Reviews

15 June 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Brainwashed HAND001: Windy & Carl "Dedications to Flea" CD
Windy & Carl return after a four year break from their last album,
Consciousness with Dedications to Flea, a full-length release of two long
tracks, dedicated to their dearly departed dog, Flea. This is the first
in the Brainwashed Handmade series and comes in a letterpress edition,
silver printing on black paper, limited to 500 copies. Windy & Carl are
planning to release their next proper full-length album through Kranky in
the autumn, coinciding with tour dates and festival appearances in Europe.
Expected ship date: June 11.
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15 June 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

BRAIN009: Meat Beat Manifesto, "Lovefingers"/"Radio Free Republic"
Brainwashed is excited to release this gem from Meat Beat Manifesto
featuring two exclusive tracks. Lovefingers is a Silver Apples cover and
was recorded in 1996 while Radio Free Republic is a brand new unreleased
song. 18 special editions were available to the public via pre-orders on
Brainwashed.com and sold out in less than 24 hours - so this single will
go FAST. Meat Beat Manifesto is about to embark on the first tour in
seven years, the newest full-length album, 'At the Center' is to be
released on Thirsty Ear on May 24th. Jack Dangers and Meat Beat Manifesto
should need no introduction, as Meat Beat Manifesto albums have been
released worldwide on labels Play It Again Sam, Nothing/Interscope,
WaxTrax!, and Important Records while Jack Dangers has provided
groundbreaking remixes for artists like Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Coil,
Nine Inch Nails, Laika, Public Enemy, and many, many, many others. Drums
of Death, a collaboration with DJ Spooky and Dave Lombardo (Slayer), along
with Chuck D and other MCs is out now through Thirsty Ear.
"Lovefingers"/"Radio Free Republic" is a thick 75g vinyl in a stiff sleeve
and comes on grey vinyl.

Supplies are limited.

15 June 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Brainwashed began on April 16, 1996 as a repository of information on
various bands with little in common. In 1998 it was decided to start
giving something back to the fans and supporters as the entire Brainwashed
staff are big music fans to begin with, so a 7" single was made, then
another, and another. Records are fun, collectible, come in colors, and
are nice to frame. I, Jon Whitney, am growing increasingly jaded towards
CDs. They're becoming disposable, mass manufacturable, easily obtainable,
and pretty much anybody can make a CD and send it to you (ask me some time
to see the pile of stuff that comes in daily to review). The upside is
the portability and scratchless sound and it's much quicker to import them
into your iWhatever. So, we're offering a free CD-R compilation with no
packaging, no printing, no information anywhere. The CD-R will contain
the music from BRAIN001, BRAIN002, BRAIN003, BRAIN005, BRAIN006, and
BRAIN007.

The only way to get it is by ordering the next round of 3 7" singles, all
due for release on Brainwashed's 9th birthday, April 16, 2005.

BRAIN005 - Sybarite, "Dolorous Echo"/"The Mast"
Two instrumental songs from Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Xian
Hawkins. As Sybarite, he's released full-length albums on labels like
Temporary Residence and 4AD and has had a number of singles and
compilation tracks from labels all over the world. It's upbeat, amazingly
well crafted and never wears out its welcome. www.brainwashed.com/sybarite
for more info on this painfully underlooked genius.

BRAIN006 - Jessica Bailiff live on VPRO radio, Amsterdam
Four songs from Jessica including "Shadow," only released on the Brain in
the Wire compilation (I'm beginning to think this really is my song or
something!), the haunting "Mary" from her self-titled third release on
Kranky, "Beautiful Soul," which dates back to her 1998 debut on Kranky,
Even in Silence, and an exclusive song, "Come and Close My Eyes," a Flying
Saucer Attack cover. All recordings are obviously exclusive. Jessica
arrived at Kranky by way of Low, having her first two albums produced by
Alan Sparhawk at 20 Below in Minneapolis. She has gone on to record more
solo singles and albums and has appeared on record with bands Rivulets,
Saturday Looks Good to Me, Flashpapr, and Red Morning Chorus, and makes up
part of the core nucleus of bands Clear Horizon, Northern Song Dynasty,
and Eau Claire. www.brainwashed.com/jb for more images and sounds from
her.

BRAIN007 - Aranos, "No Religion"/"Spitting Revivalist Dreams of
Everlasting Poison"
Most people will recognize his name from appearing on albums by Nurse With
Wound, but this Czech-born Bohemian Irish resident has a musical blood
that runs deep into the heart of gypsy folk, jazz, and rock music. "No
Religion" is most certainly a statement a statement of Aranos' own
personal dismay with violence and abhorrent behavior conducted in the name
of religion while "Spitting Revivalist Dreams" is perhaps one of the most
excrutiating noise tracks I have ever witnessed. This is the first of a
number of 7" singles to be released by Aranos this year, and expect to see
him live in Europe earlier this year with a North American string of dates
being worked out for later in the year. He's a fantastic musician and a
charismatic performer. Videos and sounds and bio are available at
www.brainwashed.com/aranos.

All 7" singles are retailing for $6.00 USD (which is an astoundingly cheap
4.61 Euros or 3.21 Pound Sterling!) and there will only be 500 copies
pressed. The CD-R will once again only be issued to people who order all
three. Additionally, a 7" of BRAIN003 will be tossed in (since most
people missed it first time around) while supplies last.

Sound samples and the beautiful cover images (thanks to Jim Siegel and
once again Ben Palmer) are available at www.brainwashed.com/recordings.
Orders can be made at the Brainwashed commerce site -
www.brainwashed.com/commerce.html.

An email list is now set up for future releases and event information.
Future 7" singles have been discussed (no official concrete news or plans
yet) for Nurse With Wound, The One Ensemble of Daniel Padden,
Thighpaulsandra, Volcano the Bear, Little Annie w/Antony, and Mimir.
There is no guarantee on any of these coming out and we'll keep news
posted online if there is any to report. Due to finances, future 7"
singles will also be limited. Sign up for the brainwashed announcement
list at: http://www.hollyfeld.org/mailman/listinfo/brainwashed

15 June 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

For immediate release:

The London-based instrumental trio, Fridge is about to release their
fourth full-length album, "Happiness", due in September. "Happiness" will
be their first US album and will be available through Text in the UK and
Domino throughout Europe.

The Baltimore, MD-based record label Temporary Residence and the
internet web site Brainwashed.com have teamed up to co-release the album
and bring the band for their very first North American Tour. Dates are
currently being confirmed for October, including a handful of dates
opening up for Low.

Fridge have two albums out on Output in the UK, "Ceefax" and "Semaphore"
as well as a double-length collection of singles titled "Sevens and
Twelves". Their last album, "Eph" was released on Go Beat! in the UK.
Kieran Hebden of the group also has released a couple albums and various
singles as Four Tet.

For more information and some sound samples, please see
www.brainwashed.com/fridge or www.temporaryresidence.com

Tour dates will be posted on line when they're confirmed.

15 June 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

For their second album on Secret Eye, this Finnish group salvages gear from some electronic junkyard to make these gurgling basement recordings. Perhaps not, but that’s what the fidelity of this album suggests. It’s not such a bad thing, however, because the recording quality brings a murky depth to the album resulting in an underwater feeling, caressing the music and allowing it so swim.

Secret Eye

There are a lot of great, weird things going on here, and the group rarely comes up for air. “Loylyvesi,” for instance, features what could be a deep-voiced animal learning human language for the first time over a barrage of plumbing transformed into tribal rhythm. This one-sided speech eventually becomes a conversation when another beast joins in, which by its dark whisperings has the trappings of a trickster. Eventually something like the beeping of an emergency vehicle shows up in the background.

Crowd chatter starts “Vissyvesi,” which here is divided into two tracks and was recorded live in Dublin with guest Tara Burke. Hard to define low frequency movements, liquid electronics, and guitar squeals establish the scene. Burke, whose Fursaxa material is fairly distinctive, isn’t immediately recognizable, although I suspect she’s one of the banshees wailing during the latter half of the song, but I could be wrong. A sinister riff sneaks into the set before depth charges from the guitar implore the drums to take up a beat.A dime store rhythm begins the second half of “Vissyvesi.” Soon come electronics that could be air escaping the lungs of a drowning victim. After a cartoonish intro, a dementedly childish voice enters the mix. Burke’s voice finally appears thereafter, lending the track a meditative quality on which the album ends.

Although there are only three songs, there are so many changes within the songs themselves that the album never gets static or boring. If anything, the album’s over far too quickly. Having recently made their first U.S. appearance at Terrastock, hopefully I won’t have to wait too long to witness their wonderful muck in person.

samples:

15 June 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Release Date: September 2006

Track Listing:

A1 - You're so lovely
A2 - People tell me
B1 - Ladies get on the flo'

Unlockedgroove is proud to present their third release and the first
in their SOLID series, branching out from their minimal techno core
into funky new realms. Dancing days are here again.

The Dan Bensons Project began as a snotty punk collaboration between the Dan Paluska (aka six million dollar dan) and the Ben Recht (aka localfields), but, after Dan was fatefully dissed by a fine lady at the club, the trajectory was changed forever. With just a beer light to guide him, Dan sketched out the A1 track You're So Lovely at 3 in the morning. Wanting to live vicariously through Dan's womanizing, Ben grabbed hold of his guitar and the mixing console, and the rest... is history. People Tell Me, the A2 track presents slap bass and live drums in lockstep with synth stabs and pounding techno percussion. Finally, the B-side Ladies get on the flo is a falsetto call to arms, demanding you shake your god given ass.

Dan and Ben are busy men. Never able to refuse a public appearance, Dan has hosted a number of radio shows, countless slamming parties, and some of the most influential weeklies in Boston electronic music. He is a prolific star of the electronic arts scene co-curating the Collision event series and hacking together art that falls somewhere under the broad 'new media' category. Notably, his work was featured as the cover art of album "Less Than Human" from The Juan Maclean on DFA records. And for the cable heads, his patented arm bash has starred in a couple reality television shows.

When Ben is not breaking shit in Dan's basement, he can be found throwing down at parties with Mike Uzzi, droning out with the Fun Years, or rocking it solo as Localfields. Ben has released two singles on Zero G Sounds and has upcoming releases on Unlockedgroove, Beat Research and Barge Recordings. He has toured extensively throughout the US and Europe and his Sound Art has been exhibited in the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, the Cooper Hewitt Museum, and the ARS Electronica Center.

You can buy online from Forced Exposure.

Also available at Mass Muzik in Boston.

UG003 Front Label

14 June 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

A founding member of the late Argentinian trio Reynols, Courtis is no stranger to extreme media. Past works like symphonies for blank tapes, chickens, quartets for whistling kettles, and one piece called Reynols Plays The Eiffel Tower make a record of no-input feedback sound rather tame. And it is, in the best way.

Sedimental

Inspired by ancient rock structures, presumed tombs like stone hallways, Antiguos Dólmenes del Paleolítico is not a composition of pummeling, monolithic noise but a quiet work of blank insistencies, as if Courtis is looking for essential structures when he looks at these rocks, not for history, or calm, or any kind of presence. The piece comes divided into four distinct parts: not monotonous but planar in their construction; never entering the granular, overblown textures susceptible in feedback play or the painstaking prickly landscapes of someone like fellow-no-inputer Toshimaru Nakamura. Courtis’ method is more in the spirit of drone, a twining of cyclical, throb-like modulations on patient, studious trajectory; even at their most shrill (please expect them to get as shrill as they do subterranean), their focus is meditative, a contemplation of spaces, like distant bells echoing across water, signals of the void.

Courtis manages to mingle tones in a dynamic and repetitive way, never overloading or resorting to womb-y crescendos that would compromise such delicate, static advance. The tense, but comfortably insistent higher frequencies (especially in Parts II and IIII) remind of later works by Morton Feldman where shrill woodwinds chiming the same note at regular interval affect a dual monotony by becoming both the piercing pacemaker and grateful grounding to a super-long shallow composition. The third of Antiguos’ four parts abandons the drone-y construction of twining pure tones dominating the other parts, taking instead a reverb-heavy chorus of tiny, chirping whines, miniature arabesques of sculpted feedback that sound remarkably like birds, glistening and twinkling as the glints and glyphs from a dolmen-side might.

Knowledge of the ‘pure feedback’ artifice behind music like this becomes a necessary part of the listening process; it’s something that, to me, always feels cheeky and somewhat subversive, certainly a thread running through Courtis’ time in Reynols. Listening to Antiguos, though, I think less about the nature of the sounds or the obsessive nature of this kind of composition (as I might listening to something by Nakamura, or a sine wave piece). Courtis makes it easy to exist alongside these pieces without too much expenditure towards projected form or content. It’s easier to slowly surge along, to enjoy the room I’m in, to think of how genuinely calming and softly electric a throb can feel, or how living out near some really big rock piles would feel too.

samples:

14 June 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This is an Ache label release of spirited electronic experimentation by eleven different artists, all reworking a sample of sound originally created using only a bicycle. Track #12 is that source material, which you are free to use to create your own piece. While some contributors emphasise rhythm, others favor smoother propulsion. Everyone avoids the temptation to hit-and-run with unnecessary power or weight, in favor of a lighter touch well-suited to this magnificent subject.

Ache

All but the best compilations can be patchy, naturally enough. Equally, a brilliant conceptual idea may turn out sounding forced and limited in execution. Thankfully, initial fears that Project Bicycle would be filed under Concept Sublime: Music Unlistenable are dispelled. This recording is jammed full of seductive contrast, yet also has a satisfying flow.

The Aelters track "Roule Brouille" evokes a pleasing ride through a frenetic and sunny marketplace. Jab Mica Och El produces something juddering and melting that's not too far from Kid Koala, while Sun OK Papi K.O.'s simultaneously controlled yet deranged gear and pedal-spinning and horn-squeaking left me wanting more. The results can stand alone, but some of the extra layers of process are amusing: for his contribution, Greg Davis ran the sample through a hand-held tape recorder as he rode around on a bike.

DJ Elephant Power comes up trumps with "Bikebou" perhaps the most evolving and involving work, starting every bit as pleasingly scratchy and repetitive as a section of Xerophonics' Copying Machine Music, before releasing warmth and a climactic softness. Romanhead achieves a slightly brooding and even-paced sound, as does Wobbly, with the clang and pulse of 'Flee You' appearing to take place either underwater or in deep space.

Anyone who enjoyed hearing The Conet Project may find pleasure in the brief, fractured "Les Klaxons de Madame Dupont" by Uske Niko. On "Breaking Away" Jason Forrest manages a fairly subtle cinematic reference and appears to be sprinting into breathless Tour de France mode, only to come an almighty handlebar-flipping-chin-grazing cropper by not sticking to the brief, and, even worse, sampling Queen with predictable and disappointing results.

As mentioned, this music works well even without the listener knowing the concept. I suppose knowledge of the international lineup and accompanying essay on oil, global warming and general planet-friendliness may lead to certain conclusions, but I believe it mattered less to me than how the disc actually sounds. It may be obvious to suggest that this might make good listening for a bike ride, but I wouldn't recommend a rider missing the sounds to be heard out and about in the world. Anyway, watch for potholes and wear something bright.

samples:

DJ Elephant Power - Bikebou
Wobbly - Flee You
Sun Ok Papi K.O. - Pizza Boy's Bike

14 June 2006

John Kealy

Albums and Singles

From the Tindersticks front man’s forthcoming album come two songs which are more like his band than the collection of songs he showcased previously. Both are that kind of epic melancholy orchestral swing that Tindersticks do so well.

Beggars Banquet

“That Leaving Feeling” is a classic Staples plus sultry female singer duets (in this case with Lhasa de Sela) that is very reminiscent of “Travelling Light” and “Buried Bones” from the Tindersticks back catalogue. It doesn’t quite reach the power of these songs but it is still a fine addition to Staples’ repertoire. “There is a Path” also sounds familiar. Staples must have gotten fed up trying to find new styles of music to sing to and gone back to something more comfortable. Staples’ previous solo work, although good, was a break from this cosy style which suits his velvet voice perfectly, but these two songs sound much like what I’ve been waiting for since 2003 (a new Tindersticks record).

13 June 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This New Zealand group goes underground to summon some nefarious entity to the earthly plane, torment it a little bit for fun, and then banish it back to the void from which it came. None of that is true, of course, but it’s the sort of vivid imagery this strange, dense recording produces.

Digitalis Industries

What is true, however, is that the group used battery-powered generators to record this material outdoors. The locations sound suitably subterranean for work so pleasantly claustrophobic. The album is one ever-shifting, continuous flow that’s divided into six track designations that are almost more reference points than anything else. The markers aren’t arbitrary and delineate very definite change, yet they aren’t completely necessary since this is an album best suited to listening in its entirety in a single sitting.

The first track begins with an ethereal drone that sounds like the humming of alien beings while raspy machinery whirs and clanks in the background, punctuated by light harmonic shimmers. Underneath the drones on the next track are clattering bottles or pieces of metal and unearthly groans. It’s not clear exactly what’s happening, but it hints at something fairly sinister. Someone in the group plucks an instrument on the fourth track and the group builds their clanging into a rhythm as their ritual gains momentum. Whatever prey they have in their sights surfaces dramatically on track five, emitting grotesque growls in whatever passes for language in its native realm. A burst of static erupts in track six, as if their enemy’s prowess has been underestimated, but cooler heads prevail as the band manages to get rid of the entity for good.

Make no mistake, this is no Lovecraftian homage, but rather one of the most fully-realized, unique recordings I’ve had the pleasure of coming across in a long time, making me eager to hear what they do next.

samples: