William Tyler, Ichiko Aoba and some notes on streaming
This week's shows, new music and more
Cantilever Recommends is a weekly rundown of London-based gigs, new releases and writing about music.
Shows this week
William Tyler — 15.05.23, EartH
Guitarist William Tyler has carved out a niche combining Nashville Country aesthetics with psychedelic, or “kosmische” tones over a decade of instrumental solo albums. His records lean less on the indie Nashville sound of Silver Jews with whom he played for many years, instead harking back to the “primitive guitar” work of Robbie Basho, whose mystical soul searching songs conjure images of deserts, deer, and vast American landscapes. Crispy recording and added sheen give a widescreen road movie appeal. Hike over to EartH on Monday. Tickets.
Ethan P. Flynn — 15.05.23, The George Tavern
Mysterious and mercurial, no gig listing or review of Ethan P. Flynn’s work is complete without the following list of his collaborators: David Byrne, FKA Twigs, Jockstrap, Vegyn and Black Country, New Road. It’s never been entirely clear what exactly Flynn has done in these combos but, in fairness, the list does give a good indication of his wide ranging sound. A BCNR-esque vocal delivery and folkish-ness, the glitchy tomfoolery of Jockstrap and the unequivocally beautiful songwriting of FKA Twigs are all in there on his debut album ‘B-sides and Rarities’ and on the ad hoc releases he’s dropped since. Catch him at East London alternative HQ The George Tavern. (Selling fast!) Tickets.
Ichiko Aoba — 16-17.05.23, EartH
Japanese folk artist Ichiko Aoba stops off at EartH during her global tour. Her latest, Windsweapt Adan (2020), was conceived as the soundtrack to an unmade film in which a protagonist inhabits two islands, one physical and one imagined, and journeys between them: even if the specifics of this narrative frame are not fully realised for non-Japanese speakers, there’s a distinctively cinematic and expansively landscaped feel to the album’s instrumentation. Comparisons come from multiple directions, from the glistening folk gentleness of Vashti Bunyan, the psychedelic soul of Rotary Connection to the poised jazz / classical tension of Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders’ Promises, though none of these quite sum it up. A self-released cinematic universe to get lost in. Two London dates due to demand. Tickets
High School — 17.05.23, Moth Club
High School are an Australian band now based in London, dripping with 80s gloom. Distorted vocals and lo-fi saturated guitars are all over their EP Forever at Last, with a sense of polished melody always poking through the haze. Usually comparisons to The Smiths would be foolhardy but something about the vocal cadence on ‘New York, Paris and London’ invites them. Hints of a stronger electronic influence were present on the EP and latest single Colt pushes these further, with the bouncing bass and Nintendo-esque top synth line straight out of the Alice glass playbook. At Moth on Wednesday. Tickets
HMLTD — 18-19.05.23, ICA
The story of HMLTD is a curious cautionary tale. A glam Adam and the Ants bombast for the 21st century, their gender-bending and flamboyant pomp was met with a lethal combination of “industry plant” skepticism, accusations of queer baiting and an attempt by their major label home to dilute them into a more palatable indie aesthetic: in their own words, “Our label gave us parkas and said, ‘You should appeal to people in the north of England'”. A few years after leaving said label, reshaping and regrouping, the band are now on their second LP The Worm, with the flurry of hype having subsided, HMLTD are now, it seems, able to fully embody their idiosyncrasies. An almost musical theatre quality hovers around ‘The End is Near’ before it heads straight to Pink Floyd-ville, the Cavalcade of ‘Wyrmlands’ sits alongside the sincere crooning of ‘Days’. And there are hints of David Sylvian vocal delivery on the haunting ‘Liverpool Street’, with some knowing spoken word meta-narrative thrown in for good measure. There's a sense to which the Old English town crier stuff is a bit “Taking Retro to It’s Logical Conclusion”, but it’s fun! Lots going on, well held together and plenty here for fans of invertebrates. Two nights at the ICA feels like a fitting rebirth from a band whose best days now feel ahead of them. Tickets
Legss — 19.05.23, The Lexington
One of the more angular and doleful London guitar bands, Legss’ latest singles ‘Fester’ and ‘The Landlord’ bring them into contact with slowcore touchstones Duster, and perhaps the murky spoken word of Arab Stap’s The Week Never Starts Round Here. Cathartic intensity meets whimpering honesty. Catch them at The Lexington presumably testing out new material with a debut album on the horizon! Tickets
Lafawndah + Happa + Maeve Moayedi — 20.05.23, ICA
Lafawdah, Happa and Maeve Moayedi take to the ICA on Saturday for ‘a night presenting innovation and resilience from the Iranian diaspora during a time of immense political turbulence in Iran.’ Lafawndah’s latest, The Fifth Season pushes her globally minded R&B aesthetic into new sonic regions with shades of Ellen Arkbro-esque brass arrangements on glacial emotional peak ‘You, at the End’, with tuba played by the exceptional Theon Cross. Happa’s latest EP Party Chat combines Batu-esque rhythms with a the hyper-futuristic metallic churn of Iglooghost. The EP features guest performances from Lafawndah and unlikely collaborators Shame, lending vocals to ‘Only Darkness’, a sludgy gothic number described by Happa as his first ‘song’. Tickets.
Writing on Music
A great deep dive on Spotify and its grip on contemporary music, Daniel Cohen’s piece To Monopolise Our Ears in the LRB gives the full lowdown on how the streaming giant cut through Sweden’s piracy fuelled late aughts to become the all encompassing beast we love or perhaps don’t today. The piece also explores the hot topic of algorithmic or functional music on Spotify: a few years ago, there were cries of dystopian morbidity when Netflix CEO Reed Hastings claimed that the video streaming service’s biggest competitor was “sleep”, Spotify, however, already got there and then some with sleep music and other forms of background noisemaking becoming a large chunk of the content on the platform. A market that is, as Cohen discusses, cannibalising the pool of listening hours and thus royalties from “real” artists, given the current pro-rata streaming model on the platform.
Cohen outlines one such example from the experimental scene in his article:
75 Dollar Bill, told the music website Pitchfork that one of their songs earned a monthly royalty of 20 cents. ‘We might make $100 a year from streaming,’ he said. By contrast, when the band put a live album on the platform Bandcamp – a kind of anti-Spotify, where artists and labels upload music and sell it directly to listeners – they made $4200 in just two days.
No doubt BandCamp’s ‘name your price’ model for products allows for these higher numbers, with generous fans able to compensate more. The model is reminiscent of the story of Radiohead’s In Rainbows where their Pay What you Want approach resulted in higher revenue than from any of their previous albums. Who decides the pricing of Spotify, would you pay more if it meant that artists received a higher share across the board? There is already a ‘fan fundraising’ option on Spotify, so it seems that the difference in being able to pay directly to support a band or artist you love is really embedded in the culture of the platform.
It’s also not just independent and experimental artists who have an issue with the fact that Spotify, a service that initially set out to work with Music industry, has since branched out into all forms of auditory entertainment; Robert Kyncl, Warner Music CEO recently commented that “an Ed Sheeran stream is not worth the same as a stream of rain falling on a roof”. We’re used to hearing namechecks for artists who aren’t making a living from streaming being brought up in this debate so it’s interesting to know that it also irks the top of the top.
Cohen’s comparison between Spotify and Bandcamp is a little flawed, however: crucially, its sales he’s talking about on BandCamp, not streams. If Spotify brought in a digital download option with a name your price model, how would the revenues look for different genres? There have been many suggestions of different streaming models for greater equity on Spotify, from user-centric (essentially, if I only listen to 75 Dollar Bill and nothing else for a month on Spotify they should get my whole £9.99, right?) a flawed concept given the vastly higher quantities of streamers who only listen to Drake; the head gets bigger and the tail may get even smaller. Or Robert Kyncl’s ‘Multiplier’ concept, which would separate direct user actions from algorithmic intentions — artists would be rewarded from fans using organic search to find them, rather than radio and autoplay. It’s an appealing idea, but given Spotify’s attempts to “Monopolise our Ears”, as Cohen puts it, occupying all auditory background space, it seems unlikely they would part with the functions that exercise the tightest grip on lean-back listening.
Another strange development in streaming this week is ‘Soundcloud top fans’, just announced. This feature will allow Soundcloud artists to discover exactly who their biggest fans are at a user level as well as offering them the ability to message said fans directly. To me, this sounds well intentioned but horrendous, a power trip minefield with all sorts of questions about consent thrown in. If I’m ever a top fan of anyone I want it to be my own shameful secret (sorry The National). Don’t meet your heroes, particularly not through DM.
In other algorithmic / platform news I received an invitation from Dice to go and watch Nick Drake at Rough Trade East on June 6th… a man who is famously no longer with us.
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