GFOTY — GFOTV

GFOTV, the latest album from GFOTY (and the first since her departure from label PC Music) finds the shackles loosened. Whether it's a refreshing course-correction or dismal fall from grace is in the eye of the beholder.

For better or worse, no artist so embodied PC Music as GFOTY. Her disruptive disassembly of pop music tropes always pushed things further and harder than any of her labelmates — sometimes past the point of what PC’s audiences found palatable. Her playground was the profane and the excessive. While there was no evidence of compromise in her work for PC, it’s clear that GFOTY felt a new direction was necessary. So — what grand statement has this newfound freedom permitted?

GFOTV is a collection of skits which describe TV shows from the late 90s to early 00s. Descriptions are at the most superficial level — often to the point of listing characters by name. GFOTY will on occasion offer an opinion like, ‘This TV show is good, dun dun dun,’ or, in the case of the Bananas in Pyjamas-themed ‘EDIBLE BROTHERS’, ‘This show / It has / A really high concept.' If this all sounds a little arch, that’s because it is. But it’s so shot through with sardonic humour, it's so confrontationally low-effort, that you don’t want to rise to the bait.

GFOTV is antagonistic from an aesthetic standpoint too. It’s horribly mixed and monotonous. At only twelve minutes long, at points the album feels like it’s never going to end. The question arises; ‘what is this doing beyond trolling the listener?' PC has a reputation for acts which are so cutting-edge they feel like they’re from the future. But this kind of dry cynicism is straight from the days of rage comics.

To play devil’s advocate, let's argue this album isn’t as conceptually thin as it seems. GFOTY describes shows which likely occupied her fanbase’s childhoods, but muscles nostalgia out of the room completely. There is no sentiment or love; just disinterest. It’s like revisiting an old memory to hear, ‘that never happened,’ finding out it’s manufactured; hollow. There’s something unsettling which is difficult to pinpoint. And as signified by the spooky test card clown of its cover, it’s something GFOTV seems fully aware of.

GFOTV is available to purchase and stream here. All proceeds from purchases to charity Mind.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

The Keep — Primer

On Primer, Gothenburg musician The Keep shares stylistic trappings with the early cinema of Michael Mann. The cover of Primer depicts an apartment collaged from sources which clash yet somehow cohere. A floating, untethered vaporwave nightmare resembling Will Graham’s dreamlike beach apartment from Mann’s Manhunter. Its musical components are as loosely associated. Combining traditional Indonesian instruments with drones and synth washes recalls the futuristic prog of Tangerine Dream — the band which provided Mann’s The Keep (a curious namesake) with its soundtrack.

Oliver Knowles, the artist behind this The Keep, describes the genesis of Primer in ‘intrusive thoughts, anxieties, and a lingering sense of dread’. But like the Balinese gamelan from which it draws inspiration, Primer finds calm in chaos. The tone is eerily soothing — the perspectivised zen which can follow huge upheavals and tragedies. Primer presents an adverse world, but not a cruel one. Knowles never stoops to cynicism, or loses appreciation or gratitude for the world’s beauty.

Track titles are disarming, even humorous. ‘Fatberg’ and ‘Barry Manny Drone’ might not look out of place on a Pink Guy tracklist. But this doesn’t speak to a flippancy on Knowles’ part. Both tracks are utterly transcendent. Respectively frantic and still, they each scratch a different atrium of the heart.

Primer is stylish — that much is immediately clear. But what’s surprising is how much the EP reveals under closer scrutiny. On the surface, it’s a jumble of wildly different ideas and sounds. It’s a placeless room in which indoor streetlamps illuminate antique furniture. It should be fraying, bursting, falling apart at the seams. But keep digging , and you find the glue holding it all together.

Primer will be released on 6th December. Stream single ‘The Cub’ here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

FKA Twigs — Magdalene

FKA Twigs’ reputation precedes her. Since her 2014 debut, LP1, Twigs has released the odd morsel (including the stunning EP M3LL155X) to abate her fiercely loyal fans. Despite their quality, these releases have felt ancillary. Stepping-stones to an inevitable sophomore album. That sophomore arrives in Magdalene, a wounded work which both defies and exceeds expectations.

Twigs' M.O. is a clinical, slightly frightening deconstruction of female sexuality and power. A former Beyonce backing dancer, Twigs knows the dichotomous nature of objectification. To be something both desired and disposable. To feel eyes which linger before they pass. Her name refers to the cracking of her joints when dancing — a reminder of the physicality of dance; the strength and power requisite for grace.

Magdalene extends and deepens this deconstruction with compassion and cutting maturity. Twigs’ widely publicised fight with fibroid uterine tumours left her living with ‘a fruit bowl of pain’. A Spike Jonze-shot Apple ad featured a Twigs who, unbeknownst to the public, bore a searing surgical cut which reopened and bled as she danced. Rooted, as you’d expect, in the gospels, Magdalene is a product of great pain and eventual resurrection. It shoots for the irresistible melodrama of the Passion, and somehow holds together through it all.

The second half of this LP is more raw and emotive than anything Twigs has ever recorded. Its measured pace may discourage some long-time fans expecting the voguing Twigs of LP1. And when Twigs does try to capture this energy in the Future-featuring Holy Terrain, the result is a track which feels asynchronous with the album it sits in. It’s still more banger than clanger — but somehow disconnected from its peers.

Crucially, Twigs still dodges definition. Her work is difficult to categorise, straddling more genres than you can count and doing stuff all of its own on top. Whatever Magdalene is, it bodes well for the future. Twigs has been through the wringer, but emerges refreshed and better than ever.

Magdalene is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Have a Nice Life — Sea of Worry

Have a Nice Life contend with the legacy of their seminal work, Deathconsciousness. This is a trap many young bands with promise become caught in. It's the reason My Bloody Valentine took twenty-two years to follow up Loveless. Taking notes from MBV, Have a Nice Life have here rejigged their signature sound.

Tremolo guitar and falsetto ooh-ing gives Sea of Worry a blackened surf-rock vibe. Production is more squeaky-clean than before. Lyrical candour is as biting as ever, but now more considered; less damaged and frightening. The cumulative effect of these changes is a mixed bag. The album separates itself elegantly from Have a Nice Life's previous work, but at points feels tinny and phoned-in.

Earlier works' cracked rage defers to a resigned softness. Lyrics are still peppered with arcane imagery and refer to Satan and death. But something feels more measured; a depressive old-head who has learned to coexist with their condition.

When this approach works, though, Sea of Worry is a joy. 'Science Beat' is a dreamy piece which lunges into some beautiful harmonies and melodic guitar phrases. It's something like a lost New Order song, damaged and decayed but still reaching towards the sun. A microcosm of this album's successes, the song is a balancing act between hope and dismay.

'Lords of Tresserhorn' majestically resurrects the band's noisy origins. It feels like a self-immolating track. Every snare crash loosens the kit's component parts a little more. Every strike of string frays and splits the steel fibres. 'Destinos' is similarly monstrous, but offers unexpected moments of respite amidst its crushing power. These tracks represent a tendency for Sea of Worry to regress further into the band's old sound as it proceeds.

The general tone is one of quiet, fractured ethereality. The viscera has been mopped up, but the floor is still stained. It's an album which is beautiful, hopeful, and even at times fun. Have a Nice Life still occupy the same troublesome world — but they're having a good day in it.

Sea of Worry is available to purchase and stream here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Hiro Kone — A Fossil Begins to Bray

The work of producer Hiro Kone (Nicky Mao) is reliably muscular and haptic. Over several releases Mao has shown talent and consistency. A Fossil Begins to Bray finds Mao transformed but intact. It builds on foundations set by its predecessors, but neither betrays nor leaves them in the dust. 

As suggested by its title, the album bursts from stolid and intermittent silences. Life erupts from nowhere. Wobbly rhythms, bright synth work and a menacing low end scream into being; relics rendered animate. 

The title track of A Fossil Begins to Bray forms like an organism emerging from primordial soup. From stuttering silence and calm, the track blossoms into a cacophonous roar. It builds to an abrupt cut, a story suddenly swiped from the table. In a few minutes, Mao manages a wordless evocation of a species’ span on the planet. 

‘Akoluthic Phase’ has a similar structure. What begins akin to Eduard Artemyev’s mysterious work for Tarkovsky heaves out of the sea and sprouts a propulsive, powerline-twang of a bassline. Its pensive mode accelerates into danger and fierce action.

It’s impressive how often Mao repeats this trick in different ways. A standout is ‘Shatter the Gangue of Piety’, a lurching epic peppered with inhuman signs and industrial clanging. It’s the most monstrous track here: like Depeche Mode but fracked, blasted into deconstruction and drained of black blood. 

Mao’s M.O. appears to be a rejection of modernity and accelerationism; an ode to quiet and to hesitance. It’s not some Luddite manifesto — more a work which tenders reflection on the structures which support us. The weight of history held in our future.

The most overt example of this is ‘Submerged Dragons’, a transitory minimalist track which lapses into frequent silence. It is filled with tension; a penny awaiting the drop. What a friend of mine would call ‘silence so loud you want to turn it up’. This track and its peers are something to ring the ears with more than once. 

Hiro Kone’s A Fossil Begins to Bray is available for stream and purchase here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe