The Retrographer, Issue 35 (November, 2 0 1 7)

December 10, 2017

Slum Village, Ty Dolla $ign, Pinegrove, Bedouine, Taylor Swift, Louis Tomlinson, Weaves, DJ Seinfeld, Margo Price, Kari Price, Yebba

The Retrographer, Issue 35 (November, 2 0 1 7)

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Ten Songs for November, 2 0 1 7

Listen to this playlist on Spotify and YouTube

“Famous”, Ty Dolla $ign and John Mayer (Cymbal / YouTube) –  It was Ty’s dream to get on a song with John Mayer, and he did it on this “Love Yourself”-like song. Like many of his best songs, “Famous” simply showcases Ty’s songwriting, voice, guitar playing, and sense of humor.

“Intrepid”, Pinegrove (Cymbal / YouTube) –  If you’re like multitudes of Pinegrove’s fans, you’re confused, disappointed, and a little incredulous about Evan Stephens Hall’s recent admissions. Through that fog, he’s still put out a single, now unlikely to be followed, with gravity.

“All American Made”, Margo Price (Cymbal / YouTube) – Heavy-handed, sure, but Margo Price’s fresh voice still delivers a very-welcome “fuck you” to a wildly malignant, metastasizing political era, chomping away wildly at the body politic. You love to hear it coming from Nashville, too.

“Dusty Eyes”, Bedouine (Cymbal / YouTube) – Like work from Natalie Prass and Matthew E. White, Azniv Korkejian beautiful songwriting is dressed gorgeously, its hooks and lyrics elevated by Gus Seyffert’s subtle, sumptuous production.

“New Year’s Day”, Taylor Swift (Cymbal / YouTube) – Reputation emerged from a depression of pandering-pop singles to be an album of exquisite deep cuts, this possibly the most luminous (with respect to “Delicate”). The muted piano, the fantasia romance, the elegant lyricism – thank goodness Taylor poked through.

“I Miss You”, Louis Tomlinson (Cymbal / YouTube) – If Niall Horan fancies himself Don Henley, Harry Styles sees himself as Mick Jagger, Liam Payne thinks he’s Bobby Brown, Zayn Malik wants to be Ginuwine, then why can’t Louis Tomlinson be Doncaster’s Joel Madden?

“Walkaway”, Weaves (Cymbal / YouTube) – Jasmyn Burke has a way of capturing a largely bygone momentum in the alt rock aesthetic. Weaves’ music can sometimes – like here – make the 10 Things I Hate About You soundtrack feel like it just came out. I can scarcely think of higher praise.

“Facetious”, Kari Faux (Cymbal / YouTube) – We all know the feeling: Your stomach drops like an elevator with the cables cut as your phone lights up to reveal your ex’s name. Kari Faux, who’s been just about everywhere these last few years, blesses us with an anthem for the moment.

“Evergreen”, YEBBA (Cymbal / YouTube) – Thanks to Matt Lipkins for this tip. Harlemite Abbey Smith spins a propulsive, contained moment of funk, muscular vocals bolstered by bass.

“I Saw Him Kiss Her in Front of Me and I Was Like Wtf?”, DJ Seinfeld (Cymbal / YouTube) – If you’re expecting slap bass, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, enjoy the lo-fi house of Swedish producer Armand Jakobsson. Blown out drums, utterly unmixed, build a world in just 5 minutes.

One Album for November, 2 0 1 7Slum Village, “Fan-Tas-Tic (Vol. 1)” (Counterflow) (Cymbal / YouTube) It’s almost hard to believe now, but music was once imprisoned in physical vessels. The job of a record label was, above all, to make music available to listeners by pressing it to tape, vinyl, or plastic, and then shipping it somewhere. Now there’s exactly as much of it as people want, no more, and always around just when you want it to; but not so long ago, things weren’t so efficient.

Bootlegs, rarities, demos – certain types of music didn’t exist in the quantities they were demanded in, but were rather printed to meet some other requirement. Bob Dylan’s Great White Wonder, widely considered the first rock bootleg, took on a kind of folkloric life; so did the Beatles’ Kum Back. For years, Prince’s The Black Album existed more as a fantasy than musical reality; today, the Strokes’ The Modern Age EP will cost you $100 on eBay.

In 1996, Detroit’s Slum Village – which had been together under various names since at least 1991 – decided to make their first serious demo to circulate to labels. The group’s two rappers, Baatin and T3, and their producer, J Dilla (then Jay Dee), spent the better part of a year making the tape, which they gave out at shows and shopped around for publishing. Even though Dilla was already producing for the likes of Janet Jackson and Pharcyde, Slum Village was unknown. A limited quantity of their first demo were printed, and it wasn’t until 2006 – long after this tape, entitled Fan-Tas-Tic (Vol.1), had achieved legendary status – would see any kind of official release.

J Dilla died in 2006, at 32. He finished his masterwork, Donuts, on his deathbed, conjuring its singular movements as he was succumbing to a rare blood disease. Donuts has remained a kind of artistic north star for producers since: Production is an art form, and yet so many uninformed critics misunderstand its loops, samples, and programmed beats as inhuman, mechanized. Dilla’s music, even as he was dying, seemed to live and breathe as no other beats ever had. He programmed drums by hand throughout his songs, warped tempos and samples, changed elements and avoided predictable repetition to where his beats seemed to constantly evolve before the listener. It is mysterious, changeable, breathing music.

But in 1996, the germ of that brilliance was already in place. Fan-Tas-Tic (Vol. 1) begins with one bar of barely-audible metronome and then an alien frequency, a rumble. If you’re listening to the record in your car, you may think you rolled over some gravel. The rest of the intro sounds like a small, slightly drunk jazz duo – electric piano and woozy drums – that sometimes flickers out of sight, like an interrupted reception. Over it, Baatin and T3 riff, sounding like they’re freestyling (maybe they are), their vocals laid back and somewhat distant.

Slum Village elide the elements of their music that indicate intentionality and contrivance: Tempos are far from metronomic, though they keep moving at the same speed. Sounds are only occasionally obviously voices, live drums, or bass. It’s never possible to tell whether lyrics are improvised or written. Words are chopped into timbres and tones. While it always seems like there are more instruments than there are – “Fat Cat Song” is just drums, diced Erykah Badu vocal samples, and some maniacally dissonant Rhodes loops – it’s always clear more is going on than you’re hearing. Conventional tools, like the James Brown sample on “I Don’t Know”, are somehow both off and always on time. Even the tracklisting is inherently misleading: Songs are often repeated and reinterpreted, rarely longer than two minutes long, and bleed into one another in ways that makes it impossible to come back and know which song you liked. “How We Bullshit” starts out with intro ad-libs you’re familiar with, and just as it seems like a first verse is going to come in, the whole song disappears and the rest of the track is replaced by aimless banter and goofing off.

Fan-Tas-Tic (Vol. 1), unlike so many demos handed out on street corners or after shows, took on a kind of legendary status. Demo tapes like this one could only be disseminated by hand, either at concerts or with the help of a two-deck player mapping onto a blank tape. As a result, copies would, clone by clone, lose fidelity, warp, transform by their transfer. The more the legend of this demo grew, the more the music would stretch and change, leaning into the sonic experience Dilla was drawing from – the whole thing was recorded on a DAT machine, all to tape. He seemed to drop premonitions of this proliferation all over the album: “The Look of Love” begins with a sketchy recording a crowd rocking with Slum Village and then, magically, cleans up, transitioning straight into the studio version of the song on cue. He points to the music’s naturalism, the final product of all its replication.

Slum Village songs are short by nature, but they contain so much to think about, not just in their rickety structures and unexpected interjections, but their pensive, dark tonality too. They feel long because they stick with you long after the sound has stopped. Harmonically, Fan-tas-tic (Vol.1) is full of melancholy moments, like the daydream vocal sample on “Players”, and shimmering drones (note “Pregnant” and “Hoc N Pucky”) that are so far and low in the mix they’re more tactile than audible. Take “Fantastic 3”, one of four theme restatements on the extended version of the album now on streaming services, which is built around an endlessly ascending piano figure, which, at its highest step before looping, revels at the beauty of the electric piano in a moment of sustain where steam seems to rise off the note itself as its held. It’s just over 90 seconds, but stays with your ear long after.

Dilla could do seemingly endless things with just a few ingredients, but it didn’t stay that way. On future releases, with Slum Village, or with artists like A Tribe Called Quest or MF DOOM, he broke into kaleidoscopic colors. But, at the beginning, the mystery within his music was manifest in its every element – how to find it, where to hear it, what any song would do and where it would go. Imagine putting an unmarked tape into your car in Detroit at night, and Fan-Tas-Tic (Vol. 1) sounds something like the feeling before the music begins.

Best-Of Playlists

Though these playlists are all on Spotify, not every song (including many of my favorites) is available to stream. To see which tracks are missing, go to "Preferences", scroll down to "Display Options," and then switch on "Show unavailable tracks in playlists."