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When Piano Magic starts singing about libraries, things are right in the universe once again. By a similar axiom, a good Piano Magic album is marked by its invocation of libraries in one or more songs. Thus, the "The Tollbooth Martrys," the seventh song on The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic, is evidence that Magic has produced another splendidly ethereal album. This wasn't the case with the previous album, Writers Without Homes, which was noticeably devoid of libraries.Green UFOs
There are very certain elements which work for Piano Magic: sounds of desolation; wind-swept soundscapes; eye-blisteringly good artwork; female vocals of approximate age eight which expound on libraries; eccentric post-studio sounds, some of which sound like electronic birds, others of which sound like electronic mauls and hacksaws. What happened during the thankfully brief and innocuous flirtation with the 4AD label (the band has moved on to the Spanish label Green UFOs) was that the band eschewed and disregarded these elements. The cover art (once a beauty equaling and sometimes surpassing the music itself) became the generic "new" 4AD look, which plagues all their recent releases; the music became far more baroque and populated by more and more instruments; it was filled out (in other words, less desolation and isolation) to the point where it approached post-rock jam band; the vocals became burdensome instead of bolstering. But now, Piano Magic have found a way to reconcile some of the old elements with the new. "Saint Marie" starts off this new album humbly enough: a tremulous guitar line syncopated by frontman Glen Johnson's hushed vocals. Soon, though, a pulsing stereo of guitars rises and falls alternately, which itself is then punctuated by fast programmed beats of a drum machine. It's an engrossing and compelling sound that persists for the better part of four and a half minutes. It doesn't change much, but it doesn't need to. And this is precisely what used to make Piano Magic magic: the ability to make the sustained repetition of a created sound utterly compelling. Indeed, there are some moments which feel like sloppy seconds from the 4AD affair, but they are mediated by stronger songwriting and a moodier atmosphere. "Speed the Road, Rush the Lights," the weakest song on the album, could be a vestige of Writers Without Homes, and yet I can sense the band turning away from a song like this throughout the rest of the album, which thereby makes this song more palatable. Another illustrative track is "The Teacher's Son," which contrasts the old and new sound of Piano Magic perfectly. For the first minute of the song, there is a spare and lovely guitar line with Johnson's vocals amidst it. An old Piano Magic song could have maintained this sound for five minutes without tiring or growing tedious. But at about 1:15 into the song, the other instruments (bass and percussion, not of the electronic sort) crash in. During the brief 4AD period, the song would have been irreparably marred by these instruments. Yet the ensemble makes it work in this case, and I suspect it has to do with the stronger song-writing. Curiously, Piano Magic has retrieved most of its gothic gloom and beauty ever since its divorce from 4AD, though one might have thought it would have surely increased threefold in that marriage. In any case, it's good to see the band has rediscovered its eloquence for libraries and the sound of desolation, and I can only hope the next album will reintroduce the electronic birds I once adored so much. 
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- Pakoisvoima (transl: Fugalforce) - from CD 1
- Ilma (transl: Air) - from CD 4
- Säteily (transl: Radiation) - from CD 4
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samples:
- Cyclobe/NWW - > Paraparaparallelogrammatica
- irr.app.(ext.)/NWW - Mute Bell Extinction Process
- Jim O'Rourke/NWW - Tape Monkey Mooch
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samples:
- Gandhi-Freud - Molybdene
- The Sperm - Korvapoliklinikka Hesperia
- Ajraxin - No Focus (Nurse With Wound remix)
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samples:
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The Italian label continues its valuable new series of archival releases with this 1998 collaboration between two of France's most active contemporary concret-ists and the old-guard explorer to whom they are most indebted. Chion's sprawling tape collages are the obvious precedents for much of Marchetti's and Noetinger's solo work, and his influence is certainly felt on this live performance from the Festival Musique Action, an event that catches the younger musicians still very taken with their elder's drifting compositional technique.Fringes Archive
While there are some of the more "extreme" tape and analog manipulations that would later populate Noetinger and Marchetti's duo projects, the real pleasures of Les 120 Jours rise from the dark surrealism of the music's more specific and referential sound sources. The trio had spent over a year prior to the performance gathering banks of sound, and they arrive well enough equipped to create a diverse and shadowy world with epic sweep and weight almost entirely unrelated to any sonic density or visceral quality in the sounds used.
Opening, like some of Chion's solo works, with a spoken concert hall-style introduction of players and title, Les 120 Jours plays off theatrical tropes throughout but in subtle ways, interjecting at parts rather than framing the whole and putting limits on the piece. Fragments of French war films line up next to clipped opera vocals, barking dogs, strangled snoring, and aroused moans, everything laced together at the slow, contemplative pace that remains among Chion's unrivaled skills. Untraceable mechanical wheezing enters in twisted dialogue with labored breathing and painfully human choking sounds, sculpting an atmosphere that floats whimsically between inner and outer spheres of experience. The musicians confuse not only performed music with prerecorded, autonomous sound but also sampled or "commodified" music with sound captured and contextualized in the field. Pieces of Cypress Hill sneak by along with snatches of roadside ambience, faraway house music from the insides of cars and a mosaic of city sounds, automated machine beeps, engine turnovers, and a thousand French conversations. Knowing the language would, I am sure, increase the surrealist bent of these two discs dramatically; for the non-French speaker it is impossible to recognize what must be some incredibly odd speech juxtapositions. The massive piece works like a slow nighttime journey, a wounded stagger through the dim city center or an unshakeable fever dream.
Though the pop culture references and endless stream of media dialogue become stepping-stones through the confused passage, they are more a curse than a blessing, arriving as deadpanned, empty referents, often repeated as if to hint, mockingly, at some cryptic significance. One particularly unnerving segment features a ghostly robot voice in steady whisper: "Don't be afraid, I am not a machine; I am just an image..." Imagine such a voice traveling on, the only discernable communication amidst a chorus of shrouded street noise along some windswept corridor, an alley's dark hallway where a single bell tolls as opera crystallizes in the blue night above. These are just minutes of Les 120 Jours' heady sprawl. It's hard to tell if the piece's title was meant to reference De Sade's book or Pasolini's film, but the music itself makes ample case for comparison, a creeping, disorienting montage, beautiful but at a cost.
samples:
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Boston's 27 is one of my favorite local groups. It's not simply because their music is a warm welcome against the typical local average rock scene, but Ayal and Maria are two of the nicest people I think I know. Local radio colleague Tracy alerted me to their new release and I had to stop by their show at the Middle East one Friday night to see if it was true or available (well, and to say hi of course). Luckily they had some pre-release limited version that I was able to get fresh out of the box. Unfortunately, I had to be at work at 3:30 the following morning and couldn't stay for their set. Otherwise, I'd film them for The Eye (I plan on doing this eventually).
So, 3:30 am hits, I'm at work suited up and driving to another rich jackasses house who doesn't appreciate the efforts I put in to get him and his family from point A to point B. I'm hating my job, really, and I'm hating everybody and the rest of the world. Let the Light In goes in for the first time and I'm simply floored. Although, I'm unfortunately so completely preoccupied that my mind drifts. It drifts so much that I'm remixing the album in my mind. Maybe it's all that Hydra Head influence, but the EP opens with a rocking guitar riff — a side of them I've never heard from the group. It's nice to realize that this band, who I've wanted to join on a number of occasions, are branching out and experimenting with new styles and finding a good amount of success.
When the second tune, "Every Day" hits, it cuts through my world like a piercing needle. The impact is intense but concentrated, it doesn't disturb the surroundings but it's powerful enough to be felt. The line "May the rest of the world go away" resounds in my head, over and over and over again, and it's at this point I've decided I'm going to remix the EP today, this afternoon, into the evening or something. The disc continues with some experiments with beats and sound effects, and, while I do love the music, I must admit that while I appreciate the group being more daring in the studio, I'm somehow thinking they're still rather timid, reserved, and unwilling to step even further away from the rock outline.
The fifth song hits and Maria, the singer, remains silent, although the song is a tease at only slightly above a minute long. Something has to be done. I finished my shift, went home, napped, and in the afternoon I began my duty in remixing the album. I used a basic program to loop a couple phrases from each of the song, threw the things on to CD and minidisc and put them all through my R effects rack and did everything on the fly in one take. I noticed their tour was hitting Atlanta a week from that Saturday, so I Priority Mailed the final CD to Brainwashed contributor Matthew Jeanes and told him to bring it to them but don't say who it's from. Weeks go by and on the final day before my international trip I see the notice on their website: they finally acknowledged the reception of the disc! Furthermore, the band decided to take my version of "Every Day" and put it on the Japanese version of the disc as a bonus track! (I've been remasterd by the immortal Jeff Lipton!!!) 27 are excited to tour Japan, the UK, and Europe and those who want to see how amazing some really cool Americans can be, show up and say hi.
samples:
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- Fridge - Five Combs
- Sybarite - Killing the Moonshine (version)
- Explosions in the Sky - Long Spring
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