Bathhouse Blues, by Jake Muir

Bathhouse Blues

by Jake Muir

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Celestial Dregs Sferic releasing some absolute masterpieces this year. Between this and the Yungwebster album we're all so spoilt. Favorite track: Cruisin' 87.

Harrison Phinney there’s a movement halfway thru when the top-end rolls off and we’re left with a sinister, undulating morass—we’re in the viscera now, adrift in the bloodstream, seeping into the extremities…. refractory bardo Favorite track: Cruisin' 87.

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Limited Edition LP.
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Black vinyl housed in reverse board sleeve.
Edition of 300.

Includes unlimited streaming of Bathhouse Blues via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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	1.	Cruisin' 87 21:00		buy track
	2.	Pipe Dream 19:30		buy track

about

Jake Muir's latest set of soft-focus, sensual electro-concrète, dissolves X-rated gay sleaze flick soundtracks into a shimmering suite of subdued orchestral flourishes and surreal cosmic psychedelia.

Back in 2020, Muir put together a 90-minute mix for Honey Soundsystem, blending tracks from Kelman Duran, DJ Olive, Daniel Lanois and Terre Thaemlitz with obliquely camp dialog samples from vintage gay porn. The idea was to represent queer sexuality in a looser, more experimental manner, grazing the super-sensory pleasure of the bathhouse experience and the illicit joy of cruising without getting too self-serious while doing it. The mix was so popular that Muir followed it up with a weightless sequel two years later, and began developing the concept into a proper album, using more samples of music and dialogue, eventually performing the piece at the esteemed GRM as part of their FOCUS #4 concerts alongside work by Eliane Radigue, Folke Rabe and Chris Watson.

The album is split into two side-long pieces that wash and ripple with nervous tension and discreet salaciousness. Opening with a familiar, bombastic theater sting, there are echoes of kosmische music and antique experimental electronics on 'Cruisin' 87', that Muir fashions into ASMR-rich puddles of syrupy, back-room ambience. Occasionally we hear lascivious words thru the fog, men mumbling to each other and giggling before the inevitable occurs. That's beautiful," a voice mutters over a dusky cricket chirp on 'Pipe Dream'. "It is," another replies.

Muir's sonic response is suitably explicit, like a 1950s Hollywood jump-cut to a train going into a tunnel; the Berlin-via-Los Angeles sound artist takes the whole-body, mutual release of queer sex and interprets it with heady gestures, peppering jazzy rhythmic frostings into basins of skewered drone and gurgling synth. Muir's sound is colored by the pleasure of physical touch, a mussy flux of high frequency scrapes and caresses juxtaposed with woozy, dubbed-out fondles and thrusts. Who said the GRM was buttoned up?

(Boomkat)

credits

released September 28, 2023

Written & produced by Jake Muir.
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung.
Cut by LUPO.

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sferic Manchester, UK

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