August 7 2023
The Landscape Channel, vaporwave, and more
The Landscape Channel was patient zero (or one) in the vaporwave epidemic and this YouTube fan channel (started in 2019) has archived some videos and full albums they released. TLC was set up in 1988 by Nick Austin of Beggars Banquet to pair relaxing videos with “ambient music,” not a term that would be used for these tracks now. According to this 2000 article in The Argus, Austin got some of his screensavery images by filming “the flowers in his front garden and the Sussex countryside.”
The muzak and smooth jazz and ambient and vaporwave nexus feels heavily under-theorized and under-covered. It simply isn’t the case that this is lesser music and that the Good Stuff is serious songwriters with their binders on stage (hi Lucinda I love you mom). Dan Lopatin’s theory of “timbral fascism” helps us figure out how we got into this particular caste system, but there’s a long way to go. The albums that slap in that playlist slap all the way: no meta, no irony. Look for albums by Cayenne and Phil Manzanera in that feed and let’s talk.
Thank you for asking—I was at the Great Kai Cenat Influencer Riot on Friday, which seems good enough to reason to share this report released last November about what police actually do: “U.S. police spend much of their time conducting racially biased stops and searches of minority drivers, often without reasonable suspicion, rather than ‘fighting crime.’” As an antidote, read Nicolò Molinari on territory and the struggle.
Jack Rollo played his new edit of Ui’s “Lullaby” on his Friday Early Bird show. The track is extended to several times its original length (that’s just Wilbo and Erik Sanko playing—it is one of my favorite things we ever did and I had absolutely nothing to do with it) and combined with a poem by Mona DaVinci from this Giorno Poetry Systems album, Big Ego. (Jack pointed out the “radio of things” line to me, and it is one of many bangers. I also adore her accent.) DaVinci’s performance was recorded at St. Marks Church in 1974. I miss that New York acutely right now and need to know more about DaVinci. If you are that somebody who knows, ring my bell.
Good lord, this Little Dragon song. The bass line and compressed-to-dust drums?
Lee Gamble’s Motor System show from July 10 is a good example of his “forward facing, club ready DJ sets exploring contemporary dance floor-mechanics.” Shredded and headed nowhere obvious. (There’s also a new Gamble album on the way.) It’s hectic stuff—Gamble is not the EZ Listen Fella. If you are roughly familiar with drum and bass or footwork, you will recognize that those styles provide the rough tenor for his beat selection. This is burps and stutters and spikes—no ambient techno here.
Someone, I assume from the band, has uploaded the four original Big Flame EPs to Spotify. (Maybe not? Shambotic is a label in Fareham, to the south of London. No idea what the connection is.) If you are used to the more human-friendly music discussed here, Big Flame—or bIG*fLAME, as they style it—may not make sense. This is aggro, a category that used to be important. Their gritted teeth, all-treble sound made a mark on me in the mid-‘80s. “Think of what you can do with a trio!” was my take-away. For a brief moment, they were as important to me as Minutemen.
This album from March by Rogê Cury, Curyman, was produced by Tommy Brenneck of Menahan Street Band and Budos Band. Rogê released eight albums before this one, all fairly described as samba or samba-adjacent. He describes this one as “samba funk” and I am not gonna argue. It would be unfair of me to criticize Brenneck and Rogê for fetishizing ‘70s production in general, or the sound of Clube da Esquina in particular, since I do that all the time. Rogê is not even sort of in Milton Nascimento’s league as a singer, nor are the songs on Curyman that strong. That said, it will hold you.
To End All War: Oppenheimer & The Atomic Bomb posted on NBC’s Peacock a month ago. (You can sign up for a free trial and get a viewing or two in.) It’s 90 minutes, no bullshit. There might be a little bit more sympathy for Oppenheimer than I’d like, and that’s to be expected from an American network. You hear from the victims, though, and that tips the balance for me. Typical cornball conflation of Communism and Soviet life, a bit of red scare foolishness, sure, but the FBI surveillance is reported. Christopher Nolan appears only as a talking head and that he does fairly well.
Peder Mannerfelt’s Hyperchase EP has been my go-to when trying to dissuade the (new) upstairs neighbors from using power tools. Try “Floppy Size” and turn it up. Your neighbors will think you are building a machine to fight a megalodon.
