Violet Noise: 04
Bjork Loves TV, New Music Recs, Country Ambient, and More!
“All of us remember ‘Purple Haze’ and what that did for the world of music.” - Wolf Blitzer on Prince, shortly after his death
Hi everyone. My name is Sam Tornow. Welcome to the fourth edition of Violet Noise, a bi-weekly newsletter/gathering place for all things experimental music. Think of it like the cup of coffee you drink before starting work on Monday; it’s here to get you through the week.
A bit of house-keeping, if the newsletter is going to your spam filter, make sure to mark it as “not spam” so that you never have to miss an issue.
Lastly, feel free to invite any friends to subscribe. I’m happy to do this for any amount of readers, however, part of the reason I’m doing this is to shine one more light, no matter how small, on the artists who are often snubbed by Spotify and YouTube algorithms.
See you in two weeks for Violet Noise’s favorite albums from the first half of 2020.
Media Lab
Miscellaneous Moving Pictures
“Never let poets lie to you.”
In case you missed it, Bjork has joined Bandcamp! In honor of the event, here’s an absolutely bizarre video of her taking apart a TV and describing the inside as a “little city.”
“It’s called ‘Water Walk’ because it contains water and I walk during it.”
In 1960, American avant-garde pioneer John Cage appeared on the popular show I’ve Got A Secret to perform one of his most famous compositions, “Water Walk.” The performance is a bit like one of those “What my friends think I do…” memes. Cage walks around the stage, takes a sip of beer, puts some flowers into a bathtub, places a rubber fish into a piano and the audience has a bit of a laugh.
Some gatekeepers in the comments are offended by the audience’s laughter, but from what I’ve read about Cage, I think he would just appreciate the added sound.
“The sound of Earth is the sound of guns, anger, frustration.”
Free jazz guru and resident of Mars Sun Ra’s esoteric film Space is the Place is on YouTube in its entirety. It’s a beautifully strange, and somewhat campy, look into the mind of one of experimental music’s most iconic artists. If you’ve never seen it, it’s worth a late-night weekend viewing.
An Update on Blackbandcamp.info
As you may remember, in the last issue of Violet Noise, I shared a link to the massive, crowd-sourced Google doc of Black artists on Bandcamp. Well, good news, Bandcamp has integrated it into the platform and made it easier to search upon. Check out the revised page here. Several entries in this newsletter are new finds from the list.
“New” Music
“New” doesn’t end on the next #NewMusicFriday
Room for the Moon by Kate NV
Kate NV has been killing it outside of the mainstream music presses’ eyes for a few years now. On previous albums, Binasu and для FOR, the Moscow-based artist’s sound has been comprised mainly of squiggly, organic synths paired with MIDI-mallet hits. Room for the Moon maintains those squiggly synths, but scales them back considerably and fills in the rest of the space with hints of new wave, synthpop, and fully fleshed out vocal sections, making Room her most conventionally digestible album yet.
Fortunately, NV’s tightening of the experimental reins has resulted in a fantastic, colorful record. Leading up to the release, the artist, born Ekaterina Shilonosova, claimed that the album was an exercise in escapism, her fairy tale to get lost in during a lonely period of her life. I’m just grateful that she let us in.
FFO: Blondie, Stereolab, ARP, Yasuaki Shimizu, Talking Heads, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi Hosono, City Pop, Crash Bandicoot OSTs
Shrines by Armand Hammer
Armand Hammer, the rap duo made up of billy woods and EUCLID, might be the most potent pairing in experimental rap right now. On their own, each of the collaborators has had critical success, but together, they’ve been three steps ahead of what anyone else is doing since 2017’s Rome.
Shrines is the duo’s third album. It’s a jam-packed, fully realized 14-track album that’s filled with loads of one-liners and no filler. The record is only made better with a cacophony of collaborations, making the pair’s work feel even more communal thanks to artists like Quelle Chris, Moor Mother, Earl Sweatshirt, Navy Blu, Andrew Broder, Fielded, Messiah Muzik, August Fanon, KeiyaA, Kenny Segal, Nicholas Craven, and many more.
FFO: EUCLID, billy woods, MIKE, Milo, Ka, Quelle Chris, Earl Sweatshirt, Moor Mother, Ripping It Up and Starting Again
Algorithmic Music for Synthesised Strings by Dane Law
Dane Law’s first record for Astral Plane Recordings, Algorithmic Music for Synthesised Strings, is made up of, as the title says, algorithmic music for synthesised strings. To create the record, Law built upon MIDI files processed through a second-order Strong Markov (more commonly known as the law of large numbers) algorithm.
The result is something akin to an uncanny MIDI valley; or, the score to a Black Mirror episode that doesn’t suck. While swatches of ambient patterns lay the foundation of each track, the strings come out in not-quite-normal rhythms and melodies. Many of the tracks are reminiscent of an old, clanked up music box that’s ticker got rusted out decades ago, in a good way.
FFO: James Ferraro, Biophilia-era Bjork, Triad God, Mary Lattimore, Ka Baird, Autechre, ASMR, Nature Documentaries, Reading About MIDI 2.0
AIRHORN by DJ LIFELINE
Surprise!
A.G. Cook has another alias. The PC Music maestro released AIRHORN under the DJ LIFELINE tag in early June, pledging to donate all proceeds from the six-track release to Movement 4 Black Lives. Sonically, AIRHORN is in line with the rest of Cook's super sweet tracks, but for the sugar-depraved listener, it gives you a little more to snack on.
FFO: A.G. Cook, Slime Girls, 100 Gecs, Charli XCX, QT, TOMMY HOTLINE, Mid ‘00s Pop Music, Now That’s What I Call Music 4
Stasis Sounds For Long-Distance Space Travel by 36 & zakè
“‘Space,’ it says, ‘is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.’” - Douglas Adams
The latest in the long history of space-based ambient music (shameless plug alert, I wrote about that long history for Bandcamp last year), Stasis Sounds For Long-Distance Space Travel calls back to the Krautrock records of Cluster and Harmonia, with massive, echo-filled tracks, evoking the image of the grandness of the final frontier.
FFO: Steve Roach, Cluster, Max Richter, Robert Rich, Celer, That One Bibio Album, The Eno Brothers, Watching the Ship Rotate in 2001: Space Odyssey, Sleeping for Years
IRLY - EP by Sewerslvt
An example of album artwork looking exactly like how the record sounds — IRLY is four tracks of ripped up, noisy breakbeats, overlaid with lofi synths samples. If you’re into that sort of thing, look no further.
FFO: Machine Girl, Iglooghost, galen tipton, Venetian Snares, Goreshit, Error37, Five Star Hotel, Searching '“DBZ AMV Fight Scene” on YouTube, Picking Up Manga at the Library
PYROT3K by DJ Taye
Footwork artist DJ Taye quietly dropped the third installment in his Pyrotek series in April of this year. Although not as widely promoted as 2018’s fantastic Still Trippin’, Pyrot3k is just as clean and a bit more whimsical. On most of the tracks, Taye drapes old video game tunes with blistering beats, including on the opener "Konga Island Ting," and "2Simple 2Clean," which is easily the greatest “Simple and Clean,” remix I’ve ever heard.
FFO: DJ Earl, Traxman, EQ Why, DJ Spinn, DJ Manny, DJ Paypal, Jlin, Wearing Teklife shirts, arguing over which song from the Kingdom Hearts series is the best
Summations EP by Y A S H A
FFO: Andy Stott, Demdike Stare, Lee Gamble, Oli XL, AceMO, Emptyset
COSMIC BROWNIE by Lust$ickPuppy
FFO: Dreamcrusher, Kill Alters, Machine Girl, Eartheater, Show Me The Body, Deli Girls, Two Neighboring Dogs Barking at Each Other, Fires
Meantime by V/A
FFO: DJ Healer, Dean Blunt, Mantana Roberts, Visible Cloaks, Disassociating, Astral Projecting, Getting Added on LinkedIn by People You Don’t Know From the Opposite Side of the World
Nao Fales Nela Que A Mentes by NÍDIA
FFO: DJ Python, MHYSA, Most of the Club Chai Roster, Khotin, RP Boo, Equinoxx, Movin’, Groovin’
To Kiss Earth Goodbye by Telepasmiste
FFO: Long Distance Poison, Pulse Emitter, Emeralds, Lawrence English, Forest Management, Ys’ Album Artwork, Building Multiple Fountains in Animal Crossing
“Old” Music
There’s Always More
The Death Of Rave (The Source) by V/Vm (2006)
Leyland Kirby, who also performs under The Caretaker alias, recently put the entire The Death of Rave series (100+ tracks) on his Bandcamp for a name your price fee. Here’s Kirby’s description of the incredible project.
“Originally released in 2006. This is the full unedited and long unavailable 'The Death Of Rave' project. From its original press release. ‘An audio soup of half remembered rave anthems featuring all of the hits and many misses from the golden age of the Northern U.K. rave scene. From the run down Blackburn warehouses through to the M6 service stations enroute to Shelly's in Stoke the people came. The rave legacy no longer lives on, the corpse of rave bares no resemblance to those heady days in the late eighties and early nineties.’"
You Are My Everlovin / Celestial Power by Henry Flynt (1986)
Henry Flynt is a philosopher known for his association with the Fluxus and anti-art movements, and a creator of “Hillbilly Tape Music.” Flynt’s musical endeavors range from garage rock, country rock, and experimental music. The signature sound of his left-field releases features lavish drones coupled with his electric violin, making for a kind of country ambient sound.
You Are My Everlovin’ / Celestial Power is probably Flynt’s most popular composition for good reason. The drones stretch out like the Texas sky, and the Arthur Russell-esque string swells mark the compositions like stars. Lean back in that rocking chair, stare out at that long horizon, and bliss out for an hour. You deserve it.
Epsilon in Malaysian Pale by Edgar Froese (1975)
Unlike the cosmic Tangerine Dreams records Froese worked on in the first half of the ‘70s— Alpha Centuri, Phaedra, Rubycon — the composer’s second solo album Epsilon In Malaysian Pale (spelled “Ypsilon” for the German release), shows an Earthier side of the late synthesist. Here, the chilling drones and driving arpeggios are traded in for tropical field recordings and more bass-heavy synth work, giving the record its warmer feel. Although Epsilon has gained a resurgence of critical praise in the last few years, most notably as number 46 on Pitchfork’s “50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time list,” the record’s absence on several major streaming platforms has surely kept it from receiving the amount of new listens it deserves.
Yup.
Music Journalism
Miles Bowe’s latest “Acid Test” column on Bandcamp is, as always, a wonderful collection of recommendations.
Evan Minsker interviewed Mark Mothersbaugh for a “5-10-15-20” for Pitchfork, and wow did this entirety breathe new life into the column. The Devo frontman chats about square dancing and Burger King commercial jingles
Lawrence Burney summarized George Floyd’s chopped and screwed legacy for The Fader.
Joe Gross wrote about the archive of Sonic Youth live recordings on Bandcamp.
DONATE DONATE DONATE
If you take a screenshot of your donation to one of the links below (or any similar organization) and email it to me at sctornow@gmail.com with the subject line "Black Lives Matter," I’ll email you back with a personal 10 track playlist based around any theme/abstract scenario/color/anything of your choosing (basically the Automatic Tiny Mix Tape Generator).