Vietnamese Drone, Madrid Punk, Soft Glitch
How to have a quintessentially D.C. summer:
devour a bushel of crabs accompanied by Natty Boh and friends
get a soft-serve cone (with sprinkles) as local bands play the outdoor Fort Reno stage in oppressively muggy heat
scream with glee at the 9:30 Club’s Girls Rock! D.C. camper showcase
Of course, none of that’s happening, at least not in the ways they normally do. (Though a Ruff N Ready crab feast, with quarantine family, is assuredly in my future.)
Few things brighten my spirit like watching little girls and non-binary kids strum guitars too big for their bodies, plonk a keyboard and turn scrappy power-chord punk into a rap halfway through the song. Girls Rock! D.C. is a force for good in the world, not only teaching youth about making music but, more crucially, offering them tools to own their power. Those are just some of the many reasons I’ve volunteered for the Girls Rock! D.C. camp over the years. (I’m a cis dude, so I’m mostly in the background: moving equipment, running errands and, one year, running social media during the showcase.)
But what happens when campers can’t come to camp? They Zoom.
Both camp and the annual showcase, like everything else right now, was held online. And like every live-streamed concert, the show was riddled with technical difficulties and awkward pauses. But, dang y’all, just listen to these tuuuuuunes the campers made with Soundtrap software. There’s still a spritely folk-pop song, but how telling is it that, without little or no access to guitars or any other instruments, that these kids turned to trap beats, Soundcloud rap and post-PC Music electro-pop? So often these elements get inserted into their traditional rock-format bands as rap breakdowns, but here they just get to make the music they want. Thrilled by what that might mean for camp going forward.
Our family still screamed with glee at the computer screen, despite Zoom meeting glitches, and my 1.5-year-old daughter danced to music made by bands with excellent names like Insane Witches and Rat Date. I can’t wait to see her bang on a guitar or drop a nutzoid beat. — Lars Gotrich
Bandcamp 6-Pack (+2)
(Note: Some of these albums can only be found on Bandcamp, so click the links to explore! You can also follow my collection on Bandcamp.)
Lửa with Phayam, สวัสดี Hibiscus (CHO OYU): In the midst of recent consciousness-altering headaches, I stumbled across the peace-giving, forest-dwelling ambient music of Vietnam’s Lửa. Vangelis, Sigur Rós and Stars of the Lid are guiding lights, but Lửa (here with Thailand’s Phayam) captures the quiet still with melodies as gentle, grounded and awe-inspiring as the jungle’s canopy. Start here, then check out everything from the South Korean ambient label.
Accidente, Caníbal (self-released): Major props to Z from Crying and 100% for turning me onto Accidente a few years back, which has quickly become one of my favorite punk bands from the stellar Madrid scene. As Blanca sings against patriarchal violence and capitalism, Accidente blasts bright hooks with a rainbow cannon. Caníbal furthers the band’s searing Buzzcocks-polish and Avengers-gruff with songs ripe for road-trip singalongs — en español, of course, but there are plenty of ba-da-bah’s and whoa-oh-oh’s for us gringos.
Ronnie Vega, Two EPs (Don Giovanni): When pals from Philly mourned the death of Curran Cottman, they remembered a tender, fierce spirit. By all accounts, he sounded like the kind of person who holds a scene together in small gestures that radiate outward. Recently released with 100% of profits going to Philly’s Oshun Family Center, Ronnie Vega’s Two EPs picks up the boom-bap Fugazi held in its back pocket. There’s a loose, garage-band energy to these songs, but with a basement-punk urgency as Curran raps about the trauma of being Black in America — his voice is gnarled and gargled, but makes his point painfully clear.
Pilori, À Nos Morts (Terrain Vague): You, a person of discerning taste, prefer metallic hardcore caked in noxious fumes, encrusted with d-beat swagger and grinded into a death-metal ash. There are a lot of extreme-metal bands fouling up similar territory, but this French foursome ingests the brutalizing metal-punk of All Pigs Must Die and Zao’s fire-breathing riff chaos with rabid energy.
Handsome Bob, Guillotined (self-released): Speaking of which, here’s some ragged, HM-2 pedal-stompin’ metallic hardcore from Osaka, Japan. Ugly as Autopsy and Coffins, but packed with neanderthal-punk breakdowns.
Tomotsugu Nakamura, Literature (laaps): Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto’s fruitfully subtle collaborations, Oval’s cut-up guitar, Cornelius’ quieter moments of abstract melody, The Books’ more patient plunderphonics — I’m just a sucker for soft glitch. Tokyo’s Tomotsugu Nakamura treads through similar sounds of static, repetition and pixelation, but renders glitched guitar and piano with an intimate nostalgia. Cozy couch on a sunlit Sunday music.
more eaze & claire rousay, </3 (new computer girls ltd): Ambient-adjacent, Auto-Tuned emo earnestness from a duo more wont to make hyper collage-pop and frenetic free-improv/unnerving drone, respectively. Pairs nicely with Tomotsugu Nakamura’s soft glitch and a trail of crying emoji tears. All proceeds go to The Okra Project.
Bailterspace, Concret (self-released): Everything’s coming up ’90s! First, space-rockers Hum and now New Zealand noise-rockers Bailterspace have returned with a surprise album. Not a thing has changed here and that is not a complaint: dissonant chords drone and explode, the band’s Velvet Underground worship hits a satisfying punk crunch (“Heard It Once”) and the atmosphere’s as dank and moody as a dimly-lit subway station.
The Playlist
21 tracks. Opens with M83’s “Don’t Save Us from the Flames” because the drum fills have been coursing through my veins all week. Tunisian electronic producer Ammar 808 is back, but this time collabs with south Indian singers and musicians — can’t wait to hear more. Hundred Waters’ trayer tryon goes solo with some ambient jams straight out of Harold Budd and Brian Eno’s The Pearl (I really like how the Julie Byrne-featuring “new forever” sequences into The Aces’ crystal bummer-pop). Heavy varietals from Vanishing Point (industrial-fan-blowing-luscious-locks power metal), Incantation (grave-robbing death metal) and Venom Prison (pit-destroying metallic hardcore). Oh, and y’all, as documented on Instagram, I’ve been listening to a lot of Amy Grant ever since I won a lot of 6 tapes from eBay — the brilliant “Stay for a While” somehow marries Doobie Brothers bounce with Enya ambience.
Stream the playlist via Spotify. Did you miss a previous playlist? Get thee to the archives.
RIYL the cute one
What: Larger Than Life: A History of Boy Bands from NKOTB to BTS (book)
Why: My poptimism can never be denied; I’m thanked in a book about boy bands. This is my cheeky way of giving full disclosure: Maria Sherman is a brilliant writer who’s become a friend over the years, and as long as I’ve known her, Maria’s three deepest musical passions have been indie-pop, punk and boy bands.
Larger Than Life makes the case early and often that young girls are experts on pop music (just a fact), that boy bands awaken consciousness of all kinds (political, spiritual, sexual) and the machine behind it all is both revolutionary and exploitative (both can be true at once). Brightly illustrated by Alex Fine, the book not only celebrates these musicians and dancers with history going back to Franz Liszt and Motown but also smartly takes long-held assumptions (about fandom, masculinity, whiteness) to task with language as loving as it is funny. This phenomenon gave me great pain in the ’90s — hey, I was a teenage wannabe-punk — but after reading (and frequently laughing out loud to) Larger Than Life, I feel like I came away with a diploma in Top 40 studies from Tiger Beat University.
(Pictured: My kiddo, the future Girls Rock! camper and pop music expert.)