Mansions & Millions 2010s 4 Items

The uncanny is Helen Fry’s birthright: both of her parents have a twin sibling. For her, the absence of a genetic double is felt as a lack. When nature reveals itself as a master of eerie duplication, how does one draw a line between organic and mechanical reproduction? Thus, Fry’s plea to her mother for a “Twin” becomes a technological proposal: “so this is the future….if we have the possibility to create functional 3D-printed human organs, why don’t we just print my twin?” If nature is in the business of cloning, why wouldn’t your mother have a 3D printer?

In this world, where it is hard to trace the boundaries of the artificial, a love song becomes a matter of materials science. Feelings can be confused with industrial processes. An emotion might have not only texture but extension; a sentiment might be a membrane, becoming impossibly thin. The prospect of lost passion shades into the promise of a technological miracle. It’s hard to tell whether the request to “turn me on” in “Maybe Not” is a come-on or a friendly computer instruction, robotically repeated. It’s not made any easier by the dispassionate phrases spoken between the choruses: “a sensible desire, a vulnerable reflection.” Is a lover another kind of twin? If yours was 3D-printed, could you tell?

What does all of this actually sound like? Well, beautiful. (The arpeggios of “Plasticine,” a standout on the second volume of the Mansions and Millions label mixtape, might make one teary-eyed.) Technological alienation is an easy theme to find in music today; Future Light Cone distinguishes itself as music for technological domestication, music of the cyborg hearth. Fry’s Classical background comes through in her organ and harpsichord-invoking synth pads, but the tones don’t aspire to an organic realism; nor are they self-evidently artificial. They simply are themselves, comfortable and elegant like a worn-in but finely-crafted set of furniture. On “PCNC 310,” a fantasy about an unstopping milling machine, with Fry (who is also an industrial designer) repeating a priestly intonation of the device’s name and MS-DOS entry code, one can imagine the heavy-duty machine tool positioned in a living room, next to an antique sofa and a loom. That domestic feel likely has a lot to do with how the EP came about. Fry and her collaborator Rémi Letournelle, (of the band Slow Steve) who played on the record as well as producing and mixing it, retreated to a rural east German home to work on Fry’s demos. There they incorporated the setting’s prosaic elements into the recordings, using baskets, cotton swabs, and a neighbor’s cat.

The term ‘future light cone’ refers to the region of space and time that a beam of light will travel through in its lifetime. It’s a nice metaphor for an EP which sees the future unfolding in front of it and takes in all its strangeness with equanimity and poise.

Alone in the world, we find ourselves. Inside ourselves, we find something to share with the world.

The Essential John Moods, a solo album in all senses of the word, is what Jonathan Jarzyna of Fenster found in himself during a summer spent hiking along the Iberian coast, and he now wants to share it with you. A mini-guitar on his back and a copy of GarageBand on his phone allowed Jarzyna to record songs each evening as he arrived in a new town after a long day traveling by foot. (He did, admittedly, add live drum tracks and some additional instrumentation back in Berlin.) The album preserves this peripatetic feeling, each song relating to the next as one city or village relates to its neighbor, its unique situation contrasting with the shared architectural vernacular. Blipping instrumental interludes (“Trainride,” “Pontevedra,” “Coastal Way”) even capture the disordered, delirious feeling of transit hubs and the sleep-bleared mystery of waking on an unfamiliar road.

“I just came alive completely” are the first words Jarzyna murmurs on “New Spring,” invoking the spirit of the album. He speaks not of the liveliness of manic activity, but the heightened, tender sensitivity of presence. It’s a fullness of living captured by the transition from the lush, jangling groove of “The Weight” to the spacious contemplation of “Pawns.” The dreamy echo of the 60s’ and 70s’ soft rock and folk troubadours suffuses the album, and the organ-soaked “Where In The World” even has a psychedelic tinge. But the overall effect is quite contemporary, from the back-of-the-nightbus lounge funk of “Take It Home” (featuring an amazing turn from arch-crooner Sean Nicholas Savage) to the mournful cupboard jazz of “Almost Gone.” “Dark Wall” sounds like a honkytonk ramble alongside a robot tentatively learning to play lap steel. “Leap of Love,” an early album highlight, passes over the listener in shimmering waves, a love song which remains a mystery even to its creator.

In the meditation tape coda “Relax Your Foot,” Jarzyna selects the perfect sample to encapsulate The Essential John Moods’ hopeful receptivity: the late Professor Carl Sagan reminding us that “despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.”

The modernist Dreampop of Magic Island’s Wasted Dawn was catalyzed and nurtured by Berlin. The predominant Casio keyboard was found in the street, the project itself developed under the influence of a close circle of Berlin-based artists and friends, including Touchy Mob and Montreal’s Sean Nicholas Savage, while the compositions strongly reflect both the complex and most simplistic day-to-day emotions, events and surrounding environment. That particular magic has proven charming to many, as this year Magic Island has played at Fusion Festival, Torstraßen festival, C/O Pop Festival, at The Lab Magazine’s Regenerate event series, as well as opening for Fenster (Morr Music), Ballet School (Bella Union), Hundred Waters (OWSLA), Soft Metals (Captured Tracks) and Teen Daze.

Alone in the world, we find ourselves. Inside ourselves, we find something to share with the world.

The Essential John Moods, a solo album in all senses of the word, is what Jonathan Jarzyna of Fenster found in himself during a summer spent hiking along the Iberian coast, and he now wants to share it with you. A mini-guitar on his back and a copy of GarageBand on his phone allowed Jarzyna to record songs each evening as he arrived in a new town after a long day traveling by foot. (He did, admittedly, add live drum tracks and some additional instrumentation back in Berlin.) The album preserves this peripatetic feeling, each song relating to the next as one city or village relates to its neighbor, its unique situation contrasting with the shared architectural vernacular. Blipping instrumental interludes (“Trainride,” “Pontevedra,” “Coastal Way”) even capture the disordered, delirious feeling of transit hubs and the sleep-bleared mystery of waking on an unfamiliar road.

“I just came alive completely” are the first words Jarzyna murmurs on “New Spring,” invoking the spirit of the album. He speaks not of the liveliness of manic activity, but the heightened, tender sensitivity of presence. It’s a fullness of living captured by the transition from the lush, jangling groove of “The Weight” to the spacious contemplation of “Pawns.” The dreamy echo of the 60s’ and 70s’ soft rock and folk troubadours suffuses the album, and the organ-soaked “Where In The World” even has a psychedelic tinge. But the overall effect is quite contemporary, from the back-of-the-nightbus lounge funk of “Take It Home” (featuring an amazing turn from arch-crooner Sean Nicholas Savage) to the mournful cupboard jazz of “Almost Gone.” “Dark Wall” sounds like a honkytonk ramble alongside a robot tentatively learning to play lap steel. “Leap of Love,” an early album highlight, passes over the listener in shimmering waves, a love song which remains a mystery even to its creator.

In the meditation tape coda “Relax Your Foot,” Jarzyna selects the perfect sample to encapsulate The Essential John Moods’ hopeful receptivity: the late Professor Carl Sagan reminding us that “despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.”