The best new albums this week
Our writers’ guide to your long playing heaven
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Tusken Raiders – Housewerk Vol 1 & 2 (Furthur Electronix)
When Mike Paradinas revived the Tusken Raiders alias in earnest in 2020 it seemed he was distinctly focusing on the gnarlier end of the project. The history of his George Lucas-aggrieving pseudonym reaches back to the mid 90s, although it was initially shortlived thanks to legal pressure from the Star Wars industrial complex. In 2018 we were given a surprise whisper of familiarity when the Inchstar Static EP arrived on Furthur Electronix, offering up a previously shelved EP from 1994 which still stands as some of the roughest material the man best known as µ-Ziq has ever put out. Not necessarily the hardest, but the scuffed and scraped break dissembling was a far cry from some of the winsome melodies prevalent in much of his work.
2020’s Bantha Trax Vol. 3 appeared to be all new material, landing on Seagrave in a nod to the modern era of hardcore experimentalists. It confirmed the idea Tusken Raiders can’t be pinned down to a specific sound in the way many prolific artists’ side-projects can. Rather, it reflects a certain attitude on the part of Paradinas. It tends to be a bit noisier, a bit more lo-fi than µ-Ziq, darting into the shadowy corners of UK rave culture where the rag tag breakbeat sampling of The Blapps Posse flings around next to Yorkshire bleep and the dark intensity of the RIP parties still sticks to the walls. It’s certainly not meant to be sweet or pretty, but also not so fiddly and glitchy. There is space for melody, but it’s more understated.
These days Paradinas has the floodgates open with a lot of material to keep up with. His recent Scurlage and Goodbye drops demonstrate he’s on a roll with µ-Ziq, and his Bandcamp page spills forth with archive material and new gear alike. He’s always operated on his own terms as far as the business side of music is concerned, and the new digital model seems to suit him quite well. As such, you’d be forgiven for missing bits and pieces, and lo and behold there are now six volumes of new Tusken Raiders material made since the start of 2021. By way of an explainer, Paradinas framed the first two volumes as drawing on his voyage of discovery between 1989 and 1991. “In retrospect they were inspired by my first few years of exposure to electronic club music… I can hear the electro of Model 500, the deep house of Mr. Fingers or the rave energy of Belgian Techno,” he explained in a self-reflexive review, suggesting this was an unconscious influence rather than a pronounced tribute act.
Furthur Electronix have done a useful service in picking up these first two volumes and presenting them as an LP, pulling the nine tracks out of the Bandcamp melee and giving everything a bit of breathing room (not to mention the pomp and ceremony of ‘traditional’ releases). Even without Paradinas’ tasting notes, any casual raver would spot some classic styles being thrown into the blender. ‘Gelignite’ has a vintage drum machine jack, while and the rowdy synths atop two-note, off-key monosynth bass are explicit in their lineage. Crucially though, this doesn’t sound like music from 1991 even if the reference points are there. That nightmarish lead sounds a little too dexterous for an early Belgian brainmelter.
Sending the rough n’ ready Tusken typecasting into disarray, ‘Houzz 11’ champions a vibe somewhere between Larry Heard and SAW-era Aphex, but funnily enough the more immediate old-skool reference is Tango N’ Vectif-era Paradinas. Like it should be, he remains an artist who can’t help but sound like himself even when he’s relaxing into music-making as presumably fun and comfortable as these tracks must be. There’s still something holding back from the full tilt µ-Ziq sound though – an ineffable quality which sits this stuff apart, a certain rawness.
There are other moments of beauty as above. ‘Amnesia’ features some lingering piano notes, but they’re floating nervously above a murky sound bed of submerged techno. ‘Perigog’ is an exceptional downtempo groover adorned with b-lines and leads which seem informed by 80s boogie and synth-pop as much as techno, but with a gloriously sinister key change which tells you it’s still the Tusken Raider at the controls.
Elsewhere, things are pointedly edgier. ‘Belm’ and ‘Slow Belm’ are a standout pair which hark back to the earliest Tusken record on Clear, favouring detuned synth patterns and knotty beats that lock into techno thrust on the former and scrappy machine funk on the latter. It’s all quite simply outstanding, tickling at the pleasure receptors in its gentle callback to bygone eras, but still sounding utterly individual and varied across the entire 50 minutes, like the best acid-era record you never heard. Does it make the Tusken sound any more defined? Not really, other than to say it remains a wholly different side of Paradinas’ musical output, but not at the expense of the occasional charming overlap.
OW
Mr Fingers – Around The Sun: Part 1 (Alleviated)
30 long years after releasing his debut Mr Fingers album (‘Introduction’), Larry Heard returns with his latest long-playing work – serving 10 sumptuous tracks on the achingly soulful ‘Around The Sun: Part 1’. Responsible not only for producing some of the deep house canon’s finest moments, Heard effectively invented the sound with his groundbreaking 1985 Mr Fingers cut, ‘Mystery Of Love’. He followed up with a string of timeless classics – including ‘Can You Feel It’, ‘Washing Machine’ and ‘Stars’ – and has continued to release varied but reliable house sounds ever since. A ten-year Mr Fingers gap was closed with the arrival of ‘Mr Fingers 2016’, and 2018’s ‘Cerebral Hemispheres’ marked the first long-player to land under the well-known moniker for over 25 years. Showing the world he still has an incomparable message to share, Heard’s latest work bursts with all of the emotion-rich feeling we’ve come to expect after so many years of delivering musical wonderment.
The soulful sound for which he’s become synonymous presents itself throughout the album, with the searing vocals of ‘Touch The Sky’ and ‘Something’s Going On’ among the inclusions likely to strike a chord with lovers of the spiritual deep. Elsewhere, the rolling percussion of ‘Like The Dawn’ is an instant Heard classic, while the soothing instrumentation of ‘Shimmer’ proves similarly enduring in tone. Beloved as much for his stripped, freaky textures as for his elegant orchestrations, Heard shows us he’s lost none of his bite on that front, either, with deviant moments cropping up at various intervals across the album. The grubby textures of ‘Pressureize’ provide an aberrant counterpoint to the generally harmonious nature of the collection, with wonky-eyed synths bubbling across a late-night soundscape as crisp drums keep the rhythm, while the dubby mysticism of ‘Marrakesh’ displays yet another striking string to the Fingers deep house bow. Worthy of attention not just for what he’s previously achieved musically, but for what he continues to deliver after almost 40 years in the game, this is stunning work from the deep house legend.
PC
Merzbow – Hybrid Noisebloom (Urashima)
Launching the extreme noise project Merzbow in 1979, Masami Akita’s music saw many stylistic shifts throughout the ‘80s. Then the ‘90s hit. Coincidentally, the pink, impressionist cover for his 1997 album Hybrid Noisebloom is the most ‘shoegaze’ looking of all his releases. We’re more than happy that Urashima’s efforts to revive Merzbow’s discog will be likely to trick first-time MBV fans into listening to harsh noise.
Still early on in Merzbow’s ear-exploding career, Hybrid Noisebloom was recorded largely on tour in 1989, but didn’t see a proper release until almost a decade later in 1997. It came to the UK outfit Vinyl Communications, one of the many hardcore punk labels to steadily transition out of band music to embrace the then burgeoning electronic, gabba-noise-breaks zeitgeist.
At the time, Akita was travelling and could only perform via limited means, so as to keep things portable. He had but a theremin, a couple of synths, and some circuit-bent odds and ends at his disposal. This oppressive gear fuckry lead to an oppressive sound, topped off by Akita’s own demonic voice occupying each’s mix’s nether regions. The unique soundworld for ‘Hybrid Noisebloom’ is that of cancerous, rapid sound mitosis; ‘Plasma Birds’ works in rabid ringmodded laserblasts, which peek hazily out of the tinnitus-sludge like exterminant beacons. Elsewhere, these laser sounds dominate. ‘Minotaurus’ opens with a regular, despotic pulse of this very same modular noise, its regularity making it sound like an early precursor to Joy Kitikonti’s trance classic ‘Joyenergizer’ (though not for long… there’s not much ‘joy’ in it).
The reissue gets the full stereo treatment, contrasting to the original mono. This is best noted on ‘Mouse Of Superconcetion’, with its colossal wash of toothy, kettly noise – and Akita’s urgent vocal wails – occupying our synaesthetic lefts and rights. Finally, ‘Neuro Electric Butterfly’ is brought out in all its synaptic glory, perhaps being the best example on the album of Merzbow’s symphonic ability to cycle through different variations on the same mesh of sounds in quick succession. Coming to an abrasive 299 vinyl copies, we hope this album doesn’t grind down your needles as much as it did our cognitive faculties!
JIJ
Webbed Wing – What’s So Fucking Funny? (Run For Cover)
Philadelphia based emo-grunge slacker rock outfit, Webbed Wing, continue the trajectory they set out on their exceptional 2019 debut full-length, ‘Bike Ride Across The Moon’.
Spearheaded by Taylor Madison of seminal 90’s revivalists, Superheaven (formerly Daylight), ‘What’s So Fucking Funny?’ is yet another nostalgic entry into the expansive Run For Cover Records roster. It genuinely seems that with each new emo-trap or blackened hardcore signee, another project arrives to remind all of the label’s near single-handed redistribution of the emo genre within the modern age.
Barely clocking in at a half hour, only one of these hazy ditties makes it beyond the 3 minute mark. Operating in a faux-restrained, dismissive yet endearing manner, Madison’s musings on everyday mundanity, nostalgia and naturally growing apart from friends, are delivered with zero pomp or romanticism. Rather, they creep up with little suggestion of resolution or resolve, merely pointing out the self-awareness of such issues without any of the motivation or drive to fix and mend.
From the power-pop fuzz of opener, ‘Years’, to The Lemonheads indebted folk-punk banger, ‘Jesus’s Age’, all the way to snapshot reflections like the minute long, ‘Old Times’, there’s an undeniable sense of revisiting youthful issues sat on since entering adulthood.
Avoiding the urge to dissect with overtly artistic reverie, the peeled back, practice space composition and delivery adds subtle nuance and dimension to a batch of material much deeper than might appear at first glance, but not in any way, shape or form offering insightful answers via a communal artform. Madison sounds just as uncertain as the rest of us, he’s just put those anxieties into music and lyrics that can be taken at face value or pored over to staggering degree. With a title almost lambasting and confronting before even pressing play, along with its purposeful brevity, Webbed Wing appear to expect listeners to get in, absorb and get out again. Then, eventually ponder, what’s so fucking funny?
ZB
Parrish Smith – Light Cruel Vain (Dekmantel)
In years to come, if someone discovers Parrish Smith and starts their exploration of his catalogue with his debut album, the technoid 12”s that predate it may well seem like misnomers. The Dutch artist has always set out a certain rockist attitude in his music – lashings of distortion and maximal energy – and his DJ sets are even more instructive. His mix for Dekmantel’s podcast series featured 90s metal cuts from Korn and Sepultura alongside bruising club fare, and he’ll happily get on the mic and bring some guttural vocal intensity to his confrontational sets. But even with the squalling guitar laced through 2018’s ‘Sex Suicide & Speed Metal’, his modest run of records still adhered to techno in principle. It’s no accident that he released on L.I.E.S., after all.
Light Cruel Vain does away with such matters in a pronounced way. It’s a debut album proper in that sense, providing an opportunity for Smith to step into the fullest, and perhaps truest, dimension of his muse. “I want to be an idol so, so bad,” he intones in a mantra like fashion over the album’s penultimate track, a kick-thumping industrial metal party starter. In such explicit terms, the lyrics could be taken as a sharp critique of posturing celebrity in the techno world, but with the stadium-sized production values and vociferous charisma Smith doubles down on for this record, it actually sounds plausible.
This is absolutely the sound of someone expressing music already pumping through their veins. At times the sound veers well and truly into nu metal territory, as on the gnarly hip-hop-pop-rawk fusion of ‘Never Break Faith’ with it’s “kill this day in harmony” refrain. It’s brash, but it’s also sincere and it’s certainly not clumsy. At times the sound veers a little towards that Americanised mid-90s techno-rock hybrid style you might associate with The Matrix and Spawn soundtracks, but equally there’s a degree of sophistication which nods to one of Smith’s declared heroes, Trent Reznor. If his rockist swerves in DJ sets divided opinion, this album should make things a little clearer about what to expect from him going forwards. On the basis of Light Cruel Vain, Parrish Smith might just as easily become a metal idol who curiously kicked off his career with some techno 12”s.
OW
Various – Brasil Novo (Musica Macondo)
London’s Musica Macondo dig deep to serve this excellent compilation of contemporary Brazilian grooves, dispelling preconceived notions of the samba sound with this diligently assembled set of tracks. Sao Paulo-based DJ Tahira combined forces with London jock Tim Garcia to research and curate the collection, vividly showcasing Brazil’s vibrant percussive tradition while shining further light on the Samba de Coco sound. Fusing elements of samba, Candomble, batuques, jazz, folk and more, the ‘Brasil Novo’ is aimed squarely at open-minded dancefloors and lovers of the esoteric.
Already winning high profile admirers including Gilles Peterson, Mr Scruff, and Jamz Supernova, the imaginative selection bursts with rhythm-heavy highlights. The call-and-response mysticism of Dona Celia Coquista’s ‘O Bar’ echoes with heavy Afro-Brazilian heritage, while the Latin-jazz fusion of ‘Dunas (Live)’ by Toro Instrumental injects a turbocharge into the lineup with its lively percussion and space-age synth work. Elsewhere, the freeform abandon of Alabe Ketujazz’s ‘Opanije Xaxará’ is genuinely dazzling, before Grupo Bongar’s ‘Vento Corredor’ mesmerises as vocal chants and fuzz guitar burst over infectious poly-rhythms. Closing things off, the irrepressible energy of ‘Iansã’ by ILU OBA DE MIN leaves an indelible mark, overflowing with vigour as pounding drums support the intoxicating vocal lead.
PC
This week’s reviewers: Zach Buggy, Oli Warwick, Jude Iago James, Patrizio Cavaliere.