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The rural areas from which William Fowler Collins and James Jackson Toth hail have an inescapable influence on this new collaborative record. Across the three pieces that make up Under Stars and Smoke it is impossible to not hear the ambient desolation of Collins’ New Mexico home, while Kentucky’s own Toth provides unsettling Appalachian folk-tinged guitar and vocals. The two styles meld together perfectly, and with an appropriately challenging approach to production and aesthetic, it is a powerful entry in both artists’ already impressive catalogs.
The barren, sunbleached sands of New Mexico appear in sonic form immediately on the expansive introduction to "The Border".Elongated passages of bleak guitar tone are layered subtly, with occasional shifts in tone mimicking the errant desert mirage.Toth's guitar and vocals eventually come into focus, a sound that is simultaneously reminiscent of monastic chanting and country tinged revival bluegrass.His strained, intentionally thin voice adds to the creepiness factor that is already strongly in play before the icy sound is pulled apart by the duo into grinding guitar noise dissonance.
Connecting the two lengthy pieces that open and close this record is the brief "The Memorial".The song stands alone with a very different sense of composition, with a focus on quiet rumbling percussion that is far in the distance, enough to be disconcerting in its ambiguity.Collins and Toth keep the dynamic sparse and hushed, even as they push the composition into a more commanding wall of glistening processed sound for its conclusion.
The final piece, the 17 minute "The Man Who Could Not Stay" abandons the subtleties and instead opens abruptly with buzzing, noisy electronics and more overt electronic guitar squall.Just as quickly it fades back into more acoustic passages, with the duo returning to the more obvious electric guitar vibrations.There is a significant amount of effects here, but the sound is quite clearly that of a guitar, blending the more commanding notes with the space in which they are allowed to resonate.
Toth's vocals reappear amidst the guitar and what resembles the sparsest of field recordings.Buried low and hard panned, his voice sounds disconnected and isolated, made all the more pronounced via heavy echoes applied to it.The piece evolves and changes throughout the long duration, melding electrics, guitar, and vocals in different configurations that hint at both ambient noise and country-tinged folk, but never settle comfortably into either framework.
While the two different landscapes that James Jackson Toth and William Fowler Collins conjure via their work on Under Stars and Smoke, they complement each other wonderfully.Both may also have roots in the folk and drone metal scenes as well (respectively), and they bring those sensibilities to this record, the final product stands on its own as a singularly unique, bleak, but also gripping record that excels in its ambiguity and mystery.
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Dominions is the second full-length release from Canadian electroacoustic composer Sarah Davachi, following 2015’s Barons Court. A slightly more demure approach is at work here, shifting from the brooding textures of her previous work to softer tones and more delicate movements in structure, as in side openers "Feeler" and "Ordinal." Recorded primarily at her home base in Vancouver, Davachi returns with her typical assembly of electronic equipment, mostly consisting of vintage synthesizers as well as the Orchestron, a rare optical sampler known for its low fidelity charms. The five compositions on this release breathe new life into these obsolete machines, pausing only for the stringed cacophony of the album’s closer. Melodics emerge almost as an after thought, suggesting something farther and more distant, echoed in the disjointed imagery of local artist, Daniel Presnell.
More information can be found here.
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Australia’s excellent Preservation label has quietly resurfaced with a pair of cassette/digital releases, my favorite of which is the latest from this Finnish composer.  Muova draws its inspiration from both old New Age tapes and William Basinski, which certainly provides a rough summary of Aarni’s aesthetic, but does not convey how wonderfully and thoroughly he manages to transcend those influences.  While I do love both Basinski and distressed tapes, I am not at all predisposed to either vintage synthesizers or New Age revivalism, yet Aarni has managed to use those unpromising threads to weave something quite beautiful and unique.
This is the first Olli Aarni album that I have heard, but he has quite a prolific back catalog of cassette releases behind him, so I may be a little late to the party.  In fact, he even has two other releases on Preservation under different guises (Nuojuva and Ous Mal), though neither sound much like Muova ("Plastic").  Having a shifting moniker has proven to be a historically excellent way to elude my attention.  In any case, Muova seems like a bit of a one-off stylistic divergence, though Aarni seems to be an especially game fellow when it comes to trying new things (2013's Koittaa aika is composed entirely of found sounds, for example).  This particular cassette consists of two 15-minute pieces built from a handful of simple synthesizer motifs.  While the aforementioned Basinski influence is amply apparent in approach, Aarni does not encroach upon his stylistic territory.  Rather, he just seems to have been awakened to the possibilities inherent in simplicity and endless repetition.  He also seems quite enamored with exploring the hissing and crackling textural wonders of old tapes, though he avoids using escalating degradation as a compositional tool.  Basinski and Aarni both use similar tools and start from very similar places, but they ultimately lead to very different aesthetics: Basinski's obsessively looping symphonies of melancholy and Aarni's hallucinatory and warmly beautiful floating stasis.
On the opening "Kirkas vesi" ("Clear Water"), Aarni creates a wobbly and shimmering reverie of looping synth swells, squiggles, and whimpers.  While very loop-centric, the loops are either long enough or spaced far enough apart to dissipate any sense of obsessiveness or forward motion.  Instead, all of the various components drift along in a gorgeously languorous pointillist shimmer.  I am particularly enamored with Olli's attention to texture, as the piece is so beautiful largely because it feels so quaveringly fragile and blurred.  Also, I loved how the more radiant and pastoral New Age motifs were balanced with a very effective and understated touch of bittersweet sadness.  There is a dark undercurrent at work that differentiates Aarni's work from its somewhat toothless inspirations. "Kirkas vesi" also works quite well dynamically, as its dreamy bubbling is made considerably more vibrant by its unusually swaying and see-sawing feel.  The second piece, "Tyhjä tie" ("Empty Road"), wisely avoids messing with that hugely successful template.  Much like its predecessor, "Tyhjä tie" endlessly repeats a handful of shaky, soft-focus motifs for the entirely of its duration with no obvious arc or evolution, settling instead upon a gently hissing, undulating, and dreamlike haze.  It is much less conspicuously synth-based, however, as its central theme resembles a slowed-down and pitch-shifted harp arpeggio.  Also, tape noise makes a bold step to the foreground as well: Aarni’s arsenal of hisses and crackles are every bit as important as the melodic components, giving the piece a strong inhalation/exhalation pulse and artfully masking/transforming the backdrop of field recordings.
While it is clear that Muova was intended as a somewhat modest release, it is something of a minor masterpiece of simple, understated beauty.  Superficially, these two pieces are composed of very little and just basically appear and disappear without much in the way of change or evolution, but making something this static and minimal work this effectively is a deceptively Herculean task.  Such a feat requires both delicate balance and an incredible lightness of touch, as the various loops need to be vibrant and compelling enough to hold my attention, yet unobtrusive enough to not get annoying when they endlessly recur (strong melodies do not work, but fragments do).  In that compositional regard, Aarni succeeded admirably with both pieces.  His real success, however, goes much deeper, as he was able to imbue his wobbly loops with both tender fragility and genuine emotion.  That is a very special thing indeed and Muova is a very rare achievement: the kind of album that I could happily listen to in an infinite loop for hours.
 
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This is the debut album from the restlessly evolving Mark Van Hoen’s latest project, a duo with the Touch label's Mike Harding.  Recorded in LA during a particularly sweltering day, this single longform piece is quite divergent from any of Van Hoen’s previous work that I have heard, beautifully blending organ-like synthesizers with menacing throbs, crackling shortwave radio ambience, and mysterious field recordings.  Drøne are definitely onto something wonderful here, finding a niche that is simultaneously sublimely melodic, gently hallucinatory, and ominously unsettling.
I normally spend very little time wondering where and when an album was recorded, but in the case of Reversing into the Future, the oppressively hot Los Angeles environment goes a long way towards explaining the resultant atmosphere of simmering dread and buzzing ominousness.  Divided into two halves of a single longform piece ("This Strange Life"), Future is a slow-burning fantasia that feels like half existential horror, half Blade Runner-style dystopia.  For much of the first half, Van Hoen’s modular synthesizers are little more than a murky, seismic force, as layers of out-of-sync throbs weave an impressive air of smoldering menace.  Eventually, however, they are fleshed out by some stuttering drones before unexpectedly blossoming into hauntingly elegiac chord progression.  Once everything is finally in place, the piece achieves a creepily beautiful Davis Lynch-esque grandeur, like I am drifting over LA at night in a helicopter fitted with especially loud and sinister-sounding blades.  Eventually, the chords fade away and the first half of the piece closes with a multilayered miasma of densely throbbing, buzzing, stammering, and twinkling synth patches.
The second half of "This Strange Life" slowly creeps back to life with a flurry of pinging, arrhythmic sonar-like tones and something that sounds like a blurry, relentlessly skipping fragment of a classical music record.  The piece soon takes a strange detour, however, dissolving its momentum into a thickly buzzing interlude populated with grinding washes and a hollow-sounding, "locked-groove" riff. That lull is the only time the album ever completely betrays its somewhat improvisatory origins, as the piece quickly regains its footing by downshifting to a threatening, quivering simmer.  "This Strange Life" then slowly begins to build back up to its second peak, as echoing, unintelligible voices gradually bleed in and everything plunges into gently burbling and surreal submerged ambiance.  The music does a lot of shapeshifting over the course of a few minutes, but the chattering, cryptic shortwave voices remain a constant, imbuing the piece with a disorienting air of mystery.  At times, the second half of "This Strange Life" even verges on noise, as Van Hoen unleashes distorted rumbles of sound and something that sounds like a distant fire alarm.  As it nears the end, however, the piece blossoms into unexpected beauty once more, as slow, heavy, and overloaded washes of bass are joined by a wandering, disjointed church organ motif and buried shouting.  It is glorious.
My sole quibble with Reversing into the Future is that it definitely feels rooted in improvisation and correspondingly has a few more lulls than would be ideal.  The flip side of that, however, is that there is also a more unpredictable and organically evolving arc than a meticulously edited composition might have yielded.  That said, the album’s greatest qualities lie in both its execution and its vision.  Reversing is remarkably richly textured and visceral, as Van Hoen proves to be a wizard at layering thickly pulsing drones for maximum gravitas and tension.  This is a surprisingly heavy and eerie album.  Also, even though the only "real" instrument is Van Hoen’s battery of synthesizers, Reversing into the Future does not sound at all like a "synthesizer album," which I hugely appreciate.  Admittedly, those synths do a lot of the heavy lifting, but many of the more memorable parts are either due to Harding’s shortwave radio transmissions or a more general collision of textures or juxtaposition of motifs.  The beauty of Reversing into the Future is that everything bleeds together so effectively and egolessly to evoke a sustained atmosphere of buzzing, throbbing disquietude.  I sincerely hope that Drøne is much more than a one-off collaboration, as Harding seems to be quite an excellent foil: this is easily my favorite Mark Van Hoen album since 2012's The Revenant Diary.
 
 
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Raime’s second album, Tooth, arrives June 10, 2016 on 2xLP, CD and digital formats. The widescreen melancholia of their 2012 debut, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, gives way to an urgent and focussed futurism, in the shape of eight fiercely uptempo, minimal, meticulously crafted electro-acoustic rhythm tracks. The DNA of dub-techno, garage/grime and post-hardcore rock music spliced into sleek and predatory new forms.
No let-up, no hesitation. Needlepoint guitar, deftly junglist drum programming, brooding synths and lethal sub-bass drive the engine. The production is immaculate, high definition. No hiss, no obscuring drones or extraneous noise: the music of Tooth is wide-open and exposed. The seeds of its supple dancehall biomechanics can be found in the self-titled 2013 EP by Raime side-project Moin, an ahead-of-its-time synthesis of art-rock and soundsystem sensibilities, but Tooth pushes the template further, binding the disparate elements together so tightly that they become indistinguishable from one another.
If Quarter Turns was an album that confronted total loss and self-destruction, even longed for it, then Tooth is the sound of resistance and counter-attack: cunning, quick, resolute; calling upon stealth as much as brute-force. At a time when so many pay lip service to experimentation without ever fully committing themselves or their work to it, Raime return from three years of deep, dedicated studio research with a bold and original new music: staunch, rude, and way out in front.
More information can be found here.
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Having completed a preliminary round of work on their eponymous 2015 album at Rockfield Studios, Wire found themselves with 19 tracks. Among them, there was a critical mass of 11 aesthetically unified songs. In typical Wire fashion, however, the remaining material was something other: it had the sound of a band already moving in a different direction, beyond the album project in which they were engaged at that time. These tracks were the basis for Nocturnal Koreans.
The difference between the two clusters of work birthed at Rockfield has its roots in discrete approaches to the studio process itself. “The WIRE album was quite respectful of the band,” explains Colin Newman, “and Nocturnal Koreans is less respectful of the band—or, more accurately, it's the band being less respectful to itself—in that it's more created in the studio, rather than recorded basically as the band played it, which was mostly the case with WIRE. A general rule for this record was: any trickery is fair game, if it makes it sound better.” Nocturnal Koreans emphasises studio construction over authentic performance, using the recording environment as an instrument, not just as a simple means of capturing Wire playing.
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The long-awaited album is now available for pre-order.
Dark Fat is a celebration and documentation of 10 years of NWW shows, but to call it a live album is far too simplistic. It is an entirely new recording constructed by combining the most interesting moments of the past decade into unique tracks. We have M.S. Waldron to thank, as he is archival commandant of the NWW oeuvre and since 2006 has recorded everything and we mean EVERYTHING. He has recorded all the live shows, sound-checks, rehearsals, off-stage events and even covertly recorded the private conversations of the band. These recordings have been studiously and lovingly crafted into a unique sonic tapestry by Waldron and Stapleton with delicate embroidery and filigree added by Liles and Potter. Listen in the Dark and soak up the Fat.
More information can be found here.
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Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (1973) is quite a remarkable musician, singer, improviser and composer and Crepuscular Hour is quite an extraordinary piece of music, written as it is for the unusual line-up of three choirs, three pairs of noise musicians and church organ. It is a one hour piece to be performed in a cathedral or similar with musicians surrounding the audience. The room will be filled with sound in an intense and dramatic, but also hypnotic and meditative hour, where the voices blend with the distortion, the noise sometimes taking over, and the organ eventually hoisting the music to a new dramaturgic level. The piece is inspired by the phenomena ‘crepuscular rays’, which is when rays of sunlight stream from one point through gaps in clouds or other obstacles. The visual design of this concert is a play on the phenomena, with the light being filtered by the obstacles and musicians in the room. All texts are from the Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient books with over 18 texts that were discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. These texts have provided a major re-evaluation of early Christian history. Crepuscular Hour was premiered at the Ultima Festival in Oslo in 2010, and the next realisation of the piece was at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2012, where this recording was done.
The concert was beautifully filmed and directed by Kathy Hinde and can be found on the DVD that comes with both the CD and 2LP editions. This also includes a 5.1 surround sound option.
More information can be found here.
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For more than 12 years, Marissa Nadler has perfected her own take on the exquisitely sculpted gothic American songform. On her seventh full-length, Strangers, she has shed any self-imposed restrictions her earlier albums adhered to, stepped through a looking glass, and created a truly monumental work.
In the two years since 2014’s elegiac, autobiographical July, Nadler has reconciled the heartbreak so often a catalyst for her songwriting. Turning her writing to more universal themes, Nadler dives deep into a surreal, apocalyptic dreamscape. Her lyrics touch upon the loneliness and despair of the characters that inhabit them. These muses are primal, fractured, disillusioned, delicate, and alone. They are the unified voice of this record, the titular "strangers."
Out May 20th. More information can be found here.
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There is a distinct sense of nostalgia running through this newest Luciernaga release. Fitting, since the entire work was inspired by Joao Da Silva's hometown of Santiago, Chile, and is even released by a hometown as a limited edition cassette. His work has always had a sense of personal intimacy amidst the sonic abstraction, and this is no different. Sic Transit Gloria is an emotionally rich, and extremely diverse piece of complex ambient music.
The entirety of this cassette is sourced only from guitar and autoharp, although it is at times difficult to believe given the diverse array of sounds Da Silva creates here.It is only really in the opening piece, "11:00 AM 9/11/73" where the instrumentation sounds most apparent, save for a few other scattered moments. Here he generates an expansive web of droning strings, most closely resembling bowed autoharp strings. While there is a significant amount of layering, the piece overall sticks to only the essentials, which is more than enough to sustain the subtle beauty he creates."Mi Memoria Obstinada" is of similarly sparse construction.Expanding tones of an unclear nature stretch out, carefully intertwined together and wavering slightly enough to create a noticeable change and development in the sound.As a whole, Da Silva does an exemplary job of creating a piece of an extremely delicate nature, yet one that is surprisingly strong and powerful in its understated complexity.
There is significant variation throughout these pieces, however, and "Respiramos" features a different side of Luciernaga's sound, with humming electronics and what sounds like distorted guitar loops paired with clean, untreated guitar playing that blends brilliantly, but is disappointingly brief."Te Desvaneces" has Da Silva going in a different direction, here with electronic-like high frequency loops and reversed guitar parts both running through effects.The insistent radar beacon like loops feature heavily as light puffs of guitar sound are pushed through, with the whole piece becoming looser and more improvised sounding in its conclusion.
The final two compositions, however, are the strongest and most diverse on this tape. "Aire Negro" is largely made up of unidentifiable sounds in a complex mix.Rhythmic bits of scraping and banging-like sounds are weaved in and out with clouds of guitar passing over.Even with this complex, at times dizzying array of sounds being utilized, the dynamics are kept soft, so it never becomes overwhelming.The 15 minute closer "La Tragedia Que Es Chile" ends this release on a somewhat harsh note.With an opening that sounds like synthesizer through a battery of distortion pedals, there is a noise tinge covering the whole piece.The harshness is kept in check, but there is a lot of forcefulness in this piece, blending ugly electronics processing and shimmering melodies together, building to an almost piercing, feedback-laden conclusion.
Sic Transit Gloria is yet another strong addition to the always impressive Luciernaga discography.At this point, it just further solidifies my opinion that Joao Da Silva's horribly underrecognized as the brilliant sound artist he is.His ability to create such a diverse array of sounds from only limited sources is unparalleled, and his skill at knowing just how much processing and post-production to utilize without a composition dissolving into a monochromatic dull roar is impeccable.Hopefully his notoriety will soon grow proportional to his skill, and then I can pull the "oh I was into his stuff years ago" card that so many of us music nerds are fond of doing.Sarcasm aside, this is a powerful and beautiful piece of music that demonstrates his continued brilliance.
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Following their 2012 self-titled debut release, this Austin trio largely return to the sound that made that album so strong: namely dissonant synthesizer work, slow and stiff drum programming, and unsettling, yet gripping vocal work. That is not to say that Graphic is more of the same, but rather a development and refinement of the sound they did so well previously, culminating in an infectious, yet dour and dark piece of music.
Near the beginning of this album, the title song quickly establishes the style and mood that will follow.Taking the pace of a funeral dirge, distorted rhythms and slow, pulsating synthesizers lead the way.While the sound may be awash in cavernous reverb, that never fully obscures a strong melodic underpinning.While the piece may be slow, it never relents, and Amber Goers' vocals start far away and echo heavy, but eventually culminate in a terrifying horror film scream to conclude the song.
A song such as "Not Here" is a comparably lighter affair.With more of a synth pop like opening and a more stripped down mix, the sense of tension and oppression is less pronounced.Goers’ vocals are also calmer and gentler in delivery, and while they build in drama, the piece stays more beautiful than frightening."Nothing"sees the trio going back to their colder roots, with the clap-heavy analog drum programming driving buzzing electronics, and a vocal approach that shifts from aggressive to coldly disconnected.
The strongest moments of Graphic are saved for its conclusion, however.The penultimate piece, "Sundowner" begins with Goers' grimy bass guitar leading the way, as dissonant, snappy beat boxes come together with a heavy sense of chaos.With an overall jerky, stop/start structure, great energy, yet frightening use of electronics, it makes for the high point of the album.
It is closely followed (both in strength and album sequencing) by the lengthy "Torch", which features the trio using its eight-plus minute duration to construct and destroy various arrangements.What begins with sawtooth-heavy synthesizer patches and minimal rhythms, a more aggressive, thudding beat falls into place and the synth leads convey an epic sense of drama.The tempo shifts, and the intensity builds, ending the record with an intense vocal performance by Goers that fits both the tension and darkness of the music perfectly.
As a whole, Graphic does not feature Troller stepping too far away from the sound that defined their first record, but there was no need to.Working with a more conventional synth-pop type approach to music, but with a dark and unsettling spin placed on it was already an excellent formula.Graphic works then as a further refinement of this sound, polishing in some ways and others displaying a growth in songwriting and arrangement skills.Either way, it makes for a perfect complement to their already amazing first record.
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