What sucked this week: dead musicians.
It happens to everyone at one point or another: the news of an artist's passing - an artist whose work you actually feel invested in - hits you out of the blue. On Friday I found myself reeling from this particular kind of shock of the first time since the murder of Dimebag Darrell when I was 15. Seeing Juan "Silent Servant" Mendez and Luis "Soft Moon" Vasquez mentioned in a group chat sparked a moment of excitement at the possibility of a collab between these two dark electronic warlords, a hope that was instantly dashed upon learning that they, along with Mendez's partner Simone Ling, had gone to the great, dank, smoke-filled basement in the sky after consuming fentanyl-contaminated gear.
This is of course above all a painful loss for those close to them, but we can still mourn as fans, and celebrate the unique music they left behind: Mendez bringing his gothic post punk sensibilities to techno production and Vasquez more or less doing the inverse. And n0teeth can think of no better than paying our respects than with a playlist featuring and inspired by the sinister, suffocating sounds these two minds brought to the dance floor:
What put a bounce back in my step this week: Dead Normal.
This Barcelona based group does noise exactly how I like it - rhythmically, and with incandescant rage spewing from every pore. Vocally and lyrically coming off like a socially conscious Whitehouse, Dead Normal underpin their splenetic diatribes with crunching beats culled from only the very hardest and crustiest of techno and dubstep influences. The avoidance of straight up 4/4 pummelling sets the Normies well apart from run-of-the-steelmill rhythmic noise, but rhythm and noise are qualities they have in spades regardless. Everything they've released so far has scratched certain musical sweet spots of mine til raw and bloody, and we'll definitely be keeping an ear to the ground for future releases (and hopefully gigs).