We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
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ABRA 001LP Stephen Thrower Trouser Bar ABSTRACT RAVEN (UK) LP
release date: 4/6/2018
Side one features the pounding disco soundtrack to Trouser Bar (2016), composed, recorded and produced by musician and writer Stephen Thrower. The film was directed by gay porn legend Kristen Bjorn, produced by esteemed author and screenwriter David McGillivray, and written by 'A Gentleman'. Side two features Thrower's music commissioned by the BFI for two silent films by Peter De Rome: Encounter (1971) and The Fire Island Kids (1971). In contrast to the disco fever of Side one, these tracks reside upon the stranger shores of Thrower's work with Cyclobe and UnicaZürn. Thrower first gained attention in the 1980s, as a member of Coil. He formed Cyclobe in 1998 with his long-term partner Ossian Brown and also works with David Knight as UnicaZürn.
"Thrower scores a pulsating and hypnotic disco suite, comprised of shifting moods that span an epic 20 minutes -- imagine the more inspired moments in the music of Bobby O, Cerrone or Patrick Cowley. To accompany, Thrower has programmed new commissions for two silent films by the 'grandfather of gay porn', Peter De Rome. These tracks, in contrast to the A-side, share the same haunting and experimental tropes as his work in Cyclobe and Coil. Essential." --Jonathan Burnip, DJ Mag
Track Listing: 01. Trouser Bar Suite 02. Fire Island Kids Pt.1 03. Encounter 04. Fire Island Kids Pt.2
- Side one features the pounding disco soundtrack to Trouser Bar (2016), composed, recorded and produced by musician and writer Stephen Thrower. - Side two features Thrower's music commissioned by the BFI for two silent films by Peter De Rome: Encounter (1971) and The Fire Island Kids (1971). - Thrower first gained attention in the 1980s, as a member of Coil. He is also a part of Cyclobe and UnicaZürn.
Thoughts of a Dot as it Travels a Surface is the title of an album derived from a series of wall drawings begun in 2014 by multi-disciplinary Paris-based artist Zin Taylor. Drawn in simple black-and-white, the large-scale pieces depict linear landscapes populated with rough-hewn objects: potted cacti, sculptural boulders, steaming stone baths. Taylor describes the project as “a psychological backdrop,”utilizing the reductive yet narrative techniques of caricature and illustration to achieve an abbreviated, associative form of visual storytelling. Or in his words: “Think of it as haze collecting along the surface of the wall.”
Upon completion of a particularly ambitious 90-meter panoramic wall drawing, experimental composers Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett were invited to interpret the work as a musical graphic score. The result was a forty minute live performance in two parts, which was multi-track recorded and then mixed down into a 10-track album. Each piece and title corresponds to a specific section or object in the wall drawing. Vantzou, though based in Brussels, is best known for a string of enigmatic solo recordings for the American ambient imprint Kranky, while Bennett has explored electronic sound design in a variety of capacities, including as one third of Brooklyn synthesizer outfit Forma. Working under their initials – CV & JAB – they attempted to translate Taylor’s elusive gestural lexicon into sound. The results are appropriately minimal, malleable, and mysterious.
Opener “Cactus With Vent” sets the tone: insectoid murmurings and fractured crystalline tones seesaw in and out of focus, eventually disappearing within a wash of churning water. Each composition flows unbroken into the next, much like Taylor’s continuous line, emphasizing fluidity, curvature, and connectivity. “Hot Tub” introduces a mesmerizing synthetic flute-like raga, pirouetting above muted jungle noises and a babbling brook. Subsequent songs skew softer and stranger, alternately meditative (“Large Suess Plant”) and miasmic (“Tombstones”), remote vistas mapped with hieroglyphic frequencies.
The recordings, like Taylor’s nuanced mini-murals, exude a subtle but restless energy, rarely lingering too long in a fixed formation. The whooshing astral synthesizer of “Alfred Hitchcock Haze” dissolves invisibly into the smeared, somber séance of “Rock House With Door,” which in turn evaporates amongst the menagerie of chattering printers, running water, and shepherd tone whispers of “String of Objects With Planter.”
More so than in past projects, here Vantzou and Bennett mask their presence, allowing textures and tonalities to tangle or unspool with minimal intrusion. The effect is naturalistic, impersonal, and intriguing. Even the few passages of relatively emotive classical piano (“Brick With Modern Form,” “Fingers Of Thought”) are played with an air of otherworldly detachment, as though such beauty was materializing purely of its own accord.
Recorded live at Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, Germany May 6th, 2017. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D+M. Clear purple vinyl housed in a reverse board-printed inner and double-width spine jacket. Comes with a 180CM. leporello reproducing the original 9000CM. wall drawing.
The Uhrwald ("Clockwood") -- a place of dreams and sounds, with its own sense of time. Channeled into his band Die Wilde Jagd, Sebastian Lee Philipp's obsession for this place unleashes a uniquely spellbinding project of minimalist, tenebrous intensity. Recorded in the studio which lends its name to the sophomore album, Uhrwald Orange weaves a dense, atmospheric web of drama, romance, ecstasy, and melancholy. Die Wilde Jagd released their debut album in 2015 (BB 203CD/LP) when Philipp teamed up with producer Ralf Beck (Nalin & Kane, Unit 4). Beck excused himself from "daily business" shortly afterwards, but he retains an important influence on the new LP: Not only did he co-produce and mix the tracks (joined by Australian producer Kris Baha in the final mixdown process), but his collection of vintage analog synthesizers, drum computers, and studio equipment gives Die Wilde Jagd's music its unique, dexterously crafted character. Philipp locked himself in Beck's Uhrwald Orange studio for nights on end to transfer sonic interpretations of his world of images to tape: a nocturnal flight into the subconscious, into a strange world ("Fremde Welt") where ghostly creatures reside -- acid horses, bat boys, 2000 elephants ("Säuregäule", "Flederboy", "2000 Elefanten"). Flemish artist Frans Snyder (1579-1657) provides inspiration with his painting "Animals of the Night" as does the 14th-century collection of songs "Llibre Vermell de Montserrat". Philipp's repetitive electronic sequences include Mediterranean mandolins, psychedelic bass/guitar loops, Georgian choirs, and rattling North African krakebs. Medieval church music mixes with European folklore and improvised jams on this aural journey through the Orient and Occident -- from dark Nordic woods to the Eastern dawn. Philipp offers an insight into his hermetic world of ideas on eight tracks, enriched by sounds of nature captured on a trip through Portugal. Uhrwald Orange is, of course, also Philipp's ode to the recording studio itself, to the analog gear and the ubiquitous EMT Plate reverb. This is where he could realize the sound he imagined, all within Beck's own framework of compressors, preamps and signal paths. Philipp on his work in the studio: "I want to make the equipment in the studio sing, build a world of sound in which every tone, every effect has its own voice. . . . Every element can be found amongst the dwellers and natural forces of the 'Clockwood Orange'."
Cavern Of Anti-Matter return for their third studio album on their own Duophonic label. Hormone Lemonade sees the band heavily utilising the sounds of modular synths and home built drum machines, yet still keeping the loose, improvised sound familiar to fans of their first two albums, with minimal guitar melodies and live drum kit helping to build hypnotic layers of texture.
The albums genesis was in the self-constructed rhythm machines of band member Holger Zapf, the Taktron Z3 and Taktron Z2, being recorded to tape during three one-hour sessions. These sessions also included the use of 70s Hohner and Eko drum machines. Holger played his parts in a free-form way and the bpm varied wildly as it was not possible to sync it to any outside controllers.
Tim Gane edited these initial jams into useable chunks and proceeded to overdub each new rhythmic “chunk” with some basic musical ideas, keeping in tune to the hum of the machines and retaining the “feel” of the inherent pulse. Joe Dilworth arrived to lay down a beat over these minimal backing tracks, going with the flow as best he could.
In the following months the music was fleshed out using various synths and sequencers from Roland, Arp, Oberheim and Holger’s modular synth set up. As well as many of the bass and sequencer parts the modular also supplied the chords by tuning each one of it’s five oscillators to specific notes and intervals.
The results of these experiments, improvisations, and refinements, are Hormone Lemonade, which will be released as LP, CD, and Digital Download in March 2018.
The Blue Sleep is a brand new studio album by Blaine L. Reininger, the Colorado-born composer and founder member of avant-garde music group Tuxedomoon.
Written and recorded by Blaine in 2017, the album was mixed in his adopted hometown of Athens by noted electronic music producer Coti K. Like most of his previous solo projects, The Blue Sleep combines vocal songs with atmospheric instrumental tracks, three of which (Lost Ballroom, Jacob's Ladder and Odi et Amo) were written for Caligula, a theatre production.
"These days the music plays me," explains Blaine. "The unifying principle behind the songs on Blue Sleep is the method of composition. I apply fine old aleatory techniques - John Cage, William Burroughs, Tristan Tzara - and filter these through my instinctive knowledge of melody and harmony. Lyrics are generated algorithmically (I work with programs which assemble phrases according to mathematical rules) and then edited by me, with phrases suggested by the random output. That's pretty much my modus operandi in the 21st century."
10 track CD. Cover image by George Terzis.
Tracklist
1. Public Transformation 2. The Blue Sleep 3. Lost Ballroom 4. We're Tearing Out 5. Dry Food 6. Camminando Qui 7. Jacob's Ladder 8. The Dull Sea 9. Molecular Landscape 10. Odi et Amo
Available on CD and digital download (MP3). Mailorder copies are delivered in a special Crépuscule slipcase.
Inexplicable Hours is the sequel of the successful six-CD boxed set Elapsed Time, also released by Sonoris in 2017. The first LP documents a new direction in his music, with some of his last electroacoustic experimentations with audio generators, field recordings, and various electronic devices. The second one explores the same ambient/drone territories as the boxset, with tracks less static and more complex than it appears on the first listen. And as always with recent Kevin Drumm's music there's a sense of majesty, of mystery and a melancholic beauty that is uniquely his own.
Not long after recording her 10th album, Ruins, Liz Harris traveled to Wyoming to work on art and record music. She found herself drawn towards the pairing of skeletal piano phrasing with spare, rich bursts of vocal harmony. A series of stark songs emerged, minimal and vulnerable, woven with emotive silences. Inspired by "the idea that something is missing or cold," the pieces float and fade like vignettes, implying as much as they reveal. She describes them as "small texts hanging in space," impressions of mortality, melody, and the unseen – fleeting beauty, interrupted. Grid Of Points stands as a concise and potently poetic addition to the Grouper catalog.
from Liz Harris:
Grid Of Points is a set of songs for piano and voice. I wrote these songs over a week and a half; they stopped abruptly when I was interrupted by a high fever. Though brief, it is complete. The intimacy and abbreviation of this music allude to an essence that the songs lyrics speak more directly of. The space left after matter has departed, a stage after the characters have gone, the hollow of some central column, missing.
Out April 27th. More information can be found here.
This week Brainwashed is pleased to premiere Dylan Cameron’s “Graceless Gods”, part of the massive digital compilation the Holodeck label is releasing this week to commemorate their 50th release. "Graceless Gods" is a fitting teaser for the release, capturing everything he (as well as the label) excels at: heavy danceable beats, prickly, pulsating analog synths, and immaculate attention to sonic detail and production.
Holodeck Vision One features 30 artists from the label's past and present, as well as close associates such as Troller, Drab Majesty, and Michael Stein, and is available digitally on March 9. Dylan Cameron will also performing at both of the upcoming Holodeck SXSW showcases on March 15 at Hotel Vegas and March 17 at Central Presbyterian.
Ever since their inception in the late 1980s, this UK project has simultaneously dabbled both in the worlds of musique concret and harsh electronics; two styles that are undeniably similar but have very few in the way of crossover artists, all with a distinct sense of irreverence. Active again after a lengthy hiatus in the early part of the 21st century, Your Reality is Broken is another piece of work that successfully blurs unnecessary lines; in this case if it is a tribute album to them, a remix collection, or a compilation of collaborations. In truth, it is all of these things at once, and it is excellent.
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There are only five artists who were invited to participate in this release, each providing one piece that is either a reworking of Contrastate material, a collaboration with them, or in the case of the opening piece, Contrastate covering themselves.The remainder of Your Reality is Broken are artists that also work between those two aforementioned stylistic poles:RLW, Troum, Genocide Organ, Band of Pain, and État D'Urgence.
Contrastate’s self-reflexive contribution, "The People Who Control the Information," is built upon a different piece that was previously only performed live in 1997, "The People Who Read the Books."In its opening moments it is largely a spoken word performance, with ringing electronics filling the otherwise wide open spaces around the vocals.Sharp, grinding electronics tear through and hints of rhythm appear, which eventually solidify into an almost reggae like beat.By the time it all comes together, it is a bizarre combination of noisy electronics, spoken word, and dancehall beats; a strange combination no doubt, but also one that works very well.
Troum's "An End Marked, as Time Began" is constructed by the legendary drone act from three existing Contrastate works plus their own cover of "An End Marked By Pessimism."Besides the aforementioned song, this is pretty much the other most musical piece here.Troum blend the existing recordings into a sustained wall of cavernous sound, making for a murky and somewhat oppressive sonic feel.With snatches of voice peppered throughout and swirling strings later introduced, it comes together in a surprisingly melodic and classical-tinged form.
Ralf Wehowsky (as RLW) and État D’Urgence each supply the more disturbing, discomforting tributes on this record.The former's "Goodbye Great Nation 2016" is a pairing of churning sub bass and piercing high frequencies that, while somewhat minimal at first, convey a splendidly sinister mood.Fragments of voice and chimes are weaved in, and with the random voices and mangled piano, it is an entirely disorienting and uncomfortable sounding composition.The latter’s "Assassinate En Arrière-Plan" is another where vocals are up front and demonically processed, making for the most sinister and horror-esque moments of this record.
Your Reality is Broken is a bit of an odd compilation, but one that is undoubtedly Contrastate, and the artists selected all reflect this idiosyncratic approach just as well.All of the artists contribute excellent reworkings or inspired pieces, but I also appreciate the classic compilation feel to the record.The mix of artists, the presentation, the style, it all reminded me of classic albums like the Rising from the Red Sands series or albums put out by RRRecords a few decades ago.It simply hits all the right buttons from beginning to end.
The four untitled pieces that make up this (similarly untitled) cassette were recorded one November in 2016 as John Olson (Spykes) was in the upstate New York area and looking to collaborate. Thus enters electronics virtuoso Mike Griffin (Parashi, also a member of psych rock collective Burnt Hills), and the two got together in Griffin's suburban basement studio. With Olson in full on psy jazz mode and Griffin manning the pedals, the final product is a combination of two disparate, yet perfectly complementary performers.
The first of the four performances builds up from a wall of squelchy loops and droning electronics conjured by Parashi.The noise chaotic and at times seemingly random, but clearly under Griffin's control as Olson's reeds rise up like a snake charmer’s cobra.The nasal tones contrast the crunching electronic rumble expertly, pairing the organic with inorganic and the two perfectly complementing each other.
Olson's reeds lead off the second performance as well:a pained caterwaul cutting through the surging, spacious electronics that nearly engulf his playing.With time Griffin introduces some treated tapes and sputtering voices, as Olson works in some unconventional reed noises.Eventually he switches over to saxophone and the mood turns to a jazzier one.While Olson gets down, Griffin's electronics are repurposed into expanding waves of sound and textured with flatulent bursts and ending with sputtering, decaying electronics.
On the other side of the tape, the horns and scraping electronics come out aggressively, like white noise sheets piled atop a buzzing electric generator.Eventually Olson takes a break from actually playing his instrument and instead uses it to make a slew of noises it was not intended for as Griffin keeps the electronics running.Soon the traditional horn sound is back and animal like noises come forth from sped up and mangled cassette tapes.By the end the duo sink into an almost conventional jazz groove, with horns in the lead and electronics taking up the role of the backing band in a pleasantly obtuse way.
The final collaboration is a slower growing one, at first a pairing of smooth horn and dubby, delayed electronics.The two exercise an admirable amount of restraint here, each contributing more subtle sounds and allowing them to expand in the mix, doing quite a bit of work with just a little in the way of actual performance.In its closing moments, however, the sound builds up powerfully.Olson keeps his playing jazzy and traditional, but Griffin works in a multitude of distortion and shrill, Theremin like blasts to end on an appropriately aggressive conclusion.
Listened to in isolation, it would at times seem like Spykes and Parashi are making sounds with drastically different intent from one another: when the former decides to take things smooth, the latter adds another pedal to the textural sonic abyss.Even with all of this contrast, the sound is always fitting and complementary between the two artists.They may have drastically different approaches to this recording, but Griffin and Olson’s performances bounce off each other perfectly, demonstrating both artists’ ability not only as performers, but improvisers in the classical sense.