Loud And Quiet

All the photos of Californian jammer Art Feynman are like this one, where his face is obscured.

Musically, we’re not really any more the wiser, beyond the fact that ‘Feeling Good About Feeling Good’ is the first track to come from Feynman’s debut album of non-stop psychedelic kraut jams. The LP is called ‘Blast Off Through The Wicker’ and will be release via Western Vinyl on July 14th.

Extra props to this guy for making all of his music without any loops or drum machines. That really is him twiddling away for 7 minutes 39.

Back at the start of the year, with the cold nights and dark mornings closing in Moon Duo, fittingly, released the first of two parts to their latest album.

The Portland duo – guitarist Ripley Johnson and keyboardist Sanae Yamada – deliberately went with the dark stuff first, as our writer David Zammitt commented at the time in his review of ‘Occult Architecture Vol. 1’.

Now, it’s time for instalment II. The band have said that the two volumes of this new release can be enjoyed separately or together, but they are designed to sit side by side. ‘Occult Architecture Vol. 2’ is most definitely a lighter offering, as Ripley explains:

“In production we referred to Vol. 1 as the fuzz dungeon, and Vol. 2 as the crystal palace. The darkness of Vol. 1 gave birth to the light of Vol. 2. We had to have both elements in order to complete the cycle.”

You can check out the full album below, it’s officially out on Friday (5 May) via Sacred Bones and available to pre-order here.

Ripley Johnson from Moon Duo recently spoke to us about his experience as a teenager for our Sweet 16 column.

It had been a long day when we went to ResonanceFM for our monthly show that attempts to round up the best new music we’ve heard over the preceding month. We were feeling a little manic, and so found ourselves blathering on about tanned old men, mixtapes, boxsets and other stupid things.

Between all that, we did manage to play some great new artists though, from Sloan Paterson and Lifestyle to Eyedress and Pure Beauty.

Molly Nilsson has been challenging what it is to be a pop musician since her 2008 debut album ‘These Things Take Time’ – a prescient title for the Swedish-born/Berlin-based artist who has always bided her time and done things how she likes.

She makes pop music in an uncharacteristically DIY fashion, bringing the most melodious genre of them all back to its essence – the tune.

The fact is that it can take teams and teams of people to come up with a song like ‘About Somebody’, only to flog it to Katy Perry’s record label, although they’d probably have to cut out the line: “Babe I want to party with you every night, and have a hard-on for the rest of my life.”

Nilsson releases new album ‘Imaginations’ next month via her own Dark Skies Association label and the Glasgow based Night School Records. You’d think that ‘About Somebody’ has arrived online to promote that, but it hasn’t. Backed with another new song called ‘Quit (In Time)’, it will be released as a limited 7″ on May 12th, only to be followed by the ‘Imaginations’ LP on May 26th.

You can order a copy of the single here.

You might be able to guess how a new satirical art-punk band called LICE sound – spidery, scratchy and revelling in some ugly, natural truths. Kinda like PiL.

That’s true of this new group from Bristol who have just released their debut single, ‘Human Parasite’, on a new label called Big Score.

“All humans carry, through their daily lives / A compulsion to torture and destroy / Be not afeared of your impulse to despise / Your neighbour just because they have an accent you dislike.” 

You imagine as they whine their opening bars they do so taunting us by skipping back and forth across our field of vision. Why won’t they just leave us alone?!

LICE’s point – who share a hometown with other socially aware underground bands IDLES and The St. Pierre Snake Invasion – is to confront us with our own hateful impulses and biases. As such, in this one song they take on misanthropy, xenophobia and misogyny… and killing Bob Geldof.

In tone, flair and musicianship, you won’t be surprised to hear that they playing a show with HMLTD in Bristol on May 5th.

LICE tour dates:

29/04 Wedgwood Rooms, Portsmouth Psych Festival
01/05 The Louisiana, Bristol
05/05 The Louisiana, Bristol (supporting HMLTD)
08/06 The Windmill, London
28/06 The Windmill. London (supporting The Rebel)
08/07 Bristol Psych Festival
19/08 Green Man Festival

While you’re reading this month’s issue of Loud And Quiet (it came out this weekend and is here in full as well as available at our stockists), here’s a playlist of the artist featured.

Laurel Halo‘s last release of note was her ‘In Situ’ EP for the Honest Jons label in 2015. For her third album she’s back with Hyperdub and following up her twisted ambient ‘Chance of Rain’ LP with ‘Dust’ – released June 23rd.

Where that last full album was fully instrumental, ‘Dust’ looks like it will see the Michigan musician move back closer towards the sound of her ‘Quarantine’ debut – towards it and then past it, in fact, as she sings the clearest she ever has on this lead track ‘Jelly’, with other guest vocals coming from Klein, Lafawndah, and Michael Salu.

Guest musicians feature too, including Julia Holter, Craig Clouse of $hit and $hine, Eli Keszler, Max D, Michael Beharie and Diamond Terrifier.

MYSTERON front man Jack Clayton is a 65 year old man trapped in the body of someone forty years his junior. He’s an alien; embittered, angered and confused by the world he finds himself in and so instead carves out an alternative and psychedelic sonic reality to exist in.

It therefore makes perfect sense then that his Sheffield group’s latest EP is called ‘We’re Not From Here’.

The four-track release is a little like tuning into an old esoteric TV film in the middle of the night, rooted in whirling and jumping keyboards that float from Broadcast-like eerie wonder to ’60s garage psych oomph, whilst Clayton’s vocals nod heavily to the grandiose flair of Scott Walker with the kitchen sink bite of Jarvis Cocker.

Combined, it makes for a pleasingly perturbing yet beguiling concoction that, in their own words, operates in a realm of “existential space realism”.

The video for EP track ‘Wet Man’ captures this sense of alienation and bewilderment as it pokes fun at the perceived sterile nature of TV-ready Jools Holland bands, whilst also managing to look like a Joe Meek-starring short film directed by Lindsay Anderson.

There’s also a song on the EP called ‘Spud King’ about a man with a face of a potato.

MYSTERON’s E.P ‘We’re Not From Here’ is out April 22nd and they play a launch show the same evening at the Shakespeare in Sheffield.

Since Erika M. Anderson (or EMA) released industrial grunge winner ‘The Future’s Void’ (seemingly a prescient title) in 2014 she’s been holed up in an untrendy neighbourhood of Portland making a new album called ‘Exile In The Outer Ring’. It’s been announced today that it will be out via City Slang on August 25th.

News of that comes with this lead-off track ‘Aryan Nation’ – the title is meant to be provocative, as has been the case with everything Anderson has done so far.

You can probably guess where EMA is coming from on this one, and what side of the fence she’s on. America is in turmoil, and as a young woman who grew up in the Midwest (South Dekota) she’s always seen the real American that most of us traveling there to the east and west coasts on holidays don’t.

‘Aryan Nation’ is EMA’s plea to her fellow Americans to not allow the current economical situation and stresses caused by it to warp their view of others, or point a wicked finger of blame. As she says:

“This is for my people in the middle country. I don’t look down on, or laugh at, serious issues such as poverty or drug problems. I believe your situations are real, your pain is real. I’m not here to ridicule or dismiss you. But as a person who came from heartland America, I also believe that there is another way than directing your anger at those who often have less power than you. Don’t let your discontent or your patriotism be exploited. Don’t look down, look up.”

She also says that track was inspired in part by Shane Meadows’ 2006 movie This Is England.

“I actually wrote this song about 3 years ago. It was partially inspired by people I’ve known in the the past and also the British film This Is England, which most people in the UK are familiar with but hardly any Americans have seen.

“In the movie a group of non-racist UK skinheads in the 80s are radicalised through prison, poverty, and needless war. The results are violent and tragic. When I watched it I felt like I recognised a glimmer of their hopelessness and confusion in parts of America, but I had no clue how much that would explode in 2017.”