In a continuation of an amusing trend begun with 2014’s stellar Feeling Tropical Feeling Romantic Feeling Ill mixtape, Demdike Stare have yet again coaxed another odd non-Shapes release out of the singular Mica Levi.  This one is perhaps even stranger than its predecessor, as it is centered around an infectiously skittering and warbling 2-step "single" that Levi and frequent collaborator Tirzah released to YouTube all the way back in 2011.  The rest of Taz and May Vids is filled out with a few other excellent Tirzah collaborations, a Demdike Stare remix of a Tirzah collaboration, and a couple of very different outliers.  While the Brother May-assisted "More Red" is admirably bonkers, the primary appeal of this EP is definitely the murky, poppy, and beautifully warped Tirzah pieces.  Admittedly, it seems like Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker had quite a struggle in collecting even a mere EP's worth of material (the three Tirzah songs add up to barely 8 minutes), but these scraps from the vault offer some dazzling (if fleeting) glimpses of Levi's skewed and inscrutable pop genius.
DDS
Mica Levi is an artist that I have always had a very hard time wrapping my head around, as she seems to effortlessly bounce from one direction to another with the only consistent thread being that she sounds like absolutely no one else who is working similar territory.  She also seems at times to be like the creative equivalent of a broken fire hydrant, either spewing out great ideas too quickly to fully explore them or else presenting them in a fractured, over-caffeinated way.  However, her incredible score to Under The Skin stands as a very convincing counterargument to that theory.  The Taz and May Vids EP, however, does not: these (barely) 7 songs are basically one tossed-off stellar idea after another, which is simultaneously wonderful and exasperating.  For example, the piece that birthed the entire release ("GO") is essentially just a decent beat, the word "go," and a completely generic chord progression at its core, but that meager content is executed absolutely brilliantly and audaciously.  For one, the chords sound like they are coming from a broken calliope.  Secondly, it is piled with chopped and gibbering vocal snippets that sound absolutely deranged and hallucinatory.  Sadly, it all lasts just two minutes, but that is more than enough to make a huge impression: "GO" lies in the lunatic nexus in which a circus, a precocious child who has eaten too much sugary cereal, Aphex Twin’s "Windowlicker," and a seizure all gloriously intersect.
"Dare You," also featuring Tirzah, is built from similarly bizarre and minimal content, sounding like someone chopped up a percussion loop from Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation, then decided to slow it way down and make it seem seasick.  While not nearly as strong as "GO," it does feature an absolutely killer break where it settles into a heavy, shuffling groove.  Unfortunately, "Dare You" does not even manage to hit the two-minute mark, so it is nice that there is an extended Demdike Stare remix at the end of the album.  Canty and Whittaker do not do anything particularly transformative with the material, but they do a fine and reverent job of stretching it out, focusing on the best part (the great beat), and downplaying the weaker aspects.  The third Tirzah collaboration ("Trip6Love"") is even less of a complete song than the other two, but its clattering percussion and fuzzed-out jabbering happen over a very cool and obsessively repeating loop of fat synth swells.  In fact, it sounds like Levi and Tirzah just decided to go crazy over an extremely promising Under the Skin piece that somehow did not make the cut for the soundtrack.  Elsewhere, "More Red" is another wonderfully brainsick stand-out, sculpting a clanging industrial percussion loop, sirens, and pitch-shifted rapping into something so relentlessly annoying and one-note that it almost becomes brilliant.  Almost.
The EP is rounded out by a couple of incidental pieces, the 52-second "Intro" and 3-minute "Chimes 7."  Unsurprisingly, both are quite strange.  I would probably like "Intro" quite a lot, however, if only its plinking and lurching calliope groove had been given a chance to blossom into something more rather than just abruptly ending.  "Chimes 7," on the other hand, maybe goes on a little too long (a truly rare crime for Mica).  It does feature some great twanging and rusted-sounding string textures though.  All of that basically adds up to an alternately disorienting, dazzling, frustrating, and fascinating mixed-bag of an EP: the better moments are legitimately great, but they are always far too short-lived and it is quite clear that Mica did not lose any sleep worrying about songcraft.  Taz and May Vids reminds me of one of those bonus "sessions and outtakes" discs that are often appended to classic albums by folks like Miles Davis, but in this case, these are sessions and outtakes are from a great album that does not actually exist.  That said, I like it anyway: it is not fully formed by any means, but it is both original and inspired.  Also, it is certainly more visceral and attention-grabbing than some of Mica's other releases.  The only caveat is that it is definitely the musical equivalent of a delicious junk food fix rather than a satisfying meal.
 
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