9 Albums to Check Out This Bandcamp Friday
It's the last Bandcamp Friday of 2022. From Thai blues to ECM-style shakuhachi-driven jazz to heartbreaking dark ambient drone, here are 9 albums worthy of your time and money!
Various Artists - Molam: Thai Country Groove From Isan (Sublime Frequencies)
"The first modern electrified Molam recordings from the 1970s ever presented outside Thailand. Molam is a multi-faceted folk music native to Laos and the predominantly rural Northeastern region of Thailand known as Isan - home to myriad ethnic groups and provinces, and once a part of present-day Laos. Mo meaning "master" and lam meaning "song", molam literally translates into "master singer", but it remains more of an umbrella term covering over a dozen types of lam styles in which male and female singers can be backed by a free-reed bamboo mouth organ called a khaen, indigenous lute-like instruments (the phin or the soong), a bowed fiddle called a sor and a percussion ensemble featuring finger cymbals and hand drums. Lam phun and lam sing are the two molam styles featured most prominently in this collection. Also in the musical family is look thoong, a slower, more tragic style, usually lamenting lost love and perpetual poverty."
With its themes of tragedy of poverty, loss, and heartbreak, you might tink of Molam as a kind of Thai blues. Sonically, it doesn't sound it, though, bearing more in common with the desert funk of Tinariwen or other Sublime Frequencies archival recordings like The Crying Princess. It's hypnotic yet enervating,
Track to preview:
Chaan Siang Phin - “Lam Phun Keaogan”
zemekky - new record, last record
Last collaboration between Alexander Adams , the maniac behind the Lurker Bias label, and Brian Wiemerslage. Fluctuates between hissy static drone, sonic assemblage, avant-garde guitar, and dada punk noise. A very raw and live feeling.
Track to Preview:
"oil coma"
Z'ev & Illusion of Safety - Illusion of Safety & Z'ev
Pairs nicely with that zemekky album (even the NAMES sound good together, although we cheated a little bit as Dubuque, Ia's Personal Archives label followed proper alphabetization protocol in their titling.
Illusion of Safety & Z'ev is an archival recording of a mail art collaboration between the much-missed Z'ev and Daniel Burke, a stalwart of the industrial cassette noise underground as Illusion of Safety, which is now mostly on hiatus, issued under the directive of olf friend Arvo Zylo, one of the first noisenik weirdos to give me the time of day and encourage my music journalism, way back in the day.
"Illusion of Safety & Z'ev" doesn't sound much like what you'd expect, if you're more used to Z'ev's trademarked rhythmic works. Instead, it's two longform drones of murky, misty hiss and static with occasional post-industrial claptrap. It's beautifully lofi, simultaneously transportive and hypnotic, sounding both enchanting and vaguely menacing at the same time.
Track to Preview:
"A Strategy to Transformation"
Sam Gendel - blueblue
Avant- guitar jazz meets Japanese shakuhachi music over mellow, lazy freeform jazz beats. Sounds like some sorta adventurous ECM record from the 70s mixed with some wild, wooly, warped modern lofi like only Leaving Records can muster.
Preview Track:
“Yarai (矢来, bamboo fence)”
Makeup & Vanity Set - Monsuta
Makeup & Vanity Set ditch their usual Outrun stylings for some orchestral horrorscores in the style of Akira Ifukube by way of John Carpenter. Was inspiration for the music Adam Wingard ended up composing for Godzilla vs. Kong.
It's a right proper old-school orchestral score, straight out of 1939, transforming yr office or bedroom or coffeeshop into Skull Island. Really cool to hear Makeup and Vanity Set branching out!
Preview Track:
"The World Summit"
Various Artists - A Shoegaze/Dream Pop Compilation Vol. 1
Sprawling, impressive collection of modern shoegaze & dream pop featuring longstanding Forestpunk favourite Indoor Voices.
A lovely survey of the current shoegaze scene, ranging from Cocteau Twins-esque Dream Pop to Slowdive-worthy ethereal shoegaze to vapourwave-adjacent
Preview Tracks:
dramamine - Ashes
Fotopsia - Tangled Up
Indoor Voices - Lead for Breakfast
New Ghost - Rectify
Richard Chartier - Recurrence
For Bandcamp Friday, LINE boss Richard Chartier made several recordings available for half-off. Recurrence was originally released almost 10 years ago, to the day. It's a recording of Series, a work that remained unperformed for years due to the noise and equipment restraints of most live music environments.
Chartier was finally able to realize the work as part of France Jobin’s Immerson event at the renowned OBORO in Montreal, Chartier was finally able to present the subtlety of this new Series, “Recurrence (series)” in two parts. Working at OBORO with their Head of Audio Research, Stephane Claude on its spatialization Chartier finally presented versions of piece live in a multi-channel diffusion on November 17 and 18, 2011.
In October, Chartier presented a 30-channel edited version of “Recurrence (Series)/ Recurrence (room/crosstones)” at EMPAC (Troy, NY) as part of Akousma @ EMPAC event to a sold out theatre.
This recording is a studio rendition of "Recurrence" paired with "rooms/crosstones," an exploration of a space's resonances and overtones. In typical Chartier fashion, it brings a whole new meaning to the word "minimal." It makes Toshiya Tsunoda's Air Vibrations Inside a Hollow feel downright busy, by comparison.
Preview Track:
"Recurrence (room-crosstones)
The Lonely Bell - The Broken Heart of Man
Scotland's The Lonely Bell has been rather a recent obsession after being put onto them by the wonderful Fog Songs blog.
For this Bandcamp Friday, The Lonely Bell have something truly special on offer, their first-ever vinyl release with a micro version of 33 lathe-cut 7"s. The Broken Heart of Man finds The Lonely Bell working in a shorter format, trading in the long, elegant, floating drones of Kingdoms of the Deep (more on that very soon) for bittersweet, heartbreaking song-based compositions, with human voices breaking through the mist. It's beautiful stuff, as is all of their work.
Preview Tracks:
"Centuries Of Guilt"
Garden on a Trampoline - Szygy
Last but not least, we close things out with the new one from Chicago's Garden on a Trampoline. Full disclosure - Garden on a Trampoline is the project of one of my oldest surviving friends, James Eric Laczkowski, so i in no way can claim to be non-biased or objective on this one. I don't really aspire to objectivity in music journalism, though, as so much of it is personal and subjective anyway.
Regardless, in Szygy’s liner notes he observes "this one to me represents my strengths better than any record i’ve made to date." I tend to agree. I've heard Jim's music for coming up on 30 years now and I've seen him get stronger and stronger with each release.
Szygy strikes a lovey balance between his beloved Power Pop and some warm, keyboard-driven ambient pop. The album was galvanized by a brush-up with danger after getting mugged in an alley, making him realize what's important in life and art, pushing some hot blood through his music that suits it well.
Going to review this one in more detail, also, so keep an eye on Forestpunk in the coming weeks.
Preview Tracks:
"How To Breathe"
"No Way Back"
What’re y’all listenin’ to this week? Pick up any treasures this Bandcamp Friday? Let us know in the comments! And don’t forget to…
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