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Artist News Release Round-Up Releases
Release round-up: Thurston Moore, Squarepusher, Karin Park and a weird Ariel Pink thing
By Aly Barchi | Published on Monday 17 February 2014
Rounding up the latest release news…
Thurston Moore has confirmed his second solo LP is ‘on’, so that’s nice. He appears to be spearheading it with a new single titled ‘Heavenmental’, which if its title looks familiar, it’s because it was first released on Moore’s non-solo band Chelsea Light Moving’s eponymous album of 2013. Which is a bit awkward, since he’s now billing it as a solo track. Though hopefully CLM are okay with it. But who knows? Thurston doesn’t care either way, because here is his new and not at all pre-existing ‘solo’ song ‘Heavenmental’!
Also, Squarepusher has made an AI EP with some actual robots. Created by a team of roboticists in Japan, the trio of bots, or “music-performing systems”, or Z Machines, are programmed to function as self-playing guitars and a drum kit, only with different capabilities to those of a human musician. So for instance, says Squarepusher (real name Tom Jenkinson): “The robot guitar player can play much faster than a human ever could, but there is no amplitude control”.
He explains: “In this project the main question I’ve tried to answer is ‘can these robots play music that is emotionally engaging?’ I have long admired the player piano works of Conlon Nancarrow and Gyorgy Ligeti. Part of the appeal of that music has to do with hearing a familiar instrument being ‘played’ in an unfamiliar fashion. For me there has always been something fascinating about the encounter of the unfamiliar with the familiar”.
Cool. Square and the Z Machines’ first collaboration, a five track set, will be released via Warp in April. In the mean time here’s a relevant clip:
Shamanic pop artist Karin Park, from Scandanavian climes, has shared a standalone (so far, anyway) track titled ‘Shine’. The first sign of life from Park’s camp since her last LP, ‘Highwire Poetry’, she’ll release it as a single in seven days time (on 24 Feb), beside remixes by Let The Machines Do The Work, Lovegrove and Hannah Wants & Chris Lorenzo. Preview it here:
And finally, a weird Ariel Pink thing (pictured). It’s really a single, titled ‘Lana Del Rey’, by apparently real-life ‘rapper’ Jerry James. Pink (again, ‘apparently’) is behind the beat via Raw Deal, his and Charli XCX collaborator Justin Raisen’s hit-making team. Pink appears in the single’s official clip in a wig and cap. It’s all pretty strange. And here he is:
