Bandcamp Picks of the Week 11/16/16
Bandcamp Picks of the Week: If you don’t know, now you know.
Machine Girl and Five Star Hotel – MACHINE GIRL / FIVE STAR HOTEL
Genre: Electronic, Breakcore
Favorite Tracks: “Ohio3,” “Ohio1,” “Ohio2,” “Portland2,” “The Guardian,” “ICE Cam,” “S. Diverge”
It seems that every time I listen to New York’s Machine Girl I find myself in trouble. A few years ago I tried working out to WLFGRL and nearly tore my squeedily spooch. Just a few months after that, I was listening to their two tracks on DRED COLLECTIVE VOLUME 3 while driving and was caught speeding at 110 miles per hour by the police. So I guess it’s safe to say that Machine Girl’s brand of drum and bass jungle rave is energetic beyond belief. I was honest enough to say I was doing 110 miles per hour but the police inside I was going 140 miles per hour, which made me think is a lawyer worth it for speeding tickets? I may have to give it a go since 140 miles per hour is a license disqualification. On this split with Five Star Hotel, MG has a nice batch of new stuff that is still relentless and dizzying but also exhibits more precision and growth as an electronic producer. The influence of noise is apparent but not overbearing, scarce but effective vocal samples make this breakbeat nightmare more believable, and no one beat or loop is abused. It’s exhausting but throws something new at you every turn. Five Star Hotel, whom I am less familiar with, comes in on the second half to slow things down just a tad. Hotel’s section, although more cautious, is just as fun and adds a little bit of Venetian Snares-esque, off-kilter weirdness while still maintaining cohesion. They’re two sides to the same wacky coin, one that many should treasure. Check it out here!
Nadja – THE STONE IS NOT HIT BY THE SUN, NOR CARVED WITH A KNIFE
Genre: Shoegaze, Drone
Favorite Tracks: “The Stone,” “The Knife,” “Untitled IV”
I’ll never stop being a proponent of these talented, Berlin-based Canadian expatriates and their insane methods of meditation. With their multiple-releases-per-year regimen, Nadja still continues to pump out worthwhile projects to add to their expansive discography. For the latter end of 2016, Toronto’s Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff offer up four tracks of heavy dreamsludge on THE STONE, transporting you to a reverber-nation of fuzzy massage chairs and mountainous distortion walls. It’s a bit more fun and dynamic than EARTH 2, but still retains that album’s therapeutic effects. Baker’s noisy guitar again manages to be oppressively titanic while simultaneously keeping an undeniably gentle and mellow feel. Buckareff’s ghostly, echoed vocals make the album a little reminiscent to more classic, LOVELESS-era shoegaze so as not to have listeners totally abandoned in a droning abyss. You know how those quicksand fetishists describe their obsession as getting a full-body, all-encompassing hug with the slow creeping danger of suffocation adding just a tinge of edge? THE STONE is that, in a safe, audio form. Give it a listen.
Alexander Larios
Mr. Alexander Ignacio Larios used to own a Sega Dreamcast. Follow him on Last.fm at: http://www.last.fm/user/KeroseneBath. on RateYourMusic at: https://rateyourmusic.com/~KeroseneBath. on Letterboxd at: http://letterboxd.com/Phallixander/.
