Track: "Numbers"
As he appears naked in a Sandy Kim photograph on the cover of his record, it’s clear that Young Thug is a pop star for the millennial art generation. It doesn’t matter that his lyrics don’t make sense. He oozes soul and conviction. He is hyper-conscious of image errs towards performance art. When he edits himself, he also has songs. The Barter 6 is Thug’s most realized effort yet. Kanye needs to get with this kid and teach him how to hone that zaniness.
12. Oddisee, The Good Fight, First Choice
Like Rakim and A Tribe Called Quest before him, Oddisee is interested in the entirety of black American music history. His beats reference soul, jazz, and his hip-hop forebears. What I find most fascinating about him is his ability to weave his rhymes into complex melodies. His music sounds undeniably tight, much like a jazz collective. It’s a total interplay between voice and music.
13. Freddie Gibbs, Shadow of a Doubt, Track: "Narcos"
Gangsta Gibbs’ 2014 collaboration with Madlib, Pinata, was my favorite hip-hop record of 2014. Then last week he dropped another late-year instant classic with Shadow of a Doubt. Gibbs is one of the only MCs in the world that could accurately be labeled as both a coke rapper and socially conscious. His tales of gangbanging aren’t exploitative. They are journalistic. He offers a window into a world in hopes that we can gain a better understanding of it. On Narcos, he tells us that his woman can no longer stand his lifestyle, but he is addicted to it. He loves it. The sentiment is shocking and sad. He also has the best voice in rap. Period. Gibbs forever.
14. Rich Homie Quan, If You Ever Think I Will Stop Going in Ask Rr, Track: "Stupid Me"
How is Quan faring in the battle for Atlanta? Pretty good, I would say. His record If You Ever Think… revealed a new clarity in Quan’s vision. He is introducing a slew of new vocal techniques to pop music. He stays on beat more than Thug. He’s less experimental (if that’s the right word?). Not a perfect record, but promising nonetheless.
15. Meek Mill, Dreams Worth More than Money, Track: "Lord Knows (featuring Tory Lanez)"
Meek fucking Mill. This should have been your year! From its first track Lord Knows, it was clear that Mill was out for blood. No opener this year set the pace for such a bone-shattering album. He just went out for the wrong blood. Drake proved untouchable when Mill challenged him earlier this year, stomping on Meek with two perfect diss tracks. That will be Mill’s 2015 story. But, if you just focus on this record, then Meek won. Plus he gets to have sex with Nicki Minaj. Life can’t be that bad, right? (better than mine anyways)
16. White Boiz, Neighborhood Wonderful, Track: "Main St. (featuring Earl Leon’ne)"
White Boiz aren’t white boys. It’s actually a collaboration between MC Strong Arm Steady producer Star-Ra who came together for this Stones Throw-released Neighborhood Wonderful. The result is a record that channels the galactic spirit of Sun Ra as filtered through Flying Lotus and the meditative qualities of early Mos Def. Though experimental, the record is also quite accessible. It plays like a conversation between the two artists. A conversation that is important to listen to.
17. Quelle Chris, Innocent Country, Track: "Well Running Deep"
Quelle Chris is 13 fucking records into his career, and people still have no clue who he is. He really doesn’t care though, “As artists and musicians, we lost a lot of shit,” he said in an interview with Hip-hopDX, “We sacrifice everything to barely make anything while giving our whole life to people.” Chris makes real hip-hop at the expense of financial security. Generally, he’s pretty funny. On Innocent Country, he gets contemplative. He contemplates why he does what he does and why he is who he is. He never fully realizes his own ideas, and that makes him more interesting to listen to. While we try and figure out what he’s talking about, Quelle is still trying to figure out what he’s trying to talk about. Humanity runs deep in his rhymes.
18. Future Brown, Future Brown, Track: "Talkin Bandz"
I almost forgot about this one. I wasn’t that excited about this record when it came out, but Fatima Al Qadiri and crew grow on you. Warp Records artists, from OG gods Aphex Twin to modern abstract club cultists like Arca, have always paid heed to hip-hop music. Future Brown outwardly explores that connection. In the Internet culture, the kids who are out frying their skulls on Molly in packed clubs to dance music are often the same kids smoking weed in front of their computers all day listening to ‘90s hip-hop. Future Brown comes off as a conceptual project exploring that very mindset.
19. Travi$ Scott, Rodeo, Track: "Piss on ya’ Grave (featuring Kanye West)"
I have so many friends that hate Travi$. In some ways, I see their points. He isn’t the strongest lyricist and he seems more ready-made for fame than he seems willing to develop as an artist. But I found myself seduced Rodeo. It’s interesting to finally hear the Yeezus effect loud and clear. Kanye West once accurately told Zayn Lowe that rappers are the new rock stars, from the sounds to the fame to the fashions. Scott is an immediate rock star. Piss on ya’ Grave, the Kanye collab that serves as the album’s strongest track, takes a Hendrix riff and reappropriates it for a rap star generation.
20. Big Sean, Dark Sky Paradise, Track: "All Your Fault (featuring Kanye West)"
Sean is always going to be over-shadowed by his contemporaries. He lacks Kendrick's lyrical skill, Drake’s emotional resonance, and Kanye’s dominating personality. But when working with the right producers, he does pop-rap as good as anyone. Any other year Dark Sky Paradise would have been one of the biggest releases around. It’s undeniably listenable and a gigantic step up in quality from anything Sean has done previously. He’s also a million times better than J. Cole, but heads seem to hero worship J. Cole until no tomorrow while Sean is left in the G.O.O.D. Music shadow.
Bonus: Vic Mensa featuring Kanye West ‘U Mad Ha’
Though neither artists had full-lengths in 2015, both had strong years. Mensa is the heir apparent to Kanye’s legacy: he channels the grit of the South Side of Chicago while reaching for higher art aspirations. In a recent video, he revealed himself as political, fighting for the justice of Laquan McDonald. And while Kanye had no new record, 2015 still was one of the biggest years of his life. It was the year that the fashion industry finally had to take him seriously, as he released his deconstructed Helmut Lang-channeling military garb with Adidas, and three of the best sneakers ever made. On top of that, he got an honorary doctorate and gave the best VMAs speech ever. On ‘U Mad Ha,’ both artists come together for what will surely prove to be an interesting 2016.
Text and Playlist by Adam Lehrer
A Very Autre Thanksgiving Playlist Featuring Peaches, Bowie, and More
Text by Adam Lehrer
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Where will you be eating today? Family? Friends? Both? To commemorate the holiday we put together this playlist counting down a slew of songs that express gratitude to one thing or another. Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley's versions of 'Hallelujah' both praise the state of existing in this world. Lou Reed is grateful for heroin in this version of the Velvet Underground's 'Heroin.' Everyone is thankful for sex, and in 'Fuck the Pain Away' Peaches illuminates on the healing powers of rough sex while weird hair R&B singer Sisqo is merely thankful for the all mighty thong. On the more poignant end of the playlist is Stevie Wonder, whose track off 'Innervisions,' 'Living for the City,' express love and thanks for his parents. Bowie says thank you to all the heroes out there where ever they may be. Happy thanksgiving, and stay thankful.
[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Arca's Mind Blow Of A New Record Will Have You Taking Personal Inventory
Communication by means of social media and technology can no longer be argued as being a less expressive mode of communication than any other. It’s quite interesting that people are using these modes of communication to, for lack of a better term, pour their hearts out. What else is a Pinterest page other than a digital bearing of the soul? “This is who I am,” is what we communicate, and we do so through image and curation of content just as much as we do through the written word.
Perhaps this is why Venezuela-born wunderkind electronic music producer Arca feels like one of the most important artists on planet Earth after just two solo records. On 2014’s ‘Xen,’ Arca developed a musical language that could be abrasive and sentimental, spiritual and atheist, and masculine and feminine all at once. Though good electronic music has never been devoid of emotion (can you honestly tell me you feel nothing listening to Brian Eno’s ‘Music for Airports’ or Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works Vol.2’ or LFO’s ‘Frequencies?’), it doesn’t seem that electronic music has ever been made with the intention of expression as such an obvious ambition.
Arca’s newest full-length ‘Sinner’ feels like an even more realized effort than ‘Xen’ and after only a few listens I can already argue it’s one of the year’s best releases in an extraordinarily strong year for new tunes. Arca’s millennial approach (that must have certainly been honed as being part of Shayne Oliver of Hood By Air’s GHETTO GOTHIK parties in which industrial music from the ‘80s and Houston rap were played in equal measure) finds Arca digging deep into his soul. The music is danceable, but dancing is not its ultimate conceptual purpose. It’s about looking within and taking personal inventory. Who am I? What do I like? Who do I like? These questions are asked throughout the record. Arca doesn’t need the written word to express himself. It’s all there in the sonics.
Arca’s aesthetic is clearly in high-demand. The man has of course been responsible for sounds on records of three of contemporary pop music’s most fascinating and experimental superstars: Kanye West, Bjork, and FKA Twigz. But it is in his music that Arca most defines himself.
In an article by Pitchfork, writer Phillip Sherburne deduced that Arca does seem to be the leader of a new aesthetic in electronic music along with artists like Rabit and Lotic. These artists are always weird, sometimes queer, and absolutely deconstruct what we assume electronic dance music is. With these Autre playlists, I have often dug up music that has been personally important to me in my own history. But the release of ‘Mutant’ has me thinking about the here and now. The artists on this playlist are some of the most important and culturally relevant artists working in any medium today. Hyperbole? You wish.
[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Impulse Records under Bob Thiele
I was reading Kurt Vile’s Baker’s Dozen column on the excellent UK-based music site The Quietus, and I was a little surprised to read him name numerous records by John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders. When you listen to Kurt Vile, you are more likely to think of Neil Young, Bob Dylan’s collaboration with the Band ‘The Basement Tapes,’ or maybe even bands like Pavement. But his adoration of the spiritual jazz of the aforementioned musicians is testament to the strength of that music. Those musicians display influence on any musician that seeks to stretch a sound out. Coltrane and his brethren grew discontent with parameters, and considering how loose all forms of jazz are, they evidently were uncomfortable with ANY parameters. As a result, records ranging from Sonic Youth’s ‘Daydream Nation’ to Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ can draw connections to 1960s free jazz and spiritual jazz.
Interestingly enough, almost all of the Jazz records that Vile named in the column come from a specific record label, Impulse! Records, during a specific period the 1960s, and were all produced by one man, Bob Thiele. Thiele had remarkable foresight in the world of Jazz. When Coltrane initially began to display an interest in spiritualism and improvisation and created ‘A Love Supreme,’ many producers of the time would have balked. But Thiele was with ‘Trane the whole time. The result? ‘A Love Supreme’ sold a gargantuan 100,000 copies. Can you imagine a record as far out selling anything close to that in the modern era? No, it just can’t happen.
‘Trane’s spiritual jazz manifested further in later releases like ‘Ascension’ and ‘Interstellar’ space. He was both meddling in Free Jazz as well as the avant-garde. ‘Ascension’ is an astounding achievement; the only directions ‘Trane gave to his players, that included McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders, were to end their solos with a crescendo. Sanders’ own ‘Tauhid’ was also a watershed moment for free jazz.
While Pharoah represented ‘Trane’s more Free Jazz leanings, his harpist wife Alice Coltrane manifested his interest in the spiritual and made some stunning albums with and without her husband. She incorporated Middle Eastern sounds that had nothing to do with jazz, but nevertheless created monumental walls of sound that can transfix a listener under the right circumstances.
Really, there is too much to say about this fruitful period of this amazing record label to go on at length. The musicians included in this playlist speak enough volumes: Albert Ayler, Chico Hamilton, Charles Mingus, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Sonny Rollins, and Mel Brown. There is a lot of music there and I apologize, but sometimes massive amounts of listening is the only way to really get into this type of music. Enjoy.
Pop and Circumstance: An Existential Review of Grimes’ New Album and The State Of Popular Music
Paris Hilton reworked album by Banksy, with live cockroaches. photograph by Barney Pell
Editor’s note: Alex Kazemi is one of our favorite “voices of a generation” – a voice that has risen angelic and rebellious above the Tweeting and Snapchatting hordes. In a recent podcast, Bret Easton Ellis called Kazemi a “millennial friend” and “a contrarian 20 year old with a brilliant grasp of the contradictions that exist within his generation.” In the following review, if it can be called that, Kazemi shares his views on Grimes’ new album and wonders: “If Grimes can have a career in pop music, why can’t reality TV stars Scheana Marie and Heidi Montag?"
text by Alex Kazemi
Earlier this year indie artist Grimes tweeted "Now that indie music is obsessed with pop I feel completely bored by it”, an early indication and self-exploitation of her new album Art Angels. With one listen through - it is clearly a pop record. It’s not a surprising move, from someone who dropped a Rihanna-reject single as her own single, and after poor response would back track and say “I made this song to be bought.” It would be hilarious to hear the day, a similar sentiment came out of the mouth of someone like a young Britney Spears, an artist who will never be afraid of the word: pop star.
This idea of pop only being cool when it's under the guise of indie-art is wrong. The most creative pop songs are inside the corporate discography's of pop stars like Britney Spears. You like Tricky? You like to get trippy? Um, have you ever heard "Touch Of My Hand" off 2003's In The Zone?
It’s, like what? Whoever needed the indie world, to make pop socially acceptable, or “cool”? Pop is pop. It’s music for the universe. Sometimes cheap pop is better, sometimes cheap is tastier. Grimes is an example of someone who makes “smart pop music” that is tailored for the "music intellectual," the type of person who is not supposed to feel embarrassed or find it ironic to be listening to pop music because it's "actually creative, and you know smart pop music," but what is smart pop music? Is it when the artist behind it is the self-aware one controlling everything rather than a team of people conspiring on an album for a face to perform? If Grimes can have a career in pop music, why can’t reality TV stars like Heidi Montag or Scheana Marie? Why should there be a time and place when pop music is valid? All pop music should always be valid. Stupid or smart, it’s valid.
2006’s "Stars Are Blind" by Paris Hilton, to most millennials (one including CHARLI XCX) is one of the best pop songs of all time but not because it's Paris singing it but because it's a toasty tropical song that washes you away to someplace else in the way pop music should, and most of us who heard it for the first time - were children, too young to ever think to question the motives of a Reality TV star heiress that was making a record with J.R & Scott Storch. The actress turned pop star trick was normalized to us growing up in the early 2000s, from Lindsay Lohan to Ashley Tisdale. These people were, and are pop artists.
Now in 2015, a time where the most watched people on TV: Reality TV stars like the women on Real Housewives and Kim Kardashian have released singles, this is just normal. There were even torturous rumors of teen terror Kylie Jenner releasing a single last year. It's a nu sacred rite of passage. You go on reality TV, once you finally reach d-list status, you record your single, drop it on iTunes on your own label and it becomes a trashy cult classic for a lucky few and then we all move on with our lives. I'm sure Juliet from Bravo's Ladies Of London is going to drop her new single "Fashion Is My Passion! (Stylist From London)" any day now. Half a decade ago, reality TV star Heidi Montag dropped her debut album SUPERFICIAL, it featured major pop producers, one including RedOne, who at the time was the madman behind the sounds of GaGa's opus The Fame Monster. Why wasn’t Heidi's music treated the same as GaGa's? I’ll never know. It's not like vocal talent means anything in pop (see Haillee Steinfield). There can be something beautiful, disgusting and entrancing, listening to a young woman who clearly grew up worshipping mega pop idols like Madonna record vocals with such plastic and powerful delusion. It is now strange to think that Montag may have had ulterior motives being on The Hills, a focus to further her own pop career.
Heidi's music is not accessible, and to some is unlistenable - it's because not many people are brave enough to step into a dark world that even Barbie, herself might not be ready to go into.
Heidi Montag, would release gorgeous self-made iMovie music videos, long before Lana Del Rey. One still exists under an abandoned YouTube account “HeidiMontagRecords,” where a teaser for the never released video for “LOOK HOW I’M DOING,” a 33-second clip of paparazzi taking photos of her. Flashes burst, as she steps out of a black car - a fetish of her own nothingness.
"It's not like vocal talent, means anything in pop...there can be something beautiful, disgusting and entrancing, listening to a young woman who clearly grew up worshipping mega pop idols like Madonna record vocals with such plastic and powerful delusion."
It could be that Montag was born to be a cult-super pop star, who would only exist in a once in a life time televised Miss Universe performance, and a Superficial promo club tour that can only exist in our imagination. Unfortunately, Heidi Montag, is the real life, unfinished pop star.
It is true that Heidi's early 20s sex-kitten days are long gone, but since she turns 30 next year - it could be a great time for her to deliver a spa-lounge record, about coming to terms with her own mortality and the tragic loss of fame. An experience, many people beyond her years might never have. I believe Montag is capable of some fire-torch laments, and haunting shoegaze moments while remaining her natural gift for pop. We are ready to hear your screams, Heidi.
Scheana Marie, the reality TV star of Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules - has been hard at work on her pop career since the show’s 2013 premiere, using it as a platform to get her music out, while living a double life as a waitress at SUR. The show aired haunting footage of her performing her single that sounds like the price it is sold for: “What I Like” to an empty Hollywood audience. Some people may see her as a talent show act, but for her it is real – scary and fascinating, lost in the imagination. A delusion and ambition that could out-flame the early Montag, herself.
On the season premiere of the newest season of Vanderpump Rules, Scheana Marie held a decade party for her 30th birthday. She decided to dress up as VMAs 80s Madonna. The majority of pop stars today do that, everyday; the only difference is they get paid for it. The majority of the world may perceive Scheana as a "basic bitch," like every other American 30 year old woman who posts countless duck-lip selfies, goes to Hanson concerts and puts her hand on her hip in a skin tight dress at any given photo op, but maybe it's time for "basic bitch" pop to infiltrate and end our exhausting boring competitive costume party of colored hair, and predictable shock. A club girl pop star who loves being normal and partying, sounds like a refreshing spa-day for the pop world. Someone should get her in the studio fast, or she should make a Kickstarter to fund her debut album. Possibly, Starbucks could fund her next video. She could start off, where Paradiso Girls stopped. Her normality, is a gritty asset - the pop world needs.
If either Scheana or Heidi, ended up in the studio with Major Lazer or Avicii - what would make these girls not deserve the spot? Maybe, Marie and Montag’s refreshing approach to pop music - desperate, hungry delusion is actually something endearing and genuine, in the time of Meghan Trainor. A void of vocal talent is important. Scheana Marie and Heidi Montag on Top 40 beside today’s groundbreaking acts like X-Ambassadors and OMI could be nothing short of revolutionary.
The purity and beauty of reality TV stars turned pop-stars like Heidi Montag and Scheana Marie is that they are the opposite of ironic. There is nothing hilarious about their music, they want to be pop stars, they live and die for this shit. It's that simple. It's real. It's not getting the last laugh, or caring to think the world thinks they are ironically experimenting with the genre, in a way that is "smart and valid.” It's a horrifying and gaudy "Give me my fucking video. Give me my dance track. Make me look like a star, and let's take over the world" kind of thing. Isn't this, what real art angels are made of?
[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Ode to Southern Lord Records
Despite decades of evidence to the contrary, music snobs still have a hard time viewing heavy metal as a musical form worthy of the label, "art." Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley have fought that notion throughout their careers. With the announcement of the duo's main band Sunn O))) releasing its first new record since 2008's 'Monoliths and Demensions (except for the 2014 'Soused' that saw the band collaborate with legendary UK singer Scott Walker), I have decided to use this Autre Playlist to pay homage to the duo's work as well as their record label, Southern Lord.
Anderson and O'Malley are artists that happen to work in heavy metal, but are not pretentious enough to claim that they are elevating heavy music. Instead, they see metal as one of the mediums that they work in. Before Sunn O))), both men were in the more traditional doom metal band Thorr's Hammer. They got artier and arguably more extreme with the blackened doom metal band Burning Witch. The most conceptual and long-lasting of their projects however has certainly been Sunn O))) (named after their amplifier of choice). Heavily influenced by Earth's second album '2,' Sunn 0))) has consistently utilized loud droning guitars swirling in and out of one another to dizzy the listener into a transcendental lull. It is experimental and psychedelic, but most certainly metal. O'Malley is also an extremely talented artist and designer (see his work on his website, ideologic.org), and that shows in Sunn O))))'s stage performances; the band, draped in black robes, surrounds themselves with mist and darkness creating something of a ritualistic seance. It is thrilling, and even though I don't listen to heavy music like I used to, I have been consistently fascinated with the band for over a decade.
Though Anderson and O'Malley started Southern Lord in 2008 to release their own music, it quickly became one of the most important labels in underground metal. Southern Lord has helped introduce some of the most interesting metal acts of the last few decades to the world. Khanate, a noise doom band founded by Anderson and god screamer vocalist Alan Dubin, set the pace for similarly terrifying bands like Gnaw and (funnily enough) Gnaw their Tongues. Wolves in the Throne Room were one of the first bands to draw connections between black metal and shoegaze, crossing over to Pitchfork-approved success. Black Breath, one of today's most successful crossover bands, put their early records out on SL, as well.
O'Malley and Anderson have also used Southern Lord to release music by the people that influenced them. Earth (side note: Earth's front man Dylan Carlson was Kurt Cobain's best friend) found a re-birth on Southern Lord, ditching the drone metal sound for a western-inflected psychedelia that serves as the perfect soundtrack to reading Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian.' Striborg, a mysterious one-man black metal band, found wider success due to his association with the label. Even very traditional metal bands including Saint Vitus and Pentagram have released music via the imprint.
Most recently, Southern Lord has become a coveted label for crust punk and hardcore bands. The only unifying theme in the label's world is that it be good and heavy, at least according to the label's honored leaders.
Now bring on the new Sunn O))) record.
[AUTRE PLAYLIST] Best of Horror
text by Adam Lehrer
While I'm not a huge Halloween fan, my love of horror cinema is only bested by my love of music. Luckily, the two mediums have always gone hand-in-hand. Films simply can't be scary without tense and eerie sounds gripping the film viewer as it goes along.
Horror film music arguably has had more influence on contemporary music than all other film scoring combined. It's hard to imagine industrial music, noise, drone, dark ambient, and some electronic music without the blueprints laid down in soundtracks to films like 'Eraserhead,' scored by David Lynch himself.
While 'Eraserhead' isn't strictly a horror film of course, it is very scary. Making a film scary is no small feat, explaining why some of the scariest films ever made (pretty much all of Lynch's films are terrifying, another example is Lars Von Trier's underrated 'Antichrist') are done by auteur directors. Scary requires a singular vision.
John Carpenter is the true auteur of B cinema. His best films are better directed than most of today's prestige dramas, and Carpenter had complete creative control over every decision in the films, even scoring the music himself. His score for 'Halloween' both created and elevated the slasher genre, and every time we hear those ringing synths we look over our shoulder waiting for Michael Myers to brutally butcher us. His synth work has been undeniably influential, precluding the whole "cold wave" genre that would come into its own in the '80s and later be popularized by bands like New York-based Cold Cave in the '00s. Also included in this playlist is Carpenter's score to 'The Fog' as well as a bonus track, a Carpenter remix by New York noise icon Pruriert, aka Dom Fernow.
One of the few rock bands to ever get famous specifically for soundtrack work, progressive rock band Goblin's work with Italian Giallo Horror director Dario Argento was groundbreaking. Argento developed a new style of horror that was bright, stylish, big. and very fucking scary. Goblin's work encapsulated all of that, with near-shlocky use of synths and horn sections. The band's best known work was for classic witchcraft film 'Suspiria,' but their work was equally good on the less stellar film 'Phenomena' (which has the most disgusting person falling in pit of decomposing body goo ever shot). My favorite of Goblin' soundtracks is that for 'Tenebre,' my favorite Argento film. Spotify didn't have it though.
Kenneth Anger's most watchable film, the religious horror 'Lucifer Rising,' is scored to an epic soundtrack by Bobbu Beausoleil, who is currently serving a life sentence for his connection to the Manson Family. Beausoleil has a role in the film but his soundtrack, marked by fuzzed out guitar riffs and a free jazz-referencing horn section, is a marvelous achievement. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine the heavy psych bands like Acid Mother's Temple without it.
Mica Levi's soundtrack for last year's 'Under the Skin' reminds its viewers how important sound is to horror films. Much of the film would simply consist of Scarlet Johannson seducing sad sack men had it not been for the fact that those scenes are marked my screeching tonal soundscapes. Every facial gesture reeks of pure menace as a result.
And of course this list wouldn't be complete without the OGs. Krzysztof Komeda's OST for Roman Polanski's 'Rosemary's Baby' exemplified how sound can be used to amplify a character's growing anxiety. Bernard Hermann, one of the greatest film composers ever ('Taxi Driver,' etc.), used tension in sound to push Alfred Hitchcock's narratives along ('Psycho' wasn't on Spotify, so we settle for 'Vertigo'). Finally, has anyone ever been able to swim in the ocean minus anxiety after hearing John Williams' score to 'Jaws?" I think not.
Happy Halloween everyone, be safe!
[AUTRE PLAYLIST] Motorcity Soul Rebels
Text by Adam Lehrer
Whenever I get the proverbial gun to the head and am asked if I could only listen to one genre of music forever, I go with soul and funk. Why? Because it's everything: amazing lyrics, amazing singing, political, emotional, makes you dance, makes you cry, makes you sex.
Motown Records in the '60s and '70s was a supercharged inferno of creativity. For every icon there's an under-praised equally deserving hero. For every Diana Ross, there's a Gladys Knight. I mean, FUCK, Gladys Knight, the power of that voice pre-dated the energy of punk and the heartbreaking candor of R&B.
You get guys like Stevie Wonder (my undeniable number one all-time favorite artist) and Marvin Gaye, and Jr. Walker all swinging to the music, fighting the power, and making beautiful jams under one roof. Now, that would be like Kanye, Beyoncé, and Frank Ocean all in the same studio at the same time with a unified front of hope and glory. That was Motown Records. It was a movement. There are no corporate labels like it and there never will be again. Something like that honestly can't exist. People don't love music in the same way that they did in those days.
Lots of people start thinking that MDMA came into popular recreational use during the days of Detroit Techno and Chicago House, but there are rumors that Temptations producer Norman Whitfield was copping love fizz since 1971. That makes total sense. Any fan of Motown would agree that all of those records have a physical buzz that just floods your body, pulsates within it. I'm an electronic music fan, but I can honestly say no music feels like Motown.
[AUTRE PLAYLIST] An Ode to Amphetamine Reptile Records
When Nirvana blew up, the door was wide open for loud rock bands to be signed to lucrative major label deals, and of course, many bands did just that. It's still a testament to how crazy a time the early '90s was for the music industry that a band as bizarre as Royal Trux was signed to Virgin Records. Even then, there were still plenty of rock bands that wanted to be as weird as possible and wanted nothing to do with the majors. For them, record labels like the Washington State-based Amphetamine Reptile were blessings.
Amphetamine Reptile was founded by a then-US Marine named Tom Hazelmyer. Hazelmyer needed a label to release the albums by his noisy garage rock band, Halo of Flies. The label has become known as something of a haven for Noise Rock, but that description is reductive. It was more or less a rock n' roll label, a really weird rock label, but rock nonetheless. A band like Cows that mixed aggressive punk with blues found a welcome home on AmRep. As did completely unrelated bands like the Space Rock-leaning Cosmic Psychos. In 1992, the label released the New York band Hemet's mega successful 'Meantime' record. Helmet was fairly conventional for AmRep, but the success of the album is credited by Hazelmyer as keeping the label afloat through the '90s, allowing completely uncommercial bands freedom to not worry about selling, sort of like how AMC uses 'Fear of the Walking Dead' to keep the brilliant but ratings averse 'Halt and Catch Fire' going.
Hazelmyer was able to tap influential musicians from yore to put records out on AmRep. The Australian sludge punk band Feedtime and the former Chrome psych-punk guitarist Helios Creed both put out full-lengths on AmRep. Even the relatively big Olympia-based sludge band the Melvins have an AmRep credit. When you count in singles, bands as diverse as New York noise metal band Today is the Day, Japanese abstract noise weirdos Boredoms, and grunge gods Mudhoney all have put music out on the haven of creative freedom that was Amphetamine Reptile.