Plutonic Rainbows

NST on Bois Noir:

It seems most people believe objects from the past are better made, more lovingly created, and more beautiful than today’s ‘products’. At the museum where I volunteer, I always hear people pining for the past (“…if only the medical care were better!”) As I’ve gotten older, like Bois Noir, I’ve lost my sparkling top notes, my lemon-scented optimism. Not so long ago, I ignored ugly facts about people and places and eras I love; now, I face those hard facts head-on and look for deeper meaning, something to learn.

Though it does not compare with my shocking discovery that Colette (one of my idols) sometimes, as a young woman, beat her small dogs with a riding crop to train them, the fact that Bois Noir is not really ‘superior’ to Égoïste is ever so slightly startling…but freeing! Colette mellowed as she aged and learned that kindness and intense observation led to the best-trained dogs — and men — and I’ve learned that chasing after what is gone, fretting over the “expired,” crying over the extinct, are draining, time-consuming and futile pursuits.

We can all learn a few lessons from Bois Noir:

• If you like a limited edition fragrance or if you learn a beloved perfume is on the way out – buy as many bottles as you can afford.

• If you missed out on a fragrance, remember that everything and everyone will eventually disappear, and never having smelled Bois Noir (or Jean-Marie Farina Extrait de baume de Pérou or Lubin Enigma or Rigaud Un Air embaumé or Parfums de Rosine Aladin) is NOT a tragedy.

Something to keep in mind when you're thinking about your next vintage fragrance.

A great book which I really enjoyed last year. Mark Fisher wrote about how we are haunted by futures that failed to happen. In Ghosts of My Life, he searches for these lost futures in the work of David Peace, John Le Carré, Christopher Nolan, Joy Division, Burial and many others.

Sadly Mark Fisher died a year ago today.

Bleep:

Having dropped a red-eyed techno 12 MS Ghost for Dark Past Bright Future in 2016, Blackest Ever Black call on Russian artist тпсб for an exercise in this very vivid form of dread-jungle. This is the sort of sound that made Foul Play, Omni Trio and A Guy Called Gerald such staples within our '90s listening habits, and it's great to see BEB pushing this lesser-explored corner of ambient-jungle (tekno).

Sounding rather heavy-eyed from what we assume is many nights staying up late in front of a monitor and crunchy tower block running Cubase, carefully piecing together the album's complex web of breakbeats and dreamlike BST atmospherics, Sekundenschlaf is sort of like the reverse sound of Pessimist's paranoia-drenched DNB chill. Where that record was full of scything breaks, Sekundenschlaf is more restrained, held back for the dream squad. When it hits though, the breaks roll with a fierce velocity that is fine-tuned by a mind well-educated with the expanding possibilities of early hardcore and techno. Making it a strongly suggested listen for all AWOL, Black Dog & Dream Catalogue End Of World Rave revellers.

More Info

Bleep:

Paper Dollhouse unveil the radioactive ambient pop of new album The Sky Looks Different Here via the group's independently run MoonDome imprint. Produced by Planet Mu's Asher Levitas and featuring artwork by Finders Keepers' Andy Votel. The Sky Looks Different Here is an incredibly vivid journey through a nuclear nightside dreamworld.

Having previously recorded two albums for Jane Weaver's Finders Keepers sub-label Bird and the Glasgow based imprint Night School, The Sky Looks Different Here features twelve tracks that draw parallels between the project's past roots in spidery post-punk electronica and a neon-lit, radioactive ambient pop sensibility. This has lead to the creation of what is sure to be the most concise and realised Paper Dollhouse record yet.

Recorded between North London's New River Studios with Asher Levitas and Nina's studio in Suffolk, together they have crafted twelve tracks of ambient electronica blended with field recordings of the surrounding studios environments, shot through a spectral technicolour narrative. One that mixes the group's signature brand of darkwave influenced left-field pop, urban field recordings and electronic composition.

The Sky Looks Different Here is a journey through a city drowning within the endless downpour of metallic rain and a radiant haze of dawn, a map through a vivid and bucolic utopia.

Pre-order here.