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19 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

Some drones have a spark—a life between the waves of sound that act as a portal to another dimension—others are merely lazy ways of making an album, flat and dull slabs of sound. This reissue of Ambience belongs to the former group of drones: it glitters and shines like the lightning that graces the artwork.

Divine Frequency

The title is a bit of a misnomer. Yes the music is ambient but it’snot something that should be played as ambience. The music here needsthe attention of the listener. Its subtleties were lost on theoccasions I was listening to it passively. When I had it on in thebackground it wasn’t that interesting. When I sat down with a cup oftea and gave it my full attention the music opened up fully. Grassowmakes very spacious compositions. I mean spacious in both a sense ofbeing without boundaries and a celestial feeling. “Siddharta” is a slowand detailed piece that sounds like astronomy. It appears infinite andblank at first but Grassow dragged me closer towards the stars and thecomets to revel in the detail. This feeling of vastness may seem atodds with Grassow’s statement in the sleeve notes saying that Ambience is an “inner document of [his] self.” Though, like the great astral artists (Sun Ra and Coil), Grassow manages to link up endless space with the much more intimate setting of the mind. “(Famine Road To) Port” is the most intimate sounding track and it is almost transcendent, it doesn’t quite evoke the same feelings of immensity as the rest of the album.

However there are times when I find the album hard going. It’s a lotto take in sometimes, especially with the longer tracks. Once I stoppedpaying attention, the music became slightly dull. By the time thesecond last track (called “The Old Park”) comes on, I am weary. Ambience requires an all or nothing involvement by the listener. Sometimes I’d have to turn it off and come back to it. This isn’t a negative criticism; the music is so dense that I can only fully appreciate it in smaller doses. It’s like a book of poetry, it’s impossible to take in the meaning and the language of all the poems by reading them all in one sitting.

Ambience is a very interesting album but it requires a lot of work to recognize the value of Grassow’s work. This is not an album that should be thrown onto an mp3 player for the walk to work. This is an album that should be played on an adequate stereo at the appropriate volume.

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19 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

Theartwork and title might be all cute nonsense and adolescent fun, butthe music that comes with it could only be born from a demented mind.Todd Drootin's music has been called "beatpunk," whatever that means,and his live shows are said to be fairly insane. In truth, he makessome pretty crazy melodic electronic music layered with snapping beatsand dreams of three headed monsters. It can be catchy as hell, but attimes it also sounds a little too familiar.

Alien8

In a fit of excitement I tossed Dinosaur Dinosaur into my player the moment I noticed the first song was called "Noise is Political." I waited and expected the whole album to launch into the stratosphere from this point forward. Let it be known, however, that Drootin isn't political at all, at least not on album. Instead he comes away as a mad scientist, mixing fairly straightforward beats with all manner of circus sounds and nightmare samples that would send Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fans into a frenzy. Computers beep to life, animals unexpectedly croak, and robots come to life only to let out a laser beam yell and then shut down again. Anyone that's heard any kind of electronic music that focuses its attention on mashed up beats and widely repeated motifs will half know what to expect from Books on Tape. What will come as a surprise is how fresh it sounds despite every last one of the songs having a fairly similar structure and straightforward approach. Drootin's musical success comes from the attitude he suffuses into the music, not from any radical innovation.

Allthe usual suspects are here, of course: the drum imitating a drill bitat a billion miles an hour; the pretty piano part; the modified vocals;and the massively edited orchestration of instruments so varied thatthey wouldn't normally fit together within the same song, but somehowmanage to find themselves squeezed together in the same second. Drootinshifts from first gear to sixth in three seconds flat and has theability to toss around phrases, loops, and samples like they were asack of potatoes to be handled with extreme force. All this makes Dinosaur Dinosaur passable: a fun album to thrown on now and then. His comedic approach to the music is like a vortex from which my imagination cannot escape, though, and that feature of his music pushes it past ordinary. If his brand of humor isn't immediately evident, then chances are the album is going to sound dull and come away as being another in a long line of decent electronic albums with nice melodies in them. If, however, the nonsensical and sci-fi, b-movie approach he's managed to harness without a single recognizable movie sample is readily obvious, be prepared to spend a lot of time with songs like "Surly Ambassador" or "When Siblings Attack." His goofball programming and razor sharp shifts have ended up occupying large portions of my brain, slowly taking it over with all the weirdness I could ever ask for.

Don't expect to be blown away immediately. Dinosaur Dinosaur works slowly despite being fast paced and unusual. It will take time for all the wires, tentacles, and madness to take root, but they will surely take over. At times Drootin can sound a little flat, his compositions not always ready to give up their secrets right away. Closer observation, however, will reveal a whole world of sound blistering away beneath his beatcentric music.

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18 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

This introductory four track CD-R is the first not-so rotten fruitfrom the newly minted side project from one half of Newcastle uponTyne’s Tears of Abraham. Mein Kinder might freely embrace the tag of‘dark ambient soundscapes’ but the music here is far darker, deeper andbetter than the limitations of that genre suggest.

Self Released

Part of an ongoing larger 21 track project, these tracks take theirtitles from the names of the children killed at the Branch Davidiancompound in Waco, Texas. The basic ingredients of the tracks here aremaybe straight to tape live sounds such as drone and feedback withlittle or no manipulation, but they swell under the weight of differentthe sounds that are heard.

At nearly twenty five minutes longer than the other pieces, “Little OneJones” can’t help but stand out. The ranting insane vocal line (done inone take through a child’s tape recorder) may be incomprehensible butit still manages to clearly rage under the unfolding and judderingcircling waves.

The other pieces are shot through with streaks of violence (“LisaMartin”) and eddies of bleak tapering smoke blown by circlinghelicopters (“Star Koresh”) creating compulsory if unsettling listens.Even though closer, “Startle Summers,” is possibly still a futurework-in-progress, it’s the best thing here. Chaining a metal melody ofcalland response feedback to a groaning backdrop of shifting weight itstaggers contemptibly within its constraints. There’s a huge repeatingsound (perhaps a disfigured doom metal chant or perhaps percussion)with in the track that carries it headlong into gloom.

Mein Kinder mayonly be a few months old but he’s maturing very fast.

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18 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

Thrones is better known as the work of Joe Preston, the man of a thousand bands (Earth, The Melvins, Sunn O))), High on Fire, etc) and of limited edition releases. This is a (thankfully unlimited) collection of various singles, rarities and unreleased material from about the last ten years on one handy disc. It is one oddball collection to say the least.

Southern Lord

The variety of material on Day Late, Dollar Short is immense. I was expecting something along the lines of what Earth are doing now judging from the style of the cover (designed by Stephen O’Malley whose work graces the covers of half the music I buy lately) but that adage about covers and judging holds true. There are the expected dirges and snail’s-pace sludge tracks but then there is also a slew of other surprises: weird carnival music, an odd Enya-like synth piece and a selection of balls-to-the-wall covers. There’s little time to get your bearings with each track as they seem to be put in an order that will cause the most disorientation possible for the listener. Just as I get used to the slow, sludgy tracks, Preston does a U-turn and slaps me with a trout in the shape of “Epicus Doomicus Dumpitus,” which sounds like the soundtrack to a Japanese role playing videogame.

Day Late, Dollar Short starts off with “The Suckling,” whichis exactly what I was expecting from Thrones. It is all detuned,guttural guitars and fucked up vocals. It plods along like a dinosauron valium before suddenly I find myself in the middle of a killer coverof “Young Savage” by Ultravox. It is the kind of song to get a fistpumping in the air very easily. There are a couple of other covers onthe album, both of which are excellent. “Black Blade” (originally BlueÖyster Cult) is a psychedelic, lost in the desert version of theoriginal. However, the real gem of a cover is the gobsmackinglyridiculous cover of The Who’s “A Quick One While He’s Away.” It startsoff with heavily processed barber shop vocals and finishes with amindfuck of bizarre electronics, booming drums and unhuman high pitchedvocals (think Alvin the Chipmunk impersonating an ebowed guitar).

Apart from covering other people’s work, the original material by Thrones is also of note. “Senex” is a long and highly disturbing track: the guitars play extremely repetitively to a programmed beat while a scary, mechanical voice speaks over the music. When the song breaks down into a monstrously huge riff it’s like all of earth has been swallowed whole by god knows what. “Coal Stick” and “Obolus” continue the heavier than heavy riffage to devastating effect. Elsewhere,Preston shows his more peculiar side with “Silvery Colorado” and “Oracle,” both of which employ watery sounding vocals and a cheesy organ sound (with the latter breaking into a totally unexpected stadium rock finale).

Day Late, Dollar Short is a fantastic collection of eccentric and inimitable songs. Thrones can sometimes teeter towards novelty but the warped humour pulls it back from the edge. I’ve always liked Preston’s work with the other bands mentioned above but this is the first time I’ve heard the man doing his own thing and it well and truly floored me. Simply put, this is a blinder of an album.

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17 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

As I write this it has been seven years to the day since the passing ofBryn Jones. Several labels diligently continue to release andpreserve his music but in recent years Soleilmoon is at the forefrontof packaging presentation. From the metal tin of Arrabbox tothe oversized folder of Alms for Iraq to the fur covering of Re-mixsVolume 1 & 2 to the silk pouch of Syrinjia. And now this.
Soleilmoon Recordings

Speaker of Turkish is a limited edition of 397 (a second issuein more conventional packaging is forthcoming) that comes in ahand-made wooden gatefold case held together by a paper hinge and heldfast by a beaded string through top notches. On the front is araised-relief mosque and inside the word "Allah" is silk-screened inArabic calligraphy. Also inside is a hand-numbered 2006 wallet-sizedcalendar and window sticker, both with colorful mosque illustrations.

Musically speaking, rather than another re-issue, this is the firstalbum of completely new material to be released in more than two years.It was recorded in 1997 along with at least a dozen other albums—threeof which have still yet to be released—a testament to Jones'unrelentingly productive pace. The entire catalog stands as one greatwork but any one disc is a snapshot of a particular period. Around thistime Jones had become very skilled at creating a sort of traveloguecollage with his usual arsenal of sounds: hand drums, bass throbs,ethnic wind and string instruments, electronic blips, snatches ofvoice, smears of stereo-panned distortion and seemingly found sounds(the pesky peacock is back, but subdued).

Six tracks make up the 73 and 1/2 minutes with two being in the 10minute range and three being in the 16 minute range. "The Good Muslim,"especially its same-titled reprise, is the most aggressive minded asthe beats are much more forceful and overlapping. The closer, "Shah ofPersia," approaches a minimal zen as a simple string loop is accompaniedby bass, surface crackle and sporadic overdriven outbursts. The rhythmson the epic length tracks are lethargic and come and go as theymeander,altogether defying the tedious repetition that marks many other albums.

It's this more relaxed and subliminal style of Muslimgauze thatimpresses me most and leaves me with an overwhelming sense of mystery:where are we?; why are we there?; what does it all mean? It onlybecomes perfectly clear when delving into the to-the-point interviewswith Jones that the music is purely a compulsive reaction to events inthe Middle East. He produced music for 17 years at the time of hisdeath and I wouldn't be surprised if it takes another 17 years torelease the remainder of what he left behind. Hopefully Soleilmoon andothers continue to honor the man and his music with their adornment.

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17 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

Without a single weak track, Make has gone down as one of the most fun albums of 2005 that I missed. As GD Luxxe, Gerhard Potuznik offers up everything from sexy, hot beats to pounding, throbbing punk full of blazing guitars and explosive arrangements that blow up in the most intense and lovingly orchestrated ways possible.

Tigerbeat 6

Potuznik, Angelika Koehlermann co-founder and former Chicks on Speed member/producer, is resurrecting the dead. Being a difficult project, I had doubts that he could succeed. The challenge is to relive the glory days of late punk and early electronic dance music without sounding contrived, weak, or absolutely bland. I didn't think it was possible, considering how much that period has been bled dry by other lame acts.

He is, however, a creative and dynamic writer and producer. Instead of blatantly ripping off countless, talented performers so as to sound almost as good as they once did, Potuznik simply borrows their attitude and maybe their love of dance to make something new and worth listening to. It doesn't take an education in punk music to hear the punk attitude on this record. As GD Luxxe, Potuznik's voice is a little flat, the lyrics delivered in that cold and calculated manner that suggests the vocalist is an observer reporting things nobody else sees. He sometimes sings as though he is delivering a manifesto, a suggested course of action towards that new and improved world political punk never delivered. His music, however, is lively, full of guitars, animated keyboards, and a myriad of bubbling electronics that either bounce about or elicit dark, very gothic clouds reminiscent of the best make-up wearing bands of the 80s.

Make doesn't sound like a complete rip-off of New Order, Joy Division, Wire, or whoever else you want to name-check because it doesn't bother trying to sound as revolutionary as they did twenty-plus years ago. Potuznik has mixed his own brand of beat-propelled electronic music with his idea of punk music and called it a day, thankfully. Instead of reaching for that searching, youthful sound that marked much of the late 70s and early 80s best bands, Potuznik lets go and merely acknowledges his influences and his love for the genre. Where other, terrible musicians try to add all the drama and seriousness that came naturally for some bands, GD Luxxe has some fun writing his own songs and doesn't bother reaching for anything he can't come across naturally.

The opener, "Hands," sounds like music for traveling in the most Kraftwerkian sense possible. The pounding drums and lovely, dark synthesizers pulse like an engine chugging its way down the longest highway ever constructed, with no goal in sight. Potuznik's voice compliments the music perfectly, sounding like a demented narrator for the journey ahead. And, as dark as the track is, it could easily find its way to the dance floor where all the seedy elements of the track would be celebrated as dark and seething sexuality. "IFY" is more dreamy, full of winding melodies and stuttered rhythms that never quite match up. Even Potuznik's voice is higher on this track, the chorus a lovely combination of echoes, tenuous utterances, and unadorned heat. Repeated listens will reveal that GD Luxxe is a sexual creature if nothing else. When many of the tracks pick up the pace and begin rolling along uncontrollably in their rhythm, it is hard not to think of Make as an animalistic album destined for clubs and house parties. Beyond that, however, the album is wholly listenable, well-written, and deserving of serious attention. This does seem to be, after all, the blueprint for how to acknowledge the 80s without worshipping it or cheapening the decade's better music.

His darker songs are exquisite and with songs like "Profile" or "Your Highways" it is obvious that Potuznik is worried about song craft and atmosphere first and attitude second. Luckily he's loaded with attitude, so the two blend effortlessly.

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16 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

4AD's recent release of this Cocteau Twins retrospective finally does this pioneering band's back catalog justice. From the comprehensive track selection to beautifully-designed v23 art printed on a soft, textured paper with vellum overlay, this is the collection that Cocteau Twins fans have been waiting for.

4AD

When 4AD released the first Cocteau singles box set, the unwieldy collection was more of a bookshelf trophy than a music document. The crimson box stuffed full of single-length CDs was most notable for its girth, and yet it didn't even cover nearly half of the band's career from the major label days. Lullabies to Violaine fixes all of that by compressing the output of all of the band's singles into a mere four discs, sequenced chronologically and packaged together into something that is both more elaborate and small enough to fit in a normal CD rack.

Listening straight through the discs is a wonderfully organic trip through Cocteau Twins history. Beginning with the rough-edged, post-punk angst of "Feathers-Oar-Blades," it's difficult to imagine how the band would wind up providing a near-muzak version of "Frosty the Snowman" to play in supermarkets over a decade later. The guitars in early Cocteau tracks are angular, noisy and tend to shriek more than soar. When taken a few tracks at a time, though, the progress is evident and it even makes a strange sort of sense as the edges are smoothed out into the blissful, angelic pop for which the band is most well known.

The first evolution comes with "Sugar Hiccup," where Elizabeth Fraser ditches most of her anguished vocal urgency and the pace slows to a lullaby crawl. While I love some of the rough and dirty early tracks, it's the mid-to-late 4AD period that will always define Cocteau Twins for me, and those records are represented with some wonderfully obscure alternate versions of tracks and singles that I'd long forgotten. Putting "The Spangle Maker" and "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops" into the larger context is one of the invaluable services that this set provides.

Discs three and four cover the Four Calendar Café and later years; and while I've never been as much of a fan of that era as I was of records like Blue Bell Knoll, it's amazing to look back at the volume and variety of a period that is mostly remembered for an overly-saccharine record and a let-down of a swan song. The acoustic Twinlights EP was an interesting unplugged experiment, but the minimalist, electronic reconstructions of Otherness rank as one of the band's best and biggest surprises. The single for "Violaine," is another late-era highlight and the omnipresent in retail yet difficult to track down Christmas singles are included for good measure.

All of this is wrapped up in the kind of package that is befitting a band that perhaps first justified the much-overused adjective "ethereal" as applied to music. The white fold out package is printed on a white, billowy paper that feels otherworldly yet wholly appropriate. At this point in my life, I've been a Cocteau Twins fan longer than not, and it's great to have the v23 designed retrospective that's complete and mysterious, beautifully simple and yet as evocative as the band ever was.

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16 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

After more than a year of lying low following the release of 2004's bewildering They Were Wrong, So We Drowned,Liars return with this provocatively packaged single, a taster fortheir forthcoming full-length. Though I had hoped that Hemphill,Andrew and Gross might have decided to drop some of the abrasive,self-consciously artsy gestures that made their last album such anunsatisfyingly turgid mess, unfortunately It Fit When I Was A Kid shows that the band is travelling even further down the same rabbit hole, apparently intent on alienating everyone.

Mute

Liars' 2002 debut album was part of a flurry of new groups thatfound their inspiration in early 1980s post-punk-funk groups like ACertain Ratio, The Pop Group and Gang of Four. Their debut album They Threw Us All In a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Topdemonstrated that, unlike many of their contemporaries, the group wascapable of adding their own idiosyncrasies into the mix, and they endedup with a passable album that was angular and tense, but still filledwith catchy hooks. Then the band lost two of their foundingmembers, got a new drummer, and began a long descent into purposelybefuddling art rock, culminating in a tiresome concept album aboutwitches or something.

I have a feeling that band and label both realize expiration date forcritical enthusiasm over Liars' is about to be reached, and theprovocative cover artwork for this single seems to be a cynical attemptto ignite some controversy in order to drum up publicity for the newalbum. The cover shows the heads of the three bandmembersdigitally grafted onto a pornographic gay menage a trois. Though retail copies of the single are censored, the full artwork can be seen here,and mailorder copies of the 7" will contain the uncensored imageprinted onto edible paper. It's a gimmick that appears to havefuckall to do with the actual musical content of the single, andeverything to do with getting the bloggers of the world to help promotethe new release.

The upcoming full-length is a CD/DVD combo entitled Drum's Not Dead,indicating a new emphasis on percussion, which can clearly be heard on"It Fit When I Was A Kid." The song's sing-songy vocal chant ispartially lifted from The Turtles' "You Showed Me" and placed amidst anresonant jungle of tribal drumming and mechanical bass. Halfway through, the song pauses for breath, returning with churchorgan, vocal multitracks and creepy echo chamber. It's not aterrible track, but it seems almost neanderthal in its simplicity,and it's anything but groovy. The two b-sides are completelypointless, all splattery obtuseness and formless blurt. The besttrack is the "Don't Techno For An Answer" remix of the a-side, whichups the tribal quotient by leaps and bounds, producing a wonky rhythmattack not unlike those Boredoms Re-Bore mix albums.

Of the three MPG videos included on the CD, two are utterly mindless,and another borrows heavily from Terry Gilliam. This doesn't bodewell for the upcoming DVD, which apparently includes three separatevisual takes on the entire album. At bottom, I think the newemphasis on visual art is really just a distraction from the fact thatLiars haven't really written any songs. Groups that Liarsobviously hope to emulate—The Pop Group, This Heat, MountEerie, and even Neubauten—have always had songs at the heart of even their mostunorthodox experiments. Liars attempt to infuse their workwith conceptual trappings that are vague and incoherent, and their musicis undernourished and underwritten, so everything falls apart intoformlessness. I'm guessing that some will find somethingmeaningful to grasp onto in the midst of this nebulousness, but I forone no longer care to even try.

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16 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

This is Ryoji Ikeda's first full-length release of new material since 2002's orchestral Op.,however, it is a return to his original form of rhythmic clicks, sonicbeeps, high pitched squeals, and low buzz. Although the claims comethat this, the first part of the Datamatics series, is built onstructures from data, Ikeda hasn't woven data into something that'sabstract or foreign sounding. The music is rather rhythmic,challenging, and completely enjoyable: something most computer musiciantypes have failed at.

Raster-Noton

Dataplex almost picks up where O°C left off, asthere's 20 tracks, a number of them are strung together using a commontheme, and for the most part, the music is very upbeat. The reason Ithink I like Ikeda's music over all the other sonic laptop "glitch"acts of the late 1990s is that Ikeda isn't glitch. His music is veryprecise and composed: it's never accidental, haphazard, or random.Ikeda's aesthetic is song-based. He knows how to start and end a songand make it something both tangible and enjoyable.

The first eight tracks are strung together: they follow the samehurried tempo and use a common palette. It's only by the ninth track,"data.microhelix," that things significantly change. This piece isdrastically slower and introduces some sustained lower tones into themix, making an almost funk-influenced groove that Ikeda's not commonlyknown to exhibit. When the pace picks up again for "data.superhelix,"the low tones remain but it's as if the sound has moved from being funkinspired to almost speed-metal inspired. Switching up the pace andpalette is in store for the following duo of tracks, "data.minimax" and"data.syntax," as the high pitched bell-like sounds clearly establishthat nobody else sounds like Ryoji Ikeda.

Ikeda returns to his new found love for incorporating other musicstyles in "data.flex" and its successor, "data.reflex," where both arealmost built through influences of deep techno, using lower tones likebass sounds and higher rhythmic sounds like a hi-hat. It's songs likethis that make me wonder what Ikeda might do as a member of atraditional rock group, adding his signature rhythmic clicks and beepson top of more standard western pop instrumentation. I'm sure somemight feel it would spoil the purity of the music but crossing soundscan prove quite influential to the evolution of music if they're wellexecuted.

Ikeda goes more abstract for the next triptych, "data.convex,""data.vertex," and "data.vortex," almost borrowing ideas from the wholemath-rock/post-rock/dub hybrid aesthetic, using dub-like echoes almostlike submarine sounds before cutting the beat and dousing the audiofloor with a low drone. It's serene and unusually peaceful.

Dataplex concludes with the cadence of the fantastic"data.matrix" (before the clearly abstract data noise of the disc'scloser, "data.adaplex") in a similar way that he has closed otherprojects, taking some of the ideas put forth in earlier tracks andwrapping them up in an all-encompassing song. Ikeda might claim thathis music is built from data points of DNA, the cosmos, or mathematics,but it's what's at the center his own heart that weaves everything intosuch elegant and beautiful songs.

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16 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

The second part in Dockstader's series of albums based around recordings of radio waves packs a powerful punch. The atmospheric and cold timbres of the first volume have dissipated and have been replaced with a collection of hot, energetic pieces. The previous album was a subdued and relaxing work but with Aerial #2, Dockstader goes straight for the face.

Sub Rosa

Dockstader has selected far more active pieces for Aerial #2 than he did for Aerial #1, the pieces here range from rhythmic and pulsing currents of sound to disorientating storms of tones. The music is very evocative: many of the tracks stimulated very detailed daydreams and imaginings in me. "Wail" elicits the feeling of freefalling down a deep, dark chasm where everything is a charcoal grey; I could hear the updrafts of warm air and noises of passing by the ledges at great speed. "Orgal" and "Babbel" were the sound of hitting the bottom of that chasm, belly flopping full force into magma and bathing in the molten rock. It is incredible that each track throbs with so much life; there is no piece that sounds contrived or strained. Every piece flows smoothly and naturally into the next.

Of course I'd be worried if there was even one below par track, Dockstader made nearly 600 mixes over the course of this project, whittling them down to the best 59 for release as this series. The middle of the album calms down but it never rests easy. "Spindrift" is a looming piece that sounds the sky will crack at any moment. The mood continues and the feeling of impending doom escalates in the following track "Surfer." As the album draws to a close, the power starts to build again. Perhaps this is an indication of what is in store in the final part of the trilogy.

By limiting himself to a somewhat limited area of tones (radio waves), Dockstader has proven again to be the master of manipulating normally ignored or intangible sound into flowing, lucid and beautiful landscapes. He has crafted each piece to a fine layer of detail without pushing the music at all into difficult like many musique concrète composers can’t help doing. Aerial #2 is intellectually stimulating but Dockstader doesn’t let that force him to sacrifice accessibility and abstraction from enjoyable music. A lot of music I like can be classified as that which I find enjoyable to listen to and that which I find interesting from a more beard stroking perspective. Aerial #2 joins that special club found at the intersection of these two classifications. It is an absolutely fascinating and infinitely pleasing album.

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15 January 2006

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Albums and Singles

This supergroup among the new wave of Italian experimentersput out one of my favorite records of 2004 and returned in late 2005 withanother favorite. Members ValerioTricoli, Claudio Rocchetti, and Stefano Pilia represent some of the mostmystical, lyrical music I’ve heard come out of Italyor anywhere in some time. ¾, theircollaborative group, now with percussionist Tony Arrabito, make brilliantlyinviting and adaptable music mixing melancholy chamber acoustics, ambientimprovised textures, and woven electronic and mechanical effects.

Häpna

The sound is a lo-fi trio, languishing in a woody, goldenroom, half-asleep and wading through brushed textures and sad crescendos, whilethe fourth cuts into everything with slow slices of field noise, the occasionalglitch-pop or little breaking object. Inmy review of their first record, I talked about the way these interruptions,rather than leading outside, or becoming immediately contrastive presences,instead work at saturating or carving out an existing environment. Incidental sounds pop into existence asguidance for the more conventionally song-like structures or become buriedmarkers for shifts in the mood or momentum of a song, arriving with anarbitrary quickness that is never forced, always magical.

The general, droning quietude of the group’s self-titleddebut made the subtlety of their methods more effective than it is on Year, a record more reliant onpercussive, “pop” forms but also infinitely more lush in its assemblage ofsonic details. Vocals appear for the firsttime, and the musicians seem more confident in articulating even the smallest,potentially intrusive elements (including shrill alarm sounds and cannedscreams). All in all, the sound is lessveiled, less overcome by Pilia’s exquisite, Lid-ian guitar drones and morecomparable to ambience in the natural world: more irregularities and lopsidedrhythms, more chatter and clatter.

Recognizable field captures from ocean and woods direct themood more towards the pastoral than the monolithic, sublime abstractions of theband’s first disc, but Year’s mood isjust as hard to isolate and should appeal to many tastes, from post-rock, tojazz, even glossy, symphonic rock or the most austere of experimental orcontemporary classical. My most obviouscomparison is the recent work of Dean Roberts, with whom several of theseItalians have worked, and who likewise embraces the synthetic punctuation ofmelancholy acoustic sound in the creation of ornate, baroque masses of sound asopposed to ascetic dissolves. Though theout-of-improv feel of most of this disc tends to conjure ethereal imagery, eachmoment remains a monument to grandeur and presence,in sound, in life.

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