19 March 2011

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Albums and Singles

It is quite rare for two artists with successful solo careers to team up for a genuinely strong collaborative project that offers a fresh vision, but this debut full-length from Marielle V. Jakobsons and Chuck Johnson is the elusive exception that is arguably better than the sum of its parts. I say "arguably" only because each artist is already responsible (or at least partly responsible) for some albums that I have absolutely loved in the past. Notably, however, both artists have undergone significant stylistic evolutions in their careers, which may very well be the secret to a truly egoless and organic confluence of visions: neither was rigidly tied to a signature style, so finding a fertile common ground was probably just a natural outcome after playing together for a while. That said, the clear antecedent to this project is Johnson's gorgeous Balsams album (his first on pedal steel). As someone who was thoroughly beguiled by that album, it never would have occurred to me that Johnson might have been able to reach even greater heights with the help of a sympathetic foil on Fender Rhodes, but I am delighted that it occurred to Jakobsons (and that she was completely right).

Temporary Residence

As someone who is quite fond of both Marielle Jakobsons' early work as Darwinsbitch and her collaborations with Agnes Szelag (Myrmyr, EJS), I still occasionally have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that the same artist is also behind Date Palms and Saariselka.Every great artist changes over the course of their career, but the aesthetic gulf between Jakobsons' days as a formidable violinist and her recent sun-dappled, meditative reveries is quite a substantial one.While her newer albums are too varied and distinctive to quite bleed into the New Age vogue, she has definitely become synonymous with a style of earthy, laid-back psychedelia that feels very "California" to me.

In that regard, Jakobsons and pedal steel-era Johnson are very much kindred spirits and The Ground Our Sky is an archetypal example of that evocative stylistic niche.In fact, that terrain proves to be surprisingly fertile and shifting creative ground for the pair, as these six songs take a number of different and intriguing directions.To some degree, it feels like Jakobsons and Johnson alternated taking the lead on songwriting, as some pieces feel more driven by organ and some by guitar.On the strongest pieces, however, the instruments merge together so organically and beautifully that they seem to have sprang into the world fully formed."Void" is the most sublime success story in that vein, as Jakobsons' twinkling organ arpeggios leave lovely vapor trails while Johnson's swooning and chiming pedal steel weaves a shimmering haze of its own.It is a strikingly beautiful and lush piece of music, as well as one of the few songs in which Jakobsons sings, resulting in quite a woozily wonderful swirl of dreampop heaven.

Elsewhere, the opening "Horizons" is yet another gem, as a lazily winding and chiming organ motif blossoms into a vivid new vista once Johnson's ringing arpeggios, sliding chords, and shivering sustained notes start to elegantly intertwine with the original theme."Into The Wind" is a highlight as well, as a gently swaying and languorous web of arpeggios slowly coheres into a hushed vocal piece embellished by lazily glimmering organ melodies and bleary pedal steel glissando.I am also quite fond of the more diffuse and ambient-minded "Neochrome," in which a gently rippling, slow-motion succession of organ chords provides a loose backdrop for pedal steel that feels like a soft-focus ghost ballet.The closing "Afterlight" is another piece that approximates ambient drone territory, but it is a far more radiant variation, as Johnson's guitars lazily smear together over a warm bed of drones like the final streaks of a gorgeous pink and violet sunset.Only the sleepily burbling "Subsurface" feels like a misstep: it is all sunny psych shimmer without any added depth or shadow to give it some necessary gravitas.That said, there are plenty of artists who have made careers mining similar territory, so perhaps it is just more of a direction that is subjectively (if emphatically) not for me.Saariselka are far too good to be delving into Kosmische pastiche or homage.

For the most part, however, every direction that Jakobsons and Johnson explore tends to be quite an appealing and absorbing one: The Ground Our Sky simultaneously delivers on the promise of 2018's Ceres and expands that earlier vision in some very inspired ways.I was especially struck by "Void," as I had not anticipated this project ever creeping into Julee Cruise-esque "pop" territory (or doing it quite so beautifully if they did).The real magic of this union transcends the success of any individual song though, as Jakobsons and Johnson seem very much attuned to the same cosmic vibrations and their twin visions complement each other perfectly.Also, I was surprised anew by how much emotion and heavenly beauty Johnson is able to conjure from a pedal steel, as I have never viewed it as a particularly promising lead instrument (and tend to prefer my guitars inventively misused rather than played properly).Between this album, Balsams, and Ayami, however, Johnson has decisively won me over to both the instrument and his artistic vision for it–the man is on quite an impressive run of releases these days and this album only continues that trend.It is damn hard to make radiant, gentle, and quietly lovely music that has real depth and soul: when they are at their best, Saariselka manage to do it better than just about anybody.

Samples can be found here.

19 March 2011

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Albums and Singles

My ears rarely perk up at the prospect of any artist releasing a modular synth album, but Alessandro Cortini's recent career has been a wonderful exception thus far: some of the pieces on his Buchla-centric debut (2013's Forse) absolutely floored me. Moreover, he has yet to disappoint me since, as the handful of albums that followed in Forse's wake have largely adhered to that same impressively high level of quality: Cortini almost never releases a solo full-length that does not boast at least two legitimately amazing pieces. As such, he has definitively earned a place in my personal pantheon of great contemporary synth composers. Great artists tend to be great, however, because they restlessly expand and reshape their vision with new tools, new influences, and new ideas. In keeping with that tendency, Volume Massimo (Cortini's first album for Mute) marks a fairly significant stylistic departure from previous releases. For one, there are guitars. And on a structural level, many of these songs adhere to a very "pop" framework, which I suppose makes Mute the perfect home for this phase of Cortini's career: some songs on Volume Massimo song like they could have been deep cuts or instrumental B-sides from classic '80s synth pop albums. Other songs, however, still sound characteristically slow-burning and majestic. Those pieces tend to be the better ones (but not always).

Mute

The album opens in deceptively heavy and promising fashion with "Amore Amaro," which feels like a perfectly reasonable progression from 2017's excellent Avanti.As is generally the case with analog synth compositions, "Amore Amaro" is essentially just a couple of simple themes intertwined, yet a master like Cortini can wring a surprising amount of dynamic activity and emotional depth from a handful of repeating notes.In the case of this piece, Cortini marries a repeating two-note pulse with a burbling, subterranean arpeggio pattern.As the piece progresses, however, the pulsing notes become unpredictably frayed and distressed-sounding, a mysterious voice recording creeps into the background, and some roiling guitars build towards a noisy, volcanic crescendo.In short, it is a classic (if somewhat dramatic) Alessandro Cortini piece that just happens to incorporate guitars. Unfortunately, it is also the best piece on Volume Massimo by a large margin until a second highlight eventually appears in the form of "Sabbia" (the second-to-last piece on the album).

As much as I like "Amore Amaro," "Sabbia" is the piece that best illustrates the wonderful shape that this more pop-minded direction could have taken (and may very well still take someday).The heart of the piece is an understated and gorgeously melancholy guitar figure, but that motif is nested in a lurching, slow-motion groove that sounds like a worn tape played at the wrong speed.That alone would be grist for a fine piece, but it turns out to only be the backdrop for something even better, as the guitars are unexpectedly pushed aside for a gnarled and strangled melody.Cortini has rarely been in finer form, as he manages to create something that is both achingly lovely and evocative of a wounded machine straining to emerge from a pool of incredibly viscous liquid.Moreover, he does it in a way that has a genuinely satisfying structural arc: great sounds, great melodies, flawless pacing, and a seamless and organic dynamic evolution–Cortini hits the mark on every possible count. 

What lies between the two pillars of "Amore Amaro" and "Sabbia," however, is a more of an ambiguous achievement, teetering unpredictably between perplexing misfires and promising ideas that do not quite make the leap into great songs.On the promising side of that equation, I am most fond of "La Storia" and "Batticuore," two pieces which diverge quite significantly from one another."Batticuore" is the best of Cortini’s pure synth-pop forays, as a simple lilting melody unfolds over a thick and throbbing bass pulse.It is even structured like a pop song, with clearly delineated verses and choruses, though Cortini ratchets up the intensity to non-pop levels with roaring layers of guitars as the piece builds.It is a perfectly likable piece, but I cannot shake the sense that it sounds like an unexpectedly explosive cover of a minor OMD song."La Storia," on the other, feels like it could have been an improvisation, as it unfolds as a stuttering and gnarled melody of blurting synth tones that eventually erupts into a crescendo of buzzing, sizzling, and swooping sci-fi psychedelia.It is quite a cool piece, but it feels a bit half-formed and suffers from a predictable, formulaic arc: Cortini has an exasperating tendency to steer almost every piece to…uh…volume massimo by simply making his chords louder and more layered. I vastly prefer the less bombastic moments, like the seething and hissing closer "Dormi," but they are the exception rather than the rule.

That brings me to the "perplexing misfire" category, which is best exemplified by another piece that sounds plucked from an early ‘80s OMD album: "Momenti."Unlike "Batticuore," however, "Momenti" does not sound like classic synthpop fare–it sounds like what would have resulted if an Eastern Bloc country had commissioned them to compose an anthem for the Olympics. I cannot imagine that was what Cortini was hoping to achieve, but there is no accounting for taste.Given how devoted Cortini is to vintage/analog synthesizers, it is highly likely that he absorbed quite a lot of now-dated electronic pop in his youth and that it had a lasting impact on his aesthetic.Cortini seems far too exacting to wind up in such a place by sheer misadventure.

All of that adds up to quite a strange roller coaster of an album, as Volume Massimo frustrates, dazzles, and baffles me in equal measures over the course of its duration. I genuinely wish I liked it more, as it was a gutsy gamble for Cortini to stretch so far out of his comfort zone on such a high profile release.Moreover, his working methods do not seem to lend themselves very well to what he set out to do: there are a few songs that have more complicated structures and moving parts than the others, but most of these songs are essentially just a couple of cool patches that unfold with escalating intensity until they end.Historically, that approach has produced some truly transcendent results in Cortini’s moodier, more slow-building pieces.In the tighter and more condensed "pop" structures of this album, however, it can feel a bit rushed and overdramatic.That said, the album also contains "Sabbia," which easily exceeded my wildest expectations for how this direction might turn out.Moreover, even some of the weakest pieces contain some winderful and inventive ideas that fall a bit flat in their execution ("Momenti," for example, has a strangely rattling and lo-fi guitar outro). Volume Massimo does not suffer from lack of inspiration–the pieces just do not quite fit together properly.Ultimately, those stronger moments fail to amount to a whole that rivals Cortini’s impressive run of previous albums, but I certainly respect how beautifully some of these seemingly overreaching experiments worked out.

Samples:

• Amore Amaro
• Momenti
• Sabbia

14 March 2011

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Albums and Singles

14 March 2011

Administrator

Albums and Singles

The last time I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness released a record, George W. Bush was president, Twitter was the latest social networking innovation, Burial was a new buzz word on everyone’s lips, and James Brown was still alive and touring. The Knife were riding high on the success of Silent Shout and Brainwashed readers were placing records by bands like Wolf Eyes, Comets on Fire, and Xiu Xiu high atop the annual reader’s poll. I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness won some recognition that year too. According to Plan nabbed a spot in the top five singles of the year and "The Owl" nearly beat out Boards of Canada’s "Dayvan Cowboy" for Brainwashed’s best loved music video of 2006. Then a seemingly terminal eight-year silence ensued. Now the band has returned with Dust, as if nothing happened. Their lineup is unchanged, Ministry’s Paul Baker is still behind the mixing board, and the artwork is as austere as before. And though much in the music is also familiar, the group’s focus has changed. They cast a wider net on Dust. There’s more variety and the songs are denser this time around, layered thick with circular melodies and crisscrossing guitars.

Secretly Canadian

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness open Dust with "Faust," a song they beat out with surgical exactitude. It’s fast paced, built on a thumping rhythm section, and driven by a simple guitar riff that winds in and out of the lead guitar’s meandering accents. The song twitches with energy, as if the band were just itching to play together again, but the performance is controlled, channeled into a concise, coolly played four minutes. "Come Undone," and, to some extent, "Stay Awake," feed on that same energy. A quick moving, tightly wound melody skips through the heart of all three songs, and on each the bass and drums add variety to the already rhythm heavy core. The lead guitarist extracts little hidden melodies from inside that wave of sound and spins them through the air, completing the illusion that these songs are all unspooling as they fall through space.

These are songs the band could have written in 2007 or '08, after wrapping up their tour for Fear Is on Our Side. They’re white knuckle rockers that burn with the same fire as "According to Plan," but they are far more insistent, far less translucent, and far from the norm.

The rest of Dust courses down a surprising path, starting with "Heat Hand Up." It’s there that I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness first switch to a rarefied, pseudo-romantic mode. The guitars space out and harmonize, the drummer sits back on his throne and relaxes, and the music suddenly turns diaphanous. "Safely" continues in the same way, adding xylophone and a humming e-bow drone to the mix. It’s a colorful, delicately played ballad that depends on texture as much as rhythm and melody, and it sets the table for Dust’s mid-album climax.

"You Are Dead to Me" floats on a blanket of distorted synthesizer loops, cut up vocals, and a series of long, moaning guitar notes, all sans percussion. The effect is like the one depicted in cartoons, where a character falls to the center of the Earth only to find that it’s a hollow, weightless ball. Faceless voices and shifting clouds of color hover in this formless place, but they never condense. Instead, the music evaporates.

That weightlessness infects all of side two. The drum set returns on "69th Street Bridge" and turns the song like a top, etching a circular figure into the music that reaches out to the guitars and synthesizers at the periphery and sends them turning round and round the multi-tracked vocals. "The Sun Burns Out" returns to a backbeat base, but the gleaming guitars almost snuff it out in a haze of harmonies, and closer "WAYSD" opens the album all the way up by putting the bass front and center with the drums. The guitars and keyboards decorate their slow, psychological crawl with dramatic bursts, but the rhythm plows forward undeterred, the air around it slowly escaping into the void.

Eight years is a long time for a band to go without a release. I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness make it sound as though it were only eight months. Dust thrives not because the band made any quantum leaps during their sabbatical, but because they opted to make small changes instead, and because they learned to open their sound up without losing what made them so great in the first place.

samples:

• Safely
• Come Undone
• Your Are Dead to Me

 

14 March 2011

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Albums and Singles

On this self-titled LP, the core duo of Sungod: Michael Sharp and Braden Balentine, create an odd combination of synth heavy folk infused rock music. A certain genre-hopping, overall post-rock feel may be notable, but for the most part the album is a strange amalgam of styles, combined in a way that sounds very different than the sum of its parts.

Holodeck

The most consistent thread running throughout the five pieces that make up this album is a clearly prog rock influenced approach to keyboard parts. The lengthy "Heavy Water" mixes in synth strings within a passage of expansive, flanging ambience.What the duo build up around that is where the strengths lie:the slow build into the final few minutes once the guitar expands and the drums drop in channels the most rock moments of Spacemen 3.

The other long composition, "L'ame de Toute Etoile" stands perfectly as a companion piece.The 1970s synth melodies form the core, and then the duo bring in the drums and lead guitar to increase the pace and heaviness.The uptempo structure and metronomic percussion calls to mind Neu!'s "Hallo Gallo", but with a looser, more "fun" feel to it.

The shorter pieces mixed around these two are the ones in which there is more variation, but also a bit less complexity.The acoustic and slide guitar of "Come Gently, the Wind" drift into a country/folk vibe, while "Burn Ward Blues" sits more between classic rock and blusey twang.Amongst both of these, a hint of folk appears as well, with vocals and electronics buried low in the mix.

"Shiftless en Nkawkaw" may be shorter, but also has the most distinctive sound on here, due to additional bass by Alex Hughes and Kristine Reaume’s flute.Compared to the rest, it is more an instantaneous"rock" piece, propelled by Hughes' bass.A chorus of vocals is present, but far off in the distance, as if bleeding over from the studio next door.Its first half is dense and claustrophobic, but on the second half things loosen up:noisy synths and erratic rhythms come in and make a mess of things.It seems as if the band is building the song to a dramatic climax, but instead they end things just as effectively by letting the individual instruments drift apart into playful chaos.

Along with the aforementioned proggy-ness to Sungod, there is also a certain outsiderness to their music as well.The duo happily pull from disparate genres multiple times in each song, and when the styles are placed alongside each other, they become something else entirely.The resulting album is murky, at times befuddling, but more often than not captivating.

samples:

• Heavy Water
• Shiftless en Nkawkaw
• L'ame de Toute Etoile

 

14 March 2011

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Albums and Singles

In the 32 years since beginning the project, Philip Best has made the transition from teenage instigator to respected artist and academic, with erratic smatterings of solo releases ever since. He might be best known for his time in Whitehouse, but the infrequent series of solo releases and collaborations as Consumer Electronics were nothing to be ignored either. Years in the making, Estuary English represents a new zenith in the project, in both content and presentation.

Dirter

CE has been Best's (largely solo) project since its inception, although it has often been considered a footnote next to his role in Whitehouse (most obviously in their exceptionally strong final albums) and to a lesser extent his time as the vocalist/keyboardist in the rock incarnation of Ramleh.Estuary English, however, is purely his work.Even though legendary noise/electronic artist Russell Haswell and Best’s wife Sarah Froelich are significant contributors to this album and currently the project as a whole, it is Best and his singular lyrics and vocals that define this album.

It is the words and delivery of them that make this album the brilliant monstrosity that it is.Anyone familiar with Best's vocal style on the latter day Whitehouse records knows what to expect:an acidic, aggressive, unpleasant berating with a wry, sardonic hint of humor off in the corner.He shifts from viperous social commentator to sleazy pornographer and back again, snarling with a peerless malignance.What he does very well, however, is convey disgust like no one else can.Music is ripe with people who can do harsh and angry vocals with varying degrees of success, but no one matches Best’s tangible disdain and disgust that just drips from each sentence he spits out.

When the material on this album made its live debut, much fuss was made in the internet ghetto of noise message boards that "Co-opted by Cunts", heavily based around a standard 4/4 techno beat, meant CE was yet another noise project to go electronic and "normal".While I would have little concern if that did happen, noise fans can rest assured that the backing tracks of these eight songs get just as ugly as the vocals, even if the programmed beats are not harsh enough.

"Co-Opted" sees the trio using the most overt use of conventional rhythms, in the form of a skipping CD beat that eventually gets blended with noisy processed snares and drifting synth passages.Shades of Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle and their early flirtations with drum machines are noticeable here more than anywhere else on the album.Best's vocals consist only of repeating the song’s title throughout, a noteworthy contrast, because this is musically the most complicated work on here, yet the most simple from a lyrical standpoint.

Beyond that, the use of beats and sequencers on the album are unconventional to say the least.The closest thing to a rhythm on "Teknon" is a flatulent bass synth pattern that underscores Best’s vocals, working excellently as an accompaniment while leaving the vocals the focus.The monotone low volume jackhammer beat of "Sex Offender Boyfriend", on the other hand, is less of a rhythm and more of an abrasive element that just happens to be made up of drum sounds, underscoring his most unhinged vocal performance to date.

The remaining pieces are more entrenched in the noise/power electronics style, which is sure to please those fans who are afraid of change."Affirmation" is slow, seasick buzzing synthesizers with random outbursts and heavily processed fragments of voice sneaking out demonically from the distance.Both "Come Clean" and "Estuary English" work as throwbacks to the genre's staple: walls of overdriven distortion and electronics, neither of which would have been out of place on a 2000s Whitehouse album.

Recognition has to be given to the quality presentation that Dirter has put forth on here.A weighty, glossy gatefold sleeve featuring all of the lyrics, and the album presented on two heavy weight 45rpm records, plus the first pressing including a CD version of the album mastered by Denis Blackham.The album visually exudes class, and is a perverse juxtaposition to what is contained on it.

My initial concern was the length of the album, clocking in at only 22 minutes.After the first playing, I do not think I would have wanted any more.Like Slayer's Reign in Blood or Whitehouse's Dedicated to Peter Kurten, putting too much more on here would have not only dulled its impact, but would have likely been overwhelming to listen to.The sheer force and intensity here is draining, so it works perfectly as a short forceful burst.Estuary English is disturbing, ugly, and at times horrifying, and that is what makes it one of the best records I have heard this year.

samples:

• Teknon
• Sex Offender Boyfriend
• Co-Opted by Cunts

 

13 March 2011

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Albums and Singles

With its careful, hushed vibe and slow pacing, it is only all the more amazing that this 24 minute piece is the work of pure improvisation, without the benefit of practice or rehearsal. It is simply the product of four disciplined, like-minded individuals captured in the moment perfectly.

12k

The four participants, Molly Berg (clarinet and vocals), Olivia Block (tapes and electronics), Steve Roden (lap steel guitar) and Stephen Vitiello (electric guitar), congregated for an impromptu performance late one night at a San Francisco cathedral.Given the nature of the performance and instrumentation, each individual can be heard clearly:Roden’s guitar appears early atop taped clatterings and subtle electronics from Block, which then is met by sparse, wordless vocals from Berg.

When she switches from vocals to clarinet, the piece gets sharper and a bit louder, but then calms back down, allowing bird chirps and gentle melodies to fill the opened space.Sparse electric guitar from Vitiello becomes audible, as does a deep, almost rhythmic loop of clacking sound, rocks perhaps?At this point each element that comes in sticks around, leading to a complex, but not overly dense mix, placing expansive electronic drones with what could be rainforest field recordings and repeated backwards melodies.With the clarinet leading, the closing moments end up taking along a subtle jazzy feeling.

While there is a noticeable improvisational feeling to be found, the four players synthesize their sounds together quite well, especially considering this isn’t extracted from a longer performance, and that there was no practice or rehearsal beforehand.Each artist can be heard, but no one overshadows the other, truly uniting them as a group.The result is a beautiful, understated performance that retains the live, at the moment feeling that was surely felt in the cathedral when it was recorded.

samples:

• Excerpt 1
• Excerpt 2
• Excerpt 3

 

13 March 2011

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Albums and Singles

After two excellent recent split releases, the duo of Faith Coloccia and Aaron Turner have put out a full length CD that manages to spread out over an hour and still retain the variety of moody and complex sounds that they did so well in previous shorter bursts.

Sige/Conspiracy

Between those two splits, Mamiffer did both denser heavy rock-influenced sounds as well as more pensive, piano driven ambient works, both of which receive good representation here.Above all, there’s an over-reaching sense of bombast and drama that, while tinged with prog-rock tendencies, never falls into any of the pretentious pitfalls that usually mar such works and instead have a regal flair most strive for, but few attain.

"As Freedom Rings" opens slowly, with a soft panned organ that picks up additional tones and sounds with each pass, bringing in electronic textures and washes of white noise.Like many of the pieces on here, Coloccia's piano playing eventually becomes the focus, flanked by synth layers, Turner's restrained guitar feedback, and hollow percussion.Layers come and go, eventually building to a dramatic crescendo that is punctuated with quiet, layered vocals; choral and chanted, that close the track powerfully.

The long, ambient "We Speak In The Dark" stretches out for over 20 minutes, beginning with expansive, drawn out notes of unclear origin that become more grounded when the piano arrives, a punchier contrast to the frozen tones off in the distance.It has a comparatively slower, more deliberate pace than before, but with more grandiose outbursts, including full string arrangements courtesy of Eyvind Kang, who also did such work with Sunn O)))'s recent Monoliths & Dimensions album.The chaotic, speaking in tongue vocals that are male and female, screamed, growled, and chanted add a frightening, inhuman like quality to a cinematic piece.

Piano and drums also characterize the final two pieces, both of which also include strings and guitar, but each go into drastically different territories."Eating Our Bodies" emphasizes the guitar a bit more, putting on a heavier, more tense sound that eventually closes in slow, dark and pounding territory.Conversely, "Iron Water" is more concise, first as a carefully measured piano and guitar duet that is simply beautiful before unraveling, leaving echoed vocals, ambience, and shimmering guitar noise in its wake.Even with the long subsonic rumbles that close the album, it has an overall lighter quality to it.

Like the split LPs I've reviewed recently, Mare Decendrii doesn’t fit into any specific genre, nor can it be easily explained or described, it simply is what it is.While the two on the surface sound nothing alike, there is a certain shared vibe with Earth’s more recent work.Both have a similar, cinematic feeling that conjures up a lot of feelings and images that strengthen the work.However, Mamiffer’s use of piano, strings, and more abstract electronic textures are what sets them apart, helping them carve out their niche.

samples:

• As Freedom Rings
• We Speak In The Dark
• Iron Water

 

13 March 2011

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Albums and Singles

Following 1983's Soul Possession, Annie moved into a shed in Adrian Sherwood’s garden and slowly began assembling an album's worth of new material with his then-wife, Kishi Yamamoto.  The new songs were very different than her previous work: the scary and disturbed-sounding elements completely disappeared and Annie began to make a conscious attempt to assimilate pre-rock influences like Marlene Dietrich and Edith Piaf into her work.  The actual impact of those divas on her sound was still fairly slight at this point (1987) though, as Jackamo turned out to be a very weird, difficult, and transitional album.

Southern

This wasn't the first time that Kishi and Annie had worked together: Kishi had actually played a bit of synth and Chinese harp on Soul Possession and was probably responsible for some of its more outré textures, as she was an enthusiastic proponent of avant-garde classical and musique concrète.  Also returning to the fold were Dub Syndicate/African Head Charge percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and –of course– master dub producer Adrian Sherwood.  The only major line-up change, in fact, was the departure of Crass and the arrival of stellar bassist Doug Wimbish (who later wound up joining Living Colour).  The presence of Wimbish made a huge difference, as he ensured that these songs had a fat, ribcage-rattling bottom end.

Oddly, despite the eclecticism of Annie and Kishi's inspirations, Jackamo is still very much a dub album (albeit an aberrant one).  With the very notable exception of an accordion-led cover of Charles Aznavour's "Hier Encore," the bulk of this album maintains a lumbering, slow-motion reggae feel buffeted by Sherwood's studio-tweaked electronics and Noah's omnipresent clattering hand-percussion.  "Hier Encore" was a very clear harbinger of what was eventually to come in the future, as it later reappeared in different form as "Yesterday When I was Young" on When Good Things Happen to Bad Pianos, but Annie's transformation into a singularly charming and urbane chanteuse was still nearly a decade away at this point.  For the rest of Jackamo, her vocals are still pretty tough and post-punky.  Sometimes that works beautifully, like in the blackly funny dance anti-anthem "Bastinado," but there are some serious misfires too.  I found the very hammy and shout-y "Jack Yo Mama" in particular to be almost unlistenable.  The very '80s metal guitar in "Rise" (and again on "Rise (dub)") also made for a somewhat rocky listening experience.  It would be another few years before Annie completely mastered balancing power with restraint and nuance.

Jackamo is my least favorite of Annie's early albums but it is important in the context of her evolution, as it provided a bridge between the superior but very different albums that bookended it (Soul Possession and Short and Sweet).  Also, it marked the first time when Annie's tenderness and wit started to conspicuously manifest themselves in her music.  She definitely took some wild chances too, like the prominent jungle noises in "Chasing the Dragon Down Broadway" and "Jackamo."  There is certainly no shortage of personality, attitude, imagination, or daring here, it's just that Annie hadn't quite fully come into her own yet as a songwriter (though the title piece, "Bastinado" and "As I Lie in Your Arms" are all quite good).  Jackamo offers some surprises and great moments, but not quite enough to make it a great album.

Samples:

• Bastinado
• Hier Encore
• As I Lie in Your Arms

 

 

13 March 2011

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Albums and Singles

One of my favorite reissues of 2012 was Porter Ricks' Biokinetics, a maddeningly hard-to-get dub techno classic from Chain Reaction's golden age.  Unbeknownst to me, that album was apparently just the beginning of a larger project, as Type is back with yet another landmark reissue from Basic Channel's influential imprint.  While Vibrant Forms is not quite as distinctive or intermittently amazing as Biokinetics, it compensates by being consistently excellent from start to finish.

Type

Fluxion is one of the guises of Greek producer Konstantinos Soublis, who is still fairly active on Denmark's Echocord label.  This particular compilation, however, is a collection of some of his earliest work, though not a very comprehensive one.  In fact, it only includes Fluxion's debut single (1998's Lark/Atlos) and 1999's Largo EP, though both the 1999 original and this reissue toss in a couple of short bonus tracks as well ("Lapses" and "Cyclops Machine").

Some of Fluxion's other releases from the same period are actually compiled on a second volume of Vibrant Forms, but that one remains woefully out-of-print and expensive for the time being (Chain Reaction's signature metal boxes being both collectible and amusingly prone to damaging their contents).  I certainly hope to be able to hear the rest of those songs someday to get a more complete picture of Soublis' early creative flurry, but it is easy to see why Type was so thrilled to put out this first volume by itself (they hail it as a "legendary masterpiece").  Certainly, more Fluxion would be nice, but this volume beautifully embodies the electronic music zeitgeist of the era just fine by itself: this is as archetypal as dub techno can possibly be.

Of course, the line separating "archetypal" and "faceless" is quite a blurry one, which is perhaps why Soublis' name is not as well-known as it probably should be.  Vibrant Forms is simply the sound of someone who understood dub techno on a deep and intuitive level and set about putting all of its requisite components together in exactly the right way at exactly the right time.  As a result, nearly all of these ten songs adhere to the same template: a steady 4/4 kick-drum thump, a hazy/echo-ey synth motif, a simple bass line, and constant subtle additions and subtractions to the beat.  The overall effect is like a highly precise machine creating a mesmerizing, complex rhythm that never stops evolving, but the more mechanized/inhuman aspect of Fluxion is somewhat balanced out by the woozily warm and blurry synth chords (though that endlessly repeats as well).

Normally, such incredible similarity between pieces would make for a punishingly redundant and tedious album or at least prevent me from have much of a preference for any particular song, but I do not have that problem at all with Vibrant Forms.  The reason for that is that I would be perfectly happy if any one of these songs went on for the duration of the entire album, as all of beauty lies within the details and constant small changes: shifts in cymbal patterns, pops and hisses, slight variations in the sound of the synth, etc.  While the bass drum thump rarely (if ever) changes, the overall pulse never stops changing.  Given that, the best songs often tend to be the ones that go on the longest, though my favorites (the almost indistinguishable "Largo" and "Hiatus") only clock in at around 7- or 8-minutes.  Conversely, the album's weakest songs are simply those that end too soon, like the otherwise excellent 2-minute "Lapses."

Since Konstantinosis not actually a machine, he does occasionally stray a bit from his formula from time to time.  In fact, unexpected detours start to become the norm as the album gets closer and closer to the end.  One of the more divergent examples is "Pendoulous," which incorporates a prominent bassline and replaces the standard-issue chord stabs with rippling, murky dissonance.  An even more dramatic aberration is "Influx," which completely eschews a beat in favor of surprisingly harsh and sizzle-heavy synth washes.  My favorite of Fluxion's variations, however, is the closing "Opaque," which creates a hypnotic push-pull pulse with something that sounds like treated machine-noise.

The word "masterpiece" is woefully misused and I probably would not have declared Vibrant Forms to be one just a few short years ago, but I have recently expanded my definition of brilliance to include peerless craftsmanship rather than just bold vision.  Given that, this album is at the very least a legitimate, unqualified masterpiece of its genre, as it could not possibly be more elegantly executed (or more consistent quality-wise).  If Vibrant Forms can be said to have a flaw, it is actually that it is too flawless: Soublis' skill in achieving machine-like, trance-inducing perfection left absolutely no room for any distinct personality to come through.  That seems to have been precisely the point though.

• Hiatus
• Opaque
• Lapses