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Brainwashed | Sunday, 29 November 2009 |
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Podcast #207: November 24, 2009.
Music from Meat Beat Manifesto, World Domination Enterprises, Aus, Holy Sons, The Son of P.M., Dean McPhee, Moebius Plank Neumeier, Amberhaze, Annalogue, and Volcano the Bear.
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Look for releases this week from Kid Koala, Arthur Lee & Love, Tom Waits, and the DVD+CD of Decoder, the 1983 German film with music from PTV, Neubauten, and more. |
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 Sometimes I have to wonder how much life is left in rock and roll. How long before every possible note is exhausted? Then I think, who cares as long as albums like this exist. It is rough as sandpaper and about as original as any other retro-styled artist but this album rocks very hard. This is not surprising considering it is the work of Michael Polizze of Birds of Maya but this solo album has clicked with me even more than his main group already has; its guitar-heavy mix and hypnotising riffs tap into a primeval feeling of rock and roll abandon and it feels like a living fossil from a time when Blue Cheer and The Stooges were punk kids shaking things up. |
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 Amberhaze is the solo project of an Italian expatriate currently living in Singapore, which seems to be an unexpectedly fertile ground these days for warm electronic music such as this. However, Giulliano Gullotti also exhibits quite a healthy (and well-justified) passion for early ‘90s English shoegaze (which obviously Singapore is not as known for). Despite that substantial temporal and geographic disadvantage, this debut album combines those two loves with a sometimes stunning degree of success. |
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 In the first solo museum exhibit of C. Spencer Yeh, the prolific musician and sound artist shows off his more personal and playful side. The two installations and two videos show him equally at home in the halls of a gallery as he is on stage or on a record, and marks another milestone in his ever growing body of work. |
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 Dean McPhee’s debut EP takes a divergent path from the current prevailing solo guitar trends, venturing into neither Fahey/Basho-inspired steel guitar virtuosity nor pedal-stomping soundscapes. Instead, Brown Bear quietly captures the sound of a man simply playing a guitar extremely well, with little ostentation or outside artifice. |
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 Take Me To The Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950 is an astonishing document of 75 sepia photograph reproductions with a disc of 25 songs and sermons. As usual, the Dust to Digital label rises above concepts of social division and genre by including music made by both African-Americans and European-Americans. There's a primal appeal both to these sounds and to the haunting, almost other-worldly photographs. |
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 This ten-band concert DVD celebrates the weird, sweaty entropy of LA’s unique all-ages DIY club. There are some fairly well known bands included here, such as High Places and the reliably excellent No Age, but the most memorable performances are generally delivered by those that lurk in the most aggressively uncommercial shadows of the lunatic fringe (like Captain Ahab and Foot Village). |
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 This, I believe, is the ninth full-length album that Tokyo’s Yasuhiko Fukuzono has released since 2004, but this young composer has somehow managed to balance his voluminous output with an unwavering elegance and painstaking meticulousness. The glitchy pastoral ambience of Light in August, Later is certainly nothing new, but it is nevertheless done quite well…a bit too well, actually. While technically flawless, there are too few cracks to allow very much emotion to seep in. |
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 This reissue of the trio’s only album together fills in a gap in my Krautrock collection but unfortunately does not live up to the quality I expect from any of the artists involved. Heavily inspired by African rhythms, this 1983 album has dated badly and sounds and upsettingly reminds me of one of my most hated albums of all time (Paul Simon’s Graceland, a more harrowing record I have never encountered). However, there are still moments of brilliance shining through but overall this is an album that might have been better left in the vaults. |
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 Aranos has always been reliably unpredictable and this strange, disorienting, and difficult new album will do nothing to dispel that perception. It begins as a cerebral drone work, but Surrounded by Hermits gradually escalates (degenerates?) into Dadaist cabaret, absurdist noise, and mischievous buffoonery with characteristic anarchic glee. |
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 The only full-length album from this London based trio has been high on my needs-a-CD-reissue list for years. Originally released in 1988 on the Mute subsidiary Product Inc., this abrasive and unapologetic stew of noise rock, punk, and reggae is a vibrant and flawless classic that sounds as peerless now as it did 21 years ago. |
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 It was inevitable that my quest for truly outlandish music would lead me to the deranged audio landscapes of Caroliner. Where my quest will lead me after exploring the many records in their unhinged ouvre I do not know. As for now I content myself with the warped cognitive dissonance they provide. |
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 This vinyl only release is the work of Ann Matthews and it is a hazy mix of childlike experimentation, a far cry from her usual work with Ectogram. She discards any of the usual approaches from her day job and explores her methods of songwriting and musicianship from a very different angle. Although initially difficult to digest, the music here is a wonderful mix of disintegrated pop and primal improvisation. |
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 The concept of a "true mask" is quite an oxymoron, because what could be a "true" façade? I’m not entirely sure how that applies to this album, however, because while it is a very well done combination of black metal and power electronics/noise, neither of those seem like mutually exclusive genres. Regardless of that, the sound is a good mix of lo fi crunch and metal burn that might not be anything new, it’s something familiar done well. |
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 This collaboration between the English double bassist and one of my favorite drummers is superb. While Corsano rarely disappoints, when he is matched by a player who is equally as inventive and fluid then things heat up nicely. Edwards puts his immense experience to full use during this album, the two players sparking off each other to create music with enormous clout. Tsktsking is repeatedly brilliant, all four pieces showing that these two musicians are at the top of their respective games. |
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 Important Records describes this seventh(!) solo album by Grails/Om drummer Emil Amos as “going toe to toe with Roger Waters in the race to become the most bitter songwriter in the world”, but I don’t quite see it (too bad, as I love bitterness). Instead, it seems like an exuberant and odd (though sometimes surprisingly successful) collision between existentialist introversion and the virile extroversion of the best classic rock. |
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 I always hearing a label with a distinctive "sound" trying new things: while the Hymen/Ant-Zen axis has been mining the world of industrial and noise tinged electronica for years (without becoming stagnant), something completely out of character can be either a rousing success or utter failure. Thankfully, this disc falls completely into the former, with each track defying expectations and going even more “out there” than the one before. |
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 Spilling over with trembling strings and thunderous crescendos, "Coward" foreshadows the electric energy that is to be found throughout Vic Chesnutt's newest record. With members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, and Fugazi once again contributing, At the Cut is populated by giant melodies, quiet meditations, and intense studies on mortality and memory. But, for all its bombast, At the Cut is probably most notable for Chesnutt's unwavering honesty and cathartic power. Because of these qualities it has quickly become one of my favorite and most played records this year. |
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More...
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Supersilent, "9"
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Red Favorite
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Emeralds
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Phill Niblock, "Touch Strings"
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Pelican, "What We All Come To Need"
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"Shadow Music of Thailand"
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Group Bombino, "Guitars from Agadez Volume 2"
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Pumice, "Persevere"
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Black to Comm, "Alphabet 1968"
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Steve Roach, "Destination Beyond"
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The Revenge of the Paranoid Shellfish... IN SPACE!
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A Brief Exchange with Benoît Pioulard
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Simon Scott, "Navigare"
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Nurse With Wound, "Flawed Existence"
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Small Color, "In Light"
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This Immortal Coil, "The Dark Age of Love"
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Emily Jane White, "Dark Undercoat"
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OOIOO, "Armonico Hewa"
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Fjordne, "The Setting Sun"
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UnicaZürn, "Temporal Bends"
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The Black Box
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Mark McGuire, "Solo Guitar Volume Two"
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Bruce Gilbert, "Oblivio Agitatum"
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Maja S. K. Ratkje & Lasse Marhaug, “Music For Gardening”
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Shrinebuilder
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Michael Hurley, "Ida Con Snock"
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Help Give Some Orphaned CDs a Home
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The Eye vol. 17!
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Killer Pimp announces first batch of 2009 releases
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Brainwashed Sponsorship Now Available
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