JHM III
A full length that can play through without skipping a track. They don’t make them like this too often these days. Recommended.
Favorite track: Book (Dub).
_likesbacon
Heard Continuous Hinge on the Freaks Only program with Travis Holcombe on KCRW last night. And since it was BC Friday, I bought the vinyl instantly! Luv the post-wave vibes that harken back to ESG and Liquid Liquid! Plus they’re from Oakland! Bay Area represent!
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$8USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
PPM88. Black vinyl. Edition of 500. Full color covers on recycled stock. 8.5" x 11" color insert. *pre orders come with risographed pamphlet "A Broken Headlight Sky... Notes On Desire Choir"
Includes unlimited streaming of Desire Choir
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Andy Human and Sam Lefebvre began writing and recording Desire Choir in 2021. They biked to a West Oakland rehearsal space and tracked drums and bass to an old tape machine. It was an accretive process, initially disoriented from live performance. Influenced by a “communist interpretation of collective music” and the variable post-punk and dub combinations of the On-U Sound label, as they write in a pamphlet companion to the album, Non Plus Temps emerged as more singers and players sought affinity amid the pandemic-era social isolation and unrest.
The result joins various instruments (sax and saz, synths and bells) and production techniques in a sound like the “broken headlight sky” mentioned in “Endless Jetty Night,” the nervy, Residents-like meditation on coastal subduction zones closing the A-side. Album opener “Continuous Hinge,” with vocalist Amber Sermeno, is a backbeat beaded with Stanley Martinez’s electric viola, while “Facts Sound Like Myths” introduces pinballing dub paranoia. “Reversible Mesh,” they write, suggests a “self-conscious Eno affinity surrendering to Chrome.”
Human and Lefebvre’s companion text to the album also remarks on the title and band name: “‘Non Plus Temps’ is a garbled curse on time, which we mainly experience in relation to the wage, whether or not we’re getting one. We’re all racing and raging against meaningless gig work. ‘Desire Choir’ refers to the production of wants and needs in capitalist society, which uses them against us, and the desire not to escape or avoid but to end this present state of things.”
The recording and live lineups of Non Plus Temps feature members of Naked Roommate, the World, Famous Mammals, and Preening, among other groups based in Oakland, California.
Read "A Broken Headlight Sky: Notes on Desire Choir" in full:
Sam Lefebvre: drums, percussion, backing vocals, piano, slide guitar, small instruments
Andy Jordan: bass, vocals, guitar, keyboards, synth, melodica, noise
Stanley Martinez: guitar, saxophone, viola
Amber Sermeno: vocals (1, 5, 9, 10)
Alex Sperling: synth (11)
Cyrus Comisky: saz (11)
Candace Lazarou: backing vocals (8)
Dubs: Andy and Sam
Recorded by Andy Jordan at Room 337, Oakland Music Complex, 2021
Transferred and mixed at Santo Studio with engineer Paul Korte
Mastered by Mike Kriebel
Artwork: Stanley, Sam, Andy, June
Thanks: Fun Time Printshop, Low Light Darkroom, Harvey, Miguel, Katie, Eliza
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