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08 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

Only one thing, with slight variations, really happens for the hour after this CD starts playing: a bass guitar riff... a massive, filthy, loping beast of a groove that's immensely heavy without being in any way 'metal', or even terribly aggressive. The riff is not complicated, but it is loud (as evidenced by the album's unrelenting near-bootleg-quality tape saturation distortion). The riff has no funk, no drive, it isn't headed anywhere; the guitar barely glides along with it, and the drums do not embellish it.Last Visible Dog

Sloppy repetition is the game here, and no frills, lyrics or showmanship get in its stubborn way. But lest you think that this is some slowcore sleepytime, let me be clear: Pharaoh Overlord, a trio from the (apparantly) fertile psych-rock scene of Finland, play rock n' roll as it's been written by Fushitsusha, the Stooges, Les Rallizes Denudes, and Black Sabbath. Thuggish, brutal, straight to the point, but also as minimal as one can get while still acting like a rock band. The songs are stripped down so bare that they are almost identical, changing in speed and length but remaining in roughly the same key and retaining the same non-structure. It's a miracle that this music works as well as it does, as it could easily have slipped off into dull-as-dirt potsmoke self-gratification (see Acid Mothers Temple). Instead, somehow, amazingly, Battle of the Axehammer is invigorating and alive. This was obviously a live concert that must have been excruciatingly loud in the room while it was happening. Alas, it doesn't seem that more than six people were in this particular room, as after the black hole of every tune ends (again, there are no verses, bridges, or breakdowns, or any apparent internal logic... the songs mysteriously decide by themselves that enough time has passed) and air is let back in, a pitiful number of hands are audibly brought together, and a few people shout their approval. Unless there were more people attending than can be heard on the CD, and everyone else was rendered too stupified to move.¬†

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08 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

Sub Pop

Originally released in 2001 on the Canadian Three Gut Records, theConstantines' debut album is now available via Sub Pop to Americanaudiences. That's not to say that those of us south of the borderaren't already familiar with The Constantines following the success of Shine A Light,one of the best albums of 2003. While The Constantines have often beencompared to the likes of Fugazi, they manage to equally channel thespirit of everyone from Bruce Springsteen to the Replacements. BryWeber's vocals are the band's trademark, carrying the torch forcrooners such as Tom Waits and the above-mentioned Springsteen. Theband's mission is simple, as Webb screams on "Arizona," the album'sopening track: "We want the death of rock n' roll." The irony is thatThe Constantines are more rock n' roll than most other bands in theindie pantheon, and that's their strong point. Anchored by DougMacGregor's confident drumming and Dallas Wehrle's pulsating basslines,the songs on this album maintain an overall energy and aesthetic thatgives the album a seamless quality. While the music is the drivingforce behind the album, Weber's lyrics are perhaps its highlight.Allusions to Isadora Duncan, Danny Rapp, and the Italian Futuristsillustrate an intellectual side not often found in indie rock. Theoverall mood and atmosphere of the album is summed up on the finaltrack, where in "Little Instruments" Weber sings "Mercy little rocker,bleeding guitars / Went out chasing landmarks, fell asleep at the bar /We got an amplifier." They indeed have amplifiers, and let's bethankful for that.

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08 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

Edited down from hours of raw tapes of radio broadcasts recorded from 1989 to 1996 from New Dehli to Bengal to Calcutta and every point between, Radio India is the newest addition to Sublime Frequencies' growing library of ethnic radio collage. It's a massive two-disc set of low-fidelity radio transmissions that encompass Indian classical ragas, Bollywood pop music, psychedelic rock, lush orchestrals, folk music, electronic dance music and a variety of Indian divas. The patter of on-air DJs, commercials and radio dramas have all been left intact, along with a generous helping of hiss, distortion, sound dropouts and vinyl pops and skips.

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Sublime Frequencies

This compilation immediately distinguishes itself from the endless parade of Nonesuch Explorer and Smithsonian Ethnic Folkways collections of Indian music by capturing Indian music as Indian people hear it ‚Äî unmediated by Western anthropologists and archivists. This isn't a collection comprised of rehearsed, self-conscious musicians performing the music of their traditional heritage in a studio at the behest of Western producers who may or may not be paying them. Rather, because of the de-emphasis on "tradition" and "heritage," much of the music on Radio India is a delightful cultural crossbreed ‚Äî combining traditional Indian instrumentation with newer studio techniques and effects, freely borrowing from Western pop music, Broadway songs, European classical and baroque styles and Arabic orchestral traditions. It's a jumbled mass of sounds and influences that forms a tangible continuum of sound, the Eternal Dream of the album's subtitle. Hypnotic bedrocks of rhythmic tabla form a backdrop for dramatic swoops and curls of viola and chenai. Though it has certainly been observed before, I never fail to be amazed by the intrinsically psychedelic nature of Indian music; the expressive, reverberating character of instruments such as the sitar and sarongi, the effortless and natural swarms of incense-billowing sound. It's a tradition defined by trance and transcendentalism, by improvisation and de-intellectualization, by drones and repetition. Indian spirituality is defined by limitless concepts like Krishna and Kali, rather than the restrictive paternalistic concepts of Western spirituality. Indian music's structure is defined by open-ended, improvisatory interplay between musicians, rather than the rigid, virtuosic displays of Western musicians. It is precisely these differences that make this music so intoxicating to our ears, and Radio India allowed me to live inside this vast museum of sound for over two hours.¬†

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08 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

Sublime Frequencies

By far the most surprising and unorthodox of SF's newest releases is Broken Hearted Dragonflies,a series of unprocessed field recordings of cicadas and dragonfliesfrom the Southeast Asian lowlands, again captured by producer andrecordist Tucker Martine. It's been very appropriately subtitled Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia,as the ear-piercing high-frequency drones of these insects suggestartificially-rendered, conceptual electronics made by some heretoforeunknown Western minimalist. The spine-chilling, synthetic swoops anddithers of sound are amazingly textural and complex, making it hard tobelieve that these sounds are presented untreated, just as they wererecorded. As a test, I played this for a friend without revealing thesource of the recordings. He immediately began to make all sorts ofassociations, from Alvin Lucier to Ryoji Ikeda to Whitehouse. When Irevealed the actual origin of these synthetic alien tones, his reactionwas shock and disbelief, followed by a jubilation and fascination thatsuch noises exist in nature. Listening to these four extended tracks —given titles like "Particle Swarm Intelligence" and "Brood X" thathighlight their other-worldliness — provoke some very deep thoughtsabout the possibility of hidden patterns in nature. The liner notes bymodern cultural provocateur Peter Lamborn Wilson (AKA Hakim Bey)outline these provocative questions. If this album was the work of ahuman being, we certainly would not hesitate to call it art. However,because these performances come from swarms of supposedly behavorial,mechanical, unselfconscious insects, it belongs to some other realm.The title of the album comes from a Burmese legend about a species ofdragonfly who court their mates with choruses of high-pitched screams.Those that don't succeed in mating eventually scream so loud theirhearts explode and they drop dead. It's an appropriately morbid imagefor this collection of unrelentingly piercing, shrill tones. Listeningon headphones at top volume is enough to send my pulse racing, puttingmy heart in serious danger of spontaneously combusting. Broken Hearted Dragonfliesputs nature back on the map as the source of the most complex,frightening and fascinatingly textural noises in the field of dronemusic. I hope my ears will stop ringing soon.

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08 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

A series of crisply recorded audio snapshots from producer Tucker Martine's travels through the West African countryside in the fall of 1998, Bush Taxi Mali is probably the most disarmingly beautiful of the five new entries to the Sublime Frequencies discography. Capturing singers and instrumentalists in several small villages in the heart of Mali, Martine's impressive recordings recreate a rich, brilliantly rendered portrait of the Mande and Dogon people comprised of guileless performances from guitar and Fulani flute players, choruses of children and stunning vocal performances.Sublime Frequencies

Interspersed are sounds captured from Bamako radio broadcasts, outdoor markets, street sounds, Bambaran wedding celebrations and the sounds of a village going to sleep under a clear night sky. In short, Martine provides a richly abstract documentary of his journey through these enchantingly exotic lands, through musical traditions at once foreign and hauntingly familiar to Western ears. On many vocal tracks, the blues-tinged accompaniment is performed on an instrument called the ngoni, the African ancestor of the banjo, made from fishing wires stretched over a drum body. On "Fouta Djallon," Martine captures a performance on the Fulani flute with accompanying drums, a hypnotic performance that resembles an uncomplicated version of the Moroccan pan pipes of Jajouka. Several tracks capture the beautiful vocal dynamics of female singer Jalimusa Amanita Diabate, from the prominent Diabate family of Malian musicians. Her vocal performances are singularly sad and pregnant with emotion, gloriously unsophisticated but remarkably articulate. On "Rihlah," she leans against the stone gateway to the village of Kela and effortlessly belts out a vocal lament that weaves a countermelody to the skillfully played ngonis. "O Mansa Musa" captures Sidiki Kouyate, playing an exquisite solo on acoustic guitar, a complex tune that draws a straight line from Mali's traditional musical heritage to the African-American folk and blues of the early 20th century.

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08 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

Sublime Frequencies

This summer brings five new releases from Sublime Frequencies, arelatively young label that has already gained a reputation as one ofthe most unique sources of ethnic esoterica. Owned and operated byRichard and Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls, Sublime Frequencies hasalready released a clutch of superlative radio collages, fieldrecordings, compilations and video travelogues that have carved out aunique aesthetic that could be loosely termed extra-geographicalpsychedelia. Although their releases are invariably instructive on avariety of ethnic and cultural musical styles, they seem to functionbetter as a kind of World Noise; unfocused and messy, lacking structureand neat categorizations, a dizzying assortment of low-fidelity exoticathat transcends racial and national identities. The first of the newestgrouping of releases is a unique compilation culled from over 150 agingcassettes at the Asian branch of the Oakland public library. Thoughthis collection is subtitled Khmer Folk and Pop,the emphasis is clearly on the Pop side of things, with the majority ofthe tracks utilizing Western instrumentation and combining 60's dancemusic and psychedelic rock with indigenous Khmer styles. Those who haveheard Southeast Asian pop before will know that it can be insufferablyprecious and cutesy, and the music on this CD is no exception.Infantile female and male vocals tackle a variety of cloying pop tunes,with unexceptional keyboards and programmed rhythms, and the occasionalraunchy guitar solo. However, the range of the material chosen for thiscollection is quite remarkable, clearly having been chosen with care torepresent as many different styles as possible, with forays into rockinstrumentals, haunting ballads, garage-psych, dance music, synth-heavynew wave and easy listening jazz. Compiler Mark Gergis has avoided theinclusion of more recent Cambodian popular music, which tends toconsist of tiresome MIDI and karaoke variations on classic Khmer pop ofthe kind represented here. In contrast, most of the tracks here utilizereal instrumentalists and many also evidence unorthodox productiontechniques, such as the dislocated spring echoes of the unknown artiston track 19. Sadly Khmer pop music reached its apex of success in 1970,soon to be undermined by the ensuing civil war and the brutal Angkaregime. Under the tyrant Pol Pot, thousands of Khmer's musicians,artists, teachers and intellectuals were viewed as enemies of therevolution, and a staggering 90% were executed at the S-21interrogation center. Many of the post-1970 tracks on this compilationwere recorded by escapees throughout the Cambodian diaspora — fromThailand to Long Beach to Rhode Island. It's hard to imagine, listeningto the blissful innocence of tracks like "Don't Let My GirlfriendTickle Me," that at one time, merely performing this music was groundsfor arrest and execution.

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08 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

Chairkickers Music

Low has amassed an incredible body of work in the eleven years sincetheir inception, this is more than likely due to the fact that Lowrespect their job as musicians more seriously than nearly every rockband in history, working seemingly overtime, writing music andconstantly touring. What started out as a few 7" singles andcompilation releases has exploded into a three-disc set of music plus afourth disc: a double-sided DVD with some home made documentaries andall their music videos! For a fan, this collection is a gift, packagedin what even looks like a pleasant, compact gift box. Unwrapping eachaudio pesent contained within is like Christmas for an easily excitablechild, featuring numerous recordings never commercially released,single a-sides and b-sides, compilation tracks, demos, and weird bitsand pieces the band never intended to go on any records. It might soundlike a mess to somebody just scratching the surface, yet, between someof the not-so-ready for our record bits are some of their mostincredible, and some of their most popular live songs. Early, scratchyrecordings of songs like "Lullaby," "Prisoner," and their cover ofWire's "Heartbeat" and the painful cover of Journey's "Open Arms" areprobably not going to find any new fans, but their popular livemainstay "Venus," covers of George Harrison's "Long, Long, Long," andSoul Coughing's "Blue Eyed Devil," along with vinyl LP bonus/raresingle tracks like "Tomorrow One," and "Don't Carry It All," couldeasily be some of what would make up a Greatest Hitsrecord. Each of the three CDs come painfully close to the 80 minutemark, the second even includes some live randomness of Low performingtheir songs in Misfits style, and while the documentaries are homegrown, they're entertaining and personal insights to the band and kidand their travels. Perhaps sometimes it's a bit too close and personal,but then again, anybody who know's Low's music knows they're prettyclose (or at least are good at giving that impression) to begin with.

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08 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

This double CD set reissues what is, in my opinion, the most thought-provoking and satisfying album by Organum, originally released as an LP from the mid-1980s. That it is paired with a frustrating singles compilation called "Rara Avis" makes me stop short from giving it a whole-hearted endorsement.Die Stadt

Vacant Lights works so well because it seems so simple. There are two players, David Jackman (who is the center of Organum) and Dinah Jane Rowe. In what appears to be an improvised live performance, they bow metal (perhaps gongs or cymbals?), roll metal pipes along the ground, and play breathy fragments of melodies on what sound to me like shakuachis, or wooden flutes of some sort. The ever-present coating of reverb that accompanies most Organum recordings adds portense to the spare movements of the players, but it isn't overbearing here as it is on Ikon or other less successful Organum records. What takes Vacant Lights to the next level is that it appears to have been recorded outside, on a city street.

The Organum duo plays along to the sounds of passing cars, city buses, honking, wind, distant urban noise... throughout, they are highly sensitive to their surroundings, treating all sounds as equal compositional elements. At times, they play beneath the city sounds, adding a layer of rolling fog under the environment. At other times, the flutes poke through, but find some aboveground pitch to blend into; eventually, environment and intentional playing become indistinguishable. Two producers (including Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton) are to credit for bringing the environment into the recording with such detail and clarity, but ultimately the success belongs to Organum for creating a record that is part field recording, part improvisation, and finally something unique. It's such a simple and well-executed idea, that the depth of music belies its illuson of naturalness and effortlessness. On the other hand, there is disc two.

Because Vacant Lights is only about half an hour long, either the label or the artist decided to flesh it out with Rara Avis, a rare singles compilation. Given the large catalog of tiny-edition Organum 7"s that now go on eBay for hundreds of dollars, this could have been a terific idea. But the second CD is only 25 minutes long, and contains music from one 7", one side of another 7", an alternate version from a different 7", and an unreleased track. All five tracks could have fit onto the end of the first disc. Even if it was decided that it's important to keep Vacant Lights separate for aesthetic purposes (not an unreasonable notion), if they went so far as to include another CD, why not include maybe a bit more than 25 minutes to fill out the disc? I don't understand. The music on Rara Avis, however, is a good survery of Organum's palette in the mid 1980s: metal scraping noise, somber bamboo flute noodling, and deep rumbling gigantic drone, all in compact five minute chunks. It's good music, but Vacant Lights/Rara Avis is a confoundingly flawed package.¬†

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04 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

Panaxis

Forms of Things Unknown is primarily the work of multi-instrumentalistand windplayer Ferrara Brain Pan, who has previously played with BoydRice and legendary krautrockers Faust. For his debut EP as Form ofThings Unknown, the artist tackles a galaxy of wind instruments,including bass clarinet, saxophone, flute, recorder, Tibetan thighbonetrumpet, didgeridoo and shakahuchi. Multiple overdubs and liberal sonicmutations push the material into the sort of dark, uneasy territoriesoccupied by Coil and Nurse With Wound, who seem to have exerted heavyinfluence on Mr. Pan. The first two tracks are two movements of thesame 16-minute piece, amusingly entitled "Black Candles &Pentagrams 'n Shit." Extended tape loops of the aforementioned hornscirculate slowly, as deep, vibratory foghorns blow across a murkylagoon at midnight. Occasional swipes of backwards-tracked soundcontribute a ritualistic mood to the proceedings, but the artistgracefully breathlessly bends and bows his performance to mesmericeffect. The next two tracks represent an instrumental and vocalarrangement of an anonymously composed 14th century devotional song.Monsieur Pan plays his courtly medieval recorders with aplomb, andvocalist Shannon Wolfe beautifully renders the Latin lyrics. The songis immediately reminiscent of Shirley and Dolly Collins and other1960's neo-medievalists, and that's enough to keep me smiling forweeks. The last track is an unorthodox arrangement of UK punk legendand former Buzzcock Howard Devoto's "Stupid Blood," from his latter dayLuxuria project. The song trips along at its own turgid pace, with Mr.Pan providing pleasurable blasts of layered brass and vocalist BobAyres delivering the lyrics in a stately baritone. The EP ends with anincredibly brief answering machine message left for Ferrara Brain Panby one Babs Santini, which has prompted the artist to label each copyof this EP with a sticker declaring "Special guest appearance by SteveStapleton of Nurse With Wound," thus hopefully luring unsuspecting NWWcompletists to buy his music. However misleading and manipulative thisstrategy seems, I don't think avid Nurse fans would be disappointed by Cross Purposesin the slightest, should they be tricked into purchasing it. On thecontrary, this is a dynamic and intriguing work, just the sort of thingyour average NWW fan would be in for.

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04 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

New West

At its simplest, this album proves yet again what exactly is wrong withthe major record label system: they don't know what to do with goodtalent, and they relentlessly promote the mediocre variety. Old 97swere the darlings of the indie rock scene, releasing one album on theirown and another for Bloodshot Records, throwing out their own brand ofpunkified countryness with a classic Old West feel. They wereeventually snatched up by Elektra, where they released three morerecords, every one an attempt by the band and the label — more thelatter than the former, I'd wager — to get that one true hit, makingthe songs poppier and poppier as they went along. They did pretty well,but their albums never really hit the big time, and eventually labeland band parted ways. This obviously triggered a return to the DIYmoments of their past, as their first album for their new label is atrue awakening of potential, and a bold statement about where a bandcan go on their own if they're not prodded and poked. Old 97s of oldhad fire and spunk, but still held on to their roots, maintaining aflavor and sound that was decidedly uncommercial, as it was unsurewhere they fit in. That feel, that classic "we don't know if this isgoing to work" vibe, is all over these songs, and the band sound betterthan ever. This is wholesale rejuvenation, with every band memberpulling out their very best, and letting the true directions of theband set in. Drag It Upwas recorded on eight tracks, and most vocals recorded in one room withone microphone. It sounds dirty, uneven, and like the band wanted totake chances. The record features guitarist Ken Bethea's first stab atlead vocals on "Coahuila," and while not a brilliant first effort, thetrack has the most energy of any on the record. Bassist Murry Hammondsings a few tracks, as usual, and as usual I'm not real fond of thosesongs, though they are still great slices of storytelling. When allpieces fall into place, it's like all the stars aligned and the trueshape of the constellation can be revealed. Rhett Miller's clean wailis better than ever on songs like "Bloomington" and "The New Kid," andhe even warbles here and there, letting the little imperfections makeit all better. What it all adds up to is that five albums along Old 97sare experiencing a rebirth, and the sky's the limit.

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04 August 2004

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Albums and Singles

MIO

Philippe Besombes was a Ph.D. student with an abiding interest incontemporary electro-acoustic music, an interest that led him tocollaborate and play with Jean Michel Jarre, Jean-Francois Dessoliers(as PJF) and Jean-Louis Rizet (as Pole). Both Besombes' and Pole'snotoriety have been sealed by their inclusion on Steven Stapleton andJohn Fothergill's famous Nurse With Wound Influence List, whichappeared in the liner notes for NWW's debut album. Israel's MIO recordshas been doing quite a good job in issuing rarities from the NWW listlately, and this CD is no exception. Comprising the entire original1974 LibraLP on Tapioca (composed as the soundtrack to the film of the samename), MIO also generously adds four tracks from the same general timeperiod, filling out the running time of the disc to 76 minutes.Besombes' unorthodox work nervously straddles two strikingly differentdimensions - avant-garde electronic composition and the contemporaryEuropean prog and psych-rock prevalent at the time. Besombes negotiatesthis dichotomy rather brilliantly, producing a spectacularly uniquealbum that pulls in influences seemingly from everything the artistever heard in his lifetime. The paltry three samples below simply can'treflect the true variety of approaches on the album, from the jarringmetallic drones and disturbingly strangled vocals of "La Plage" to thecosmic Indian twang of "Raggacountry" to the languid fuzz guitar loungeof "Ballade en Velo." Besombes employs various synthesizers, Moogs,electric sitars, oscillators and a studio full of rock session playersto achieve the stunning dynamics of the album. "Boogimmick" is asynth-drenched heavy blues stomp in the style of Hawkwind, but alsoseeming simultaneously to function as an absurdist parody of suchmusic. "Hache 6" stands out, a heavily phased funk excursion,reminiscent of the kind of eclectic library music uncovered by LukeVibert and Barry 7 on their Lo Recordings compilations. Before thealbum is over, I'm treated to an atonal free-jazz meltdown ("LaVille"), a science-fiction fanfare of mind-altering proportions ("LesCosmonautes") and a lovely psych ballad ("Tis a Song"). Bonus tracksrange from a funky breakbeat jazz number with female vocals to anamazingly textured, 20-plus minute piece for prepared piano. Libra is a fantastic album, in that rare category of storied, obscure albums that actually deserve their reputation.

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