Friday Thoughts
Things to read and listen to + some bonus content
Hello there. Due to pure laziness and nothing more, this week’s newsletter arrives several days later than usual. I wish I had a fancy excuse or even an excuse, but I just haven’t really felt up to it this week. Anyway, this week’s photos were shot on Cinestill 800 film with a Nikon F60 camera and developed and scanned by Splendid.
WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING:
My thanks to the Music Journalism Insider for spotlighting the Susumu Yokota tribute mix we recently assembled for Dublab.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:
An Interview with Black Thought: “In this moment, as a creative, my process is to leave it all on the page, on the stage, and on the table, because none of this shit is promised, man.” In one of those dream crossover moments, John Morrison interviewed Black Thought (of The Roots) for Believer Magazine. This is how you do it.
On the Verge of Discovery: Venezuelan Synth Pioneer Oksana Linde. As a child growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, Linde played the piano for hours a day; but she was also drawn to the natural world: the sea, the rivers, the clouds, and the cosmos. This one does what it says on the tin, Allyson McCabe profiles Oksana Linde for Bandcamp.
Most Dismal Swamp slides into a mixed reality k-hole with MUSH. An extended and addled meditation on ‘gangcrafting,’ community-driven building projects within multiplayer online games, MUSH is equal parts film essay, cursed ASMR and weird fiction. Henry Bruce-Jones tells all for Fact Mag.
Behind The Pen: Aneesa Ahmed on being a music journalist. “Write. Just start writing, start a blog, even if only five people read it. You’ve got to start somewhere.” Clara Löffler interviews Mixmag journalist Anessa Ahmed about her experiences in the music media industry.
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:
Los Angeles-based vocalist & field recordist, Megan Mitchell aka Cruel Diagonals and fellow musician Jon Carr have recorded ‘Fall Back Into Earth’, a remarkable long composition piece tribute to Megan’s dog Quinn, who died last year. Angelic, ascendent voice, drones that stretch out into infinity, dubby beatscapes and rhythmic rave stabs dovetail together into a journey between styles, moods and tones. After all, what is life but a tapestry of separate but interconnected moments?
To borrow some ideas from Philip Sherburne, En Átomos Volando, the second album from Bogotá, Colombia artist Nicolás Vallejo aka Ezmeralda takes Gabriel Duéñez’s syrupy cumbia rebajada and rewires it through the nocturnal ambience of Burial and the abstract reggaeton of Kelman Duran. Applying a liberal dose of Philip Jeck style looping, he’s crafted a series of slow, mournful and beautiful but bittersweet sound pieces that illuminate the hidden traumas of Vallejo’s home country. Moving and powerful mood music.
Argentine DJs and record collectors Bárbara Salazar and Alejandro Cohen, based in Buenos Aires and Los Angeles respectively come together for Viento Sur, an immaculately compiled collection of leftfield synth-pop, experimental folk and ambient tracks from their home country. Mostly sourced from the archives of the Argentinian label Melopea Discos, the eleven songs collected here represent a window into the creative curiosity of its founder, Litto Nebbia.
Last month, the Los Angeles based producer Maral Mahmoudi aka Maral wrote to me with her new single ‘lavender’s love’. Maral created this track to celebrate the beginning of spring, the equinox of which marks the Persian New Year. ‘lavender’s love’ also serves as an introductory precursor for the new sound she will be unveiling when she releases her next album in the fall through Leaving Records. Across ‘lavender’s love’ a squelchy synth spirals around a half-time rhythm, with texturally manipulated vocal snippets and incidental noises breathing extra life into every bar.
BONUS:
Hua Hsu is mailing things to people.
I asked writers on Twitter what they are doing when they are writing.
It’s Women’s History Month and Mixcloud is celebrating the amazing artists and DJs on the platform making history in real-time.