21 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

For better or worse, Marielle Jakobsons’ first solo album for Thrill Jockey continues her evolution away from her darker and heavier early work into more mellow, gently psychedelic territory more in line with her Date Palms project.  On the one hand, that makes sense, as Date Palms is probably the most popular of Jakobsons' many endeavors and quasi-New Age revivalism is still more or less in vogue.  On the other hand, I tend to loathe just about anything that resembles toothless pastoral burbling, regardless of who is making it.  Consequently, this direction is not for me much of the time.  While there are admittedly a few faint traces of the Jakobsons’ more distinctive and compelling past scattered throughout Star Core, this album is mostly significant for continuing the ambitious expansion of her palette and for being the first time that Marielle sings on record (as far as I know, anyway).  Also, the album's closing two pieces are sublimely mesmerizing.

Thrill Jockey

The opening "White Sparks" begins quite deceptively with some ominously dissonant low drones that set my heart a-flutter, but both the piece and the entire album quickly settle into a languorous, radiant, and twinkling haze. Curiously, Jakobsons' violin is reduced to a mere droning shimmer or an occasional swell of color here, as she seems quite intent on becoming a one-woman psych rock band, albeit one with no guitars or percussion.  Instead, Jakobsons lays down a stoned and sleepy bassline, some pleasantly chiming and rippling synth melodies, and takes the mic for some vaporous, reverb-swathed vocals.  Closely scrutinized, "White Sparks" is actually a complexly layered and harmonically rich piece, but that is undercut by the fact that the piece is so drifting and hazy that it barely feels like a song.  It almost seems like Jakobsons' intent was to leave as little an impression as possible, a feat she seems to replicate repeatedly throughout Star Core.  Unfortunately, ego death is a much better goal in spirituality than it is in music.  Occasionally, however, there are some prominent and forceful motifs, such as the vaguely Eastern "desert rock" violin melody on the title piece, but mostly Jakobsons is content to just allow her synthesizers to amiably drone and twinkle.  Also, it is perplexing how little Marielle's decision to finally sing actually matters, as her vocals are little more than a bleary haze or a repeating wordless chant.  She might be singing, but she is very much fading into the background rather than stepping forward.

Thankfully, there are parts of Star Core that depart a bit from the otherwise pervasive "lounging on a hammock under the palm trees at a commune" vibe. The first time my ears perked up was "The Beginning is the End," which is built upon a beautiful and vaguely mysterious flute melody.  While there are certainly plenty of analog synth tones to be found, they remain mostly understated and the flutes do a fine job of cutting through the artificiality to make the piece feel comparatively earthy and real.  It is a perverse irony that such an event can seem surprising, given how visceral and unrepentantly organic much of Jakobsons'work has been on previous albums like Fire Star, Ore, and Improvisations for Strings and Electronics.  Elsewhere, "Undone" stands as the best example of Jakobsons' "slow-motion psychedelia" aesthetic, as her diffuse and drifting groove is enhanced with heavy buzzing and throbbing synths, some hallucinatory flanging that resembles Tuvan throat singing, an effective dynamic arc, and some thick minor key flutes.  To my ears, "Undone" is Star Core's unquestionable zenith, exchanging benevolent serenity for an unexpectedly sultry and smeared foray into deep stoner rock. The closing "The Sinking of the Sky," however, attempts to make lightning strike twice and arguably succeeds, despite being even more glacial and bleary than "Undone."  Thankfully, it boasts some impressively haunting and emotionally resonant flute and violin themes to compensate for its extended length and Quaalude pace.  In fact, I probably would not have minded if it had been twice as long, as Jakobsons hits upon a gorgeous sort of slow-motion trance nirvana.  That aesthetic seems to be the way forward and I hope Jakobsons sticks with it.  Weirdly, Star Core seems to be at its heaviest and most compelling only when Jakobsons picks up her flute, though her talents as a sound designer seem to play as much a role in that as her talents as a flautist, as the texture and layering seems more evocative than the actual melodies.

Interestingly, the critical response to this album elsewhere has been hugely favorable, which makes me wonder if I am either deaf, stupid, or terminally cranky, as I only liked about half of it.  I suspect part of my problem is my personal expectations, as I am coming at this album as a huge Marielle Jakobsons fan.  In one sense, that certainly makes me predisposed to love her work, but the more significant bias is that it makes me hugely exasperated to hear a once-formidable artist become gradually less and less distinctive and more and more serene.  The fact that Star Core is "cosmic" or that it calls to mind Terry Riley is not a selling point for me at all: there is already one Terry Riley, so I would much rather have a Marielle Jakobsons who sounds like only Marielle Jakobsons can sound.  When Star Core does not work, it is not necessarily bad so much as puzzling and forgettable–like a cross between 1.) a Liz Harris that found God, bought a synth, and became a yoga instructor, and 2.) Led Zeppelin’s "Kashmir" on a near-lethal dose of horse tranquilizers (I promise that imaginary combination is not nearly as compelling as it might sound).  I am tempted to say that I hope Marielle throws her synthesizer in a lake, but that is not fair: the synths work just fine when relegated to a textural role.  It is mostly just a question of finding a suitable balance between shimmering serenity and something a bit more substantial and forward-thinking.  On the final two pieces at least, Jakobsons nails it.  I suspect that Date Palms fans will probably love the entire album though, as will anyone enamored of the softer side of Kranky.

• The Beginning is the End
• Undone
• The Sinking of the Sky

 

21 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

This duo’s latest collaboration is a score composed to accompany Philippe Garrel’s haunting 1968 silent film Le Révélateur, which Lattimore and Zeigler have been intermittently been performing across the US since its debut at Ballroom Marfa’s 2013 silent film festival.  Naturally, Lattimore's harp is the most prominent element, imbuing these pieces with an eerily dream-like and rippling "music box" feel.  However, Zeigler’s presence is much more conspicuous here than it was on their previous Slant of Light (2014), balancing the delicate harp motifs with a bevy of synths, processed guitars, and lovely accordion-like melodies.  In general, I am not enthusiastic about soundtracks disembodied from their visual component, but this is an atypically good one, finding the perfect understated balance between whimsy, melancholy, menace, and surreality.

Thrill Jockey

Few instruments can lend themselves nearly as well to evoking a mysterious unreal world of flickering and shadows as the harp.  Of course, the downside to the harp is that its singular sound and lack of versatility makes it very hard for an aspiring harpist to carve out their own niche without at least offering something else as well (it is unlikely that anyone would be familiar with Joanna Newsom if she had not started singing, for example).  Against the odds, Mary Lattimore has done a remarkably impressive job of making her mark as a pure harpist, though she admittedly embellishes her work with plenty of effects and studio techniques, which is precisely why her partnership with Jeff Zeigler is such a fruitful one.  Zeigler thrives primarily as a behind-the-scenes guy, working as a producer and engineer for artists such as Nothing and Kurt Vile.  In short, he offers that "something else," ensuring that this album is as gorgeous, lush, and hallucinatory as possible and crafting inspired arrangements that alternately smolder, dissolve, and plunge into deeply lysergic psychedelia.  In addition to all those things, Zeigler and Lattimore also do a passable job of sounding vaguely French and vaguely fairy tale-like.  Much like Yann Tiersen’s Amélie score, Le Révélateur sounds like something that could have been recorded inside a snowglobe, though the two take very different tones, as this album is understated, melancholy, and darkly hallucinatory rather than pretty, kinetic, and Romantic.

As much as I enjoy the more experimental bits through the album, they are best appreciated as a counterbalance to the more conventional beauty of Lattimore's tender and elegant melodic themes.  The duo shines brightest with "A Tunnel," though similar motifs recur again throughout the album.  The composition itself is not particularly complex, as it is just a lovely minor key progression of harp arpeggios, but it is gorgeously enhanced by Zeigler’s melancholy and ghostly swells of faux accordion.  Also, as the piece progresses, Lattimore increasingly dances around her central melody to create unexpected harmonies.  The contrast between the piece's various textures is quite masterful as well, as the shadowy and spectral atmospherics complement the crisp lightness of the harp wonderfully.  Elsewhere, "Laurent and Bernadette" presents the reverse, as Lattimore weaves an undulating backdrop of rippling chords beneath a languorous and lovelorn "accordion" theme.  Trying to choose a favorite piece is a fundamentally doomed endeavor, however, as all of the pieces seamlessly drift into one another in a deliciously disorienting flow.  None of Le Révélateur's stronger themes are meant to hold together for long, as the score weaves a spell of endless fragility and creeping shadows: anything beautiful is fated to evaporate into an unsettling miasma of wildly panning and pointillist harpistry, ominous reverberations, warped electronics, and hallucinatory echoes.  Conversely, no matter how skittering, abstract, ugly, and unhinged a piece like "Running Chased" may get, there is always a piece like the shimmering and celestial "Stanislas" ready to emerge from the wreckage.

Lamentably, I have not yet seen Garrel's Le Révélateur in its glorious entirety, but it definitely seems like Lattimore and Zeigler have captured the mood of its more strange and iconic scenes: the film has absolutely no shortage of mysterious subterranean tunnels, looming shadows and ominous staircases.  It is also quite prone to viewing the world through a child’s eyes and toying with the precarious and porous boundary between reality and artifice.  Though capturing all of that in a score is unquestionably a tall order, Lattimore and Zeigler have done an admirable job indeed.  As with all soundtracks, Le Révélateur's magic would presumably be greatly enhanced if I was hearing it in its intended context, but the flickering dream-like spell this soundtrack casts is an appealing one nonetheless.  It can certainly stand alone, even if that is not the ideal.  Of course, given that the whole idea of a soundtrack is to lurk in the periphery rather than grabbing my attention, this is not the place to go for Lattimore's strongest work, though it definitely highlights her talents as a composer and serves as an illuminating companion piece to her recent At the Dam.  More importantly, it is a unique and quietly beautiful minor gem that was clearly a labor of love.

• A¬†Tunnel
• Hidden in a Cabinet
• Laurent and Bernadette

 

20 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

Tom Carter and Loren Connors are a pairing so obvious, it’s a mystery how it took this long to happen. Each has traversed the American underground on their own unique path. Carter co-founded acid-folk improvisers Charalambides in 1991 and Connors has been redefining his singular vision of the blues since the late 1970s.

On this debut non-titled LP, these guitar masters conjure a stunning, and at times labyrinthine, six-string tableau. Carter’s high-contrast spiral melodies sear through Connors’ expanding canvas of blacks and molten reds. It’s a startling and new language of psychedelic and avant blues that is a next step in Carter and Connor’s ongoing exploration of the guitar.

More information can be found here.

20 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

Art Sex Music is the autobiography of a musician who, as a founding member of the avant-garde group Throbbing Gristle and electronic pioneers Chris & Cosey, has consistently challenged the boundaries of music over the past four decades.

It is the account of an artist who, as part of COUM Transmissions, represented Britain at the IXth Biennale de Paris, whose "Prostitution" show at the ICA in 1976 caused the Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn to declare her, COUM and Throbbing Gristle "Wreckers of Civilization"… shortly before he was arrested for indecent exposure, and whose work continues to be held at the vanguard of contemporary art, some of which resides as part of the Tate permanent collection.

And it is the story of her work as a pornographic model and striptease artiste which challenged assumptions about morality, pornography and art.

Art Sex Music is the wise, shocking and elegant autobiography of Cosey Fanni Tutti.

Art Sex Music will be published by Faber & Faber on April 7th, 2017.

More information can be found here.

14 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

Infinite Floor may be his first solo record proper, but Austin's Dylan Cameron has honed his craft as a producer and engineer in that scene for a number of years now. That technical expertise shines through on the eight songs that comprise this record, a suite of songs that ooze with rhythm, yet also a depth and complexity that rivals the most nuanced of electronic artists. Strong rhythms, infectious melodies, and amazing production all come together as an excellent record.

Holodeck

Some of Cameron's background does not necessarily shine though directly in the sound of Infinite Floor, having spent time both as a hip-hop producer and metal drummer, but that sense of diversity and variety does come across in the diversity of production and composition here.Album opener "Nebula" is a great example of this:sweeping noises and crackling textures scream old school musique concrete electronic experiments, yet skittering high-hat and jungle drum loops push the piece more to the club than the opening minutes would have hinted at.

Cameron works with similar abstraction on "Forest Drone", where he pairs sheets of white noise with slightly mournful beats and synths.There is a distinct rhythm, but parts of it are clearly the product of synth bits or found sounds rather than trite samples or drum machines."Human Condition" is also similar in its method, with ambient sweeps and open passages eventually blended with massive handclaps and bass heavy beats.Concluding the piece on a field recording of some sort, Cameron goes in many different places during the piece’s sub-four minute duration but never does it feel unfocused.

Other moments may be a bit less challenging of course, but even during the more conventional songs, Cameron is sure to give them a distinct edge in his performance."Misted Road" more heavily features conventional sounding house synth stabs and lead, but the overall structure and composition is loose and far less repetitive than most music of this style."Difficult Floor" leans a bit more into the world of dance floors with its standard techno throb and sampled female vocals, but is still drenched in Cameron's idiosyncrasy.

As I mentioned before, one of the biggest assets to Infinite Floor is Cameron's experience and ability as a producer and engineer.Not to take anything at all away from his ability to construct beats and melodies (which is exceptional), but where this album stands out most is in its production and sound design.There is a depth and complexity that is extremely impressive throughout this album.Synths and samples are obvious at times, but Cameron blends and shapes them into different elements entirely.The finished product is both memorable and compelling in its nuanced and unique style.

samples:

• Nebula
• Difficult Floor
• Human Condition

 

12 August 2016

Lucas Schleicher

Albums and Singles

The cover for Stop Time is meant to convey the nature of the tool used to compose it, an invention of Robin Hayward’s called the Hayward Tuning Vine. The idea behind it is to spatialize (and colorize) the relationship between just intervals played, in this case, on a baritone saxophone, a cello, and a microtonal tuba. At the performance from which this album is drawn, each instrumentalist was illuminated in a color corresponding to the pitch he played on the Vine. If the pitch shifted, so did the color. Those pitches were in turn fed to a surround-sound system and projected into different parts of the performance space. In the move to recorded medium, the spatial-visual element is partially flattened, making the slow accrual of rhythm, texture, and harmony the music’s driving feature.

Important

Robin Hayward is a member of Catherine Christer Hennix’s Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage ensemble, and he’s collaborated with composers like Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, and Christian Wolff. For anyone familiar with Hennix or Radigue, their work makes for a convenient point of reference. Hayward uses few materials—just three instruments, a handful of tones, and a series of sustained pulses. The variety and beauty they create is derived from how they interact within their circular framework.

Throughout the album’s half-hour duration, cello, sax, and tuba revolve around an invisible center, conveying distance and intensity. They stand out in the stereo for a time, solo on a single note (repeated or held), then fall back into an underlying drone. The mix makes good use of stereo to position the instruments too. They seem to trade places, rocking left-to-right and back-and-forth on a smooth, glassy curve; a parallel, maybe, to the ratios of whole numbers used for representing just intonation. By the end, the overall effect escapes into an extra dimension. It’s like listening to someone breathe, or like watching small waves lap against one another in slow motion. The CD may not be able to replicate the visual effects of the live performance, but Hayward’s music relates visual information of its own, both color and light, and the cloudy images from the no-space of dreams.

samples:

• An excerpt is available on Important's Soundcloud page

 

12 August 2016

Lucas Schleicher

Albums and Singles

High-volume, high-velocity, whiplash-inducing noise torn screaming from the guts of a haywire machine. As the Pilgrim Talk website notes, Ian M. Fraser programs his computer to make noise. Once finished, circuitry and code do the rest, no human interaction required. The result is so quick-moving and chaotic that absorbing it in the first four or five listens is about as likely as a windshield absorbing a brick in a hurricane.

 

 

Pilgrim Talk

Fraser’s work produces sounds that are thick, gnarled, and biting, as sharp as they are chunky. There’s processed white noise, sizzling distortion, squealing tones, and the kind of chewed up electronic clamor that only a computer could make, like the sound of a million insects eating a screaming animal inside a gasoline-powered wood chipper. And it’s sustained for 15-minutes: one passage after another (it has to be around a hundred in total) separated by sudden shifts in texture and rhythm, all of it rushing by as if set in motion by three megatons of dynamite. The variety (and channel-jumping structure) is impressive; the after effect, relieving. On a Tuesday afternoon when Hillary Clinton courted Henry Kissinger’s approval and Neil deGrasse Tyson defended his dystopian nightmare state of the future, this hornet’s nest of igneous jetsam made everything a hundred times better. Turn Harlem Electronics way up and dig deep into the grain of an electronic furnace.

samples:

• Sound samples available on the Pilgrim Talk website

 

08 August 2016

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Phase One of our modest campaign to fund The Dots' Tour of North America slated for Autumn 2016. Festive collects together all the "seasonal" releases by the Dots so far and presents them as a delightful 2xCDr package.It is necessarily limited but we intend to keep this full set downloadable for the foreseeable future. 18 of the physical sets will be available for the Tour; 49 will be available via this site from around 28 OCTOBER 2016.

07 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

While it may be easy at first glance to label Body of Light (the duo of brothers Alex and Andrew Jarson) as yet another entry in the EBM revival arena, that is not entirely fitting. There are drum machines and vintage synths aplenty, certainly, but Let Me Go stands on its own as a brilliant record of pure unadulterated synth pop that makes no conscious attempt at being anyone else, or sounding of any time except the present.

Dais

Even though they are geographically distant (the brothers Jarson hail from Phoenix, Arizona, which is pretty far from the Los Angeles scene), Body of Light has some kindred spirits with label mates High-Functioning Flesh and Youth Code, but they are anything but a sound alike band.While those two projects are marvelous in their own right, they also focus more old school punk and hardcore elements filtered through their electronic gear.Here, however, the sound is more unabashedly hook-laden and romantic, albeit darkly.The sound is much in line more Pet Shop Boys or Depeche Mode than Skinny Puppy.

They also differ from the decidedly European gothic futurepop sound, even though that is also a similar reference point for their style.There are similarly big, rave heavy synth leads from Andrew and Alex's dramatic vocals, but unlike those bands, Body of Light have a slightly less polished, more natural and human sound to them.I have always found that cold sterility in this type of music off-putting, and there is none of that to be heard here.It still results in Let Me Go being packed with catchy hooks and big, memorable choruses, and people could still easily do that weird stomping industrial dance people in that scene love so much though.

The record starts off on a big note with "How Do I Know?", at first all big synth leads that erupt into bombastic, explosive drums peppered with the weird cowbell and rimshot sounds on drum machines that never get enough use.The result is upbeat and fun, but still with a dark edge and hint of menace to it.The same applies to "Tremble":it is shamelessly grandiose pop, from its dramatic synth opening to the taut rhythms and Alex Jarson's dramatic, hook laden chorus.The energy is undeniable and the song is extremely memorable.

The duo paced the album well though, so it is not all big uptempo numbers.Both "Felt" and "Cold Gestures" have sparser arrangements and overall more somber tones, making those highs all the more intense.Each side of the record ends with a song that hearkens a bit more back toward their earlier, more experimental days."Last Breath" is a frigid mass of spaced out synth pulses, anchored by snappy beats and a building intensity.Album closer "World Falls Apart" is a nervous, but dour mass of stuttering percussive clicks and drips, as dramatic, icy keyboards cast an ominous shadow.Mixed with Alex's impassioned, yet frustrated vocals, it is a heavy note to end the record on.

My first exposure to Body of Light was seeing them live a few months ago, and I was especially impressed with their 2013 EP Volantà Di Amore, so my hopes were high when this album was announced.In this case, my expectations were exceeded, as Let Me Go is an unabashedly magnificent piece of rich and dramatic, yet entirely catchy and memorable music.It is a record that I can easily see as being among my favorite releases of 2016.

samples:

• How Do I Know?
• Last Breath
• Tremble

 

07 August 2016

Administrator

Albums and Singles

While it has only been seven years since my first exposure to Jenks Miller's Horseback (2009's The Invisible Mountain), the amount of change and evolution the project has undergone is astounding. What began as classically minimalist Sabbath worship veered toward psychedelic southern rock and has now come back as an idiosyncratic electronic record full of untreated vocals and captivating melodies. Even with this wide variation in sound, Dead Ringers manages to stay consistent with Miller's previous body of work while still sounding like a different, but no less amazing beast.

Relapse

The transition was not as abrupt as it may seem on the surface, however.The Stolen Fire tape (later reissued in the A Plague of Knowing collection) featured some of Miller's first overt excursions into the world of drum machines, synths, and samplers, but compared to the lush arrangements and orchestrations of Dead Ringers, those earlier pieces feel far more like demos or experiments compared to these fully fleshed out songs.

For instance, the snappy drum machine and fuzzy guitar that lead offalbum opener "Modern Pull" is an odd pairing of up tempo rhythms and dissonance, but the two disparate elements meld together perfectly.Most shocking is, besides the synthesizer focus, is Miller's clean, undistorted vocals, which rarely appeared in such a naked manner.It may not sound like it at first, but there is a vintage electronic pop aspect to the sound, but one that is undeniably Horseback once the classic rock inspired guitar soloing kicks in.

On "A Bolt from Blue", the electronic sounds take on a more deconstructed avant garde sound as an almost 90s R&B rhythm section underpins bizarre chimes and twang-heavy guitar.There is a distinct lightness to the sound, but one that is almost uncomfortably strange once the vocals kick in.The same goes for "Lion Killer", with its rich synthesizer arrangement and bass guitar lead, with bent electronics and marimba giving a bizarrely psychedelic edge to what could almost pass as a pop song.

The Horseback of old still appears here and there on this record, however."In Another Time, In and Out of Form" feels like a throwback to the Invisible Mountain days with its circular, chugging riffs and what sounds like live drumming, the only distinction being Miller's singing as opposed to the demonic growl that featured more heavily in his earlier work."The Cord Itself" channels the greater abstraction that defined Forbidden Planet with its dubby echo chamber rhythms and dark guitar drone, building to an intense wall but never going full metal.

Dead Ringers is, like much of the Horseback catalog, difficult to fully explain, which is exactly what makes it so fascinating.Genre tags are somewhat useless, because the wide array of instrumentation and production styles are pulled together on here that contradict one another, yet in the hands of Jenks Miller make perfect sense alongside each other.It really just boils down to the fact that this is a Horseback album, and no one makes them quite like he does.Each one thus far has had a distinct sound, and this is no different.But perhaps the most striking element is how his songwriting and arrangement has grown.Not to demean any of his previous work, but Dead Ringers is extremely impressive in its composition and production, giving it an added depth that amazes with each listening.

samples:

• Modern Pull
• The Cord Itself
• In Another Time, In and Out of Form