Hi This is Flume: A Journey into Madness

Written By: Kirk Kitson

Hi This Is Flume is the soundtrack to your wildest parties and your worst nightmares. It’s raw distillation of color in auditory form; the personification of a hot desert summer while simultaneously harboring the iciness of a brisk winter. It’s symbolic of our growing culture of ironic detachment due to our newfound need for constant entertainment and distraction, which will only grow (get worse) as technology and capitalism both continue their constant, trudging march; a fantastic argument for the importance of poptimism while also appearing to be an outright rejection of it.

Avant garde and unknown yet conventional and familiar, Hi This Is Flume has managed to create the rawest version of Flume’s signature sound, having more in common with Amnesia Scanner, Arca, and Oneohtrix Point Never than his usual forte of mainstream dance music, a space he had previously found massive success in with 2016’s Skin.

However, it’s still unmistakably Flume – every song here still carries his stadium-filling pop aesthetic, only twisted into grotesque, primal behemoths. While it could still sound at times as if it could fit in a phone commercial or at Rolling Loud, it demonstrates more of an interest towards experimentation. Moreso, along with other works such as Charli XCX’s Pop 2 and Sophie’s Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-insides, Hi This Is Flume is indicative of pop music’s clear desire to innovate and evolve beyond its expected norms while also serving as a deconstruction of itself.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating parts of Hi This Is Flume is how it constantly has one foot planted firmly in the history of electronic music. Every song here is a mosaic of electronic music’s past, present, and future; an exciting tapestry of footwork, dubstep, ambient, drum and bass, grime, trap, future bass, IDM, witch house, the list goes on. Above all that, Hi This Is Flume is maddening, unadulterated fun. Every song here is a madhouse of ideas that flow so perfectly into each other, heeding itself to repeated listens not only because it’s incredibly dense but also satisfying.

In this regard, a fair comparison would be to Playboi Carti’s Die Lit in how they both bounce around between different forms and open themselves up to unconventionality yet can still keep the listener’s attention otherwise through pure dopamine rushes. This is what Hi This Is Flume delivers in spades – from the constant trading of sleek keys and harsh horns on Ecdysis to the maddening drop on the Is It Cold In The Water remix that carries a brutal, teeth-grinding level of distortion, to Upgrade which starts with distorted 8-bit keys yet evolves into a straight up footwork track (and a damn good one at that), Hi This Is Flume proves itself to be diverse and engaging, even when not everything works.

One of the most important things to note about Hi This Is Flume is while it does nod to a history of both conventional and experimental forms of dance music, it is also very of the moment. It becomes apparent that Hi This Is Flume is intrinsically tied to our modern psyche, a project not only made in but made for 2019. From the first track being a commentary on the artistic process and the vapid nature of dumbing that down for a mainstream audience who ignore entire aesthetics of albums for instant gratification Spotify “This is” playlists to the more obvious references of various pop culture bastions like vlogging and Game of Thrones from rapper JPEGMAFIA, Hi This Is Flume is surprisingly reflective of the various changes of this last decade, however loud or subtle. It speaks to our dysfunctional relationship with technology and consumption, serving as a raucous celebration of fleeting youth and chaos. And through this, Flume has managed to create something beautiful yet freaky and avant garde, something harsh and raw yet endlessly listenable.

 

A New Album with a New Era of Cherry Glazerr

Since their debut album in 2014, Cherry Glazerr hit the music scene with a punch (in a good way). Clementine Creevy started the band in high school and as she grew up so did her sound. In their new album “Stuffed & Ready” we can see a massive shift in their music as it takes on a more deeply personal tone. “Stuffed and Ready” explores Clementine’s emotional vulnerability in a mere 10 songs. We first start off the journey at the song “Ohio” with a striking lyric “I wish myself the best, but I’m broken” complemented by heavy guitar riffs. It delivers a bold intro song but I’m soon to be unimpressed, as the song “Daddi” comes on. “Daddi” fails to capture my interest as I feel it’s a little generic but I’m stricken by the next song “Wasted Nun.”

You can hear a familiar sound to their other albums in “Wasted Nun” but this time it’s more polished. The lyric “I’m an unproductive sin” is well pretty damn relatable. “Self Explained” gives the freshest and pop-ish sound compared to the rest of the album but still delivers Clementine’s emotional reprise. Stupid Fish” is good but delivers too similar of a sound to the rest of the album to catch my interest. The song that really blows me away is “Distressor”. “Distressor” hits with amazing guitar riffs as a hybrid of all of the sounds given to us in previous songs. In this song it’s apparent how much Cherry Glazerr has grown and Clementine as well as a lyricist. It’s the perfect victory lap for the album. Overall, I personally dub this a very solid album. Seeing them grow from a feminist powerhouse to a feminist powerhouse with a polished sound has been an amazing journey.

Stream here!

William Basinski and Lawrence English – Selva Oscura: An Album for Autumn Exploration

Written By: Joshua Reedy

There is something about the works of both William Basinski and Lawrence English that incites a lust for exploration. Basinski and English are both massive figureheads in the ambient/avant-garde music genre, neither of which are strangers to collaboration. Basinski is likely most recognized for his sprawling multi-faceted Disintegration Loops which, in a nine lp box set, runs for over 600 dollars on Discogs. Basinski has a wealth of other emotionally and mentally stimulating albums such as Melancholia, released in 2003. Lawrence English is an Australian ambient artist known best for his 2009 album A Colour for Autumn. English has worked with various artists including Fennesz, Grouper and even Xiu Xiu. English is responsible for the experimental music label Room 40, which houses various artists including some Tim Hecker releases. Basinski and English have come together to create Selva Oscura, released on October 12th, 2018.

“Selva Oscura” translates roughly to “Twilight Forest”; the album is perfect for any hiking through the woods this fall. The first collaboration between these two feels like an exploration into hollow and decaying spaces in nature: a marriage between cold man-made stone structures and the golden-brown descent of autumnal changes. The album combines sounds of isolating drones with pulses of life interspersed throughout. “Selva Oscura 1.2” feels as if you are traversing through a tunnel deep within the woods. Rhythmic Industrial clanking and movement pierces “Selva Oscura 1.2”, portraying imagery of rusted and abandoned machinery found lingering in a hidden place. Quiet signs of life shimmer through the drone on both “Selva Oscura 1.2” and “Selva Oscura 1.3” testifying to the final stand of nature before the Winter comes. The album exudes a feeling of curiosity, of being in an unfamiliar place and discovering something that has been left behind a long time ago. The album is a perfect ambient expression of Fall; it is lonely, dreary and endlessly echoing yet wonderfully beautiful. Fall, and this album itself are a tragically beautiful “Memento Mori”: A reminder that all things collapse eventually to time. Selva Oscura however, reminds us that this loss is what makes life beautiful in the first place, and that even the twisted nature of loss can be beautiful just as autumn forests drenched in twilight manage to evoke such emotion from us.

The first four tracks of the album, “Mono No Aware 1.1” through “Mono No Aware 1.4” lowers us into the forest with brighter sounds, and more frequent melodies. “Mono no aware” roughly means “an empathy for things” which relates to the melancholy feelings people often have during the transition from Fall into Winter. Selva Oscura as an album represents an empathy toward the slow falling of leaves and coldness of air. The album manages to find a level of warmth on top of the howling winds, providing mental images of being wrapped in a coat and hat to combat the stinging air. The “Mono No Aware” half of this album is certainly the brighter side, representing an initial entrance into Fall or one’s first step in an unknown collage of trees. Sounds reminiscent of a train bobbing along in the distance graces “Mono No Aware 1.3” bringing the idea of nature and machinery together. The albums feels like a testament to the duality of that which is natural and that which is created; as both fall apart just the same. Nature, however, always rebounds and even at the peak of Summer, wind will still blow through the various lifeless and forgotten metal structures that have been reclaimed and engulfed by trees and grass.

Overall Selva Oscura manages to be a beautifully comfortable reminder of our mortality, just as Fall. Hopefully, the existential comparison of natural cycles to the futility of our time on Earth does not unnerve the reader/listener; if it does, take comfort in knowing Halloween is just around the corner where artificial scares and vast amounts of candy can help us cope. Selva Oscura is great for getting comfy with a warm mug of tea, or for walking through your local forest.

Listen to this album below!

The Electronica Underworld, and the Ventriloquists Behind the Curtains of Today’s EDM

Written By: Hudson Hoffman

When the common person hears the term “EDM” in 2018, they believe it refers to the likes of Illenium and Marshmello. In 2011, the same term would have put images of Deadmau5’s iconic helmet and Skrillex’s 3-clawed symbol into the minds of the commercial audience at the time. These names are all superstar icons which have been recognized for their significant contributions to the industry, and their influence in the shaping and evolution of what is defined as EDM. 

However, there is always a bigger fish, and if these are the big fish of the pond, who do they consider sizable? 

The answer is found in what is known as IDM – Intelligent Dance Music. You may not have heard it, but the press has labeled the scene with such a term because there is simply no other term to refer to it as. Some call it Brainwave, Acid Dance, and Glitchcore, among other buzzwords. The scene consists of artists you have probably never heard of, but those big fish in the pond? These are the artists who were essential in the nurturing of their production career. Some of the names in this realm of electronica include Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, U-Ziq, and Squarepusher – all names prominent in the 90s dance scene of the UK and Europe – the breeding ground of dubstep and electronica as a whole. If you ask anyone behind the counter of your local record store, there’s a near-guarantee they have heard of these names, for they are credited with pioneering electronica, despite their lack of presence in the mainstream. Aphex Twin is considered the poster boy for IDM, his 1992 release “Selected Ambient Works 85-92” sending subtle yet influential shock waves through what was considered pop & dance music at the time. 

What followed was a tsunami of releases on the heels of Aphex Twin’s album. U-Ziq made himself known with his debut known as “Tango N’ Vectif” in ’93, the first ever album to incorporate the elements that established what the world now knows as “dubstep”. 1996 saw Squarepusher debut with his jazz/breakcore album “Feed Me Weird Things”, which pioneered the virtually nonexistent drum n’ bass scene and further helped with the establishment of glitch, a prominent genre of the early 00’s.

Despite the lack of mainstream exposure of these artists and their works, many mainstream artists of today label the IDM pioneers as the driving force behind their own creation. Skrillex has been very open about how Aphex Twin inspired his debut EP “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”, and goes into detail in an interview about his interest in the Richard D. James’ discography: 

[In regards to how much he has listened to of Aphex twin’s soundcloud releases] “So much of it. I’m always on SoundCloud, in general, but the new stuff? I’ve listened to all of it. I just put it on and clean my house to it. I found my old CD book and I wanna take a photo of it because I have every [Aphex Twin] CD. Some of the actual CDs are missing but I have every release up until 2006. I know he’s released more stuff since then, but I haven’t bought a CD since 2006. But I have every single [one], like Caustic Window, Polygon Window, every Analord you can buy on CD.”  

Joel Zimmerman, better known as Deadmau5, and the pioneering force behind progressive house with his 2008 release “Random Album Title”, has claimed a love for Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin, his earlier works paying homage to themselves and the scene with tracks off his 2001-2006 production “Project 56”. One particular track on the assortment is named “Bored of Canada” referencing to Boards of Canada in both its name and style. Most, if not all, of the tracks on Project 56 derive from the IDM/Glitch/Breakcore/Ambient scene produced by Aphex Twin, U-Ziq, Squarepusher, and Boards of Canada. Another less known release of Deadmau5 was his remix of Boards of Canada’s famous “Roygbiv”. In his livestream Q&A hosted by asQme, Joel reaffirmed his admiration for Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, and Tycho, upon being asked about his key inspirations and influences, as well as what he listens to on a daily basis, given his constant exposure to electronica. 

Other massive names both inside and outside of the electronic music scene such as Frank Ocean, Radiohead,Moby, DJ Shadow, Kraftwerk, Bjork, and Kanye West, have all claimed Aphex Twin either influenced their productions or is one of the artists in their playlists. In fact, Kanye West was called out by Aphex Twin himself for illegally sampling Aphex Twin’s piano piece “Avril 14th” in his collaboration with John Legend on “Blame Game”. Despite having been called out for it, Kanye continues to claim he wrote the instrumental. 

The musketeers are still making music today, U-Ziq having released “Challenge Me Foolish” earlier in 2018, Aphex Twin releasing his first commercial content since 2014 under the almost-mainstream “Collapse EP”, Squarepusher’s“Damogen Furies” reintroducing him to the scene in 2015, and finally Boards of Canada’s 2013 release “Tomorrow’s Harvest”, their first production since their 2005 album “The Campfire Headphase”. They seem to be thriving within their dimension of music, their fan bases loyal to an almost cult-like point.     

So in the family tree of edm subgenres, now you know where it all originated from, and not to forget where it all began in what is today an oversaturated, low-quality market that thrives off of festivals and live shows rather than the music itself. As Aphex Twin once quoted from Willy Wonka: 

“We are the music makers, and we, are the dreamers of dreams”