Bandcloud EOY II
Patricia Wolf, Martyn, Florian T M Zeisig, Dylan Bryne, Whettman Chelmets and FRBH Recordings
Hello! Here is the second set of lists from some friends and fellow-minded individuals in the world of music. Videos, albums, memories and more. I’ve also got a few focused Q&A pieces about interesting things from 2021. See the first entry here.
Patricia Wolf
Here’s a list of some of my favorite music videos from 2021. These are listed in no particular order, just videos that I enjoyed watching and think worked well with the music that they were made for.
Penelope Trappes - Nervous
Hiro Kone - Reciprocal Capture ft Speaker Music
HTRK - New Year’s Day
Lawrence English - A Mirror Holds the Sky
Loscil - Vespera
Loscil - Cobalt
Pauline Anna Strom - Equatorial Sunrise
Hinako Omori - Spirit Jewellery Journey
Jenny Hval - Jupiter
Foodman - Michi No Eki feat. Taigen Kawabe
Magdalena Bay - Secrets
Magdalena Bay - Hysterical Us
Magdalena Bay - Chaeri
I just found out about Magdalena Bay and I am obsessed with them now. Their music videos are so much fun and so is their music! <3 I’m not usually one to share pop music, but I truly need it right now to break me out of my introspective tendencies and get back to social life. I’m hoping this can be uplifting, fun, and inspiring for other ambiverts who may not have seen/heard it yet.
Patricia Wolf on Bandcamp
Martyn
Martyn is a DJ and producer based in Washington DC. He also runs the 3024 label. Last year he established a mentoring system, which he runs through Patreon. This year he released three compilations of music from artists who have taken part in the programme.
What prompted you to start it? Was it COVID or had you been thinking about it already?
I’ve always been really inspired by people who do a range of different things rather than just one, you know like artists who write, make movies and design clothes, instead of just doing a single specific thing really well. Since I’m a very restless person I constantly look to expand my own activities. Also I feel that more so than the ‘superstars’, people who do more constructive multidisciplinary work have way more value for a community. So I had been thinking about all this before COVID, but obviously COVID accelerated the idea.
You have the various tiers, involving Group Sessions, one-on-one sessions and Deeper Dives. Do you see the programme expanding or modifying?
Back in March of 2020 I only had a basic idea of where mentoring could go, and what I could do for people besides sharing studio tips. But as more people signed up and I learned about what people were looking for I started expanding and modifying the program into these three tiers - the most important one is the Groups where people from all levels meet and discuss monthly topics about music making. Members of groups help each other, provide feedback etc. I think it’s super important to not just learn from me but from other producers with different skill levels, backgrounds, genres etc. That’s what makes the experience so exciting in my opinion. The second, more in-depth tier is individual mentoring, which I do with around 10 people. Then the third tier is the biggest one in size, the Deeper Dives. These are monthly conversations I have with other producers about music making, they’re sort of between RBMA lecture and producer-interviews-other-producer tech chat if that makes sense. These are accessible to everyone, even if you don’t make music these are still great sessions to check out. People I spoke with recently are Donato Dozzy, DVS1, Waajeed, RP Boo, Darwin, James Holden, Skee Mask & Stenny, Surgeon and more.
In your interview with DJ Mag you said you’ve no plans to stop once your schedule fills up again, so how do you see it panning out in the future?
Yeah I didn’t want the program to be some sort of ‘scheme’ and then drop all that good work as soon as clubs open up. People commit to this program with their time and energy and I commit to them you know. Over the years I’ve done a LOT of touring and for both physical/mental health reasons I want to focus more on sustainability rather than playing as much as humanly possible and then having a mental breakdown every 10 months (this has happened, several times). So if I can combine the very positive activity of mentoring with playing good gigs, make good music and stay healthy I’m all for it!
The recent three-part compilation showcased a lot of work from your various mentees - how do you think they have been received?
First of all, when we had the idea for a compilation, I had a conversation with my label partner Jeroen Erosie and he suggested it would be great to not simply ask everyone for their best tune but to involve people in the process of A&Ring the project, to experience how it works and to show how hard it can be sometimes. After everyone submitted music, we went through a process of listening to everything, providing feedback, picking and choosing what worked together and all that boiled down to the three volumes. Even people whose music didn’t make the cut still were part of the project as curators, which is one of my favorite things about the compilation. I think that positive energy really shines through in the comp and I’m happy people picked up on it. There are known and unknown producers on the comp but I’m happy to see it made practically no difference in how the music was received. If you bring the quality and get it in front of people, they will notice!
It Was Always There Vol 1, Vol 2 and Vol 3 on 3024
Florian T M Zeisig
here’s my list of my fav music while driving/walking around in the mountains, playing basketball by myself while deers were watching lol. list is in no particular order :)
L’Rain - Fatigue
PVAS - Accepting eEntropy Loss
454 - 4 Real
DUPPY GUN - Duppy Vaulted (2011 - 2021)
claire rousay + more eaze - an afternoon wine
jung dj - loci flux
Nappy Nina, JWords - Double Down
Nala Sinephro - Space 1.8
Other Joe - Jealousy Tulip
Forest Management - String Loop Series
Exael – Flowered Knife Shadows
mu tate - Let Me Put Myself Together
Madteo - Head Gone Wrong By Noise
Drew Kid - ynamsayin
Felisha Ledesma – Sweet Hour
Florian T M Zeisig’s Music For Parents on Bandcamp
Dylan Bryne
the top albums of 1991
as selected by 14 year old me
and which holds up well at age 44
(except for perhaps jesus jones and pearl jam)
presented in chronological order of release
jesus jones - doubt
klf - the white room
morrissey - kill uncle
throwing muses - the real ramona
lenny kravitz - mama said
firehose - flyin the flannel
de la soul - de la soul is dead
ned’s atomic dustbin - god fodder
primus - sailing the sea of cheese
electronic - electronic
siouxsie and the banshees - superstition
kraftwerk - the mix
big audio dynamite ii - the globe
metallica - metallica
mr bungle - mr bungle
cypress hill - cypress hill
pearl jam - ten
ween - the pod
pixies - trompe le monde
nirvana - nevermind
nitzer ebb - ebbhead
public enemy - apocalypse 91
erasure - chorus
teenage fan club - bandwagonesque
my bloody valentine - loveless
Dylan Bryne’s Shebco Sounds on Bandcamp
Whettman Chelmets
Back in September, Whettman Chelmets released a strange piece on Bandcamp entitled Droneloaf, where he tackled the music of Meat Loaf in his own bizarre style. I described one of its tracks as being “the kind of swooning, yearning music that makes you want to melt into a sunset”. I put a few questions to the artist about the project’s origins.
I know you said you liked the songs in particular, and mentioned your memories of your dad, but I wanted to interrogate the source material a bit more. In the current moment, Meat Loaf isn’t considered “cool”, let’s say. I know we don’t really defer to such whims, but he’s not even really part of any conversation. Why now? Is he someone you think about often, or was it a totally random thought?
Honestly, yea, I might have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with Meat Loaf’s music, and specifically the music of Jim Steinman, the guy that wrote all of those songs. He also wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”, which was a big hit for Celine Dion. I love these songs. Just love them. Something about this theatrical, gothic music that just really appeals to my sensibilities. I always bemoaned my own inability to really sing and craft melodies and songwriting. In a more perfect world, I’d be making generic indie pop probably!
But yea, my Dad listened to Bat out of Hell all of the time. We didn’t have the best relationship. He left when I was 7 and moved 24 hours away, and I’d spend my summers with him until I was 16 or so. He was very absent when it wasn’t summer, but we always had this bond over music, and there are certain things like Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull or REO Speedwagon that make me think of him. He liked to sing around the house, and really wasn’t bad. I like a lot of contemporary experimental music, and try to stay current with what is out there, but I also listen to a lot of stuff that others wouldn’t consider cool, and I reference these things a lot in social media because it’s fun to just say random things about hair metal and see who responds. One of my favorite concert experiences was Def Leppard in 1999. They were like 10+ years past their prime in a small arena setting of maybe 8,000, and I was able to get into the front row and just geek out my 11-year-old self. I even wore the band’s T-Shirt to the concert! I’ve never been concerned about what’s cool right now.
As far as how this release came about, it was just a stupid tweet on Twitter. I think I said something along the lines of how my next one was just going to be Paulstretched Meat Loaf songs, and it got like this huge response from people. It was a joke idea, but the next day I took a Meat Loaf track, found 4 bars, and Paulstretched it out, ran that through Melodyne to convert the audio into midi, and used that midi to trigger other instruments so it isn’t just straight Paulstretch sound for like 4 hours. I was in-between projects and after an hour of fiddling around it was just a lot of fun and heavenly and big and just sounded really nice to me.
Have you had any feedback from Meat Loaf fans? Is there a term for them? Loafians? Meat-men (Meat-people)?
I think one Jim Steinman bot retweeted an album release, but no. It was really meant to be just this one shot thing you record and release in like a week. Made me feel more like the Soundcloud type days in the early 10s when we would just record music and throw it out there and get this feedback from people all over the world and whatnot. It was a really exciting thing to first do, but after a while, if you want to get people, specifically music review sites and media, to pay attention and help push your music, you gotta plan like 6 months to a year out and start getting things out there at least a couple of months in advance. The media hype train can be fun to ride, but a lot of times, you go on this huge ride to release day, release something, get some response, and then 2 weeks later nobody cares. And I think artists in all stages of reach experience this to an extent. There’s so much music out there to listen too, it’s sometimes hard to get a second listen from anybody. I’m guilty of that too as a listener.
But no, I have some mutual artist friends who have a soft spot for Meat Loaf and 70s music who have listened, but I think the one track I loaded to Spotify has had maybe 80 streams in 2 months. It’s just tucked away there for people to find.
Perhaps I’m overthinking it. For me, Meat Loaf is the guy who won’t do *that* and also Robert Paulson from Fight Club. I missed his previous eras and iterations.
His real peak for me growing up was probably the early 90s. There was this bizarre period post grunge in 1992 when music culture was transitioning, it wasn’t just hair metal and then, BOOM, grunge; there was this music in between, and part of it was youth culture consuming songs that were like 12 minutes long. Guns and Roses’s ‘November Rain’ fits into that. And for Meat Loaf, it was “I Would Do Anything or Love (but I Won’t Do That)”. This song was a #1 hit all over the world, and the freaking album cut was 12 minutes long. I think the video and radio cut was close to 8. They didn’t really cut that much. But he was huge! He was everywhere! I’m really not the biggest fan of that song personally. I prefer Bat out of Hell III from 2006. It has all these songs cut from a failed Batman musical (Bandcloud: u wot).
But yea, experimental drone musicians generally don’t drink from the well of Meat Loaf for inspiration.
Whettman Chelmets on Bandcamp
FRBH Recordings
FRBH Recordings is a label based in North Berwick, Scotland. They describe themselves as “experimental electronica/noise/pop/hiphop since 1988”. Most (if not all) of their releases are old tapes and collections from the early 90s. It’s a particularly heady vibe, reminiscent of The Orb and The KLF. I asked them a few questions about their approach and their seemingly endless archives.
Where do you find all this old music?
A group of us that grew up together have been making and releasing music since 1989. Back then it was homemade tapes with photocopied covers, but in very limited numbers. The bands were formed around a particular technology (The Pressure Group), geographical area (Adel Music Club) or type of music (The JWA).
Do you have much to do in terms of fat-trimming, or do you have whole projects or tapes/CDs etc to work with?
Something like Moon Eclipse Overshoot is an exact copy of the tape we made when our friends said they only listened to a few albums whilst ‘chilling out’. In other cases we’ve only put up instrumental versions because the originals were poor PWEI rip-offs, and I don’t think anyone wants to hear those. Having said that we have some vocal releases planned for 2022 as they were literally the first tapes released on FRBH back in 1989/1990.
Apart from the obvious, how has the industry changed since these pieces were recorded?
The ability to make music on just a laptop coupled with the ease of distribution has changed the industry forever, but I guess that counts as obvious? Back then even a short run of vinyl or going into an actual studio seemed like a big expense and out of the reach of most.
If you were to travel back to the early 90s, what would you tell a budding chillout superstar?
Just about anything goes and stick with it because somewhere there’ll be an audience for it.
Is there anyone out there who is making similar sounds or at least something with the same spirit to what you're releasing?
Obviously we were heavily influenced by The KLF/Orb but after Aphex Twin and SAW a wider sound emerged. I hear some of this in releases on Third Kind and Bricolage, to name but two labels. I recall (but may have dreamt) Alex Paterson writing a sort of manifesto in a magazine that anyone with a couple of turntables, videos and tapes could make ‘ambient house’. It was a big influence on us and I think that spirit is still around today.
