Satie Listens to 2016

[Satie]

Satie Listens to 2016

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Master List

8/10
1. Jónó Mí Ló - Hymn of the Nephilim
2. SCRAAATCH - FADER Mix

7/10
3. Mhysa - Hivemind
4. Moro - San Benito
5. Faithful - Faithful Mixtape Vol. V: Things As They Are Without
6. Charan-Po-Rantan - Onna no 46 Pun
Amnesia Scanner & Bill Kouligas - Lexachast

6/10
Chino Amobi - NTS NATO Radio Mix
Babyfather - Meditation
Lil Yachty - 1Night, RD, Lil Boat (The EP)
Not Waving - Animals
Fatima Al Qadiri - Brute
Rabit & Dedekind Cut - R&D
Isis Scott - King Isis
Sicko Mobb - Super Saiyan, Vol. 3
Zebra Zebra - I'm Still Playing

5/10
Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Arc
Ehnahre - Douve
Haircuts for Men - 隠しは安全ではありません ep
Half Japanese - Perfect
Kendrick Lamar - untitled unmastered.
Rihanna - ANTI
Young Thug - I'm Up

4/10
Animal Collective - Painting With
David Bowie - Blackstar
Charli XCX - Vroom Vroom
Future - Purple Reign
Paint - Blood
Kanye West - The Life of Pablo

3/10
Meek Mill - 4/4

[Satie]

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Amnesia Scanner & Bill Kouligas - Lexachast

Genre: Glitch
Sounds Like: Janus Berlin, Christophe Charles, Vladislav Delay, but noisier
First Listen: January 6, 2016
Current Rating: 7/10
Yearly Ranking: N/A (ineligible)

January 7, 2016
Lexachast is the latest offering from Amnesia Scanner, one of the untouchable and mysterious leftfield institutions of our time, and Bill Kouligas, a fellow Germany-based artist with whose personal output I have not spent any time and am unqualified to comment in detail but who is the head of the PAN label, which put out new releases from M.E.S.H. and Visionist last year. Lexachast is possibly unfair to examine in the context of music releases, but given the roots of both artists in sound design and the chance algorthmic nature of the visual component, I feel it is within the realm of this thread. Plus it's in the RYM database, which is my original stated parameter for inclusion here.

Lexachast's specific assembly is a bit unclear, and a Facebook friend of mine has apparently chatted with the creators for a bit closer look at their intentions and method of execution, so when I get a chance to talk to him to see what he's discovered, I'll likely add a bit more here. What's immediately available to anyone on the Internet, however, is the website itself, with a visual and audible component, and a short written work that's been circulated on various websites like FACT Mag, The FADER, Tiny Mix Tapes, etc. The visual component is a chance algorithm compilation of random images that refreshes and randomizes each time you visit the domain. The parameters of the visuals are unclear, though I wouldn't be surprised if there were certain tags being looked for, as juxtapositions of CNN newscasts and suburban life came up quite frequently in my experiences with the website. The audio element is played on a loop and if not for a brief silence after the track ends, its movement is so perfectly horizontal - or perhaps multi-planar in the vein of Mille Plateaux glitch music from Vladislav Delay, Christophe Charles, etc. - that it could pass for its own cyclical operation. The statement of intent is formatted in the stylized opaque diction that appeared on Amnesia Scanner's landmark Angels Rig Hook last year. There's always a feeling of a simultaneous humorousness and humorlessness in these dense sort of treatises, and of course any piece of writing that's going to take on the same foreboding formlessness of the musical and visual pieces here is going to tread that line.

It seems that the collaborators here seek to continue some of the best aims of the Mille Plateaux label and of course of the philosophical work that granted its name from Deleuze and Guattari - constantly shifting signifier-signified relationships, words and sounds and images colliding with themselves and each other in increasingly fractious ways. It's interesting to read the treatise along with the rest of the experience, to view the images along with everything else, to listen to the music with everything else, and then to sample one or two at a time in different combinations. To discuss this as "just" music might be sort of missing a lot of the texture and power of the piece. Overall, a permeating sense of despair hangs over and within the various contours of Lexachast, but there's also a disarming unity to everything, a sense of Apocalypse not just as end but beginning. Given the fission that occurs in each and every element of it all, this filling in and contextualizing might be more a reflection of myself than the art, but that seems a necessary conclusion of trying to find the writing voice's ego in a void that is creating and recreating itself. Better to experience it than to read about it here, in other words. 7/10

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[Tap]

Oh nice, yeah would be curious to hear your thoughts on that one, lookin forward to what ya throw down in here as we go thru the year. Are you gonna be talking about any archival reissue type deals like that Harry Bertoia Sonambient set or just keepin it to the now for the writing?

[Applerill]

dang this is some good shit

[Satie]

[Satie]

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Blackstar by David Bowie

Genre: "Art" Rock
Sounds Like: a darker, less fun Low, struggling for relevance
First Listen: January 7, 2016
Current Rating: 4/10
Yearly Ranking: N/A

January 7, 2016
Blackstar is the first big-name release of a year that is promised to deliver plenty of throwback delicacies for online music fans eager to relive the past, recent (LCD Soundsystem) or distant (Guns 'n Roses) in the form of reunion shows, new albums, and other such self-fellating monumentality. The cries of returns to roots, the re-establishment of some missed paradigm, etc. will surely be flowing from keyboards across the western world. Bowie's "return" (not much of an absence to return from - his last album came out two years ago to disappoint virtually everyone who heard it; see also: m b v, an album you only listen to when people like me tell you it wasn't good and you have to re-listen in order to come up with reasons it's not terrible) is quite paradoxical. As always, the man is hailed as some unique visionary of a new sound, but the emperor's clothes have been gone since the fucking '70s. Somehow, the man keeps being a chameleon of new-old styles, smart collaborations, or general weirdness to keep people remembering how good the '70s were to him. Once again, we are faced with a man we are told is some experimental visionary and an album that's supposed to elucidate that vision to us, but all we can ever do is talk about how great Low was.

There's a reason for that - each of these new albums is the same just-missed-the-train nonsense that the man has always put out in the ears of anyone willing to hear the worlds he judiciously steals from. It's just that this time, the only world he steals from (despite his and his rabid fanbase's best efforts to pretend otherwise and cite people like Kendrick Lamar) is his own. Well, that and a bit of trip hop to give him a vision of what his drum sound should be. But where Low's world had a heart and a saccharine sheen in places, an affected ebullience that craftily if unoriginally juxtaposed yelping, ecstatic singing and bright synthesizer sounds with declarations of near-death experiences and self-exile in Berlin apartments, Blackstar ironically finds a man on top of the world doing nothing but mope. For all the attempts at gothic theatricality or late '70s art punk skronk and circumstance, Blackstar is a dreadfully boring, meandering affair. None of the signature Bowie charm is there because Bowie, just like his fanbase, forgets that we only like the Thin White Duke because he was a fall from and stark contrast to Ziggy who let that child of the stars shine through every so often. In the absence of that, we have a very poorly-sold artiste figure.

But that's Bowie at the end of the day - an incredible glam rock artist who became convinced of his own pop art performance. It's been an embarrassing handful of decades of copping random music trends and being caught with his pants down wondering if he's a pop artist or a popular Artist. Without a clear vision of himself or even a willingness to look into himself or to make comment on the outside world, he's left in the same liminal world as all the other disappointing kitsch. Try remembering this album this time next year, I dare you. I just listened to it not fifteen minutes ago, and I can barely remember it. The same plodding "jazz" drumming (just because you technically are trained as a jazz drummer doesn't make occasionally creative fills and drum-and-bass copping into jazz, friend) under Bowie's best impressions of himself and synths stolen from every embarrassing British art rock project of the '80s and '90s battered my eardrums for about forty minutes as I strained them to hear the Scott Walker everyone is telling me is here. 4/10

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[Applerill]

:O SATIE MIGHT ENJOY THE NEW BOWIE LESS THAN I "DID"

I'm planning to finally listen to this tomorrow, and I actually have really high hopes now. That "Lazarus" song was dope.

Also Satie, what Matmos would you recommend?

[Satie]

I don't think I've ever heard any material from Matmos.

[alelsupreme]

I sometimes forget how much I like your writing. Keep up the good work *thumbs up emoji BEA for some reason doesn't have and wouldn't format correctly*
_________________

Romanelli wrote:

We're all fucked, lads.

[Satie]