"Your Sex is Overrated" 098 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 17-08-2020 (50')

ALTER.NATION #98

Fantastic Negrito, The Dirty Streets, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Eyedress, Sufjan Stevens, Black Marble, Helvetia, Prins Thomas, Ganser, Fontaines D.C., Robby Krieger, Bill Frisell

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"Your Sex is Overrated"

ALTER.NATION #98 on deezer

An inventive modern-day blues musician who plays with tradition and culture. Bay Area-based singer/songwriter Xavier Dphrepaulezz rebooted his career in the 2010s by adopting the name Fantastic Negrito and pioneering a blues, hip-hop, rock, folk, and funk hybrid ...
Fantastic Negrito - Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? / Your Sex is Overrated feat. Masa Kohama
Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? is a title suitable for the madness of 2020 and its timeliness is further proof that Fantastic Negrito is the rare modern blues musician whose eye is keenly upon the present, not the past. His insistence on grappling with the realities of now also meant that he never resigned himself to playing traditional chord changes, preferring to rely as heavily on funk, hip-hop, soul, and rock as the blues themselves...

No-nonsense blues rock trio from Memphis with a knack for the boogie. Memphis hard rock revivalists the Dirty Streets like big guitar riffs, equally big amplifiers and drums, and tunes full of swaggering boogie rhythms in the manner of their '60s and '70s heroes. Powerfully influenced by classic rock and vintage blues-rock, the Dirty Streets write and play in a manner that honors the artists who paved the way for their music, but with enough originality and passion to establish an approach of their own. 
The Dirty Streets - Rough and Tumble / Good Pills
This rough and tumble recording captures the high-energy power trio Dirty Streets live on Ditty TV, in Memphis, Tennessee. This is heavy, bluesy rock'n'roll played with heart. Crank up the volume and let it rip! Justin Toland (vocals/guitar), Thomas Storz (vocals/bass), and Andrew Denham (drums/percussion), go through a set of songs culled from their catalogue ..

Australian psychedelic collective with an intense work ethic and a wildly experimental outlook that reaches from synth prog to folk rock.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Some Of Us
---Last month, they got back on track with a brand-new song called “Honey” and now they’re following it up with another new single, “Some Of Us,” a jerky and chaotic and barreling track that’s out now.
“This Cookie penned, Stu sung song came together early this year as the world was slowly descending into madness, but before it was truly on fire,” the band wrote in a tweet. “Can’t wait to show y’all some more tunes before we go down in flames.”

Eyedress was the nom de plume of Filipino Idris Vicuña, whose woozy, narcotic sound was not dissimilar to the American "witch house" trend.
Eyedress - Let's Skip To the Wedding / Happy Hour
In its earliest days, Idris Vicuña's solo project Eyedress fell more in line with the dark atmospherics and sludgy beats of the witch house movement, but it grew increasingly dreamier and brighter as it evolved. When Vicuña began introducing heavily processed guitar lines into his arrangements, Eyedress moved away from its early bleakness and into territory more similar to King Krule's fractured songwriting or Mac Demarco's wobbly indie rock. Let's Skip to the Wedding is the first Eyedress album since Vicuña returned to America after a time in his homeland of the Philippines, and the sound has reached new levels of both lovestruck romanticism and faded lo-fi production...

Critically feted indie pop singer/songwriter who paired personal and spiritual musings with hypnotic melodic patterns.
Sufjan Stevens - Video Game
On “Video Game,” the second single from Sufjan Stevens’ forthcoming album The Ascension, the singer-songwriter gazes outward at the nation that still considers itself the most powerful on Earth. The midtempo, soft-rocking synth-pop here becomes a Trojan horse for a refusenik idealism. Your own personal Jesus? The center of the universe? A modern-day Julius Caesar? Stevens rejects all these potential roles, and resume-building careerism to boot, repeating in the chorus, “I don’t wanna play.”

Influenced by coldwave, early-'80s synth pop, and the mighty bass playing of New Order's Peter Hook, Black Marble is the project of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Chris Stewart. 
Black Marble - I Must Be Living Twice / Johnny and Mary
Like a lot of bands, Black Marble like to liven up their concert set lists with well-chosen covers. Unlike a lot of bands, on I Must Be Living Twice they took the opportunity to record studio versions of these songs. Chris Stewart and company made the EP at the request of their fans, some of whom loved the group's interpretations of these songs, and some of whom weren't even aware that they weren't Black Marble originals. Listening to I Must Be Living Twice, that confusion is easy to understand: Stewart knows exactly what songs suit his style, and exactly how to adapt them. The EP's mix of new wave, post-punk, and indie pop is very much a continuation of Black Marble's sound, and shares the dreamy L.A. haze that covered the project's previous album, Bigger Than Life...

Experimental indie group Helvetia was formed by ex-members of similarly forward thinking slowcore band Duster. Over the course of the next decade and beyond, founding member Jason Albertini enlisted a revolving host of bandmates as Helvetia's sound moved from hazy indie pop beginnings to unexpected song structures and off-center home recorded production...
Helvetia - This Devastating Map / Inverted
As one-third of San Jose slowcore icons Duster—and bassist for Built to Spill from 2012 until 2019 -Jason Albertini is well-versed in indie rock that peers inwards to find a way out. As the core member of Helvetia, a project that he has helmed since 2005, his pining lo-fi multi-instrumentalism delves deeper still. Alongside a rotating cast including Built to Spill alumni Scott Plouf and Jim Roth...  Still, there’s a sunken, almost submerged quality to many of these songs—the kind of thrifty reverb glow and soft-focus hiss that makes Albertini’s studio seem to be situated not just in his basement but far below it. Stretching this quality to its outer reaches, Albertini—backed by ex-Built to Spill drummer Steve Gere and Tiburones’ Samantha Stidham on bass—fills out a sphere of sound...

Norwegian producer whose vision of space disco encompasses house, electro, psychedelia, jazz fusion, and more.
Prins Thomas - Træns / Traæns 1
With Træns, Prins Thomas explores the common ground between his trademark space disco style and the euphoric trance sound that was prevalent throughout the 1990s. For the most part, he channels trance's more tasteful elements, focusing on shimmering synths and letting the percolating rhythms build steadily, rather than constructing overblown epics with endless breakdowns and bombastic, Wagnerian melodies. Nothing here sounds too self-important or dramatic -- Thomas' take on trance is a smoothly hypnotic ride rather than a peaks-and-valleys emotional roller coaster...

Chicago quartet Ganser built on a foundation of moody, goth-indebted post-punk, drawing on more art rock influences as their sound developed.
Ganser - Just Look at That Sky / Lucky
Chicago quartet Ganser began when two art school students bonded over their shared love of the Residents and David Lynch movies. As the experimental-leaning duo grew into a full band, they took on a dour, shadowy post-punk sound that combined moments of abrasive noise with moody, goth-tinged songwriting. On second album Just Look at That Sky, Ganser continue to develop by embracing a wider spectrum of approaches to their ever-pessimistic sound...

Dublin five-piece who have strong ties to their native city, which they translate into abrasive vocals and driving percussion.
Fontaines D.C. - A Hero's Death / I Don't Belong
Setting a high bar on a debut album has always been a double-edged sword, as demonstrated here on A Hero's Death, which is a fine album that is nonetheless a step down from the booze-soaked sticky floors of Dogrel. Fontaines D.C.'s debut benefited from strong singles and a cohesive locational element to give it strength. Here the singles are not as strong, and the sweaty vibe from the debut is gone, as if someone has switched on the air conditioning... It gets off to a great start with opener "I Don't Belong," which features Grian Chatten's trademark tar-covered vocals bouncing off a midtempo strut laid out by the rest of the band... Although A Hero's Death does suffer from repetition and a lack of literacy, it remains fun enough; the mistakes it makes won't deter existing fans of the band...

Guitarist Robby Krieger rose to fame in the 1960s as guitarist and songwriter with the iconic band the Doors. His work after the group broke up in 1973 wasn't as well known; however, he earned critical respect and a loyal following for his solo recordings that blended rock, jazz, psychedelia, and world music, filtered through a guitar style that was clean, expressive, and straightforward.
Robby Krieger - The Ritual Begins at Sundown / Chunga's Revenge
The label described the instrumental LP as a “return to friends” and features a wide range of his colleagues from the era when he began exploring jazz music, including a number of people who worked with Frank Zappa. The record contains nine original compositions and a cover of Zappa’s “Chunga’s Revenge.”

A stunning, eclectic guitarist who blends the best elements of rock energy with jazz harmonic sophistication and melodic interpretation.
Bill Frisell - Valentine / Baba Drame
Bill Frisell's catalog is as vast as it is diverse. Whenever he releases an album, the question is often, "which Frisell will show up?" On Valentine, the debut offering from the guitarist's 2020 trio with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston, he offers a multi-dimensional display of his many identities. Frisell has led few recorded trio offerings, although he performs in that setting most often. This rhythm section jumped into the studio immediately after a well-reviewed two-week run at the Village Vanguard in New York and that live sense of presence and intuition is ever present... Check "Baba Drame," the set opener by Malian guitarist Boubacar Traoré. It appeared as a droning desert blues with the composer's vocals and Jenny Scheinman's haunted violin on 2003's The Intercontinentals. Here it's breezier, lighter, and jazzier, with multi-tracked drones framed by earthy tom-toms and a syncopated bassline...

Fantastic Negrito, The Dirty Streets, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Eyedress, Sufjan Stevens, Black Marble, Helvetia, Prins Thomas, Ganser, Fontaines D.C., Robby Krieger, Bill Frisell Trio