10 Records of 2015: easyFun's Deep Trouble EP

Given the amount I’ve been listening to the PC Music label this year, I thought I might have to include their Volume 1 compilation in this list, even though I’ve only listened to it through once. There are plenty of incredible tracks on there; however, their inclusion together on a single release invites a particularly annoying response that is common in the label’s critical reception, whereby every release is lumped together in terms of a single ‘project’, which we are invited either to approve of or disapprove of. Happily, the label released another record this year — easyFun’s Deep Trouble EP — which exemplifies a lot of what I love most about this music, which often gets left out of the debate.

But first: another short kvetch about music criticism

I think about half of what is written on PC Music is bullshit, and this bullshit is largely responsible for the pretty superficial way in which the music has been received. The entire label is reduced to a provocation, or a single conceptual statement standing in for an identifiable set of post-internet phenomena (this is compounded by the label’s iconography, including the image of black-lit cables on the compilation cover), and as a result, the huge diversity exhibited among the associated artists (or ‘avatars’) risks going unremarked.

This appearance of aesthetic unity has clearly been a goal of the label, given the way it presents itself. My favourite PC Music-related releases have actually been A. G. Cook’s various mixes (in particular, the ‘Radio Tank Mix’ for Tank Magazine), which reproduce the bewildering experience of his DJ sets. Like all mixes, these releases not only showcase influences and exhibit taste; they function as long-form theatricalisations of some of the label’s more oblique, object-like singles. This approach goes further than curation; as on a dance floor, the tracks are melted down and remade within a new context. This allows the artist to foreground certain elements of the tracks — unravelling the mess of influences, from European sentimentalism and kitsch, to East Asian alter-humanism and Black avant-gardism — that disappear behind the more overt cultural references and satire. Placed within a certain sequence of samples, remixes, covers and other detritus, these tight little bundles of contradictory elements begin to resemble one thing or another. Their irony or ambivalence is replaced by a kind of commitment. Most importantly, the mix creates a contextual frame for the vocal experimentation that can otherwise seem like a gimmick. For me, as with The Scene Between (see previous post), the success of these mixes relies on our refusal to hear the result as the smart-alecky posturing of a single hipster producer (or his private empire of signs) and instead allow the music to comment on, deconstruct and critique itself. Presumably this was easier before the day of superstar DJs, auteur producers and Boiler Room sets, but I’m sure it is still possible.