bloodsports sounds more like the consequence than like the action preceding it. Their post-hardcore dissonances exist through Newton’s third law of motion and in spite of the first two, with all the tension of straightforwardness and distortion being channelled through a contained pace, gazing melodies and dramatic chord progressions. All their most hardcore intents do happen in sudden bursts of fuzzy guitar lines, with over-the-top melodic resolves that replace the vocal stillness of calmer moments. It feels like looking in a mirror after a particular violent moment.
Dagmar Zuniga’s music is a hymn to the moment. Each delicate melody carefully picked out of the guitar strings pulls out a calm, haunting voice from the singer-songwriter into an ethereal world of low fidelity recordings. Her debut record emulates the experience of being beside Zuniga while she deposits inspiration into the recorder and sucks light out of the room with it. Each song is an eye-closing piece that seems to contain the whole heart of the composer, exposed yet reserved. It is a wholehearted performance that we expect.
There is something outright peculiar about Hong Kong born, UK-based gyrofield: although her sound is deeply rooted in the 90s uk bass scene, with drum and bass taking the biggest influence toll, the music is very much defined for what is now, and still yet to come. The up-and-coming producer draws from any electronic genre to create layered and complex approaches to break beat, breaking them even further and diligently avoiding harmonic and melodic commonplaces. Both as a producer and as a DJ, the result of her practice is a wormhole between eras, simply folding and warping time between yesterday and tomorrow, and creating new melodic routes for drum and bass. Nothing less than exciting.
The tonic on every chord Jana Horn strikes is not exactly melodic, but conceptual and lyrical. Her parallel activity as a fiction writer complements her artistry of songwriting wonderfully, covering each word with thoughtful meaning and ideally placed for her velvety voice. It is quite the combo: voice empowered by delicate projection and soft melodies, over pastoral Americana folk that projects spirits towards never-ending journeying. Her concert will remind us of the indelible power of a good song, and moving it can feel.
Kavari is a sonic collection of schisms and negations, sculpting a musical body of really specific but still culturally immersed sound. Of each trait, aesthetic detail, and canon that the Scottish producer takes from their sound, the identity of their musical ability grows more uncanny, balancing ambient expressions with club techniques seamlessly. This leads Kavari to build a body of work that derives from the familiar but rather explores the uncanny, surprising us with melodic solutions more expected from non-electronic latitudes, propelling us into wonderful unknowns. It is club, alright, but is it one that we have been invited to inhabit, or that was just created by Kavari?
Liim is the chosen incarnation of the 5th generation of rapper, one that captures perfectly the contemporary aligned with the canon and not in spite of it. His bars are melodically imbued, as most pop rappers nowadays are, but without dropping the responsibility of building intricate lyrical duties. Balancing words and melodies carefully, the New York native demonstrates why being from the land of hip hop may prove to be an advantage, channelling the OG vibes, looking towards trap and sounds alike, and spicying it up with some RnB softness. We will hear a lot about him in the future, but you listened to him first at Mucho Flow.
Ambivalence is very seldomly a word used to describe any music, but Mandy, Indiana are deserving of a singular description: half british, half french, equally divided between electronic sounds, punk bursts, connected by dissonance and a weird harmonic sensitivity. The guiding line between screeching and distinctive guitars, synth deep basses and impetuous drums is the vocals, a place of solace in chaos, and the agitator in more melodic scapes. Their sound is definetly free, so should be your bodies to express themselves during their concert.
When black midi came to a hiatus, Cameron Picton followed in a completely new direction. His My New Band Believe moniker is an unfixed ensemble whose only constant is his voice and guitar, and where, considering the new record advances, emotion sets the tone. Steering away from dissonance and anger, the album lives on elaborate and dramatic chord progressions, full of narratives, building tension, resolving it and creating a perfect, almost-baroque pop setting for lyrical pop confessions. If you expect distortion, you will be pleasantly surprised with piano melodies, string arrangements and beatitude.
With no walls to hold us, no borders to stop us, the Commune expands, contracts and disappears like an organism unto itself, one that, while not ubiquitous, occupies and vacates in expressions of life and art. For the restless among us, ever more distant beyond this place, this space of cohabitation grows ever more urgent; ever more disconnected, here we find the space to reclaim, recreate and regenerate the mythologies that have been externalised away from us into machines. This organism is alive, it ingests, it expels, it sweats. Its habitat is the dance floor, its realm is the party, its anatomy is communion. The Commune.