Playlist #13: Introducing Deep Hedonia
Their first gig just around the corner, we invited Deep Hedonia in to give us an insight into their eclectic tastes, and perhaps a hint of what we can expect of their shows…
Between the three of us we’re constantly throwing new tracks back and forth, every other sentence preceded by ‘Have you heard…’, that picking only 10 songs between 3 people was a tough ask. Not only in being able to put across our favourite tracks, but having to get a decent breadth of styles, while being coherent and it not sounding like an odd Youtube harvest. Fingers crossed we’ve been able to dig out some good tracks that you may have heard, and some that are new to you!
We’re opening and closing with a couple oddball ballads, both of which also happen to be covers! ‘Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes’ by Colin Stetson and Sarah Worden is originally a Blind Willie Johnson blues offering, but it’s been given quite an unsettling feel by Stetson’s low saxophone grumblings, and is decidedly more introspective and brooding than the original. Similarly we’ve chosen Antony Hegarty’s cover of ‘Returnal’ by one of our fave artists Oneohtrix Point Never. OPN’s version is well in his range of analogue synths and buried vocal melodies, but Antony has flipped the arrangements and dropped the electronic for the acoustic. Not only does this showcase what we already know of Antony’s brilliantly tender vocals but also that OPN isn’t simply a glitch/electronic whizz but also deft with his harmonic progressions, the chords under the melodies are right out of a McCoy Tyner handbook.
Obviously we couldn’t miss out some tracks from our upcoming bookings. We deliberated over which Laurel Halo track to put on; originally we were plumping for one of her more conventional synth-pop tracks but thought instead we need to represent what she’s doing presently, which is in fact pretty beastly. ‘Carcass’ is currently my favourite track on the album; it first swells with a noisy jungle-inspired beat then enveloping into Drexciya’s space age soft pads, for the comfort to be instantly shattered by Halo’s arresting vocal performance. high pitched, screechy and yet incredibly elegant, I don’t think pop’s heard such a fantastically jarring female vocal on record since Bjork’s heyday. Also check out Dauwd’s syrupy smooth ‘Ikopol’, full of shuffling noise, breezing chords and blissful vocal samples, exciting times from the lad from Liverpool.
Ital’s ‘Hive Mind’ has been in constant rotation since its release, as has his previous 12 inches. I’ve had the pleasure of hosting a show for Daniel aka Ital’s other band Mi Ami twice (my first gig as a promoter way back in 2009) but I hadn’t anticipated how big his new project would get. It’s quite the feat to get onto the Planet-Mu imprint, but coming from a purely hardcore punk background into the dance scene with relatively little experience in production is simply astounding. Anyway ‘Doesn’t Matter (If You Love Him)’ is a brilliant track containing a totally garbled Lady Gaga sample and bleeding synth leads – He’s also phenomenal live, more animated and mental than your average punk band, never-mind laptop DJ. We’re also pleased to announce the local hero Paolo aka Isocore is performing a special live house set with Ital, we’ve got a track by him on our list too!
We’ve thrown in ‘Track 2’ by Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, off their new record ‘Black is Beautiful’. Also known as Hype Williams, they’re definitely one of the most wonderfully controversial acts doing the rounds at the moment. I’ve heard many opinions about their music, ranging from it being genius to lazy, slapdash to incredibly well crafted – there are seriously not enough artists that cause such opposing views. Anyway, this is is one of their more accessible, and easy going tracks, but it’s pretty fleeting, I love it.
So I hope this playlist has given you an insight of the kind of music we all listen to. I should mention the tracks we put on by Terranova, Amen Ra and Brandt Brauer Frick, an eclectic mix of dance, soul and modern classical each big favourites from all of us at Deep Hedonia. We look forward to seeing you at the shows!
Laurel Halo plays The Kazimier Tuesday 5th June
