- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This is the debut collaboration between two Berlin-based Peruvian musicians and also marks my first exposure to percussionist Laura Robles. I am, however, reasonably familiar with the alien soundscapes of Ale Hop (Alejandra Cárdenas) and this union seems to have inspired some of her finest work to date. Notably, Robles is "reputed to be one of the best cajón players in Peru," which is useful context given how radically (yet lovingly) the pair deconstruct and reinvigorate the instrument ("a symbol of resistance, experimentation and transformation" in Peru). In more practical terms, that means that Cárdenas and Robles dramatically disrupt, distort, and repurpose traditional dance rhythms into a wild psychotropic mindfuck. In fact, it sometimes sounds like Robles recorded her parts alone as a freeform performance at an Ayahuasca ceremony or something, but the seemingly roving and divergent threads always come together in impressive fashion in the end. Amusingly, I would have thought that the enigmatically and erratically shifting rhythms of Agua dolce would be damn near impossible to dance to, yet these pieces apparently made quite a splash when the duo coupled with dancer/choreographer Liza Alpiźar Aguilar for the Heroines Of Sound festival. Whether or not that means that I would be a terrible choreographer is hard to say, however, as the finished album may have ultimately landed in far more lysergic territory due to Cárdenas' additional edits and production wizardry.
The album borrows its title from "the most popular beach in Lima," which is near where "both artists lived during their childhood, houses apart, without ever meeting one another." Improbably, they eventually met as expats on the other side of the world and happily found themselves to be kindred spirits tuned into the same outré wavelength. I suppose Robles is arguably the more conventional of the two despite playing Peruvian music in Germany on a self-built electric cajón, but that is only because Ale Hop often sounds like she is from a completely different planet or dimension altogether. The most impressive example of that otherworldliness comes at the midpoint of "Lamento," as the hissing, blatting electronics and sleepy Latin rhythms seem like they are suddenly interrupted by the appearance of ghost UFO that propels the proceedings into dazzling new heights of haunting, spacialized phantasmagoria. That said, the entire first half of the album is one mesmerizing psychotropic jungle freakout after another, as Cárdenas unleashes her inner tropical Lovecraft to conjure a host of squirming, gelatinous, seething, buzzing, and jabbering electronic sounds over Robles' clattering percussion workouts.
I am also quite fond of the more simmering and sensuous closer "Calato," but this whole album feels like a vivid extradimensional jungle nightmare taking place inside a pinball machine. The one caveat is that the improvisatory roots of these pieces occasionally mean that it takes a little while for all the pieces to fall into place, but expectantly waiting for that unpredictably organic convergence to hit only enhances my appreciation for the pair's spontaneous and freewheeling deep psych vision.
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This is my first exposure to this UK-based collective centered around Gavin Miller (worriedaboutsatan) and Sophie Green (formerly of Her Name is Calla), but they have been fitfully releasing albums for more than a decade now. Their last major release, Scavengers, was back in 2016 on Time-Released Sound, so Eyes Like Pools both ends a lengthy hiatus and marks the collective’s first appearance on Athens’ sound in silence label. Much like Miller’s worriedaboutsatan project, this latest statement from Marta Mist occupies a vaguely cinematic stylistic niche where ambient and post-rock blur together, but Eyes Like Pools parts ways from worriedaboutsatan by swapping out electronic beats for Green’s achingly lovely violin melodies. While the more ambient side of Marta Mist’s current vision is appropriately warm and immersive, those pieces tend to be quite brief and the more substantial string-driven pieces are the true heart of the album (and it is a fiery heart indeed).
The album opens with a pleasant yet deceptive intro of gently rolling piano arpeggios before unveiling the first of its three major highlights: the 14-minute “Alway On.” The piece begins modestly enough with some lovely violin drones, but tendrils of melody soon start to appear and a low industrial hum gradually blossoms into a slow-moving chord progression driven by deep, warm bass tones. There are admittedly a couple of moments where it starts to err a bit too far towards soft-focus prettiness for my taste, but Green’s sliding, smearing, and occasionally snarling violin carves through the bliss haze enough to keep me transfixed regardless. More importantly, “Always On” delighted me with a very cool and unexpected ending in which echoey guitar chords slowly emerge from the ambient haze like a vengeful rockabilly ghost.
The following “Lie on Your Side” is yet another gem, as a simple call-and-response violin melody gradually swells into a complexly layered tour de force of churning drones, looping strings, buzzing bass wreckage, and howling intensity in just six minutes. I especially love how the sensuous string drones at the heart of the piece seem to expand and intensify until the surrounding structure starts to burn up. I am also quite fond of the dream-like, stuttering loop bliss of “I've Drawn you a Map,” but it sadly does not stick around very long. Fortunately, “We Have Business to Attend to” ends the album with one final epic that stretches and strains towards transcendence (or at valiantly strains towards being an appropriate soundtrack for The Rapture). In any case, “We Have Business..” is an absolutely gorgeous piece, as mournful strings ascend heavenward from an intensifying roar of choral loops, distortion, and lingering smears of decay. Notably, Miller and Green also pull one last unexpected and emphatic ending out of their hat, as the final minute sounds like a wall of amps bursting into flames as the explosive finale to a disconcertingly feral space rock gig.
This album properly blindsided me, as Green and Miller brought an intensity and inventiveness to these pieces that I definitely did not anticipate at all. If there are any other ambient collectives out there who are planning to end a long hiatus, this is the template for doing it right (and doing it memorably): no one needs another album of pretty synth drones, but everyone needs a good distortion-gnawed howl of catharsis or ecstatic release.
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- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
William Basinski recorded this music during his time living in San Francisco, when he presumably visited Clocktower Beach. Considering that Basinski once created On Time Out Of Time—music in tribute to quantum entanglement and the theories of Einstein and Rosen, and Einstein, Rosen, and Podolsky, using source recordings of the 1.3 billion year old sounds of two distant massive black holes—undoubtedly the subject matter of The Clocktower at the Beach is one of his more straightforward creations. Fair enough, it is one of his earliest drone pieces, yet his methodology is as intriguing as anything he's done, and (most important of all) the music is a memorable journey into the sadness of things. Back to "mono no aware," then.
About that methodology: it seems that Basinski recorded the night shift at a sausage factory on a battery operated portable cassette player, then made this music from that source material chiefly using a Norelco Continental four speed reel to reel tape recorder. Looping and speed tampering is all very well on paper, but thankfully Basinski's ear is such that there is not the slightest trace of anything horrible, gimmicky, nonsensical, or even dull. Broken 1950s televisions, scavenged from the streets by James Elaine, were also used, I'm unsure exactly how but presumably as another sound source.
As with any good drone, or extended ambient work, there comes a point or points where I must have stopped actively listening, because later I realize "oh that's still going on." The music can also suddenly become absolutely riveting. At least that's the kind of journey I go on. It's a bit like Lord Buckley's "Subconscious Mind" track, wherein he describes driving along in a car when suddenly a girl pops into his head who occupies his thinking to the extent that he zones out before being shocked to discover he's driven the last five miles with his mind elsewhere. Not that we've ever done that, eh? Perish the thought!
Keep in mind that I couldn't construct a coherent theory as to how and why a cheese sandwich exists, yet I feel confidently able to state that, as with much of Basinski's work, there is a sense on this album that the music compresses centuries into a few moments while simultaneously expanding those moments into a piece essentially without beginning or end; suggesting everything, explaining nothing. The album title suggests time stopped, time passing, the ebb and flow of tides, a snapshot of a place, a personal memory. The music evokes grief, decay, sadness, and an intersection of dreams and wishes. The cover art is an excellent match, too, and no wonder. Offshore 2 (2022) a piece composed of acrylic and metallic paint, graphite, razor cuts on board by James Elaine in the style of Paul Klee.
Basinski's career, well it's impossible to discuss without mentioning his landmark release The Disintegration Loops. I have only heard that all the way through once; arguably the only way to approach such a monument. Loops is the perfect example of unintended consequences arising from technology and a composer being open and able to recognize when the universe is bringing something into being without specific intent from the artist. He has recently taken a splendid tangent with the wildly different Sparkle Division, his project with Preston Wendell. Their first release disguised Basinski's presence almost entirely; but several tracks, such as "No Exit" and "Oh No You Did Not!" do seem almost to fall to pieces as they glide along and fade away, as if departing for a separate recording titled Jazz from the Entropy Lounge which exists only in another multiverse. The Clocktower at the Beach is just as enjoyable. Close in texture to the early feedback work of Eliane Radigue, it could definitely work as a soundtrack; perhaps if someone decides to make a movie of Steve Erickson's books, such as Tours of The Black Clock, Rubicon Beach, or Days Between Stations. This is a fascinating and engrossing glimpse into Basinksi's creativity. Now I want him to release a recording commemorating Denton Square.
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This is apparently the twelfth solo album from Berlin-based double bassist Mike Majknowski, but—far more significantly—it is also the follow up to 2021's killer Four Pieces and is very much in the same vein. That vein lies somewhere between loscil-style dubwise soundscapes and the austere sophistication of classic Tortoise or early Oren Ambarchi, which is certainly a fine place to set up shop, but that is merely the backdrop for some truly fascinating forays into sustained, simmering tension and exquisitely slow-burning heaviness. Unsurprisingly, I am like a moth to a flame when it comes to longform smoldering minimalism and I can think of few artists who can match Majknowski's execution, as he consistently weaves magic from little more than a few moving parts and a healthy appreciation for coiled, seething intensity.
The album consists of two side-long pieces ("Spiral" and "Later") that feel like divergent variations on a similar theme. "Spiral" opens with little more than a simple bass pattern, the pulse of a lonely high hat, and semi-rhythmic washes of bleary feedback or ravaged synth. There is also something resembling a minor key vibraphone melody languorously weaving through the mix, but it feels more like impressionistic coloring rather than a focal point. Gradually, a pulsing synth motif fades in that feels out-of-sync with the rest of the rhythm, giving the piece an organically shapeshifting feel that propels it into increasingly frayed and subtly unpredictable terrain: reliable rhythms start to falter, textures become more distorted, and the relationship between the various parts is increasingly in flux. It calls to mind a spider patiently spinning an incredibly intricate web while also resembling a state of suspended animation that is increasingly gnawed by an unsettling outside darkness.
While mostly built from similar materials, "Later" takes a very different path than its predecessor, opening with an industrial "locked groove" rhythm that is coupled with an insistently looping bass pulse. Gradually, however, additional notes creep into the bass pattern to transform the rhythm into something a bit more fluid, though the mechanized foundation boldly reasserts later in the piece. If "Later" was only an experiment in subtly shifting industrial rhythms, it would still be an impressive and absorbing piece, but a sickly swooping sound joins the churning and hiss-ravaged factory floor rhythm in the final minutes to elevate the piece into something more intense and haunting. Aside from the warmth of the bass line, it almost feels like a "lost classic" industrial tape from the '80s, except that tape murk has been replaced by crystalline clarity and precision-engineered dynamics. That clarity suits Majknowski's tightly choreographed artistry beautifully, as he expertly wields space to create a vacuum in which every subtle change or manipulation is felt deeply enough to transform and shape the whole. While I admittedly have a strong predisposition towards any virtuosic instrumentalist who spends a lifetime mastering their instrument so thoroughly that they eventually come out the other side to make hyper-minimalist music (like the two- or three-note bass lines on this album, for example), Coast feels like an objectively brilliant album to me (or at least an absolute master class in the manipulation of dynamics and tension).
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- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
I can hardly think of anything better for Aguirre to have reissued on vinyl than Morgan Fisher's collaboration with Lol Coxhill, originally released in1980 on Fisher's short-lived Pipe label. More than four decades later Slow Music is a rare phenomenon: a masterpiece which truly sounds like one. It remains an ambient landmark, an elemental work of art and imagination, and a painstaking labor of love.
Coxhill started out in standard jazz, Fisher in popular music, but from these fairly conventional points, both set about making creative leaps to develop their talents, and vice versa. Fisher quickly went into and out of such disparate groups as Third Ear Band and Mott the Hoople before his penchant for experimentation led—via Miniatures (his 1980 collection of 51 one minute tracks by everyone from Gavin Bryars, XTC, and Penguin Cafe Orchestra, to Ivor Cutler, Robert Wyatt, and The Damned)—to his own radically experimental music. Coxhill accelerated into his distinctly wild yet restrained style of saxophone playing, bringing him into contact with future members of the legendary Hatfield & The North, Kevin Ayers, Shirley Collins, Derek Bailey, and many others, in addition to acting roles on stage and screen. The pair worked together for the first time one year before Slow Music when Coxhill came into the studio for Fisher's Hybrid Kids, ostensibly a collection of various mutant art-punk groups, all of whom were in fact Morgan Fisher in disguise.
With his own studio and a distribution deal from Cherry Red records in the bag, Fisher set out to create something different, something we might now see in a similar vein as a few of the 1970s releases on the Obscure label: ambient, post-rock, improvisatory, studio-as-instrument, modern classical. Given the time period, synthesizers would have been the obvious choice of instrument upon which to base his first ambient exploration, but Fisher opted for a more radical component: Coxhill's saxophone. The result was a great example of "musical sausage-making," as in the success of the end product relying on the quality of the ingredients. Of course, Fisher's working ideas and processes were also quite extraordinary. Take the opening track "Que En Paz Descanse," for example. He has casually described this mesmerizingly mournful classic as "a bit like a Mexican funeral march," which is really selling it short. The raw material is Coxhill performing Handel's "Largo" which Fisher recycles through tape delays, VCS3 filters and octave shifts to create an unforgettable piece. This track, and the final title piece are the undisputed highlights of Slow Music.
The entire album is a fascinating exercise in uncategorizable tape collaging minimalism, with overdubs, layers, and loops done to create passages of both hypnotic beauty and gob-smackingly clever sound manipulation. Coxhill's instrument is transformed to where it remains sonorous and timbral, yet rarely sounds like a saxophone. There are two tiny pieces on the record, one sounding very much like the reversal of the other, which makes sense given they are called "Flotsam" and "Jetsam." I like to imagine that Fisher took those titles from J.R.R.Tolkien, but that is probably unlikely and doesn't actually matter in the slightest.
The title track, "Slow Music/Pretty Little Girl," is 26 minutes of bliss based upon the melody of the final three or so minutes—where Lol Coxhill sings "Pretty Little Girl" as if accompanied by distant church bells. With guitar, bass, piano and voice, Morgan Fisher recorded his own piano, guitar, bass and vocal versions of that simple tune. He then spent weeks cutting approximately 5 mm of tape off from the start of each note, by hand, looping each melodic phrase, and recording these loops as new tracks which he then manipulated with tape delays. This seminal work has been cited as an important influence by several other artists, not least Haruomi Hosono.
Slow Music was reissued on vinyl in 2020. Lol Coxhill, subject of the documentary Frog Dance, passed away in 2012 at the age of 79 after a long illness. Morgan Fisher lives in Japan where—amongst other things—he hosts artist salons, exhibits his abstract photography called Light Art, and has composed music for television commercials and for the anime/live action film Twilight of The Cockroaches.
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- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
The Notwist tend to regard their live shows as launchpads where they can blast off from their studio albums on voyages of discovery. Live from Alien Research Center is a terrific document of that process, as the group re-explore the contents of Vertigo Days; their 2021 release which featured an array of guests from Angel Bat Dawid to Juana Molina. 2021-23 might seem a speedy recycling of the same material, but there is valuable quality of freedom and looseness in these live versions; stretched out and stitched together in the kosmische style.
As enjoyable as it has been to spend the past week on an accelerated hypnostroll through The Notwist discography, that probably cannot compensate for the inattention I've paid to it for around two decades. Over that 20 year period, there has been encouragement from reliable sources, which caused the opposite effect… since nothing provokes the contrarian quite like another person imagining they've discovered something which aligns with our own taste. At any rate, and not only in my imagination, The Notwist has been something of an invisible or taken-for-granted phenomenon, at once both subterranean and ubiquitous, not being there while always being there. With no evidence whatsoever, I feel they are content with this position. After all, without being a pastiche, their music and methodology mirrors the long revered German and European music revolution which sparked Tangerine Dream, Faust, Popol Vuh and others into a Year Zero rejection of both the shackles of military history and the occupying force of US music.
Back in 2016 the group released their first live album Superheroes, Ghostvillains + Stuff, a lengthy recording of the last of three sold out concerts from December 2015 in Leipzig, which focuses primarily on material from the group's Neon Golden album (itself a quantum leap from their early noisy incarnation to a sound balancing a melodic popular sensibility with avant-outsider electro-cool). For Alien Research Center the group worked out the song arrangements and then recorded everything in one take—for obvious reasons without an audience. The question of whether this event was a gig should not keep anyone up at night, not least those of us who have attended shows where the group vastly outnumbered the crowd. At 45 minutes it is considerably shorter than the previous live recording, yet performs the same trick of reinventing another of their creative leaps forward, Vertigo Days, by harnessing their absolutely obvious joy of performing. This joy is clearly lapped up by fans. Indeed, the headline to a piece on this gig and album, by Felix Heinecker, translates as "The Return of Our Incredible Humans."
As on the studio album, "Into love / Stars" is a highlight, even more so here extended to an eight minute duration, moving from ultra fragile hyper-melodic vocals and blinking percussive bleeps to blissful, driving, hypnotic krautrock. Cosmic European music, if you will.
On "Where You Find Me" the group sound like it is walking a tightrope strung between Stereolab's shed and the back garden of Eden Ahbez, without falling off. The angular rhythms of "Ship" could easily slot into any Tarwater album, particularly the later ones. I enjoyed the absolute nothingness of "Intermission" as both a palate cleanser and a primer for the smoother second half of the recording. Everything merges into a seamlessly blissed out mantra as "Into the Ice Age" leads into "Oh Sweet Fire," "Sans Soleil," and the achingly wonderful closing piece "Loose Ends."
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- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
This first volume of Valentina Goncharova's home studio recordings is devoted to her remarkable solo work over a four year period from 1987. The first six tracks in particular illustrate her genius for balancing written composition with spontaneity, and for manipulating sources (such as her voice and cello) into beautifully hypnotic maelstroms of melodic dissonance.
I have read about the breadth and artistic vision of Valentina Goncharova, her classical studies, her quest for experimentation, her embrace of musique concrete and drone, free jazz and underground rock, her interests in Boulez, Riley, Stockhausen and others, and her wildly inventive home studio shenanigans. None of which fully prepared me for the mind-melting allure of her best music, with it's hypnotic frequencies, and mastery of space and spirit.
Writers from John Lydgate, to Cervantes, Donne, and Shakespeare, have all agreed that comparisons are odious, but the title of Goncharova's fantastic piece called "Insight" brings to mind a comparison which I cannot resist. More than 40 years ago I went to see Buzzcocks and was stunned by the 30 minute set from the support group—Joy Division*—after whom Pete Shelley and co sounded like The Monkees. Had Valentina Goncharova appeared first on that bill—blasting manipulated cello strings and synthesizer keys—she would have made Ian Curtis and co sound like The Monkees and Buzzcocks sound like The Archies. Just listen to the magic and power she generates on "Insight" (even the first 60 seconds will be enough). More than noise, more than avant-garde exploration, there is a cathartic and poignant quality to the extraterrestrial reverberations and exotic drone of both "Insight" and "Passageway to Eternity." In the face of these two tracks I groped for descriptors and, as usual, found only ludicrously subjective mental pictures: of electrical pulses whining along phone wires in the desert, an exhausted UFO fighting to stay aloft but losing power and sinking beneath quicksand. Separating these masterpieces is the delicate and eerie "Zen Garden'' which sounds like a duet between (and I have no experience of playing either) a Scottish fiddle and an Atari game console, as they pass in space aboard separate satellites.
"Maitreya" appears to consist of little more than muted clanging bells and the sound of Goncharova wailing into her cello strings, yet after getting "the treatment" the combined and altered sound ends up as a transcendent hyper-mantric exorcism of reason. "Higher Frequencies" the shortest tune on the album is initially sweet sounding but does have an odd atmosphere of approaching dread, like signing a 12 month lease and then realizing you've moved in next door to Craig Leon and The Clangers.
My preference would be for the album to end right there, and if this music had been released before CDs and digital downloads, then it may have. Certainly the final four tunes, including the 18 minutes of "Metamorphoses," all add to the experimental variety, yet to me they sound like they belong on a different disc. Dissenters can just be happy with the bonus. Make no mistake, though, Vol1 is an astonishing discovery, as mystifying as it is satisfying. I picture two trains on parallel tracks. One train is called composition and the other is improvisation. Valentina Goncharova is driving both. She keeps both trains close, makes them switch tracks, even runs both on the same track, all without causing a crash.
*Joy Division has a completely different song called "Insight."
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This debut album from Danish artist/multi-instrumentalist Cecilie "Cisser" Mæhl is easily one of the strongest releases from Berlin's Sonic Pieces in recent memory. Mæhl has already carved out an impressively distinctive niche. Innemuseum first began taking shape in the summer of 2019 when Mæhl made a bunch of field recordings while working at a mountain lodge in Norway (though those recordings would ultimately become a very small part of the puzzle). After moving to Oslo, she rented a studio space and eventually met some inspiring people who helped guide her towards realizing her unconventional vision (Jenny Hval, Stephan Mathieu, and the increasingly ubiquitous and versatile Lasse Marhaug). The involvement of the latter was especially surprising for me, as this album has the intimate feel of a bedroom chamber pop masterpiece conjured from little more than a violin, a drum machine, and an ancient piano, which is generally not where I expect someone from Testicle Hazard to turn up. That said, the homespun, elegantly minimal feel of these pieces is presented in beautifully detailed, crystalline clarity, which is presumably where the Marhaug magic came into play. I suspect this album would still be quite good even if submerged in tape hiss and murk, as Mæhl has a lovely voice and plenty of great ideas, but the fact that these otherwise hushed songs explode in vivid color beautifully elevates Innemuseum to another level altogether.
The opening "Menneskeaftryk" kicks off the album in strikingly lovely fashion, as Mæhl sensuously sings in Dutch over a backdrop of muted arpeggios that fitfully blossoms into swooningly romantic orchestral swells. The following "Små Ting" is similarly stellar, as a shuffling drum machine groove propels Mæhl's playfully dancing melody into a realm somewhere between a seductive cabaret performance and the "haunted fairytale" aesthetic of Brannten Schnüre. While both pieces succeed primarily due to the strength of Mæhl's melodies and the charisma and soul of her vocal performance, there are a number of interesting compositional and production nuances that make them stand out even further. The big one is that Mæhl's vocals (and presumably several of the instruments as well) are close-mic'd, which gives every piece a sense of intimacy and physical presence, but there is an organic fluidity to the vocal melodies that feels wonderfully spontaneous and alive as well.
The structures and arrangements are similarly intuitive, as Mæhl's songs feel far more like miniatures or poems than structured songs. That is intended as a compliment, as they do not feel sketchlike at all. Instead, it feels like a beautiful theme is given just enough space and time to develop fully and it does not ever linger around for long once that objective has been reached. Moreover, Mæhl seamlessly avoids recognizable pop tropes like verses, choruses, and repetition, as she can make pop magic in its most distilled form just fine without them (simple, direct, and refreshingly human). Of course, that tendency towards brevity understandably results in quite a short album (under 30 minutes), but it also means that absolutely nothing ever overstays its welcome and that nearly every single song feels like a legitimate highlight ("Banegård" and "Se Nu Stiger Floden" stand out as especially strong). Innemuseum is an absolutely gorgeous and fully formed debut.
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- Duncan Edwards
- Albums and Singles
Archangels has an unhurried pace which I find deeply satisfying. John Bence shapes electronics, voice, piano, percussion and orchestration into dense and haunting forms, and although he creates some dynamic and challenging sounds, he never forgets that human ears need melodies and tunes. The spiritual concerns underpinning this creation also make it a good stepping off point to investigate and learn about a variety of concepts which have occupied people throughout human history.
It is no accident that the album begins with a piece entitled "Psalm 34.4," a simple form of which states "I sought the Lord, and he heard me, And delivered me from all my fears." Quite what Bence is getting at here matters more for him than me, because my main concern is that Archangels is a genuinely intriguing and enjoyable album to listen to. Although given his victory over addiction, perhaps the album documents Bence's interest in his spiritual health, or even his gratitude for divine help. In an increasingly secular world, where such matters as diet, finances, physical fitness, and relationships blare incessantly for our attention, Archangels sounds like one man listening to himself and searching for faith.
Where Bence's search has led I am not going to surmise, and nor will I lay out the meaning behind each of the fascinating track names on this album. To give the gist, and hopefully a taste to explore more, let me first refer to "Metratron, Archangel of Kether," where we are plunged into shuddering dynamics and a brooding atmosphere of sacred mystery. This atmosphere then changes by blending a distant siren or children's voices or the squeaking wheel of a wooden cart, with an oddly disturbing marching beat. Metatron or "The Youth'' is the angel who led the people of Israel through the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt. Kether, meaning "crown," being the topmost of the sephirot of the Tree of Life in Kabbalah, lies between Chokhmah and Binah and it sits above Tifere. The definition of Kabbalah varies according to traditions and aims of followers, from its origin in medieval Judaism to its later adaptations in Western esotericism (Christian Kabbalah) and Hermetic Qabalah. Whether the composer is a follower of any or all of these traditions is unclear, but he definitely manages to compose music which does justice to his chosen topic; no easy task.
Throughout the album, Bence adeptly blends his chosen elements majestically and violently, and he uses dissonance and juxtaposition with enough restraint to give space for the music to convey awe, emotion, fear, and mystery. On "Gabriel, Archangel of Yesod," a female voice, appears to signal a joyous event with subtle yet richly ecstatic tones that are entirely appropriate—since Yesod means the foundation upon which God has built the world and Gabriel, herald of visions, is the Archangel who appeared to shepherds to alert them of the birth of Christ. The piano repetition intro to "Michael, Archangel of Hod" works superbly before being joined by sonorous male voices which bring a sense of comfort and peace. Both these tracks are superb but I would like them to have been several minutes longer. Not to focus on any one piece of music, but "Raphael, Archangel of Tiphareth" is quite stunning, with a densely shimmering electronic foundation upon which deeply resonant voices are laid. The moment when the voice cracks slightly is genuinely eerie.
I have read that Archangels was created out of a regime of daily prayer and meditation. Actually it said "ritual" not regime but I'm changing that because the word ritual gets on my nerves if it hints at anything occult. Apparently Bence relied somewhat on Damien Echols's book Angels and Archangels when composing a couple of these tracks, and his approach seems, shall we say, inclusive rather than selective or dismissive. Hopefully it stops short of embracing the occult, which in the minds of it's advocates and followers refers to supernatural beliefs and practices outside the scope of religion and science, I tend to think that nothing falls outside religion and science: be that otherworldly phenomena, magic, mysticism, extra-sensory perception, parapsychology, or whatever. Then again, my idea of a golden dawn involves being thankful for the new day, yogurt and granola, even bacon, coffee, pancakes, and a walk with the dogs. The combined wit and wisdom of Helena Blavatsky, William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Paschal Beverly Randolph, Emma Hardinge Britten, Arthur Edward Waite, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, Israel Regardie, Gerald Gardner, and, I don't know, L. Ron Hubbard, plus ayahuasca, crystals, and magick (however you wish to spell it) isn't going to help with that.
John Bence may be banishing his demons, evoking divine assistance, doing both, or something else entirely. Certainly he is going about making some extraordinary music.
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This latest enigmatic find from Arizona's eternally far out and fascinating Was Ist Das? label will be an absolute revelation for anyone who misses Natural Snow Buildings as much as I do. Otherworld is apparently the debut release for this project, but any further details beyond that are non-existent other than the fact that these four pieces were recorded by someone named "Joe" in 2022. While the label's description name-checks a few '70s psych heavy-hitters as reference points in addition to Natural Snow Buildings (Third Ear Band and Popul Vuh), those elements manifest themselves much more subtly, as Otherworld is an oft-transcendent plunge into folk horror-inspired cosmic drone sorcery. That all-encompassing devotion to heavyweight drone majesty is also where Myriad Valley departs from Mehdi and Solange's path, as Joe does not let himself get distracted by any songcraft aspirations, opting instead to focus entirely on crafting massive, sustained psychotropic drones that feel like ancient field recordings from some remote mountain cult hellbent on opening an extra-dimensional portal through sheer vibrational magic.
The opening "Hanging Crystal Garden" makes for quite a mesmerizing introduction to Myriad Valley, as slow waves of buzzing tanpura lap at the shores of an occult nightmare. The buzzing tanpura drones are a ubiquitous feature throughout the album, as is ritualistic hand percussion (in this case, something like rattling bells), but this particular piece has an especially otherworldly and sinister vibe due to the strangled dissonance of the pipes and the way the notes increasingly bleed together and dissolve into sharp feedback. Notably, "Hanging Crystal Garden" is the album's shortest piece (at eight minutes) despite being the most inspired, but that makes sense given its nerve-jangling intensity. The much longer second piece is considerably calmer and more radiant (at first, anyway), almost calling to mind a restorative early morning yogic meditation to clear the mind of the previous night's cosmic horror, human sacrifice, and demon summoning.
While I do enjoy the piece's "slow-motion sunrise burning through the morning mist" feel, it definitely starts to overstay its welcome a bit, but that lull is thankfully obliterated by an incredibly strong finale of ritualistic processional drums and a mind-melting phantasmagoric feast of flanged-out drone heaviness. The remaining two pieces do not offer many fresh surprises in the wake of that opening one-two punch, but they are similarly enjoyable and the lazily undulating tapestry of strums and buzzes that forms the foundation of the title piece is particularly beautiful. While I imagine some drone heads will will find this album a bit too loose, dissonant, or one-dimensional to fully connect with, I am not one of them, as I very much appreciate Myriad Valley's single-minded and unswerving devotion to sheer buzzing physicality and transcendence through sustained psychotropic drone-age.
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- Anthony D'Amico
- Albums and Singles
This quadruple LP boxed set is likely to be an absolute revelation for Laraaji fans, as Numero Group has combined his landmark 1978 debut (Celestial Vibration) with the equivalent of three lost albums recorded around the same time. The albums in question surfaced in 2021 when some acetates from an abandoned storage locker were auctioned off and passed through a flea market and Ebay before being spotted by eagle-eyed college student Jake Fischer, who snapped them up for $114 after recognizing Laraaji's given name (Edward Larry Gordon, the name he was still using at the time of Celestial Vibration's release). Amusingly, even Laraaji himself is a bit mystified by the provenance of these recordings, as the documentation states that they were recorded at a studio in Long Island 200 miles from where the Celestial Vibration sessions took place (ZBS in Fort Edward). While it remains unclear whether the Fort Edward tapes were merely transferred in Long Island or whether these recordings actually originate from a different session altogether in Queens, they are unmistakably Laraaji and they are frequently as good or better than the album that actually got released. Finds like this are exactly why there are Discogs fiends hunting for lost private press New Age music, as the late '70s and early '80s were a golden age for bedroom visionaries who thanklessly explored the cosmos with little hope of ever reaching an audience. Laraaji deserves a particularly special place in that pantheon, as he may have been the most forward-thinking visionary of them all and also took his autoharp to the goddamn streets to expand the consciousness of unwitting strangers.
The story of how former Baptist/Apollo Theater comedian/cult film actor/Marvin Gaye collaborator/street musician/West Village folk scenester Ed "Flash" Gordon eventually transformed into Laraaji is far too lengthy for me to do it any justice here, but one especially significant event was that Gordon became very interested in Eastern spirituality after his role in Putney Swope stirred up doubts about the righteousness of the path he was on. A "paranormal sound-hearing experience" and a fateful decision to trade his guitar in for an autoharp at a pawnshop soon followed, as well as the similarly fateful purchase of a contact pickup and some effects pedals. While the autoharp was an entirely new instrument for Gordon, he dove wholeheartedly into exploring open tunings and effects and quickly arrived at a new sound he dubbed "Celestial Vibration." Having reached that point, I suspect Laraaji would have been totally content to play in parks, dance/yoga studios, and holistic centers around his community forever, as getting a record deal probably does not seem all that important once you have already figured out how to channel celestial vibrations. Exterior forces intervened, however, and Gordon met a lawyer named Stuart White who was absolutely enthralled with his music and eager to start up an independent record label (SWN). That resulted in the release of Celestial Vibration (now regarded as a classic), but not many people noticed and the label soon folded. Thankfully, Laraaji met another motivated fan soon after (Brian Eno) and the two eventually collaborated on 1980's Ambient 3 (Day Of Radiance). I am tempted to say that the rest is history, but Laraaji's work only started getting regularly anthologized and reissued in the last decade.
Given the volume of material and the sprawling, improvisatory nature of the performances (each piece spans an entire side of vinyl), Segue To Infinity defies any easy generalizations, but Celestial Vibration's "Bethlehem" provides the best condensed tour of the Laraaji aesthetic that one could reasonably expect. The heart of Laraaji's "Celestial Vibration" vision, of course, are the dreamily shimmering waves that radiate outward from his chord sweeps. In fact, I half-expected that this collection would mostly be four hours of that (which would have been fine). Instead, however, those admittedly gorgeous New Age/ambient passages are regularly interspersed with forays into wilder, more avant-garde territory. In just "Bethlehem" alone, for example, there is a section that sounds like John Cage violently attacking a prepared piano's innards (as well as another interlude that feels like Steve Reich on a tropical vacation). Elsewhere, there are passages that almost feel like free jazz, some kind of Ellen Fullman creation, wind chimes, water dripping onto a pan, or a psychotropic jaw harp hoedown (the final minutes of "Pervading"). The one consistent theme seems to be that nearly every sound that Laraaji produces feels resonant or visceral in all the right ways. Beyond that, the other big revelation is the strength of the six previously unheard pieces. In fact, I suspect Celestial Vibration would still be considered a classic even if it had been replaced in its entirety with any of the other pieces here (none were intended for release, by the way, as studio banter is included). Hell, Celestial Vibration might even have become more of a classic if "Koto" or any of the "Kalimba" pieces had made the cut. This feels like it could have been a goddamn greatest hits retrospective. And maybe it is, albeit only accidentally. Given that this is a characteristically lavish Numero Group set with all the usual accouterments (photos, insightful liner notes, etc.), I expect every serious Laraaji fan is already snapping up the vinyl, but the digital version would probably be an excellent entry point for the curious. While I already enjoyed Laraaji beforehand and recognized him as the most unique and fascinating figure to emerge from the New Age underground, I definitely needed Segue To Infinity to show me that I was still not appreciating him nearly enough.
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