by Selina Yang (@y_aniles)
Contrasting underground hip-hop’s focus into downtempo distortion, the experimental rock world is exploring the opposite direction. This leads to an undefinable question: what is experimental rock, anyways? I’m Into Life Records, the Los Angeles and Kingston based label, is hunting for an answer, exploring every -wave and no-wave at the same time, building community along the way. With every next artist that stretches their limits, we’re closer to finding out. Compilation #1, released in September 2023, is the cummulation of East Coast Weird contemporaries. Leaning into the label’s East Coast reach, these friends (and friends of friends) span from Boston to upstate New York. Glam ballads are shredded, then reinterpreted, as if you never heard one before. Even within pockets of abstract distortion, there is a throughline of humor and energy. Riffs are getting sharper, all the while sprawling in more directions.
Of Kingston, New York, Open Head fixes in place a writing tension that makes your skin crawl and teaches you how to dance with dissonance. Their tracks “Dun” and “Intrusive Thought” open the compilation. Guitars strike like swinging pendulums. They move in sync with the shouted vocals, army sergeant barks that are pent up with frustration. Through biting shrapnel snares, the undercurrent drumline acts as the wry straightman of a comedy duo. In the middle of “Intrusive Thought” there is a disarming second of grade school scale progressions. Clearly, a moment of sarcasm. It’s hilarious to think Open Head will stick to expectations.
Rong’s three tracks, “Homologous,” “Apple Polisher,” and “Meanwhile,” form the meat of the compilation. Channeling Arab on Radar’s scalpel-precise dissonance, with a dark twist on Stereolab’s pop sensibilities, this Massachusetts quartet takes instruments beyond the limits of functionality. Strings rip until they reach a debilitating buzz rather than notes. As Adric Giles’ drums rise to machine gun bursts on the end of “Homologous,” Olivia W-B’s bell-like voice floats undisturbed over them. This contrast recalls the sheen of iridescent oil over dark waters.
On “Meanwhile” there is the semblance of melodic relief over a sludge metal grind. Not before long, Olivia W-B’s suspiciously calm demeanor shatters into a flurry of puppy yelps. Rong are masters of cognitive dissonance, resulting from the alignment of sarcastic girlishness with a rabid passion. It’s as if the only way to resolve the dissonance, is to render the human indistinguishable from the machines that make music. By the end of Rong’s feature, Olivia W-B’s voice is indistinguishable from the high keening of auditory feedback.
Rong and Queen Crony, the two groups fronted with female vocalists, are sandwiched between masculinity. Open Head’s “Dun” wraps around the reprimands of a boot camp trainer, goading the beat onwards. This same presence is found again in Rider/Horse’s “Single String,” which opens with an icily hesitant strum before exploding into lo-fi spoken word calls. Again, in Patti’s closing “No Pain,” which nods to the jittering protest of old school punk.
Tracking voices throughout this album results in a contrast between “masculine” or “feminine” associations. The feminine-fronted tracks reflect emotionally intense internal monologues, and the masculine-fronted tracks reflect feelings of disembodiment and frustration. On the surface, there is a reflection of social expectations: the woman who nurtures, the man bogged down. However, the tone in this compilation is far from blindly following along. All players are energetic to break out of constraints, whether those of musical or social conventions. By definition, compilations use art as a unifier. The sincerity of Queen Crony’s track “Hanging Out Having Fun” puts it succinctly: “Friends like you are hard to come by / I want to hang out the whole day” – words of explicit appreciation that are just as hard to come by as true friends. I’m Into Life Records is the product of talented people wholeheartedly making art, not being afraid to be weird.
