We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
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In characteristic Sublime Frequencies fashion, Mark Gergis' latest compilation documents a truly unique and flourishing scene that very few people even knew existed. It is hard to think of many positive things that came out of the Vietnam War but the free exchange of music and equipment between American soldiers and Saigon's hipper young musicians certainly resulted in some raucous and inventive music that could not have otherwise existed. Punk would have had no reason to happen if rock music had been this wild in the Western world in the mid-'70s.
This is the sort of album that could only have come out on Sublime Frequencies for many reasons, but the main one is that compiling such a retrospective seemed like such a complicated and near-hopeless task: these songs were essentially wiped from the earth after Saigon fell to the Viet Cong in 1975.Some musicians were tipped-off by friends and were able to flee the country to continue their careers as nomadic rock n’ roll refugees, but the ones that stayed behind were forced to destroy any evidence of Western culture to avoid being dispatched to reform camps.Further complicating the endeavor was the fact that Southeast Asian cultures have a tendency to view pop music as a disposable and very of-the-moment thing.Even if this music had remained available, most Vietnamese music fans wouldn’t care.They are interested in what is happening now, not forty years ago ("fetishism of the old is left to those rare creatures obsessed enough to take on the task"). As if that wasn't enough, any new interpretations are viewed as supplanting the original versions, making Internet searches an exasperating process.Consequently, original recordings from that short-lived era are staggeringly difficult to come by in 2010, even without a language barrier standing in the way.Fortunately, Gergis was aided in his efforts by a California record collector named Rick Foust who had presciently snapped up a lot of these recordings when they were available in Vietnamese-owned shops in the '80s.
Gergis definitely tried to give a broad overview of the scene, which necessarily means that listeners will probably not fall in love with every single song.On the flip side, however, it is hard to imagine anyone who loves music not being floored by at least one or two pieces here.I personally had a hard time embracing some of the more high-pitched vocal performances, like Bich Loan's opening "Tinh Yêu Tuyêt Vòi."Fortunately, he is backed by CBC Band, whom the liner notes describe (quite rightly) as "teenage acid rock of the highest order."Acid rock is generally not a favorite genre of mine, but these teens were smart enough to replace its more plodding and self-indulgent aspects with infectious youthful exuberance and a rumbling, funky low-end.It is impossible not to love a band that is so obviously intent on tearing it up.Notably, even though Rolling Stone proclaimed them "The Best Band in the Orient" at one point, they only ever recorded two songs (for the soundtrack to a comedy, no less).The band, who now live in Texas, were absolutely stunned that Mark found those songs (even they themselves hadn’t heard them in nearly four decades).
The most essential piece on the album, however, is probably Bang Chan's incendiary "Nhurng Dóm Mat Hoa Châu," which features one of the absolute best rhythm sections that I have ever heard.The groove is so perfect that the rest of the band could have been playing literally anything and it wouldn't matter, but everything else is great too: wild organ solos, smoky saxophones, fuzzed out guitars, and cool sultry vocals.It must have been a bit disorienting for some G.I.s to come back home and hear the comparatively neutered rock being played on radios in the US after experiencing such funky, frenzied abandon abroad.That said, there are a number of other stunning pieces strewn throughout the album that take wildly different stylistic paths, such as Lê Thu's languidly melancholy "Sao Bien," the mutant Motown girl-group pop of Thai Thanh, and Thanh Lan's suavely cosmopolitan "Hoài Thu."
As with just about all Sublime Frequencies releases, the sound quality is quite raw.It actually works quite effectively in this case, as this music deserves to be heard as it was experienced in those steamy Saigon clubs forty years ago: gritty and unfiltered.Most of these artists rely heavily on sinuously funky bass lines and overdriven and wah-wah'ed guitars, both of which only sound more visceral with increased volume and in-the-red recording quality.In general, I am not a fan a foreign pastiches of American rock, but the sheer enthusiasm and passion of these musicians transcended my apathy beautifully and instantly.Saigon Rock & Soul captures a singular cultural nexus: the thrill of discovering rock and roll colliding with the urgency of living in the midst of a war zone.This is some of the most thrillingly alive music that will be released this year (and one impressive feat of musicology to boot).
The origins of this compilation read like the plot to an quirky indie comedy: a German musicologist misplaces his passport, loses his luggage, misses his flight, and winds up taking a completely different flight. When he arrives at his revised destination, he spends some time with a compelling eccentric, some unexpected things happen, and the experience changes the course of his life. The eccentric character in this instance was Dick Essilfe-Bonzie, a producer for Ghana's influential indie label Essiebons, and reluctant caretaker of a mountain of forgotten recordings that Polygram never bothered to collect when they took over.
It is both fascinating and alarming how much of a role serendipity and chance play in musicology sometimes.Altered flight destination aside, curator Samy Ben Redjeb was not planning to embark upon a Ghana compilation at all when Essilfe-Bonzie presented him with a box of recently digitized recordings that he was thinking of emerging from retirement to release himself.Soon after, Redjeb learned that the reissue project wasn’t going to happen after all ("things are complicated")and that Dick had several huge boxes of doomed master tapes sitting on his veranda getting rained on.Given that: 1.) he had no choice but to save the tapes, and 2.) he already had heard quite a bit of great of great music from Essilfe-Bonzie's prematurely aborted digitizing project, it became a forgone conclusion that Samy needed to shelve his Togo and Benin projects and plunge into the sudden windfall of Ghana-iana.I am curious to see how many more albums emerge from this treasure trove, as only 12 of the songs included on Afro-Beat Airways were actually taken from Dick's archive.
For the most part, the focus of the album is placed quite squarely on funky, organ-based Afro-Beat.To his credit, Redjeb avoids the unnecessarily epic song lengths and prolonged, self-indulgent solos that have historically torpedoed many of my Afro-Beat listening experiences.In fact, most of the songs are a punchy four minutes or under, except for the cases where they are excellent enough to warrant departing from that formula.If it weren't for the inclusion of a brief and infectiously propulsive piece by De Frank Professionals, song length would actually be directly proportional to song quality: all of my other favorites tend to go on for a while.In particular, the K. Frimpong and Ebo Taylor pieces are pretty stellar.Notably, two of those were among the tapes liberated from the boxes sitting outside Essilfe-Bonzie's house, narrowly avoiding oblivion to become compilation highlights.I was also quite fond of African Brothers Band's "Ngyegye No So," which features a charming mid-song spoken breakdown courtesy of the very charismatic Nana Ampedu ("Well well well...my people, are you okay?").I'm a sucker for those.
Afro-Beat Airways is a very solid and likable compilation.There wasn't a single song that stood out as a flat-out masterpiece (aside from maybe Ebo Taylor's sinuously funky "Come Along"), but nothing stood out as disappointing either.That is no small feat, as Ghana—like Nigeria—has been anthologized to death in recent years.Unearthing the gems from such a vast and complicated trove of available material is a never-ending (and daunting) sifting process and Redjeb has done a great job of it. I was particularly excited about the K. Frimpong piece, which I didn't have yet (and would never have had, without his intervention).I was equally thrilled to learn from the liner notes that Vis-à-vis were his studio backing band, thus providing me with my next internet scavenging target.
Obviously, a lot of great African music is turning up on mp3 blogs like Awesome Tapes From Africa, but having a knowledgeable guy like Samy around to ferret out all the best stuff and write about it is pretty wonderful and indispensable.Not many people have the resources or patience to try to chase down dozens of long-retired obscure musicians in foreign countries, so a lot of the pictures, anecdotes, and line-up details included here are pretty unique and invaluable. The album itself is certainly enjoyable, but the accompanying interviews and biographical information are even better.
I do not know if there would have been a more fitting epitaph for the departing Hydra Head label. As the final full length release, Black Curtain channels both the beautiful and the ugly of the label’s catalog, in a wonderfully engaging deconstruction of metal as a genre and as an art form, something Aaron Turner and colleagues embarked upon with the founding of Hydra Head 17 years ago.
Jodis, the trio of guitarist/vocalist Turner, bassist James Plotkin, and drummer Tim Wyskida, at times bears more than a passing resemblance to Khanate, partially because Plotkin and Wyskida were that project’s rhythm section as well.Both projects revel in a beyond slow crawl, letting any guitar riff or drum beat ring out for what seems like an infinity.However, while the misanthropic Khanate was largely characterized by Alan Dubin's inhuman, demonic snarl, Turner's vocals here are much more calm and restrained.Khanate's slow plod was like malignant thoughts stewing in the mind of a medicated psychopath, while Jodis uses the lugubrious pacing to develop into an introspective, depressive beauty.
The sprawling, tortured guitar of "Broken Ground," the album opener, exemplifies this.It is erratic and fragmented, yet conjures a brilliantly sad sensibility to it.Turner's vocals stay low in the mix, depressed yet melodic, radiating a powerful sense of isolation.The infrequent drums add a dramatic punctuation, without providing any sense of inertia.The guitar slowly builds upon itself, becoming more and more distorted until reaching a glorious crescendo of noise.
None of the six pieces move at anything but a glacial pace, and there is more space than density, but the album is far from monotone."Red Bough" first alternates between only vocals and threadbare guitar notes. It transforms into a slightly faster, bombastic piece with the full rhythm section and quells back to more ambient spaces."Awful Feast" eschews most riffing entirely, leaving only chiming guitar notes and treated, monastic chanted vocals.
The album closer, "Beggar's Hand," is the only time where things begin to get dark, with the downtuned guitars diving more into the low end, becoming a more bleak and visceral experience.It retains the more beautiful elements of what preceded, and Turner continues singing rather than growling, but there is more of a sinister undercurrent.Surprisingly, for such a dramatic sounding piece, it ends the album on a rather understated note.
The slow, depressive pace of Black Curtain simply adds to its mood, but like the best Jesu material, it never comes across as a self-indulgent mope. Instead it is cautiously optimistic and empowered, spotlighting the power and beauty that can arise from sadness.As a swansong piece for a beloved label, it is a perfect one.
With each release, this Canadian duo has taken their idiosyncratic approach to black metal and pushed it out further, to the point where it bares little resemblance to the genre that birthed it. Alight in Ashes, for example, brings in much more in the way of noise-tinged soundscapes and haunting, unique vocals than it does any staccato riffs or cookie monster growls.
One of the two most striking facets of this album is its lack of percussion.Some deep, monotone thuds can be heard lurking in the either on "Salamandra" and "Cup of Oblivion," the latter especially coming across as some Neolithic caveman pounding a simple, but functional rhythm.Other than that the album is pure ambience and texture
The other distinctive element is Geneviève’s distinctive voice, which seems to channel some medieval madrigal more so than anything of the modern era.For that reason some of the tracks, most specifically "Disease of Fear," take on a certain neo-folk quality, though amidst distorted squalls and fuzzy synths rather than acoustic guitars or more traditionalist instrumentation.
The opening to the aforementioned "Disease of Fear" also looks more towards the past than the present:structurally it does sound almost like a medieval ballad, but played by a barely controlled passage of feedbacking guitar.The dichotomy between classical and modernism, of powerful beauty and ugly dissonance, is an ongoing theme throughout the album.The stripped down "Burnt Offerings" is just guitar that reaches soaring and dramatic swells of gorgeous tone and guttural, unpleasant lows for eight brilliant minutes.
The same dichotomy applies on "Arsenikon (Faded in Discord)":bent and lovely guitar tones clash with one another under multi-tracked, droning vocals in a stop/start structure that prevents things from getting too comfortable.The more attractive sounds begin to take command at the end, only be swallowed by a morass of static and noise.
Alight in Ashes is an even further abstraction of conventional sound than its predecessors, which is definitely an asset in the overpopulated world of black metal and its various offshoots.Unlike other albums in this field though, it is inviting and downright melodic at times, leading to a great, eclectic whole.
Jack Dangers, the mastermind behind Meat Beat Manifesto, has already established his reputation as a legendary figure in electronic music. With classic albums such as Storm The Studio, Armed Audio Warfare, Satyricon, In Dub, and 2008’s Autoimmune, MBM has never stopped evolving and influencing the musical landscape. Over the course of its existence, MBM has been labeled industrial, techno, breakbeat, IDM, Acid House, Drum N’ Bass, Dubstep, and more. No label seems to stick, as the music evolves with every release. With the new album, Answers Come In Dreams, Mr. Dangers once again expands on the Meat Beat Manifesto sound. Hypnotically beautiful, the album pulses with life.
Released on Metropolis and available October 12th, 2010.
01. Luminol 02. Mnemonic 03. M.Y.C. 04. Let Me Set 05. #Zero 06. Quietus 07. Token Words 08. Waterphone 09. 010130 10. Zenta! 11. Please 12. Chimie Du Son
Sun Ra is one of the most challenging and innovative composers of the 20th century. He has a stupefyingly enormous discography, he espoused an enigmatic philosophy of cosmic proportions, and his music is often full of dense and unconventional sounds. Knowing where to start can be difficult, digesting his more experimental recordings even more so. For these reasons, and because of its once rare status, 1978's Lanquidity has long been among the most coveted Sun Ra records. It blends the Arkestra's characteristically obtuse performances and noisy tendencies with strong melodies, fat bass lines, and relatively straightforward rhythms. It's an excellent record for beginners and maybe the most accessible Sun Ra album ever recorded.
Because of previous encounters with Sun Ra's music, I was surprised by what I heard in the opening moments of Lanquidity. The title song features a plodding rhythm beat out by percussionist Michael Anderson, horn solos cool enough for an early Miles Davis record, and space enough to identify the many fractured tones that materialize around Richard Williams' weighty bass line. It is impressive that, with more than 14 Arkestra members on board, nearly every one of them gets the chance to speak up before the first song is out. Keyboards, synthesizer noise, oboe, flute, bassoon, and various horns (one of them played by Eddie Gale) take turns chattering or singing over the foundation of Anderson and Williams' somnambulistic rhythm section. The Arkestra's ingenious blending of simple rhythms and melodies with angular bursts of noise and interwoven phrases makes concentrating on the music's many complexities easier. The sometimes jarring juxtapositions of sax honking and squealing woodwinds are transformed into colorful, ecstatic, and pleasing expressions, like fireworks exploding over a familiar scene. And the often vibrant, strongly melodic solos are made that much more attractive by the atonal harmonies and contrasting elements that swirl throughout the song. Each musician plays off the other musician in such an effortless and easy-sounding way that I'm tempted to think Sun Ra notated each and every last note of the song, right down to the most nuanced dynamics. "Lanquidity" is a masterwork of arrangement and performance, and one of the best opening songs to an album that I've ever heard.
But things only get better from there. "Where Pathways Meet" is brisk and far more upbeat, almost danceable. Williams' bass, Sun Ra's piano, and a baritone sax combine to form a basic melodic pattern with a boastful, heavy swagger while a trio saxophones bluster a melody over it that swings so hard it rocks. Michael Anderson and second percussionist Artaukatune slam out a sample-worthy backbeat that is met by more blaring horns, a pair of dueling electric guitars, and a from-the-gut trumpet solo so emotive it outshines everything the Arkestra and both guitarists can pump out together. On each of the following songs, the same basic idea is employed: Sun Ra combines attractive and catchy melodies and rhythms with spaced out, often impressionistic instrumental voices that are more painterly than they are musical. It is astonishing that the Arkestra keeps this same basic formula compelling throughout the entire album. The rhythms, melodies, solos, and tapestry-like arrangements on each song are all memorable, layered, and exciting, and they've yet to get old, though I've played this record countless times in the last couple of months. Whether or not anyone could dance to this stuff, the music commands the body just as well as it commands the imagination, and I think that is one of the reasons it is so enduring.
"There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)" concludes the album in a more abstract and disjointed way. A constant rhythm section still leads the song, at least at first. But, Sun Ra adds more synthesizer, wandering piano, and atonality to the proceedings. Eventually, whispering voices are added to the mix, which speak of space, music, secret knowledge, and mysterious worlds beyond our own. From start to finish, the music becomes increasingly fractured, until it is broken down into primal piano and synthesizer utterances, like a radio communication received from afar. These final moments lead naturally into Sun Ra's more abstract and difficult music, as if the album were made to prepare listeners for what comes next, whether it be a record like Interstellar Low Ways or Heliocentric Worlds Vol. 2. My natural inclination once the album has finished is to put more Ra on and follow him further into the outer reaches of music.
For those curious about the man's music Lanquidity is an excellent place to begin. More than that, it's a stupendous album that marries Sun Ra's more adventurous ideas with a soulful and catchy sound anyone can appreciate.
Although this is the first official release from this saxophonist and electronic artist, he has an illustrious list of collaborators, including the likes of Phill Niblock, Tony Conrad, and Borbetomagus. For this reason alone, the bar is set rather high for this album, and luckily Ankersmit lives up to the expectations.
Recorded live, this 38 minute piece mixes live with pre-recorded elements, pairing Ankersmit’s saxophone playing with taped versions of himself, analog synthesizer, and some digital treatments as well.The recurring motif becomes the sound of his horn, sometimes in its pure, traditional format, such as towards the beginning of the performance where it is in tightly clipped bursts.Other times it is dissected and rebuilt into a different beast entirely, such as at the ending moments of the performance where pieces are looped and closely multi-tracked together to the point it resembles a mini-orchestra of sax players.The close, but slightly different pitches create unnatural harmonics as layers are snipped away, leaving only one singular loop at the end.
Between these natural reference points, there is a slew of digital and analog treated sounds that are placed together to create an idiosyncratic electro-acoustic sound that stands on its own.The snipped and looped horns at the beginning are eventually digitally deconstructed, leaving processed sound fragments that are far from identifiable to become the focus, with the most subtle of underlying melody to be perceived.
For a single live performance, it is a varied one, with a great deal of diversity in dynamics and structure.Clanging, raw high speed sounds and feedback-like swells clash to create an abrasive, gratingly harsh noises that will just as quickly retreat, leaving only a bass drone and high frequency textures.Some segments resemble a CD being decoded in the wrong order, with blobs of sound coming out seemingly at random.Mixing the high and low pitched elements does occur more than once, at one point there’s subwoofer rattling bass frequencies with ultrasonic, tweeter shredding treated horn noises that pulls a page from the early noise scene.Other moments sit more nicely in the middle, more comfortable frequency range, with what sounds like a duet between a broken AM radio and a laptop-based didgeridoo forming one of the closing segments of the performance.
While he uses familiar building blocks, the results on this album sound like no other artist, and considering his connections with Niblock and Conrad, Ankersmit takes a more maximalist approach to sound than would be expected.It isn’t an easy listen, with its frequently abrasive frequencies and erratic, jumpy structure.However, there are so many nuances and subtlety contained within that the more difficult moments are worth enduring, even for those who aren’t as fond of raw and harsh sounds as I.
1987’s Children of God marked a significant turning point in Swans' musical career. Prior to this, Michael Gira had hewn slow, heavy and angular blasts of negative energy into violent songs of protest. Releases like Cop, Greed, and the sublime Public Castration is a Good Idea marked Swans out as perhaps the heaviest group at the time both in terms of music style and of thematic content. Gira had sung about rape, murder, power, and slavery like a survivor and the rest of the band played with the same intensity. Suddenly, Children of God represented a massive change in trajectory which saw them taking on a new tender perspective which made the darker passages seem even blacker. Acoustic guitars, femininity and flute vie with Ted Parson’s thundering drums, Gira's growling baritone and an ominous void. This was, and still is, a peerless record.
"New Mind," the album’s opening salvo, lurches like a battalion of damaged angels; the plodding beat and Norman Westberg’s grinding guitars driving one of Gira's best vocal performances of the '80s. At this point, the song represents only a slight shift from the heaviness of before but the Jarboe-led "In My Garden" must have been a shock for anyone expecting the usual Swans sound (I had worked backwards when discovering Swans the first time so their early heaviness was the shock for me). From here on, an Old Testament despair permeates Children of God; the lyrics to "Sex, God, Sex" read like one of Nick Cave's nightmares as the music takes on a slow, twisted but beautiful descent into hell. The slow tempos and muscular arrangements that have always been Swans' hallmark have been retained but compared to the graceless but physically imposing Filth, pieces like this were like a poised and deadly assassin.
The mutilated corpse of the blues had already been well and truly dismembered by the aforementioned Cave with The Bad Seeds and their influence (along with the original bluesmen of course) is audible throughout Children of God. Songs like "Our Love Lies" and "Real Love" both could have ended up on Cave's The Firstborn is Dead; unsettling ghosts of Americana hidden amongst the music’s huge fissures. Slide guitar and harmonica sounding like restless dead in the hands of Swans. It is easy to see in retrospect how Swans would soon make the jump to a more country and blues-influenced sound on albums like The Burning World and Gira’s later work as a solo musician and with The Angels of Light.
There are two songs on Children of God that always drag me back to it and, in my mind, they represent everything that make Swans important. The first is the epic "Beautiful Child," a hurtling beast of a song which swallows us, as listeners, whole. Everything from the opening gunshots to the harrowing backing vocals conjures up visions of a blood-soaked religious sacrifice. Gira's bellowing voice contains more conviction and more power than at any other point in his career: "THIS IS MY SACRIFICE!" The violent repetition is balanced by the second piece, namely the album's title track. It is again repetitive with its pulsing guitars and organ creating a swirling, kaleidoscopic trance. However, instead of the aggression inherent in the human sacrifice of "Beautiful Child," there is a hopeful spiritual fervor running through Jarboe's vocal performance. When I first bought the CD version of this album, I would listen to "Children of God" on repeat for hours. Strangely, after all these years of exposure it has lost none of its hypnotic effect.
Jarboe's presence in Swans has always been a contentious issue amongst fans but I have never understood those who only liked early Swans; as good as those recordings are it is only from this Children of God period that Swans truly began to live up to the legend. Without Jarboe's contributions, I do not think that albums like this or their later (and arguably greater) albums would have the same impact. Her vocals have always matched Gira's both in their sincerity and their range. Her move to join Gira at the front of Swans on Children of God was as vital to Swans' evolution as was Gira’s act of picking up an acoustic guitar. Swans' overly masculine outer shell needed Jarboe's delicateness and, as she would show later in their career, she could let rip when needed.
After 23 years, Children of God has aged remarkably well (only the original album art has really aged badly, thankfully the CD reissue on Young God Records came with a far better cover). While I tend to go to the live albums when I am looking for a Swans hit, this is an album that from start to finish never fails to fully pull me in. Along with Soundtracks for the Blind, Children of God is their studio masterpiece. Hopefully, their forthcoming album My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky will pick up where Soundtracks left off. Bearing in mind that some of the songs from Gira’s recent solo album (like "Eden Prison") bring to mind the same vibes as Children of God, my money is on it being another masterpiece.
While this solo project from Wolf Eyes member Mike Connelly has been active for over five years, most of the output has been limited to small run tapes and CDRs that only those "in the know" had a chance to get. Here's a chance for the average person to check out Connelly’s distinct, creepy take on bleak dark ambience without having to outbid Henry Rollins on eBay.
Throughout this album there are some similarities to Wolf Eyes, which isn't unexpected considering Connelly is currently one third of that project, but the similarities are subtle, and the sound goes off in its own direction entirely.Whenever Wolf Eyes goes for a dark or frightening mood, I've always felt there was a lingering sense of fun still there.Sure, they can create wonderfully disturbing soundscapes, but it’s like a 1980s slasher film:there's a tongue-in-cheek sense that they’re still having fun.This material, however, is more like The Exorcist to their Friday the 13th:it's much more about mood and subtlety, and while not as apt to go for outright terror, it’s stronger in its ability to just lurk off in the distance menacingly, creating a beautiful sense of tension.
The nauseous string plucks of "Serve in Silence" reverberate around a claustrophobic ambience, and with the rough, lo-fi recording conditions, sounds like it could be culled from a 40 year old audio tape found in a creepy abandoned house far off in the woods."Revealing Scene" puts squelchy electronics in a swamp-like ambience, with flatulent noise bursts flailing around in the muck just out of sight before everything is obscured in a drenching torrent of static rain.
The menace becomes more tangible as microphone scrapes and muffled, overdriven noises swell to the surface in "Telling Artifacts," but the harsher stuff stays just far enough away to create tension more so than pure terror, which is the strength of this album.There's a distant, fragmented quality to the sound that become more pronounced, alternating noise with open, uncomfortable near silence.The sparse outro feels like pure foreshadowing of something bad about to happen.
Closer "The Comfort Zone" is anything but, allowing some of the darkness that was hinted at prior to become the focus.It begins much like the others, organic swells of sound and echoing, guitar notes that are just a bit "off" in an intangible way.White noise mimics breathing in the distance with shrieks of feedback and low end notes before finally opening up into pure chaos.Most of the tracks 18 minute duration ends up being a sustained decrepit church organ that appears with a ferocity that never really relents, even as the sound slowly decays away by the end of the track, leaving just an uncomfortable ambience to end the album.
The greatest strength of this disc is how it showcases Mike Connelly's ability to craft slow building, menacing audio dramas that are not really apt to terrorize, but instead lead to a subtle, disquieting tension that is compelling from beginning to end.Hopefully this will be the first of more wider-scale releases that’ll make hearing more of his solo output a bit less difficult.
Perhaps owing to the fact that life in '80s Belgium was probably quite a bit more pleasant than that in Manchester, there is not much in the way of darkness and angst here aside from the Banshees-esque goth-pop of Brussels' own Isolation Ward.Germany's Malaria! are usually good for some angular vitriol as well, but their "You You" contribution is surprisingly bouncy and hook-heavy (aside from the unwaveringly intense vocals, anyway). There is an insightful quote in the liner notes from Ludus's Linder Sterling, who notes: "there's this particularly soporific atmosphere about Brussels…there was something about that level of comfort, and a real sense of disconnection.Everything seemed to slow right down…we just couldn't create there."
This Colorado duo have always inhabited a rather improbable and lonely niche with their "bootgazer" aesthetic, but their third EP makes it sound like the most natural thing in the world. Due to superficial vocal similarities, I suspect that Joe Sampson and Jeffrey Wentworth Stephens are probably doomed to a lifetime of Wilco comparisons, yet the two groups are pursuing very divergent aesthetic ends: Wentworth Kersey have staked out their own spare, intimate, sublime, and sun-baked territory and betray no aspirations towards changing that any time soon. What has changed, however, is that they keep getting better and better at doing it. Their last EP was certainly pleasant, but it didn't have nearly the wealth of great, instantly memorable songs as they’ve managed to assemble here.
Wentworth Kersey have a rather unusual dynamic at their core.One half–Joe Sampson–is a talented singer/songwriter of the folk/alt-country variety.Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens, however, comes from an experimental/electronic music background.Rather than attempting to reach a doomed compromise between their respective sounds, it appears that Joe Sampson writes exactly what he wants, and then Stevens adds layers and textures until the songs reach a state of Kranky-fied pseudo-ambient beauty.Whatever their system, it seems to be working quite well.
The duo originally described their collaborations as "sci-fi folk experiments," but they seem to have evolved to the point where that is no longer quite accurate.At the very least, there is almost nothing overtly "sci-fi" here, and the experimentation (while there) is pretty inconspicuous.Normally, that lack of weirdness and unpredictability would frustrate me, but this is an exceptional case: Stevens knows exactly what he is doing.Sampson's songs are completely solid on their own and most distractions would be both unwelcome and self-defeating.As such, the electronics mainly lurk in the periphery and provide color and atmosphere.
That said, Stevens' presence is not at all wasted: he merely serves to elevate good songs into great ones.Every piece seems like it has a warm, shimmering halo of synth bliss around it, which provides a very effective soft-focus counterbalance to Sampson's gritty heartbreak.Occasionally the synthesizers manage to steal the spotlight a bit, but it is usually due to their awesomeness rather than their volume, such as in the elegantly mournful "Since You Arrived."Jeffrey certainly manages to sneak in some sly spaciness from time to time too, like warped, backwards vocal snippets or Acid Mothers Temple-style whooshes and burbles, but he is refreshingly tactful about it.On rare occasions, he even manages to dazzle on both fronts simultaneously, as he does with the reversed Tejano samples in the chorus of "Walking."
Despite the obvious shoegazer influences and general tendency toward melancholy subject manner, Sampson is anything but mopey.In fact, he's a very charismatic, powerful, and articulate vocalist.He's a damn good songwriter too, as each of the eight pieces here is simple, direct, and memorably hooky.And short.There are, of course, a couple of songs that didn't make a big impression on me and I did not particularly like the opening "Broken Down Knees" (sung mostly in French, unexpectedly), but there are at least two or three songs here that I absolutely love.That is an uncommon occurrence, even among bands that I actively follow.Sampson's songs are very honest and human and when he goes for emotional resonance, he nails it (though not without a little musical help).