by Matty McPherson (@ghostplanetmatt)
The kranky label just turned thirty years old. They don't toot their horn often nor was there a set of parties or events unlike in 2018 with Ambient Church. As an act of personal celebration, I took my half decade of admiration for the label and curated a selection of titles from the first ~14 years for a forum. This was not something that could be done in haste, and the project ultimately revealed an obvious, but often under acknowledged truth about the independent, left field record label: bands are far from the focus anymore. Digital Access Workstations and file sharing are amongst the two biggest 21st century innovations that have pushed kranky away from arrangements with bands and more towards long standing agreements with artists and voices that still happens to enshrine a truth of the label: it is what they want when we need it.
In the last five years, since Forma's undersung Semblance, the label hasn't released an album from an actual band. Its glacial pace has been focused on keeping titles in print (or pressing them to wax) and fostering relationships with (non-male) artists that continually suggest (the current incarnation of) Mr. Kranky has a passion for Bandcamp wormholes, continually surprising themselves and enthusiasts in the curation. 2020 was a recent peak of this when MJ Guider returned with an immense sonic level up based around seductive drums n' reverb, alongside Ana Roxanne unfurling an ambient pop presence out of a new age lane not seen in the roster since White Rainbow. Yet, 2023 has made it clear this is a long game; Saloli's Canyon itself unfurled Mary Sutton's Satie-esque piano compositions (for synthesizer) into its own sound world with an incandescent jubilance that is amongst the brightest any release the label has done. There is a new style of ambient soul emerging in the kranky universe; atmospheric and feminine, as much as playful and ever-toying with expectations of just what the muse is and what ignites the spirits. At the heart of this is the sudden appearance of Niecy Blues' Exit Simulation.
Now, there are a lot of Niecy Blues (aka Heather Sinclair) breadcrumbs circling around online that contextualize why this album is the way it is. A few date back to Soundcloud recordings from eight years ago, but they’re much more steeped in that moment of mid-2010s R&B than where we are today or kranky ever released. Recently, a lovely Foxy Digitalis interview was released during this writing that really dives in, discussing their Lawston, OK (now in Charleston, SC) religious upbringing (in a religious cult), grew up listening to non-secular music–although now have moved beyond organized religion (they still love gossip). Another interview with fifteen questions notes that they also do quite a bit of theater. All the while, they dreamed of making music and spent the last four years learning production. Slowly trickling out Bandcamp cuts and a loosey for a Mexican Summer sub label here, amongst being a West Coast tour opener there. Scant videos exist, yet demonstrate that raw vocal prowess that was there on those Soundcloud recordings. All adds to the sonic mythos that further burrows an appreciation for how Niecy Blues had figured out how to take their main instrument, her disarming vocal delivery, and let it float off of patient, suggestive instrumentals. The kinds built from guitar, synth patches, and drum machines that all draw power from their connection to spaces of worship outside typical bounds.
I feel I say this every time a new album comes to stand toe to toe with Demen's Nekytr. Yet, Exit Simulation is truly the most impactful and "magical" thing the label has released in the past decade, a bonafide recalibration of what the label's sound has been suggesting and a true platforming of an engrossing, new voice. "Magical" is not coming from my bank of words, but Brian Foote. The long time Kranky PR guru and Nudge alum has had a knack for opening the label to these endeavors, and he's behind one of the production sessions on Exit Simulation (themselves a rich tapestry of individuals). It's easy to understand why when you are this steeped in the label’s music, because Exit Simulation happens to both feel distinctly kranky in old and legitimately new ways.
For starters, no one’s broken the commandment about putting your face on a record cover since Atlas Sound’s Logos, but Niecy Blues does it in such a striking way invoking the inscrutability and subtlety of the label's roster and sound. Liz Harris’ and Ana Roxanne's usage of space to levy their voices (Niecy Blues cannot find a harmony that could be turned divine); MJ Guider's otherworldliness and drum machines (here, more soothing than hitting with the frenetic impact); even the crinkles of hard-fought rays of resonant space from Tara Jane O'Neil's Where Shines New Light (itself finding balance in flowing from one space to the next akin to Niecy Blues). But all of these are points that do not quite seem parallel with Exit Simulation sonic territory: a deft balancing of vague electro-slowcore, sophisticated chopped n' screwed pop stutters, and layers of ethereal cooing that all point to a new branch in DIY soul/R&B; one that could vaguely put it in dialogue with the fringes some major releases in the last decade. Although I’d confess KeiyaA & Crosslegged are more interconnected points and fellow travelers, amongst the collages of L'Rain than anything released in recent time. Yet, if there is a totemic album Exit Simulation stands far closer in sonic spirit to, then it might just be Ndegeocello's utterly divine pop flatline Bitter. There’s a shared boundless depth to the passion exemplified here.
It is what makes the album such a treat, a true sum of its parts that the singles in isolation could only hint at. Over its 41 minutes, Exit Simulation is an insistent listen, pervading and reverberating the walls of whatever space it can attach itself to. Brilliantly paced to function as a transitory performance that assumes the song itself is only a part of a larger tapestry, requesting the full respect of its space to unfurl. Hints of this were teased back on 2020's brevity driven CRY EP. Although now the airtight concision, eleven cuts and two precise interludes, create a plane to sink into fully. To hold the LP closely is to take it as a dialogue between you and Niecy Blues. One where the walls scale back, beckoning to a leap of faith can bring about a reverential drumline ("U Care"), a life recording ("Exit Simulation"), and/or a harmonic consonance of vocal coos and mantras ("Exits", amongst many other cuts on the album). It's a fluid trusting of a process that continues to renew itself with each listen, grounded from patches of noise or stirring loops that feel precise.
Niecy Blues has stated their first real experience with ambient music came from church, "slow songs of worship... even if you don't believe you feel something". Exit Simulation plays with textures that can be unassuming as they are invigorating, trawling its frequencies towards a gospel for this moment. The kinds that seem more attuned to a corporeal kind of deeping listening than any of their peers. Perhaps it is because this album is in dialogue with the unexpected aspects of spectral fiction (the back cover’s type font furthers the salience), a quality aligning itself with amongst the best of kranky. This is the kind that instinctively suggests the weird and eerie, neither showing nor telling outright, leaving a truth to the listener to make contact with–through track titles, a stray instrument, a desire to be shook. In Exit Simulation's breadcrumb allusions to love, there's a dissociation from the immediate here and the present, having granted itself permission to wander where the low end rumbles to its own instinct. At times it comes through the detente of tracks, where instrumentals that fill the space unfurl into voices that hint at surveilling, gripping fear amongst a willingness to push back and self-actualize regardless of circumstances. The love there is sublime, a sense of devotion, personal stakes, and the space between; Niecy’s is that kind of a speculative realm. You open a door and it takes you in.
Perhaps much of this stems and can be attributed to the casually stacked deck of collaborators. One that gives this the feeling of a live happening more than DAW music; spontaneous and assured, with everyone coming into these cuts and stretching themselves, doing what feels right. Khari Lucas, a long time collaborator, helps to produce whilst maintaining a steady stream of deft bass rumbles across the album–in particular, imparting the minimal sleight (and perhaps lone crushing sing a long) "Analysis Paralysis" a buoyant character to lean in. Meanwhile, other collaborators do appear for a singular cut, acting as pockets to this dimension. Mary Lattimore's harp is the extra detail "Exits" desires, plucking chords in an aleatoric fashion emphasizing environment, almost revealing just how close to the ghosts of Jessica Pratt’s Quiet Signs this album pushes towards. “The Architect,” a lone outside production by T. Morris Wilson, uses skittering drum machines practically out of illbient (not trip hop), sedated and blended amongst an undercurrent of synth drone, locating a the sultry, smokey punch-drunk terrain that so much of this music shies from, becoming a featherweight shield for their voice. Sometimes though, Niecy Blues' best collaborator is just her own voice, layered into a chiaroscuro haze that gives the listener permission to leave with their eyes and ears, if not the body. Her brief loops and interludes are potent expansions of the warm feeling vocal looping provides.
At the center of the collaborations and sound of Exit Simulation is “Soma”. A fleet yet omnipresent five minutes that sees Niecy Blues navigate the ambience amongst the ecstatic trance of gospel amongst many friends from all over. Supposedly recorded in LA during a chance session, they let the collaborators bring everything they felt and needed to play. A lucky call brought KeiyaA in to provide a singular saxophone and vocal bellwether to them. Qur’an Shaheed maintains a ponderous key melody, as Aisha Mars wields the flute; their styles complimentary embellishing one note into their own trance. A simple guitar chord strums, wafting its way to the front, as small flickers of sound chew the scenery and foreshadow something to come. Maybe it’s their opening mantra "easy come, easy go"? Not quite. Although, layering the mantra into an ecstatic fusion with KeiyaA and Durand Bernarr, it saunters and tornadoes into a singular trance, a cocoon swelling the listener. It’s electric, but then William Alexander comes blasting in on drums, and “Soma” takes a life on its own. Suddenly, it became clear that "magical" could barely articulate the way time stops there, just listening in depth.