Writing music under the moniker Perfect Tenant, Leon Piers found a way to reconcile his songwriting and recording with being someone who never had enough money to rent a studio space, rather having to operate living in shared houses or in apartments. The almost claustrophobic quality of his new track “D.Y.C.A.I.” nearly reflects that psychological space of reigning in your sonics or capturing them in a way that works to maintain that already challenging balance of living. The creeping bass line is hypnotic. The slowly seething guitar and its the evolving, shifting volumes makes a virtue of repetitive minimalism as dynamic, tonal textures. The vocals are not disengaged so much as resigned as they float through a song that also manages to rise to emotional peaks of the kind you reach in surreal, lucid dreams where intense situations are happening but you know you can pull away whenever you like. The production on the song is borderline lo-fi but in a way that worked for The Fall in the early 80s and on Colin Newman’s 1981 solo album A-Z by establishing a freshness, authenticity of emotion and grit that slick production makes impossible. It also has a similar otherworldly quality that makes it difficult to pin down to any specific stylistic period other than under the broad umbrella of post-punk though this is obviously on the more experimental end of that. Listen “D.Y.C.A.I.” on Spotify.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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