New tracks: the never-ending story of Kenny Dennis
Object Permanence by Leor Galil
Forgive me, I made a lot of plans for this newsletter and thus far have done so little with it. It's easy to daydream ideas for newsletters, but wouldn't you know it, I have not made much time to write. Since the last newsletter I went to Japan (amazing, I need to jot down some thoughts), came back and got COVID (I do not recommend), and I've been slowly returning to some sense of... whatever it was I did a few months ago. Anyway, rather than spending more time with the hope that I make writing this newsletter a routine, I figured it'd be best to actually put anything out in the world. So here's some of what's caught my attention recently.
Serengeti, Kenny Dennis IV
Serengeti's Kenny Dennis corpus is one of the most impressive feats of art in this young century. We're coming up on two decades since the mustachioed blue-collar Chicago rapper emerged on "Dennehy," and six years since Geti dropped what he suggested was the final Kenny Dennis record, Dennis 6e. Two years later, Kenny Dennis popped up on Serengeti's Ajai, which largely concerns the titular hypebeast suffering through a shopping addiction on par with that of Buzz Bissinger. Kenny Dennis's universe expands non-linearly (in 2020, Fake Four issued his "1979 demos," one of which recounts his experience at the Disco Demolition) and spills into our world; one of Geti's frequent collaborators on Kenny Dennis recordings is actor Anders Holm, who had an electro-rap duo with Dennis called Perfecto (who released an album on Joyful Noise in 2015). The story isn't confined to just music either; cartoonist Owen Cornish collaborated with Serengeti on a comic book called Kenny Dennis Vs. the Dark Web (yes, there's a musical component too).
I often feel like I'd need to use an entire bedroom wall, lots of photos, and a ball of yarn to make sense of the whole Kenny Dennis world. Kenny Dennis IV came out Friday, and adds even more confusion to the mix. If all of this is new to you, the Kenny Dennis IV narrative will not make much sense, but if hearing Geti lay on a thick Chicago accent to punch in the line "claiming that you're vegan, but ain't touched the giardiniera" doesn't convince you to go back and start piecing together this grand story, I don't know how to help you.
Math, Rubber Musique
Last weekend, I picked up a copy of The Lumpen Times: 30+ Years of Radical Media and Building Communities of the Future. Weasel Walter's essay on the emergence of Chicago's '90s no wave scene made me eager to read even more about that community, since I mostly know the same handful of names that keep getting repeated all these years later (including Walter's extant group, the Flying Luttenbachers). I'd never listened to Quintron's old band Math, and Walter's writing sent me in search of what I could hear online. The torpid funk of this 1995 LP has convinced me to spend time hunting down copies of Math's older cassettes.
samlrc, A Lovely Sinner
I remain a little resistant RYM. I'd love to read a reported essay on its curious cultural force, which strikes me as several notches beneath the biggest subreddits. Scrolling through the charts often make me feel like I've fallen into a subreddit whose URL is illegible to me; the mishmash of hyper-meticulous metal, experimental pop, and indie rock is juuust enough to pique my interest even when whatever breadth I can determine scans as fairly narrow. And yet, I still can sometimes find something interesting. Recently, this stylistically slippery ambient album by a Brazilian musician I'd never heard of was at the very top of the "Top albums of 2024" chart (as I write this, it's number 5), and while I don't think I'd rank it very high, I'm certainly charmed; A Lovely Sinner feels huge and intimate.
Leaf Miner, Remnant, Remains
Chicago dance label Kino Disk debuted with a trio of records a couple months ago. I know little of it other than its connection to one of my favorite local record stores, Signal Records. Prolific dance producer Jason Letkiewicz works at the shop and also mastered a couple of these records, so I'll have to ask him about the label next time I swing by the Signal. This ambient-dance single hits the sweet spot that's made Purelink so compelling to me.
Willy Rodriguez, Wetdream
This made me miss Twitter, in the sense that there are probably 20 people I'd met through that platform who I'd eagerly share this with... if I hadn't abandoned the site last year. The youthful expression of community that powers these shaggy, restless songs will always draw me to new emo bands. Too bad this is the last Willy Rodriguez album.
Goalden Chyld, War Cry
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A big and direct Chicago hip-hop album, also helluva album cover.
A couple additional notes:
-I wrote about emo memes for the Reader. I irritated a faction of r/indieheads, so mission accomplished, I guess?
-A couple old zines I made popped up in a recent New York Times Magazine story about Matt Farley.