Two Underground Stars Imagine a Dank, Dubby Baltimore

A friend recently sent me a list of her favorite records of 2024 with the disclaimer, "Basically I listened to Valentina Magaletti all year." While she was being hyperbolic (sort of), I understood what she meant. Magaletti, the London-based drummer and producer, may be the hardest working musician in experimental music. Last year alone, she was the rhythmic force of You Never End by the techno-meets-post-hardcore band Moin; she worked alongside the Príncipe affiliate Nídia on an ethereal reimagining of kuduro; and her band Holy Tongue linked up with bass provocateur Shackleton for some soul-searching trips down a dubby, post-punk rabbit hole. That doesn't even account for the abundance of one-off singles, EPs, and projects that would leave even the most enthusiastic Discogs archivists with their head spinning. Did I mention she started a label? 

Whether Magaletti is making brash and unapologetic punk as part of UUUU or collaborating with experimental and ambient musician Laila Sakini on gossamer soundscapes, every record is as unexpected as it is essential. Her latest creation arrives on Dusseldorf weirdo-in-chief Vladimir Ivkovic's label Offen Music. It's Cold in Baltimore, her second outing under the alias V/Z alongside Susumu Mukai, is a dark and twisted record of blown-out post-punk and dub. Mukai is an equally adventurous figure from the fringes of the underground: His debut LP as Zongamin, released on XL Recordings in 2003, is a time capsule from the moment when skinny-jean hipsters were starting to take pills and DJ in Williamsburg warehouses. Mukai’s releases since then have been increasingly outré, mixing folk and world music with techno and disco.He’s probably the only person to release 12-inches for both French blog house label Ed Banger and the fourth-world experimental imprint Multi Culti.

V/Z isn't the first time Magaletti and Mukai have linked up. They also play in the band Vanishing Twin together, a group that takes elements of Vanessa Daou-style trip-hop and blends it with genres like kosmische and Stereolab-school pop. Their first album as V/Z felt like an easy extension of that sound: Released on AD93 back in 2023, Suono Assente was a fairly straightforward psychedelic take on post-punk (or, at least, as straightforward as anything Magaletti or Mukai have ever made). On tracks where they worked with vocalists, you could even begin to sense a pop sensibility in their approach to songwriting. Their second album together, It's Cold In Baltimore, goes in a completely different direction, leaning into their more eccentric tendencies on a dark and strange record where trip-hop bleeds into orchestral string snippets and post-punk morphs into blasts of sub-heavy dub. 

It's Cold in Baltimore is billed as a mixtape and is best enjoyed as two continuous sides. The A-Side, running from "Tobu" through to "An Ikea Moment," is like listening to some twisted transmission where an early ’90s James Lavelle took over the BBC late night's programming, with blown-out breakbeats,snippets of dialogue, and other production oddities. The poignant string loop on "Tobu" eventually gives way to compressed crunching that sounds like robotic crickets being cycled through a meat grinder. They use a similar trick on "An Ikea Moment," where the track starts with strings and jingling percussion before Magaletti's drums begin to precariously stack across each other. The eerie melody takes the tune in a paranoid direction—like that crazed feeling of finding yourself in the food court three hours after you showed up hoping to only buy meatballs. 

The first half of the record is haunted, but it also has sense of groove. There's a syncopated funk to the drums on "Jazz for Women" that the duo accent with sub pulses that wouldn't sound out of place on a Tempa release. Throw in the vocal snippets exploring queerness and you could be attending a Gender Studies lecture at Plastic People. 

On the flipside, things get darker, danker, and sparser as they turn up the sub-bass and hollow out the stereo field. If the first half of the record is like searching for FM signals, the second half is trying to find a pirate station on a lonely walk home through a darkened city—particularly in "Scan to Switch," whose choral vocal samples have a hint of Burial’s urban yearning. Tracks like "Essato" and “It’s Cold in Baltimore,” are completely empty, save for rattling sub pulses, creepy breathing sounds, and occasional flickers of percussion. While this sounds like a slightly depressing listen, there is an austere beauty that emerges across It's Cold in Baltimore. At the end of the mixtape, the two give us the faintest hint of sunrise as "Tobu Reprise" borrows the opening tune's string samples. 

As with the best collaborations, it's hard to tell who is doing what on the record. But that uncertainty seems to be exactly what Magaletti looks for in her sparring partners. Asked about her love of collaboration by The Guardian, she explained, "When you talk with yourself, you know where you’re going and what you want to say. When it’s with someone else, the narrative changes.” With It’s Cold in Baltimore, the two provide us with a glimpse into another aspect of their musical world—that of a post-apocalyptic city, battling yet another nuclear winter.