brainwashed

Do you have Oscar Fever? Probably not if you're reading brainwashed.com, but once again Hollywood has managed to engage in their yearly ritual of televised autofellatio. Here we present to you our picks of soundtracks that have, as far as we know, have gone unrecognized in internationally broadcast award ceremonies.

New music is due from Current 93, Kool Keith, and Spiritual Front, while old music is due from Philip Corner, Simon Finn, Andy Kaufman, Baby Huey, and Death.

In his 29 year career, Francisco López’s work could never be described as accessible.  His treatment and processes of both organic and synthetic sound sources have ranged from pensive to painful, and everything in between those extremes.  This, however, may be his most daunting work to date: a data DVD of uncompressed wave files and a total of seven hours. The 17 "quiet" pieces are challenging, yet captivate when experienced in the right context.

It has taken me entirely too long to get around to covering a Petrels album, but London composer/multimedia artist Oliver Barrett's third opus turned out to be an ideal place to start.  Due to the complex and heavily processed nature of these pieces, the closest reference point is probably someone like Tim Hecker, yet Barrett's epic scope; talent for texture, dynamics, and melody; and passion for deep and unusual concepts place both Petrels and Mima in a category all their own.

2013 was an uncharacteristically quiet year for Horseback.  While leader Jenks Miller released a solo record and the band put out a three disc compilation of limited and unreleased material, that was about it.  The result of that hiatus is Piedmont Apocrypha, an album that hits many of the touchstones Horseback has worked with before, but as an evolved, more nuanced album that is polished and more complex than what preceded it.

There are a few reasons why I am so late to the party on Daryl Groetsch's work, but the primary one is that I first heard about him in the early 2000s, when he was appearing on albums with titles like All I Want for Xmas is Bowel Disrupting Noise and Underwater Corpse.  Consequently, his transformation into one the premier purveyors of kosmische-inspired long-form analog synthesizer voyages went entirely unnoticed by me.  Another reason, unfortunately, is that Pulse Emitter has a dangerous tendency to veer into cloyingly saccharine New Age territory, as he sometimes does here.

Face Without Face, to me, is the musical equipment of a genre film.  It pairs a respected master (Negru Voda) with a relatively new artist (Knös) in a split release of harsh European electronics that offers no surprises nor earth shattering developments, but accomplishes what it intends to.  Muffled, bleak and rhythmic, this split is a great throwback to the Tesco/Cold Meat Industry scene from the late 1990s.

As much as it pains me deeply to use this adjective, this Manchester duo seem to specialize in something resembling hypnagogic techno. At the very least, they attempt to refract more conventional techno sounds through a drugged/half-asleep/eyes closed/out-of-body sensibility that is seemingly all their own.  That is a tricky feat to pull off though, as the line separating "ghostly and diffuse" from "boring, forgettable, and easy to ignore" is quite a narrow one.  Fortunately, both of these EPs are likable (if flawed) in their own right and admirably a bit beyond the pale, but the newer New Brutalism is significantly more sharply realized than its predecessor.

The material that makes up Voyeur dates back to 2008, when Celer was at their most prolific as a duo.  Intended to be a film score, the sound of this album is in league with the contemporaneous work they were putting out, but there is a distinctly different feel to this album, possibly due to its conceptual framing, or perhaps because of the project’s more conservative release schedule as of late.

This Brooklyn-based composer's debut release for Students of Decay is quite an unusual effort, placing its emphasis most prominently on frequently untreated field recordings of natural spaces (as well as a few unnatural ones).  Even the instrumentation is atypical, as Guthrie uses violoncello and contrabass to weave a creaking, moaning bed beneath French horn playing that frequently sounds like a very large, very sad bird.  There is seemingly not much happening compositionally (overtly, anyway), but Codiaeum Variegatum's languorous, organic, and unfamiliar soundscapes are a lovely place to linger nonetheless.