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I was starting to get a little worried about Big Blood, as they went almost all of 2019 without releasing any new music. Thankfully, however, they were just quietly amassing material for not one but TWO new albums to be released in rapid succession. The first of the pair is this one, a self-released duo recording that surfaced digitally at the end of December. Obviously, they chose to give the more rocking family affair Do You Want to Have A Skeleton Dream? the more high-profile release, but that does not necessarily mean that that album got all the best songs. In fact, there are a couple of absolutely beautiful pieces on this more modest, stripped-down and fitfully ballad-centered release. Consequently, I have no doubt that there will someday be a deluxe reissue in Deep Maine's future, as it certainly deserves it. Until then, however, "A Message Sent" is an instant classic no matter which format it appears in.
I first came to Big Blood after falling in love with Fire on Fire, as the line separating the two projects was initially quite a blurry one: the ragged, psych-damaged folk aesthetic and principle songwriters were the same (Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella), but Fire on Fire featured an expanded ensemble of talented collaborators.Naturally, having Micah Blue Smaldone and some former Cerberus Shoal bandmates along for the ride yielded some great results, yet the primary appeal of both bands has always been the songwriting.While Mulkerin and Kinsella's talents in that regard have certainly not dimmed over the last decade or so, this project has evolved into quite an idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and stylistically fluid endeavor in recent years that can be quite a different animal than either Fire on Fire or early Big Blood.I am certainly happy to follow Kinsella and Mulkerin wherever their mercurial muse leads them, but the diverging paths that their albums have taken is a significant one: some albums are thematically focused conceptual or aesthetic statements and some are just straightforward collections of good songs that harken back to their earlier strain of outsider Americana.Deep Maine is mostly an album that falls in the latter category, albeit one with some occasional detours and eccentricities.The opening "Hail the Happy Hourlings" is an especially strong example of the skewed vision that the duo brings to traditional folk/country fare, as Kinsella's lovely, lilting vocals and the simple, bittersweet piano melody are embellished with a persistently mooing cow and a woozy flute motif.It has all the hooks and melody I would expect from a classic country song, but it feels like that song is bleeding into a considerably weirder dream or hallucination without sacrificing any of its poignancy or soul.
That countrified heartache gives way to more rousing fare with the following "Baby Eyes," as Kinsella and Mulkerin's harmonized vocals lead an amiably rolling and anthemic sing-along.It is a bit too breezy to rank among my favorite Big Blood songs, but it is illustrative of some of the details that make the duo such a delightful and unique creative force.Beyond the pair's obvious talent for crafting strong hooks, "Baby Eyes" strikes a perfect balance of playful experimentation and rough, homespun charm that can only come from years of comfortably recording together.Mulkerin and Kinsella have a real genius for making their music feel wonderfully loose, unpretentious, and effortless: "Baby Eyes" is packed with cool melodic interplay, inventive arrangement flourishes, and endearing eccentricities (the wonderfully warbling backing vocals), yet it has the casual spontaneity of a song that was bashed out in a single take with no overdubs.As much as I appreciate all of those details, however, the songs themselves always remain the essence of Big Blood's greatness (though the duo's unerring instinct for not smothering those songs in overproduction or perfectionism is crucial too).In keeping with that sentiment, my favorite piece on the album is probably the most direct and minimal one of all, as "A Message Sent" is essentially just a vocal melody and a few simple piano chords.While those two elements are all Mulkerin and Kinsella need to conjure up an achingly beautiful reverie, the piece is elevated by some wonderful vocal harmonies as well as some great psychedelic flourishes in the periphery (backwards guitars, orchestral swells).Given the conspicuous absence of any country or folk influence, it almost sounds like a Flaming Lips song, but more like a highly sought-after demo version of a beloved classic than something that would wind up on a polished formal album.
The album's second half, on the other hand, is a considerably more eclectic and abstract affair.The strongest (and most endearingly weird) piece is the Kinsella-sung "The Queen and Her Court II," which features a sing-song melody that recalls a sea shanty or early English folk song.Aside from a subdued, winding organ melody, however, every other aspect of the piece is warped and hallucinatory: the vocals are distorted, the percussion is hollow and echoing, and a current of gurgling and smeared noises roils in the periphery.Elsewhere, the hypnotic repetition and mass vocals of "Serpent Skies" resemble a communal jam that some '70s hippie cult might have recorded.That piece segues nicely into the lovely and meditative closer: a reverent cover of Lloyd Cheechoo's bass-driven "James Bay" that transforms it into something approaching a hymn (Light In the Attic fans will likely recall the original from 2014's Native North America).
To some degree, the small number of songs (seven) and the stylistic variety of Deep Maine give it the feeling of an odds-and-ends collection, but that actually works in its favor, as there is not much here that sounds like business-as-usual for Big Blood (except for perhaps "Time is Coming").Also, Big Blood's orphaned songs, digressions, and covers historically tend to be every bit as likable as their formal albums (sometimes more so).Consequently, Deep Maine is quite an enjoyable batch of songs that both explores some unfamiliar stylistic threads and sneaks in a few fresh classics in the process.
Samples can be found here.
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A Typical Night in the Pit is a collection of new music by Los Angeles' Nick Malkin. It is an album that finds the artist absorbed in the density and chaos of the urban complex. It is unquestionably an "LA album," but not the LA of hi-fi listening bars and twinkling, Instagram-ready New Age. Rather, Malkin navigates something more akin to the LA found in the films of Robert Altman or Alan Rudolph— overheated, tense, hazy, frayed— with blue-lit, nocturnal compositions that at times recall Mark Isham's noirish scores for those subversive (anti-)Hollywood pictures. Enlisting a revolving cast of LA experimentalists, Malkin has assembled a record that is as chameleonic as it is cohesive, offering up vignettes ranging from the skewed MIDI-jazz of "Sixth Street Conversation" to the skulking menace of "Estacionamiento Privado," before giving way to the wide-eyed, cloudy closer "View From Two Perspectives."
C’mon, let’s go in here and get outta this heat.
More information can be found here.
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As Midwife, Denver based multi-instrumentalist Madeline Johnston plays what she describes as "Heaven Metal," or emotive music about devastation. Johnston began developing the experimental pop project in 2015 while a resident of beloved Denver DIY space Rhinoceropolis. The venue/co-op started in the early aughts and nurtured local artists until 2016, when its doors were shuttered due to high tensions surrounding the safety of DIY spaces (not coincidentally following the horrific Ghost Ship fire in Oakland). Residents were displaced around Denver and artists like Midwife were forced to start over.
However, it was at Rhinoceropolis that Madeline became close with Colin Ward, an artistic confidant and friend to whom her new album, Forever, is dedicated. Madeline comments, "He was my roommate and was the embodiment of that place [Rhinoceropolis] in a lot of ways. We became really close friends there. I was always learning so much from him, about life and being an artist. He was an amazing teacher and friend to me." When Ward passed away unexpectedly in 2018, she turned towards sound to express the indescribable feelings that partnered with her grief.
These mournful sounds ultimately developed into her new album, Forever. The 6-song LP is a latticework of soft-focus guitars and precise melodies– anthems of light piercing through gray clouds of drone. On the track "C.R.F.W.," we hear Colin Ward reading a poem that speaks of a leaf falling from a tree in autumn: "imagine the way a breeze feels against your leaf body while you finally don't have to hold on anymore." Johnston responds with slowly radiating tones, branches stretching out to hold the leaf one last time. "I wanted to write him a letter. I wanted to make something for him in his memory," Madeline says of Forever.
On Forever, Midwife combines ambient and dream pop into nuanced, reverb-soaked music that is equally haunting and moving.
More information can be found here.
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Matt Jencik is back on Hands in the Dark with his new album, Dream Character, the follow up to his first solo record Weird Times back in 2017.
Whilst all the songs on his debut album were created using the same sampling method on the same instrument, this time the Chicago artist's approach is slightly different. Using a combination of 4-track cassette, digital recording & sampling, he added live improvisations and a wider selection of instruments including guitar, bass, organ and string synth to his work.
What Matt Jencik achieves on Dream Character this time is, like a powerful dose of psychedelic drugs, not to be taken lightly. There are layers, and if you're prepared to dig you will find yourself drawn into a maze of pathways that can take you in multiple directions, via feelings of escape and release alongside suffocating claustrophobia, or soaring, triumphant beauty paired with cold, lonely despair. These eight titles can both tuck you in and make you feel like you’ve got to fight your way out. Either way there is great value in the experience. There is a purity and a clarity to Jencik's sound, but one that can only truly be accessed by listening with your own intention.
More information can be found here.
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Sound In Silence is happy to announce the return of Test Card, presenting his new album Music For The Towers.
This is his second release on the label after the highly acclaimed, and already sold out, album Rediffusion back in 2017.
Test Card is the solo project of Lee Nicholson, based in Vancouver, Canada. Nicholson was a member of Preston’s Formula One in late 1990s and Brighton’s Domestic4 in early 2000s, having released albums and EPs on many independent labels such as Kooky, Fierce Panda, Liquefaction Empire and others. Later, he moved to Vancouver and from 2012 to 2015 he released two albums and two EPs under the alias of Electrohome and an album in 2015 as one half of the folktronica duo Future Peasants.
Music For The Towers is Test Card’s third full-length album, following his debut album on Symbolic Interaction in 2016, his second album on Sound In Silence in 2017 and an EP on The Slow Music Movement Label in 2018. Made up of eight captivating tracks with a total duration of about 45 minutes, Music For The Towers is a dreamy blend of gentle ambient, hazy electronica and minimal post rock, full of delicate guitars, hypnotic bass, warm synthesizers, glitchy electronics and field recordings.
Beautifully mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave), Music For The Towers is a wonderful album, highly recommended for devotees of Fripp & Eno, Labradford, and 1 Mile North.
More information can be found here.
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Sound In Silence is happy to announce the addition of worriedaboutsatan to its roster of artists, presenting his new album Crystalline.
worriedaboutsatan is the electronica/post-rock project of Gavin Miller, based in Bradford, UK. Formed in 2005 in Leeds as a side project for Gavin Miller, while he was member of the post-rock band Johnny Poindexter, worriedaboutsatan turned into a duo when Thomas Ragsdale, also member of the same band, joined the project and became their main focus after their previous band split up in 2006. As a duo, and until 2010, they released an album on Gizeh Records, a self-released remix album and a series of singles and EPs, either self-released or on labels such as Denovali Records, on which they also released a vinyl version of their debut album, and You Are Not Stealing Records. In 2011, the duo launched a new electronic project, Ghosting Season, and put worriedaboutsatan on hold. Ghosting Season released two albums and some more singles and EPs on labels such as DJ Sasha’s Last Night On Earth, Max Cooper’s Fields and their own This Is It Forever. In 2014 the duo abandoned the Ghosting Season project and returned to worriedaboutsatan full time. From 2014 to 2019 they released four more albums and several singles and EPs on their own label and others such as Wolves And Vibrancy Records and Burning Witches Records. In June 2019 Thomas Ragsdale left the band to focus on his solo career and since then worriedaboutsatan is comprised solely of Gavin Miller.
Crystalline is worriedaboutsatan’s sixth full-length album, featuring eight new compositions with a total duration of something more than 35 minutes. Crystalline’s dreamy soundscapes take the listener on an immersive journey, showcasing the brilliant trademark sound of the very first worriedaboutsatan releases. worriedaboutsatan skillfully blends together haunting guitar melodies, warm pads, deep bass lines, hypnotic beats, minimal electronic elements and distant indistinct vocals, provided by Sophie Green of Her Name Is Calla, resulting in an emotive album that balances between post-rock, ambient and electronica.
Crystalline is an impressive album, highly recommended for devotees of Port-Royal, Yellow6 and Lights Out Asia.
More information can be found here.
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WHO IS DAVID TIBET?: A FILM BY TONY REYES
Filmed and created by the wonderful Tony Reyes, WHO IS DAVID TIBET? documents the installation of my work, and the preview OpeningNight itself, at my ArtShow INVOCATION OF ALMOST, lovingly and perfectly installed and curated by that inspired couple Jacqueline Bunge and Shaun Richards at the Begovich Gallery on March 5, 2019. It includes interviews with David, Jacqueline, Shaun, and many other friends and felines.
The film can be streamed for free here.
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Date : 28.12.17
Map point : eilean 100
Color : white / grey
Season : winter
Edition : limited to 175 copies
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This is the final Eilean rec. release which closes both the map and the project with all the artists involved since the beginning, during these last 5 years.
109 artists / 82 tracks / 6 hours of sounds.
61 unreleased and new tracks / 21 tracks from back catalogs (16 from Eilean rec. + 6 from some other labels)
More information can be found here.
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Welcome to the second album we’ve done with string maestro, Joseph Allred. Unlike O Meadowlark (FTR 451), this one features a smattering of Joseph's vocals, although his main thrust is still glistening instrumentals.
The title song is a goddamn sad one, sung with reedy elegance, dealing with a kidnapped dog that serves as a stand-in for all earthly beings, full of both frailty and resilience. Another vocal track, "The Crown" (which inspired the cover art), stems from a long conversation Joseph had with Max Ochs. It squeezes the inherently surreal aspects of dream-walking into semi-conventional blues tautology, and the fit is just right. The third and last vocal, "O Columbia," is a particular favorite, based as it is upon the some of the same melodies Fahey swiped for "In Christ There Is No East or West," although Allred takes things in all new directions. I had been a tad leery when I heard Joseph would be singing on this new session — being so enamored of his unadorned instrumental technique — but these tunes won me over in the course of a few plays. Maybe there'll be more verbal-content in his future? We would not say "no."
But the meat of this album remains Joseph’s splendid inventions for guitar and banjo. His piece for Glenn Jones, "The Giant Who Shrank Himself," is a beautiful suite, worthy of its concept (that Jones is a behemoth who has to shrink himself in order to deal with us normals). It flows like the sweetest stream of wine you, I or anyone might imagine. "Single Me a Stranger" is another literal killer, with sliding chords evoking the 1872 lynching and curse-fulfillment of an unlucky newcomer in the small Tennessee town where Allred grew up. It's spell-binding. As is "Mark’s Overture," a banjo piece inspired by by a homeless music critic in Cambridge, Mass.
Another top-notch album by this great player. If you don’t know Allred already, you will soon.
-Byron Coley, 2019
More information can be found here.
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Super Natural is a spell spun by the inner guides: sometimes they have your best interests in mind but other times....you're wanting it to go this way...
Jonnine's songs swim in part-spoken, part-sung suspension, sophisticated wordplay amid languorous instruments and devotional invocations with allegorical weight. Written and produced by Jonnine and co-produced by Nathan Corbin (Excepter, Blazer Sound System, Psychic 9-5 Club), Super Natural was conceived as a soundtrack to the surreal Venice-set feature film the two are destined to one day make together, a testament to eight years of friendship and musical / visual collaboration. Super Natural has a chimeric quality – fleeting and, like any good thriller, pulsing with potential but paced with restraint (as Jonnine says, "it's what you don’t see that keeps you imagining").
Jonnine's first solitary offering carries the refinement of her work in the Australian band HTRK. With this EP, a creative block was overcome after years of being urged by her therapist to forge a solo musical identity. It began with a first attempt to play her brother's broken stringed guitar, unused since 2001, and became these four songs.
Starless and clandestine, the spoken-word delivery of "You're Wanting It To Go This Way" is streaked with discordant guitar, tripped rhythm and sanguine, fluttering melodic ornament. A rapt rendering of self-sabotage, but patient and alluring, this introduction is reminiscent of Leslie Winer's Witch.
"I Don't Seem Myself Tonight" confesses ethereal harmonies with waveless vocals, earthy strums and keyboard sceneries (in Sceneries Not Songs likeness). A tribute to love at first sight as a little death. Subconscious gong in whale tones from Mona Ruijs (Sound Interventions).
The penultimate "You Can Leave The Vampires" is fettered by guitar from HTRK bandmate Nigel Yang against a moody, cautionary libretto. This collaboration yields ritualistic results as the object of the spell is appealed to break with an addictive game of chance by the overlapping mantras "If I can leave you / you can leave too" and "Please, you can be free"
The playful "Scorpio Rises Again" simmers with Audrey Horne cheek; bass guitar, finger clicks and a whistle from Conrad Standish (CS + Kreme) in beguiling denouement.
With stories unlocked by the interior dreaming of Super Natural, Jonnine and Nigel's collaboration as HTRK opened up and new material (their 2019 album, Venus in Leo) sprang forth immediately after. The inner guides may delude when kept quiet: their expression is a way towards healing, even their most haunted song.
More information can be found here.
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With these two new releases recorded and released in 2019, Stephen Petrus's long running noise/death industrial/ambient/whatever project continues to be productive and constantly evolving, demonstrating his wide array of influences and talents. Here are two distinctly different sounding discs, one a shared release with fellow dark synth fan David Reed (also a member of Nightmares), and the second featuring Murderous Vision in duo configuration with the addition of Jeff Curtis on bass. Each of the discs are remarkable, and exemplify just how much versatility there is in Petrus's work.
Live Bait Recording Foundation
Liminal Presence, with Envenomist is billed not as a split nor collaboration, and while that sounds somewhat confusing, it actually makes sense upon listening.The disc is bookended by two collaborative pieces with Petrus and Reed working together, and the two trade off on the eight songs in-between.It is never difficult to tell who is responsible for what song, but their personal styles complement one another quite well and the complete product is all the richer for it.
The general pattern though is that the Murderous Vision pieces tend to be the noisier ones, featuring more sustained, constant passages, while the Envenomist ones are cold and spectral, with open mixes and shifting layers of complex synth sounds.For example, Petrus' "Time Dilation" is built on a foundation of expansive electronic drone, with some distorted swells and an echoing, heavy reverb bit of percussion.It is heavy, but also structured in a very conventional way.This is paired with Reed’s "Sleepwalker":ghostly synth bits rise and fall like subtle waves, creating a dynamic that is not overly oppressive, but nicely spacious and ambient.
This alternating pattern continues throughout, with pieces from Murderous Vision such as "Parasomnium," featuring the addition of fragments of voice samples (a nice touch for the whole sleep/dream theme of the album), heavy bass rumbles and buzzsaw electronics.Things do get a bit harsh here and there, but in general the dynamics ensure the sound stays in the dream-like mode throughout.Later on "Valine" he piles on the layers of electronics, from an initial sputtering synth and later a surprisingly melodic synth progression taking the focus of the otherwise hushed layers.
On the other half, Envenomist emphasizes the drift elements of the album’s sound, with his work occasionally resembling tense film cues.Throughout "Fathomless Light" he slowly nudges things along, punctuating the wide open mix with some shrill electronic scrapes.The ghostly landscape becomes peppered with extremely complex and nuanced synthesizer bits, contrasting the more austere arrangements.For "Servant" he envelops the sound in a blanket of heavy reverb, giving an appropriate dream-like haze.
Even on the two collaborative pieces that open and close the album, each artist’s personal style is distinct."Zeitgeber" opens the disc, with Reed’s synths shifting and passing through like floating in dark water, with the occasional outburst, as Petrus provides the backing, noisier segments and churning static."Luminiferous Aether" is the disc’s ending note, with Reed's passing swells mixed with Petrus's sustained, noisier textures blended together, nicely functioning as the concluding section of the work.
At a different end of the spectrum, Surface Bone is a five song EP featuring Petrus alongside Jeff Curtis, who supplies bass guitar to the electronics.Consisting of four studio recordings and a live performance of those same songs (on the CD only), it showcases Murderous Vision at its most industrial.Right from the onset of "Ancestral Remains" the mood is obviously different from Liminal Presence.Buzzing, churning noise is immediate, with percussion and rhythms fleshing everything else out.The addition of Curtis’s bass is what really sets it apart, however.With the combination of the dense rhythms and his bass tone and performance, the final product resembles a harsher, murky take on the Cure's "Carnage Visors."
The bass is also a prominent part of "Surface Bone," but within the heavier noise and hollow space it is more of a sinister piece of ambient music.Drums (or drum programming) also feature heavily in "A Thought That Shatters Teeth," and Curtis’s bass is processed with a massive amount of distortion.Between the pounding rhythms and grinding, dirgey distortion, it is doomy as hell, but extremely dynamic and varied.Unsurprisingly the Live in LA performance does not present anything drastically different, just the same basic sounds from the studio material but in a looser, more chaotic environment."A Thought That Shatters Teeth" stands out, however, with the live setting pushing the bass into the mix even harder.
Even though both of these discs were recorded in 2019, both the mood and the style of both differ drastically from one another.With David Reed on Liminal Presence, Stephen Petrus channels the sounds of dreaming and sleep, from open, drifting spaces to lurking, electronic menace and nightmarish creep.With Jeff Curtis on the half live/half studio Surface Bone, chaos reigns but grounded by heavy rhythms and a greater nod to industrial and goth sounds that surely has influenced the project since the beginning.Even with these two rather different styles, there is a distinct feel consistent to both, which only further drives home the point that Murderous Vision has been, and continues to be, among the top tier artists in the world of heavy, dark electronics.
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