TRACKS AND NOTES
Nova Nova | Song: “Montée Branduesque” | Album: ‘Neoclassic’ (Chez Emile, 2017) … Deep in the DNA of the French electronic scene — or scenes — lurks the spirit of Debussy, and Nova Nova knows it on this track. The duo of Marc Durif and Michel Gravil have been pushing boundaries since the early 1990s and this song comes from the back half of their fourth album, which landed last year. Note: one of the (loose) rules by which I’ve been mixing IDES is to try to give each track a full run — i.e., if I’m not psyched to play the whole cut, why is the selection necessary listening in the first place? — but in this case, I do break my own rule; trying it two different ways, the aesthetic of the truncated transition trumped my own guidelines.
Sol Oosel | Song: “The Dark Side of the Sun” | Album: ‘Janus’ (Sol Oosel, 2018) … If you’re looking for an intense package of talent — musician, actor, director, cinematographer, essayist; the list goes on — look no further than Gustavo Mauricio Hernández Dávila, who creates and produces and is a huge proponent of the arts in Mexico. Sol Oosel is his first solo project and ‘Janus’ is his first solo album and it’s self-released, and it’s no joke. Twin strands of trance and rock intertwine and the outcome is something else, something out of time and of no one place.
Ghostland Observatory | Song: “See You Later Simulator” | Album: ‘See You Later Simulator’ (Trashy Moped, 2018) … Aaron Behrens and Thomas Ross Turner are an Austin duo who’ve been turning out their own take on electro (and other sounds) since the mid 2000s. This is their first new one in a while, having spent most of the 2010s in and out of hiatus, and it’s yellow-line weaving, long-dark highway listening at its best.
Underworld & Iggy Pop | Song: “Trapped” | Album: ‘Teatime Dub Encounters’ (Caroline International, 2018) … Why it took so long for two such obvious collaborators to do more than just contribute the big standout tracks to Trainspotting’s soundtrack back in 1996 probably has a lot to do with the ways genres and business work upon music and art. Here it is, however, thirteen years down the line, and we’ve got an Iggy Pop and Underworld EP. “Trapped” is tremendously funny, lyrics-wise, and Underworld’s production sounds like a freight train in all the best ways, and, again, I mixed-out about halfway through because, well, the mix just wanted that transition. You try different things. I think the rule of completion that I’m trying to observe does, in the end, benefit from a bit of bending. For good reason.
Peder (feat. Dean Bowman) | Song: “The Sour” | Album: ‘And He Just Pointed to the Sky’ (Ubiquity Records, 2007) … The Danish producer and DJ is known for his hip-hop project, The Prunes, and also for remixes of Beastie Boys and DJ Krush. Here’s his debut solo work from more than a decade ago, now, and this track won all kinds of praise back then. Still sounds fresh, today. Dean Bowman used to sing in a nerdy prog-jazz band called Screaming Headless Torsos. As for this track in the mix, I’ve brought in samples from Tony Thomas interviewing Jim Morrison in West Hollywood in 1970 during the recording of ‘L.A. Woman’. That interview has since been released on The Doors’ record archives/label, Bright Midnight, as part of the ‘The Lost Interview Tapes Vol. 1’. Rhino Records appears to distribute it, these days. You can find it in all the usual places online as well.
Ceramic Sky (feat. Marc Ribot) | Song: “YRU Still Here” | Album: ‘YRU Still Here’ (Northern Spy, 2018) … Punk, jazz, avant garde: all these ideas are part of what makes up the musical world that Marc Ribot brings to life. Hailing from New Jersey, more recently recording in Brooklyn, look at this man’s collaborative shortlist: it includes Tom Waits, Allen Ginsburg, Elvis Costello, and John Zorn (among many, many more) — and it all starts to make sense. It was Ribot’s guitar on Waits’ ‘Rain Dogs’ that got that ball rolling, for example. Here, album number twenty four of his own catalogue, and he’s locked-in, oozing atmosphere, and delivering a glorious freak-out track. The sample between this track and the next is also from the Thomas/Morrison interview.
Art Brut | Song: “Wham! Bam! Pow! Let’s Rock Out!” | Album: ‘Wham! Bam! Pow! Let’s Rock Out!’ (Alcopop! Records, 2018) … More than half a decade ago, Frank Black produced Art Brut’s fourth album and just a little while later the UK band went mostly invisible. There are probably many details to address about that — the hiatus included health scares — but, whatever happened, here on their fifth and comeback record the band is in good spirits and speak-singing its way through a sort of post-midlife crisis sneer-take on the nature of partying when you’re not a post-adolescent moron anymore. Because it still means something to allow for that feeling, the urge to cut out and go a bit crazy until you pretty much annoy everyone and then you feel a little savage and stupid the next morning … and so, maybe, don’t lose that capacity. Also, give a listen to “Wham! Bam! Pow! Let’s Rock Out!”. It’ll help.
Flavien Berger | Song: “La Fête Noir” | Album: ‘Leviathan’ (Pan European Recording, 2015) … As we began in France, so we conclude this installment of IDES in the city of Paris, where, about half a decade ago, Flavien Berger created this incredible track. At the time, the artist liked to claim his musical training came from his Playstation 2. He is, of course, full of shit; he’s been possessed by the ghost of Serge Gainsbourg and subsequently has introduced his supernatural captain to the synthesizer and to French pop’s present. And so it goes, with this one — “The Black Party” — a lyric of some strange and terrible opiate-fueled carnival. It really doesn’t get much better than this one, which is a perfect closer to the mix and a gift to humankind in general.
Mastered by Matt Girard, Revolution Sound Studio, 2019