I always find the influences that an artist cites to be an interesting place to start. All too often, names seem added to the press blurb to merely appear cool and fashionable, as if the artist’s tastes in music naturally reflect their own creative ability… “a cool record collection does not a great record make.” (Bangs 5: 8.) Often it is the generic nature of such sonic citations – James Brown, Zeppelin, Whitney Houston, George Jones, etc – that actually puts me off…oh no, not more of the same.
So when I read names as cool and contrasting as Jaco Pastorius, Nels Cline and Death Cult (wow, that takes me back) as reference points for Shunya Cassius‘ latest double-barrelled sonic single, I’m certainly intrigued. But it is perhaps as much the attitude or approach of such people, their artistic intellect rather than merely their sound, that informs this brace of songs.
‘A World Too Self Aware’ merges low-end funkadelic bass struts with soulful guitar licks, on-the-one groove and jazz-infused finesse. But even with such cleverly contrasting and recognisable creativity, it is hard to place the music in the musical landscape. Good! Too clever to be mainstream, not weird enough to be truly avant-garde, ‘A World Too Self Aware’ is floating in a place where the more discerning mainstream pop-pickers can get to it (and get an education) but also where the movers and shakers of the more underground sound can still call it their own.
Its sonic travelling companion, ‘Until The Circle Breaks’ comes on like a piece of pastoral sixties psychedelic pop, often heading into heavier and more hysterical places, especially vocally…although the vocals here are used only for instrumental purposes, not for communication. It is the hypnotic patterns and beguiling cycles of the song itself that deliver the message here, a musing on “the patterns we inherit, recognise and nevertheless repeat.”
And this brings me neatly on to the thing that always comes up when talking about instrumental music or songs where the lyrics seem obscure, deep or indirect. If regular lyrics are the equivalent of an artist taking the listener by the hand and leading them directly to the point that the artist is making, music such as this is more like having a separate conversation with each listener. Not only that, because it communicates largely through less tangible means – emotion and mood, sonics and sensations, groove and contrast – it is up to each one of us to discern our own message in these mildly mad, generally mellifluous melodies, contrasting musical currents, these strange and satisfying sonic tides.