By
Bandcamp Employees
·
October 27, 2023
What the Bandcamp Each day editors are listening to proper now.
Gazelle Twin
Black Dog
One in every of two newly arrived releases I’ve picked out with Halloween in thoughts, Black Canine is the fourth album from Brighton singer, composer, and visible artist Elizabeth Bernholz, higher referred to as Gazelle Twin; a beguiling, bewitching feat of experimental-electronic worldbuilding that examines themes of concern and trauma by means of the lens of Victorian horror. The title isn’t a reference to Led Zeppelin, however moderately a nod to a centuries-old beastie from British folklore, the dwelling embodiment of loss of life, despair, household curses, and different foul omens — in addition to the symbolic vessel from which all these dour, mangled digiscapes are born. “Two Worlds” is an suave examine in doppelgangery (one other outstanding Victorian motif) that deploys distorted, multi-layered operatic vocals paying homage to David Bowie’s Blackstar, whereas “Unstoppable Voice” leans into violent delirium with bleary synths, taunts of “Push Me!”, and erratic, scratchy percussion that seems like somebody attempting to claw out from below a slab of concrete. The preparations’ slow-building pressure, mixed with the shadowplay of the synths and Bernholz’s devastatingly beautiful singing, add as much as an expertise that’s enjoyable, contemporary, and just a bit bit horrifying. Methods and treats for you all. Now go forth and hear.
–Zoe Camp
Nivek B
The King’s Regalia
Launched in July on Rugged Triad data, the label based by Atlanta rapper Indigo Phoenyx, The King’s Regalia makes its intentions identified early. Opening with a brass fanfare worthy of a John Williams Star Wars rating, rapper Nivek B and a small military of collaborators lay out the album’s themes: A struggle is on, and that is battle music. That concept seeps deep into each second of Regalia: within the martial stomp of the drums, the high-tension instrumentation—glissando-ing strings, the menacing bass—even the music titles: “Entrance Line,” “Let’s Go,” “Hazard Zone.” The latter of these is an album excessive level, opening with a stuttering Gang Starr pattern after which easing right into a observe constructed from icy xylophones and dropped at life by steely bars from Nivek and Staten Island rapper Squeegie Oblong. “Gradual Burn” is beautiful, a haunting soprano vocal flying excessive above hard-knocking beats, the right complement to Nivek’s muscular circulation. Like all the things on Rugged Triad, it nods to the previous with out burglarizing it wholesale—there’s a moodiness to “Thump” that summons a Wu-Tang Endlessly outtake, however quickly an odd, gurgling vocal pattern enters the combo and the observe takes on an eerieness all its personal. Rugged Triad has been quietly amassing a catalog of stellar hip-hop over the past three years. Take this as your cue to start out digging in.
–J. Edward Keyes
Nídia
95 MINDJERES
After spiraling far, distant from the dancefloor on mesmerizing experimental data like 2020’s Não Fales Nela Que A Mentes, the Portuguese producer Nídia hurtles again into its orbit with 95 MINDJERES, a file constructed for velocity, every of its 11 songs centered round obstinately insistent percussion. Each second of it electrifies: “Pose” is a wild hallucinogenic home quantity, with lightning-like flashes of synth sparking and vanishing over a beat that hisses like water dripping on a sizzling range. On “cp,” pads that sound like metal drums pogo between a samba-like rhythm observe. And the melody of opener “É COMO?” seems like a sly inversion of the synth riff that powered Usher’s “Yeah!,” a straight-ahead dancefloor banger. As at all times, the album’s most fascinating moments are those the place Nídia indulges in experimental flights of fancy; “Mindjeres” is a masterpiece, Nídia sending a giddy flute melody spiraling out like a silk ribbon within the breeze whereas she holds a gentle synth sample in lockstep beneath because the drums slip intentionally out and in of time. Nídia’s been making music since 2014, however 95 MINDJERES is simply her third full-length. The wait turns every drop into an occasion—an opportunity to witness the newest discovery of a real musical scientist.
–J. Edward Keyes
Seablite
Lemon Lights
Blue Ocean
Fertile State
I’m breaking with custom by contemplating two data in a single write-up, however nothing on this world stays the identical so why ought to your Important Releases be any totally different? In any case, each of those data come from bands related to San Francisco’s not-dead indie pop scene, one other place the place nothing stays the identical. The reliably twee Seablite go full dream pop on Lemon Lights, a file custom-made for anybody who’s worn out their copies of Split and Spooky. It’s not as egregious because it sounds (by no means thoughts the quilt artwork) and really is sensible for the band—Lauren Matusi and Galine Galine Tumasyan’s chiming vocals at all times did the heavy lifting in Seablite’s music; it was a lot the identical for Lush—however the leap ahead in songwriting is what makes Lemon Lights a real delight, all dishevelled and catchy and doused with sufficient Aislers Set-esque din to really feel resolutely San Francisco. Terrific! Blue Ocean’s Fertile State represents the marginally colder, extra experimental iteration of shoegaze, with noisier passages and extra mechanization and even dips into gothy post-punk. But this can be a Slumberland Information band, so Blue Ocean makes loads of time for moments of pop transcendence—actually, in truth, because the file’s longest music, the nebulously hooky, submerged-sounding “The Radiant Edge,” can be its most memorable.
–Mariana Timony
Slauson Malone
EXCELSIOR
When you had been to go off simply style descriptors alone for Slauson Malone’s EXCELSIOR, you’ll be sorely confused—I do know I used to be. And sure, whereas it does, in a way, span all the things from no wave to free jazz and trendy classical; from bed room pop to lo-fi hip-hop and noise; it’s simply this shapeshifting restlessness that retains you listening for extra. You by no means know what you’ll get subsequent! Right here you’ll be able to anticipate finding clouds of harsh noise and squiggling electronics that construct solely to dissipate into reverent piano and orchestral interludes earlier than they too abruptly transition to a skittering beat or a split-second Cher needle drop. Regardless of the iconoclastic producer (actual title Jasper Marsalis)’s eccentric sensibilities, this stressed looking out doesn’t get exhausting however moderately feels dynamic and surprisingly delicate—there’s lots of soulfulness to be discovered right here. “The place I’m going? (The place I’m going?)/ Ready any day now, climate’s at all times unusual now/ I’m ready, ready, ready, ready, ready/ For a change to come back in,” Marsalis sings on “Home Music,” modulating his voice into alien pitches that pang with isolation and longing. There’s a tether, too, within the heat strum of acoustic guitar and plucks of piano keys which hold the file from wandering too far afield from some type of sonic order. No matter the way you outline his sound, it’s simple sufficient to press play on this album and end up alongside for the experience, wherever it’s going.
-Stephanie Barclay
Tele Novella
Poet’s Tooth
The merry duo of Natalie Ribbons and Jason Chronis return with extra twangy baroque pop on Poet’s Tooth, Tele Novella’s third full-length and second for Kill Rock Stars. The band have dialed down the medieval melodrama of 2021’s Merlynn Belle however stored the twinkly nation & western vibe, Ribbons moving into the position of velvety-voiced singing cowgirl wearing pigtails and classic pinstripes, strumming her nylon-string guitar below the paper moon. There’s an enthralling literary high quality to Poet’s Tooth in that just about each music is sort of a little morality story, the tales populated by a forged of vampires, clowns, and unicorns—fantastical outsiders every body on a quest to comply with their star. The music is adorned however comfortably so, freckly face Americana with a light-weight smearing with British psych-folk fairydust. However there’s a snub-nosed pioneer dedication underpinning this Wild West fantasia and one which feels hard-won, the morals of Ribbon’s fairly fables—inform the reality, imply what you say, be true to your self—easy sufficient for kids to grasp and simple for adults to neglect.
–Mariana Timony
Numerous Artists
The Stone Tape – Analysing A Ghost By Electronic Means
The Stone Tapes, Peter Sasdy’s BBC drama sequence, launched in 1972, is usually cited as some of the influential ghost tales ever made, partially because of the distinctive writing and modifying, however principally due to the affect of the Stone Tape Concept—the movie’s central idea concerning the science of hauntings—on the paranormal investigation neighborhood writ giant. (Critically, there have been research on these items.) The concept is that emotional and traumatic occasions (i.e. loss of life) include vitality that’s generally transferred (or “recorded”) onto mineral parts (something from a limestone wall to a concrete slab to a circuit board), which may be “replayed” below sure circumstances. In different phrases, ghosts are simply subject recordings trapped in rocks—and if that isn’t the idea for a compelling album, I don’t know what’s. Launched by Hidden Britain Information in (barely belated) commemoration of the movie’s fiftieth anniversary, in partnership with a number of UK-based experimental labels (Wayside & Woodland, Clay Pipe, Castles in Space, Spun Out Of Control), The Stone Tape – Analysing A Ghost By Digital Means illustrates this precept from an ambient digital perspective: an episode of “Ghost Hunters” directed by William Basinski. Some songs really feel haunted by violence, like Drew Mulholland’s “The Unusual Past;” industrial crackling samples materializing simply to disintegrate seconds later; corroded mechanical clanks melting into corrupted, roaring engines within the back-end. Others, like “Evaluating The Properties Of Stone, Brick And Concrete,” by the Warrington-Runcorn New City Improvement Plan, pierce the veil with the sunshine and heat you’d affiliate with a New Age file: unsettling, and but serene. Who knew ambient music may sound so supernatural?