🐣 KANTAKIN — PARELLEL UNIVERSE

⌾ LISTEN TO PARALLEL UNIVERSE BY KANTAKIN ⌾

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With its popping pinprick starry synths setting things off to a steady sojourn on a spacey backdrop, London producer Kantakin is all about slow-moving majesty. Shifting from sparkling icy-lonesome to gradual cosmic menace, this track is all about gradual dynamics, a tilting gradient of power.

At the same time, 'Parallel Universe' is a ship adrift. The irregular arepeggios and brooding, looming clouds and rails of sound, much like John Carpenter's 1979 Halloween theme, summon a sense of horror. Though mirroring that heavier, earthy grounding, closer to Kantakin's subject matter is the title screen theme of Super Metroid, a haunting number soaked in galactic ghastliness. The stepping synth melody feels like we are practically looking over Samus' shoulder: tension is the word.

'Parallel Universe' has this sharp minimalism. But it also feels gigantic. Pumping sub-bass and growling modulated synths rising up highlight the drama of a cruiser on a backdrop of nothingness—and all the epic proportions and unimaginable human impact involved.

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• 🔔 Like what you hear? Kantakin's 'Parallel Universe' can be downloaded from Bandcamp https://kantakin.bandcamp.com/track/parallel-universe if you feel like it.
• 🔔 Kantakin also creates music for film, TV, etc. under real name Paola Cantachin.

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📠
☟ Kantakin Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram

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🐣 ISSERLEY — ADVENT

Do you remember the music for the Big Boo's Haunt from Super Mario 64? It's this that literally sets the scene for the level being as frightening as it was and is. This cold synth sound like a freezing gale gives a sense of abandonment and isolation, of adverse weather conditions that go hand-in-hand with things like haunted houses. And it's also how 'Advent' by 22-year-old Australian musicmaker Isserley begins, along with a handful of sub-bass kicks that drag us into this dark pool of lust and self-doubt.

Raspy hi-hats cut in, a sparse two-note piano melody plinks with hefty reverb before turning into something more horrorfully cyclical with more notes, creeping, inescapable. All the while, Isserley talks in aching absent monotone, quiet and breathy against the bass, effusing an ominous atmosphere. And then it hits: a moment of buzzing intensity saws through this, dense synths droning and crashing towards the end, the beat turning busier and rattling sharply like gunfire. The contrast between this heavy blast of brash sound and the small voice of the artist herself is stark, and enough to prove frankly mesmerising. Similarly it's an illustration of surface-level brooding calm and inner turmoil, stillness and the storm beneath.

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• 🔔 Check out Isserley's 2016 album Messes, where you'll find tracks like the sludgy 'Daddy' and 'Deep Throat', which has a decidedly more industrial feel than 'Advent', with its ticking percussion, atonal synths crushed and grinding, simmering with its chopped and decaying vocal samples.
• 🔔 Aside from producing her own music, it turns out she's been utilising her sound for other projects. "I've been doing scoring for horror movies lately too," Isserley told YES/NO, "I'm scoring some of the new Silent Hill movie!"
• 🔔 Isserley is the second project of Roxxi Wallace, who is formerly of formerly existing duo, Girlflesh.

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📠
☟ Isserley Internet Presence ☟
Facebook • SoundCloud • Bandcamp

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THE ORWELLS WHO NEEDS YOU EP

Wake up. Dispel the morning phantoms. Somehow acquire The Orwells' Who Needs You EP. Put your headphones on, or at least use some damn speakers that go damn loud, and bathe in the noise, grit and bouncy distortion that possesses these four songs. For me personally, it's a self-indulgent trip back to a breed of music that used to be all I liked when I was younger - it's also a brilliant continuation of a sound that, despite the inevitable detractions and purist naysayers, deserves to be nurtured and revitalised (not just kept in a Misfits/Black Flag/Ramones-shaped museum); and here it has been damn well revitalised.

The Orwells - Grant Brinner (bass), Henry Brinner (drums), Dominic Corso (guitar), Matt O'Keefe (guitar) and Mario Cuomo (vocals - no relation to Rivers Cuomo from Weezer, just a cool surname) - released their debut album Remember When last year and first EP, Other Voices, in June this year. This one, Who Needs You, is out 9th September on National Anthem records. There's gotta be a second album coming out pretty soon - that's just me speculating; I don't know really. What I do know, or what I believe - FEEL even - is that this EP will certainly tide over fans of the band and fans of thrash-pop-punk-lo-fi-rock stuff. Or perhaps it will just make you hungry for more. Yes, it's that tasty.

It begins with title-track 'Who Needs You', (which I wrote about, along with its video, in more detail last month) a loud and anthemic party-piece that is or could be a protest song for all us lost millennials: it's filled with pacifist leanings - "You better toss your bullets / You better hide your guns / You better help the children / Let them have some fun" - and bolshy self-disinheritance, i.e. "Listen up forefathers / I'm not your son". To be honest, this song stands out as different from the other three - it's like their "coming out" song. A more polished sound that, perhaps, will make its way onto their next release, or a one-off anthem: who can say?

Next up is one of two "Rip-offs" on the album, 'Open Your Eyes' - apparently a song done in the style of The Misfits. I think this "rip-off" thing is quite a neat idea - rather than just covering a song, they've paid a more meaningful homage to a band that has influenced many punk bands before. What's the saying? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? That doesn't even work in this case. Forget that. In any case, 'Open Your Eyes' resembles The Misfits mostly in vocal style. It opens with a gutsy snare roll and some thrashing distorted guitar and goes on to be exceedingly proficient in the low-end of the spectrum, the bass guitar and kick drum rumbling and thumping inescapably as Cuomo gives some gravelly rockabilly drawl to lyrics like "I wanna be your, be your, be your man" in this pogo-stickin' love song.

Then there's some heavy lo-fi goodness in 'Salvation Is A Parking Lot' - a Black Lips "rip-off" that has its similarities in the slap-dash fuzz of the general sound and the multi-voiced refraining chants of the chorus. This one is a glorious mess of noise complete with truncated guitar solo in the middle. A hot 'n' sweaty sound. The EP finishes with a live rendition of 'Halloween All Year', a dark subversion of doo-wop '50s prom-night rhythms complete with horror-tinged lyrics, such as, "There's a body on the ceiling looking for me / Get a knife from the kitchen and follow me" and "Take a drink from the vial / And laugh with me". They sound very good live. Cuomo is particularly impassioned, spluttering/laughing in the second half whilst belting out the lyrics. A suitable end to a punch-in-the-face of an EP.

So much energy. I love it. It's great. What else can I say? Jeez. Just listen to it. It's intense, fun, playful, noisy, bouncy, ballsy, raw... All of that. It's good shtuff. Get it.

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