Big Joanie—Back Home

Last month saw the death of Mimi Parker, drummer and vocalist of the band Low. Parker was one of many women whose vital contribution to shoegaze is too often sidelined for conversations about the genius of pedal-headed men. Shoegaze was quintessentially 90s—a lush and indulgent do-over of the utilitarian post-punk that dominated alternative charts in the previous decade. The UK middle-class was emerging from the dark chrysalis of the Thatcher years into a stranger and more questioning world; a world where joy was suddenly palatable because you didn’t have to be a cabinet member to have it. Shoegaze fit neatly into this depoliticised world. It prioritised sensation over message, bending its massive arrangements over often inaudible vocals. But shoegaze wasn’t just quintessentially 90s—it was feminine, too. Most of the biggest bands in the genre featured women centre stage (something you can’t say about new wave or post-punk). And in public consciousness, shoegaze and the female voice are synonymous.

Now that sound inhabits Back Home, the new album from Big Joanie. This album represents an absolutely enormous shift in sound which greatly elevates the band’s material. As courageous as Big Joanie have been with this course shift, special attention must be lavished on producer Margo Broom, who makes everything heavy as bones but skyward-soaring and ebullient.

Back Home is hook-driven, but neither cheap nor cheesy. Individual songs are colourful and varied without sacrificing sonic or thematic consistency. ‘Insecure’ sounds like the 00s anthem accompanying the clean-up the morning after a Skins party. The track channels that millennial indie style; a sort of family-friendly reinterpretation of punk, all stabbing rhythms and repetition but without any nasty bits. ‘In My Arms’ bookends the other side of punk, its progenitors; it’s a riff-driven surf ballad that plays like a rediscovered Kip Tyler track.

Stephanie Phillips’ vocals are nasal, drawling, almost lackadaisical, which just adds to the grungey mood. They work particularly well with songs like ‘Confident Man’ whose lyrics are shot through with cynicism. Somehow these vocal deliveries have great resonance and clarity too. It’s clear that behind the apparent effortlessness is real craft.

A standout from Back Home is the closer, ‘Sainted’, which is something like a New Order take on krautrock. The track is lifted by a bass drone and a luminous chorus. It’s a fitting capstone for such a strangely celebratory album. Back Home is an emotional two-hander in the same vein as The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me; both bounce between pop and pallor, both demonstrate every trick in their respective bands’ books. Up until now Big Joanie had been a band with something really great in their future. With Back Home that future has arrived.

Andrew O’Keefe

Gilla Band—Most Normal

In the time since their last LP (2019’s The Talkies) Gilla Band changed their name. Formerly known as ‘Girl Band’, the group announced the change in a statement describing their previous name as naïve and ignorant. They expressed regret over using a name which was “misgendered”. This sensitivity and conscience have run through every song the group have put out so far. To any fans surprised (or, bafflingly, angered) by the move: you were getting something very different from them than the rest of us.

Any else fearing a toothless new era should also relax. Most Normal dials the noise up, and leans as far into chaos and heaviness as the band ever have. While The Talkies was a perfectly commendable second album, it lacked the danger and unhinged misanthropy of earlier work. Here the edge is back. Most Normal is suffused with a feeling that it could fall to pieces any second, and it’s exhilarating to hear the band find that again—years later, healthier, happier; surfing waves that broke on them as younger men. And what a wave they find. If grunge was the damaged younger brother of punk, Gilla Band are another sibling down the line; extreme, dysphonic, dysfunctional and strange.

There is a new intricacy to production. Where amplification used to do heavy lifting, it’s yielded to subtler and more bizzaro techniques to ruin the listener’s day. Standout ‘The Weirds’ ends with a section of high frequency whining that’s physically difficult to listen to. Songs regularly feature aggressive ducking and instruments are positioned like sardines in the mix. In the moment, these claustrophobia-inducing production no-nos sound convincingly naïve. The reality is that they’re used with precision and intentionality. Balanced on a knife’s edge, this album constructs the illusion of spontaneity, thoughtlessness; as though the inception of its ideas had been captured on tape. Behind that illusion is fastidious attention to detail.

And while Most Normal can lean on some previously established sounds and techniques, it’s far and away their most eclectic album in terms of style. A great example is ‘I Was Away’ which has a really unexpected Primus-y sound. 2020s bands sounding like Primus is a trend that’s bubbled up out of nowhere but seems to be working well for everyone—Gilla Band included.  This album has one foot in the band’s past, one foot in their future; standing in a confident power stance over The Talkies and ready for more.

Andrew O’Keefe

Christoph de Babalon—Hilf Dir Selbst!

German electronic producer Christoph de Babalon has one of the most consistent discographies you could imagine. In a sense, the revered cult status of his ’97 album If You’re Into It, I’m Out of It is a shame. Its enormity dwarfs work deserving equal time in the spotlight, and can direct attention away from de Babalon’s still-vital contemporary stuff. Listeners need only investigate 2018’s Exquisite Angst—or this latest portion Hilf Dir Selbst!—for a first-hand understanding.

Hilf Dir Selbst! is frantic even by de Babalon’s standards. The EP is a dark set whose sound is saturated in primacy and mythic terror. It shares DNA with Gazelle Twin and NYX’s monstrous album Deep England; hooking itself into a twisted and archaic folk universality, then distorting things almost beyond recognition. The face of the past leers into the future.

It feels trite to compare de Babalon to a contemporary act—he as good as invented this sound. Unchanging through a storm of fickle fashions, de Babalon has weathered the years and gained recognition just by sticking to his guns. It’s like he could see the future when naming his trend-dodging If You’re Into It…, knew he simply had to lie in wait for the dummies to catch up. It doesn’t matter that de Babalon’s sound is largely unchanged from the early years; not when the sound is still so refreshing and inimitable.

It’s in this EP’s little touches. The drums of ‘Hung on a String’ move in marching-band mechanicality. Like a military drill, the track subtly gestures towards violence and death. ‘Cool Priest’ (whose title can’t help but make me think of The Fall) balances its tortured breakbeats and frightening vocal stabs over a bed of sweet legato pads. Soothing and crepuscular horror like this is de Babalon’s forte. Listening to it is like sitting between a neck and a vampire.

Hilf Dir Selbst! is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Moor Mother—Black Encyclopedia of the Air

Black Encyclopedia of the Air finds Philadelphia performance poet Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa) surrounded by uncustomarily restrained accompaniment. Where Ayewa’s previous albums spat in the face of their listeners—at times pulling at the fringes of noise music—Black Encyclopedia hushes things up; gargles with potential energy.

This may sound like a defanging. It’s not. If anything, Ayewa’s confrontational performance is vitalized by the vacuum which surrounds it. Writing is one thing—delivery altogether another. To my mind greatest compliment an artist can receieve, which is certainly true in Ayewa’s case, is that no-one else could deliver their material. Moor Mother is a singular voice in every sense of the word.

Its's not the first time a more subdued approach has appeared this year. Recently, Rhode Island noise musician Lingua Ignota stripped things back for her album Get Ready Sinner. As an unfortunate side-effect, the lyrical and thematic one-dimensionality of that album’s lyrics stumbled into unavoidable relief. The opposite is true here; Ayewa is a considered, thoughtful and fantastically intelligent lyricist whose work only reveals greater riches the closer we scrutinse.

But Ayewa is not the only voice on Black Enclyclopedia. Unfamiliar voices explore unfamiliar territory and give this album a broader perspective than had Ayewa, skilled as she is, chosen to make it a one-woman show. These guest performances, which feature on around half of the album’s tracks, are cannily used. You never know what to expect: features range from sweet, melodic vocal hooks to jittery verses exploring lockdown paranoia and sinister governmental duplicity.

The most persistent motif of Moor Mother’s work—a gathering together of history, a collision and entanglement of past and future—is just as present here as it was on her stunning debut Fetish Bones. What truly impresses, though, is her ability to explore this concept from so many angles; to so consistently refresh and defamiliarise a theme, to the extent it feels unprecedented every time.

Black Encyclopedia of the Air is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Best Available Technology—Inscape Routes

Inscape Routes, the new album from Best Available Technology, is a nostalgic and unpredictable collection of ambient dub. The whole album feels oddly lyrical, provoking easier comparison to the quixotic likes of Micachu, or Archy Marshall’s A New Place 2 Drown, than any artists working more firmly within the genre. The fundamentals are obviously there—beefy subs and scratchy, delay-laden percussion. But they’re just the foundation for something altogether stranger. Most of what Inscape Routes has to offer is half-song, half…something else. The album’s plaintive instrumentals speak as forcefully as any lyricist you might think of—but they are also as delicate, tremulous, and spare as the skeletons of dead leaves.

Inscape Routes recycles some well-worn sounds of the 1990s, and some of its synth splashes will leave listeners soaked through with nostalgia. But this album re-contextualises those sounds, deliberately strips them of their vigour and leaves them stilted and struggling. The result is something bittersweet. It’s the last embers of an optimistic fire, one that was lit some decades ago, finally fading into the inky air. Inflatable armchairs rotting on a tumulus of the Packington Landfill. And yeah: it’s become quite trendy to write rave culture eulogies recently—2017 Bicep weepie ‘Glue’ is testament to that. But as you might have guessed, Inscape Routes commits harder to the abstract—and to having ideas of its own—than most deconstructionist club stuff.

About halfway through, Inscape Routes even deconstructs itself. Mid-album track ‘Arc Stoked’ is demolished, to segue into quasi-concrète sketch ‘Observation Hill’. The transition is as wonderful as it is surprising—and is just one of many breathlessly inventive displays of musicianship on the album.

Unconcerned with evoking a specific time or place, Inscape Routes is instead the sound of transience. Like a bullet, it moves through, punctures, and distorts the tissue of its subject. Inscape Routes scrunches some of the last few decades’ musical styles into piles of tangled tape on the floor, and invites you to have a little dance on them. It’s a thoughtful, generous and really fun album.  

Inscape Routes is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe