What’s an expanding universe? An ineluctable outpouring of general relativity, a spatial property, a shift of light observed through the telescope as distant galaxies stretch farther away? Is it Moon landings and Mars living and Voyager probes destined to wander eternally the Milky Way? Or can the outward manifestations of an expanding universe be more mundane? Eggs boiling in a crowded saucepan, scribbles and scores scrawled down in a notepad or blotter, violin practice, creamy cat treats clawed between meals, the first feed after placid slumber of your firstborn babe? What might an expanding universe sound like amid such domesticity? The bend and creak of the floorboards, the whirring of an air conditioner and the pop of a toaster suffused by birdsong and passing traffic, all of those noises that together fall under the umbrella of house sounds and might even amount to home comforts, muffling the staggered quiet, tracing and colouring the everyday?
On the opening track of their upcoming album Peach and Tomato, the violinist Sana Nagano and violist Leonor Falcón bring a flurry of clipped notes and deft plucks to a clamorous climax through bowed melodies, stretched glissandos and metallic effects, demonstrating their classical chops on a record which also tackles the Sonata for Two Violins by Sergei Prokofiev and offers an homage to the folk stylings of Béla Bartók. The Brooklyn-based drummer Tomas Fujiwara shares a solace with his 7 Poets Trio starring Patricia Brennan on vibraphone and Tomeka Reid on cello, while the Polish composer Piotr Kurek skews from the vocal harmonies of Peach Blossom to a sprawling root system of tiny melodic phrases which draws inspiration from early music, experimental jazz, contemporary computer simulations and the whimsical work of the Algerian-French graphic designer Jean Sariano. Featuring Kurek on keyboards, MIDI wind controller and electric guitar, Wojtek Traczyk on double bass and electric bass, Tomasz Duda on clarinets, saxophone and flute and Anna Pašic on harp, the curlicued landscapes of Smartwoods first premiered last autumn at the Kraków festival Unsound.
Embracing a world post Age Of Extinction while taking a brief detour from his series of spellbinding collaborations with Roper Williams, the New Jersey horror maestro Fatboi Sharif spins lyrical webs over Steel Tipped Dove’s rickety and shapeshifting production as he sculpts his latest dystopia Decay. Bearing definitions which would rival the fear and trembling of Kierkegaard, the transcendental idealism of German Romanticism, or Edmund Burke’s philosophical enquiries into the beautiful and sublime, the ecstatic black metal band Agriculture scream at the moon in reverence in the companionable company of Nick Levine, Patrick Shiroishi and Pauline Lay.
Too hood for the art shit, too smart for the hard shit, Kenny Mason comes through with one of the verses of the year, rocking out on the debut album of the levitational genre-benders Paris Texas. Big Thief bare their fangs even as they fall rapt into the wan arms of the undead on an agitated and ultimately incendiary recording of a recent live staple, Tinashe cuts through the lullabies and gossip on the lead single from BB/ANG3L, and from Houston the noise rapper B L A C K I E offers a humanist’s take on pain and suffering, tackling themes cosmic and cloacal, cop-hating, cathartic and hopeful on the claustrophobic and caustic cassette tape music.
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Sana Nagano & Leonor Falcón – ‘Expanding Universe’
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Paris Texas & Kenny Mason – ‘DnD’
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Fatboi Sharif & Steel Tipped Dove – ‘Phantasm’
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Tinashe – ‘Talk To Me Nice’
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B L A C K I E – ‘born inside excrement’
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