by Aker
Mon, 14 Jun 2021
Read in 6 minutes
The Week in Review: Aker’s Deep Dive (31/5 - 6/6)
The Interdimensional Vortex is a bottomless pit. Diving deep into the murky depths is a risky game. Gems can be unearthed from the thick mire of releases beneath the tasty-if-safe pickings from the surface. There’s a reason, though, why many releases float the deeper depths. Some are niche - too extreme, too experimental, poorly publicised - and some are just bad. We embrace all at the Vortex. We know gems are rare and rarely we find them. But there are always interesting if flawed releases floating about in the deep aether. So, join me - Aker - for a weekly review of a week’s deep diving.
There is usually a mid year release slump, at least with big name releases. Bands prepare for a summer of festival fun and record labels spend their time reclined on the roofs of their warehouses, firing unsold patches and tapes into sunset. What better time, then, to scour the pits of various musical databases for the next best thing? A word of warning: the mini release reflections here are consistently different. The cosmos of music is a wide one, and it’s expanding. These are, in my mind, interesting releases - some flawed, some solid. You, dear reader, might find a lot more to sing about. Hopefully soon, dear reader, you’ll be able to contribute to the deepest of dives. So, let’s dive in.
If you’ve been yearning for a genre bending clusterfuck of extreme metal, industrial pop, psychedelia, noise, new age ambient and jazz fusion, Circle of Sigh’s Narci might be your cup of mushroom tea. It really is a record of disparate ideas crushed together into a dense 43-minute ball. Isolated, individual generic elements stand up for themselves; moulded as one, Narci’s clashing elements can sound nasty as a whole. Narci is proficient and confused - a trip down the shapeless rabbit hole.
Talking about rabbit holes, Code re-emerged after a six-year soul search with the twisted fairytale extremism of Flyblown Prince. Whereas previous release Mut murmured in softer territories, leaving much of the extremity behind, Flyblown Prince harkens back to extreme past days. Code has always intrigued and Flyblown Prince is an intensely wacky warp through realms of avant-garde metal and rock. For some the cleans are too sickly, for others the cleans are perfectly fragile. Code wrap their metal core in a gothic, sentimental shell that is drenched in emotional depth. Worth a listen.
Wacky in a restrained and subtler manner, The German duo (Hannah von Hubbenet and John Gurtler) behind Field Kit’s self titled release merges scratching, unstable moments electronica and classical in a tight thirty minute flutter. The short tracks are brief interjections into pensive worlds of organic and manufactured clicks, twists, grinds, twangs, breaths and builds. Like Narci, Field Kit is a taster menu of indulgent samples that perhaps fails to root itself in the brain. Despite this, Field Kit’s cinematic textural picnic is intriguing.
Much to my surprise, Common Grackle re-emerged with the follow up to 2010’s The Great Depression. Singer-songwriter Gregory Pepper re-unites with producer Factor in a peculiarly brief and melancholic nineteen minutes of middle-aged malaise and crisis. The Great Depression’s smooth indie-hop swagger has made way for a greater spoken word solemnity that evokes the confessional sadness of Mount Eerie and mopiness of Sufjan Stevens. There still remains, thankfully, a bass heavy instrumental swagger to tracks like “I Seriously Think I’m Going To Die” that provides an odd counter to vocals that focus on being a new dada and living a directionless, dead-end middle-aged life. The depression is present and sincere. A barrel of laughs.
There’s a self referential dark comedy to Common Grackle. The same can’t be said for Pan Daijing’s Jade. The album artwork perfectly reflects the music: a zombie-like siren haunts murky waters. Jade is throbbing, cold and uneasy, a 37-minute dive into hazy electronica and field noises. Female spoken word incantations permeate the nauseating terrain, as do the operatic echoes, mechanical chugs, wooden scratchings, industrial toolbox sounds and suffocating stringed overlays. “Metal” is a standout for the interplay of brash thickness and silky female led malevolence. Jade is a late night record for sure and though it doesn’t imprint its malevolence exceptionally well, there’s something alluring about the collision of subtlety and brashness.
Less horrific and more intimately arresting, Kajsa Lindgren’s Momentary Harmony is a solemn and richly textured string led instrumental record that succeeds in its restraint. There are few overly indulgent and show-off moments here; Lindgren’s strengths lie in restraint. Pleasant is probably the wrong word, but there is a sense of the record washing over with a placid power that eases its way through headphones for 37 minutes. Momentary Harmony is both warm and cold, a sort of in between oscillation that makes the record intriguing but difficult to totally connect with. Like Pan Daijing’s Jade, this is a record to play at night or, more accurately, as a heavy sun has dropped from the horizon.
Hidegard’s S/T is sunny weather electronica as sweet female vocals caress juicy, swaggering beats. The record isn’t as sickly sweet as it seems on the surface, however; peculiar background off-shoots and noises merge with bittersweet chord progressions to create a sultry atmosphere that makes Hildegard an appealing listen. This is more of a fever dream that sweats out thick colour in the form of overproduced layers of sound. A warming yet surreal cyber dream. Pop for quirky kids with dreads and, in a saturated quirk-pop market, nothing to get the noggin-a-joggin.
Ethereal Void’s Acolytes of Entropy is a 26-minute plant smasher and Hildegard’s evil neighbour. Rigid riff chunks slam and grind in a tight chasm (upheld by growls of the deeper variety), but the record’s intrigue comes from the silky space-ambient touches that unravel, twitch and imprint on the blocks of brutality. Many bands who embrace the cosmic do so with a pseudo-philosophical grandiosity; Ethereal Void, on the other hand, just want to throw space shit at cosmo-dragons. There are playful grooves aplenty, silly samples, faux-bro swaggerings and a general sense of sci-fi B-movie haphazardness that makes this an endearing record. Too much riff monotony, overly plastic drum sounds, and a questionable clean vocal interruption towards the end drags Acolytes down a bit, but as a short romp to turbo boost the day, it’s worthy of a listen or four.
In another galaxy completely, Genesis 1:27 opens with a lounge-jazz smoothness and, for a few minutes at least, you’re lulled into a trap. This is chilled, lyrically ‘deep’ rap that deals with big things in big ways above beats that carry a religious power. The trap is “Kings,” the second track that introduces obscenity and heightened sexual wordplay with a monstrous power. Rome Streetz and ANKLEJOHN’s attempt to merge smooth, deep beats with obscene swagger in a pot of clashing flavours. From suit-wearing stand up bass twanging to intense provocations, Genesis 1:27 doesn’t quite know what it is and what decade it exists in. It floats and stings with smoothness and anger.
…and what did Aker really, really dislike? Fluids play edgy cyber grind that tacks itself, leech-like, onto every ‘cool’ movement in the memelands of Bandcamp, Reddit and Myspace. Not Dark Yet is a fat and smelly swagger into a vape shop. The odd fat, gory groove can’t save the record from drooping like melted fat into the gutter. Not a fan.
Overally, an enjoyable and diverse week spent deep diving. Nothing special emerged, but the time spent with these records will stay with me until the day I die. It’s been a pleasure. Until next time.