Friday Fix: David Bowie, Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship, Jumbling Towers

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David Bowie – “Breaking Glass” (via)

One of the most remarkable achievements of Bowie’s Berlin triptych was his ability to mechanize the idiosyncratic. Long before any debate about whether autotune is a more or less sincere means of human expression in recorded format, Bowie realized that the real core of popular music lays in the personality of the performer, and that just as the parts of a song can be broken down and reassembled, so too could the mode of expression. Whether he was delivering a jagged, automaton monotone or crescendoing into a soulful moan was simply a computational decision, as easy as flipping a switch on or off.

Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship – “Jonaccce” (via)

Bowie’s Berlin looms prominently on Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship’s stunning self-titled debut, but they don’t just wear the influence as a skin. Instead, they inhabit the body on a deeper, neurological level. Sensory cues — sights, sounds, tactile experiences — seem to unleash a flood of repressed memories. But while the music, with its ghostly echo and expressionistic drumming, feels like it should evoke a particular place and time, the details are too foggy to pinpoint and the faces too blurry to put a name to. Everything is revealed in indeterminate glimpses, like a flashback or a premonition.

Jumbling Towers – “The Kanetown City Rips” (via)

The thing that always appealed to me about the Berlin albums was the assured sense that they would always be a few years ahead of their time, that no matter the decade they’d always be a dangling carrot just out of reach. But now I’m starting to think that maybe I’ve been approaching the situation backwards the whole time. Instead of looking forward to Bowie’s icy cold, dystopian future, St. Louis’ Jumbling Towers have opted to create a brand new nostalgia, dedicating an entire album to a city that never was, and to the music that its children never had a chance to make. “The Kanetown City Rips,” the first track off this as-yet-unreleased record, reveals itself as a post-industrial nursery rhyme, full of resolute defiance and analog hopefulness. In the junkyards of yesteryear, there is something wonderful to be found yet.