The Space Between: May 2020

A bumper bunker report featuring reviews of Dalham, 24-Carat Black, Spirit Fest and the Minna Miteru compilation, plus a Martin Jensen hip hop mix

I’m in danger of becoming a character in a Charlie Kaufman screenplay. Reality is increasingly unstable and the fictional constructs I try to grasp on to have become slippery. So getting a grip isn’t really an option any more. For instance, I’ve been introducing my daughter to Buffy and we recently arrived at “Hush”, one of Joss Whedon’s high concept masterpieces (in this case the silent one). As familiar as it is to me, the episode played out differently this time around. I’d forgotten that Sunnydale is quarantined after The Gentlemen steal everyone’s voices. Even more on point is the in-episode news programme that talks about businesses in the town shutting down, followed by a cut to an exterior with a sign indicating liquor stores remain open. Of course they do. I try to shrug off the connections to our own situation, focus in on the characters, enjoy the jokes. Days later I’m watching Total Recall. All this should be is me revisiting a personal favourite mind-bending sci-fi actioner from my youth. I should not see it as a field guide for abstract living. What’s more, I start to wonder whether it was me rather than Schwarzenegger’s character who made the trip to Rekall Inc (I continue to make the distinction between an actor and their character, but not between myself and a fictional me). Assuming this was the case, then Rekall got it very wrong regarding my choice of implanted vacation experience and uploaded ‘global pandemic’ instead of whatever else it should have been.

If television and film are failing to offer me mental alternatives to what’s going on then I can at least rely on music. Alice Coltrane, Gal Costa and Jon Hassell are certainly helping ease the journey through this interminable rabbit hole. So it feels right that this column pull together current releases that resist a unifying sound, from unearthed American soul cuts to Japanese outsider indie pop. Although before that we return to Rekall Inc, where Dalham’s electronic dream within a dream Alderson Loop on Castles in Space awaits inspection. Inspired by Carlos Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming – a real world text that could conceivably have been extracted from the pages of Philip K Dick’s fiction – Dalham’s fourth album (and second for Castles in Space) offers up an electronic pocket universe to slip into. Alderson Loop isn’t quite as memorably synapse arresting as its predecessor Heat Death, instead treading gentler paths to arrive at its destination – a destination that ends with an infinite lockgroove. The psychic wormhole is opened with “First Gate”, an engulfing synth stream that wobbles, shifts and takes over thought patterns. Elsewhere, “Forrice” is the flow of time pushing against memory rendered as immaculate soundscape. Think of the feeling you get watching Solaris (Tarkovsky’s or Soderbergh’s version – you decide) or certain moments in Contact. Tones coalesce and the resulting piece rises into the depths before retreating forward into memory storage units. Alderson Loop is ripe for exploration and Dalham is in the business of cosmic rehabilitation.

The return to earth is unnecessarily turbulent – these non-physical flights take their toll on the mind – but recalibration is made possible by 24-Carat Black’s III. Chicago label Numero Group continue to dig deep and III is no exception. 1980s demos were found in 24-Carat Black instigator Dale Warren’s storage space and reassembled as an unfinished yet startling album of sui generis soul cuts. The late producer’s credits include Stax and Isaac Hayes, so it isn’t beyond imagining that his demos would convey the sort of magic touch that is impossible for most to come by in the highest-tech studios. III features vocal contributions from LaRhonda LeGette, Vicki Gray and Princess Hearn that to these ears would not have required further takes even if Warren had lived long enough to complete the record. His productions are taut and free at the same time, grounded in the groove and yet threatening to vanish out of grasp once the moment has passed. It’s the sort of lightness and depth dreamt of but all too rarely achieved. “I Need a Change” drops the listener into Warren’s shimmering world, the piano parting the veil before the percussion kicks in as a slow motion dream. “I need a change, I need it / Yes I do, I – I need a change” sings LeGette, as if she is channelling the present from the vantage point of the past. The hands-on-drums and flute loop texture of “Speak Low” is crying out to be repurposed as a quietly devastating hip hop joint. That organ grind in “You’re Slipping Away” would have had DJ Shadow reaching for his MPC60 back in his Mo’ Wax days. Indeed headz are sure to get lost in the scope and salivate over the details of 24-Carat Black’s III.

So, like Chris Marker in his Sans Soleil visual essay about memory (which is on my lockdown re-watch list), let’s make our collective way to Japan. Our peculiarly brilliant first destination is Minna Miteru: A Compilation of Japanese Indie Music. It’s a delightful outsider collection put together by Saya of musical magicians Tenniscoats and released through Morr Music in collaboration with Alien Transistor. I would have been introduced to Tenniscoats by Stephen Pastel in Monorail years ago back in Glasgow. I can’t recall the exact circumstances, but it must have been one of those cases where he sold me an album I didn’t know I needed in my life, but I really very much did. He has a knack of doing that. Minna Miteru is a 27-track contemporary snapshot of what’s going on in a scene that feels as much a part of my Glasgow experience as it does of distant Japan. Reclaiming “indie music” from the tired and pedestrian, the likes of Tenniscoats and The Pastels craft music to live by. Think the outer/inner edges of indie pop gone international and put back together again with gentle experimentalism. Which is what is on display across this compilation. Minna Miteru is out of time and of the moment. Each song creates its own delicate, ephemeral world; shards of beauty revealed at regular intervals. A dream that is falling apart in reverse – hence a coming together as thoughts shift and turn to the music. If you make the space and take the time to explore the compilation then favourite artists, songs and moments will soon emerge. That aside, I would like to draw your attention to early highlight “Shiroimono” by Tenniscoats and yumbo. It’s as if the night sky has been stripped down to piano, horn, drums and voice – a process of unimaginable translation that loses none of the wonder.

Sticking with Morr Music and indeed Saya, fellow travellers are gathered as Spirit Fest for their latest LP Mirage Mirage. Spirit Fest are the group manifestation of an internationalist musical community, including Tenniscoats (both Saya and Ueno), Markus Acher (The Notwist, Alien Transistor), Mat Fowler (Jam Money, Bons, A Happy Return) and Cico Beck (Joasinho, Aloa Input, The Notwist). Theirs is an outsider magic contained within free structures, as direct as it is elusive. Previous LP Anohito is a personal favourite that I’ve continued to grow into since its 2018 release. I’ve little doubt that Mirage Mirage will have similar personal longevity. This is a wide open record that occupies four sides of vinyl, but feels precise and essential, never bloated. The carefully crafted minutiae threaded throughout the landscape of the album is never allowed to encroach upon the sense of space within each song; every abstraction is grounded. Take “Zenbu Honto (Every Thing Is Everything)”, a swelling pastoral anthem that moves forwards as if it were a clock being wound back – time here is cut loose. Then there’s the miraculous trilogy of tracks lying at the album’s heart. “Circle Love” is rickety avant pop that infuses the 60s girl group underground with field recordings to create a beautiful expression of Pastelism. Surely unearthed from the remnants of a soundtrack to a lost masterpiece of European cinema, “Mohikone” is the instrumental expression of existential dread under the sun at its loveliest. The detailing is exquisite, the emotional force contained but no less moving for it, like some scaled down model village version of Morricone. Spirit Fest wear their emotions on sleeves with the relatively unadorned majesty of “The Snow Falls On Everyone”. Here they employ gentle harmonies and a more straightforward song structure to craft something beguiling. Experimental undercurrents come to the surface as the track progresses and it is beautifully judged. The listener is left wondering if the long afternoon they were reliving is only a dream after all. Many more dreams and imaginings are possible within the shifting constructs of Mirage Mirage. Accept an open invite to explore.

The character-in-a-Charlie-Kaufman-screenplay me informs the other me that this column isn’t quite at an end. It needs a final narrative turn. He doesn’t want to say “twist”, because that often suggests a lack of belief in what has already been told. “But I’ve said everything I wanted to say,” I tell him – because now, you see, I’m holding a conversation with myself – but he’s strangely insistent. “I’ve got something for you,” he says as he produces a mixtape put together by Martin Jensen of The Home Current. “But we don’t do mixtapes any more,” I counter, rather unconvincingly. “This is an old school hip hop mix,” is the reply and I’m immediately sold on the idea. So idea to reality in the blink of a dialogue with myself, here’s something from Martin for you to enjoy responsibly at home. Stay safe and keep track of who you are.