ON REPEAT: English Teacher, Sam Akpro, Callahan & Witscher, Laura Groves, PVA, Okay Kaya, Orion Sun, Kit Sebastian, Khruangbin

[Taco Bell dong]

Back after a while because I over-extended myself for a few weeks, but I’m feeling great typing this after sleeping 14 hours! I have a lot of new songs to talk about but I will begin with a cheap plug first:

The hilarious Bridey Elliott and I have begun a monthly show called Discover! at the Lyric Hyperion in LA. The first one (Discover! The World of Fear) was a big success, and you’re invited to our next one on 11/10, which will be… Discover! The World of Swingers. I will take no further questions on the matter.

I’ll focus on some of the chiller songs in the rotation lately. As always, you can listen to them in playlist form here.

Callahan & Witscher “Boiler Room”

thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity to share my music with all of you and create content for ad revenue

I love this song about doing a Boiler Room set in 2013 lol. I also love the fake Boiler Room session with just four dudes in a room with towels draped on their heads. Also the best use of the Taco Bell dong in a song I’ve ever heard. And love that is was filmed on Myrtle Ave on the steps of Bossa Nova.

Their songs are very drenched in a 90’s sound with Cake-like vocals, , cameos from the likes of Sedona & Ana Roxanne, Douggpound-esque samples of the new Wonka movie and “the haters will sabotage me” and lyrics that sound like if “Losing My Edge” were by a thirtysomething millenial.

Here’s a good blurb from their Bandcamp:

Fans of their individual work might expect opacity, disruption, or rhythmic irregularity from their collaboration, but ‘Think Differently’ sounds like a the dopamine hit you get from 311 or Smash Mouth. It’s a punchy, crunchy, highly infectious record. How did Callahan & Witscher cut the path from the ghostly margins of avant garde musics to the gutters of post-grunge American hard rock? In the words of Callahan, “at some point, you start to need a stronger drug.”

Sam Akpro “Death By Entertainment”

“This song is about the numbing feeling of repeating the same day again and again, and how we entertain ourselves to death just to get through it – an easy cop-out from actually thinking or changing a situation.”

Holler!

Kit Sebastian “Metropolis”

These two seem like they would throw lovely dinner parties.

English Teacher “R&B”

I really vibe with this song because I too, would love to be an R&B singer, have watched so many of the COLORS shows but I simply don’t have the voice for it. I would do such a good job if I had the talent and a different body and face and clothes and overall disposition…

English Teacher recently won the Mercury Prize and have the perfect voices, body, clothes, disposition and faces for their music, so they have nothing to fucking worry about—wait why am I mad now?

Okay Kaya “Spacegirl (Shirley’s)”

I love songs about going into space.

Orion Sun “Already Gone”

NEW JERSEY REPRESENT. Orion Sun is from Mount Laurel, though it seems like she grew up in an oppressive conservative home and had to leave when she came out of the closet so I don’t know how much she wears the “dirty jerz” on her sleeve. Since then she now operates from the West Coast (hey, like me!) This song is lovely, no notes.

Laura Groves “Heaven Again”

This song is terrific. I love when Laura goes HEAVUUUUN and then a litle “deedle-deele-lee” comes in. She’s an artist from South Yorkshire who has been around for a bit but has floated under my radar despite previously being in a group with Bullion, who I’ve talked about before here.

PVA “Not”

I didn’t realize at first this was a Big Thief cover (for whatever reason I totally let Big Thiefamania pass me by), but I really enjoyed this. The band met at a house party in South London and quickly wound up in opening gigs for Black Midi and Squid. They seem to channel everything from No Wave to 808s and Heartbreak, techno, post-punk, and disco all in the mix there—which is deeply my shit, so expect to see more of them in these.

THE GOLD STANDARD:

Khruangbin “White Gloves”

I recently moved to a new area and have been trying to take long walks to clear my head. A one-hour walk from my new neighborhood in Los Angeles can be a strange experience, as you can walk from a very urban area to a very fancy suburban one in not a lot of time. There are signs in one that say, “this area protected by neighborhood watch” and in another a picture of a gun barrel pointing saying, “nothing here is worth your life, bitch” (the bitch is implied). Same message, but delivered differently.

Depending on the night, I can pass by a lot of sex workers on various street corners, which despite living in cities my whole life is still an unusual sight to me. They are often pantsless with a winter jacket on. Sometimes they’ll twerk at cars and then hop in. I’ll also pass by mothers and daughters in matching Lululemon going for late-night jogs. There’s also a ghost kitchen that dispatches numerous delivery robots with Venom’s face on them that pass by me. But strangest of all is how quiet all of it is at night. It’s all a strange experience that feels specific to this city.

I was walking through an upscale strip of stores and restaurants in Larchmont Village during one of these walks and heard this playing from a restaurant packing up it’s sidewalk seating, and the tone of the song perfectly encapsulated whatever I was feeling at the time, and seemed to fit the entire experience.