FORTHE’s Bandcamp Picks: January – February 2022

by FORTHE Staff  |  Published February 4, 2022 in Arts & Culture

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FORTHE’s Bandcamp Picks is back! Bandcamp Friday began last spring as part of Bandcamp’s monthly initiative to direct more proceeds to artists in light of the pandemic by waiving its usual 15% service fee for all music purchased that day. That means on Bandcamp Friday artists will get to keep all proceeds from music sales, minus a small PayPal or card processing fee. 

Below, some of our editors—Erin Foley, Kevin Flores, and Esther Kang—picked a few of their favorite Long Beach music releases of 2022 so far. We encourage you to support these local artists by purchasing from their Bandcamp pages. 

And if you’re a Long Beach musician, let us know when you release new music by hitting us up at editors@forthe.org. 

Hoop Jail – HARD RED

Album art by Hoop Jail.

Released: Feb. 4

Hoop Jail’s newest single “HARD RED” is an existential lofi-garage-pop power anthem that hinges on a cathartically nostalgic tip. The solo project of Long Beach artist and multi-instrumentalist Alan Connor, Hoop Jail will be releasing their highly anticipated full-length album Upload Gem on March 18.

In “HARD RED,” Hoop Jail explores a yearning for self-definition beyond the muted expressions and identities assigned by the world at large. Over the backdrop of harmonically blaring down strums, a driving bassline, and drums, Hoop Jail sings: 

Full on rip me off the page

didn’t ask to be born

didn’t ask to be made

raised by the tv

and it’s givin me my name

In moments after a time/space warp wherein vocal samples bend in and out of shape, the song dissolves into a metaphoric mantra that also sheds some light on the choices behind Hoop Jail’s visual creative practice, often marked by the contrast between the primary colors red, yellow, and blue. 

HARD RED

hard yellow

primary others

destiny overrides the life of soft colors

-EK

Basico – The Calm

Album art by Lobo Incognito.

Released: Feb. 4

In his newest album The Calm, producer Basico (GRN+GLD) shares a highly personal collection of ambient sketches that tenderly invite the listener on a journey of reflection. Recorded using a Tascam 6-track tape recorder over the last six months of 2021, this collection of soundscapes is decidedly languid in nature, with long, sustained synths that slowly warp like a metal plate bending under the weight of a heavy object. Guitar harmonics, vocal samples, percussion, and keys take turns coloring the psychic space, paced by builds of tension, release, and fleeting moments of quiet euphoria.

-EK

Huey Briss – 2/2/22

Released: Feb. 2

This new EP by Grace Park legend Huey Briss (his name is a playful take on the word “hubris”) was named after and released on 2/2/22. Produced by Nikobeats, the two tracks “Losing My Faith” and “Thoughts N Actions” are thoughtful declarations on Briss’ unique gifts and purpose; he is doing this for his “family not the Grammys.” 

Though the first song speaks of a time where Briss felt he was losing his faith, ultimately there is a message of drive and perseverance throughout both tunes.

“Getting closer to the edge but I won’t jump / the wind blows but I won’t budge”

Briss has been catching the eye of Uncle Snoop and P Diddy as of late, but was already on the rise since well before COVID-19 slowed down touring options and forced the cancellation of a trip to perform in England. The pandemic hasn’t slowed down his creativity though; another new album is forthcoming. Long Beach stand up!

-EF

Chris Schlarb & Alex Sadnik – Viva Durant and the Madness of Madame Bouchard (soundtrack)

Album art courtesy of Ashli St. Armant.

Released: Jan. 28

Ashli St. Armant (AKA Jazzy Ash in the music world) is a Black queer woman living in Southern California with a fondness for her family’s home city of New Orleans. Based on her experiences growing up and visiting her family still there, the unique culture of the birthplace of jazz features heavily in her children’s series “Viva Durant and the Madness of Madame Bouchard,” which tells the adventures of a young detective named Viva Durant and her loving but no-nonsense Gram. Guitarist Chris Shlarb (who is the owner of Long Beach’s own Big Ego Studios) collaborated with saxophonist Alex Sadnik to create a series of instrumental theme songs to be interspersed throughout the series’ four-hour audiobook.  

Schlarb and Sadnik take you on a journey rich with accompaniment by organist Carey Frank, chromatic harmonica master Bill Barrett, drummer Danny Frankel, and bassist Anthony Shadduck. Inspired by the composer who created Charlie Brown’s Christmas (Vince Guaraldi) as well as ‘70s TV theme songs and New Orleans itself; there is a sense of nostalgia and timelessness and funk with driving, melodic expressions of joy and melancholy and everything in between.

-EF

Violent Vickie – The Gloom (Dimension 23 Remix)

Released: Jan. 28

Note: This song is only available to stream when you purchase the song on Bandcamp.

“The Gloom” is an apt title for Violent Vickie’s newly remixed single, with its dark, longing undertone, but with Violent Vickie, you always get rhythm and vocals that make you want to dance and sing out, which always brings me joy. 
This prolific dark synth goddess wails like a ‘90s rocker over this Dimension 23 remix of her 2020 song, her cries for help are hypnotic. Thoughts of someone (“When I am alone / can’t help thinking about you”) are affecting her in ways that can’t be helped by anyone in the medical profession (“Can’t call the doctor / Can’t call the dentist”). Perhaps the only one who can help is the one she can’t stop thinking about. These feelings of longing have changed her, she begins thinking of herself in the third person. “Get someone to comfort her, Get someone to comfort her before she does something bad.” She can no longer be responsible for the way their memory and absence have negatively affected her.

-EF

SouLocust – Stank

SouLocust through the lens of @carmesifuego.

Released Jan. 28

With the release of the first song from their upcoming album recorded at Jazzcats Studio, SouLocust is here to funk us up with some “good ol Beach city stank.” Despite being a new tune, it definitely would not feel out of place at The Good Foot (old soul and funk night at Alex’s Bar). “Reverend” Kyle P. Davis, who is also the lead vocalist and plays guitar and tambourine, wrote and composed the track. Rounding out SouLocust is Alexander Blanco Jr. on drums and cowbell, Johnny Rico on guitar, and Ray James Steward on bass.

-EF 

Nativity – Horizon

Cover art by Noel Belen. Original photo by Alex Wong (Unsplash).

Released Jan. 7

Noel Belen, better known as Nativity, crafts beautifully minimalistic electronic music. The nearly six-minute single “Horizon” is one of four techno singles released this year so far. It opens with a very hard, driving bassline before a puff of uplifting symphonic pads glitter over the beat. Transitioning to a more menacing atmosphere, the track introduces what I can only describe as a warped synth note that sounds like a demented zipper. These two opposing elements dovetail with the more subtle touches of dissonance to conjure images of washed-out futuristic cityscapes—so it’s no coincidence that each of the singles feature stark photos of the built environment as cover art.

-KF

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Editors' Picks

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[1] Militarily demobilized. Since WWII—which was both the death knell of European colonial empires as well as the starting shot of the American neocolonial era—Europe has had notoriously scant standing armies, and has been able to consistently slash government military spending domestically and as a percentage of their contributions to international diplomatic bodies such as the UN. This is because nowadays European nations very rarely find themselves in situations where they need to independently send their militaries abroad in order to secure trade routes, foreign resources, or privileges within markets overseas; the U.S. has been fulfilling that hard-power obligation for them for over half a century. The social results of Western Europe’s decreased militarization are striking, especially when contrasted with the U.S.: there is not a single country in Western Europe without universal healthcare, labor rights and welfare systems are strong, value is placed on corporate and financial regulation, environmental policy is lightyears ahead, and, not least of all, there is a robust governmental approach to curbing digital surveillance and reining in tech monopolies. Japan enjoys a similar arrangement with the U.S. in which it, too, is militarily demobilized yet is given full access to, and prominence in, the global economy. In the last decade there has been a reversing trend of remilitarization in some of these nations. That trend was hastened during the last four years as a result of Trump’s ultranationalist politics, but is likely to continue even after his departure in large part due to the growing bipolar geopolitical climate of competition between superpowers.

The “owner” bit of home-“owner” appears in scare quotes throughout the text for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Nothing signals trouble quite like consensus.

More on them later.

And, anyways, what exactly remains “obvious” in an era “post-truth”?

I take as my starting position that even the “obvious” must be won.

It’s like Lenin said, you know…

Whether directly, or through a chain of investments, or through the wider speculative market in real estate.

I use “banks” in this piece as a stand-in for several sources of income that derive partly through the mortgaging of property and/or investment in institutions that have the power to mortgage property.

That is just its “ideology.”

The Ricardian “law of rent” explains that any location with an advantage over another location, can accrue an economic value, called “rent,” to the owner.

This happens without the owner needing to pitch in to create the advantage.

If the owner does pitch in, then the value accrued from that advantage cannot be called “rent.”

“Rent,” in economic terms, is only, precisely, the value accrued from that portion of the advantage for which the owner is not responsible. That is what we mean when we say, “Rent is theft.”

This does not mean places with lower property taxes ipso facto have higher property prices—and that is because the property tax is only one of the contributing factors. You could have zero taxes on land in Antarctica, for instance, and it would still sell for $0. This is why the introduction to the analogy controls for such variables.

This is the logical conclusion of believing two premises:

(1) All humans have an equal right to the Earth.
(2) Vaginal birth is a lottery system

Prop 13 is rent control for home-“owners.” You can learn more about its history and impact here.

“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. Act 4, Scene 5

This is why the lobbyists who spend the most money to support the mortgage interest deduction are bankers, mortgagers, and realtors.

Term

Definition