Small Mercies – SMALL MERCIES 021
Friday, December 17, 2021
The House Of Life (1989)
Îlé Aiyé
ILÉ AIYÉ is David Byrne's breathtaking 1989 documentary on Candomblé, the African-influenced spirit cult of the Bahia region of Brazil. ILÉ AIYÉ explores the ways in which Candomblé has influenced the daily life and culture of the people of Brazil in music, art, religion, theater, food, dance, poetry and more.
Ilê Aiyê is a carnival block from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. It is located in the Curuzu/Liberdade neighborhood, the largest afro-descendent population area of Salvador. The name stems from the Yoruba language: Ilé - home; Ayé - life; which can be loosely translated as 'earth'. It was founded in 1974 by Antônio Carlos “Vovô” and Apolônio de Jesus, making it the oldest Afro-Brazilian block.
Ilê Aiyê works to raise the consciousness of the Bahian black community. Persecuted by the police and the media during its first years, and still controversial for only allowing blacks to parade with the group, Ilê Aiyê is a renowned element of Bahia’s carnival. The group pioneered the type of carnival group known as the bloco afro, featuring themes from global black cultures and history, and celebrating the aesthetic beauty of black people. All other Afro-Brazilian blocos borrow elements originally created by Ilê Aiyê, including such groups founded shortly afterwards, such as Olodum and Malê Debalê.[2][3]
During Bahian carnival, the group includes hundreds of musicians, dozens of dancers, and thousands of members. They traditionally begin their procession on the Saturday night of Carnaval at the home of the Dos Santos family, where for many years Mãe Hilda de Jitolu, the mother of co-founder Vovô, presided as spiritual mother to the group and formal leader of a candomblé. As Ilê Aiyê passes, carnival crowds sing along by the thousands to songs about the importance of African and Afro-Brazilian culture and religion.
Ilê Aiyê was responsible for a huge cultural revolution in Brazil. It is often mentioned that in Salvador, before the founding of Ilê Aiyê, black men and women would never wear colorful dresses, would often not enter through the front door, would not wear afro hairstyles, and black women would not use lipstick – all because of long-standing racist stigmatization. This situation has been thoroughly changed for many Afro-Brazilians thanks to the empowerment processes that Ilê Aiyê implemented through music and through the praise of African culture and history.
Arca - (2020) &&&&& LP
Pan – 100
Fully remastered & first-time release of individual tracks*
For anyone who can remember, Arca’s &&&&& was a moment. Its 25-minute stretch of coiling, contorted grime and glitch; dub and hip hop dropped with the buzz of an impending co-production credit on Kanye West’s Yeezus in 2013. It included cuts of sound and beats that were too weird for that pop project, while becoming a piece of experimental art that what would come to define what is by now broadly known as a ‘post-club’ sound. It’s music that is as visceral as it is experimental; made as much for the mind, as it is for the body.
Released with no warning seven years ago, &&&&& became a bridge between Alejandra Ghersi’s time partying and collaborating with her queer peers, while still living in New York to the next stage of her career releasing on Mute in London. She’d go from making beats for rapper Mykki Blanco and fashion label Hood By Air, posting lurching bass reworkings of pop hits on YouTube, and producing her first fluid mixtapes with DIS Magazine, to finishing off this seminal mixtape on the synths in Daniel Miller’s studio.
After dropping three impressive EPs the year before, &&&&& marked a transition. Continuations and extrapolations of material from Stretch 1 and Stretch 2 appeared in the mangled RnB sampling of “Century” and Arca’s signature vocal layering in the pitched flow of “Waste”. Along with the fluttering, muted heartbeat of “Obelisk”, and the lumbering piano chords of “Mother”, fourteen sonic sketches were elegantly woven together into a single, downloadable whole.
As Alejandra’s course turned toward moving to Europe from the United States, &&&&& became a remarkable challenge to the form of the mixtape, which was a relatively new trend taking hold of the online-oriented underground at the turn of the 2010s. But where many, if not most mixtapes where treated simply as a showcase of individual tracks presaging a more ‘official’ release to come, &&&&& was a complete piece in its own right. “I wanted to make something that was my best work,” Alejandra says about a record that has stood the test of time, “I listen to it very fondly today.”
Now, with the lifespan of the Arca project nearing a decade, Alejandra has entered a new era of ‘non-binary pop’ with her fourth album, KiCk i, out on XL Recordings. It’s more important than ever to look back while forging ahead, and &&&&&’s ground-breaking hybrid dance music is a good place to start:
“A sense of possibility, a sense of the unknown; punk attitude, respect for classical music and formality; cyberpunk, anime, sexual tension; trauma, innocence, fear of death; kink, lots of weed, and wanting to connect with people, but not on the terms of a status quo. That kind of sums up &&&&& for me.”
Labeled a "reissue" this release has nine additional cuts (apparently the five previously issued cuts were not released as separate tracks), and all the cuts have been remastered.
Thursday, December 16, 2021
INDEX - (2020) Kainos LP
iDEAL Recordings – 197
Slowdive’s Simon Scott debuts his new ‘Index' project with a visceral new sound that absorbs and transmutes political, ecological and psychic dread into a caustic, dissonant style of drone and textural sculpture for iDEAL Recordings, a worthy follow-up to last year’s ’The Sacrificial Code’ album release on the label by Kali Malone. Recorded in Los Angeles between 2016 and 2019, and featuring the voice of Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, it’s a multi-layered album that comes highly recommended if you’re into anything from Throbbing Gristle to Ilpo Väisänen, Arthur Russell to Basic Channel.
‘Kainos’ sees the veteran UK composer, field recordist, drummer and mastering engineer explore a prism of formative musical influences from the post-industrial music of Coil, Throbbing Gristle and early Black Sabbath, to the non-musical and conceptual inspiration taken from the turmoil of Brexit - including recordings of the Houses of Parliament - thru to the radical feminist scientific writing of Donna Haraway, and the conceptual vigour of Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto, ‘The Art of Noises’.
The album’s title ‘Kainos’, from the ancient Greek meaning “new” or “fresh”, characterises Scott’s efforts to glean something practical from the world’s current state of chaos, enacting a tectonic shift from bucolic sonic signifiers to signposts of the post-industrial world that could hardly be more apt at at a time when electronic and ambient music are prized for their safe and sterile wallpaper qualities, rather than a potential to evoke and invoke more powerful feelings.
Based around modular synth-mangled recordings of the Houses of Parliament during the prelude to Brexit, Scott’s compositions take these fractious debates as building blocks for the album’s caustic improvisations and compositions, ranging from convulsive clangour to pulsating tracts of strobing distortion and gutted, lurching-rhythms riddled with the voice of Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, before eventually resolving with a more spacious, textured sense of relief by the album’s close.
Senyawa & Stephen O’Malley - (2020) Bima Sakti LP
| iDEAL Recordings – 198 Ancient Indonesian tradition meets doom metal in profoundly Ur ways on Stephen O’Malley and Senyawa’s collaborative commission for choreographer Gisèle Vienne, highly recommended if you’re into Sunn O))), Keiji Haino, Nazoranai, Phurpa, KTL. Following a decade of creative bonds forged between theatre director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne and doom sayer Stephen O’Malley that spans multiple soundtracks (solo and with Peter Rehberg in KTL) and visual artworks, the pair travelled to Indonesia on a commission to explore the country’s rich culture in 2018. They immersed in a magical world of performative rituals where they encountered Wukir Suryadi, an experimental musician and instrument builder whose acclaimed releases both solo and as half of Senyawa have invigorated the avant and experimental rock scene over the past decade. The six tracks of ’Bimi Sakti’ document groundbreaking ventures between Senyawa and O’Malley, yielding an incredibly powerful mix of electric guitar and bass guitar amp worship blended with the remarkable range of tonalities from Senyawa’s custom-built bambuwukir, plus traditional pipes and possessed vocals. Practically without precedent in the modern musical sphere, the 44’ release speaks to a resounding mutuality and common musical philosophy between two musicians who are usually geographically separated by a hemisphere. Slow to start, but culminating in a wholly dilated musical vision, the performance effectively collapses eons of musical practice and thought into a singular yet timeless expression of beauty and anguish that transcends the sum of its parts. Fleshing out the frequency spectrum between flighty, avian flutes and sprawling subharmonic bass riffs, they come to inhabit a thrilling mid-ground over the course of the album as O’Malley moves up the registers to thrashing mid-range riffs while Suryadi invokes a range of demonic voices and unearthly tones from his bamboo instrument. The results come to prod the pineal like little else beyond, say, O’Malley’s Nazoranai trio with Keiji Haino and Oren Ambarchi, or the first Phurpa album on his Ideologic Organ label, and we reckon should be hailed among the boldest and most astonishing records of 2020. |
Kali Malone - (2020) Studies for Organ CS
Self-released – none
“Studies for Organ” is a rehearsal demo tape featuring the early iterations of some of my organ pieces. I recorded these as a form a note taking during the compositional process, not thinking of the recording as a final form but as documentation of an evolving practice. Fascinated by the transmutability of the musical material, I later went on to apply variations of these compositional structures to other organs and instrumentations. Revisiting these recordings today, I doubt I am finished exploring this material. These are the raw and elemental forms of a music which can be reiterated upon endlessly.
Self released.
Cover photo taken by Victoria Loeb in 2017.
Inner pipe photo taken by Kali Malone in 2019 while tuning/repairing an organ at Möjakyrka.
Music written and recorded by Kali Malone in 2017-2018.
Kali Malone - (2019) The Sacrificial Code 3xCD
iDEAL Recordings – 192
Slow, methodical organ recordings on this major new work from Kali Malone; a quietly subversive double album featuring almost two hours of concentrated, creeping organ pieces governed by a strict acoustic and compositional code with ultimately profound emotional resonance. Featuring additional organ pieces performed by Ellen Arkbro and mastering by Rashad Becker, you’re gonna wanna spent time with this one.
‘The Sacrificial Code’ takes a more surgical approach to the methods first explored on last year’s ‘Organ Dirges 2016 - 2017’. Over the course of three parts performed on three different organs, Malone’s minimalist process captures a jarring precision of closeness, both on the level of the materiality of the sounds and on the level of composition.The recordings here involved careful close miking of the pipe organ in such a way as to eliminate environmental identifiers as far as possible - essentially removing the large hall reverb so inextricably linked to the instrument. The pieces were then further compositionally stripped of gestural adornments and spontaneous expressive impulse - an approach that flows against the grain of the prevailing musical hegemony, where sound is so often manipulated, and composition often steeped in self indulgence. It echoes Steve Reich’s sentiment “..by voluntarily giving up the freedom to do whatever momentarily comes to mind, we are, as a result, free of all that momentarily comes to mind.”
With its slow, purified and seemingly austere qualities ‘The Sacrificial Code’ guides us through an almost trance-inducing process where we become vulnerable receptors for every slight movement, where every miniature shift in sound becomes magnified through stillness. As such, it’s a uniquely satisfying exercise in transcendence through self restraint - a stunning realisation of ideas borne out of academic and conceptual rigour which gradually reveals startling personal dimensions. It has a perception-altering quality that encourages self exploration free of signposts and without a preordained endpoint - the antithesis to the language of colourless musical platitudes we've become so accustomed to.
Acronym & Kali Malone - (2019) The Torrid Eye 12''
Stilla Ton – Stilla Ton 3
Debut record of collaborative project between multi-instrumentalists Acronym & Kali Malone. An EP recorded using Buchla 200 series modular synthesizer as the foundation.
Deep, electronic, just intonation, rhythmically-driven music.
Speaker Crackle In The Garden (2021, Discreet Music)
Discreet Music – none Speaker Crackle In The Garden was a feature on New Zealand lathe cuts that ran in the last six issues of the Gothenburg fanzine Fördämning. This publication is a continuation of that, a review guide to 83 lathe cuts from New Zealand featuring releases from artists like Surface Of The Earth, Tanaka-Nixon Meeting, Armpit, Pumice, Birchville Cat Motel, Bruce Russell, The Drugs, New Zealand Guitar Orchestra, White Saucer, Sandoz Lab Technicians, Antony Milton, Oistraka, Omit plus many more, and labels like Headshy, High Tension House, Precious Metal, World Resources, CMR, Root Don Loonie For Cash, PseudoArcana, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Trinder, Crawlspace, Independent Woman Records etc. 60 text-heavy pages. A5, English. Comes with a Root Don Loonie For Cash CD compiled by Clayton Noone featuring lathe tracks from The Strange Girls, Armpit, Claypipe, Pumice and more. |
Sanger Till En Manniska (2021, Discreet Music)
Klas Trollius
Discreet Music – 04
The fourth release from Discreet Music is another seemingly out-of-nowhere debut album from an Gothenburg artist. To people in Gothenburg, Klas Trollius is probably best known as a DJ and a visual artist, but the origins of this collection of songs goes back to as far as 2010 when the very first version of the exceptional opening track 'Över Ett Fält' was recorded. On Sånger Till En Människa, Klas Trollius explores the connection between music and place, letting specific location recordings become an important part of each track. The reworked 'Över Ett Fält, a loose interpretation of John Martyns' 'Over The Hill', is a 8 minute+ epic that immediately sets the tone and mood for the rest of the album with it's acoustic guitar, hushed vocals and heavy use of field recordings. The shorter 'Koltrast' is the closest we come to a fully realized acoustic pop song, Klas himself citing Razorcuts' fantastic 'Sorry To Embarass You' and several shoegaze songs as an influence. More improvised tracks like 'Gitarr, Klockspel Och Isdemoner' and 'Isdemoner För Flöjt, Trumma Och Vind' fully lets the nature become one with the instrumentaion in the spirit of Schwarzwaldfahrt or something from the Jewelled Antler Collective. Truly bewildering organic music. The record is dedicated to the memory of his Father, King Tubby and Elsa Grave.
Omhet & Skilsmassa (2021, Discreet Music)
Enhet För Fri Musik
Discreet Music – 03
Don't Give Me Instructions (2021, Forfall)
Tintomara
Förfall – 21
Facit is the brainchild of Joakim Karlsson hailing from Gothenburg, Sweden, who also released under Jocke & Elliot back in 2010. Featuring both Karlsson and the lovely Mai Nestor on vocals, Facit is quintessential melancholic Swedish wave at it’s finest. Exquisitely produced, the Mat Åt Duvorna EP is a minimal synth wave gem, drawing some inspiration from French Chanson as well.
Covid "Music" I Made With My Guitar (2021, Förfall)
Leda
Förfall – 20
Sofie Herner has and still is one of the pillars of the Gothenburg underground scene with an astonishing timeless discography in her backpack. Not only in her solo-outings as Leda but very prominent within Neutral, Enhet For Fri Musik etc... Her distinctive guitarplay is sooooo recognizable and sounds familiar within a second of the cassette kicking in. A sound which has a metallic "kling" inhaled with a kind of rhytmic "klang" heating up the wood stove into melting proportions. Melancholic industrial anybody?
Beach Music (2021, Discreet Music)
Facit
Discreet Music – 02
The debut full length from Facit after a few years of silence. Often working as a duo consisting of Joakim Karlsson and Mai Nestor, Facit released a couple of fantastic EPs between 2013 and 2016. Beach Music is a rapid turn from the previous recordings, with barely no traces left of the minimal wave and synth-pop of the past. Recorded by Joakim Karlsson alone at the island of Hönö in the west coast archipleggio outside of Gothenburg in the summer of 2020, Beach Music is an entirely guitar-based album. With an old Vantage guitar, Joakim has created a beautiful morning light soundtrack. 10 shimmering instrumentals stripped down to the bare minimum.
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Ensam Ar Nattens Rymd Over Vita Vagar (2021, Discreet Music)
Arv & Miljö
Discreet Music – 06
The third part in Arv & Miljös seasonal ambient tetralogy, following up Himmelsvind (Discreet Music, 2020) and Svensk Sommar I Stilla Frid (Omlott Records, 2018). The 11 segments on Ensam Är Nattens Rymd are inspired just as much by the memories of long and cold childhood winters that never seemed to end as it is by walking home on slushy Gothenburg streets in the middle of December. Based more on rudimentary back-to-basics analouge 4-track tactics, the lush and shimmering ambience from Himmelsvind is replaced with a slow-moving, monotonous and grittier variation on the same formula and the sound is somewhat reminiscent of how the world sounds like from inside a snow cave. Tape murk, jarring discordance and ice cold droning aside, much is still similar to its two slightly lighter predecessors, taking severe cues from 80's new age cassette culture and what not. Featuring guest appearances by Helen Johnstone (The Garbage & The Flowers) and P Wits. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
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