Waiting around at home with your family or over caffeinated dog till this all blows over can be an arduous process. This is more than just a cold spell, or taking an alternate route to work because a bridge is out. This isolation thing is becoming the new norm, and it may continue to be so for a long time. As a fairly creative type I see this as an opportunity not a detriment. I’ve been working on music that I haven’t for a long time. I’m playing more guitar and drums, for fun even. Spinning more records, reading more books, and writing more.
Martin Jenkins, aka Pye Corner Audio, isn’t sitting on his laurels either. He’s not letting the time go idling by waiting to see how Boris Johnson’s hair fares through all of this whilst the synths and drum machines collect moderate dust. No, he’s been releasing one new track each week since March 28th. Dropping them onto Pye Corner Audio’s Bandcamp page for all to dig and groove your isolating butt to.
First week was the disco doom of “Distance”, then followed by the more low key but equally alluring “Memory of Rave”. We were then greeted with “Curves Etcetera”, “Walk One”(under the name The House in the Woods), and most recently was last Friday’s pulsating “Somewhere There’s A Sunrise”. Each one locks into the PCA low key techno vibes while feeling as if it’s a dystopian groove just for you.
Jenkins is a master of the low key vibe; dance floor bangers for the end of the world and hypnotic grooves for wasteland drives across burned out countrysides. Each of these tracks Jenkins is presenting every week represent the sound of isolated creativity. There’s both a buoyancy and quiet joy, even in the quarantine nature of their creation. Given the sonic world of Pye Corner Audio’s musical landscape, isolation is part of the music’s DNA. These songs aren’t dance floor bangers, per say, but they do offer an opportunity for the goths to feel like club kids. Bela Lugosi may be dead, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t want us to get lost in a beat every now and then.
My hat’s off to artists that are continuing to create and make art, if not for anyone but themselves. The fact they open their windows so we can get a listen, at a safe distance, is music to my ears.
Give all the songs a listen over at Pye Corner Audio’s Bandcamp page. Check out the latest single below.
Complex Distractions 