* 7PM - DOORS
* 8PM - IAN CHANG
* 9PM - HALF WAIF
HALF WAIF
Nandi Rose is on her own again, and three songs into her forthcoming
album The Caretaker, the singer, songwriter and producer declares her
fearlessness: “Baby don’t worry about me, I don’t worry about
you.” The words fall away from her breathlessly, unfolding with
grace and force: "I've got places in my mind that I'll never find if
you're holding my hand like you always do." Here, on “Ordinary
Talk,” Rose meditates on the heaviness of ordinary moments, the
constellation of tears and chores and self-doubt and small talk that
comprise being a person, accompanied by her most cinematic, pulsing
arrangements to date.
It’s an apt introduction to The Caretaker, a vessel for Rose’s
stories and observations that negotiates the space between working
alone and with others, between isolation and connection. The result is
her boldest work yet. For Half Waif, The Caretaker is a statement of
intent in high resolution, a deliberate move from the obscured, muted
mystery of her previous work. And there Rose is on the album’s
cover—her sharp image before a brilliant blue storm, staring you
right in the eye.
An eleven-song journey through mind, memory and home, The Caretaker
finds Rose astutely observing inward and outwardly, picking apart what
it means to take care—of herself, partners, friends, family—and
the shared pain that comes with that. The utterly crushing “In
August” circles on the harsh fade of a crumbling friendship and the
particular type of pain that comes with it. “I have lost your
friendship / what does that say about me?” wonders Rose over a spare
chord progression. Amid slowly swelling layers of synths and drum
machines, her elastic and expressive voice shifts and takes off
towards soaring and searching falsetto, as she grasps for meaning in
turmoil. The more bittersweet side B is made of candid, slow-burning
piano ballads that chronicle the passing of time.
Rose’s voice sometimes sounds like a choir of one, like on
“Blinking Light,” where she self-harmonizes in a billowing cloud
of her own voice. “Blinking light in the black hills / if this
doesn’t change me, nothing will,” she wonders. “But give me
‘til the end of June. / I’ll be better with the weather.” Time
slips by, mistakes are internalized, messages go unread. Relationships
dissolve. She bids goodbye to her 29th year. The Caretaker follows
Lavender, Rose’s debut, named for the lavender that once grew in her
grandmother’s garden.
And on her most recent collection, Rose’s family history and
intergenerational stories continue to seep their way into the songs.
“There’s a family legacy of losing and seeking homes, a theme that
has followed me,” she reflects, pointing to her mother’s journey
as an Indian refugee from Uganda and her grandmother’s displacement
from Lahore after the partition of India. “Growing up, being
half-Indian was a point of pride for me. It made me feel different in
a good way,” adds Rose, who was raised surrounded by the Berkshire
mountains in Williamstown, Massachusetts. “Generation” in part is
an ode to her family and lineage; its lyrics are partially inspired by
a poem that Rose’s father wrote for her, which hangs on the wall in
her studio where the record was written. Also on that wall: a
photograph of Joni Mitchell, looking vulnerable and strong, and
another of Rose’s smiling grandmother that she looked to for energy
while recording vocals.
While Lavender dealt with wider views on life and death, of endings
and apocalypses, terror and tragedy, The Caretaker focuses the
telescope inward, grappling with her desire for independence and the
knotty reality that we need each other. “The Caretaker is much more
about smaller minutiae of relationships and how so much humanity is
packed into some of our most mundane moments,” she says,
deliberately placing each word. “The most ordinary things bring us
together. And that in itself is extraordinary.” While her previous
full-length was arranged and produced with a band, The Caretaker was
an endeavor of solitude. Rose wrote and arranged its entirety before
bringing co-producer David Tolomei into the process to sharpen the
sounds, tracking upright bass, violin, flute, piano, and bass clarinet
at The Clubhouse in Rhinebeck NY, and lush analog synths at The Synth
Sanctuary in New York City. The result is that Rose, as Half Waif, has
never sounded more like herself. By the end of writing the record,
though, the perspective she was writing from didn’t quite feel like
her own anymore, but more like someone she used to be, another person
altogether: “I kind of created a character. She’s someone who has
been entrusted with taking care of this estate, taking care of the
land, and she’s not doing a very good job. The weeds are growing
everywhere, and she’s not taking care of herself.” For Rose, the
character of The Caretaker serves as a kind of warning of who she
could become if she’s not more vigilant. The story came together for
her while sitting on the back porch of her countryside home, an old
house that’s reminiscent of her recently destroyed childhood home.
She stared at its big, overgrown yard and listened to its summertime
sounds: the bugs buzzing, the train rolling by. She captured field
recordings for the album, adding them to the dark, swirling sounds.
This is the world of The Caretaker—a dense, humid summer night.
It’s when Rose says she’s “her best self.” Rose begins The
Caretaker disillusioned and longing for clarity, but by the album’s
end she has found something better: “It’s hard to believe, but
I’m finding my way,” she sings matter-of-factly on album closer
“Window Place.” It’s a resilient type of healing that sounds
mature and assured in its wandering, like a moment of peace
IAN CHANG
属 Belonging, Ian Chang’s first full-length album, is like a cyborg
- part purring mechanism, part animate bio-mass rising from primordial
ooze. In nine concise, largely instrumental pop songs, Chang conjures
a personal cosmos: the listener feels as if we might reach out and
touch Belonging's jagged and tender aural sculptures. At every level,
his music sings with earnest and deceptive simplicity. The album's
melodies are intimate, its rhythms rewarding, and yet, just beneath
the surface glimmers innovation, as if the neurons firing in each
melodic idea have become audible. From the tradition of Bjork, Burial,
and Flying Lotus, Chang breathes a new kind of human vulnerability
into electronica.
Chang's magic starts with his method: from an improvised foundation of
sampled percussion, he follows the innate logic of a musical
conversation, allowing his compositional forms to reveal themselves.
The album's three vocal features - KAZU (Blonde Redhead), Kiah
Victoria and Hanna Benn - weren’t anticipated at the project's
outset; they arose like friendships, unpredictably complex and
increasingly rare, a consequence of Chang's ubiquitous receptivity.
Whereas on his EP Spiritual Leader (2017) Chang limited himself to
capturing unedited performances without overdubs, on this release the
percussionist expands his palate, burrowing deeper into a layered,
symphonic subconscious. Consequently, Chang's formidable growth as a
producer is on display. Reflecting the album's bottom-up,
performance-as-composition construction, his music conveys an
intuitive sense of wholeness, carrying its experimental ethos without
pretense. The resulting album unfolds like a confessional exploration,
complicating the lines between rhythm and melody, modernity and
antiquity, exuberance and meditation.
When Chang describes his creative process, the phrase "third
culture” keeps coming up. Born in the colony of Hong Kong in 1988,
Chang has lived a nomadic life. Stationed out of New York for 10
years, he built an impressive roster of progressive pop collaborators
such as Moses Sumney, Kazu Makino, Joan As Policewoman, Body Language,
Matthew Dear, and Rubblebucket, among others, all while performing
internationally and recording as a member of Son Lux and Landlady. Now
relocated to Dallas, Texas, Chang's discovered an inquisitive
confidence that can only come from newfound isolation. Between tours,
he dedicated himself to developing his international musical language,
facilitated by a home studio and a burgeoning relationship.
For his first time in the aesthetic driver's seat, Chang hopes that
Belonging may connect with those who have found a home in their
not-at-homeness. The album represents a tumultuous period of enormous
activity and advance, rooted in an eye-of-the-hurricane peacefulness.
At times it seems as if Chang's playful curiosity threatens to
overwhelm everything in its path, but the center somehow holds, and
this is precisely the point: order arises naturally from his musical
chaos. On the second track "Comfort Me," singer Kiah Victoria tosses
off a thesis statement: "I don't know how long I'll stay here / but I
know I'm right here, right here." On Belonging, the sense that nothing
is planned yet all falls into place allows us to reconsider what we
really need in order to belong. In his willingness to start over again
and again, to let the music guide him (instead of the other way
around), Chang reveals a home without boundary. Belonging introduces a
musical contradiction: complete yet ever-evolving, neighborly yet
global, precise yet instinctive, familiar yet innovative. Ian Chang's
debut both satisfies and challenges modern expectations of catchy
electronica. May we find ourselves at home in the paradox.
Written by Ross Edwards
music
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26/10/2020 Last update