In our rapid-fire flurry of posts this week, we casually mentioned a couple of our favorite labels. Maybe this will be the subject of a polished "features" piece someday - a breakdown of DC's go-to music publishers. We've got a lot of them, for sure, but can safely say that Beacon Sound tops that list. The reasons behind this #1 ranking are too numerous to get into here, and anyway, the purpose of this post is to premiere a song, not talk up a label. We'll save that for another time.
Beacon Sound's next full-length release is Leider's A Fog Like Liars Loving - out on May 14th, but available for pre-order now. Today, we are so excited to premiere the album's second single, Human Error, along with three excellent reworks of the track.
Leider is a Berlin-based ensemble who plays music that, frankly, is hard to classify. Human Error feels unsettling from the opening notes, as vocalists Annie Gårlid and Stine Sterne repeatedly sing the title lyric, harmonizing atop stretched and bent flute, cello, trombone, and viola. This description evokes a nails-scraping-down-a-chalkboard image, but the group's principal songwriter, Rishin Singh, creates a rising (and inexplicably beautiful) tension impossible to ignore. The sounds you hear may seem strange or alien on the surface, but they are rooted in voice, breath, vibration, and movement. Because of this, they retain a human quality. Have a listen for yourself below.
The reworks of Human Error pull from a diverse slate of artists, calling in from different corners of the world. NYC's Chloe Alexandra is up first with an interpretation drenched in echo and drone, moving away from the clean tones featured in the original take. We miss her in PDX, but Apartment Fox is up next for all you locals. An artist who dabbles in techno, he opts to scaffold the song with beats, and this rhythm provides some structure to Leider's free-flowing composition. Tehran's Tegh offers the final rework, and perhaps the one which strays furthest from the original. The artist opens with static, but then punctuates Leider's base melody with industrial blasts. For a moment the noise drops away, only to reappear with renewed force. Like Leider, Tegh seems very comfortable in discomfort.
Listen to all three reworks below, or just head to Beacon Sound's Bandcamp page now, where you will find the EP for streaming and purchase. Explore the rest of the label's catalogue too, and follow them for some exciting release announcements later this year.