Miss Grit "Follow the Cyborg"
From Pitchfork:
The idea of Asian humanoids never seems to leave the cultural consciousness. While techno-Orientalist tropes have penetrated Western popular media for decades, appearing in sci-fi films like Ex Machina or Ghost in the Shell, recently artists of Asian descent have increasingly begun invoking the concept of Asian robots themselves: South Korean-born filmmaker Kogonada centered his drama After Yang on a Chinese automaton child, while this year Singaporean pop artist yeule explored their status as a “cyborg entity” on Glitch Princess, and Filipina-American singer and social media personality Bella Poarch cast herself as a robot revolutionary on her Dolls EP. Following this trend, Korean-American musician Margaret Sohn inhabits the role of a repressed machine on their upcoming debut album as Miss Grit, Follow the Cyborg, using the archetype to explore the complexities of selfhood.
On the album’s lead single and title track, Sohn is alienated from their own body: “I’ll wake up pretending/Then I’ll wake up again/Leave my mouth open/And let her say the rest,” they sing flatly, over a flickering drone beat. Drums, angular synths, and jagged guitars build momentum; midway through, the song is joyously elevated by saxophone flourishes. “I’m a living girl/A real living girl,” they proclaim, then announce a different identity: “I’m a living boy/A real living boy.” Offering a quiet moment of clarity after an adrenaline high, the track pulls back, and lingering piano keys dissolve into electronic dissonance. “Follow the Cyborg” gestures to a liberated future beyond binaries, and while its concept isn’t particularly new, its theatrical vision is striking.
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs "Land of Sleeper"
“I’ve always liked the quote: “Sleep, those little slices of death – how I loathe them.”
So reckons Matt Baty of Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, vocalist and lyricist of a band as comfortable wading through the darker quarters of their subconscious as they are punishing ampstacks.
Whether dwelling in the realm of dreams or nightmares, the primordial drive of the Newcastle-based band is more powerful than ever. Land Of Sleeper, their fourth record in a decade of riot and rancour, is testimony to this: the sound of a band not so much reinvigorated as channelling a furious energy, which only appears to gather momentum as the band’s surroundings spin on their axis.
“Shouting about themes of existential dread comes very naturally to me, and I think because I’m aware of that in the past I’ve tried to rein that in a little” reckons Matt. “There’s definitely moments on this album where I took my gloves off and surrendered to that urge.”
Whether this means Pigs, a band once associated with reckless excess, have taken a darker turn to match the dystopian realm of the 2022 everyday, is open to debate. The band themselves aren’t necessarily convinced; “Sobriety does funny things to a man” reckons guitarist Adam Ian Sykes wryly.
“I know from my perspective, I was trying to write some much heavier and darker music” says guitarist and producer Sam Grant. “But this was an aim more as a counterpoint to earlier material, as opposed to any sort of political or social commentary. I still very much see these heavier moments as musically euphoric, and emotionally cut loose or liberating.”
“For obvious reasons, the anticipation for the writing of Land of Sleeper was unlike anything we’d felt before” Adam adds. “These sessions were an almost religious experience for me. It felt like we were working in unison, connected to some unknowable hive mind.”
The intensity of feeling is writ large right from the pulverising drive of opener ‘Ultimate Hammer’, and its rallying cry “I keep spinning out, what a time to be alive”. Yet, whilst ‘Terror’s Pillow’ and ‘Big Rig’ are rich with the band’s trademark Sabbathian power, there’s scope this time around that supercedes anything they’ve previously attempted. Matt’s duet with the traditional folk vocals of Cath Tyler on the closing lament ‘Ball Lightning’, for example, is one particularly potent illustration of their expanded horizons.
In terms of emotional impact, a pinnacle on Land Of Sleeper is ‘The Weatherman’. Replete with devotional rapture and radiant intensity, the band’s attack slowed down to a mantric and mesmeric crawl, it marks a collaboration with the ululatory tones of Bonnacons Of Doom vocalist Kate Smith and a choir including Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington. The resulting tumult constitutes a sound not unlike The Stooges ‘We Will Fall’, reinvented and adrenalised as an invigorating sermon for the zeitgeist.
“This one presented an opportunity for me to do something completely unbridled. I wanted to surrender to the weight of the song, so the lyrics came about in much the same way I imagine a frenzied artist might throw paint at a canvas.” relates Matt “I just wanted the lyrics to present an uncontrollable energy.”
For all that the last few years have seen Pigs’ stature rise in the wake of triumphant festival slots and sold-out venues alike, this remains a band, consummated by bassist John-Michael Hedley and returning drummer Ewan Mackenzie, who are fundamentally incapable of tailoring their sound to a prospective audience, instead standing alone and impervious as a monument of catharsis.
“Writing and playing music is often surprising and revealing, it can be like holding up a mirror and seeing things you didn’t expect to see” reckons Mackenzie. “For me, the darker tracks on the record hold in common a determination not to lose faith, despite the odds.”
The better to unite slumber and waking, Land Of Sleeper is no less than an act of transcendence for Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – new anthems to elucidate a world sleepwalking to oblivion
Koleżanka "Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes"
From Bar/None Records:
In the last few years, we’ve all gotten a bit more acquainted with isolation at some point or another. It was no different for Kristina Moore (she/they), the songwriter behind koleżanka. During the long, dire winter months of late 2020 and early 2021, Moore found themselves holed up in their Brooklyn apartment, spending most of their time alone, and thus tumbling deeper into their own mind. The noise of daily life in New York City, and the numbness it can produce, receded. Moore’s thoughts were alight with memories, dreams, musical explorations. New songs began to pour out of them.
What could’ve been another despondent lockdown instead turned into the genesis for koleżanka’s sophomore album, Alone With The Sound The Mind Makes. Unable to work and without the distractions of social life, Moore kept a strict schedule, plotting their days down to what sort of meals they were going to make, which songs to revisit. It was a way of enforcing order on a chaotic time, during which they wrestled with mental health swings many of us are familiar with from quarantine (or otherwise) — depression, then anxiety, manic bouts of productivity with undercurrents of exhaustion. Without the resources for therapy, Moore had to learn to navigate it solo, to “make friends” with various unsettled states. In the process, they wrote an album that dives deep into a person’s reckoning with their self, their body, their experiences, their perceptions.
Sunroof "Electronic Music Improvisations Vol 2"
From Mute Records:
“Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 2 is the second collection of improvised modular pieces recorded by Sunroof, aka Daniel Miller, the Founder and Chairman of Mute and Gareth Jones, a producer and engineer, notable for working with Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten, Erasure and Yann Tiersen. The album recorded through 2022, is available on CD and white vinyl.”