- John Kealy
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This cassette is the debut solo release from Andrew Fogarty (also of Boys of Summer and Toymonger) and it builds on the same dreamy electronic textures as his other projects. Caught somewhere between '80s sci-fi soundtracks, sound effects, and drifting electronics, the music on this EP is a shimmering blend of styles and sounds.
 
The two pieces on the cassette both investigate the variety of tones that can be wrought from analogue synthesizers. The bubbling and racing sounds Fogarty extracts from his synths on side A gives a feeling of traveling at speed through a kaleidoscope. Some of Fogarty’s style is instantly recognizable from his work in Boys of Summer but he expands his palette significantly throughout this and the subsequent piece. Ray guns, radiation, tractor beams, force fields and teleporters: these are the kind of images that come to mind listening to Dinosaur.
Side B is an altogether warmer piece as dozens of balmy loops and layered melodies compete with each other; the mix boiling like a primordial soup during a storm. Suddenly the chaos gives way to a wet, pulsing noise which steadily increases in its intensity. The piece eventually returns to a similar kind of kosmische-influenced sound-scape like on side A.
While Dinosaur does not shift Boys of Summer from the top of my favorite Fogarty-related projects, it does pack enough punch to be a serious contender. Both sides of the tape show enough variation and tonal development to place Reptile Brain beyond the categorization of simple noise. There is more in common here with music from the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop than with the contemporary noise scene; granted this is not that unusual but Fogarty does it with a lot of class.
 
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Kevin Ayers may yet get his due. His influence on British psychedelia and the avant-garde school of glam rock are pretty obvious. Equally, Brian Eno's first solo records (the pre-ambient period beginning with Here Come The Warm Jets) owe as much of a debt to Kevin Ayers as they do to the Velvets. Older music lovers won't need to take my word for it, though, as they will fondly recall the 1974 concert and album Ayers did with Cale, Nico, & Eno (ACNE).
A late harvest is in bloom for Ayers with this release, as well as the 4 CD set Songs For Insane Times 1969-1980 (including an unreleased 1973 London concert) and his rapturously received new album Unfairground (made with fans from Neutral Milk Hotel and Teenage Fan Club, Bill Wells, Bridget St. John, Phil Manzanera and others). Ayers best work is a dance between his joyful talent and his lack of killer instinct. His concerns tend to be women, wine, and philosophy (not necessarily in that order).
Fellow former commune dweller G.F. Fitz-Gerald has hung on to these discarded tapes for more than 30 years. The sections where Ayers is laying out both simple and complex demos and specifying what will go where, who will be doing it and what it will sound like are fascinating. Hearing Ayers singing again reminds me of the contrast between his voice and that of his fellow Soft Machinist, Robert Wyatt. Wyatt's cracked, yearning voice can sound beautiful but always seemed like a strain. Ayers sounds like a man permanently on holiday and his resonant tone slides around as rich and easy as rum spilled on a glass table. His guitar playing is underrated, too, as shown on the playful and fuzzy instrumental track "Crystal Clear."
While What More Can I Say is probably destined to be known as a footnote to Ayers' work it is quite fascinating and very much more than scraping the barrel. It harks back to a time when he was almost something of an It-Kid, what with his joy of punning, his easy talent, his posh other-ness, his languid baritone croon, and his dreamy blond looks. It could all have turned out differently, and yet may. What has turned out is that he never had a star's ego or an inheritance. Marvelously, even now his photos exude the style of a bloke who used to hang out with Bardot and Deneuve but with whom it would probably be a rare pleasure to spend time sharing intoxicants; the least of which would not be his music.
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Obsessed with Lovecraft, ritual and recreating the atmospheres of an underground temple, it is easy to see how Moss arrived at their musical aesthetic. After the eerie Hammond organ, barely audible vocals and distant percussion of “Ritus” provide an unearthly start to the album, the ground opens up with a swell of guitar and swallows the victim whole. The drums and vocals both sound like they are coming from a chasm deep within the earth, the howls of a beshrouded priest and the percussive rhythms of the ceremony he is performing.
Listening to this album during the day is a futile endeavour, Sub Templum is all about context. Sitting down at night with the detailed sleeves in your hands and turning the volume up is the only way to do it. The arcane symbols and darkly psychedelic imagery of the sleeve make this less of an album and more of a grimoire. It would not surprise me if you could conjure up some foul demon by knowing the right gestures at the right points of the music. The three piece suite “Gate III: Devils from the Outer Dark” which takes up the second half of the album is how imagine such a moment would sound like, only in reality I doubt it would be as frightening.
Most of the descriptions and reviews of Moss I read treat them as just another doom band and while they are indeed as doom as fuck, they have made an album that manages to transcend the doom genre that spawned the band. Sub Templum is a dizzying and upsetting sonic journey that just happens to have massive riffs. There is a lot going on between the grooves and it is not all just Sabbath worship. Since their debut, they have sculpted their blackened sound away from genre clichés and have managed to develop a unique sound that on the surface is metal but this only hides in its depths a portal to a weird and foreboding dimension.
This review was made from the vinyl version of the album so unfortunately no mp3 samples.
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The ten tracks that comprise Unitxt do not deviate dramatically from one another, at least in the instrumentation used: all tend to be based around the requisite beeps, clicks and digital errors stapled on a framework of conventional 120bpm electronics. The actual dynamics of the pieces do vary notably, however. While the actual etiology of the sounds is not made clear, the presentation of 15 tracks named after various computer programs at the end leads me to believe the overall sound comes from opening data in sound editing software. I assume elements of the buzzes, blips, and screeches that were created were then carefully molded and shaped into the glitchy techno that comprises the album.
Tracks such as “u_06” and “u_04” both glide on microsonic clicks and pulses shaped into rhythms, the former featuring an obvious, but fractured and obtuse rhythm, and the latter propelled by a monotone digital click drum and a backing of what could be ancient modem connect tones sequenced to be almost synth-like. “u_08” and “u_09-1-2” also follow along with this more conventional techno structure, though the latter encroaches into more harsh territory with a build up of white noise covering the more rhythmic spots.
These noiser leanings are more apparent on “u_08-1” and “u_03”, both of which move along with clunky distortion-laden sounds that could be described as the sound of a dying hard drive or a malfunctioning sound card. The album as a whole begins to become more and more chaotic towards the end: the extreme high and low end frequencies of “u-05” are reminiscent, dynamically at least, of an abstract techno take on PIL’s Metal Box, while the closing “u-09-0” has even more noisy outbursts and textures mixed with pastiches of utter silence.
A few of the tracks feature spoken word elements by French poet Anne-James Chaton, which contrast the inorganic nature of the music very well. The opening “u_07” is perhaps the most conventional “techno” piece on here, and it’s frail, thin sound is nicely contrasted by the monotone reading by Chaton of the contents of Nicolai’s wallet. The other tracks with vocals are not quite as memorable, but the voice does inject a nice human counterpoint to the otherwise purely digital world.
I don’t think anyone would expect a Raster-Noton release to be a hit at the clubs, and this one is no different. However, as a clinical, glitchy disc that for all its abstraction, remains a tightly structured rhythmic work. It is an engaging set of sounds that functions well both in the headphone meditative listening as well as bowel shaking loud volumes that give a more visceral experience.
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Sonically based around dueling saxophones and underpinned by dark, heavily reverbed guitar ambience, Schwarzhagel is an extremely dark, tense listening experience. The short opening track of black, reverb drenched ambience and violent guitar string bends serves as a more than adequate prelude to the pummeling that awaits.
The second, longer piece begins similarly with wobbling pitch guitar and carefully controlled feedback that swells and sustains violently, but never feels unnecessary or unfocused. However, once the saxophones enter, the bleakness is replaced with pure violence. Tham Kar Mun and Yandsen both manage to produce the most tortured, pained shrieks from their instruments that rivals anything Peter Brotzmann or John Zorn has done similar in sheer brutality. Unrelenting, the guttural screams continue, occasionally dropping off into a death rattle just to come back strong. Finally, the horns retreat and the piece retreats into the calmer darkness of the guitar that opened it.
The third long track is more focused on noise laden guitar riffs that are punctuated by subtler, but still uncomfortable horn blasts. The guitar grows noiser and noiser until the latter half where it erupts into pure unhinged noise that could have been the work of Hijokaidan or Solmania for utter guitar raucousness. Throughout this piece, however, there is a greater variety of dynamics taking place. While the former piece was one unending blast, this one allows for some breathing room in the first half, with the volume and density of sound swelling and then retreating, allowing for more tension and less pure chaos.
Ending with another short track, the album closes is a much more softer manner than it opened, chiming, crystalline guitar tones shine through the mist of reverb, and the piercing feedback swells stay carefully under control. As a whole, it’s an interesting take on what is usually just considered free jazz. Even with the sonic parallels to the FMP label and other such camps, Klangmutationen retains a darker, more sinister quality that was never quite as apparent in other similar works.
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Having already reviewed the Daturas' Dead in the Woods CD a short while ago, I was anticipating a sustained barrage of raw granitic blockiness and in that respect I wasn’t to be disappointed. Despite that, their sixteen and a half minute slice of doom, “Golden Tusk the Endearing,” left me somewhat unconvinced. All the right ingredients are there: slow-moving tectonic plates of gravelly guitar, interrupted by splintering, sharp flinty shards as fault-lines shift and break, along with the protesting squeal of feedback, with the whole culminating in cyclopean seismic ruptures in its fabric. Yet, there is still something missing. Compared to the previous album, this one seems to wallow in a sludgy one-dimensional pit of its own making, and just self-indulgently stays there. It never really appears to elevate itself beyond that, determinedly staying in the lower registers without attempting to inject a measure of personality or dimensionality into it, which I found massively disappointing. I got the impression that it was too self-limiting and unwilling to break bounds, preferring instead to root around in the mud and muck, simply for its own sake.
Monarch follows a similar path, equally subterranean and equally monolithic in execution, on their somehow appropriately titled “Rapture.” The difference here though is there is palpable heat and electricity being generated as the geological processes stack up in coiled-spring tension, releasing energy in tectonic spasms of high Richter-scale detonations. Utilising the same dirty filth-inflected instrumentation of granular guitar explosions and feedback, but this time augmented with the behemothic percussion of Stephane and the hellishly demonic vocals of Eurogirl (aka Emilie), “Rapture” dives and plunges into the lightless Stygian depths. Apart from any other consideration this adds the multi-dimensional layering missing from the Grey Datura’s entry. Miasmatically black swirls of noxious, asphyxiating essence clog the senses, enveloping and suffocating. Knife-sharp feedback and chainsaw guitar slice through, wielded by unseen hands, cutting and dicing with malign abandon. A genderless angelic voice rises from the airless gloom, enticing and pleading, until all pretence is dropped and its true demonic nature is finally revealed. One feels the weight of both the subterranean gloom and the mass of rock above. Oppression and dread take on a physical form here, cowing and buffeting the soul mercilessly.
I was more than a bit disappointed with the Grey Datura side, but it was more than redeemed by Monarch’s effort. Compared to it, “Golden Tusk the Endearing” lacked any energy or drive, remaining nothing but monochrome in the process. In contrast, Monarch ignited their engines, stuck them on full throttle and just let go. Consequently it felt like whole landmasses were moved and crushed, and mountains crumbled. Sadly though, the Grey Daturas never managed to emerge from their little pit.
Samples:
- Grey Daturas - Golden Tusk the Endearing
- Monarch - Rapture excerpt 1
- Monarch - Rapture excerpt 2
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Die Stadt
What brought these two (rather these three—a trio again!) back for asecond take at the arch abstraction that has protected their careersfrom scrutiny thus far can only be guessed at, left unanswered orforgotten by those with the courage and the will captivated enough tostretch prone across these two discs, these vast hollow spaces. I havenever been to space, but I’ve been trapped in the funnel of a bedroom’srestless blanket-mess enough times, absent and terrified, alone in asearch for clues that might be miniature parts of myself, to know wherethis is coming from.
“Post-technoid” this is not; switch on the lightand you might see it evaporate, petrify in sepia, graft onto an inch ofwallpaper. Here is glitch as the subtle-supreme counterpoint to anotherfragment of McKenzie’s masterpiece of micro-strata exposed. Glitch asdistinct and spare as Autechre can make it, set, as if upon silkenpaper, as if in an ancient dressing, with proportions easily projectedbut also perfectly, so very regularly, aligned.
It's funny how logic cantrip such a wide hole. Autechre, the neat sutures to the Hafler game ofplaying sweet orchestra for those deeply paranoid. Droning, descending,solemn innerspaces get ruptured, even painfully, but never without anhonest recoil, to the oceanic calm that is more reticence thanacceptance, a cold glow across distances whose shortness is beyondmeasure. No beats save that heart-click, the slow break of a bodyturning in on itself, the thuum-ph of an eyelid that has only to riseon things changed in their own deceptive degrees.
I have fallen asleepin these silences (there are many), only to be awoken by the swingingof latches and humming and swirling of machines in warm-up, again, forme. (He has awoken; he will not quit us; he has visioned the walls ofthis room in their true dissolve; he can see again) No rust, nothinghangs, nothing weeps or weezes and everything moves with a purpose thatis the only the assertion of its own maintenance. I cannot be astranger traveling through, all is part of and one with; I have willednothing but exist on the obliterating fringe of every new noise.
Haflerdrones forward and around, Autechre finds, binds, and questions, whatcan stifle and disprove this atmosphere, which details can push thisdrift into harrowing reverse? The answer is none, and the answer ispart of a continued method of questioning bent on perpetual negationand discovery.
I am at a loss to describe this painful union of forces.
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The lead song, "No. One" is an upbeat maximalistic rocker which is decent but not nearly as catchy as some of the highlights of Ms. John Soda's debut album (the counting vocals and frequent stops aren't much more than a mild annoyance), while the second track, "Sometimes Stop, Sometimes Go" has some beautiful moments. Each, however, are sort of ruined by Stephanie's frequent talking. She's got such an alluring singing voice that I wish she would only sing these tracks rather than hide behind spoken word interludes. The third cut, "I & #8217" begins as a mishmash of sounds and samples from the No P or D album, but as it's re-pasted back together, vocals and additional instruments are added by Subtle (which features unnamed Anticon members - although Dose One's voice is clearly audible). It's an interesting concept but at four minutes doesn't sound like it's beed explored to the full extent. The disc continues with the creepy late-night car wreck devastation score in the form of the slow moving "If Someone Would Know," and closes the almost unbearingly heavy dialogue of "I think it could work, Marilyn," where Stephanie is almost playing dolly, talking as the fictitious voices of Elvis and Marilyn in a situation far more interesting to read about than to hear. I honestly hope this is the last they come this close to making a "spoken word" record. The good thing about the EP is that it's been made with the intentions of selling on the upcoming European and North American shows: shows I'm anxiously looking forward to. I remain enthusiastic and firmly believe that this EP, while mildly anticlimactic, isn't going to lose any existing fans at all.
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Every once in a while, an artist comes along who sounds born into a sound, like while in the womb his parents played him classic records that he just absorbed into his psyche. Andy Wagner has that quality, like there's nothing else in this world he could be doing because it just wouldn't fit. This multi-instrumentalist uses guitar, keyboard, bass, and accordion to construct pop songs that defy the typical trappings to derive at something more.Tense Forms
His breathy, Dylan-esque voice talks of death, human relationships, beginnings and ends, and all over a bed of western influences and tossed with rockabilly and country rock. The result belies the DIY formula he adheres to, as Horse Year has the feel of a solid group of players that have been polishing their skills in bars for five years, playing for crowds wading in sawdust and peanut shells. For the most part, though, Wagner wore all the hats himself, including the engineering and production work, with a scant few guests. While they add some much needed flavor, including the stable drumming of Mark Benson, this is Wagner's show, and rightfully so. Narrative and introspective, he has the presence of a soul who will be writing and recording for a long time. "Weak in the Knees" and "Something's Watching" speak of the inevitable day many of us spend most of our lives trying to pretend will never come, with the latter infusing just enough scare tactics. The ambling waltz and saloon piano of "Nothing to Defend" and "When I Leave" with its shuffle and faded accordion are definite highlights, but this album belongs to "What You Used to Be," all echoed guitar and steady rhythm over laments of the past. Wagner is also a member of the Delta Still, and also works in Chicago area theatre, but this well-crafted debut shows he has the ability to overshadow it all like the dark side of the moon with his own work.
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There's something unspeakable wandering the halls of a deserted hotel somewhere in the past and its sound has been captured so that all can know it. Salvaged from dusty records in plain white and brown sleeves, these recordings take a decidedly darker stroll into the halls of forgotten happiness and celebration. The Caretaker has managed to take the deserted and neglected and give them new life by expanding their sound: horns blasting for the satisfaction of dancing men and women are slowed down to funeral marches and the static and hiss of old records become the wind and rain as it toils outside the windows of a shining and elegant ballroom. There's an element of surgery in The Caretaker's approach: that which must've seemed so vibrant and brimming with life is torn open so reveal something betraying that image inside. Everyone had their demons at this party and each of them were quite desperate to hide that little part of themselves; fear had its axe in everyone's back. But there's more going on here than just psychological investigation: The Caretaker strips back a little bit of reality to reveal the void underneath everything.
This explains the reason for all the sounds being so spacious: voices extended into the unintelligible, drums turned into drones and smoke, and strings diminished to hollow wails. The good news is that the fear never becomes too great and the void never feels all-consuming. The sounds and sights to be found on this release can be explored with confidence: whatever it is that is lurking through these distorted and destroyed melodies certainly cannot cause any permanent damage, right? Even this seems uncertain, really. "And The Bands Played On" is a reminder that nothing is for certain and that whatever certainty is assumed is truly dangerous. From start to finish, We'll All Go Riding on a Rainbow is filled with absolutely haunting and unmitigated sound. There are points when it is impossible to tell whether the sounds being heard are really from a lost record or from some lurking and abnormal creature not subject to a name or description.
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With C&C Luchtbal, purportedly the band's final album of unreleased material under their most well-known moniker, the artists formerly known as Chris & Cosey leave us with a recording of a 68 minute concert that took place in November of 2002 in Antwerp, Belgium. Though they have chosen to take up the name Carter Tutti to express their musical vision from here on in (making the decision to end Chris & Cosey seem possibly pointless and pompous), this generally mellow release serves as a pleasant soundtrack to their closing chapter. Things begin in a decidedly ambient fashion similar to the solo remix albums the two have released separately in recent years. The first true signs of life come in the mixture of head-nodding beats, swirling synths, and Cosey's soothingly savage voice on "Celph." "Infect Us" recalls everything I've loved out of Chris & Cosey, its sexual tension steaming up my speakers as I daydream of pornographic scenes of strip clubs and orgies. Their music has always catered to my perverse side, and this performance does not disappoint. My excitement truly peaked when the ritualistic flair and 4/4 beats of "Apocalipzo" spilled from my stereo, building me up for the hot white orgasm delivered on "Exotikah." Remarkably true to the original, the classic track retains the duo's passion for the electro and techno sounds they spawned and is a satisfying treat for listeners. While so many electroclash bands try to mimic the sounds of the 80's, loudmouths like Peaches and the girls of W.I.T. could learn a lot from the subtlety offered by these originators and forefathers on this live album. I've certainly learned a lot from them, and I look forward to gaining insight into what their future output has to offer.
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