I was very excited to make my first #WITCHFORK forays into the art of the surrealist review, in the enchanted world of YIKIS. Not only could I reanimate those long dead writing urges, but I could use them to share music by wonderful people with an audience always hungry for more! This last year has put a cork in the creativity bottle and I haven’t been able to find the heart to do much of anything (I know, dear readers that a lot of you feel just the same) but I want to spread around the passion and talent of artists that I have reviewed in the past. For your listening pleasure, please listen to this mix, I chose a track from each album or in the long one-piece tracks, an excerpt.
Main image by Ruby Nekk
The YEAH I KNOW IT SUCKS Podcast – Dolly Mix 1 by Corporal Tofulung
Here are snippets of the reviews and links, please check out the artists and share some love, and of course flick them some dosh (only) if you can afford it!
Love, The Doll xx
00:20 Spartan Jet-Plex – [Resurrected #01] Fear
“We close our eyes and melt into the glorious guitar tones and the chest-swelling emotions to be discovered in Spartan Jet-Plex’s voice. We feel revived and could drift in this song forever if we were allowed. There is a bittersweet feeling in our hearts and the tears start to build, the nostrils flare and the sinuses awaken as we try to hold it in. If you spend any amount of time listening to their releases this will become a familiar (and highly recommended!) experience. We subside and our ears are wrapped in layers of sonic emotion.”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2019/11/04/spartan-jet-plex-resurrected/
https://grimalkinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/resurrected
04:30 Jen Kutler – Disembodied – Meg Noe
‘Disembodied is a series of audio pieces generated by the vibrations and movements captured by an electronic ring worn on the finger of a feminine spectrum body while bringing themselves to orgasm. The ring transmits nothing but data in a spreadsheet. This is the first step in a series of de-sexualization experiments seeking to discover the amount of separation required to de-objectify a body on the feminine spectrum. The spreadsheet is parsed in Pure Data to create a variety of MIDI files which are given synthetic voices to generate twelve sound pieces (one for each participant’s set of data). The timbres and textures draw from pure tones, field recordings, and granular synthesis to create long drones, complex harmonies and dynamic timbral shifts.’ [supplied description]
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2019/11/01/jen-kutler-disembodied/
https://eyevee.org/press/product/jen-kutler-disembodied-lp/
08:20 Rumor Milk – Blue Xmas
“While we listen we can easily imagine those people [families of 2SLGBTQ+ people who have rejected them] sitting around a table littered with the corpses of innocent creatures while the blue snowflakes fall outside. There is no joy, no conversation, their hearts are as hard as the ice forming on the roof. Meanwhile we have the sounds of joy and the emotion of love, we have Rumor Milk to lull us into a feeling of warm harmony. Lush!”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2019/12/13/rumor-milk-blue-xmas/
https://rumormilk.bandcamp.com/track/blue-xmas
11:25 Charmaine Lee – [Ggggg #02] mboobles
“It could be water but then again it might be anything at all! Soon a high kitten-like squeaking blends with the bubbles, adding a texture that makes the outside of your eyebrows go down and the insides raise up. It’s as if a poor little puss is stuck in the liquid and trying to get out. The mewing gets fainter and the bubbling gets louder, it seems our tiny friend has slipped below the surface.”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2019/10/04/charmaine-lee-ggggg/
https://charmainelee.bandcamp.com/album/ggggg
14:15 Toxic Chicken ft. Furchick – [Tinkerbells #02] empower and enable
“Next our friendly canine approaches some humans in order to extend a paw and to learn how to ’empower and enable’ people. The lesson involves using a frog croak beat & various machines that shimmy, shake, & bleep away happily. Our pup knows all of the basic commands already but learns some important new ones about helping people in need.”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2019/09/17/toxic-chicken-ft-furchick-tinkerbells/
https://dogparkrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tinkerbells
18:30 HEADLESSDOLLS – [Sol #01] Sol 1
“The music created by this artist is in the style of long-form drone with gutterings of neural texture and growlings of guitar that scrape the insides of your skull like slice of dark sunshine. Two tracks make up almost an hour of Sonic Doll Tea Party Music. If you are holding your head, you can fill it with your hot beverage of choice, swirl the liquid around with lashings of sound, and pour it straight down your neck as if you were Mike the Headless Chicken.”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2020/05/15/headlessdolls-sol/
https://sensoryassault.bandcamp.com/album/sol
24:10 Noise Bombing – [NB20: Local Time | Blue #07] Robot Kokako – Transhuman
“We can tell by the collage art ‘False Summit’ by Melanie Reed used for the covers of the double cd compilation ‘Local Time: Blue’ & ‘Local Time: Green’ that we are in for a treat. The only question we have is if we will ever reach the top of this mountain of sound, or will we be forever ascending as we traverse the terrain from which these tracks emerge: the Philippines, Australia, America, Indonesia, Canada, the UK, the Independent Republic of Aotea, and Japan. Let’s set off for the first part of our trek!”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2019/11/21/various-artists-noise-bombing-local-time-green-2/
https://noisebombing.bandcamp.com/album/nb20-local-time-blue
28:45 Don’t Do It, Neil – [B/X #07] Deep Love (feat. Berko Lover)
“As we expect from any release on this label, the cover art is so tempting and we’re very glad that none of us are called ‘Neil” so we CAN DO IT after all! Yes, we can dive in to this pink blossom fantasyland and explore the world of B/X … Berko Lover joins in for ‘Deep Love’ and it’s a magical feeling with all of these Grimalkin artists and their friends coming together to create something so beautiful. We are all feeling the saturated vibe of this song and have to take some time to lie down upon the sugar-snow carpet just to take it all in.”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/dont-do-it-neil-b-x/
https://grimalkinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/b-x
33:00 somesurprises – [somesurprises #05] Airport
“We look out of the window and see an ‘Airport’ nestled in amongst a swirl of light – our pilot is going in to land. Once safely docked we unbuckle ourselves and exit the ship, amazingly we can breathe with no problem. We enter the airport and it is a gigantic tropical garden, syrupy sweet scents drifting towards us. Brightly coloured hummingbirds flicker around us, pools hide gleaming scales beneath water flowers. The music lifts us up and embraces us like warm air.”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2019/10/08/somesurprises-somesurprises/
https://somesurprises.bandcamp.com/album/somesurprises
37:30 Stephanie Merchak – [Impacts, Reflections and Feedback #01] Impacts, Reflections and Feedback
“As soon as this composition starts we feel like we are inside a hall of mirrors, one with all of those weird bendy mirrors. One moment we have huge eyes and an elongated head on top of spindly little legs, then we are the tiniest creature imaginable. The mirrors are reflecting sounds as well as movement, we don’t know which way to look. Our ears are pulled one way and then the next. A disco ball starts spinning high up above us and the lights are fractured, bouncing off glass and eyeballs. It is all so bright, blindingly so. We wish that we had eye masks like you get on aeroplanes, to shut it out.”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2019/09/12/stephanie-merchak-impacts-reflections-and-feedback-2/
https://arell.bandcamp.com/album/impacts-reflections-and-feedback
43:45 SHIFFRA – [Crown Shyness EP #02] City in the Clouds (Bespin Rave)
“I have to be honest here and let y’all know that I haven’t been to a rave since, er, circa 1996… it was on an old boat in the city harbour of Tāmaki Makaurau and I was dressed in black & silver with tinfoil wrapped around my hair, and toting a multi-sound-effects ray gun. So though it has been a while, I feel that I will like this place!
Sure enough it has a similar vibe, a city in the clouds is not too different to an isthmus city in the sea. There are hints of thunder and rain, bursts of clattering, and the emcee bringing us back to reality when we drift off into the mist. The sound is pure and clear, as you would expect in an open-sky kind of place, it hovers and thrums over a relentless beat.”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2020/03/14/shiffre-crown-shyness-ep/
https://shiffra.bandcamp.com/album/crown-shyness-ep
49:25 Ivy Nostrum – [Genuflection Maps #01] When It’s Sunny, We Sit Outside
“Someone seems to be engrossed in typing while the world passes by outside, descriptions of fantastic places rolling off the keys. We are kneeling in the sun, blissfully happy to be entertained as the typewriting machine starts morphing into a chime contraption. Suddenly it stops and we realise that we have arrived in a whole new territory, a paradise of insects chattering away to each other. They are chirruping so hard that their wings start creating a great wind which is temporarily calmed by a strange being playing a stringed instrument. The being (our guide?) puts down the instrument and pulls a radio out of their sack. The insects are in ecstasies over this and fly close to us – we are lost in the music.”
https://yeahiknowitsucks.wordpress.com/2019/09/06/ivy-nostrum-genuflection-maps/
https://nostrumivy.bandcamp.com/album/genuflection-maps
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Yeah I Know It Sucks 