Label Spotlight: House of Feelings

Wherein I write a bit about Matty Fasano's House of Feelings collective

Seven years ago, a Dunedin-based graphic designer and illustrator named Daniel Blackball introduced me to a few releases from a boutique New York record label he was digging at the time, Godmode. I was initially sucked in by Pith, a fever-dream-pop album from a duo named Courtship Ritual and Northtown, a short suite of euphoric disco from the singer-songwriter Shamir. On a trip through the US, I managed to grab lunch with one of the main minds behind the label, the producer Nick Sylvester and spent a bit of time hanging out with some of the label’s artists like the New Yorker Matty Fasano, aka Fasano, aka aka Summer Matty!

Fasano was part of the men’s choir for the “final” LCD Soundsystem shows in the early 2010s. By 2014, he was working with Sylvester and friends of his like Dale Eisinger to craft spare and soulful indie-folk songs recorded on a four-track cassette mixer. One take recordings of vocals, drum loops, electric guitar, sometimes improvised, sometimes not. Ostensibly, they fit within the whole wooden cabin singer-songwriter mode, but when you spent some time with the music, something else was going on.

Sylvester moved to Los Angeles, where in partnership with a very sharp A&R named Talya Elitzer, Godmode became an artist development company. Since then, they've introduced the international music community to new generation talents such as Channel Tres and LoveLeo. On the other hand, Fasano dived into House of Feelings, a collective endeavour with Eisinger, Joe Fassler, and friends. These days, it’s a music project., record label, radio show, and dance party based between Brooklyn, NY and Denver, CO.

From memory, House of Feelings kicked off with radio shows on Bushwick, Brooklyn’s Newtown Radio and pop-up dance parties. Those activations were followed by a series of singles, EPs and an album of music that explored the intersections between house, techno, post-punk, pop, and new disco while riffing on the anxieties and quirks of big city life in the 21st century. Shamir sometimes contributed guest vocals, as did Meredith Graves of the punk rock band Perfect Pussy, and a litany of other characters.

At some point, Fasano decided this whole House of Feelings project was about more than just the collective he shared with Eisinger and Fassler. House of Feelings expanded into a label, and they started releasing music from the extended network of communities around them. Now, some capsule format notes on a few House of Feelings releases. Fasano, I hope this newsletter finds you well.

Ang Low, If I Slipped

'‘If I slipped’ is a slice of joyously colourful neo jacked synth-soul from an equally colourful character with no shortage of stories and feelings to share. Riotous, kaleidoscopically detailed production meets soaring, cyber-angelic vocals and the words of someone who wrote to stay sane and became an artist in the process.

ANDREW, Reedem U / Euphoria

From Miami to New York, ANDREW’s extravagant dance-pop recalls the lavish vocal excesses of the 1970s disco scene, while also folding the sounds of 2000s Nu-disco and modern pop into the mix. A game of two halves, ‘Reedem U’ and ‘Euphoria’ map out a journey for dancefloor liberation which transmutes from sky-high pop maximalism to sweaty, basement nightclub funk.

House of Feelings, Black and Blue (feat. Shamir)

A theatrical and cinematic collaboration with Shamir? Sounds good. Set against frosty synths, skittering drums and glistening touches of percussive rhyth-melodics, Shamir emotes with signature intensity, depth and style. ‘Black and Blue’ is soft and sweet, but it’s also sharp and angular. House of Feelings and Shamir cram a lot of ideas into three and a half minutes here, but things never feel cluttered or overly labored. Enjoy the ride.

Flash Trading, Show Cause

I’m going to describe this one as a slice of glistening synth-pop, by which I mean to say that it’s programmed drums and synthesizer pads are sleek and polished enough for blinding light to reflect off. That said, if ‘Show Cause’s instrumental quotient feels like android futurism, the way singer Dani Laundry delivers the vocal is all imperfect humanity. And in my books, that’s a pretty good combo. ‘Show Cause’ is a single from Flash Trading’s recent(ish) album City of Refugee.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

A Brief History of Philly Psych, by John Morrison (Bandcamp Daily)

In the mid-to-late ‘00s, Philly’s psych scene was a part of a broader, exciting renaissance in underground rock music. Philly bands like the brilliant psych-folk ensemble Espers, prog/psych-pop titans Make A Rising, and the Circadian Rhythms with their gorgeous jazz and Elephant 6-inspired pop tunes, each represented the many unique flavors of Philadelphia rock music at the time. Today, acts like Strange Parts, The Primary Colors, and ill Fated Natives are holding it down for the psychedelic side of Philadelphia’s rock scene.

Starting back in the 1960s, John Morrison explores the story of the history of psych rock in Philadelphia, as understood through the lens of the albums recorded over the last fifty odd years. Read more here.

A Conversation With A Guy Called Gerald, by Apiento (Test Pressing)

I was always into jazz… That was my Spotify… In those days you had to go to a library and see who was playing on what records and then you’d spin off and check their records so I got more and more into that. Luckily the jazz guys named the musicians and the instruments they played so I started to see like Chick Corea playing an Arp Odyssey or Micromoog and all these synths. Then I’d go to the music shop and see these instruments and be like ‘ah thats that’.

Test Pressing boss Apiento takes advantage of the repress of English screenwriter, author and playwright Trevor Miller’s cult classic acid house novel Trip City (1989) to have a really lovely conversation with UK dance music pioneer A Guy Called Gerald. What’s the connection? Well, when Trip City originally came out, it was packaged with a cassette tape “soundtrack” created by Gerald. That’s been reissued as well. Read more here.

Arushi Jain Applies Modular-Synth Wizardry to Indian Classical Music, by Dhruva Balram (Bandcamp Daily)

“One of my secret—and not-so-secret—goals is to make people fall in love with Indian classical music,” the 27-year-old says. “Unless you’ve grown up with it, [Indian classical music] can be jarring.”

The link between light and atmosphere is a constant point of fascination for Arushi Jain. The New Delhi-born, New York City-based composer uses the countless colors that appear at twilight as a fulcrum within her work, and the evidence is all over her debut album, Under The Lilac Sky. An LP specifically composed for the sunset, Lilac Sky is a dazzlingly meditative project which intersperses various pieces of Jain’s identity—her childhood in New Delhi, her adulthood in America—through a finely-tuned balance of Indian ragas and modular synthesizers, all underpinned by her captivating vocals. Dhruva Balram comes through with the good stuff for Bandcamp Daily. Read more here.

FIN.