#single reviews

Though I was only recently introduced to the sounds of Dai Nakamura through Growing Bin Records, the composer and producer has been active since the early 2000s, working solo as Nuback, and also collectively with bands such as Bank andBlank Music. Much of Nakamura’s work finds its home on the artist’s own Too Young Records, and back in 2013, the label digitally released Nuback’s Good Bye Summer, AgainEP, two tracks of which were eventually selected by Growing Bin for the When the Party’s Over / Heartbeat Summer 7”. Nostalgic city-pop, heart throb indie, and dub-kissed chillwave thread together as sparse rhythms and big bottomed basslines groove beneath swirls of ethereal synthesis…these aqueous pads, soaring leads, and starlight sparkles that swim aside funk guitar licks and swooning soul vocalizations. And there is a distinct sense throughout—helped in no small part by the title of each track, and of the EP from which they are sourced—that the music here is meant to function as a wistful love letter to the end of summer…to bittersweet remembrances of coastal highway cruises, afternoon beach parties, late night dances, and early mornings spent watching the sun ascend across magnificent expanses of gold and blue. 

Nuback - When the Party’s Over / Heartbeat Summer (Growing Bin Records, 2020)
“When the Party’s Over” begins with glimmering synth chords that stretch through ping-pong echoes, their decay trails flowing towards a gorgeous summer horizon. Rubber band boogie bass pounds and broken kick and snare beats hold down a skeletal groove, while further layers of oceanic synthesis swell into the stereo field. Cluster of starshine shimmer in the sky, pads move like liquid light waves, and majestic melodies are buried beneath layers of sweeping filter mesmerism while in the distance, electric guitars riff through multi-hued clouds of seafoam. As we back down into washing synthetic wavefronts and barely-there kick and snare rhythms, Nakamura croons romantically around the mix…breathing sensuously…voice double tracked and spoken close…conversational and sweetly naïve. Solar guitar hooks and layers of blissed out electronica rush in for a sort of chorus as Nakamura’s voice backs into a sadboy indie serenade, with the vibe sleepy eyed, slightly stoned, and softly psychedelic. During the bridge, hazy pads hover aside the vocals and bulbous basslines move beneath blasts of galactic magic, with sonorous soul hooks and radio AOR lyricisms flowing out into the ether. Sometimes, further guitar layers scat out spacey funk riffs in support while overhead, kosmische arps sparkle like liquid diamonds. There’s a moment where things slowly devolve towards a false ending…the track seeming to vaporize as drums and pads wash out beneath bell tree cascades and synthetic firefly dances. But as echoing space guitars decay and blurred electronics mimic a mirage, a timbale roll rockets the track back to life, leading to one last soulful summer pop swing that slowly fades into silence.

Over on the B-side sits “Heartbeat Summer,” where jazz snares and house claps work together over clipped kicks and smoldering e-piano romantics. The background overflows with chittering echo manipulations and broken machine oscillations, though these sounds swirl far in the distance, leaving room for sub bass dub bubbles to guide summery group vocalizations. Nakamura’s multi-layered voice moves through wordless soul-hooks…like the backline singers for some Motown diva transported into a spell of downtempo seafloor balearica. Synthesizers paint the air in shades of aquamarine as they reach out across infinite oceans and futuristic wobble basslines sing strange lullabies in support. Metalloid vapors breath and sparkling strands of crystal break free from the murk as they introduce anthemic guitar harmonies…these sky-seeking fusion pop licks that vaguely remind me of PInback…a sort of flamboyant six string duel repurposed for indie heartache and twilit romance. Following this, the flubbing spaceage bass wobbles return to sing alien sea shanties and woven threads of starshine synthesis resume wrapping around the heart, their melodies carrying the spirit away towards a paradise unknown. And all throughout the background, a calming cloud of dissonance continuously mutates, from which psychosonic threads push out into view before receding into nothingness.

(images from my personal copy)

I first visited the esoteric world of Chambre Noire back in 2019, when the radio show and mix series made the transition to record label with the release of Puma & the Dolphin’s PrimitiveEP (see my review here). Following this, the label turned its sights on the work of VЯOMB, a cult artist who has been operating for decades in Quebec’s experimental underground. Though I regretfully didn’t find time to review the Origami12” last year, I’ll take space here to mention that across the release, VЯOMB mangles and mutates textures of warehouse rave and acid techno into expanses of alien industrial madness, and twists, bends, and contorts an array of sci-fi sound structures into ever-evolving displays of electro-acoustic intensity. As for Chambre Noire’s third outing CN003—which is the focus of this piece—the label changed its approach toward limited intimacy by dropping a small-press lathe cut 10”. The A-side of this release is given over to Fareed (aka Benoit Legrain), who whips up a fried and frenzied slab of techno tribalism, wherein sub-bass pressure waves and stuttering club drums anchor hip-house vocal cut ups and layers of polyrhythmic madness. And splitting the release with Fareed is Peter Bunzinelli, the person behind Chambre Noire and a name readers of this blog should be well familiar with, for I’ve also discussed his work in the context of the amazing _Montreal Pleiades _mini-comp on Cosmic Tones, and his La Foresta Segreta b​/​w The Five Tibetans7”. Here on the B-side of CN003, Bunzinelli throws down a slab of breakbeat rave sorcery, though rather than employ euphoric melodies, trance-like atmospherics, or liquid acid lines, he instead shrouds the rhythms in unintelligible radio transmissions and layers of demented noise, dissonant distortion, and caustic drone.

Fareed / Bunzinelli - CN003 (Chambre Noire, 2020) Fareed’s “Nord” begins with hypnotizing feminine vocal cut ups and industrial beats rolling through static. A massive kick drum enters—as do hand drums and energetic cymbal phrases—and the whole thing beings taking on the feel of a tribal dancefloor stomp. Beats momentarily pull away as a panorama of metals moves across the spectrum, and as we barrel back down into the groove, stormfronts of pounding sub bass beat against the body while the lysergic hip hop vocal samples are further cut-up and pushed towards abstraction. Entrancing displays of metallic percussion move in and out of the mix and hand drums work through ever-evolving polyrhythms while double-time cymbal patterns pulse at lightspeed.  At some point the whole spectrum filters through a white noise wormhole before slamming back towards rainforest techno ceremonialism, and as bursts of computronic noise pan side-to-side, the rolling polyrhythms grow ever more manic and intense. Whooshing engines rev up and down in pitch before the mix reduces to metalloid clatter, and as the ritualized rhythm storms return—bringing with it subsonic basslines that threaten to cave in the chest—an infinitude of drum rolls spreads out in every direction…as if crazed shamanic beings in uncountable numbers are beating forest drums and sheets of steel at inhuman speeds. It all comes together as a strange merging of hip house modernism and militant techno tribalism, wherein chopped hip hop vocal flows are repurposed as ecstatic chants amidst an ever-morphing ritual of sub bass physicality and hyperkinetic drum psychedelia. And as the track comes to a close, everything cuts way, leaving rusted scraps, corroded wind chimes, and hollowed stones to blow in a gentle wind.

Bunzinelli’s “Metagryne Bicolumnata” comes to life on a vintage breakbeat bounce, with granular filtering and old skool artifacts obscuring the decade of origin. A mutating rave bassline enters…this incredible subsonic slide the gets the body jacking…and after a hard hitting snare pattern drops, further layers of mesmeric percussive detritus flow into the stereo field. While the breaks continue slamming, Bunzinelli conjures up strange alien soundscapes—as mutating clouds of metallic ether obscure garbled satellite broadcasts and decaying radiowave transmissions—and later, as the kick drops away, tribal-tinged snare and cymbal pyrotechnics work the mind while the body continues vibing on that hypno-slide bass groove. When the bass drum returns, masculine vocal samples are cut up into trance-like tracers, though any sense of euphoria is soon blasted away by demonic clouds of scraping distortion…the effect like some sort of deranged noise rock guitar performance crashing against a b-boy breakdance rhythm track. Percussive elements continue adding and subtracting to the mix while morphing and mutating, wavefronts of sonic terrorism merge together with chemical clouds of screaming drone, and as the song progresses, the vibes of throwback 90s revivalism are increasingly subverted, so that what began as a body-popping break track instead reveals itself as something quite experimental. Towards the end, stretches are given over to rhythmic ecstasy, with beats accented by chopping vocal sequences and psychosomatic dub fx growing ever more fried and freaky. And as quick as the song began, it all cuts away in a flash.

(images from my personal copy)