New Music / Lists
Fresh Picks: April New Releases from Yves Tumor, Peel Dream Magazine and Ferrari Garden
New and noteworthy of the first half of April include Heaven To a Tortured Mind by Yves Tumor, Agitprop Alterna by Peel Dream Magazine and Longest Slow Dance EP by Ferrari Garden
We’re halfway through April and here are my records on high rotation so far this month. As the planet holds its breath in isolation it’s the perfect time to tune in to the music world that might often feel hard to keep up with. There’s an endless library to adventure into now — art and culture stop for nobody! Whether you find comfort in relatability or escapism, here are three of my personal favourites to wrap yourself in.
Longest Slow Dance EP, by Ferrari Garden
In her new EP, Longest Slow Dance, Ferrari Garden (Sophia Ruby Katz) delivers a delightful, self-assured and eclectic insight into the female gaze.
The EP opens with the eponymous single, “Longest Slow Dance,” a glitchy industrial electronic soundscape which sets the listener up to expect some kind of euro-punk techno. However, halfway through the track we are greeted with the most glorious vocal warble break into a funky yet solemn groove. As the beat breaks free, the vocals take a stand to mark the end of a bad relationship: “I would rather dance with a broom / Because they are not afraid to move / And I am not afraid to move.”
These tongue-in-cheek lyrics continue throughout the 6 tracks (and one B-Side), like in the song on the suffocation of “Cities”: “Crack an egg on your head / Let the yolk drip down / But unless you’re really hungry / Never let it hit the ground.” Currency begins with cultish choral chants, the hubbub of a background crowd and then a steady thump of disco bass and guitars. Ferrari Garden is a hustler and the shuffling frantic beat makes it feel like we’re the victim of the hustle, with a cheeky giggle “I don’t want to steal from you / It’s just the he-he-he-he-he-he-he-heat.” In a Bandcamp interview with Michael Rancic, Katz reveals the song is about power dynamics in heteronormative relationships, written from the masculine voice. The whole song is a process of contradiction and gaslighting: “I want to give it to you / I want you to want to give it to me / Just don’t want you to give it away for free.”
The lyrical pertness of Katz, who is a published writer as well as a musician, really makes this electronic grounded EP exceptional. It’s coupled with Katz’s gorgeous sonorous tone, great vocal agility and excellent enunciation to boot! It has the quality of Meghan Remy, front-woman of U.S. Girls, who also hail from Toronto just as Sophia Ruby Katz does. The gendered themes and feminine defiance is a refreshing voice to the scene.
The markedly electronic EBM inspired sound continues throughout alongside the funk and pop and dance influences that are so clear and make all the tracks sound comfortably familiar but also original. There’s an enormous talent that makes this an exciting album and I’m enthusiastic to see what future projects bring for this emerging artist.
Released 10 April 2020
Rating: 7/10
Agitprop Alterna, by Peel Dream Magazine
There’s no denying that Peel Dream Magazine’s frontman Joe Stevens is a well-read, well-versed musical pundit. The band’s name itself is a nod to the BBC radio legend John Peel, a late 20th century broadcaster credited for spearheading countless musical movements into popular listenership. A kingpin taste-maker. It’s no surprise Peel Dream Magazine’s music tends to be equally referential and deferential.
The most instantly recognisable influence on Agitprop Alterna, Peel Dream Magazine’s sophomore album, is the shoegaze supremes, My Bloody Valentine. The opening track “Pill” would fit comfortably on My Bloody Valentine’s quintessential album Loveless, perhaps in between “When You Sleep” and “I Only Said.” Indeed the whole album plays as a tribute to the atmospheric, dreamy sub-genre of shoegaze (beloved by basement-dwelling music geeks everywhere, myself included and Joe Stevens probably included too), with its hallmark ethereal female vocals (provided here by Jo-Anne Hyun), and fuzzed out distorted guitar.
Further along, the more familiar psychedelic influences of Peel Dream Magazine’s debut Modern Meta Physic also come through. The Velvet Underground and Stereolab being cited as inspirations on their earlier album and on Agitprop Alterna these steady and heady tones are again recycled. An ambient sound also grounds much of the album. “Brief Inner Mission” has the dreamy flavour of French electronic duo, Air, or Brit space rockers, Spiritualized. The references and self-references fits entirely with what’s on the box, an alt-music propogandic “agitprop alterna” band with a “modern meta” motive. From the album and track titles to the lyricism, Peel Dream Magazine’s prosaic flair further reveals a considered process. Simply put: they name things good.
It’s hard to put a label on whether this record ends up being derivative, leaving you holding your breath for something more from this astute group, or whether this loyalty to past ideas is simply and perfectly executed. It depends on your philosophy. The Velvet Underground and My Bloody Valentine unwittingly pushed the avant-garde while Stereolab’s ideology was always about revitalising and reimagining past ideas, which is a brief Peel Dream Magazine absolutely achieve on Agitprop Alterna. In any case, Peel Dream Magazine are adept and thoughtful music makers, making it easy to just sit back, relax and appreciate.
Released 3 April 2020, Slumberland
Rating: 7/10
Heaven To a Tortured Mind, by Yves Tumor
Yves Tumor has become a master of the alter-ego. Behind the mask is Sean Bowie: born in Florida, raised in Tennessee, studied in California, moved to Germany, birthed Yves Tumor. This nomadic restlessness perhaps explains Bowie’s ambition with genre and reinvention. From the textural and ambient debut albums that landed him in experimental scene in 2015/16, Yves Tumor has graduated into more lyrical work since signing with Warp. His 2018 release Safe in the Hands of Love held the same noisy electronic crunch but developed a distinct psych-pop, R&B groove which forged into a genre-bending and excitingly accessible package.
This similar swagger is captured on his latest, Heaven to a Tortured Mind, which revives Yves Tumor in sensual glam rock stylings but maintains that clamorous experimental core. The twisted rock star monster is revealed in the music video to the opening track “Gospel for a New Century.” The aesthetic of Arca also echo the cavernous electronica that ground both Yves Tumor and Arca’s work. The brassy, glittery sound of the track is reminiscent of Madvillain, as well as a development on Safe in the Hands of Love single, “Noid.”
The first half of the album did it for me a lot more than the next half. The urgency and ache of the first three tracks flowing to the seductive release of “Kerosene!” featuring Diana Gordon is very satisfying capsule that I’ve had on repeat. The latter half of the album is good, it offers a lot of reminders of the ambient and pop elements of Yves Tumor’s previous albums. Songs like “Super Stars” and “Strawberry Privilege” sit back in a calm that definitely gives this album its cool. “Folie Imposée” is another personal favourite that reminds me of the epoch of French House circa Cassius or Kavinsky and I promise that’s not just because the name of the track is French. But the later part of the album just loses the grizzly freakiness exemplified in“Identity Trade”: “Pure water from the fire / Reflect my spirit” […] “I saw my first lover / clutching a dagger / sunk beneath the water”
Yves Tumor pioneers steadily forward on Heaven to a Tortured Mind. The joy lies in its two-pronged familiarity, coupling the hallmark stark experimental electronic noise, with a marketable and recognisable rock attitude. I promise that despite the ‘experimental’ label Yves Tumor is like nothing you’ve ever heard, because some part of you will think you’ve heard it before. And for an artist who continues to mould and defy the mould, who knows what we’ll hear next.
Released 3 April 2020, Warp
Rating: 8/10
Al-So Fresh:
BRAT by NNAMDÏ (Sooper) // Cenizas by Nicolas Jaar (Other People) // 925 by Sorry (Domino) //WHAT WE DREW 우리가 그려왔던 by Yaeji (XL) // Song For Our Daughter by Laura Marling (Partisan/Chrysalis) // Perception Is/as/of Deception by ADULT. (Dais) //Personalia by Locate S,1 (Captured Tracks) // The Loves of Your Life by Hamilton Leithauser (Glassnote) //
words by Joy Qin
