By It’s our Bandcamp picks of the Week, featuring the alienating yet alluring electronic music of Molto Ohm’s FEED and the unwavering rock vision of Des Demonas’s APOCALYPTIC BOOM! BOOM!
Molto Ohm – FEED
Genre: Experimental Electronic, Hypnagogic Pop
Favorite Tracks: “$$$$$$,” “Sponsored #1,” “A Place Far Away,” “11 Growth”
Inessential goods and promises are rampant in society and the digital realm. Today’s web is littered with inconsequential and consumerist content we see as we endlessly scroll, hoping to be jolted by another dopamine hit, but it never comes. There’s a sinking feeling from doom-scrolling on any towering social platform once you realize that time is spent unproductively. Misspent time from being fed false promises of finding love, connection, and motivation through the digital world—Matteo Liberatore’s newest audiovisual project, Molto Ohm, interrogates these gripping notions in spirit.
Liberatore is a sound collagist at heart, whose affecting palette encompasses careful acoustic rhythms and atonal electronic music. FEED, his latest series of musical experiments exploring the interrelation between digital life and social decay, sits in the latter sonic camp. You’d have no idea his unfiltered, finger-plucking improvisation on his 2018 LP SOLOS could lend itself to the metallic, belligerent kicks that anchor FEED. It’s likely Liberatore’s move from Abruzzo, Italy to Brooklyn, New York that did it—his rustic, classical background has been deftly polished upon his traversing into the American city’s experimental music scenes.
FEED is James Ferraro-esque with samples of faux advertisements and conversations (“Are You Making Money,” “Were You Dreaming Yesterday,” “Legend”) cushioning the album’s lengthier, near-hyperpop tracks. Even Ferraro’s examination of consumerism and technology’s unnatural fashion speaks broadly to the Molto Ohm project. The dichotomy of sparsity and repetition also resembles forward-thinking electronic composer Carl Stone. Given Liberatore can interact with layering and lulling in this dignified way, FEED is truly another crowning achievement in his ever-increasing list of artistic works.
Glitchy beats and modular synths dominate the upbeat club-heavy tracks, like the skittery “$$$$$$” and flickering coda across “Sponsored #1,” the latter calling upon the reader to recognize their emotions and stress by keeping tabs, like how social media always does. The unsettling dial tones in “Legend” are accompanied by words probing on brand trust: “Our brand’s an extension of your personal identity. How much value do you place on a brand’s stable initiatives? Do you feel the brands you support represent you and your values?” The stark musical changes are as sudden as how today more people trust individuals than ever as brands.
The discomfort from confronting digital realities is best outlined on “A Place Far Away,” a MIDI-like beat interrupted by coastal swooshing and electronic distortion. It’s Ferraro’s FAR SIDE VIRTUAL with a potent, unshakeable unease. Closer “11 Growth” extends this, where what beats precede the prior tracks are substituted for gorgeous piano embellishments amidst folk samples. There’s a harrowing disconnect, like looking at life through glass screens, being our phones. Looking into a fabricated reality with false promises, doesn’t much of the internet yield such a thing?
Liberatore’s inquiries require much more extensive parsing to appreciate them properly. However, his profoundly alienating and intimate confrontation with the modern digital realm is ambitious no matter how you listen. Experience FEED, Molto Ohm’s stimulating examination of digital life, over on Bandcamp. [Dom Lepore]
Des Demonas – APOCALYPTIC BOOM! BOOM!
Genre: Rock Fusion
Favorite Tracks: “Backwards Man,” “Conduit”
Genre means both more and less than ever before. As we saunter toward multimedia transcendence, these tags have cross-married into meaninglessness. Still, they highlight art’s germinative capabilities while providing lessons as ley lines blur. However, if you really want to see what happens as we near the genre promised land, there’s D.C.’s own Des Demonas.
The recent, 13-track APOCALYPTIC BOOM! BOOM! sees the band chopped-cheesing Afrobeat, funk, blues, and punk. That “nothing/everything is sacred” approach fosters tracks like “Obsession” (if Talking Heads time traveled to feature on NUGGETS); “Restructuring” (perfect for a bossa nova-field TWIN PEAKS soundtrack); and “Backwards Man” (equal parts Bad Religion and Yo La Tengo). They’re songs that regard genre with carefree chaos, remixing and repurposing to create something novel via free-wheeling expressiveness.
Yet the record’s true magic resides elsewhere. “Conduit” expertly showcases Jacky “Cougar” Abok, whose gimmick of “Leonard Cohen channeling Allen Ginsberg” shines as the socio-political dissonance dances over the simple-but-lively beat. “Elvis and Nixon” follows suit, but its stance between Interpol and Protomartyr is some decidedly catchy cultural criticism. And in a move both strategic and unassuming, “Arthur Lee Bomb Squad” confounds and delights with gooey context. There’s more still—”Psychic Bloc” is an unmatched gem, and “Angola” exemplifies the tactical value of the band’s technical prowess.
Yet the throughline is that this genre dissolution goes deeper still. The band assault these “walls” with such intent that it’s either overpowering (but undeniable) or too subtle (thus you’re brought in deeper still). Whatever the pacing between songs, you get the sense they’re cutting to the core of some hugely important shared experience. Yes, the album’s about life in this most feckless timeline, with references to fascism, disruptive technology, and even counterculture heroes. (It’s no coincidence that “Arthur Lee Bomb Squad” could be about the abolitionist or Love frontman.) More so, we’re seeing the very world actively dissolve and unwind, and Des Demonas capture that fear and opportunity in sonic form. That as what was becomes what might be, we can use this breakdown to usher in something new. Maybe that’s something better, but certainly it’s a systemic reshuffling. Your anguish is just one reaction to this, and you could just as easily see this time as the moment when truth and lies, peace and war lose their value and it’s our job to discern the path onward.
Des Demonas have vital insight into the state of this world, but what they really bring to the table is the ability to connect the quiet and the loud, the spoken with the understated. What we get, then, is a record for dismantling the world and making something that feels as bold and unwavering as any great punk song before. The genre-centric shift’s the same as any revolution—it starts with screaming the truth over a cheap Wurlitzer. Things will always change, but what doesn’t is that we can march closer to big revelations as we delve deeper into the ideas presented by truly great art. Even if that’s just, “Why aren’t there more ‘60s-style Afro-punk jams out there?” Listen to it now over on Bandcamp. [Chris Coplan]
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