Hello!
I started reading Adam Levin’s ‘Bubblegum’ the other day. It’s a fictional memoir from writer Belt Magnet, set in an alternate reality where the internet never existed. And recently, I’ve never wished more to be in the world of a novel. I’m enjoying it so far (comparisons to David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest’ so far don’t hold up and feel lazy), though I’m interested in the flesh-based robots called “curios” everyone seems to have. Maybe they hold horrors of their own.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been spinning recently…
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Cecyl Ruehlen
OOZETONES/FLESHSCAPES
2182
“The ooze is all encompassing. The ooze is action and thought,” explains curator, artist, and composer Cecyl Ruehlen. Based out of the Sonoron Desert in Arizona, “esoteric” doesn’t seem to do justice to the sonic endeavours that Reuhlen creates. A quick glance at his discography and you’ll find releases such as ‘Spells & Others’, ‘Ectoplasmic Food Offerings To The God Anubis’, and ‘64 Verses For Crane Fly’. But back to the ooze. ‘Oozetones/Fleshscapes’ is not for the faint-hearted, and is two sides of experimental sound engineering that run around 20 minutes apiece. Across both ‘Side A’ and ‘Side B’ industrial noise howls, growls, and shatters; brass excursions screech on their merry way; vocals wail, waters ripple, tones echo, and all the aforementioned morph into a textured psychic warble. If you opened Pandora’s box and found another box inside, this record would be in there. All-encompassing it certainly is, as well as intoxicating and provocative and I can’t seem to get enough of it. The physical edition also comes with a beautiful graphic book and narrative for the album. “The ooze is music,” says Reuhlen. “The ooze is everything that is not music.”
Visible Light
SONGS FOR EVENTIDE
Permaculture Media
This was a lovely thing to drop in my inbox. Visible Light is a duo composed of cellist Amy McNally and composer Matthew Hiram, who make music rooted in the environment and the changing of the seasons. Their musical arsenal involves analogue synths, field recordings, wooden bass flutes, and quartz singing bowls. Oh, as well as synths and cello. ‘Songs For Eventide’ is their debut full-length that, they say, “emerged from spontaneous, location-based collaboration”. It’s delicate, meditative stuff, and absolutely gorgeous. Over five suites the pair conjure ambient dreamscapes rooted in the ecology of reality. Sonorous strings, accompanied by birdsong and electronic wahs wind through ‘Purple Prairie’; ‘Losing Leaves’ combines bassy cello with melancholic flute tones spiralling into a sombre lament; while pulsing synthlines, plucked strings, and field recordings back a light, almost New Age melody on ‘Bloom To Bloom’. It all calls to mind the work of Harold Budd, with shades of Brian Eno, and even elements of A Winged Victory For The Sullen. This is a record of considered and thoughtful music by two composers that clearly care very deeply about their work. Look out for it when it’s released on Friday.
Iglooghost
BRONZE CLAW ISO
Lucky Me
Congratulations to Seamus Malliagh, who became a father in July. The man more commonly known as Iglooghost has likely swapped synthesisers for nappies for the time being. But this latest EP from one of Brainfeeder’s finest was made while he was working a side job as a crane operator. “I was having a miserable time in a new city,” he explains, “and beefing with about 15 different local producers involved in a subgenre dubbed ‘Crane⊷Musik’”. ‘Bronze Claw Iso’ is the result of Malliagh nicking power for his laptop from inside construction vehicles and making tunes. It’s not as maximalist as you might expect from Iglooghost, but there’s still a core of fury at the heart of it all. A sharp metallic edge outlines the lethargic industrial of ‘Mouthbreath-r’, while ‘Slug Song’ sounds like pared-back d ‘n’ b. A natural evolution for Iglooghost? Perhaps. We’ll have to see which direction his next album goes in.
Caleb Landry Jones
HEY GARY, HEY DAWN
Sacred Bones
I watched Athina Rachel Tsangiri’s ‘Harvest’ the other night, a surreal, otherworldly, medieval portrait of tradition coming up against the cold, hard front of modernity, based on the Jim Crace novel of the same name (it’s currently streaming on Mubi if you’re interested). It stars Caleb Landry Jones as the lead, and he also had a hand in the hazy, electronic-inflected score. It sadly doesn’t appear to be available anywhere, but that did lead me back to Jones’ solo work as a musician. ‘Hey Gary, Hey Dawn’ was released in April last year and is possibly Jones at his most flamboyant. Genre-defying (par for the course), the album swings from prog, to grunge, to art pop, to psych rock, all laced with Jones’ Bowie-like vocals. ‘Your Favourite Song’ is probably my favourite song from the album (the tempo switch-up mid-track is fantastic), but what I think this record really shows is Jones’ love of not just music, but artistry across the board. You can hear this in his previous records, as well as his film and television work (he’s fantastic in the small part he had in ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’). Think it might be time to give his whole discography a revisit. Do yourself a favour and do the same.
That’s it for this time. As always you can find my ramblings elsewhere in both print and online in Electronic Sound. I am going to tentatively dip into the world of microblogging again, so follow me on Bluesky if that’s your sort of thing.
But before I got, here are some things from across the internet that have caught my eye…
Some Stray Thoughts
// The long-awaited, furiously hyped ‘Hollow Knight: Silksong’ finally released on September 4th, and I’m happy to report it’s a triumph. A fiendishly hard platformer that feels like it shares more DNA with ‘Dark Souls’ than a straight forward Metroidvania, and if you don’t play video games I’m sure I’ve probably lost you but in short: it’s really good. And at £17, more than a steal in the current economic climate.
// Literally hours after the killing of right wing podcaster Charlie Kirk, AI-generated “books” chronicling Kirk’s life, career, and death started appearing on Amazon. Available in both paperback and audiobook, one even claimed to cover “the quick arrest of the Charlie Kirk shooter”. At the time, no arrests had been made. Some of these books were also only a few pages long, but were still priced at $7.99. This, along with the reaction to the killing, has never been a better look into the black mirror of our current moment. For what it’s worth, I think this piece on Kirk by Ta-Nehsi Coates is really good.
// I always enjoy including a bit of astronomical news in Happening Again, and this issue is no different. In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers have narrowed down the atmospheric conditions of TRAPPIST-1e, an exoplanet located in the red dwarf system TRAPPIST-1, around 40 light years from Earth. Astronomers are particularly keen on TRAPPIST-1e as, if the planet has the right atmosphere, it might theoretically house liquid water. Habitable planets need to be contained in what is referred to as the “Goldilocks zone” - not too close or not too far away from the system’s star. While they haven’t managed to pinpoint exactly if TRAPPIST-1e even has an atmosphere, scientists have managed to rule out several scenarios, including that the planet is anything like Venus or Mars. Very cool! You can further explore TRAPPIST-1 and its planets thanks to this fantastic interactive map on NASA’s website. If they could get a shift on with their atmospheric identification, and then immediately develop a lightspeed craft that I can pilot and travel to TRAPPIST-1e, or indeed anywhere outside the Solar System, that would be great.
