07 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

 

Crunchy, harsh, trance, rhythmic, noise, acidic, violent and unavoidable are all words that have been used to describe the music of Terrorfakt. The NYC based artist has been grafting infectious and innovative power noise trance since 2001. their corrosive music has re-invented and infused the noise and trance genres of electronic music with fresh ideas and influences. Their second album on Metropolis, Teethgrinder, is a myriad of torment, anger, confusion, hatred and pain. Agressive is too mild of a word to describe the pummeling beats, explosive rhythms, critical state melodies and self-destructive tempo. With the most raging album you'll hear this year, Terrorfakt has reached unprecedented levels with the seething Teethgrinder.

 

Teethgrinder tracklisting:

01. Welcome To Hell   RA MP3
02. Headcase
03. The Unknown
04. Damage
05. Skullfucker
06. The Fine Art Of Killing Yourself   RA MP3
07. Empire
08. Rhythm & Hate
09. Stormbreaker
10. M15
11. Crown Of Thorns
12. Do Unto Others
13. Sie Bringen Mich Um
14. Animal
15. We Gave Till We Bled
16. Welcome To Hell (Reshanked by Manufactura)
17. The Fine Art Of Killing Yourself (Refined by Tonikom)

FALL TOUR w/ TONIKOM
09.07.06 - Garfield Werks - Pittsburgh, PA
09.08.06 - Empire @ Whitehawk Cafe - Penn Hills, PA - DJ DATE
09.09.06 - The Phantasy - Lakewood, OH
09.11.06 - Jakes - Bloomington, IN
09.12.06 - Smalls - Hamtramck (Detroit), MI
09.13.06 - The Inferno - Madison, WI
09.14.06 - Star Central - Minneapolis, MN - CANCELLED
09.15.06 - Spot 6 - Chicago, IL (with Caustic)
09.17.06 - Bluebird Theater- Denver, CO
09.20.06 - Sabalas Mt. Tabor - Portland, OR
09.21.06 - The Vogue - Seattle, Wa
09.24.06 - The DNA Lounge - San Fransisco, CA
09.27.06 - Infirmary - Garden Grove, CA
09.29.06 - The Krave Lounge - Las Vegas, NV
09.30.06 - Sadisco @ Mardi Gras - Scottsdale, AZ
10.01.06 - House Of Rock N Roll - El Paso, TX
10.04.06 - The Conservatory - OK City, OK
10.05.06 - Darkside Lounge - Dallas, TX
10.06.06 - Sanctuary - San Antonio, TX
10.07.06 - Havok - Houston, Tx
10.10.06 - Club Red - Gainesville, FL
10.12.06 - Young Avenue Deli - Memphis, TN
10.13.06 - Main Street Lounge - Louisville, KY
10.14.06 - Outback Lodge - Charlottesville, Va
10.18.06 - Asylum, Washington D.C.
10.19.06 - Alchemy, Washington D.C. - DJ DATE ONLY
10.28.06 - Valentines - Albany, NY

 Terrorfakt  | Tonikom | Metropolis Records

Read More

06 September 2006

Albums and Singles

"Dogwood Rust" activates the fuzzed-out, manipulated, rock-crushing side of this five piece from the get-go and lambasts the speakers with the same kind of punishment they've made a name for themselves on. Comet on Fire have undoubtedly changed, though, adding a melodic, tuneful side to their chaotic free-form rock.

Read more …

06 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

The second album from Brooklyn’s instrumental electrodisco darlings Ratatat is a remarkably flat-footed affair. Operating under the guise of familiarity, the group manages to leave almost no distinctive imprint on this somewhat boring album.

XL

Although it initially comes across as interesting if not exciting, closer inspection reveals how bland this album actually is. The disc starts off promisingly enough with "Montanita," yet the song says all it has to say in the first minute and doesn’t really go anywhere. "Lex" has a great opening, but other than embellishing the main riff in a few different ways, it does little else of note and begs for vocals. Vocals and decent lyrics might be the missing ingredient here, especially if the words inspired the group to expand their songwriting. Instead, something like "Kennedy" comes across as an instrumental remix of some other, better song.

Most of these tracks have one good idea that the group tries to dress up ad nauseam, but to tedious effect. "Loud Pipes" is a good example of this, then again so is almost any other song on the album. On the other hand, I’m a sucker for "Wildcat" if only for the sampled wildcat growl that shows up throughout the song. The music itself is somewhat monotonous electric boogie dance floor fare, but something about that wildcat makes me smile and keeps me listening.

Maybe if I’d first heard this album in a more festive context, I might have liked it more. However, its weaknesses far outweigh its strengths and it’s much too dull, especially when I’d rather be dancing. This could have been a great party album, but instead it comes across as just another retread of things that were done better the first time around.

samples:

• Lex
• Wildcat
• Kennedy

 

Read More

06 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"Dogwood Rust" activates the fuzzed-out, manipulated, rock-crushing side of this five piece from the get-go and lambasts the speakers with the same kind of punishment they've made a name for themselves on. Comet on Fire have undoubtedly changed, though, adding a melodic, tuneful side to their chaotic free-form rock.

 

Sub Pop

Blue Cathedral had plenty on it to offer in the way of southern comforts and with a name like "Whiskey River" on that album it would be impossible not to think a little of the country's lower region had touched this band's ears. Comets on Fire weren't finished there, though, and everything on Avatar points to the rowdy and relaxed land below the Mason-Dixon. "Dogwood Rust" rumbles and soars in a haze of cymbals and walking bass lines, guitars springing over that rhythm with a strut and maybe some stumbling: it's a righteous mix of all things rock 'n' roll.

There's a purity in its sound that can't help but illicit all the silliest guitar solo faces in the world. With the rhythm section holding everything down nice and tight, everyone else in the band has the chance to show their stuff, literally exploding with bits of melody and feedback. I'm not sure I could handle this much rock if this pace were continued throughout the album and the band shows their increased song-writing ability by keeping that mania present, but slowing things down a little, focusing their noise enraptured energy into smaller spaces and slower cadences.

After the rough and tumble "Dogwood Rust" comes to a halt, the band turns everything down without damaging their sound, without removing themselves from that power that made them so unavoidable in the first place. "Jaybird" is a sweetly melodic jam that meanders about as though a stroll in the country were its only natural comparison. Ethan Miller's vocals seem to be simultaneously yelled and whispered, carried by the incessant circularity of the again excellent rhythm section. The whole band seems to loosen up, but they continue to play with that same insistence, that same forward driving motion that makes all of their songs rock by necessity. Avatar is riddled with songs like this. "Lucifer's Memory" and "Sour Smoke" both feel propelled by the fiery hand of a rock 'n' roll Jesus, but their jazz-influenced arrangements bring all the sound to a smokey crawl. Some of these songs could easily be dances as orchestrated in hell by the spirits of a demented voodoo tribe or they could be smoked-out ritual music for people out to have a good time. I guess it doesn't matter, this stuff sounds fantastic.

There's plenty of freaked out, fuzzy bliss on Avatar, too. "The Swallow's Eye" starts slow and then begins to take off, slowly building the sort of steam that can only end in disaster; the result is the concussive, million-mile-per-hour thrash fest, "Holy Teeth." It's as though the band couldn't keep a lid on their excitement and they just had to give themselves the opportunity to sacrifice their instruments and blow their amps to dust.

This album holds together well and stands out in my mind as one of the best things released this year for a lot of reasons, but the main one is that Comets on Fire have their own voice and no matter how much they borrow from the past or from other, well-known genres, that voice stays loud and clear. On top of that, they've continued to grow as songwriters; their obsession with sound and power has evolved. They've learned how to handle that aspect of their music incredibly well while juggling the tasks of writing great songs with memorable melodies and keeping their approach fresh the entire time.

samples:

• Dogwood Rust
• The Swallow's Eye
• Sour Smoke

Read More

05 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Recently I was lying on a very comfortable couch in a quiet house. For a couple of hours I was mostly asleep or in a semi-conscious dreamstate. Later I discovered that in a room nearby was a cat who had infrequently remembered that it wanted to get out and engaged in brief episodes of door-rattling. Listening to this record is very like that experience: peaceful, hypnotic, slightly disturbing, repetitive, flawed, transporting.

 

Unguent

The three untitled pieces on Guitar Realtime Processing offer a sense of mesmeric stilless and vague movement. As with Eno's Oblique Strategies to some extent, and his ambient systems in particular, more might be gained by discarding the usual preconception of how to proceed; by not actively listening. This is sound as shifting and surrounding as fog, yet with an odd emotional impact. In terms of direction or coaxing, there's little to follow. Something approaching constant change and insubstantial permanence emerges. It is the audio equivalent of a rarely visited brook, or (as in Murakami's South Of The Border, West Of The Sun) of "rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one there to see it."

Dinkins, a former resident of Shreveport, also records as Unguent. The history of music in Shreveport gives no clues to the sound of this record, however. Leadbelly favored the twelve-string, and was from Shreveport and although new evidence suggest they might be from Slidell, The Residents still claim Shreveport as their site of origin, before—like Dinkins—a relocation to California. On a map of sound, the location of Guitar Realtime Processing is closer to the least tuneful aspects of Budd & Partridge's Through The Hill. While these sketches lack the austere depth of such contemplative works as Nils Okland's Bris, it's similarly a record in which to get lost, and American Routes be damned.

samples:

• 1  
• 2
• 3

Read More

05 September 2006

Albums and Singles

Two of the more difficult to find albums from the Coil back catalogue have been reissued with new mixes and material bundled on. While most reissues don’t need a new review, considering these albums have been expanded and remixed, a reappraisal is in order. This is especially true of Black Antlers which was essentially only a demo disc in its original incarnation.

Read more …

05 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

The double album solo debut from Matthew Friedberger of The Fiery Furnaces is a mixed bag that’s often exasperating. While there are great songs buried within both albums, it takes a bit of digging to find them.

859

Winter Women’s opener, "Under the Hood at Paradise Garage," is a bit of a head scratcher. Stuttering and clunky, it’s heavy on lo-fi beats and Friedberger isn’t afraid to throw in some cheap effects. The track isn’t terribly catchy, but its construction is intriguing. Many of the songs that follow, however, lack the same quirky charm and stray dangerously into easy listening territory with a flute dogging nearly every track. Although "P.S. 213 Mini-School" is decent, the album really picks up with the last five songs, which are actually pretty good, throwing in weird arrangements and odd noises for good measure. Of these, I enjoyed "I Love You Cedric" the most because of its strange rhythm and the chiming guitar.

Holy Ghost Language School is designed to be the more experimental of the two albums. "Seventh Loop Highway" starts the album as a Beefheartian stomp but halfway through drops the guitar in favor of piano and follows a completely different muse to its completion. There are plenty of experiments to be found elsewhere on this disc, but many of them simply aren’t developed enough to warrant multiple listens. As enjoyable as the second half of the title track is, without the first half it would have been even better. Some of the songs, like "The Cross and the Switchblade," are just plain boring. "Do You Like Blondes?" engages with the strange tone of its bass and Friedberger’s spoken word accompaniment, but "Topeka and San Antonio" gets annoying quickly. After a while this disc becomes a morass of recurring motifs and approaches that tires more than it entertains.

There are enough gems between the two discs for one fantastic album, but as a double album it’s a bit of a stretch.

samples:

• I Love You Cedric
• Seventh Loop Highway
• Do You Like Blondes?

 

Read More

05 September 2006

Lucas Schleicher

Albums and Singles

Hive Mind's Greh Holger either wanted this release to spawn spells of deafness or his particular taste for extreme noise is of the most outrageous kind and he just couldn't help making it this loud. It's no secret that harsh noise isn't my cup of tea and this particular release exemplifies why.

 

Troniks/PACrec


Every now and then I like the sound of a chainsaw working its way through three square miles of steel, rock, and animal flesh, but far too often I'm left in awe of how senseless so many of those sounds are. Choking on Grave Soil inspired a Velvet Underground moment for me, a moment where I said to myself, "I think I could do this." I'm not interested in imitating the sound necessarily, but so much of this album seems completely and totally disorganized, as though the idea of arrangement was thrown to the wind and left for dead. This lack of arrangement kills the album for me, rendering any viciousness null and leaving the attack without any edge to speak of. To his credit, Holger has organized portions of these two long tracks into moments of relative chaos and relative stability, but all of it seems intentionally messy. Parts of this album just blend together as recordings of garbage disposal sound turned up to 11 and recorded by a contact mic.

There's no doubt in my mind that the sounds Holger squeezes out of his machines are black and nasty as they come, there being no better point of reference for the sounds employed than the action of choking that the album title suggests. I wish the feeling that this album was recorded in the same amount of time that it takes to play would leave me, but it seems as though a bunch of feedback and distortion was turned up to max levels and thrown together haphazardly with no care given to their running order. All the crunching, cracking, hissing, and rumbling in the world might make for one hell of a headache-inducing experience, but it isn't enough to make a great album. In fact, this seems less like an album and more like a collection of harsh sounds people might enjoy if they were angry enough. As moments of the second track really catch my ear, I can only hope that some portions from this disc will be excavated and used on a Hive Mind release, a project where I know Holger pays as much attention to his arrangements as he does to his choice of sound.

Read More

05 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Two of the more difficult to find albums from the Coil back catalogue have been reissued with new mixes and material bundled on. While most reissues don’t need a new review, considering these albums have been expanded and remixed, a reappraisal is in order. This is especially true of Black Antlers which was essentially only a demo disc in its original incarnation.

 

 

Threshold House

The Remote Viewer was first released as a CD-R in an edition of 500 (review here), the first disc is the exact same material as on the original release and my views mirror that of Mr. Carsten’s linked earlier in this sentence. The second disc (a 3” CD embedded in plastic to make it the same size as a regular CD, a ‘semi-substrate’ disc apparently) features two pieces created in 2006 using material from the original Remote Viewer sessions. These new pieces, predictably titled “Remote Viewing 4” and “Remote Viewing 5,” are more of the same hurdy gurdy and Breton bagpipe drones and beats that are on the original disc. There’s more emphasis on glitches and the beat on “Remote Viewing 4,” giving a more aggressive edge to the music. “Remote Viewing 5” removes most of the drone and goes the warped melody route. Both tracks are worthy additions to the album.

samples:

• Remote Viewing 4
• Remote Viewing 5

 

 

Black Antlers hasn’t been as elusive as The Remote Viewer but it is still one of those Coil limited editions that deserved a wider release. As the original version of this album was a collection of work in progress sketches (reviewed here), it is interesting to hear how Peter Christopherson and Danny Hyde have polished and updated the album. Some of the tracks have been cleaned up or, as in the case of “Wraiths and Strays,” completely replaced. This version of “Wraiths and Strays” is taken from a Paris show where Jhonn Balance was present and replaces the unBalanced Montreal version from the original version of the CD. I’ve always found the Montreal “Wraiths and Strays” fades into the background far too easily. However this Parisian incarnation of the song grabs the attention more with the hurdy gurdy and marimba adding far more depth to the piece. Not to mention Balance’s live vocals which sound desperately sad.

“Sex with Sun Ra (Part One – Saturnalia)” was quite rough sounding on the original album, an alarming amount of hiss permeating the mix. Nonetheless it was still the jewel of Black Antlers. I was expecting it to be cleaned up (a cleaner sounding version has been leaked online previously) but unfortunately the hiss is still there. In lighter news, the second part of “Sex with Sun Ra” has been included on the album. “Sex with Sun Ra (Part Two – Sigillaricia)” is quite different to what I expected which was a reprise of the song in a similar way to the different versions of “Teenage Lightning” on Love’s Secret Domain. It is more of a mutated remix with added Breton bagpipe. I like it but it doesn’t reach the same heights as the first part.

There is also a semi-substrate CD included that contains a couple of remixes. “Departed” is a dancier version of “Black Antlers” which isn’t doing much for me now but will probably grow on me. It lacks the claustrophobic sting of “Black Antlers.” “Things We Never Had,” takes elements from all over the Coil back catalogue (mainly using "Black Antlers" and "Sex with Sun Ra" as its base). It feels almost like a greatest hits compilation condensed into one track. It’s good but it makes me want to listen to all of the original songs instead.

Both Black Antlers and The Remote Viewer have been repackaged in attractive wallet sleeves, which are much nicer to hold than the home printed sleeves of the originals. These two albums have always warranted a better release (both in format and size of the edition) than they initially got so it is great to see these finally getting the circulation that they deserve. Granted I didn’t own a copy of The Remote Viewer beforehand but I certainly don’t feel cheated buying Black Antlers again.

samples:

• The Wraiths and Strays of Paris
• Sex with Sun Ra (Part Two - Sigillaricia)
• Departed

Read More

05 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

artist:  Boduf Songs
title:   Lion Devours The Sun
catalog #:  krank099
formats available:  CD
Release Date:  October 30, 2006

Content:
Mathew Sweet is an alchemist, having developed the powers to mysteriously transform a minimal palette of common musical elements into something extraordinary. While his work contains references to psychedelia and folk musics, it fits comfortably in neither category. His understated vocals are delivered not as declamation, but rather a muted invitation to listen to his tales of the failing human condition; a terrain of fallow fields, poisoned wells and doomed existence. All hail the messenger of truths.

Context:
Lion Devours The Sun is the first full length release from U.K. resident Mathew Sweet following his self-titled kranky debut EP released in the fall of 2005. It was recorded at home with a 4 track and a single microphone, using acoustic guitar and voice along with well placed touches of a cymbal-playing monkey, some bricks, an e-bowed autoharp, a homemade gramophone, and daggers. The title derives from alchemical imagery, the sun representing consciousness and the lion symbolizing emotion. Some of these songs contain actual invocations of demonic forces. Not really. Mathew states that "this is not folk music", and that someone told him that they think the first record "sounds humble and withdrawn and the new one sounds righteous and bitter". He agrees. The debut Boduf Songs release garnered high praise from all reviewers. He has performed limited live shows in the U.K. and Europe, and recently recorded a live session for the legendary VPRO in Amsterdam.

Quotes:
"Sweet is at once engaged and detached from the outside world, his evocative observations surreal, literate, and fatalistic..." Grooves

"Quiet revelations from an acoustic guitar, gentle male voice very nearly whispering, and the harmonic convergence of cymbals, violin bow, toy piano and manipulated field recordings." Dream Magazine

"Stark and dark psychedelia exquisitely woven by one M. Sweet. What spirits are invoked I don't know, but I imagine they are as riveted as I am to these haunted musings." Foxy Digitalis

"Picturesque and pastoral, using little more than his voice and guitar to create a vivid picture of the world around him. Only Sweet sees a world populated by very dark happenings and very dreadful ideas, all swirling, massing and waiting to descend on the world." Brainwashed

Track Listing:
1. Lord of the Flies  2. Two Across the Mouth  3. That Angel was Pretty Lame  4. Great Wolf of No Tracks  5. Green Lion Devours the Sun, Blood Descends to Earth  6. 27th Raven's Head (Darkness Showing Through the Head of the Raven)  7. Please Ache for Redemptive  8. Fall of Cherry Blossom in Long Shadows of Twilight  9. Bell for Harness


Read More