Week of Aug. 10:This week, experimental electric guitars from Dither, guitar rock from Mali by Songhoy Blues, Jamaican dancehall, and a reinvented British folk song from Bonny Light Horseman.
PREMIERE: Dither Guitar Quartet’s Jarring, Startling New Video
Dither is a contemporary classical music group consisting of four electric guitars. As you might expect, there ain’t a whole lotta Beethoven or Mozart for that combination of instruments, so Dither focuses on works by contemporary composers. Brendon Randall-Myers is one of them, and his big piece called Dynamics of Vanishing Bodies is a memorable thing to witness live (although in all fairness, these days, hearing anything live is memorable), with sharp, angular passages of notes producing a raft of overtones. There are moments that recall the music of the late Glenn Branca – and in fact, Randall-Myers played in Branca’s ensemble – but despite all the ringing sounds, and the odd tunings, there is a clarity and momentum here that is Randall-Myers’ own. The amplification is as much a part of the piece as the notes themselves, and he says that it’s “both a moment of rage/catharsis and a raucous celebration of physical movement/endurance and sound/amplification as connection between people.” Today we premiere the striking video for the section of the piece known as “Trem Chorale.” Though the piece was written well before the pandemic, the video was made recently, and its director, Derrick Belcham, says “the claustrophobic close-ups, tightly-wound movements and stark black on white contrast reflect the mixture of confinement and agitation that this period has provoked.” The guitars’ incessant motion and noise is perfectly captured by the dancers’ strained movements, and especially by the editing that scrubs the images back and forth. When you finally see the five women at the end of the video, after the piece ends, you’ll notice that several of them are out of breath – which seems to be a natural response to this seething music.
The full piece, Dynamics of Vanishing Bodies, comes out on September 25.
Alex Da Kid Returns As _by.Alexander, With A Friend In Tow
As Alex Da Kid, the London-born, LA-based producer born Alexander Grant was responsible for some of the biggest hits of the past decade: “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons, “Love The Way You Lie” by Eminem, and “I Need a Doctor” by Dr. Dre are just a few of them. Now, he’s released two new singles of his own, under the name _by.Alexander, and both reflect his interest in jazz. “Le merveilleux resume” is an instrumental track featuring the sound of the vibrant East London jazz scene (a fertile mix of jazz, breakbeat, pop, and Caribbean music), with strange electronic sounds woven through it. And this song, “Trumpets,” features the New Jersey rapper and singer 070 Shake (Danielle Balbuena). Her singing has a rough-edged, soulful quality that neatly sits atop the track’s groove-based, acid-jazz sound. Both singles are apparently from an album that Alex will be releasing later; no details yet.
Bon Iver Returns, With Many Friends In Tow
Justin Vernon, who spearheads (and sometimes just is) the project known as Bon Iver, has just released a new song called “AUATC” – the title stands for “ate up all their cake,” and the song takes to task those one percenters who eat up everyone’s cake and drink everyone’s wine. As befits a protest song, it’s a singalong, and vocal duties are shared by Vernon himself, Bon Iver collaborator Elsa Jensen, Jenny Lewis from Rilo Kiley, Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, and a hanger-on named Bruce Springsteen. And because it wouldn’t be a Bon Iver song without some weird, unidentifiable sound, Wasner plays the new synth gizmo known as a morphagene. She also helped write the song, as did pianist Phil Cook, of freak folk band Megafaun (and another longtime Vernon collaborator). The song has a charming video, and a message: get out and work at making the world a fairer, more equitable place. So the video has a bunch of suggestions of organizations and activities to do just that.
A Short, “Green” EP From Bonny Light Horseman
Bonny Light Horseman is the trio of Anais Mitchell (who wrote Hadestown), Eric D. Johnson (of Fruit Bats) and Josh Kaufman (who’s part of Muzz and has also played with The National and others). In January their eponymous album came out and immediately cemented its place on my annual Top 10 list – it is simply that good. The trio, and some high-powered guests, recast old folk songs from the British Isles and the US as jangly indie rock or as moody, often poignant art songs. Now they’ve released a two song EP called Green/Green, because one of the tracks is the American folk song “Green Rocky Road,” and the other is this track, “Greenland Fishery.” This is an original song that closely follows one of the many versions of the old British whaling song called “Greenland Whaling Fishery.” (The LP has several of these original songs with obvious roots in specific folk songs.) Basically, the song can go one of two ways: there is a whaling disaster, and several men (usually four, but here twelve) are lost – and so is the whale. The captain then bemoans the loss of both men and income, but in some versions, it’s the loss of the men that grieves him more; in other, later versions, singers have damned the captain by having him reverse that sentiment. See if you can guess which way Anais Mitchell will go before she gets to the end of the song.
Mali’s Blues-Rock Band Songhoy Blues Support Women’s Rights With New Song
Songhoy Blues comes by its sound organically; it may sound like they grew up listening to early 70s blues-rock bands like Led Zeppelin and Foghat and Free, but that bluesy electric guitar sound has been an essential part of the sound of northern Mali for two generations, at least. (See the band Tinariwen, still going today, as an early example.) The Malian band is preparing to put out a new album, called Optimisme, in October, but they’ve just released the first single. It’s called “Badala,” sung in their language of Songhai and translated as “I don’t give a @#$%”). It’s the tale of a young woman breaking off a relationship so that she can be free to face her own future, and while the sound will inevitably remind Western listeners of much older songs, it is definitely a very contemporary idea in West Africa, where a woman’s options are still often constrained by traditional patriarchy.
Popcaan Releases Surprise Mixtape – Er, Fixtape
The Jamaican dancehall sensation Popcaan had a busy week. First he featured on the Jamaican producer Protoje’s new single “Like Royalty,” a likable reggae/hip hop confection that he promptly upstaged by announcing a surprise project called Fixtape on Friday. Popcaan has long been interested in collaborating with rappers and global pop singers, and that’s reflected in the album’s variety: “Chill” is catchy, languorous summer pop; “Fresh Polo” is a seamless blend of hip hop and dancehall. There are also two tracks that feature Drake. Then there’s “Canary,” a fusion of dancehall riddims (the instrumental tracks of the song) and salsa horn samples, and perhaps a reminder that Jamaica and Cuba are not so far apart. Popcaan, like most dancehall singers, uses Jamaican patois instead of Jamaican English, so it’s not always possible to know what he’s singing about… although I get the distinct impression much of this – “Chill” being a sunny exception – is at least R-rated.