Release date: October 19th
Record label: Bee Side Cassettes
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, electronic, ambient, shoegaze, indie folk, hyperpop, R&B, post-rock, hip hop, punk, screamo, singer-songwriter…
Formats: Digital
This is going to be a bit different than my typical standalone Pressing Concerns entries. I don’t intend this to be a longform album review as such, but due to both the overwhelming size of this compilation and its mission, I see no other way to touch on it on the blog without giving it a post to itself. Anyway, today I am talking about Bee Side Beats 2: For Gaza, a 106-song compilation (referencing the 106 years that have passed since the Balfour Declaration) assembled by Albany’s Bee Side Cassettes (DJ Silky Smooth, Bruiser & Bicycle, Russel the Leaf), which is only available via digital download and from which all the proceeds go towards The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Like (I would imagine) many other readers of this blog, I’ve felt especially horrified and despondent at what has been happening in the Gaza Strip as of late, and I’m not under the illusion that “posting on the Internet about how this is bad to what amounts to an echo chamber” has done anything to change this terrible reality. However, here is one material way that you can help those most in need (unless you are a literal genocide supporter, we can all hopefully agree that children do not need to suffer the consequences of a conflict that, as the title to this compilation points out, predates their arrival into the world by a long, long time).
Even if you don’t particularly care about any of this, you should still donate, because then you get to listen to Bee Side Beats 2: For Gaza, which is a collection of a lot of good music. In addition to the quality music that Bee Side has released under their own umbrella, they’ve teamed up with a few other good labels to put together this compilation. This list includes one of the best current imprints going in Candlepin Records, two other quality labels whose music I’ve written about before in Really Rad and Julia’s War, and Beautiful Rat Records (who I’ve never touched on the blog directly before, but they’re named after an underappreciated Mountain Goats EP and once put together a Mountain Goats cover compilation featuring Man Random, Iffin, and Nova Robotics Initiative, among others, so I’m going to go ahead and call them cool as well). The songs on For Gaza subsequently cover a wide variety of ground–I’ve heard screamo, J Dilla-esque instrumental hip hop, dub, ambient, video game music, and every kind of experimental subgenre one could imagine on here. Since Rosy Overdrive is a primarily indie rock-based blog, those are the kinds of tracks I’m going to highlight here, but rest assured if any of those other types of music speak to you, you can find them on For Gaza as well.
If one scans the tracklist of For Gaza, one will see about eight artists who have appeared on this blog before, and, unsurprisingly, their contributions are some of the songs I most immediately loved on this compilation. Greg Mendez and Ther have been responsible for two of my favorite albums of 2023, and this compilation gives us all the first taste of new music from them since Greg Mendez and A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy, respectively. Both of their submissions to For Gaza live up to the high bar of their last releases, Mendez by offering up a track that feels like a dry run at the kind of intricate pop-structured folk music of his last release in “Everybody Wants to Be Your Friend”, and Ther by cranking up the amps and distortion to kick open a new era beyond their last record’s skeletal slowcore in “A Pale Horse, Ha Ha Ha Ha”. Not to be outdone, two artists who released great records last year also show up–Husbands’ “I Hate That” is a “slow-gaze” anthem that might be the best song on this whole damn thing, and Joan Kelsey offers up an alternate version of the excellent “Horses” from their 2020 album House of Mercy. Other familiar faces include Bad History Month (with “To Be Free”, a demo I don’t recognize but sounds of a piece with 2017’s Dead and Loving It, my favorite record of theirs), Tuxis Giant (with a demo version of “Cub Scout” from last month’s The Old House) and Swim Camp (with “For My Kid”, which I also think is exclusive to this release).
That being said, my favorite aspect of Bee Side Beats 2: For Gaza is also what any various-artist compilation worth its salt does: it introduces me to a ton of new-to-me artists who contributed great songs to this album. The meat of this compilation is the kind of music in which Candlepin and Julia’s War trade–lo-fi indie rock, bedroom pop-rock, folk rock, shoegaze, indie punk, and slowcore–and there’s shining examples of all of these genres here. There’s so much here that I’m still digesting it, but after hearing everything on For Gaza at least once, here is an incomplete list of new bands who I either hadn’t heard of or hadn’t given enough time to that are now fully on my radar after hearing their contributions to the compilation: Vesuvian, All Seas, Noah Kesey, deadharrie, Bummer Camp, Discotelle, Candy Ambulance, Family Vision, Miss Bones, No Good With Secrets, Floral Print, Flying Golden Vee, Good Queen Susan, GBMystical, Joetaurone, Service Industry, Georgie, Griff, Landfill Band, Headless Relatives, kitchen, Nara’s Room, Ringing, Shunkan, Ruth in the Bardo, Soupy, Watercoat, Broken Record, Zach Malett, and Senior Living. These are all bands I’m going to be paying attention to going forward–and plus, as a bonus, I already know that they don’t support genocide, war crimes, and whatnot.
There is something to be said about how the kind of basement/bedroom lo-fi indie rock that populates Bee Side Beats 2: For Gaza is hardly thought of as a “political” genre of music, and so those immersed in that world have two possibilities laid in front of them in times like this. They can either use this perception of their music as a shield to block it out of their orbits, or they can, at a time in which big-ticket “punk” and “indie” bands decline to say anything about what’s happening in Gaza because it would hurt their (or, perhaps more accurately, their label and management’s) bottom line, recognize that the true independence of their self-built scenes and spaces is a statement in itself, and that, furthermore, it is a sword to be wielded in the face of the cold, inevitable-feeling march of colonialism, putting to the lie those who insist that there just isn’t any other way.
Social media is just the latest tool used to dissipate and dissolve a very real and justified anger and horror into nothingness. Anyone who’s thought about this at length has run into the wall of “nothing I can say or do matters” regarding this. That means it’s working. I’m not an expert in this matter by any means, but I do know that some things are more effective than posting–contacting anyone and everyone with any kind of political power and making it known that pursuit of a ceasefire is the only way forward, attending protests that advocate for the humanity of a people that have been dehumanized again and again by these institutions, talking to people in real-life who you know well enough to understand that they’d be perceptive to understanding what’s going on if they were given a less one-sided account than what these institutions provide and, if you can, donating to organizations like the PCRF. And now you can listen to a ton of good music just by giving any amount of money to them and letting Bee Side Cassettes know about it via email or direct message. (Bandcamp link)
(Postscript: Bee Side Cassettes is currently organizing a second benefit compilation, so if you’re a musician reading this and want to contribute, get in touch with them by Friday at midnight Eastern Time.)
Rosy Overdrive 