Hello!
I thought as there was such a huge void between that last two newsletters, I’d get this one out a week earlier. Besides, there’s a lot of good stuff to talk about. There’s also going to be a slightly different Happening Again dropping in inboxes over the next week or so. Nothing radical, but I’m testing a few things out. Two more things before I get started:
Are you a musician? Do you have a certain band or artist you think I should be listening to? Drop them into the Happening Again inbox: wearehappeningagain@gmail.com
If you like what I do and enjoy reading these little send-outs, you can drop me a few quid in my ko-fi jar:
ko-fi.com/happeningagain
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been spinning this week…
Chrystabell, David Lynch
SUBLIME ETERNAL LOVE
Sacred Bones/David Lynch Music Company
It was the 28th May when a video of a sunglasses-sporting David Lynch appeared on the internet. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Lynch intoned. “Something is coming along… for you to see and hear. And it will be coming along on June 5.” Come along it did in the form of ‘Sublime Eternal Love’, the first single from upcoming LP ‘Cellophane Memories’. The album is a collaboration between Lynch and long-time associate Chrysta Bell Zucht (mononymously known as Chrystabell), an artist in her own right who starred in ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ as Special Agent Tamara Preston. ‘Sublime Eternal Love’ matches Lynch’s dreamy arrangements with Zucht’s angelic vocals. “Haunting” is a word that’s often overused when it comes to David Lynch (and let’s not get onto “Lynchian”), but it very much suits this track, Zucht’s vocals echoing, colliding, and slipping in and out of focus around an ambience so gentle it’s been pulled from some far-away ether. I can’t wait to see what the full album has in store.
Bat For Lashes
THE DREAM OF DELPHI
Mercury KX
Natasha Khan dazzled earlier in the year when she released the title track from ‘The Dream Of Delphi’, and I’m happy to report that the full album is just as magical. Conceived in 2020 during the pandemic while Khan also gave birth to her daughter Delphi, the record is a sonic ode to motherhood as well as a document of a changing world - in more ways that one. It packs quite the punch, emotion seeping out of it from all corners like mist. Take ‘The Midwives Have Left’, Khan’s moving vocals circling gentle piano keys, creating a melody so light it could float. ‘Letter To My Daughter’ evokes moments of Imogen Heap, synth chirrups flitting around very personal lyrics. Warm electronics and ethereal voice soar on ‘Waking Up’, chunky synthesisers arpeggiate on ‘Delphi Dancing’, and there’s something incredibly inviting about the sombre ‘Breaking Up’, brass horn added to the childlike electronic tones. These are intimate ambient soundscapes awash with affection and Khan’s deft instrumentation. Very well worth your time.
Cumulostratus
ARTIFICIAL MODERN LANDSCAPES
Bandcamp
The hazy vaporwave of Cumulostratus is so infectious there was no chance this wasn’t going to feature. If the name rings a bell, that’s because Mr. Cumulostratus and his 2022 EP ‘River Valley’ was featured in the first Happening Again of the year. So I was pleasantly surprised when this cropped up. ‘Artificial Modern Landscapes’ is as hallucinogenic as that sleeve art suggests - dreamy ambience and foggy synthlines. This is music drawn from the corners of liminal spaces; a nostalgic memory of sound that’s just in reach. A personal highlight is ‘Light Therapy’, its sky-high guitars paired beautifully with a dewy synth melody, reverbing into nothing. Hopefully there won’t be another two-year gap until the next release.
Doomlode
DOOMLODE 1
Fonolith
Bloody hell that Neil Scrivin is at it again, and this time under a different moniker. ‘DOOMLODE 1’, he says, is the first in a series of EPs that explores “a dystopian sonic landscape of technological paranoia, urban decay, environmental degradation, and nuclear fear.” I love an optimistic vision of the future. These are short, thrift, lo-fi experiments; radiophonic horror like something you wouldn’t want to tune to by accident in the middle of the night. And I love it. A rotten signal bleeps against the crackle of a bassline on ‘Chemical'/Biological Warfare’; a voice that could have been pulled from a 1950s BBC broadcast repeats the title over and over against a hauntological gurgle on ‘A Giant Brain Ten Miles Away In The Heart Of London’. Even the sleeve looks like the radiated imprint of something found deep in the heart of a nuclear power station. It’s all great stuff, and for those inclined there’s an equipment list on the Bandcamp page to boot.
Charli xcx
BRAT
Atlantic
To go from posting demos online at the tail-end of the MySpace era and illegal raves in East London, to maybe thee hyperpop pioneer is quite a feat. But with ‘Brat’ coming hot on the heels of her scoring work for Emma Seligman’s hilarious ‘Bottoms’, Charli xcx is truly firing on all cylinders. ‘Brat’, Charli’s sixth studio record, is an aggressive, hyperactive, stonker of a record, melding dance, electronic, rave, shades of EDM, and her signature hyperpop. It’s very much an album that makes you want to get up and dance. And then dance some more; short break, then more dancing. Singles ‘360’ and ‘Von Dutch’ have already made significant waves, but there’s much more to enjoy here. The synthy stabs of ‘Sympathy Is A Knife’ and treacle-thick rhythmic fuzz of ‘Girl, So Confusing’ allude to a feud with a fellow female artist (any guesses?). ‘Talk Talk’, with its clapping drum machine and clubby euphoric bass could have been produced by the dearly departed Sophie, who’s memory lives on through ‘So I’. The track is Charli’s melancholic battle with grief, ode, and tribute to gifted late producer. And the finale we’ve been building to, ‘365’, is a redux of ‘360’ with a churning, fist-pumping outro that sounds like someone fashioned a synthesiser out of a cheese grater. Three extra songs have been released on an updated album ‘Brat And It’s The Same But There’s Three Most Songs So It’s Not’. Tongue firmly in cheek and good times all round, I imagine I’ll be listening to this for the rest of the year.
And that’s your lot. As always you can find my ramblings elsewhere in both print and online in Electronic Sound. But before I go…
I Wanna Dance With Charli’s Angels
A final note on Ms. xcx. Her Boiler Room set from earlier in the year is fantastic, and a natural set-up to ‘Brat’. She’s also doing a DJ set at Glasto. Everything’s coming up M̵i̵l̵h̵o̵u̵s̵e̵ Charli.
“Snails Never Go Back Over Their Trail”
I had no idea this was on its way. The second full-length feature from Australian director Adam Elliot, ‘Memoir Of A Snail’, will release at the end of the year. If you haven’t heard of Adam Elliot then that’s not really surprising. He’s mostly known for claymation shorts, but if you can seek out his first feature film, 2009’s ‘Mary And Max’, it’s a must watch. Set in Melbourne in 1976, it charts the unlikely pen pal correspondence between an 8-year-old Australian girl and a severely overweight 44-year-old New Yorker with Asperger’s. It’s a poignant, tender, beautifully made film, and it looks like ‘Memoir Of A Snail’ will be similar. Starring Sarah Snook (of ‘Succession’ fame), Jacki Weaver, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Eric Bana, it centres on Grace Puddle, a hoarder of ornamental snails who lives in Canberra. Check out the trailer below.
“This Isn’t ‘Twin Peaks’, You Know?”
‘Twin Peaks’ it may not be, but I’ve not heard nearly enough buzz about ‘Passenger’, and I’m hear to rectify that. Set in the fictional town of Chadder Vale, it follows the mystery surrounding a missing girl, a dead stag, and the strange crimes that follow these discoveries. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s a sort of darkly comic cross between the aforementioned ‘Twin Peaks’, Netflix’s ‘Dark’, and ‘Wallace And Gromit’. Yeah, you heard. Highly recommended, and available to stream now on ITVX.