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When I heard talk about this, I was rather excited. It seemed to bepart of a collaborative effort — perhaps with four contributors allbasing music around selected Hebrew prayers. Arthur Baker was allegedlyat the helm of this project, with a superstar team which includedengineer Steve Albini, and a completion to be mastered at Abbey Road.But what happened in the meantime? Some plug must have been pulledsomewhere and us, the consumers are left with this $6 remnant whichmimics a dangling participle. Mogwai's one-track single here stretchesabout twenty minutes, and if you've seen them live at all in the lastyear, you've heard it already — it's the very last track they've beendoing in concert — you know, the one that gave me hearing damage in myleft ear in Boston and set the PA on fire in Baltimore. The song isinstrumental and starts off quiet and peaceful, with a repeated themeand builds and builds and builds, to a blurry, gritty climax. Strangelyenough, however, there seems to be so much compression performed onthis in the mastering process that it feels like it came in on the samevolume it goes out in. It's not -bad- per se and it sure as hell rocksout, yet on it's own, I'm rather disappointed. I feel it's sort ofmissing something. This song would be great at the end of this year's"Rock Action" LP or on a compilation with four other remotely anthemic20 minute-long pieces. I'm going to suggest this item only for the bigfans who can't live without a recording of their concert finale.
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Vote Robot are Canadian duo Scott August and Kevin Rivard and "In MeormNA" is their second album, first on CD, for Scratch Recordings.Thirteen mostly 1 to 3 minute tracks, all with seemingly non-sensicaltitles, provide about 33 minutes total of sparse glitch-flow. A littlesticker on the jewel case proudly declares "NO laptops, sequencers,samplers, drumboxes, etc." so I'm assuming these are improvised pieces.What's more pretentious - declaring what you do use or what you don'tuse to make music? Judging from the disc's cute and cuddly animalthemed artwork, I don't think Vote Robot take themselves all thatseriously, unlike, say, the Rastermusic posse. The sound palette isvaried but maintains an anonymity. It sounds like line noises, foreverechoing input/output pops, dismembered tones/drones/notes, morse codeblips, the gentle shuffling of small objects, etc. It's very warm andeasygoing and Oval-like at times, only more 'musical' and, ultimately,listenable. A few tracks are a tad noisier than the rest but certainlynot enough to disrupt the pleasantness of it all.
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The new EP from Mira Calix comes with 2 tracks. One by Mira Calixherself, and one Andrea Parker remix from her first album. The MiraCalix track is divided into four parts, and starts out with roughmachinery sounds and a dark static flowing from side to side. A sawwave and beautiful voice then coats these sounds, accompanied by a slowclassical piano melody. The machinery and static morph into a complexrhythm at the very top of the sound range, with a low bass beat in thecenter. The soft voices make sounds that compliment the saw-wave synthmelody very nicely. They warmed my heart. After the beat ends, a flutemelody and a dirty resonance (much like a storm or crickets) arrives.This is coupled by sounds of flapping water, like a seal clapping.Weird stuff. This track is very, very, very peaceful, and could bringme up when I'm at my lowest low. Parker's remix is darker and more beatoriented, and while it's ok, it doesn't evolve over the course of thetrack and gets old.
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Korean born artist Nam June Paik is widely credited as the founder ofvideo art and for over 40 years his work and performances have crossedpaths with the Fluxus group and such experimental luminaries as JohnCage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Joseph Beuys. "Works" is the first CDrelease of Paik's music and it contains 5 tracks spanning 21 years andranging from 20 seconds to nearly 29 minutes. The first, "PreparedPiano for Merce Cunningham" from 1977, is the lengthiest and is muchmore atmospheric than melodic. Paik (rhymes with 'cake') improvises onand moves about a de-tuned piano, the majority of the piece composed ofdampened lower register notes with an eerie timbre that resembles thatof gently struck steel drums. From the 1958-61 period, "Hommage A JohnCage", "Simple" and "Etude for Pianoforte" are all short hand splicedtape collages. 'Samples' of varying length - prepared piano, sped-upsongs, crying babies, Paik screaming - seem to be randomly, yetskillfully, juxtaposed. "Duett Paik/Takis" is just that, about 26minutes worth of Paik improvising on piano while Greek kinetic artistTakis performs on his sculptures. By 'perform' I mean sporadicallyslamming pieces of metal while Paik softly, non verbally hums/sings andquietly plays a pretty but sad song, never breaking concentrationdespite the very jarring interruptions. It makes for a very strangeeffect in that an austere beauty is forced to cohabit a space withindustrial noise, neither apparently mindful of the other. Oddlyenough, for the final 6 minutes Takis audibly bows out and Paikswitches to what I'm guessing is a harpsichord for a much brighterconclusion. While the 3 shorter pieces are yet another reminder thatsomeone else has already done most everything that's being done todaymany years ago, the 2 longer pieces are truly, curiously compellingworks of music/art that bear repeated listening.
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This EP surfaces a whole 20 years after the last full album from this Coventry, UK-based quartet. These four songs are short enough to grace a 7" and the songs are of the same caliber of what made the group so popular 25 years ago. It's a brief teaser/taster of hopefully more punchy, catchy, sugar-coated pop to come.
An uncountable amount of British pop bands seem to have followed the same exact trajectory: become media darlings with a few singles; release an album; tour the world; release a second album; implode. The Primitives made waves worldwide with their first two albums, Lovely and Pure, and, like other contemporaries, their third album was such a commercial flop that their bloated record labels found it unnecessary to release overseas. Record labels blame artists for going over budget, biographers and artists blame fickle critics, but in reality, if the magic simply isn't there, bands can't continue very well. There wasn't a lot of magic in Galore, Primitives 1991 album: it didn't command attention like songs like "Crash" or "Way Behind Me" did on previous albums.
Never Kill a Secret thankfully doesn't "pick up where they left off," it's a return to the infectious jangly rock the band were quite good at for their first two albums. Whether the modern media outlets catch on to these pop gems seems unnecessary as it sounds like the Primitives are enjoying themselves.
"Rattle My Cage" is clearly the hit song despite not being the title track. It launches the EP with a pounding rhythm, is met with a bopping riff, and Tracy Tracy's voice sounds unchanged from when I first heard them. To me it's a success as it's hard not to sing along with the chorus by the second time it comes around and long after it's over it's still circling around in my head. This isn't a deep thought, a political statement, nor a comment on the mess the world has become (news flash: the world was a mess in the '80s too), it's not mopey or gloomy, it's a 3.5 minute slice of fun. Go ahead, watch the video and try not to crack a smile.
Side A ends with the Lee Hazlewood composition (recorded by Suzi Jane Hokom) "Need All the Help I Can Get," a fierce '60s girl pop should-have-been anthem. Side B opens with the fun-in-the-sun title track, and while it's not a bad song, it's dangerously close to that cheese border. Tracy Tracy's voice is so captivating and warm on this song that it's all too easy to forgive them. Despite being the title song, it's certainly not the hit of the EP, and I can visualize this song triggering a beer/bathroom break at their live shows. Like side A, side B ends with a cover, "Breakaway," originally by Toni Basil (yes she recorded more than 1 song), and like most of the Primitives best songs, it's a throwback to the sassy side of the '60s girl group sound.
Knowing the currently popular music trends I'm having a tough time believing that The Primitives will gain new audiences, despite them sounding (and remarkably looking) just as fresh as they did 25 years ago. I hate to see them making the rounds as a "retro" touring act but unfortunately that's what they will most likely have to keep doing in order to build momentum again. I wouldn't miss the show, however, if it ever comes close.
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Cold Cave's embarrassing attempt at crossover success opens with "The Great Pan Is Dead," a dull, emotionally overwrought synth-rocker slathered in Wes Eisold's affected, fake British accent (he's from Boston) that sounds like a nu-goth approximation of the Killers. Cold Cave may be aiming to win over the synth-pop revival crowd, but the Killers are more popular than Cold Cave (and headlining sold-out arenas) for one simple reason—they write better tunes.
I wouldn't bother to complain about Cherish the Light Years, Cold Cave's second album, if I had not expected more from the band. I fell in love two years ago with Cremations, a collection of abrasive, lo-fi noise-pop sketches, demos and live tracks that was given wide release on Hospital Recordings (run by Prurient's Dominick Fernow, who also plays in Cold Cave). Cremations remains their most rewarding work—they signed to Matador soon after the initial release of Love Comes Close, their first full-length, which cranked down the volume and shone light on their '80s new wave influences. It was a risky move, but Cold Cave smartly balanced the noise and pop halves of their sound, and Love Comes Close was on target more often than it missed.
To be clear, I have no issue with a band recognizing its popular appeal and tailoring its material to commercial audiences. In fact, it can be a smart move for a band making appealing music to focus on its pop smarts and expand its fan base; it's been done well by too many synth-pop bands to count over the past 30 years. The trouble is that to succeed, a band needs to have great songs, not just reference sounds that are currently in vogue (or "influences," as bands typically call them).
On Cherish the Light Years, Cold Cave's Xerox machine is in good working order. They lean heavily on New Order and Depeche Mode blueprints, shitting out synth presets and clunky melodies at every turn, but their songs are nowhere close to as smart or creative. These songs are faceless, lacking a sense of personality, and hardly original; they would sound at home if played by any '80s revivalist act on the indie circuit. Granted, the album is essentially focus-grouped to reach fans of such music—its best song, "Confetti," is the aural equivalent of the band crossing its fingers for a FADER Magazine cover story—but will alienate fans of Cold Cave's previous work as a result.
As icing on the cake, the mastering job on Cherish the Light Years is beyond horrific—all traces of sonic detail squashed together in the mix, equalized and compressed to infinity; everything pushed completely into the red for maximum impact at radio. Cold Cave's album is as much a victim of the last decade's loudness war as, say, Britney Spears' latest will be (the difference being that Britney will actually get radio play, so has a better excuse for botched mastering). All said, Cherish the Light Years reminds me how disappointing it can be hearing a once capable band make a bid for crossover stardom without writing a proper batch of songs first.
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Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai have made some of the most intense, exciting and intriguing electronic music of the last 20 years, mostly apart but they came together as Cyclo. ten years ago with a terrific self-titled album. When the follow up landed on my doorstep recently, I was expecting something great and got something unexpectedly better than I hoped for instead. Their debut was only a warm up, a training session. id is the real deal. Combining Nicolai’s hard yet yielding rhythms with Ikeda’s lust for ear-bending sounds, the duo has created a stunning album that aims to fuse their music (and their concept of music) with the visual arts.
 
Sonically, id is flawless. Although divided into 11 tracks, it feels like one long progression. Beats are persistent, omnipresent but they crack and falter repeatedly only to flow again as if nothing happened. The rhythms are interesting but at the end of the day they are pretty much standard beats.
The draw of id is the nature of the sounds which bring to mind Ikeda’s exploration of data as a sound source over the last few years. The range of sounds seem to be limited to beeps, blips, and electronic interference but there are surprising depths to this palette. Part of this comes from the mastering (or to be more precise the lack of mastering for reasons explained below). The dynamic range is huge, the frequencies go from the ultra low (I was listening to this in my car and my mirrors all pulsed to the beats) to I assume to inaudibly high. The music is electrifying; at points I get a serious case of shivers down my spine as the sounds pummel my auditory cortex into submission.
Yet it is not Ikeda and Nicolai’s intention to make merely an album of glorious sounds. Not one millisecond of id had been composed with a final sound in mind. Instead, each sound was chosen for its appearance on an oscilloscope as Cyclo have intended the album to be listened to while simultaneously watching the output of an oscilloscope being fed the audio. They have left the audio deliberately unmastered, as mastering (and MP3 compression) would destroy the images they had assembled. Unfortunately, oscilloscopes are the kind of instruments that tend to be difficult to find in normal life (despite my best efforts). It is frustrating to be listening to an album when it is intended to be absorbed as a synaesthetic blend of visual and audio art. Granted, Ikeda and Nicolai have a "publication" planned that will present the visuals but it is unclear whether this will be a printed publication (which would miss out on the audio) or a DVD (which is probably how this should have been released in the first place).
Despite the annoyance of not being able to obtain access to an oscilloscope, id is an incredible album. I have a lot of time for both Ikeda and Nicolai but even as a long-term fan, this has been a total joyous shock to my ears. To have the complete picture (pun intended) would be perfect but in the meantime, the audio alone is more than enough to occupy me. Of course, if anyone reading this knows of a good (free) oscilloscope program for Mac, please let me know!
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Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has been a key figure of the underground music scene for over 30 years. A cult artist in prepunk and post-punk groups Throbbing Gristle (1975 to 1981) and Psychic TV (1981 to present), he is considered to be the father of industrial music and a pioneer of acid house and techno. Not content with breaking new ground in music, Genesis has also used his position at the limits of society to challenge the very fundamentals of biology.
Transformation is, indeed, central to his life. He became a she to resemble his beloved Lady Jaye, now deceased. With peroxide hair, full lips and gold teeth, Genesis does not go unnoticed. A unique life, modeled on his other, Lady Jaye, who remains an integral part of himself. Without subscribing to any movement but living life as the ultimate experiment, he has made his body a work of art.
A kaleidoscopic collection of moving surfaces, composed of interviews (Orlan, Peaches, Peter Christopherson), role plays, concerts and his day to day life, comes together to paint a multi-faceted profile of this pioneer of industrial music and in doing so, exposes the abundant yet inherently elusive nature of his creativity.
http://marielosier.net/the-ballad-of-genesis-and-lady-jaye/
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Boyd Rice may well be the only person alive who's been on a first name basis with both Charlie Manson and Marilyn Manson. His career has spanned more than three decades, during which time he has remained at the epicenter of underground culture and controversy. Rice first came to prominence in the 70's as one of the founders of the genre known as Industrial Music, and soon gained a reputation for live shows that were deemed the most abrasive, minimalist and loudest concerts ever staged (his shows regularly clocked in at 130 decibels, whereas a jet plane taking off was a mere 113 decibels). As early as 1980, he was already hailed as The Godfather of Noise Music.
Since then, Rice has extended his creative pursuits to numerous fields, even lecturing at The Massachusettes Institute of Technology, despite being a high-school dropout. "My life", says Rice, "is a testament to the idea that you can achieve whatever the hell you want if you posess a modicum of creativity, and a certain amount of naivete concerning what is and isn't possible in this world. I've had one man shows of my paintings in New York, but I'm not a painter. I've authored several books, but I'm not a writer. I've made a living as a recording artist for the last 30 years, but I can't read a note of music or play an instrument. I've somehow managed to make a career out of doing a great number of things I'm in no way qualified to do".
Larry Wessel's documentary, ICONOCLAST is a 4 hour long tour de force, 6 years in the making; an in depth expose of Boyd Rice's life, career, and personal obsessions. No mere documentary, ICONOCLAST is more of a roller coaster ride through the fevered mindscape of one of the most controversial and unique artists of the modern age.
trailer here.
http://www.iconoclastmovie.com/
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Jackamo was a pretty odd and uncompromising album, but some insightful person at Atco still managed to see commercial potential in it and Annie wound up with a major label record deal.  Unfortunately, that partnership did not get a chance to flourish, as Atco dissolved before her completed follow-up album could be released.  In fact, that album still hasn't been released.  Undeterred, Annie returned to On-U Sound and recorded Short and Sweet (1992), a very fun, accessible, and dance-friendly effort that ironically seems like it could have been wildly successful if it had had a major label's promotional budget behind it.
At this point in her career, Annie was starting to seem like a diminutive female David Bowie, boldly reinventing herself with each new album.  Having already passed through her "noisy and disturbing" and "eclectic, leftfield dub songstress" phases, Short and Sweet marked the beginning (and end) of her "urbane dance diva" period.  One of the reasons that this album works so well, however, is that Annie and her prodigiously talented collaborators Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald (Tackhead/Dub Syndicate) did not treat their foray into dance pop as slumming.  Instead, they demanded "said musical form to rise to their high standards."  Sure, there are some thumping beats, fake horn stabs, and unapologetically big, radio-friendly choruses here, such as on "Watch the World Go Bye" and "Going For Gold," but the songs are among the catchiest and most scathingly witty that Annie has written and the music is generally pretty funky and punchy.
Annie's talent as a singer clearly evolved a lot in the five years between Jackamo and Short and Sweet, as she effortlessly uses dynamic shifts to give her words maximum impact.  In fact, most of my favorite parts of the album are the breathy or conversational asides ("you look like you've been kissing, dear, the wrong end of a hammer") rather than the hooks.  This is the first album in which Annie's personality seems to survive the transition into song undiluted.  No matter how toothless or straightforward a song initially seems, there is always at least one very amusing or clever bit that injects it with a charisma that is hard to resist.
The only real misfire is the shallow vamping of "Give It To Me," whose sole lyrical content consists of variations of the title.  Even then, however, it is difficult to totally write-off: it could be taken as a snarky parody of sultry pop (an interpretation that is bolstered by lines like "give it to me forthwith").  Still, the accompanying music is pretty uninspired.  That song is the exception rather than the rule though–this is a very solid batch of songs.  There are at least two or three of them that probably would have been hits if the music world were a totally level playing field and even the less accessible moments still boast quite a bit of personality and sharp wordplay.
I was definitely caught a bit off-guard by how much I enjoyed this album, as it is easy to picture a twelve year-old girl happily doing the Roger Rabbit in front of her mirror to catchier songs like "Going For Gold" or "I Think of You," but the actual content remains very intelligent and funny throughout.  There's also quite a bit of heartache and darkness lurking beneath the breezy, bouncy surface, as the album was written during the dissolution of Annie's marriage.  That undercurrent finally manages to force its way to the fore for the album's finale and centerpiece, the steadily escalating and cathartic "If Cain Were Able," a piece that remains one of the clear highlights of Annie's discography (especially once the bass and drums finally kick in).  That might be the only conventionally great song here that I can listen to with no cognitive dissonance issues, but the rest of the album boasts quite a few killer guilty pleasures (seriously guilty–I think some of the beats here could be reasonably described as "new jack swing").  I'm glad Annie went elsewhere stylistically after this album, but this is a very inspired, charming, and entertaining one-off effort and an illuminating vision of what early '90s pop could have been.
 
 
 
 
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Eleventh Dream Day has got to be one of the most well-adjusted bands ever, loosely holding together for over two decades despite never quite achieving the level of success they deserved and sharing members with Freakwater and Tortoise.  More remarkable still is how well they've continued to evolve and remain vital after all this time, as 2006's Zeroes and Ones ranked among their best efforts. Riot Now! picks up right where that album left off and continues EDD's late career momentum beautifully, sounding very much like a great rock band at the top of their game.
For some reason, it took a very long time for Eleventh Dream Day to register on my radar and I always mistakenly thought they were a shoegazer band.  They most definitely aren't and I was definitely missing out.  Though Riot Now! is not quite as raucous as its title suggests, Rick Rizzo and the gang deliver a very solid album of muscular, no-frills, straightforward rock that not many people seem to know how to make anymore.  These songs all have a very "classic" feel to them, sounding like they could have been recorded at any time over the last 20 years.  A lot of that has to do with Rizzo's passion for Crazy Horse, but Eleventh Dream Day doesn’t sound retro or imitative.  Instead, they just sound immune to trends, despite being clearly informed by both punk and indie rock.
This is an album that is stronger than the sum of its parts, as I am fairly unmoved by the actual lyrical content of the songs: Rizzo tends to write about everyday life's existential struggles and frustrations with a great deal of metaphor and symbolism (trees, driving, satellites, tall men, etc.) that didn't quite connect with me.  It is probably possible to read a lot more into his songs than I did though.  Conversely, it is also possible to enjoy the album on a completely different level by taking all of his words quite literally ("man, this guy sure hates trees!").  Still, the lyrics are intelligent and Rick doesn't try to fake 20-something self-absorption and angst, which I very much appreciate.  The secret to this album's success lies more in its details.
For example, Rizzo is a pretty great guitarist (coming from someone who doesn't particularly like guitars).  He doesn't open up very often, but when he does, his solos add quite a bit to the songs (particularly the anthemic outro of "Tall Man").  They're generally pretty simple, but it seems like he means every single damn note.  Also, there is a deliberate messiness and snarl to them that would make Ira Kaplan or J. Mascis proud.  Another great thing about this album is just simple mechanics: these guys have an impressive mastery of dynamics, space, and structure.  If there is a cool bass line, like in "Maybe This Time," then it is given the necessary room to stand out. This band simply knows exactly how to construct a good, memorable song.
My favorite part of Riot Now!, however, is the fact that drummer Janet Beveridge Bean contributes energetic backing vocals to nearly every song.  It's not that her and Rizzo lock into heartbreaking harmonies or anything.  Instead, it's the fact that even the drummer is excitedly singing and shouting along with the whole damn album: it feels like the whole band is wholeheartedly into every single one these songs.  The whole album was recorded in mostly single takes too, which adds still further to the sense of vibrancy and immediacy.  That aesthetic suits the band very well.
The band isn't afraid to take chances either, as the ballad-like "Away With Words" is quite a departure.  I'm a little bit conflicted by it, as some of Bean's early backing vocals are "atmospheric" and "ethereal" in a somewhat clumsy way (like when she just bursts in with a prolonged "la").  That might have been a poor mixing decision rather than a poor aesthetic one though. However, once the song starts to gather momentum, her vocals become pretty wonderful and essential: she begins by providing a vulnerable-sounding echo to Rizzo's voice, then builds to a ghostly trill beneath the very soulful guitar solo crescendo.  It ultimately ends up turning into quite a good song.  Notably, it is completely uncharacteristic for me to love a song mostly for the backing vocals and the guitar solo, but that is the case here.  This is a historic moment.
The standout song here is probably the jangly "Divining For Water," but this is the kind of album where nearly every song could be a released as a single.  I know a lot of people swear that Prairie School Freakout or Lived to Tell are the albums to get, but Riot Now! makes a damn strong case that Eleventh Dream Day is in the midst of a second (and possibly better) golden age.
Lived to Tell will be pretty hard to top though...
 
 
 
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