THE DELI

“I used to want to be up on the music blogs / […] / I may not have a million but I’m chillin’ dawg”

KOTA The Friend is hardly a slacker but he could play one on TV. A multi-instrumentalist who excelled early on as a first-chair trumpet player who taught himself bass and guitar while going on to hold down two jobs and attend performing arts school eventually becoming a producer, photographer, visual artist and interior designer in addition to a musician, the man is actually a polymath if you do the math. Plus on his 2020 full-length Everything KOTA somehow managed to score features from such obscure names (sarcasm alert) as Lakeith Stanfield, Joey Bada$$, and Lupita Nyong’o which is hardly the work of an underachiever. A true DIY artist, it’s been reported elsewhere that KOTA will take on mundane tasks himself ranging from flyer design to directly answering fans’ queries, all the while turning down three major-label offers (so far) in order to maintain his independence. 

And yet, on his latest single “Dragon,” he sounds as laid back as a panda bear that just got laid. (apologies for the mixed animal metaphors, KOTA is actually named for a baby bear of the non-panda variety) Opening with a loping, start-stop jazzy guitar loop, KOTA laconically drops lines like “I do what I want, I go where I please / but still I want more things” over a beat that sounds like an outtake from the Lofi Beats to Relax/Study/Quarantine To videos–sonic shorthand for sitting at one’s desk and staring off into space all day. The conversational flow and mellow vibes on “Dragon” can be deceptive, however, tinged as they are with regret, doubt, and deceit lurking around the corner. Likewise for KOTA’s flow itself, laidback on the surface but twisty at times and shifting relative to the main guitar riff.

Not unlike a good friend IRL, KOTA The Friend puts the listener at ease but doesn’t stoop to please, giving it to you straight: "Before it gets better, it’s gonna get worse" so you better “Skip the fast pass, be knowledgeable, that’s the bag bag / polish all your skills, set your price, then you tax that.” Sage advice as 2020 slouches towards its end. (Jason Lee)

Following a few bars of strummed guitar Kierst declares “it’s nothing more than a crush but / I’m holding my breath” and I believe her. For one thing she repeats the second line four times in a row and indeed crushes are nothing if not obsessive, and while singing the line four times whilst holding one’s breath defies logic, crushes are nothing if not illogical. Check and check.

A pathway to love turned into a a cul-de-sac of hopeless hope: “Tinged blue in the face no it’s not too late.” A distressing new fetish for emotional distress: “An unwanted switch that’s leaving me reeling.” Check and check.

Keirst’s lyrics here scan perfectly in a song that slowly and steadily and almost imperceptibly builds tension–but crucially never achieves release. Layer by layer you hear the addition of ride cymbal flourishes, plaintive guitar wails, hints of bass and perhaps keyboard and finally some insistent drumming over a late-in-the-game declaration to “love you to death.” And then like that it’s over. And you want it to start all over again. (Jason Lee)

On his third collection of 2020 so far (quarantine goals!) Burnt Umber Penumbra opens with a track called “Landings” that with its percolating digital oscillations and warm hazy drones does indeed sound like a good soundtrack for a lunar landing. On the next track (“Scamz”) the listener is brought back down to earth cold-opening with a voice message left by a robotic female from an unidentified government agency, promising “you will be taken under custody by the local cops as there are four serious allegations pressed on your name at this moment,” followed by a fuzzed-out looped beat and heavily-reverbed repeating chords. Whether this message pertains to four overdue parking tickets or a quadruple homicide we may never know but the mystery’s the thing.

Based on no evidence whatsoever I would hypothesize that Burnt Umber Penumbra got his name from one of those band-name-generating-algorithms that in this case takes a discontinued Crayola color and combines it with a word or phrase likely to be uttered by Neil deGrasse Tyson. If so, consider yourself lucky not to be listening to Prussian Blue Trigonometric Parallax. Anyway based on a minute-or-two of extensive Internet research I learned that a “penumbra” is a physical phenomenon equivalent to a shadow of a shadow. So go ahead and light up a jazz cigarette and ponder that for a moment and while you’re at it put on this album because it’s perfect music for just this sort of mental activity–on B.U.P.3 you’ll hear echoes of everything from Tangerine Dream to M83 ready to take you on a journey to the center of the mind. Space is the place indeed.

As value added Burnt Umber Penumbra’s video output so far further solidifies the mystical aesthetic of his music. A crystal pyramid of unknown origin features consistently for instance, and he apparently has the ability to play clarinet through a Covid-style bandana face covering (see below). Which is pretty cool and so is the music. But consider yourself forewarned, there’s some magickal forces at work here. (Jason Lee)

MOTHERMARY aren’t your average twin sister duo who managed to escape both Montana and Mormonism to resettle in Brooklyn and make art-damaged darkwave electro-pop as a form of cleansing "sacrilegious ritual" before eventually teaming up with Italians Do It Better maestro Johnny Jewel who placed their latest musical offering entitled "Resurrection" (timely title) on his third installment of the After Dark compilation series featuring label stablemates such as Chromatics, Desire, and Double Mixte.

“Resurrection” is a moody come-hither heavy-breather chock full of pregnant pauses, sawtooth synths, acid basslines and ‘80s electro-tom fills. You can listen to the song at 34:10 below but really why not just listen to the entire After Dark 3 comp because who couldn’t use a good hour-plus of dark synthy sexiness to cleanse the palate of the past fours years. And heck, while you’re at it just go ahead and buy the triple-LP on “Green Slime Vinyl” because Happy Days Are Here Again. [addendum: music video for "Resurrection" also included below]

“Resurrection is our version of the story of Selene, the Moon goddess in Greek mythology. She finds herself in love with a mortal she can’t help but visit every night. Their relationship strained… by his own mortality & natural barriers of the night… tempts her lover to choose eternal sleep so that they may resurrect their love every evening” -MOTHERMARY

File Under: Italo–disco. Giallo soundtracks. The Neon Demon. Twins of Evil. Twin Peaks: The Return. Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner. John Carpenter in the disco. That scene in the Terminator with the chain-link fence new wave dance club. And of course that scene in the Star Wars Holiday Special where an elderly Wookie masturbates to a hologram of Diahann Carroll. And so on. (Jason Lee)