Bandcloud 381
Pamela_ and her sons, Urvakan, Gost Zvuk, Konakov, Woodford Halse, Winthorpe Electronics, Sarah Hennies, Beachers, Roiju, SELVEDGE, Irene Buckley / Neil Quigley, Binaural Space & co and loads more
This is a tricky one to write. Today is a Bandcamp Friday, where Bandcamp waives its revenue share and allows artists to collect that extra 10%. Much like during the early days of the pandemic, a lot of artists are in turn giving up their profit share today, only instead of helping those suffering due to COVID-related issues they are donating to help those suffering in/from Ukraine due to the recent Russian invasion. This is unquestionably a noble thing. Earlier this week, Bandcamp, long an independent company, announced that it was “joining” Epic Games (an interesting word that seems to stand in for “bought by”). I didn’t know anything about Epic until this week but the general consensus is that this is a Bad Move. Epic staff have reportedly been forced to work up to 100-hour weeks, there are several lawsuits over kids allegedly being tricked into spending money on Fortnite and, most flagrantly, “Epic took 3 years to implement a shopping cart on their store”. There’s also the fact that Tencent, which owns a 40% stake in Epic, owns about 10% of Spotify too. Where this all goes, I don’t know. Bandcamp co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond claims that the company will continue to run as a standalone entity and that he will continue to run it, and that may well be true for now. It will be true until it isn’t. Bandcamp was never going to be wholly independent forever, but I get the sense that people wish it had been bought by someone else. As for Bandcloud, well I can’t keep doing this forever. Maybe the time is nigh for to me to wrap it all up. Let’s see if I can make to 400, that’s a nice number.
Pamela_ and her sons - Floating in sun shallows
Choppy and weird cut-up electronic sounds that are part club fodder, part freakout IDM stuff. Closer ‘Nothing, Forever’ reminds me of Faithless’s ‘Drifting Away’.
VA - A Collective Memoir (Urvakan)
This compilation is a sound research project featuring artists from Armenia, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine, released last week but obviously in the works for some time before that. The project invited artists to explore how collective memories could be embodied in sound, and apparently ‘urvakan’ is the Armenian word for ghost, phantom or spirit, so it’s quite literally haunting. It’s strange and unsettling, smoky and unknowable. Perila is the only artist I recognise.
VA - STOP THE WAR! (Gost Zvuk)
Pretty straightforward title, this. Another selection of muggy ambient* sounds, seemingly assembled rather hastily but with no less quality because of it. Perila also features here, as it happens, as do Kedr Livanskiy, Hoavi, OL and many more. I really like the track from Shine Grooves. All proceeds are going to those in need.
*My friend Lighght said the following about “ambient” in an interview with Foxy Digitalis: “[F]or a lot of people it’s just shorthand for the vast breadth of electronic music that doesn’t necessarily fit into the dance music category but at the same time there is just so much variance within that term? … it’s definitely a total headache to think about.” True that. Speaking of the man, Seodra is out now on Doom Trip.
Richie Sombrero, who generally has his finger on the pulse when it comes to Eastern European sounds, shared the ШЩЦ page this week. This album from late last year is a kind of tongue-in-cheek fuck you to the sounds of the 90s, taking all of the most overused sounds and fusing them together for a kind of crisp and fragrant ambient electro techno mishmash. It’s name your price, and the label is matching any payments and sending them to the Kyiv Civil Defence. It’s a tricky position to be in right now, being a pacifist or being anti-war. Do you just stand by and shake your head as another country invades? Do you ignore any acts of resistance and send all your aid to humanitarian relief efforts to ease your conscience? Answers on a blood-soaked postcard.
VA - Undulating Waters 1-7 (Woodford Halse)
The Woodford Halse label has put together all seven volumes of the Undulating Waters series to raise money for the British Red Cross Ukrainian Crisis Appeal. The compilations are usually a fiver each but you can get the lot for a tenner here. Polypores, Midwich Youth Club, Field Lines Cartographer, Salvatore Mercatante, Quiet Clapping, Rupert Lally and Ffion feature alongside dozens of other acts.
VA - Streets of Rave (Winthorpe Electronics)
Game-inspired electro business here from artists like Lee Kelly and Minos. Silly and yet deadly serious. Top lads, top tunes.
Sarah Hennies full discography
Sarah Hennies has put her full discography up for the bargain price of $7.40.
Beachers - The endless endlessness of endlessness
I put this on while I went into the kitchen cleaning and putting stuff away. The clinks that appear on ‘Spoons, ashtray, glass and tape loop of spoons, ashtray and glass’ startled me and made me think something was broken somewhere. We just replaced our washing machine so I’m not in the mood for spending any more money on appliances. Thankfully it was just some mundane sounds recorded by Beachers while he suffered/recovered from COVID. The whole release portrays “the endless endlessness of endlessness”, what one must feel when stuck in isolation.
These are two excellent tracks, with crisp and robotic percussion alongside synths that are at turns sparse and expansive.
Real weird and murky foggy stuff. Dank slime and sludge, hissing crash and noise. Tools cited include “Cheap Midwestern Beer” and “Warm legs, cold toes”.
Irene Buckley / Neil Quigley - Signs of Life: Part 2
Two stunning tracks here, available on 7” if you so wish. The artwork is even like Hieronymus Bosch meets the internet.
VA - Blue and Yellow
VA - Yellow and Blue
Two compilations put together by Prague-based Binaural Space, who’s gone days without sleep for this project. They’re priced at £1 each but you can pay whatever you wish. Money from this one is going to People in Need. Blue and Yellow features Simon McCorry, Andy Fosberry, Heavy Cloud, Greg Nieuwsma, Chorchill, ireless, Selvedge, Whettman Chelmets, Sarah Schonert and others, offering ambient and wistful sounds, to put it quite simply. How else to encapsulate 26 different tracks? I can’t say I recognise any names on Yellow and Blue, but the general mood seems to be 80s-tinged synth instrumentals for use in video games or low-budget genre film.
Jad Atoui & Jawad Nawfal - Reading
My son has been obsessing over videogame walkthroughs recently, mainly because we don’t have a console and I don’t let him play games on my phone. One such game is Super Mario Odyssey. We were out of the house and he mentioned it and I explained that an Odyssey is a long journey, named after Odysseus. I then told him the tale of this wily Ithacan, mentioning his exploits with Polyphemus and Circe and how he defeated the suitors who had taken up residence in his palace. My son had read an abridged version of all of this before and all of a sudden he remembered the sea monsters, Scylla and Charybdis, although he couldn’t remember their names. He couldn’t remember which was which, and, to be honest, neither could I. Where is this all going? Last year I bought Between Scylla And Charybdis by Beirut-based Jawad Nawfal. Yesterday Nawfal released Reading, a collaboration with Jad Atoui. After his flat was destroyed in the explosion of 2020, Nawfal retreated to the suburbs, and there he would occasionally jam with Atoui on modular synths. These are a selection of edits from that time of “bittersweet retreat” from the city. The three tracks here are wonderfully languid and expressive.
For the record, Charybdis would swallow large amounts of water and belch it up again, creating massive whirlpools, while Scylla was a six-headed monster that would devour anything that came near.
Incredibly lush and atmospheric ambient sounds here, even if that does read like utter garbage word soup. What else can I say to describe the sound of wind through sunlit scrub, a breeze on an empty beach? The sound of an empty train line as birds sing and children play in the distance, a teen gently playing piano and humming while the world goes about its day. A kind of platonic ideal of what life could be, presented via a Bandcamp link. Proceeds go to mental health charity Voices of Children in Ukraine.
Mutated dub sounds, or something. Swampy echoes and rattling drums permeate ‘Maranza Percussion Ensemble’, a true highlight here. Probably fits alongside that Al Wootton stuff I shared last week.