STACK #180 Oct 2019

MUSIC REVIEWS

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Nils Frahm All Encores Frahm describes All Encores (the consolidation of three EPs) as "musical islands that complement All Melody ” (his 2018 release). Encores 1 's sonic explorations draw from an acoustic sound palette of piano and harmonium. Frahm recorded Encores 2 – which navigates ambient terrain and adds strings – through an amplified stone well he found on Mallorca, the result of which is an ever- present whooshing background noise. Encores 3 incorporates more electronic/percussive elements. You may already be familiar with the pulsing, penultimate track All Armed – a live favourite since 2015. Closer Amirador is restorative. All Encores is an intensifying listening experience, since each track's arrangement is incrementally more intricate. This contemplative work feels simultaneously hopeful and curious. Soul soothing. (ErasedTapes) Bryget Chrisfield

Chastity Belt Chastity Belt Making your mark with an album titled No Regerts (2013) should tell you all you need to know about a band’s sense of humour, but it belied Chastity Belt’s thoughtfulness as well. This album, self-titled and recorded after a break, feels newly sincere and self-assured. While the band’s irony previously never felt detached, Chastity Belt comes off like post-punk via late-night DNMs. That ability to invite the listener into a shared private joke, through whatever form, has always been Chastity Belt’s greatest strength, and especially so on their return. (Hardly Art) Jake Cleland

Clipping There Existed An Addiction To Blood 'There Existed an Addiction to Blood' is the ominous title of clipping's latest LP. The LA trio are known for forensic investigations into hip hop traditions - analysing the DNA and rewriting the stems to make new and unheard forms. For this task the group are uniquely qualified: William Hutson wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on experimental music, Jonathan Snipes

composes film scores, and Daveed Diggs earned a Grammy and a Tony for his performance in Hamilton. Here, clipping take their microscope and scalpel to horrorcore, - a subgenre pioneered by groups like Gravediggaz who explored the darker side of human nature, often with a sense of the supernatural. As a quick sidenote, Frukwan of the Gravediggaz explained the name this way: “It means digging graves of the mentally dead, and it stood [for] resurrecting the mentally dead from their state of unawareness and ignorance.” It's a mission that seeps into Clipping's new work. The trio evoke chilling dread with their tense tales, gothic theatre and eerie beats. The conclusion arrives with 'Piano Burning', a performance of a piece written by avant-garde composer Annea Lockwood. We listen in stunned silence as the smouldering sound of the instrument sounds its last, crackling to ash. (Sub Pop) SimonWinkler

Big Thief Two Hands

Battles Juice B Crypts Battles' fourth album opens with Ambulance , which sounds like an ice cream truck's jingle reinterpreted by New Order and Kraftwerk. They roll as a duo – multi- instrumentalist Ian Williams and drummer John Stanier – these days, and Juice B Crypts is heavy on the killer feats: Sal Principato ( Liquid Liquid ) will knock your block off as will Shabazz Palaces, who dish out "young hustler" advice. Carn, we dare you to try dancing along with Sugar Foot (feat. Jon Anderson & Prairie WWWW) without looking unco! The same keys riff bookends Juice B Crypts – organ to start, piano to finish – and Battles really are too bloody clever for their own good! Featuring freakishly intelligent explorations of rhythm and deconstructed melodies, your IQ will surely increase with each listen. (Warp/Inertia) Bryget Chrisfield

Big Thief prove that their creative output flows like water with Two Hands , the NewYork quartet’s second album for 2019. Recorded predominately live, the record has an instant warmth and captures an immediacy the band have cultivated since their debut album. Considerably more upbeat than their last release U.F.O.F., lead singer Adrienne Lenker’s vocal is still fraught with plenty of emotion, while her lyrics, as always, are rich with devastating poetry. The world is unsurprisingly completely taken with Big Thief, who among many things, express the deepest of authenticity and generosity within their music. (4AD/Remote Control) Holly Pereira

FKA twigs Magdalene “Just when you think it’s really fragile and about to fall apart, there’s an absolute defiance and strength in a way that my work’s never had before,” FKA twigs describes her new album Magdalene . "I found a lot of power in the story of Mary Magdalene; a lot of dignity, a lot of grace, a lot of inspiration.” Fans know FKA twigs as an artist and auteur whose

work often plays at boundaries, exploring tensions between power and vulnerability. Whether on film, in the recording studio, or on stage (or online demonstrating the future of consumer tech with companies like Google or Apple), FKA twigs is a pioneering voice and leading light. With Magdalene , she turns her attention inward, to untangle some of the binding knots of human interdependency. 1000 Eyes begins the record with an immense, distressed chorus singing in unison "It's gonna be cold with all those eyes", foreshadowing loss. The voices slowly disintegrate as a bass note grows into a drone. Future joins in the memorable duet of Holy Terrain , an upbeat hip hop ballad of a tender relationship filled with hurt and human failings. Home to You also soars to a slow-building crescendo of strings, synths, and fractured beats. (YoungTurks/Remote Control) SimonWinkler

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OCTOBER 2019

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