31 January 2010

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Albums and Singles

Cobra Records

Cobra records claim that Opium Warlords is an identity secret with this disc arriving from persons unknown. But many other sources seem to know that it comes from one person: Sami Albert Hynninen, known for his work with The Puritan, Reverend Bizarre, Armanenschaft, Spiritus Mortis, and more. The release is full of the contradictions which come from naming your "group" Opium Warlords and residing, at least symbolically, in the territory of death metal or Satanic rock. Despite the clichés, Live at Colonia Dignidad offers a few surprises. For example, the splendidly named “Suck My Spear, Servant of Satan” turns out to be an unexpectedly relaxing listen rather than an ode to some darkly stylized oral sex ritual. The piece is almost pseudo-medieval in tone, as if Tortoise had been inspired by a dub version of a Wishbone Ash instrumental.  

Much of the album is ponderously paced. This slowness is doubtless meant to convey threat but also suggests a lack of technique. At times the music does indeed (as claimed on the Opium Warlords MySpace page) sound like "a bad Bolivian Metal band practicing a riff" but some patches stir up an odd sense of humans wallowing in mud and leaves a la Samuel Beckett’s story How It Is. The vision is of depressed or wretched ones refusing to stop crawling through crap, even enjoying it. At such times, Opium Warlords’ contemplative, brooding tempo is nicely out of sync with the dizzy but superficial haste of modern life.

Photos on the website show Hynninen from the back, stripped to the waist and wearing a hip-hugging bullet belt and boots. He is slouching near a bare tree and in his right hand is a hardback book which, given its heft, looks rather paradoxically like Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Obviously that’s not the case, but maybe it is a reasonable signal of the dilemmas inherent in approaching this music. For in the year 2010, it is hard to imagine that devil-worship exists as anything more than sexual fetish, nostalgic symbolism or a stance to annoy self-appointed moralists. At the same time, while it is hard to swallow this album with a straight face it is easy to grasp that Hynninen fully realizes both the humor and the paradoxes. On some pieces, such as “Meet Me at The Iron Place” and  particular on the urine erotica song "Let it Pour, Let It Pour" he enunciates his words to good effect. Elsewhere his cartoon-constipated grunt voice obscures lyrics which are as likely to divide opinion as Pynchon’s infamous excrement swallowing scene in Gravity’s Rainbow. Luckily, samples of these (images of raw sex, painful depression, fluffy animals and forest mythology) are in an accompanying booklet along with childlike sketches, occult references and an ad for Zyprexa tablets with the requisite (devilish) barcodes. 

The repetitive medium-paced instrumental “Feel The Strength” is (at three minutes) much shorter than most of the songs, a few of which could have been trimmed. The sole fast track is “Support the Satanic Youth.” This lasts just five seconds but for some reason I found it genuinely uncomfortable. On the one hand, it’s a laughable, throwaway, incomprehensible speed rant, but that had me half-wondering if the humor is not a double-bluff similar to the circular logic of those Christians who claim that the best trick the devil ever pulled was to convince us that he doesn’t exist.  I conclude that, as in the spheres of politics and religion, reality in the world of metal is whatever the participants decide it to be; a handy device.

For all its lumpy predictability, Live at Colonia Dignidad is also heavy and uncompromising in a good way. During some of the slow rambling guitar work, away from the ham-fisted lyrical signifiers, Hynninen stumbles upon mystery. His choice of the name Opium Warlords is terrific, and befitting of the complex and hilarious nature of human “evil.” The name conjures such hidden or murky histories of war and trade as those of the British in China, the French in Vietnam, the heroin labs of Marseille, the Golden Route, and the US involvement with international crime syndicates. It evokes excellent stories such as the release of Lucky Luciano and the role of the Mafia in assisting the Allies in opening a second front in WWII. It reminds of the marvelous saga of Fidel Castro’s exploding cigar, and the less amusing legend of Ollie North’s covert exploits in Colombia and Iran. It hints at recent fables of CIA tolerance for Afghan opium production and export during the US backed Afghanistan war against Russia. But amidst all these, the alleged payment of $43 million to the Taliban government for crushing opium production, just months before the US invasion of Afghanistan with the support of the Afghan opium warlords, may be the most incredible tale of all.*

*Ed Felien: The Big Payoff

samples:

• Let It Pour, Let It Pour
• Overwhelm Me Black Sorrow
• My Spear Servant of Satan

31 January 2010

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Albums and Singles

Bureau B

Compared to Hans-Joachim Roedelius’ output from around the same time, Tonspuren is not much of a jump from Moebius and Roedelius’ previous work as Cluster. During the '80s, both artists took time out from Cluster to forge solo careers that, although meandering, never strayed too far from the sounds and compositions developed through their collaboration together. The first few pieces on Tonspuren could easily sit on Cluster’s Curiosum without sounding out of place. “Contramio” is one of those sweet, melodic pieces that define the Cluster sound as much as their experiments in ambient electronic drift do. It is evident from listening to this and Roedelius’ own solo work that Moebius was responsible for much of Cluster’s more sugary moments.

However, this is not to say that Tonspuren is just more of the same from Moebius. On “Etwas,” Moebius has incorporated some of the more interesting ideas from his sessions with Mani Neumeier and Conny Plank on Zero Set; skittering noises jump across the beats in a dizzying way. The heavy beat of “B 36” combined with the kind of synth lines that are more air raid siren than anything else evokes the tension of the Cold War with its threat of nuclear war, the B 36 being a prime contender for carrying such a devastating payload. The fear that filters through the piece is palpable even in the absence of any real contextual information (according to the Internet B36 could also be a soccer team).

Even taking the Cluster “template” (if such a thing could be said to exist), Moebius challenges himself to create new textures from familiar arrangements. “Immerhin” clocks in at well under three minutes but contains enough variation to make it seem like a much grander piece of music. On the surface it is a facile and easily digestible piece but the grain in the sounds used make it far more interesting than a superficial listening would suggest. Deep listening is usually associated with the dronier side of minimalism but here Moebius shows that the same approaches should be applied to more “active” forms of music.

While not the pinnacle of his lengthy back catalogue, Tonspuren represents a point in Moebius’ career where he finds himself at a point where he needs breathing space. Not as prolific as his partner in Cluster, he still had been working pretty much constantly for the last decade on a lot of challenging and rewarding music. Therefore it is no surprise that there is not a huge leap between his earlier efforts and the music found here. As I argue above, familiarity does not always imply stagnation and Moebius shows that it is possible to take something that could almost be described as formulaic and reveal details in music that were invisible before.

samples:

• Contramio
• Transport
• B 36

24 January 2010

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Albums and Singles

artist Mouthus/Bulbs
title: split
catalog #: IMPREC255
release date: Feb 16, 2010
format: LP

Limited edition of 500 numbered copies. Screenprinted at Monoroid.
Bulbs features William Sabiston formerly of Axolotl.

Mouthus: Drum and guitar explosion through tape manipulation and a total synth bath. Collided
through a number of recording sessions and strings of modulation to elevate the
particle riffage to a heightened state of platectonic rock.

Bulbs: Like tuning your radio slowly between far off New Age stations in the most
serene way possible. The marriage of muted melodies existing below feedback skwerls
and electronic swerls. Transmissions from a better place.

24 January 2010

Albums and Singles

It is nearly impossible to find any concrete information about this shadowy psychedelic collective, aside from the fact that they first surfaced in Alaska about fourteen years ago and that they are now active in Oakland as both Nommo Ogo and Katabik Soundsystem.  How they managed to maintain such a low profile is still more of a mystery, as this collection contains some of the most otherworldly and unique music currently being made.

Read more …

24 January 2010

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Albums and Singles

Spekk

Spread across four long tracks, the trio has an intentional sense of isolation injected within the sound.  Recorded over a week in the basement of member Florian Kindlinger’s parents’ house, and then edited in a small hut in the Austrian mountains, there is a sense of being alone amidst the lush ambience.  The opening "This Is Your 4AM Wake-Up Call" begins with slow ringing reverse textures, a low rhythmic pulse and an odd clicking sound finally appear.  The track builds in complexity, adding subtle layers of sound that, on their own seem rather sparse, but taken together, along with guitar and fragments of voice, sound like a deconstructed take on shoegaze ambient, complex yet beautiful and inviting.

Heavily effected string and sparse ambient sounds introduce "Augarten," and a distant kickdrum acts like a heartbeat in the extremely intimate recording.  Compared to the opener, the heavily tremolo’ed strings that stretch for infinity stay the primary focus, with only the occasionally plucked string, or the sound of movement picked up by an ambient microphone.  Because of this extremely simple structure, it’s more like being in the room as the tracks were being laid down as opposed to a polished studio (or live) recording.

"Bantu" brings back more of the processing and effects, with the metallic pings and rattles and subtle guitar pushing it into improvisation-land, with field recordings and wind chimes fleshing out the sound.  As the track closes, a lush organ and digital textures push the volume up to full on power ambience:  heavy and room-filling, but never oppressive or harsh.  The closing "A Rest in Tension" lives up to its name:  it mirrors the textures of the opening track, but keeps the dense heaviness of "Bantu" on and on, even above recordings of conversations and long, drawn-out sounds before ending on a sparse note of a clicking metronome and distant bells.

As previously stated, there’s a constant sense of isolation and intimacy here:  even though field recordings occasionally put the sound in a wider context, there is still the feeling of being in a room with these guys as its being recorded, in an entirely different world.  The shoegaze and ambient elements pervade, but never feel like a crutch to be leaned on.  Too often bands will simply pile on the effects to create a lush, heavy feeling, but here it feels truly warm, and truly different.

samples:

• This Is Your 4AM Wakeup Call
• Augarten
• Bantu

24 January 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Ant-Zen

I always considered Moreau’s work for the label as the definitive "Ant-Zen" sound:  rapid fire overdriven analog drum machines, raw synths, mutilated samples and a general sense of post industrial malaise.  Cask Strength doesn’t step too far away from this formula, because it’s still a grinding cacophony of noise and beats, and I don’t think any of his fans would have wanted to see drastic change.  There does seem to be an increased sense of experimentation and concessions to the pathetically named IDM sound here though, proving it’s not all just 909s and fuzzboxes.

The influence is apparent from the opening "Seracs" with its polyrhythmic plastic beats that are completely chaotic, but obviously well sequenced, with deep raw synth line that’s a bad trip version of acid techno.  The odd juxtaposition of a stuttering voice, which is reminiscent of how Autechre has treated vocals the few times snippets were present, and a rather unabashed synth pop melody is a unique one covering both the harsh aggressive sound, yet concedes a bit of beauty amidst the ugly.

"Teskede" is cut from a similar cloth, with hardcore rattling beats and synth leads that sound more like radio static than anything else, but with some more warm, gentle synth work buried under the grime.  "Rubbs" also does this combination, but keeps the jagged rhythms more in check, and allowing the synths to be the track’s focus.  Here it’s pretty clear that if one were to remove the rhythms, there would be a rather pretty ambient track hiding under them.

Songs like "Lorsc" keep the rapid rhythms, but lose a bit of the violence, with the rhythms dialed back to recall old school electro rather than power noise, and synth leads that resemble guitars more than waveforms, creating a more diverse sound.  Moreau never lets the sound get too soft though, and for every delicate-ish moment there’s about three more over the top aggressive ones, like the low bit rate synths and drums on "Bock" that sound like being punched in the stomach more than anything else.  The simplistic, but effective "Ila" is the longest track here, but is unabashed monotone thumping techno throughout, with only a bit of tweaked samples and loops for variety.  If there’s ever a track for high speed aggressive city driving, this is it.

The long break between releases hasn’t slowed Imminent down at all, and his sound is still, at least to me, the Ant-Zen one.  However, he’s not just rehashing his old material at all, but using that as a basis to create new variations on.  While personally I’d have loved to hear some even more extreme divergences in sound, the music on Cask Strength is presented so well that it makes it unnecessary.

samples:

• Seracs
• Bock
• Ila

24 January 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Elevator Bath

Machines consists of four commissioned pieces recorded in various European cities over a span of three years.  Each piece is devoted to a specific type of machinery, though López often utilizes recordings taken from more than one site.  For example, “Fabrikas” is composed entirely of factory sounds recorded in Latvia, but the source material covers a chocolate factory, a beer factory, a vintage bicycle workshop, and a speaker workshop.  Notably, López does not conspicuously treat the raw recordings in any way, so everything sounds like exactly what it is and there is no effort to add any “musical” elements at all.  As such, the song titles are very literal and accurate: “Clocks” is essentially 32 minutes of ticking clocks and nothing else.  That is not an inherently attractive premise for a piece of music, but Francisco’s deft layering of field recordings transforms it into something quite hypnotic.

Aside from López’s singular adherence to thematic and acousmatic purity, the most striking aspect of these recordings is their length.  Machines clocks in at 2 ½ hours, which presents quite an endurance test for listeners.    I attempted to make it through the entire thing a couple of times on my headphones, but never made it further than 20 minutes—it is simply too subtle and slowly evolving to hold my direct, undivided attention for the enormous amount of time required.  However, when I have had this album on while doing something else, I have frequently found myself utterly engrossed and struck by the numerous moments in which the rumbling and humming coheres into something strangely beautiful.  Of course, this is music as art, not music as entertainment, so listenability was presumably not a motivating factor in the assembling and sequencing of this release.  Instead, Machines is a document that captures one of the world’s premier sound artists at the top of his game.  The intricate webs of waxing and waning loops and subtle convergences of tempo are nothing short of ingenious.

Essentially, Machines is a fascinating high-wire act and a significant music event.  There are very few musicians that I am aware of that could turn 45 minutes of field recordings of German elevators into something compelling and worthwhile (and probably none that would actually exert the effort to do so).   While many of the environments sampled lend themselves to harsh sounds and heavy, crunching rhythms, there is ultimately very little dissonance in Francisco’s finished sound collages.  The bulk of the material collected here is quite surprisingly warm and enveloping, particularly the hissing and humming laboratory and factory pieces that make up the second disc.  Machines is certainly a stunning creative and technical achievement, but it also works quite effectively as an epic mechanized lullaby. 

Samples:

• Labs
• Fahrstühle
• Fabrikas

24 January 2010

Albums and Singles

Read more …

24 January 2010

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Albums and Singles

Drag City

When "Just Do It!" begins I'm immediately reminded of Neil Young, but not because Scout is gravitating towards her folk influences these days. Her attitude and sound is too introspective for punk rock, too heavy for folk, and too atmospheric for grunge, but she undeniably draws from all of these influences and has a fondness, like Young, for fluctuating between all of them, sometimes in the same song. The album begins with a gnarly and fuzzed-out melodic hook, but it quickly goes quiet as Niblett sings "And the voices said just do it / And I think I will" in a cocky, almost angry snarl. What exactly she intends to do is left a little ambiguous, but I get the sense it is meant as a threat, perhaps to herself. With her trademarked big drum sound and loud-quiet dynamic in hand, Scout embarks on a quest to set herself on fire in a ritual act of purification. But, in accomplishing this end she does almost nothing to her sound that we haven't already heard. In fact, portions of The Calcination are a little too familiar. So, let me get this out of the way right away: Scout's walking over a lot of the same ground she covered on 2007's This Fool Can Die Now. She's toying with her approach a little bit and bringing back elements from Kidnapped by Neptune and I Am, but all three of those records have so much in common that there's little point in debating the minituae that distinguishes them stylistically. Scout's stubborn determination to stay basically the same is a little frustrating, but as other writers have pointed out she sounds so good that changing anything might be equally frustrating, maybe even detrimental.

That said, The Calcination is much darker than This Fool Can Die Now and a little more satisfying for it. It is easily her most foreboding record. If Scout hasn't changed her sound much, she's made up for it a little by letting her teeth show more than usual. There's no semi-sweet or awkward duets and no video of Scout singing into a hair brush or prancing about on the beach with a skeleton-clad Will Oldham. Instead, Scout delivers a cover lit by the welding torch she is holding, a booklet filled photographs of stones, and lyrics like "Welcome to my self-made sweat box / this is where I take it all off / Sweat / I've got to sweat it out / Cook / I'll cook those monsters out / Because I ain't getting out of here / until my, until my soul appears." There are no playful or cute interludes anywhere on the record, so there's none of the relief that songs like "Dinosaur Egg" or "Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death" provided. Distilled or calcinated or completely stripped down, Scout is more aggressive and serious and probably a little more troubled, too. Her guitars loom and stab where they once danced and rocked out and her drums snap and pound where they were sometimes played like a toy. Whatever has happened to Scout since we last heard from her, it has added a substantial amount of menace to her words and playing. She's become more concise and that's made her more aggressive and fearsome.

The album ends with "Meet and Greet," which sounds like it could be the soundtrack to a showdown in some anachronistic western. A dissonant, casually played melody and some light, atmospheric percussion make up most of the song, together sounding like a thunderstorm on the horizon. Scout sings in a challenging voice throughout it, intimating that some kind of resolution might be on the horizon, too. But, whatever she means when she sings "Jupiter, father of gods, I summon you to me / When are you gonna learn to play that thing?" it sounds more like a provocation than an invitation or a prayer. Scout doesn't ultimatey provide a resolution for all the tension she generates on The Calcination. All we get at the end of "Meet and Greet" is a volcanic splash of distorted guitar and a rumbling, sustained tone. While she has always written heavy, honest, and intimidating music, Scout has never sounded as bleak and frightful as she does here. 

samples:

• I.B.D.
• Cherry Cheek Bomb
• Ripe with Life

23 January 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Artist: Merzbow
Title: Graft
Catalogue No: CSR129LP
Barcode: 8 2356649002 9
Format: LP on lime green vinyl in 'bootleg' style sleeve / with bonus 7"
Genre: Japanese Noise
Shipping: 22nd February

Pre-Order LP & 7"


MERZBOW returns to COLD SPRING in blistering form - a sizzling new album length VINYL only limited edition (lime green, ltd x 400 copies) presented in an old-school 'bootleg' style cover and sealed with a sticker. LP regular edition is available only through Cargo Distribution

The special extra limited edition version of the LP comes with bonus 7" (ltd x 150 copies) of exclusive tracks and is only available from COLD SPRING MAIL ORDER. This title will be deleted upon selling out, and the tracks are never to be issued on CD! A one time opportunity to own a true MERZBOW collectors piece! ACT FAST! LP with LTD 7" is available ONLY through Cold Spring Mailorder

Tracks: A1. graft#1 | B1. graft#2

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