27 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

After an unusually lengthy period of relative silence, Natural Snow Buildings have returned with a significant departure from much of their previous work.  Well, a departure in some ways, at least–both the songs and the entire album are unexpectedly brief and concise.  Also, the most memorable pieces eschew the duo's usual drone and "haunted folk" tendencies in favor of something resembling a lysergic, nightmarish Ennio Morricone score or an imaginary soundtrack to a Jodorowsky film.  Otherwise, everything great about the duo thankfully remains, as comparative accessibility has done nothing to lessen Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte’s characteristic spell of haunting and timeless otherworldliness.  This is definitely one of the more essential Natural Snow Buildings albums.

Ba Da Bing!

Terror’s Horns opens in striking and beautiful fashion, as "Dawn on a Buckskin" evocatively combines a mournful and reverberating Spaghetti Western tremolo-bar strum with massing dissonant drones and a slow-motion pulse of bass drum thud and crashing cymbals.  To some degree, the piece calls to mind the Wild West, but Natural Snow Buildings' version is quite a bit more strange and disturbing than any familiar images from movies.  To me, it creates a tableaux that is not so much "gunfight" or "ghost town" as "wounded person stumbling through an empty, flickering, unfamiliar, and hallucinatory landscape."  As far as opening salvos go, Mehdi and Solange could not have done better.  The following "Saturna’s Black Belt" is both equally short and similarly stellar, again embellishing the hollow twang of the Western with dirge-like, quasi-ritualistic percussion and an ominous miasma of buzzing and swirling drones.  Even better is the strangely sickly guitar tone of the central motif.  In a mere six minutes or so, Mehdi and Solange managed to plunge me deeply into a twisted, disturbing, forlorn, and temporally dislocated world of their own making.

Lamentably, the album is not able to endlessly sustain such a relentless pace of brilliance and innovation for its entire duration, but Terror's Horns does offer up at least two other gems, albeit in somewhat different directions.  The 10-minute epic "The King in Yellow" is partially a return to NSB's comfort zone, as it is quite long, prominently features Mehdi's floating and ghostly vocals, and gradually morphs into a fine drone piece.  There is a wonderful twist though, as Mehdi's vocals occur over a beautifully thorny and broken-sounding thicket of buzzing, stuttering, and stumbling strings.  Later, Mehdi and Solange unveil yet another triumph at the end of the album with "Orion is Dead," elevating their standard dirge-like balladry with eerie vocal harmonies and an explosive crescendo of smoldering distortion, trance-like percussion, and a blearily melodic quasi-orchestral fantasia.

The remaining four songs are generally quite good as well, but they will mostly sound quite familiar to anyone who already has a few Natural Snow Buildings albums.  "Twilight Bells, Terror's Horns," for example, is a bit of shimmering, twinkling, and undulating ambiance, embellished only by interruptions of deep, hollow moans resembling the shifting of a giant, empty ship’s hull.  Later, "People in the Hills" returns to similar territory, mingling buzzing and ominous drones with hollow wooden clacks; lazily jangling chimes; and wordless, spectral vocals.  "The Sun Tower" is a bit of an exception, however, as it unexpectedly transforms Mehdi's usual ghost-folk into something quite muscular and metallic with liberal use of distortion and a vigorous boom-boom-thwack percussion crescendo.  The lengthy "Rising Portal" is also a bit of an aberration, as its warm and radiant drones do not seem to belong on the same album as any of the disquieting surrounding pieces.  I suspect it was included because it has meaning within whatever overarching narrative arc the duo were hoping to weave with their sequencing.  In any case, it is a bit too pleasant and straightforward for my liking.  Curiously, Mehdi and Solange seem to be quite fond of that direction, as the limited edition version of Terror's Horns came with a second album (The Ladder) that leans very heavily in that vein.  Natural Snow Buildings admittedly do ambient drone quite well (they have a distinct knack for texture and layering), but there are too many other artists producing similar fare to make it as satisfying as something like "Dawn on a Buckskin."

As far as new Natural Snow Buildings albums go, I could not realistically have hoped for anything much better than Terror's Horns: it may not be perfect, but its high points are very high indeed.Also, I would have been perfectly content with yet another suite of songs that continue to improve upon past themes, so I am both delighted and surprised that Mehdi and Solange instead decided to both try something new stylistically and distill their oft-amorphous and overwhelming aesthetic into something a bit more manageable.  It is no small feat for a singular band to completely overhaul its sound without losing any of its distinctiveness.  As far as I am concerned, Terror's Horns is a hugely successful experiment, as half of its songs are absolutely revelatory.  The sole critique that I have (aside from both the length and inclusion of "Rising Portal") is that these shorter songs cannot weave quite the lushly mesmerizing and transformative illusion as some of the duo’s best long-form work.  That said, however, there is no real need to repeat what has already been done: the world already has many hours of great Natural Snow Buildings epics, so these shorter pieces are a welcome change of pace.  Anyone new to the band should definitely start here before plunging into the deep end.  Also, this is a great time for any existing fans numbed by the mountain of similar-sounding material to check back in.  This easily ranks among Natural Snow Buildings' finest work.

• Dawn on a Buckskin
• Orion is Dead
• The King in Yellow

 

27 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Crimewave's Andy Gibbs is best known as one of the guitarists for dour, doom metal artisans Thou, but his solo work could not possibly be more different. This collection compiles two tapes of solo synth material that is much more subtle than his guitar work, but lacks none of the creativity and diversity of his other output. Shades of classic film score and ambient music can be heard, but the final product stands strongly as a unique set of songs.

Small Doses

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this set is that it, while heavily synth focused, is not heavily rooted in vintage sounds or gear.The technology employed by Gibbs has a fresh, contemporary sound to it, and while influences can be heard, they are subtle inspirations rather than styles being emulated.Pieces like "Broken Man" and "Fraud" have a lighter tinge to them that channels the likes of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis' soundtrack work, and both feature a strong, darker undercurrent to them that add significant depth.On the other hand, the hints of dissonance and chaos that permeate "Rebecca" are not miles removed from John Carpenter's best work.

This is not a collection of film scores, however, and Gibbs never sticks too closely to any specific template."Yarrow," for example, has a distinctly strange lead synth sound that makes the piece sound simultaneously jaunty and sad, resulting in an odd mood, but a compelling work.Idiosyncratic sounds drive "Devastated by a Stranger's Remark" as well, giving the piece a crunchier, more dissonant color, but the restrained mood stays consistent.

While this is a two volume collection, the pieces on the second cassette feel more thematically consistent, like a traditional album."In Wonder" and "Cypressdrone" both find Gibbs enshrouding synths and piano sounds in a concrete bunker of reverb, and both of which drift closer to noise at times, while never losing their musical structure.Even the glassy keyboards of "Healing Beam," while not as bleak, still convey a definite sense of sadness throughout.

One of the lighter moments on this second tape is the shimmering synths and weird rhythmic loops of "Allure of Crime," but even there the sound stays mostly shadowy.It may only have hints at harshness, but "Burnt Oak" remains dark and cold, drifting on a big droning bass line as squalls of electronic noise shine through occasionally.The concluding "Shame" is where Gibbs embraces ugliness the most.Forceful, buzzing keyboard passages and white noise make for an aggressive piece to begin with, but the constant tremolo effect on the volume adds an additional level of intensity to it.

Cinematic drama abounds on this collection of Andy Gibbs' work as Crimewave, but the constantly changing moods and diverse array of sounds he employs throughout these two tapes makes it impossible to pigeonhole.While it may bear little direct resemblance to his other persona in Thou, the force and intensity is similar, and it results in a lengthy collection that stays fresh and brilliant throughout.

samples:

• Rebecca
• Cypressdrone
• Shame

 

27 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Four long years after their seismic performance at London’s Short Circuit Festival, Carter Tutti Void have finally returned with their first proper studio album.  Equally noteworthy is that fact that f(x) is the first new music to be released by Industrial Records since 2012's Throbbing Gristle/X-TG swan song Desertshore/The Final Report.  Given those circumstances, it would be hard for any record to live up to the resultant expectations, so it is not especially surprising that f(x) falls a bit short of the mark.  The problem is not that the trio were lacking ideas or inspiration, however: they have just backed themselves into a very constrained stylistic niche that cannot realistically yield multiple albums of compelling material.  That said, f(x) is still quite an enjoyable album, even if it is essentially Transverse Redux (albeit with some of the sharper edges sanded down a bit).

Industrial

One of the many perils of music criticism is that it is very easy to develop a skewed perspective when I am a longtime fan of an artist.  That revelation smacked me in the head when I tried to figure why I was not nearly as thrilled by f(x) as I wanted to be.  Upon deeper reflection, it occurred to me that Carter Tutti Void is a fundamentally perverse and unsustainable project: I enjoyed Transverse because it was exciting to see three oft-dormant artists that I like team up for an unexpected, visceral, and explosive performance.  Only later does it occur to me that Transverse lacked almost everything that I love about Throbbing Gristle or Chris & Cosey: it was not transgressive, it was not sexy, it did not have great hooks, and there were not any actual songs.  What it offered instead was Chris Carter's wonderfully unique lurching, clanking and wheezing grooves; plenty of energy; and the wild spontaneity of Nik Void and Cosey Fanni Tutti's smoldering and echoing guitar improvisations.  As it happens, that was more than enough to make a cool album, but it was a very precarious cocktail indeed: Cosey is an iconic vocalist and performer, but I would probably not queue up to buy a solo improv guitar album by either her or Void.  Carter Tutti Void are not a band that entirely play to their strengths.

Notably, the trio have not made any significant alterations to their formula with f(x), which is essentially more of the same, except recorded at Chris & Cosey's home studio in Norfolk rather than at a gig.  Even the approach was roughly the same, as they set up for the recording process as though they were playing a live show in the studio–the sole significant innovation being that they allowed themselves three takes and assembled the finished pieces from those components.  Oddly, the sound quality is cleaner, but not always better–f(x) often feels quite a bit more mannered than its predecessor, even though the grooves are a bit more sexed-up.  Musically, however, Chris Carter is in prime form, unleashing six more throbbing and propulsive grooves that sound eerily like a living machine.  The best of lot is the opening "f = (2.4)," which sounds like a sinuous and sultry Carter Tutti song warped into a haunted, hallucinatory, and sci-fi-damaged juggernaut.  Later on, Carter delves into something that sounds like it belongs in a strip club scene in a film like Escape From New York ("f = (2.2)"), a burbling and insistent Motorik work-out ("f =(2.6)"), and an awesomely throbbing groove that sounds plucked from an '80s S&M club ("f=(2.7.)").

Notably, the "John Carpenter Strip Club" song is absent from the vinyl version of the album, but that gets at something very important about f(x): it absolutely does not matter at all.  While the best pieces are definitely the book-ends ("Warped Carter Tutti Song in Space" and "Retro S&M Sex Groove"), these six (or five) pieces are otherwise more or less interchangeable due to their hyper-limited palette.  There are no melodies, no chord changes, no hooks, no real development, and no real vocals (aside from some chopped and heavily processed howling and chanting).  The songs are all just vamps that play out for 8 or 10 minutes, then wind to a close once they have run their course.  Cosey and Nik certainly make quite a bit of racket on their end, but there is only so much they can do to make a song memorable when playing bowed guitar through a battery of effects pedals.  For all intents and purposes, these songs live or die by their grooves: the gnarled guitar cacophony over the top just serves to keep things interesting and unpredictable.  Also, these pieces are so similar that listening to more than a few at a time yields quickly diminishing impact.

All of that adds up to an alternately bracing, exhilarating, exhausting, frustrating, hypnotic, and wild whole (or maybe a handful of very cool (if overlong) singles, if viewed in a more charitable light).  In any case, my feelings regarding f(x) are deeply conflicted.  On one hand, it is always wonderful to hear more of Carter's weirdly heaving and imperfect rhythms and it is great that this project is bringing Chris & Cosey's work to new audiences.  On the other, I cannot help but feel that Carter Tutti Void have driven themselves into a creative cul de sac and that they desperately need to find a way out: this is not a well that they can viably keep returning to.  I am hoping that they eventually either take the plunge and write some actual songs or find some way to harness their rhythmic genius into something more immersive and longform.  In fact, I was hoping that might happen with f(x).  Alas.  Maybe next time.  For now, however, f(x) is a very likable, albeit minor, album.  It may not be the revelation that Transverse was, but the material is not necessarily weaker–it just feels that way because Carter Tutti Void tried to dazzle me with the same trick twice.

Samples:

• f = (2.4)
• f = (2.2)
• f = (2.7)

 

27 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

St. John at Hackney, the parish on Lower Clapton Road in the London Borough of Hackney, was consecrated in 1798. Nineteen years earlier, surveyor Richard Jupp proposed expanding the capacity of the original structure, which was situated to the southwest, where the tower of St. Augustine still stands. The need for more seats, spurred by the church’s convenient location, was supposed to have guaranteed a larger space, but architect James Spiller convinced its trustees that fewer seats and a smaller space would better serve the church’s acoustics. The organ now inside St. John’s, a gorgeous three manual Mander, was installed much later, after May 18th, 1955, when a fire started in the church’s roof, ate through its galleries and pews, and finally consumed the original organ built by George Pike England. Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion EMS, where John Chantler assembled and recorded a portion of Still Light, Outside, was constructed nine years later, in 1964. The other portion of his album was recorded at St. John’s, on the three manual Mander. Chantler’s music is loud, physically powerful, and spacious, as evocative of material, location, and history as it is of composition. It is, in an obvious way, a combination of the new and old, but also a model for the passing of time and the endurance of sound.

1703 Skivbolaget

The album’s title track and opening song begins lightly but quickly amasses weight as it transforms from a sparse array of isolated notes and synthesized noise into a mountain of stratified chords, distorted drones, and floor-shaking bass. Over the course of nine minutes, Chantler separates his original organ recordings into different registers, then distinguishes them further by degree of post-processing.

Much of "Still Light, Outside" sounds like it originated inside St. John’s pipe organ. Not just the ringing samples with their metallic overtones, but the long, endlessly variable swaths of geologic rumble and over-driven melody too. Unlike the trilogy that occupies the rest of the album, this work seems to take all of its sustenance and reason from the organ itself: the heft of its construction, the details of its mechanisms, and its presence inside a place of worship. Coincidentally, the light of the title shows up in the way that Chantler breaks the organ’s irradiated voice against the darker shades of its manipulated self. The image of light glowing through stained glass, and a feeling of heat, is difficult to shake, even as "The Long Shadow of Decline" sinks the record into a play of concealed movements and blaring discordances.

"Decline - Part I" quickly introduces electroacoustic miscellany, the sources of which are unidentifiable, except that they must have originated in a machine. They are loosely rhythmic and surrounded by low hums and high, hissing tones, high enough that they sound more like whistles than organ pipes. The combination of echoing noises and opposite pitches creates a feeling of spaciousness—musically, architecturally, and chronologically. The harmonious chords that occupy the central part of the piece are somewhat muffled, like Chantler recorded them from outside the church. They also exhibit a resonance that contrasts sharply with the electronic flutter that accompanies them. The mood is more relaxed, contemplative, and the pace is slower. There are no sudden movements, no sharp increases in volume. The music stretches out in every direction and stops, it would seem, only because Chantler decided it had to stop.

Parts two and three tread back up the mountain, to the intensity of "Still Light, Outside." This time the modern instruments show off their own voice instead of bolstering the organ’s. Small armies of metallic pebbles march across the face of the organ’s sustained blasts, layers of reeds and squealing wires are stacked on top of each other like lead weights, and the music turns monolithic. The conclusion converts that weight into a force, which, for a time, seems as if it could tear the album to shreds. But the organ continues steadily on and the electronics, despite their jabbering and convulsing, return to a calm state. A bass heavy loop slowly restores order, and then the album fades away in exhausted agreement.

It’s easy to see some concord between the new and the old in this, between two different kinds of engineered brilliance, but there’s also a hint of illusion. The sound of both instruments coexist whatever their history, the one transformed by the other through the efforts of Chantler and the people responsible for building, installing, and preserving the organ. And even if the original at St. John’s was burnt to ruin in 1955, some semblance of it persists in 2015, brought out of the past like a time traveler, something that moves faster than light.

samples:

• Still Light, Outside
• The Long Shadow of Decline - Part II
• The Long Shadow Decline - Part III

 

27 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"... and they sparkled like burnished brass"

"Out of the depths of our complaints, it could be all so simple. To be never fooled by the finesse of a long-yearned for solidity, but in the momentary aplomb of a sleepy walk threading through familiar streets we'd hum our way, alto, baritone and tenor toward some harmonious end. An effect like some wonderful recollection of one or other of those technicolour movies. Not real for sure, but if you are in the mood… [...] (Philip Jeck, April 2015)

"To make this record I used Fidelity record players, Casio Keyboards, Ibanez bass guitar, Sony minidisc players, Ibanez and Zoom effects pedals, assorted percussion, a Behringer mixer and it was edited it at home with minidisc players and on a laptop computer."

More information will soon be found here.  Out October 23rd.

27 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

An colossal audiovisual adaption of Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, by one of the uncontested master isolationists of the ethereal static sounds, a sonic symphony of the unconsciouss and a defiant decceleration critique of today society through the ultimate modern text. Thomas Köner has crafted the ultimate 4 bpm masterpiece.

More information can be found here.

27 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Spherical collections of stars form around black holes in situ; that is, locally to their cosmic neighbourhoods. It is said that future space colonization will rely on sourcing supplies in situ. Construction in situ uses raw materials at the site: colossal sculptures such as Naqsh-e Rustam, the Leshan Giant Buddha and Mount Rushmore were built in this fashion.

Wild, organic machine grooves, with a mind’s eye on naked treetops and an early sunset. Melody breathes out from dubwise fx, percussion by turns sinewy and floating, sub blasts and stripped synth arrangements. Keys on air.

Spacious, witty, melancholic, deadly.

More information is available here.

27 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Astro Love is the first widely available solo release in several years from Kawabata, emerging from a period of relative quiet with this blockbuster Krautrock-flavored epic. On the whole, this a lovely and impressionistic record, the other side of Makoto's outrageous works with Acid Mothers' Temple. Taking cues from classics of the genre like Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra and Steve Hillage's Rainbow Dome Music,  "Dos Nurages" is the centerpiece of the record, a 41-minute hypnotic epic, with echoplex’d guitar anchoring a stream of expertly done glissando. "Astro Love & Infinite Kisses" is a darker drone, in the traditions of Kawabata’s INUI series of releases for VHF. "Woman From Dream Island" finishes the record with a thick buzz of tamboura overlaid with trippy backwards guitar, before giving way to a gentle finger-picked acoustic coda.

More information can be found here.

27 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Astro Love is the first widely available solo release in several years from Kawabata, emerging from a period of relative quiet with this blockbuster Krautrock-flavored epic. On the whole, this a lovely and impressionistic record, the other side of Makoto's outrageous works with Acid Mothers' Temple. Taking cues from classics of the genre like Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra and Steve Hillage's Rainbow Dome Music,  "Dos Nurages" is the centerpiece of the record, a 41-minute hypnotic epic, with echoplex’d guitar anchoring a stream of expertly done glissando. "Astro Love & Infinite Kisses" is a darker drone, in the traditions of Kawabata’s INUI series of releases for VHF. "Woman From Dream Island" finishes the record with a thick buzz of tamboura overlaid with trippy backwards guitar, before giving way to a gentle finger-picked acoustic coda.

More information can be found here.

27 September 2015

Administrator

Albums and Singles

King Midas Sound is comprised of Kevin Martin (also known for his work under The Bug moniker), singer/poet Roger Robinson, and vocalist Kiki Hitomi. Their landmark 2009 debut Waiting For You on Hyperdub quickly established them as falling sonically somewhere between sub-electronic lovers' rock, dub and the bleakest, slowest mutation of narco hip-hop, while on the live front they were nestled somewhere between the apocalypse and FX-drenched, shoegaze laments. In both arenas they are known as a brooding sonic force. With a move over to Ninja Tune plus the release of 2013's lauded Aroo single and in particular its b-side "Funny Love," an even deeper sense of spaciousness began to set in. That track’s dramatic tonal shift acted as a catalyst for the idea of a conceptual collaborative project to be born. Hence this first edition (in a series of four), appropriately titled Edition 1.

Looking even further back it does seems fitting that the person (Kevin Martin) who once curated a compilation called Isolationism is one of the key contributors behind this truly mesmeric examination of melancholy and desolation, Edition 1 features collaborator number one, Austrian guitarist / electronic musician Fennesz. His 2001 album Endless Summer was a swirling mix of electric tonal guitars and sweeping emotional shifts which inspired and sparked an admiration within Kevin and Roger to bring him onboard. Utilizing improvised guitar tracks, samples, and unreleased material from Fennesz's archive, Edition 1 took shape within the KMS framework. In the wake of Kevin's last Bug album Angels & Devils, he wanted to create a record focused on kaleidoscopic sonic beauty, bathed in the bluest emotional lyricism. This record reflects the group’s past, present, and a truly extraordinary future.

Edition 1 is a tide coming in. A fog reaching out into nothing, and encapsulating everything. An ultimate parting note drifting into absolute loneliness, swept up in a sumptuously blurred, dronal haze. Hallucinatory tone poems of heartbreak, despair, disappearance, and displacement. Seductively spatial sketches of long goodbyes. Music to cling to or to be used to move past. Sounds set adrift on their own tonal plain and reigned back in by Roger & Kiki's complimentary, yet extremely different deliveries. Cosmic blues meets a siren’s song. A zonal re-examination of "It's Raining Today" or an audio representation of a Sugimoto "Seascapes" photo... A high water mark forever etched to memory.

More information can be found here.