Kahero:ton, Welcome to Tiohtia:ke, Drunk Skin Confidential (Self-released)
This week’s NicheMTL article was supposed to be an interview with a big-name artist whom everyone would recognize. However, due to a confluence of factors, that interview did not take place, and what you’re reading instead is this explanation.
One thing I realized is that I much prefer conversations with artists rather than their managers and publicists. Managers and publicists aren’t particularly good conversationalists. They quite frequently don’t follow through. You can pretty much have those conversations by yourself.
I guess I was trying to land that all-important, coveted cover story in very much an old media, Rolling Stone kind of way, not unlike a talk show host attempting to book bigger and bigger stars onto the broadcast, to attract bigger audiences, and garner bigger ratings.
What I forgot was that the old media way of doing things is dying. Pitchfork, formerly the benchmark for making (and breaking) the biggest names in popular music, folded its operations this month into GQ Magazine. And Vice Media, once too big to fail, last year declared bankruptcy.
Ultimately, what I neglected was that the concept of ‘bigger’ is inherently at odds with this publication’s ethos. Big things don’t fit into niches.
Ensemble Tesse, 24 January 2024, Édifice Wilder
On the other hand, covering something like Ensemble Tesse’s triumphant inaugural public performance at Édifice Wilder is precisely the raison d’être of NicheMTL. There are so many excellent and under-the-radar things happening in this bisected city that deserve a little extra light shed upon them. (Although the show was in no way wanting for its own dramatic lighting schemes.)
NPNP, Walk The Trigger, Ice Storm (Self-released)
One of my favourite teacups broke.
I was loading it into the dishwasher, and it slipped out of my hand and fell hard into the other, apparently sturdier dishes. The handle snapped off cleanly, thankfully — a small consolation, not having to clean up a mess of scattered shards of China in the dishwasher.
A little orange Tupperware container that has existed for longer than I have been alive, and which I inherited from my mom’s kitchen, also recently cracked.
The teacup left behind its matching saucer. And the orange Tupperware container was survived by a tight-fitting lid.
So, I introduced the two and closed the cupboard door.
Seriously, though, the question remains: what should we do with these residual things that were meant specifically for something else? How to find use for perfectly good items that have lost their significant others?
Chayer Lefebvre, In A Void, NO GH XC FU (Rara Avis)
We often want to operate unhindered in our lives, with absolutely no obstacles. But a healthy amount of impedance is necessary to forward momentum. Like conflict, it drives the story.
Silent Servant, M-87, In Memoriam (Tresor Records)
Sandwell District was not a mere record label. It wasn’t quite a band, either, at least not in any traditional, instrumental sense. There were no drums, nor guitars. Just beats and machines.
Rather, Sandwell District — comprised of Regis (Karl O’Connor), Female (Peter Sutton), Function (David Sumner), and Silent Servant (Juan Mendez) — gave name and identity to a loose-knit collection of recordings that only a handful of artists lovingly produced, that were, in my opinion, the finest electronic music to ever have been made, and which no one will ever surpass. Sandwell District, the mythical second-wave techno collective that redefined the genre, also distilled it to its most minimal, basic essence.
That’s not to say that Sandwell District’s music was basic. Its rhythms were mathematically intricate variations on seemingly simple themes, informed by dub and post-punk as much as they were influenced by their 1980s techno 1.0 predecessors, hailing from Detroit and Berlin.
Whereas DJs like Carl Cox and Robert Hood were essentially industrial, assembly-line producers, working aptly in a Fordist tradition, Sandwell District’s members were more like engineers for Bentley or Lamborghini, designing madcap one-offs for specialists and niche connoisseurs. Sandwell District quintessentially defined techno’s futuristic character, conjuring a baroque postmodernism, fusing the apparatus to the human, the worker with the hive.
Structurally speaking, Sandwell District was like The Beatles of techno. Regis was John Lennon, the obvious leader; Female played Paul McCartney, workhorse and sounding board; Function was George Harrison, discreet and thoughtful; and Silent Servant was Ringo Starr, ever present with a steady backbeat. Mendez also served as Sandwell District’s artistic skeleton, designing the austere, photocopied one-sheets that accompanied their 12-inch releases. It was really Juan Mendez who conceived of Sandwell District’s black-leather, World War IV aesthetic.
I never personally met Mendez, who died along with two other musicians on January 18th in Los Angeles, in an apparently drug-related accident that qualifies as a bona fide tragedy. We only ever communicated electronically. I had written a favourable review for The Quietus of his 2013 debut album, Negative Fascination, when Mendez emailed me to say thank you. We chatted back and forth and discovered that we were the same age and admired a lot of the same culture: artists like Coil, Skinny Puppy, and the filmmaker Gregg Araki. Modern urban culture.
Two things synonymous with modern urban culture for me are techno and drugs. Because they both speak to the postmodern subject’s alienation under capitalism. Techno signifies the mechanical world’s distance from nature; drugs represent man’s separation from himself, the spirit, from God. Techno is self-regulatory, mechanizing our embodiments into synchronous precision. Drugs are technology, too, designed to regulate human activity through addiction.
It’s spooky that Silent Servant’s final recording, just released on the Tresor label, is an EP entitled In Memoriam. I found Mendez, of Sandwell District’s four core members, to be their most prescient. There is something pious in service, and something revelatory about silence.◼︎
If you or someone you know struggles with substance use, find helpful resources here.
Cover image: Ensemble Tesse performs at Édifice Wilder, 24 January 2024.