Midweek Beats + Pieces vol.10

In lockdown, life goes on.

Before we get into things properly, a quick COVID-19 PSA for everyone reading from Aotearoa New Zealand: bookmyvaccine.nz is now taking bookings for anyone in the country who is aged thirty plus. Go well and good luck. This week’s photographs are a set of Kodak Ultramax 400 35mm film shots I took last year during Aotearoa’s first national lockdown. From memory, I shot them on an Olympus MJU II.

WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING:

Down here in Aotearoa, we’re back in a full national lockdown due to an outbreak of the Delta Variant of COVID-19. As a result, I haven’t really done much at all over the last week, but I have been done - and been working on - a few things.

I wrote about the Efficient Space and Fresh Hold labels joint reissue of the 1986 Australian spiritual jazz cult classic, Singing Melody. This album is really moving, really really moving. If things go according to plan, I’ll hopefully be interviewing Singing Melody mastermind Robert Welsh later in the year. You can read what I wrote here.

I recorded a sixty minute mix of 90s street soul, swingbeat and RnB from Aotearoa New Zealand for the excellent Skylab Radio internet station in Naarm Melbourne. They gave Just Another Day it’s first airing in the weekend, but you can also replay it online over here. Whenever I play this music, I always think about how lucky we, here in Aotearoa are, to have experienced so much amazing Polynesian creativity.

WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

Cleo Sol, Mother (Bandcamp)

When I think about the music that the West London soul jazz artist Cleo Sol and her longtime collaborator Inflo create, the first word that always comes to mind is intentional. Over the course of the two albums she’s released in the last two years, Cleo has mapped out an emotional landscape and modern soul/RnB soundworld that feels endlessly intentional. Mother is the story of Cleo’s journey into motherhood, and also a reflection on her relationship with her own mother. Music for quiet moments.

Luke Sanger, Languid Gongue (BALMAT)

Norwich-based modular synthesis guy Luke Sanger inaugurates the new BALMAT record label with Languid Gongue, a collection of fourteen vividly impressionistic synthesised fantasias for the head (and sometimes the hips). Over two decades of analog and digital approaches to electronic music-making, Luke has become a master textural abstractionist, a soundscape surfer, and quiet master of rhythm-not-rhythm rhythms. Languid Gongue is songs as environments and environments as songs. It might not be a place, but might as well be a place, and you can really chill there.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

Bandcamp: Remembering the Work of Experimental Innovator Yoshi Wada, Jennifer Lucy Allan

Yoshi Wada died on May 18th of this year, at the age of 77. He was a musician, an artist, an instrument builder, a bagpipe player, and, by all accounts, a mischievous character, whose work represents a crucial chapter in the history of minimalist art. His pieces were centered around almost visceral drones, and his installations considered the ecstatic potential of air, acoustics, and sound. They were performed using handmade bagpipes, custom-built pipe organs, and gigantic horns built from commercial plumbing parts.

Jennifer Lucy Allan reflects on his legacy through six essential albums. Read here.

Bandcamp: A Guide to Acclaimed Toronto Rapper DijahSB, Max Mertens

Over the course of the last year, Toronto rapper DijahSB released a slew of albums and singles, received critical acclaim from both Canadian and international publications, and saw their album Head Above The Waters shortlisted for the 2021 Polaris Music Prize. Still, there’s one specific reaction to their songs—songs that address topics like depression, mental health, and financial hardships—that stands above the other accolades.

Max Mertens guides us through six recent releases from DijahSB, one of the most exciting emerging Toronto rappers right now. Read here.

Wax Poetics: DJ Premier Takes It Personal, Andrew Mason

Growing up, music was everything. My mother used to paint to music—she’d have it playing while she painted. She did a lot of abstract stuff. She’d see a picture she liked in a magazine and copy it, but just the part she liked, and add her own stuff on top. I was always mesmerized by the records she’d play. Marvin Gaye and anything Motown: Smokey Robinson, Jackson Five, Diana Ross. I actually used to be fascinated by the way the label looked. I wasn’t even grasping the concept of the music, I was just fascinated by the way the label looked spinning around, and the way the record would drop and the needle would move over to the record. That’s when automatic players were out.

Andrew Mason talks to the legendary DJ Premier for Wax Poetics. This isn’t a recent interview, but it is interesting. You can read the full story here.

The Wire: Return to the source: Grouper’s favourite art about the sea, Liz Harris

I have sought water all my life. Growing up, I was never more than a few miles from the ocean. As a child in Bolinas, California, I walked down to Agate Beach almost every afternoon, or on weekends, alone or with my father. The cliffs are constantly eroding there, a tinkling sound like broken glass as little pebbles fall down in countless streams. Tide pools with chiton and anemone swaying in the salt. I would beg to be allowed to bring back long strands of kelp, or crab shells, only to find them later, forgotten and reeking in the trunk.

The recent The Wire cover star Liz Harris bka Grouper selects films, books and art responding to water. You can read her essay and picks here.

WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING:

Vivarium (2019)

How do I put this? Director Lorcan Finnegan’s Vivarium (2019) is one of the most prescriptive, telegraphed and inevitable films I’ve ever seen. From about two minutes in, you know exactly how this science fiction thriller is going to end, and yet, it’s still fascinating watching it unfold. I think the thing is, for a film that features about six actors (maybe 12, but not really), it has the most incredible sense of world-building and speculative lore. I don’t really want to recommend it, but I’m also recommending it.

Colour Out Of Space (2019)

Hands down, this is the best adaption I’ve ever seen of one of deceased American cosmic horror author H.P Lovecraft’s rather horrifying cult short stories. Adapted from The Colour Out of Space, his story of a small but maddening rural meteorite crash, Colour Out Of Space succeeds by recasting the general narrative, mood and atmosphere of Lovecraft’s 1927 story and recasting them within a more contemporary landscape. Director Richard Stanley and his team really got this one right. Beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.

BONUS:

My friend Michael Upton aka Jet Jaguar has just launched a new archival website called AmbientNZ: A directory of New Zealand ambient music. It does what it says on the tin. Have a look here.

Aotearoa theatre-artist Alice Canton went on 95bFM this week and talked to Breakfast Host Rachel Ashby about getting ghosted by arts organisations during a pandemic. Listen here.

Jeff Weiss and the team at theLAnd have launched a Kickstarter campaign to support publishing the next issue of theLAnd. Check it out here.

MAURI TAU is a unique storytelling experience that weaves together the magic of theatre, your whakapapa to the stars and nature. If you live in Aotearoa and have a smartphone and headphones, you might want to try this out. More details here.

FIN.