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13 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image This is a bit of a surprising album, as it finds one of American's premiere psych-rock bands noticeably toning down the more psych-inspired aspects of their work in favor of a more sun-dappled, spacious strain of rock. ¬†Fortunately, that move towards a cleaner, more melodic sound coincides with an impressive leap forward in their songwriting, resulting in a handful of great, memorable songs amidst all the newly subtle Spacemen 3/Suicide/Hawkwind worship. ¬†The full album is still a bit too formulaic overall for my liking, but the Shjips demonstrate they know how to craft a killer single or two.

Thrill Jockey

Back to Land is the sort of album that makes me nostalgic for the wide-eyed innocence of my life before I became a music critic, when I could just enjoy an album without thinking about it too much. ¬†I suspect that the old me would have liked Back to Land a lot more than the current me, as Wooden Shjips sound great doing what they do. ¬†Unfortunately, my initial thrill with the opening title track began to yield diminishing returns as its formula was repeated again and again as the album unfolded.

It is hard to objectively say whether that is my problem alone, but this is certainly an album where the seams show: most of these songs are built upon little more than a simple, obsessively repeating, Suicide-style organ pattern (though it is sometimes transposed to guitar or bass). ¬†Admittedly, the Shjips pull off a neat trick in appropriating Suicide's aesthetic wholesale and translating it into something resembling driving classic rock, but once I noticed the rigid template, I could not stop noticing it. ¬†These are all quite catchy, propulsive songs, but they are mostly obvious variations on roughly the same catchy, propulsive root.

There are admittedly some divergences though, which are delivered with varying degrees of success. ¬†The fairly straightforward rock of the breezy "These Shadows" is the least interesting of the lot, though it is still pleasant‚Äìthere just is not anything for more outr√©-minded music fans like myself to grab onto at all. ¬†"Other Stars," on the other hand, is just flat-out Hawkwind channeling: there is a simple groove and some space-y flanging and not much else. On the bright side, Wooden Shjips happily avoid Hawkwind's heavy-handedness, wild indulgence, and frequent ridiculousness, so it is not wasted effort. ¬†The last aberration, however, turns out to be the album's absolute high point: the closing "Everybody Knows." ¬†Like the aforementioned "These Shadows," it is essentially another straightforward rock song, but everything about it is great: the pace, the vocal melody, the chord progression, the bittersweet organ hook‚Äìjust...everything. ¬†It is easily one of my favorite songs of the year.

Back to Land's other great song is one of the omnipresent rockin' Suicide pastiches: "Servants," a piece that beautifully illustrates how many unexpected variables are involved in getting a song just right. ¬†In fact, the only real difference between it and Back to Land's lesser variations seems to be its pace. ¬†While it admittedly boasts a better-than-average vocal hook, most of its magic occurs simply because its somewhat druggy, slowed-down speed is ideal for turning the endlessly repeating bass line into something quite mesmerizing.

I suspect a lot of people will like this album a lot more than I do, owing to my extreme and perhaps irrational sensitivity to overt-influence-wearing and rigid formulas. ¬†I still do like this album a lot though‚ÄìI just choose to see Wooden Shjips as more of a "singles band." ¬†I also suspect that some people will be very disappointed in the Shjips' decision to step away from psychedelia a bit, but it is not like they had a totally unique sound that they willfully compromised for increased popularity. ¬†Rather, they merely downplayed their genre tropes to let in a bit more personality and songcraft, a transition that is off to an extremely promising beginning.

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13 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image Thanasis Kaproulias has been quietly building an impressive repertoire of conceptual sound art releases for the past few years. Neuroplanets may perhaps be the most varied and complex release yet, by not only utilizing source material from four titans of the field (BJ Nilsen, Daniel Menche, Francisco Lopez and Mika Vainio) but also applying data from neurological and astronomical research into his compositions. The end product is something that sounds more like a collaboration where the original artists‚Äô sound is measurable, but also Kaproulias' reworking as well.

Sub Rosa

Unlike his last release for the label, Inhumane Humans, Novi_sad does not work with as much overt noise and dissonance, although those things do crop up tastefully throughout.The first piece allows BJ Nilsen's careful, understated touch to sound to be prevalent in the form of buzzing and ghostly passages of sound drifting through, occasionally bringing along the hint of a melody that slowly dissipates into the ether.Eventually the piece builds to a dense and heavy blast of digital noise, but used as a tasteful climax rather than an overused stylistic choice.

In more of a departure, the material provided by Daniel Menche sticks to the high end of the spectrum, and also has the sound of being recorded in a massive, abandoned warehouse.Considering Menche's work is so often of a very organic nature, and heavy on the bass, it is a different recording than I was expecting.The piece (meshed with data of plasma waves from NASA and patterns of music agnosia) ends up with a denser, heavier sound that is more of a product of its spaciousness rather than the actual abrasiveness of the sound, as counterintuitive as that may sound.

Kaproulias' work with material from Francisco Lopez demonstrates the Spanish composer‚Äôs touch early on, with near silence and subsonic rumbles to slowly build the work from almost nothing.However, the collaborative element becomes clear when metallic, grinding rhythmic scatters and noises appear, locked into some sort of ersatz rhythm that becomes sharper as the piece clicks on.By the end, it sounds like a recording from within a factory, with all associated noise and distortion.

The final composition is built on recordings from Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio in a work dense with digital noise and what sounds like bits of a malfunctioning guitar cable.There is a heavy electronic sheen to everything, and with the use of guitar-resembling sounds it fits with Vainio's recent works.Throughout this piece there are rising and falling ultra sonic blaststhat are balanced by more peaceful, shimmering sounds, but ending the piece in a rather painful outburst due to the processing of Kaproulias.

How exactly the use of neurological and astronomical data shaped these four compositions is not at all clear.Being that it is not too difficult to hear the source material Kaproulias used from other artists, my curiosity of course was to how the processing was handled.Knowing the answer to that is not a necessity, however, and Neuroplanets is a strong piece of occasionally harsh sound exploration even without its conceptual trappings and appearances by other artists.Novi_sad's work sounds even more singular and self assured than before, with him firmly establishing himself amongst the most noteworthy artists in the field.

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11 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

New CD(r), in handmade cover with woodcut and linocut print.
One long track (1hour, 6 minutes 16 seconds):

Weather-beaten time
Exhausted
Returns through crimson spread
It's towering body
Makes deepest twitching night young.
Sliding on whirlpool dreams
Gallops decomposing transmutations away.
Dark-cloaked ignition pillars
Move each creviced moment
Through farmer's saw-toothed snores
Around infant whimpers,
As goose and gander
Stand asunder
On yelping canal banks.

price € 20,- includes shipping from: www.aranos.org

08 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

The Iron Soul Of Nothing

The Iron Soul of Nothing will be released on 11/29/11 by Ideologic Organ.

Finally, available now as double vinyl set this is a must for fans of both of these legendary sonic travelers: Steven Stapleton & Colin Potter twist SUNN O)))’s 2000 album “ØØVOID” inside out on Nurse’s dissection table.

"In 2007 we commissioned Nurse With Wound to re-work the masters of SUNN O)))’s second album “ØØVOID” to be included as a bonus CD on the Japanese reissue of said album released a year later on Daymare Recordings. We dug up the original 2" reels from the 2000 session, had Mell Dettmer bake the tapes, made the multitrack transfers and send the drive over to IC studios. The intial brief was to hopefully come up with to come up with something in the veiin of Nurse’s legendary Soliloquoy for Lilith set (my favorite release of the collective). What was returned was way beyond our expectations, completely transformed and rediscovered material, including highlighting formerly obscured vocals of the legendary Pete Stahl (Scream, Wool, Goatsnake). A vast creepy sonic journey some part drone/depth of SUNN O))), other part concrete weirdness of Nurse, third part just downright out there in surreality and obscure referencing." —Stephen O'Malley

More information here.

08 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

The most important audio recording released in the nineties wasn't a collection of songs by a self-tortured alternative star. The most important recording released in the grunge era was entitled SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! It was a covert audio recording of two older drunken men living in a small flat in San Francisco, who spent their available free time yelling, screaming, hitting and generally abusing each other.

The phenomenon began in 1987 when Eddie and Mitch (two young punks from the Mid West), moved next door to Peter Haskett (a flamboyant gay man), and Raymond Huffman (a raging homophobe). This ultimate odd-couple hated each other with raging abandon, and through the paper-thin walls their alcohol-fuelled rants terrorised Eddie and Mitch. Fearing for their lives they began to tape record evidence of the insane goings on from next door.

In recording Pete and Ray’s unique dialogue, the boys accidentally created one of the world’s first ‘viral’ pop-culture sensations. Their tapes went on to inspire a cult following, spawning sell-out CD’s, comic artworks by Dan Clowes (Ghostworld), stage-plays, music from the likes of Devo and a Hollywood feeding frenzy. For the newly famous Eddie and Mitchell, this would be a life-changing experience that would see them ingested into the belly and fired out the orifice of the pop culture beast.

In this first feature to come out of the SAFC’s FilmLab initiative, Matthew Bate (What the Future Sounded Like, Mystery of Flying Kicks) explores the blurring boundaries between privacy, art and exploitation.

Info here.

Shut Up Little Man!

08 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

New issue out now.

Treriksröset, Boyd Rice, Slogun, Militia, Gnaw Their Tongues, Perispirit, Mika Taanila, As Loud As Possible, ILIOS, Black Boned Angel, KE/HIL, Control. Insider look at the new forces of American Power Electronics, “For Little Box” by: GX Jupitter-Larsen, The Essentials with Sick Seed, Haters and Night Science/Chrysalis. Art by: Waltteri M. (Armon Kuilu). Now bigger page size and more pages!! B5 (18x25cm) / 68 pages with full color cover!

More info here.

06 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

Dani Siciliano‚Äôs second album starts out well, but it has trouble maintaining both the momentum and the high standards set by the first couple of tracks. While her voice sounds better than ever, unfortunately the music doesn‚Äôt always do it justice.

The album starts with a couple of playful, danceable songs with good beats that only get better as they unfold. It‚Äôs a great beginning, but the extra effort seems to have drained the energy from the songs that follow. Siciliano spreads herself thin when she tries to get serious, and the transition from the silly "Why Can‚Äôt I Make You High" to "Frozen" is abrupt and painful. This vacillation between having fun and being serious additionally causes the album to lose focus.

It‚Äôs also too bad that she relies on the music to carry the ideas as much as she does, because it‚Äôs her voice and the vocal melodies that are the real draw here. She‚Äôs at her most sultry and intriguing on the otherwise overly repetitive and static "Be My Producer," yet she‚Äôs much too restrained on "Think Twice." Far too frequently, she introduces musical elements that detract from the song, like the cartoonish accents on "They Can Wait" or the rising synth on "Frozen" that grates rather than builds tension.

The electronics don‚Äôt always serve her well, and there are some spots where her voice seems out of place among them. The few instances of acoustic instruments included on the album are a good foil for her vocals, and she comes across as more confident and natural in their presence. While dance music is pretty forgivable as far as lyrics go, many of the album‚Äôs lyrics aren‚Äôt very compelling, like this line from the title track: "If you speak, then speak your mind/Use your head, not your behind."

This album has many enjoyable moments, but its inconsistency hampers any potential greatness.

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06 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

Southern Lord’s reissue of Clown Alley’s classic album Circus of Chaos is very welcome. Never available on CD before, this album has long gone under the radar. While not completely fresh sounding after 20 years, the album still packs a powerful punch.

Southern Lord

Clown Alley deserve more than the footnote in musical history that they’ve been afforded. Guitarist Mark Deutrom founded Alchemy Records who, in addition to originally releasing this album, also released the debut albums by Melvins and Neurosis (who both have a lot to answer for with regards to modern metal). Deutrom produced some of the early Melvins releases and later joined as bass player. Clown Alley’s bassist, Lori Black, changed her name to Lorax following this release when she too joined the Melvins as their bassist. Unfortunately Circus of Chaos was consigned to history when the Melvins hit it big.

Of course, with this spiderweb of connections in the Melvins universe it’s easy to overlook Clown Alley’s music. While not the revolutionaries that the Melvins were, Clown Alley were still somewhat ahead of their time. They combined the punk of Dead Kennedys and Black Flag with a fresher and tougher sound. Listening to “On the Way Up” it is possible to hear sounds that would become staples of '90s alternative rock; the likes of Lard, Helmet and Tomahawk were definitely taking notes while this album was playing.

The music is fast and powerful (certainly a lot faster than Black and Deutrom would be playing later in their careers. The punchy bass and machine-like drumming push the songs along at breakneck paces while vocalist David Duran spits out the words like he was trying to get some nasty taste out of his mouth. “Pet of a Pig” is the kind of song that would make me want to get into the centre of a crowd and jump like a fool. The playing from all quarters is crisp and precise, the production is quite sparse. Aside from a tiny bit too much compression, the entire album sounds like just a band playing in a rehearsal room, there’s no jiggery pokery with unnecessary studio techniques to colour the music. There isn’t a wide range to choose from here but Clown Alley do one thing and they do it well (that’s play tight, blistering hardcore infused rock).

In addition to the full album, also included on this reissue are a bunch of live tracks and some radio material. The radio material consists of a promo and an interview, neither of which are worth listening to more than once. The interview lasts 10 minutes but could have been done in one. The only interesting bit is where Deutrom starts getting excited about future releases on Alchemy and tries to explain that exactly how heavy the Melvins are: “imagine Metallica if they were men.” The live tracks, although sometimes of quite ropey quality, were worth including on the disc. The power being put out by the four of them is white hot. Even though at times the music melts into one noise (such as on “Unplugged”), the rhythm still stays intact.

Although it does sound a little dated 20 years on, Circus of Chaos is well worth listening to both as a great album and as a document for fans of the Melvins who are interested in hearing what two of their better bass players did before they joined. I’m delighted to see this being re-released as I’ve never been able to find a copy of the vinyl and have had to make do with a crappy MP3 rip of it. Southern Lord deserve thanks.

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06 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

The latest release from Matthew Bower’s Skullflower crushes all the competition. Making very rough rhythms and drones from slabs of noise, Bower has put together one titan of an album. The noise he evokes rakes out my ears like few others do.

Crucial Blast

Starting off with the pretentiously titled “Lost in the Blackened Gardens of Some Vast Star,” Tribulation begins like a kick to the face and keeps kicking. Bower uses the bare minimum rock setup of guitars and drums to make his compositions, but it’s hard to tell as there is so much distortion and dirt all over the music that it all forms one black mess. (It’s a glorious black mess however.) Sometimes, like on this first track it is possible to hear bits of guitar squawk through the layers of feedback but most of the time the wall of sound is all consuming. Like an awful lot of noise releases, Bower shows a strong metal influence. “Black Wind” has a black metal tinged riff repeating through it while tons of feedback creates the black wind of the title. Black metal always strives for icy coldness but rarely achieves it, when I play this piece, the temperature drops in the room.

One thing that isn’t quite annoying but is a little irksome is the way that all of the pieces just stop at the end and immediately the next piece begins. After the eight minutes of aural assault of the title track I am only beginning to get into a good trance when (the admittedly awesome) “Void of Roses” all of a sudden begins at a different volume, knocking me back into consciousness. This is probably intentional, lulling the listener into a comfort zone and pulling the chair out from under them.

The music is disorientating and overwhelming as Bower makes good use of stereo, channelling different sounds into different ears and at different volumes. On headphones many of the pieces have a much stronger impact; the sounds coming in at different levels resulted in me cocking my head to one side like I had a creak in my neck. The dizzying array of noises on offer makes each listen sound as fresh as the first. Even within one piece Bower utilises a wide range of sounds. For example there are three main elements to “Dwarf Thunderbolt:” a slow and doom laden guitar, a wall of shrieking feedback and what sounds like a piano being demolished. Any combination of two of these elements would have made a powerful piece on their own but the three together is tremendous.

One thing that struck me about Tribulation is that as overwhelming as it is, it is never overbearing. After many noise albums I want to put on something a little more sedate but when this album finishes I’m ready to go again after a short break. This is a fantastic album and definitely one of the best from Skullflower.

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05 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

I started keeping a list of random ideas and sounds in the newestKattoo record because by the fourth track, the record was already goingall over the place. I'm a huge fan of sample-based music and thekitchen sink approach to constructing records usuallyworks, but here it plays like a hackneyed collection of obviousinfluences that don't add up to anything greater.

Hymen

The opening track is a melodramatic piece of orchestra music played allby the canned synths that plague the entire record. People learned inthe '70s that synthesizers made to simulate acousticinstruments were more interesting when they were just being used tomake their own weird sounds, but that's something Kattoo still hasn'tfigured out.

Some of the arrangements are touching and themelodies can be pretty hook-filled, but they are all hamstrung by synthpresets. Electric piano is flat and drenched in reverb so that itsounds almost exactly like the piano tones in Windows XP that tell youwhen an application is finished installing. Strings and synth brass(does anyone seriously try to get away with synth brass these days?)are excruciating and while the songs might have been great had theybeen recorded by a real orchestra, Kattoo seems not to have thatluxury.

Movie samples dot the record and add texture andoccassionally meaning, but they never sew the songs together intoanything cohesive. The effect usually comes off like someone adding Aliensdialogue over a new age record which sounds like the kind ofexperiments everyone I knew with a sampler and a love of Wax Trax werebanging out in 1992.

When there are beats to break up themovie-score melodrama, they are either pulled from the same cannedcollection as the synth patches or cut up in an annoying way in anattempt to posture as contemporary. Take away some of the buzz rollsand micro-edits and you have an Enigma B-Side collection here, onlywith less interesting instrumentation.

When the samples aren'tobvious and overly indicative of the genre aesthetic to which Kattooseems tied, they are so completely out of any context that it sounds asif the author is simply passing through channels on a TV and capturingwhatever bit of randomness catches his fancy. I swear there's even abit of the Alien 3 score lifted or re-created here. Kattoo's haphazard approach tries to throw samples from Logan's Run,anime dialogue, beatboxing, middle eastern melodies, and war moviesound bytes together and if it were trying to be funny, it might justwork. Unfortunately, there's no obvious tongue in Kattoo's cheek.

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05 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

Jazzfinger's openness to sounds and attention to emotion, minimalism and fluidity contradicts and even somehow incomprehensibly dismisses their defiantly lo-fi two-track sound.

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The balance of distance, depth and intimacy that seems to delicately merge within the songs is also evident on the LP's magnificent extended card packaging. These almost biological alpenglow hallucinogenic watery images are almost like looking down into some hyper-psychedelic liquid abyss, plus it towers above the rest of my CD collection so it's hard to ignore.

While acts like Vibracathedral Orchestra and Sunroof! (with whom Jazzfinger have played as part of) bask in the UK underground's glow Jazzfinger remain relatively, and curiously, under unexposed. Also unlike many of their contemporaries in the hard to pin down esoteric fucked up sounds / drone based scene Jazzfinger can easily cope without overindulging in lengthy freeform immolating noise shakedowns; this LP is about space, melody and texture. The way the perfect but ungraspable melody on "Secret Grandfather" seems to slip from the memory just before it loops round into focus again shows the duo are able to manipulate the intangible silences into form.

The best example of their approach to minimalism is the subtle restraint of the single pealing piano note of the introductory "Wooden Fireworks" that rings out over an intermittent beat and quivering drone; it's a hardly there splinter ov magick. There's a touch of dark peculiarity too with the almost Western saloon piano on "Crying Video" in the midst of the loose improvisational percussion and the menace of shaking dark bloody prenatal thing that moves over plucked strings on "I am in Blood". At times it becomes difficult to tell where a sound is sourced from and with "On Red Moon" the sound that could be just as easily be expertly leaked shortwave feedback as slices of egoless damaged free horn abuse. Even though Hasan Gaylani and Ben Jones are prepared to reach Jazzfinger's digits into several other musical territories the music never reeks of dilettantism. The only possible criticism that can be levelled at The Well of Used Dreams is that a couple of the song's harsher concluding edits can snap the head back into the reality of the surrounding environment a little too quickly.

With wintry moments amongst the broad autumnal mood they grasp the noisy nettle on "History of Tweed" with a substratum of industrial beats and constant tectonic electronic rumble. Picking up pace as it reaches the song's damaged vinegar strokes it releases blasts of near regal organ rise proudly from the static as if Coil had come back from the ether sieved through an aural super-8 filter. Jazzfinger's handmade reverberations have a readymade aged appearance that sounds more solid.

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The album's finish comes heavily with its two closers but without the weight of a blow out. "Silver Glitter on the Summit of Everest" deals in Tibetan instrumentation and sounds with clashing strings rubbing up against electronic note picking which alchemises the CDR into helping to visualise a cold blue sky. The epic fifteen minute finale "The Lighthouse Keepers" keeps two steady soft(ish) hums beneath intermittent parallel systems checks which scratch themselves out of the plastic like the spinning discharge of a lighthouse. The apparent softness of the humming eventually gives way to the scraping metal of those difficult to identify horns/feedback and an organ that reaches skywards in circuitous gorgings.

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As amorphous as The Well of Used Dreams manages to be it couldn't be called anything other than a consistently impressive and defining release. Slowly but surely Jazzfinger are creating an underground swell of completists and admirers and this is another essential release that needs to be tracked down while its still available in this impressive incarnation.

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