Kapitan Kulam’s ‘Blunt Instrument’ is a post-apocalyptic, feedback-saturated descent to insanity, a vomit-inducing tour of the seven circles of hell that was the Duterte regime
Laufey, A Evening on the Symphony (AWAL)
For this 12 months’s Document Retailer Day (RSD), former TikTok sensation and now Grammy winner Laufey launched on vinyl her 2022 reside recording with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
Given her worldwide fanbase, the album has turn into one in all RSD’s much-anticipated releases. (Document Retailer Day, often held on the third Sunday of April, began in 2007 as a method of serving to impartial report shops. At present, it’s a much-awaited and much-hyped worldwide occasion the place main labels and artists unload restricted editions of rarities, reside live shows, image discs, and absolutely anything of their vaults to an enthusiastic viewers with fats wallets.)
“The night time was magical and this efficiency was greater than a recording of my songs,” Laufey writes within the liner notes. “It’s a residing journal of my life. Every notice and crescendo mirrored my experiences, remodeling my songs right into a sonic autobiography.”
Laufey has been credited for making jazz requirements cool to a brand new technology. Her love for jazz offers fascinating textures to her authentic works and A Evening on the Symphony validates her daring musical instructions. Along with her songs organized for orchestra, the efficiency highlights Laufey’s vocal and compositional abilities, and adeptness at piano, guitar, and cello.
Right here’s the catch: solely 4,200 copies of A Evening on the Symphony have been pressed. In case you weren’t in a position to get a duplicate final April, you would possibly have to hunt for one on the secondary market the place the album is being bought for as excessive as $101. Then once more, that’s what fandom is all about.
Kapitan Kulam, Blunt Instrument (Terno Recording)
On Blunt Instrument, the often voluble Lourd de Veyra – poet, writer, painter, media character, and former chief of the jazz-spoken phrase collective Radioactive Sago Venture – lets his guitar do all of the speaking. However his guitar doesn’t simply discuss. It spits, snarls, and wails.
The album is a post-apocalyptic, feedback-saturated descent to insanity, a vomit-inducing tour of the seven circles of hell that was the Duterte regime.
Listening to the album leaves one feeling bludgeoned and lower a thousand methods, the scent of gunpowder lingering within the air. Blunt Instrument is the sonic model of Patricia Evangelista’s Some Individuals Want Killing channeled by means of a distortion pedal.
Neil Younger and Loopy Horse, Fu##in’ Up (Reprise Data)
Fu##in’ Up is one other RSD 2024 launch from Neil Younger and his longtime backing band Loopy Horse. A warning for the informal Younger followers, although. This isn’t the acoustic folkie of Coronary heart and Gold and Harvest from the early ’70s. That is Neil Younger the noisemaker, the godfather of grunge within the ’90s, backed by most likely the loudest, gnarliest band on the planet.
The album was recorded reside at a personal gig in 2023, with Younger and his band performing nearly all of the songs from Ragged Glory, the extraordinarily loud and distortion-laden observe as much as Freedom launched in 1990.
The efficiency is endearingly uncooked and rambling, which is to say it’s simply one other Younger and Loopy Horse trip. And at 78, previous man Younger nonetheless exudes the kinetic vitality that made his reside recordings with Loopy Horse compelling.
Varied Artists, Homegrown (The Gray Market/Backspacer Data)
Compilation albums could be tough. A-listers and D-listers are often crammed collectively on two sides of the report. When this occurs, you would want {that a} turntable had a skip button. However once they work, compilations can provide the listener a snapshot of creativity. The bonus: listening to beforehand unreleased songs that talk loudly about an artists’ intent or imaginative and prescient.
Homegrown is a compilation album containing beforehand unreleased tracks from a combined bag of excellent Filipino indie rock musicians. Namecheck: 7-Foot Junior, Shade It Pink, Vagabonds, Milagros Dancehall Collective, Completely satisfied Analogues, Rod Mijares Combo, Session Street, CoffeeBreak Island, Scarlet Gum, The Spills, Plaster of Paris, and Neighbors.
Numerous quirky, funky, grooving music right here. Throw in Gloc-9 jamming with Shade it Pink and Ely Buendia singing with the Vagabonds on a country-twinged monitor ala Flying Burrito Brothers and Gram Parsons and also you’ve obtained a keeper.
Johnoy Danao, Dapithapon (Backspacer Data)
Earlier than embarking on a solo profession, Johnoy Danao was the vocalist for various band Bridge and Kakoy and Johnoy, with guitarist Kakoy Legaspi. The duo constructed an everyday following at 70s Bistro with their left area tackle folk-rock and indie rock hits.
Danao launched his first solo album, “Dapithapon” in 2010. Fourteen years after, the album has been launched on vinyl courtesy of Backspacer Data. The remastering by Shinji Tanaka provides better readability to Danao’s voice, highlighting its quivering fragility. The remastered model of “Ikaw at Ako” leaves the listener anticipating a voice that might break anytime from sincerity. And it doesn’t. – Rappler.com
Joey Salgado is a former journalist, and a authorities and political communications practitioner. He served as spokesperson for former Vice President Jejomar Binay.
This was first printed in ourbrew.
