In the period between Haha Sound’s releaseand Tender Buttons, Broadcast have undergone a fair amount of change.Vocalist Trish Keenan and bassist James Cargill are the only remainingmembers, causing them to significantly pare down their sound. Whatremains is a collection of some of the most haunting, minimalistelectronic pop I’ve heard in a good long while. |
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In the period between Haha Sound’s releaseand Tender Buttons, Broadcast have undergone a fair amount of change.Vocalist Trish Keenan and bassist James Cargill are the only remainingmembers, causing them to significantly pare down their sound. Whatremains is a collection of some of the most haunting, minimalistelectronic pop I’ve heard in a good long while.
9064 Hits
I'm not entirely certain whether CocoRosie should actually be considered a musical group, or just a collection of willful, calculated eccentricities clumsily juxtaposed with each other.
25422 Hits
Though I always search in vain for anyindication that the Legendary Pink Dots front man is resting on his laurels, phoning it in,or "taking the piss," as they say, each new release tends to hold to animpressive level of quality control.
6873 Hits
Gene and Dean Ween have a huge catalog of unreleased demo tracks, and the Shinola seriesis their way of inflicting them on the rest of the world.
10112 Hits
Bissonnette's compositionsburn slowly and coldly, not because the record is particularlyunwelcome nor is it difficult to listen to, but his sound choices areundeniably of the modern age.
6287 Hits
Greh of Hive Mind and Mike Connelly of Hair Police and Wolf Eyes have released a monster of a record that collects two previously limited cassette releases with a new 38 minute opus dedicated to dysfunctional machinery of all kinds.
5909 Hits
Adding to my theory that producers shouldn't write and release records of their own is this gem of an "ethnic" electronic record. Scott Solter is a name some might identify with Spoon, Court and Spark, or Tarentel, but don't let their better records fools you: The Brief Light is a mess of an album with few strengths to speak of.
7060 Hits
Bellini appeared to have stumbled out of a time machine. Their barbedguitar hooks, thumping rhythm section, and obtuse lyricism seemstrangely out of place in 2005. One listen through songs like “RoomNumber Five” and “The Buffalo Song” make things remarkably clear:Bellini belong in 1993.
7012 Hits
Thosewho have had the pleasure of seeing Wolf Eyes live know that someof their on-stage announcements can be a littlemore on the Bill & Ted side rather than the sort of vitriolichate expected from a trio jamming nasty freeform noiseshit. With their past releases ranging from the blackest of black noiseto stiletto drones it was only a matter of time before they addeda disc of spoken word rambling/stand-up comedy/on-stagenonsense to their catalogue.
7344 Hits
Eclectic Discs' superlative reissues of Bill Fay's pair of classic1970s LPs are well-timed, appearing at the crest a few years of slowlybuilding buzz around this most arcane of British singer-songwriters.
17114 Hits
“Break My Heart,” the first track of Malcom Middleton’s second solorelease, declares that the singer “don’t want to sing these shit songsanymore.” A jaunty, mid-tempo number which features Middleton’sself-effacing lyrics and is delivered in his thick Scottish accent, itis anything but a “shit song.”
6953 Hits
Thisalbum is the transatlantic collaboration between Ben Chansy (Comets onFire, Current 93 and solo as Six Organs of Admittance) and HiroyukiUsui (Ghost, Fushitsusha, and solo as L) and it is based on theproposition that artists, even ones separated by the largest ocean inthe world, can endlessly inspire one another.
8229 Hits
Mat Sweet is the primary musician behind every band on the Blue Baby Recordings label, a label that he is also the founder and principle head of. As Jonathan Dean mentioned in the final issue of the Brain, Sweet has a battery of talents that spread across musical styles both diverse and exploratory. Boduf Songs is the demo Sweet recorded and sent to Kranky, hoping to facilitate a relationship that might involve future albums. Thankfully Kranky was stopped dead in their tracks by this demo and released it as is.
7425 Hits
This beautifully-packaged limited edition CD-R sees Finland's A Way pitch four tracks against a single twenty-minute Jazzfinger epic. It's an evolutionary fact that even the collaborative spirit of split CD-Rs still leaves the listener with a winner and a loser; someone's going to end up being the b-side.
5439 Hits
Robert Lowe might be recognized for his work with 90 Day Men and hisinvolvement with TV on the Radio. As a solo performer Lowe contacts thesublime and unspeakable, evoking masses of digital voices recorded fromwastelands, deserts, and temples.
7445 Hits
Obviouslytrying to reaffirm his status as the king of drones, Carlson has beenreleasing a steady stream of records this year. This is the second livealbum to be belched up this year and it is a patchy affair.
10408 Hits
After nearly 30 years of defying the system, it seems that The Ex are ripe for a retrospective. This isn’t necessarily surprising, given the overwhelmingly positive response that greeted last year’s Turn.
7592 Hits
As a bigbeliever in sensory deprivation in pursuit of a better listeningexperience, Francisco López has gratiously included a blindfold with his latest one-track live CD. As criticalanalyses of blindfolds go, my review is damning.
6897 Hits
The New Pornographerssound friendly and homey, and listening to Twin Cinema reminds me ofall those times I've attended carefully-planned parties thrown byfamilies of slightly tipsy identical twins.
6857 Hits
This is the first solo album from former lead for Rock*A*Teens, a bandso good that they will be forever underrated no matter how many times they’repegged as the archetypal underrated band.
7416 Hits
