- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
This first studio album from the formidable duo of Peter Brötzmann and Heather Leigh took me an unexpectedly long time to warm to, as it was not at all what I was expecting (skwonking and rapturous free-form flame-throwing). Instead, Sparrow Nights is something considerably more stark, novel, and challenging, unfolding as a uniquely surreal fantasia of alternately gnarled and lyrical saxophone passages over a disorientingly woozy and shifting bed of blurred pedal steel. That said, there are a few comparatively volcanic eruptions of catharsis to found as well, yet the true genius of this album lies primarily in its sprawling and immersive strangeness. As a cumulative and complete work, Sparrow Nights achieves the transcendent indulgence of prime My Cat is an Alien, leaving me feeling weirdly drugged, disoriented, and transformed by the time the last notes fade. That is not a particularly lucrative or instantly gratifying niche, obviously, but Sparrow Nights is more of a legitimate event than it is a mere album.
It is always interesting to see what happens when multiple visionary/iconic artists with distinctive individual voices come together, even though the results generally tend to be rather underwhelming or forgettable due to time-constraints or lack of chemistry.At best, the result is usually an explosive improvised cacophony that I listen to just once or twice.Despite being disappointed so many times, I still find such pairings too enticing to resist, as every now and then an album like Sparrow Nights turns up and knocks me sideways.Well, not exactly like Sparrow Nights, as this is a one-of-a-kind opus–I am speaking more of a collaboration that offers something completely new rather than the uneven mashing together of two aesthetics.Notably, this album is not even all that similar to the pair's previous collaborations.A large part of that is due to finally recording in a studio, as the duo are able to express considerably more nuance and varying shades of emotion than would be possible in a live setting.However, it is also clear that Brötzmann and Leigh's years of collaboration have blossomed into something wonderful that can only be birthed from artists on the same intuitive wavelength.Trost colorfully describes Sparrow Nights as "cold-forged minimalist blues" and that is probably as apt as anything that I could come up with for this near-uncategorizable album, as long as one's definition of minimalist blues is broad enough to include someone like Jandek.There is definitely an uncluttered intimacy and simmering emotional punch to these recordings, even if they bear no resemblance to conventional blues in any structural way.The essence is what matters and Brötzmann and Leigh channel it beautifully.
For the most part, Brötzmann sets up camp in the foreground and handles all of the heavy lifting melodically.There is quite a lot of variety to what he plays though, as he cycles through an array of different clarinets and saxophones and fluidly moves from sensual melodies to strangled howls to fluttering cascades of notes as the album's mood shifts.As his playing is characteristically and invariably inspired, the degree to which each of these pieces succeed is largely dependent on the beauty or lysergic otherworldliness of Leigh's foundation and how the two threads intertwine and interact.The most instantly gratifying pieces tend to be the ones where Leigh approximates some sort of shivering and shimmering slow-motion dream pop, as she does with the glimmering arpeggios of the opening "Summer Nights" and the lingering, quivering chords of "This Word Love."Most pieces fall into that vein, but Leigh breaks up her approach a bit with the stuttering, wobbling single notes of the title piece and the distorted, howling sustained tones of "This Time Around" (the latter almost sounds like she gave "Here Comes the Bride" the Jimi Hendrix "Star-Spangled Banner" treatment).Picking a clear highlight is extremely difficult, however, as the album feels like a mosaic painstakingly assembled from disparate fragments: the pieces all feel like ephemeral vignettes of varying lengths that are not meant to fully stand on their own.Further complicating matters is the fact that the vinyl and digital/CD versions of Sparrow Nights are radically different albums, as the latter includes ten songs rather than six.Notably, the four additional pieces do not feel like tacked-on bonus tracks so much as they feel like a continued and deeper descent into the album’s hypnagogic, reality-dissolving spell.
Thankfully, that dramatic difference does not create a serious predicament for fans, as Trost makes it easy to get the digital version along with the vinyl, yet it does present two very different listening experiences: a concise and focused selection of (mostly) the more melodic pieces versus a far more indulgent dive into darker and more hallucinatory terrain.For me, the latter is easily the superior album, as late album gems like "At First Sight" and "The Longer We're Apart" make a much more decisive break with reality and achieve a unique seasick nightmarishness.Admittedly, a full album of a pedal steel guitar being abused with such violent vibrato and relentlessly sliding pitches would probably be too overwhelming and mercilessly uncomfortable to take, yet the darkly ecstatic delirium of "The Longer We're Apart" is glorious final act to Sparrow Night’s long, slow, and mesmerizing descent into strange waters (it is like being enveloped in a mindfucking swarm of extra-dimensional bees).There are certainly great Peter Brötzmann albums and great Heather Leigh albums out there, and probably a number of great Brötzmann/Leigh live performances as well, but Sparrow Nights is something totally different than all of them.And at its most challenging heights, it is not much like anything else at all.That is a hell of an achievement.
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Phill Niblock is an artist that, despite his penchant of expansive, subtle and nuanced recordings, always seems to make every release an epic one. His fifth album for the label (hence the title) is yet again another double disc one that holds only five compositions. Although it takes a conceptually similar approach to those albums, namely Niblock's use of layered instrument drones with microtonal adjustments to pitch, it still has a different feel when placed alongside his other releases.
The first disc is comprised of two compositions for classical stringed instruments."FeedCorn Ear" (for cello) is unsurprisingly made up of long, bowed notes that seem to stretch into eternity with Niblock's post-production consisting of a very light touch, but one that emphasizes the hidden microtones and natural audio variations.Arne Deforce's playing deserves recognition as well, as his steady hand enhances the purity of sound that Niblock deconstructs. The different layers rise and fall, twisting and turning like braided wires of pure sound into a massive sonic expanse.Toward the end of its 30 minute duration, only the slightest traces of cello remains and instead is simply a cloud of delicate tones and sound. In total it is a lighter work compared to Deforce's performances on "Poure" and "Harm" two cello compositions on previous Niblock releases.
The second piece, "A Cage of Stars," is for electric harp and performed by Rhodri Davies with both a traditional bow and an e-bow.Leading off with a bit of sparkling noise, it soon settles into a sustained wall of microscopically shifting tones that build atop one another.Towards its conclusion there is a much more significant emphasis on the lower end of the spectrum, which again ends it in a different place than it began.Even though it is just a single performance, the layering and tweaking to the final results in a composition that sounds as if it were performed by an entire orchestra.
Disc Two consists of three different performances of the 23 minute composition "Two Lips" by three different guitar quartets.Each player performed the score ten times in a single session with the faintest of tonal variations.The first, performed by Zwerm, is surprisingly inorganic sounding at first blush due to a heavy use of effects, but eventually takes on a more traditional electric guitar sound.The fuzzy leading tones trade off with each other with each player shifting from lower to high register drones being produced.
The second performance, by the Dither guitar quartet, begins with a more intense approach, with organ like wavering sustains cutting through the tonal mass sharply.Towards its conclusion the liberal use of flange and chorus effects imbues it with a distinct feel, getting a bit more psychedelic in the process.The final performance, by the Coh Da quartet (Ad Hoc, featuring Robert Poss and Susan Stenger) comes across as even more abstracted from guitar, with each player producing passages resembling organ and harmonium drones than traditional electric guitar.
Phill Niblock's work is often challenging, and Touch Five is no exception.It requires a focused and dedicated ear to absorb the slow changes and evolution in these long compositions.For those with the time and the patience though, his work rewards like no other in its purity and hidden complexity.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Chondritic Sound label head Greh Holger initially began work as a harsh noise artist, but like many in that field, his tastes and art has changed and evolved, and on this pair of new releases that is completely evident. With both his synth pop project Pure Ground becoming a tighter band and his solo noise guise Hive Mind displaying even greater compositional tactics, he is definitely at the top of his game.
Pure Ground, which is Holger with Jesse Short, has only produced two EPs (this being the second), and a 7 inch single thus far, but even with that limited discography the duo are honing their craft rather quickly.Rather than being simply a showcase for vintage electronic instrumentation, like many in the minimal wave revival scene, "Atlantic Wall" is truly a hook laden aggressive pop song.The bass line that shifts from a catchy melody to a curt thump pairs perfectly with the snappy drum machine beat and noisy synth lead.The verse/chorus/verse structure is rather simplistic, but in the way that all good pop songs should, and leads to a memorable chorus that is extremely memorable.
The three remaining songs are just as good, but not in the same infectious way.The taut bass and shimmering synth pads of "From Outside" and serpentine lead and buried vocals of "With the Old Ways" are great in their own right, however, even if they do not have quite the same earworm quality.Pure Ground go darker and more dissonant on the closing piece, "Sacrificed to Purpose," which is more dissonant than the preceding with its immediate machinery pounding beat.With a shrill lead and everything bathed in liberal layers of reverb, it embraces texture more than hooks, and excels at its goal while making a fitting tribute to mid 1980s industrial.
Hive Mind does not focus as much on rhythm and musicality on Beneath Triangle and Crescent, but they express more structure than previous, harsh noise focused works.The crackling noise and low end push of "Exodus" initially feels in league with the European school of power electronics, but soon changes.As a subtle hint of melodic synth throb begins to become prominent, the noise becomes darker and more oppressive before retreating.The remaining dissonance and depressive electronic melody feels more akin to Maurizio Bianchi's earlier work than it does that of Genocide Organ or the like.
"Detritus" features a similar combination of melody and noise, with the former being more bleak and the latter harsher.Jagged, harsh sheets of distorted squeal crash and eventually take the piece back to the harsh noise days, but not before resembling an even more tortured, deconstructed version of The Cure’s Pornography.The final, side-long title piece embraces both of the extremes, with its overdriven low end and slow synthesizer sweeps giving it texture and depth.The slow build drifts back into the dour, depressive electronic territory, and keeps the harsher moments at bay for its full duration.
Between the indisputably catchy moments of Protection and depressive noise of Beneath Triangle and Crescent, Holger does not disappoint.Even with the more complex, song-oriented approach to these compositions, there remains that dirty, noisy edge of his earliest work, which goes a long way in giving these two sets of songs character and an identity all their own.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Vitiello and Berg have collaborated before on 2009's The Gorilla Variations. Like that work, the two improvise together, Vitiello primarily on guitar and Berg on clarinet and vocals. However, due to heavy amounts of processing and editing, only a ghost of untreated instruments shine through, resulting in an album rife with sadness and longing, but never in an overly bleak or depressing way.
The moments where the core instruments can be identified are relatively far between on this album:"From Here" demonstrates some of the more overt acoustic guitar that can be heard, while "Back Again" features it only in fragmented sputters and shards. Clarinet feature prominently on "Clarinet Assembly" (unsurprisingly), accompanied by a skittering rhythm that sounds as if it were constructed from a malfunctioning guitar cable.
It is on pieces such as "Voice L-," where the instrumentation is almost impossible to discern other than Berg's vocals, leading to the album’s most enigmatic moments.What sounds like a basic repeating synthesizer sequence underscores breathy, hushed moments of voice.With the added rhythmic heartbeat-like accompaniment the piece is filled out nicely, and overall conveys an intimate, home taped like sound to it."Easy Travel" may also have some noticeable guitar, but the strength of it is due to the bassy low end textures and occasional outbursts of unidentifiable noise that overshadow the more identifiable moments.
Closing piece "Another End" may be the most significantly different sounding song to be heard here.Recorded separately from the other nine compositions that make up the album, there is less of that analog tape fuzz home recording sensibility and instead a cleaner, richer sounding mix.Hushed voices and quiet clarinet bits lay atop changing and evolving electronics and effects.It definitely fits in with the rest of the disc, but its cleaner ambience signals a colder, sadder end to the album.
Two of these ten songs are actually the work of a trio, with the addition of renowned violinist Hahn Rowe.On "Recap (With Violin)," his contributions are most blatant; producing dry, almost painful string scrapes that make for a shrill, dissonant experience while still retaining a haunting sense of melodicism.His other appearance is on the aforementioned "From Here," where his playing is kept to low key string plucks and pensive accents that blend beautifully into the other instruments.
If there is a weakness to this album as a whole, it would be the moments where it simply feels as if it is a collage of random sounds rather than an actual album.These moments are fleeting, and definitely do not overshadow the more cohesive elements, nor do they weigh particularly heavy in any one song.To some extent this is expected though, given the nature of how these songs were recorded (improvised with little or no discussion between the players beforehand). Aside from that small negative, Between You And the Shapes You Take is a beautifully melancholy, intimate piece of mystery and intrigue.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
An album presented in two distinct movements, one on each side of the LP, Olivia Block's latest work at first seems like two diametrically opposed pieces, but are thematically, if not evidently from the sound, tied to one another. Based partially on the idea of presentation, both in the form of musical performance and in the sociological perception of the self, Karren has conceptual depth, but is captivating even stripped of that fact.
The A side composition, "Foramen Magnum," is the darker and more discordant of the two by far.Culled from field recordings in a multitude of public locations, such as zoos and museums from across the world, as well as orchestral rehearsals (of the piece that lies on the other side of the LP), there is a chaotic, disjointed quality throughout.Unidentifiable found sounds, crispy processed static and a menacing far off hum sets a sinister tone at the onset.
The occasionally overt smattering of applause, fragmented conversation or obvious sound of footsteps makes for a precious few moments of familiarity, but the rest is disconnected and improvised feeling.It continues to move and evolve for its 20 minute duration, never really fully settling into a single mood or sound until the conclusion.
With "Foramen Magnum" acting as the back stage half, "Opening Night" is the on stage piece.Performed by the Chicago Composers Orchestra, it is a much more calming and meditative piece.Recorded over a period of multiple years and with added percussion courtesy of Jon Mueller, it results in a soaring piece of layered strings and organic sounds.Linked together, the result is more that of a mass of instruments than anything overly identifiable.
Even in this fog, an individual instrument sometimes floats to the surface only to be pulled back again into the mass.Throughout there is a slow, aquatic like flow that moves the composition forward, with sporadic, unobtrusive bits of percussion, but nothing that upsets the soft balance.Towards the end, the instruments seem to lose their identifiable qualities and instead take a turn for the synthetic and almost unnatural, closing in a very different way than it began.
Concepts aside, Karren makes for a distinctly bipolar pairing of compositional styles, with "Foramen Magnum" emphasizing the rawer, more electro-acoustic elements of Olivia Block's work, while "Opening Night" is rooted more in traditional sounds and structures.Neither feel rigidly rooted in their respective styles, however, and some bleed over does occur, reflecting Block's own self as a distinct and proficient composer.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
The Stranger’s second album sounds very different from his 2008 release Bleaklow. Whereas that debut was doused with a sense of trekking over ancient stones and moors of Northern England, this record feels much more interior, claustrophobic and urban. The rhythms boom and snake through a threatening, shattered, dystopia like rats crawling through pipes beneath a recently evacuated building.
James Leyland Kirby* has created myriad projects, spanning the mysterious and the ludicrous, over the past two decades, and The Stranger is arguably the least known of his album-length ventures. This second release shares, most evidently on "Providence or Fate," a little of the melancholy, ghostly beauty, if none of the treated vocals, associated with his best loved guise, The Caretaker. That piece and the following one, "Where Are Our Monsters Now, Where Are Our Friends?," are the treasure at the core of this album, the latter developing with an almost Canterburyesque synthesizer line weaving back and forth. I say synthesizer, but the elements and method of constructing these tracks is far from obvious.
Here and there it may be possible to suggest some leftover vinyl crackle has been borrowed; this clang may be a spanner whacking a burned out car; that stretched, spiraling, sound—on "Spiral of Decline"—might be a ball-bearing falling down a series of drainpipes; that could be a re-wired drum machine; or field recordings of a scrapyard documented on an old answering machine. Generally it is all rather enjoyably baffling and quite a progression.
Watching Dead Empires In Decay resembles a concept album wherein warring factions find themselves survivors of a devastating incident, after which taking sides matters less than just getting by in a landscape of architectural ruin, with pissed-in elevators, downed power lines and stench-filled underground tunnels. P.D.James’ The Children of Men came to my mind, among other narratives. It is an unexpected and excellent development of The Stranger’s sound. However, a protagonist residing in Watching Dead Empires In Decay would probably welcome a break among the traces of unpleasant memories and the harsh yet comfortingly unchanging terrain of Bleaklow.
*Hopefully he resurrects the brilliantly lascivious character of The Colonel to update another unhealthy dose of his highly salacious ode "Cup, my balls" in time for the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament in Brazil.
 
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
An entire album's worth of field recordings can be a daunting proposition. As an added instrument, they often are mixed into other albums all the time to great effect, but the idea of a full album of nothing else can be intimidating, unless it involves Chris Watson.  However, this five artist/one track performance works splendidly, emphasizing the varying elements of the genre and staying compelling throughout its nearly 18 minute duration.
In the text that accompanies, which includes one piece from each artist, it's Seth Cluett’s passage that resonates with me the most.His discussion of how field recordings are catalysts for memories is definitely understandable, but they also inspire the imagination.Traditional music entertains, but it doesn’t create visualizations and speculation on how it was recorded like this sort of work does.
For this project, each artist contributed ten minutes of field recordings, with no post production, that are weaved together into a single piece.Admittedly, these aren't seamless transitions:it's pretty easy to tell where one ends and the next begins, but that also helps to emphasize each artist's unique contributions.
For example, the first segment by Scott Smallwood is an obvious recording of water running from a faucet, yet accompanied by a singular dripping sound that mimics a basic, but perceptible rhythm to give a musical counterpoint to the otherwise abstract sounds.Later on a passage of wind chimes serves a similar purpose, putting melodies in amidst the dissonance.
Seth Cluett's contribution also mixes in more traditional "music" moments, with distant bells that, panned and far enough off, sound much more like studio creations than they actually are.Sawako goes for a different facet of field recording:by capturing fragments of ghostly conversations and howling winds, an almost alien landscape is conjured, with only bits of familiarity to be recognized.
The final two pieces, courtesy of Ben Owen and Civyiu Kkliu, opt to use recordings in a completely removed, utterly abstract context.Owen's segment of distant thuds and bangs could be anything, and his later inclusion of lovely, quiet static solidified its greatness for me.Kkliu’s closer sounds like a dying PC power supply, amplified to absurd levels, and some electronic interference/breakdowns thrown in to liven things up and end the work on a noisy note.
The easy criticism to level at artists in this field is that they are not actually "creating" but just "capturing" the world, and I’m sure for some that’s a fair critique, but it does not apply here.None of these recordings sound accidental or haphazard, instead they sound like the result of careful planning and deliberate microphone placement.Whether it's creating tangible visual environments via audio, mutating the known into the unknown, or using everyday sounds to create widely diverging textures, it's all included within this album.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
A six year absence means nothing to Melt-Banana. Fetch is a minor refinement of past efforts in the band's 20 year career, unraveling over a bevy of short, aggressive songs to reveal itself as either an irreverently noisy pop album, or an intermittently poppy noise rock album, depending on your point of view. They have a knack for straddling the fence between kitsch and the vaguely obscene, and that grey area has never seemed so lived-in and comfortable as on their newest work.
The departure of Rika Hamamoto has served to further focus the distinct, poppy sound that became Melt-Banana's M.O. on Bambi's Dilemma and hinted at in past releases. At this point, all non-guitars and non-voices serve a streamlined, utilitarian purpose, aiding the lead instrumentation in overwhelming the senses. The hi-fi, crystalline mastering adds to the controlled chaos, filling the midrange to the point of aural fatigue. Yasuko Onuki's inimitable bubblegum-and-glass cadence has usually been the most difficult barrier to entry in enjoying Melt-Banana's brand of splintered noise rock. As Melt-Banana's grindcore edges were slowly whittled down and sanded smooth, though, Onuki learned to cut loose more, to care less, and to sing with a more confident, punky sourness which complimented the depreciation of the band's formerly caustic and incalculable melodies. Similarly, the guitar work of Ichirou Agata has grown conciser and more smartly composed; clear chords ringing through on choruses where before there was only hissing, ear-splitting saturation. The cacophonous pedal abuse has mostly been pruned down to staccato loops and the occasional laser gun blast.
Songs like "Candy Gun," "The Hive," "Lie Lied Lies," and the closer "Zero" are all instant classics as a product of this massively increased attention to detail. They are sharp without being impossible to like, and easily some of the catchiest material the band has worked with. Waylaid prior by extraneous band members, perhaps, this newest effort keeps a stranglehold on one idea and makes a killer argument for total musical tunnel vision, with a success rate that can sometimes seem to paint a lot of their past work as too cluttered. If that seems blasphemous, I am surprised too. Nothing overstays its welcome here. Even odd song out "Zero+" sells as an interlude, a glitched guitar cycling through accidental melodies before resolving in froggy silence.
In essence, Fetch is a gleeful embrace of the band's innate kitsch, which always lay under its surface. In past albums, it was an inversion of the trope: a rock band jokingly dangling its own freakish clone of pop cheer above the noise. Now Fetch finds them in contrast, having traversed the harsh end of the spectrum, finding there might be a way to write more accessibly without resorting to self-censoring their best qualities. A song or two flirts with thrash and some of noise pop's dancier excursions, occasionally at the expense of the reckless exuberance of earlier releases, but it is still one of the least commercial releases likely to be given coverage by more well-known publications. Jaded fans clamoring for a now uncharacteristic shift to the old familiar chaos have had about a decade to adjust, and if the biggest complaint to be leveraged against the band is that after two decades they have gotten a little more focused, they have nothing to worry about.
Samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Kid606 has never quite fit into a particular narrative as an artist, which I have always felt was the strongest attribute to surviving as an electronic producer in the flooded market of similarly supertalented electronic producers. Equally brooding, romantic, humored, and flat-out destructive, Miguel De Pedro makes no effort to coordinate releases, or to eschew the fleeting moods and odd moments that fill any life of a grown adult and derive inspiration from any and all of them. Happiness is another one of his "heart on sleeve" albums, full of airy downtempo compositions similar to P.S. I Love You or Resilience, which means that fans of the softer end of his catalog will probably love it and fans of hyperactive scene destroying genius nonsense (myself included) will mostly only tolerate it.
Happiness comes at the tail end of a lot of personal changes for De Pedro, who has recently relocated to Los Angeles, and much of the press around the album will make note of this. It is not particularly new territory, however; PS I Love You was the most endearing and exquisitely brief of his more emotional excursions, and some of his older songs ("Parenthood," "For When Yr Just Happy To Be Alive") have been demonstrating his knack for simpler, more idyllic compositions since back in the early 2000s. It seems strange to say but a wistful Kid606 is often best handled in small doses; those songs were great because they lay at the opposite end of a barrage of rambunctious breakbeats and appropriated ragga grooves. They stood out because they did not have to be there, because they were an oasis of sincerity and exploration that showed Miguel's emotional and technical range and because there was an implication that something important had to be said, if only briefly. Those softer moments were Kid606's self-therapy in practice; a catharsis for a frustrated artist who sometimes got tired of their own schtick.
There are a number of solid songs on the album that make a good case for it being culled down as an EP. "Coronado Bay Breezin'" basically succeeds where the first three songs on the album fail; a bit of early afternoon beach-drive downtempo with a smart balance of empty space and manipulated effects to undercut the sparseness of the melodies. "Happiness Is A Warm Kitten" and "If I am only allowed one song on the album with cut up female vocals then this song is it" fill the quota for tongue in cheek song titles along with being genuinely pleasant slices of ambient electronica. "Taco Time" and equally alliterative "Tarsier Treehouse" are all too brief highlights as well, all clipped loops of thick fuzz and fake strings fumbling around in processed uncertainty, masquerading as interludes. Happiness does not demonstrate any new range of talents or moods, though. It just reinforces the same things we already knew.
For the most part I can not help but think that as technological improvements and stylistic shifts have settled into a comfortable equilibrium, some of De Pedro's edge as an innovator has suffered for it. He was functioning at his best when he was pushing against the boundaries of how and why music in the scene was being made. No longer moving and changing, Happiness represents little more than a staid devotion to a kind of inoffensive electronica that has always been in need of a serious sea change. This is the last thing to expect from a Kid606 album, so while it is impossible to hate something so aimlessly pretty, it also does not offer enough to grab onto to earn any kind of lasting attention.
Samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Jason Urick's second full-length for Thrill Jockey is an enigmatic and confounding one, as many elements of his laptop-based soundscapes rival the work of higher-profile kindred spirits like Tim Hecker.  However, his ingenious and unconventional production talents are somewhat undercut by a strange obsessiveness (which extends even to the title, as Urick was fixated on Marco Ferreri's 1986 film of the same name while working on the album).  That curious combination makes for a simultaneously striking and uneasy listening experience.
I think Jason Urick must have a lot of the same software as Daniel Lopatin, as I could easily have been convinced that this was a lost Oneohtrix album when I first put it on.  That unavoidable comparison pretty much smacked me in the face as soon as the weirdly warped and shuddering synthesizers (or voices) came in on "I Love You," but on a deeper aesthetic level, Urick is doing something very divergent from Lopatin or anyone else.  That distinction becomes increasingly noticeable as the album progresses: Urick's pieces tend to involve just one or two key samples or motifs that are enthusiastically stretched, slowed, and processed until they sound thoroughly vibrant, ravaged, blurred, and impossibly thick.
That doesn't mean that these five pieces are simple though—they're very dense, ingeniously textured, and complex in their own way.  It's just that Jason tends to focus all of his creative energies on honing his primary themes into something unnaturally immense and distorted—there isn't too much happening into periphery or any apparent interest in space or dynamic variability.  Such a "maximizing minimalism" approach is a very unusual one, but it is not unsuccessful.  There is a great deal of life and depth to Urick's melodies, as he clearly knows how to craft (or appropriate) a solid hook and is not at all shy about tweaking it into woozily quavering otherness. Also, his forceful, tightly structured presentation make his songs immediately accessible, memorable, and heavy.  The resultant downside, however, is that there aren't terribly many secrets or surprises left to discover with repeat listens.
Notably, there's also an element of the perverse or paradoxical to I Love You, as the songs sound futuristic and processed into oblivion, but they're often built upon recognizably traditional samples.  In fact, on "Ageless Isms," it even sounds like he took an old ballad from the Far East in its entirety and just slowed, pitch-shifted, and generally garbled it into utter unrecognizability.  "Don't Digital" seems to achieve similarly impressive levels of chopped-and-screwedness with an accordion and a fiddle.  I could have that completely wrong though, as Urick's manipulation of his source material is so drastic that it could be almost anything (reggae and dub tend to come up quite a bit as possibilities whenever this album is discussed).
Regardless of where he is borrowing from, I find it conceptually amusing: applying cough medicine-fueled hip-hop tactics to traditional Asian music is just as inspired as using dub tactics to shred dub into utter abstraction.  Still, my favorite pieces are the album's more drone-based book-ends: the title piece and "Syndromes" essentially sound like spaced-out ambient synth music muscled-up to a rumbling and shuddering intensity level. Also, the ghostly, warbling sample (koto?) at the end of "Syndromes" might be the single best thing on the album.
Despite all those great attributes, however, I Love You can be a tough listen.  The album's most significant and fundamental flaw manifests itself most strongly with the candy-colored synth psychedelia of "The Crying Song": Urick's music is so dense, busy, over-processed, and over-saturated that it can be absolutely exhausting to listen to in large doses.  There's no space, nothing natural, no breathing room–just an unrelenting, undulating mass of thick synthetic sounds.  That makes this a very difficult album to love, but it is definitely not a hard one to be impressed by: despite its flaws, I Love You is still one of the most full-on, attention-grabbing abstract electronic albums that I have heard in a while.
Samples:
 
Read More
Mixing a fistful of covers with the band's own original songs, this compilation shows the group at the peak of its messy adolescent period (which they fortunately never grew out of). Everything that made The Cramps one of the most perfect rock groups of all time is here; they were primitive, sexy and gloriously out of time with everyone but themselves. Their music penetrates my brain like a bolt of electricity from Dr. Frankenstein's lab and I don't think these songs have ever sounded any better.