JASON DILL IS DEAD

\\Notes From Downriver//
\\Punk (La Vie Antérieure)//
\\Minimal Techno//
\\(Co-Dependent) Independent Jangling//
\\Ambient/Experimental/Drone//
\\Occasional Modern Classical//

By James Harbard

Jandek On Corwood  (Unicorn Stencil Productions - 2004)

This is a really incredible documentary about one of the most important experimental/underground musicians who ever lived. Jandek lived in isolation, running the equally mysterious Corwood records from a P.O. box somewhere in Huston between 1978 and 2001. He has released around 70 full albums ranging from atonal folk musings to small collaborations with parties he has never fully named (including my favourite Jandek song “Nancy Sings”) to furiously bleak and self destructive acapella and spoken word records. 

Jandek’s mystery manifested not only from the bizarre nature of his music but also the complete lack of personal information he divulged. Often seen as a deluded, suicidal loner the reality of who Jandek may or may not have been is likely to be much more complex. In his only interview ever (included at the end of the film) Jandek seems calm, rational and thoughtful. In his only meeting with the a member of the press in 1999 he was apparently very well dressed, jovial and talkative (when not pressed with questions about Jandek) and enjoying beers with friends. 

It’s a stunning and beautiful story and one that the internet has made very hard to replicate. Since the making of this film he has started performing publicly and in 2012 he released 4 albums.



The National - Trouble Will find Me 
(4AD - 2013) 

New York’s mainstream indie elite seem to operate around an ideal of upperclass guilt, Vampire Weekend ignored it and we all got angry, this year they flipped the switch down even harder and took on god. How dare they frame their sorrows as if empathy should be felt for the well off the same it should be felt for those hard done by! In 2013, The National still feel guilt and they are still taking on nobody but themselves. They understand the mundane aspects of regular life, they’ve had boring jobs, they have boring sex, they find comfort in the idea of the cigarette break, they have to go to shopping malls sometimes and have under-their-breath arguments with their wives when their kids are out of earshot. The National have been a band for what? Like 13 years? That’s a long time to feel guilty and it’s a long time to look at your shortcomings square in the eye. With a fresh persecutive maybe Ezra took the easy road.

I spent saturday morning having coffees made for me by a beautiful person and listening to Trouble Will Find Me with the backdoors of the house wide open. I’ve always been captivated by these 2000 era New York Buzzbands. The Walkmen, The National, both rarely if ever surprise both rarely if ever don’t provide wondrous fulfilling records. Trouble Will Find Me is a good, sad National album, nothing more, certainly nothing less, and most importantly it’s the type of all black record that you can play on a beautiful morning. It’s also another mark of a band fully aware of its potential to create great music that’s essentially emotional dad-rock for the dudes who grew up going to MBV shows. 

For a band that frequently include nods to infidelity and financial burden in their work it’s hard for them not to slip into that grey area where, god forbid, people are talking about themselves. But there’s a complex self awareness that makes this record seem best approached sociologically rather than psychologically. He’s never going to be Christopher Owens and The National continue to be more or less faceless. On “Slipped” Berninger asks for sympathy not grievance, “I won’t need any help being lonely when you leave” is the type of lyric that could turn to characterture if not for the tone of his voice. He withholds any personal anecdote, any real evidence he’s talking about Matthew Berninger. Whilst we fuck, drink and forget our problems we listen to shit like this as if it’s some form of pornography, “Graceless” can light up a morning because it’s fun to drown yourself in its bombastically celebratory sorrow. But we’re idiots who are easy to laugh at. You can get so consumed by this music you forget the real pornography here is still in The National’s lingering depiction of the shameless, naked wealth of millennial Manhattan, and the sorrow that creeps through it.   

Adrian Aniol - Black Background XXVIII (Reprise) (Cooper Cult 2013)

Adrain Anioł is a sound artist from Poland and is worth a lot of your time. This is immaculately constructed, highly cathartic music. “Black Background” sounds as if you are watching a film of a band playing in a dank underground jazz club from the back of the room, the film score continuing to run parallel over the top. The hints of saxophone could be resinating form somewhere that intends to be more cheerful, but the ominous foreground music turns them into shrill, dissonant screams. 

(“BLACK BACKGROUND: Black Background XXVIII (Reprise) is an excerpt from a live noir exhibition soundtrack NOT EVEN THE ANGELS. The exhibition took place in 2011 and it contains a total of 32 tracks that was written especially for this event.”)



Vår - No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers 
(Sacred Bones - 2013)

An army of troops perilously lead by Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, one part homo erotic pretty boy one part Fascist european-elitist punk rock frontman is a scary thought, but it’s happening right now. Iceage and Lower’s manifestos can’t be contained by punk rock and nor does Elias want them to be. Last year under the guise of War, they were waging their name through burnt techno, now decidedly bleaker and less hardened after their law suit avoiding name change, they’ve traded the torture of “Brodermordet” for an outlet to express their grief through a type of post-punk/cold wave haze. Elias’s self awareness here is palpable, No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers is his personal, emotional mascot that we never asked to see. It acts as a smouldering, foggy aftermath to the astounding and hopelessly addictive You’re Nothing, but it also exposes a vital need within Elias to expose his venerability and in doing so pushes that aforementioned record inexplicably further towards greatness.  

“In Your Arms” the gay/EU pride statement that surfaced last year, is notably absent from this record. In its place are nine tracks that encapsulate the imagery of that isolated piece of multimedia. After two full frontal synth assaults, the title track presents as a spoken word piece, the accent is confrontingly American. “No one dances quite like my brothers”, she says over and over through self loathing attention seeking statements of a scared ex-girlfriend whilst an industrial chug that could be an army or a machine drives the thing over the top of her. Techno claps announce the records two biggest moments like lightening bolts, a slim connection to this project’s dance rooted origins, but they are quickly dispersed by new wave synths mixed with ambient fog. Vår follow genre rules aligned with these things to almost corrosive, self destructive effect, to the point where by the sixth track we’re met with a “Danish punks do Lonesome Crowded West” called “Pictures of Today/ Victorial”.No One Dances is a delicate emotionally direct confrontation with ones self that never needed to happen, it exceeds the original promise of this project and holds its own as a perfect compliment to one of the most chaotic and bold records in recent memory. 



Majical Cloudz - Impersonator
 (Matador - 2013) 

In the wake of all the stupid shit she did after the mainstream success of Visions, the one thing I still really love about Grimes’s breakthrough is a subtle appearance from Devon Welsh who contributed to “Nightmusic.” The balladeer’s successful infiltration of her feminist, post-internet landscape was uncharacteristic but enough to warrant turning your attention the way of tracks like “Turns Turns Turns.” Impersonator is a suffocating debut record, an attempted hymnal of sorts. The striking thing here is how hard Welsh makes everything work for him, an unremarkable piano chord met with a thundering synth is all he needs to drive most of highlight “Bugs don’t Buzz,” and there’s a light heartedness to the way he handles the heaviest of topics that reaches well beyond the spelling of his name. It helps a record that rarely strays from “devastating” stay afloat. As a full length Impersonator only makes you wish he’d stretch his wings a bit. “Bugs Don’t Buzz” and “I Do Sing For You” render a lot of the rest of Impersonator obsolete, but a dude as talented as this has undoubtedly got his reasons for keeping his blinkers on. I’m not sure we need to know what they are.  

Julianna Barwick - “Forever” (Dead Oceans - 2013) 

I don’t mean to come across as over-excited but on August 20 I’m not going to do much but listen to this. I thought it would be a pretty tough ask to want more from Julianna than Pacing or Vow but this seems to want to give it to us. 

image

James Blackshaw and Lubomyr Melnyk - The Watchers (Important - 2013) 

This is a long overdue acknowledgement of one my favourite records of the year, a collaboration between guitar visionary James Blackshaw and continuous pianist Lubomyr MelnykThe Watchers is one of the most gorgeous, uplifting and hopelessly romantic pieces of music I have heard in a while and I visit it everyday without exception, a true marriage of two incredible musicians. I will leave it to the ever articulate Blackshaw to tell the story, It’s startling and beautiful to hear him so moved by someone else’s music considering the power his own has had over me. 

- - -

“I first met Lubomyr Melnyk at a festival called Hea Uus Heli in October 2008. We were both scheduled to play that day and I was very excited to see him perform. Before the show I bought several LPs from him and mentioned as much. Lubomyr (more than modest and courteous, as he always is) asked me what I was doing at the festival and I replied that I was also performing at the festival a little later, to which he responded “I’ll come and watch you”, before being ushered into the hall to play one of the most staggeringly sonorous and beautiful sets I’ve ever heard. It was overwhelming, full of pathos and I left the hall with those incredible overtones hanging in my ears for hours.

A couple of hours later, I was onstage when I glanced up and saw Lubomyr, true to his word, stood in the audience watching me attentively. I felt incredibly nervous. It’s not everyday you get to play for someone who has greatly inspired and influenced your own music. After the show, I packed up my guitar and came out to meet the crowd. The first person who greeted me was Lubomyr: friendly. full of enthusiasm and keen to hear about my music, my processes, the way in which I made music. Yet again, I was overwhelmed - for very different reasons.

“You have invented continuous music for guitar!”

I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I can’t think of an epitaph that would make me prouder.

We also spoke about collaborating that night and via e-mail a while after, but it wasn’t until January 2012, shortly after I’d moved back to Hastings, England from Ann Arbor, Michigan and Lubomyr played his first ever show in the UK at Cafe Oto that it came to fruition. John Chantler got in touch, said Lubomyr had a free day after his performance and could I come to London for a day, see what happens? He kindly agreed to record the whole thing.

We all met at the Vortex Jazz Cafe around midday. We set up, Lubomyr at the grand piano, me directly facing him with my 12-string guitar and began. I would retune at random between songs and together we would find interesting chord progressions, hints of melodies and ways in which to weave those immense overtones that Lubomyr is able to generate on the piano with those of my guitar. No more than two takes per song. Improvisation, spontaneous composition, whatever you want to call it. Either way, it truly felt as if the piano and guitar were as one - inseparable, parts of a bigger whole, a means by which for two people to make one sound. It never felt forced and never less than engaging. Lubomyr was always humble, jovial and open to ideas. The whole session lasted six hours.

I’m not a great improviser. I always want to take that raw creative element that the form brings and work upon it, to distill and refine it further. I think Lubomyr feels the same. But there is something about these recordings that would be incredibly difficult to recapture. A small moment in time, feeling perfectly and wonderfully lost within that sound.

I’m honoured.”

- James Blackshaw, October 2012.

Neon Indians, Awkward Texts and Vivaldi. (Esperanto - 2012) 
(NOTE* I Wrote this a while ago for Esperanto, but I still like it. It was tricky to get my idea across, it’s still well formed in my head but not fully in the piece, but I think I managed to get a few things on paper. I had an awkwardly awesome text message conversation last night and I also bought my mum Richter’s take on Vivaldi for Mothers day. Those things reminded me I still needed to share this.*)
“There’s nothing better than having an experience now that’s the exact same thing I would’ve done when I was 16, like texting a really awkward “I like you” message to someone. The way you phrase it might change, but it will always continue to happen, and there’s something really charming and calming about that.” - Alan Palomo. 
Apart from “cinematic” there’s no word that can trigger an instant gag reflex when talking about music than “nostalgia”. Nostalgia is rarely a collective thing so to label an act nostalgic is treacherous territory. It’s normally an easy way to say, “these guys sound a lot like (insert currently hip time period), but they’re still cool”. Sure, the new Pains of Being Pure at Heart record might sound a fair bit like the Smashing Pumpkins did in 1993 but that doesn’t mean it reminds me of my first kiss, which is a shame. For a while I dismissed nostalgia in music as a purely personal thing associated with individual events, but last year I discovered there are ways to make music that is instantly and widely sentimental to a wide group of people. It’s just a more complex process than using the same reverb settings as My Bloody Valentine did in 88.  
Recently a couple of musicians with high concept tendencies played on the idea of how our memory works in relationship to music by redelivering music we have encountered in our past. Ambient producer The Caretaker rearranged pre-war parlour music he found on old damaged records into a whirling soundscape of things you thought you might have heard before but could never be sure. He repeated tracks at random points within his 2011 piece An Empty Bliss Beyond this World and filled in gaps with his own bits of sound art and remnants of the re-recording process. It was a work that brilliantly captured the the fragmented way our memory works. The result is a reflection of the mechanical complexities of the human brain rather than the emotional ones but it was very powerful all the same. Renowned German composer Max Richter recomposed the concertos that make up Vivaldi’s 1723 work The Four Seasons with similar results. He used music we are all familiar with and delivered it in a way that was startlingly new. That piece of music is of particular note because not many people my age listen to Vivaldi consciously, they have heard fragments of The Four Seasons in movies, at parents dinner parties, at high school concerts - always delivered indirectly. It could trigger memories that you never knew were there. They’re not nostalgic ones, but this process of fragmented redelivery is a step in the right direction to sparking them.    
 Nostalgia is reliant on tricks played by our brains. Often we remember things with a golden filter and we remember selectively. With his 2011 record Era Extraña Alan Palomo, who makes music as Neon Indian has done something quite remarkable. Rather than do what I thought he did and put 80’s filters on music videos, he’s actually legitimately uninterested in creating music that aligns directly with another time and place. He uses fragments of our recent past to construct a bizarre and beautiful present that taps into our tendency towards selective memory. The result is instantly “nostalgic” but feels rooted in the now because he’s doing far more than just mimic music from the past. Era Extraña is a far cry from the potentially inaccessible high concept work of the other artists I talked about. His re-imaginings come in the form of easy to digest, stupidly catchy pop songs. Songs that carry within them the shattered remains of a period of music most would rather forget.  
 There’s been a sort of survival of the fittest culling of the myriad of artists that emerged to cash in on big-sounding indie electro’s rise to prominence around 2006-2008, the time when Neon Indian initially appeared with 2006’s Psychic Chasms. Some acts like Cut Copy managed to adapt their sound to live another day but hope for the other young guys weilding synths and guitars seemed thin. Rather than distance himself from this period Palomo jumped right back in and mined the depths of that time, but these are far from direct copies. Like Richter’s take on Vivaldi, or The Caretaker’s redelivered parlour music they are recomposed to play tricks with your brain. The stadium filling, digitally perfected sounds of the songs he appropriates are gone, Neon Indian’s tracks are raw, minimal and unstable. The synths sound wobbly and agitated, like they could fall apart at any second. There is a purpose to this fragility. 
“Halogen” is almost a note for note copy of M83’s 2008 monster “Kim And Jessie”, however the fragmented and fragile way it is presented means that you can instantly identify it with a time period but spend a long time trying to figure out exactly what it was reminding you of. I was very familiar with “Kim And Jessie” but it took me a few minutes with my head in 2008 to make the full connection, and within those few minutes you remember things you otherwise wouldn’t have. He’s also cleverly chosen songs that someone listening to a Neon Indian album would be highly unlikely not to know, minutes later during “Suns Irrupt” I found myself trying to remember the name of LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great.” Palomo talks about internet acceleration a lot, he understands the speed of the modern world. We’re nostalgic for things that just happened not things that happened 20 years ago. Era Extraña is one of the only records I know to fully tap into that. 
Last year something really great happened to me. On a tram shortly afterwards, in the mood to remember golden hours and beers with lunch I skipped my normal diet of German ambient techno and reached for Era Extraña . It was shortly after it was released and I had no emotional attachment to it at all. There was a reason I did this. I’d rarely whack on the sickly sweet “Kim and Jessie” nowadays, but it’s nice to be reminded of the happy and youthful exuberance associated with it in a way that’s easy to digest. That quote up the top says it really well. Palomo is rephrasing the energy of the golden age of indie electro with maturity and class but the associated feelings remain the same. In 2011 he made a record that felt like 2006 and sounded like 2011. There’s something really charming and calming about that.

Neon Indians, Awkward Texts and Vivaldi. (Esperanto - 2012) 

(NOTE* I Wrote this a while ago for Esperanto, but I still like it. It was tricky to get my idea across, it’s still well formed in my head but not fully in the piece, but I think I managed to get a few things on paper. I had an awkwardly awesome text message conversation last night and I also bought my mum Richter’s take on Vivaldi for Mothers day. Those things reminded me I still needed to share this.*)

“There’s nothing better than having an experience now that’s the exact same thing I would’ve done when I was 16, like texting a really awkward “I like you” message to someone. The way you phrase it might change, but it will always continue to happen, and there’s something really charming and calming about that.” - Alan Palomo. 

Apart from “cinematic” there’s no word that can trigger an instant gag reflex when talking about music than “nostalgia”. Nostalgia is rarely a collective thing so to label an act nostalgic is treacherous territory. It’s normally an easy way to say, “these guys sound a lot like (insert currently hip time period), but they’re still cool”. Sure, the new Pains of Being Pure at Heart record might sound a fair bit like the Smashing Pumpkins did in 1993 but that doesn’t mean it reminds me of my first kiss, which is a shame. For a while I dismissed nostalgia in music as a purely personal thing associated with individual events, but last year I discovered there are ways to make music that is instantly and widely sentimental to a wide group of people. It’s just a more complex process than using the same reverb settings as My Bloody Valentine did in 88.  

Recently a couple of musicians with high concept tendencies played on the idea of how our memory works in relationship to music by redelivering music we have encountered in our past. Ambient producer The Caretaker rearranged pre-war parlour music he found on old damaged records into a whirling soundscape of things you thought you might have heard before but could never be sure. He repeated tracks at random points within his 2011 piece An Empty Bliss Beyond this World and filled in gaps with his own bits of sound art and remnants of the re-recording process. It was a work that brilliantly captured the the fragmented way our memory works. The result is a reflection of the mechanical complexities of the human brain rather than the emotional ones but it was very powerful all the same. Renowned German composer Max Richter recomposed the concertos that make up Vivaldi’s 1723 work The Four Seasons with similar results. He used music we are all familiar with and delivered it in a way that was startlingly new. That piece of music is of particular note because not many people my age listen to Vivaldi consciously, they have heard fragments of The Four Seasons in movies, at parents dinner parties, at high school concerts - always delivered indirectly. It could trigger memories that you never knew were there. They’re not nostalgic ones, but this process of fragmented redelivery is a step in the right direction to sparking them.    

 Nostalgia is reliant on tricks played by our brains. Often we remember things with a golden filter and we remember selectively. With his 2011 record Era Extraña Alan Palomo, who makes music as Neon Indian has done something quite remarkable. Rather than do what I thought he did and put 80’s filters on music videos, he’s actually legitimately uninterested in creating music that aligns directly with another time and place. He uses fragments of our recent past to construct a bizarre and beautiful present that taps into our tendency towards selective memory. The result is instantly “nostalgic” but feels rooted in the now because he’s doing far more than just mimic music from the past. Era Extraña is a far cry from the potentially inaccessible high concept work of the other artists I talked about. His re-imaginings come in the form of easy to digest, stupidly catchy pop songs. Songs that carry within them the shattered remains of a period of music most would rather forget.  

 There’s been a sort of survival of the fittest culling of the myriad of artists that emerged to cash in on big-sounding indie electro’s rise to prominence around 2006-2008, the time when Neon Indian initially appeared with 2006’s Psychic Chasms. Some acts like Cut Copy managed to adapt their sound to live another day but hope for the other young guys weilding synths and guitars seemed thin. Rather than distance himself from this period Palomo jumped right back in and mined the depths of that time, but these are far from direct copies. Like Richter’s take on Vivaldi, or The Caretaker’s redelivered parlour music they are recomposed to play tricks with your brain. The stadium filling, digitally perfected sounds of the songs he appropriates are gone, Neon Indian’s tracks are raw, minimal and unstable. The synths sound wobbly and agitated, like they could fall apart at any second. There is a purpose to this fragility. 

Halogen” is almost a note for note copy of M83’s 2008 monster “Kim And Jessie”, however the fragmented and fragile way it is presented means that you can instantly identify it with a time period but spend a long time trying to figure out exactly what it was reminding you of. I was very familiar with “Kim And Jessie” but it took me a few minutes with my head in 2008 to make the full connection, and within those few minutes you remember things you otherwise wouldn’t have. He’s also cleverly chosen songs that someone listening to a Neon Indian album would be highly unlikely not to know, minutes later during “Suns Irrupt” I found myself trying to remember the name of LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great.” Palomo talks about internet acceleration a lot, he understands the speed of the modern world. We’re nostalgic for things that just happened not things that happened 20 years ago. Era Extraña is one of the only records I know to fully tap into that. 

Last year something really great happened to me. On a tram shortly afterwards, in the mood to remember golden hours and beers with lunch I skipped my normal diet of German ambient techno and reached for Era Extraña . It was shortly after it was released and I had no emotional attachment to it at all. There was a reason I did this. I’d rarely whack on the sickly sweet “Kim and Jessie” nowadays, but it’s nice to be reminded of the happy and youthful exuberance associated with it in a way that’s easy to digest. That quote up the top says it really well. Palomo is rephrasing the energy of the golden age of indie electro with maturity and class but the associated feelings remain the same. In 2011 he made a record that felt like 2006 and sounded like 2011. There’s something really charming and calming about that.


Lust For Youth - “Breaking Silence” (Sacred Bones - 2013) 

It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as when we have accepted an invitation we duly arrive in a certain house at a given time.

Such is life for Sacred Bones, who’s increasingly expanded camp will land more attention here in a day or two, (see if you can guess who’s getting it). Sweedish producer Hannes Norrvide is part of the band of brothers pushing the scope of the synthesiser for more than just “summer vibes”. God bless the EU - Sacred Bones 2013 cold wave take over is real and they’re marching in from the west. 

Perfect View is out June 11