Dylan Henner—The Invention of the Human

Dylan Henner’s The Invention of the Human feels like mallsoft of a deserted future. It is a suite of synthesis, which sings in garbled voices to empty rooms. Its new-agey choral minimalism can best be described as glacial. This owes not only to a measured pace, but a powerful tension as chords slide over each other in creaking and reluctant transition. There is such stillness to this album that its each greedy moment seeks to hold you forever.

It’s useful to discuss The Invention of the Human through its vocals. Voices are ever-present but computer synthesised, and then even further processed into abhuman weirdness; slowed, downpitched or swamped with delay. It’s like listening through thick water; recognisable, but refracted, askew and alien. The sound is organic but equally suggests transhumanism—a chorus staying its breath in anticipation of the future.

Vocals also recall some works of the past. Closer ‘We Could Hear Them Singing…’ surprises with Daft Punk-style vocoder effects—but supplements its sound with faint ecclesiasticism, shades of a prayer bell burbling beneath the surface.  ‘The Peach Tree Next Door…’ and ‘The Lake was Covered in Lilypads’ both feature staccato vocals as percussion, in the style of Philip Glass. ‘…Lilypads’ impresses in particular, its peppering of vocal delay mimicking the perpetually-accelerating rhythm of a bouncy ball. The track disintegrates at its midpoint, before reforming for an acidic and overdriven coda. It is anchored by a gorgeous chord sequence, the sole element of the track which continues throughout its length.

This happens a number of times in The Invention of the Human, a sole thread sitting concrete amidst amorphous elements.  The album subtly evolves and self-corrects, undergoing slow but drastic and sometimes painful changes—but you don’t really notice it happening in the moment. You could see this as an optimistic reflection of our natures—both on a personal and a global level. Our history is a long series of misguided acts, some species-wide endemic flaw forcing our errors. But follow the thread and we see change and development blossoming around the mistakes. The album’s cover encapsulates this idea well; a machine-learning replica of pre-Guttenberg illuminated text. As the internet hastens a second incunabula, how will humans of five hundred years from now regard us?

The Invention of the Human is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Girl Friday—Androgynous Mary

Girl Friday are the sort of band who engender themselves to lazy comparison. The list is long and broad, encompassing both the gentility of acts like Cocteau Twins and the raggedness and lackadaisical vocal delivery of PJ Harvey. I can imagine Girl Friday’s Androgynous Mary described as derivative or unadventurous. These descriptors serve little purpose after over a century of recorded music; there is nothing new under the sun. Originality is how we Frankenstein our forebears’ disparate limbs together. Our expressions and individual voice live in the needlework—not in how well we disguise our musical literacy.

If anything, Girl Friday face the opposite problem here. Androgynous Mary bursts with loopiness and leftfield decisions. But these only become evident after casual listeners will have been turned off by some rote and insecure production. Girl Friday live far less in the shadow of dead and decrepit artists than they think. It feels invasive to suggest a band rejig their entire sound—but from a production standpoint, Androgynous Mary feels like an album which honours its influencers more than its own personnel.

Its sound does, conversely, grant Androgynous Mary a kind of unassuming anonymity, which it uses for ambushes. Listeners may pin ‘Eaten Alive’ down as pure post-punk pastiche, but it serpentines off-road for a Black Sabbath style sludge-fest outro. The clue is right there in the name of the LP’s first track; ‘This Is Not the Indie Rock I Signed Up For’. This technique lends destabilising vigour to Androgynous Mary—but it’s repeated so often throughout the album its coating rubs off a bit by the end.

Lyrics—much like the band’s name—are stark and matter-of-fact, compactly political and quietly humorous. Their precision and clear-headedness reflects Girl Friday’s very controlled approach. Androgynous Mary is both a restrained and unpredictable album. It portions out the metronomic plod of its post-punk ancestors with a side of wild and exciting freedom. It’s a very promising debut—and bodes well for a future in which an emboldened band can unleash their idiosyncrasy on the world.

Androgynous Mary is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

‘Doing Our Best Is No Longer Good Enough’ and Youtube’s War on Danish Music

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual. This is a damage-control disclaimer because tech-giants are lawsuit-happy parasites who will happily bankrupt normal people to add another few thousand to their trillions in capital.

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No-Wave recently received an email from Danish musician SØS Gunver Ryberg. It contained her powerful new track, ‘Doing Our Best Is No Longer Good Enough’ (review below). But in the same email, Ryberg stated Youtube may take her track down, as they are removing all Danish music from their website. Yes, all.

Since 2013, Denmark’s music has lived on Youtube according to an agreement between the site and Danish copyright collective KODA. But recently that’s changed. Copyright collectives like KODA (a U.K. example being PRS for Music) are organisations who license and manage copyrighted works. Royalties are delivered to the copyright holders. The amount recieved is determined by the artists' foothold in the industry, and the popularity of their work. Such collectives are either union-style opt-in organisations, or NGOs established by statute. Pocket-lining notwithstanding, the aim of these collectives is to ensure the fairest possible payment to copyright holders for their work.

It comes as no surprise that some collectives have histories of documented corruption, delayed payments, and dishonest distribution of revenue. In serving out slices of the pie, organisations labour under the self-deception that they themselves baked it, glutting before feeding others. To some, they're self-appointed moneymen and bully-boys who operate legally-sanctioned shakedowns. Others see them as a welcome security net; preventing piracy, thievery, and the hosting of non-attributed work. Denmark’s KODA seem to fall into the second camp, with no high-profile controversy to their name. Denmark's lively and experimental music scene doesn't feel like it could be made by the discouraged.

So what’s changed since 2013? In April of this year, KODA’s licensing agreement with Youtube expired. Polaris Nordic, a sort of pan-Scandi alliance between KODA and Finnish/Norwegian collectives TONO and Teosto, have since been negotiating a replacement.

In the interim, Youtube offered a temporary extension to its deal with KODA. The trouble is, according to KODA, Youtube proposed a new condition which required a seventy per cent reduction in payment to KODA’s clients. KODA assert that Youtube were already pretty miserly before this move. Youtube pay out out far less on average than any other streaming service, and KODA have rejected their deal. As a result, all Danish music has been pulled from Youtube in Denmark. This blanket ban has even affected Danish musicians unaffiliated with KODA. Amidst a global pandemic, and resultant dearth of live performance, this move threatens further financial instability to an industry already on its knees.

It’s hard to see Youtube’s actions as anything other than the latest example of twenty-first century tech giants’ monopolistic power. Complaints of copyright collectives’ stranglehold on art funding seem antiquated and quaint. Now we contend with shameless, nauseatingly corporate one-upmanship and power-play; the multi-billionaires’ version of “this is a knife”.

Youtube now positions itself as a music streaming platform—something it never did in 2013. The site even flogs its own ‘Youtube Music’ service through useless self-serving spam every time you visit it. In 2018, the IFPI’s Music Consumer Insight Report found that forty-seven per cent of music consumption now streams via Youtube. This is marginally shy of anything warranting investigation by a monopoly commission. The question is: can the arts afford to allow its most dominant representative to withhold funding, globally centralise copyright policy, and dictate artists’ royalty payments? Because that’s the way it’s going—greedy guts wants the entire pie.

For these reasons, No-Wave will host Vimeo and Bandcamp links to SØS’s music video below. We decline to host links to any Youtube content going forward. We also maintain that fans of music should—wherever possible—support their favourite artists through Bandcamp or physical purchases instead of streaming.

With that said, here is a review of SØS’ track:

SØS Gunver Ryberg—‘Doing Our Best Is No Longer Good Enough’

AD 93, Aug. 2020

Earlier in the year, SØS Gunver Ryberg released a surprise EP on the label formerly known as Whities (now AD 93). Whities 030 was a clear standout among the label’s already-stellar catalogue. According to our review, the release “[reaffirmed] Ryberg as one of the best producers about”. This month, she releases a bonus track, ‘Doing Our Best Is No Longer Good Enough’, and its accompanying music video.

A natural extension of her work on Whities 030, the track tempers techno sensibilities with modern edge. Unlike than its 90s antecedents, which mined an imagined future apocalypse for drama, ‘Doing Our Best…’ occupies the apocalyptic now. This thing sounds like Greta Thunberg piloting an attack helicopter. How fitting that it releases the same week we discover Greenland is past the point of no return. The kitschy cool of the apocalypse has evaporated in the heat, and “anthropocene” has entered public lexicon. The problem is now so immediate we’ve invented a way to say it fast.

The track's panicked urgency extends into its video, a Weirdcore-style electronic amalgam from Push 1 stop’s Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules. The video depicts a globe, which disintegrates to reveal its core flickering like a dying flashlight. It continues to centre on various dissolutions and disintegrations of this globe, iterating and reiterating the world’s final dying gasps.

The music’s form follows; a garbled and muscular gut-punch of chaos in the style of late Autechre. It’s the full-body experience that Ryberg excels in, this time inducing a fight-or-flight response to a crisis in which it’s futile to do either. Climate change is a massive and horrifying subject. As a species we coast on the idea that “we haven’t gone extinct yet, so we probably never will”. We aren’t hardwired to examine our own mortality, and doing so takes courage and conviction. It’s commendable that Ryberg could even stand to create a track this immediate.

You can’t drop the ball with subject matter this intense—and ‘Doing Our Best Is No Longer Good Enough’ knows that. It’s a track of enormous power that feels like it could shake ice floes loose and rattle the Earth in its cage. While not easy listening, this track has a fair claim to contextualising the impending apocalypse better than any others. Try ignoring it after this.

Whities 030 is available for purchase and download here. Watch the video for ‘Doing Our Best Is No Longer Good Enough’ below.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Music: SØS Gunver Ryberg (https://sosgunverryberg.com/) Video: Push 1 stop (push1stop.com/) Mastering: Joel Krozer, Six Bit Deep 'Doing our best is no longer good enough’ appears courtesy of AD 93 on Whities 030. https://sosgunverryberg.bandcamp.com/album/whities-030 Video is commissioned by Strøm for Strøm Festival 2020. strm.dk Thanks to: Statens Kunstfond, Ekko Festival, Norberg Festival, Radar and Intonal festival.

L.A. Witch—Play With Fire

California, the world over, symbolises a particular kind of whacked-out transgression. A crackling nervous system of dark magic and mysticism covers the state like a tattoo. San Francisco plays host to Anton Le Vey’s infamous Black House—the origin of the Church of Satan. And, until Tarantino rewrote history last year, Los Angeles remained the site of the infamous murders committed by Charles Manson’s commune. Ritual, morbidity and ghoulishness seem sprinkled across the sands of the West coast.

In this spirit, L.A. Witch deliver a collection of tracks whose kitschy dips into the occult live up to the band's name. While this album, Play With Fire, acknowledges the endemic goofiness ascribed to witchcraft in 2020, it’s no less spirited or intense for doing so. Vocalist Sade Sanchez’s guttural and commanding tone sounds as controlled as it does throat-shreddingly raw. It’s not unlike Wytches frontman Kristian Bell. Both singers' styles touch an unspoken universality, but are nigh-impossible for anyone else to reproduce. And both bands are served well by sardonic sensibilities: less "black-metal-cemeteries-at-night", more "spooky-ghost-train".

L.A. Witch give equal attention to their city’s musical and occult histories. Play With Fire sounds like a grungy death rattle of 60s idealism; the final fatal moments of Easy Rider. The freewheeling hippy spirit has careened into a ditch. Now it sits limbless and mired in self-reflection, dissatisfaction, anxiety. ‘Fire Starter’, the album’s opener, couldn’t make this any clearer with the vocal hook, “I got sun in my eyes./ I got too much to do, and not enough time.” None of this is to say Play With Fire is dour. It retains the vital energy of its forebears, channeling that energy inward and burying itself in dark and personal interior spaces.

Fast-forward twenty years to sequence another piece of the album’s DNA; its echoes of the 80s hardcore scene. Play With Fire combines the anecdotal songwriting of X with the smirking fury of The Germs to great effect. It rages without tantruming. L.A. Witch’s coolness, objectivity and sly detachment open their songs to listeners. And their LP carries off its form as a historical hodgepodge with panache. You have to squint to see any of the strings.

Play With Fire will no doubt be a hit among fans of the Aussie psych scene, and bear particular resemblance to Flightless five-piece The Murlocs. But there’s a twang of Americana that sets L.A. Witch apart. Play With Fire feels rooted so specifically in its birthplace that it’s like a sonic Hollywood sign; severe and symbolic, with a broad and encompassing view of its hometown.

Play With Fire, releasing 21st August, is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Mario Verandi—Remansum

Mario Verandi’s Remansum is a captivating suite of electroacoustic tracks. Its combination of the jazzy and liturgical should please fans of Australian trio The Necks. Both artists tend toward a feeling of deep and unyielding mystery, and Verandi’s work at times bears such strong resemblance that less generous listeners may cry facsimile. The wonky melody of ‘Bosque’ bears striking similarity to The Necks’ Swans collaboration, ‘The Nub’. But in actuality, these similarities reveal both artists as pioneers who stretch in the same direction.

Verandi’s music feels oddly timeless. Remansum boasts cutting contemporaneity and, at the same time, attention to symphony and tradition. It’s like wandering from the noise of a medieval city; vaulting its walls to explore untended, dangerous wilds, in which a calendar is no more use than a candelabrum. ‘With Eyes Hidden’ best exemplifies this feeling of sublime danger. Thrumming arpeggios dominate its low end, the breath of a waking force of nature.

On many tracks, repeating piano phrases guide you through these landscapes. These phrases feel like warm and entrancing footprints to follow through the forest. Verandi dodges the sort of saccharine minimalism risked with this approach, delivering work that’s probably how Einaudi sounds in his own head; meditative, numinous, and full of mystery. The success of this sound is down to Verandi’s masterful control. Songs contain silent force, hung in suspension and bulging with potential energy. Remansum imagines a dangerous world; defined by an apprehension that a predator will erupt from the quiet. That Verandi sustains this mood for the duration of the LP is impressive.

It’s obvious that this is all intentional. Remanso is a Spanish word whose literal translation is ‘backwater’, but whose meaning here is ‘to hold in place’. Effectively, that’s what this album achieves—one extended and beautiful moment. Remansum is like taking a deep breath and holding it for the rest of your life.

Remansum is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe