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21 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Mick Flower and Chris Corsano are no newcomers to the world of freely improvised music, and their numerous accolades more than summarize their collective achievements. Yet the two musicians play in such a broad spectrum of situations that sometimes it is difficult to tell just what the core of their sound is. On their second full length as a duo however, they are stripped of any external distractions in favor of head-to-head improvisational conversations, a setting that both thrive in.

VHF

The album opens with a bang as Corsano's drums and Flower's virtuosic Japan Banjo (or Shaahi Baaja) explode forth for "I, Brute Force?," a propulsive shredding session that finds fertile exploratory ground in the brief gaps allotted by Lightning Bolt levels of energy. Corsano's drumming can rival anyone's, and his playing here is absolutely frenetic, bounding across, over and through Flower's arbeggiated shards with reckless confidence. There are few sounds so unique in improvised music today, and the duo's perfection of this kind of head-on freedom is rarely matched in any circle. Beneath all of the notes—and there are plenty—is an overall shape the form of which unravels with patience and (relative) clarity, but whose moment to moment discourse of ideas is that of a structure far briefer in length.

If the first track represents the duo's forte, the rest of the album displays its depth. Both members' instrumentation extends beyond their usual associations, as Corsano variously picks up a melodica and cello while Flower also plays tanpura and organ. This provides some necessary pockets for the two to extend into and they take full advantage of it. On "The Three Degrees of Temptation," Corsano's pot and pan drum kit rattles, shakes and chimes beneath Flower's nimble string manipulations, creating an eerie and amorphous spatial realm.

This sparse sound is counteracted by the thick duel-string drones on the following track, "The Drifter's Miracles." True to Flower's Vibracathedral Orchestra roots, the number finds the ample dialogue to be had between La Monte Young's drone experiments, contemporary free drone music and Japanese shamisen. Corsano's cello undulates underneath while Flower ornaments his moves with layer after layer of shapes that change effortlessly despite the consistent density of sound.

The duo return to what appears to be their signature sound on "The Beginning of the End," although this time the proceedings maintain a distinctly Skaters-like feel as Corsano's drums patter about beneath Flower's riffage. While the approach may be the same, it's encouraging—though not surprising—that the unit can extend it into different modes through what they're playing rather than how loud or fast they are.

The closing track, "The Main Ingredient," is the longest here, and the duo takes advantage of the length to explore depths previously only hinted at. Building into a frenetic and undulating weight, the unit moves with a singular vision all too rare. Instant response is one thing, but Flower and Corsano can shift mood along with tempo, atmosphere with melody and approach with feel. This sort of elasticity and balance results in some of the most distinctly surprising and exciting sounds happening today. And the long raga-like fade out at the end? It only encourages another go.

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21 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

In the seemingly endless discography of Muslimgauze, sometimes it's tough to know where to start or, even worse, where to end. Bryn Jones produced so much music during his sadly shortened life that sifting through it all can feel more like an archival endeavor than a journey into the mind of one of the most impressive and singular electronic musicians of his time. This disc, part of an archive series collecting various shelved projects from Jones, demonstrates simultaneously the depth and the prolific compulsions of the electro-genius.

Staalplaat

Actually this disc, in a matter of speaking, has already been released before. Drawn from masters that were later retracted in favor of those that would become 1998's Vampire Of Tehran, this collection is essentially that album with two tracks missing and nine more added. While this may sound like a lot of bonus material—and it is—the album hardly reads like an attempt to squish as much in to one disc as possible even though they're nearing it with almost 70 minutes of music here. Still, Jones' precise concoctions are so stylistically singular that the whole of the disc reads like an album, not a compilation.

Stylistically speaking, Jones sticks with his usual ammo on this release, mixing an ample amount of Arabic source material with breakbeat, electro and dub tactics. The result is a relatively mobile and downright dancey release. Which is not to say that this is poppy in the slightest. If anything, the constraints placed on the music by the clear and propulsive rhythms serve as markers that Jones variously avoids, dabbles over and treads across with samples galore.

Take "Satsuma Tablet" for example. This looping rhythm features no lyrics at all, instead riding along the rhythm with blips and blurts as an Arabesque melodic fragment is repeated into oblivion. On the other hand, the following "Arabs Improved Zpain" features a four-four beat straight out of an NWA track. Underneath, reversed strings and a female vocal dance amongst each other, diverging, interlocking and generally keeping things interesting despite the miniscule amount of material being utilized.

If anything, that may have been Jones' greatest strength. Each track here makes the most out of only a few spare parts—it is the way they are combined, recombined, sampled and treated that shapes the movement. The result is a nearly vertical sonic consideration unheard of in this sort of rhythmic setting. Tracks like "North Africa is Not So Far Away" don't proceed so much as they morph, bending a fragment guitar line, a steady bass groove, a rhythm track and a vocal sample into a dub groove that could last long enough to accompany a Saharan trek.

Other displays of his depth can be seen on tracks like "Straps Sticks of Dynamite Around Her Body," a gentle and moody piece whose intimate Arabic string gestures and spare beat exude just the kind of grim scene that the title suggests without providing answers to its questions. It is this attention to detail and, above all else, the works themselves and what they say that keep nearly all of Muslimgauze's works interesting. This one is no different which is great on the one hand. On the other, it's no different, and could just as easily be lost in the shuffle of the 18 other Muslimgauze albums you've already managed to get your hands on.

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21 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

It is doubtful whether a majority of today's current crop of laptop musicians would recognize the name of Lejaren Hiller (1924-1994). It is however, certain, that he was a key figure in the genesis of computer music. A lifelong student of music who was a chemist by profession, he succeeded in bridging the gap between scientific inquiry and the world of sound. After working for Dupont he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois where his research involved the Iliac 1, the first computer to be owned by an academic institution. He realized that the chemical probability processes he was investigating could be applied to music, resulting in the first composition to be written with the aid of a computer, much to the ire of the 1958 musical establishment.

New World Records

While the Iliac Suite is not included on this release, it does contain three key works from the period of 1963 to 1974, very fertile years for the composer, who continued to pursue his creative vision unabated by the negative press that attended the world’s first computer aided composition. The three pieces exhibited show off his interest in the use of information theory and ability and comfort in writing for multiple forms such as studio prepared magnetic tape with vocalists, chamber ensemble with computer, and string quartet.

The title of the collection refers to Hiller’s working procedure, best stated in his own words: “I certainly use tonal methods, serial methods, of course, chance methods, charts, mathematical formulas like Fibonnaci series, eye music –you name it. And all of this with or without computers and electronics. But again I say that I try all of them in what you might call a total matrix of possibilities.”

“Computer Cantata” is split into five sections and starts off with a bang of rackety meandering percussion, like a drum corps on nitrous oxide. Eventually petering out into mainframe blips, bleeps, and fuzz, a soprano’s wavering voice emerges in the middle, acting as a focal point as the drums fade back in and vacuum-tube tones zigzag back and forth between the speakers. All the while horns and violins dance around with each other playfully and chaotic. The third section begins and ends with unaccompanied computer noise, what I imagine it must have sounded like in the old Ma Bell telephone switching stations.

“Quartet No. 6 for Strings” is an exuberant affair and perhaps the most accessible on the disc to the casual listener. The three sections of the quartet are based on environmental sound patterns he took notes on and then categorized: commercial district and industrial sounds; placid and peaceful sounds; and cheerful sounds such as children playing or those from Saturday morning cartoons. He then further defined them by applying a whole slew of chance processes and then imposing various constraints regarding pitch and other elements.“A Portfolio for Diverse Performers and Tape” is by far the most esoteric piece collected here. Commissioned by Polskie Radio in Warsaw the eight-channel tape features children’s songs sung by his daughter and son, making it at times eerie and scary. If the operatic singing were deleted from the mix it would come very close to a Nurse With Wound piece. It would be very appropriate to play on Halloween, sitting on the porch passing out candy to kids. It also contains sounds that are comical and sourced from who knows where. Trilling kazoos emerge from a resonant abyss.

I would have liked to seen more photographs in the liner notes, of Hiller, of the various performers, of the computers and studios where the works were created, and of the notebooks in which the ideas were sketched out. Perhaps those who put this together did not have access to them, or maybe their budget didn’t allow for them to be included. On many of the other archival releases from New World Records such images have been included. Hopefully though, what this release will have done is to take a step towards restoring Lejaren Hiller’s place in the history of music; from that of a footnote in books on ambient and computer music to a place of honor for his unique prolific genius.

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15 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

For his first release on Raster-Noton, Atom™ (aka Senor Coconut, Atom Heart, Uwe Schmidt, etc.) has created an album that does not necessarily clash with the label’s aesthetic, but takes a different direction that is much more classical in feel: just as the album’s packaging resembles an old book more than the traditional cold, sterile art R-N are known for, the music within has the same feel, along with input from Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider.

Raster-Noton

Although split across some 20 tracks, the album consists mostly of "suites" of songs that are separated into smaller bite-sized pieces. Bookended by two variations of processed static ("Weisses Rauschen", or "white noise"), the pieces in between combine the usual selection of digitally manipulated sounds, but by way of 1960s early electronic composers, and even a bit of classical musical structures. The four parts of "Wellen und Felder" mix bass pulses and simplistic rhythms and tones, with orchestral like string tones giving the entire piece a classical vibe, even with the sub bass thumps and stuttering electronics.

On "Funksignal" a basic bleep/bloop rhythm and GameBoy snare skitters over cut up fragments of voice and MSP static crunch algorithms. The rhythm never really gets locked in though, and instead scurries about the track, which carires over into "Interferenz 1", which throws the now-overwrought sounds of wireless phone interference that gets boxed into a rhythmic structure, and the occasional piano stab cobbles it all together into some bizarre take on house music.

The series of "Mittlere Composition" tracks vary from violent noise blasts and random electronic noises on the first, to the organ like tones and arpeggiated synths, before ending with fake xylophone ascending/descending rhythms that could be pulled off of some 1970s middle school film strip. The closing cycle of "Weisses Rauschen" tracks puts the emphasis back on the classical elements, with the first piece showing a waltz-like pace and synthetic harp sounds alongside shrill insect calls that eventually adds in another series of GameBoy beats, the evil computer voice at the onset goes from growling to almost singing by the end.

This sinister computer voice is actually that of Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider, which gives the tracks on which he appears a sense of menace, like the all-powerful master computer growling out in clear, yet forceful German. The whole of this album though just doesn’t match its parts. It never feels like it takes off, but seems like a series of musical sketches that are not quite finished. There are good ideas here, but it resembles a collection of tracks more than a fully fleshed out album.

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15 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Working at the crossroads between a variety of contradictory approaches—electronic and acoustic, improvisation and composition, producer and performer—Kevin Micka continues to hone his Animal Hospital project's refined explorations on this disc, compounding his broad and considerable talents into a majestic grit that shimmers with supple detail.

Barge Recordings

With a slew of instruments at his disposal, Micka has the means to create haunting and unusual sonic combinations throughout the album, a trait that sets him apart from so many of the do-it-yourself electronic explorers out there. Chimes, oscillators, guitars, toy pianos and Jonah Sacks' cello are among the plethora of noise makers fed and looped through large dosages of reverb and delay. Never one to let the effects speak for themselves though, Micka proves himself an able craftsmen, and any effect here is used as an endorsement of and contributor to the greater structure of the work.

The lengthy "His Belly Burst" is a fitting example. Sacks' nimble cello line opens with a line evocative of a Japanese folk melody. Building off of that mood, the piece is crafted upward as lines overlap and loop into an electronic wash of blissful tonalities. Soon interspersed with glitching electronics and, eventually, thudding, militaristic power chords and careening drum lines, the work grows into a textural bath of tone and sharp, staccato punctuation before settling back into its beginnings. That the piece manages to incorporate so many elements in its 17 minutes without ever feeling superfluous is impressive enough, but Micka manages to guide the work into something far greater than the sum of its parts.

Each work here presents itself with a similar ear for dramatic lines and structural buildup. On "...and ever," a Neu!-like drum pulse leads to slinking guitar lines, thudding bass and, ultimately, a propulsive brand of head-bangable psychedelic riffage. While Micka's ability to extrapolate on these tiny musical cells and turn them into full scale works is no small accomplishment, and he does it with aplomb every time, the result does dabble toward slightly sterile terrain due mostly in part to its consistance. Even when lyrics slip in to the album for the first time halfway through "...and ever," it fits in so neatly among the other gadgety rhythms around it that the resultant feel is perhaps less surprising than intended.

This is by no means a deterrent against his approaches however. Some of these tracks reach truly unexpected heights while never straying too far from a certain breed of electronic-rock loop craftsmanship. Think Caribou but with a more proggy and less literal psychedelic sound. Micka also has the smarts to follow up his epic works with paired-down ones, and these provide smooth and necessary transitions between the three lengthy centerpieces of the album. The gently lilting guitar and wordless vocal melodies of "A Safe Place" rest atop an odd synthesized beat that manages to succeed in effect without shoving it down your throat.

The closing title track fittingly displays Micka's talents at their height, as low-end cello rumble, fragile guitar lines and panning clicks grow into a synthesized soup of gooey loop manipulations and Eno-esque ambiance. It all works beautifully, if it seems as though Micka could do this in his sleep. Sterilizing though that may be, the sincerity, skill and vision on display is exciting in a day when few manage to walk the line between experimental attitudes and near pop approachability with so finely attuned a vision.

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15 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

The fourth album by French composer Pierre-Yves Macé is an exceedingly high-concept affair with very intriguing source material. Passagenweg is inspired by philosopher Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, which was an unfinished attempt to chronicle Parisian industrial modernity. Mace, whose thematic consistency is laudable, constructs this lengthy musique concrete opus largely from crackling gramophone recordings of French popular music from the early twentieth century.

Brocoli

Pierre-Yves Macé has had a fairly atypical career for a contemporary classical composer. Despite his youth (he was born in 1980), he has already released three albums of electro-acoustic ensemble works (his debut album was released by John Zorn's Tzadik) and has opened for decidedly non-classical artists such as Matmos. He is currently working on a PhD in musicology with a specific interest on field recording. I suspect Passagenweg was conceptually birthed during those studies, but it does not seem especially sterile or academic.

The album opens in strange, yet some somewhat promising fashion. "Angelus Novus" gradually fades in with a dull, hobbling snare rhythm that is gradually eclipsed by the engulfing roar of a crackling and wavering sustained chord. Then the chord disappears, leaving a haunting, dreamlike waltz loop in its place.

After that, the album becomes very collage-y and difficult to discern where one track ends and another begins without staring unblinkingly at my CD player. A few tracks stand out as particularly enjoyable and coherent, however. "Il Principe il Ranocchio, 1" sustains a hazy ambience of schmaltzy strings and a churchbell that is intermittently encroached upon by field recordings and an exuberant antique piano recording. Eventually the schmaltzy strings seem to overpower the interloping elements, but then the loop is stretched and mangled before being abruptly cut out altogether. The following track is made up some submerged and seemingly understated glitchery, but then the track after that ("Ranocchio, 2") revisits the same string theme. It is unclear what it all means or how the glitch interlude is related. I suspect it isn't, but perhaps Macé's vision is simply too complex and enigmatic for me to grasp. Later, "Nocturnorama" essentially condenses the entire album into a 15 minute microcosm, shifting endlessly between scratchy big band recordings, radio dial-turning randomness, crackling melodramatic strings, and pastoral Eno/Budd ambience.

Passagenweg is a bit of complex and challenging listen, as a whole. It never achieves what I would call "beauty", but often attains a sort of creepy, otherworldly and bittersweet nostalgia. Lamentably, this mood is always quite fleeting, as the album is packed full of harsh juxtapositions, noise, and violent cut-ups. On the other hand, annoying repeating loops and unpleasant dissonance often unexpectedly transform into something shimmering, compelling, or unexpected. Surprises abound, both positive and otherwise.

The obvious peril with utilizing exotic source material for a sound-collaging is that listeners will find the raw materials more interesting than what you have done with them. Passagenweg does not entirely avoid this peril: there were many moments on the album where I dearly wished that Macé would stop chaotically mutilating and combining gramophone snippets and/or applying watery, insubstantial reverbed piano or strings and let the source material unfold without him. But, alas, that would not be Art. I'm afraid my sensibility clashes somewhat with Macé's, but there are a lot of unique textures and flashes of surreal inspiration here. Also, while Macé does an excellent job concealing his formal classical training, Passagenweg lacks the humor and perverseness that make vaguely similar forays by Nurse With Wound and The Caretaker so enjoyable. Someday this may grow on me more, but for now I think Passagenweg is an inspired near-miss.

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15 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

This ensemble, named after a region of northern Africa located west of the Nile in ancient history, fuses jazz, rock and Middle Eastern traditional music to great effect (and never becomes tacky jazz fusion). The group is under the supervision of Sam Shalabi who, despite a large recorded output, has outdone himself on this album. Recruiting what seems like everyone in Montréal to play, what might have been a project too big to effectively handle has instead blossomed into the best album of the year so far.

Constellation

Judging an album by its cover is never a good idea and despite a gaudy luminous cover, the music on Against the Day is far from gaudy but it is luminous. Mixing Arabic influences with a jazz big band style group has made for a powerful album. The obvious influences here are Sun Ra and to a lesser extent John Coltrane but Shalabi’s own style (honed across many, many projects with most of them focussing on African and Middle Eastern styles) makes the jazz greats more spectres in the background rather than true points of reference as to how this all sounds. On “Iceland Spar” Shalabi and his group conjure up images of deserts and sandstorms (granted not images I would associate with Iceland!); the haunting strings and exotic motifs are fluid and malleable like a dune in the wind.

Elsewhere, the jazz comes out far stronger. Molly Sweeney’s smoky vocals on “Bilocations” are without doubt the centrepiece of Against the Day. She riffs on topics not exactly relevant to early civilisation but Shalabi states in the liner notes that this album is in dedication to Thomas Pynchon (the album’s titled borrowed from Pynchon’s novel of the same name) so the imagery makes more sense in that context. Taken together with the vibrant music, the song becomes psychedelic both in terms of style and in terms of being mind blowing. Several times I have had to stop what I am doing when listening to the album as this song comes on, it is remarkably captivating.

The title track is a frenzy of (whirl)wind instruments that sound like they belong on a classic 60s recording from Impulse! Records. The chaos of the piece suddenly bursts into a surging rhythm and escapes its free jazz trappings; the flowing music like a river and completely at odds with the arid, dry pieces that precede it. It floods out of the speakers and washes over me in a torrent. Sweeney’s vocals may be the centrepiece of the album but “Against the Day” is its life and soul.

I cannot sing Land of Kush’s praises enough, this is phenomenal album that ticks every single box for me. The recording is, as usual for Constellation, flawless. There is not a dud note to be found and even with nearly 30 musicians on board, not one of them sounds like a hollow session player. The only thing that could improve on it would for it to be at least twice as long but hopefully Shalabi does not just move on to another new project and does more with this. Undeniably Against the Day is one of the best albums of the year so far and is likely to stay high in my estimations for some time.

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15 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

While I am not generally one to categorically dismiss entire genres of music, my interest in black metal has historically been for the wrong reasons (I am amused by things that are cartoonishly evil). Despite my love for extreme music, I feel I have to draw the line at corpse-painted adults operatically shrieking about Satan or hobbits. Wolves In The Throne Room, however, are not ridiculous. In fact, they are kind of absolutely amazing.

Southern Lord

Olympia, Washington’s Wolves In The Throne Room contains no murderers, church-burners, or even a single dwarf that is too evil to be named. Nevertheless, they certainly have their own unusual and oft-mythologized backstory. The core of the group consists of two brothers (Nathan and Aaron Weaver) who were inspired to start the band at an Earth First! event in the Cascade Mountains as an attempt to combine the misanthropy of their sinister Norwegian musical brethren with earthy spirituality and radical environmentalism. Their ultimate aim is to "create a mythic space where artist and listener alike could strip away the mindset of the mundane to reveal a more ancient and transcendent consciousness." Also, they live in a collapsed farmhouse/rural stronghold called Calliope. I always like bands that live in strongholds, although Fela Kuti and Africa '70 is the only other example that springs to mind.

Malevolent Grain is much leaner and single-minded than the band's previous works (which I also enjoy). There are no guitar solos, atmospheric keyboards, interludes, or even a single riff here. Both lengthy songs are built entirely upon relatively simple (albeit tremelo-picked) minor chord progressions that hardly change at all. Surprisingly, this approach works extremely well, as the Wolves have clearly spent an enormous amount of time forging these skeletal song structures into their most intense and face-melting possible manifestation. This facial annihilation is largely rhythmic in origin.

Aaron Weaver's drumming is absolutely stupefying throughout both songs. Though certainly insane and virtuosic, I was especially struck by Weaver's unusual musicality. He may very well be the first drummer that I have heard that can make blast beats seem nuanced. Also, he performs an impressive rhythmic feat on "A Looming Resonance" in which he plays with blistering intensity while still enabling the song to feel like it is moving glacially. I was equally impressed at how he skillfully shifts from minimal head-bobbing grooves, to rumbling double bass, to blast beat intensity in a way that actually seems natural and essential to the songs' dynamic unfolding. One of my primary frustrations with this genre is that spastic blast beats are often just meaningless required components that feel strangely unwarranted and oddly detached from the music around them. On Malevolent Grain, the guitars and drums achieve a singular synergy that I think can only be attained by brothers who have been playing together their entire lives (Max and Igor Cavalera of Sepultura spring to mind as another example of this. Van Halen does not.).

The jaw-dropping first track ("A Looming Resonance") turns over vocal duties to Jamie Meyers (Hammers of Misfortune). Meyers had a cameo on the Wolves debut (Diadem Of 12 Stars), but this is the first time that the band has attempted female vocals for an entire song. It works incredibly well in this case- Meyers' vocals have a Nico-esque detached beauty that serves the material perfectly and almost transcends the black metal genre entirely. This is no small accomplishment, as I usually find female metal vocals to be shrill, unengagingly cold, or so swathed in reverb that they make the band sound like a terrible, sub-Projekt, early nineties goth band. This track is simply devastating in all respects (elegantly melodic vocals aside)- it builds in slow-burning intensity for over thirteen minutes and, weirdly, it more closely resembles Low during one of their rare roaring freak-outs than, for example, Emperor.

I was admittedly disappointed that Nathan reclaimed the microphone for "Hate Crystal," as his traditional black metal shrieking meant a sad farewell to to the EP's earlier somber melodicism. Despite that, it is still a fairly crushing song and it makes a sensible companion piece to "A Looming Resonance." It shares the stripped-down simplicity of its predecessor, but follows an opposite trajectory in that it begins in frenzied and demonically heavy fashion, then gradually becomes less and less intense until it finally dissolves into an ambient hum.

Malevolent Grain is the Wolves first release to feature a second guitarist (Will Lindsay from Middian). It is unclear if this new sinewy simplicity is related to that, or if these two songs were aberrations that would've been out of place amidst the "blazing crystalline blackness and ocean-deep ritualistic dronescapes" of their imminent third album (Black Cascade). I hope it is the former, but these guys seem to be incapable of making a misstep at this stage in their career- perhaps they've already moved onto to something even better.

Samples

14 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

With a slew of recent releases on homespun label luminaries such as Housecraft, Tape Drift, Peasant Magik and now Stunned, France's Enfer Boreal (aka Maxime Primault) has been hard to ignore of late. That he is partaking in Stunned's glorious first anniversary run is testament to the successes of both parties this past year and to honor it he releases one his best yet, a moist and brittle set of drones which far outshine the too often pallid results achieved by less finely attuned tacklers of texture.

Stunned

On this unfortunately limited morsel, Primault takes the warm and gushy drone approach often squandered by lesser tacklers of texture and infuses it with his own distinct organicism. Where many opt for clear and rich synthesizer squelching, his is a mellow and moist drone that slips inside the earlobes with ease despite the work's deeply detailed nature. Never one to forsake the work in the name of scale, the album opens with the restrained beauty of the first untitled track. Hovering gently, the piece would serve all too well as the soundtrack to some cave-dwelling crystal palace. With warm and longing loops ebbing and receding against a thick mat of static downpour and whispered wind sweeps, the work is given enough space to unfold once the materials are present, letting it meander long enough to coax out some pretty placid lucid dreams.

To be fair though, that's hardly the case on only the first tune. All five of the untitled tracks here are steeped in an airy loneliness that focuses far more on mood than effect. Guitar plucks drip across endless hums on the second track while the fourth track fades in to a mat of phasing loops that suggests the cosmic without losing sight of humanity. It is this capability that pushes the material beyond most basement dwellers' explorative potential, as Primault exhibits again and again his mastery of craft and attuned sense of loops that change meaning when left to interact.

The lone odd man out here is certainly the third track, which presents a decidedly grimmer take on Primault's sound. Snugged neatly in the middle of the album however, its industrious backing and glitchy smatterings segue neatly between the album's two halves. It is perhaps a necessary and smart change of pace to an album that, at its worst, comes dangerously close to losing its listeners in its drapings.

Yet that is hardly cause for distress; the veils of sound explored on here are rife with change. It just takes patience to uncover its layers. When the closing track enters with a thick knot of gravel, it is offset by steelpan-sounding melodies that softly meld on to the rough background and drag it into another space entirely. Closing things on this note is suiting; half way between thick and thin, full and empty, awake and asleep, it perfectly ties together all of the contradictions that are woven so well here. It is releases like this that display the true potential of the homegrown labels, and it is a shame that only 100 people will be able to here this warmly created package.

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14 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Some music is better left on a MySpace page. Record labels could do the Earth a favor by not wasting its valuable petroleum supply on sub-par CDs like this. To be fair, Robot vs. Zombie is available as a download from iTunes and other digital distributors, but to put it on your computer might compromise valuable hard drive space.

Automation

Gonken’s attempt at fusing the genres of hip-hop, IDM, and indie rock make for a disc that is, at its best, only mildly enjoyable. Having chosen the worst aspects of the aforementioned styles doesn’t add to the entertainment factor. Perhaps this album is best understood as the soundtrack for a shopping spree at Hot Topic; perhaps it was if you caught Gonken’s performance their in the Burlington, Washington store last week.

The mere utilization of circuit bent instruments does not automatically improve the music played on them. It is rumored Madonna used them on her latest album after all. The song “Circuit Bent Teeth” takes a further step toward annoyance with vocals distorted as if they are processed by a megaphone, a ploy littered far too often throughout the disc.

His lyrics are, however, humorous (at least on the first listen). “Indie Rockstar 101” pokes fun at hipster cokeheads while it is easy to imagine depressed teenagers rocking out to “Crushed,” in which the singer laments a giant robot killing his girlfriend. One of the better songs is a rap about a robot assassin. The verses are clever, but it has the same failings as most contemporary hip-hop: the refrain is repeated ad nauseam, making the song needlessly repetitious and the creative parts of the flow end up being overwhelmed. “Taking It For What Its Worth” provides an instrumental reprieve from the lyrical songs. The depression motif comes back in full force on “Hate Is For People With Hearts,” with lyrics like “you told me you loved me/ but there was somebody else/in the back of your head/now your wishing that I was dead/I hate the way you make me feel.”

The album ends with a skit that amounts to little more than a chance for Gonken to talk about the size of his penis, something he calls “sledgehammer.” Like the title of his previous album Self Pleasurevation, this one is an exercise in onanistic indulgence, something he seems to know all about.

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14 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Tim Hecker's music is physical and concussive, but its effects radiate on a different level and manipulate something more primal than flesh alone. For close to an hour the music on this disc invades and purges the human core with vibrating melodies and crashing distortion: An Imaginary Country features Hecker doing what he does best.

Kranky

Hecker understands the value of balance in abstract music. Throughout his career he has explored the often indescribable places that exist between completely abstract noise, blissful drone, and carefully sequenced melody and rhythm. An Imaginary Country is a continuation of the sound developed over the course of Harmony in Ultraviolet, but with an eye towards vignettes. Whereas the latter record flowed in one continuous and throbbing motion, Hecker's newest fades in and out of consciousness and concentrates on developing a broader array of sounds and ideas. Taking the title of the album seriously, it isn't hard to imagine each of these songs as an impressionistic detail of a landscape in Hecker's mind. Instead of focusing on long, slowly developing ideas and shapeless clouds of song, Hecker has decided to temper his music with abrupt shifts, slow fades, and unexpected, definitive transformations. A more concentrated and diverse album is the result. The song titles bear the landscape idea out as many of them carry names you might find in an atlas or on a trail map. However, instead of physical locations, Hecker maps out emotional and spiritual terrain by offering subtle and extravagant sounds in measured portions.

The music's basic elements are hot noise and buried melody. Fat bass pulses, unending string drones, guitar-esque noise solos, hiss, and blankets of of other electronic sounds make up the bulk of the record, with silence existing only between the tracks. Hecker's arrangements are dense without sounding busy and they rely on deceptive movements to work their magic. Distinct melodies and rhythms populate many of the songs, but they're so repetitive and completely woven into the fabric of the record that they disappear whenever attention wavers for a second. Radio distortion and bent frequencies eradicate structure and sensibility throughout the record, but at no point does the music fall apart and turn into a mass of unintelligible noise. In fact, the album thrives on the tension between intelligibility and senselessness without ever reaching for either extreme. Each song is very relaxing, but some are particularly hypnotic and play out like electric sirens. Others reward a concentrated listening; all of the minor details that are packed onto this record reinforce its beauty and complexity. An Eno-like playfulness is evident on more than a few of these songs. Another Green World this is not, but Hecker is definitely flirting with that kind of creativity and conceptual framework. "Pond Life" is especially reminiscent of the pictographic nature of that album. Its varied and unpredictable sounds wiggle and gyrate like the kind of life forms you'd expect to find at the bottom of a small body of water. The entire album is life-like in a similar fashion, though Hecker's musical world is far more dominated by landmarks than by biology.

Appreciated superficially or carefully, An Imaginary Country is a deeply satisfying record. Fully formed songs like "Borderlands" and "Paragon Point" convey and sustain an emotional heft that has become increasingly rare in abstract electronic music. Other songs, like "The Inner Shore" and "Pond Life," convey their power in more subtle and playful ways. I've listened to this record for the last two months and have found something new and exciting about it with nearly each listen. I've gone to sleep with it playing, listened to it at work, studied with it, written to it, attempted a review twice, and I've still not managed to make myself sick of it. I've been excited by a couple records already this year, but this is one of the few that sounds absolutely essential to me.

Samples can be found here.