Idents by Julia Schimautz, collage by Emma Shore
This feature is part of Bandcamp Daily’s Slept-On Week, covering records, scenes, and artists we overlooked the first time around. Today, the editorial team revisits missed connection records from their own personal archives. Read more here.
Blades of Joy
Blades of Joy (2018)
Vinyl LP
It’s both a function of my job and part of being a music person generally that all day long there are people telling me what I should be listening to—but the thing is, I usually don’t bother with most of it because life is short, a lot of music is largely whatever, etc. I rarely have reason to regret that choice with a few notable exceptions, one of which is Blades of Joy, whom I first heard about while working on the San Francisco scene report in summer of 2021. A musician I interviewed for the piece talked them up and pushed me to include them in my list of bands, but I didn’t for reasons that now escape me; perhaps I just forgot. That could be true. Blades of Joy seem cursed to be forgotten in that way peculiar to the Bay Area bands who would rather play to fifteen of their friends forever than tour further east than Spokane, where the group’s talent so vastly outstrips their ambition and resources that their records are destined to be forgotten, excavated, and misplaced over and over again into infinity. Well, no day like today to rediscover Blades of Joy’s 2018 self-titled LP, a work of just-fuzzy-enough dream-pop with a murky psychedelic streak that ties together the current vogue for those angsty 4AD guitar bands from the 90s and quirked up indie rock of the same era. Neither sourly minimal or hazily ephemeral like many other Bay Area groups, Blades of Joy bend their shoegaze influences into paisley shapes, the sprinkling of flower power over the bummer summer vibes making this a fairly classic sounding but unmistakably San Franciscan effort.
–Mariana Timony
CUTIE
CUTIE (2019)
7" Vinyl, T-Shirt/Apparel
I first laid eyes on Cutie in the latter half of 2019 in the dank recesses of 444 Club, an LGBTQ+-focused DIY venue in Bushwick, Brooklyn that, alas, no longer exists. Allow me to set the scene: picture a nightclub that is really more of a wartime bunker, with a concrete “dancefloor” that fits 150 moshers (or maybe 175, if you’re feeling risky); the lights are harsh and red, the floor is sticky, and the raw sound system leverages the tight space into dynamics so explosive that the heavy industrial chains hanging from the ceiling swing back and forth as the sound waves reign down, a pendulum atop the pit. Three dudes in leather jackets start playing and everyone in the room, yourself included, loses their goddamn minds. End scene.
But Zoe, you interject, isn’t that just your garden-variety New York lightning-in-a-bottle shit? To which I’d say: give Cutie’s 2019 eponymous LP a listen (or better yet, several; the whole thing’s 13 minutes long) and tell me it isn’t some of the best, most honest hardcore spawned in the five boroughs since the past decade. Don’t bother applying the ol’ chain punk-egg punk framework here; songs like “CAN YOU HEAR ME” and “JACUZZI” reconciles the scratchy, hummable guitar leads associated with the former and the four-cylinder meltdowns associated with the latter, cycling between melody and aggression without ever coming across as over-choreographed or redundant.
Now for the bad news. Cutie’s been on hiatus since the pandemic hit, which means you might have to wait a bit to witness the spectacles I just described. Its members are still delivering sharp, potent rawk, just with different delivery systems: guitarist and singer Michael Frankfurter runs with the folk-rock group Dominick and the Family Band; bassist Dean Violante plays in OLTH, a tongue-in-cheek screamo outfit; drummer Ben Finkelstein is involved with both projects. Better yet, when asked about Cutie’s status over email, Frankfurter revealed they’re planning to resume shows in the months and years ahead. Don’t call it a comeback…they’re just circling back to destiny.
–Zoe Camp
Gem Jones
Admiral Frenchkiss (2016)
I have spent a significant chunk of time over the last seven years trying to track down any information at all about Gem Jones, the man behind the incredibly oddball masterpiece Admiral Frenchkiss. I even emailed Goaty Tapes, who remained defiantly tight-lipped, but was glad I enjoyed the record. I suspect your experience will be the same once you get an earful of “Rock N Roll Dementia” the deconstructed Motown song that opens the album—even though the guitar is barely in tune and the synth stabs enter at the oddest of points, the song is undeniably hooky as hell, a honey of a shout-along chorus that provides the only sturdy mooring in the otherwise falling-apart-at-the-seams song. The vibe stays as such throughout: “Ectomorphic Love” sounds like someone playing “Can I Get To That” on a broken turntable from 500 feet underwater, its overstretched-rubber-band-funk rhythm section dawdling behind Jones’s all-falsetto vocal. Like reggae, but find it too professional? Allow me to introduce you to “God In U.” What I need to emphasize here is that Admiral Frenchkiss is not just noise—that’s part of what makes it so fascinating. The melodies are there, the song structures are there, they’re just wobbly to the point of falling over. Back when I emailed Goaty Tapes trying to track down Gem Jones’s identity, they did tell me that a new Gem Jones record was “imminent.” Seven years later, the world still waits in vain for it. Miss Admiral Frenchkiss at your own peril; hear it, and never be the same.
–J. Edward Keyes
DJ Kid Slizzard
Murderbells of Mempho (2017)
Cassette
Last month, Finals Blog founder Andrew Matson summarized the true essence of the blog era in better words than I ever could: “It wasn’t just about being first or upsetting promo cycles, it was about shining a light on under-recognized genius,” he texted me. “Bloggers wouldn’t just learn about and discover these hard-to-find tracks, they’d also make sick ass mixes.”
Murderbells of Mempho was the final mixtape put out by Twankle & Glisten, a blog headed by DJ Kid Slizzard that put a spotlight on “Bounce, Shake & Thug From Down South & Up Elsewhere.” In the spirit of Matson’s astute take on one of hip-hop’s golden eras, Slizzard’s blog primarily focused on old-school releases with an occasional nod to the contemporary, i.e. WASS HAPSENIN: New Rap from the trAp Vol. I, which featured releases from the likes of Atlanta’s now-legendary Shawty Lo and Maceo. With contemporary Memphis rap’s torchbearers being ‘90s revivalists like Key Glock and Duke Deuce (much of what their producers have flipped are indeed sprinkled across hundreds of T&G posts), it only felt right to spotlight this very meta “slept-on slept-on” release.
This month, Murderbells celebrates six years back from the dead on Bandcamp. Originally released in March 2014 in the blog’s final post, Slizzard created the mix to showcase the versatile cowbell splatter pattern heard in Memphis phonk and horrorcore. “If [brass band] Second Line is celebratory funeral music, this is its mirror: hypnotic swirls of robot cowbell to premeditate murder to,” he wrote in the tape’s linear notes, which is sold out on cassette (all profits went to the Mid South Food Bank in Memphis). “Cowbell cuts are emergent phenomena like sidewalk weeds that sprout up naturally in the cracks between songs when the conditions are goldilocks.” Ranging from dark, to darker, to straight up demented, Murderbells gives the influences behind some of the most exciting contemporary rap (DJ Spanish Fly, Tommy Wright III, Three 6, Princess Loko, Shawty Pimp, and beyond) their shine.
-Atoosa Moinzadeh
Rra
Moon Dancing (2021)
Cassette
Rra is the solo project of Sara Abdelaal, who I first encountered playing synth and bass in the excellent post punk/synth-pop band CLAPS. Moon Dancing finds Abdelaal going deeper into the territory she began exploring on 2016’s Perfume of Love, exploring the decently well-explored intersection of dub and post-punk with Middle Eastern pop and folk. It’s heady territory, both gorgeous and disorienting; “5Star” buries Abdelaal’s vocals so that they sound particularly otherworldly, and fluttering, droning, Arabic ney perfectly blends with dreamy dub rhythms. A remix of “Ballin” (by Yume Nikki) feels particularly claustrophobic (in a good way), clotting the track’s layers closer together; former CLAPS bandmate Patrick Donohoe (Finesse) puts an Italo disco spin on “SufiDub,” drawing Abdelaal’s chanted line “I’ve got the magic in me/ It’s so easy to see” to the center for some pure dancefloor magic. While Moon Dancing is a reasonably short release, no track outlasting four minutes and most hovering around two, its potent ideas and thoughtful execution have real staying power. (And while it certainly marks Abdelaal herself as an artist worth paying attention to, it also bears saying that the eclectic and vibrant Minneapolis DIY scene she’s part of is also criminally overlooked.)
–jj skolnik
Hasani
BOOMBYEBYE (2021)
There was so much good R&B released in the last few years, that there were bound to be projects that didn’t get their due. One of them is 2021’s BOOMBYEBYE by London-based Hasani. It’s notable that Hasani chose BOOMBYEBYE, a reference to the Buju Banton song of the same name, for the title of his queer-affirming record. In referencing a song with explicit lyrics advocating for violence against gay men, Hasani turns it on its head to create a title track that is both vulnerable and liberatory. Elsewhere, the Brixton native creates a sultry and soul-stirring soundscape. The album begins with “MANTRA” where Hasani repeats, “That’s how it has to be sometimes” over and over again with various added effects including distortion towards the end of the song. It’s followed by “Waiting/In Vain” which reimagines Bob Marley’s classic “Waiting In Vain” but with queer-affirming lyrics. What Hasani does best on this album is being open and unafraid. He has taken the music of his youth and made it anew. I don’t remember how I found this album but I’m so glad I did—it’s a record worth the listen.
