Tag: not not fun

TRACK | Golden Hallway Music – Radiant Park Collage

5/5 golden merles

Golden Hallway Music revels in saturation and subtle intention. Rules & Chance Vol. 3 seems to understand that the purpose of the pulse is a side effect, and that there’s a heart beating somewhere other and the movement is the aftermath echoing throughout the body. There’s a lot of that subterranean engine documented here across a few concurrent sensors, claiming to be live and feeling like it. It has plenty of refraction and careening, but consistently and repeatedly with gentle variations within the coherent structure.

From my dullards point of view, abstraction tends to flatter authority. What is the difference between this and the other abstractions I find distasteful? Not Not Fun seems to know. And I think the work provides some intimation of allegiance. Titles, tones and influence, conspiring in the common era. Minimal but rich in its rawness, paced in a manner that is difficult to convert into something damning or damaging.

It was recorded by expansive mining of the melodies and then an extracting of excerpts. “Radiant Park Collage” works up and charts the sort of layers that have their own intimations of language or kinds of simple systems, deliberately but slowly compounding to give way to larger complexities. And the symbolic representation of that evolution seems valuable.

Redefining some single units of measure, it will be released April 7th.



TRACK | Filthy Huns – Fake Ass Muthas

5/5 golden merles

In quick summation: From LA, released on the indomitable Not Not Fun, two albums removed from the common era.

“Fake Ass Muthas” is likely the first and last eight and a half minute track posted to this platform, so don’t get any ideas you epic/jam band freaks. But also take note, this is how you collapse time into a malleable unit.

Wonderous and empirically strange, the pacing and texture of this instance is something to hold up as an idol. Some kind of masterclass (…if that phrasing wasn’t recently besmirched by capital). But that isn’t without its risk. Just because it can be admired doesn’t mean it can be replicated or the right lessons learned or applied.

How does the orbit not collapse or dull around that digi drum over the prolonged runtime? How is anything ever in a stable state or find a form of homeostasis? It is an adaptive system which draws on ample resources and manages to remain inventive despite the glut.

The track always manages to tire of itself moments before the listener might and appropriately reinvent or contort the structure. One melody is relieved of duty and a well-textured instrument is replaced by a complimentary but stark alternate. Sounds simple. Isn’t.

TRACK | White Poppy – I Had a Dream

5/5 golden merles

White Poppy’s I had a dream is one of the finest closers to an album I have heard. Over the mild hiss and drum, one line is repeated like a mantra:

I had a dream but I think I’ll forget about it
I had a dream but I think I’ll forget about it
I had a dream but I think I’ll forget about it
I had a dream but I think I’ll forget about it

The tape was put out in 2012 on Not Not Fun records, an extremely reliably excellent CA label over the last couple of decades.

About a year after this release in 2013 Britt from NNF wrote me a very kind and thoughtful rejection email regarding some poorly recorded demos I had sent them. I proudly showed this note of pleasant renunciation to my friends at the time as though it proved something or other, something beyond their patience and goodness.