Frank's 5 Under 50K (06/17)
#2--Analog horror, bedroom pop, drones, oil paint, and the radio.
Wulven is among the handful of rising slowcore/shoegaze pioneers who, the moment they have their big break, will be on the A24 speed-dial roster, scoring experimental analog horror until it rules the world. I can always appreciate someone who shamelessly drones out in projects where vocals serve as an anchor, closing his 2021 project “This Earth Is Consuming Us” for example with the title track: a symphony of hazy, organesque frequencies reverberating between harmony and screeching discomfort. “I Have Seen The End and It Is Beautiful,” is evidently crafted out of care not only in the way it sounds but the ways it delivers a story; an apparent collection of ambiguous cautionary tales chanted from an unnamed posthumous perspective.
As an occasional mobile phone producer/music making enjoyer myself, there is so much power in the possibility of creating full-fledged bodies of work with a mic, 2 thumbs, a smartphone, and even the slightest inkling of a creative direction. For Lowkeybaitss, creating a pithy pop banger is like breathing. The occasional drill breaks and tasteful vocal transposition upward sing to the likes of PinkPantheress, but the homemade feel doesn’t disappear. Instead, it evokes a new level of badassery restricted to the 8-bit soundbites, beeps, and boops that make her most recent release “404: LOVE ERROR” one of many triumphs in her portfolio.
Returning to the slowcore moguls, Polish producer and guitarist Dawid Schindler, professionally air hunger is the reverb wizard whose majestic, pedal-stacked guitar arrangements play in the background of my most beautiful nightmares. “Grace,” Schindler’s 2023 full-length release is a mishmash of the brightest, most convoluted, at times grating drones that often sing louder than his voice itself. Still, there’s a perpetual, strangely welcoming, sense of devastation as tracks like “A Place to Sleep” or “Way Things Aren’t” see these string loops played into submission almost as if even the instruments creating the music can’t take it any longer.
My first impression of Issy Wood’s work in any capacity was an oil painting. It was an album cover, a faceless blond woman facing us, her defining features covered entirely by a white dove in passing. Its curiousness made me curious, especially with a track titled “Soup” which was completely unrelated to the image I was seeing. Wood’s sound is oddly shaped, relaxed, but intricate, sort of like if Okay Kaya was British and could paint like Vermeer. Her vocals are notably deadpan, though endearing as she prefers to let the weight of her words do the talking (singing) over addictive alt-pop earworm beats.
This is one of those shouts that I feel like I’ll refer back to a year from now when their listener base (currently just over 14k on Spotify) has snowballed into stage-shattering numbers. I’m gonna continue my discourse from last week of how important I think it is that great vocalists keep it fun and free and the trio have done so in way that I don’t think will be secret much longer. “Ramona” for example is radio ready, the radio just doesn’t know they need it yet. The instrumentals in many of their tracks are also notably minimalistic, albeit incredibly fucking lit. They’ve got the bug that keeps things catchy, approachable, and ever so innovative. When the time is right, festivals will flock for Ky and the band.