ENOFA “All Roads Lead to Polesworth” C60 (Third Kind)

 

Enofa’s a decidedly and wonderfully British electronic artist that goes by the name Ross Baker when they do their taxes each year. I don’t latch onto the Britishness of this just because “Polesworth” is in the title or because it was released on Brighton stalwart Third Kind, there’s just a sense that this hi-NRG electronic pulsefest is a total throwback to 90s raver culture, the energetic rhythms and effortless melodies perfect for that retrofuturist dancefloor. I’ve gotta say, too, that I’m a sucker for what Baker’s slinging here – I can pop this on and relax to it all day, proving that you don’t need to stand up and wiggle to thoroughly enjoy it. And trust me – I’m an expert at sitting down these days.
 
Baker has appeared on Third Kind before with Seltrac as International Debris, another incredible release, and if we’re going to start getting regular releases from them like this, we should probably mark our calendars for when those releases are going to happen. It’s not easy to put together such a streamlined body of work as All Roads, but Baker weaves in and out of cuts like they're assembling an expert mixtape, the more fervent tunes residing with equal comfort and natural placement next to chillaxed comedowns. So yeah, a regular schedule here would be nice. But even if we have to place All Roads in a vacuum and ingest it without context, we’re still taking in sixty minutes of the dance equivalent of high-speed future transportation, frictionless and smooth, efficient and beautiful. And winding up at Polesworth, if you can believe it.
 
https://enofa.bandcamp.com/
 
https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

DOGS VERSUS SHADOWS “Oscilloghost” (Third Kind)

 

You’re warned from the start: Oscilloghost isn’t for the weak-willed, it’s for the truly hearty, those whose constitutions can withstand a fright or two. And Dogs Versus Shadows, aka Lee Pylon, lays it on thick, the suspense I mean, letting the spirits occupy his synthesizer rigs and just get all gooey in there with the ectoplasm and the wisps of whatever ether they’re made out of. Maybe they’re just figments of ESP, but they sure sound real. They sure sound like they’re hovering just on the other side of the physical plane, waiting for the right moment to bend reality to their will and manifest.
 
Lee Pylon allows them to manifest.
 
Yeah, he’s like a medium or something, channeling otherworldly entities, sometimes like an actual witch or whatever, sometimes like Steven Spielberg when he mixes childhood wonder and horror in equal measure. At any rate, the tones and tales are real, the experiments in sonic parapsychology teasing out the creepily visceral and wondrously ethereal simultaneously. It’s easy to get lost in the inky blackness of a winter woodland, wandering restlessly as you search for meaning. Dogs Versus Shadows provides the soundtrack for that, and maybe it turns out that – spoiler alert, Jack! – you’re the one who’s the Oscilloghost after all. Wouldn’t that be a scrumptious twist!
 
https://dogsversusshadows.bandcamp.com/
 
https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

YVES MALONE “Immortal Death” C40 (Third Kind Records)

 

Everything about Immortal Death absolutely reeks of stylization, from the faux-horror-movie-poster j-card (Tiny Little Hammers ftw) to the faux-horror-movie soundtrack it probably purports to be. Make no mistake, Yves Malone has worn his influences on his sleeve before (I mean, Three Movies, amiright?), so the fact that Malone is back to drawing water from this well, one filled with giallo, John Carpenter, and Tangerine Dream, as well as contemporaries like Umberto, should not only be the most unsurprising turn of events but also an invigorating jolt to us COVID zombies hunkered in a state of utmost malaise as we quarantine in place. Unless you live in Florida of course, and you’re just out doing whatever the hell you want to do. I live in Florida. Sigh.
 
I need an escape then, and Immortal Death provides. Listening to Yves Malone often simply feels like I’m watching a film with my ears anyway, so that’s the easiest place for my mind to go. Everything happens at night, when the darkest deeds are carried out and the seediest characters flit from shadow to shadow. The synth-prog score – “all hardware, all night” – punctuates the darkness with neon reds, the expressive instrumentals rippling in the rain and gathering under the moon. I’m at a drive-in in the 1970s, in some alternate America where European exploitation flicks top the box office. I’m steamrolled by smut but buoyed by the slick tunes, pumping life into these old veins and energizing pleasure receptors. I need an escape then, and Yves Malone provides.
 
Yves Malone always provides.
 
https://yvesmalone.bandcamp.com/
 
https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

ANDY FOSBERRY “When Comfort Is Stranger” C45 (Third Kind Records)

 

I’d like to get a glimpse of what’s going on in Andy Fosberry’s head. Not like a literal glimpse – there’s a brain in there, and it’s firing electrical synapses and whatever to keep the body going. I mean like a glimpse into what his inspirations are, the visual images that play within his mind that inform the music he makes. Again, not literally – I fully understand that there’s not a projector or something in there flashing home movies on one side of his brain pan. I’m not going to try to dig through his skull with a teaspoon or anything.
 
I promise.
 
Andy Fosberry makes soundtracks, and thank god for that. Some of the soundtracks are real – Fosberry sees film and makes music for it. Some of the soundtracks are in his head – Fosberry sees visuals there and makes music for it. When Comfort Is Stranger maybe telegraphs its opening track, “Here Is Your Eye,” a Stranger Things homage with pulsing synths and 1980s-inspired vibe, but it veers beyond it to all sorts of cinematic atmospheres. There’s lens-flared ambient and piano-led melancholy, like the appropriately titled “Lana Del Rey,” which flatters the muse with a deft homage. (And let’s not kid ourselves – Norman Fucking Rockwell is an absolute treat.)
 
So it plays out like it says it will, treating “comfort” and “strangeness” like interchangeable elements, two sides of the same coin, a combination made familiar by the nostalgia it promotes. Turns out Andy Fosberry and I see pretty similar things in our mind theaters when listening to music like this, and we both have a visceral and positive reaction upon the brilliant juxtaposition. You could probably chisel your way into both of our heads and see pretty much the same thing!
 
Metaphorically. Always metaphorically with the head excavations.
 
https://andyfosberry.bandcamp.com/
 
https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

PORTLAND VOWS “Living Posthumously” C48 (Third Kind Records)

 

The first thing you gotta worry about when you listen to Portland Vows’ new tape Living Posthumously is right there in the title – what does that mean?! Bob Plant, philosopher, thinker, all around smarter person than me, either doesn’t get that the present-tense “living” really can’t be modified by the adverb “posthumously,” because that would be the type of paradox that could knock the entire space-time continuum off its axis (if indeed it’s on an axis). Did I say paradox? I meant oxymoron. You can’t live after you’re dead, which is what “posthumously” means: post-living.
 
So maybe I am as smart as Bob Plant, but get this: I’m smarter, and here’s why. I was able to make it all the way through the Portland Vows mind puzzle and come out the other side, completely unscathed, not knocked around or plowed over by his mental gymnastics. Well, I was at least a little scathed as I made it through Living Posthumously – but in a good way! In fact, I actually sort of started to feel like Living Posthumously was coating my brain in some narcotic yet restorative way, filling in all the emotional cracks that I wasn’t even aware of with its delicate and insightful drone smears and guitar twinkles. Perhaps it’s the art that put these ideas in my head (and kudos to Tiny Little Hammers for another superb design!).
 
So maybe Living Posthumously is a statement of stasis, a balancing act, a dissertation on a modern problem of feeling stuck in life in such a way that experiencing it is like looking back from beyond the point of expiration and viewing the sleepwalking self. It’s both a condemnation of inaction and the revelation and acceptance that inaction is all there’s ever going to be. But that doesn’t mean those complex feelings can’t coexist within your mind sans a soundtrack. And Living Posthumously is a great one, filled with gorgeous miniature lullabies, star shimmers, and Nyquil-coated safe spaces. You’ll need those safe spaces to recharge at least some energy spent on those thousand-yard stares.
 
https://portlandvows.bandcamp.com/
 
https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

DANIEL SAYLOR “Plastic Present” C45 (Third Kind Records)

 

It’s the answer to a question nobody asked. Plastic Present represents a counterpoint to southern electronic rock, the point being … what’s a good electronic rock band from Florida? Never mind. Daniel Saylor lives three hours from me over there in Orlando, and somehow he finds a way through the heat and humidity, the tourist season, the constant construction and traffic, and the just south-ness of Floridian life to actually form a coherent thought, record it, and make it sound good enough to release. Not only that, he made it sound so good that he released it through Brighton, England, label Third Kind (one of the best). How’s that for a cultural surprise?
 
Plastic Present takes on a lot of the characteristics of electronic Radiohead or solo Thom, but without the constant barrage of depressing vocals. It only starts there, though, and spirals out from there. And sometimes there are vocals, but not often. And sometimes Saylor has help from erstwhile bandmates, but a lot of this work is really on the solo tip. Breakbeats and synths do battle for the tonal high ground, and both win and lose constantly, bringing about a tenuous balance that shifts one way or the other depending on how the next track begins. A second battle occurs between the syntheticness of sound sources and the obvious human manipulation of it (not to mention the playing of actual instruments at points) – the cross-section of human anatomy adorning the cover suggests that humans win. But the “plasticness” of Plastic Present suggests otherwise. Again, there’s no winner, but everybody wins.
 
So … what was the question in the first place again? No idea. What I do know is that Plastic Present is very good, and I still can’t believe it came out of a middle-Florida swamp. A paved-over swamp, sure, but a swamp nonetheless.
 
PS: The last song has some rap.
 
https://danielsaylor.bandcamp.com/
 
https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

HASSNI MALIK & NICHOLAS LANGLEY “Music by Hassni Malik & Nicholas Langley” C60 (Third Kind)

 

Fifty is a lot of releases, but that’s where we find our pals Third Kind in July 2020, sitting on their fiftieth release as a label. Fifty! It’s hard to make the case that there’s not a single misstep for a label ushering so much music into the world, but you’ll have to take from me, a noted expert, that there’s not a single misstep in Third Kind’s catalog. Can you believe it? I barely can, and I’m the one writing/stating it.
 
This isn’t the fiftieth release. That honor went to Bary Center’s Guide Me Through the Hills of Your Home, which you can read about right here. This, on the other hand, is the first release, THIRD01, reissued and repackaged in celebration of the milestone. Good luck getting your hands on a copy of the old one, because you probably won’t be able to unless you scour Discogs or know Hassni Malik or Nicholas Langley personally, and even then they’ll probably point you to the reissue. But that’s OK – because this new thing is quite nice in its folded cardstock packaging, and it also features brand spanking new artwork from Tiny Little Hammers. Yes, that Tiny Little Hammers, the good one!
 
Malik and Langley, the latter of whom runs Third Kind (like you didn’t know), also have performed in beloved UK combo the Vitamin B12, so this is sort of like a side project for them. The two of them twiddle knobs and beam in transmissions from distant galaxies through the satellites they’ve clandestinely sent into orbit, recording the mesmerizing output to tape. Each of these three pieces were improvised (the titles include the word “Improv” as well as a date), but it doesn’t matter. It all sounds like communication, from outer to inner, then inner to inner, maybe back to outer, but that’s not so important. What is important is that TLH made this tape look like a sci-fi novel, and that’s super awesome. It sounds like the soundtrack to a sci-fi novel. Also, looking at the tape itself will probably get you high.
 
So celebrate along with Third Kind and the rest of us, and take a trip down memory lane with Music by Hassni Malik & Nicholas Langley. Sounds as fresh now as it did then.
 
https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

DAKOTA BLUE “Plaza to Plaza / Specific System” (Third Kind)

If we were to peg Dakota Blue as anything, it’d be more difficult than you might expect. See, Blue, the LA synth pop/new wave/goth/post-punk hybrid artist, seemingly wears his heart right there on his sleeve, just like any good synth pop/new wave/goth/post-punk artist totally would. But you also get the feeling listening to his double EP on Third Kind, Plaza to Plaza / Specific System, that he’s keeping you at arm’s length about what’s really going on with him, feigning closeness by delivering proximity.

Aloof.

That’s OK, as the entire genre he uses as his personal sandbox is about building barriers against the mainstream, the “outsiders” circling the wagons and protecting their personal ideals against encroachment. And he does this quite well, even though the constructions he erects are fragile, teetering in the wind, fragments of tunes dreamed together across a city breeze. Thus they’re more powerful, more defiant in the face of urban ennui.

Still, their hearts are guarded, and Dakota Blue lets in flickers of light when only he is vulnerable enough. The dance is real throughout.

And look at that full-shell artwork! Stunning. Thick cardstock slipcase too.

https://dakotablue.bandcamp.com/

https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

DVANOV “Подполья” (Third Kind)

“Eight songs for the outskirts.” That’s how it goes for Dvanov, whose Cyrillic-displayed tape (look at it up there) and songs leave the rest a mystery for the English-only reader. I, being an English-only reader (OK, I know a smattering of German), am ass deep in the mysteries, and my personal embarrassment at “settling” on one language (American) is rightfully at the forefront of my inability to decipher even a teensy bit of this tape. In fact, I’m so colloquial in any response to any music I’ve ever written about that it would probably take a full-time translator to smooth it all into another language, and even then it would probably be bastardized to within an inch of its original meaning.

Which is just fine by me, I’m the first to admit I’m a blabbering idiot half the time.

So this Dvanov, then! Like Eastern bloc Sonic Youth worship by way of the Make-Up (or other groovy Ian Svenonius project), the Saint Petersburg quartet aren’t doing it for any scene in particular, nor are they aping any other vibe. They’re their own thing, a band of scrappy misfits with a perfectly cast female lead singer, the interplay a regular cacophony of syrupy dissonance. Guitars collide with synthesizers, and the martial drumming sort of grounds everything in a krautrock vibe. It’s all decidedly and excellently Russian, and that’s not even just because the songs are all sung in Russian! Maybe imagine Deerhoof jamming with a state band from the 1950s, or Trupa Trupa hanging out in a goth club behind the Iron Curtain. Either way, Dvanov’s got it going on, making music for people who need it most: the ones on the outskirts of society, those knocked down or back by oppressive regimes. This is music to seethe to.

https://dvanovband.bandcamp.com/

https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

NEW BATCH: THIRD KIND RECORDS AUGUST 2017

Happy summer! Did you expect a couple new tapes from Third Kind Records, especially since they just graced us with the spectacular WIDDENDREAM by Nikmis and the equally spectacular SELTRAC by International Debris? I sure didn’t, but here I am, stupefied in my glee. The Brighton, UK, label (hey, I’ve wandered down Brighton Pier, etc.!) even doubles down on the Nikmis, flashing some serious street cred when it comes to your baroque synthesizer musicians. I’ve often thought to myself, in the past month or so, gee, if only I had something to listen to by Nikmis after WIDDENDREAM ends. I no longer have to wonder about the answer to that question. The answer is here!

NIKMIS – 10 MOVEMENTS FOR LARGE SYNTHESIZER (1909)

I’m a huge fan of classical music permeating whatever genre or scene I’m digging into, whether it’s Patrick Higgins’s guitar interpretations of Bach or David Kanaga’s interpretation of opera (or something) – heck, there’s an Orange Milk subset that’s all over this classical thing. But Nikmis goes a step further – well, a step in parallel with 10 MOVEMENTS FOR LARGE SYNTHESIZER (1909), a lovely meander through the baroque while often sounding like he’s set up his instrument of choice in a large cathedral. The effect is sort of like a pipe organ, but the timbre throughout betrays its electric origins. Not unlike Wendy Carlos’s SWITCHED-ON BACH, Nikmis plays it straight-faced, simply reveling in the possibilities of marrying the old approaches with new technology. The result is never less than fascinating, as Nikmis proves himself a deft composer and performer, flitting through arpeggios and movements with ease. And this is doubly fortuitous, as the answer to my earlier question is now and always 10 MOVEMENTS. (Plus it has a reversible cover!)



CRUSHTRASH – RECLAMATION YARD

But that begs the next question – what’s next after 10 MOVEMENTS? Well duh, if you’ve bought the batch it’s obviously Crushtrash. RECLAMATION YARD is a reclamation project of sorts for Third Kind, as it comprises the remastered/reissued recordings of a “friend made long ago” – the mid-1990s! God, I remember the mid-1990s. I was into a lot of great music back then, and a lot of stupidly horrible music. Crushtrash stands the test of time, coming off as a mix between Depeche Mode and Morrissey, but a lot darker and a lot synthier. Maybe if Julee Cruise was male? Anyway, the synthpop/darkwave tunes are a nice trip down memory lane, as they’d be perfectly at home popping up on the 1st Wave station I constantly listen to in my car. I’m sure it was a blast for Nick at Third Kind to revisit and beef up his friend’s old tunes – they sound fantastic to this day.

Third Kind Records

--Ryan Masteller

INTERNATIONAL DEBRIS “Seltrac” C60 (Third Kind Records)

I’m going to give this tape a really high recommendation. A really high one. Start there, go backward into your thought process, begin evaluation, go back to sleep. I don’t know why I’m approaching this from the wrong direction, but it doesn’t matter. I think I know why I like International Debris, aka Ross Baker, so much. First of all, on the Bandcamp page, it simply says “Horizon music” under the artist description. I like that. You can lose yourself in a horizon, dreaming of the vast swath of real estate it encompasses, the people who inhabit it. It’s where the sun rises and sets, so it takes on celestial properties at certain times of day. You can lose yourself in International Debris’s music too – its mix of propulsive minimal electronics, leavened with easily digestible beats and timbres. The second reason International Debris hits all the right spots is that I’m reminded at points of the Octopus Project/Black Moth Super Rainbow collab album The House of Apples and Eyeballs, which I love. It takes the rough edges of both bands and kind of smooths them, for the most part. Seltrac has that House vibe, not too in-your-face, but not remotely operating at a distance. From start to finish it’s an absolute treat. Chew it like gum and huff the horizon with your third eye.

International Debris

Third Kind Records

--Ryan Masteller