I received an email this morning from Phratry Records about a very interesting Portland, Oregon noise band called Palo Verde. Their album, Zero Hour, is a lengthy and super-sludgy instrumental LP that propagates a level of amplified muck worthy of The Melvins while also providing meditative slabs of psychedelia. Repetitious and prone to areas of free form musical assault, at times Zero Hour reminds me of the more abrasive aspects of Black Flag's The Process Of Weeding Out and combines them with Earth's recent Americana-laced desert rock. There's less jazz than to it than there is No Wave, "pigfuck" or drone metal, but improvisation is at its core.
A well-designed lyric video surfaced for Camae Ayewa's (a.k.a. Moor Mother) "We Got The Jazz," a new single featured in her upcoming release Jazz Codes Deluxe , which is an enhanced digital version of 2022's excellent Jazz Codes . From the desk of Stereo Sanctity: “‘ We Got The Jazz ’ is me thinking about how mediocre a lot of popular music is, about its capitalistic structures and how those placements are bought and paid for,” Ayewa said of the song’s meaning. “I'm speaking about the whitewashing of who's allowed to participate in jazz, who is allowed to participate in poetry, and asking where the room for innovation is, now and in the future. It’s also me thinking about my jazz band, Irreversible Entanglements, and how we’ve toured the world destroying stages, uplifting audiences, and inspiring everyone on the jazz scene with or without recognition. I'm also speaking about my own influence on the culture.” Jazz Codes Deluxe will be released 5/19/23 ...
Good morning, Midweek. Spring is officially here. I've opened the windows. First thing I checked out today was the title track of the upcoming new collaboration between Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA , Scaring The Hoes . The distinct and character-rich voices of each artist aside, the snare beat sounds like it was mic'd in a crawlspace, scratchy tenor sax scribbles across the track like a kindergartner enthusiastically dragging a marker across paper with a tight fist. Add a simple bass groove and claps. I love it. When thinking about minimalism in terms of production, the tinniness and sonic anemia of trap/drill beats and the ubiquity that this sound has had over the last decade or more across a multitude of artists hasn't had consistent appeal for me. That said, I get it: soundtracking a club, the bass drops are effective and the vibe is the draw. But, "Scaring The Hoes" is minimalism done well. Looking forward to this album. __________ The Laurie Anderson all...
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