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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As the title may suggest, the latest release from the once nomadic James Bradell (aka Funki Porcini) is a wonderous collection of musical dreamscapes and headnodding grooves to relax with. Assisted by the musical (and visual) talents of Team Alcohol (Rupert Small), the disc's fourteen compositions, comprised of droning synth and guitar layers, funky, jazzy rhythms and sampled dialogue that sounds right out of a sci-fi B-movie, vary from subtle to conspicuous.
Tracks like "Last Night Over Norway," "Offshore Birmingham" and the aptly-titled "Sleepy" can evoke the urge to turn down the comforter on a lazy weekend afternoon, while the B3-driven "We're Out Of Here" and "16 Megatons" will have you poppin' your fingers with a smirk. Most noteable is the seriously slippery-grooved "Weow," which sounds as if The Orb were jamming with The Meters. Accompanying the disc is a DVD of eight visual interpretations (six tracks from the disc, plus two bonuses) which explore the world of macro photography and seamless loops, all synching up beautifully with the music. It's a great multimedia artshow for your living room without the overpriced drinks and snooty, turtleneck-wearing people.
When we left Loscil—aka Scott Morgan—last, he had released his debut 'Triple Point' to much acclaim, and was preparing to tour behind the release. That was scant a year ago, and now Loscil is back, having toured the earth and recorded a mother of a concept album. 'Submers' is very much a continuation of the same ideals Morgan has upheld before—singular artistic vision, music created on keyboards and computers—but he plumbs new territories this time around.
Each track is named after a submarine, and the songs all have an eerie spaciness that makes them feel very detached in nature. Very appropriate for songs about huge metal vessels that travel miles below the ocean's surface, for defense use or not. The sound is very much the same, though this time I got the feeling of a more cohesive release than the last CD. Songs blend into each other well with dense keyboards and simple click beats over top. Then they build, adding intensity and textures/flavors until they achieve fervent but understated pace, then fade out gracefully. Morgan has a real ear for production, and these tracks are crystal clear, with a violent tension that sits just underneath it all, waiting to pounce, but revelling in the torture of not attacking instead. There are tracks that sound like sonar bouncing off the hull of a ship, or the slow pulse of the "caterpillar drive" from "Hunt For Red October". The whole time I listened, I felt very much alone, and the thought of that almost drove me insane. The album closes with an almost funereal requiem called "Kursk," after the Russian submarine we all saw on CNN with tales of its fallen crew. It's a tribute and a dirge, a respectful sending up of these men who subject themselves to unreal situations and fears—the ultimate bravery. Loscil gains major points for dreaming up a concept this brave, embracing it, and succeeding in creating a moving and stirring listening experience.
"Bang bang! That awful sound!" said Cher in a song of the same name, and like any critical listener in search of a cheap laugh I was primed to apply that reference here. After all, it's easy enough for an instrumental rock group to come off as either hideously discordant or sleep-inducingly masturbatory. But the problem is, even the most awful sounds on Oma Yang’s second full-length release are sublime, and theirs is the sort of masturbation you'd pay good money to see (though you might not want to volunteer for clean-up duty afterwards).
On the front cover of this particular 'Bang Bang' CD, a sloppy-looking man wearing wet, baggy underwear contemplates an algae-spotted river from the shore. On the back cover, he just dives right in. Drums, bass and guitar come together on this occasionally harrowing mix of tracks, sometimes joined by a welcome synth or organ. When these guys throw rock, jazz, and smooth psychedelia into the mix, does it work? It can be as beautiful as a quiet, echoing horn on "Oh Yeah...I Get Jokes" and as jarring as the tempo changes and discordant notes on "No Backdoor To Heaven, Just A Front Door To Hell." Somehow, even the studio trickery and synth warblings of "A Paper Bag Holds Great Secrets" manages to fit in and sound chummy. Just as the jangling and thumping begins to get on your nerves the mood will switch to something placid as a rippling brook (a quiet song you could knit a sweater to while humming along)...but before the track is over that sloppy guy will jump right in again and shake things up, dropping stitches and jumping influences, proving that the Oma Yang guys know more than just how to write cute song titles. The best songs on this CD are over five minutes long, allowing the band to expand, twist, distort, and demolish their theme, leaving me eagerly awaiting the day they decide to record a single hour-long track. "Awful sound?" Well, occasionally yes, but in a good way. Sometimes lush, sometimes minimal, always capable and never dull is Oma Yang.
Konkurrent The idea behind the 'In the Fishtank' series sounds really good: get two (or more) bands touring the area (broadly, the Netherlands,) and get them to record a live album in the studio, spontaneously. Like most things that look great on paper, the execution fails gloriously, and on many levels. Maybe Sonic Youth was having a bad day, or possibly the I.C.P. or The Ex took over a whole lot of the sound on this album, but please, if you have anything else you'd rather do, don't hesitate to do that instead of listening to this album. It has all the annoying qualities of a pretentious John Zorn release (and none of the positive, like the amazing musicianship of some of the early John Zorn stuff.) The rush of recording constraints forced on the groups probably didn't help the creation of their numbered tracks. The seemingly random numbering of the tracks gives me the impression that these pieces were just made with no intent in mind, just to take up time. Weird atonal honking horns are ok, but not if they're boring you to death. If you like Sonic Youth (or any of the other bands,) at all, avoid this thing like the plague.
After numerous tours of rapping live, Cex has finally released his first album with rhymes. While those who only know his instrumental output might be put off by this, others, like I, who have been following his career a little more closely will be more than satisfied with the first true expression of the Baltimore boy wonder's talents.
Long the enfant-terrible of electronic music, Kidwell has finally given a voice to all the frustrations he has with the creative world he inhabits. Songs like "Brutal Exposure" and "One Cex" let us know exactly how he feels about modern music and the majority of the album's remaining time is spent telling us how he is going to go about changing it. Not by inventing new styles, but by bringing in a new attitude. Every verse on the album is full of it and I don't think I've heard so much sass in six tracks since the opening half of Miss E's 'So Addictive'. Kidwell is pushing the message that art and entertainment are one and the same, so it comes as no surprise to find the occassional song about bicycles, middle school and fisting in amongst the antagonism. Most of the rhymes are amusing, but it's when Cex stops beating his chest and lives up to his self-proclaimed position as the #1 entertainer in the world on songs like "Ghost Rider," that he really excels. The album's beats continue to be influenced by MTV as much as they are by Warp, but its the rhymes that are the focus of 'Tall, Dark and Handcuffed'. Sure, they may be a little self-obsessed but Kidwell is only human, and that's a quality in his music we should all be celebrating.
Sit down, make yourself comfortable, this album is far from both the post-industrial noise nor the minimalistic drone stuff David Jackman is usually known for his releases as Organum. Recorded between 1990 and 1993 (originally released in 1994), the album opens with the stunning epic 16¬Ω-minute, "Aurora," which is probably the closest Organum got to Taj Mahal Tavelers. "Aurora" features fantastic guitar sounds, exotic wind instruments, and unidentifiable shining and piercing other sounds by Dinah Jane Rowe, Christoph Heemann and Jim O'Rourke.
This is all accompanied by a driving improvised drum contribution by AMM's Eddie Prevost, providing an even more trecherous, ominous feel, almsot like the dust clouds whipping into whirlwinds as the prelude to a magnificent storm. The title track continues the feel with more drones, bowed cymbals and beautiful wind instrument sounds. Absent of the drum set, "Sphyx" is only the work of Jackman and O'Rourke. "Multa" by Heemann and Jackman closes the original LP with less intense drones, but piercing sounds and a heavily delayed percussive sound keeping the tempo. Two bonus tracks, "Æo" (short for Aeolian) and "Shining Star" appear on CD for the first time. These subtle, gorgeous tracks, which further exploit Jackman's obsession with beautiful wind instruments, are also originally from 1994 but only appeared on a small 7" single run. After years of being unavailable and appropriately highly sought after, Robot has released a small number of these CDs. The original three tracks are undeniably regarded as some of Organum's finest moments and the bonus addition makes this release even more irresistable. With a limited to 700 copies, this can easily be cleaned off the shelves before Christmas time.
Since early in his career, music historian and WFMU radio host Irwin Chusid has been defining and championing a peculiar genre of music that he has termed "outsider music". Outsider Music is loosely defined as music made by people who have little or no musical training or talent, and doubtful sanity, but continue to make and record music in spite of their severe limitations. Outsider music can result from mental derangement, drug burnout or total cluelessness, but the results are often worthwhile. People with little or no self-awareness are capable of producing some of the most beguiling and ambiguous sounds you'll ever hear. Outsider musicians are boundless experimenters and low-fi geniuses - but their total sincerity and passion make the results even more astounding. For jaded music aficionados who have grown tired of the endlessly self-referential intelligentsia of the modern avant-garde, outsider music offers a completely new universe of stunning musical insight, and all of it totally accidental!
Chusid has been the primary collector and disseminator of outsider music for the past two decades. Just last year, with the publication of his book and the subsequent release of two CD compilations, Chusid is finally making this arcane musical genre accessible to the world. Writing in an entertaining and infectiously funny style, Chusid attempts to collect all of these disparate musical oddities and arrive at a definition of the genre. Through a series of chapters highlighting the most important outsider musicians—Daniel Johnston, Tiny Tim, Wesley Willis, Jandek, Shooby Taylor, etc.—the author pieces together the "story" of outsider music. Biographies, critical views, personal anecdotes and photographs are scattered throughout, giving about as clear a picture as you could expect for his subject matter. I read the book over the course of two days; I couldn't put it down. This is certainly one of the best, non-academic books of musical theory I have ever read. Even in cases where I felt Chusid was trying to stretch the definition of the genre a little too far (as in the chapters about established musicians like Syd Barrett, Captain Beefheart and Harry Partch), the writing was still engaging.
The first volume of the two companion CDs was released last year, and is the superior of the two. It is one of the most entertaining and concise genre overviews ever compiled, containing selections both by relatively well-known outsiders like The Shaggs, Captain Beefheart, Wesley Willis and Tiny Tim, as well as totally enigmatic obscurities such as Sri Darwin Gross, Luie Luie and Arcesia. Highlights include Congress-Woman Malinda Jackson Parker's "Cousin Mosquito #1," an ode to the tropical insect, in which the word "cousin" is uttered over 500 times in the span of three minutes. Luie Luie is a Mexican bandleader who excitedly jabbers on about the new dance called "El Touchy" that he has invented. Arcesia was a middle-aged big band crooner who moved to the West Coast during the 60's and experimented with LSD, prompting him to record a preposterous psychedelic album called 'Reachin'. The track included here, "Butterfly Mind," is an amazingly emotional outpouring—one of the more intense and creepy songs on the compilation. Jandek weighs in with a typically miserable, self-hating diatribe, which he sings while randomly plucking an out-of-tune guitar. Jack Mudurian is a toothless old codger in a nursing home, who happily sings a non-stop, one-hour medley of every song he can remember in "Downloading the Repertoire (excerpt)". I love this album, and it has been on almost non-stop rotation since I first bought it more than a year ago.
The second CD has just been released on Gammon Records, and it something of an "appendix" to the first disc. It is certainly less impressive in its scope, but this is for those serious students who require further study. Shooby Taylor, the seemingly insane scat singer from the first compilation, opens up the disc with the absurdly uplifting glossolalia of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing". An anonymous redneck girl sings unashamedly a cappella into a tape recorder on "Curly Toes". Thoth, a New York City street performer and resident of the fictitious land of Nular-In, sings a selection from his "solopera" named "The Herma". Clothed in a loincloth and headdress, Thoth sings in an impressive operatic falsetto while accompanying himself on the violin. The Space Lady does a haunting low-fi version of The Electric Prunes' hit "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night". Hearing these daring and original "artists" puts all of that self-consciously low-fi indie stuff such as Jad Fair, Danielson Famile, etc. to shame. Suffice it to say that if you enjoyed the first compilation, you're probably going to have to get this one too.
Irwin Chusid deserves high praise for his book and this commendable set of albums—his obvious affection and passion for these lunatics is totally contagious. As Chusid says in his introduction, outsider music is "mutant strain of twisted sonic art that's so wrong—it's right!" Get into it.
So I'm playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City the other day, or, as I like to put it, my new "vice". Yes, I'm witty. [keep trying - ed.] Anyway, this game takes place in the eighties, and I noticed that they chose to get the rights to actual music this time instead of inventing their own, which probably put a lot of mediocre artists out of work. It's a better game for it (nothing like running over a street hustler while listening to "Broken Wings"), but after eight straight hours of gameplay, even that can get tiring, especially when you consider that each station only has about eight or ten songs.
So, I decided to combine my efforts, and listen to some music that I'd like to review. Sure, it may be a bit incongruous, as this music probably will seem out of place playing an eighties game, but I could certainly use a break from Twisted Sister. What a surprise when I put on this release from the Russian Futurists, aka Matthew Adam Hart. Hart's first album gathered critical acclaim for its songs as well as for its story—he recorded it on a shoestring budget in his childhood bedroom. At 23, Hart was being heralded as a new pop sensation. Now, at 25, this follow-up puts him on the map again with an even larger population statistic. This music is a real growth, even though the feeling is very much the same. 'Crumble' is a declaration as well as a continuation, as if Hart is saying he's here to stay, so deal with it. His music has a very eighties flavor with a very nineties execution, and the songs are catchy, moving, energetic, and concise. It's all very high concept, low execution, but don't discount him for lack of flashy production. "When the Sun Drops Like an Anvil", with its "Ruby Tuesday"-like chorus and sing-song repeat background vocals is a great synth-pop number that will remind you of that middle school dance where you first danced with that special someone. "Precious Metals" bounces with authentic hip hop moxy, and "Your Life on Magnetic Tape" feels almost like the Monkees and Wayne Coyne recording on synthesizers. It's perfect music for Vice City, but after time, I had to turn off the game and just listen. It fits so well today, too, and it's a shame to waste this music on a video game.
The Welsh musical artist Dafydd Morgan has sought to musically document rugged, wind-swept landscapes over the course of his career as Stylus, and 'Archif:01,' a collection of various non-album tracks between 1997 and 2000, fits cleanly into that agenda.
Most of the 19 songs are ambient music in the Eno tradition; slow pairings of low fidelity synths and guitar. I find much of this record to be more tedious than atmospheric—the sounds used are a little too simple and uninteresting; the melodies are repeated unchanged a few too many times. If the lack of direction doesn't ruin the ambience, the overreliance on soft white noise or wind samples in the background, in an attempt to make things seem stormy and desolate, does. They just fail to engage me like the immersive sounds of composers who explore similar territory. Despite these complaints, it's not a completely bad album; there are some bright moments and well-crafted pieces. I like the introduction of guitar and the melodies found on the six tracks drawn from the 'Groom Lake' EP, but they could use more development. "Glass Dream One," is a nice track, combining a few layers of synthesizers, a slick bassline, and some drowned French vocals. "Grinding #8" has enough detail to remain interesting, with a repetitive flute sample over some subtle synth parts, as a slowly oscillating tone works its way to the foreground. Finally "Kinski (Longstone Remix)" (the third version of "Kinski" on this comp!) ushers the album out on a strong note but in a markedly different style, with stuttering synths, an upfront electronic drum beat, and vocodered vocals. There's a general improvement in Stylus' writing and arrangement over the chronological course of the album, so I wouldn't mind hearing one of his recent works that focuses on a more united theme than this scattered collection.
The core of Sybarite's album 'Nonument' (yes, there are nine songs to accompany the pun) sounds like the dallying analog electronics of ISAN mixed with some guitar and live percussion. Horns and cellos also dot the landscape created by Sybarite's Xian Hawkins.
Listening to 'Nonument,' I was also reminded of Mum, especially the way in which the tingling guitar sound on "The Fourth Day" rises and disperses, akin to the beginning Mum's "The Ballad of the Broken Birdie Records." Sybarite's arrangements are all quite dense, sometimes too consistently so. "Water" opens with a wavering cellist (Leah Coloff) all over the place on the neck of the instrument, sounding as if the cello was being tuned by musician on methamphetamines before a chamber concert. The sound is captivating, if only because it recalls the days when you used to warm up for your middle school holiday concerts, getting ready to play Pachelbel or something, and you wish Sybarite would extend this aural reminiscence just a little bit longer, before coming in with the beat and the vocals. But Hawkins does not oblige you, and for that you curse him silently under your breath. Sybarite is certainly able to show the complexity of his craft and the many layers he weaves into each song, but the end product is more a collection of moments than a finely-wrought record. I can listen endlessly to the lovely last forty seconds of "Accidental Triumph," though the three minute preamble to that does not really affect me. The biggest innovation for Sybarite on 'Nonument' is the addition of vocals to the songs, but their impact is hardly felt. The vocals mix well into the songs without calling much attention to themselves, which is arguably a fairly amiable effect. 'Nonuments' is a pleasant enough collection of songs, but they tend to get tangled up in one another's wake, making a strong argument to take each individual nonument on its own.
A stateside release is the crowning achievement for what has been a hard three years for Melbourne, Australia's Art of Fighting. 'Wires' was originally released last year on the excellent Trifekta label to much crtical acclaim and the Australian equivalent of a Grammy for Best Independent Release.
Two years of touring the country followed playing with the likes of the Go-Betweens and the Church, which culminated in them doing one last round of shows with Songs:Ohia in support. If you had to find a musical reference for Art of Fighting it would be difficult to look past Low. The male/female vocals and each spare but exquisitely spaced note is very reminiscent of that group. The difficulty however in making music popularised by another group is that failure to better it will make your album sound derivitive. Unfortunately, AOF are not as accomplished as their influences and some poor songwriting prevents Wires from being the great new Australian hope that many claimed it was. Still, it is a good album by a young band, and if you are a fan of any of the above mentioned acts I heartily recommend that you seek it out.