Some programming notes to start:
- Foxy Digitalis will be on hiatus from October 1 through October 17. It will return on the 18th.
- New Songs of Our Lives episodes will continue every Tuesday, though.
Why? The main reason is that I have a solo exhibition called Lost Waters opening in Tulsa on October 11 and will be completely swamped with that to start the month. If you are in town that evening, please come by! If you are going to be passing through Tulsa between October 11 and November 10, get in touch and someone (probably me) can meet you at the gallery and give you a private viewing.
If you would like to support my work on these projects, consider subscribing to The Jewel Garden or signing up for the Foxy Digitalis Patreon.
Now here’s some new music to dig into:
Leila Bordreuil 1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire (Hanson)
The opening minutes of “1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire” aren’t preparation for the hellstorm Leila Bordreuil’s about to unleash. Gentle oscillations and sound samples from a VHS tape hum with restrained tension. Harmonics begin to sing like distant live wires inching closer sending an electric hum into the air. Once all the blocks collapse, distorted, angular washes suck all the oxygen from the room. Cello convulsions spew more fire, upping the intensity further. It’s full speed until the wall finally emerges, and then we’re stuck in this exhalation that slowly breathes life back into our lungs. Incredible. And that’s only the A-Side! On the flip, Bordreuil ghosts into multiple dimensions, stretching the limits of sound from that same VHS tape. Resonant drones gloss over charred, splintered frameworks, a sonorous cocoon with no sharp edges. Other parts feel more familiar, parts of us pulled out through sorcery and built into phantom casts and blackout memories; heartbreak and horror distilled into sonic glass. This is among my favorite albums of 2024.
Hair and Space Museum Human Presence (Beacon Sound)
Blurred, electronic drones sing wordless paeans from beyond. Lamentations pour down from the sky in resonant waves, a harmonic portal to spaces beyond vision. It’s enveloping and focused, voices and synthesizers expanding into a warm mass. These sonic dreams are utterly electric. Arpeggiations hum methodically to create elegiac patterns in the space-time continuum, like secret siren messages echoing through the darkness between stars. This is expansive music teeming with cascading melodies layered and blended into infinite, morphing dimensions.
Patrick Shiroishi Glass House (Otherly Love)
I’m fully convinced Patrick Shiroishi can do anything. Glass House is a departure, musically, and an invitation into this full, fragile world. Beauty is embedded in the soft-worn textures and reverberant holler. Even with plenty of saxophone staining all corners of this sonic map, Glass House isn’t a horn record. Lithe drones echo underneath a familiar, chaotic world. Exhales come in buoyant rhythms while we crowd to the back, still keeping the faded neon melodies at arm’s length. A requiem will come and midnight never forgets, this time in the form of emotive piano expositions with a melancholic sting. The sun always rises, though, with cinematic urgency in gilded string arrangements plastered with illuminated arpeggiations, alive and still singing. Shiroishi keeps making essential records, but this may be the most potent marker yet.
JPW Raw Action On Route (Fort Lowell)
There’s a call being broadcast from beyond the cosmos, hypnotizing our focus into the deepest reaches of space. Hazy memories snake through inner starfields like a mantra beckoning us to go back to reality. JPW’s voice crackles at the crests of slinking guitar leads, all with a wry smile buried in resonant hollows. Simple rhythms underscore the melancholy as if our hearts beat in unison across different stories in different times. Raw Action On Route sings in space-age shadows, adrift on lackadaisical waves while hanging heavy in the golden gravitational pull of future dreams.
Laila Sakini Like a Gun (Futura Resistenza)
“Like a Gun” is one of Laila Sakini’s earliest solo works, newly reissued on 7″ by Futura Resistenza. Mutatated digital timbres wrap around looping melodies of stilted electronics and broken voice notes. It’s like an unearthed relic from a distant galaxy. This is music that is simultaneously futurist and ancient. Its underlying abrasiveness is welcoming, making the world it inhabits feel even more real. Sakini crafts cutting moments from small tonic pieces, fusing detritus into aural magic. Glassine guitar modes flicker and search on “Life out Here is Changing” for something solid to hold onto, for permanence in fleeting moments. Musically, each element is delicate, but once Sakini fuses it all together it cuts so deep.
Chandra Shukla Äkäsh आकाश (Ash International)
There is so much to hear on Chandra Shukla’s latest solo album. Fusing acoustic and electric sitar with various electronics and a Buchla 100 modular system, he creates shapeshifting soundworlds. Glassine tones fold into themselves, casting bright, lucid drones across the landscape. There’s a brightness in the sitar timbres, a hypnotic contrast against the shadow spaces surrounding them. Each passage is dotted with small sonic details that combine to expand the overall scope of this work. Resonant and spacious, Äkäsh remains grounded with massive bass squalls grinding out solid foundations at the music’s core. An incredible album from start to finish.
dogs versus shadows Hollow Headaches (Third Kind)
Hollow Headaches makes me feel disoriented, like I’m in a spinning room and the only way out is some secret passage I don’t know about. That sounds awful, at least as a reality goes, but in sonic form it’s absolutely enthralling. Minimalist, stolid rhythms pound out Morse code threats, sometimes plodding, sometimes blitzkrieg so that various synthetic forms can blithely float toward the void. Catharsis collapses in wailing sirens, bleeding at the seams to let melodic mantras flow back into the soil. On these 14 tracks, anything seems possible while everything gets destroyed. Drones break into pointillist aural shrapnel. Skycast sequences fall to the ground, drowning themselves within aqueous caverns. It’s all in the dizzying confines and surreal allure of Hollow Headaches.
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Nice! New Chandra and Patrick, and new artists to discover. Excited to dive into all these.