Now Listening: Black Decelerant, Lara Sarkissian, Darlynn, Geier aus Stahl, Hotspring
Meditative jazz textures, filmic soundscapes, sunny vocal-led house music, funky machine music, ambient-ish songwriting with dub sensibility.
Black Decelerant – Reflections Vol. 2: Black Decelerant (RVNG Intl. 2024)
After numerous listens, totally rapt, I realized how fitting this record's title is. Black because it's two Black artists making art about Black experience: “a kind of inner-self realization,” to quote track four, "seven ½"; Decelerant because the record seems to slow time itself. The second in a new series from RVNG Intl. showcasing contemporary artists collaborating together, Black Decelerant are neo-soul composer Khari Lucas, aka Contour, from Charleston, S.C., and outer-realm hip-hop producer Omari Jazz, from Portland, Ore. Though both artists overlap stylistically—and collaborated on Contour's 2022 LP Onwards!—Black Decelerant sounds altogether unlike either artist's solo recordings. Beats are nonexistent, traded out for meditative jazz textures that move like ripples in water. Whispers of digital hesitance and sample manipulation, glitchy in style but subtle in effect, enmesh with strings, horns, and synth tones unfurling with elliptical beauty. A through-line: the album was mastered by Stephan Mathieu, whose abstract, deconstructed computer music from the ‘00s could be one of its predecessors. There is potency in stillness; Black Decelerant shows us the way.
trevordknapp
Lara Sarkissian – Born of the Sea (Pop Can Records + Lower Grand Tapes 2024)
What I love most about Los Angeles-based artist Lara Sarkissian's new EP is that it defies categorization. For her first solo release in five years, Sarkissian presents five remarkably filmic soundscapes, each track telling a story in miniature. "Spirit as Fire" burns slowly with moody tension; "Ages Pass, No Tidings Come" melds Eastern drums with galloping breaks; "Flow Serene" sounds like its title. What unites them all is Sarkissian's way with percussion: light as a feather and heavy as a really heavy thing, all at once. Drums, basslines, and harmonics are interwoven with precision, each taking up just the right amount of space. And so it makes perfect sense that on "DBM," Sarkissian collaborated with veteran British musician Mark Van Hoen (aka Locust; formerly in Seefeel, Scala, more), whose corroded-but-beautiful drum tone has, for over 30 years, existed in a world all its own. At less than a half-hour long, the record is over in a flash—perhaps an LP will come next.
Martyn Pepperell
Darlynn – Like a Summer (NO BIAS 2024)
When I'm with you, you're all I need / You're the air I breathe, goes the refrain. By the time this is published, I'll have had these lyrics stuck in my head for weeks. This is "Like a Summer," the new single from Oakland duo Darlynn: Daria Lourd, aka Bored Lord, on production duty, and her partner, Jaelynn Walls, on vocals. True to its title, it's a bright, sunny, and warm blast of pure, unadulterated house music. What elevates it to ecstatic anthem status is Walls' voice: the way it soars and shimmers; the way their vocals sound just like the heartfelt love the lyrics profess. In proper throwback fashion, a suite of remixes are included, like on a CD single from 1996: NO BIAS honchos RITCHRD and Bastiengoat turn out hyper-rave neo-trance banger and nervous choppy breaks versions, respectively; Introspekt goes low-slung garage; Lourd herself offers a cut-up vocal dub and a half-time downtempo redux. Every day with you is like a summer / I don't want the sun to ever set…
silversound
Geier aus Stahl – Strapazen und Genesung (Knekelhuis 2022)
Rarely is icy, clinical, and detached machine music as categorically funky as this. Call it "minimal synth," "cold wave," or "minimal wave," after Veronica Vasicka's record label of the same name, this particular style of music originated in the early '80s when disaffected European youths traded post-punk guitars for synthesizers. Geier aus Stahl is Rotterdam-based artist Leonard Prochazka, and though this record is rooted in this vintage style, it sounds extraordinarily fresh. Listen to "Wohin," with its snake-charmer synth tone and hypnotic rhythm, or "Geschichten aus dem Narrenkasten," a swirl of dark aggression and half-time industrial drums: a throwback record this is not. Interspersed between dancier cuts are textural pieces, like "Zeitglas," the final track, which builds a stark groove out of nervous abstraction. And though the mood is gloomy overall—some might call it "goth"—it's never overbearing, and is even catchy and vibrant in its own way. Creative DJs and adventurous listeners should listen closely.
polipolaritaet
Hotspring – Apodelia (Mood Hut 2024)
Come June, or July, or maybe August, when you go to the market and you find perfect farm tomatoes mottled like red dwarf stars, and you slice them open and the juice runs out and you eat them with butter and salt on crusty bread and you thank God you're alive to experience joy like this—that's how you know summer has really arrived. And this record, by Canadian artist Hotspring on mystical Vancouver label Mood Hut, sounds like those tomatoes taste. It sounds like summer: the hot days, the warm nights, that shimmering orange evening glow. If pressed, I'd describe this record as "contemporary ambient-ish songwriting with sparkling guitar and dub sensibility," but that, I think, would miss the forest for the trees a little bit. Instead, just give it a spin, sink into it, and let it float on. It will treat you in kind. Best of all, you can listen all year long, anytime you need. Not like those tomatoes—alas.
JDIGZ
