Those of you who actually read this shifty blog, might remember our write up on Sex Worker's pulsating wash out of a debut full length, called "Labor of Love", a few months back.A record that totally blew us, and many others away time and time again.Daniel Martin-McCormick is Sex Worker.He was a core member of the painfully overlooked and oddly, mega-influential D.C. band - Black Eyes.If you don't already own them, go buy all of their releases.Seminal shit, indeed.He spends most of his time singing and playing guitar in Mi Ami these days, who are also quite good, and not too far from Sex Worker's space-dub collage.
With Labor of Love, McCormick did some heavily blatant flirting with classic psychedelic, dub, and drone music.The three songs that make up that record were blown out, drawn out, and pretty damn freaked out, too.Relying on more subtle, and extremely minimal analog tones, and stretched out low-end looping to carry his squeaky, affected wails and croons along for the slow ride.A total anthem-ridden punk/dub record lies beneath the rubble of echoes and dense,noisy fog.Pick it up NOW.
He returns now, with a new lp entitled "Waving Goodbye", which ironically was released the same day that
he set out on a trip leaving San Fransisco Bay to live in Brooklyn,NY.A literal wave goodbye.California will surely miss this dude, but he left them with quite the parting gift.Six brand new songs of damaged, haunting, and hair-raising, neon-street-dance gems.This record is such a wild turn from the last, and it just gets better each time i hear it.Things unfold a little more with each listen, kind of like how a Fellini film works you over several times, but this one is more Brazil/Over The Edge.His pulsating echoes and creepo synth dissonance haven't completely been replaced, but coupled with a more direct vocal passage and a painfully tuneful agony, that fills in the open spaces.The NNF site tags these six new songs as "street grime crooner ballads and sprawling forlorn trancefloor fantasias", and I can't think of a more accurate and bizarre definition.
Shards of dubbed out beat worship splinter through some rather piercing synth work out and bass rumbles.McCormick's voice still cracks like a whip, and slices through the deep rhythms so easily, but there is a sense of control and a more collected spirit within his shrieks.Tales of life and love and loss and things to come drip from his tongue, and he keeps it brutally honest, as always.Definitely more "songwriting techniques" are being used here than on his last record, but the content is all just as dark and anthem-filled, if not ten times more.
Everyone will pull something different from this album, but all will find something fresh and inventive to listen to, even if you hate it.For fans of new and revamped genres, and peat listening.Quite an achievement.Keep your mind's eye out for a new split 7" with Psychic Reality, as part of NNF's Bored Fortress club.It rules.
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