on the pulse - 2020 - week 26 - passion, pleasure & delight

So this week was utterly bizarre - I thought I’d have nothing to cover but instead wound up with all the off-the-wall projects in both catch-up and current releases on which I had way too much to say. Nothing all that popular, so I do question all the work put in, but here we are anyway, this is On The Pulse!

Patricia Taxxon - Gelb / Rosa / Schwarz - I already discussed this triple album at length - it’s some of the most dense and complex electronic music you’ll hear in 2020, but wound as pretty damn rewarding as a whole. Not an easy jump-on point for her work, but if you’re up for a wondrously layered, remarkably affecting and unique listen, this has it in spades. 8/10, absolutely worth your attention

Dynazty - The Dark Delight - Look, I don’t cover a lot of power metal - which is odd, given that was one of my entry points into metal as a whole, but I’ve had a lot of mixed luck with the genre, where the best of it feels increasingly few and far between and I don’t have much patience for even the middling material; one of the most depressing things to sit through is a middling and boring power metal project, if only because it aspires to more and the disappointment is more palpable. That said, when I was pointed towards Dynazty, I liked a decent amount of what I heard: the group was loose and the hooks were plentiful, frontman Nils Molin - also newly of Amaranthe - had one hell of a voice, and outside of maybe leaning on the synths a bit too much, this new album could be pretty fun. And… honestly, it’s exactly what we got! The funny thing about Dynazty is while I won’t claim they’re reinventing the wheel with power metal or even breaking outside of the exact archetypal sound, it’s a lane they’re doing very well here: huge, gleaming guitar melodies, solid chugging grooves and sharp drumwork, and massive hooks with impressive stickiness. Now that’s not saying this project isn’t over-produced - some of the synth accents can feel superfluous and not always complimentary to the groove - but for the most part they’re not obtrusive or get in the way of the solos or lead melodies or the occasional big key change. That said, when I said this album isn’t reinventing the wheel with power metal, that’s both a strength and weakness, especially as this is not really a band that does ballads or slower, progressive moments, so by the back half of the album I was looking for a bit more variation and diversity in the sound as songs run together… which I’d also say for the lyrics. Now the one thing I’ll credit is that for all of Dynazty’s over-the-top empowerment fantasy, there’s a little more grasp on humanity, highlighting how those darker impulses can be just as tempting, and the glorious abandon shown to it all probably makes ‘Apex’ the one “anti-social media” song I can tolerate in recent memory. But outside of that… it’s got its high points, which for me were ‘The Black’, ‘Hologram’, and ‘Heartless Madness’, but while it is very good power metal, it’s not quite as a whole and you know exactly what you’re getting. Still fun, though, so… strong 7/10, check it out?

Kevin Max - Radio Teknika - Okay, how do I even start with this… alright, in the 90s there was a Christian rap rock group called DC Talk that is widely considered one of the most preeminent groups in the Christian subculture in the 90s, and when they got signed gradually moved to more pop rock. But then their frontman Kevin Max decided to go in a slightly weirder, slightly more secular direction when he went solo, which his Christian major label didn’t get and he’s been indie ever since, minus a few reunions and other Christian rock collaborations. Now I’ve described my problems with Christian music before - the more evangelical side can rub me the wrong way, and the production can sound really cheap and/or sanitized - and throughout his back catalog both issues are frequent and frustrating, but I will say his off-kilter and occasionally more thoughtful approach has made his material a bit more interesting, and he can write a good hook on occasion, like on 2015’s Broken Temples… although nothing that really blew my mind, if I’m being blunt here, not helped by nearly all of his projects running really long. Now in recent years he’s moved more towards an electronic, synthwave palette with very mixed results - I’m not forgiving him for that awful cover of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ - and on this album… well, it’s not synthwave, I can say that! Honestly, I wish it was, because the best way I can describe this is a blend of clunky, underproduced electronics and flat spoken word you’d have heard on the more pretentious ‘experimental’ dance projects dropping in the mid-to-late 90s, where if I wasn’t certain Kevin Max wasn’t on drugs I’d ask him for the acid! Now this would be where I’d come here and call this an outright disaster: it contains some of the most painfully dated drum machines blending in a really flat and charmless way, the blending is haphazard, there are some of the most poorly considered horns I’ve heard on a record in years, the pacing is terrible, there are dub and world music digressions that are as cringe-worthy as you get, Kevin Max barely even sings instead opting for flat passionless delivery - and more than a few 90s Bowie plagarisms - and voice actor Troy Baker delivers a nihilistic monologue that not only doesn’t fit thematically but also cribs liberally from Heath Ledger’s Joker! And to some degree I still think it might be - as much as this project is framed as a scattered musing through struggles with faith and what the Christian church in the United States has become, most of it circles back to bland, undercooked, utopianism and on the back half some weird self-loathing individualism which I found very telling; it’s very 90s, pseudospiritual slacker hipster in its outlook, in highlighting all the problems but not particularly galvanized to do more than just ‘love, man, and dance, and brood’. And maybe the last one gives me something - both ‘Vampire’ and ‘Becoming James Dean’ were fragments that were okay - but this is a project that fails utterly to be political, conscious, or relevant, and I’d struggle to say this is absurd enough fun to be a ‘so bad it’s good’ disaster; it runs nearly an hour, and it gets really boring, vacillating, and insufferable really fast. In other words, I went on a rant about a lot of things that piss me off about Gen X a few weeks back - I shouldn’t have bothered, because I can just point to this album and say ‘all of this’. 3/10, it sucks, and not even in the fun way.

Raleigh Ritchie - Andy - I’m always a little skeptical in covering side projects as a rule, and even moreso when they come from already famous people in other profession: case in point, Raleigh Ritchie is the stage name for Jacob Anderson, who is most well-known for his role on Game Of Thrones. But what I often find with these projects is that they can feel undercooked in their artistic identity because they’re riding on a different wave of celebrity, and that’s kind of the vibe I got from his 2016 debut, which I’d slot into an odd mix of pop R&B with smatterings of U.K. hip-hop. I didn’t get much out of it - it had the weird feeling of pulling from so many other sources that its ‘uniqueness’ felt insubstantial - but maybe his follow-up would hit more? Unfortunately, not at all - in fact, I’d argue Andy is considerably worse than his debut across the board, and let’s start in its composition and sound. The first thought that came to mind was ‘ah, this is what AJR would sound like if they were British, black, and discovered a bass frequency’, but what it reminds me more of is Bazzi’s cheap-sounding percussion matched with wonky arrangements full of classical strings and horns. But despite the fractured production, I remember liking Bazzi more than a lot of folks because despite it all, the songs were short and had just enough glistening hook to hold together. Raleign Ritchie, meanwhile, is trying to carry the majority these songs with a flat baritone in his lower register where he just doesn’t have the charisma nor presence in the mix, and yet when you have songs like ‘Squares’ where he proves he can sing, they warp his voice all throughout the hook with all these glassy, gummy effects that not only clash hideously with the arranged elements, but make all of these songs feel misshapen. Now I thought maybe that was the point - the album is very downbeat, depressed, a wallow in sullen angst and anxiety, maybe all the terrible synth mixing, awkward sample choices, and out of nowhere pitch-shifting in both breakdowns and chipmunk vocals is intensifying ugliness compared to a brighter, more classically happy world. And I can argue there’s some of that, but there’s also three big problems: a.) the mixing is almost distractingly ugly and I’m left thinking the point could have been made just on the content and maybe delivery versus an elegant arrangement; b.) it happens on more straightforward songs not attempting the juxtaposition, especially the final two; and c.) you still have to buy into Ritchie as compelling, and from his monotonous delivery to the writing, he’s just not. For one, you get lines like ‘the hater inside is the Vader of shade’ or ‘let’s be squares in a round world’, but that’s just corny - the ugly side comes on how he wishes he could have been part of the 27 club, or the sadboi wallow on the song of the same name, or how awkwardly performative so much of the writing feels, especially opposite this production where intimacy is constantly undercut; I get depression and looking inwards, my favourite album thus far in 2020 is emo, but there’s not much in the way of detail or self-discovery beyond of a lot of woozy self-loathing intending to alienate the audience, and both ‘STFU’ and ‘Shadow’ feel really undercooked in pushing back those demons. As a whole, I get the potency that comes with celebrity vulnerability, and with a very spare piece like ‘Structure’, I hear where this could work… but man, this execution is dire. light 4/10

Paysage d’Hiver - Im Wald - This is a project that’s been long-in-coming throughout most of the year when it comes to black metal, and deserves a bit of an explanation. So, Paysage d’Hiver is the sort of long-running, very lo-fi atmospheric black metal project that really has just one consistent theme: the frigid, inhospitable nature of winter. It could almost feel like a gimmick in juxtaposing the field recordings and ambient textures of frigid, howling wind alongside some exceedingly rough recordings of black metal… but I’d be damned if it doesn’t occasionally work. The most impressive run started with the self-titled project in 1999 and continued to Winterkaelte in 2001, but since then the output has been sporadic and it hasn’t always clicked - the greater ambience of Nacht and the sharper immediacy of Das Tor didn’t quite nail the same implacable menace. And I’ll admit I was about to disregard this on its frustrating release tactic alone: a sparely distributed USB stick that that sold out near immediately, only got online in patches, and now has been formally released six months later in the middle of summer. And while this is now being billed as the first proper Paysage d’Hiver album with previous projects as ‘demos’… well, at this point you know what you’re getting: the guitars will surge in haunted lo-fi waves in between frigid field recordings, the blastbeats will roil with the few sparks of higher fidelity drums breaking through the cacophony, and whatever guttural, barely audible lyrics we get when translated wlll all focus on the primordial wildland that it is the depths of winter and how its infinite inevitability parallels the human condition. And… well, I wish there was more to say to put this over the top, but across its two hour runtime, I’m not sure there is, mostly as it seems like whenever new instrumental elements with cleaner pickups are integrated they struggle to blend effectively. At best, you get the violin cutting against the fuzz, occasionally some of the keys sound alright, but at worst you get baritone backing vocals that clip against it in wonky ways. I get wanting to do a bit more for a proper album this time, but when you factor in how so much any groove is drowned out and how distinctive shifts in melody will get swallowed by the production, it’s hard to ignore the bloat on a project that can lack more dimensionality. Still potent and it’s got its moments, but it’s not better than the self-titled or Winterkaelte, which remain the strongest in this now deeply carved niche. 7/10

Special Interest - The Passion Of - Okay, this was a pretty intriguing act to find randomly on Pitchfork in the past week. For those not aware, Special Interest is a glam punk / no wave act out of New Orleans, ramming together squealing guitars, shuddering bass, fractured percussion on both drums and drum machines, and raw, howled punk vocals from frontwoman Ali Logout that have an odd sort of magnetism through warped instability and a targeted political edge in bringing a distinctively black and queer energy to the sexually charged scene - or really just giving voice to roots that have always been there but often ignored or silenced. Now I’ll say their short debut Spiraling didn’t really impress me - the compositions didn’t quite come together, the sloganeering felt a little undercooked, you could tell they were still getting a firmer handle on atmosphere and overall approach, so framing this album as a partial sequel with noticeable references did seem a bit questionable… but at the same time, it’s a good springboard into a great album, because this is an improvement across the board from that debut. I’m still not quite crazy about how some of the vocals can sound buried - and Logout’s punk brattiness on a couple songs might fit the content but just didn’t always click - and I do question ending the album on ‘With Love’ instead of the much stronger ‘Street Pulse Beat’, but otherwise this is the right kind of amplification. The percussion is thicker and pulse-pounding, borderline techno in its gummy metallic punch, the bass grooves are richer and more defined, the guitars squeal and sputter but can also seethe and more of that texture, and the content splits the difference between creative vivacious sexuality and pointed social commentary on its stifling by culture at large. And I appreciate how ‘Homogenized Milk’ drills into the underlying insecurity and degradation of culture that comes with gentrification, the reinforcement of poverty’s entrapment on ‘All Tomorrow’s Carry’, and how ‘With Love’ not only channels survival, but revolutionary freedom and the fruits of that labour - you don’t get songs like ‘Head’ or ‘A Depravity Such As This’ without that underlying context, and that’s the point. Again, I want to stress how raw a project like this feels, but in a similar lane to an act like Algiers, I see tremendous potential and I’d like to see what greater refinement and a bit more focus brings, so… light 8/10, you’ll want to get on board now.

Jessie Ware - What’s Your Pleasure? - I’ll be very honest: up until this got requested, I had little reason to care about Jessie Ware. I’ve heard her in a few scattered guest appearances - most notably when she showed up as one of the tolerable elements on the first SBTRKT album - but outside of a really good voice and pretty tasteful arrangements, her material didn’t really rise out of the mass of indie, R&B/soul-influenced borderline sophistipop in that era. And up until this project apparently blew a lot of critic’s minds, I had no reason to expect anything changed, so after a quick, pleasant but kind of underwhelming relisten through her albums, I came to this… and do any of you remember when I covered Weyes Blood last year and I highlighted how seemingly out of nowhere critics pick the moment to hop onboard an artist’s hype train to the point where it’s almost oversold? Yeah, that’s a bit of the vibe I’m getting with this Jessie Ware album: it’s more accessible courtesy of the more lush, retro-disco tones blended with mature, sophistipop poise, tasteful and frequently likable… but I’m not loving this as much as I would like, and the parallel that came to mind immediately was that last Robyn album from 2018, another project I thought was good, but also very backwards-looking and safe and a less little impactful than it could be. Part of the problem is that half the disco on this album is more 70s inspired - lush strings, organic percussion, more soulful backing vocals, all of which compliment her delivery very well… and then there’s 80s disco, which is sharper, more synth-driven, less organic, and a fair bit cooler as a whole. And ‘coolness’ is something I couldn’t ignore with this project, because the pop I tend to love isn’t cool - or if it is there’s more organic soul and texture to it than just playing coy. And the proof of that comes in the content of the songs I like here: there’s at least a chance of a risk or something at stake, like on ‘In Your Eyes’ or the darker concerns of ‘The Kill’, or even ‘Spotlight’ in how much it tries to preserve a moment - for an album that in the writing becomes exceedingly one-dimensional, any crack in the veneer is interesting. And maybe it’s just fortuitous timing that I’m covering this alongside Special Interest, which is absolutely music that references the truth of disco and its origin AND fucks, but in contrast this feels more like dreamy fantasy - and that’s something I hate to say when you have BADBADNOTGOOD on production with basslines this good, but go to a song like ‘Ooh La La’ or ‘Read My Lips’ and say otherwise. But okay, that’s not really fair, why not just treat it as cool, sexy escapism - it’s flighty, but that’s the point, and I hear the appeal in how expensive and lush, and dance-ready it is - but not only does it pale in comparison with the best sounds it’s lifting, it just feels thin, underwritten, and when it goes to the 80s-inspired cuts, not as flattering. Again, I do not think this is bad by any means, but this is a bit too safe to be my pleasure. light 7/10