I felt hesitant about sharing this clip of audio, purportedly recovered from the phone of the late music journalist Jennifer Ling. Surely you've heard the legends of Grifter's Bone, the band assembled by the musician Alfred Grifter, the latest in the long line of musicians associated with a devil's bargain, crossroads type myth. And surely you've heard the rumors of what the music of Grifter's Bone does to unsuspecting audiences, even through digital simulacra.
But we feel confident we've EQ'ed the recording in such a way that the danger to the listener should be minimal. Naturally, neither the actual source of the audio nor its authenticity can be properly verified At best, all of the other unpleasantries that are said to have occurred during their performance at an unnamed jazz club in Soho have been sufficiently muted by the basics of audio equalization and filtering. I'll admit I can't listen much past when the flute enters, however.
Almost as curious as the legend itself is the fact that the music is so ordinary. It bears faint whiffs of the "bedroom New Age producer" sound that was so ubiquitous, if not popular, during the late 80s and early 90s. Hard to believe anyone was playing music like this in clubs in the 2010s.
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XIMEUA's debut EP is meditative, organic-sounding synth music inspired by Mexican progressive composers from the last few decades. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 22, 2021