This week, we’re featuring an artist I deeply admire, my friend Magnum Innominandum, hailing from St. Louis, Missouri. A prolific creator juggling multiple projects and aliases, from his work with Harpo Jarvi and The Happening World to his solo ventures like Nihil 64, all while running Starhenge Records. For this curation, we asked him to pick five albums that are especially meaningful to him, and he chose five records that flew under the radar, albums he genuinely wants you to discover.
As always these records are making their way into the Dungeon !
1. Channel of Dreams – 單調的幻想
One of my tenets as a plunderer is to leave no musical idea unexplored. I’m unsatisfied until I’ve wrung every last possibility from a sample, sometimes at the expense of the runtime and (this is the tricky part) the listener’s patience. Here’s some modern new age with slush sensibilities that exercises this strategy well.The foundation of these songs are simple, but those themes are expanded into 16 and 19 minute epics (should mention there’s two unlisted tracks in both the digital download and tape versions). Despite their runtime, they’re never tiring; they build, climax, break down, build again, and explore every avenue its motifs have to offer. They’re musical journeys filled with awe and grandeur. A big part of their effectiveness is the strength of the musical ideas themselves—the melodies are earwormy and the dreamy, romantic mood is persistent.
2. Romance – Once Upon a Time
death’s dynamic shroud.wmv’s No Tomorrow is one of my favorite vapor albums of all time, but since that one’s paywalled under their mixtape club, I thought I’d share something that’s similar, but more accessible, and perhaps more deserving of a shout-out than the oft-shouted-out albums of DDS.
Romance’s Once Upon a Time transforms the power-ballads of Celine Dion into ethereal ambient mantras. Though these reinterpretations never achieve the “power” component of the power-ballad formula, there’s still plenty of drama, though it’s drama of the yearning/brooding/introspective variety.
It’s a good case study on the power of plunderphonics, highlighting the genre’s ability to fish for those submerged emotions in recognizable tunes and yank them up to the surface.
3. Blank Entourage – Prince With a Thousand Enemies
Confession time: I am not as well-rounded a vapor listener as most people in the genre seem to be. I mostly make barber beats and I mostly listen to barber beats. Therefore, the rest of these recs will be barber beats.
First up: Blank Entourage, a name that might be recognizable to those active in the scene, but likely overlooked by those only familiar with the genre’s headliners. Prince With a Thousand Enemies was my introduction to their extensive catalog, and still stands out to me as one of their best (and as a bibliophile I can’t help but love an album based on Watership Down).
There’s some debate as to what barber beats actually is now that it’s expanded beyond its initial blueprint, but for me, it’s plundered music with clean production that tends to let the samples play out as-is with minimal edits. While Blank Entourage embodies this philosophy in spirit, there’s enough seasoning on top of these samples to transform them into something new, original, and distinctive. Usually, this means souped-up rhythms, bold production choices, and clever edits that render these samples as hazier, zonked-out versions of their original selves.
4. Heaven Silhouettes – When I Was Casually Lost I Found Myself Into a Bright Disguise
One of the veterans, being present at the blossoming of the genre under the alias of Machina Pensant, and at the forefront of its renaissance as Heaven Silhouettes. Machina Pensant tended towards more “traditional” barber beats until becoming a vehicle for original work.
Heaven Silhouettes focuses more on pushing the boundaries of sample manipulation while maintaining the trip-hop rhythms many associate with the genre. This album is a recent one, and more psychedelic than their music has ever been. It’s dense, and its glitchy, glittering details provide endless ear-candy for relistens. It’s way prettier than a heavily experimental album has any right to be.
We’ve established my love for long songs, and this album has a good one. The closer provides everything I want in an epic composition: progression that draws you in with anticipation, abundant variation, and a catharsis that leaves you awestruck.
5. Professional Hairdresser – 人々が望むものを与える
By far the most unique and interesting barber beats producer out there right now. These are not chill beats to relax and study to; these are confrontational tracks that demand your attention and will smother you with heavy-hitting rhythms and suffocating atmospheres.
All of his albums are great, and my favorite one changes depending on my mood. This one is my favorite for today. It’s a lengthy listen, but all the elements of the Professional Hairdresser sound are there: raucous drum tracks, distortion, movie samples, multi-genre instrumentals transformed into walls of sound, and a touch of humor.
He’s also one of the few barber beats producers that mashes up multiple samples into one track, and is pretty thorough about documenting sample sources, so if you want to glimpse the mad genius that goes into making these tunes, the tools are there for you to do so.
Thank you to Magnum Innominandum for this wonderful selection.
To discover more about their (many) projects, check out here : https://linktr.ee/partyfamine
If you enjoyed this article and want to stay updated with our latest content, subscribe to our newsletter !
