Drahla (14.05)
This year, Drahla make their long-awaited return with their astounding second record angeltape. It’s an offering that was not only interesting for the Leeds-based art-rock experimentalists to make, but offers an intriguing world for audiences to explore with a similar curiosity that informed the songwriting process. This inclination to eschew conventional melodic structures and embrace uncertainty across their latest material gives fans an unfiltered insight into a challenging transitional period the band found themselves in following the release of their 2019 critically acclaimed debut, Useless Coordinates. That blistering introduction, described as a “darkly affecting uncompromising listen”, along with the success of their Third Article EP from 2017, saw them share stages with Parquet Courts, Ought, Buzzcocks and several more. Angeltape, recorded with Matthew Benn and Jamie Lockhart in 2023, is an altogether more introspective and abstract examination of the self: “The core is off kilter I’m sure / When you feel too detached for your own words,” Brown intones on ‘Lip Sync’, an early glimpse into Drahla’s extraordinary artistic evolution.
Angeltape is an avant garde document of the events that unfolded over the five-year gap between records which saw a variety of changes – good and bad – steer their professional and personal lives down unfamiliar territories. Instead of succumbing to adversity, however, Drahla re-emerge sounding creatively rejuvenated and examine this time with deeply reflective perspectives. Over the last few years, they suffered devastating losses and expanded their sound with guitarist Ewan Barr joining vocalist and guitarist Luciel Brown, bassist Rob Riggs and drummer Mike Ainsley. These recent experiences – collective and individual – culminate in a sound that is considerably darker and tonally more complex and conceptual in its essence. Delving into themes of grief and trauma whilst simultaneously celebrating moments of sentimentality and support during difficult times, angeltape shifts between being a challenging, comforting and ultimately rewarding record for both artist and audience.
The addition of Ewan Barr to Drahla’s visceral and vital arrangements signaled a significant shift in the band's dynamic, ultimately reshaping the way they approach their angular arrangements. Crucially, it allowed Drahla to dismantle previous limitations and carve out new sonic avenues to experiment with form more than ever before. Brown, in particular, embraced this opportunity to find different ways to inhabit her contemplative lyrics. There was, of course, a readjustment period for the band as they came together to write angeltape in this new iteration which kickstarted a renewed creative approach. “There was an uncertainty and anxiety in not knowing how to rekindle what we had and what we did have just didn’t exist in the same format,” Brown explains. “I feel this is apparent in the music; the constant changes, opposing ideas and structures, the overall energy and drive of the songs. I think there's also the sense of reconnection, encouragement and freedom, too. There's excitement borne from us finding something together again.”
Sonically, the exhilarating interplay of driving bass riffs and charged drum patterns provide a captivating contrast to Brown’s melodic spoken delivery. The enveloping atmosphere emanating from the quartet is heightened by searing saxophone accompaniments by long-standing collaborator Chris Duffin, who has featured on all of Drahla’s previous output. There’s an irresistible and unwavering potency surging throughout this masterful second record, one that stays with you long after you first step into Drahla’s enticing world. Furthermore, this exciting new chapter is anchored by the quartet finding a great source of inspiration in the joy of playing music together, as bassist Rob Riggs adds: “When the four of us are in a room, we each bring separate things to the table. Sometimes, a session would start a little bit disjointed but then we find a way where we could all interlock together for a moment in a song and then disperse again.”
Drawing some inspiration from experimental rock band This Heat, Drahla primarily found that their greatest motivation came from listening to and following one another throughout the recording sessions. “I think the process and inspiration for this album has been way more experimental and insular than taking on any external musical references,” says Brown, “This record feels like it was built on a foundation of insular inspiration.” This autonomous practice extends beyond Drahla’s music into the visual representation of their intense and immersive instrumentation. It’s almost impossible to listen to songs as intricately layered – musically and lyrically– as theirs and not imagine the spaces they exist within. Thus providing an awe-striking multi-sensory experience every time you spend time with a Drahla record.
Tickets: https://goingapp.pl/wydarzenie/green-zoo-drahla-uk/maj-2024
Deerhoof (17.05)
Sit down, let me tell you a story. We look at the state of the world and think, “It’ll be a miracle if we survive.” But miracles are what humans do as our planet’s most inventive and unpredictable species. Miracle-Level is Deerhoof’s mystical manifesto on creativity and trust, its answer to the artificial industries of deception, coercion, and boredom we’re forced to put up with.
Deerhoof’s 19th album is also their first to be recorded and mixed in a recording studio. Not because they had tired of their anarchic sound, but because they wanted to open their secretive DIY comfort zone up to something new and uncomfortable. Our research has not turned up many examples of a DIY band waiting 28 years to entrust their record to a proper producer. But in summer 2022 Deerhoof decided to take a chance.
“Seemingly out of nowhere, I was presented with a miracle-level opportunity to produce Deerhoof,” says Mike Bridavsky, a total stranger to the band until Joyful Noise founder Karl Hofstetter suggested him. “Two consecutive weeks at No Fun Club in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I began listening through their albums and realized: I have no fucking idea how to make a Deerhoof record. Did anyone? They’d assembled a catalog of thoughtful, wild, and unique records, each different from the one before. I was about to be inserted into a thriving creative organism that’s worked almost exclusively with each other, with unlimited control of every blip and bleep. This was the session I’d been dreaming of for my whole professional life—and I was terrified.”
Bridavsky realized he had to build trust—trust that he would safeguard their one-of-a-kind musical personality. “In my first call with Greg, I was relieved that we had an instant rapport. Their biggest concern was dispensing with the months of obsessive tinkering that usually make their albums sound so beautiful and insane. He told me, ‘We don’t want to do our usual aggro control-freak thing. We’re going for bare-minimum production that doesn’t push the listener around.’”
Nor was this to be the only departure from standard operating procedure. The band emailed Bridavsky the music they’d been listening to for inspiration: Rosalía, Meridian Brothers, Les Freres Michot, Ngola Ritmos, Mozart opera. It occurred to them that none of this was in English. Satomi decided that she’d like to forsake the language of “the world’s policeman” and write Miracle-Level’s lyrics entirely in her native tongue.
After months of paring their demos down to Deerhoofian nuggets of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic gold, Deerhoof spent their final pre-recording week in a rehearsal room near John’s house in Minneapolis. There, just before Bridavsky’s 42nd birthday, Bridavsky met the band face to face for the first time. “They sat me down and performed the entire album from beginning to end. I knew we were about to make an amazing record. We went back to John’s where he prepared the most delightful fresh-baked pizza and apple pie followed by an a capella rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. We hadn’t even made it to the studio yet, and this was already one of the best sessions I’d ever been a part of.”
Arriving in Winnipeg the next day, Deerhoof picked out drums and amps from the studio’s collection, Satomi chose the room where she most liked the sound of her voice, and Greg selected which of the studio’s three pianos he preferred for the album’s piano ballads.1 Five days later, they had finished tracking Miracle-Level a day ahead of schedule.2 The fateful moment for mixing had arrived. “We’d reached a level of mutual trust where the band was comfortable with me mixing alone. I’d send them away and when I felt a mix was ready, I’d call them back into the control room to listen. The look of excitement and accomplishment on everyone’s faces is something I’ll never forget. Satomi, Ed, John and Greg tried something different on this record, and the result is Deerhoof at their most sparse and vulnerable.”
The record they walked out with at the end of two weeks is often unexpectedly sotto voce, a drama term referring to emphasis attained by lowering one’s voice. Miracle-Level is an avant-garde, anti-fascist carnival, its spicy surprises whispered conspiratorially, and lit by candlelight. Sit down, let me tell you a story celebrating the infinite small wonders of existence…the miracles that spontaneously present themselves when we’re not distracted by the tribalism and manipulation of our death-driven masters…the miracles that Artificial Intelligence will never replicate. Deerhoof speak in a secret code in which hooks abound, genre is nonexistent, and magic ever awaits us.
1. He liked the cheap upright with the special felt mute.
2. This band so used to their tiny home-recording setups could not resist lavishing an entire day on John’s unique vision for the guitar sound. Explains Bridavsky, “This seemingly overcomplicated setup, which turned out to be the defining sound of the record, involved John and Ed playing semi-hollow body guitars in an isolated room, with each guitar split into three separate signals: one through their pedals into an amplifier; one from dedicated microphone pointed at the guitar, run into a second amplifier, and one that summed both of the guitars’ direct outputs into a fifth, highly distorted amplifier that combined both guitar signals.”
Tickets: https://goingapp.pl/wydarzenie/green-zoo-deerhoof-us/maj-2024
Josephine Foster (18.05)
North American artist Josephine Foster (b. 1974): singer, multi-instrumentalist, song composer. Known to breathe new life into archaic forms, embodying the cultural archaeology of Harry Smith’s old weird America, she has lent her warbling mezzo-soprano and interpretive wit to nearly two decades of self-produced recordings.
As Jarry said, anachronism, the crossing of different times, produces eternity, and anachronic is an apt arch-adjective to describe Foster’s singular songbook, one that began in the Mountain West (where at age 15 she had her first gig delivering hymns at a log cabin church). Her uncanny timbre imparts a paradoxically rustic glamour, despite a certain stage shyness.
In her 20’s, submerged into Chicago’s fringe rock and free jazz periphery, frayed vestiges of her abandoned operatic aspirations wore away; she then crossed the Atlantic for over a decade, grounding herself in the earthen glaze of rural Spain. A glitter of Nashville recording residencies helped shape her prolific output, solo and band album releases, leading a variety of ensembles on the road around the world and in the studio.
Foster draws from spiritual wells beyond limits of space and time, her performances mesmeric. An oneiric voice which entwines with her own swelling guitar, piano, harp and autoharp gestures, folk-art songs spun in surprising musical design, are often playfully unravelled. And while she favors the piano or organ, she will probably play whatever guitar is handed to her.
Many of her albums, the country-blues and Americana inflected No Harm Done (2020), the gothic Godmother (2022), and others, are available through Fire records.
Tickets: https://goingapp.pl/wydarzenie/green-zoo-josephine-foster-us/krakow-maj-2024
Topographies (23.05)
Topographies is a post-punk group based in San Francisco and Los Angeles and formed in 2018 by Justin Oronos, Jeremie Ruest, and Gray Tolhurst. The band draws from coldwave and post punk groups like Asylum Party, New Order, and the Chameleons while also fusing elements of industrial, EBM, and shoegaze into a sound that is at once nostalgic and contemporary. The group has released two 7” singles, two EPs and one LP through independent labels Sonic Cathedral, DREAM, and Funeral Party. A second LP entitled “Interior Spring” is due early 2024 from San Francisco label Dark Entries known for releases by Severed Heads, Lives of Angels and countless other seminal acts of the 80s, 90s and contemporary post punk and electronic underground. The group has toured nationally, most recently with Portland’s Soft Kill on a 6-week national tour which included sold out shows in Los Angeles, Portland and New York. They have also shared bills with The Chills, Odonis Odonis, and The Twilight Sad.
Tickets: https://goingapp.pl/wydarzenie/green-zoo-topographies-us/krakow-maj-2024
Xeno & Oaklander (24.05)
Tickets: https://goingapp.pl/wydarzenie/green-zoo-xeno-oaklander-us/maj-2024
Source: press release
