Classic Grand, Loud Compression, Angel Agony
With apologies on this rare delay to our usual Friday publication, we hope you enjoy these recommendations in the relaxed spirit of a slow weekend read. This week: revisiting the myth of London-based jazz/alt-pop artist Leto Grand, the textural possibilities of compression, and the redemptive forces of fantasy and reality in Yung Lean.
Recommendation: Leto Grand - “Theme”
“Hello Grand Audience.” I’m checking back in this week with a new favorite artist - London-based alt-pop/jazz man, Leto Grand - who released another beautiful single called “Theme.” I wrote about Leto and his track “Lovely Walk,” and Leto himself in a more general sense a couple of months ago. Check that out for some context.
“Theme,” has the attractive quality of a home-spun sample platter from the library of Leto: distinctive saxophone hooks, atmospheric percussion, marching band whistles, little bongo fills. Most impactful are the chopped vocal rumination of Leto that persists throughout the track - little taglines, fragments of introspection, and imagined or remembered commentaries on Leto Grand himself and his band, as from the adoring mouths of Leto fans and the previous nights lovely audience, recalled and whispered under the breath in solitude, walking to meet a friend for breakfast.
Sold out, full house, sold out, full house, sold out, full house
Classic grand
Classic grand
Sold out (classic grand)
This is Leto’s Band (sold out, sold out, sold out)
This is Leto’s Band
Leto Grand
[...]
Sometimes we stand and find the light
Through a diamond bright
Smoking hot vampire white
With properties of dynamite
Amplify, amplify, amplify
The best place to see the band
Out of the green of the North to the South
From stage to shining stage.
Encore, Leto, Bravo, Bravo
Leto Grand, Encore, Encore
I love how this track invokes some expansiveness and sense of purpose in how Leto approaches his music and his local scene. It appears both reflective and aspirational, and it’s inspiring to imagine how Leto builds upon this sort of small pond mythological interior in such a relaxed way. The world and music of Leto Grand comes from a deep place I think. Yesterday I saw his instagram announcement that he would be unable to respond to messages for the next couple of weeks, as he is embarking on a walking trip in Tibet. Classic Grand. Amplify, amplify, amplify.
—Alec Sturgis
Recommendation: Che - REST IN BASS
I’ve got a piece in the latest issue of Spike talking about Che’s REST IN BASS and its utilization of compression as an aesthetic tool. This production tactic pervades rage rap in general, and its sensation-hijacking functions have intensified in concert with the style’s developments over the years. Yeat’s “Sorry Bout That” felt bracing in 2021, but it now sounds tame compared to recent material.
The evolution of the formal constellation of sonic space and loudness is central to such a periodizing distinction. (We remember the loudness wars.) I argue that extreme compression can enact a kind of generative flattening, synthesizing affordances by “doing away with micro-variations at the levels of amplitude and spatial depth.” Consider this alongside certain works by Morton Feldman or King Tubby, for example. It is possible for the foreground and background to phase in and out of sync, even eclipsing one another. I’ll be thinking more about this.
—Alexander Iadarola
Recommendation: Yung Lean - “Agony”
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been listening to Yung Lean’s 2017 track “Agony,” sent by an angel. It’s devastating. Thirteen years ago, in 2013, Lean’s “Kyoto” had many of us in a complete chokehold—annunciatory for a sound that has only recently carried out its arc. “Agony” instead, is timeless. There’s no date on it. No cultural analysis therein, no rumination about its aesthetics, its stakes, or place. It’s stripped down, just Lean’s unadorned voice and a slightly out-of-tune piano. It’s the kind of music that—if you’re there for it—also strips you back. It’s music that’s completely enough. It could be everything, really.
“Agony,” from 2017’s Stranger, carries with it the drifting lore of Lean’s previous record Warlord, released during a series of dire circumstances in his life. Heavy drug use had led him to be hospitalized and institutionalized following the death of his then-manager Baron Machatt, co-founder of the beloved Hippos In Tanks label. Warlord knelt at the altar of darkness, reveling in it to an unknowable degree-zero—a cry for help spiralling to an incommunicable place.
In the aftermath, the embrace of a song like “Agony” is stunning. His lyrics are matter-fact yet unfold in simple, profound poetics. There’s a tension in how Lean’s artifice falls away into undecorated earnestness, his expression in half-light. It’s a true “mask off” moment, and memoriam for the possibility of falling away—a redemptive crescent, unmasking masks and shedding armors. A processed guitar glitters in miniature, shining over chord phrases. A choir drifts in and away softly.
In a 2017 interview, Lean told an interviewer that “Agony” is his interpretation of Alice In Wonderland and Beauty And The Beast: “It’s about being alone in a big marble house with white marble floors filled with burning golden candles and everything comes alive when you’re alone.” Fantasy enmeshed in reality, indistinguishable. Furniture coming alive, dancing with candlesticks. There’s a slight horror to those forms becoming alive, reality becoming fantasy or vice versa—both caving in. Recently, I’ve seen the “White Rabbit” trend on TikTok, referring to viral narrative videos where users share “before-and-after” moments that highlight sudden, life-changing events. Accompanied by the phrase “the rabbit got me,” the videos feature a timeline from peaceful moments to the exact point everything turned upside down.
After everything that’s happened to Lean, “Agony” comes across as a redemptive white rabbit, carrying him into fantasy that’s manifesting as golden candles, illuminating the shadows that once surrounded him. He is at peace with the visions, singing: “It’s fine, it happens all the time.”
In Lean’s words “the dragon sleeps in agony,” angels above—”lay me down, concrete love.”
My furniture has come alive
I’m dancing with a candlestick tonight
Flying kites, raven outside my window
Smiles with fright
Isolation caved in
I adore you
The sound of your skin
—Nick James Scavo