Beats + Pieces Vol. 57
A general listening recap for mid June 2024
Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.
BEATS + PIECES:
It’s been a bit of a rushed week at my end, but over the last couple of days, I managed to snatch some time to type up some blurbs for a few EPs and albums I’ve been listening to lately. It’s a bit of a mixed bag of styles and genres, but when isn’t it a mixed bag? Ambient dream pop, modern street soul, stoner rock, DJ tools, Toronto house, bird call music, practical life advice rap, and the beat goes on. I’ll be back in your inbox next week!
CLAIR from Glasgow is back in the saddle with Sonic Shorts 0.3, a three-track sampler that points the way towards her forthcoming Sonic Shorts LP. If her 2021 album, Earth Mothers, was a cult masterclass in modern new-age minimalism, improvisation and soundtrack music, Sonic Shorts 0.3 finds CLAIR winding her way through the constellation of sounds that connects dream pop, shoegaze, neo-psychedelia and glo-fi. Expect spoken word collages, expansive, state of consciousness crossing dronescapes, and melodies that move like a flight of fancy. The whole thing reminds me of the Gaelic phrase Caol Ait (Thin Place). Look it up.
My bro Cian, one of the best selector-DJs in New Zealand, recently described this EP to me as the sound of UK Street Soul updated for 2024. I think that is a pretty fair assessment. Over a litany of muscular, dreamy, acapella and instrumental mixes of ‘Body Talk’, Leisure Dub (aka Lexx and Apiento) and the London singer Armanious blend sturdy machine funk with dubby basslines, downbeat redolent melodies and a lovers rock/RnB vocal for the ages, landing on a sound that feels, intimate, sensual and slightly melancholic. It’s well worth a spin or ten.
Seven years in the making, Subset BC is the self-titled debut album from a group of seasoned musicians who came together in Gisborne, New Zealand, in 2016. As the story goes, they started out as a bass players’ practice group called Bass Club before shifting into Subset BC when they realised the textural and rhythmic possibilities of three bass players jamming with a drummer and a keyboard player. It almost sounds like a joke, but the sonics on display across Subset BC are anything but.
Over the course of ten well-worn instrumentals (occasionally dusted in the odd vocal), the group explore the intersection between psychedelia, stoner rock, ambient jungle/drum and bass rhythms, kosmische musik and even krautrock landing an invigorating set of moods that make sense as either dancefloor or headphone music. One for the head, the hips and the heart. They’ve even still got some limited edition vinyl on sale over on their Bandcamp page.
One of the quieter joys of the last few years has been hearing Juke Bounce Werk co-founder, DJ Noir begin to share her production skills with the world under her Phyllis Jaxson alias. ‘Ghetto Boom’ is the latest in an ongoing series of singles from the Los Angeles-based DJ, producer, photographer, organiser, writer, and advocate, I mean, I can go on; let’s just settle on multi-hyphenate. Over four minutes and two seconds of juicy audio, Jaxson pairs a percussive club riddim with a dubbed-out Jamaican vocal sample. It’s a simple, minimalist track built out of a tiny number of parts, but given her DJ experience, Jaxson knows how to really juice the elements. I can see so many ways this track could fit into a DJ set. Sometimes less is less, but other times, it really is more.
The ever-diligent Heels & Souls crew step back up with yet another classy 12” reissue release. This time around, they head to Toronto, Canada, circa 1994, to take a closer look at the shuffling ambient house magic of 100th Monkey.
An alias of The Boomtang Boys production trio and label crew (Paul Grace, Rob DeBoer, Tony Grace), 100th Monkey’s sole release Nyika Nyika / Raindance is an elegant two-tracker that uses a mercurial blend of drum machine rhythms, elegant synthesiser figures, dreamy chords and yearning vocal chops to summon up an eternal sunset/sunrise skyline dancefloor of the mind that hasn’t aged one iota. There’s probably something to be said about the cultural diversity of Toronto in the era, but as that isn’t my lived experience, I’ll keep it to that. However, I will note that for this issue, Heels & Souls tapped Manuel Darquart to provide a lush dream house remix of ‘Nyika Nyika’. IMO, that’s a very classy touch. The full release will be out on June 21 in digital and vinyl formats.
On the 28th of June, Portland, Oregon-based musician, sound designer, and DJ Patricia Wolf, a lover of birds, bird noises, landscapes, field recordings and synthesis, will unveil her latest album, The Secret Lives Of Birds. Due for release through Nite Hive, The Secret Lives Of Birds began through watching and recording birds, before thinking about bird calls, what they might mean, and how their songs might interface with her skills as a synthesist, ambient/minimal music composer, sound designer and general audio alchemist.
In 1973, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird published a much debated and loved book called The Secret Life of Plants. In 2001, John Edwards and Amanda Higgs created a television show about young Australians living in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda called The Secret Life of Us. That same year, American author Sue Monk Kidd published the civil rights era coming of age novel The Secret Life of Bees, which was adapted into a film seven years later by Gina Prince-Bythewood. In 2024, Wolf is giving birds her version of the secret life/secret lives concept, and it’s a warm hearted and enjoyable listen.
Have you ever had that experience where you look at a word for too long and it starts to look wrong? That’s how I feel about secret right now.
The very talented Sudanese-American rapper, producer, band leader, coffee lover, history buff and general good dude Oddisee returns with another tidy EP of practical life advice rap, And Yet Still. This time around, Oddisee plays around with drill rap cadences, mid 1990s house party vibes, elements of jazzy hip-hop introspection, Moroccan rhythms, soul, rock, spoken word, sample beats and excellent synth work. Saying that a record has something for everyone on it often feels like a tired cliche, but Oddisee might just be the guy who can really make those words feel like they actually mean something.
This is the lost soundtrack to Chess of the Wind, Iran’s banned 1976 queer-gothic-class-horror masterpiece, restored by the director and released for the first time. As Mississipi Records observed in the sales notes, it’s not for the faint of heart! Watch the film. Listen to the soundtrack. Marvel at the power of human imagination and creativity!
If you like 1970s dub reggae, you know, the kind that sits at the tail end of rocksteady and has a playful, childlike, and perhaps even mystical feeling to it, you’re absolutely going to love New Zealand producer/DJ Christoph El Truento’s new album Dubs From The Neighbourhood. I’m thinking of Lee Scratch Perry, Jackie Mitto, Ernest Ranglin and all those types. These songs are very special, and the list of special guest players and musicians is absolutely bonkers. Just on vocals alone, El Truento roped in Mara TK, The Hongi Slicker, Waiata & Rākai James. Let’s not get started on the artwork, either. Outstanding.
Over the last few years, London-based boutique label and artist collective Scenic Route have been consistently taking the road less travelled. Fittingly, that’s also the title of their now-ongoing compilation series, Road Less Travelled. After dropping some beautiful classical folk, spoken word hip-hop, retrofuturistic boogie, post-punk and neo-freestyle records from Vanessa Bedot, Natty Wylah, Bubba Jenko, In Tongues and Nourished By Time, the collective is coming back with Road Less Travelled Vol.2, due for release on June 14.
Here’s what Enya Sullivan wrote about the compilation: After Ursula K Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction Humans collect things and plunder. They collect things which are useful, edible, healing, beautiful. They bundle them up into a knapsack, a basket of woven sticks, a net of hair, wrap them in bark, pour them in a ceramic vessel. Then they take them home, another sort or container for humans (and some plants and animals). They eat it or share it or store it for winter, in the medicine cabinet, shrine, church, museum. A compilation is a collection of songs gathered and heaped together. And within each song is an artist's archive, containers of their own. Gleams from an old Ableton project, a line in an old notebook, a sample, a field recording, a phrase graffitied on a wall, a feeling in their belly, reverb at the end of a note, something stuck in their throat, the timbre of a very old and borrowed cello. Parceled up to make a song. A song that is rebundled by the listener: a song for heartbreak, a song to walk and enjoy the spring air, a song to inspire another song, a song for a long journey, a sweaty night out. A compilation that truly reflects the scenic route: meandering pathways, rabbit holes and a way to contain many possible worlds.
FIN.