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Had the promise of the first track on this record carried through, I'd be ranting and raving about an extraordinary work of sound manipulation and minimal composition right now. Unfortunately the first track does feel like a standout on this Shimmer and puts the remaining seven songs to shame. Jasch has a great ear that allows him to do more than just slap sounds together in a creative way; he gets into sounds and recognizes their beginning and end and chooses, from the perspective, how to organize a piece of music. The result is a broad spectrum of stuttering sounds, whining strings, deep bass growls, and static rushes that never quite leave the world of organization and dive into the realm of the subconscious world.Doc
Despite this aptitude towards organization, Jasch's pieces are sometimes a bit too simple or they sound too busy. The sounds all fit together well, but no matter how harmonious they are, too much of a good thing can be ruinous. "Morphogeneis" is that opening piece that had me thinking this record was going to be absolutely stunning. It's a twelve minute extravaganza of boiling noise, winding chainsaws, and ominous moans blurring the line between the forest and the trees. Strange machines float overhead with their anonymous engines and some kind of hospital machine beeps slowly in a hidden place nearby. The precision of the composition (the way it ebbs and flows, the way the tension builds and receeds) crafts a kind of noble stability out of broken and shattered parts. It's a twelve minute stasis full of haunted ideas and unsure footing. "Shimmer" follows in a similar fashion but somehow feels repetitive, as though it were a remix of the first track with a small group of new sounds added for good measure. The album slowly fades away as the structure of Jasch's songs reach a kind of predictability. There's always a "solo instrument" wandering about in front of the noises that compose the background. There's always some hint of a musical instrument at work and it usually pulses or flows with a distinct rhythm or timing. If I were less picky, these facts would be minor distractions, but I dislike knowing where sound collage is going to go and I really wanted this record to move someplace it just wasn't moving. There's a ton of potential in Jasch's work and I'd love to see something a little less predictable come my way. If he's going to insist on that heavy, pulsing, repetitive sound, then he needs to do more with it and learn how to compose a piece that increases its heaviness as it unfolds. If he's intent on doing something more subconscious and wants to throw the listener off, he needs to do more than add strange, disco-esque sounds into the middle of an extremely moody piece (see the otherwise excellent "Levity's Rainbow"). Establishing a kind of aura that is working through a constant change of sound is one thing, changing the sound so drastically that it makes me forget how great the past six minutes were is another. There's a lot good going on here, but I find these small points sticking to me and forcing me to acknowledge this as a spotty album with both very excellent and only mediocre moments. 
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When the message is primarily about breaking down social and political barriers, it's only natural that the musical ones should be overstepped as well. For their third full-length release, the first for Ropeadope, the Brooklyn soldiers of Afrobeat open with the loaded question of "Who is This America Dem Speak of Today?"Ropeadope
The response is their typical high energy musical interventions of monstrous bass lines and fragmented horns with more syncopation than you can shake a rainstick at, aided by lead vocalist Amayo's clever take on the nation's history when it comes its culture. The nearly over-extended jams of "Elephant" and "Sister" are a lot more laid back in the shake-your-body department, although there is more of a heartfelt touch as traditional Yoruba chants and sincere, soulful vocals are brought in on their respective tracks. The grinding dirge of "Pay Back Africa" takes on a foreboding overtone of uprising which becomes more uplifting with the middle eight-styled key change. Subsequent cycles of the tune are heard with more mindfulness and awareness, which is likely the point based on its title. The would-be gospel according to Antibalas track "Indictment" should have been longer than its five minutes and change. This heavy handed, tongue-in-cheek track of linear beats and distorted horns, which ring out some heavy power chords and tight stabs, takes on a rowdy courtroom setting (the honorable Judge Reinhold presiding) where members of Dubya's office are indicted with a near "can I get a fuck yeah" styled chorus from the peanut gallery. Paced with the irate, high energy numbers early on, Who is This America? gradually settles into, at times, near trance-inducing repetitive choruses and grooves which melt away some of the tension. A glimpse of the shell's underside reminds that it's not just about finger pointing, but of hope as well.
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- F.T. Marinetti - Definition of Futurism
- F.T. Marinetti - Five Radio Sintesi
- Luigi Russolo - The Awakening of a City
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- Marcel Duchamp - La Mariée mise a nu par ses Celibataires, même
- Kurt Schwitter - Die Sonata In Urlauten
- Jean Cocteau - Le Voleur Defants
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I shouldn't be surprised at yet more perversion coming out of Tim Lewis' vividly transgressive imagination, and yet this image made me shudder. Rape Scene is about the pleasures of an impromptu homosexual menage a trois — Thighpaulsandra, Martin Schellard and Siôn Orgon — who together create three lengthy in-studio improvisations which comprise the album. Three seems to be the numerical key to the album — three musicians, three tracks, and a photograph of three "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" toilets on the cover artwork. On Rape Scene, "he who rides astride the tundra in reindeer-skin thigh-length boots" treats the listener to 45 minutes of synthesizer abuse, psychedelic indulgence and analog chaos. This is deconstructed progressive rock in its most undisciplined form. At times its the sound of a circlejerk; Thighps has found a button on his synthesizer that feels good when he presses it, so he just keeps on pressing it again and again as Martin Schellard jams senselessly to a Steve Howe tune in his head and Siôn Orgon struggles to glue everything together with shambolic percussion. By their nature these three tracks are less focused than on Thighpaulsandra's previous albums and EPs, but when they gel, as in the middle section of "The Busy Jew," the effect is positively riveting. Like getting a peak inside the Inner Space studio where Can produced masterful albums from weeks of improvisation, Thighpaulsandra's merry band of perverts make beautiful noise out of the dynamic of group vs. individual thought. The songs teeter precariously between areas of dissonance, each member pursuing their own phantoms, and moments of perfect synergism, leading to a series of brilliant group climaxes. "His Lavish Showroom" starts off like a whimsical oriental symphony played on the bridge of the Enterprise, eventually exploding into a chaotic mess of buzzsaw guitar licks, jagged electronic arpeggiations and tubular bells. On the aforementioned "The Busy Jew," Schellard busies himself with high-lonesome slide-guitar, while Thighpaulsandra creates a dense mattress of thick, gooey electronics, and Siôn Orgon pushes the momentum forward with propulsive rhythms. It pays off at about the five-minute mark, transforming into a gloriously funky Kraut groove with the Welshman barking out stream-of-consciousness lyrical couplets about weeping vaginas and garden trestles. I seriously doubt I'll hear anything as joyously unrestrained and original as Rape Scene going under the heading of "improv" for the rest of the year.
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- Alva Noto - Party Plasibenpius (For Rune Lindblad)
- Peter Hansen - Winter Air
- Johannes Heldén - Bäckegatan 36
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- Ulf Lohmann - Because Before (remix by The Orb)
- Schaeben and Voss - The World is Crazy
- Reinhard Voigt - Zu Dicht Dran (DJ Koze remix)
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Those albums had a somewhat immature approach characterized by overamped, echo-plexed riffs that combined into a fuzzy, undifferentiated storm of guitar noise, with kraut-inspired rhythms and MC5-ish vocal utterances. Their amorphous noise was often compelling, but perhaps shared too much in common with contemporaries like Acid Mothers Temple, pushing the reverbed-into-oblivion psych-rock sound to the absolute limits of taste. With Blue Cathedral, the band emerges as a tight, dynamic rock unit that fearlessly rivals the best of Hawkwind, MC5 and the rest of their musical forbears. Tracks like "The Bee and the Cracking Egg" rock so hard and so relentlessly that any other band is going to have to work awfully hard to convince me that Blue Cathedral isn't the rock album of the year. Lead guitarist and vocalist Ethan Miller pulls white-hot squalls out of his instrument, by turns rhythmic and melodic, or fuzzed-out, jagged and dissonant. His strangulated, throat-stripped vocals sound uncannily like a combination of Gary Burger of the Monks and Robert Calvert. Ben Flashman's bass and Utrillo Kushner's drums form a rhythm section of undeniable power and ferocity, reigning in the chaotic sprawl of guitar distortion. Noel Harmonson strikes a perfect balance between bombast and majesty, working the echoplex and playing keyboards, contributing that all-important galactic dimension to the band's rock proceedings. Guest second guitarist Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), who also appeared on Field Recordings, contributes a level of acoustic complexity to Miller's debris-spewing riffage. All of this talent would be useless if the songs were weak, but Comets on Fire have worked out a brilliant set of monolithic tracks and brief interludes that never want for focus or intensity, and end long before they've worn out their welcome. "The Bee and the Cracking Egg" doesn't waste a moment in unveiling the combo in full interstellar overdrive, relentlessly pummeling forward on their own demented momentum. "Pussy Foot the Duke" is the album's most beautiful track, with Harmonson deftly underscoring the propulsive rhythms with piano and farfisa organ, Miller and Chasny juxtaposing acoustic and electric guitar to stunningly melodic effect. On "Whisky River" and "Antlers of the Midnight Sun" (love that song title), just to cinch the Hawkwind comparison, guest Tim Daly contributes some unhinged saxophone skronk to the planet-crushing rock. Ending with the dark, drug-damaged psychedelic dirge of "Blue Tomb," Blue Cathedral is an album of undeniable strength and focus.
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