DECAYCAST Reviews: Giovanni Marks “2 Plaza 2” (2022)

Giovanni Marks’ 2 Plaza 2

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Every artist has a set aesthetic that adds to their art, and no one proves this better than rapper/producers. Whether you are the newscaster, the emo kid, the gangsta or anything, rap music has a tendency to have artists that box themselves in and make it hard to really allow complexities within that. Giovanni Marks is a different animal.

Those who hopped aboard the train either during the subtitle or Giovanni Marks phase, whether he was on Briefcase Rockers, Gold Standard Laboratories, or his own Get Crev Labs, will notice his aesthetic/role is of the cyberpunk, the scientist, the afrofuturist, the nerd with the Kid n’ Play haircut and Dracula cape. If hip hop is currently in its punk rock phase, Giovanni Marks is the New Wave/synthpunk with colored hair, jumpsuits and plenty of electronic instruments to hook up on stage. But while that aesthetic can give way to ideas of being introverted or reclusive, 2 Plaza 2 suggests that this spacey, futuristic aesthetic that Marks has been cultivating for years during his time as an MC is a universe that anybody can take part in.

2 Plaza 2 is a project that finds GIovanni Marks taking a backseat from rapping to assist friends like Juan Huevos and pink siifu with the avant-garde production he is known for. Take the opener, for example. A slow red siren rumble of synth bass giving way to an anonymous rewound sound all adding up to a sound that is as musically unsettling as it is fascinating. That is just “Alternative C”, which bears the subtitle of being the “nox-vox version”. While you are busy working out how the vox version would be delivered, singer Joseph Squire transforms a stomping noiresque beat into a seductive R&B track that leaves before you find yourself really falling into the groove.

Friends from art-rapper/multidisciplinary artist Koreatown Oddity, Pink Siifu and Mason Williams all come in to give color to Marks’ production from the rallying “Baby Teeth” to the intergalactic stream-of-consciousness delivery in “all night long” (which is delivered as both a regular track and a “space dub”) to the bounce of “Samuraid Hott” that will surely have trouble evading Shabazz Palaces vibes. They all may sound like fragments of ideas underneath a half-hour, but the shift from style to style is fascinating enough not only to keep your attention, but to likely leave you wanting to revisit such world all over again.

2 Plaza 2 can be described as a front row seat into Giovanni Marks’ world of spacey production, but what is different about this project, it’s that it insists that this electronic/avant-rap universe he has been building for years now isn’t only for him.

Listen/Buy here https://getcrevlabs.bandcamp.com/album/2-plaza-2

– Mynameisblueskye

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DECAYCAST Reviews : GRST “Container​+​=​object EP” (2021)

DECAYCAST Reviews : GRST “Container​+​=​object EP” (2021)

GRST ‘container​+​=​object EP’’s pleasingly adjunct description states only that it relies upon  ‘a variety of electro-acoustic techniques and physical modelling’, eschewing any form of wild conceptual structure in favour of a more detailed sonic study. Connoisseurs of physical modelling synthesis will no doubt recognise its presence – we’re not dealing with bold new territories here, but rather some extremely pensive, rhythmically free wanderings that travel from additive washes to organic plucks and rattles. The absence of any measurable pulse is perhaps ‘Maracaibo’s’ strongest feature – its textures are allowed to ebb and flow between various synthetic states without ever feeling pressured to reveal a defined compositional logic.

In contrast, the second track, ‘aruba’, invokes a distinctly modular tact, tying bursts of reverb to the gestating clangs and urgent bounces across glass and metal. We get some nieve stabs at melody, too, meandering repetitions that dance back and forth like the song of a sinister, cartoon music-box. Theres no development proper, nor does there need to be – ‘container​+​=​object’ works precisely because it sets up a limited palette and then proceeds to meekly explore its affordance, the listener invited to observe as GRST tests the sonic properties of each corner in turn. 

– Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully

Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully is a composer, video and performance artist from the UK. He produces work under the Distant Animals moniker (www.distantanimals.com), and runs both the production company 7000 Trees (www.7000trees.com) and the Difficult Art and Music label (difficultartandmusic.bandcamp.com). He holds an actual proper grown-up PhD in contemporary music, and currently lectures at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. 

DECAYCAST Reviews: B L A C K I E “Face The Darkness” (2020)

B L A C K I E: Face the Darkness reviewed by mynameisblueskye

“What is freedom to the average person?”

How ever you answer that question, the one thing you should know is that it probably doesn’t mean the same thing as does to art-punk auteur Michael LaCoeur aka B L A C K I E. To those who have ever listened to B L A C K I E, you will release that his album represents a natural freedom. The freedom to just be the man he was made to be without the world seeking to destroy him or cage him in. Nomadic by nature, nonconformist by choice and perhaps even by nature and unafraid to encourage it for others in his position. The opening lines of “While They Try to Kill Each Other” outlines one of his overall thesis of being B L A C K I E over electric drums better than any of us could ever try.

“Children laugh while they try to kill each other/at least the blood returns to the earth where it belongs, and out of the hands of in power”, bellows Michael in his dry and world-weary town crier scream. With danger everywhere in his wake, it would make sense that he finds silver linings here…if that is what you want to call it. On “There Is No Light”, he reports the history of laid waste in front of and committed towards the people. “There was no food, there were fists/there were no light, there were fists” all to come back to the devastating line. “We use to eat each other!” Entrails wrapped in crimson blood line the periphery of wherever B L A C K I E looks, even amongst those who towards those who call themselves allies and heroes. His second overall thesis “I am not you’r nigger!” is delivered in an angry tone only punctuated by a deep sense of pain and sorrow.

B L A C K I E’s mind may be a mass of continuously spinning wheels, but he will be damned if it ever spins for you. Even as he tackles topics such as suffering from a crippling addiction (“How to Let It Control You”), toxic “patriotism” (“Wave Your Flag”) and fascism/fake empathy (“Uncounted”), Michael knows that even HE is not above occupying the hot seat. Painting a picture of anxiety through a descriptive lens, “Meet the Demons” is claustrophobic in its description of not being able to think and feel freely.

Not being able to just be without judgment. So, after all of this, hearing him emerge free and ready to escape on “It Can’t Define Me” feels not only heartening, but like an anthem written to those looking for their own escape. B L A C K I E’s Face the Darkness may start off as B L A C K I E in the slaughter line witnessing victims meeting their end in HD and plotting his escape from such slaughter, but it sees to it that he isn’t his own cause of danger to himself. In the midst of this, B L A C K I E emerges with one last message (clue, rather) that overall defines not only the entire album, but the world and the philosophy of B L A C K I E: “Look around/Don’t look down”.

– Mynameisblueskye

Mynameisblueskye is a singer, songwriter, poet, and occasional blogger. An American-born Renaissance man who loves music so much, he has too many videos in his Watch Look after list. His bandcamp can be found here:

DECAYCAST Premieres: Bryce Hample’s Hedia – untitled 3 {VIDEO PREMIERE}

Morose and warm new visual from Hedia – “Untitled 3” from the Quartets cassette that came out in July. 

A beautiful union of enveloped, undulation machine of reverberated moods; a warm refreshing breath in cinematic neo-classical minimalism.  Pinched tones, crawling,  yearning for a new breath, a new beginning, Hedia works the space  of decaying sound in a beautiful and nuanced treatment of the sounds themselves bringing the space to live in a tremendously rich pattern.

With hedia, I hope to create a blank space for the listener to enter and find stillness for a moment, unfocus your eye, escape from the desert heat.” – Bryce Hample

Microscopic sonic events washing ashore fade into arpeggiated synths, but only for a few seconds as envelopes of sound and vision open and close on the viewer to create a somber distortion in both time, place, and vision.  A blurry fade into an unknown place, loss, grief, strings, sadness, hope all sputter past each other like blurred pedestrians buzzing through a rush-hour rain station. For a few moments, we have some peace.

 

video, by Bryce Hample

Hedia is the music of multi-instrumentalist Bryce Hample. Hedia is spacial music, creating a place to inhabit, if only temporarily. Musical spaces to encompass the listener, unfolding organically and spaciously, in a blanket of drifting piano chords, viola da gamba, brass, subdued guitar, and tape manipulations.

 

DECAYCAST Premieres: Ezra Feinberg “Castle and Sand” & John Kolodij “Beyond the Fragile” streaming now! (Whited Sepulchre Records, 2020)

Ezra Feinberg & John Kolodij share the first two tracks off of new LP on Whited Sepulchre Records. , 

The preorder is live now and the LP comes out August 28, 2020.

 

Ezra Feinberg shares “Castle and Sand”, A beautiful, warm, introduction to a slowly shifting, bending, humming soundscape, unfolding inside the ear, setting off a trigger of washed out humming strings, a caucophanous silence, a briightly lit star millions of miles away, these. tones escape the source and paint a distant hum that grows brighter, and quieter. John Kolodij’s “Beyond the Fragile” escalates the listener to fever pitch psychedelic hums of bending light across a plush, dimly lit, mist cloaked forest.

On his side Feinberg compliments Kolodij perfectly with warm strings resonating and shaking across a barren sea. drenched in reverb, archaic strums pluck broightly across a sea of glass. Friction like a creaking ice tray about to crack Feinberg’s music is relaxing bt holds an intensity that could erupt at any moment but never quite does, leaving us on the edge of bliss and loneliness.

from the label:

“Bless whatever cosmic winds brought together this split between NYC guitarist and composer Ezra Feinberg and multi-instrumentalist John Kolodij. Traveling deep blue highways of the mind, their split LP opens up the stunning vistas that link these two artists in sound and texture.”

Preorder the LP HERE,  scope out W S R  vast and eclectic discography  HERE

DECAYCAST Reviews: VYLTER Industries “I” (Holojamz, 2o2o)

 

 

Vylter Industries ( VYLTER, Serotonin Jackalope et al )  creates at a seemingly unimaginable pace, so much so that it’s often hard to get a full grasp of the previous work before the next one drops, though with “I” the project now known as Vylter Industries) is back with one of the heaviest and darkest offerings from the project to date;  smoggy, dense sonic explorations to take us into a narrowed hallway encapsulated with the spilling blood-purple haze of an unknown space in reverse.

 

“I” is cavernous riffs bleeding into each other like a sonic hurricane. Slow motion controlled chaos.  Blending chopped and screwed, doom, vaporwave, and ambient styles “I”  never strays too far away from a defined sound, while at the same time weaponizing a wide range of sonic modes to wage a psychedelic trap against monotony. “I’  casts thick doom-ridden clouds into a crowded space where the listener spirals into a psychedelic frenzy. Heavy, distorted waves crash in like a digital sea, enveloping sight, and screen before a grasp of reality occurs, just for a second. Distant strums become closer and more menacing as “I” pulls you into an uncontrolled acceleration, spinning against the walls of time, a life and death sonic vortex. Powerful powerful sounds.   Highly recommended.

BUY “I” HERE!

DECAYCAST Guest Mix: Farm To Tape July Mix by D.A.C.

DECAYCAST MIXES : Farm To Tape : Episode 10 – July Mix

Next mix from the Farm To Tape  guest mix series combining experimental, jazz, metal, noise, avant garde, neo-soul, hip hop and other interpretations  of experimental sonic musings.

 

Chapter 319. by clipping.

Black Sheep by Backxwash

NIGHTSHADE by Moor Mother and Olof Melander

Nothing by Tyler Holmes

Black Kaveera by Nihiloxica

ZU FAUL by 93SOVAGE

HOTHOTHOT by Alienood

SUMMER OF LOVE ON ACID by SHA SHA KIMBO

Newtype Track by Yakui

Days of Hate V2 by Dark Machine Nation

Accelerant by Azar Swan

[side B] by Uraño

Under The Stall Door by evicshen

Sermon by Bison Squad

Short Bow by Kcin and Brendan Clark

Negu by Luka Productions & Kandiafa

NORDINE STAIFI by  Goultili Bye Bye

Expanding Electricity by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

DECAYCAST Reviews: Tristan Welch “Asset / Defect” (Self Released, 2020)

 

On his newest EP, “Asset / Defect”  Tristan Welch explores a timeless dichotomy  of positive and negative expansions and contractions through space, silence, time and sound. Through glassy, shifting drones and tone poem movements ringing present, like a warm blanket after a cold night adrift on the nights moon last beam.  The album opens up with beautifully articulated  mid tempo oscillating synth pulses,  a faint buzzing underscored with a warm bath of tones; a calm yet slightly unnerving  respite; a rest for the restless, for the anxious, and for the forgotten.  This is slow patient, music, for one in a process of uncertainty, as well as one of discovery knows  that things can change, and every once in a great while, for the better, and maybe this time they will, that is the question this music asks, what is  change,  and when will it be cast upon us?

‘Given the inherently political nature of most of his music, “Asset / Defect” is a rare turn inward for Welch. As a person in recovery, “Asset / Defect” is an audio/visual accounting of sorts, a result from tallying up the ledger of negative character defects and positive assets. An accounting feat that is musically reflected in the clear balance between beautiful, ebullient tones and grainy distortion held at tension within the work.”

The A side  “Asset / Defect” seems a bit brighter in sound presentation overall but across the twenty minute EP, Welsh offers two movements which compliment each other in a dichotomy of undulation.  Wet delays and thick intertwined braids of reverberated strings cast doubt to those casting doubt, give hope to those giving hope, and push us all to look inward to a change of fresh air and relief.  The B side offers a similar, more contemplative, introspective place where the listener can identify with these living breathing wave manipulations, like a warm bath, tingling the skin, but never fully encapsulating the full dynamic of touch and pressure. Beautiful music for complicated times.

 

Highly recommended.

 

-Dr. Decaycast

 

 

Decaycast Essential Listening : Grimalkin Records Statement Of Solidarity + Resources + Micro Reviews

Grimalkin Records or GR has released a collective statement of solidarity with the global uprising in support of All Black Lives and ways folks can contribute to fighting anti Black racism, transphobia, and xenophobia and all forms of oppression through music, art, poetry, fundraising projects, transparency, compilations and performance. GR boasts an impressive roster of artists working at the forefront of everything from rap to bedroom folk, with social justice projects and grassroots fundraising campaigns rooted in anti oppression at the core of their beliefs and conceptual underpinnings. Check out a few releases we’ve selected below from their Bandcamp page  as well as some infographics provided by the label’s collective members.

A few of our favorite releases:

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ABSOLUTE LEGEND IN THE MAKING. Backxwash is one of the most forefront artists of our time, do not sleep on her, this album goes into so many different places, a true tour de force of modern Rap, industrial,  and experimental.

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Fantastic sampler spanning all of the unique genre bending hits of the GR family, another essential release in the catalog which you should not miss, a little something for everyone on here, plus many exclusives as well.  From the somber, blissful  acoustics of Elizabeth Owens , to the funky, Prince inspired, experimental R&B from Quinton Barnes, this is a beautifully curated eclectic mix and showing of the sonic diversity of the collective.

Here’s a few infographics provided by the collective to elaborate on ways folks can practice anti racism in music and art communities and grassroots organizing efforts, something that is much needed, and long overdue,

“Grimalkin  is music & zine collective & record label comprised of artists from all over the world to raise money and support social justice & civil rights organizations locally in Richmond, Virginia, USA & worldwide”

Preview YouTube video Cardinality – At the Dinner Table

Cardinality – At the Dinner Table

DECAYCAST Radio #023 – Guest Mix: “Quarantine” by Benjamin Ethan Tinker

DECAYCAST Radio #023 – Guest Mix: “Quarantine” by Benjamin Ethan Tinker

Bay Area artistic stalwart, all around musical maestro  Ben Tinker  (White Pee, That Hideous Strength,  The Heroic Quartet et al ) takes us on nearly three. hour psychedelic quarantine adventure through space, time, and the unknown in perhaps the most guitar heavy episode to boot, sit back (don’t relax) and strap in for a fuzz out, tripped in ride spanning art. rock, krautrock, slow warbly Sunday morning horns, piano presentations and  timeless vocal exhalations, plus so much above, below, and more even betwixt and beyond.

 

Tracklisting:

1) Phil Manzanera – East Of Echo
2) Phil Manzanera – Largrima
3) Peter Michael Hamel – Organum Part 1
4) Popol Vuh – Im Garten der Gemeinschaft
5) Baden Powell – Marcia Meu Amor
6) Allen Ravenstine & Robert Wheeler –  A Morning Mood
7) Hans-Joachim Roedelius – Das Eis bricht (excerpt)
8) Nino Rota – L’Harem
9) The Durutti Column – Without Mercy 1
10) Vladimir Cosma – Metro Police
11) Tom Verlaine – Dissolve/Reveal (Instrumental)
12) Richard Pinhas – Beautiful May
13) Swanox – Days Like Waves
14) Andy Summers and Robert Fripp – Under Bridges of Silence
15) Yello – Homer Hossa
16) Andrew Chalk & Ralf Wehowsky – Wycha
17) Tom Verlaine – Let Go The Mansion (instrumental)
18) His Name Is Alive – Echo Lake
19) His Name Is Alive – F Choir
20) Anne Clark – Poem Without Words 1 The Third Meeting
21) Marsfield ‎– Three Sunsets Over Marsfield Pt. 2
22) Anne Clark – Silent Prayer
23) Allen Ravenstine & Robert Wheeler – Twilight With Crickets
24) Andrew Chalk – Obscure In The Valley
25) Robert Wheeler & Allen Ravenstine – Sunrise in Milan
26) Nino Rota – Cimitero & Gigoletto & Cadillac
27) Vladimir Cosma – Le curé et l’antillais
28) Hans-Joachim Roedelius – Regentropfen
29) Robert Wheeler & Allen Ravenstine – A Nocturne
30) Andrew Chalk – A World Displaced
31) Popol Vuh – Engel Der Luft

Benjamin Ethan Tinker (New York, 1969) is a multidisciplinary artist and electronic musician who has lived in San Francisco since 1996. He chooses to work primarily with analog synthesizers with which he composes electroacoustic music, and performs regularly with the improv ensemble White Pee, and his own project That Hideous Strength. In addition, he curates and writes about experimental music. He has a BFA in Sculpture from SUNY Purchase and a MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College, between those degrees was a decade of commercial audio engineering.