Open Mike Eagle & Paul White "Hella Personal Film Festival"
Open Mike Eagle might not have all the answers, but few artists in hip-hop, music, or American life are asking smarter questions. In a landscape governed by ceaseless babble, flashing lights, and hollow lies, Eagle harmonizes into the void so we don’t have to.
On this descent into the digital trenches, Eagle teams up with British producer, Paul White for Hella Personal Film Festival. Released on Mello Music Group, the full collaboration finds White behind the SP-1200s, conjuring a psychedelic strain of soul-funk, booming drums, and 21st century crate-digging in tropical attics of the imagination. On the microphone, the Chicago-bred, LA-based, Eagle artfully breaks down the banalities and perils of the modern condition.
Recorded in London, Eagle’s new album continues where his 2014 masterpiece, Dark Comedy left off. It’s anxiety-riddled but whimsical, addicted to and scornful of social media, stuffed with old wrestling in-jokes and film snippets. Self-aware admissions blend into attacks on societal double standards.
Known for alchemical solo work and collaborations with Danny Brown, Homeboy Sandman, and Mos Def, this is White’s first proper union with Eagle. The two artists bonded over the notion of diversity. The process started out with rough demos, which White ended up finishing in post-production—playing guitar, drums, bass, keyboards, percussion and pieces of wood found in a forest. Its genius ultimately comes from the pair mining a deep vein of emotional content—a discussion of the things we feel that you don’t say. A movie that hits so accurately it’s almost uncomfortable.
These are tense anthems for the vulnerable, consecrations to black people with rich internal lives, agnostic prayers for those grappling with pain. They’re emotional landmines leavened by the wry bleakness usually only found in great stand-up comedians. Eagle exists in the lineage of They Might Be Giants and Richard Pryor, Freestyle Fellowship and his longtime friend and collaborator, Hannibal Burress.
Within the first act, the plot becomes clear. See “Admitting the Endorphin,” where Eagle raps, “I chase my poison tail and get so high that voices fail.” These are the movies he’d make it he knew how to make movies. Surreal vignettes about waking up with burrito hangovers in hotels you don’t recognize, wondering if you remembered to charge your phone. Aesop Rock and Hemlock Ernst (Sam Herring of Future Islands) pop up as fellow travelers.
No one is better than Eagle at capturing the nauseous disorientation of day-to-day life. The deluge of sports highlights, unread texts and Twitter notifications. The compulsive need to check your phone at red lights and pauses in conversation. But his incisiveness extends far beyond observational humor. “Smiling (Quirky Race Doc)” examines the slights and casual bigotry of daily interaction. “A Short About a Guy That Dies Every Night” is a morbid rumination on death.
These are the returns after long dark nights of the soul. When the noises are loud, the lights are off, and the armor is pierced. Short films that loop over and over again, as soon as you close your eyes.
Gyasi "Here Comes the Good Part"
Mostly recorded with his touring band, it also features guest appearances by drummer Daru Jones. “Here Comes The Good Part” is a bold exploration of theatrical rock n’ roll, through the lens of a small-town West Virginia kid seeking self-discovery.
Geologist "A Shaw Deal"
Some things take a long time. And some things are meant to last. But how you know that, or learn how to find out, that’s a more intangible thing. That’s A Shaw Deal – intangible. A communal meeting place for two old friends and their different musics.
A Shaw Deal is the first album by Geologist and DS. They go back a long ways – back before Highlife, before Shaw joined White Magic – back to the early childhood of Animal Collective. Basically, Doug Shaw touched down in NYC around 2003, and he and Brian Weitz have been friends ever since.
“DS” first released his own music under the moniker “Highlife” on the album “Best Bless” EP, in 2010. Listeners were lifted by the sound – a vital new transmission imbued by the popular African guitar music, British folk-pop, desert blues and the ritual spirit energy that Doug had been evoking in White Magic with Mira Billotte. And really, if you knew Doug, this incredible alchemy was just one of the amazing ways he could come through on the guitar.
A couple years back, Doug was posting bits of his playing on Instagram, and Brian found them to be a much-needed escape from reality – he’d just let them loop for stretches of time, get lost in there, and emerge with recharged energies. They were such perfect mini-encapsulations of Doug’s fantastic spirit. Brian was inspired. Eventually, he ran them through his modular system, editing and tweaking and looping as he went, creating new shapes and juxtapositions, instinctively rewiring Doug’s original sounds to extend the feeling of peace they’d given him. Once it was all together, it would make a cool birthday present to regift to Doug! And once the gift was given, it was sounding like an album too…
From start to finish, A Shaw Deal taps into DS’s guitar playing and the vibe of his expression, drawing out meditative waves in new forms while exploring the worlds within them. Geologist and DS collaborate in a manner that’s brought comfort and release to them both. A Shaw Deal leaves no doubt, as it radiates further into the world and beyond – it will bring a new range of views and feels to everyone who listens in.
Brueder Selke & Midori Hirano "Split Scale"
Brueder Selke & Midori Hirano’s debut album unites two artists who share both inimitable skill and depth of expression. Pillars of Berlin’s new music community and globally lauded composers, they each share a background in classical tradition while practicing on the cutting edge of modern music. The brothers Sebastian and Daniel Selke are open-minded, critically-acclaimed instrumentalists and composers with a sprawling catalog of international productions. As Brueder Selke, aka CEEYS, the polyinstrumental duo focuses their passion for genre-bending music primarily on their hand-picked Q3Ambientfest, sharing the stage every year with fellow artists such as Laura Cannell, Mabe Fratti, Resina, Jules Reidy, Grand River, Yair Elazar Glotman, and now-collaborator Midori Hirano. Midori Hirano’s mastery of sound sculpting has put her in high demand as a composer for film and television, including recent soundtracks for All or Nothing, Tokito, and a documentary on the Premier League, alongside astounding collaborations with artists including Hprizm of Anti Pop Consortium and Ilpo Väisänen of Pan Sonic. In addition to her own composing, Hirano has remixed the likes of Robot Koch and Rival Consoles. Split Scale, the group’s first album together, follows a series of live collaborations. The artists chose a simple concept, following a western scale from beginning to end, and from this created a suite of sublime, synesthetic soundscapes and cinematic movements. The vivid tapestry of sound and color is luminous and emotive.
The immediacy and emotional power of Split Scale belies the precise nature of its creation. The group began by splitting out the notes of a scale, A through G and back to A, using each as a starting point and tonal foundation for a piece on the album and then equally split the pieces with Midori starting half and the Selke’s initiating the other half. The album then was refined by artists trading tracks, each working on a piece as if in dialogue with the other. The pieces were meticulously edited with a focus on the subtle shift in tonality, translating the simplistic premise into an affecting exploration of mood and atmosphere. Hirano elaborates: “I feel that this naturally became like one piece of music, as if we were climbing up a long, colorful staircase.” There is a distinctive live, “played” feel to the suite, despite each track being slowly pieced together across separate studios. Brueder Selke explains: “In order to keep the soundscape tight and organic, we would both play multiple instruments and devices simultaneously. For example, Sebastian would support his cello passages with synthesizer in the sub-bass range, while Daniel might build arpeggio runs on the synthesizer that are unplayable by humans, then compete with them on the piano. The unhurried pieces are painted with graceful melancholy and curiosity, at times lavishly exploring single hues or technicolor gradients all stemming from the tonal center.
Split Scale’s opener “A” begins the conversation between the artists, with Hirano’s cyclical arpeggios feeling out the space, Brueder Selke adding subtle noise and texture with washes of smudged cello and synthesizer. “C” finds the artists trade roles, Hirano’s rippling electronics rising like heat shimmers before shapes start to coalesce amidst the haze, Sebastian and Daniel tracing the outline of the landscape in arcing strings. Closer “AA” takes the final step on the cycle with one of the album’s most explicitly electronic moments, ascending skyward with pulsing, prismatic chords before breaking apart into astral ambience.
Split Scale touches on many western musicians’ foundational experiences with sound, the equal tempered scale. “We, in a way, traveled back in time back to our beginnings… our choice of tones was relatively simple, intuitive, almost child’s play,” notes Brueder Selke. “We wanted to take this unique opportunity with Midori to start from zero, and to do it together.” Split Scale is an album born of a collective experience and mastery of instrumentation and arranging that manages to convey a dazzling sense of wonder, as if one was playing an instrument for the first time and truly listening.