Select Frequency #4
Your weekly dose of carefully curated chaos
Select Frequency has emphatically hit_its_stride, and I am but the latest of gatekeep's stand-in DJs to bring you an album-sized playlist of everything and anything. Uhuh, my name is Hugh Puddle, and these 10 tracks have been chosen to hijack your pulse rate, stomp on your toes, and spoon your cat while you fight off an asthma attack. Although there’s a sharp contemporary skew, I've done my best to mitigate this by ensuring that only one of them features an American vocalist singing audible words (and what words they are!) Isn’t that nice: an adrenalised reprieve for troubled times, or irreparable jank for the insatiably janked? Don't call me.
Mari Boine - “Lean dás”
Kumo 99 - “Down”
xsgacha - “當我們分開從此不一樣”
Split End - “sea side”
Prayer - “Venlafaxine”
Flowchart - “Another Word Explodes”
Bambara - “Loretta”
Hailu Mergia - “Lala Belu”
Inabakumori - “ハルノ寂寞”
Kap Bambino - “Mortuum Last Journey”
Mari Boine - “Lean dás”
from Alva // 2024 // joik - folk rock
excuse the mini-essay; I promise the remaining blurbs are far shorter
In early January this year, I flew to Tromsø for a New Year change of scene, my laptop and working-from-home itinerary in tow. The trip was just a weekend; everything in town was prohibitively expensive; the aurora was shy (though clearly visible with the right iPhone filters); the 'relaxation' sauna floating in the middle of Tromsø harbour was full of incorrigible French lugs; I learned next to nothing about Norwegian culture (other than that skiing down the street is absolutely the way to go and that a full-body cold dip is mandatory no matter how many icicles fringe the ladder descending into the sub-zero literal ocean).
And yet, and yet, and yet! the sheer gorgeous unforgettable immensity of those frozen vistas was an instant gamechanger, the kind of thing that revolutionises your understanding of beauty in a heartbeat and makes you question how it was ever possible for idiotic, ant-like humans to turn their backs on the natural world (I write this from a London tube car with deafening friction between wheel and rail, and the word RETCH scratched into the door to the next compartment). Forget your resplendent sunlights, your blinding swathes of whites and your ancient mountainses: words truly do fail here, and accepting this is about the closest I've come to understanding joik, the traditional music of the indigenous Sámi people that gives voice to that language-dwarfing, heart-flooding communion with a natural world so vast, so stunning that it simply demands to be recognised. I can’t begin to explain joik in straightforward musical terms, but just standing there and feeling the urge to open my lungs and let out something ineffable, it was at least easy enough to sense where it stems from.
This was all timed perfectly with my early foray into Mari Boine, who had popped up on my 2024 catchup with one of that year's best records and, by happy coincidence, is perhaps the most decorated joik musician working today. Her craft enjoys ample crossover with Western rock and jazz stylings, yet upholds an emphatically Sámi platform, all of which comes together as a feisty case-in-point on "Lean dás": this track has all panoramic arrangements and rousing refrains you could hope for, and on a purely superficial level it's an easy keeper. There's much more at play here, however: skim a lyric translation and it scans as a heartfelt tribute to holding onto one's inner child and balancing different modes of femininity within one harmonious existence; skim a little context on the repression and denigration of the Sámi people by decades of Norwegian Christians, and how this feeds into Boine's own girlhood experiences, and there's a lot to unpack behind the full-throated zeal in her delivery.
Kumo 99 - “Down”
single // 2025 // breakbeat
With its cutting edge production, thrill-happy playbook and bruising delivery, Kumo 99's HeadPlate (2023) was perhaps the most convincing collision I've heard to date between IRL rave fever and net-friendly overstimulation: one of the current decade's most infectious releases of anxiety emerged from its deliciously aggro smackdowns, its nervy lyricism, its whimsical emotional centrepieces, and its sweaty alchemy of breakbeat, electro pop, EBM, rave hardcore, and [you get the scene].
HOT(!) new single "Down" is the point where it all comes together and their ratty songwriting formula finally expands to do it all it all at once: what the pair once achieved in the conjunction of successive tracks, this thing flexes in one full-tilt bombardment. Its teeth-kicker of an intro ramps the energy levels up, setting the stage for a roof-raiser of a chorus and a smart push-and-pull structure that seems to push vocalist Ami Komai to go higher-harder-faster like never before, snarling through one roof-raising peak after another. However, the changes of pace here belie an increasingly clement bent: you can hear those adrenaline levels wearing themselves out, and producer Nate Donmoyer concedes to this in style in a series of dizzy phase-outs. For four supercharged minutes, you can have it all — but this track just knows how much you’ll need a sit-down afterwards.
xsgacha - “當我們分開從此不一樣”
from 冇有形狀 // 2021 // trip-hop
Long-standing players in the Hong Kong underground, trip-hop duo xsgacha remain shrouded in mystery outside of their local scene, a reflection equal parts of the recent plight of the city's independent cultural landscape and of the slim amount of material they've released publicly. This is a great shame on a number of levels, as you’ll hear from "當我們分開從此不一樣", closer to their sole, eight-track album (2021): the duo's production evokes an instantly familiar appeal, as chilling as anything on Mezzanine or Dummy in the limbo it conjures out of the heart of the seedy metropolitan underbelly, but their hushed approach to male/female spoken word unisons is strikingly original, their delivery oscillating from sensuous deadpan to strained half-song with addictive confidence. The intrigue here could comfortably have sustained the track well past its five-minute runtime, and the wider potential is obvious; as it stands, I have no idea what, if anything, the future holds for xsgacha, but this at least is one good reason to keep an eye out.
Split End - “sea side”
single // 2020 // power pop
Power pop!? In this economy? At this time of year? But yes, always and forever! Especially from Split End – over the years, I've been a steady advocate for these girls and their knack for dressing zippy guitar pop in blissed-out shoegaze tones, an instantly familiar sound that no one plays with quite the same balance of pep and pathos.
Non-album single "sea side" covers all their bases, kicking off with deceptively straightforward (albeit ebullient) pop rock deja vu, only to navigate a succession of smart changes of pace and lay down an absolute swoon of a bridge, subverting the upbeat opening sections with a glum twist on the eponymous image (the beach is initially a reassuring image of permanence and escape, but here the focus shifts to the salty taste of the waves, their tightly-curled forms forever lost as they break against the shore). The upshot is sweet and sobering in alternation, but vocalist Nanami sees the whole thing through with gusto, her voice a heart-shaped bowling ball with enough woo-wah to topple limitless ranks of steel-framed apathetic grouchers. Rejoice or be crushed!
Prayer - Venlafaxine
from Dream of Heaven // 2025 // atmospheric drum and bass
The standout track from one of the more ambitious and far-reaching records I've heard from atmospheric drum and bass of late, "Venlafaxine" cements Prayer as one of the genre's key under-the-radar players to watch. Like most of the best contemporary stuff, he handily eschews the bedroom-bound claustrophobia and degenerate fantasies of the artists who catalysed the genre's 2010s online revival; unlike many of his traditionalist rave contemporaries, Prayer sets great store in desk chair-friendly linear builds and goes as far as to reach across multiple dancefloors! Get a load of the beat "Venlafaxine" settles into once it hits liftoff: how often does your rapturous breakbeat clatter come draped over techno muscle, those off-beat hi-hats locking the track's key motif into a vicelike clutch that digs its nails into a single ecstatic time-unit and holds on for all that's dear? Sometimes all it takes for a great track is to sustain one larger than life moment — this thing's swelling strings and swooning vocal samples have their work cut out for them, and there's simply no wrong time to throw it on.
Flowchart - “Another Word Explodes”
from Cumulus Mood Twang // 1997 // indietronica - psychedelic
Flowchart are a long-standing cult treasure whose dreamlike atmospheres and gauzy textures perfectly complement the psychedelic tones of the first-wave shoegaze scene, and they also had the honour of introducing the world to Darla Records' landmark Bliss Out series (alumni of which include Sweet Strip, Junior Varsity KM and Piano Magic) — but none of that is adequate preparation for "Another Word Explodes"! Over eight minutes of tension navigated so meticulously one imagines the entire band wearing surgical gloves, Flowchart lock their audience in an industrial freezer and make a hypnotist act out of turning the temperature steadily down and, through some arcane trickery, the gravity up with every iteration of their lysergic vocal mantra and time-stalling techno pulse. It's heavy as balls yet operates entirely within the aesthetics of traditionally 'chill' genres; drop that acid, port it all over your Alien and 28 Days Later fanedits, and tell me this isn't your new peak wavy heartstopper bullshit.
Bambara - “Loretta”
from Birthmarks // 2025 // post-punk
I've skewed enough of these selections towards current-year picks to have no excuse not to plug my current song of the year or most-played track (same difference baby): "Loretta" is an increasingly rare strain of murky post-punk vintage with fire in its veins, demons in its eyes and a tongue sharp enough to be heard far beyond the wayside soapbox such things usually live and die on. While it's a banger on anyone's terms thanks to a throttling bassline, powerhouse drumbeat and umpteen ghoulish production accents (credit to Bark Psychosis' Graham Sutton), this is one of those tracks you simply cannot approach without a lyric sheet – all 3-4 pages' worth. There are no choruses, nothing repeated beyond a small handful of core images: frontman Reid Bateh simply barrels through one Southern Gothic heartstopper of a verse after another like a blood-starved apparition of 80s Nick Cave lost in the pages of Flannery O'Connor, sparing no detail or eerie overture in his account of a small town choirgirl led to a grisly end by her inner voice of God.
This story, revealed as a final twist, serves as a narrative nexus for the rest of Birthmarks, and it could just as easily support a whole novella as an album's worth of tie-ins. If it contains multitudes as such, then it's much too much to take in one listen – but if that initial chill hits you anything like it did me, it'll be no time at all until you get the whole thing under your skin.
Hailu Mergia - “Lala Belu”
from Lala Belu // 2018 // Ethio-jazz
Here's one for those who want to grin ear to ear and touch the sky with their life-drive! While my exposure to Ethio-jazz has focused on swampy, noirish grooves as likely to elicit the swaying of your hips as it is to soundtrack a choice session of people-watching from the corner of a shadowy bar (plenty of which can be heard in Hailu Mergia's own back catalogue), this soulful triumph from the scene legend's 2018 contemporary landmark album (of the same title) is a different kettle of fish. This is all cheer, all saunter!
The groove, courtesy of two-star duo Mike Majkowski (bass) and the Necks' Tony Buck (drums), is the kind of thing that would put a spring in any step, but Mergia's zany pentatonics and heart-satiatingly warm vocal mantra are the star factors here — there's something gloriously universal to his sound, like there isn't a low mood in the world it couldn't lift, and if that makes you the latest figures in an audience that should damn well be entirely global, so much the better.
Inabakumori - “ハルノ寂寞” (The Loneliness of Spring)
from Weather Station // 2022 // J-indie - vocaloid
I recently wrote far too many words about how vocaloid producer Inabakumori provides exciting insights into artificial mayhem and the nuances putting neurotic narratives into the lockjawed mouths of fictional robot girls — and so it was back on his 2019 debut full-length! Flash forward three years, and the game has changed subtly but significantly: his second album Weather Station is slicker, less claustrophobically arranged, and far more convincingly humanised in its vocal stylings, specifically in the two tracks where he was commissioned to work with an AI voicebank called Tsurumaki Maki (the best and earliest of the two being this one).
On the one hand, this development is hilarious (just you try saying Tsurumaki Maki out loud with a straight face), but for the most part it's opened a whole new realm of synthetic naturalism that I find heavily disconcerting and simply cannot stop listening to. Those vocals are terrifyingly slick, both as a convincing stand-in for a real human voice and as a perfect fit for J-indie's trademark breathless singsong (listen to any track from, say, flesh-and-blood baby-voiced indie pop queen Etsuko Yakushimaru and tell me that valley is even the slightest bit canny). The 'fakest'-sounding part of this track is Inabakumori's VST crash cymbal; those deliriously blurred lines between human/tech, dream/reality, listener empathy/authorial manipulation and so on add real edge to an otherwise feathery set of melodies. Whatever it takes to make an earworm...
Kap Bambino - “Mortuum Last Journey”
from No Domination // 2025 // synth-punk
Down to earth! If Inabakumori's frictionless reconstruction of the perfect indie pop song is a little too eerie, Kap Bambino are the perfect contrast within the field of man-and-machine: two sweaty French ravers hammering and hollering through the kind of hyperactive synth-punk banger that would make your nyan cat puke and your shitty Window desktop brick itself. It's sweaty, it's loud, it's unsophisticated, it's deliciously lurid, and it absolutely revels in its own buzzed-up ADHD stomp! It takes a lot of spunk to make a fresh fix out of a sound as established and stereotyped as this, but for all "Mortuum Last Journey" falls squarely and Nintendoficationally under the long shadow of the irrevocably cursed Crystal Castles, there's something wholesome, unabashed and straightforward to this track that clears the air and sets it up as the perfect sampler for Kap Bambino's solid recent offering No Domination. Put those misgivings away, bin your deja vu, and get your digi-rave on.
That is all. Select Frequency will return next week cya there.
See more:
Select Frequency #1 (Benjamin Jack)
cool tunes esp Kumo and Bambara!!!