If I Can’t Handle Me At My Best, You Don’t Deserve You At Your Worst —Helena Celle
Glasgow-based hardware synth artist Helena Celle, aka Kay Logan, cited music as a “guiding light” when facing challenges related to LGBT homelessness. Regardless of whether or not it is explicitly addressed in her musical works, she said, in an interview last year with Factmag, that these experiences were reflected in her music and performance. Logan, a trans artist herself, went on to say that she hoped to show others who faced similar challenges that their lives, and the lives of those who came after them, were “worth fighting for”. Music is the medium for her message.
As an artist, Logan’s interest in power dynamics is expressed through the interplay between technology and sound. She approaches technology, the machine, cold and rigid, in a way that embraces chance and randomness. Logan recorded the tracks on her 2016 release If I Can’t Handle Me At My Best, You Don’t Deserve You At Your Worst on dictaphones using an MC303. The sounds were then sent through an amp and captured again on dictaphone. The choice of recording device and lack of overdubs introduces an element of chance, resulting in textural sound experiments that appear emotive and disarmingly human. Through music Logan creates a space of her own, unhindered by social constructs.
Don’t be swayed by the lo-fi crunch of the recordings. The tracks are sophisticated techno explorations with an underbelly of synth-punk. Tracks like ‘Distributed Denial of Reality’ and ‘Live Slug Array for Information Processing’ may not seem dancefloor ready to the Octagon bar circuit, but they invite us to carve out a new kind of dancefloor and create some shapes of our own.
If I Can’t Handle Me At My Best, You Don’t Deserve You At Your Worst is out now on Night School Records.
Physically Sick —Allergy Season
The bi-line on Allergy Season’s Bandcamp page warns us that there is a sickness in the air that’s playing havoc with our allergies; “The pollen of hatred and bigotry”. Though the cure is yet unknown, ‘Ew’, ‘Dying and Denying’, and ‘My Sorrow is Luminous’, are just a few of the songs that “taken once a day […] can help to alleviate the symptoms of discrimination and demagoguery.”
This is Physically Sick, a 42 track compilation of electronic protest music devised by New York record label Allergy Season and Discwoman, a Brooklyn-based collective and booking agency representing cis women, trans women, and genderqueer artists working in electronic music. The compilation became available for download on 19 January 2017, deliberately timed to counteract the Inauguration Day that followed.
With 42 tracks, the minimal-techno-therapy is holistic. The ambient underwater quality of Octa Octa’s ‘Only Tears’ and Bookworm’s ‘Sacred Drama’ emote a strategic cruise through the universal digestive system, targeting every symptom of the demagogue. The bass frequencies and panning synths of Aquarian’s ‘Hydropulse’ hone in on the sinister particles we can’t see, while simultaneously stimulating the club floor. Somewhere near the middle of the comp, a moment of space, a kick drum, and the clear tone of Yaeji’s voice cutting through the digital mist. “As if I was mute for a while / My first words are silent / But violent.” Yaeji’s ‘Full of It’ is immediately followed by the vibrant, life-giving, sonic-tonic of Jayda G’s ‘Sestra’s Cry’. These are tracks on a mission. Resistance. Therapy. Protest. It’s time for your daily dose.
Physically Sick can be purchased from Bandcamp for “name your price”. All proceeds go to selected charities “who oppose the hateful policies” of the current US Administration.
We Got it from Here…Thank You 4 Your Service —A Tribe Called Quest’
Opening sample—“The heat / It’s comin’ down hard / We gotta get our shit together.”
Closing track—‘The Donald’, a song not explicitly referring to, though implicitly haunted by, Donald Trump. A song strategically released three days after the US presidential election, a tribute to Don Juice, a.k.a. Phife Dawg (1970 - 2016). Respect. RIP.
Cut to…warped bass synth-line … kick in the heavy drum crunch … sample siren … “We don’t believe you / ‘Cause we the people” … sirens blaring … “All you Black folks, you must go / All you Mexicans, you must go / And all you poor folks, you must go / Muslims and gays / Boy, we hate your ways / So all you bad folks, you must go.”
It’s not a time to be complacent. It’s not a time to sit on my butt on the couch writing reviews of albums that should be listened to, not read about. The artists say it, play it, and relay it better than I can.
Donald Trump is President of the United States of America (if only it had been Don Juice). It happened. We’re living it. We’re all fired. But we’re not going anywhere.
We waited 18 years for the lyrical, rhythmic, sonic politics of Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad to follow up their 1998 release, The Love Movement.
“Who can come back years later, still hit the shot?” -A Tribe Called Quest.
Timing is everything.