ISSUE #43
Articulation
by Rival Consoles
Ryan Lee West, under his London-based electronic music alias Rival Consoles, has released his latest LP via Erased Tapes. As a follow up to 2018's Persona (which we named one of the best albums of the last decade), Articulation cements West's identity as an artist. His signature punchy synthesizers blend together amidst geometric patterns and striking rhythms to make something beautiful. Vast oceans saturated with dense, ghostly fog - empty city streets glittering as the sun's tendrils beam between skyscrapers. Most importantly: pitch-black dance floors where pulsating sound waves take the form of streaks of light that illuminate the silhouettes of countless bodies undulating to the music. Whether you're head-down in a project or a mountain of emails, entertaining guests or taking out your pent-up pandemic-induced frustrations—Rival Consoles, and in this case, Articulation, is universal.
Purchase Articulation here.
Check out the official video of Sudden Awareness of Now below!
Breathe Deep
By Oscar Jerome
I love jazz because of its seemingly endless capacity to evoke peripheral, fleeting emotion - the changeable moment-long feelings that fill our days but are largely subjugated to the subconscious because they are so difficult to express. Hailing from London, Oscar Jerome encapsulates this metamorphic translative ability better than most, and his newly-released LP Breathe Deep is testament to his prowess in mixing emotion and genre as fluidly as if he were tie-dying the human soul.
A member of the Ezra Collective alongside bump favorites Catching Flies and Jay Prince, Jerome first came onto my radar in 2016 when the Spotify algorithm dropped Give Back What You Stole from Me into my Daily Mix and sent me wandering aimlessly through my neighborhood with the track on repeat. Four years later the song still feels wholly unique and remarkable, all the incentive one may need to give Oscar’s discography a listen, but until today that discography consisted entirely of singles and 3 song EPs.
Image courtesy of The Line of Best Fit.
Breathe Deep marks Jerome’s first full length release and does not disappoint, featuring 11 tracks of inventive guitar playing, soulful and direct singing from Jerome and several guests, and deliciously hectic jazz drums and walking basslines. The energy levels swings from a sweat-summoning sped-up rendition of Give Back What U Stole From Me to chilled downtempo during Timeless, but an atmosphere of chromakey experimentation and virtuosic playing is consistent throughout. The production is air-tight, almost vacuum-sealed around the small orchestra of instruments involved in making the album tick.
Drum tone is dry and crisp, horns and sharp and bright, and Jerome’s guitar, whether strummed or finger-plucked in hypnotic patterns, is always butter-smooth and operating-room-clean. Your Saint features a loose vocal delivery that oscillates between spoken word and Sinatra-esque crooning, while Timeless features an intimate and sweet duet with Lianne La Havas.
I could go on about all the ways this album succeeds, but it would be a disservice - you must listen to believe. Just know that this triumphant work of jazz fusion takes the best of Kamasi Washington, Tom Misch and Jordan Rakei and spins it together with something so unique it will make anyone an Oscar Jerome fan.
Bumps best in a pair of good headphones, with a slight breeze and your full attention.
Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape
By Black Crown Initiate
Hailing from Reading, Pennsylvania, the five members Black Crown Initiate have proven themselves fearless trailblazers in a genre already known for its endless subcategories and almost satirical specificity. All the way back in 2013 this band perked my ears with the courtly and devastating Song of the Crippled Bull EP, 21 minutes of solemn, stately guitar and clean choral vocals fused seamlessly with brutal, blackened death metal. A keen understanding of dynamic songwriting and a peerless ability to fuse light and dark into something more than the sum has kept these 4 songs on my rotation for 7 years, and the group’s 3rd full length album, Violent Portraits of Doomed Escape has only seen these skills honed to a razor edge.
Image courtesy of MetalSucks.
The opening track Invitation is a clear calling card, a bleak medieval-sounding mix of plucked acoustic guitar and stately clean vocals that breathes for a moment before crashing and swelling suddenly into a malevolent cloud of black metal that evokes the cold threat of Scandanavian forests under a moonless sky. James Dorton’s regal vocals are replaced with an animalistic scream that manages to hit a very small target between witch scream and guttural growl. The magic trick is not complete though - far from it. An already impressive concotion of disparate sound is further transmuted when machine-gun precise metal grooves are re-joined by acoustic strumming and Dorton’s voice once again goes clean and high, singing a lament that manages to be full of sorrow and sadism at the same time. As far as choruses go, this is one of the fullest, most impressive displays of melody and rhythm, clean and distorted guitar, screams and singing that I’ve ever heard. And the album is just getting started.
Invitation is nearly 8 minutes of this sonic dichotomy, featuring several incendiary guitar solos, a sudden and haunting acoustic breakdown that would make any Opeth fan weep with joy, and more crushing grooves that you could find in a 5-bus pile-up. Years in Frigid Light comes out of the gates on black-shod steeds with a sadistically catchy riff and a bassline the sounds like descending castle steps. Dorton’s two-faced vocal performance once again takes center stage, leading the charge with phlegmy vitriol before ascending to the pinnacles of some dark tower to lament the sky with pristine melody and impressive range.
Bellow is one of my favorite metal interludes of all time - 2 minutes of feral throat singing that absolutely precludes the summoning of a lovecraftian horror. Death Comes in Reverse features a psychedelic medley of dark murmurs over a macabre bassline and swirling arpeggios that break off into a sludgey chorus over which Dorton once again sails in dark majesty.
This album is incredibly progressive in its songwriting and its application of mirror-edge segments that spell doom and despair with entirely different faces. If you like this, go back through Black Crown Initiate’s discography - you won’t be disappointed.
