NOTHING – CANNIBAL WORLD

BY ALEX GIBSON
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A chamber of screeching shoegaze immures you, the drone of guitars driven by relentless breakbeat snares circles and swirls, catching you in the tow of their whirlpool. You must look up to avoid drowning in it.

In their single ‘Cannibal World’, Philadelphia post-shoegazers Nothing explode against the eardrums with layers of refined noise. Those palpitating drums compel the continually bleeding guitars to flood outwards from singer Domenic Palermo’s oneiric vocal melody, creating a visceral body of sound.

Enveloped within this organism of unnameable noises, spilling through unnameable membranes, we are powerless but to grasp out at that unplaceable feeling — something “deeper than bone marrow”, as Palermo sings.

‘Cannibal World’ peels away its flesh to reveal a tender middle eight. Echoing vocals oscillate. Everything thickens and, for a moment, the drums disappear. It’s a peace that doesn’t hold. The song builds towards yet another geyser of sound with intimations of noise, a flashflood of pouring guitars and high-pitched, rhythmic judders. With an unsteady, staccato heartbeat, they whimper. And with this resolution, Nothing soars again.

✧

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• 🔔 'Cannibal World' is taken from Nothing's new album a short history of decay, which is out now and available on vinyl, cassette tape, compact disc and digitally. You may purchase it on Bandcamp.

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📠
☟ Nothing Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official website ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia

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⌾

🐣 CYNABEL — WHEN I'M WITH YOU

This track begins awash with textures, the sea spreading itself onto sand with all its foam and flotsam and tumbling little stones and shells that dance jostling on the beach and the bleached bones of coral twisted ceramic antler collections crooning to the sky with its trickling trickling streaming watery sounds. Your private beach. How natural it all sounds, the percussion luscious delicious all hurtling molecular and tiny, a tapestry for time and the way the natural world fills it. Cynabel creates this moss forest these glorious miniatures for roundabout the first third of the wonderful 'When I'm With You', before wide synth chords like rainbows, slow and kinetic, these are dolphins arcing in open sea.

"This particular song was symphonically through-composed, rather than the usual copy/paste we're so accustomed to in music, especially EDM," the Philadelphia-based musicmaker himself tells yes/no via email. "The lack of strophic form and general air of adventure were directly inspired by RefraQ's tune Soda Ritual." The finished product, Cynabel explains, creates "a journey for the listener to experience," adding: "I sincerely hope that the sparkling chords and comforting ambience result in a few smiles for those who choose to adventure with me."

Out there just beyond the reef and from far off it seems slow and getting close to them it's a speed racer affair, it's wiggling and wobbly and vital utterly the smooth mammalian grey of the skin strobing in and out of the calm tufts of sea, as highlighted by the drum fill and the leaping leap into the jostle of more rapid fire rolling soft synth foamy fizzy waves breaking breaking. And the dynamic shift, slowdown, the cascading waterworld of the track's outro where Cynabel seems to be channelling this Zora's Domain feeling, a crowd of effortlessly glistening melodic synths that chime and drip-drop crystalline and ultragorgeous, this aching beautiful coda stretching into the distance, the gentle fade of cirrus clouds against vast blue, the comfort and heartwarm of being with whoever the "you" is in this electronic symphony.

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• 🔔 This foley-soaked track arrived ahead of Cynabel's recent Summer Breeze EP. You can download 'When I'm With You' here courtesy of collective Phonotecture.
• 🔔 The cute artwork for the track was created by Sam F Hinton, an illustrator based in Falmouth, UK.

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📠
☟ Cynabel Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram

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🐣 SEDRIC PERRY — WILD [初演 • PREMIERE]

It's an intoxicating sound in this one by Philadelphia-raised Sedric Perry and it's all down to the song's centrepiece, where the vocals lilt in luscious languor—layers upon layers of vocals in a millefeuille of warm harmonies. In 'Wild', where glossy kicks boom with sub-bass gloop and ticking clanking percussion skitters indistinctly creeping across the soundscape, the vocals are undoubtedly the star, the bedrock of the track as much as its ornamentation; over the soft satiny choral waves, Perry sends his own voice fluttering, rising, swooping through the increasingly heated clamour, where a crescendo of shredded peals of guitar crests, courtesy of Marcus Machado, whilst the kicks' pulse quickens and quivers.

Inspired by "Gregorian Chant music," and recorded in a Columbia dorm room, 'Wild' is "the story of the aftermath of a drug raid gone wrong, leaving two insatiable lovers pained from two years apart in separate prisons," Perry told us. You can imagine that raid taking place slow-motion as the song begins, and as it intensifies the aching vocals reflect this longing, a languishing atmosphere broils the sound in an anxious haze, those kicks boom-booming restlessly, the separated lovers together only in their distress and disquiet. In this slice of music, the swirling colours evoked by those layered vocals, that kaleidoscope of images easily flashes through your mind—it's a vessel of imagination and progressive songmaking based very wonderfully on the original instrument: voice.

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• 🔔 Go to Sedric Perry's SoundCloud to peep previous releases, like 'Nubian Dream' for instance.

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📠
☟ Sedric Perry Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram ⚘ itunes

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Y/N GUEST MIX 019 :: IZZY'S CUP OF JOE W/ CREAMER MIX

Ok, so I tried to put this guest mix up the other day and it got blocked from being uploaded because of copyright. On one hand, fine, everyone needs to make money, I get that. But on the other: ¿why be so mercenary about it? What benefit do you get, really, from not allowing an tiny little music site like this one to upload a mix done by an up-and-coming artist just because it contains one track? "Oh but if everyone did it blah blah blah" – NEWSFLASH: everyone's NOT doing it. This isn't a protected beach that keeps getting all of its coral stolen.

This is people sharing things they like, telling a story with music, showing appreciation for other artists who might inspire you or just help you to get through the day thanks to their music. Shout out to all lines of code and robots and spiders out there blocking our freedom (not to mention the intellectual-property-appropriating jargon-spouting business boys and girls that create and endorse them).

Speaking of which, this is a mix by Izzy, one to help you get through the day, or one that at least illustrates a working day. Called his Cup of Joe w/ Creamer Mix (it is the second iteration of the mix with the offending track removed; the first had no creamer), this is the coffee you'd want at the start of a working day. What is creamer? I do not know. Is it this (non-dairy creamer)? Something milk-inspired, at least.

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I am Izzy, an individual looking to express myself through various creative mediums.

IZZY

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So now you might be wondering, Who is Izzy? Well, let's find out shall we? (A little bit, at least). "You may be able to find me trekking between the NY/Philly/Jersey area," he says cryptically. What does Izzy do? "I create. Whether it be music, photography, my sales job, I make sure I incorporate my own perspective to enrich my experience," he tells me. "I grew up on copious amounts of music. After a while making music just became something that I had to do."

Izzy briefly talks us through the inspiration for the mix: "These artists are all people who have inspired me in one way or another. People like AbJo, Toro y Moi, and Matt Martians, just to name a few, are constantly thinking about how they can further the music; I can relate to that." And with those artists he's weaved a simple background story for the mix itself: "Thematically, it feels like a recapitulation of an average morning," he explains, "the mellow feel of hitting the snooze button ('Aches' by me), literally getting into the 'Grind' midway (Mr. Carmack). Just gradually becoming acclimated to a new state of mind."

I imagine a lot of computer-based clicking and typing happening to the sound of 'Orange Juice Simpson' by Odd Future affiliates The Jet Age Of Tomorrow, with Izzy's own and fluidly brilliant – with its fragmented beats and warming sounds – 'Traveler's Cheque' being like a break for lunch or something, before the hectic 'Silvicide' and 'Navi's Dance' (by AbJo and PYRMDPLAZA, respectively) kick in to soundtrack the bustle of urgent bidness. I like to think the mad synth of aptly titled 'Synth City' by also aptly titled Chaos Kid is put in its place here for rush hour effect, the motion and movement of the track combined with its busy resonance to illustrate the quick crowds of hometime; which is where 'Mothership' (also by Izzy) with its feeling of exhaustion and desire to be someplace else comes in, back to the mothership for the night before another day at the grind.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

1. Telescope Thieves – R U Still Down
2. FKA Twigs – Ache (Reimagined by Izzy)
3. Toro y Moi — Rose Quartz
4. Sango — The Differences
5. Mr. Carmack — Grind (Lex)
6. The Jet Age Of Tomorrow — Orange Juice Simpson
7. Izzy – Traveler’s Cheque
8. AbJo — Silvicide
9. PYRMDPLAZA — Navi’s Dance
10. Flying Lotus — Such A Square
11. Chaos Kid — Synth City
12. Izzy — Mothership
13. Ta-ku — We Were In Love

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☟ Izzy Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter

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THE INTEREST GROUP THE PASSENGER & THE BOYS AND THE GIRLS

Self-releasing things these days is the norm. Why not? It's a really simple way to connect with thousands of people very quickly. There's no use messing about with a record label or a PR company, or both, if what you want to do is get your sounds out there as quickly as possible.

As such, wild Philadelphian soft rockers The Interest Group are joining the self-doers, musical polymaths who all think that do-it-yourself does it best: they have released a two-song EP (I suppose) on both their Bandcamp and SoundCloud pages. It's called ∞. Infinity? Infinity sign? Either way, it doesn't matter.

They seem to have found a bridge somewhere in the world that spans the gap between now and the psychedelic freewheelers of the late 1960s. From the sounds of it, they frequent this temporal crossing quite often, revelling in beauty of it. They basically sound like this picture above.

'The Passenger' soars as a kind of melancholic Nancy Sinatra-esque airship above any kind of modern sound. Complete with guitar sounds straight from a spaghetti Western, not only does this song scream Americana, but it also whispers darker, more sombre themes. 'The Girls And The Boys', on the other hand, is a little more sunny, starting with a chaotic intro that makes it seem as if a surf rock song is coming along. However, what ensues is a Jefferson Airplane-meets-lo-fi-Beatles chill-out of a song - from the washed-out vocals to the poppy bassline, it's a soft, cushiony song that presents less hard edges than 'The Passenger'.

Get to know. Can't wait for more songs. The enigma of The Interest Group will reveal itself soon!



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• The Interest Group on SoundCloud
• Here's their Bandcamp page
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