28 March 2010

Lucas Schleicher

Albums and Singles

Mute

As far as immediate, red-hot rock songs go, A Place to Bury Strangers is among the best bands out there. Hell, Exploding Head could have been a punk record if it weren't for their shoegaze affiliations and songs like "I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart." But, songs like "Hit the Ground" are good evidence that Oliver Ackermann still has a little hardcore in his heart, as it drives forward with stacatto eighth note rhythms and a pounding chorus that stomps the floor more than anything else. The lead melody reminds me a little bit of Dick Dale, but when Ackermann lets his guitar go nuts and the bass line takes over melodic duties I'm reminded just a little bit of Hüsker Dü, though not because of any similarity in their songwriting. "Hit the Ground" just sounds like a big, beautiful mess, much in the same way most of New Day Rising does. Sloppy, completely electrified songs with a lot of forward movement, big rhythms, and no small amount of testosterone are among my favorite things, so this song hits the spot. I'd like to see this thing pop up on a collection of B-Sides somewhere down the line as I could easily wear this 7" out from overplaying it.

28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Important

Nothing about the music on De Pedro's latest record suggest that this is even a Kid606 album. The album and song titles and the fact that Kid606 is printed on the cover in big pink letters is all anyone has connecting this noise to that person. The closest Miguel has ever come to textured noise like this is on his Mille Plateaux releases, which featured at least some beats and remnants of the characteristic 606 sound assault. There's none of that happening here, unless some fractured glitch noise and fuzzy static are to be counted as the sole property of Miguel De Pedro. On Songs About Fucking Steve Albini I hear the clear influence of guys like Markus Popp, Pan Sonic, Jan St. Werner, and even a little Terry Riley. I guess somebody could argue these musicians have always been an influence on Kid606, but they've never been as clear as they are on this album. If they were all hiding under Miguel's bed in the past, now they're outside running around, playing keep away from Kid606 with his laptops.

Cyclical melodies and chopped up fragments of already fragmented sound make up about 99% of the Kid's arsenal this time around, which means that there are long passages of repetitive junk audio and seemingly aimless noise tangents to be found everywhere. Some are pretty annoying (see "Die Rumpled Ego"), but others are delicate and surprisingly beautiful (check out "Periled Emu God"). I figure without recourse to even a single break, Miguel just loosened the reins, choosing to let the audio lead him instead of the other way around. For the most part this actually works to his advantage, but in the places where Miguel gives up on any and all order, the album falls apart and quickly loses my interest. Thankfully, the Kid sticks to producing lovely slabs of interlocking glacial noise and melody for most of the record. Sometimes single samples churn and buzz away in cardiac-like rhythms and sometimes layers and layers of strange oscillations work together to form an indistinguishable mass of throbbing electrical meat. It's hard not to think of Harmonia or Cluster during the first few songs. That same simple, child-like approach to melody and loops is present from the beginning and survives until very near the end, where it's finally mangled beyond recognition. When Miguel checks himself and builds concise, metered music he simultaneously produces his best, most alluring work. When he loses control and ends up churning out electrical farts and headache-inducing buzz, I'm nearly always tempted to reach for the stop button. Had he saved his prankster audio tendencies for an album where it would fit more convincingly, I'd probably be gushing a little more about Miguel's Albini fucking ways.

Still, how any of this relates to Steve Albini is completely up in the air. Maybe Miguel's use of a bunch of analog equipment is sufficient reason for referencing the king of analog tapes, but I was half-expecting static-filled remixes of Big Black when I first heard the title and saw the cover art. If not that, then I was hoping for at least a little vitriol. After getting over the fact that there wasn't even one consistent beat or a single Big Black sample anywhere on any of the songs, I was able to sit back and appreciate the record for what it is. In the time between I was left wondering why Miguel would choose this album title instead of 606 Diskont or maybe Miguel De Pedro and the Phantom Band Play Mika Vainio's Pool Party. Reproducing the artwork for Songs About Fucking is cute, but it works against Kid606: the music is already odd and unexpected enough, it doesn't really need a misleading title to make things more difficult. Besides, naming songs after broken up anagrams of your own name is pretty lazy. The Important website tells me that Miguel spent a lot of time recording and putting this music together (many years, apparently). I wish he would have spent more time personalizing the project, because the music definitely deserves something more unique.

samples:

• Dim Ego Prelude
• Periled Emu God
• Deep Lid Morgue

28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Scorn's third album was a groundbreaking and seminal release, as Napalm Death’s former rhythm section finally shook loose the last vestiges of their metal past to attain the sinister strain of dub that they came to be known for. Unfortunately, it was also one of the last times that things went well for the project, as Mick Harris would soon be hit by the mercurial Nick Bullen's departure, creative differences with Earache, and a precipitous decline in the popularity of the isolationism genre.

 

Earache

It is uncanny how much influence Napalm Death has had on both my musical evolution and that of the underground in general (both directly and indirectly).No one could have anticipated that the anarcho-punk-loving trio of Mick Harris, Justin Broadrick, and Nick Bullen who recorded Scum in 1986 (an album that holds only passing interest for me) would eventually split into such disparate and pioneering entities as Scorn, Godflesh, Jesu, and Lull.I remember both Evanescence and Godflesh’s Streetcleaner both making such a splash upon their release that they even managed to appear in publications that were mainstream enough to reach me in the cultural backwaters of central New York (this being before widespread Internet use, of course).As such, they were both gateways to a whole world of unpopular musics (dub, dark ambient, noise, etc.) that I may not have discovered otherwise.

Listening to Evanescence 16 years later, I am surprised by how well much of it holds up.The heavy shuffling beat and deep bass groove of the opening track ("Silver Rain Fell") still explodes out of the speakers and elicits involuntary head-bobbing.Nick Bullen's vocals are still as confounding as ever though: they are incomprehensible, amelodic, and buried very low in the mix.In retrospect, they seem very unnecessary and like they were a grudging afterthought, but I suspect that being a "band" with a "singer" and "songs" was probably an important factor in Scorn's relative popularity in those days.That said, Bullen's bass playing is awesome.Even though later Scorn releases like Gyral are arguably better than Evanescence, I definitely miss his presence.Apparently he is a baker now.I suspect that I will eventually hear about him again in association with some sort of extreme and genre-smashing type of new bread that stuns the bourgeoisie.

Of course, "Silver Rain Fell" is not a fluke.In fact, "Falling" is even more propulsive and substantially more psychedelic (and probably the best song on the album).Bullen's vocals are almost nonexistent on it, relegated to just a heavily processed background sound, yielding the foreground to the incredible and complex beat and a swirling barrage of disorienting synthesizers and samples.This was a good move."Days Passed" is also a pretty brilliant track, as it sounds like Harris and Bullen decided to take PIL's Second Edition sound and tweak it by making it heavier and removing the obnoxious vocals (I think Keith Levene and Jah Wobble would be very impressed).Also, Harris's atmospheric sampling collages are particularly inspired and surreal here.The thumping, didgeridoo-inflected "Exodus" (featuring Bullen's most melodic vocals) and the warped and shuddering ambient closer "Slumber" are also quite excellent.

That said, Scorn is a band that is best taken in song-sized doses.Mick Harris is extremely good at what he does, but what he does is very narrow.The Scorn sound can basically be summarized as "a cool groove with some trippy stuff happening over it."In a 5-minute dose, that can sound amazing, but it yields diminishing returns over the course of an hour.Also, some songs don't age well, like the bombastic "Automata," which sounds like it could have been an out-take from The Mind Is a Terrible Thing To Taste-era Ministry.The horror movie piano of "Silver Rain Fell" and "Night Tide" also sounds a bit heavy-handed with the passage of time.Despite its flaws, however, Evanescence is an album that was very, very much ahead of its time.While dubstep and artists like Burial enjoy quite a bit of popularity and influence today, making dark and noise-damaged dub music in 1994 was decidedly not the cool thing to be doing.

(Note- Earache has recently reissued Evanescance as a double-album with Ellipsis)

Samples:

• Silver Rain Fell
• Falling
• Slumber

 

28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Coptic Cat

Several of Fay’s songs on the Piano, Guitar, Bass & Drums 1970-71 disc were either on his lushly orchestrated debut Bill Fay, or the more stripped down follow up Time of The Last Persecution. The album is made up of tapes found in various locations and approved for release by musicians who obviously had a tight bond. That trust in each other enabled them to keep the music simple. So the sweet, ticking drums, the scattered piano notes, and unfussy bass all make for a perfect unhurried atmosphere in which Fay’s unusual voice flourishes. Additionally, Ray Russell’s wildly brilliant guitar playing adds a barnstorming edge to some of these lovely and deeply personal songs.

At some point Bill Fay must have acquired some conviction that life on Earth would eventually be interrupted by the intervention of a higher spiritual power; an intervention prophesied to fix the folly and misguided actions of humans that had wrought widespread war, false idols and misery. His images interpret the book of Revelation yet he conveys a gentle vulnerability and humanity which make apocalypse and salvation all sound rather comforting. That he also sings of not kneeling in "dead cathedrals" and complains of a spire "that blocks out the sky" is rather appealing. The versions of “Plan D” and “Pictures of Adolph Again” are love songs to the joy of existence albeit with a backdrop of horror and delusion. I hate to compare Fay to anyone else, but the warmth generated by his voice and Russell’s guitar on “I Hear You Calling” put me in mind of the late Ronnie Lane at his most soulful. Fay’s genuinely touching love of nature, his appreciation of his landscape of origin, and his love for his family both balances and compliments his other concerns. His honesty is unmistakable since he obviously sings about his own back yard. I also can’t think of another songwriter who mentions trees quite as often and treats the minutiae of everyday life—door keys, dustbins, your team losing, old school friends who have passed away—with such a matter-of-fact reverence.

I have never heard anyone sing or tell stories quite like Bill Fay. His phrasing and dialect are, if not unique, then certainly unusual, and his lyrics are disarmingly direct. It’s as if a character from Adam Thorpe’s odd rural epic Ulverton has come to life and is regaling us with history, observations of nature, and heavy portent. There is a consistently humble quality to Fay’s voice and yet it manages to be mesmerizing. I say humble, but when he speaks the words to “I Will Find My Own Way Home” he seems to be acknowledging failings (perhaps a crisis of faith) but sounds as determined and cocksure as if he were auditioning for the role of Brian Clough in The Damned United.

The second disc, Still Some Light, is lighter and several of the tracks seem a bit over-sentimental at first. Maybe they are, but what emerges is Fay’s loyalty to his natural mode of expression. For example, “Hello Old Tree” is enveloped in the feeling of returning again and again for reverie to a favorite spot in his landscape. That song makes me think of John Cooper Powys’ notion that all of creation, including trees and stones, has a soul. Equally, the song “Diamond Studied Days” revels unashamedly in a strong feeling of grateful nostalgia that mirrors its topic: the love Fay’s parents gave him as a child. He merges several of his main themes, nature, peace and spiritual redemption, on the hymn-like track "There Is A Valley". His singing (of his own words) on “My Eyes Open” defies the truth that they were written quite separately for Michael Cashmore's originally unrelated music, so good is the match. Like most of the second disc, the piece is quiet and lush. By contrast, “I Wonder,” the final track written by John Fay, has a pleasantly rough production and a ragged acoustic edge that some might associate with Syd Barrett.

Fay's brother did the cover and booklet paintings and there are some completely natural looking photographs of Bill Fay and his close family in which he seems happy and contented and his hair looks like it hasn't been combed maybe since his mother tried to do it when he was a schoolboy! In the booklet he writes one of the longest thank you letters I've ever read. With almost forty years betwen these recordings the over-riding feeling is that there's no pretense and, depite some of the grand concerns, no preaching. I find some of the songs less successful than others but mainly enjoy the lovely imperfections of these marvelous demos and home recordings. This is the sound of someone recognizing danger and fears, but hoping and trusting for the best. Bill Fay’s proceeds from this album will go to “the major charities active in the poorest places of the world.” Including, I believe, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières.

samples disc 1:

• I Will Find My Own Way Back
• Pitctures of Adolph Again
• Tell It Like It Is

samples disc 2:

• Diamond Studded Days
• I Wonder
• My Eyes Open
  

28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

4AD

Red House Painters (I) has been one of my favorite albums for ages, but it is by no means a flawless work—far from it, in fact.  It can be overly melodramatic and solipsistic at times and has a sprawling and somewhat overwhelming running time.  It doesn’t matter though, as Mark Kozelek’s appeal lies in his warmth, honesty, and humanity.  He is inconsistent, but when he connects, he does it on a deep and meaningful personal level.  He connects quite often on this modest affair—in fact, much more so than on his next couple of “serious” albums.  This release certainly lacks coherence and polish, but it has an uncharacteristically unfussed-over intimacy and rawness to it that Mark had a hard-time recapturing.  Also, this is a rare chance to hear the band indulge in some of their more outré impulses (they don’t usually work so well, but they are often intriguing to hear). 

From the very beginning of “Evil,” it is immediately clear why these songs were orphaned—they don’t sound quite like other Red House Painters’ songs.  Although it unexpectedly begins with Kozelek good-naturedly chuckling, “Evil” takes the already slow and melancholic RHP formula and pushes it into a darker, more skeletal, and still slower place.  Despite initially centering solely upon Kozelek’s resonant vocals and some delicately picked acoustic arpeggios, it is instantly a very heavy song.  The dark tone and the way that Mark slowly and deliberately draws out every single word imbues even somewhat innocuous phrases like “Mom and Dad, is it a boy or a girl?” with an uncomfortable menace.  The lengthy spaces between notes and beats create a vacuum that makes every single nuance of the song seem important and fraught with mystery.  Then, oddly, the second half of the song shifts gears into an experimental coda of wordlessly repeating and somewhat dissonant falsetto vocals.  The next track, “Bubble,” is similarly sparse and glacial, but completely inverts the tone into a lushly melodic and bittersweetly autumnal love song that is one of the best things that Kozelek has ever penned.  I love the impossibly slow drumming and beautiful, sleepily unfolding chord progression- the music is the perfect foil for Mark’s lovelorn lyrics, like falling leaves or snow.

It isn’t until the third song, a decent cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock,” that things become a bit more conventionally “rock”: chords are strummed, the drummer starts to play like he has emerged from the somnambulant trance of the first two songs, and there is a relatively normal pace and structure.  After that, there is a brief return to extreme slow-motion (“Helicopter”) before the band picks up the pace again for two back-to-back classics.  “New Jersey” reprises one of Red House Painters I’s best songs with the added inclusion of some unexpectedly enthusiastic drumming, resulting in one of the most warm, immediately gratifying, and catchy songs in RHP’s oeuvre.  The deeply confessional and hauntingly powerful “Uncle Joe” follows it.

“Uncle Joe” is one of the most lyrically dark and overtly autobiographical works of Mark’s career, as it is peppered with phrases like “I’m looking at the ceiling with an awful feeling of loss and loneliness” and “the after late-night television pain…I’m running out of strength again.”  Even so, it has an extremely strong melody and some subtle flashes of light and humor (“it was unintentional when I spit in your beer.  I am over-influenced by movies”) that prevent Kozelek’s unfiltered catharsis from becoming oppressive or overly mopey.  It is simply a great song: existential anguish is rarely this poppy and pop is rarely this dark.

Of course, being an out-takes collection of sorts, Red House Painters II can’t help but miss the mark a few times.  Kozelek thoughtfully saves the failures for the end of the album though, so they’re easy to avoid.  “Blindfold” is initially another pleasantly slumberous piece in the vein of “Helicopter,” but takes that song’s lengthy jamming outro and amplifies it into something quite awful.  It goes on for over eight minutes and features some singularly bad primal metal howling for the final stretch (not something this band is generally associated with).  The album then limps to an anticlimactic conclusion with a very brief, but very ill-conceived cover of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”  Still, the handful of great songs on this album is well-worth investigating.  Kozelek certainly went on to release some wonderful and essential late-period albums (like Old Ramon and Ghosts of the Great Highway), but this is the most stripped-down and spacious representation of his darker, more bluntly emotional early period.

Samples:

• Bubble
• New Jersey
• Uncle Joe

28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Western Vinyl

Owing perhaps to their classical training, the album unfolds like a symphony. They really know how to wield tension: building it up and releasing it in bursts; soaring high and then laying fallow—but not utterly inactive—as the various strains of their playing resolve themselves. “The Night You Left New York” is their opening sonata. With a devastating pulse whipped out on the drum kit, a crunchy and melodic guitar hook courtesy of Stephen Griesgraber I am pulled right in. The two violins swirling around each other lift me off the ground and carry me upwards like dry leaves in the autumn wind. Colorful electronic treatments of the instruments become apparent towards the end.

“Cloud Cover” in two parts is a slow movement. Here they explore one of my favorite features in music for the last sixty or so years: the use of a radio as an instrument in and of itself. Scanning the airwaves for signs of life, bits of static and atmospheric scree merge with the lulling violin and organic electronics. What is most impressive about the electronic aspect of this group is the fact that Christopher Tignor, who is the lead violinist and songwriter, writes his own software used for the live processing of the other instruments. It doesn't take a genius to go out and buy or download a music program for the computer and get it to cough up some weird sounding garbage, but it does take serious dedication to write programs from scratch and coax them into producing the desired sounds. In this respect Slow Six are part of a tradition that stretches back to the academic composers who first explored the possibilities in music opened up by computers. There is however nothing dry, dusty, or doddering about what they do. The radio voices, now manipulated so as to be wondrously unintelligible, bleed into the next track, “Because Together We Resonate,” which steps the pace up a notch again. From here on out they don't let up. The tension aforementioned is again held in perfect balance, escalating and descending, only the ingress and regress happen swiftly now. The guitar and violins dance around each other, moving expertly as clockwork without sounding at all mechanical.

“These Rivers Between Us” executes the album flawlessly with a smooth, but upbeat, and heartfelt finish. It is an inspired anthem building and elaborating upon the themes first heard in the albums opener. Theo Metz again shows his mastery of the drums by laying down a spell-binding foundation, joined by the low toned melody Rob Collins plunks down on the rhodes. Over top of this the guitarist and two violinists ascend to heavenly heights. In just under an hour they have unraveled the yarn of their musical structures and not only weaved it back together again, but have layered in new designs. Tommorrow Becomes You is definite an early choice for what will be on my best of year list for 2010.

samples:

• The Night You Left New York
• Cloud Cover Part Two
• These Rivers Between Us

27 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Thrill Jockey

The music has a lot in common with German synthesiser music from the '70s. Ghosts of Cluster and Kraftwerk pass through the compositions, eerily beautiful. “Suno Vidis” could easily have come from the recording sessions of Cluster’s Zuckerzeit, the dancing melodies and childlike wonder are satisfying to listen to. Lowe again and again captures the very essence of pure, simple and gorgeous music although in a different way from his work as Lichens (which for me always has a very open and investigative feeling to it).

However, it is not all about simple melodies: there are some amazing textures and sounds being created throughout Eclipses. The ending of “Crayon Gym” features some wonderful sounds where the music is being manipulated slowly, ending up somewhere between a cracking voice and the throb of a mighty machine. Elsewhere, computerised beeps and opaque sounds wash over the listener such as on the sublime “Ŭyndham-a Horloĝo.” Here Lowe conjures up the kind of music that would accompany science documentaries in the '60s and '70s, the frenetic electronic blips representing everything from evolution to cloud formation.

As for the actual collaborative part of the album, the LP’s sleeve folds out into a large double sided poster to show off Lowe and Lazar’s handiwork. I am not an art critic but I like the imagery which is a mixture of abstract shapes, rainbows and weather (the use of prisms, light and weather going well with my mental images of “Ŭyndham-a Horloĝo” described above). The youthful style of drawing matches up quite well with the music on the record.

Although Eclipses is currently only available on vinyl, it does come with a download voucher for MP3s which is always appreciated for those who must sometimes leave their turntable behind. However, the experience of listening to Eclipses on my iPod was far less satisfying than putting the LP on the turntable and unfolding the artwork to gaze at while I listened. Plus this is music that sounds best coming out of speakers rather than headphones, the rich sounds filling the room in a way that is lost when listening to it in your ears alone. Finally, it sounds great at either speed which is harder to replicate on my iPod.

samples:

• Crayon Gym
• Suno Vidis
• Tapiŝoj Lasis la Lumon En

23 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Little Annie and Paul Wallfisch

Genderful [CD]

Southern Records

£10.00

11 songs, 41 minutes.  Second album from Little Annie aka Annie Anxiety aka Annie Bandez and her piano muse and composer Paul Wallfisch is comprised of of songs which shove a dagger through your heart while tickling your funny bone.  Gorgeous digi-wallet with 12 page lyric booklet.


Here comes Genderful, Annie and Paul's new album that somehow manages to perfectly mix soul songs and chansons, bluesy saloon singing and European cabaret styling into a gorgeous, new amalgam. Dig the gentle groove and the sad strings of "Suitcase Full of Secrets", and the fluttering, art-house-cinema-soundtrack glamour of "Because You're Gone Song". "Regret", "Carried Away" and "In The Bar Womb" would make Jacques Brel and/or Serge Gainsbourg proud. "Zen Zexy Zage", "Cutesy Bootsies" and "Adrianna" are brilliant little three penny operas for this post-gentrification/monetary meltdown epoch. Then there are subtle epics like "Billy Martin's Requiem"- a tough, groovy bit of NYC-back-in-the-day-free-association that mixes the ill-fated Yankees  manager, the post-punk scene and all the brilliant men lost to AIDS in one smart, seamless package, and "Tomorrow Will Be", a shimmering, resplendent prayer to life with Annie as a knowing urban/urbane/earth mother.

Genderful is sentiment without sentimentality, inspiration without bombast, a collection of songs thick with pain and wit and joy.

A perfect reflection of Annie herself....

See you on the other side of heartache.

Track listing
1. Tomorrow Will Be 6:42
2. Miss Annie Regrets 1:22
3. Suitcase Full Of Secrets 4:06
4. Billy Martin's Requiem 4:53
5. In The Bar Womb 1:59
6. Because You're Gone Song 2:17
7. Cutesy Bootsies 3:01
8. Zexy Zen Like Zage 4:34
9. Carried Away 2:23
10. God Song 4:52
11. Adrianna 5:30
Running time 41:35 total

Release date:  March 2010
File under: Pop, Melodramatic Popular Song, Piano Lounge
For fans of: Edith Piaf, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Brel, Antony & The Johnsons, Eartha Kitt, The Tiger Lillies

You can preorder this release now. It will be available on Monday 05 April, 2010.

21 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

artist: Henry Jacobs
title: Around The World With Henry Jacobs (produced by Jack Dangers, Alex Artaud, & Henry Jacobs)
catalog #: IMPREC054
release date: April 27, 2010
upc793447529929
format: double CD

Absurd folklorist Henry Jacobs returns with a selection of rare interviews, odd loops, sales pitches, early
synthesizer demos, an ether-infused evening, and more! Produced in San Francisco and New York City, Around The World With Henry Jacobs is a travelogue that continues the story begun with The Wide Weird World of Henry Jacobs, mixing archival material from the 1950s with recent improvisations by Jacobs. Guests include Stan Freberg and Dr. Irwin Corey, with Alan Watts returning for a visit, too.

Also included is special bonus disc — First Night, one of the true gems from the collection. Recorded in
February 1957 by Henry Jacobs on the opening night of the Poetry/Jazz Series at The Cellar in San Francisco, this unique document captures the first time Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti read their poetry to jazz in this very intimate setting. In contrast to Fantasy Records' Poetry Readings in the Cellar, you feel yourself a part of the audience here, moments punctuated with a register ringing, muted conversations, laughter, and clinking glasses. Includes Rexroth reading "Between Myself And Death" and "She Is Away", and Ferlinghetti reading "The World is A Beautiful Place."

21 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

After a four-year hiatus, this slumbering drone supergroup has returned with a deeply unsettling and surreal new album.  That time was not spent idly, as Above The Sky sounds like it has been sculpted and tweaked to razor-sharp perfection.  Despite being the work of three people with three different aesthetics, there is no absolutely trace of ego, compromise, bloat, or wasted time here.  This is as perfect as drone music gets.

ICR

Above the Sky apparently had a very difficult birth, as it originated from a single concert that Paul Bradley, Colin Potter, and Darren Tate played together in 2006.  The trio wasn’t entirely pleased with the recording, so it was gradually embellished, enhanced, layered, and reworked until it finally became “A Place of Voices.”  In the process, quite a bit of new material was recorded, some of which cohered into the album’s closing piece.  The rest of it wound up as Beneath the Earth, a bonus album that sold-out very quickly.

Each of the two tracks included here is a half-hour long.  The first one, “A Place Of Voices,” begins with ominous, queasy droning.  As it progresses, the sound slowly undulates and swells while spectral creaks, scrapes and squeals flit about the shadows.  However, only the peripheral mindfuckery remains relatively constant, as the trio seamlessly drifts from one movement to another.  It flows quite beautifully, but it follows a very unpredictable course, as a cacophony of bowed metals can turn into a pleasant field recording of a flock of chirping birds within mere minutes (and does). 

The following piece, “Cloudless Day,” fades in with a shifting, quavering mass of subtly clashing notes and a harsh metallic shimmer.  The volume swells and drops unpredictably, heightening the deep sense of unease, and various elements begin to change dramatically until it graduates from “uneasy” to “harrowing.”  Then it all abruptly stops, only to begin again in a distant, murky new form.  After a while, that limps to a conclusion as well, but is soon replaced by a still more disquietingly hallucinatory phase that calls to mind a haunted hall of mirrors.  Ultimately, however, the birds reappear and it all ends on an unexpectedly calm note: the titular “cloudless day,” I suppose (but one that only appears after a trip through hell). 

Above the Sky is an album that is malevolently alive, as every single sound is active and holds the potential to morph into either something deeply ugly or an unexpected oasis of calm.  It is a constantly and mysteriously shifting sonic terrain that seethes with implied menace.  Repeat listens will certainly lessen the impact of the twists and surprises, but there is so much to absorb and appreciate that it won’t matter.  This is a brilliant and nightmarish masterpiece from start to finish.  

Samples:

• A Place of Voices (excerpt one)
• A Place of Voices (excerpt two)
• Cloudless Day