- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![cover image](/brain/images/svarte_greiner-kappe.jpg)
The opening "Tunnel Of Love" starts with field recordings of urban menace: squealing metallic scrapes, emergency sirens and a few metric tons of reverb covering everything. Sounds continue to become deeper and more menacing, ominous hums and metallic clattering like an evil gamelan lead to an uneasy rhythm. The swells continue to just float ominously throughout before everything fades away quietly.
"Mystery Man" opens with delayed metallic guitar shards that cut through, and then just linger a bit, allowing the vestigial feedback elements to drone on and on. The sound and concept here is good, but the problem is that it is allowed almost too long to build and segue into the more complex tones and reverbed shrieks. It is a good idea that is too slow in its execution, and the payoff isn’t really as satisfying as the long build-up would indicate.
The longest track here, "Candle Light Dinner Actress" fares better, opening with cannon like thuds in the distance, processed string-like tones slowly weaving around the sparse ambience. In this case the length and slow pace is an asset, allowing a more diverse set of sounds to intermingle, such as the high register plucked strings and reverbed soaked saxophone notes. The track fades into subtle, quiet passages before roaring back with harsh, dissonant squeals and noise blasts.
The shorter, closing track, "Last Light" is more melancholy than the darker preceding ones, it is based more on a sustained hum rather than the layered structure of the rest of the album, based on dark processed strings and dark drones. Over the length of the preceding two tracks, this would probably be too static, but in the shorter duration it works better, and is one of the more captivating tracks here.
The problem with this album is that it simply doesn’t do anything that a legion of other artists haven’t done before. I’m not sure why this is suddenly labeled as "doom", but it fits in with the pantheon of dark ambient music of the mid-1990s that are difficult to remember specifically bands or albums, but almost anything could be easily traced to Bill Laswell somehow. This has the same feeling: it’s a nice take on dark, bleak music, but isn’t enough to stand out from the crowd, and probably won’t be memorable in five to ten years.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](/brain/images/muslimgauze-sycophant_of_purdah.jpg)
Bryn Jones completed Sycophant Of Purdah ("Purdah" is the practice of preventing women by being seen by any men that are not their husbands) in 1994, but he changed his mind after submitting it and decided to release a different album in its place. It is amusing that he had to pick and choose which albums would actually see release, as he still managed to put out six that year (two of which were double albums). Jones' biographer Ibrahim Khider describes Purdha as the "missing link" that connects Muslimgauze's more industrial albums (Izlamaphobia, Zealot, Silknoose, etc.). I will have take his word for that, as acquiring my own comprehensive understanding of Muslimgauze's creative arc would delay this review several months. (On a related note, there is a Muslimgauze biography being released by SAF Publishing...someday (it is now delayed indefinitely). I hope it eventually sees the light of day, as I have long found Jones to be one of the most compelling and bizarre figures in contemporary culture.)
The aberrant opener, "Jericho Loop-Bin Duplicator," combines a decidedly non-Middle Eastern-sounding breakbeat with a thick, funky bass line. Bryn Jones clearly came to party, as the only clue that this is even Muslimgauze at all is that indecipherable (presumably Arabic) radio broadcast snippets keep wandering into the mix. Despite the general absence of weirdness/darkness, it is a pretty awesome and heavy groove.
While the playful and funky tone of "Jericho Loop-Bin Duplicator" is unique to that track, it still fits comfortably with the rest of Purdah in being heavily (almost exclusively) rhythmic. In fact, musical accompaniment on this album is extremely minimal and mostly limited to vague ambiance buried low in the mix. I initially thought this made the album feel like a series of very repetitive and sparse unfinished song sketches, but after a few listens I found Purdah to be quite compelling and hypnotic. Also, when I eventually listened to it with headphones, I realized the percussive loops were not completely static and that constant subtle shifts were occurring in and around them.
The whole album is quite strong, but I found the harsher, more industrial tracks to be more immediately memorable and engrossing than the ethno-percussion ones (although the addition of droning sitar and speech fragments in "Dupatta" stands out quite nicely). "Mossad Evil" combines a heavy, rumbling groove with some sort of strange liquid-y sucking sound and a somber violin loop, while the title track transforms Arabic percussion into a crushing and insistent mechanized groove with a somewhat shrill wavering tone panning around deep in the mix.
I am a bit curious about what Jones was trying to convey thematically with this album. Historically, I have completely disregarded the political aspect of Muslimgauze, but I have since become fascinated upon learning that Jones issued albums almost as real-time reactions and commentaries on unfolding Middle Eastern events. Now that albums conceived in the distant past are being released, I was expecting an odd temporal disconnection. I didn't find one here, but neither could I find a unifying theme among the song titles (traditional Persian music and poetry, Indian scarves, the Mossad, genetic engineering, etc). Enigmatic.
Sycophant of Purdah is a worthy addition to the Muslimgauze oeuvre. It is certainly less melodic, strange, and dark than many of Jones' more celebrated releases, but it is also extremely listenable and mesmerizing. I hope the rest of albums sifted from Jones' mountainous backlog of material for Staalplaat's archive series are similarly excellent—this release makes it clear that they are far from scraping the bottom of the Muslimgauze vault.
Samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
While I do not have any particular animosity towards Deerhunter, I've always felt that the enthusiasm they generate seems to be disproportionate to the quality of their music. Consequently, my expectations for guitarist Lockett Pundt's Lotus Plaza solo project were not especially high. I turned out to be pleasantly surprised though. He has managed to produce a couple of memorably warm and artfully blurred pop gems here. I suppose I owe him an apology, but first he has to apologize for sabotaging his debut album with so much filler.
Kranky
The album's cover (a hazy, washed-out photo of a young boy on a rocking horse) provides an excellent clue to the tone of the music contained within. This is a summery, soft-focus affair that evokes vague feelings of warmth and nostalgia. At least it does during its better moments, when it sounds vaguely like how I imagine The Jesus and Mary Chain would've sounded if they'd relocated to California and given up heroin for bongs and beaches.
"Red Oak Way" starts the album in strong and attention-grabbing fashion: a simple garage rock drum pattern leads into a steadily escalating swell of chiming arpeggios, melodic vocals, and lazy endlessly repeating and wordless backing vocals. While the track has undeniable immediacy and catchiness, repeated listens reveal additional depth (many studio-tweaked percussion flourishes and vocal tracks that pile-up and harmonize beautifully) that I did not expect. This is important and conveys to me that Lockett Pundt is no fool. The sleepy, blurred feel of The Floodlight Collective required Pundt to reverb everything to death (especially the vocals), which causes the songs to suffer greatly in character, immediacy, and general ballsiness. However, the album’s inherent shortcomings are (almost) ingeniously compensated for by muscular drums, thick propulsive bass lines, and dub-inspired studio wizardry. This approach works extremely well here, but unfortunately the opening track is the best on the album.
The second track, “Quicksand,” is also noteworthy, although I initially found it to be a disappointment. It starts off with too much clutter and sounds like a failed, less melodically gratifying variation of the “Red Oak” formula. However, after about two minutes, Lundt surprised me by dropping all the tracks of shimming guitar noise and leaving only shuffling drums and a simple and clean melancholy guitar part. The effect is quite striking and makes me forgive the song’s clumsy start. Then the roaring, ringing, and guitar layers start piling up again, but this time they work beautifully and the song builds to a lazy crescendo of sorts.
"Sunday Night" begins in spectacular fashion with throbbing and squelching electronic percussion coupled with repetitive, minimal, Steve Reich-y ringing guitar and a simple melodic bass line. This groundwork never changes, but is slowly built up with layer after gauzy layer. A complex arsenal of feedback, noises, swooping guitars, and mournful vocals burbles in and out of the mix and relentlesslessly builds to a climax of uncharacteristically raw and melancholic harmonized vocals. Oddly, it never coheres into a truly great song, but Pundt certainly manages to pack more awesome sounding stuff into one song than many bands have on their entire album.
One striking thing about The Floodlight Collective is that there seems to be two strongly conflicting impulses at work here. The vocals are sleepy and mumbled-sounding, buried in the mix, and absolutely swathed in reverb, which renders most attempts to decipher the lyrics or connect with the songs utterly hopeless. Nevertheless, the songs are extremely melodic and tightly structured and the omnipresent tambourine and rockabilly-flavored drumming can be best described as "bouncy". In fact, the whole album is unexpected driven by the rhythm section- not at all what I would anticipate from a guitarist's solo project. Pundt's aesthetic seems to lie somewhere between self-sabotaging indie pop and drone music (but for parties). Either way, it works quite well on the poppier tracks.
Lamentably, the album wavers in quality a bit during more instrumental, "atmospheric" moments like “These Years” and the title track. There is nothing particularly unfortunate about them, but they veer into territory that other artists have tackled more impressively and they tend to drain the album's momentum. The fatal flaw of the album is, perversely, its own aesthetic. Despite his best efforts, Pundt’s reverb-mongering causes the album to feel somewhat endless and same-y. When heard on their own, songs like “Red Oak Way” and “Sunday Night” are unique, head-turning, and wonderful, but attempting to listen to this entire album is an endurance test that will make those around you beg for something else to be put on. This could have been an absolutely scorching EP.
Samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![cover image](/brain/images/flower_corsano_duo-four_arms.jpg)
The album opens with a bang as Corsano's drums and Flower's virtuosic Japan Banjo (or Shaahi Baaja) explode forth for "I, Brute Force?," a propulsive shredding session that finds fertile exploratory ground in the brief gaps allotted by Lightning Bolt levels of energy. Corsano's drumming can rival anyone's, and his playing here is absolutely frenetic, bounding across, over and through Flower's arbeggiated shards with reckless confidence. There are few sounds so unique in improvised music today, and the duo's perfection of this kind of head-on freedom is rarely matched in any circle. Beneath all of the notes—and there are plenty—is an overall shape the form of which unravels with patience and (relative) clarity, but whose moment to moment discourse of ideas is that of a structure far briefer in length.
If the first track represents the duo's forte, the rest of the album displays its depth. Both members' instrumentation extends beyond their usual associations, as Corsano variously picks up a melodica and cello while Flower also plays tanpura and organ. This provides some necessary pockets for the two to extend into and they take full advantage of it. On "The Three Degrees of Temptation," Corsano's pot and pan drum kit rattles, shakes and chimes beneath Flower's nimble string manipulations, creating an eerie and amorphous spatial realm.
This sparse sound is counteracted by the thick duel-string drones on the following track, "The Drifter's Miracles." True to Flower's Vibracathedral Orchestra roots, the number finds the ample dialogue to be had between La Monte Young's drone experiments, contemporary free drone music and Japanese shamisen. Corsano's cello undulates underneath while Flower ornaments his moves with layer after layer of shapes that change effortlessly despite the consistent density of sound.
The duo return to what appears to be their signature sound on "The Beginning of the End," although this time the proceedings maintain a distinctly Skaters-like feel as Corsano's drums patter about beneath Flower's riffage. While the approach may be the same, it's encouraging—though not surprising—that the unit can extend it into different modes through what they're playing rather than how loud or fast they are.
The closing track, "The Main Ingredient," is the longest here, and the duo takes advantage of the length to explore depths previously only hinted at. Building into a frenetic and undulating weight, the unit moves with a singular vision all too rare. Instant response is one thing, but Flower and Corsano can shift mood along with tempo, atmosphere with melody and approach with feel. This sort of elasticity and balance results in some of the most distinctly surprising and exciting sounds happening today. And the long raga-like fade out at the end? It only encourages another go.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![cover image](/brain/images/muslimgauze-sulaymaniyah.jpg)
Actually this disc, in a matter of speaking, has already been released before. Drawn from masters that were later retracted in favor of those that would become 1998's Vampire Of Tehran, this collection is essentially that album with two tracks missing and nine more added. While this may sound like a lot of bonus material—and it is—the album hardly reads like an attempt to squish as much in to one disc as possible even though they're nearing it with almost 70 minutes of music here. Still, Jones' precise concoctions are so stylistically singular that the whole of the disc reads like an album, not a compilation.
Stylistically speaking, Jones sticks with his usual ammo on this release, mixing an ample amount of Arabic source material with breakbeat, electro and dub tactics. The result is a relatively mobile and downright dancey release. Which is not to say that this is poppy in the slightest. If anything, the constraints placed on the music by the clear and propulsive rhythms serve as markers that Jones variously avoids, dabbles over and treads across with samples galore.
Take "Satsuma Tablet" for example. This looping rhythm features no lyrics at all, instead riding along the rhythm with blips and blurts as an Arabesque melodic fragment is repeated into oblivion. On the other hand, the following "Arabs Improved Zpain" features a four-four beat straight out of an NWA track. Underneath, reversed strings and a female vocal dance amongst each other, diverging, interlocking and generally keeping things interesting despite the miniscule amount of material being utilized.
If anything, that may have been Jones' greatest strength. Each track here makes the most out of only a few spare parts—it is the way they are combined, recombined, sampled and treated that shapes the movement. The result is a nearly vertical sonic consideration unheard of in this sort of rhythmic setting. Tracks like "North Africa is Not So Far Away" don't proceed so much as they morph, bending a fragment guitar line, a steady bass groove, a rhythm track and a vocal sample into a dub groove that could last long enough to accompany a Saharan trek.
Other displays of his depth can be seen on tracks like "Straps Sticks of Dynamite Around Her Body," a gentle and moody piece whose intimate Arabic string gestures and spare beat exude just the kind of grim scene that the title suggests without providing answers to its questions. It is this attention to detail and, above all else, the works themselves and what they say that keep nearly all of Muslimgauze's works interesting. This one is no different which is great on the one hand. On the other, it's no different, and could just as easily be lost in the shuffle of the 18 other Muslimgauze albums you've already managed to get your hands on.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![cover image](/brain/images/lejaren_hiller-a_total_matrix_of_possibilities.jpg)
While the Iliac Suite is not included on this release, it does contain three key works from the period of 1963 to 1974, very fertile years for the composer, who continued to pursue his creative vision unabated by the negative press that attended the world’s first computer aided composition. The three pieces exhibited show off his interest in the use of information theory and ability and comfort in writing for multiple forms such as studio prepared magnetic tape with vocalists, chamber ensemble with computer, and string quartet.
The title of the collection refers to Hiller’s working procedure, best stated in his own words: “I certainly use tonal methods, serial methods, of course, chance methods, charts, mathematical formulas like Fibonnaci series, eye music –you name it. And all of this with or without computers and electronics. But again I say that I try all of them in what you might call a total matrix of possibilities.”
“Computer Cantata” is split into five sections and starts off with a bang of rackety meandering percussion, like a drum corps on nitrous oxide. Eventually petering out into mainframe blips, bleeps, and fuzz, a soprano’s wavering voice emerges in the middle, acting as a focal point as the drums fade back in and vacuum-tube tones zigzag back and forth between the speakers. All the while horns and violins dance around with each other playfully and chaotic. The third section begins and ends with unaccompanied computer noise, what I imagine it must have sounded like in the old Ma Bell telephone switching stations.
“Quartet No. 6 for Strings” is an exuberant affair and perhaps the most accessible on the disc to the casual listener. The three sections of the quartet are based on environmental sound patterns he took notes on and then categorized: commercial district and industrial sounds; placid and peaceful sounds; and cheerful sounds such as children playing or those from Saturday morning cartoons. He then further defined them by applying a whole slew of chance processes and then imposing various constraints regarding pitch and other elements.“A Portfolio for Diverse Performers and Tape” is by far the most esoteric piece collected here. Commissioned by Polskie Radio in Warsaw the eight-channel tape features children’s songs sung by his daughter and son, making it at times eerie and scary. If the operatic singing were deleted from the mix it would come very close to a Nurse With Wound piece. It would be very appropriate to play on Halloween, sitting on the porch passing out candy to kids. It also contains sounds that are comical and sourced from who knows where. Trilling kazoos emerge from a resonant abyss.
I would have liked to seen more photographs in the liner notes, of Hiller, of the various performers, of the computers and studios where the works were created, and of the notebooks in which the ideas were sketched out. Perhaps those who put this together did not have access to them, or maybe their budget didn’t allow for them to be included. On many of the other archival releases from New World Records such images have been included. Hopefully though, what this release will have done is to take a step towards restoring Lejaren Hiller’s place in the history of music; from that of a footnote in books on ambient and computer music to a place of honor for his unique prolific genius.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![cover image](/brain/images/atomtm-liedgut.jpg)
Although split across some 20 tracks, the album consists mostly of "suites" of songs that are separated into smaller bite-sized pieces. Bookended by two variations of processed static ("Weisses Rauschen", or "white noise"), the pieces in between combine the usual selection of digitally manipulated sounds, but by way of 1960s early electronic composers, and even a bit of classical musical structures. The four parts of "Wellen und Felder" mix bass pulses and simplistic rhythms and tones, with orchestral like string tones giving the entire piece a classical vibe, even with the sub bass thumps and stuttering electronics.
On "Funksignal" a basic bleep/bloop rhythm and GameBoy snare skitters over cut up fragments of voice and MSP static crunch algorithms. The rhythm never really gets locked in though, and instead scurries about the track, which carires over into "Interferenz 1", which throws the now-overwrought sounds of wireless phone interference that gets boxed into a rhythmic structure, and the occasional piano stab cobbles it all together into some bizarre take on house music.
The series of "Mittlere Composition" tracks vary from violent noise blasts and random electronic noises on the first, to the organ like tones and arpeggiated synths, before ending with fake xylophone ascending/descending rhythms that could be pulled off of some 1970s middle school film strip. The closing cycle of "Weisses Rauschen" tracks puts the emphasis back on the classical elements, with the first piece showing a waltz-like pace and synthetic harp sounds alongside shrill insect calls that eventually adds in another series of GameBoy beats, the evil computer voice at the onset goes from growling to almost singing by the end.
This sinister computer voice is actually that of Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider, which gives the tracks on which he appears a sense of menace, like the all-powerful master computer growling out in clear, yet forceful German. The whole of this album though just doesn’t match its parts. It never feels like it takes off, but seems like a series of musical sketches that are not quite finished. There are good ideas here, but it resembles a collection of tracks more than a fully fleshed out album.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![cover image](/brain/images/animal_hospital-memory.jpg)
With a slew of instruments at his disposal, Micka has the means to create haunting and unusual sonic combinations throughout the album, a trait that sets him apart from so many of the do-it-yourself electronic explorers out there. Chimes, oscillators, guitars, toy pianos and Jonah Sacks' cello are among the plethora of noise makers fed and looped through large dosages of reverb and delay. Never one to let the effects speak for themselves though, Micka proves himself an able craftsmen, and any effect here is used as an endorsement of and contributor to the greater structure of the work.
The lengthy "His Belly Burst" is a fitting example. Sacks' nimble cello line opens with a line evocative of a Japanese folk melody. Building off of that mood, the piece is crafted upward as lines overlap and loop into an electronic wash of blissful tonalities. Soon interspersed with glitching electronics and, eventually, thudding, militaristic power chords and careening drum lines, the work grows into a textural bath of tone and sharp, staccato punctuation before settling back into its beginnings. That the piece manages to incorporate so many elements in its 17 minutes without ever feeling superfluous is impressive enough, but Micka manages to guide the work into something far greater than the sum of its parts.
Each work here presents itself with a similar ear for dramatic lines and structural buildup. On "...and ever," a Neu!-like drum pulse leads to slinking guitar lines, thudding bass and, ultimately, a propulsive brand of head-bangable psychedelic riffage. While Micka's ability to extrapolate on these tiny musical cells and turn them into full scale works is no small accomplishment, and he does it with aplomb every time, the result does dabble toward slightly sterile terrain due mostly in part to its consistance. Even when lyrics slip in to the album for the first time halfway through "...and ever," it fits in so neatly among the other gadgety rhythms around it that the resultant feel is perhaps less surprising than intended.
This is by no means a deterrent against his approaches however. Some of these tracks reach truly unexpected heights while never straying too far from a certain breed of electronic-rock loop craftsmanship. Think Caribou but with a more proggy and less literal psychedelic sound. Micka also has the smarts to follow up his epic works with paired-down ones, and these provide smooth and necessary transitions between the three lengthy centerpieces of the album. The gently lilting guitar and wordless vocal melodies of "A Safe Place" rest atop an odd synthesized beat that manages to succeed in effect without shoving it down your throat.
The closing title track fittingly displays Micka's talents at their height, as low-end cello rumble, fragile guitar lines and panning clicks grow into a synthesized soup of gooey loop manipulations and Eno-esque ambiance. It all works beautifully, if it seems as though Micka could do this in his sleep. Sterilizing though that may be, the sincerity, skill and vision on display is exciting in a day when few manage to walk the line between experimental attitudes and near pop approachability with so finely attuned a vision.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](/brain/images/pierre_yves_mace-passagenweg.jpg)
Pierre-Yves Macé has had a fairly atypical career for a contemporary classical composer. Despite his youth (he was born in 1980), he has already released three albums of electro-acoustic ensemble works (his debut album was released by John Zorn's Tzadik) and has opened for decidedly non-classical artists such as Matmos. He is currently working on a PhD in musicology with a specific interest on field recording. I suspect Passagenweg was conceptually birthed during those studies, but it does not seem especially sterile or academic.
The album opens in strange, yet some somewhat promising fashion. "Angelus Novus" gradually fades in with a dull, hobbling snare rhythm that is gradually eclipsed by the engulfing roar of a crackling and wavering sustained chord. Then the chord disappears, leaving a haunting, dreamlike waltz loop in its place.
After that, the album becomes very collage-y and difficult to discern where one track ends and another begins without staring unblinkingly at my CD player. A few tracks stand out as particularly enjoyable and coherent, however. "Il Principe il Ranocchio, 1" sustains a hazy ambience of schmaltzy strings and a churchbell that is intermittently encroached upon by field recordings and an exuberant antique piano recording. Eventually the schmaltzy strings seem to overpower the interloping elements, but then the loop is stretched and mangled before being abruptly cut out altogether. The following track is made up some submerged and seemingly understated glitchery, but then the track after that ("Ranocchio, 2") revisits the same string theme. It is unclear what it all means or how the glitch interlude is related. I suspect it isn't, but perhaps Macé's vision is simply too complex and enigmatic for me to grasp. Later, "Nocturnorama" essentially condenses the entire album into a 15 minute microcosm, shifting endlessly between scratchy big band recordings, radio dial-turning randomness, crackling melodramatic strings, and pastoral Eno/Budd ambience.
Passagenweg is a bit of complex and challenging listen, as a whole. It never achieves what I would call "beauty", but often attains a sort of creepy, otherworldly and bittersweet nostalgia. Lamentably, this mood is always quite fleeting, as the album is packed full of harsh juxtapositions, noise, and violent cut-ups. On the other hand, annoying repeating loops and unpleasant dissonance often unexpectedly transform into something shimmering, compelling, or unexpected. Surprises abound, both positive and otherwise.
The obvious peril with utilizing exotic source material for a sound-collaging is that listeners will find the raw materials more interesting than what you have done with them. Passagenweg does not entirely avoid this peril: there were many moments on the album where I dearly wished that Macé would stop chaotically mutilating and combining gramophone snippets and/or applying watery, insubstantial reverbed piano or strings and let the source material unfold without him. But, alas, that would not be Art. I'm afraid my sensibility clashes somewhat with Macé's, but there are a lot of unique textures and flashes of surreal inspiration here. Also, while Macé does an excellent job concealing his formal classical training, Passagenweg lacks the humor and perverseness that make vaguely similar forays by Nurse With Wound and The Caretaker so enjoyable. Someday this may grow on me more, but for now I think Passagenweg is an inspired near-miss.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![cover image](/brain/images/landofkushagainsttheday.jpg)
Judging an album by its cover is never a good idea and despite a gaudy luminous cover, the music on Against the Day is far from gaudy but it is luminous. Mixing Arabic influences with a jazz big band style group has made for a powerful album. The obvious influences here are Sun Ra and to a lesser extent John Coltrane but Shalabi’s own style (honed across many, many projects with most of them focussing on African and Middle Eastern styles) makes the jazz greats more spectres in the background rather than true points of reference as to how this all sounds. On “Iceland Spar” Shalabi and his group conjure up images of deserts and sandstorms (granted not images I would associate with Iceland!); the haunting strings and exotic motifs are fluid and malleable like a dune in the wind.
Elsewhere, the jazz comes out far stronger. Molly Sweeney’s smoky vocals on “Bilocations” are without doubt the centrepiece of Against the Day. She riffs on topics not exactly relevant to early civilisation but Shalabi states in the liner notes that this album is in dedication to Thomas Pynchon (the album’s titled borrowed from Pynchon’s novel of the same name) so the imagery makes more sense in that context. Taken together with the vibrant music, the song becomes psychedelic both in terms of style and in terms of being mind blowing. Several times I have had to stop what I am doing when listening to the album as this song comes on, it is remarkably captivating.
The title track is a frenzy of (whirl)wind instruments that sound like they belong on a classic 60s recording from Impulse! Records. The chaos of the piece suddenly bursts into a surging rhythm and escapes its free jazz trappings; the flowing music like a river and completely at odds with the arid, dry pieces that precede it. It floods out of the speakers and washes over me in a torrent. Sweeney’s vocals may be the centrepiece of the album but “Against the Day” is its life and soul.
I cannot sing Land of Kush’s praises enough, this is phenomenal album that ticks every single box for me. The recording is, as usual for Constellation, flawless. There is not a dud note to be found and even with nearly 30 musicians on board, not one of them sounds like a hollow session player. The only thing that could improve on it would for it to be at least twice as long but hopefully Shalabi does not just move on to another new project and does more with this. Undeniably Against the Day is one of the best albums of the year so far and is likely to stay high in my estimations for some time.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](/brain/images/wolves_in_the_throne_room-malevolent_grain.jpg)
Olympia, Washington’s Wolves In The Throne Room contains no murderers, church-burners, or even a single dwarf that is too evil to be named. Nevertheless, they certainly have their own unusual and oft-mythologized backstory. The core of the group consists of two brothers (Nathan and Aaron Weaver) who were inspired to start the band at an Earth First! event in the Cascade Mountains as an attempt to combine the misanthropy of their sinister Norwegian musical brethren with earthy spirituality and radical environmentalism. Their ultimate aim is to "create a mythic space where artist and listener alike could strip away the mindset of the mundane to reveal a more ancient and transcendent consciousness." Also, they live in a collapsed farmhouse/rural stronghold called Calliope. I always like bands that live in strongholds, although Fela Kuti and Africa '70 is the only other example that springs to mind.
Malevolent Grain is much leaner and single-minded than the band's previous works (which I also enjoy). There are no guitar solos, atmospheric keyboards, interludes, or even a single riff here. Both lengthy songs are built entirely upon relatively simple (albeit tremelo-picked) minor chord progressions that hardly change at all. Surprisingly, this approach works extremely well, as the Wolves have clearly spent an enormous amount of time forging these skeletal song structures into their most intense and face-melting possible manifestation. This facial annihilation is largely rhythmic in origin.
Aaron Weaver's drumming is absolutely stupefying throughout both songs. Though certainly insane and virtuosic, I was especially struck by Weaver's unusual musicality. He may very well be the first drummer that I have heard that can make blast beats seem nuanced. Also, he performs an impressive rhythmic feat on "A Looming Resonance" in which he plays with blistering intensity while still enabling the song to feel like it is moving glacially. I was equally impressed at how he skillfully shifts from minimal head-bobbing grooves, to rumbling double bass, to blast beat intensity in a way that actually seems natural and essential to the songs' dynamic unfolding. One of my primary frustrations with this genre is that spastic blast beats are often just meaningless required components that feel strangely unwarranted and oddly detached from the music around them. On Malevolent Grain, the guitars and drums achieve a singular synergy that I think can only be attained by brothers who have been playing together their entire lives (Max and Igor Cavalera of Sepultura spring to mind as another example of this. Van Halen does not.).
The jaw-dropping first track ("A Looming Resonance") turns over vocal duties to Jamie Meyers (Hammers of Misfortune). Meyers had a cameo on the Wolves debut (Diadem Of 12 Stars), but this is the first time that the band has attempted female vocals for an entire song. It works incredibly well in this case- Meyers' vocals have a Nico-esque detached beauty that serves the material perfectly and almost transcends the black metal genre entirely. This is no small accomplishment, as I usually find female metal vocals to be shrill, unengagingly cold, or so swathed in reverb that they make the band sound like a terrible, sub-Projekt, early nineties goth band. This track is simply devastating in all respects (elegantly melodic vocals aside)- it builds in slow-burning intensity for over thirteen minutes and, weirdly, it more closely resembles Low during one of their rare roaring freak-outs than, for example, Emperor.
I was admittedly disappointed that Nathan reclaimed the microphone for "Hate Crystal," as his traditional black metal shrieking meant a sad farewell to to the EP's earlier somber melodicism. Despite that, it is still a fairly crushing song and it makes a sensible companion piece to "A Looming Resonance." It shares the stripped-down simplicity of its predecessor, but follows an opposite trajectory in that it begins in frenzied and demonically heavy fashion, then gradually becomes less and less intense until it finally dissolves into an ambient hum.
Malevolent Grain is the Wolves first release to feature a second guitarist (Will Lindsay from Middian). It is unclear if this new sinewy simplicity is related to that, or if these two songs were aberrations that would've been out of place amidst the "blazing crystalline blackness and ocean-deep ritualistic dronescapes" of their imminent third album (Black Cascade). I hope it is the former, but these guys seem to be incapable of making a misstep at this stage in their career- perhaps they've already moved onto to something even better.
Samples
Read More