ALWAYS EVERYTHING

NEW SOUNDS // 100% SILK

Here at AE we’re awaiting an impending net-assisted musical singularity with all the fervour of a wild-eyed evangelical preacher screaming himself hoarse on a city street corner. So considering we’ve been tracking an increasingly obvious crossover point between (largely US-based) lo-fi/experimental/noise sounds and club headspaces, it’s been interesting – and unsurprising, I suppose - to witness the launch of Not Not Fun’s new dancefloor-centric offshoot, 100% Silk.

While NNF’s output can be patchy, they’ve also been responsible for some of the finest records to have emerged from the US underground over the last few years. Last year in particular, Ensemble Economique’s Psychical, Sun Araw’s On Patrol and LA Vampires & Matrix Metals’ stunning So Unreal captured our hearts, discovering worlds that were by turns nightmarish, elegiac and celebratory, sprawling outward in all directions. But they also found common ground with some of the darker dance sounds we’ve been loving recently - Psychical was shot through with dubbed-out vibes and a heady, eyes down feel that sits perfectly in the mix alongside the likes of Shackleton and King Midas Sound, and So Unreal’s glossy, half-remembered eighties feel could quite easily bed down alongside Hyetal’s stargazing ‘Phoenix’.

In keeping with its sister label’s heat-hazy, scorched H-Pop aesthetic, 100% Silk’s first couple of releases have a distinctly retrospective feel. And while they’re intended as separate dancefloor artefacts they aren’t so far off much of NNF’s back catalogue – both Ital’s Ital’s Theme EP and The Deeep’s Muddy Tracks are swamped in the past while simultaneously staring into the future. The idea of looking backward in order to move forward is a pretty strange paradox, but it’s one which has been making itself felt across the board recently (Demdike Stare’s resolutely futuristic music being crafted entirely from a library of creaking, ancient samples ‘n’ hardware; the acid revival in bass music, with the likes of Blawan and Pangaea churning out modern takes on its vicious scattergun approach). And speaking of acieed, ‘Ital’s Theme’ itself is a blazing 303-styled jack, all jagged edges and percussion that falls just on the right side of tinny. 

For my money, The Deeep’s Muddy Tracks is the better of the label’s first two releases. It’s deep and trip-hoppy (in a good way, mind, rather than falling under that label’s tendency to mean ‘slightly coffee table’), layering blissed-out female vocals over a muggy backdrop of droning low-end and cracked beats. And lurking beneath the surface is this sense of dread, permeating everything but never quite rising to the surface – in that sense it’s like an embryonic counterpart to Psychical, where fear and darkness are left unspoken and implicit rather than brought out into the harsh light of day. And the heavily effected dub guitars of the ‘Grand Am Version’ on the flipside are pure Sun Araw psych, perfect warm fodder for February.

There’s more to come on 100% Silk soon from LA Vampires, Cuticle, Maria Minerva and more – keep a close eye open. While at the moment it’s perhaps more interesting than essential, given NNF’s record for putting out the odd slab of utter brilliance, it’s not unreasonable to expect the same of its new, club-centric twin.

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Some interesting developments forthcoming on AE. Watch this space.

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Rory