Midweek Beats + Pieces
Listening, reading and watching recommendations + photos from the recent Noa Records residency.
Another week has passed and it’s time for another newsletter. As with most of the midweek editions, I’ll be working through what I’ve been listening to, reading, watching, etc lately. This week’s photographs were shot on 35mm Cinestill 800 film with a Nikon F60 camera at the recent Noa Records Te Whanganui-a-Tara Pyramid Club residency.
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:
SPELLLING, The Turning Wheel (Sacred Bones Records)
After 2019’s dark RnB meets dreamy doom-pop album Mazy Fly, Oakland’s SPELLLING steps things up a notch (that’s an understatement) with her new record, The Turning Wheel. Traditionally speaking, I haven’t been much of a musical guy, but if someone gave SPELLLING the budget to make a musical, I’d be willing to spend large on a front row ticket. Lush, orchestral pop that slowly spirals into chilling, folkloric songcraft.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Weekend Run (Jagjaguwar)
Ruban Nielson has written a lot of bangers as Unknown Mortal Orchestra, but this might be his catchiest single yet. The subtlety and openhearted exploration of his more unconventional works definitely hasn’t been discarded, but when it comes to emotional sentiment, melodies and the chorus, he’s aiming straight for the heart.
Nite Jewel, This Time (Gloriette Records)
If I had to identify a spiritual ancestor for this song, it would probably be ‘Empty’ off Janet Jackson’s 1997 album The Velvet Rope. ‘This Time’ points the way towards No Sun, Los Angeles underground/overground legend Nite Jewel’s first album in four years. She’s transforming the pain of personal loss into catharsis while dreaming up some of the most exquisite electronic soundscapes of her already storied career, and I am all the way here for it. This single in particular, is a masterclass in tension and release, with a plot twist I didn’t see coming and yet utterly loved. This new album is going to something special.
W00DY, Headbanging In The Club (Orange Milk)
I know I keep banging this drum on social media, but nothing has reminded me of the feeling of attending warehouse raves as a teenager like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania producer/DJ W00DY’s new record on Orange Milk. Over six perfectly formed tracks, W00DY reframes IDM, jungle/drum’n’bass and breakcore within a noise-punk moshpit aesthetic. Headbanging In The Club does exactly what it says on the label. After all, D.I.Y comes in many different shapes and forms.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:
PENUMBRA PUNK, by Anton Spice (Wax Poetics)
“At that period in Kyoto, it was chaos, which is why it was so interesting,” says Sonoko, a contemporary of artists like Noizunzuri, Amaryllis, and, most successfully, Shonen Knife. She recalls film screenings, collaborations with galleries, and concerts in churches, describing every day as “a moveable feast,” not unlike the multidisciplinary environments unraveling in cities around the world at the time. “The Kyoto music scene was very stimulated by philosophical and intellectual tendencies,” she describes, suggesting that it was perhaps closer in spirit to Berlin or London than Tokyo.
In the late 1970s through the mid-’80s, an underground Japanese DIY scene flush with post-punk attitude and dreamy electronic ambience offered a darker vision of the country’s economic boom years. Anton Spice on Penumbra Punk. [read here]
Yung Raja: Nothing can make me change my blueprint, by Nyshka Chandran (We Present)
"I’m not going to rap in fully English or fully in Tamil because neither of those are me," he explains. “I’m going to rap bilingual, which is me. My family didn’t change their ways one bit after moving to Singapore. They came here and remained themselves. I was born here two years after they moved, so I came into an unadulterated South Indian household. We never mixed English with Tamil to make it urban, we just spoke pure Tamil at home.” As a rapper, “I gotta portray my truth,” he continues. “If someone else is rapping about guns or gangs, that’s their reality, and in the same way, I gotta represent mine.”
Yung Raja grew up in Singapore with roots in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu. Now, the 25-year-old artist raps bilingually, hopping between Tamil and English as he references everyday elements of Indian culture through deft wordplay. Writer Nyshka Chandran meets the down-to-earth, Tamilian millennial to talk about the language of his creativity. [read here]
Life of Surprises #6: Crappy Dreams Count, by Selim Bulut (Substack)
Selim Bulut, my old editor at Dummy Mag and Dazed Digital, has started a semi-regular substack newsletter called Life of Surprises. The deal is simple - every issue he puts together a spotify playlist and includes some additional commentary. Selim’s got great taste and he knows about context. You can check the latest edition over [here]
‘In the Heights’ and Colorism: What Is Lost When Afro-Latinos Are Erased (New York Times)
“ISABELIA HERRERA I’ve seen justifications like, “In the Heights” is not a documentary and is not meant to represent the actual Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights; it’s a fantasia of a Latino neighborhood. Yes, we understand that this is a musical, a story with surreal and fantastical elements. Even if we accept the view that a fantasy does not have to be representative, that argument assumes that Black Latinos do not belong in these imagined worlds anyway. At the same time, the director, actors and producers have used the language of community celebration and the cultural history of the actual neighborhood of Washington Heights to market the film. This feels like a contradiction, and one that is very telling for me.”
In The Heights, set in a New York neighborhood known as the Little Dominican Republic, didn’t cast dark-skinned Latinos in lead roles. Maira Garcia, Sandra E. Garcia, Isabelia Herrera, Concepción de León, Maya Phillips and A.O. Scott discuss how that absence reverberates. [read here]
WHAT I'VE BEEN WATCHING:
Terre Thaemlitz: Give Up On Hopes And Dreams (Resident Advisor)
"For me, the worst nightmare would be ending up with a film that's somehow a construction of an artistic figure that had this singularity and a kind of growth path, if it started with photos of childhood and then talking to different people in chronological order about when they knew me," Terre Thaemlitz, the mind behind monikers like DJ Sprinkles, K-S.H.E. and G.R.R.L., tells director Patrick Nation in Give Up On Hopes And Dreams.
In 2018, Terre Thaemlitz and five close friends gathered at the Shizu Community Centre near Thaemlitz's home in Chiba, Japan. As per a set of protocols laid down by sound art collective Ultra-red, each participant brought a series of objects (in the form of audio, text, film or physical items) relating to Thaemlitz and her work. Nation spent three days filming them discussing these “objects”, in the process creating a surreal documentary film about Thaemlitz. Fascinating viewing.
BONUS:
The Coconet.tv has made a short film about Afro-Pacific artist and DJ Lady Shaka [view here]
Dr. Rob of Ban Ban Ton Ton pays tribute to the recently deceased fourth world music legend Jon Hassell with a new mix [listen here]
The prolific Ivy Barkakati has recorded a new DJ mix for Zaragoza, Spain’s Microondas Radio [listen here]
Dhruva Balram explores the protest music of Kashmir for Crack Mag [read here]
jitwam and TEYMORI are getting on down with Studio 54 Music. ‘Help Yo Self’ over [here].
FIN.