Welcome to another trip through the tags. There is, as you well know, an incredible, vast world to explore out there, and we’re going to start our journey this time around with an album that’s been in regular rotation lately. Let’s see how quickly starting somewhere familiar can take us to new territory.
DIM
Parachrism
I’ve been a fan of DIM since 2017, so I was excited to see a new release in my inbox. Parachrism is a bold step forward for the Nova Scotian musician (who also releases music as Satchel Bearer, Atrium of Time, and Ring of Tamyrlin) and an evolution of the project’s sound. Though DIM is known for working in the “medieval ambient” realm, the Klaus Schulze-esque synth arpeggios of Parachrism’s opening track, “Steeple of Pearls,” throw expectations out of the castle window. It’s only after a Berlin School-introduction that medieval melodies and lute and dulcimer synth voices are woven back into the fold. In the artist’s notes, DIM states that “Parachrism is about forcing evolution,” and you can feel that through the entirety of the record, which is a work of exceptional depth and great beauty.
The #electronic elements in DIM’s music have always been paired with other more organic sounds. Our next featured release keeps with the theme of combining the acoustic with the electronic.
Randal Fisher & Dexter Story
Wenge
, Cassette
Wenge (named for a tree indigenous to central Africa) exists on the border between jazz and electronic ambient. The swelling synths that open the album are soon joined by floating woodwinds. As the work progresses, electronic sounds take a back seat to organic sounds, with acoustic percussion and handclaps joining the flutes, clarinets, ocarinas, and saxophones. The hypnotic “The Griot” features ghostly flutes floating above a looping progression played on the ngoni, a traditional West African stringed instrument. Eventually the synths slowly become lost in a wondrous blur of acoustic sounds. They still show up occasionally, though more in a supporting role. Although the strong influence of New Age and ambient music is felt throughout, Wenge is anything but “background music.” It’s an enchanting album, exploring rich and surprising sonic territory.
Although not something you’d immediately identify with the #soul genre, there’s no doubt that Wenge is a soulful record. It’s the same with our next featured release, although they’re expressing musical soul in a completely different style.
Max Savage and the Lofty Mountain Band
Winter Songs
The latest from Adelaide, South Australia’s Max Savage and the Lofty Mountain Band brings old-timey recording techniques (all musicians gathered in the studio around a single microphone) to a modern blend of bluegrass, folk, and country. The songs here fall mostly in the ballad category of slow songs that tell stories of romance new, old, and lost, and two feature heavenly harmonies from members of the Eileens. Likely due to the aforementioned recording method, Winter Songs is suffused with a feeling of immediacy. It’s a feeling that is magnified on the more intimate songs, especially the a cappella “Mawson Street,” on which Max Savage’s strong voice rings out in an otherwise empty space, the echoes from the corners of the room its only accompaniment.
The #acoustic tag is an obvious one to find beneath Winter Songs. Let’s follow it from South Australia to Serbia
Kompilacija Intimnosti
Intimnosti 3.1
From Serbian label Kompilacija Intimnosti comes the latest in their series of compilations featuring experimental, improvisational, ambient, and just plain weird artists. Ranging in mood from the relaxing, pastoral strumming of guitarist Miodrag Velimirov’s “MV Silence” and Slobodan Mandić’s “Još samo malo” to the ominous dread produced by rustling effects and high-pitched synth stabs of Bojan Bekić’s “Window Sill,” to the cavernous production and EBM/darkwave style displayed by Topolis on “No Wet Hands,” there’s certainly plenty here that’ll lead listeners down previously unknown pathways of discovery, which is what compilations like this one are all about.
It’s interesting to see how, over time, genre tags that were once pretty specific have expanded to include broader definitions as experimentation and cross-pollination has increased. The #drone tag is definitely one that has seen this sort of growth, and it’s one we’ll use to find our next stop on this trip.
A Form Without Spirit
Ghosts of Mujahideen
The latest from this experimental New York duo features sounds that evoke smoke curling into the air or of sand being shifted by the wind. There’s a tranquil beauty at work in many of these tracks—take, for example, the opening moments of “feed from the sugar sap”—but the tranquility often slowly shifts slowly, conjuring images of desolate spaces. When you read a track title like “bustling metropolises for the restless dead,” you know that A Form Without Spirit is a band who are intentionally and carefully building towering yet delicate structures with their music.
We’re going to use the #New York tag to stay in the city and hear jazz played in a more straightforward and traditional manner.
Rufus Reid
It’s the Nights I Like
Compact Disc (CD)
Legendary jazz bassist Rufus Reid has had an amazing career, one which spans nearly 50 years (and is still going). Not only has he performed alongside jazz luminaries like Dexter Gordon, Etta Jones, Stan Getz, and Donald Byrd among many, many others, his work as a bandleader is featured on well over a dozen albums, the latest of which, 2020’s It’s the Nights I Like, was recently reissued by Sunnyside Records. The album is a duet with pianist Sullivan Fortner, an accomplished and award-winning musician in his own right, and the combination of these two talents is as spectacular as you would imagine. Though mostly a smooth, laid-back affair packed with feeling emotion, two musicians of this caliber can’t resist a little show of their virtuosity and there are times where they put their skills fully on display, the syncopated interplay of bass and piano on “The Meddler” being a prime example. Never stuffy or pretentious, this album captures the idealized “smoke-filled nightclub” feeling of the best jazz records.
We’re using the #duo tag to jump to a release created by three musicians because sometimes an established duo can work with a guest.
Roser, Moser & Asselbergs
Tides
Poster/Print
The metaphor of improvisational music as a conversation is one that’s maybe overused and guess what? I’m going to extend that overuse here. The interplay of percussion, piano and oud on these compositions so perfectly fits this comparison that there’s no way around it. Each element is given its time to “speak,” then other instruments join in to expand and embellish the “discussion.” The album, as a whole, exists in a space where the best experimental and improvisational music resides, on the edge of stability, somewhere just beyond standard, linear musical expression. It’s exhilarating to hear three accomplished musicians working together on a work full of passion and spontaneity.
North Holland capital #Haarlem has a variety of vibrant music scenes going on. We’re going to zoom in on an artist making, you guessed it, electronic music.
Nachtvocht
NV01
Since the early ’90s, IDM has combined the free-floating formlessness of ambient music with the rigid mechanical structures of techno. It’s a combination that maybe shouldn’t work, but we’ve got three decades of evidence that it absolutely does. Dutch duo Nachtvocht are proof that there are still new and surprising ways to blend the two. Take the breathy, flute-like synth voice that opens “Dauw.” On its own, the stuttering, frantic sequence of notes seems chaotic and unrooted—it’s a bit confusing. Then the percussion kicks in, rooting that flurry of notes in rhythm and causing those same sounds to make perfect sense. As the song progresses, those opening sounds are joined by an increasingly bold array of synths that open the track up to create something expansive and uplifting. That is NV01 in microcosm. But it’s not the only time Nachevocht performs that magic. This record is full of sounds that are at first puzzling and are suddenly pulled into a musical construction that is intricate, captivating, and incredibly satisfying.
I never would have found the #wonky tag had it not been for Nachtvocht. It’s full of weird, fun, often goofy stuff. It’s also populated at least partially by worms.
Sloe
Commissions for Worms
This music absolutely sounds like what I imagine music for worms would sound like. These songs dig and crawl, they positively wriggle out of the speakers. Melodies emerge from the thick, wobbly basslines like earthworms after a summer storm. Synth washes cover wet, gloopy soundscapes like topsoil covering rich, fertile black earth. I listened to this record a couple of times before I saw the artist’s note that Sloe’s music centers on a “fictional universe where mysterious purple goo brings a colorful cast of wacky creatures to life,” which is almost exactly the imagery I’d conjured up in my mind. It’s hard not to imagine strange creatures dancing to fractured and slightly warped melodies, thick-legged creatures plodding through dense landscapes accompanied by booming bass, and below it all—having a party just below the surface, winding their way through the loamy earth—the exuberant dancing of the worms.
#idm continues to both influence and be influenced by other forms of electronic music. It’s been a pretty electric journey so far, so there’s no reason not to continue that trend for our final stop.
Atrey
The Collection
Prague-based electronic musician Atrey’s discography on Bandcamp dates back to 2013, but the general sound of that output reaches back even further. Taking the pop sounds of the ’80s and distilling them down to their absolute best parts is step one of Atrey’s formula. Then that essence is combined with high energy synth music to yield a concoction that’s pure audio adrenaline. Imagine being able to distill the energy of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff,” Irene Cara’s “Flashdance (What a Feeling)” and more than a little of Eddie Van Halen’s lightning-fast guitar shredding. It’s not hard, because Atrey’s already done it for you. But it’s not all high-energy intensity. Atrey knows when to slow down the tempo to a storming march pace, like you hear on “Body Heat,” but regardless of the BPM, there’s no denying that Atrey has created the perfect soundtrack(s) to the best kind of action movie: the one that only exists in the listeners’ minds.
And here we are, dancing to electronic music in Prague at the end of a journey started by listening to electronic music from Canada. Synthesizers always make everything better. Will there be more of them on our next journey? There’s only one way to find out! (Although, let’s be honest…yes, there will always be more synthesizers.)
