Today’s edition of The List features just four releases. However, it draws from a bunch of different sources, modalities, and ways of life and you’re definitely in for a rewarding ride. (I mean, come on, there’s a new Tellier single out!)
Various Artists — Tehrangeles Vice (Iranian Diaspora Pop 1983-1993)
Light In The Attic is a marquee label for original works, vinyl reissues, and distribution of other labels’ often obscure gems. An upcoming example of the latter is Tehrangeles Vice, which is coming out in October via Discotchari and is a collection of 12 compelling cuts from Iranians in California who fled the 1979 Islamic Revolution (11 songs are on vinyl for the first time). Basically, these are Persian artists who settled in the Los Angeles area (hence the portmanteau of Tehran and LA) and released catchy, subversive Farsi-language cuts that the Ayatollah and his nutbags deemed an affront to Islam.
The package itself is stacked: a 20-page booklet by Dr. Farzaneh Hemmasi, lyrics (in Farsi and English), a bunch of original art, etc. You can get more information (and pre-order the collection) via LITA’s own site or its Bandcamp page. (Read about the story behind the impact of cassettes on both the revolution and these diaspora songs. It’s fascinating.)
Sébastien Tellier — “Refresh”
The latest single from the French maestro is an energetic 1980s-tastic disco-pop number built on a kinetic Linn Drum and a swirl of high-octave strings and fat-bottomed synths. His overly manipulated vocals are a little off-putting at first for someone like me, a decades-long Tellier fan who loves his real, robust voice. That said, it blends in perfectly with the creative posture of the work as a whole. He co-wrote this energetic work with longtime collaborator Amandine de la Richardière with production work by SebastiAn (another frequent collaborator) and Oscar Holter.
Tellier said in a statement: “It’s a track about renewal, rebirth, failures, and the ceaseless cycle of starting over. It’s about changing internal processes at certain moments in life in order to keep moving forward, to reinvent oneself, to continue existing—like an animal shedding its skin, or like reprogramming computer software to survive inner chaos. And always rolling the dice again, over and over.”
It’s available now to stream via Because Music. (He’s seemingly no longer on longtime label Record Makers). I hope this means a full album is afoot.
Girl As Wave — “Sparks”
This synth-heavy splash of love and lust evokes the dark-light dichotomy and catchy sensibilities of artists like Pr0files, who exist on a spectrum that originates with beams of light shining from the neon-on-black essence of the Drive soundtrack. It is curiously a number that could have easily been released in 2015, which is perfectly damn fine in my view. Genre and time are increasingly meaningless in our contemporary world, and so nothing is dated and all things exist and once and not at all. There isn’t a ton of information out there about GAW, but according to an AnalogueTrash post from 2023 the project is the work of musician Marci Elizabeth. Out now on streaming.
Brooke Blair and Will Blair — The Toxic Avenger (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Macon Blair’s Peter Dinklage-starring reboot of the Troma classic is as delightfully unhinged, unapologetically gory, and utterly fun as you’d imagine. A key part of this is the music from the other Blairs. The score easily operates in the cinematic bombast and whimsy required of a film like this, but laced within the maximalist symphonics are things like dirty electric guitars and delectably articulated Bossa Nova. That provides a worthwhile glue to the original songs the Blairs also created. You get trashy nu-metal songs by in-film band (and antagonists) The Killer Nutz along with mid-century numbers like the 1950s rock song “The Good Things” from another in-film fictional band called The Whoopsie Dews. It’s all-around great.
Notably, the score has a provenance as anarchistic as the people in the film. According to press materials: “Over 120 musicians in eight countries contributed to the soundtrack, including Medirecon, a 16-piece Kyiv-based string ensemble who recorded by generator after Russian forces cut power to the city’s [grid] during the early days of the occupation.”
You can stream the Lakeshore Records-released album via all the usual suspects. The inimitable Mutant has up for pre-order a stunning physical package, with “Toxic Green and Black” vinyl with glow-in-the-dark splatter. This sits inside a silver mirror board sleeve with a glow-in-the-dark eye. There are also liner notes by all three Blairs.
