Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Brad Dunn – “Malfunctioning”

Posted on September 29, 2021 by Levi Fuller

In order for Brad Dunn – a brilliant old friend who (is it possible?) last appeared on BoW way back on Volume 31 – to give us a song about the future, he had to look back into the past: To the long-gone mid-’00s, those heady days of CD-Rs, house shows at Dearborn, and the births of Ball of Wax and Hollow Earth Radio. The words for “Malfunctioning,” written and recorded about fifteen years ago, came from his then-five-year-old daughter Camille, describing an apocalyptic drawing she she had made. A plodding, almost-in-tune old upright piano and Brad’s lyrical electric guitar musings draw us into the song at first, laying the groundwork for the tale to come.  A guitar/piano unison line tingles our spine (that spot at the end of the phrase where the guitar hits a few harmonics and the piano plays its own variation on the theme just about kills me every time), before Brad’s plainsung baritone jumps right in: “This world is made of trash . . .” and the story continues, Brad giving the words their due gravity, despite the youth of their author.

The story ends with a mystifying (even to the singer) Jesus reference, and the guitar and piano play us out, providing ample time to ponder the meaning of it all.  I am thrilled to be able to bring this song to you, all these years later. Thank you Brad, and thank you Camille, for entrusting these words and music to Ball of Wax.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: oddkin ft. sceneriesplacements – “Taste This”

Posted on September 28, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

I’m gonna come right out and say that it’s very possible I am biased in my reviews. I also really like everything that I review. Certainly, both are factors in my not being an actual critic. I’m okay with that. And so, good readers, I present to you “Taste This” by oddkin, featuring sceneriesplacements. I know both of these characters, having watched them release unholy/transcendent sheets of noise from the stage, stood side-by-side with them in audiences, enjoyed their various side projects, and even contributed a snippet of my own sound to a creation of theirs.

“Taste This” is representative of their aesthetic while simultaneously anomalous. Sometimes one will hear samples in their world of music—TV dialogue, radio calls, snippets of actual conversations—and it can serve any number of purposes. Opening and closing the song as it does here places the listener on a couch or chair in the center of a slightly worn-in apartment living room, old CRT set on a shaky dresser in the corner, not really being watched because the very room itself is about to undergo metamorphosis into a slow-melting fuzz apocalypse of gathered souls (heralded in by the first cautious but then suddenly fanfaring synths)—the kind reserved for the lowliest of conditions. A central melodic idea takes center stage immediately behind the listener (one almost feels its fingers splayed and pressing into one’s shoulders) and guides the panned red-and-grey vocals (themselves a call-and-response between anguished declarations and pained wordless coos) while guitar tones of every color (white noise, brown noise, pink noise, glorious howls and otherdimensional roars) call forth the shoegaze of yesteryear to give its approval, blessing, and granting of passage to usher this thrumming heartache into the future.

At the moment of complete collapse, everything drops but a few final wails and then, just like that, you’re left alone in a slightly worn-in living room while a 19” rerun machine with wobbly color bars mutters laughtrackless fifteen-minute philosophies that will never bring you nearer the brink of comprehension or annihilation than what has just transpired.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: electric bird noise – “won eht ylno s’ereht”

Posted on September 27, 2021 by Michele Khazak

Epic, funky, artfully disjointed, and even a little creepy, this five and a half minutes of madness from electric bird noise is absolutely worth your full attention. It grooves deeply and explores an aural universe of hypnotic harmonics and distorted solos. There’s structure there that stabilizes things in contrast to the wailing discord that becomes more and more dense and intense as the piece continues. The balance struck here is not a simple one to achieve, and electric bird noise executes and delivers with a grace and ferocity that can be felt. So grateful to have been turned on to this music.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Keyboar – “Under Glass for Now”

Posted on September 23, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

If I thought that I was 2 for 2 interpreting what the artists on the new Ball of Wax were saying instrumentally and sonically about “the future,” Levi throws “Under Glass for Now” in as the third panel in this instrumental triptych and ensures that I return to the drawing board.

I want to say a lot of things about this track all at once but I can’t quite get it out without my fingers stammering and tripping each other up. The song seems to do so, as well, although far more gloriously. It seems to start before it’s ready to start, with the tin clatterbox percussion jumping the gun a split second before a deep, rich tone with synth-and-stringed counterpoint arpeggios begins proper and presents enunciated guitar plucks crispy enough to plant you firmly in an amplified desert somewhere west of El Topo and south of Eastwood/Leone. Once it’s underway, though, everything falls firmly into place.

This is a 2-minute, 18-second final score of the film we’re coming to know as “The Future.” Like any epic audio denouement, “Under Glass for Now” marches the whole narrative of WHAT HAS BEEN before our eyes/ears/hearts, but shows us at the very same time WHAT WILL BE—but in such a way as to render us incapable of fully comprehending, the guitar’s sinister melody informing us that, when the music’s over, we’ll remember what we’ve seen the way we remember a dream by lunchtime (remember the arpeggios? Understated, dreamlike). This, of course, is by design, for we’ll be drawn to listen again—and again—gaining just a hint of something more each time but still unable to grasp the whole picture. Is the future as uncertain as we’ve always feared?

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Kora Karuna – “Kolombia Is the Future”

Posted on September 22, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

The kora is a traditional West African instrument not unlike the combination of a guitar and harp and large gourd (though there is a lot more to it than my oversimplification) and the word “karuna” (or “karuṇā”) is found in Sanskrit and Jainism and translates roughly as “compassion” or “mercy.” Gabriel Bass and his associates in Kora Karuna create just such in atmosphere within “Kolombia Is the Future,” their lovely marriage of organic and synthetic, on Ball of Wax 65.

As previously mentioned, the theme here at #65 is “the future,” and the artists are free to pursue or express that theme however they desire. Opening on the gentle plucks of the kora and an alternating-current drone with oscillations and electronic spritzes and splashes, Kora Karuna invite the listener into a future of naturopathic spiritual cleansing and fern-speckled valleys, joined in here and there on what I believe to be a very lively marimba and a synth bass that holds the otherwise freestyling players together.

But before simply declaring that the future is a full return to the acoustics and hide-and-wood tones of nature in the spirit of reconnecting with that from which we all get our start, that buzzy drone shows up again to upstage the gang, at least for a bar or two. Electronics don’t belong in this valley, do they? Or don’t they? If the drone and synth bass were removed, the song would lose something. Maybe, then, the future is really a world of symbiotic codependence between man and machine and animal and circuit board and rocks and trees and electrons—not like a SkyNet-McGovCorp world with its envy and excess and demand for subjugation, but like a place filled with mutual respect, genuine extraself interest, desire to understand and help the community—“compassion” or “mercy,” even. Maybe Kolombia?

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: autOaudiO – “untitled (wax mix)”

Posted on September 21, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

Without lyrical content or even clues in the title as to what autOaudiO’s vision of the future may be as represented musically, one is left to invest oneself fully into the actual composition—and therein lay the rewards. Levi asked for submissions to this edition of Ball of Wax to revolve around “the future,” with no additional specificity required. That leaves the artists free to interpret how they like.

The synths that swim toward the listener’s ears at the beginning of this untitled track embody a liveliness, a newly-forming aural colony reproducing, teeming with life and survival instinct, their motility driving them out and about in various directions—seemingly random but somehow still organized. They’re allowed to proliferate, albeit placed gently to one side, and a blooping synth and trimmed beat take the central role on this beatlab benchtop, seeming to skip along without real direction and yet aligned to the aforementioned organism. In their symbiotic state, they bring us to a somewhat sudden primary analog motif and then, together, the various elements do that to which life is occasionally driven: They evolve. Bloops find their place as the backbone of an actual jam, the fledgling beat becomes an electronic four-on-the-floor, and our colony of aurobacillus chimedophilus acquires a new life complete with a silvery sheen and slow decay.

Lyrics might only have taken away autOaudiO’s untitled statement, which is as much mankind’s own statement toward this point in time as to what the future holds: Despite difficulty and hostile environments, life survives, even flourishes.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Grumpy Bear – “Windows and Doors”

Posted on September 20, 2021 by Levi Fuller

BoW MVPs Grumpy Bear are back with the gritty, noisy, pulsing jam “Windows and Doors.” Yet again, Tyler and Lattney have conspired to find the perfect balance of sonic adventurism and pop sensibilities. The beat and melodies keep our heads bobbing, and the layers of twisted, tweaked, and tortured sound elements keep our brains reeling as we attempt figure out by what strange alchemy they managed to piece this glorious beast together. Depending on the actual manifestation of your current apocalyptic reality, “open your windows and doors” might not be the best advice, but it sure feels good to holler along with.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Green Light Cameras – “Shelter in Place (Can’t Wake Up)”

Posted on September 17, 2021 by Levi Fuller

Beloved Florida pop weirdos Green Light Cameras return with the disco-infused “Shelter in Place (Can’t Wake Up),” their response to our call for future-themed songs. Retro strings and a pulsing beat keep this song moving through an ever-shifting aural landscape, as two vocalists unwind a love story set in the all-too-familar not-too-distant future portended by the current moment. (When you’re already living in a dystopian world wrought by madness and calamity, is there any difference between writing about the present and the future?) “Maybe when I kiss you we’ll wake up,” ruminates Phil Chamberlin towards the end, but his counterpart closes with the echoing refrain, “This is not a dream, we can’t wake up,” a sobering and increasingly common realization for all of us these days.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Spinster – “Saddle Through”

Posted on September 16, 2021 by Levi Fuller

As you might have noticed, Ball of Wax 65 is kind of easing you into this future theme. Things will get darker, I assure you, but right now we must immerse ourselves in this lush, hopeful pop gem from Spinster. A single, glimmering voice starts us off: “Stranger, can you spare a moment?” – then drops us into a beautifully sparse arrangement of drums/bass/synths, all in service of the melodies and harmonies that grow and layer, until by the end you’re just swimming in song, looking up at the blue sky, and you never want it to stop.

I have to say . . . I really, really, really wish we were able to do an in-person release show for this volume. For some reason this particular song has me feeling that loss particularly hard. I miss live music, and I want to see Spinster play this song live. Until that’s possible, I’m glad to have been able to share it with you here.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Tekla Waterfield – “New Skies”

Posted on September 15, 2021 by Levi Fuller

The gently optimistic “New Skies” is the title track of Tekla Waterfield’s brand-new album (the release of which she and her band are celebrating next Tuesday at the Tractor. You should go). As the title suggests, the overall feel is light and breezy, full of the brightness and potential in the big wide world (and yes, this album was written and recorded pre-pandemic). Acoustic guitars and lightly shuffling drums and Tekla’s sweet, high voice welcome you into a world of possibility, although the first verse does end with a gentle warning, as it takes a minor turn: “There’s no place to hide.” Which is absolutely true: The future may, indeed, be brimming with limitless possibility and beauty, or it may be a nightmarish hellscape, but we absolutely cannot hide from it. It feels a bit more manageable, though, with Tekla and her band holding our hands and guiding us along.

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