This newsletter is an extension of the 2022 Summer Album Guide, and will evolve to include writing about the community, the city and the world in areas other than hot vinyl and vital music. But for now consider it a gesture to continue the art of the album review, forever disappearing from our print newspapers. - Dave Bidini
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Weval
Remember
In high school, we went on a school trip to a winter lodge, where we snowshoed, played broom ball, studied ancient maps, skated on a lake, watched Gordon Pinsent movies (RIP) and smoked copious amounts of shitty (shitty great) weed in the snowy forest, our parka hoods hiding our faces from teachers who were probably smoking one forest away. At night, and despite the lodge’s NO MUSIC policy, we furtively listened to cassette tapes in our rooms on a portable boombox stereo, riding the music as our buzz dimmed into the small hours. One of the tapes we liked best was the last thing you’d expect to hear in a Canadian northscape: “Metal Beat” by John Foxx, an austere electronic British art pop album that we discovered by way of Visage, Blancmange, Cabaret Voltaire, Ultravox and other influential bands that I’ve ceased to follow or enjoy, deciding that, in the end, I liked music with guitars just a little bit more. But “Metal Beat” was important to us because of how essentially alternative it was, much closer to Arvo Part, say, than The Vapors. The music sounded purposefully distanced from the pursuit of popular acclaim-- an absurd and new concept to us-- and we discovered value in liking something without first being told we were supposed to like it (I can say with certainty that nobody else from KCI was listening to John Foxx in their cabins). If every other album wanted to grab you by the (frilly) collar, “Metal Beat” sat in the parking lot, poking a keyboard and smoking.
I had these memories while listening to the new album by Weval-- a Dutch duo heretofore unknown to me-- whose spare, analogue synth lines, clear, primitive drum programming and charming-robot vocal treatments feel created on their own terms; somewhere in the past yet somehow into the future. The music is rich and fully captivating in its unhurried and electronically meditative taxi-ride-across-the-city, never pushing the vehicle beyond the speed limit while still getting the listener to where they have to go. Even better, the songs unspool across the mix with lots of active sonic movement-- music that surprises is sometimes its greatest gift-- and if, at times, the compositions are couched in deeply familiar electro-nostalgia, this album isn ’t like looking inside a Turing Machine, either. You still wonder how the whole thing works, scratching your head and twisting your mouth before giving in to the magic.
Buy it on Bandcamp HERE
De La Soul
Three Feet High and Rising
I don’t know if Howard Druckman reads these reviews-- I’d like him to, but people are busy and you don’t want to be a pain-- but back in the middle-1980s, he was our Great Explainer, turning us on to obscure singer songwriters like Loudon Wainwright III, foundational funk bands like Parliament/Funkadelic, and every new record we missed, many of which were freebie’d to him as a pre-eminent music journalist, and a few vital years our senior, a detail that made a world of difference in always being slightly ahead. I remember riding around in the car-- his, mine, I’m not sure-- in the summer of 1989 listening to De La Soul’s “Three Feet High and Rising” and feeling the way I did going to the CNE Midway for the first time or seeing the “Wizard of Oz” on the big screen or eating a sleeve of Cherry Chews in one sitting. It was to blast off towards a shining new sun with Howard as my pilot, explaining what “Little Derwin” meant, how the “Schoolhouse Rock” samples were used, or why this “hip hop soul community’s” aesthetic had as much in common with Paul Klee as it did James Brown. Growing up, people who knew everything about music were as valuable to me as my uncle, who knew everything about cars. At 59, I can tell you who plays drums on “Let’s Get it On” (Uriel Jones), but if the RDX broke down tomorrow, I’d be fucked.
The entire DLS catalogue is only now out on the streamers, having finally settled business with the myriad of sources used in the mix. The music sounds best on vinyl, but it’s still a joy coming through your device, sproinging forth with a buoyancy and fun unmatched this side of “Planet Clare.” A lot will be written about this by people better versed in Hip Hop than me, but it’s not hard to know a daring record when you hear it, full of playful manipulation and slavish folly, dropping in piano breaks, bits of comedy, Grade 10 French teachers, Johnny Cash, Liberace, and deft rhythms that melt in places while spinning out of control in others, all within the same Dadaist composition. DLS threw everything at the wall, creating a glorious rainbow of splatter, and proved an easy gateway for people (that is, white people) who’d missed the daunting first wave of rap. Looking back, producer Prince Paul was as important to this band’s phenomena as George Martin was to The Beatles: a master-organizer and colourist, knowing when to empty the vessel before filling it with more Freshie. That this record arrives in the March doldrums is a total gift.
All the De La Soul records are available NOW on your streaming platform of choice!
Thanks Dave for making reviews with verve!! i so look forward to these Saturday morning romps through new musical adventures. Carry on.