Five For Bandcamp Friday (02/04/21)
A run-down of five releases i’m into that, if purchased on Bandcamp Friday, will see the platform’s revenue share going straight to the artists and labels instead. The selection leans towards music released on small labels or directly by artists themselves. See my Buy Music Club for a longer list of 10 recommendations, or dig into my collection.
Share your own recommendations/lists in the comments!
Anz - OTMI001 (OTMI, 2021)
Anz follows last year’s EP on Hessle with another unmitigated banger, this time on her own label OTMI. That is, we know for sure that one track out of two is fire – we won’t hear the other one until its full release on 9 April.
As suggested by its top-tier track name, ‘Unravel In The Designated Zone’ is about ‘coming undone’, though Anz’s abilities sound fully intact. The beat is a dry and punchy 1-2 kick-snare combo punctuated by a huge and echoing clap that already puts us in panoramic mode before the arrival of the hook.
This latter is an epic, caterwauling lead line that is both audacious and irresistible. Add a funky walking bassline and Neptunes pads and you’re in untethered joy territory. It’s really that good! And now we wait to hear the other half of the orange, ‘Morphing Into Brighter’.
Duckett - His entire back catalogue! (Self-released, 2015–2021)
As singular a producer as you will find out there, Duckett recently took the step of putting his entire back catalogue up on Bandcamp.
His music is complex and changeable – here dense, there diaphanous – and always with its sights set beyond the arbitrary borders of genre, of space, and of place. He’s enough of a chameleon that there’s no obvious entry point (other than downloading his whole catalogue!), but while writing this I was particuarly happy to revisit ‘People Are Sick’ on the EP linked above. Sheer personality and soul.
And, believe it or not, for today only you can download the whole lot for the princely sum of £10.80. That’s right, 12 records’ worth of music for £10.80. The fact that I already own five of them is irrelevant, it’s still an amazing deal. This isn’t about business though – the main point here is that the music is wonderful and will now hopefully reach the ears of those who either never heard of Duckett before, or wouldn’t have bought the vinyl.
In Duckett’s own words:
It seems odd to break with the usual release modal. PR has its benefits, hype is hollow. It feels good to reduce the whole debacle down in size to just me and you, with no one between. Thanks to everyone for the continuing support!!! It makes a huge and very tangible difference to my life!
This is Bandcamp at its best. And don’t forget you can always pay more than £10.80!
YUF-O - You Eff Ohh (Superconscious, 2021)
The product of a two-day collaboration between Yu Su and Francisco Inferno Orchestra in an LA Studio in 2019, it’s hard to listen to this EP without imagining the pre-Covid vibe in that sunny room two summers ago. Sure it’s not as if everything was all roses back then – it feels flippant even to make that statement – but nostalgia feeds fantasy by drawing a veil over privilege, and with that veil firmly in place these tracks speak to me of a brighter, more innocent time.
The ambient ‘Do You Ever D.R.E.A.M. Of Flying?’ exists on the heaven-bound plane its name invokes, while ‘S.O-S.A’ leans happily into the less sophisticated tropes of turn-of-the-90s tribal-/‘world’-influenced house. Then ‘Rebuild, Recharge’ and ‘Prance=Prance’ are the kind of ecstatic 150bpm trance that I remember Paquita Gordon playing after sunrise at Waking Life 2019, just possibly at the precise moment Yu Su and Francisco Inferno Orchestra were turning off their machines for the night.
Fabz - Deeper Feelings (feat. E.A.R.L.) (Troublemaker, 2021)
I played this on February’s Flamingo and I’m sharing it again here since it’s still getting regular rotation at home. You could say this track was a tale of two Ryans: Fabz was inspired by the films The Driver (1978), starring Ryan O’Neal, and Drive (2011), starring Ryan Gosling, and the neon–noir atmosphere of both films is present in the track and its accompanying artwork.
Although I’m a big film noir fan, I only got round to watching The Driver for the first time a couple of years ago on Mubi. ‘Deeper Feelings’ evokes both the feeling of stasis and melancholy in the protagonist’s isolated home life and the superficial glamour of the seedy world that pays his bills.
I love how the mid-section sounds like it’s coming through the wall of the basement club next door, presumably while we complete our game of poker and Ryan (whichever!) waits behind the wheel outside.
Kelpe – Kyverdale Road (Self-released, 2021)
Since his early releases on J Saul Kane (aka The Octagon Man/Depth Charge)’s D.C. Recordings, Kelpe has been putting out smartly sequenced, richly textured beats and ambience-focussed music of the kind that (in the circles I move in at least) has been experiencing a resurgence over the past few years, especially during this extended period of dancefloor privation.
His new self-released album was written as a lockdown tribute to the house he had lived in for 14 years and was soon to move out of. As he describes in the digital liner notes, it was composed with the help of a drum kit assembled from components given to him by friends, bought on ebay, or simply found on the street. From the preview track, the acoustic sound – with his own guitar and violin playing – marks a step towards a less processed and more domestic mode of expression, which is entirely in keeping with the subject matter.
From my own label, both releases are currently available through Bandcamp:
WLTD002 Lerosa - Kiss Me Again EP (vinyl, first press)
WLTD001 And.rea - Coco Bongo Club EP (vinyl, repress)
The digital releases will be made available once the initial vinyl pressings have had enough time to percolate through the various distribution channels. For WLTD001 that will be soon after this repress.