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ThrowingMusic
Kristin Hersh and her post-Throwing Muses band are back with not only atight EP of solid rock, but a different approach in delivering thatmusic. 50FootWave is one of the growing number of bands who actually encourage the sharing of officialreleases among listeners. Fed up with the money-mindedness of the musicindustry as a whole, Hersh is lashing back by taking the opposite tack.The music is what matters here, not the money, and reaching fans is thegoal, rather than reaping profits. Word of mouth has always been thebest advertisement and while giving away an entire EP of brand-newmaterial might be a risky move, I think 50FootWave will see it pay off,and in spades.
Looking past the delivery method, the EP itself is five songs of roughrollicking guitars and Hersh's distinctive sandpaper-wrapped voice. Sheclearly hasn't lost her edge and the songwriting is as strong asanything the Muses ever released. The lyrics are distilled down to thebones, cutting with a sharp bare directness and filled with images ofclear blue skies, dark dark days, and coming to terms with it all. Itsometimes seems a voice as soft as hers can be could be drowned out bythe heavy guitars, but she overwhelms them with sheer attitude. Hersh'sguitar may not snarl the way it on Limbo or University, but the soundhas a menace all its own, much like the band's watery moniker itcrashes down in a more solid and inescapable way.
This small set of songs is perfect in a way to release in this form;there's more than enough here to get any new fan hooked and headed tothe record store to find more and just enough to satisfy an older fan,at least until the next full-length release.
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Domino
Everything Ecstatic Films is a collection of music videos for every song from 2005's Everything Ecstatic: some are homemade by Kieran Hebden's close friends, others are clearly professional. The first one I saw last year was for the song "Smile Around the Face," which I continuously show at my music video night in Boston. Only a small few Americans recognize the lead character—British actor Mark Heap, who I know as the offbeat oddball Brian from the fantastic TV comedy Spaced—as the camera is focused only on his head as it follows him from a shower, to a walk around town, and to various other places (even a little kid jumps on him at one point!).
A lot of the other videos are less geared for an MTV-crowd but provide excellent visuals that could either backdrop Four Tet live performances or serve as excellent visuals at a music video night in a loud bar. "A Joy," for example, is a stunning, colorful animation by Jodie Mack, while "High Fives," by Ed Holdsworth, has surreal animations with actual people, including Kieran sporting four eyes. Other videos like "Sun Drums and Soil," by Jason Evans and "Fuji Check," by Kieran, himself, are of home video quality, but not displeasing at all, especially "You Were There With Me," which features uber sweetheart Kathryn Bint jumping in circles in various places all across the world!
The companion audio portion is Everything Ecstatic 2, an EP of previously unreleased recordings, including a 16 minute/16 second long version of "Turtle Turtle Up," originally only a brief piece on last year's Everything Ecstatic. "Sun Drums and Soil (Part 2)" includes a lot of elements from the first version but is more jazzed up. "Watching Wavelength" and "Ending" aren't terribly memorable, while the highlight for me is the new song, "This Is Six Minutes," which doesn't sound like a toss-away or outtake, but a typical track in reliable Four Tet form: it's constructed entirely from samples of other music, however it's far more complex than most other Four Tet music, with multiple layers of guitars, drums, keyboards and marimba-like instruments, all weaved together to form an intricate audio tapestry.
Together with the DVD/EP release of "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth," the entire music video collection of Four Tet can be obtained. Once again I want to stress to all the industry professional bitching about lower sales of CDs: stop holding back. Give people something special, like this, and the praise will follow.
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Equation Records
While Troum are known and worshipped (in unfairly small numbers) fortheir vast, gorgeous soundscapes, this time, they sound far moreaggressive and serious. The 'open' side begins forcefully with"Tatan," as its relentless, echoed, driving rhythm is decorated withthe bleeding howls of guitar noises and ghostly sounds. "Aurddrach"eases in more quietly, with a signature Troum depth-defying sound and afaster paced, but more subtle rhythmic loop. Both rhythm and atmospherebuild concurrently until the sound is so massive, and then it breaks,quieting down, as if they're laying a beast to rest.
The 'closed' side is far more reserved, contained, and concealed. Rhtyhms of "Chertanovo" only barely evolve after about four minutesinto the piece, and even then, they're provided by the echoes of themain sound sources, which are thunderous and rumbling. It's like beinghidden deep, beneath the earth in the massive darkness, where only afew glimmers of light can be seen through cracks far above. "Chertanovo" doesn't make a grand exit, it only creeps off into theinfinite darkness. "Yemanja" ends the release with a sad and slowanthemic melody. Elongated and emotional, it's a reminder that it'salmost criminal that Troum aren't as praised as much as the bands likeSunn O))) and Godspeed who have followed their foosteps on the same trails, but havereached different peaks and valleys in their expeditions.
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Troniks/Ninth Circle Music
This double disc set from Troniks and Ninth Circle Music collects a lot of noise. The combined running time is 144 minutes and two seconds. Listening to both of these discs straight through is like asking for a migraine and then a boxing match with a bulldozer. Despite being two discs long, there are only eleven tracks on the collection, most of them running between nine and 20 or so minutes long. Just getting through the first half of the first disc can be a bit of a chore. The first three tracks are from a demo tape Endo released in 1994 and the fourth track is the first side of the Brutal Rainbow tape originally released in 1995. That series of noise is over an hour long all by itself. These tracks are definitely loud and definitely harsh, but every time I listen to them I have trouble finding whatever unique qualities others may have heard in those pieces. It isn't until the four shorter pieces start that I'm really taken by Killer Bug and what he did with noise.
The Cunt Explosion! and Your Wife Is Mine EPs were both released in 1995 and it is easy to see why they would have garnered some attention from the noise community. The tracks from those EPs that are included on this disc are short, roughly two to three minute long bursts of cluttered sounds, screams, junk being tossed around inside a metal box, and total feedback. Instead of being densely layered clouds of almost total chaos, Killer Bug's sound is more refined on these EPs, slightly easier to take in, but no less harsh for it. It's easy to think that these were more closely watched and more caringly constructed sound pieces than just freeform noise riots. Both "Masked Porno Star" and "Slaughter on the Beach" are strangely lo-fi sounding extracts of freaked out equipment buzzing and burning away in a series of rapid flashes and blazing edits. Listening to them is a lot more fun than trying to get through the first half of the disc in one sitting. I've been able to listen to these over and over with a great deal of pleasure. Though the first half of the disc is both uneven and sloppy, listening to a track here or a track there without feeling the need to associate them with anything else on the disc is nice. It at least provides a sense of movement in Endo's composition, showing exactly how he grew in the year between his demos and his earliest releases.
The second disc, with the exception of the live track, is much like the first half of the first disc. Live, Killer Bug must've been amazing. Despite the recording being slightly muffled, it's clear that Endo enjoyed throwing sucker punches at his audience. Everything from high-pitched synthesizer-like belches to unhinged screams populate his live performance. If his longer compositions had been as entertaining as his live performances were, sitting through the first fifty minutes or so of the second disc would be much less of a task and far more exciting. And this is evidently Killer Bug's first live performance. He came out strong, so I can only imagine his live material got stronger.
Regardless of whether or not all of the material on this relase is amazing or not, Killer Bug's material has its merits. "Steaming Gash," if listened to by itself, is a thrashing groan of cut up and destabilized anger punching its way through twenty minutes of sudden left turns and unexpected pitfalls. Trying to keep up with Endo's approach is fun enough, but trying to understand where it all came from is even better. It's as though Endo knew just how to open up his machines so as to make for the most insane ride of static eruptions and nose bleeds. The two EPs included in this collection are excellent slices of short, abusive noise that can't be found anywhere else. Everything else on the collection is worth hearing to some degree, but just make sure to listen to it a little bit at a time. Otherwise the whole collection can seem a little too intimidating and sometimes a little too repetitive.
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C and P Binto Family
There are eleven musicians credited on this six song release and yet it sounds like one drunken man clumsily fumbling through a song about whether or not Christmas is today or yesterday. It's appropriate that he doesn't know, sounding as intoxicated as he does. The rest of the musicians sound the same, half-heartedly plucking their way around banjos and violins or honking on saxophones that merely compound the tepid nature of the compositions and add to the sense that this was all thrown together at the last second. Apparently the record was assembled to accompany an Arthur Pembleton gallery dedicated to his deceased mother, a woman that suffered from dementia and couldn't remember when Christmas was. That's all fine and dandy, but there's no reason to make five really crummy versions of a song in order to preserve her memory. One would've been enough and even that's stretching it.
After hearing "Is Christmas tomorrow? / Or was it yesterday?" over and over again for a period of ten minutes, I wanted to drive a hot poker through my ears. I had to take out this already brief EP and listen to something else before I could come back and listen to the final two songs. The poor quality of the recordings and the way that Spirito enjoys layering instruments is irritating. His incessant use of poorly tuned instruments and faded production values makes the entire record sound like it was recorded in a dive bar where nobody was paying attention to anything that was going on. Even if this CD wasn't entirely out of season by this point, it'd have nothing to contribute to the Christmas spirit. Unless, perhaps, I felt like finding a knife and slashing my wrists on Christmas Eve. There are better drinking albums dedicated to ruining the spirit of giving than this and there are certainly better Christmas and holiday albums to be found. This is an unnecessary contribution to a brand of music that is already choked with elf manure and sleigh bells from hell.
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Tigerbeat6
History be damned for a moment: Quintron, his organ, Miss Pussycat, and her puppets are all from New Orleans. To be more specific, they claim to be and sound absolutely like they are of the swamp. Not from it, though. Forget any conventions concerning origin and musical influence via geography—they might as well have been born in a swamp and thus their music is just as murky, muddy, sweaty, and hot. Catching Quintron and Miss Pussycat live might be a bit mystifying at first. When I saw them live with the Cramps in St. Louis, I wasn't sure whether I was watching a performance art group or a musical duo. Quintron was a shirtless, one-man musical machine manipulating what looked like an entirely pointless tin can lit up from the inside and boasting a bevy of switches and knobs, playing hi-hat here and there, and messing about with other drum equipment. Miss Pussycat was decked out in a blue dress like one a flight attendant from the 1950s might wear, shaking maracas, and generally playing off the role of totally hot sex kitten meant to seduce every man and open minded woman in the crowd. Then there were the puppet shows. I remember termites of evil intent, alligators, crawfish, and other denizens of the swamp interacting in fits of hilarity and seeming nonsense. What was clear was that when they played, there was no shortage of energy or libido for them to draw from. They were having a blast on stage and everyone in the crowd was as well, despite St. Louis crowds being notorious for their complete lack of enthusiasm towards new and unfamiliar bands. I didn't forget them, to say the least. At first, their appearance on Tigerbeat6 didn't strike me as being appropriate, but after hearing Swamp Tech my mind has changed entirely.
This album was recorded live. Thank god, too. My memory of Quintron and Miss Pussycat as a live duo hasn't been spoiled by this album. The tour was a long time ago, but as soon as "Shoplifter" started, I was quite sure this was, in fact, the same band doing exactly what they did so well on stage. What they do so well is rock out like two lovers high on the powers of heavy beats and chaotic road life. There is no multi-tracking in rock n' roll and these two understand that. There can be only sweat, blood, beer swilling, and boot stomping and that is all this duo provides, with just a few twists. Their rock n' roll is laden with a southern swagger that'd make Lynyrd Skynyrd blush and most art-rock groups run for cover. Here is a world of Madison Squirrel Gardens, strange free-association, Kiss covers, bouncing beat boxes, and the promise of a night full of wanton disaster and drunken vandalism. This southern bounce isn't afraid of the word faggot or the promised thrill of shoplifting, the only fear is that one day there will be no boogie and who knows what'll happen to the body when the boogie dies. When they bother to slow down, their music comes across as a steamboat stroll through the evening, lit only by fireflies and heavy drinks that never seem to empty. No matter what the mood, no matter what the occaision, Quintron and Miss Pussycat bleed their music, letting all the excitement of New Orleans and the surrounding area seep from them in glorious perversion and strange hallucinatory bouts of dance.
When Miss Pussycat sings, there is no room for confusion. She's always excited, screaming for all her lungs are worth and when Quintron lets himself loose, it's like being smacked by a wave of swagger and bravado that could only be acquired by hitting the road and living life the hard way for a long time. There are moments when the album drags just slightly. For all its raw power, there are a few bells and whistles tossed in musically that I could do without. That's just me nitpicking, though. This is balls to the wall music, meant for feeling awesome in the light of pure adrenaline-induced activity. The DVD that comes with the CD edition of Swamp Tech features some of Miss Pussycat's puppet shows. So, after listening to their awesome cover of "God of Thunder" (who knew I could like a Kiss song?) a billion times and bellowing its lyrics as though they meant everything in the world, watch the DVD and be prepared for some comedy. This isn't novelty music, this is power and groove harnessed through an organ, an organ that'd make all the machismo of a guitar look limp and pathetic in its wake. Rock n' roll might've somehow died, but Quintron gets the idea. Give the drunken organist another shot and turn the volume up.
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Ash International
The packaging for this rarely available release (it's gone out of printtwice in seven years) is lush and obviously produced with care. Thebooklet includes not only an essay explaining EVP, but also includesdetailed and thorough biographies of Cass, Raudive, and FriedrichJurgenson (who pioneered the technique after finding voices on histapes of bird calls). The cover image—an adaptation of apolygraph—and the photos of Cass and Jurgenson are printed in asilvery ink with a slight metallic sheen. The polygraph image isrepeated in the inside of the booklet and is the perfect visualrepresentation of eerie, distorted speech. The title itself issignificant too...a ghost orchid is a tiny and rare flower, hard tocome by and grow.
I was a bit apprehensive of listening to this CD initially—I'm thesort of person who avoids scary movies and covered her eyes during thebloody bits in Gladiator—but I actually did not find the recordings to be particularly scary orcreepy, perhaps because I was expecting them to be. If I walked into an emptyroom where these recordings were being played, however, I can't say I wouldn'tbe scared half to death. The voices do sound ethereal and other-worldly at times;at other times they sound like a commercial or the oldies stationbeing played on a cheap stereo down the block. They speak in English,German, Russian, and Latvian, and sometimes combinations of severallanguages (the so-called "polyglot voices"). They sing, laugh, and aresaid to respond directly to researchers and address them by name. Eachfragment is repeated three times to give the listener a chance toreally hear and absorb the voices.
These voices are said to be ghosts attempting to communicate from theafterlife (including Winston Churchill), psychic impressions from theresearcher himself, and even extraterrestrial beings (the evidence forthis being their bad grammar). I'm not sure I buy any of thoseexplanations myself, but I do find these recordings fascinatingand compelling. Some of the transcriptions of the voices are a stretchand don't sound to me much like what they're "supposed" to (I've alsopossibly identified an "unknown" alien word as a German surname). Evenviewing these recordings as the results of radio interference, cordlessphones butting in, or CB or shortwave radios breaking through, they canbe enjoyed as the sonic equivalent of a found poem.
samples:
- Polyglot voices: Sonja Liepina; Where's Mable?; Cold Soldart
- PSB Interrupt: Raudive; Radio Luxembourg; Not Enough There to Copy; Don't Do it!
- Out of This World
- Alien Voices: Dead Machines; We Can See Edith by Radio; Una
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North East Indie
His delicate playing is almost asexpressive as his singing. He blends bluegrass with a little blues anda touch of old-time country for a sound that's almost like ancestralmemory. It's hard to tell if there's anyone else on the album besides him, butI wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn the album was recorded bySmaldone picking his steel guitar and wailing into a 4-track in a dustyempty room.
Hither and Thither is a 40-minute trip back into ablack-and-white silent film world of fragile beauty. It's familiar butthe era it recalls is so far gone it feels new again, like a book fromchildhood found and reread as an adult.
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It seems that nine times out of ten whatever instrument Keiji Haino turns his hand to (or whoever he collaborates with) he comes out of the experience with an hour or so of brilliance. This electronics-based recording features a bundle of obscure black boxes and a digital theremin that he uses and investigates to create more than just your average everyday abstract soundscapes.
 
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bravecaptain’s full-on dalliances with glitch, techno and breaks have over time become infused elements within his songs instead of headfirst jumps into sonic territories. Trying to hold the man down to an easy to tag sound is difficult, but at a push its melodic pop with a fucked up expansive structure and a warm digital simple production. Even that description leaves fat big holes in the home studio sound.
Writing, recording and self releasing an MP3 single a month through his website, bravecaptain (aka Martin Carr) has accidentally created a full album release that superbly showcases his patchwork style of lyrical laptop pop.
While most of the songs seem to be built from a predilection and talent with acoustic guitar, programmed drums, keyboards and vocals he manages to explore outside this more traditional set up. A production style that encompasses space and subtly and highlighting the odd and broke parts of a mix seems to sit more easily within a dub context rather than a pop one. bravecaptain’s ability to coax and secure lambent sounds to the hearts of his songs is a side-effect of his skill as a writer/arranger/producer. In someone less talented it’d be possible to see these sounds as ‘spice up the mix’ afterthoughts. His beats, while always engaging, are still improving and getting that little bit closer to a full on two footed toe tapping session.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Archive / Important
The two CDs come packaged in a beautiful fold out sleeve in black card with all the text and images embossed or printed in black ink (designed by Stephen O’Malley, who is a cover art machine of the highest caliber). It’s nearly worth buying for the art alone. Luckily the music enclosed on the discs makes it a bargain. I’m not a big fan of Keiji Haino: some of his albums are good but sometimes he just bores the hell out of me. This is probably the best recording of his that I’ve come across. It is quite accessible compared to even his less extreme guitar albums (I need a stiff drink to enjoy the likes of Black Blues which has normal songs I already knew on it!).
The hurdy gurdy disc is monumental. Much like his guitar playing, he completely ignores the “correct” way of playing and approaches the instrument from a different slant. Haino makes the hurdy gurdy sing and scream, at times it sounds like a barely controlled animal. When the sound all of a sudden stops and Haino’s voice rings out alone, a shiver ran down my spine. On the other disc, the air synth sounds utterly amazing: it's like an old analog synth with a bad case of flatulence (don’t worry, this is a good thing). Haino builds up a huge droning mass of sound that feels like a wave on the verge of breaking. It finally does break when the percussion kicks in. Haino loops something that sounds like a marimba and more familiar drums and cymbals to great effect. His vocals sound all too human amidst the din. It is a powerful performance.
James Plotkin did an excellent job mastering the discs. As they are essentially high quality bootleg recordings the sound isn’t perfect. However Plotkin has gleaned as much as he can from the source material to give a final result that isn’t polished but the rough edges have been sanded down. There is still enough coarseness to the recordings to make them sound that bit warmer and grittier. This is a great release, especially if like me you aren’t that gone on Haino as this album really opened my eyes to his talent.
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