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Six years ago, Drag City tracked down outsider folk artist Gary Higgins and reissued his solitary lost album, 1973's Red Hash, a slow-burning work of art that was difficult to find on vinyl 30 years after its release. After that album and a new release by Higgins, 2009's overlooked Seconds, Drag City is now presenting Higgins' recordings made prior to Red Hash, a previously unreleased collection of six hushed, lovely songs that Higgins wrote and recorded in a Connecticut log cabin (eat your heart out, Bon Iver...) in 1970-71.
A Dream a While Back is a collection of Higgins' psych-folk music in its purest form. The expanded instrumental palette that fleshed out his songs on Red Hash—electric guitar, percussion, cello, flute, piano, organ, bass and mandolin—is nowhere to be heard; this is Higgins, a guitar, a room and a microphone, for better or for worse. Luckily, these are revelatory songs—in case there was any doubt, the curtain being pulled back reveals that Higgins is a master of his craft, carefully arranging his songs and maximizing their impact even at a rudimentary level. While he chose to color between the lines with new instrumentation on Red Hash, his songs are compelling without any extra flourishes.
Higgins' songwriting on A Dream a While Back remains recognizably his own. If anything, the stripped-back, solo recordings on this EP effectively draw attention to the haunting undercurrent that runs through his music. Higgins' influence on modern folk artists like David Tibet and Ben Chasny (both avowed fans; the latter covered Higgins' on 2005's School of the Flower) is indisputable, the through lines apparent: introspective, often bittersweet vocals; plaintive, melancholic guitar playing that conjures up a lonely atmosphere like clouds drifting across a barren countryside; an eerie air hovering over the recordings like the tape hiss coating several of these songs.
This may sound cheesy, but I find these basic, effective recordings to be a marvel—that one man is able to conjure up such poignant, atmospheric beauty with guitar and voice, and nothing more, is incredible. The sparse, simplistic nature of Higgins' songs make wonder whether folks leaning on extra instrumentation in the modern age are, in a sense, using their 'Get Out of Jail Free' pass. Higgins achieves an intimacy that many songwriters can only dream of: this is gorgeous folk music with no frills—Gary and a guitar—and it is perfect.
Music aside, I find it refreshing that Drag City (and perhaps Higgins himself) thought it best to release A Dream a While Back as an EP—six songs, 24 lean minutes. Far too many record labels assume that "more is better" when it comes to reissues, stuffing them with undercooked bonus tracks, alternate versions of previously released songs, pointless remixes and so on. A Dream a While Back points to the truth: more is not always better. Whether Higgins recorded more material than is included here is irrelevant. This is an archival release presented exactly as it should be—lean and potent without a bad song in the bunch.
Samples:
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This second mix of eclectic roots underpinning the late-'70s musical revolution may irk the purists who feel Blue Cheer, Edgar Broughton, Faust, Parliament, Suicide, The Misunderstood, The Godz, Woody Guthrie and others weren't "punk." Actually, many of Kris Needs' choices make sense, although the lack of Dada tone-poetry is baffling.
In his excellent book, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of The Twentieth Century, Greil Marcus makes a convincing case for an ongoing distillation of a societal critique that he maps from the Dada movement to the Situationist International to Johnny Rotten. It's a critique based upon the standpoint of the absurdity in failing to challenge conformistconstructs such as advertising, popular culture, suburbs, organized religion and war. In a similar vein, Kris Needs identifies a slew of artists which he feels are imbued with aspirit akin to that which erupted in 1976 to register disgust and boredom at the economic and musical stagnation which held sway.
The cover art is awful and some of Dirty Water 2 features major label artists of early rock n roll, glam rock and reggae that we can skip over here. However, having made the necessary link with NYC punk with Patti Smith's "Piss Factory" (sounding better than ever) and Jayne County's "Man Enough To Be A Woman" (sounding worse than ever) Needs casts the net much wider. Firstly, he grabs some obscure US garage rock tracks by Human Expression, Zachary Thaks, Unrelated Segments, Tidal Waves and The Misunderstood (doing "Children of The Sun" which is the song I like best on this double CD set).
A bit of research on The Misunderstood reveals John Peel (in a 2003 interview) picking a gig of theirs at Pandora's Box, Hollywood, in 1966, as the best he'd ever attended; certainly in his top ten. We live and learn. It turns out that Peel first saw the group perform in a San Bernadino shopping mall and coaxed them to London to record. Unfortunately, a combination of the US draft and UK immigration seems to have caused swift and severe problems from which they never recovered. The story is detailed in Like, Misunderstood , the autobiography of lead singer Rick Brown, which looks to have some fascinating details of his subsequent escape from boot camp and fugitive life hiding in jungles and an Indian ruby mine guarded by a 115 year old guru. I'll definitely be seeking that and more of their music.
Apparently, among the most appreciated artists from the first Dirty Water compilation were (doo wop group) The Silhouettes and (black pre-punks from Detroit) Death. Both bands are featured again. Death sound like they were ahead of the punk curve but a refusal to change their name at the behest of a record company meant they ended up self-releasing 500 copies of their 1975 recordings. Their "Freakin' Out" starts with a short comical falsetto screeching of their name, but what follows is a thrashing punk rock blueprint. The Silhouettes' inclusion may be explained in the 76 page booklet accompanying this set (which I didn't receive). Presumably Needs feels their tales of economic woe, released in the late 1950s, had a echo in the doom-laden, scapegoating, dole queue backdrop to late-1970s England. Lipstick Traces also focuses on the effects of mass unemployment with a quote from Hannah Arendt:
"Each time society, through unemployment, frustrates the small man in his normal functioning and normal self respect, it trains him for that last stage in which he will willingly undertake any function, even that of hangman."
Fair enough, although as a young carefree man, I found being on the dole quite liberating in a dreamy rambling fashion which Arendt might label "bourgeois" although it felt more like "peasant with an attitude to the passage of time similar to that sometimes suggested by The Idler magazine."
Anyway, the same people who frothed at the mouth at Needs' first collection (while muttering "The Last Poets have nothing to do with punk") will froth at the mouth over 2 (while muttering "Parliament have nothing to do with punk"). And if "punk" is seen as merely a narrow musical genre, rather than creativity borne out of a "punk attitude" then the criticism is justified. However, life's too short not to accept musical variety and the more inclusive angle. Such a viewpoint also tries to avoid depicting "punk" as another art or social movement which reduces most people to spectators and deteriorates into a less than amusing exercise in exclusion. Certainly, the DIY aspect is the most alluring part of the late 1970s wave of musical creativity in the UK. Not everyone joined in, of course, but artists seemed to be coming out of nowhere to make a cassette or flexi-single, borne along on a wave of "attitude."In Lipstick Traces, that "attitude" (be it labeled Dada, Situationist, or punk) comes across as almost a biological, noble, social imperative: to smash the old and make something which you claim is new and unique. Revolt into style, refuse to be logical, reject any labels and deny all influences. Let the critics who come along later sort it into neat piles of genre and location, if they must.
In terms of the musical variety which Needs showcases, I was pleased to listen again to some forgotten UK groups such as Kilburn & The High Roads (Ian Dury's group before The Blockheads) and Doctors of Madness. Up-close in the confines of Burton-on Trent's 76 Club, I recall Dury's stage presence as genuinely unnerving. Of course, back then it was not unknown to sup pints of "hosepipe" (mixing brown ale, barley wine and brandy) after which many things had a tendency to become "genuinely unnerving" not least oneself. In the same venue the Doctors of Madness were less memorable with their slightly silly outfits and stage presence. The Edgar Broughton Band were more interesting and it's good to hear "Out Demons Out" again. Maybe it was the smattering of Clockwork Orange-esque trousers but the group had a pleasing yet defiant, quasi-thuggish demeanor and a clunky sound which was a million miles from the pomposity, increasingly un-affecting technical skill, and celebrity aura that was the stale musical norm in the UK; after years of diminishing returns from progressive rock and West-Coast influenced balladry.
Kris Needs has a sense of how to get people to pay attention to the things he loves. He took over the fanzine Zig Zag and probably sold more copies in a single issue with (the then uber-hot and relevant) Debbie Harry on the cover than all the previous ones combined. The range of 39 tracks on Dirty Water 2 hold my interest very well. There is a sense of rebellion conveyed by speed, aggressive playing, strident lyrics and a defiant pose. I enjoy the tangents into the realm of dub toasting, the leaps into wild instrumental catharsis or (in the case of The Holy Modal Rounders resembling a whole group of Legendary Stardust Cowboys on "Indian War Whoop") the rabid yelping. Suicide also whisper and growl over what sounds like battling malfunctioning vacuum cleaner and didgeridoo for "Creature Feature." Certainly it's a fine mix when Faust, John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett and The United States of America can rest easily together. My only gripes are the cover, a couple too many major label artists, the absence of any Dada gibberish, and something from Captain Lockheed and The Starfighters.
samples:
- Death - Freakin Out
- Suicide - Creature Feature
- Parliament - O Lord Why Lord
- Holy Modal Rounders - Indian War Whoop
- Edgar Broughton - Out Demons Out
- The Misunderstood - Children of the Sun
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Belong's second album (and first for Kranky) arrives half a decade after their debut full-length on Carpark and a couple of abbreviated, vinyl-only releases. Luckily, Common Era is worth the wait. This is my favorite recording that Belong have made—a collection of nine ambient, washed-out pop songs folded into a labyrinth of hazy, disorienting production, like a beautiful snapshot purposely taken out of focus, its colors smeared and bleeding into one another, blurry and dreamlike.
As on many Kranky records, there is a thick, hazy ambience at play on Common Era—equal parts guitar feedback, reverb, echo, static and noise—that wraps snugly around each of its songs and unifies the album. The production is, perhaps, a double-edged sword: on a poor stereo, I suspect the album may sound muddy; however, on great headphones (which I humbly suggest every serious music listener invest in), the details and nuances come to life. Instruments, vocals and ambient sounds bleed into one another seamlessly, but sound slightly askew and off-balance, like a fractured, distant radio transmission. The overall effect is a surreal, enveloping warmth in the production that ties the songs together.
The songs on Common Era lean toward a pop music blueprint underneath the hypnotic production: thoughtfully composed and sequenced, each with memorable structures and hooks. The brooding, patient songs (and foggy, grayscale cover artwork) recall the dark grandeur of the Cure's Faith and subsequent single "Charlotte Sometimes," yet are altogether much more complex, drawing from dream pop, ambient and drone music in pursuit of something new. There are vocals scattered throughout; individual words and phrases are discernible from time to time, but they are buried deeply in the mix and written vaguely, open to interpretation, so as not to become a focal point. The hazy, static-soaked production ensures continuity, allowing the songs to contribute to the album's effectiveness without obscuring their individual charms.
At its heart, Common Era is a modern pop album buried within gorgeous, overwhelming washes of sound. It can be difficult to draw from dream pop and shoegaze without sounding like a tribute or cover band, but Belong have done it—I haven't heard a better album this year that kindly tips its hat to those sounds, then says, "No, thank you," and moves well beyond them.
Samples:
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Releases from this Swedish free-folk ensemble have historically not been particularly easy to obtain, as only their reissued debut (2015's Inom Dig, Inom Mig) has thus far seen wide distribution (and most are not digitally available either). Happily, their fifth album is now getting a well-deserved reissue too, as 2017's Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig ("There is a heart for you") will see a US physical release in December. I actually snapped up the original version when it came out on Omlott, as I love this band, but I have yet to hear the first three releases that followed Inom Dig. I am certainly curious to hear what directions they take, as the gulf between Enhet För Frei Musik's debut and this album is quite a large and unexpected one: Inom Dig had a disjointed, haunted, and almost Jandek-ian feel, whereas this latest opus blends simple, tender and melodic songs with wonderfully strange and hallucinatory collages. While both albums are excellent and unique in their own right, Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig sounds far more like the work of a project with a fully defined and realized identity.
All five members of Enhet För Frei Musik have been involved in an array of individual and collaborative projects in the Swedish underground over the years, but only Sofie Herner (Neutral) and Dan Johannson (Neutral, Sewer Election) are familiar to me.I suppose that is apt, as it is more or less impossible to tell what anyone besides Herner (vocals) contributes at any given moment or even if all five members are actively involved in every song.If they are, I am absolutely stumped about what role each artist could possibly be playing, as many pieces feature just one instrument.For example, the opening "När Ska Min Själ Finna Ro" ("When Will My Soul Find Peace") is built from just Herner's voice and a simple organ melody, while some other pieces feature just an acoustic guitar. A number of the band's members have noise and field recording backgrounds, however, so perhaps there is a team effort involved in making every piece sound like a wobbly and hissing boombox recording.It does not seem like that would require a lot of effort to achieve, so it is more likely that the band just sporadically convenes in various incarnations, then collaboratively shapes those disparate recordings into coherent albums with a unified aesthetic.I do like the murky, lo-fi quality of these recordings quite a lot though, as it suits the spontaneous, child-like nature of the songs.At its best, this album often feels like a fragmented and impressionist audio diary that is both nakedly honest and appealingly enigmatic.
For the most part, the most memorable pieces on the album tend to be the ones that prominently features Herner's disarmingly lovely and fragile-sounding vocals.There are only a handful of them though and some are quite short.Aside from the aforementioned opener, the band are at their most melodic and song-minded with "Det Finns Ett Hjärta" ("There is a Heart") and "Bara Min Egen" ("Just My Own"), both of which feel like heartfelt, guileless, and emotionally direct love songs.To a certain degree, that is not expected terrain for a band that contains so many noise and noise-adjacent artists, but it also makes a lot of sense in a perverse way: great noise artists attempt to cathartically express something raw, real, and undiluted by artifice, while pieces like this album's "Det Finns Ett Hjärta" achieve a more nuanced, vulnerable, and melodic equivalent to that.That said, Enhet För Frei Musik also prove themselves to be exceptionally adept at crafting gorgeous and unique sound collages.In "Variationer Av En Längtan Till Gud" ("Variations Of A Longing For God"), for example, a distorted and hiss-ravaged chorale abruptly transforms into a strangled, squirming saxophone and spoken-word interlude before blossoming into a final melodic coda.Like most pieces on the album, it feels more like a fragment or a vignette than a fully formed piece, but the first theme is an achingly lovely one that resembles a choir of angels faintly and fleetingly piercing through a caustic veil of noise and static.In between those two poles of collage and song, there are also an eclectic array of more sketchlike pieces that range from whistling in a sea of tape hiss ("Blomsteräng") to unaccompanied sax solos ("Solokvist") to something that sounds like a cross between a post-punk band and a snakecharmer ("Din Synd").  
The crown jewel of the album, however, is the enigmatic and haunting 10-minute closer "Fragment Av En Midsommarnattsdröm" ("Fragment of a Midsummer Night's Dream").Notably, it is one of the only songs on the album that stretches much beyond three minutes, as well as the only piece that feels like it has a purposefully structured and evolving arc.At its heart lies a sample of an impassioned speech that unfolds over a warm and twinkling bed of synths, yet it undergoes a series of intriguing transformations and intrusions that include a traditional folk ensemble and something that sounds like an Instagram influencer hawking sweaters.I dearly wish I understood Swedish, as it feels like there is something deeply poignant and profound at piece's center.Of course, it is also possible that the mystery of the sonorous monologue only enhances the piece's depth and power, as I quite like the feeling of a deep revelation elusively hidden within a disorienting swirl of unfamiliar languages, decontextualized fragments, temporal dislocation, and general mindfuckery.I suppose that is an apt summary of the album as a whole too, which is why Enhet För Frei Musik is such a compelling and refreshing band: I cannot pretend to fully understand their methods, but their strange mosaics have an uncanny way of amounting to an experience much greater than the sum of the individual parts. Moreover, they have found a way to reignite Sweden's rich tradition of iconic psych bands like Pärson Sound that feels like a new chapter rather than a mere homage, as this quintet have fully internalized that organic, unselfconscious free experimentation (rather than style) was the true soul of that illustrious milieu.
Samples can be found here.
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It is quite rare for two artists with successful solo careers to team up for a genuinely strong collaborative project that offers a fresh vision, but this debut full-length from Marielle V. Jakobsons and Chuck Johnson is the elusive exception that is arguably better than the sum of its parts. I say "arguably" only because each artist is already responsible (or at least partly responsible) for some albums that I have absolutely loved in the past. Notably, however, both artists have undergone significant stylistic evolutions in their careers, which may very well be the secret to a truly egoless and organic confluence of visions: neither was rigidly tied to a signature style, so finding a fertile common ground was probably just a natural outcome after playing together for a while. That said, the clear antecedent to this project is Johnson's gorgeous Balsams album (his first on pedal steel). As someone who was thoroughly beguiled by that album, it never would have occurred to me that Johnson might have been able to reach even greater heights with the help of a sympathetic foil on Fender Rhodes, but I am delighted that it occurred to Jakobsons (and that she was completely right).
As someone who is quite fond of both Marielle Jakobsons' early work as Darwinsbitch and her collaborations with Agnes Szelag (Myrmyr, EJS), I still occasionally have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that the same artist is also behind Date Palms and Saariselka.Every great artist changes over the course of their career, but the aesthetic gulf between Jakobsons' days as a formidable violinist and her recent sun-dappled, meditative reveries is quite a substantial one.While her newer albums are too varied and distinctive to quite bleed into the New Age vogue, she has definitely become synonymous with a style of earthy, laid-back psychedelia that feels very "California" to me.
In that regard, Jakobsons and pedal steel-era Johnson are very much kindred spirits and The Ground Our Sky is an archetypal example of that evocative stylistic niche.In fact, that terrain proves to be surprisingly fertile and shifting creative ground for the pair, as these six songs take a number of different and intriguing directions.To some degree, it feels like Jakobsons and Johnson alternated taking the lead on songwriting, as some pieces feel more driven by organ and some by guitar.On the strongest pieces, however, the instruments merge together so organically and beautifully that they seem to have sprang into the world fully formed."Void" is the most sublime success story in that vein, as Jakobsons' twinkling organ arpeggios leave lovely vapor trails while Johnson's swooning and chiming pedal steel weaves a shimmering haze of its own.It is a strikingly beautiful and lush piece of music, as well as one of the few songs in which Jakobsons sings, resulting in quite a woozily wonderful swirl of dreampop heaven.
Elsewhere, the opening "Horizons" is yet another gem, as a lazily winding and chiming organ motif blossoms into a vivid new vista once Johnson's ringing arpeggios, sliding chords, and shivering sustained notes start to elegantly intertwine with the original theme."Into The Wind" is a highlight as well, as a gently swaying and languorous web of arpeggios slowly coheres into a hushed vocal piece embellished by lazily glimmering organ melodies and bleary pedal steel glissando.I am also quite fond of the more diffuse and ambient-minded "Neochrome," in which a gently rippling, slow-motion succession of organ chords provides a loose backdrop for pedal steel that feels like a soft-focus ghost ballet.The closing "Afterlight" is another piece that approximates ambient drone territory, but it is a far more radiant variation, as Johnson's guitars lazily smear together over a warm bed of drones like the final streaks of a gorgeous pink and violet sunset.Only the sleepily burbling "Subsurface" feels like a misstep: it is all sunny psych shimmer without any added depth or shadow to give it some necessary gravitas.That said, there are plenty of artists who have made careers mining similar territory, so perhaps it is just more of a direction that is subjectively (if emphatically) not for me.Saariselka are far too good to be delving into Kosmische pastiche or homage.
For the most part, however, every direction that Jakobsons and Johnson explore tends to be quite an appealing and absorbing one: The Ground Our Sky simultaneously delivers on the promise of 2018's Ceres and expands that earlier vision in some very inspired ways.I was especially struck by "Void," as I had not anticipated this project ever creeping into Julee Cruise-esque "pop" territory (or doing it quite so beautifully if they did).The real magic of this union transcends the success of any individual song though, as Jakobsons and Johnson seem very much attuned to the same cosmic vibrations and their twin visions complement each other perfectly.Also, I was surprised anew by how much emotion and heavenly beauty Johnson is able to conjure from a pedal steel, as I have never viewed it as a particularly promising lead instrument (and tend to prefer my guitars inventively misused rather than played properly).Between this album, Balsams, and Ayami, however, Johnson has decisively won me over to both the instrument and his artistic vision for it–the man is on quite an impressive run of releases these days and this album only continues that trend.It is damn hard to make radiant, gentle, and quietly lovely music that has real depth and soul: when they are at their best, Saariselka manage to do it better than just about anybody.
Samples can be found here.
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My ears rarely perk up at the prospect of any artist releasing a modular synth album, but Alessandro Cortini's recent career has been a wonderful exception thus far: some of the pieces on his Buchla-centric debut (2013's Forse) absolutely floored me. Moreover, he has yet to disappoint me since, as the handful of albums that followed in Forse's wake have largely adhered to that same impressively high level of quality: Cortini almost never releases a solo full-length that does not boast at least two legitimately amazing pieces. As such, he has definitively earned a place in my personal pantheon of great contemporary synth composers. Great artists tend to be great, however, because they restlessly expand and reshape their vision with new tools, new influences, and new ideas. In keeping with that tendency, Volume Massimo (Cortini's first album for Mute) marks a fairly significant stylistic departure from previous releases. For one, there are guitars. And on a structural level, many of these songs adhere to a very "pop" framework, which I suppose makes Mute the perfect home for this phase of Cortini's career: some songs on Volume Massimo song like they could have been deep cuts or instrumental B-sides from classic '80s synth pop albums. Other songs, however, still sound characteristically slow-burning and majestic. Those pieces tend to be the better ones (but not always).
The album opens in deceptively heavy and promising fashion with "Amore Amaro," which feels like a perfectly reasonable progression from 2017's excellent Avanti.As is generally the case with analog synth compositions, "Amore Amaro" is essentially just a couple of simple themes intertwined, yet a master like Cortini can wring a surprising amount of dynamic activity and emotional depth from a handful of repeating notes.In the case of this piece, Cortini marries a repeating two-note pulse with a burbling, subterranean arpeggio pattern.As the piece progresses, however, the pulsing notes become unpredictably frayed and distressed-sounding, a mysterious voice recording creeps into the background, and some roiling guitars build towards a noisy, volcanic crescendo.In short, it is a classic (if somewhat dramatic) Alessandro Cortini piece that just happens to incorporate guitars. Unfortunately, it is also the best piece on Volume Massimo by a large margin until a second highlight eventually appears in the form of "Sabbia" (the second-to-last piece on the album).
As much as I like "Amore Amaro," "Sabbia" is the piece that best illustrates the wonderful shape that this more pop-minded direction could have taken (and may very well still take someday).The heart of the piece is an understated and gorgeously melancholy guitar figure, but that motif is nested in a lurching, slow-motion groove that sounds like a worn tape played at the wrong speed.That alone would be grist for a fine piece, but it turns out to only be the backdrop for something even better, as the guitars are unexpectedly pushed aside for a gnarled and strangled melody.Cortini has rarely been in finer form, as he manages to create something that is both achingly lovely and evocative of a wounded machine straining to emerge from a pool of incredibly viscous liquid.Moreover, he does it in a way that has a genuinely satisfying structural arc: great sounds, great melodies, flawless pacing, and a seamless and organic dynamic evolution–Cortini hits the mark on every possible count. 
What lies between the two pillars of "Amore Amaro" and "Sabbia," however, is a more of an ambiguous achievement, teetering unpredictably between perplexing misfires and promising ideas that do not quite make the leap into great songs.On the promising side of that equation, I am most fond of "La Storia" and "Batticuore," two pieces which diverge quite significantly from one another."Batticuore" is the best of Cortini’s pure synth-pop forays, as a simple lilting melody unfolds over a thick and throbbing bass pulse.It is even structured like a pop song, with clearly delineated verses and choruses, though Cortini ratchets up the intensity to non-pop levels with roaring layers of guitars as the piece builds.It is a perfectly likable piece, but I cannot shake the sense that it sounds like an unexpectedly explosive cover of a minor OMD song."La Storia," on the other, feels like it could have been an improvisation, as it unfolds as a stuttering and gnarled melody of blurting synth tones that eventually erupts into a crescendo of buzzing, sizzling, and swooping sci-fi psychedelia.It is quite a cool piece, but it feels a bit half-formed and suffers from a predictable, formulaic arc: Cortini has an exasperating tendency to steer almost every piece to…uh…volume massimo by simply making his chords louder and more layered. I vastly prefer the less bombastic moments, like the seething and hissing closer "Dormi," but they are the exception rather than the rule.
That brings me to the "perplexing misfire" category, which is best exemplified by another piece that sounds plucked from an early ‘80s OMD album: "Momenti."Unlike "Batticuore," however, "Momenti" does not sound like classic synthpop fare–it sounds like what would have resulted if an Eastern Bloc country had commissioned them to compose an anthem for the Olympics. I cannot imagine that was what Cortini was hoping to achieve, but there is no accounting for taste.Given how devoted Cortini is to vintage/analog synthesizers, it is highly likely that he absorbed quite a lot of now-dated electronic pop in his youth and that it had a lasting impact on his aesthetic.Cortini seems far too exacting to wind up in such a place by sheer misadventure.
All of that adds up to quite a strange roller coaster of an album, as Volume Massimo frustrates, dazzles, and baffles me in equal measures over the course of its duration. I genuinely wish I liked it more, as it was a gutsy gamble for Cortini to stretch so far out of his comfort zone on such a high profile release.Moreover, his working methods do not seem to lend themselves very well to what he set out to do: there are a few songs that have more complicated structures and moving parts than the others, but most of these songs are essentially just a couple of cool patches that unfold with escalating intensity until they end.Historically, that approach has produced some truly transcendent results in Cortini’s moodier, more slow-building pieces.In the tighter and more condensed "pop" structures of this album, however, it can feel a bit rushed and overdramatic.That said, the album also contains "Sabbia," which easily exceeded my wildest expectations for how this direction might turn out.Moreover, even some of the weakest pieces contain some winderful and inventive ideas that fall a bit flat in their execution ("Momenti," for example, has a strangely rattling and lo-fi guitar outro). Volume Massimo does not suffer from lack of inspiration–the pieces just do not quite fit together properly.Ultimately, those stronger moments fail to amount to a whole that rivals Cortini’s impressive run of previous albums, but I certainly respect how beautifully some of these seemingly overreaching experiments worked out.
Samples:
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The last time I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness released a record, George W. Bush was president, Twitter was the latest social networking innovation, Burial was a new buzz word on everyone’s lips, and James Brown was still alive and touring. The Knife were riding high on the success of Silent Shout and Brainwashed readers were placing records by bands like Wolf Eyes, Comets on Fire, and Xiu Xiu high atop the annual reader’s poll. I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness won some recognition that year too. According to Plan nabbed a spot in the top five singles of the year and "The Owl" nearly beat out Boards of Canada’s "Dayvan Cowboy" for Brainwashed’s best loved music video of 2006. Then a seemingly terminal eight-year silence ensued. Now the band has returned with Dust, as if nothing happened. Their lineup is unchanged, Ministry’s Paul Baker is still behind the mixing board, and the artwork is as austere as before. And though much in the music is also familiar, the group’s focus has changed. They cast a wider net on Dust. There’s more variety and the songs are denser this time around, layered thick with circular melodies and crisscrossing guitars.
I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness open Dust with "Faust," a song they beat out with surgical exactitude. It’s fast paced, built on a thumping rhythm section, and driven by a simple guitar riff that winds in and out of the lead guitar’s meandering accents. The song twitches with energy, as if the band were just itching to play together again, but the performance is controlled, channeled into a concise, coolly played four minutes. "Come Undone," and, to some extent, "Stay Awake," feed on that same energy. A quick moving, tightly wound melody skips through the heart of all three songs, and on each the bass and drums add variety to the already rhythm heavy core. The lead guitarist extracts little hidden melodies from inside that wave of sound and spins them through the air, completing the illusion that these songs are all unspooling as they fall through space.
These are songs the band could have written in 2007 or '08, after wrapping up their tour for Fear Is on Our Side. They’re white knuckle rockers that burn with the same fire as "According to Plan," but they are far more insistent, far less translucent, and far from the norm.
The rest of Dust courses down a surprising path, starting with "Heat Hand Up." It’s there that I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness first switch to a rarefied, pseudo-romantic mode. The guitars space out and harmonize, the drummer sits back on his throne and relaxes, and the music suddenly turns diaphanous. "Safely" continues in the same way, adding xylophone and a humming e-bow drone to the mix. It’s a colorful, delicately played ballad that depends on texture as much as rhythm and melody, and it sets the table for Dust’s mid-album climax.
"You Are Dead to Me" floats on a blanket of distorted synthesizer loops, cut up vocals, and a series of long, moaning guitar notes, all sans percussion. The effect is like the one depicted in cartoons, where a character falls to the center of the Earth only to find that it’s a hollow, weightless ball. Faceless voices and shifting clouds of color hover in this formless place, but they never condense. Instead, the music evaporates.
That weightlessness infects all of side two. The drum set returns on "69th Street Bridge" and turns the song like a top, etching a circular figure into the music that reaches out to the guitars and synthesizers at the periphery and sends them turning round and round the multi-tracked vocals. "The Sun Burns Out" returns to a backbeat base, but the gleaming guitars almost snuff it out in a haze of harmonies, and closer "WAYSD" opens the album all the way up by putting the bass front and center with the drums. The guitars and keyboards decorate their slow, psychological crawl with dramatic bursts, but the rhythm plows forward undeterred, the air around it slowly escaping into the void.
Eight years is a long time for a band to go without a release. I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness make it sound as though it were only eight months. Dust thrives not because the band made any quantum leaps during their sabbatical, but because they opted to make small changes instead, and because they learned to open their sound up without losing what made them so great in the first place.
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On this self-titled LP, the core duo of Sungod: Michael Sharp and Braden Balentine, create an odd combination of synth heavy folk infused rock music. A certain genre-hopping, overall post-rock feel may be notable, but for the most part the album is a strange amalgam of styles, combined in a way that sounds very different than the sum of its parts.
The most consistent thread running throughout the five pieces that make up this album is a clearly prog rock influenced approach to keyboard parts. The lengthy "Heavy Water" mixes in synth strings within a passage of expansive, flanging ambience.What the duo build up around that is where the strengths lie:the slow build into the final few minutes once the guitar expands and the drums drop in channels the most rock moments of Spacemen 3.
The other long composition, "L'ame de Toute Etoile" stands perfectly as a companion piece.The 1970s synth melodies form the core, and then the duo bring in the drums and lead guitar to increase the pace and heaviness.The uptempo structure and metronomic percussion calls to mind Neu!'s "Hallo Gallo", but with a looser, more "fun" feel to it.
The shorter pieces mixed around these two are the ones in which there is more variation, but also a bit less complexity.The acoustic and slide guitar of "Come Gently, the Wind" drift into a country/folk vibe, while "Burn Ward Blues" sits more between classic rock and blusey twang.Amongst both of these, a hint of folk appears as well, with vocals and electronics buried low in the mix.
"Shiftless en Nkawkaw" may be shorter, but also has the most distinctive sound on here, due to additional bass by Alex Hughes and Kristine Reaume’s flute.Compared to the rest, it is more an instantaneous"rock" piece, propelled by Hughes' bass.A chorus of vocals is present, but far off in the distance, as if bleeding over from the studio next door.Its first half is dense and claustrophobic, but on the second half things loosen up:noisy synths and erratic rhythms come in and make a mess of things.It seems as if the band is building the song to a dramatic climax, but instead they end things just as effectively by letting the individual instruments drift apart into playful chaos.
Along with the aforementioned proggy-ness to Sungod, there is also a certain outsiderness to their music as well.The duo happily pull from disparate genres multiple times in each song, and when the styles are placed alongside each other, they become something else entirely.The resulting album is murky, at times befuddling, but more often than not captivating.
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In the 32 years since beginning the project, Philip Best has made the transition from teenage instigator to respected artist and academic, with erratic smatterings of solo releases ever since. He might be best known for his time in Whitehouse, but the infrequent series of solo releases and collaborations as Consumer Electronics were nothing to be ignored either. Years in the making, Estuary English represents a new zenith in the project, in both content and presentation.
CE has been Best's (largely solo) project since its inception, although it has often been considered a footnote next to his role in Whitehouse (most obviously in their exceptionally strong final albums) and to a lesser extent his time as the vocalist/keyboardist in the rock incarnation of Ramleh.Estuary English, however, is purely his work.Even though legendary noise/electronic artist Russell Haswell and Best’s wife Sarah Froelich are significant contributors to this album and currently the project as a whole, it is Best and his singular lyrics and vocals that define this album.
It is the words and delivery of them that make this album the brilliant monstrosity that it is.Anyone familiar with Best's vocal style on the latter day Whitehouse records knows what to expect:an acidic, aggressive, unpleasant berating with a wry, sardonic hint of humor off in the corner.He shifts from viperous social commentator to sleazy pornographer and back again, snarling with a peerless malignance.What he does very well, however, is convey disgust like no one else can.Music is ripe with people who can do harsh and angry vocals with varying degrees of success, but no one matches Best’s tangible disdain and disgust that just drips from each sentence he spits out.
When the material on this album made its live debut, much fuss was made in the internet ghetto of noise message boards that "Co-opted by Cunts", heavily based around a standard 4/4 techno beat, meant CE was yet another noise project to go electronic and "normal".While I would have little concern if that did happen, noise fans can rest assured that the backing tracks of these eight songs get just as ugly as the vocals, even if the programmed beats are not harsh enough.
"Co-Opted" sees the trio using the most overt use of conventional rhythms, in the form of a skipping CD beat that eventually gets blended with noisy processed snares and drifting synth passages.Shades of Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle and their early flirtations with drum machines are noticeable here more than anywhere else on the album.Best's vocals consist only of repeating the song’s title throughout, a noteworthy contrast, because this is musically the most complicated work on here, yet the most simple from a lyrical standpoint.
Beyond that, the use of beats and sequencers on the album are unconventional to say the least.The closest thing to a rhythm on "Teknon" is a flatulent bass synth pattern that underscores Best’s vocals, working excellently as an accompaniment while leaving the vocals the focus.The monotone low volume jackhammer beat of "Sex Offender Boyfriend", on the other hand, is less of a rhythm and more of an abrasive element that just happens to be made up of drum sounds, underscoring his most unhinged vocal performance to date.
The remaining pieces are more entrenched in the noise/power electronics style, which is sure to please those fans who are afraid of change."Affirmation" is slow, seasick buzzing synthesizers with random outbursts and heavily processed fragments of voice sneaking out demonically from the distance.Both "Come Clean" and "Estuary English" work as throwbacks to the genre's staple: walls of overdriven distortion and electronics, neither of which would have been out of place on a 2000s Whitehouse album.
Recognition has to be given to the quality presentation that Dirter has put forth on here.A weighty, glossy gatefold sleeve featuring all of the lyrics, and the album presented on two heavy weight 45rpm records, plus the first pressing including a CD version of the album mastered by Denis Blackham.The album visually exudes class, and is a perverse juxtaposition to what is contained on it.
My initial concern was the length of the album, clocking in at only 22 minutes.After the first playing, I do not think I would have wanted any more.Like Slayer's Reign in Blood or Whitehouse's Dedicated to Peter Kurten, putting too much more on here would have not only dulled its impact, but would have likely been overwhelming to listen to.The sheer force and intensity here is draining, so it works perfectly as a short forceful burst.Estuary English is disturbing, ugly, and at times horrifying, and that is what makes it one of the best records I have heard this year.
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With its careful, hushed vibe and slow pacing, it is only all the more amazing that this 24 minute piece is the work of pure improvisation, without the benefit of practice or rehearsal. It is simply the product of four disciplined, like-minded individuals captured in the moment perfectly.
The four participants, Molly Berg (clarinet and vocals), Olivia Block (tapes and electronics), Steve Roden (lap steel guitar) and Stephen Vitiello (electric guitar), congregated for an impromptu performance late one night at a San Francisco cathedral.Given the nature of the performance and instrumentation, each individual can be heard clearly:Roden’s guitar appears early atop taped clatterings and subtle electronics from Block, which then is met by sparse, wordless vocals from Berg.
When she switches from vocals to clarinet, the piece gets sharper and a bit louder, but then calms back down, allowing bird chirps and gentle melodies to fill the opened space.Sparse electric guitar from Vitiello becomes audible, as does a deep, almost rhythmic loop of clacking sound, rocks perhaps?At this point each element that comes in sticks around, leading to a complex, but not overly dense mix, placing expansive electronic drones with what could be rainforest field recordings and repeated backwards melodies.With the clarinet leading, the closing moments end up taking along a subtle jazzy feeling.
While there is a noticeable improvisational feeling to be found, the four players synthesize their sounds together quite well, especially considering this isn’t extracted from a longer performance, and that there was no practice or rehearsal beforehand.Each artist can be heard, but no one overshadows the other, truly uniting them as a group.The result is a beautiful, understated performance that retains the live, at the moment feeling that was surely felt in the cathedral when it was recorded.
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