Friday Beats + Pieces

Melodics, Skylab Radio, Radio Rea, Listening Tips, etc.

Hello. Hola. Salut. Ciao. Kia ora. Mālō. 안녕하세요. やあ. 你好. مرحبا. Another week has passed and it’s time for another newsletter of sorts. Thanks for bearing with me last week. Thanks for reading this week, and should you chose to read again in the future, a pre-emptive thank you. This week, the photos are black + white film shots I took with this ridiculous iso 3200 film. Please enjoy.

WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING:

Between music journalism, broadcasting and DJ jobs, I do bits + pieces of copywriting for a few music companies. One of them is Melodics™, a gamified music learning company. They believe that everyone should experience the joy of playing music and have come up with some very cool ways to make that possible in the digital era. This week, I’ve got two articles up on the Melodics™ blog, an interview with the finger-drummer/producer Flawed Freedom and a reflection on how It’s Never Too Late to start playing music.

Later today, I have a mix of boogie, post-disco, electro and drum machine pop recorded in Aotearoa New Zealand between 1983 and 2021 airing on Naarm / Melbourne’s excellent community internet radio station, Skylab Radio. You can check them out over here. If you miss the stream, the mix will be up on their archive soon enough.

ICYMI: A couple of weeks ago, I recorded a personal history of music in Aotearoa New Zealand (1970-2201) for another excellent internet radio station, Radio Rea from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Over the course of two hours, I dug into some of my favourite psychedelic folk, musique concrete, disco, soul, jazz funk, new jack swing, hip-hop, techno and jungle recorded here during the late 20th century. You can listen to the archive stream here.

WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

It’s the first Friday of the month and while it might not be a Bandcamp Friday, you can still buy music on Bandcamp today (or any day) if you want to. Here’s a few things which have been tickling my ears lately.

Loraine James, Reflection (Hyperdub)

For me personally, very few people capture that late night/early morning London vibe in their music like Loraine James does. Her records always remind me of dazed & confused trips home on the night bus, watching the sun rise by the Thames, and a multitude of other LDN experiences. It’s like she took that stoned, sleep-dusted thing Tricky, Massive Attack and their peers did so well in the early 90s and dragged it kicking and screaming into the new millennium while bolting on every major modern UK dance/bass music innovation along the way. Reflection is definitely an album to reflect with and the cast of guests Loraine brings into the mix is spectacular.

Dennis Young, Open Roads (Self-Released)

Once Dennis Young, yes, the Dennis Young from the seminal early ‘80s New York dance-punk group Liquid Liquid, told me he never wants to repeat himself musically. Ever since Liquid Liquid wrapped up in the mid ‘80s, Dennis has been doing exactly that, NOT REPEATING HIMSELF. There has been a series of ambient/new age cassette tapes, modular synthesis electronica, jazz fusion records, planetarium shows, drone records, singer-songwriter albums and now Open Roads, his ambient folk album. Dennis has reinvented himself so many times that you almost can’t hear his past in his present. I rate that. After all, if you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.

Jack Prest, Test Tones

Eora/Sydney based sound artist Jack Prest continues his ongoing series of experimental computer improvisations with a new EP titled Test Tones. Made up of seven compositions he created between 2017 and 2019, Test Tones sees Jack focusing on the ambient and new age ends of the sonic arts spectrum. Live, Jack presents Test Tones as an AV set. There’s a lot of depth, beauty and rich texturality in these immersive short-form pieces. A recommendation: listen on headphones.

UPCOMING:

Dunedin, New Zealand singer-songwriter and composer Maxine Funke has a heart-aching new set of songs called Seance coming out later in the month. She set the bar pretty high with Silk (2018) and Forest Photographer (2020), but Seance is really something very special. Folkloric songcraft that feels like it was born in a caol 'ait, one of those thin spaces where the physical and spiritual world feel particularly close. You can check out some sample songs and pre-order it here.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

The Tyranny Of Time, by Joe Zadeh

On a damp and cloudy afternoon on February 15, 1894, a man walked through Greenwich Park in East London. His name was Martial Bourdin — French, 26 years of age, with slicked-back dark hair and a mustache. He wandered up the zigzagged path that led to the Royal Observatory, which just 10 years earlier had been established as the symbolic and scientific center of globally standardized clock time — Greenwich Mean Time — as well as the British Empire. In his left hand, Bourdin carried a bomb: a brown paper bag containing a metal case full of explosives. As he got closer to his target, he primed it with a bottle of sulfuric acid. But then, as he stood facing the Observatory, it exploded in his hands.

The clock is a useful social tool, but it is also deeply political: It benefits some, marginalizes others and blinds us from a true understanding of our own bodies and the world around us. Joe Zadeh on time for Noema.

Sherelle’s label Beautiful is carving out space for Black queer artists, by Felicity Martin

My younger self didn’t have a version of me growing up. I also got the idea based on frustrations I had with social media, with amazing people that I know constantly looked down and frowned upon when mentioning the disparities with the electronic music scene. Some were ostracised for simply pointing out that the scene needs to change in order to build a better music community. From this I thought that Beautiful can work towards making the scene better.

The label head and DJ talks to Dazed about her new venture, and why ownership and community are so vital. Felicity Martin meets Sherelle.

Men tend to think they’re the authority on music – but I have learned to fight my corner, by Tracey Thorn

I did a book event a few years ago, and just before it started the organiser looked out at the crowd and said to me, “Ooh it’s nice to see so many men here!” I was taken aback, but then it was explained to me that literary events are often very woman-heavy, as we buy more books. Because of my past, and the type of books I write, what I bring is some of the music crowd, which is dominated by men.

Tracey Thorn reflects on her forty years of feminism in music for The New Statesman.

FIN.