Lupine's Lament Liner Notes #2
New: Dorotheo, Squirrel Flower, Lukah | Old: Anekdoten, Richard Peterson, Rhythm Method
Here’s the playlist on Spotify. Some bonus cuts that aren’t streaming appear below.
NEW:
Dorotheo - “Alba Rosa”
From: Como Es
To continue a theme I’ve been stuck on, whenever I encounter an album of the “what is THIS?” variety, I’m predictably launched into a potentially lifelong bout of struggling to pin down its particulars. I didn’t ask to be like this, it’s just how my OCD-addled, bad-writer brain typically misfires. And, tellingly, it can go one of two ways:
I’m driven mad by the album’s uncanny valley similarities to tip-of-the-tongue artists.
I delight in the album’s mystery, grasping for comparisons that often exist outside of music to explain the new sensations I’m feeling.
In the first way, the magic is released slowly, like letting air out of a balloon animal; once the tip-of-the-tongue artists reach the tip of my bad-writer brain, the excitement is fully deflated. In the second way, the magic is magnified by however long the mystery lasts. Even when I develop a working description, the magic is retained.
This is a long, indulgent windup to write that Dorotheo is doing some magical shit on its LP debut, Como Es. I can’t convincingly describe the psych-y, proggy Tapatío duo’s qualities, but, man, have I delighted in them. For example, it’s hard to explain, but if you live in a place where you're frequently pummeled by wind, you already know how “Alba Rosa,” Como Es’s opener, feels. The six-minute mind-expander has a windswept-ness to it. Benjamín Zárate’s guitars and synths are like a steady breeze with occasional gusts. Otto Malgesto’s drumming jazzily pokes and prods the riffs along, utilizing a loping shuffle that’s the aural equivalent of a tumbleweed rolling across the sand. Real neat.
That windy aridness reminds me of the Tinariwen, though the two bands don't sound similar. No, the way Dorotheo fills out the sonic spectrum, with low-end psych and swirling shoegaze, is more Kairon; IRSE! But that’s where my comparisons end. There’s something singular about Dorotheo, which, needless to say, is impressive for a new band. When Zárate’s vocals lock in with his synths and guitars, satisfyingly clicking into place like puzzle pieces, it inspires a feeling I can only get from Como Es alone. It’s pure Dorotheo, in other words, which is as good as the description is going to get for now.
Soichi Terada - “Bamboo Fighter”
From: Bamboo Fighter
Soichi Terada’s “rediscovery” is the best-case scenario for what a good compilation can do for an artist’s legacy. Rush Hour’s Sounds from the Far East, the Hunee-compiled sampler of Terada’s Far East Recording label that included cuts from Terada, Manabu Nagayama, and Shinichiro Yokota, reintroduced the Ape Escape composer to a new audience newly interested in ’90s house. (By the way, the story of how Terada’s Sumo Jungle helped him land the Ape Escape gig, as recounted to Nick Dwyer in a 2017 Red Bull Music Academy interview, is a hell of a yarn.)
“I must say the biggest evolution that happened during these 30 years is the development of the internet and how it changed people’s way of consuming music,” Terada told Yokota in a fun dual interview for Ransom Note. “The speed in which music spreads is much faster compared to before and we can connect with the audience in real time.”
Sounds from the Far East led, almost immediately, to reactivating Terada and Yokota’s recording careers. Yokota struck first, with 2016’s Do It Again and Again and 2019’s I Know You Like It. (Yokota’s mix for FACT is also absurdly good, one of my favorites.) And now Terada is set to return with Asakusa Light, due in December. “Bamboo Fighter” is the lead single, a bass-blooping thumper with a hip-hop bounce. It’s “classic” Terada, at least in the sense that those of us too young to remember Larry Levan playlists have come to know.
Spectres - “Dreams”
From: Nostalgia
Vancouver’s Spectres sure hit the bullseye with the title of its fourth full-length: Nostalgia. Released during Artoffact Records hot-hand period in 2020, Nostalgia sounds enchantingly ancient, like a lost demo that never made it to 4AD in the ‘80s. “The title just felt right,” guitarist Zachary Batalden said to Post-Punk.com. “We’ve never shied away from acknowledging our influences and in a way calling the record Nostalgia felt like an affirmation of that. We had already written and recorded the album and when listening back to it in reflection it just felt very nostalgic and bittersweet.” “Dreams” might be the epitome of that bittersweetness, with yearning verses that make me think of chilly winds rustling changing leaves and how thoughts of an unrequited crush can make your whole body ache. Hindsight, the band’s follow-up, is set to be released in November. Early returns are promising.
Lukah - “Glasshouses”
From: Why Look Up, God’s in the Mirror
In a great profile by Marcus J. Moore in Bandcamp Daily, Memphis rapper Lukah shed light on his origin story. Moore writes:
He started writing raps and showing them to his uncle, a hip-hop head who used to rap himself. “I was bringing rhymes to him and he’d be telling me, ‘Yeah, that’s bubble gum, it’s bullshit,’” he says, smiling. “He hurt my feelings and all of that.” His uncle introduced him to even more East Coast hip-hop: Heltah Skeltah, Black Moon, Leaders of the New School, Organized Konfusion.
“Glasshouses,” one of the standouts from Lukah’s newest full-length, Why Look Up, God’s in the Mirror, showcases that particular influence best. Like prime Black Moon, Lukah talks truth over a grimy, brooding beat. It’s the ideal unification of Memphis and pre-‘96 NYC grinding hip-hop, from Lukah’s incredible voice and flow to the bleak melody that has been twisted into a nightmare’s OST.
Gluer - “Pumping the Iron”
From: Pumping the Iron
Gluer is a new punk band from Sweden that kind of sounds like The Consumers. It debuted back in July with “The Room.” “Pumping Iron,” its second song and second video, is the lighter of the two, adding a Nervous Eaters-y crunch to the riffs. The song is short. This bleb is short. Synergy. Watch the video.
Squirrel Flower - “Iowa 146”
From: Planet (i)
“I wanted it to feel like a person picking on a shitty, acoustic guitar at four AM on an enclosed porch at a party while people are half passed out and smoking cigarettes,” Ella Williams said to Danielle Chelosky in a “Footnotes” feature on Stereogum. “Just that beautiful intimacy of whoever’s still barely awake. I wanted to capture that.” You sure did. Williams’s Squirrel Flower took off in 2019 after I Was Born Swimming. Regretfully, I missed that one. It took a killer Audiotree Far Out video for “Flames and Flat Tires” to finally clue me in that Squirrel Flower’s follow-up, Planet (i), was the kind of sadcore-adjacent indie folk that I love. (I’m really restraining myself from making an Idaho comparison here. Hi, my name is Wolf and I love Idaho.) “Iowa 146” is Planet (i)’s gentlest number, a gorgeously spare ballad for those beautifully intimate four AMs.
Naohai - “Swimming”
From: The Crowd
Oh, hello, Maybe Mars. Now shooting 100 percent from the field for Lupine’s Lament inclusions, it’s clear that the Chinese label is on an absolute heater right now. Naohai is its newest offering, a quartet from Shanghai that returned to the studio after a nine-year layoff to cut The Crowd, its full-length debut. “The style of music, in a nutshell, is similar to our name — a troubled turbulent sea,” the band said to freewechat.com. With its six-string alt-rock heroics, “Swimming” recalls the propulsion of prime Swervedriver. I don't know who needs to read this, but, yes, it’s an off-ramp for those still waiting on Weekend to return.
Kamaal Williams - “Toulouse ft. Miguel Atwood-Ferguson”
From: Wu Hen
I first heard Kamaal Williams/Henry Wu the same way many people did, playing keys in Yussef Kamaal, his collaboration with drummer Yussef Dayes. 2017’s Black Focus broke out and, depending on the source, is cited as a major inspiration that kicked the UK modern jazz scene into a higher gear. As someone who listens mostly to brutal death metal, I can’t tell you if that’s accurate, but I can report that the record stuck with me. A big reason for that was Wu’s simultaneously brainy and emotional playing. Then, probably because I was drowning in said metal, I lost touch with Wu’s output until Wu Hen. “Toulouse” is Wu Hen’s second-shortest track, which is too bad because I could live in its vibe forever, especially Quinn Mason’s absurdly lush saxophoning. Miguel Atwood-Ferguson’s beautifully sweeping strings are the icing on top of the icing. “Miguel was just fan and I’m a huge fan,” Wu told Passion Weiss in a candid interview that dives into the Yussef Kamaal breakup if you’re curious. “It was a quick one. We share a publicist. He called me up and said ‘Kamaal, There’s no doubt in my mind,’ and I was like ‘Say no more’ and I sent him the tracks and he added strings. I didn’t change a thing. I was in my studio and put it on with the strings I thought ‘Oh my god, we just made history. Everything is going to be ok.’”
Stuck - “Labor Leisure”
From: Content That Makes You Feel Good
Stuck’s “Labor Leisure” puts its finger on a feeling I’ve been feeling a lot lately. “That all your free time feels like work time,” goes the pre-chorus, and it’s like…yeahhhhhhhhhhhh. “‘Labor Leisure’ is about the dissolving boundaries between work life and home life,” singer Greg Obis said to Stereogum in a song premiere post. “As we are constantly reminded about how we can optimize our productivity, our diet, our free time, etc., we internalize that ‘hustle mindset’ and it negatively reflects in our personal lives. Often it can make what we do for fun feel like a task.” Stuck’s spiky post-punk, which is like a more refined version of Uranium Club, helps to highlight that theme in a way that only increases the yeahhhhhhhhhhhh.
Aspartame - “Perfect Workforce”
From: Aspartame
Sequencing! While Larry Records notes that Aspartame has “been around for a while,” the only other track I’ve heard from it was on Larry Records/Limited to One’s Nyscream compilation. Anyway, Aspartame’s three-song debut(?), which you can pick up for $0.50 or more as part of Larry Records’ 92-release discography, is the kind of emo I like, stuck in the still-screamy ‘90s and adding just enough Midwest twinkle without tumbling into twee.
Pejzaż - “Miejsce”
From: Wyspa
Pejzaż is Bartosz Kruczyński. I know Kruczyński as half of Ptaki, a Polish sample-layerer I found through Weed Temple, Jakub Adamek’s long gone blog devoted to obscure experimental music. You, on the other hand, might know Kruczyński as Earth Trax, the buzzy “ambient dance” project. Either way you got here is a good way. Anyway, I loved Ptaki’s DJ Shadow-indebted sampledelica and was pretty bummed when it split in 2016. Then, a double whammy: After Weed Temple ceased posting, I lost my only connection to most experimental European music scenes. Ah, but praise Bandcamp. In my feed one day, ta-da, there appears Pejzaż and its new album, Wyspa. Wyspa has some of that Ptaki magic but is a little more Alchemist in its sources, digging up a whole bunch of ‘60s and ‘70s folky/proggy/poppy grooves. “Rzeka Tajemnic” is probably the best beat, but “Miejsce” fits the mix, so here it is.
Solo Ansamblis - “Neturėjom Dainos”
From: OLOS
Lithuania’s Solo Ansamblis calls its music “sad dance.” I love it. “Neturėjom Dainos” is the sad jewel in OLOS’s sad crown. Released by Artoffact last year, the album’s downer spirit just seems to increase its danceability. And it’s not a theatrical sadness, either, which is a tiny surprise given the band’s background. “We are all actors, and we met at acting school,” Vytautas Leistrumas said to EU Radio. “Everything developed somehow to the point where we decided that we love electronic music and so why shouldn’t we do this?” Thank god they did the damn thing. “Neturėjom Dainos” is OLOS’s mid-album comedown. Already a pretty stripped-down recording, this near-ballad feels even sparer, doing most of the heavy lifting with a throbbing archaic synth that sounds like Kraftwerk suffering seasonal affective disorder. If Google Translate is to be trusted, the lyrics are also excellent: “We never had a song/ Our soundtrack is a monologue of the wind/ We will find it in the quietest place/ We never needed fireworks for effect.”
Damu the Fudgemunk - “Enchanted Spirits ft. Insight”
From: Conversation Peace
Everyone gets hung up on the name, so let’s address that. Damu the Fudgemunk explained his unusual nom-de-DJ to NPR, saying:
Well, I'm originally from Washington, D.C., born and raised, product of D.C. public schools. And initially, Chocolate City was the name that Parliament-Funkadelic gave the city. And I was big into the Shaolin monks and kung fu movies and also Willy Wonka. And so it's just, like, an amalgamation of several different ideas that I came up with as a teenager. So Damu The Fudgemunk, the monk of music from the Chocolate City with the chocolate skin.
Got it? Cool. Alright, Conversation Peace is the result of Damu raiding KPM’s archives, the legendary library music label. “I took my MPCs and stayed about a week and a half,” Damu told Phillip Mlynar in a Bandcamp Daily breakdown of the album. “Enchanted Spirits” is an excellent example of how granular this approach turned out to be. Brian Laurence Bennett’s “Scream,” the 13-second burst of synths off of KPM 1000 Series: The Hunter (Drama Suite) / Adventure Story, is the track’s hooky, RZA-esque stab. Damu built the rest of the track from similarly small snippets. He then called on Insight, who also released an album with Edo.G this year, to lay down the intricate rhymes.
OLD:
John Berberian and the Rock East Ensemble - “Iron Maiden”
From: Middle Eastern Rock
John Berberian, the American master of the oud. Berberian’s parents immigrated to the States to escape the Armenian Genocide. Dad played the oud and was an instrument repairman, a skill that proved useful in more ways than one in the new country. “A lot of Armenian, Turkish, Arab, and Greek musicians would come to his shop for oud repairs and that gave me the exposure to a lot of oud masters,” Berberian remembered in an Arts Fuse interview. “Some of them took me under their wing and gave me some pointers. One such notable was the blind [Istanbul-born] Armenian Udi Hrant. He would come when I was very young. When I was around 20, he came to a restaurant where I was playing and asked me to play a taxim improvisation in the key he was noted for playing in. He gave me a standing ovation, so all my friends were in awe — thinking hey, maybe that John Berberian isn’t so bad after all!”
“Iron Maiden” is from 1969’s Middle Eastern Rock. The album rips. Given the era, it’s pleasingly psych in spots, utilizing distortion on the album’s centerpiece “The Oud & The Fuzz.” While the Rock East Ensemble has some names, none are perhaps bigger than Joe Beck on guitar. Beck, who appeared on a ton of albums, also played on Idris Muhammad’s masterpiece Power of Soul, a personal favorite.
Leatherface - “I Want the Moon”
From: Mush
Frankie Stubbs is legendary in certain circles, and “I Want the Moon,” the first track on Leatherface’s 1991 album Mush, demonstrates why. If that chorus was sung by anyone else, would it still crush? Doubtful. In a 2015 obit for Leatherface guitarist Dickie Hammond, The Guardian’s James McMahon summed up Stubbs’s enduring appeal: “Yet it’s those words, and that voice, a bit like Lemmy singing the blues or Elvis gargling gravel, atop a sound indebted to the muted punk pop of early Police, which has lead to Frankie becoming such a revered figure.” Indeed, despite Stubbs gruff voice and the hardcore punch of the music, Leatherface has an undeniable sensitivity to it. In that same Guardian piece, McMahon notes that Stubbs “once said that he knew the band was ‘doing alright’ when the kids with the mohawks would move away from the stage when they played, and those with the backpacks and heavy prescription glasses would move towards it.” That duality really comes through in the riffs. Stubbs and Hammond lock in and find the middle ground between punk immediacy and the gorgeously layered sounds you’d expect more from a dream pop record. A band like few others that also happened to influence so many.
Década 2 - “Alfabeto - Cold Version”
From: Back Up: Mexican Tecno Pop 1980-1989
Dark Entries’ new reconfiguration of AT-AT’s Backup Expediente Tecno Pop houses this absolute monster. Listen to that bassline. From what I can find, Mexico City’s Década 2 kicked off in 1985 and featured two musicians, Mateo Lafontaine and Carlos Garcia. “Alfabeto - Cold Version” is from 1985. An expanded version from 1988 adds more elements and pushes the bass hook to a buzzier, cheaper-sounding synth. Yeah, Década 2 knew what was up with the naming: the 1988 version isn’t as cold. I’m happy to report that Lafontaine has kept the project alive on Bandcamp and released a metric fuckton of music over the past few years. All of it still sounds supremely ‘80s.
The Walker Brothers - “Lines”
From: Lines
I’ve never heard much about The Walker Brothers’ penultimate record, Lines. For the three records released during its final decade, 1978’s Nite Flights, The Walker Brother’s swansong, understandably gets most of the ink. Its first four songs, the first originals penned by Scott Walker since his 1970 album ‘Til the Band Comes In, are masterpieces, pointing at where Walker would go on 1984’s Climate of Hunter. Lines, on the other hand, is a soft rock country album sunk by its overwhelming MORness. And that wasn’t new territory, either. Its title track, in a way, is a shorter version of “No Regrets,” the monster single that kicked off The Walker Brothers’ ‘70s reformation and anchored a similarly middling album of the same name.
Here’s the thing, though: Like “No Regrets,” “Lines” fucking rules. These are BIG FEELINGS, total Billy Sherrill bombast. But, and this is key, it’s shot through with a melancholy that only Scott Walker in balladeer god mode can deliver. I’m actually kind of surprised that George Jones never got to this Jerry Fuller-penned weeper. Maybe even he knew Walker would be a tough act to follow.
(About that Nashville-esque sound. Here’s the story from Dave Thompson’s AMG review: “The Walker Brothers intended recording the second of their comeback albums in Nashville. They returned from the sessions with just one demo and a burning hatred for everything they found there. ‘It’s a place you go when you want to die,’ John Walker snapped, and the trio set to work in London instead.”)
Anyway, it’s still amazing to me that Scott Walker walked this planet. From Righteous Brothers biting to the Scott albums to this to terrifying avant-garde. Multitudes.
Metro Area - “Strut”
From: Metro Area
Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani started Metro Area to blow the dust off Paradise Garage-ready dubs and make them over with a then-modern techno tightness. They succeeded. So well, in fact, that the duo’s self-titled 2002 debut launched a still rolling strain of nu-disco. Metro Area hit #2 on Resident Advisor’s “Top 100 Albums of 2000-2009” poll, bested only by Ricardo Villalobos’s Alcachofa. “Miura” is the track you still hear in mixes, but I’m always floored by “Strut”’s deceptive openness. It doesn’t sound like a lot until you really focus on the moving parts, and then you realize, holy hell, it’s A LOT. It’s also enjoyable, one of those rare “important” albums that doesn’t feel academic when you’re listening to it. Metro Area can still start a house party.
Anekdoten - “In Freedom”
From: Nucleus
“In Freedom” is Nucleus’s respite, sequenced at the end of a pummeling prog record. “The songs on Nucleus are so demanding, both to play and to listen to,” bassist Jan Erik Liljeström noted in a DURP interview. True, but, much like its influences, in a good way. Sweden’s Anekdoten started out as a King Crimson cover band and then made the jump to originals. Nucleus, its second album following 1993’s also-excellent Vemod, is maybe its most Red record. It’s heavy, pounding, and impatient, jumping around from section to section and relishing the times it catches you unaware with a metallic, clanging haymaker. Befitting something so challenging, “In Freedom” is the opposite of everything that came before it, an earned moment of quietude that makes excellent use of Anna Sofi Dahlberg’s cello and Helena Källander’s violin. Nicklas Barker’s voice is particularly affecting in this setting, sounding wounded and worn out, especially after the maelstrom whipped up by the previous seven tracks. Hell of a comedown.
Space Art - “Onyx”
From: Space Art
Shout out to Aaron Lariviere for sending this my way. “Onyx” was Space Art’s first single, introducing the French “cosmic synth-pop” band to the world via a bonkers TV appearance featuring the band rocking out in volcano suits. Initially, the duo was Dominique Perrier on synths and Roger “Bunny” Rizzitelli on drums. After the first run of Space Art wrapped in the early ‘80s, Perrier and Rizzitelli would play on a ton of records, most notably Jean-Michel Jarre’s Les Concerts En Chine. Rizzitelli passed in 2010. In 2017, Perrier reformed Space Art with Rizzitelli’s son, Tommy, behind the drumkit, eventually releasing the comeback Entrevues last year.
Richard Peterson - “Second Album”
From: The Second Album
If you know Richard Peterson and you don’t live in Seattle, it’s probably because of this song. And, if you know this song, it’s probably because it’s the secret track at the end of Stone Temple Pilot’s second album, Purple.* It is, indeed, that album’s promised 12th gracious melody. It has been stuck in my head for 27 years. And for most of those years, I thought it was a goof. Not a goof.
If you want to know the whole story, there’s an excellent documentary about Peterson’s life, Big City Dick: Richard Peterson’s First Movie, that doesn’t shy away from the complicated stuff. You can watch it in full on YouTube. Peterson also released Seven, his seventh album, in 2019 via Green Monkey Records. It carries his interest in ZIV, Seahunt, and Johnny Mathis forward into his fifth decade of recording music. It’s kind of crazy how assured something like “The Ghost Trumpets” sounds, a precise encapsulation of ‘60s TV music. Gracious as hell, pretty much. Few people today could do it better.
*This is an STP-positive newsletter. The first two albums are great because they sound like Rat trying to be Pearl Jam. I do, however, get why people don’t like it.
BONUS:
The Ones - “Flawless (Phunk Investigation Club)”
From: Flawless (Phunk Investigation Mixes)
I’ve given my Saturday over to doing chores while listening to dance mixes. I don’t even remember where I heard this, but, my god, does it bang. The video is the pinnacle of that ‘let’s figure it out once the coke runs out’ early ‘00s aesthetic. I think there’s a “Wolf’s 10 Favorite Dance Tracks” post happening in the near future, and in accordance with how we measure time here, “near future” means roughly 2024.
Rhythm Method - “So Many Shadows”
From: Funhouse / Rhythm Method
Way, way back in the early 2010s Blogspot days, everyone was racing to upload their rare wax to Megaupload for...uh...I don’t know, the culture? It wasn’t rewarding, and yet true nerds performed the service. My overstuffed hard drives thank them for their sacrifices. All of that has since been undone by Spotify because why would you need crate excavators like Prog Not Frog when you can lead a dull existence delegating your taste to AI? ANYWAY. Rhythm Method, this Rhythm Method, recorded two new-wavey, post-punky songs for Flux in 1984. Both are like if Modern English had Gang of Four-type bass. So good. Those tracks got packaged onto a flexi with Funhouse, which I don’t think is the same Funhouse from Sweden. Pretty unspecific, but that’s all of the information I have on it after downloading it from The Postpunk 80s Underground years ago. I almost don’t want to know more, like the spell will be broken if I find out the whos and whats. And yeah, you bet the spell Rhythm Method cast on me is enthrallment. Can’t say that spell has landed on anyone else. Like Materia, “So Many Shadows” is a song I recommend to nearly everyone, yet no one cares. I have tried. Boy, have I tried. I was even responsible for uploading it to YouTube eight years ago. (Shout out to 74Grave for uploading the other cut.) 734 views since. Welp, here’s one more shot.
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