- The relentless Raquel Solier is back and as busy as ever, maybe busier. The drummer for all the cool bands, most recently MOD CON, (but see also Palm Springs, Geoffrey O’Connor and so on), drummer and co-producer on projects with Racerage, Papaphillia and Kuya Neil, oh and working mother, somehow finds time to also be Various Asses and not ever come close to sounding like they're phoning it in. How? Unlike most people, whose lives collapse into a heap once parenthood rolls around, Solier says it “contributed to the sheer force, drive and energy V/A embodies which is what lots of people find attractive in my music.” You can hear a wild array of that -mutated Filipino pop anthems, jostling for space with soppy ballads that have been tainted by witch house and of course their trademark lunatic samples with choptastic beats- on their personal Bandcamp page (and still more elsewhere). Their latest La Adoración (The Worship) is no less wild and idiosyncratic, but also, according to the woman in question, their most personal journey to date.
To be fair, Solier has streamlined their approach over the years. As they said to Purple Sneakers back in the day “Once I discovered the added bonus of piling all my crap into one bag and jumping on a tram rather than standing on the sidewalk with a 5 piece drum kit waiting for a cab driver to feel sorry for me I could never commit to bands the way I once did.” Which sounds reasonable. About the time they were three months pregnant they also gave away their alt-r’n’b aspirations under the Fatti Frances moniker and began devoting most of their time to being a producer and Various Asses.
To their credit, Solier, manages to straddle the fence between the dancefloor and the world of really experimental, DIY beats. From their debut full-length for Nice Music (and I don’t need to translate this one for you) Loción, back in 2016, to their 2022 return to the label, Various Asses has made a specific and distinctive noise. The beats are what their label describes as “sledgehammer cutups” and the relentless chopping they do makes it sound like some of the really aggressive DIY genres like footwork or juke house. They styled it as ‘bass music’ and everyone in the press seemed to go along with that, maybe because they didn’t know what else to call it? With all of its intellectual leaps and crazy sampling, it’s in the same ballpark as IDM, but unlike a lot of IDM -which is so cerebral it can’t help but live in its own head- Various Asses was always destined for the dancefloor.
That is exactly where the new record will take you, pounding a dark groove that would be OTT by itself, but once you add in all of the airhorns, fire alarms, race cars, guns cocking, church bells (and organs) birds chirping, huge synth-choirs, air-raid sirens, chipmunk vocals, witch-house vocals, baby samples, shattering glass, police sirens, 8-bit -really it all speaks to a very cheesy sense of humor- yep, it’s a Various Asses record. My personal favourite is where a church organ morphs into an air horn on late cut, Holy Water. I’m hoping Raquel does actually have a sense of humor about things like stuffing Gloria Estefan samples into their music till its ready to burst, because it is wonderfully funny. That said, no matter how insane the stunts they pull, perhaps it’s the drummer coming out, but none of it ever stops this working and working hard, as dance.
No matter how serious or silly the umpteenth blart of air horn may be, La Adoración is, to Raquel Solier, a deeply personal work. Their thundering beats have been, according to their label “repurposed as tools in a sincere and muscular language, expressing something profoundly more personal…[P]eople and places appear everywhere throughout the album, loved ones past and present, emblazoning the cover art and speaking to us from the recording itself. It’s possible La Adoración is a life’s work, but perhaps adjunctly operates as just a flashing moment in time – a glistening diorama, an astonishing glance both forward and back at once, a prioritisation of love and intent.” That’s a lot, right? Yet I guess “it’s possible” is the key here, because, so far, Raquel Solier has not been extremely forthcoming about the meaning of this largely abstract record. I know they have Filipino heritage and there’s an endearing moment when an elderly Filipina lady shares the wisdom of generosity in a sampled conversation, in between crushing beats. Beyond that, the ties that bind this record to Solier remain a mystery.
So, I’m not sure exactly what Raquel is getting out of this, though I guess it’s a lot. You know what? So am I. La Adoración delivers their self-described “confusing, confronting, aggressive and weird” sound, with humor and intellect to burn. In the crowded world of dance beats there should be more accomplished iconoclasts like Various Asses.
- Chris Cobcroft.