On February 21st, a new Opaque was released, Total Hudson Worship. It consists of a single track of 39 minutes and 19 seconds of pure HNW. It can be considered – as may be evident – both a continuation of the recent slew of releases centered around the Moncler Hudson, as well as an entry into the different Worship series, both the various Total Alpin Worship releases (the original, the second entry and the third entry) as well as the extensive Moncler Worship series, consisting of a current total of 29 entries of 10 minutes each.
Another year has flown by; here are some of the things that I enjoyed immensely in 2021.
My favourite music of 2021, like in years prior, was a mixture of music released in 2021 and music released earlier which I only discovered or really got around to listening to this year. While I feel 2020 was primarily a year of songs, 2021 was a year of songs and albums; as such, a list for both the best songs I (re)discovered in 2021 and the albums I enjoyed most this year. Two notes of interest: two Bad Gyal songs (despite my usual and entirely arbitrary rule to feature each artist only once), one a recent official release, one a brilliant older track only to be found on YouTube; somehow, despite certainly having listened to A Promise before, Apistat Commander didn’t really hit home until this year, but then it really, really did, and as such made it to the list as a new discovery (something somewhat similar happened to The Microphones’ II. Solar System). The full list – in a somewhat lazily construed alphabetical order – is below.
AiNA THE END – NaNa ⏵ Bad Gyal – NO PIERDO NADA ⏵ Bad Gyal – Slim Thick ⏵ Caroline Polacheck – Hit Me Where It Hurts ⏵ Clipping. – ’96 Neve Campbell ⏵ Crying – A Sudden Gust ⏵ Elysia Crampton – Petrichrist ⏵ Full Of Hell – Armory Of Obsidian Glass ⏵ Himera – It’s U (Pearl Version) ⏵
Hitsujibungaku – ghost ⏵ Liturgy – HAJJ ⏵ Luna Kaguya – NEW ERA ⏵ Nick Hook, Mi$$il, Lao – Tardes de Verano ⏵ Patricia Taxxon – Brightest Sunrise ⏵ Rakky Ripper – Coyote ⏵ Seiko Oomori – 私は面白い絶対面白いたぶん ⏵ Slayyyter – Over This! ⏵
TAICHU – RACE ⏵ TECH GRL – Mejor Sin Ti ⏵ The Microphones – II. Solar System ⏵ The Mountain Goats – The Slow Parts On Death Metal Albums ⏵ TUYU – Compared Child ⏵ Utada Hikaru – 誰にも言わない ⏵ Wasuta – 雨のキモチ ⏵ Xiu Xiu – Apistat Commander ⏵
Of the albums listed below, some have an album track featured as one of my favourite tracks above; for others, however, my enjoyment of the album has been an immersive experience in which I found a selection of any favourite track impossible – hence not necessarily full overlap between the artists featured on the list of songs and those featured on the list of albums. With some semblance of order imposed, the list is posted below.
Liturgy – H.A.Q.Q. ⏵ Clipping. – Visions Of Bodies Being Burned ⏵ Crying – Beyond The Fleeting Gales ⏵ 放射性Hi5 – 9.0水面下Megathrust ⏵ Full Of Hell – Weeping Choir ⏵ Code Orange – Underneath ⏵ Otoboke Beaver – Itekoma Hits ⏵ Utada Hikaru – 初恋 ⏵ Sintel – Top Ten most Epic fish of all time ⏵ DJ Hardvore – Princess Lumina’s Dance Party (Starring Barbie as Princess Lumina) ⏵ Elysia Crampton – American Drift ⏵ Luna Kaguya – ××× ⏵ Giant Claw – Mirror Guide ⏵ Bad Gyal – Warm Up ⏵ Sueuga Kamau – Como El Viento, Vuelo ⏵
Some other musical things of note: Stickerbush Symphony, a track that that garnered fame as a checkpoint on YouTube, really resonated with me this year despite not having any nostalgia for it (I’ve never played the game) and was ambient tapestry for plenty of work days; the Bad Gyal YouTube nightcore rabbit hole is absolutely worth getting lost in; pawning off physicals as soon as they appear on Spotify bit me in the ass, because they can disappear again, too (Palace’s Arise Therefore, specifically, I had sold last year, and so I found myself having to buy it again this year); there wasn’t much in K-pop that excited me, but I found a lot of little gems in J-pop.
For reading, 2021 was definitely a good year, shattering last year’s record 55 books by this year’s neat 100 (I am currently 500 pages into Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 but don’t expect to finish the last 400 pages today) – and a diverse bunch of it, with some hefty tomes being part of those. Needless to say, not everything was equally brilliant, though I managed to drag myself through even those works I found less exciting (even the absolutely soul-crushingly boring The Light Garden of The Angel King by Peter Levi – beautiful title, horrible book) save but one – about halfway through The Book Of Disquiet, I shelved this collection of writings that despite all their supposed brilliance came off as little more than writings one might have encountered mid 00s on some teen’s MySpace. Perhaps, of course, this lack of appreciation is not so much The Book Of Disquiet’s fault but rather my own; equally, the way in which I attempted to read it – cover to cover – was perhaps also not best suited to it. However, I’ve not looked back and am currently not particularly keen to, either.
Fortunately, there was a lot of beauty to be found, too, both among the fiction and non-fiction works I read. The novels that left a most lasting impression this year were David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Paul Auster’s The Music Of Chance and Sayaka Murata’s two translated novels, Convenience Store Woman and, especially, Earthlings. I also read through the entirety of Matt Haig’s fiction oeuvre and found The Humans and The Midnight Library in particular to be pleasant, enjoyable reads.
The non-fiction I read was diverse, and much of it fantastic. I delved into North-Korea, reading a host of defector’s memoirs, as well as Barbara Demick’s excellent Nothing To Envy, the equally fascinating The Great Successor by Anna Fifield and the great and insightful The Real North Korea by Andrei Lankov.. I also started exploring the oeuvre of Svetlana Alexievich, truly an amazing voice (or, rather, multitude of voices) in her niche. Chernobyl Prayer was perhaps my favourite of her works I’ve read so far; devastatingly beautiful and absolutely harrowing at the same time. I also read more Kapuscinski, whose The Shadow Of The Sun I found especially captivating this year (and whose The Emperor reminded me of Alexievich). Other non-fiction works I found particularly impressive this year were bell hooks’ Ain’t I A Woman, Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons Of Math Destruction, Meredith Broussard’s Artificial Unintelligence, Angela Y. Davis’ Women, Race and Class, Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father, Christopher McDougall’s Born To Run, David Foster Wallace’s Consider The Lobster, and, last but not least, Michael Pollan’s amazing Cooked, which I found, in addition to a wonderful book about food and cooking, to be inspirational and instructive regarding life in general. Without further ado, the full list:
Margaret Morris – Left To Our Own Devices
Gabrielle Jackson – Pain And Prejudice
Ryszard Kapuściński – The Shadow Of The Sun
Emily Nagoski – Come As You Are
Iris Bohnet – What Works
Peter Levi – The Light Garden Of The Angel King
danah boyd – It’s Complicated
James A. Moore – Chaos Bleeds
Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein – Data Feminism
Aaron Michael Kerner and Jonathan L. Knapp – Extreme Cinema: Affective Strategies In Transnational Media
Mark Adams – Meet Me In Atlantis
Frans de Waard – This Is Supposed To Be A Record Label
Sara Wachter-Boettcher – Technically Wrong
Christopher Golden – Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher’s Guide
Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri – Ghost Work
Cathy O’Neil – Weapons Of Math Destruction
Monisha Rajesh – Around The World In 80 Trains
Zeynep Tufekci – Twitter And Tear Gas
Meredith Broussard – Artificial Unintelligence
Modes Of Criticism 4: Radical Pedagogy
Angela Y. Davis – Women, Race And Class
Virginia Eubanks – Automating Inequality
Dr Paul Julien – Kampvuren Langs De Evenaar
Angela Y. Davis – Are Prisons Obsolete?
Barbara Demick – Nothing To Envy
Kanae Minato – Penance
Yeonmi Park – In Order To Live
Kanae Minato – Confessions
Hisham D. Aidi – Rebel Music
Paul Theroux – Deep South
Matt Haig – The Midnight Library
Matt Haig – The Humans
Anna Fifield – The Great Successor
Hannah Bervoets – Wat Wij Zagen
Kang Chol-Hwan – The Aquariums Of Pyongyang
Matt Haig – How To Stop Time
Lola Olufemi – Feminism, Interrupted
Matt Haig – The Dead Fathers Club
David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
Matt Haig – The Possession Of Mr Cave
Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian
Eunsun Kim – A Thousand Miles To Freedom
Matt Haig – The Last Family In England
Hyeonseo Lee – The Girl With Seven Names
Zahra Hankir (ed.) – Our Women On The Ground
Frantz Fanon – Black Skin, White Masks
Matt Haig – The Radleys
Darcy Lockman – All The Rage
bell hooks – Ain’t I A Woman
Thomas Pynchon – Against The Day
Chuck Palahniuk – Fight Club
Michael Pollan – Cooked
Thomas Pynchon – The Crying Of Lot 49
Ryszard Kapuściński – The Emperor
Svetlana Alexievich – Chernobyl Prayer
Masaji Ishikawa – A River In Darkness
Arata Kanoh – The Place Promised In Our Early Days
Lieve Joris – Op De Vleugels Van De Draak
Nick Hornby – Fever Pitch
Kenzaburo Oë – Voetballen In 1860
Svetlana Alexievich – Last Witnesses
Irene Vallejo – Papyrus
Sayaka Murata – Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata – Earthlings
Ryszard Kapuściński – Travels With Herodotus
Raymond Queneau – Exercises In Style
Hannah Arendt – The Freedom To Be Free
Leslie T. Chang – Factory Girls
Thomas Pynchon – Bleeding Edge
James Joyce – Dubliners
Herman Melville – Moby Dick
Ryszard Kapuściński – Nobody Leaves
David Foster Wallace – Consider The Lobster
Jennifer Wallis (ed.) – Fight Your Own War
Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell – The Disaster Artist
S.D. Perry – Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
S.D. Perry – Resident Evil: Caliban Cove
Christopher McDougall – Born To Run
Thomas Pynchon – Mason & Dixon
Stuart Stevens – Malaria Dreams
Jang Jin-Sung – Dear Leader
bell hooks – Teaching To Transgress
Carson McCullers – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Dennis Cooper – God Jr.
Svetlana Alexievich – The Unwomanly Face Of War
Samrat Upadhyay – Arresting God In Kathmandu
Chuck Palahniuk – Rant
Koji Suzuki – Ring
Koji Suzuki – Birthday
James Baldwin – The Fire Next Time
Junichiro Tanizaki – Het Geheim Van De Heer Van Musashi
Andrei Lankov – The Real North Korea
Makoto Shinkai / Asahi Akisaka – 5 Centimeters Per Second + Children Who Chase Lost Voices
Paul Auster – The Invention Of Solitude
Wes Anderson – The Grand Budapest Hotel
Paul Auster – The Music Of Chance
Christina Figueres & Tom Rivett-Carnac – The Future We Choose
David Spiegelhalter – The Art Of Statistics
Sherwood Anderson – Winesburg, Ohio
Loung Ung – First They Killed My Father
Finally, here is an overview of the works I released this year, with particular thanks to the people who worked hard to release those beautiful physicals: Petar, K., Thomas and Eric.
Aisha Kandisha – This Blood Drenched Succubus, She Possesses The Black Waters, Haunts The Shadows, Eats The Skin Of Men (digital, Santuario De Sangre) ⏵
Demon Cabal – Through The Halls Of Eternity (digital, Santuario De Sangre) ⏵
Opaque – Black Duvetica Diadema (bizcard, self-released) ⏵
Opaque – Black Moncler Hudson II (C40, Field Strike) ⏵
On November 21st, the excellent Field Strike released a new Opaque tape, Black Moncler Hudson II. The tape features a single track of 19 minutes and 50 seconds and was issued in an edition of 30 on marbled lilac tapes (the same tapes were used for the HNW tape swap release Duvetica Diadema Princess). The wall featured on this tape starts at full blast and, over the course of its almost 20-minute runtime, slowly deteriorates into utterly minimal crackles and pops. The lay-out and design for this release were done by myself.
The careful reader will notice that, indeed, this tape is called Black Moncler Hudson II – which does not, in fact, make it the follow-up to 2020’s Moncler Hudson (although, of course, it is a follow-up in spirit). Rather, Black Moncler Hudson II is the follow-up to the yet-to-be-released Black Moncler Hudson – which is in the works as of yet but of which I will publish more details when the time is right. In any case, this explains this release’s particular title.
Being, nonetheless and of course, a follow-up in spirit to the aforementioned Moncler Hudson, this is another release which is dedicated entirely and whole-heartedly to the evidently stunning Moncler Hudson, which has managed to easily yet surprisingly catapult itself to the top of my favourite down jacket list, perhaps even surpassing the amazing Moncler Alpin, which had always undoubtedly been my undisputed favourite. In October, the Hudson was made available again for this year’s winter collection, and it is presently available in black (the dark grey is entirely sold out). I recently added it to my own collection, and it is absolutely glorious.
You can listen to and purchase Black Moncler Hudson II here. I will also have some copies available myself soon; feel free to contact me if you’re interested.
공중부양 ⛰️ The Humming Of Stones is the 47th release on Absent Erratum. This submission features one track at a total of 47 minutes and 59 seconds. It was released on 19 December 2021.
Absent Erratum hovers just above the dust and the pebbles, a shaded static occupying the space between her skin and the soil; soundlessly, she summons the wandering spirits, their names only audible to flowers, winds and sunsets – tenderly, she caresses them as they settle beside her – nimbly, she collects the scents and colours that coil around her body. In this garden of light, everything is sacred and nothing is forgotten: every stone is a monument, every breeze is a temple. Here, every breath lasts forever.
Today the excellent Summer Interlude Records, run by Thomas Puopolo of Scarlet Diva and a slew of other excellent projects, such as Male Slut Society and Fistfuck, released a split C20 featuring Opaque on the A-side and Scarlet Diva on the B-side.
The Opaque track is a stuttering, clattering wall that is dedicated to a wonderful recent Moncler design, the elegant Rhin, which has been available in pink, yellow and – as featured here – black. The B-side features an excellent Scarlet Diva wall with a great, deep yet detailed crackle. The tape was released in an edition of 25 copies and features a J-card designed by myself, combining trademark features of Opaque artwork – down jacket picture, Helvetica type – and Scarlet Diva artwork – layout, background, its photograph.
You can pick up your own copy of the split tape through the Summer Interlude Bandcamp, and, of course, you can also listen to the release in full on the Summer Interlude Bandcamp right here.
liz ✉️ second skin \ enveloppeis the 46th release on Absent Erratum. This submission features one track at a total of 40 minutes and 0 seconds. It was released on 15 September 2021.
Absent Erratum drags translucent, weightless relics of a wall along the floor behind her, insomniac and elegiac, the faint thuds and drums of shuffles, trailing, footsteps merging, then emerging as a spirit of clay and sound: stretched thin and bound to Earth, terrestrial undertones surrounding her private place amidst bricks and secrecy. An awareness presents itself to her, mingled with the scent of plums and apricots; a tenderness nests itself into her chest, recursive, embedded endlessly into itself; a ritual is established, lovingly, performed in times and places unlit and unsounding; her task is to guard what is ancient and primitive – to shield it from the light.
After an almost year-long hiatus from the series, today a new entry was added to the Moncler Worship series: volume 29. The cover features the excellent Moncler Parana.
I already alluded to Minute Walls in a previous post dedicated to another social media only project, Santuario De Sangre. While Santuario De Sangre in many ways exhibits characteristics typical of any other online label – streaming format, static cover image, conventional album length, to name some – with its key difference being that it isn’t available on a platform typically used for streaming sound only (such as Bandcamp or Soundcloud), Minute Walls is a different enterprise altogether. It inhabits a space that is not typically used for full-on music releases, period – Instagram – and also does away with some of those more traditional remnants that Santuario De Sangre retains: there are no static cover images (the videos, in full, comprise the artwork) and the length for each release is dictated fully by the restrictions Instagram places on the end user, meaning that each track (including the label coda – more on this below) is only a minute in length.
Much conventionalism surrounding HNW has it that walls need to be long, and while examples to the opposite certainly exist (and have since the earliest days), it is certainly clear that, by far, most HNW releases tend to go for long form. Reasons for this may be manifold: the lengthier the wall, the deeper the immersion, it is sometimes argued. Another motivation may be that to achieve extremity in every dimension (not just in sound and imagery, for instance) the wall should pose a challenge to the listener also in sheer endurance. No doubt, most wall heads will agree that the more extreme releases in the genre are those that run to considerable length (an article on the longest walls can be found in the first issue of A Wall Of Text).
Minute Walls, in that respect, is a relatively accesible HNW venture, requiring of the listener no more than a minute of her time for each release (and, as it stands, no more than eight minutes for the full discography). And with the ubiquitousness of Instagram – those not having the app installed on the equally ubiqutious smartphones being the exception these days – accessing the material is very straightforward. Just follow Minute Walls and any new release will automatically pop up in your feed: digital, bite-size, short attention span-friendly walls amidst all your other social media needs! Of course, the true intent in using Instagram as a medium is, at heart, to provide a level of inconvenience. If anything, it requires you to keep your screen active (unlike YouTube, nowadays, Instagram does not have a ‘music service’ that allows you to listen to audio only) as the walls are not available in any other format other than as Instagram videos – and the fact that it requires the use of Instagram may (perhaps, should) to some be in and of itself an inconvience (necessitating either installing the app or accessing through a browser on desktop, where navigating away pauses the video). There is something of an irony – some will argue even a definite lamentable state – in the fact that a niche, outsider scene such as HNW relies so strongly on pervasive capitalist social media (and indeed, my own departure from major social media platforms is the reason Minute Walls has not seen a new release for a good while – what a bind!).
In any case, the creation of Minute Walls, and its brief curation, was an enjoyable challenge. I love working in short form walls myself, and Minute Walls (it may be evident that minute here is to mean both extremely small and a time unit of 60 seconds) provided the perfect opportunity. Additionally, in the vast majority of my projects the sonic and visual sides had always been of equal importance, with sound influencing artwork decisions, images providing inspirations for recording, a sort of symbiosis that Minute Walls provided the perfect context for to practice even more intensely. I set to work to create the first two releases myself, creating two walls and their accompanying videos for two special projects, Opaque and Okujo No Sukima Shiroi Sora. Both have distinct but recognizable sonic and visual identities (I’d be inclined to say): Opaque is dedicated as much to experimental walls on the harsher side of the spectrum as it is to down jacket appreciation, while Okujo No Sukima Shiroi Sora is a restrained, minimalistic project, with the walls generally being very minimal, and the artwork consistently presenting cleanly laid out stills from J-pop videos (the project name is derived from a brilliant song by Rev.from DVL) on oceans of white background.
At present, Minute Walls is inactive, though, of course, its discography is readily available (and at a mere eight minutes at that) through its Instagram page.
Outerstellar: Music For The Mirror Image Of This Universe is the 45th release on Absent Erratum. It is the first compilation featured on the label. In addition to the intro and outro tracks, it features 9 contributions that together run for a total of 40 minutes and 30 seconds. It was released on August 2nd, 2021.
S V E N K A Y 