Record Reviews (10/09/22)
Monthly reviews of the records I’ve been playing or listening to while doing the washing up.
Uroish - Goodbye Party [Malmo Diskografiska, 2022]
Uroish is a Persian electronic pop artist whose latest EP was co-produced with Olof Dreijer and also features Karin Dreijer on some backing vocals. Lyrically the themes of the EP are not too distant from classic The Knife, with elliptical references to mortality, conflict, lineage and pilgrimage. (English translations of the songs are on Uroish’s IG.) I’m no expert in Persian music, but it feels like O. Dreijer has taken care to avoid inserting too much Knife into these tracks, though I detect hints here and there, most prominently in the opener ‘Delaye’ and closer ‘Yeki Bood’. I confess to finding the latter a bit grating after multiple plays, but the Eurovision appeal of the former has had me coming back regularly for more. And here I mean ‘Eurovision appeal’ as the highest of compliments.
(Unfortunately this EP is so far only available to stream. Here’s hoping for a Bandcamp release at some point.)
GB - Yamaheaters [Technoindigenous Studies, 2022]
There’s a charming story behind this new EP from Gifted & Blessed aka Gabriel Reyes-Whittaker. After finding an old Yamaha keyboard in a trash bin, he took it home and, years later, used MIDI to excavate the sounds within it, producing this beautiful record. Maybe it’s my imagination, but these tracks really do have a sort of domestic quality to them, especially the opening ‘Yamahumble’. Indeed, I always go back to this quote from GB, which says a lot about the humility in him and his wonderful music:
I owe the bulk of the performance credit to the machines themselves. I am only the composer of this music as well as the engineer and conductor, guiding the machines to play in harmony and synchronicity.
Paloma - No Seu Tempo [Gop Tun, 2022]
Following Vermelho Wonder’s lovely Se Você EP from earlier this year, Gop Tun hits us with an instant contender for EP of the year by another Brazilian duo, Paloma. It’s been a while since the first play of a record had me smiling this broadly: there’s just so much joy bursting from every funky bassline, guitar solo and groove switch-up on these three carnival jams. So far I’ve played ‘Concreto Amado’ as a statement-of-intent opener at Adonis and ‘Banguera’ as a last-hour curveball in Pbar, so next in line must be ‘No Seu Tempo’, whose freestyle fanfares and psychedelic guitar lines might even make it my favourite of three.
Fantastic Man - Alltogethernow EP [Kalahari Oyster Cult, 2022]
I’m a big fan of most of Fantastic Man’s music but when I heard the clips for his recent release on Superconscious I was a little disappointed. Compared to his brilliant Cloud Management EP from last year the tracks felt a bit straightforward and linear, and some of the harmonic ideas didn’t ring right to my ears. And then of course there’s that whale noise on the A2.
Skip forwards to this EP on Kalahari Oyster Cult, though, and I feel like there’s proper progression in the tracks, something classically beautiful in the harmonies, and an oomph in the basslines that counterbalances the shimmers on top. At first I thought I’d just be playing ‘Trojan Horse’ (which I did indeed do at Pbar, when the Man himself was, I believe, in attendance), but then the aquatic pianos on ‘Alltogethernow’ started percolating around my head so much that I had to give it a go at Dimensions. I also reached for ‘Bioxy’ on the Dimensions boat, since even though I find it pretty dissonant, I concluded that that’s kind of the point (as it was for much original Bleep techno). In the end, it had the deck jumping.