It's cold here and my body is warm
Mix 6: Trickles and streams of pain in a variety of odd time signatures
The universe seems to be giving me lots of interesting signals this past week, and I’ve been thankful, I suppose, for a few moments of unbearable tenderness, even if it’s hell on the stomach. Someone must be looking out for me, because after delaying listening to a big backlog of music for personal reasons, this mix assembled itself in about five minutes, the easiest one I’ve ever put together. Thanks to the cosmic whatsit.
Most of the music that fell serendipitously into this week’s mix fits my mood — minor key, elegiac, tending toward the experimental bordering on academic, perhaps as a hedge against something more nakedly emotional. A good depository for those five-minute-plus thinkers with Steve Reich patterns and weird time signatures. One of them is literally called “River of Pain,” which is a bit on the nose (and anyway seems like a thematic stretch for the song in question).
I think pain is probably more like the fluvial features of streams and waterfalls in a forest, all of them subtly pointing toward the river without you necessarily being able to see the thing, and when you close your eyes you can imagine the whole ocean. A river is too medium-sized for pain, neither here (in the moment) nor there (in the void). It’s probably a better metaphor for time—as the Judds once put it: life’s forever beginning, beginning again.
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5
MIX 6: IT’S COLD HERE AND MY BODY IS WARM
1. Clarissa Connelly: An Embroidery
Hannah Jocelyn shared this one, from Connelly’s upcoming Warp album. She asked what’s going on in it: from what I can tell it’s a repeating pattern of 6-5-6-6 rhythmically with chords coming in on the 1 but occasionally on the 6, giving the rhythm little jumpstarts throughout. The chords follow the melody line spelled out at the beginning: first half of the pattern in C# major(ish), but the second half is in B in a mode I can’t quite figure out (phrygian with a raised sixth, maybe, whatever that’s called?). So it’s formally repetitive, but there are at least two elements—in the rhythm and a surprising chord change in that B scale, every other time the pattern plays—keeping you on your toes. (I’m probably not quite right about all that; I’m the music theory equivalent of a beauty school dropout.) But the most remarkable thing about it to my mind is that the singing acts like there’s nothing unusual going on around it, like you’re stuck in a car wash but humming to yourself like it’s a nice hot shower.
2. Little Simz: Far Away
I figured I was underrating Little Simz as a rapper — she’s too politely appreciated by British people to take seriously — but it turns out I was underrating her as a singer, too.
3. Titanic: Anónima (2023)
Titanic is a project from Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and her partner Hector Tosta (as i la Católica), which the Guardian refers to as “ecstatic yet fraught chamber-pop cabaret reminiscent of Julia Holter and Meredith Monk.” Sure!
4. Angélica Garcia: Juanita
I’m a Garcia booster, and this gloomy art-pop is of a piece with the last song of hers I shared, “El Que.” Looking forward to an album’s worth of this stuff if it ever materializes.
5. Brittany Howard: Power to Undo
Another song from Brittany Howard’s What Now (I shared advance single “Red Flags” at the end of last year), which I guess is going to be this year’s pop magpie album from NPR royalty. It’s very good on a quick listen— this song might be my favorite, owes more than a little to Prince, while elsewhere she goes house and Stylistics soul and jazz.
6. John Glacier f. Eartheater: Money Shows
Enigmatic rapper, born in Hackney to Jamaican parents who by all accounts really did name her John but (probably) not Glacier, raps disaffectedly over what sounds like a lost Pixies riff.
7. Molly Lewis f. Thee Sacred Souls: Crushed Velvet
Figured this was Thee Sacred Souls — decent Daptone retro fetishists — bringing in a ringer for the Morricone whistle hook. But it’s the other way around: the whistler gets top billing! As a lifelong impulsive whistler without nearly the impeccable tone of a Molly Lewis, this sort of thing warms my heart.
8. Sote: River of Pain
This is the river of pain I was talking about in the intro, from Iranian electronic musician Ata Ebtekar. Sounds stuck between making a go at serial music and trying to score an Exorcist reboot gig. I’m teaching the kids how to play the themes from Halloween and The Exorcist on the piano, an important piano-noodling rite of passage, so I am sympathetic, even though it loses steam well before four and a half minutes, which feel like seven.
9. Lucie Antunes f. Baby Volcano: Luchadora
French producer/composer Antunes makes the second Meredith Monk claim of the mix, though I’m more skeptical of it than the first one, at least until the marimbas come in. Not sure if that’s Baby Volcano on vocals (I assume so), but she steals the show anyway. Cool video!
10. Ako: Planet
Alternately blithe and melancholy Japanese disco-pop that sounds like the chorus melody was composed as Vocaloid and then given back to a human singer (compliment). This is the third three-letter Japanese singer featured on my mixes after Ano and Noa — soon I will be unstoppable in J-pop Scrabble.
11. Вика Коробкова: Забыла разлюбить
Russian pop-rock from Vika Korobkova, who, because I’m writing about the teen confessional turn of the mid-aughts for my Taylor Swift book proposal, is putting me in mind of that era, even though it probably has more in common with the sort of earnest minor-key acoustic Russian pop I tend to skip when I encounter it.
12. Tei Shi: QQ (Quédate Queriéndome)
I haven’t checked in on Tei Shi since 2020’s “Die 4 Ur Love,” of which I said in the Jukebox:
“Sleek electropop that might be Tei Shi’s most transparent play for wider recognition, since her sneakier hooks and subtler pop moves circa Crawl Space weren’t world-beating, perhaps by design. Still, I think her former sound — ingratiating but claustrophobic — feels closer to the zeitgeist.”
I was wrong — that wasn’t a zeitgeist, it was a global trauma we’d all quickly toss right down the memory hole. She started singing in Spanish soon thereafter, a good (and probably canny) move.
13. Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, Patrick Shiroishi: Dance of the White Shadow and Golden Kite
Seven-minute jazz odyssey? Why not! Patrick Shiroishi on sax is probably the MVP here, but I’m tempted to give the nod to whatever high-pitched percussion it is that progressively takes over the whole track like an infestation of little wooden beetles.
14. Helado Negro: Colores Del Mar
This guy seems to have my number, every few years he insinuates with a minimal (not -ist) electroacoustic jam that I wouldn’t be able to hum afterward for the life of me.
15. Toechter: Me She Said
German indie trio looks like Haim, sounds like the Breeders doing MTV Unplugged. Yes, please.
16. Tolstoys: Mad
Slovakian indie group does not look like Haim, sounds like…I dunno, Massive Attack doing MTV Unplugged? OK, please.
17. Magenta Club: Corail Intercité
Was certain this would be Montreal indie, but it’s French, which explains the chilly synths and plastic packaging.
18. Vladimir Safatle, Fabiana Lian: O Pastor
A Brazilian professor of philosophy moonlighting in amorphous piano composition with an arrangement of a crackling chamber-pop song by Madredeus from 1990, which I will have to back-pocket for a future round of League of Extraordinary Tracks.
19. Astrid Sonne: Staying Here
Our last tricky time signature with quasi-random melody pattern on the mix, from a Danish experimental pop artist based in London, and it’s a good ‘un, sunshine breaking through the clouds.
20. Sanam: Ayouha Al-Taiin Fi Al-Mawt (2023)
Fantastic album by a Beirut post-rock outfit I missed last year — do yourself a favor and listen to all of it (Aykathani Malakon). This one is more atmospheric than the rest, but sounds great in the penultimate position this week, with a spoken word performance by lead singer Sandy Chamoun wending its way through. You can find the poetry in Arabic on the YouTube page and translate if you’re so inclined, though I probably prefer its sonics to its words, as I’m wont to do these days. Some evocative phrases, though: “What does collapse mean?”
21. A Lily: Ħajti Kollha, Qalbi
Fascinating project from Brighton producer James Vella, who incorporates Maltese home recordings into ambient compositions. From Bandcamp:
From the 60’s until the modern era, it was common for Maltese families to receive reel tapes from relatives abroad. Maltese emigrés resettled in Australia, the UK, Canada etc. would record their news onto cassette - often in the form of għana, traditional Maltese song - and mail the tapes back home. Amazingly, through the superlative archival work of Malta’s nonprofit heritage foundation Magna Żmien, many of these tapes still exist. A Lily (Phantom Limb boss and musician James Vella, who is Maltese) was allowed access to Magna Żmien’s collection and in late 2022 began creating new musical works responding to these recordings. These works make up the oneiric bliss of new album Saru l-Qamar [Eng: They Became The Moon], his first release on his own label.
I’ve been holding on to this one for a few weeks — perfect closer for the mix’s overall mood.
***
That’s it! As a wise man once said after every episode of The Jerry Springer Show, take care of yourself, and each other.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Clarissa Connelly’s “An Embroidery”