Dwellings & Druss, by Ely Grey
One of the by-products of a life frittered away reading bad prose is a strongly held set of views on what constitutes bad prose. For example, few things make my teeth itch like someone or something being described as โaward-winningโ right out the gate, like itโs the most interesting detail conceivable. Even if most awards werenโt a racket, and crap, this behaviour would still be a cowed appeal to establishment authority over oneโs own powers of descriptive persuasion. Cut it out!
Alex Paxton, I learned swiftly on being presented with his second album ilolli-pop (Nonclassical), is award-winning. An Ivor Novello! Albeit their less glitzy Composer Awards. Which, whatever their overall merits, donโt feature a prize for getting your song played on the radio the most. So all is well. As for London-based Midlander Paxtonโs new album, itโs fantastically bananas free-jazz-orchestra maximalism that uses studio editing software to push itself into unmapped technicolour territory.
Paxtonโs primary instrument, the trombone, is given the floor at the end of ilolli-pop with โMouth Song, Take 1โ, a scratchy and fragile-toned solo piece lasting nearly eleven minutes. It could hardly be less like the albumโs first half, โilolli-popโ parts one to five, which are fantastical sound collages created from the playing of skilled performers, the Dreammusics Ensemble. Frazzled, fractionally intelligible voices bounce in and out of irate brass babel and woodwind that careens like a cartoon rollercoaster and gesticulates like an inflatable-armed Italian. John Zorn enlisted Paxton to write for his Arcana book series, and if Zorn had been alive in 1940 to soundtrack Fantasia, it might have been something like this.
Two further pieces for duos complete the album: โSometimes Voicesโ is Paxton on keyboards with percussionist James Larter, and its approach to collage veers away from the classical world towards mid-90s Boredoms. โCorn-Crack Dreamsโ pairs Paxton (on trombone) with a different drummer, the Lithuanian Dominykas Snarskis, for 150 seconds of unfathomable glitching chaos โ imagine a Rock In Opposition ลtomo Yoshihide, if you will. A release with as unique a vision as you might hear anywhere.
Adam Parkinsonโs first solo tape as Dane Law for a few years is decidedly minimalist, ingredient-wise, but again embraces digital technology to create sound art analogue humans could not. Blue Forty-Six, Blue Tapesโ latest sequentially titled release, is an unaccompanied acoustic guitar album, but donโt tune in expecting any particular instrumental virtuosity. Rather, Parkinson takes microscopic samples of his playing, at home in County Durham, and uses a patch to reassemble these into new compositions โ sometimes layered, as if youโre hearing a few musicians at once, and sometimes single-tracked.
At their most obviously computer-cut, these pieces share commonality with Rian Treanor or Lorenzo Senni, minus any appeal to a clubbing context. Often, strings sound pitched up from what we might expect of a standard guitar, or drones will ease to and fro, like an electric organ perhaps. Primarily, thereโs a distinct cleanness and clarity to Parkinsonโs sound design, reflective of the Arctic landscapes he claims part-inspired this album. A new age sensibility is latent during Blue Forty-Six, and had the genreโs cassette-culture exponents of the 1980s been able to record with the high-budget artifice of Def Leppardโs Hysteria, no doubt many would have. Decades hence, Dane Lawโs suite is one of beauty and depth.
More solo guitarrings with NAQI Vol.2 by Mansur Brown from Brixton, and no external sorcery this time. Brown has manoeuvred around Londonโs spiritual nu-jazz scene in the last five or six years, with sessioneer spots on records by Yussef Kamaal among others, but releases under his own name tend to spotlight his liquid, meditative guitar style, as well they might.
This four-track EP, released on Brownโs own AMAI label โ if you want it on vinyl, it comes as one side of a 12-inch, with NAQI Vol.1 on the other โ pretty much jettisons his prior inclinations towards dance music, be that organic or electronic. I say โpretty muchโ on account of the ten-minute โMeikaiโ, which folds plangent jazz guitar into ambient keyboard ripples and female/feminised vocal manipulations, feeling kinda like a beatless remix of a hypothetical Hyperdub release from the late 00s. The three things preceding it are more introspective still, approximating a greatly reimagined blues on โNaqiโ, improvised quasi-funk on โPathโ and, for โTouchโ, glass-noodle folk Iโd have believed was an early Windham Hill release if youโd told me so. This EP will be way too tasteful for a lot of people, I imagine, but massaged my temples generously.
Wyped Out is Joe Howeโs second cassette on the Acid Waxa label, and its daffy parallax-scrolling electronic pop is, for me, an overdue reacquaintance with his headspace. In the mid to late 00s he was 50 per cent of Gay Against You, whose tartrazine-high electropunk was mightily โof its timeโ but needed to be witnessed live at least once. Later ventures, including an album with Momus as Sunbutler, escaped my lazy eye, but Glasgow-located Howeโs outsider funk has crawled into my brain.
Lo-fidelity and slo-evolving, Wyped Outโs eight tracks drip with bedroom DIY vibes: if Howe takes inspiration from club sonics at points, like the clanky breaks on โVertical Sliceโ and the electro synapse-fires throughout โSuzuki Banksโ, these arenโt exactly soundsystem bangers. A flirtation with tech-glossiness comes courtesy of a collaboration with Ryota Miyake (also of Japanese postpunk band Flash Amazonas), who adds tuffer MIDI beats and sunburst digital strings to โPlugโ, and when Howe puts his keyboard at the front of the arrangement a sort of curdled NES soundtrack air prevails.
With a few shows and one debut tape under their shiny belts of leather, Findom havenโt yet gone big on the old self-identification (I believe one of them plays in The Birthmarks from Manchester, though theyโre otherwise a London band). Their Instagram account, too, features less concrete info about the members than cheesecake erotica photos from financial dominatrices whoโve tagged the page by mistake. Titling this EP Pay, Pig probably hasnโt helped, yet Findomโs postpunk snakiness makes for a more wholesome experience than that suggests, and their label Gob Nation demand a mere, dignity-preserving ยฃ5 for the privilege.
A lot happens during these six songs without ending up exhaustingly busy. Findom can โrockโ in the broad sense of the verb, gesturing towards both Scritti Politti and The Gun Club during these 14 minutes, but step outside the confines of โrockโ the noun, notably on the wavey, clarinet-led โExhume The Lineโ. Their politics, as expressed on Pay, Pig, are evidently correct, if unsubtle: see โThe Only Good Toryโ (โโฆis a dead oneโ), punk-funk a la early-80s Bristol, and austerity paean โThe Living Standardโ, whose lyrics are two Prime Ministers out of date at the time of writing.
Championing this champion cassette collab from Jake Healy & Alfie Grieve takes us back, momentarily, to the nu-Brit-jazz landscape: Grieve, a trumpeter, plays with some relevant Bristolian outfits including Ishmael Ensemble and Snazzback. Healy currently features in Sugar Horse, who are something like post-metal and very unlike Eggs In Purgatory (Liquid Library), 30 minutes or so of delicious strung-out plains drifter ambience.
With Healy using a digital sampler alongside Grieveโs customary horn, and both playing through a bunch of unspecified pedals, the result has the feel of a live recording to me, though I wouldnโt confidently call it one. The trumpetโs tones are more muted on Eggsโฆโ earlier tracks, peering through an undergrowth of isolationist hum on โMemzโ and rising near-imperceptibly over โCreaturesโโ xylophonic percussion loop. The relatively brief mid-album piece โAlfieSoloโ is a catalyst for change, though, as Grieve sounds out in clearer, if more funereal, fashion on the blood-freezing ambient dub of โCarriagesโ and is at his most recognisably jazz-styled on โJigsawโ. The concluding โCarpentersโ, with its trip-hoppable vocal sample throughout, is probably the most pleasant-sounding thing Liquid Library have ever released; Eggs In Purgatory as a whole is my favourite thing in this column, I think. Hiding its light under a bushel, my copy has hand-Biroโd titles on its handpainted sleeve and looks like a mixtape made for a beau in long gone times.
Support & Resistance, a tape of two sidelong tracks on Barcelona label Zona Watusa, is the first collaborative release by Dwellings & Druss since 2015โs Level 3. They are, respectively, Chris Haslam from Gnod and Paddy Shine from Gnod, so that bandโs output is outwith that stat, obviously. In their solo modes and as a duo, Dwellings & Druss have often occupied techno headspace; this, too, is machine music, and there are beats, but things most commonly move mollusc-slow, with bleak, bleached-out synth tones.
โSupportโ deftly reinvents itself over 18 minutes, its paranoid drone intro built upon by abstract technoise dub, grinding loops, granular static and some kind of necromantical screams apparent in the mix. โResistanceโ starts off distorted and intemperate and doesnโt scale that back much, though a relative sense of order is conferred by a long stretch of shit-fi electro (think Frak or Tuning Circuits). Underpinning it all, again, is a substratum of rumbling drone; Haslam mixed this release himself, in the Hebden Bridge art space where he and Shine now live, and I have to imagine Support & Resistance would be a deadly weapon through a big rig.
Not so long ago, Vasilis Sakkos and Tasos Stamou were two of the Greek diasporaโs dopest dinmakers in London: Sakkos uttering oaths in Casual Nun, Stamou making wicked solo sound art and avant-rebetika in Aman!!!, both repeatedly dogged by my endorsement. When I interviewed the latter musician last year, he was about to move to Essex, where Sakkos โ who returned to Greece at some point during lockdown โ visited him this summer. The music made during which became their first collaborative venture, Sakostamu, and has emerged through the Brachliegen Tapes label as Break Down, a three-track cassette.
Recorded with basic analogue gear, the stated instrumentation leaves a little to listenersโ imagination: Sakkos is credited with โobjectsโ while Stamou handles โstringsโ, presumably including the bouzouki or similar which arises five minutes into the 17 that makes up โSweet Oblivionโ. Although the pair credit the Break Down sessions as a powerful reckoning with their shared heritage, this part is the only obvious recourse to trad Greek sounds. What we get instead โ looped sonic detritus spun into thick psychedelic chunter, vocals rendered unintelligible (if they were ever otherwise) and esoteric by an FX arsenal โ suffices in spades. โBy The Raised Hair Of The Fleshโ is particularly discombobulating: one minute youโre in a squawking, burbling tropical netherworld, the next a dank cavern of hornets with only a crudely tooted flute to guide you.
Caught a live set by Jorim Cassidy aka Birthmark about six months ago in Bristol, where he lives, and was impressed by the thudding syrupโnโgauze hip-hop inertia of his music; likewise his stage presence, hard stares through heavy lids, and the steadfast refusal to offer no fucker party vibes at post-pub time on a weekend. A fair few songs performed there also feature on Lamentations (Cold Light), his debut solo EP following some scattered collaborative things, and it functions ably as a window into the Birthmark soundworld and worldview.
โCatch me out the front โ Iโll be sipping rum and swaying with my eyes closed,โ Cassidy suggests on Lamentationsโ opener โThorns On A Roseโ, its resonant dub techno chords stemming from guest producer Eusebeia. โIโve got yellow, green and black on my Union Jack,โ he mutters, on the should-be anthemic โBlack Sheepโ, a mulling of his own imprecise racial identity. โJamaicans call me white, English call me black / But Iโm a fucking human and I couldnโt give a toss.โ Located somewhere in the sprawl of Bristolโs Young Echo crew, Birthmark offers his own spin on that already spun-out sound โ pitched-down soul, crackly ambience, emo rap if that wasnโt an invariably embarrassing concept. I hope itโs not boxing him in overly to say heโs the closest that extended scene has come to a latter-day Tricky.
Finally, a debut release by someone whoโs been DJing, he says, for north of 30 years and whose varied credentials include founding and programming the Block9 sector of Glastonbury Festival. Is Glastonbury germane to a column about British underground music or is it in fact โcommercial nowโ and โfor the eliteโ? I would rather do almost anything than debate this โ including listening to Ritmo, four raw house wreckers released on 12-inch on producer Gideรถnโs Homo-Centric label.
As per its name, Homo-Centric exists to uplift the queer ethos thatโs been in houseโs DNA since year zero, but which swathes of the genreโs listener base are scarcely exposed to. Titling Ritmoโs opener โAaron Carl Lives Onโ, in honour of the late great Detroitian, helps to back this up, as does its volley of vocal cutups and 90s techno melodies. โRitmoโ the track is โFrench Kissโ meets Bam Bam โ horny lady, android acid โ and โIt Does Not Burnโ plumps for more attitude in its vocal sample, twinkling keys and clapping hi-hats roiling below. โOver Back Thenโ closes out with tweaked soul-singer pipes on a shuffling deep house bedframe that would have blissed out any decent club in the last 30 years, if not more.
