First Floor #207 – Nothing Is Forever
a.k.a. An interview with the newly resurrected L-Vis 1990, plus a round-up of the latest electronic music news and a fresh slate of new track recommendations.
I was in Ljubljana last week when the news broke that Vice would not only be laying off hundreds of employees, but also planned to cease publishing content on its own website, shifting instead to a “studio model.” (As far as anyone can tell, that model will most likely involve making social media content for brands and other entities.) Even as someone who never contributed to Vice, and honestly didn’t really enjoy the bulk of its output, it was worrisome to see yet another round of bloodletting within music and culture journalism. It was only last month that Pitchfork went through the meat grinder, and now Vice, a company that was at one point valued at $5.7 billion, has basically given up on journalism entirely.
Figuring that other music folks would be similarly surprised, I mentioned the news to multiple people at the conference I was attending, and almost everyone had the same puzzled response:
“Oh… I didn’t realize that Vice was still in business.”
At first I was a little shocked, especially since I was talking to industry people and active music fans, but after hearing the same sentiment again and again, I realized that maybe I was the weirdo in the room. Music journalism has been in trouble for years, and is currently facing what seems like an existential crisis, but for most people, especially the ones who aren’t journalists themselves, this simply isn’t that big of a deal. Sure, some readers out there are legitimate fans of music journalism, and see value in the practice, but for everyone else (i.e. the vast majority of the human race), our scribblings are seen as just more content, and there’s certainly no shortage of that in the world. The masses may not be actively rooting for music journalism to collapse—though a dedicated few absolutely are—but if the whole enterprise does fall apart, my intuition is that most people will likely say, “That’s too bad,” and go on with their day.
And on that uplifting note, let’s get into today’s newsletter! I’m sure many of you have been anxiously waiting for the paywall to drop on my interview with L-Vis 1990. Our conversation was the first time that the Night Slugs co-founder went on the record with a journalist—see, we do have some value—since he unexpectedly returned his original artist moniker following a five-year detour as Dance System. What prompted the change? Scroll down to find out, but I’ll give you a hint: the current state of dance music has a lot to do with it.
Elsewhere, I’ve assembled the usual digest of what’s been happening in electronic music during the past week. There are news stories and release announcements, plus links to some interesting articles that are well worth a read. I’ve also sifted through the avalanche of new releases that dropped during the past seven days, and have put together a fresh batch of track recommendations highlighting my favorites of the bunch. And if that’s not enough, I’ve even enlisted Brian Foote—one of experimental and electronic music’s unsung, behind-the-scenes heroes—to drop by with a guest recommendation of his own.
Let’s get into it.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Every Tuesday, First Floor publishes a long-form piece that’s exclusively made available to paid newsletter subscribers only. The latest one, which is now (temporarily) open to everyone, is an interview with James Connolly, the Night Slugs co-founder who recently announced that he would be resurrecting L-Vis 1990, the moniker he’d rather publicly left behind only five years ago. In the wake of that announcement, he’s been busily dropping new tunes and making guest appearances on various radio stations, but this conversation is the first time he’s spoken at length about what prompted the change, his thoughts on contemporary dance music and how what he’s doing now relates (or doesn’t) to Night Slugs’ storied legacy.
SOME OTHER THINGS I DID (AND ONE THING I ’M DOING)
Second Floor is my monthly column for Nina, and the latest edition puts a spotlight on Washington, DC, surveying its contemporary electronic and experimental music scenes. Though the city’s musical output is often overlooked by the media and tastemaker types, its creative communities are ripe with talent, and from what I can tell, what holds them together isn’t hype or a desire to get famous, but a genuine passionate to try new things and make cool shit.
Yesterday I headed over to dublab BCN to do my monthly First Floor radio show. The episode has already been archived, and includes new(ish) tunes from the likes of Jonny from Space, Maral, MJ Guider, Soft Crash, People You May Know and several other artists that have been featured here in the newsletter.
This Saturday I will be in Graz, Austria, where the Elevate festival has asked me to moderate an artist talk with Kode9. We’ll be talking about his music, the Hyperdub label—which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year—and lots more.
REAL QUICK
A round-up of the last week’s most interesting electronic music news, plus links to interviews, articles and other things I think are worth sharing.
Considering all the public hand-wringing that last month’s Pitchfork layoffs inspired, the world may not need another post-mortem, but this very funny (and very long) essay that Zachary Lipez wrote for his Abundant Living newsletter feels like a brilliant way to cap the conversation. Admittedly it’s littered with obscure references and inside jokes that only media professionals and aging Brooklyn hipsters will understand, but it’s also a sober reckoning of where music journalism is at in 2024, one that rightly calls out the corporate greed currently driving the field into the ground but also recognizes that what’s being lost probably isn’t as important to the public as most writers would like to believe.
In a world where music consumers have been sold the idea that everything is available on demand, things that can’t be dialed up with the press of a few buttons inadvertently become more attractive. That reality has inspired what’s being called “lostwave,” which consists of seemingly unidentifiable songs of old that swarms of people online are now attempting to track down. Much of the music they’re focused on is relatively unremarkable, but as a cultural phenomenon, lostwave is kind of fascinating, and it’s explored in greater detail in this piece that Laura Holliday put together for Dazed. (For what it’s worth, the Guardian also got in on the act, enlisting Carrie O’Grady to pen a similar article that’s more focused on one particular lostwave song, “Everyone Knows That,” which recently set the internet ablaze.)
In the aftermath of abuse allegations that surfaced against band member Robin Stewart last week, Giant Swan will be taking an “indefinite pause.” The accusations, which are no longer publicly viewable, were made on social media by Stewart’s former partner Daniela, who goes by the artist name PMS Casualty. She claimed that he had been verbally and emotionally abusive, and had ignored sexual consent. Stewart addressed the allegations in a statement on the band’s Instagram, and his bandmate Harry Wright followed with his own statement, saying, “The whole situation breaks my heart.”
Jesse Saunders, the Chicago artist whose 1984 single “On and On” is often recognized as the first-ever house record, is in extremely poor health. Having suffered a severe stroke in 2022, he recently collapsed at home and is now in a rehab facility. Without financial assistance, he may soon be evicted from that facility, so a GoFundMe campaign has been set up with the aim of raising $150,000 to cover his medical and care expenses.
Resident Advisor published “A History of Baltimore Club in Ten Tracks,” and enlisted one of the city’s best music journalists, Lawrence Burney, to put it together. And while the piece of course includes some ’90s-era classics, it also makes clear that Baltimore club is not a purely historical phenomenon, highlighting a number of more modern tracks that have moved the streets of Charm City in recent years.
Latin America’s contributions to electronic music are often overlooked, especially when they happened during the decades before most of Europe and North America was paying attention to the region’s musical offerings. A forthcoming book, however, looks to help correct the historical record. Switched On:
The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women was edited by Buh Records founder Luis Alvarado and experimental artist Alejandra Cardenas (a.k.a. Ale Hop), and will be released by Contingent Sounds, a Berlin-based publishing platform led by Cardenas. Pre-sales go live on March 3, but in the meantime, more information about the book can be found here.
OBLIGATORY BOOK MENTION
My first book is out now. It’s called First Floor Vol. 1: Reflections on Electronic Music Culture, and you can order it from my publisher Velocity Press. However, if you’re outside of the UK, I’d actually recommend either inquiring at your favorite local bookshop or trying one of the online sales links I’ve compiled here.
JUST ANNOUNCED
A round-up of noteworthy new and upcoming releases announced during the past week.
Marking what would have been his father’s 73rd birthday, house icon Kerri Chandler has assembled 73 of his own songs in a package called Dad Giveaway. Consisting of edits, remixes and originals, it’s available as a free download via Bandcamp.
Having spent time recently as one half of Everything Falls Apart, UK artist Ross Tones hasn’t exactly been quiet during the past few years, but he did today unveil his first new original Throwing Snow single since 2021. “Hear the Tongue Fork” is out now on Houndstooth, and it’s said to be a precursor to an upcoming album, though no additional details have yet been made public.
Chris Pell has spent most his career operating as Murlo, but during the past few years he’s also been increasingly active under the name Sharda. Now he’s added another alias, Muskatt, which seems to be focused on swung, bass-heavy rhythms. The project debuted last week with a two-track EP, Echoes01, which is available now via Pell’s own Coil imprint.
Chilean artist Valesuchi, who’s been based in Rio de Janeiro for many years, has completed a new EP. Cascada is her first new release since 2020, and she describes it as the product of “a deep cycle of work and sonic embroidery, intuitive processual projection and participatory intelligence.” It’s due to arrive on March 20, but ahead of that, opening track “Servers of Fate” has already been shared.
Japanese sound artist and composer FUJI||||||||||TA has a new album on the way. Entitled MMM, the LP is once again rooted in his signature organ, but while past efforts utilized a hand-operated air pump, this new record is something he recorded after switching to an electric air pump, which “activated new sonic and compositional potentials of the instrument.” Hallow Ground will be releasing the album on April 18, but closing number “M-3” is available now.
Following up on last year’s DREAMER album, Nabihah Iqbal yesterday released DREAMER (Remixes), on which four tracks from the LP are remixed by Uppal, Slowspin (feat. Zak Khan), SIDD and Sijya, all of whom the London-based artist has previously performed alongside. The EP also includes a fifth rework from Berlin producer Frank Wiedemann, and the whole package is out now on Ninja Tune.
BRIAN FOOTE HAS BETTER TASTE THAN I DO
First Floor is effectively a one-person operation, but every edition of the Thursday digest cedes a small portion of the spotlight to an artist, writer or other figure from the music world, inviting them to recommend a piece of music. Today’s recommendation comes from Brian Foote, who lives in Los Angeles and has long been one of those behind-the-scenes heroes who quietly brings people together, supports cool shit and helps make the experimental music world go. Aside from working with the kranky label for many years, he also heads up the impeccably curated Peak Oil imprint and runs Conflict of Interest, one of the rare PR firms that takes on boundary-pushing (and generally excellent) records that most publicists wouldn’t touch. He also makes music as Leech, oversees the Tipping Point radio show on dublab and is involved in countless other projects, including Smoke Point alongside fellow Angeleno Sage Caswell. Here, he literally digs into his archives to share something from the years he spent living among Portland’s weirdo fringe.
One Human Minute “Railroad” (Self-released)
I was cleaning up my basement and was digging thru a box of turn-of-the-century private press stuff (a.k.a. burned CD-Rs with handmade artwork in editions of well under 50 copies) when I came across this short-lived band named after a Stanislaw Lem essay I hadn’t thought about in forever by some good friends from Portland. It was an inspired forcing together of the political-leaning skronky / shouty stuff folks there were doing at the time and the extreme digitalia / chaotic post-production resulting from geeks worldwide being freely handed software tools that would have made our heads spin just a few years earlier.
Maybe it sounds like Disco Inferno if it was released on Fat Cat or if .O.rang made a record for Mego or something? Here I chose “Railroad,” a relatively mellow outlier that was always my favorite to share, but as more and more folks pick back up their guitars and open their mouths, I hope to hear new versions of work as recklessly spirited as this band’s OHM1 album.
NEW THIS WEEK
The following is a selection of my favorite tunes from releases that came out during the past week or so. Click the track titles to hear each song individually, or you can also just head over to this convenient Buy Music Club list if you prefer to listen to them all in one place.
Maral ”hope’s return” (Self-released)
First Floor is in danger of becoming a full-blown Maral fan site, but she just keeps dropping great tunes. The latest is “hope’s return,” and it offers something new from the LA-based artist: a love song. (More specifically, she says it’s about “the feeling of perseverance that love can imbue in you,” and “also the melancholy of having love, because it can always be lost.”) Her foray into this zone is brief—the track is less than two minutes long—but “hope’s return” is undeniably potent, its stripped-down drums and lush guitar groans coming together in a way that initially sounds like Kevin Shields sitting in with The xx. Some ominously buzzing textures do bring a bit of darkness into the mix, but they can’t dull the glow of the song’s wordless warbles, which flutter atop the muck with an almost celestial grace.
Persher “Portable Aquarium” (Thrill Jockey)
The Body & Dis Fig “Coils of Kaa” (Thrill Jockey)
Thrill Jockey offered up two very different slices of heavy music last Friday, and both are more than capable of rupturing a neuron or two—in the best way possible, of course. “Portable Aquarium” is a standout from Sleep Well, the debut album from Blawan and Pariah’s Persher project. It’s easy to dismiss the whole endeavor as just a couple of techno dudes having a laugh with some hardcore and metal riffs (and it’s not not that), but as they explained in a First Floor interview back in 2022, their passion for this kind of musical mayhem is very real. (For further proof, check out the latest Baker’s Dozen feature in The Quietus, in which they share many of their heavy favorites with writer Patrick Clarke.)
Yes, these two have a sense of humor—that was already apparent from their work as Karenn and their curation of the Voam label—and there is something patently ridiculous about hearing Blawan howl like Beelzebub atop a sea of jagged guitar squall. But “Portable Aquarium” is also a legitimate ripper, a galloping hardcore tune that exudes the same swagger one might expect from the largest guy in the circle pit. It’s fun, and ultimately a lot less menacing than “Coils of Kaa,” a brooding, nine-plus-minute metal incantation from The Body & Dis Fig’s new Orchards of a Futile Heaven LP. The Portland duo have perfected the art of the slow burn, and while the impact of their distortion-laced blasts can be measured in kilotons, it’s the tortured, banshee-like howls of Dis Fig that provide the real terror.
Maya Shenfeld “Analemma” (Thrill Jockey)
Another Thrill Jockey release? The vaunted Chicago label has certainly been busy lately, but it’s hard to argue with the curation, even when Maya Shenfeld’s new Under the Sun album resides in a space that’s light years away from the visceral macabre of the above records from Persher and The Body & Dis Fig. It’s not that the Berlin-based composer’s sophomore full-length is without moments of tension and darkness; album cut “Tehom,” which sounds like a cross between an old-school modem and an unbalanced washing machine in the middle of the spin cycle, is particularly claustrophobic. Yet Shenfeld’s more blissful ventures are no less compelling, and “Analemma” closes out the LP on a euphoric, almost devotional note, facing skyward as its hope-filled, choir-like vocal harmonies drift off toward a golden horizon.
Artur M Puga “Adversarial Patch” (Arkestra)
Polyrhythms abound on “Adversarial Patch,” a sparkling cut from Artur M Puga’s new NUBEKEVLAR EP. Bursting with color, the song taps into the fertile terrain between classic video game soundtracks and early grime, but the Galician producer also blends in bits of ambient and new age, not to mention a twitchy drum pattern that’s maybe just a tad too restless to be effective on the dancefloor. That’s okay though! The joyous “Adversarial Patch” works best outside the club, its bubbly, anime-ready melodies and innate sense of wonder better suited to an afternoon of daydreaming than a night of raving.
Breaka “Falling” (Breaka)
For decades, the combination of Caribbean rhythms and UK bass has produced one dancefloor heater after another, and the latest is “Falling,” the title track of London producer Breaka’s latest EP. In a better world, a tune like this would be in heavy rotation on radio stations around the globe, thanks in no small part to the vocal contributions of Manchester artist Conni, who provides the song’s breathy hook. The addition of gleaming synth stabs also adds a certain pop sheen, but make no mistake: “Falling” isn’t some cookie-cutter crossover. The ghosts of both UK funky and dembow inhabit the song’s shuffling gait, and though Breaka does flirt with trance territory, he ultimately steers back into a headier, weirder zone in which broken drum patterns and rubbery bass eruptions take the lead.
Circular Square “4KO-L3” (Crux Azul)
After debuting on Crux Azul last year with the impressive 3-HT-(xon) EP, Brussels-based producer Circular Square has followed it up with 12.5h -60° SQ3, another collection of razor-sharp club hybrids. The whole EP is excellent, but “4KO-L3” opens the record with a bang, its neck-snapping breakbeats swaddled in the most sinister of bass wubs. Light-hearted it is not, but while most artists employing this sort of sound palette wind up sounding needlessly aggro, this tune feels remarkably limber, its digital crunch retaining an observable spring in its step. The predominant vibe still leans evil, but Circular Square doles it out with a wry smile on his face.
Wrecked Lightship “Hex” (Peak Oil)
Considering that Wrecked Lightship is a collaboration between UK bass veterans Appleblim and Dot Product, it’s not surprising that the duo’s new Antiposition album leans heavily into dubby astraction. One of those records that’s inspired by the club, but not necessarily for the club, it does contain one proper subwoofer workout (the jungle rumbler “Sunken Skies”), but the LP is at its best when its low-end undulations are maneuvering through humid atmospheres and delay-drenched haze. Early dubstep is an obvious reference point, and the standout “Hex” practically luxuriates in its murky confines during the album’s opening moments, but then the song’s twinkly, IDM-reminiscent melody appears, offering a little beacon of light in the darkness. The bassy abyss might be where the men of Wrecked Lightship are most comfortable, but they spend much of Antiposition with their gaze fixed on the stars.
re:ni “Blame Is the Name of the Game” (Timedance)
Given her high standing the UK bass sphere, it’s hard to believe that BeautySick is only the second proper EP that re:ni has ever released, but the London-based artist and re:lax co-founder has come exceedingly correct, filling the record with frisky drum patterns and gut-quaking bursts of serrated low-end. All four tracks are primed to do damage, but “Blame Is the Name of the Game” is the most electric of the bunch. Taking cues from the same sort of Middle Eastern / North African sound palette that artists like DJ Plead and Anunaku have used to devastating effect, the song’s rapid-fire percussion practically leaps out the speaker, while re:ni’s penchant for buzzing sonics and industrial-grade bass ensures that everyone in a five-mile radius will take notice whenever this tune comes on.
Ploy “Vortex (Busy Mix)” (Deaf Test)
Ploy “Sending” (Deaf Test)
As far as I can tell, absolutely no one was clamoring for Ploy—one of the most consistently inventive artists in all of bass music—to put together a tech house record. But after hearing his new They Don't Love It Like We Do EP, my only question is: Why didn’t he do this sooner? Tossing convention aside, the London producer has crafted five deliciously weird tunes, injecting elements of both smirking comedy and lurid horror into songs whose swaying rhythms somehow still scream, “this could work at a beachside soirée in Ibiza.” It’s a masterful effort, and while picking favorites is nearly impossible, there’s no denying the chunky groove of “Vortex (Busy Mix),” which keeps calmly bopping, even as Ploy unfurls a bonkers series of zips, zaps, swirls and twirls. (Imagine old-school Basement Jaxx without the garage references, and you’re getting close.) And for those seeking something less overtly insane, there’s soulful EP closer “Sending.” Powered by a disco-adjacent beat and a hypnotic vocal loop, it’s more of a laid-back cut, and almost sounds like a rawer (but no less effective) take on what artists like Pépé Bradock and Motor City Drum Ensemble tend to cook up.
And with that, we’ve arrived at the end of today’s newsletter. Thank you so much for reading First Floor, and, as always, I do hope that you enjoyed the tunes. (Don’t forget, you can find them all on this handy Buy Music Club list, and if you like them, please buy them.)
Have a good week,
Shawn
Shawn Reynaldo is a freelance writer, editor, presenter and project manager. Find him on LinkedIn and Twitter, or you can just drop him an email to get in touch about projects, collaborations or potential work opportunities.