24 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Over the course of his career, Jim Thirlwell has hugely expanded his repertoire with his Manorexia and Steroid Maximus projects as well as soundtrack work; a far cry and a lot more rewarding than my first exposure to him in my teens as a remixer of the likes of Nine Inch Nails. However, no matter what sideline work he does, when he comes back to Foetus it is a guarantee that the music will be brilliant. His role as a composer has fed progressively more into Foetus (fitting considering the seeds of Manorexia were sown and germinated in earlier Foetus albums) and Hide has a much wider scope than previously encountered.

Ectopic Ents

A massive choir (which in true Foetus style is actually one opera singer, Abby Fischer, layered over herself) on "Cosmetics" opens the album sounding like Ennio Morricone conjuring up one last soundtrack for the end of time. This choral element runs through the album at a subliminal level; faint voice-like sounds permeate "Here Comes the Rain" as Thirlwell whistles and croons over the sumptuous music. On this piece and indeed across most of Hide, there is a strong soundtrack vibe; film noir and the aforementioned Morricone being spliced together with Thirlwell’s own vision. This is nothing new to Thirlwell but on Hide he takes this formula further and gets more out of these different strands than on even his last album Love. He brings new influences to bear on "Oilfields" where the ghost of Giuseppe Verdi and the still-living soul of Arvo Pärt meet.

Yet it would be fallacious to view Foetus as a tribute to various composers as Thirlwell’s own stamp is planted deeply into every song here. Despite so many facets of "The Ballad of Sisyphus" adding up to Morricone worship, it is pure Foetus. The structure, the mood and, above all, the lyrics take the music away from pastiche and plant it firmly in Thirlwell’s universe. Only here could Sisyphus be more of a Wild West outlaw folk hero than a cautionary tale from Greek mythology. By the end of Hide, Thirlwell pushes the music outward and matches the visceral intensity of his first albums with the epic "You’re Trying to Break Me" which successfully marries all of Foetus’ constituent parts into one glorious black whole.

In an interview here on Brainwashed, Thirlwell explained that he initially started work on Hide during the bad old days of George Bush’s presidency and the feeling of being on the brink of disaster haunts his lyrics: "Stay in your homes... ashes over everything." The music pulses with an urgency that matches the paranoia of Thirlwell’s lyrics and the album’s title becomes an imperative command; go underground to escape the inevitable doom. Thirlwell’s black humor puts a sting into the album and in this light it is easy to take the album’s title as an order for those in control as opposed to the little people caught up in the aftermath.

samples:

• Cosmetics
• Oilfields
• O Putrid Sun (For Yuko)

 

24 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Dying is an art, and like any other one can do it with grace or go down kicking, screaming, all the while leaving a big mess behind that future generations have to clean up. This album is supple and sexy as death itself. There is no fear in these pieces. They convey the final breaths of a human as being elegnant and peaceful. This music displaces the anxiety many people feel about death. Doing so is a service to the world.

Glacial Movements

Electronic music is a wide open field and some of the territories are contested. There are many different areas and modes of activity and anyone who can run a field recording through a couple of filters and slap a few different sounds together is potentially an artist. Luckily for those who listen closely shoddy work is easily spotted. It is also simple to know the difference between clinical music that is more apt to be used for self-induced psychic surgery than that which conveys the full range and expression of human emotion. Sometimes I’m more inclined to listen to music whose theoretical underpinnings bring as much or more enjoyment than the actual piece itself. At other times I just want to tap into the raw nerve of human experience. The output of Brock van Way easily falls into this second, non-pretentious category as he creates gorgeous ambient sound worlds that are accessible, welcoming and a joy to inhabit.

Inhabit is an apt word to describe these songs. They create a cacoon and cushion of calm. Taking a break from the 21st century's frenetic pace to collect oneself is easy to do while this soundtrack is playing. It is musical medication for attention deficit disorder. It gives a person the space necessary to contemplate life from the vantage point of someone who is about to move beyond life, which holds tremendous value. Questions of purpose begin to percolate. Have I frittered away all my time chasing empty illusions? Is there something more I could have done, someone's life I could have improved, a contribution only I could have made, that I failed to? Did I express love in my relationships? Will I approach death full of regrets or with grace knowing I gave my all? There are so many people who are averse to even talking about dying and these songs create a context to open up the conversation. Contemplating death can be a powerful kick in the pants for those with no direction. I can’t count on the Singularity. My time here is limited. I should create something beautiful.

These are the types of thoughts that spin around in my head as I listen to the warm electronic textures of altered and layered voices so prevalent throughout the six long songs. The vocal elements of this disc are my favorite aspect of this recording, though the smooth curves of synth, the repetitious pulsings of delicate piano, the minimal and softly understated percussion elements that give it just enough of a beat all work in harmony together. The longest track, "To Finally Forget It All," at nearly 22 minutes creates a luxuriant atmosphere. I don’t know how Brock does it, but there are several female voices, simpering, cooing, calling out. I can’t help but think that a choir of angels or the voices of my ancestors are calling out to me from the other side, ready to greet me when my time comes.

There is a great continuity between each song. Each builds on the beauty of the previous and as a listener I sail right along. On "No More Reason Not To Fall" a looped string section fragment forms the kernel around which the voices kaleidoscopically revolve. A rattle or brushed snare drum trickles in the background. A dissonant element gradually comes to fore giving the piece an abundant sense of gravity and urgency. Things are peaceful again with fluid acoustic guitar inflections on the next song. The title track closes the album with another epic long player. The sounds cascade reminding me of water falls, the roar of the ocean surf crashing against a slew of granite rocks. But the tide goes back out in the end, leaving with a sprinkling of piano and a lulling mellow drone.

With The Art of Dying Alone Glacial Movements have released their warmest and most inviting CD yet. This electronic music warms hearts and melts ice.

samples:

• Nothing From No One
• To Finally Forget It All
• No One Will Ever Find You Here

 

24 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Although specifically composed to soundtrack a documentary about Colony Collapse Disorder called "The Vanishing of the Bees," The Effective Disconnect is not a dramatic departure from the sort of thing Brian McBride has always done extremely well: subtle and serene music with an undercurrent of sadness. As such, it basically feels more like a scaled-back follow-up to 2005's excellent When Detail Lost Its Freedom than an unrelated side-project. It's probably much too subtle to accomplish much in the way of garnering of new fans, but it is certainly a pleasant diversion for those of us converts waiting around for something more substantial to surface from the Stars of the Lid camp (like that damn feature film that seems to have disappeared).

Kranky

When they were initially discussing this project, the filmmakers suggested that Brian to try evoke the "gloriousness of bees" (among other things) with his score, a task that he made a sincere but ultimately doomed effort to accomplish.Brian McBride is incorrigibly Brian McBride and that is what makes all of his efforts so reliably enjoyable.Heavy-handed, heroic concepts like "glory" simply don't fit into McBride's world of understated, floating melancholy.I, for one, am perfectly fine with that, though Brian himself has modestly lamented that his album is "more appropriate for a different and more forlorn film." Despite his self-deprecation, quite a few rays of light manage to break through the clouds over the course of the album–most effectively in "Supposed Essay on the Piano," where beautifully warm strings and horns glide across the somberly pulsing piano chords.To my mind, the muted and somber atmosphere seems perfectly attuned to the subject matter anyway, as The Effective Disconnect makes a suitably enigmatic and sublime elegy for the millions of bees that abruptly and mysteriously dropped dead in 2007.      

Nevertheless, though I consider the album both a success and a worthy addition to the SOTL oeuvre, it is a bit too compartmentalized to be as engrossing as McBride's previous work.That is an inherent peril in composing a soundtrack, obviously, but it is unfortunate that some of Brian's better ideas are not given more time to unfold and develop.There is definitely a decreased emphasis on repetition here, as themes come and go much faster than usual.That step away from one of McBride's strong points, however, is nicely balanced by a new emphasis on strong melody.In fact, there are some absolutely heavenly moments captured here, such as the chime and string motif in "Beekeepers vs. Warfare Chemicals," that easily stand with anything Brian has done to date. The Effective Disconnect is definitely not lacking in stellar material, but it is presented in a way that handicaps its effectiveness as a whole.This album feels like kind of a Brian McBride sampler platter, showcasing everything that makes him wonderful (spaciousness, an elegant melancholy, soft-focus haziness, etc.) but never plunging completely in.Still, the seeds of an artistic breakthrough may be taking root here, as a more substantive, long-form work in this vein (though maybe with a bit more grit) has the potential to be McBride's future masterpiece.

Samples:

• Supposed Essay on the Piano (B Major Piano Adagietto)
• Beekeepers vs. Warfare Chemicals
• Chamber Minuet

 

24 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

There are very real reasons why Cyclobe albums are so infrequent, as Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower seem to deliberately eschew or expertly conceal most of the tools that similar artists rely upon (improvisation, chance/randomness, repetition, etc.) in favor of a constantly shifting and deliberate abstract narrative. There is a purposefulness and articulation to Cyclobe’s brand of psychotropic mindfuckery that is very much their own. Their best work (such as this album) feels like a twisted, meticulously composed infernal symphony or an ambitiously nightmarish film soundtrack for a film that no one could possibly make. Wounded Galaxies evokes something far too extreme and abstract to capture with words and images: a deep, timeless, all-consuming cosmic terror.

Phantom Code

It is both fitting and remarkable that Brown and Thrower met through their associations with Coil.On one hand, there are enormous similarities between the two groups: a deep fascination with both the occult and obscure transgressive art, overlapping collaborators like Thighpaulsandra, the use of similar electronic textures, and so on.On the other hand, however, Cyclobe has wound up in such a completely different place that it is almost difficult to imagine that the two were ever intertwined.Cyclobe sounds like Coil's id allowed to run rampant.Ossian and Stephen certainly display a predilection for all things eerie and nocturnal, but they seem to be chasing an altogether more difficult, disturbing, snarling, and visceral vision.No one will ever confuse a Cyclobe album with ambient music.

That said, however, the first side of the album begins with some deceptively haunting and beautiful synthesizers that suggest otherwise.That feeling doesn't last long though, as "How Acla Disappeared From the Earth" quickly grows darker and more uncomfortable as more and more sounds fade in.It is one of the shorter works on the album, so it doesn't have much time to evolve; yet it features some truly wonderful gurgling and shivering weirdness in its periphery.The next song, "The Woods Are Alive with the Smell of His Coming," completely eclipses it though.

Cyclobe’s "17-minute Pagan opus" was actually debuted on its own last year as part of an exhibition at The Tate Gallery St. Ives and it is easy to see why: it is not only the centerpiece of the album, it may possibly the defining moment of the duo's career.It is built upon a simple, yet darkly exotic backbone of kalimba and Michael York’s pipes–a foundation that doesn’t change that much over the course of the piece, serving mostly as a rhythmic anchor for the surrounding maelstrom. The real excitement lies in what unfolds on top of it, as I am amazed at how many ingenious variations of "all hell breaking loose" Thrower and Brown are able to unleash: violent, discordant cello solos from John Contreras; squealing strings that sound like the swirling spirits of the damned; horrific orchestral cacophonies; and a deep creaking like the very fabric of the universe is straining and about to rupture.It is, quite simply, an utterly staggering work.

The album's second half again begins in much calmer, uncharacteristically droning fashion with "We'll Witness the Resurrection of Dead Butterflies," but its opening motif is quickly subsumed by Cliff Stapleton’s Arabic-sounding hurdy-gurdy permutations.The piece eventually reaches a bit of a lull before being torn apart by a violent series of apocalyptically crushing stabs of ugly harmony separated by quivering aftershocks.It feels like the actual earth is shuddering in terror–loud, unexpected, visceral, and awesome.

Gradually, the relentless bludgeoning gives way to some less alarming subterranean moans and rumbles and a delicately haunting piano theme takes shape over a buzzing bed of squiggling electronics.The piano piece is "Sleeper," but it is difficult to tell quite where it officially begins due to my inability to pinpoint the moment of segue."Sleeper" is something of an aberration for the album, as it actually features some odd and creepy childlike vocals from Ossian Brown.In all other respects though, it fits in quite nicely, as the piano gradually becomes more chromatic and unmoored and the underlying music begins to lurch and swell thunderously.The title piece follows, perfectly closing the album by mangling a simple drone piece into massive swells and jarring paroxysms of dissonance.It actually has a disturbingly post-coital feel to it at times.I am curious about whether or not that was intentional, as Thrower has stated in the past that he feels that there is a "capricious sensuousness" to Cyclobe's music.It is difficult and a bit unnerving to try to imagine sex as deviant and alarming as Wounded Galaxies though.

The whole thing adds up to a rather overwhelming, unnerving, and utterly absorbing listening experience.I am fairly certain that my heart rate increased quite a bit over the course of the record, as there was no way to remain calm in the face of such disturbed content and violent dynamic shifts.It was kind of like being attacked, actually.That probably isn't an experience that appeals to most people, but Wounded Galaxies is certainly one of the most immediately striking and singular albums that anyone will release this year (and definitely the only album that can be described with phrases like "rapturous cosmic convulsion").I don't think Brown and Thrower are particularly concerned about appealing to "most people" anyway.Despite all of its more overt charms, however, I suspect Galaxies’ greatest achievement may lie in its sheer depth and complexity: there are all kinds of layers and textures that I was far too shell-shocked to appreciate during my first several listens.This is a very hard album to fully process and I don't expect to get tired of it anytime soon.

Sample:

• We'll Witness the Resurrection of Dead Butterflies

 

24 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This trio's approach is similar at times to the musical cubism of the Magic Band but at others they go into overdrive to create a maelstrom of sound without ever completely abandoning melody and rhythm. The group's name evokes the devil, Freemasonry, and Doctor John R. Brinkley's testicular transplants.

Lexicon Devil

Udders collects songs from previous vinyl releases and adds one new track. Even the shortest of the nine pieces contains an intriguing range of pace and mood. "Derek & Dot" for example, goes from brooding splutter to accelerating guitar to a meltdown crescendo of bass, drums and guitar. The mood throughout is intense and anxious. I particularly like the way that the bass guitar is sometimes used almost like a bell, to keep time, while the other instruments flow around it. "Varicose Jibs" is one of several wonderfully punishing slaps around the ears. A sort of relief, or contrast, comes on "Jipper Flow," with a slower pace, scratched guitars and fluttering drums.

Honey Ride Me A Goat’s website provides a sense of humor to go with the intensity and uncompromising turn-on-a-sixpence nature of their music. There are many pictures of curry and odd messages such as "due to certain circumstances we can’t play in Sheffield any longer." Another picture shows one member of the group in an apron: obviously a reference to Freemasons who are said to use the initiation practice of "riding the goat." Greek and Roman versions of Pan depicted a goat which Christianity then adopted to depict Satan, who in The Middle Ages was rumored to appear at witch orgies riding on a goat. Goat imagery was thus transferred onto Freemasons to taint them as evil in the common, suspicious, superstitious mind. I suppose modern day conspiracy theorists could easily point to the fact that the President of the USA was reading "My Pet Goat" while the Twin Towers were attacked to perpetuate the notion that "evil" won't rest until Earth is destroyed by Babylonian Gods of War and the victorious goat resides in heaven. All of which might explain why the bees are disappearing at the same time as swarms of bald guys with goatees seem to be everywhere.

Musically, Honey Ride Me A Goat attack their instruments with true skill; they have the chops to bash out an unholy racket and (instrumentally) quote from the wilder side of musical history. Their music ends up balanced, unpretentious, and pretty accessible. Overall, the most jumbled and tangled sections of this album are the most relaxing since there is a sense of utter abandon to those parts. Ordinarily, I prefer short, sharp shocks of the sort of aggressive, wild sprawl and quasi-mathematical structures which we can hear on Udders. Longer pieces such as "Ethel," however, work well and have enough engaging twists and turns to satisfy. There are even some wordless vocals at the end of that song.

If Honey Ride Me A Goat ever broaden their sound with some lyrics I hope they consider the advertising devices of Doctor John R. Brinkley. In the US Depression he made millions by adding slices of goat gonad to the scrotums of willing rich suckers wanting to get back their old potency. Profits from his nuts-into-nuts transplants were used to fund his mega-watt radio station blaring music and ads for his services (laced with biblical verse) from Del Rio on the Texas/Mexico border all the way to New York City. The limp wealthy flocked to shower him with cash in the hope of returning to youthful vigor. Accusations of blasphemy and quackery poured down upon the goatee-sporting Brinkley. His station was once the most powerful on Earth, a million watts which drowned out everything else. On a clear day it reached Europe and people complained they could pick it up in their tooth fillings. Honey Ride Me A Goat's music is potent and life-affirming; and may well rattle a few fillings before they are done.

samples:

• Derek & Dot
• Ethel
• Spastic Colon

21 October 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Over the course of ten days twelve railway stations were visited and at each a thirty second sound recording and photograph were taken. During the train journeys, compositions were sketched onto scores and later recorded at one rehearsal evening with The City of Exeter Railway Brass Band. The twelve short tracks reflect those brief encounters, hint at the unrealized possibilities and fleeting nature of human life, and seek majesty in insignificant events. Less than eight minutes long and organized into two sections, a reissue of Twelve Stations is overdue.

Folklore Tapes

Listening to this recording is like walking along a dark street in winter and hearing a band playing in a hall half a mile away, or removing one brick from a wall in a rain-swept cemetery and straining to hear faint echoes of sound trapped for half a century. But my enjoyment of the brass band sounds, the chuff chuff, platform announcements, tracks clattering, unknown sounds fading, and the clever short duration of this piece, is one thing; context is quite another. I hesitate to compare Twelve Stations with Chris Watson’s El Tren Fantasma, but it can belong in a context also containing Flanders and Swann’s "The Slow Train" — that of a lament. David Chatton Baker's effort is a more abstract encapsulation of time passing, whereas Flanders and Swann are specifically lamenting the closure of many small railway stations in the UK as a result of a government report (March 1963):

"No one departs and no one arrives
From Selby to Goole, from St Erth to St Ives
They've all passed out of our lives."

Those closures arose from what I refuse to call the Beeching Report since Ernest Marples better personifies the Conservative government, with clear conflicts of interest to road construction projects. who had it drawn up. "The Slow Train" was written in July 1963 and it depicts perfectly the sense of loss which was widely felt. On August 8th, 1963, an equally infamous Great Train Robbery occurred of an overnight from Glasgow to London with 72 people on board sorting the mail by hand. The robbers, who grabbed the equivalent of $75 million, had downed phone lines in the area and escaped in getaway cars. One brave rail-man got off the mail train and onto a passing goods train before raising the alarm at a nearby town. The gang, tuning in on VHF police radio heard "A robbery has been committed and you'll never believe it — they've stolen the train!"

Twelve Stations is also comparable with Edward Thomas's poem Aldestrop which gives his impressions of a brief unscheduled stop at the tiny station there on June 24th, 1914. But whereas Thomas leaves an indelible picture of peace and nature,Twelve Stations visits larger stations (including Crewe, the very epicenter of railway existence) and is a celebration of human activity and industry, fleeting but consequential. It also celebrates the late Owen Huxham (trombone player) and The City of Exeter Railway Brass Band that was formed just after World War Two. Aldestrop stands in vivid contrast to the coming carnage of World War One. In July 1915, aged 37 and married with three children, Edward Thomas enlisted to fight. Perhaps he felt his beloved land was somehow in danger. He was killed on April 9th, 1917, a Thursday, at the Battle of Arras. The enemy was arguably within, as British Railways closed Adlestrop to goods trains on August 26th, 1963 and to passengers on January 3rd, 1966. The signal box closed on April 27th, 1964 and the sidings made redundant. Incidentally, it just occurs that you might consider reading the rest of this review while listening to the brass band playing in the summery haze and bitter-sweet melancholy of Roy Harper's "When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease."

Everyone has a movie scene or perhaps a real life incident around trains. Mine is the end of Billy Liar where small town dreamer Tom Courtenay deliberately misses getting on the London train with Julie Christie by pretending to buy milk. In real life, Labour governments did not overturn the railway station cuts, perhaps due to ties to unions with strong links to roads. In any event, later Conservative Prime Minister Thatcher would treat the railways with about as much care Billy Liar treats the milk he tosses away in mock disgust. Thatcher preferred to import car-centric ideas from the US (where they make sense) and British roads are clogged beyond moderate solution. The cost of meeting renewed demand for train travel is astronomical and not all the previous tracks are even available. In another land, l ride the clean bybanen train which announces each separate stop with a distinctive tune, some days bringing my partner oat milk.

samples available here

21 October 2010

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This latest collection continues Sublime Frequencies' impressive hot streak of releases this year, as Hisham Mayet has curated a selection of elusive instrumental pieces from "a towering figure in Arabic cultural history." Unsurprisingly, I have not knowingly encountered Hamdi's work before, as SF is always way ahead of the curve in digging up revelatory artists unfamiliar to most western ears, but Mayet and the songs he selected make a convincing case that Hamdi was indeed behind "some of the hippest music coming out of the Middle East from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s." It was rare for Hamdi's work to surface under his own name, however, as most of his success and influence came from composing for a host of famous Arabic singers or scoring films, plays, and television. This collection, however, focuses on a very specific era of Hamdi's career in which Mayet believes the composer and his Diamond Orchestra perfected a modernized "international music" that elegantly combined "Eastern tinged jazz, theremin draped orchestral noir, and mid-east and eastern psychedelic exotica." Naturally, most of the original albums are exasperatingly elusive and expensive, but the rarity of these songs is secondary to their quality. This scratches roughly the same itch as other classic SF "pop" compilations like Bollywood Steel Guitar and Shadow Music of Thailand.

Sublime Frequencies

While Hamdi is technically the star of the show here, he is actually only one of two legends on these recordings, as Sublime Frequencies favorite Omar Khorshid was one of the many luminaries recruited for Hamdi's Diamond Orchestra. Naturally, there are plenty of cool guitar parts as a result, but no one member of the Diamond Orchestra stands out as particularly virtuosic or essential. Instead, the beauty of these pieces primarily lies in their deft blurring of modern and traditional styles, their inventive arrangements, and the tightness and fluidity of the ensemble. The opening "Ghada" provides an especially impressive example of Hamdi's "modal pop" vision, achieving a delightfully propulsive and swinging blend of surf guitar twang, Bollywood dance party, and bittersweetly soulful Arabic melodies. Obviously, getting all of those elements to fit seamlessly together in the first place was the most revolutionary part of Hamdi's vision, but the execution is also rather dazzling in a general sense, as melodies are constantly traded between instruments while the band nimbly navigates exacting rhythmic variations without breaking a sweat.

For the most part, "Ghada" is very representative of everything that follows, so if that one does not connect, the rest of the album will probably hold no further appeal. Similarly, anyone who loves "Ghada" will likely be thrilled to find eighteen more bangers in a similar vein awaiting them. Within that rich vein lie some delightful variations, however, such as the swooningly romantic strings of "Mawal," which approximates the soundtrack to a imagined Bond film where he teams up with sexy Egyptian dancer/double agent. Elsewhere, "Chaka Chico" initially sounds like the theme for a Spaghetti western ghost story due to its theremin melody, but fluidly shifts tones until it sounds like a love story set in an Middle Eastern cabaret. The closing "Love Story" is another surprise, as Hamdi and his ensemble gamely spice up Francis Lai's famous melody with Arabic instrumentation and inventive fluorishes until it resembles an Egyptian mariachi band crashing an Italian wedding. Beyond that, I was also delighted by the pieces where the orchestra abandon rock rhythms in favor of more Arabic-inspired percussion, as they do on "Gazairia." Just about everything here is great (and fun) though, as Instrumental Modal Pop of 1970s Egypt sounds like some of the coolest and most forward-thinking musicians around teamed up to unknowingly make a flawless and hook-filled surf/exotica/Bollywood masterpiece. I can certainly understand how Hamdi came to be so revered in the Arab world if he brought this level of heat to even his non-hits.

Samples can be found here.

21 October 2010

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

I am a bit late to the party with this project from "NYC-based, Iranian-Canadian brothers" Mohammed and Mehdi Mehrabani-Yeganeh, as they have been steadily releasing oft-killer music since 2017. This is their first album for Important, however, and it makes for a perplexingly unrepresentative introduction to their work, taking their more industrial tendencies in an unconventionally jazz-inspired direction with mixed results. That said, the brothers make a conscious point of attempting to "present new ideas" with each fresh release, so a truly representative album may never exist. Instead, each album is a snapshot of their thoughts and inspirations at one particular stage of their evolution. Similarly, the brothers are unswervingly devoted to making their music personal by rooting it in their own stories. Conceptually, that makes To Live A La West the Saint Abdullah album inspired by the time the brothers were allowed to attend a dance after their sixth grade graduation. The album is quite a bit harder to define stylistically, however. While the brothers cite Jon Hassell's Fourth World aesthetic as one major source of inspiration, I cannot think of any artists who explore similarly eclectic territory to this album’s curious mixture of free jazz and industrial-tinged experimentation mingled with shades of electronic pop and Iranian music. To my ears, this album could not be much further from the sights and sounds of a middle school dance (even filtered through psychedelic sensibility), but the best moments achieve a kind of strange beauty akin to Carter Tutti Void teaming with up some Egyptian jazz guys to record a very strange and unconventional film soundtrack. The other moments are considerably harder to explain, as they resemble industrial jazz vamps made by an AI whose primary influence is '80s arcade game sounds.

Important Records

This is one of those albums that starts out extremely strong, then gradually unravels and yields diminishing returns as it unfolds. If To Live A La West began and ended with "A Lot Of Kings," however, it would be damn near perfect. The duo are joined by trumpet player Aquiles Navarro and someone named Kol for a wonderfully simmering and smoky reverie of industrial-damaged and static-strafed jazz noir. The first hints that something has begun to go awry appear as early as the second piece, however, as it sounds like someone is throttling a modular synthesizer over an erratic, subdued, and ramshackle drum machine beat. It still ends up being a strong piece, as it is achieves a kind of jabbering, go-for-broke catharsis of squiggling electronic bloops, but I definitely felt that lack of a solid melodic component. The brothers next hit the mark again with the stomping, mechanized juggernaut of "Like A Great Starving Beast," as guest John Butcher enlivens the proceedings with a fiery sax solo. From that point onward, however, the brothers are on their own and they definitely chose a mystifying sound palette. Historically, Saint Abdullah are at their best when they aim for something akin to an Iranian Esplendor Geométrico with a strong taste for dub and sample collage, but they largely repress those tendencies on To Live A La West. In more concrete terms, that means that this album has plenty of cool grooves and foundational motifs, but they are almost always pushed to the background to focus on trilling sprays of blooping and bleeping melodies that elude any familiar scales or patterns. While the mechanized dance menace of "Furthermost" is a notable exception, the rest of the album lies somewhere between "chromatic free jazz shredding on a keytar," "someone loudly playing theremin over a '90s Aphex Twin album," "a Herbie Hancock album jarringly interrupting an S&M show," and "a modular synth player trying to mimic bird songs." Strange choices one and all and rendered even stranger by the existence of companion cassette of the same name on Cassauna. I am not sure why the brothers chose to release two similarly uneven albums in the same vein rather than a single solid one or why they did not enlist more collaborators for their ambitious jazz foray, but I do not feel they put their best foot forward here. In any case, Saint Abdullah is a great project and "A Lot of Kings" is a great song, but this is probably not the best place to start for the curious.

Samples can be found here.

21 October 2010

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This enigmatic Illinois collective has never been particularly keen on revealing much about themselves, but they do have something of an origin story in which the project was birthed when they fatefully discovered a section of a film trailer in an abandoned drive-in theater back in 1983. While I do not believe they ever specified which film they found, all signs point to a George Romero or Lucio Fulci film, as "sounds from films about fake corpses constitute some of the earliest material used by Fossil Aerosol Mining Project." In fact, the project nearly always sounds like a hallucinatory collage of badly distressed VHS tapes of Dawn of the Dead, but the project has also released several explicitly zombie-indebted releases over the course of their long and macabre career, some of which were eventually compiled on 2014's digital-only Zombi Traditions. As befits the subject material, those already remixed, remastered, and revised pieces have been cannibalized once more for this definitive edition. As the previous incarnations of these songs have been purged from existence, I cannot say how well these latest versions stack up against the earlier ones, but I can say that this is easily one of the best Fossil Aerosol Mining Project albums that I have heard. To my ears, this album is the embodiment of everything I love about this project, as it perfectly captures the imagined ambiance of a late '70s/early '80s mall where the only remaining signs of life are strains of kitschy muzak and cheery announcements of incredible bargains eerily reverberating around the ransacked, rubble-strewn, and desolate halls until the electricity eventually fails.

Self-Released

Given this project’s mystery-shrouded nature, I cannot say for certain what their working methods were back in 1983 or if they have evolved at all over the ensuing four decades, but it definitely seems like the collective has an extremely purist approach to how they use their material. It seems fair to say that one of the project’s self-imposed constraints is that all of the sounds they use must be scavenged, so the difference between a middling album and great one lies in how well the fundamentally non-musical material lends itself to musicality (and how ingenious the collective can be when the material does not). In practical terms, that means that the essence of Zombi Tradition's aesthetic is murky ambiance conjured from hiss, garbled samples, and industrial hum, but that foundation is often enhanced with enigmatic vocal fragments, snatches of ads, and bits of repurposed muzak.

When they hit the mark, the results can be wonderfully creepy, immersive, and hallucinatory in a very unique and distinctive way. In the case of this album, those moments mostly tend to be the longest pieces. For example, the seething slow burn of "Damaged Years Ago" steadily swells to a haunted crescendo of inhuman-sounding backwards voices and a promise of "all the most popular brands." Elsewhere, "Italian Resurrection" evokes the swaying industrial ambiance of a massive engine slowly churning in an enigmatic miasma of footsteps, tape hiss, and eerie vocal fragments ("help me") that bubble up from the depths. Later, "The Shopping Mall Has Long Since Flooded" sounds like a broken radio playing flickering, unintelligible, and creepily reverberant emergency dispatches to a long-abandoned and partially submerged food court. A couple of the shorter pieces are excellent too though. I especially love the hiss-ravaged muzak phantasmagoria of "1983," which has the creepy, sad, and playful feel of some recent Aaron Dilloway albums. That said, the whole album casts a wonderfully unbroken spell and the execution is unusually strong for FAMP (presumably because the material has been reworked so many times). Given the grisly and oft-schlocky source material being repurposed, I was pleasantly surprised by the bleak beauty and subtly morbid humor of these pieces, as they never err into oppressive darkness or easy kitsch (even when a cheery voice is encouraging me to "visit often"). To my ears, this is one of the true jewels of the Fossil Aerosol Mining Project discography (if not the project’s culminating achievement).

Samples can be found here.

21 October 2010

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This latest release from Aleksandra Zakharenko is a "selection of soundscapes created by throughout various stages of last year" described as "subliminal moments, suspended fragments, caught between time zones." While that description could admittedly fit quite a lot of Perila's music, 7‚Äã.‚Äã37‚Äã/‚Äã2‚Äã.‚Äã11 has a far more intimate and informal feel than this year's previous release on Smalltown Supersound (How Much Time It Is Between You And Me?). That uncluttered, sketch-like approach suits Zakharenko quite well, as it brings out a bit more distinctive character than her more layered and produced work. Given that Perila is one of the more consistently intriguing artists in the ambient-adjacent abstract electronic milieu, there is plenty to like (or love) about that more produced side too, but I found this more stark and simple side easier to connect with on a deeper level, as these six songs distill Zakharenko's vision to its most pure form without sacrificing any of the beauty.

Vaagner

The opening "long dizzying air through a balcony door" sounds exactly like I would expect Perila to sound when filtered through the beautifully murky melancholia of Vaagner's house aesthetic (or at least curated with that aesthetic in mind). It is one of the more minimal pieces on the album as well, as it is essentially a spoken-word piece over a little more than a ghostly hum that rises and falls like a slow exhalation. The words are compellingly poetic and vaguely confessional, as it Zakharenko seems to be haltingly recounting fragmented and enigmatic memories from a past spring burned deep into her psyche. It strikes quite a mesmerizing balance of eerie and sensuous and is easily as strong as anything I have previously heard from Perila. In fact, I would have been thrilled if it was followed by five more pieces in the exact same vein, but only a fool would expect that, as Zakharenko's music has long featured a strong element of unpredictability. In keeping with that theme, the following "amorphous absorption" sounds like deconstructed dub techno sourced from dripping stalactites and chopped, hallucinatory voices, while the blearily melodic reverie "haven't left home 4 4 days" evokes the melancholy of a rain-soaked and cloud-darkened afternoon. A similarly drizzly atmosphere returns for the two pieces that close the album, but "this story doesn't make any sense" detours into a gently seething and bubbling experiment in disjointed, deconstructed, and unconventional percussion that feels like it is fading in and out of focus. It is an enjoyable piece, but the two pieces that follow even more impressive. I especially enjoyed “Crash Sedative,” which feels like a stoned and stumbling twist on classic Bill Evans-style jazz piano. "1 room" delves into a similarly noir-ish jazz vein, but feels too haunted and texture-focused to exist outside an especially creepy David Lynch film.

Nearly everything on the album is both good and distinctively "Perila," however, which makes this modest release an unexpectedly satisfying and absorbing album. On a related note, Vaagnar has also issued a considerably shorter sister EP (Memories of Log) that compiles strays from one of Zakharenko's stronger collaborators with Ulla. I expect anyone who likes 7‚Äã.‚Äã37‚Äã/‚Äã2‚Äã.‚Äã11 will enjoy that one too, as I certainly did (particularly Ulla's sublime closer "falling water lullaby").

Samples can be found here.