By Bandcamp Picks of the Week, as large and in charge as ever
Baconhanger – IRAFURORBREVISEST
Genre: IDM, Breakcore
Favorite Tracks: “Creeped,” “Goetic Lechery,” “Inferno,” “Dispensation”
Despite being in contention for most obnoxious album cover and title ever (ira furor brevis est translates to “anger is a brief madness” in Latin), Baconhangar continues to bring a unique aesthetic to the whirring world of industrial dance music. He has a deep love for horror movies, especially charmingly cheap ones from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and includes several samples of them in his music. There are spastic, hard-hitting beats typical of IDM, but in Baconhangar’s hands, they aren’t as gaudy or overblown as his peers’, and he mixes them with ghoulish synthesizers, dramatic swells, and background chants to give them a sinister tone, especially on “Goetic Lechery.” He also can deliver a more minimal track, like the clinking opener “Creeped” that wheezes and buzzes, or the piano-driven and rumbling “Rain,” that’s more focused on creating an intriguing soundscape to get lost in rather than a barrage of mechanical noise to engage in kinetic motion. It’s hard to tell whether you’re supposed to be dancing or running away from some twisted serial killer or demonic cult, but that’s what makes it so enthralling. If you want your dance music to fit over that one club scene in JACOB’S LADDER where Tim Robbins hallucinates a tentacled monster groping his girlfriend, than I have many questions for you, but will encourage you to check this out. [Blake Michelle]
James Massiah
Genre: Spoken Word, Dub, Neu-Funk, Power Electronics
Favorite Tracks: N/A
I’ll come right out that this is a fairly self-indulgent recommendation, and unfortunately for some readers, one that requires (and is worth!) deeper exploration, as the breadth of James Massiah’s work can’t fully be conveyed by the few instrumentals featured on his Bandcamp. Massiah’s music primarily refers to dub, house, and funk in creating a plucky lo-fi sound not unlike James Ferraro or Elysia Crampton, often used to back his lucid, electrifying live performances (he specifies some pieces are poems and others spoken word, raps, etc., regardless of the presence of a backing track). Poetry, however, remains the core around which his work generally revolves, using it over the past decade to directly challenge institutional hierarchies, sexual oppression, and religion in a philosophically sharpened, Shakespearean tongue. Recently, however, he’s been performing as DJ Escrow and is collaborating with Dean Blunt as Babyfather, having released a series of mixtapes drawing from trap, orchestral music, power electronics, and spoken word. At times, DJ Escrow or Babyfather releases do become cryptic and opaque, but for a persona as elusive as DJ Escrow, the plethora of Massiah’s radical, self-actualizing poetry is openly available on YouTube and other platforms. A dig through Massiah’s sphere of the internet will surely be a rewarding one—click the links dummy! [Micha Knauer]
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