Top of The Drop

By Daniel J. Springer

Our monthly installment by Daniel Springer of the Gwangju Foreign Language Network (GFN) where “Danno” picks his favorite newly released tunes that you may have missed, along with some upcoming albums and EPs that you might want to keep on your radar. — Ed.

SARAH KINSLEY – “BLACK HORSE”

Back in 2021, the artist released The King while still a student at university, and June 9 saw Kinsley release her third career EP Ascension. Now an artist with a few mini records in the rearview mirror, this latest EP tracks with a developing maturity that maybe all of us feel with leaving school for the larger galaxy of real life, and time passing caught in a blurry singularity is an enthralling part of Ascension. While maybe all of us feel such sensations as our lives go forward, few of us have the voice and lyrical skills to put it down forever like Kinsley.

LES IMPRIMÉS – “LOVE & FLOWERS”

Continuing with the perfection of teaser singles to this exciting new project, this is the latest single to the upcoming Rêverie, which is the debut album of Morten Martins. Whereas the previous singles were more of a modern twist on doo-wop and dusty hits of soul’s early 60’s era, this one has the smooth sensuality of Marvin Gaye ala Here, My Dear. Not to be slept on, the album is out via Big Crown Records on August 18.

BLEARY EYED – “UPSET”

For those of us who love the shoegaze sound and stay honest, we often feel like leaving a note to the genre to remind it of our love but that it can get a little rote at times. This Philly band appears courtesy of Julia’s War, and this tune appears on the label compilation Free Treeway: A Julia’s War Tripple Split, which came out June 16 and also features tracks from labelmates Sun Organ and Euphoria Again. This joint is the true standout, giving a synth twist to the genre, then going into a sludgey reverberating finish that echoes and chants into darkness.

LEISURE – “ALWAYS”

Summer jam alert right here, kids! While it gets cold down in the southern hemisphere, the Kiwi extra chill collective are back with a sun-kissed jam for the summer months up here. This is their first new music since 2021’s Sunsetter, and what a return it is, with a breakdown that fades the beat into near nonexistence whilst an extra deft touch of strings creep in, only to be put to bed by the hands in the air. This heater is just a standalone for now, but the band is out with Leisurevision later this year.

KING KRULE – “FLIMSIER”

This tune features on Liverpool native Archy Marshall’s fifth career LP Space Heavy. Per Pitchfork’s own notes on the artist’s past works, “King Krule tends to sound woozy, even slick, until you get close enough to smell the rot.” To be honest and with very few exceptions, the rot is usually most of what we smelled with few exceptions, and Marshall’s past works had the aftertaste of a cheap drink you were forgetting about even as you imbibed. Not so with this latest record, as it feels like the blues blech, electronicized muck, and indie skids have combined into a memorable, albeit quite cold and dark, concoction.

SYNTHIA FEAT. MALLA – “YOU & I”

Described as a “supergroup of sorts,” this project is produced by Leon Michels (El Michels Affair) and performed by some of the best vocalists from the Big Crown roster. This tune is the B side of a recent 7” with a cover of an 80’s cult classic by Carol titled “So Low” on the near side. “You & I” is the main event here though, a synth-centric lo-fi builder and echoes its way right into your soul in the process of hitting the ether, with Helsinki-based Malla’s vox the icing on this spacey cupcake.

BAR ITALIA – “PUNKT”

This is a trio out of London who just made their debut on Matador with Tracey Denim. The crew had spent their first few years together in quasi-anonymity, dropping heavily abbreviated bits of busted rock memories and gaining a wordof-mouth reputation along their understated way. The band’s label debut feels like trying to check one’s appearance in a broken mirror whose shards lie on the floor of a bar bathroom that somehow only lies in the past. For those of you who notice the holes in your favorite old sweater and decide to still throw it on for a night out.

BABY COOL – “ALTAR”

This is from the debut solo album by Grace Cuell, who is also a cofounder of Aussie indie outfit Nice Biscuit, amongst other projects. “Altar” has the feeling of a psychedelic folk picnic at some secret warm asteroid floating in the Oort Cloud and appears on Earthling on the Road to Self Love.

Cuell says of the record, “The songs on this album are deeply sentimental. I have a lot I need to sing about to help me make sense of this earthly pod I have been gifted. If in singing these words out loud, I can help others find solace in knowing that we’re all out here flailing about in the cosmos, then it feels good to me.”

DEEPER – “BUILD A BRIDGE”

For the uninitiated, this is a band out of Chicago whose work has found a dedicated cult following in the process of releasing their first two records since debut in 2018. Back in April, the band announced that they were signing with Sub Pop with a very meta song called “Sub,” and this takes the new relationship with the legendary label to official status, as the band later this summer will release Careful! With this lead single the band whose central question during creation is whether their music feels good have certainly answered in an affirmative and very catchy manner.

VACATIONS – “MIDWEST”

This is an exceedingly consistent band out of Australia who we rarely pass up on a Monday or Tuesday night of broadcasting, and this tune just dropped as the Newcastle-based quartet begin to hit the road in a serious manner this year, with Aussie dates galore lined up along with their Singapore debut coming shortly along with a North American headliner tour commencing in DC cheekily dubbed “TOURZILLA.”

Daniel J. Springer (aka “Danno”) is the creator, host, writer, editor, producer, troublemaker, and Mr. Fix It of “The Drop with Danno,” broadcasting weeknights on GFN 98.7 FM in Gwangju and 93.7 FM in Yeosu from 8–10 p.m. Prior to this, he was a contributor to several shows on TBS eFM in Seoul, along with being the creator and co-host of “Spacious” and “White Label Radio” on WNUR in Chicago.

Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: @gfnthedrop

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June Releases

Bully – Lucky for You (June 2)

Protomartyr – Formal Growth in the Desert (June 2)

Beach Fossils – Bunny (June 2)

Avenged Sevenfold – Life Is But a Dream… (June 9)

Feeble Little Horse – Girl with Fish (June 9)

Jenny Lewis – Joy’All (June 9)

Squid – O Monolith (June 9)

Christine & The Queens – Paranoia, Angels, True Love (June 9)

Kool Keith – Black Elvis 2 (June 16)

Hand Habits – Sugar the Bruise (June 16)

Cable Ties – All Her Plans (June 23)

Wye Oak – Every Day Like the Last (June 23)

The Japanese House – In the End It Always Does (June 30)

John Carroll Kirby – Blowout (June 30)

July Incoming (Watch Out!)

Little Dragon – Slugs of Love (July 7)

Dominc Fike – Sunburn (July 7)

Local Natives – Time Will Wait For No One (July 7)

PJ Harvey – I Inside the Old Year Dying (July 7)

Mahalia – IRL (July 14)

Claud – Supermodels (July 14)

Greta Van Fleet – Starcatcher (July 21)

Blur – The Ballad Of Darren (July 21)

Oscar Lang – Look Now (July 21)

Post Malone – Austin (July 28)

Georgia – Euphoric (July 28)

Sevendust – Truth Killer (July 28)

The title of this article is a maxim, which many of history’s great role models lived by. Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and Captain Cook, for example, did just that.

Marco Polo (circa 1254–1324) spent nearly two decades traveling and exploring in a wide swathe of the Orient. Over much of this period, he lived in the Yuan court under the tutelage of Emperor Kublai Khan (1216–1294). He was afforded many privileges as the Khan’s favorite courtier, one of which was working as his imperial envoy to the neighboring kingdoms. Done with his long Oriental sojourn, he returned home to Venice and published a memoir of his encounter with the cultural diversity of the East. This tome served to help open Europe’s eyes to the cultural riches of the vast Asian continent.

Marco Polo was followed by another Italian explorer just as great: Christopher Columbus (1446–1508). Under the auspices of Ferdinand II and Isabella I of Spain, Columbus embarked on a transoceanic voyage to open a sea route to the East Indies or East Asia. The region was a mythic land of plenty in the popular Western imagination of the day. Columbus ended up by discovering a huge land mass on the far end of the Atlantic. This continent is known today as Latin America and comprises Central and South America. Serendipitous and wide of the mark as it was, this find proved to be more than enough of a payoff for Columbus and his sponsors.

About three hundred years later, Captain Cook (1728–1779) became the first person ever to navigate and map Newfoundland’s coastal waters in North America. Backed by British maritime and naval authorities, he soon ventured further out beyond the southernmost reaches of the Atlantic into the Pacific, mostly the South and Central Pacific. He explored the coastal waters of New Zealand and Australia, sailing via the Hawaiian Islands as far up north as the Bering Strait. Cook’s exploration was by and large very well done, his cartography having been done close to a fare-thee-well.