Hello again my friends! Welcome back to Genrefvckery, where the labels are made up and the genres don’t matter. I say that, but I’ve got some definite biases — I love my music creepy, artsy, creative and immersive. I’m also fond of instrumental music, which is the cause of some of my differences of opinion with other musichead friends. I think it’s my folk/classical background, or maybe just that I almost always have to look up lyrics to things anyway.
Befitting the topic, then, we’re kicking things off with not just an instrumental album but an OST. An OST to what, you ask? That’s where this gets interesting. The Talking Castle is a book by A.C. Fayler recently funded on Kickstarter, which apparently begins as one of those English stories about a group of children going on some innocent holiday adventure, and ends up more in the realm of Shirley Jackson. It sounds fucking awesome — and I’m rather bummed to be coming up short on ways to buy it now that the Kickstarter’s over, but I’m sure I’ll get my chance. Near Minerals are a duo of experimental musicians who created this soundtrack to go along with the book, and between the music and the description of the book I am sold. (In fact there’s now a risk that the book won’t live up to how I’m imagining things.)
What’s it like? It’s a little like how I imagine a burned-out desert wasteland would sound, mixed with a little bit of Massive Attack and Daniel Hart. It’s gorgeous, and creepy, and not what I would listen to before bed except for the part where I’m insane. (It’s soooooo good.)
2. Softest Attack – Prism Shores
We’re back in Montreal, baby! And it’s one of my favourite genre marriages — shoegaze and dream pop <3 I don’t even know if it’s a marriage — if it is, it’s kind of an incestuous one — but every time I see these two together my chances of loving the record go way, way up.
I will say, one thing that sticks out to me for this album is that many of the songs are easily a third to half of the length you’d expect from shoegaze (which, as a genre, tends towards 5-6 minute songs). It’s not a bad thing. In fact, it feels a little like with each song, I’m being thrown into the best part right away with no build-up. You know how sometimes you’re always waiting for The Good Part? I think at some point they just decided to cut every other part, and that’s a mixed blessing but a very interesting artistic choice especially in the genres they’re in. It also really contributes to the immediacy of the music, which is immersive without getting muddy.
3. Oknha Stamina – Neo Geodesia
The epithet of ‘world music’ is one that keeps coming to mind as I continue exploring Bandcamp specifically, and not in a flattering way. In music stores to this day, a lot of incredible music from around the world is consigned to the ‘world music’ label and summarily avoided by anybody not going out of their way to explore “ethnic stuff”. Meanwhile, the label behind this album, Chinabot, says on their sidebar that they aim to change the conversation around Asian music. Good for them.
Part of why that comes to mind right now is because I know so little about Cambodian culture, which this album is steeped in and a celebration of. Oknha is a Cambodian honorific roughly translating to ‘Lord’ (as per the incredible liner notes) and even as I typed it out, I kept automatically spelling it as ‘okhna’, a testament to my unfamiliarity with the language. Of course, Neo Geodesia knows this — not about me specifically, that’d be weird — but about the lack of knowledge and awareness in the West about Cambodian culture and language. The album itself is instrumental, but the notes with it give me the insight into each track — the music’s relationship to Khmer boxing and ‘vong pleng pradal’, music traditionally played during matches, the influence of fighting game soundtracks, and the tie to real-world politics both in Cambodia and around the world. There are tracks here referencing the 2024 riots in London, the violence on the border of Thailand and Cambodia, Khmer women in sports — It’s an incredibly wide-ranging album that somehow still manages to be laser-focused on sports as analogy.
I swear I don’t just call everything post-punk, it’s actually in their tags. I even agree with them this time! Aside from that though, The Hunt is more of a post-post-punk; it’s definitely got the flair of the darkwave days, but integrates enough from the industrial and electronic world to be distinctly its own thing. i also have an affection on goth music that’s built for the club. This reminds me a little of ‘The Cross’ by Priest, except of course the whole album is delivering on the vibe.
That said, while I do love goth club music, there’s a few idiosyncracies that I think belong on on more solidly club tracks; a few tracks have lingering instrumentals at the end that seem built for fadeouts, and while I appreciate the thought, I think extended versions are built for that exact kind of thing. That’s my only complaint though, especially since they’ve actually provided lyrics. Good job! Thank you! Was that so difficult? Side-eyeing so many people. C’mon. I also applaud the commitment to the bit — crowning yourself the neo-duke of darkness might be presumptuous, but it also rocks.
It’s really interesting to me how underground music culture — in particular, how it manifests on Bandcamp — follows certain lines. R&B in the pop world has been thoroughly gentrified and taken over. There’s still plenty of Black musicians who do it, but it’s no longer considered Black Music quite to the same degree. On Bandcamp, however, it’s not just Black music — it’s the home of Black musicians unapologetically singing about Blackness. I might be full of shit, of course. I have Black heritage but I haven’t lived my life as a Black person. The real takeaway is that I’m glad there’s a place for R&B music like Yaya Bey’s. Fidelity is an album about Black grief and the commodification of it; grief as spectacle, Blackness as spectacle, and all of it as performance. Despite that sobering byline, it’s not a sad album. Even darker lyrics like ‘Forty Days’ (a song about exhaustion and always getting back up… because what would happen if you don’t?) it’s underscored by a groove and a beat, as a perfect complement to the words.
I was actually surprised to find out that this wasn’t a cross-platform label release or an example of a popular artist dabbling their fingers in other venues. When I read that Yaya Bey’s father was a member of the Juice Crew, I naturally assumed she had label support, but no, she’s a stubborn indie with the rest of us. It’s all the more impressive because she’s a breakthrough artist — she’s just handling those massive tours herself. I would not wish that on anybody, and as someone familiar with the stresses of indie work, it definitely has me listening to Fidelity with a renewed appreciation.
6. Through the Hourglass – Witch Ripper
I just featured a sludge metal band last post, and here we are again — but Witch Ripper is a very different beast than Neurosis. It’s interesting to me how, even before putting on both bands, you can sort of predict that difference in their tags — for these are bands who have thought deeply and carefully about which genres they claim. Neurosis is post-metal and Witch Ripper is prog metal; Witch Ripper has the included label of ‘stoner’ while Neurosis has avoided what is usually considered a twin label to sludge. The only label missing for Witch Ripper that I would have included is symphonic or power metal — at the same time there are features of both genres that are missing here. (Plus there’s a lot of weird feelings in heavy metal communities about power metal. But let’s not get into that.)
Anyway, genre musings aside, this rips. (Pun intended.) I am a sucker for contrasting vocals — what’s called in symphonic and gothic metal ‘beauty and the beast’ vocals, although here it’s the variation with clean male vocals contrasted with death metal growls. I’m very much reminded of Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, but with an operatic depth to both vocals and instrumentation that’s more like if Freddie Mercury followed the path of Seven Seas of Rhye to its natural conclusion. (Oh, what a wonderful timeline.) Sadly Bandcamp doesn’t play tracks one after another with the smoothness they deserve, so there’s a few jumps where they don’t belong, but overall this album plays with a scope and grandness befitting both the album title and the artwork (by Chris Panatier).
But. You know what’s coming. POST YOUR FUCKING LYRICS, MY DUDES. Tell me your story!!!!!
7. Caminhos de Agua by Kaatayra
A few years back, I don’t know how, I stumbled across a band called Kauan, and their album Sorni Nai. It’s a particular blend of experimental, folk metal and black metal I’ve been craving more of ever since — but nothing, even Kauan’s other work, has quite hit that spot. I’m bringing this up because Kaatayra has finally hit that exact, perfect sound that broke my heart the first time around.
Not to, of course, attribute the talent behind Kaatayra to “sounding like” anybody else. It’s an emotion I’m referring to, much less tangible. Kaatayra is a Brazilian band singing in Portuguese, crafting a brilliant conceptual album around the idea of the river. Caminhos de Agua translates to ‘Waterways’, and while the more common word ‘rio’ shows up plenty (particularly in song names like Rio Preto and Rio sem Nome) the imagery of the river as a path or a road is particularly striking. It’s a dark album, for sure — I have my feelings about the term ‘acoustic black metal’, but Kaatayra has done plenty to earn the title. To be quite honest, I had to remind myself several times over that this was an acoustic album, and that’s before I translated any of the lyrics.
Before sharing any lyrical content, I do want to apologize — as with most of the multilingual content I discuss, I’m reliant on Google Translate. As such, any awkward turns of phrase should be taken as errors of the machine and not of the artist. If I was capable of learning every language I needed to understand the music I listen to, I would in a heartbeat. I’m particularly aware of this in regards to this section: “Vou me tornando rio/rio sem nome./Venho a ser nada mais do que água.” Translated, this reads roughly as “I am becoming a river,
a nameless river./I come to be nothing more than water.” But having a Latina partner means that I’m keenly aware of how many small details I might be missing in word choices. One that I only catch because I’m a language nerd who checked a few individual words: ‘vou’ is being used as an auxiliary verb here (to form ‘I will become’) but on its own it means ‘I go’; which is why it’s contrasted with ‘venho’ which means ‘to come’. Little things that get lost! And it’s stuff like this that makes me so impressed with the album even as someone coming to it as a non-Portuguese speaker.
And, SEE, this is what happens when you post your lyrics. I get to be a nerd about them.
8. Paradise Metal by π. Διονύσιος Ταμπάκης (P. Dionysos Tabakis)
Very much along some similar lines, next up we’ve got Paradise Metal by Father Dionysios Tabakis — an Orthodox priest who plays… whatever this is. It’s tagged as drone, folk and industrial, among others, and I’m not even sure what I’d call it. It has enough in common with the prior album that I’m tempted towards black metal, but there’s no guttural or harsh vocals. (Which brings us back to the eternal what is metal? question, doesn’t it?)
Part of what creates the unearthly sound behind Father Tabakis’s work is the instruments he’s using. Two tracks use a fretless electric guitar (perdesiz in Turkish) and the liner notes talk about how fretless instruments can access moria — intervals smaller than a semitone. This is part of what makes violins, for example, capable of such unsettling and mystical noises; because they can slide from one note to another like a wail, with an exactness that the human voice has but fretted instruments have cut themselves off from. There’s so many different instruments on display on this album, though, that I’m also just stunned at this man’s dedication to his craft. He also features vocalist Evgenia Symela Armeni on two tracks, and the result is something between devotional music, trance, and metal. It’s well worth a listen.
Favourite track? Hard to say. This entire album is just an absolute trip to listen to. But there’s something very special about track 8 — Ἄναρχος Θεός – Βυζαντινὰ Κάλαντα τῶν Χριστουγέννων ἐν ἤχῳ α΄ (Techno Christmas). Transcribed roughly (please bear with me, as I’m trained in Ancient rather than Modern Greek) it’s ‘Anarchos Theos — Vyzantina Kalanta ton Christougennon en ikho A’ or ‘Anarchic Gods — Byzantine Christmas Carols in Echo A’. Not the season, but also, it can be the season whenever we want it to be.
9. May A Soft Sun Bless Your Sky While You Wait For The Inevitable by Charbel Haber
I don’t subscribe to the idea that any particular strand of music is more privileged or more tied to oppression than any other. In March’s roundup I talked about Neurosis and their work with Blackfeet organization Firekeeper Alliance; now, on the other end of the spectrum, Charbel Haber, Lebanese post-punk and experimental musician, brings out a beautiful ambient album as a healing tribute to a country in turmoil. There’s a quiet violence in every track title, and a mourning lurking under celestial, glimmering tones — even titles like “Phosphorus resting by the entrance of a quantic maze” hold a lot more horror for those familiar with the weapons used on the citizens of Lebanon and Palestine. Is it more revolutionary to play extreme metal or quiet, serene ambient music about suffering? Does it matter?
Part of why I’m thinking about this is because of my recent foray into the history of ambient music; how it was and is supposed to ‘fade into the background’. It feels particularly pointed a comment in the context of an ambient album about a conflict many of us are too comfortable ignoring. Perhaps I’m ascribing too much of my own philosophizing to Haber’s music. Perhaps just enough. Either way, it’s a gorgeous, slightly-unsettling, but also still comforting listen. (And that cover. My goodness.)
It feels like every woman singing pop is told she has to be a soprano/high-alto, so I love it when I turn on a record and hear a girl singing nice and low. (And let’s not get into the ways this is used against trans women trying to do anything but industrial.) Hannah Lew starts off her record with a low-alto purr over the kind of electrosynth beats that’d be more at home on a Cure record or Tears for Fears than anything more modern-pop, and her lyrics have a definite Ian Curtis vibe to them. “One foot out the door/Another in the other world” — It’s, personally, a little bit of a crime that despite her write-up acknowledging her post-punk influences as the strongest ones, she’s still mostly tagged as pop and electropop.
Hannah Lew is no stranger to the indie music scene — something which I admit I didn’t realize at first. Starting out in the trio Grass Widow, she also went on to form Cold Beat. On this album, she combines her work from both places to form a very special sound — one I’ll be thinking about for a while.
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