Jesse Sappell

Back in June, the revered but shadowy Naarm band HTRK opened a pop-up club to celebrate the 10th anniversary of what most punters – from Joshua Minsoo Kim to Jesse Sappell – would consider their finest work, Psychic 9-5 Club. Last week, Sappell (the head honcho of buzzy LA label Motion Ward) released the mix he was originally commissioned by the band to create for the space. What’s most noticeable about the mix is that it has the crucial, intangible element that best defines the record it was inspired by – a sense of place.

The sound of Psychic 9-5 Club is brutalist and physical. Listening to the record feels like moving through a space that is as intimidating and impersonal as it is stunning. Each song is painted in thick washes of staid synth that give the music an ominous grandeur despite HTRK’s sparse arrangements. The plodding, linear tempo of the album is punctuated by brittle digital percussion. I hear it and see massive grey slabs, sharp angles, and a faint neon hue. The album carries with it the feeling of cathartic disconnect, a sensation that vocalist Jonnine Standish mines to deliver lyrics like “borrowed light from motel / bones go day-glo” and the album’s core mantra: “love is distraction”. It sounds the opposite of lived-in – rather, it has an awesome kind of transience.

Sappell’s intuitive understanding for place comes through in the texture and context of his selections. A mix commemorating a record like Psychic 9-5 Club has to evoke the detached emotion and swelled sound of the album it references, and this one does: Elodie’s far-off piano composition ‘Vent Blanc’ feels cavernous yet intimate; the beatless shoegaze of Windy and Carl’s ‘You’ fills up the sound field but seems just beyond reach; the windy trap cut ‘crazy8keepyaclose’ features Yung Webster rapping like he’s whispering covert instructions to you before his time runs out. But perhaps more importantly, Sappell also knows when and where it’s appropriate to linger on something simply beautiful. He opens with the Blue Sky Boys’ country lullaby ‘Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone’ and brings things to a close with a panoramic ambient piece, bvdub’s ‘Will You Know Where To Find Me’. Halfway through, the mix reaches its climax as Sappell unapologetically plays out all ten minutes of Bowery Electric’s ‘Slow Thrills’, basking in its towering, unassailable glory. As if could you ever justify cutting it short.

Sam Gollings

31 August 2024