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As before, Susanna Karolina Wallumrød's lovely voice quivers with an enthralling fragility through the peaks and valleys of obscenely eclectic track selections from such disparate artists as Kiss, Prince, and Scott Walker. Morten Qvenvild takes more than just liberties with his sparse, subtly decorated arrangements, though some of these compositions come across as more surprising than others. Joy Division's eternal "Love Will Tear Us Apart" has suffered in the feeble, fumbling hands of countless moody impersonators and descendants, with the Magical Orchestra's take slogging along predictably, as does Qvenvild's saggy, dreary stab at the equally overexposed Depeche Mode staple "Enjoy The Silence." Conversely, AC/DC's fist-pumping rock n roll warning, "It's A Long Way To The Top" transmutates into the bitter lament of the road-weary, hardened soul, its once-anthemic lyrics made infinitely more harsh than the late Bon Scott would have envisioned. Along those lines, Wallumrød magnificently reclaims Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" from the gooey depths of Shrek's CGI schmaltz, showcasing the highest heights of her vocal range over Qvenvild's ascetic organ tones.
Still, the strongest and most beautiful material on the duo's first Rune Grammofon record wasn't the creative covers of Leonard Bernstein and Dolly Parton songs, but rather heartbreaking originals like "Hello" and "Believer." As such, Melody Mountain deflects lyrical honesty, behaving much like a depressed girlfriend on the other end of the telephone, singing other people's songs into the receiver for fear of speaking of her own pain and heartache.
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- Scott Mckeating
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Although this Heatsick release starts out nice and normal, it doesn’t take that long before it gets taken over by the warped half of sole member Steven Warwick’s brain; melodic acoustic guitar work gets layered and then drowned.
This c30 release (in vampiric black and red) layers acoustic details on top of each other, all the while preparing the listener for the inevitable absorption into Heatsick world. These simply layered parts keep their backbone for a while, refusing to urn to liquid, landing in clockwork patterns of strums. The magic of this single piece is the way the mechanical mouse organ styled build of notes begins to take on a sort of halo. The chimes set in motion droney moving rings which in turn heralds circling whistles appear along with freer pitches around the song. This other world begins to try and steal the song’s focus creating an intentionally glorious coming together of two teased-out worlds.
When the second side picks up the hard to hold thread of “Pre-Cum Fog Ballet,” the guitar parts have been lost. The mazes of drones have guzzled this instrument down in murmuring hums, a disintegrating swarm of Möbius Strips. Listening to the second side of this cassette is like arriving at the fairground on expensive glue and having to choose which half-broken fairground attraction to ride on. The sounds spin just below the point of overwhelming, like a séance that only attracts pissed-up drunken spirits that all want to talking at the same time. The gap between side one and two feels like a part of this buckled metamorphosis has been lost, but that’s probably partially my fault for having equipment that requires me to get up to flip the tape. Despite the sometime insanity of the music, Heatsick’s explorations are never mentally wearing; god only knows what it’s doing to my ears though.
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- Scott Mckeating
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This, possibly sperm influenced, off-milky white seven inch is the latest between album output from Massimo and Pierce of the Black Sun Productions collective. Sex Magik seems to play a lesser part in these two pieces, being noticeably shorter than their recent material on their last few long-players.
Eschewing the melancholy of the double disc The Impossibility of Silence release they have moved into an electronic semi-operatic mode.
Massimo’s voice is the main, and most enjoyable, ingredient here, steadied now into a sonorous, deep vocal. His warm cavernous wails at the climax of “Uncle Billy” merging with the very European sounding violin’s reaching string fingers to provide what must be a raging spectacle when performed live. The underwater pounding thump is overwhelmed by his vocal, the siren strings exacerbating the expressed loss. Apparently this Burroughs tribute track is the first fruit of a collaboration with Bahntier (who sound like post-industrialists from the little I’ve heard) and I look forward to hearng more. Both tracks here have Massimo filling the songs with a human heart, mollifying the sharpened edges of the music.
The addition of Roberto Budelo’s violin is an excellent counterpoint to the mutating precision of Pierce’s electronics. This more organic work following and filling the sound of the speeding clicking beats of “His Secret Secretions”. It’s worth also noting that this is probably the best bassline that the pair has created yet, a simple forward-moving piece that’s fixed to the beats. They’ve come a long way from the ghost boys. Their musical equivocation and ongoing evolution means that it’s difficult to predict where this duo will come from next.
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"Intitially we wanted to bring Xenakis and Techno together......well, in the end it sounded really different...."
With some irony Gina Hell from the female duo Rashim states what has led to their surprisingly fresh and unconventional debut.
'Suns.Shadows' is the result of a longtime cooperation with Yasmina Haddad as Rashim, a relationship which started with dee-jaying and works for video artists or fashion designers. The album delivers more than a handful of ideas for those who have been looking after analogue warmth and tricky rhythms. Snippets of acoustic guitars built up a steady pattern, a jazz kit merges with a drum-synth, or a repeated stroke on something like a cello could keep you tapping on your table while you listen to a piano chord or a vocal phrase. Rashim´s cosm is definitely eclectic regarding its source material pop culture can meet an orchestral drum solo - but the music is always coherent in its results. Maybe this is because of the duo´s convincing and conscious handling with instruments, sounds and samples, but more likely it is their intuitive approach and the focus on rhythm, a basic and still vivid expression.
(mosz 2006)
1: lost
2: kunstkomplex
3: sheman
4: you're not past man, you are tradition
5: it's worth it
6: yes, xenakis
7: shines
8: for the cat
9: blueblackgold
10: drawn
11: total eclipse
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For their second outing as The Wardrobe, Liles and Wakeford redefine the parameters of strangeness with an album that marries lovely, emotive, nostalgic instrumentals to the shudders and creaks of old Victoriana. More often than not, the songs meander and drift through the cobwebby attics of old English country houses, the eerie and insistent presence of memory creating an uncanny atmosphere that fairly sparks with ghostly electricity. Eerie electrical portals to other worlds are found amidst the creaking floorboards and old, out-of-tune pianos, dusty guitars and rusty accordions. Without warning, atmospheric melodies are overtaken by the free play of the unconscious, eccentric intrusions from out of the ether, snatches of warped dialogue, wobbly old 78s or incongruous sound effects suites pop in and out with a refreshing absence of logic.
Whereas the title of Cups in Cupboard, the duo's first album, signified a measured appropriateness—cups in the cupboard, everything in its right place—the title of this sophomore album suggests incompleteness, lunacy and lame-brained-ness: "She's a few sandwiches short of a picnic, that one." Apropos of this contrast in title, the new album is not as pleasing and tuneful as that first album, preferring instead to push out the boundaries of discomfort, finding ever newer ways to subtly dislocate the listener in time and space. While the opening piano dirge "Wednesday" seems to start off in the same general ballpark as Cups, it soon descends into an eerie, droning netherworld, with a tinkling counter-melody that constantly threatens to derail the funereal proceedings. Everything finally digresses into buzzing electric insectoid oblivion, a miasma of withering 19th century parlor music, like watching a Merchant Ivory film on acid.
Things only get wackier from this point with the whimsically ramshackle "Horse With One Leg" and the heavily intoxicated, messily percussive strains of "Another Drink?". "Lucifer Before Sunrise" will be the most pleasurable track for old-school Nurse With Wound fans, a reworking of a track that originally appeared on Stapleton and Wakeford's sole collaboration The Revenge of the Selfish Shellfish. This time, the deeply weird crypto-Satanic text is read aloud by Colin Potter's daughters (internal rhyme unintentional), as skeletal guitar figures are licked by crackling flames. The Potter girls' spooky voices are twisted and mutated, scattered around the stereo channels, before being joined by Wakeford's morbid, gravelly vocals, so familiar from well-worn Sol Invictus records from the past two decades. Everything you loved about the English underground esoteric music scene, all in the span of five minutes.
Since Current 93 and Nurse With Wound have apparently decided to take permanent vacations from these kinds of fucked gothic sound experiments, it's nice to hear the flag still being carried by Liles and Wakeford. A Sandwich Short is the perfect mix of disarming melodies and outre electronic textures, with lots of delightfully menacing moments of plain, old-fashioned sinister whimsy.
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This duo, introduced on stage by Wolf Eyes’ John Olson, wastes no time building a swelling hurricane of roasted feedback and battered percussion. “Live at RRRecords” is a wrecking yard turned inside out, all shivering steel towers and strobing blasts of metal. The gnarled hand percussion and the speaker being force fed a guitar head liquefy into a mercury drenched tributary. About six minutes in, and without warning, it switches into a less live assault team sounding piece. An underwater toaster-in-bath murk clicks into play, a drowned mic battering on a sunken wreck’s railings.
The flipside opener has a simple drum machine beat that teeters precariously on the edge of possible funk, the looped notes perforating a swirl of dirty air. The audible hiss of an old school recording makes this feel like the oldest piece here, but it’s a blessing it’s been saved. A protuberance of organic sounds stuffed with snatches of radio and birdcall seems to grow heavier as the track progresses, becoming easier for the listener to sink under the spread. The second half of this track is the most sedentary of the four tracks, tiny electric loops and in-limbo chimes languishing in a bundle of cells. It’s obvious that Campbell’s work as part of Astral Social Club has moved on into other areas and features a good deal of focused energy, but this lathe is still an excellent example of his more sprawling side.
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THE ONE ENSEMBLE
The One Ensemble is a quartet from Glasgow, Scotland. Originally a solo recording project of Daniel Padden, two albums were released as ‘The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden’ - a self-titled CD on Catsup Plate, and 'The Owl Of Fives' on Textile. After that the Ensemble became a live band and released 'Live At VPRO Radio' on Brainwashed. The band is now simply The One Ensemble. Daniel Padden is a member of Volcano The Bear. Aby Vulliamy and Chris Hladowski are members of Nalle.
[AB-OC-32] THE ONE ENSEMBLE - Wayward The Fourth
CD or LP
$12 USA; $16 World
1. Joker Burlesque
2. Neither One Thing
3. Shapes Disguised As Sizes
4. The Venerable Eleventh Melody
5. Smok [MP3]
6. Resonant Kings
7. Horsehead Waltz
8. Fog And Tumble
9. The Following Thunder
10. Berlinda [MP3]
11. Another Cup To Drown
The heir apparant to Moondog and Zoltán Kodály, The One Ensemble blend European folk, narrative, popular and chamber forms to create modern compositions that provide attention-grabbing hooks and thought-provoking challenges. At times formal and at others improvisational, it is difficult to pin down the One Ensemble sound. Influences range from the classic pop-psychedelia of Robert Wyatt to the deep experimental drone of Third Ear Band. Blissful free jazz, delicate acoustic out-folk, tape collages, Eastern raga and mystical modern minimalism all peacefully coexist in the One Ensemble’s uniquely beautiful universe.
REVIEWS
“A gorgeous and hypnotic work that joyously trips and tumbles through a dark, mediaeval wonderland that exists only on an astral plane; a collection of whimsical funeral dirges for a merry band of wandering monks intoxicated on bad liquor and thujone. It is a collection of hymns to wood sprites and elves; it is the soundtrack to suddenly noticing the glorious spectacle of an ant crawling up a tree trunk carrying a leaf. It is a magical conjuring act by a group of trickster alchemists wandering in a foreign land. It is often all of these things and sometimes none of them, but it is always unmistakably beautiful music.” - Jonathan Dean, Brainwashed
“Predominantly acoustic, with strings, piano and organ to the fore, Padden weaves strains of early English traditional music, contemporary classical, even jazz and world music into an absorbing, sometimes quite otherwolrdly, whole.” - MOJO
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- John Kealy
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Nova Express
Sleeping with Ghosts is an entertaining album, it is back-to-basics rock played with plenty of conviction. The songs are nothing particularly special but they’re just enough above average to keep me listening to the album. There is a solid scene of French bands that all do this sort of garage rock and Cowboys from Outerspace would be far from the worst. They have moments where I really want to grab my guitar and play along but there’s never a point where they go from just another rock band to something more exciting, they could tickle my rock out bone a lot more.
One thing about this band (and a lot of other French bands) is that their singer sings in English. I don’t understand why so many French bands do this. Some can pull it off but many sound like extras from Allo, Allo. Their vocalist slips a few times into this trap and it’s a bit off-putting. I can’t help but feel that these songs would be a lot better in their mother tongue. Aside from that, Sleeping with Ghosts doesn’t have any major faults, it ticks all the boxes when it comes to rocking out but the band don’t do enough to stand out from the crowd.
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Ache
Musically Teenage Mondo Trash is thoroughly enjoyable. It sounds like a lot more than two people belting out these songs. While never showing off, both Tetsunori Tawaraya’s guitar playing and Keiichi Nakano’s drumming show competence and enough adventurousness to add a fair bit of excitement to the songs. They explore more avenues in thirty seconds than many bands do in their entire careers. Although I must point out that the music never reaches the madness of Fantomas, it is far more accessible with a heavy emphasis on punk and metal. The last few songs are the best examples of their impressive playing. For example, on “Torepan” Tetsunori flies all over the fretboard and extracts all sorts of great tones from his guitar without ever straying into the world of wank. Keiichi’s drumming sounds like he’s programmed to drum in time to Tetsunori’s odd notes, the two of them are tight but very natural sounding.
Tetsunori’s vocals don’t always work. He has a frantic yelping style that sometimes sounds great like on “Sirloin” but sometimes it borders on annoying (although that could be due to pounding headache I currently am enduring). He’s at his best when he counterpoints his guitar playing with his vocals, for example on “Hammer” he lets off bursts of pure guitar mayhem while letting off completely different explosions of sound from his mouth. The fact that he sings in his native language makes his unorthodox vocals sound better, I think if I could understand him I’d be less impressed.
It’s hard to get bored with Teenage Mondo Trash as it is all over so quickly. It finishes at just the right time as I think 2UP’s music works best in small doses. If I had to listen to 40 minutes of this I think I would give up but as it stands I can deal with it fine. Aesthetically I feel they shouldn’t be released on CD as they’re a band that would be ideal for a 7” only catalogue; they could fit an entire album on one record. That aside, Teenage Mondo Trash is an exciting and vibrant release that once again proves that there is an awful lot of music from Japan that needs western releases.
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