Arto Lindsay made a name for himself as a founding father of the New York no wave scene with his project DNA. He went on to work with the Lounge Lizards, Ambitious Lovers, and the Golden Palominos before producing a slew of solo records. Though American, Lindsay’s parents were missionaries and he spent his teenage years in Brazil at the height of the tropicália movement. This Brazilian influence emerged more and more throughout his 40 year long career, spawning a trilogy of records dense with Brazilian sound: O Corpo Sutil (1996), Mundo Civilizado (1996), and finally, Noon Chill. Lindsay has also done production work for Caetano Veloso, Tom Zé, Gal Costa, Vinicius Cantuária, and Carlinhos Brown, to name a few. (Side note: he’s also responsible for the weirdest/best cover ever of Prince’s “Erotic City.”)
Noon Chill sounds like a well-intentioned poolside afternoon gone on a codeine bender. Most of the songs are bossa nova at heart, but they continuously slip down dark, trip-hoppy rabbit holes and spiral off into ominous drum and bass riffs. It’s like Tanto Tempo‘s sinister older brother. Combined with Lindsay’s trademark disinterested vocals and lyrics like “I do love your lack of all expression/I find it not at all distressing,” you can’t help but see Noon Chill through heavy eyelids.
Greek musician Lena Platonos (Λένα Πλάτωνος) has an impressive discography ranging from dark electronic rabbitholes to post punky pop to the straight-up bizarro theatrical. She’s an electronic music pioneer (and an aesthetic genius, having designed the cover above), so it’s really exciting that Dark Entries has recently reissued her second solo record, Gallop (Γκάλοπ), which she wrote, performed, and produced. Gallop is an exercise in dark minimalism, consisting mostly of analog synths, a Roland TR-808 drum machine, and her voice, speaking and singing her own surreal poetry. It’s Greek to me, but I’m told that “lyrics deal with heartbreak, dreams, desires, and astutely predict the way that computers and technology would infiltrate our society in the years to come.” (A word to the ASMR-wise: listening to her softly-spoken voice in headphones might trigger some particularly tingly feelings.) Alternating between spiky techno beats and long stretches of unpunctuated dreamy synth sprawl, Gallop is a haunting and very progressive record. Enjoy!
The Beatniks, featuring Yukihiro Takahashi of YMO fame, released this record in 1981, the same year as Takahashi’s very excellent Neuromantic. The production here is more sparse, with that perfect combination of live instrumentation and synthesized sound that fans of YMO and Sakamoto expect. Standout track is the baroque “Now and Then…”. Dramatic piano, lush strings, filtered synth, and a voice announcing “Now and then I feel I’m sinking in a stagnant pool…” So deep! The best find of my trip to Beijing.
Another one from the canon. Song Cycle is deranged. It riffs on all things Americana: gospel, bluegrass, orchestral ballads, folk, show tunes, marching bands, movie scores, ragtime, waltzes, girl groups, and pop rock, but it never settles into any of these shapes. People call it impenetrable, but I think it’s, ahem, too penetrable, too open and slippery and rife with forks in the road. It’s psychedelic insofar as every measure seems to want to tug away and break off into several different songs, leaving the listener in many places (and times!) all at once, volatile and hanging off of a musical precipice. It’s nauseating, beautiful, and a tiny bit misanthropic.
As a teenager, my first dozen listens left me unable to remember anything about what I had just listened to, what had just happened, and yet despite it being so elusive, you can’t stop listening, trying to grab hold of it. I’m sure this is a pretty typical response, and Parks himself sums it up best in this anecdote:
When I played the album for Joe Smith, the president of the label, there was a stunned silence. Joe looked up and said, “Song Cycle”? I said, “Yes,” and he said, “So, where are the songs?” And I knew that was the beginning of the end.
A massively expensive commercial flop, the record was originally supposed to be entitled Looney Tunes, and it does feel cartoonish and larger than life. Most of it is accompanied by Parks’s reedy, androgynous vocals–he sounds like a jaded, aging chorus girl who’s smoked a few packs too many, singing sardonically to an empty theater. Clearly he’s amused by this whole thing. The opener, “Vine Street,” is Steve Young covering a Randy Newman song, and it fades in midway through the song and fades out before it’s finished. Track six, the cheekily titled “Van Dyke Parks,” is a minute long clip of a gospel hymnal, almost completely masked by what sounds like a helicopter making a water landing. The closer, “Pot Pourri” (probably another joke title, given that it’s the least hodgepodge track in the cycle), finds Parks alone with a piano, padded by a thick hiss of room tone, and the song doesn’t exactly end so much as stop–presumably leaving it open-ended and the cycle unbroken, ready for another go round.
Another gem from the Yen Records treasure trove (Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi production, blah blah blah). Cheeky, unhurried, fairly minimal synth pop, with a dusting of tittering bleeps, bloops, and sleigh bells for dimension. Mostly dry and Disneyland plump, but of course nothing Hosono is quite what it seems. Après-Midi is far from simplistic–there are plenty of well-executed jabs at western pop music (and culture), and then there’s the surprise “Catchball,” which is a deep, dark grinding proto-techno drum groove. Enjoy!
Synthy tropical lounge pop bliss, with plenty of icy space for good measure. Camino del Sol was originally a 5-track 12″, was later expanded into an LP by the wonderful Belgian label Les Disques du Crépuscule, and then reissued with some unreleased material by the also wonderful Numero Group in 2004. Their take on “The Girl From Ipanema” is killer, but by no means the standout. If you’re a fan of music, you’ll like this. Spiky, shimmering, John Foxx-produced (!) “Spiral Staircase” preview in all its cheeky brevity below.
I first heard Miharu Koshi at the now-defunct Big Snow during a revelatory Gabe D’amico DJ set. The track that blew my mind was a lush, warped, slightly psychy, rollerskate-ready slo-mo disco track, which I still haven’t tracked down (did I dream it?), but the search led me to this deeply underrated, Haruomi Hosono-produced synth-pop record, about which there isn’t much information online. Standouts are the tribal-pop lament “Laetitia,” and “Scandal Night,” replete with skittering robot chirps and whirrs. Hideki Matsutake computer programming. Tasty and playful, with dense electro percussion throughout. Side note: “L’amour Toujours” is a Telex cover (tragic video NSFW).
Looks like another kitschy futurist synth record, but it’s beautifully constructed, sometimes psychotic avant-garde pop. Side note: check out Telex’s cover of the anthemic “My Time.”
