Paradise Metal
Paradise Metal, Peki Momés, Zoh Amba, Cochemea, Andrew Wasylyk, New playlists and mixes.
Welcome to a new edition where I feature some wonderful new albums, share some new mixes and talk about how the private equity has eaten the world. Enjoy!
♩FATHER DIONYSIOS TABAKIS: (Microtonal, Byzantine, Drone) I ran to the Heat Crimes bandcamp so fast it hadn’t yet been uploaded by the label!.
Recorded by 52-year-old Greek Orthodox priest Father Dionysios Tabakis serving at the Church of Panagitsa in Greece alone at home where he plays fretless guitar specifically for the microtonality of Byzantine chants.
On a dozen songs the Holy Father proves as fluidly adept at a range of traditional Byzantine instruments (qanun, oud, cümbüş, Politikon tanbur, yali tanbur, ney, zurna, clarinet, Politiki lyra, Pontic lyra, kabak kemane) as his signature fretless guitar, favoured for its ability to feel out microtones - semi or quarter-tone pitches - closest to the human voice. The result is a level of emotional expression and harmonic colour that often escapes western modes, transcending a range of Asia Minor and Mediterranean styles from maqam to Greek traditional and Byzantine music with a disciplined but rapturous sense of transcendence.
Sun City Girls/Sir Richard Bishop ritualism in the first half, and traversing in the 2nd to astonishing sorts of techno impressionism, as with the THX string shear and choral chant of ‘TECHNO σε ΜΟΝΑΣΤΗΡΙ’ and a whole new definition of trance-techno, thru to bits that sound like a Greek Enya.” Boomkat
It’s the second time in a row we have Greek melodies (check Greg Foat & Sokratis Votskos from the latest edition). I’ve been following the avant-garde Athens cassette label ever since the Eyad (Iraqi bass) and Aeson Zervas (Greek hauntology) releases of 2024, but this is as metal as something gets without being metal!
Strange soundscapes combining Orthodox Byzantine chanting, Ottoman court music maqams, ambient, doom metal, tech-trance and whatnot. Watch the father play.
♩PEKI MOMES: (Disco, Funk, Anatolian, Synth) Inject some Turkish city-pop into your day with Peki Momés, a Turkish artist living in Germany (who doesn’t these days) who accidentally started making music a few years ago and ended up with a fantastic album, thanks to producer Dustin Braun and their jazz musician friends.
They’ve managed to get modern soul and world disco, Anatolian funk and Japanese city pop in the same record and made it their own. There’s only one song in English but that shouldn’t make you skip the others even if you don’t get the lyrics. Bonus coincidence: her interview for Durum Records has a playlist featuring Andrew Wasylyk (which is coming up below).
♩ZOH AMBA: (Indie Rock, Blues, Folk) I wasn’t expecting to see “frequent-NYC-downtown-free jazz-sax-player” Zoh Amba to make a Courtney Barnett type indie rock on guitars, but hey I can’t complain! Eyes Full will be her Matador debut, recorded live with no overdubs, going back to guitar (her first instrument) and her hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee. Features Jim White of Dirty Three on drums.
♩COCHEMEA: (Jazz, Latin, Afrobeat, Indigenous) Vol. III: Ancestros Futuros is the final chapter in the trilogy by Brooklyn-based saxophonist and flautist Cochemea Gastelum on Daptone Records. Cochemea has been on my radar since the start of his trilogy with All My Relations (2019). Percussion-driven, rooted in Indigenous jazz and funk; he has Yaqui and Mescalero Apache ancestry, so the cosmic & tribal vibes that you hear come from this heritage. The title track of Ancestros Futuros draws from a Yaqui midwife story about burying newborn navels in the ground so future generations would reclaim the land.
♩ANDREW WASYLYK: (Contemporary Classical, Ambient, Folktronica) Scottish multi-instrumentalist Andrew Wasylyk from Dundee did something different from his previous mostly instrumental and ambient albums and made songs and sent them to vocalists around the world this time. The cadre includes Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian, Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, Saya Ueno of Tenniscoats, and my personal favourite Peter Brewis of Field Music. Out on Clay Pipe Music, also the single has a lovely pastoral video.
🎶 Terminal Optimism — Undomondo Playlist
🎶 I’ve concocted a new playlist for your listening pleasure. Hauntological electronic synth music, ambient, jazz and indie pop mixed into a calm spring playlist. With material from the new albums of Green-House, Andrew Wasylyk, a cheeky little experiment called Bach Jazz, Atabasca, Resavoir, Isabel Pine (from the last edition) and new indie pop albums from songwriters I love like Luke Temple and Carla dal Forno. This mood was partly set by some of the music my friend Ay Palas sent me, namely Enno Velthuys and Kim David Bots.
🎶 I chanced upon this mix by Mr Bongo artist Santa Leticia
Originally from Andalusia in the south of Spain and now based in Newcastle, UK, her sets are shaped by years of digging, collecting and travelling, with a deep love for soulful, rhythmic and psychedelic music from across the globe.
🎶 My dear friend Ece Özel has a new mix you should check out
The mix moves through different moods and textures, bringing together tracks like Strapontin’s alias Sam Media with the laid-back sensuality of A Matter of Sex, Audrey Danza’s Next Stop from her Proxima imprint, and the early 2000s rave energy of “After Dark” by Saeed & Palash.
📖 The Angine de Poitrine Argument for UBI (Scott Santens, Substack)
There’s a slight reference to Angine de Poitrine via them having played together for 20 years which the author thinks is a good example that this kind of music need time and support to flourish. But I shared it for this quote which draws a connection to the Irish grant for artists that we’ve talked about here before, and how the UK punk / Britpop scenes were supported by state funds for the unemployed, aka “The Dole”.
A huge amount of the best music ever made in the UK — The Clash, The Specials, UB40 (literally named after Unemployment Benefit, Form 40), Pulp, Oasis, and many more — was made by people who were, at the time, living on “the dole.” When Britain had a welfare system that gave artists a tiny floor of income and left them mostly alone to do their thing, Britain produced some of the most important popular music of the twentieth century. When that system was dismantled and means-tested and hoop-jumped and shamed out of existence, that pipeline dried up. The dole worked as a floor.
📖 Pyramids, Techno and Private Equity
I saw a few soul-sucking reels on Instagram from parties at Bali & Giza Pyramids, even influencers complaining about the prices and the quality of life in the backstage!. Then over at First Floor there was this timely April Clare Welsh’s article about how the Pyramids have become a Rave Backdrop in which she criticises the raves for the physical damage. I mean we should of course not call these things raves and call it what it is: a simulacrum, yet it shows the state of the electronic music scene now, and it showcases a problem that this No Tags article had outlined: the economic dynamics of festival promotion. San Francisco’s techno boom is a warning to the world.
Portola Festival is owned and operated by Goldenvoice, a once-independent LA promoter now subsumed under the umbrella of global entertainment mega-corp AEG. AEG is owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz, a conservative Christian and frequent donor to anti-queer causes, the Republican Party, and all that sort of thing. Some might call that disparity ironic, given that the history of dance music, particularly in America, is inseparable from queer identity and community, and for decades stood as a kind of resistance against homogeneity, a bulwark against assimilation into the status quo. That all seems beside the point, though, when a crowd of 20,000 people enjoying $18 vodka-sodas lose themselves to a DJ wearing a horse mask playing hardstyle remixes of pop songs. There’s nothing ironic about that. That’s as American as apple pie. No Tags
The world has been eaten by financialization and private equity. This is the #1 cause of economic distress everywhere in the world now, and if you still believe in capitalism, just watch these two videos.
Stay sane!