Hello!
I’m back to the fortnightly schedule. Last issue was a one-off (for now). The sun has also decided to show up for that brief period in May where it feels like summer is coming. I’m sure we’ll be back to grey and rain soon though. Anyway, let’s get cracking.
Mac Lacrosse
TRUTH DECAY
My Pet Flamingo
I recently learned that vaporwave label My Pet Flamingo is the sister to synthwave imprint TimeSlave Recordings. The more you know. Not that surprising really as both of them carry impressive rosters, and this recent addition to MPF immediately caught my attention. The latest record from Mac Lacrosse is a mix of future funk, vaporwave and synthwave, and peppered with Japanese vocals. Take the bright tones of ‘Magic Key’, a groovy opening gambit with its thumping synthlines that’s an anime theme if I’ve ever heard one, but a contrast to the slower ambient sway of ‘Witness The Wetness’, all chilled percussive rhythm and dreamy electronic yawns. A personal favourite here is ‘Floating Point’, a snip at just under two minutes and starts like someone booting up a PC from another dimension, before sucking you directing into that dimension and catapulting you through cyberspace. And what would you know, Mac Lacrosse is non other than the side project of UK darksynth artist Occams Laser. I should have clocked that really what with the album being this good. And the fact that Mac Lacrosse is an anagram of the former. I should have never stopped playing Wordle.
Polypores
ECCO
Frequency Domain
You can guarantee that at any given moment, Stephen “Polypores” Buckley is somewhere noodling with a synthesiser. And it’s a good place to be if you’re Polypores, who shows no sign of slowing down when it comes to creating all-manner of electronic ambient greatness. His most recent LP ‘ECCO’ is no different, his third for label Frequency Domain and his weapon of choice this time around being the Lyra-8 synthesiser and the 1010 Music Lemondrop granular sampler. If you’re familiar with Polypores then you’ll know what to expect, but if you’re not? Opener ‘Floatation’ is all dreamy sonic textures that swirl like mist on an alien planet; ‘ECSTCY’ echoes and judders like someone played a synth inside a hollowed-out moon; ‘A Wheel Within A Wheel’ has a percussive flutter that threatens to break through the sonorous synthlines that overshadow it; and then there’s ‘Moonhole’, an expansive electronic palette that churns and churns before dissipating into a scratchy blasts of strings. Buckley has this down to a fine art at this point.
The Night Monitor
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE PENNINE KIND
Fonolith
The eerie twinkle of ‘Window Area’, the intro to this latest offering by The Night Monitor, released earlier in March, sets up stall nicely. Picture the scene: it’s November in 1980 in Todmorden, Yorkshire. Policeman Alan Godfrey is stopped during patrol by an unknown metallic craft. Later, under hypnosis, he would recount how he was brought onto the ship and met a humanoid being named “Yosef”, a group of eight small robots and a black dog. Whatever they were smoking in Todmorden in the 80s, I hope someone’s still dealing it, but this story is actually based on the real-life alien abduction of Alan Godfrey (with “real-life” doing some heavy lifting). I digress, but here on ‘Close Encounters Of The Pennine Kind’, The Night Monitor aka Blackpool synthesist Neil Scrivin and head of the Fonolith Records mothership conjures up a hazy world of dark woods and bright sky lights. ‘Time Lapse’ is a panic of echoing bleeps with screeches of background wahs-wahs, ‘Oz Factor’ wouldn’t be out of place in ‘Stranger Things’, while ‘Adamski 2’ is like someone forced whatever they found at Roswell to do its own version of a slow, Balearic Ibiza-ready tune. It gets better on every listen, and will probably be one of my favourite records of the year.
Deadly Avenger
WE TOOK PELHAM
uSUPER!
Back in Happening Again #2, I wrote about how sad I was to hear that boutique electronic label Burning Witches was shutting up shop, but the good news was that it was being succeeded by uSUPER! Records, an imprint inspired by “post punk, lo-fi, dirty, golden era hip hop, and lowest of low grindhouse”. And if you want to kick-start your label with a bang, this by BW alum Deadly Avenger is the right way to go about it. I mean, just look at that sleeve artwork. ‘We Took Pelham’ is 14 tracks of mad-cap cheesy alt electronica, with some groovy hip hop numbers thrown in for good measure (‘Brooklyn Scraps’). This a different direction for Deadly Avenger, who is better-known for his 80s-influenced synth work (his album ‘I Am Godzilla, You Are Japan’ is essential listening) but when you have tracks as funky as ‘Day One’, you’ll find no complaints here. And with titles like ‘In Pursuit Of The Pimpmobile’? This is a great entry in the Deadly Avenger catalogue, and I’ll be keeping my eyes firmly on uSUPER! and whatever they put out next.
So that’s your lot. As always you can find my ramblings elsewhere in both print and online in Electronic Sound. I guess you can also follow me on Twitter right up until the very moment Elon Musk truly torpedoes the site into cyber-oblivion. But until next time, here are some other odds and ends that have taken my interest.
I’m all a bit ‘Star Wars’-ed out. I haven’t touched the most recent series of ‘The Mandalorian’, and after the slew of recent announcements about the 700 new shows set in and around the ‘Star Wars’ universe, it’s all just a bit exhausting (I have a longer thing I might write about how the MCU-ification of the ‘Star Wars’ universe doesn’t work, but that’s for another time). However, the second volume of ‘Star Wars: Visions’ was released earlier last month and the short ‘I Am Your Mother’, produced by Aardman is fantastic. Best ‘Star Wars’-related thing I’ve watched in ages (and features at least one ‘Wallace And Gromit’ cameo). Just go and watch it, you won’t be disappointed.
I recently came across this article about how 47% of all internet traffic in 2022 came from bots. It got me thinking about the current state of the internet, and the Dead Internet Theory. For those that are unaware, the Dead Internet Theory is an conspiracy theory that gained traction on 4chan (where else?) that posits that most of the internet is run by artificial intelligence, and is likely also governed by the government, paid influencers and probably “the deep state”, whatever that is. While this is quite obviously untrue, I think there are elements of it that resonate, particularly for those of us who remember the internet of the 00s. The centralisation of the internet, in my opinion, has been a net negative, and with the mainstreaming of AI and the continued decay of social media, I do wonder what the internet will look like in another couple of years. For those interested, Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day does some excellent reporting on this type of stuff - highly recommended. Soon, will every flame war you see in the comments of a YouTube video be between two literal artificial voices? I don’t think so, but I do think AI is going to change the way we consume the internet in the future.
Finally, after months of waiting, Rian Johnson’s highly-praised ten-part mystery series ‘Poker Face’ has finally made its way across the pond and is available to watch here in the UK on Sky Max and NOW. I’ve just realised this sort of sounds like some sort of sponsored bit. It isn’t - I’ve just been wanting to watch it for ages as a fan of Johnson and Natasha Lyonne, who heads up the series. The Bank Holiday weekend’s viewing is sorted.
Finally, here is Daft Punk’s ‘Discovery’ recreated using the sounds of ‘Super Mario 64’