Today’s Track: Machinedrum (feat. Mick Jenkins & Jesse Boykins III) – ‘Weary’

June 4, 2024 — Leave a comment

When I had more free time, I posted each day and it never grew weary. New post time!

Pictured: Travis Stewart (aka Machinedrum) in an “Artist Tips” article photoshoot (2019) (Photo via XLR8.com)

A warm welcome to you – music lover – if you are new to One Track At A Time, where we broaden our horizons by streaming songs of all styles and sizes. I am Jacob Braybrooke and it was previously my pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day, but adult responsibilities are now in the way. Fear not, as I still have a small slab of leisure to post something special. Today, I am going to tell you about an excellent new release by a North Carolina-based electronic producer who goes by the name of Machinedrum. This is one of many monikers used by Travis Stewart, who fell in love with IDM and Glitch Hop sounds in the 2000’s. Syndrome and TStewart are two of his other aliases. He is also 1/2 of Sepalcure, 1/2 of JETS and 1/2 of Dream Continuum alongside Om Unit. His list of production credits and guest features are second to none – having worked with (*deep breath*) Flohio, Tkay Maidza, Freddie Gibbs, Sub Focus, Dawn Richard, Mykki Blanco and more. ‘3FOR82’ is his new LP out on Ninja Tune (The home of acts like Bicep, Yaeji and Park Hye Jin). Themed around childhood, Stewart made a unique request to his collaborators by asking them to write their segments as if they were writing to their younger selves. Some of his beats on the 12-track drum ‘n’ bass adventure were even lifted from some of his oldest teenager experiments, resulting in a low-quality fizz that artfully acknowledges the insecurities and inexperience that comes with being younger. One of the most ballsy experiments is the Hip Hop-oriented track ‘Weary’. Let’s give that record a spin below.

Stewart’s follow-up LP to 2020’s critically acclaimed album ‘A View Of U’ was crafted during a pilgrimage to Joshua Tree (a national park in California) and it finds him tapping into his network to recruit eclectic artists like Tinashe, Duckwrth, Topaz Jones, Deem Spencer and Aja Monet into his ranks as guest vocalists on the record. He explains, “I’ve been to Joshua Tree many times and I’ve always felt a great sense of clarity every time I visit“, in a press statement, adding, “and I knew that I should, at some point in my life, go out there to work on something creatively” to further establish the central theme of reconnecting with adolescence and harnessing nostalgia into your adult brand on the album. ‘Weary‘, which features rapper Mick Jenkins and Jamaican-born producer Jesse Boykins III as collaborators, is the perfect example of using childhood influences to kick a boost to a present product because it sounds so reminiscent of melodic and sample-driven 90’s Hip Hop records by artists such as The Jungle Brothers and Missy Elliot while maintaining a soft, futuristic Glitch element. A chopped drum beat kicks us off, reminiscent of a heavy Bhangra beat, before an arrangement containing a stretched vocal sample and a propulsive bass riff elevates the tension to another level. Fast and politically charged lyrics encouraging healing for people of disadvantaged, crime-ridden backgrounds are relentlessly recited at this stage, before a more soulful assortment of tender strings add a more hopeful element in the next verse. The chorus is more akin to a Thundercat or Blood Orange track due to the soulful vocal delivery by Boykins, but the momentum of the Hip Hop backing beat is still prominent due to the pace at which the framework of the melodic bass and the sharp drum rhythms are exposed. The sequencing by Machinedrum is, perhaps, the star of the show in this jam because the chopped element of the drums and samples add a specific seethe to proceedings. The slightly wonky rhythms veer noticeably into Hyper-Pop and Trap territory due to their irregular shaping, but the contorting production style keeps the foot on the gas for the connective tissue of Hip-Hop and Neo-Soul combined with electronic sounds. It all feels consistent enough, overall, without feeling too breezy as to dilute the aggressive edge of its impact. To conclude, ‘Weary‘ is a deeper cut on the album that you might read less coverage pushing as opposed to singles like ‘Rise’, but its a tough textbook example of twisting various elements of your production to meet your own needs while keeping your sound identifiable. A master of bending influences to his will, Machinedrum thrives in bringing the 90’s through the doors to modern clubs and encouraging you to make the past count by bridging the self-doubt of those times into a more motivated future.

Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘3FOR82’ (LP) (Available to buy or stream from May 24th, 2024) (via Ninja Tune)

That’s all for today! I want to say an enormous thank you for spending your time and attention with me. I will be back in a few days time with another new post regarding a Lo-Fi and Instrumental Rock singer-songwriter from an artist based in Brooklyn who has been releasing various projects throughout 2024 to celebrate his 20th anniversary of his music career since 2004. He was the founder of the Bad Channels Records label.

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New Album Release Fridays: Max Cooper – ‘Exotic Contents’

March 25, 2022 — Leave a comment

Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Unspoken Words’ (LP/Album) (Released on March 25th, 2022) (via Mesh Records)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for you to get invested in yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Facing stiff competition this week from the likes of Ibibio Sound Machine, Young Prisms and Aldous Harding is Max Cooper, who earns the ‘New Album Release Fridays’ spot on the blog for his sixth studio album – ‘Unspoken Words’ – that he’s released today via Mesh Records. One for fans of ambitious experimental electronic composers like Phillip Glass or Jon Hopkins, Max Cooper is a London-based IDM, Electronica and Techno producer who takes his recordings to an audio-visual level. He’s received positive write-up’s from publications like Clash, and he has released a multitude of highly produced, emotive records for labels like the London-based FIELDS label and German label Traum Schallplatten. He has also remixed an exhausting list of artists including Hot Chip, Hiatus, Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds, Guy Andrews, FC Kahuna, Michael Nyman, Jim Wallis, Henry Green and Stephan Bodzin over the years too. I read an article all about ‘Unspoken Words’ on Creative Review recently, and it sounded very interesting. For his latest project, Max Cooper has been exploring the difficulties of communicating with words to articulate your emotions, and the music is being accompanied by the Blu-Ray release of 13 short films – to represent each track on the record and serve as a meta-narrative to inform his work. Cooper will also be performing at Cambridge’s The Junction on April 20th. Check out Xander Steenburge’s video for ‘Exotic Contents’.

Xander Steenburge is a digital specialist who specializes in machine learning, who draws on the writings of 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein for the short film of ‘Exotic Contents’. These texts were fed to an AI system, which churned out the hypnotic visuals for the video. Talking about his collaboration with Steenburge, Cooper says, “It’s interesting for me to see the incomprehensible philosophical language interpreted visually like this, full of symbolism and the boundaries between language, our selves, the world, broken down into flowing abstraction. I haven’t really taken it all in yet, I feel like there’s more to discover in it that I can appreciate”, in his own words. Going back to the music itself, ‘Exotic Contents’ may feel like a subtle departure from the more club-oriented roots of his Techno-oriented work because he dips his toes into a collage-style suite of ambient and industrial sounds, where he uses an interpretation of words for an abstract soundscape where a half-time drum and bass format collides with the sharpness of his sound design. The beats scatter and break to an assortment of high-pitched frequencies, to the point where the production feels polished but not massively excessive. It carries the mood of a relief of stress or tension as a whole, and it definitely feels cathartic in the way that squelching breakbeats and the harsher, more dissonant Drums mimic the alleviation of a surging intensity by getting the chaos out of its system, in an ironic figure of speech. My main concern is that the music may not really communicate its ideas and themes clearly without any of the visual elements to help, and it may come across as challenging or tricky to initially grasp if you’re going into the album as a purely audio experience blind. Aside from that little question, it combines the clever pacing of IDM’s traditional production with a more intimate and emotionally driven core in intriguing and expansive ways – and the distance may not feel quite so exotic after all.

Pictured: Max Cooper in a podcast recording session for Sound Motives (2019) (Photo via SoundMotives.net)

That brings us to the end of the page for another day! Thank you for continuing to support the site, and I will be back tomorrow to present my review for the newest comeback single by a Los Angeles-based rock band who are famous for albums like 2006’s ‘Stadium Arcadium’, 2002’s ‘By The Way’ and 1999’s ‘Californiacation’. They have won six Grammy’s and they just received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

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Today’s Track: Maylee Todd – ‘Show Me’

March 10, 2022 — Leave a comment

Pictured: Toronto’s Maylee Todd in a recent photoshoot to promote ‘Maloo’ (2022) (Photo via TheStar.com)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and the time has arrived for me to guide you through yet another exciting daily track on the blog from a very brave and ambitious singer-songwriter, given how it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! ‘Brave’ and ‘Ambitious’ are just two words that describe the Toronto-based Art Pop musician Maylee Todd, who is new to this young writer’s eardrums, who has experimented with instruments as obscure as the Paraguayan Harp and the Tenori-on in her career since she began recording material in the 00’s. Todd has played across numerous festivals including the Crossover Jazz Fest and the Billboard Live Stage, she has performed alongside the likes of Janelle Monae, The Budos Band, Aloe Blacc and Thundercat on stage throughout the years, and she contributed her vocals to Bob Wiseman’s collaborative LP release ‘Giuletta Masina At The Oscars Crying’ in 2012. Todd was also the creator of Virtual Womb, a practical art exhibition where the audience walks through an enlarged CGI image of a Vagina and lies on the floor, awaiting the vibrant projections that float across on the ceiling, in 2017. Maylee Todd’s music seems just as visual and provoking, as a wide assortment of Indie Pop, Prog Jazz, Psych Funk, Bossa Nova and more have been incorporated into the sounds of her musical projects. Her latest full-length album – ‘Maloo’ – was released on March 4th via Stones Throw Records – an eclectic Funk, Jazz and Soul specialist label based in Los Angeles, California that has introduced several amazing artists like MNDSGN, John Carroll Kirby and Kiefer to my streaming libraries throughout the last few years of my work. Let’s give ‘Show Me’ a listen below.

To produce her latest artsy-craftsy LP project, Maylee Todd spent a lot of time researching VR throughout the pandemic, which led to some ideas on utopian, futuristic technology. The result is ‘Maloo’, a fictional character that she has designed in virtual reality that she created while working on the story and setting of a prototype VR video game, as she learned the skills of 3D modelling and body tracking to bring her vision to life. Dubbed as ‘The Age Of Energy’, a virtual space where the character is based, the concept album and the ‘Maloo’ avatar are influenced by intimate, personal origins. As Todd writes, “We participate in the digital landscape and our digital life has real-life implications”, in her press statement. Musically, she wrote and recorded ‘Show Me’ as the introductory single with the Yamaha Tenori-on – a discontinued electronic sequencer that was built by Toshio Iwai, a Japanese interactive media and installation artist. Her single begins with some glitched keyboard chords that convey visuals of futuristic cyberspace and post-modern technology immediately. The bass grooves grow deeper as her downtempo vocals become more hypnotic, and she allures you in to ‘Show Me’ with a noticeably Soulful skew that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Sly & The Family Stone or a Toro Y Moi record in it’s nostalgic, but free-form, nature. Lyrics like “Watch the birds, take their form/Icy hands, blood is warm” complement the peaceful and tranquil vibes, while the minimalist chorus of “Show me, your heart” is deep and intimate in it’s Lo-Fi textures. ‘Maloo’ may be conceptually driven and visually influenced at large, but the single is accessible enough to a fairly mainstream because it feels simple yet not simplistic. I also really admire the work that Todd has put into ‘giving the project her all’ by focusing on how the audio-visual aspects of the piece were written in tandem with her vocals. It reminds me of Bjork and St. Vincent, who are undoubtedly driven artists that have similar characteristics of boldness and communicating an idea through all aspects of the media at their disposal. In conclusion, it seems clear that Maylee Todd has a lot more to ‘Show Me’ – and I look forwards to seeing the rest of it.

Pictured: Vinyl Copy of ‘Maloo’ (LP/Album) (Released on March 4th, 2022) (via Stones Throw Records)

(That brings us to the end of the page for another day! Thank you very much for reading what I had to say about Maylee Todd for a few moments today, and I’ll be back tomorrow to guide you through a sneek peek at one of the weekend’s notable and new album releases. This week’s post involves the debut LP release from an emerging Alternative Rock 4-piece Post-Rock band who have been supported by the daytime playlist of BBC Radio 6 Music and they have been praised by NME. If you’re a fan of hard rock outfits such as Coach Party and Kid Kapichi – you’re going to enjoy it!

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New Album Release Fridays: Trentemøller – ‘All Too Soon’

February 11, 2022 — Leave a comment

Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Memoria’ (LP) (Released on February 11th, 2022) (via In My Room Records)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time to get through the last few hours of your tiresome working week with the aid of yet another daily track of the blog of the ‘New Album Release Fridays’ variety, given how it has always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of new music every day! One of today’s most eventful album releases comes from Trentemoller, a Danish film score creator, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Copenhagen, Denmark who has released lush compositions of a cinematic style for over 20 years now by drawing on elements such as Minimalism, Glitch, Dark Wave, Downtempo, Instrumental Hip-Hop, Synthwave, Post-Rock and more with productions that feel eerie and progressive for his grounded discography. Trentemoller started making music in the 90’s as a part of different Indie Rock projects and he has since founded his own label – In My Room Records. He also headlined the Orange Stage at Roskilde Festival in 2009 with a set designed by his close friend and touring drummer Henrik Vibskov, a night that saw him playing in front of 60,000 people with innovative visuals to captivate them. Today, he is releasing his sixth full-length studio album – ‘Memoria’ – via his own label. This is the follow-up LP to 2019’s ‘Obverse’, a record that was nominated for IMPALA’s European Independent Album Of The Year award of that same year and it also saw him collaborate with Warpaint’s Jenny Lee Linberg and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell. For one of his latest singles – ‘All Too Soon’ – he has reached out to his own girlfriend Lisbet Fritze for a glistening series of radiant backing vocals. Let’s give it a spin below.

Taking us through the narrative behind ‘All Too Soon’ on his own Bandcamp page, Trentemoller says, “All Too Soon examines ostensibly diametric relationships of light and dark, life and death, day and night, love and hate, while actually presenting them as dualistic, and symbiotic, influencing each other as they interrelate. What might appear to be a dispiriting take on our mortality could just as easily be interpreted as its acceptance being liberating”, in his own description. Beginning with a light acoustic guitar strum that becomes more intense and darkens the atmosphere before Fritze’s mysterious vocals kick in, who croons pained lyrics like “Have you ever fallen in/Into an inner void?” and “Do you feel like I do? Abandoned from it all” with an enigmatic presence, with a Trip Hop-influenced soundscape that morphs into a more glitched and distorted picture frame of a piece as the four minute duration of the track takes its time. Trentemoller complements the scattering Shoegaze opus of the chorus – with regretful lyrics like “We can’t live forever/If we could, we would” being sprawled all below percussive feedback stabs by Fritze – with sumptuous melodies of melancholic Drums and antagonized trails of reverb. Together, it makes up for an ethereal combination of psychedelic Dream Rock and textured Progressive Pop with a few vague lyrics like “Is a growing darkness/All you see?” creating a platform of intrigue. Through the means of collaborating with his girlfriend, Trentemoller toys with the idea of connections, with lyrics like “Is it day or night/Is it love or hate/Is it anything between?” that contrast each other and his instrumental work employs some warm percussion that counteracts the more cold, dry tones of the guitar and drums. Overall, ‘All Too Soon’ is a detailed and well-informed exploration of items that are bound together, yet they are opposite and he soundtracks these relations with his pivoting instrumentation and his emotive yet guarded lyricism that doesn’t reveal much in terms of laying out a direct meaning, with an underlayer of Pop that ensures that light is appropriately clashing with darkness throughout his soundscape.

Pictured: Anders Trentemøller in an official photoshoot for ‘Obverse’ (2019) (Photo by David Ampong/Waves.com)

That leaves me with nothing left to say other than to thank you for time and wish you well on your way to the weekend. ‘Scuzz Sundays’ will return in two days time for the usual throwback to the ‘trashy teen’ era of our lives, but I’ve also got some new music to share with you tomorrow that comes from an Indie Rock duo from the Isle Of Wight who have been all played over BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 6 Music since their debut single – ‘Chaise Lounge’ – went viral last year. They are shortlisted for BBC’s ‘Sound Of 2022’ poll and they began touring in the US in December as they keep finding success.

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Today’s Track: The Mushroom Herders – ‘Gainesville Square’

January 20, 2022 — Leave a comment

Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘HERE!’ (LP) (Released on December 18th, 2021) (via 2189610 Records DK)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, as per usual, and it’s time for us to invest just a little bit of time into yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! A self-described “North Georgia Cat” as per his Bandcamp profile, The Mushroom Herders is the underground indie rock project of singer-songwriter Christopher James Estrada, who has spent time in a few places like Colorado and Atlanta, but has always returned to his “original stomping grounds” of the Northern Georgia area. Introduced to the likes of Cypress Hill, The Offspring and AFI by his close brother at twelve years old, Estrada became enamored with the acoustic guitar and fell in love with genres like the 60’s Psych scene, the 70’s Punk scene and the late-80’s Alternative scene in his young adulthood. He likes to describe his music as “music for the common people” and says he thinks “It’s always been about inspiring others to feel the motivation to create their own world” when reflecting on his own work in recent times. He released his latest LP – ‘HERE’ – on 19th December, 2021 via 2189610 Records DK, a collection of recordings that he’s been producing and writing since 2016. After a few years, he re-discovered the rough recordings on a burned disc in his car and retrieved the files via his PC’s hard drive and, after feeling nostalgic about the length of time the unreleased material has been kicking about, he has decided to publish it for the world. I loved ‘Gainesville Square’ when I first heard it, which gets the music video treatment below.

“Gainesvile Square means a lot to me. There are stomping grounds for me. It’s wild. I first started performing it on the square out of convenience. It didn’t seem to bother anyone that I would play my loud, silly music here”, Estrada says about his productive live experience in the video’s description, adding, “Eventually, I started bringing out actual amplifiers and playing louder music, and even that didn’t seem to bother people, surprisingly. This allowed me to flourish creatively. It gave me an open space to try out weird, strange sounds in the public eye. It allowed me to really discover what I wanted to play and perform for people”, as he comments on the connection between the outdoor environment and musical influences of the track. Kicking off with a modulated vocal sample that progressively gets warped and just surrounds the listener with an atmospheric gloom reflective of the informality of the track’s title location, we soon get a driving drum loop that kicks into gear and raises the tempo with percussive handclaps. The vocals are screwed and chopped, providing a hazy and psychedelic 90’s backdrop for the delayed pedal effects to create a buoyant melody from. The lyrics are difficult to hear in the mix, but the soundscape is detailed with helicopter sound effects and drowsy backing beats that feel a little trippy, continuously adding more intensity to the layered melodies that each reflect the sprawling, open and public setting of the track’s title. A strange groove of playful keyboard riffs and hazy guitar loops is created as the buoyant Synth riffs and the glistening Keys merge together to provide an overall psychedelic shine of production that makes the leading hook of the chorus of “Just sitting around on Gainesville Square” feel very triumphant and not mundane as it may appear on paper, but it feels relaxed and calm because the tone of the rhythms are positive and high-spirited in the mood they evoke. The lyrics are simplistic yet very bright, with sequences like “There’s leaves on the ground, and leaves all around” that describe the scene in a catchy flow, while other lyrics feel more wide-eyed and observational in delivery, as “There’s cars and there’s people too, and there’s me and you” that address you in the second person tense and make you feel more believably absorbed into the scene. Overall, it becomes not only a track about finding cheer and joy in your current surroundings, but a light commentary on the philosophy between making music and where you perform it. By the sounds of it, it is also a location that I really want to visit.

Pictured: Cover Art for ‘Midnight Outings & Blacklight Showers’ (LP) (Released on August 16, 2011) (Self-Released)

That’s all for now! Thank you for checking out my latest post and giving ‘Gainesville Square’ a few minutes of your time, and I’ll be back tomorrow to celebrate one of the weekend’s most exciting album releases for ‘New Album Release Fridays’ as we mark the debut album release of a Leeds-based indie punk 4-piece who have admittedly featured on the blog a few times before, but there’s a huge air of anticipation about their first LP. They have been supported regularly by BBC Radio 6 Music for the past eighteen months and they are included on BBC’s ‘Sound Of 2022’ poll. I also got the chance to see this band perform live at The Portland Arms (Cambridge) in September.

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Today’s Track: The Spirit Of The Beehive – ‘I Suck The Devil’s C***k’

December 30, 2021 — Leave a comment

Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH’ (LP) (Released on April 9th, 2021) (via Saddle Creek Records)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and you’re tuned into the final part of my underrated underground series leading up to New Year’s Day as I deliver yet another daily track on the blog, because it has always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! ‘I Suck The Devil’s ****’ is a title as irreverent as they come, and one that I write about hesitantly due to the demonic implications of the name, however, this is the most suitable representation of ‘ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH’ – the latest album from the Pensylvania-based Prog Rock band The Spirit Of The Beehive – that we’re going to get. An insanely beautiful yet intensely difficult project to wrap your head around, the record reflects late-night paranoia music that is enigmatic and cryptic. It is also intimate without giving any significant details away, and that’s made it a favourite among the year-end lists of high-brow critics this year. Taking their name from a Spanish cinematic masterpiece released in 1973 with the same title, the band are signed up to Saddle Creek Records and boast Zack Schwartz among their lineup who honed his Vaporwave craft as a former member of Glocca Morra. A reclusive release that has gained universal acclaim this year – and one of my back-and-forth favourite listens of 2021 – ‘ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH’ is the band’s first album without the former drummer Pat Conaboy and rhythm guitarist Kyle Laganella who left the band in 2020. The second single – ‘I Suck The Devil’s ****’ – is a four-part song that essentially feels like four different singles sewn together through post-production trickery. The workout-in-hell themed music video was also helmed by a trio of different directors (Part 1 is by Ada Babar, Part 3 is by Documavision and Parts 2 and 4 by Noah Burke) that each unfold in four chapters along with the music recording. You will just have to see how it all fits together below.

In what initially feels like a labyrinth of a near 7-minute recording, the band notes, “It’s our take on ‘A day in the life’. A man, overworked and undervalued discovers a portal to another time and a place where he hears a familiar song on the radio. In the context of the record, this track specifically encapsulates the dread of required performance, ultimately leading to a freeing death”, in a joint press statement. As the band channel a multitude of influences including Post-Hardcore and Vaporwave among many others, the band deliver a lengthy ego death sentence that blurs the lines between homespun Lo-Fi Rock to mangled Dream-Pop to aggressive Post-Rock to dis-associative Ambient Pop – all while wrapped in a noise collage Shoegaze thread – to create a very psychedelic journey that takes listeners from upside-down textures to inside-out downbeat sounds. Through these ever-winding spirals of self-reflection, the group pull us from one realm of bizzare fantasy to another, while creating enough compelling rhythms and bold, if fairly obscured, textures that make up the highly experimental piece of twisted Psych-Rock and melodic bursts of Post-Rock that echo glimmering fragments of Tame Impala and Black Country, New Road among other diverse comparison points. There aren’t any particularly memorable lyrics, but there are multiple planes of eclectic instrumentation that underscore the more emotive qualities of lyrics like “Scared of needles, but not of everything” and “Another middle class dumb American, falling asleep” to a notably playful effect, and so the complete package is more enticing, lyrically, than the wonky title of the track may lead you to believe. The music, however, sounds just as mischievous – mixing up some ethereal guitar rock with peculiar tangents that keep you guessing what may come next as the trio continue to create unpredictable shifts in tone. At each point in this release, I would forgive you for thinking you were listening to a different track with each few beats skipped, but it is a testament to the band’s abilities to create something so captivating through playing with cohesion, as the track cycles through its chaotic vignettes to build to an acknowledgment of an insignificant fate of the lead character, if you will. If you have been on the fence about Spirit Of The Beehive at any point, this kind of rare recording will certainly help any listeners to decide to be on the right one.

Pictured: Zack Schwartz (Co-Lead Vocals/Lead Guitar/Samples), Rivka Ravede (Co-Lead Vocals/Bass Guitar/Percussion), Corey Wichlin (Keyboard/Rhythm Guitar/Backing Vocals), Kyle Laganella (Bass Guitar) and Pat Conaboy (Drums/Electronic Drum Kit/Backing Vocals) (in 2018) (Photo Credit: Natalie Piserchi and Isabel Liang)

That brings us to the end of a very interesting post. It was nice to deviate from my typical formula a little with this segmented single, and I thank you for joining me by reading the results. Tomorrow, we’ll be looking back at a mid-00’s winter Folk classic in the spirit of the New Year’s Eve and Christmas season. The single comes from a well-known and critically acclaimed Seattle-formed Alternative Folk band who took a hiatus between 2013 and 2016 when the frontman pursued an undergraduate degree.

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Today’s Track: Fasme – ‘ICI’

December 7, 2021 — Leave a comment

Pictured: Fasme (aka Tom Ferreira) playing a live DJ set at Gaîté Lyrique, Paris (2020) (Photo by Underscope TV)

Good Morning to you! You are reading the words of Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for some big room melancholy that comes courtesy of yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Said ‘big room melancholy’ is one niche that the Belfast-formed dance duo of Bicep (Matthew McBriar & Andrew Ferguson) have become a pair of unofficial kings of, scoring Best British Group and Best New Artist nominations at last year’s BRIT Awards for their concoction of Italo-inspired Electronica and multi-layered Breakbeat production. However, the duo have set a few new parameters for curatorial duties with the launch of their appropriately titled imprint label, Feel My Bicep. Their first signee is the Paris-born and Nantes-based experimental electronic dance music producer Tom Ferreira, who releases his music under the moniker of Fasme. Having caught the attention of the big-league’s Bicep when he released the ‘Stretched World’ EP last April, Bicep found ‘ICI’ on YouTube and so began playing Ferreira’s music in projects like a Friday Guest Mix for Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC Radio 6 Music and the duo’s own FMB radio podcast on Apple Music. Fasme has recently supported them on tour in October and he performed a live DJ set at Sarcus Festival in France in late September. Ferreira has said that “Fasme” is a nickname that his aunt gave him at her house during the summer one year. He takes his style from the Braindance, IDM and Techno Ambient scenes of the 00’s and he has named acts like RX 101, Binary Digit, James Shinra, David Harleydson and EOD as his influences. ‘ICI’ is taken from the new ‘Home’ EP which he released in late October via Feel My Bicep, of course. Check it out.

Bicep, as the co-managers of the Feel My Imprint indie EDM sub-label, writes that “his melodic sound is created on analog synths, evolving between Acid, Electro and Braindance” on the Bandcamp listing page for Ferreira’s recent ‘Home’ extended play, adding that Ferreira describes himself as “more of a live performer than a studio man” in the product’s description page. A track that reminds me of Aphex Twin’s ‘Druqks’ double album released in the early 00’s of misfit recordings with it’s set of minimalist Classical influences and Tin Man-esque Acid Jazz wiggling production that aims to conjure up some ‘Alien-like’ qualities overall, ‘ICI’ is a mid-tempo Trance serving that wants to provide a great example of why Fasme is a decent fit for Bicep’s Feel My Bicep label. Thankfully, this is a goal that Ferreira seems talented enough to succeed within, and ‘ICI’ has all the building blocks required to be in place to keep the festival crowds grinning, as well as feeling soft and melancholic enough to please those who would rather listen while tucked into their beds with their headphones at a good volume late at night because the chords never feel too overpowering and the distorted electronic Keys sounds never feel too harsh or aggressive for the scene either. It has it’s moments of melodicism with some moody chords that take a dark approach to the layered Lo-Fi production and some big emotive Synth hooks, as well as some mechanical electronic drum kit programming that gives the tone of the track a suitable uplift, but it never quite channels these sounds into an explosive track full of beat-driven sounds and plenty of ‘Bro-Step’ energy. Instead, it feels like a more pensive and contemplative wind-down for the end of a long night. A nebulous mix of acidic Synths, heartbroken Piano chords and neat, warm Bass stabs – ‘ICI’ is more concerned with multi-layered Synth loops and powerfully entrancing moments. Overall, ‘ICI’ is an impressive little recording that pulls off the fairly difficult task of making the Bicep-esque rave-ready despondency sound a tad more positively wistful.

Pictured: Fasme (aka Tom Ferreira) photographed for a wertn.com Q&A feature (2020) (Picture via Leviet.org)

That’s all for now! Thank you for checking out my latest post, and we’ll be counting down to Christmas with another festive-themed post featuring a track that left its mark on the niche in 2005. At the time, the track was written and performed by a Philadelphia-based indie rock band, but the project is now the solo work of multi-instrumentalist and producer Alec Ounsworth. The band appeared in the 2008 film ‘The Great Buck Howard’, and David Bowie was famously seen at some of their shows.

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New Album Release Fridays: Arca (feat. Planningtorock) – ‘Queer’

December 3, 2021 — Leave a comment

Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Kick iiii’ (LP) (Released on 3rd December, 2021) (via XL Recordings)

Good Morning to you! You are reading the words of Jacob Braybrooke and, for the final time until 2022 rolls around, it is time for us to take a deep dive into one of this weekend’s biggest new album releases, since it’s always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! It all comes down to this. As the curtain draws the year of exceptional new music to a close, we are left with a final notable release. Or two. Or three. Or – in the case of Venezeulan experimental pop producer Arca – four. Last summer, she released ‘Kick i’ to an interesting reception and this week, she has completed the ‘Kick’ quintet with the release of ‘Kick ii’, ‘Kick iii’, ‘Kick iiii’ and ‘Kick iiiii’ all on the same day via XL Recordings, boasting a total of 43 tracks of wild Glitch Pop experimentation. I loved her track ‘Time’ on the blog last year, but a follow-up single – ‘Mequetrefe’ – received a more negative reception from me, so it will be interesting to see where ‘Queer’ from ‘Kick iiii’ (featuring the Estonia-based English DJ Planningtorock) lands with me. The critics seem to be liking the ambitious bible of projects, however, with The Guardian writing, “A wild ride to the dark, daring side of Pop” in their four-star write up. The Times added, “Pop that’s a pleasure to be confused by” in their appraisal. I mostly know Arca, also a transgender icon, for her friendship and a few collaborations with the Icelandic role model Bjork. However, Arca has also produced work for Kanye West, Rosalia and FKA Twigs (Who famously used to date Robert Pattinson for quite a while, I believe). ‘Kick iiii’ also features Garbage’s Shirley Manson, Oliver Coates & No Bra. Give ‘Queer’ a whirl below.

Pitching the fourth part of her ‘Kick’ series of augmented records as “an entry in the sensual charge in the cycle; my own faith made into song, a posthuman celestial sparkle, psychosexual pulsewidth modulation, queering the void, abyss alchemically transmuted into a deconstruction of what is beautiful” in her partial LP’s product description, Arca continues to explore the themes of alienation from the inside and a bursting apart of old skin with the glitch-driven lead single from her ‘Kick iiii’ album – ‘Queer’. Built up to be an anthem that is celebrating courage in the face of prejudice and encouraging queer romance in all of its forms, this is a dramatically exploratory single that establishes Arca in the ilk of a ‘true artist’ like Kate Bush or David Bowie where commercial accessibility is primarily not a target and expression with an almost ‘alien’ quality, where traditionally catchy genre traits are simply disregarded in favour of a creative approach. Therefore, I can definitely see why this track may not play ever so well to casual listeners and it, even for me, was a little bit overwhelming to fully grasp on a first listen. It has a vague resemblance to the Eurovision flavour of Pop, however, that gives us somewhere to start with her. Set against the backdrop of a Witch House trap beat that has an air of Latin Hip-Hop about it, calling to my mind names like 100 Gecs and Bad Bunny anyways, Arca and Planningtorock (her actual name is Jam Rostram) exchange a series of Spanish and English lyrics between each other in a trade, with anthemic lyrics like “Tears will shower in my time/Like a queer life/Queer fire” as the Synthpop textures and the science fiction soundtrack feel of the music dives along at a brisk pace that doesn’t ever quite let up entirely. Full of processed vocals and some more interchangeable genre influences that are buried underneath the broad instrumentals, ‘Queer’ finds itself preoccupied with swelling Synth arrangements and rattling percussive arrangements that each function as a mimicry of non-heterosexual forms of love in their diverse nature. The opening of the track is a highlight for me, where a screeching sequence of samples almost act as haunting strings that get the beats off to an unrelented start. Overall, while I can certainly agree that ‘Queer’ is a lot to take in at once and it takes some hard work to get the most out of, I felt rewarded by the emotive soundscape that becomes more vibrant and expansive in scope with my repeated listening. I can also appreciate the thought that goes into the visual aspects of her art too. A tsunami of seismic material.

Pictured: Arca in an official photoshoot to promote the release of “Kick i” (2020) (Photo Credit: Hart Leshkina)

As aforementioned, Arca has gained a little bit of attention from my blog before. If you found ‘Queer’ to be interesting, you can see what I made of ‘Time’ here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2020/05/28/todays-track-arca-time/. You can also gain your own opinion of ‘Mequetrefe’ by visiting my take on it here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2020/06/30/todays-track-arca-mequetrefe/

Pictured: Arca (Alejandra Ghersi) in a shot from the ‘Time’ music video (2020) (Photo Credit: Rolling Stone)

That’s all for now! Thank you for finding out what music that I had to share with you today, and we will be going back to our ‘Countdown To Christmas’ in glorious style tomorrow. Join me then for an in-depth look at a new holiday-themed album release by an American Acapella group from Arlington, Texas who won the third season of NBC’s ‘The Sing-Off’ in 2011 and they have won three Grammy awards following that time. If you are a fan of the three ‘Pitch Perfect’ movies, you may find it Aca-awesome.

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Today’s Track: Relaxer – ‘Narcissus By The Pool’

November 23, 2021 — Leave a comment

Pictured: Daniel Martin-McCormick in a Red Bull Studios Spotlight Session (2016) (Via RedBull.com)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and the time has come for you to slip into something more comfortable for your daily track on the blog, since it’s always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! A New York-based experimental electronic music producer, Daniel Martin McCormick has enjoyed a career that reads like a long list of small achievements. He’s also known for releasing specialist music under the alias of Ital, and he is known for his frequent collaborations with the fellow DJ Aurora Halal. He has also been a member of groups like Black Eyes and Mi Ami, and he is the co-founder of Climate Of Fear, as well as being the founder of Lovers Rock Recordings. In 2019, he established a new alias of Relaxer and he released ‘Coconut Grove’, an album which delivered something that felt more close to a pure Techno album than his earlier releases. The follow-up, 2021’s ‘Concealer’, is his first album to be released on Planet Mu in ten years. It drifts towards hyper digital sounds and it marks his return to using PC hardware. The album’s cover art, created by the NY-based graphic designer Bjorn Copeland, is an indication of his new album’s sound, which explores the sub-genres of Dark Ambient and Microhouse. McCormick notes that it reflects “this open, airy material squeezed and wrestled into a contorted shape, suspended in air with an empty center. That’s exactly how the album felt. In this sense, I wanted to take myself out of it, to let the materials bloom into their own shape, guided by my hand but not defined by my intellect or any market concerns”, in a press statement. Let’s check out ‘Narcissus By The Pool’ below.

McCormick has revealed that his latest LP was “made in a very private way” and he describes this process as being akin to “peering into materials – the materials defined the record”, adding, “Rather than making a record that’s about an emotion, or a political scenario, or the dance floor, or the empty dance floor, or any narrative, this record was about communicating with the materials and letting them speak with me” in his own press notes. Taking a mellow approach to proceedings on mid-album cut ‘Narcissus By The Pool’, McCormick takes influence from old-school 90’s Glitch and more forward-looking minimalist Techno. By disregarding traditional Dance music traits and the normal contexts of finicky textures and spacial tricks that characterize popular Industrial music, he creates a more detailed recording that is defined by how the music flows and the intimate textures that it creates on its own. Using a slightly acidic Synth line and a chiming Chiptune melody, McCormick creates something simple and effective that would not have felt out of place if it was originally released during the mid-2000’s. It is far from just a nostalgic throwback anthem, however, with some downtempo oddities in sound and a peak-time euphoria feeling that creates something that feels more firmly post-modern. In conclusion, this is a beautiful record that isn’t focused on big hooks and catchy melodies, so it falls into a bit of a niche. However, there’s absolutely nothing that is inherently wrong with that, as it feels diverse enough to appeal to different sub-sections of audiences, like those who study at their computer to the beats of Lo-Fi radio channels on YouTube and those who are likely to take things down a notch right before bedtime with their ear plugs tuned into a podcast like ‘Ambient Focus’ on the BBC Sounds app. Whatever the case, this is meticulous, very thoughtfully crafted music that is approached like a sculpture.

Pictured: Relaxer (Daniel Martin-McCormick) performing with Halal at Rewire Festival (2020) (via PR)

That leaves me with little left to say! Thank you for reading the blog today, and I’ll be back tomorrow to resume the ‘Countdown To Christmas’ this year. Our next entry is a cover version of ‘Frosty The Snowman’ which was released in 1993 by a pioneering Scottish Shoegaze outfit whose lineup featured the head boss of Bella Union Records.

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