I'm not used to Ms. John Soda feeling fuzzy. Their sound tends to be more crisp, precise, and often coolly (if not coldly) digital, as if you could feel the ones and zeros scraping past your ears. But "A Nod on Hold," the opening song from Notes and the Like, is teeming with a bubbly electronic bed, couched in a serenade of strings. It's fluffier and warmer than usual for the band, who espouse a pop-electronic ethos while still clinging to a rock ideal which helps to make their songs more angular. |
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I'm not used to Ms. John Soda feeling fuzzy. Their sound tends to be more crisp, precise, and often coolly (if not coldly) digital, as if you could feel the ones and zeros scraping past your ears. But "A Nod on Hold," the opening song from Notes and the Like, is teeming with a bubbly electronic bed, couched in a serenade of strings. It's fluffier and warmer than usual for the band, who espouse a pop-electronic ethos while still clinging to a rock ideal which helps to make their songs more angular.
6601 Hits
Kamerman finds the vein and plots a course for the dark arterial parts that elude many other artists. These two pieces are messily organic noise improvisational / compositional voyages that map out the kind of areas that is often alluded to but rarely visited.
6037 Hits
Front man for The Meatmen and almost a founder of Touch & Go records, Tesco Vee is probably most famous for his rude posturing and sense of humor. Before The Meatmen had recorded Crippled Children Suck or War of the Superbikes he was in a noisy outfit by the name of Blight. This 20 track release on Touch & Go covers everything they released and performed during their one year existence.
6738 Hits
American Music Club singer/songwriter Mark Eitzel's latest solo effort is a gentle album full of peaceful melodies, lyrics with an obscure beauty, and Eitzel's warm and softly whispering vocals. Gentle and peaceful though it might be, Candy Ass isn't milquetoast.
6743 Hits
The latest release on Aranos’s own label is another hour of quality from one of the most easily identifiable artists on earth. It’s no departure from his previous output, those familiar with his work won’t be surprised with any of the pieces, but the songs here further refine his methods and skills.
6124 Hits
Thesecond album from these Pennsylvanian chaps is full of chunkyblues-inspired riffs. Not in a nasty, necrophilia-tinged way like LedZeppelin but more in a Sabbath-style with a nod to past greats. While Iappreciate the straightforward rocking and absence of wank solos,unfortunately there’s not much to make Pearls and Brass anything morethan just another generic stoner rock band.
13728 Hits
By now, pretty much everyone knows what to expect from a Whitehouse album, and Whitehouse seem satisfied to fully play into these expectations. Restraint and subtlety have never played a part in the project, and the Whitehouse discography seems to chart very little in the way of musical evolution in the more than two decades the group has been operating.
30612 Hits
I can't break down my love for this new TomasAndersson 12” to the kind of buzzwords that would explain its totalitarianeffect on even my own hermetic listening patterns. This ishead-banging techno without the flashy Raumschmiere-isms, crystalline andcolorful, music to stomp along to: wild, light, heartbeat stompin’ action.
7979 Hits
Time was, the words "Mike Ladd" were routinely thrown in alongside oneslike "Gil Scot-Heron." While the latter-named beat-poet is stillpopular in coffee houses and among staffs of student literary journals(as well as other places Ladd never broke into), the Cambridge, MA-bornformer's been sliding back into the obscurity from whence he came, abrief five years after dropping the masterful Welcome to theAfterfuture on us.
11357 Hits
In high school, my pal Noah and I used (or, rather, abused) the back pagesof the school newspaper to unleash a serial of stories which told of animaginary subterranean land full of anthropomorphic bunnies and otherchthonic entities.
9500 Hits
By its very nature its unsurprising that most instrumental beat-driven music seems to be kicking its heels, waiting for an MC to jump aboard the track to bring it to life. Shying away from ‘smart’ breaks and crate dust covered samples this debut concentrates instead on song structures and melodies.
6952 Hits
Inthe first five seconds of Tunng’s debut U.S. release, the group’sintentions are made perfectly clear by a vocal and acoustic guitarsample that’s time stretched and hacked into an intro. This is cut andsliced, deformed and reconstructed folk music, and it’s wonderful.
12738 Hits
Starting out as commissioned music for an audio weblog, Sandro Perri and Craig Dunsmuir’s studio project, Glissandro 70, has put together a unique album that blends many styles and influences. Although chiefly taking from prime Detroit techno and post-punk New York, they combine these well mined sound sources with a worldly edge by including dub, Latin and African elements.
8816 Hits
Volcano the Bear's dramatic, highly ambitious two disc (two-CD or two-LP) return is a lot to ingest, however, every second is rewarding in what could easily be one of my top albums of the year so far and my favorite Volcano the Bear release to date.
16682 Hits
Godspeed member Aidan Girt's latest full-length as 1-Speed Bike is this compilation of tracks from two 12" EPs and new material. Despite coming from different sources, the tracks are blended seamlessly together into one long crazy mix tape and are surprisingly uniform in style and feel.
6764 Hits
Noticeably stepping away from 2002's accessible Mind Elevation,in particular its almost radio-friendly verse-chorus-verse cuts, thelatest N.O.W. album serves not as a return to form but rather as abridge between that album and the tokeworthy downtempo delights of hispost-bleep back catalog.
13725 Hits
Impractical Cockpit, a collective of now-scattered New Orleans’natives, has released five records prior to To Be Treated. And whiletheir music does bear some of the characteristics of the oft-referencedfree-folk genre, Impractical Cockpit’s sound actually recalls a greatdeal of early 80s experimental hardcore like Flipper and early ButtholeSurfers.
9218 Hits
Over the course of four albums and some relentless touring, Mono have proven themselves capable of making some noise. On You Are There, however, the band doesn't burst in with guns blazing, but quietly sneak in through the side door. They haven't succumbed, however, to making an MOR record by a long shot.
12591 Hits
Hecq’s latest album is presented with a stark, well-composed black andwhite landscape photograph and that cover image is the perfectintroduction to an album that’s also well-made but lacking identity.
6863 Hits
There are no marks on this collection suggestive of product or capital. The music, packaged in a jewelry box with five heavy stock cards, bares no trace of greed or dishonesty. The entire package is, on all counts, a work of art far removed from concerns about ownership or illegal practices. The simple act of opening this package is a joy, a revelation of personality and craftsmanship and the importance they still carry in the world of music.
16906 Hits
