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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Newly reissued with different artwork, Porter Ricks' second album is a fitfully compelling and somewhat perplexing mixed bag that I somehow managed to never hear until now. My befuddlement is largely due to the fact that the first Porter Ricks album (Biokinetics) is an all-time dub techno classic, so I would have expected Andy Mellwig and Thomas Köner to expand further upon the formula that they had perfected to great acclaim. Instead, the duo took a more stylistically fluid approach, occasionally returning to Biokinetics-style dub, but also dabbling in dark ambient and some unexpectedly funky strains of house music. That said, it is probably wrong to view Biokinetics and this album as intentional statements or clearly delineated phases of a linear artistic evolution, as both releases are compilations of singles and EPs and Biokinetics got all the great Chain Reaction ones from 1996. This one collects all the Force Inc. EPs from the following year, so these pieces could be anything from Chain Reaction-era outtakes to stylistic experiments to a stab at greater accessibility (though that is hard to imagine, given the cold bleakness of Köner's solo work). In any case, there are still enough strong pieces to make this an enjoyable album, but anyone hoping for the focus and distinctive vision of Biokinetics will probably want to moderate their expectations a bit before diving into this one.
This uneven and eclectic collection of songs makes a lot more sense if one considers how they were originally released, as the album is essentially four stand-alone singles and their flipsides. And in classic dub fashion, the B-sides tend to be variations of the raw material from the A-side, so there are basically four separate thematically unified clusters of songs here. There is one notable exception, however, and it is the album's longest and strongest piece: "Scuba Lounge." I do not believe it ever surfaced on a single before appearing on this full length (the Trident EP featured a different "Scuba" piece), but it definitely sounds like it should have been on Biokinetics. It opens in deceptively formless fashion, elegantly blurring together burbling scuba sounds and ominous industrial ambiance, but soon coheres into a killer menacing groove of gurgling bass and seething, slow-motion crunch. The other pieces closest to the Biokinetics vein are "Redundance" series from the Vol 1 and Vol 2 EPs. My favorite of the lot is "Redundance 3," which combines the relentless forward motion of its shuffling beat with an impressively gelatinous and gnarled sounding synth motif. The remaining four "Redundance" pieces are a surprisingly varied lot, taking roughly the same themes in very different directions, as Köner and Mellwig alternately veer into hissing, coldly futuristic ambient ("Redundance (Version)"), a sensually kitschy vintage burlesque show groove ("Redundance 5"), and—weirdest of all—a Bo Diddly beat ("Redundance 6"). Similarly wrongfooting are the pieces from Explore/Exposed and Spoil/Spoiled. For example, "Explore" sounds like a New Jack Swing groove augmented with a very insistent wah-wah guitar theme, which the flip resembles guitars from The Church mashed together with a hypercaffeinated, percussion-heavy, and out-of-control strain of synth pop. That said, "Spoil" is inarguably the biggest shock of the album, as an unrelenting house thump barrels along with a very in-your-face funk bass line and some jangly guitars. It sounds far more like a purposely ham-fisted house remix of an A Certain Ratio single than anything I would expect from Porter Ricks. The smeared, hallucinatory, and submerged-sounding flipside ("Spoiled") is right up my alley though, approximating a building-shaking rave as heard from a neighboring alley. While I wish I loved more than a handful of songs here, I am delighted that this reissue called my attention to a few old classics that were new to me, as Porter Ricks has a tragically lean discography for an influential project that has now spanned a quarter century.
This latest collaboration between Nurse With Wound’s Colin Potter and guitarist/Twenty Herz label-head Paul Bradley is an experiment in returning to an earlier, less complicated way of making an album: only two guys in a studio with some instruments. Despite that, it is not a stunning or radical departure from either musician’s past solo work, though it bears a stronger resemblance to ambient’s early days than usual. It was an inspired move in theory, but the end result suggests that making music the complicated way might be a still better idea.
The premise of The Simple Plan is an appropriately simple one: record an album in real-time using real instruments with virtually no aid from computers or digital processing techniques. For this purpose, Bradley and Potter employed an array of analog synthesizers, guitars, and effects pedals. The challenge of this endeavor was further enhanced by the fact that Paul Bradley had never played a synthesizer “live” before. He seems to have managed just fine, however.
The album opens with the delicate, shimmering swells of “Embrace,” a piece very much in the vein of Eno’s pastoral early ambient works. It is “ambient” in the truest sense of the term, as it is very easy to forget that it is even playing due to its slow-moving subtlety and consonance. Nevertheless, I found it to be quite a beautiful piece once I gave it my full attention. While overtly it is simply a slowly drifting cloud of sound, there is quite a bit of action taking place in a small-scale way: the timbres and volumes of tones shift, disquieting passing tones wander in and out, and the notes smear and bleed together to yield slight dissonances and oscillations.
As it turns out, ”Embrace” is a bit of an aberration. It is by far the most placid and nuanced piece on the album, as the remaining four songs tweak its template with an increased focus on low-end and density. Also, while “Embrace” contentedly floats along for the entirety of its 18-minute duration, the remainder of the tracks merely use that as a starting point before snowballing into something more hefty. The differences between the songs are not huge, but they effectively serve to differentiate them. The title track, for example, leans much more heavily on a central droning tone and gradually escalates in power while maintaining a faint swaying pulse. Also, it ends with the unexpectedly melodic bloops and bleeps of a static-washed coda. The longest piece on the album, “Gloaming,” places even more emphasis on rhythm, coalescing into a heavy throb while Bradley’s guitar loops glisten above it. It is also one of the most intense pieces on the album, as the loops gradually mass to form a thickly layered and somewhat distorted middle section. The piece that follows it, “Alta Mesa,” achieves a similar display of power by gradually swelling to an engulfing roar.
The intended purpose of this project was to “create a simpler, more organic piece of work.” In those regards, it is a mixed success. While certainly restrained, the ebbing and flowing interplay between notes in “Embrace” sounds vibrant and alive. However, the actual sounds are still very artificial: the guitars rarely sound like guitars and very few sounds are less organic than analog synthesizers. Also, while the recording process itself was simple, the music is actually quite a bit busier and less spacious and intimate than much of Paul Bradley's solo work. When the process is taken out of the equation, what is left is merely a decent, albeit somewhat regressive, ambient album. Several other artists could have made an album like this: Bradley and Potter’s plan, while admirable, was either too simple or not simple enough to betray much personality or uniqueness.
(Note- the currently sold-out limited edition of this album came with a bonus disc (Accreation) of reworked versions of the songs made without any limitations at all. It is significantly better than The Simple Plan, which makes its unavailability perplexing.)
In 1992, 8-bit samplers were cutting-edge gear. This reissue of Chaleur Humaine by French siblings Danielle and Didier Jean, shows Didier's use of a sampler to reshape and project his sister’s voice into a memorable, magical-sounding dream world with barely discernible hints of doom under the glossy enveloping surface. At times it is reminiscent of the tracks "Alsee," "Criminie," "Bruma," and " Wask," on Nuno Canavarro’s Plux Quba (1988). Very different albums in some senses, but in a wildly imperfect analogy, the recognizable voice parts on Plux are like Elizabeth Fraser hiccuping through tubes in an Yves Tanguy surrealist painting whereas Chaleur resembles Virginia Astley and Sheila Chandra harmonizing with helium-high hedgehogs in a symbolist landscape by Marc Chagall.
A poem recurs throughout Chaleur Humaine in a variety of languages, including English, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Vietnamese: "It’s this force, almost animal, warm, like a kiss, fresh like the morning dew, that we call human warmth" but not even that can derail this sultry cinematic music. Wordless vocalizing is used as glitchy percussive punctuation and haunting backdrop. Spoken word combines with splashes of metallic synth, angelic and robotic gibbering, as Didier digitally accelerates, delays and reverses sound sources to create an ambient landscape across which the imagination may travel. I felt I was in a futuristic sound sauna one minute and the next was at the wheel of a car, filmed from above, speeding across deserts, gliding over bridges, and easing through streets ablaze with neon nightlife.
No parts of this album should be skipped, and I’m not picking highlights here so much as listing examples. At just over six minutes "Memoire Vive" is perhaps the cornerstone of the recording, the proof in the pudding, meringue light/spotted dick substantial. It is as sleek and sensual as Air and Brigitte Bardot collaborating for a Bond movie theme. Other songs are brilliantly brief (the icy eroticism of the title piece runs at just 1.40). I think of this record less in terms of rainforest and meditation and far more as a bright yet brooding sci-fi soundtrack. God knows it would have livened up the dull as fifty shades of dystopia Blade Runner 2049.
Didier uses spare flourishes of piano and brass to great effect, and the combination of strings with his treatment of Danielle's voice at the start of "Human" have an aching melancholic overdrive similar to more recent compositions by Max Richter. Soon enough, though, UMAN ditch that for a breezy, pseudo-swing, like elevator music for an elevator capable of rising out the top of a building into the clouds.
The melody of "Cordes Sensible" flickers like low setting sunlight in a car driver’s eyes, then the track glides into a propulsive rhythm and drops in a deeper bass sound. It’s almost in Moon Safari territory. "Maelstrom" has reverse breathing which I like to imagine sucks the lazy "New Age" music tag into a cup and throws it out of that speeding car. Since the duo are environmentally conscious let's also imagine it lands neatly in a recycle/reuse bin.
Surely no one will trot out a list of more recent artists and claim that Chaleur Humaine evolved music (that cannot even seriously be argued for Plux Quba), but it truly is a strange and lovely milestone on the analog-digital road. UMAN call themselves "harmony architects’ and while they have created a fine musical structure here, part of their original inspiration may have been to encourage planet-wide unity. This is not possible through overt messages, but keep in mind the subliminal effects of music. Parts of the album gave me a daydream of Kubrick’s evolved planet-sized baby at the end of 2001 and I reimagined the mega-infant sweetly warbling a dreadful warning. Yes, it was only Didier manipulating his sister's voice on a forgotten recording. Our planet has changed since 1992, and while human warmth is one thing, global warming is quite another. If Earth now resembles a vehicle pulling onto an irreversible road to hellish heat death, this beautifully innocent and irrelevant record can be a heavenly note in the glove-compartment of that prophesy. And if there are to be water wars, then (to misquote a hit man from the film In Bruges) "if UMAN have got the Vietnamese, I’m definitely fighting on their side."
In my review of Cantus Figures Laurus last month, I half-jokingly noted that Sarah Davachi's creative arc seems unavoidably headed towards composing a full-on Mellotron-driven prog rock opus. While she has not quite reached that dubious culminating achievement yet, Antiphonals is arguably another significant step in that direction, as it is very Mellotron-centric and the vinyl release features a sticker comparing it to a prog album with everything removed except the keyboard parts. For the most part, however, the change in instrumentation did not inspire any particularly dramatic stylistic transformations, as Antiphonals mostly picks up right where Cantus, Descant left off, which is somewhere best described as "like a blurred, stretched, and deconstructed organ mass." In keeping with that theme, both an electric organ and a pipe organ are featured (along with plenty of other instruments), yet the resemblance to an organ mass is more spiritual than overt this time around. In more concrete terms, that means that Davachi's sound palette has broadened a bit from Cantus, but she is still very much focused on somberly meditative moods, glacial melodies, bleary drones, and subtle harmonic transformations.
As was previously the case with Cantus, Descant, Antiphonals' title plainly states the compositional theme of the album. The term is usually applied to liturgical or traditional choral music and roughly means that two choirs are singing different themes that interact with each other. While there are not any choirs here, the album’s overarching aesthetic seems to be sketchlike compositions in which Davachi brings together two simple motifs to rub up against one another in interesting ways. I say "sketchlike" because she does not seem particularly interested in crafting strong melodies or complete compositional arcs for most of these pieces, opting to instead zoom in closely on harmonies and textures that tend to come to an abrupt end when a piece has run its course. That said, the album does feature one (somewhat) fully formed and melodic centerpiece ("Gradual of Image") that combines minor key acoustic arpeggios, a quietly gorgeous organ melody, and fluttering, dreamy layers of Mellotron. That is Davachi's most "prog" moment and it executed beautifully. For me, however, the album’s zenith is the ghostly drone of "Magdalena," which sounds like a spectral brass ensemble conjuring slow motion waves of aching melancholy. It is a masterful slow burn, gradually revealing shifting patterns and warm harmonies. In fact, it may be one of the most perfect pieces that Davachi has composed to date, so the album's primary allure is "one killer drone piece and a very promising prog detour," but a couple of the remaining pieces are compelling as well. For example, "Border of Mind" initially sounds like a murky tape of a small string ensemble trying their damnedest to acoustically replicate Sunn O)))'s gnarled and blown-out drones, but it quickly dissolves into a hallucinatory coda of smeared flutes and uneasily dissonant harmonies. Elsewhere, "Rushes Recede" takes the opposite route, as bleary flute-like Mellotron drones gradually blossom into something resembling a sublime organ mass. For me, "Rushes Recede" feels like the third and final highlight of the album, yet fans who are more enamored with Davachi's recent indulgently minimal "ancient cathedral" direction will likely find Antiphonals to be a worthy successor to Cantus, Descant. While this is admittedly not my favorite side of her work, I can still very much appreciate the way she is slowing down and burrowing deeper, as though she is tenaciously peeling away layer after layer of craft to get to the pure essence of her vision.
One of the many surprises of the last few years has been the current pipe organ renaissance unfolding in the experimental music world (your days are numbered, modular synths!). Thankfully, we still seem to be in the honeymoon phase of that phenomenon, as the vanguard of Kali Malone, Sarah Davachi, and Lawrence English are all fairly consistent in exclusively releasing strong and/or interesting albums. This latest release is English's second (after last year's Lassitude) to focus entirely upon pieces composed on an 19th century organ housed in Brisbane's The Old Museum. This is a very different album than its predecessor, however, as Lassitude was comprised of homages to Éliane Radigue and Phill Niblock. On Observation of Breath, English instead derives conceptual inspiration from Charlemagne Palestine's "maximal minimalism" as well as the mechanics of breathing (quite relevant when pipe organs are involved). There is one more favorable similarity to Lassitude, however, as this album also features one stone-cold masterpiece that spans an entire side of vinyl.
As English amusingly notes in his album description, Observation of Breath was composed and recording during a soft lockdown in which he "spent many days playing to an empty concert hall." He also states that he considers these four pieces a collaboration between himself and the pipe organ, which is not intended a mere nicety, as he viewed their interaction similarly to the mind/body dialogue of breathing (hence the album's title). In essence, English was consciously "breathing" for the pipe organ, as he strove to achieve a compelling balance of power (exhalations stacked in unison) and "elegant uncertainty" (the moments when breath becomes unsteady and fading). Knowing all of that failed to fully prepare me for the harrowing "The Torso" though, as English unleashes deep bass drones augmented with plenty of hiss, industrial ambiance, and nightmarish whine (I especially enjoyed the parts that sounded like a seasick air raid siren). The following "A Binding" is considerably less radical, lying somewhere between "textbook drone done well" and "multiple drones with differing oscillation patterns ingeniously intertwined." To my ears, it is the least strong piece on the album, but I still like it. And I love “And A Twist,” as it feels like a hallucinatory organ mass that keeps tying itself into murky knots of dissonance. Sadly, it clocks in under three minutes, but is easy to imagine an extended version rivaling Catherine Christer Hennix’s The Electric Harpsichord for the crown of "best album that sounds like a vampire on hallucinogens blasting out a sinister solo in his lonely mountaintop castle."
Fortunately, the closing title piece makes a great consolation prize for that missed opportunity. "Observation Of Breath" initially sounds like a viscous fog of dread oozing across a deep sustained drone, but English gradually enhances that with more harmonic color as the piece glacially unfolds. The truly inspired part comes when English begins to "explore the sonic qualities of different frequency spectra," however, as the piece blossoms into an all-enveloping and seismic drone juggernaut that feels like it is tuned to the resonant frequency of the earth (or at least of my apartment walls). As such, the primary appeal of this release for me is that it contains one of the greatest drone pieces ever recorded, but it is a damn strong album as a whole too. English is in peak form here.
This is purportedly the final album in Soundway’s excellent Nigeria Special series (a fact that causes me no small amount of pain), but at least it is concluding in fine form. While some of the previous albums may have hit higher highs, the breezy, laid-back songs collected here might be the most consistently strong and listenable batch yet (though without entirely forgoing eccentricity). This will likely be the soundtrack for my summer.
It is difficult to believe that most of the tracks compiled here have been out of print for over three decades, as this album is packed with memorable melodies and lazily infectious grooves from the very beginning. The ridiculously titled “Psychedelic Baby” kicks the album off perfectly with a languorous rhythm, sultry horns, and a pleasingly bittersweet chorus, setting a standard of excellence that does not waver until the album ends. Notably, "Psychedelic Baby" features one of my favorite soul music tropes: a spoken word monologue/confessional addressing a possibly fictitious woman (a move that only becomes more charming with the addition of heavily-accented, difficult-to-understand English). Sadly, none of the other 18 artists included here takes some time to break it down for the ladies, but they manage to hold my attention pretty well anyway. On a related note, I am also a huge fan of absurdly grandiose and unwieldy band names, an appetite that this album satisfies admirably (“Commander In Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe & His Nigerian Sound Makers” being my favorite, despite stiff competition).
There is no noticeably weak or even average material here, but there are a number of stellar tracks strewn throughout the album that stand out from the rest. Two of the best are by so-called “progressive” bands: Tunji Oyelana & The Benders and The Nkengas. In this case, however, that term has no relation to its oft-unfortunate Western connotations- instead, both bands are merely more ingenious and resourceful than their peers. Oyelana’s “Iwo Ko La Dami” features jazzy sax leads and a minimalist guitar vamp that are similar to many of the other acts from that era, but bolsters them with incredibly tight, funky, and virtuousic drumming. As for The Nkengas, their “Anyi Bundi Igbo” boasts a brilliantly space-riddled and compartmentalized production that sounds like it was filtered through Martin Hannett.
Curator Miles Claret seems to have deliberately opted for more uniformly relaxed and spacious feel with this album, eschewing the more aggressively funk-influenced and heavy-handed strains of ‘70s Nigerian music for a strong emphasis on Highlife. Nevertheless, he still snuck in some moments of oddball experimentalism. For example, “Totobiroko” is based on a hypnotically repeating bass pattern and a weirdly erratic xylophone motif, but manages to maintain an extremely cool tribal groove in the process. The album’s closer (by Joy Nwoso and Dan Satch) is still stranger, as it uses an endlessly repeating two-note bass line and languid brass hook to hold together a lurching beat and bizarrely operatic female vocals. Both tracks are certainly disorienting and outré when heard alone, but they are sequenced in such a way as to fit quite seamlessly with the less boldly ambitious surrounding material. Also, a great beat goes a long way towards making indulgent weirdness palatable.
Nigeria Special Volume 2 is an excellent place to start for anyone curious about African music. While the ‘70s birthed a lot of brilliant and vital music in countries like Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Senegal, and Lagos, that era was also characterized by rampant clutter, over-enthusiasm, structurelessness, and bloated song-lengths. Claret is much better at sifting through it all than most, resulting in an album packed with short, hook-filled songs and killer rhythms, but without sacrificing rawness or immediacy. This is, simply put, great music. I am sad to see this series end (especially so soon after the Panama! swansong), but I am sure Miles and Soundway have something equally compelling looming on the horizon.
(The triple LP version of this album features three extra songs not covered here)
Few current artists are as conspicuously detached from their own era as San Francisco’s Jonas Reinhardt, as there is essentially nothing on Powers of Audition or 2008’s self-titled debut that betrays any inspiration gleaned from the last two decades of recorded music (or culture in general). Nevertheless, his influences are pretty eclectic within the narrow confines of analog’s golden age, as hints of space rock, early synth experimentalism, krautrock, and forgotten cult film soundtracks all find their way into his defiantly dated aesthetic.
As expected, Jonas Reinhardt’s sophomore album brings yet another pleasant dose of spaced-out retro-krautrock, sequencer trance, and analog synthesizer worship. This time around, however, he has enlisted some actual human band mates to flesh-out his sound, turning a few tracks into an unexpectedly adrenalized Teutonic dance party. That newfound energy is balanced by another new addition: a unifying concept. Powers of Audition takes its title and theoretical premise from the idea that if a composer deliberately leaves blanks and spaces in a piece, a listener will use context and allusion to fill that void with an imagined resolution. That said, I did not notice any such holes when listening to the album. I will charitably hope that they were so skillfully incorporated that my subconscious eliminated them without my notice, but I have my suspicions.
The meat of Powers of Audition remains very much in the same vein as its predecessor: a mixture of burbling cosmic ambiance and a tense Vangelis- and Moroder-esque retro-futurism that recalls a host of late-night zombie and science fiction films from the early ‘80s. The addition of drummer Damon Palermo proves to be a welcome enhancement to the latter type, as the shifting unpredictability of his cymbal work in “Orbiter Dicta” adds greatly to its vitality and immediacy. Of course, Reinhardt gets by pretty well without Palermo too, as the darkly pulsing “Near A Mirrored Pit Viper” manages to wring a great deal of ominousness and power solely from throbbing electronics.
The degree to which Reinhardt has embraced live drums on some tracks may surprise some people, however, as the mechanized drum machine rhythms from Jonas’ last album that I liked so much are essentially gone altogether. Also, the addition of drums has coincided with some spirited forays in a much more “rock” direction, as Jonas has enthusiastically adopted some uncharacteristically muscular and propulsive motorik beats. It works fairly well though- unexpectedly bouncy pieces like “Atomic Bomb Living” and the title track recall Neu! at their grooviest and almost border on kitschy fun. I am not the target demographic for “fun,” but it certainly seems like those songs would translate much better into live performance than most of Reinhardt’s other material. Also, Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother don’t seem very likely to make further use of their signature rhythm anytime soon.
Powers of Audition is an enjoyable and successful album, though I am conflicted about Jonas’ shift towards rockin’ accessibility. On one hand, it is healthy to step away from the insular world of Tangerine Dream-y space explorations, but I personally prefer his weirder earlier works like “Crept Idea for a Mom.” Even so, this seems to be a transitional step in the right direction. While it would be unfair to describe Reinhardt’s work as “pastiche,” he has historically fit quite comfortably within the continuum begun by his influences. This album may be the harbinger of a more unique and widely appealing future, but I hope Jonas makes it there without losing any more of his quirky edges.
99% is the record that significantly expanded Meat Beat Manifesto’s audience by narrowing the band’s sound. It was somehow smaller, cleaner, and less ambitious than the records before it, but it managed to give the band a voice that a wider audience could understand.
Coming hot on the heels of Armed Audio Warfare, 99% sounded so much more refined, restrained, and focused that I initially mistook it as the band coming into their own. It was unquestionably more approachable than anything that they had put out before. The blasts of noise and free-wheeling experimentation were replaced with sampled hooks, harmonizing vocals, and pop song structures that still sounded like MBM, but a more toned-down version. The shift from Armed Audio Warfare to 99% was dramatic, making the former seem more like a sketchbook or rough draft to the latter.
“Now” is a bona fide pop song with a terrific intro, a solid groove, and a great hook for a chorus. A few years after 99%‘s release, college radio and eventually commercial radio devoted airtime to bands like The Prodigy who were making songs like this, but like most of Meat Beat’s discography, 99% was simply too far ahead of the curve to profit from that exposure. Another of the album‘s singles, “Psyche-Out,” helped to pave the way for electronica to meet the mainstream. It is constructed of verses and choruses and a bridge with layers of samples and synthesizers pulsating, and it’s a track that anticipated the kind of tunes that the Crystal Method and the Chemical Brothers popularized not much later. At the time, Meat Beat had a wonderful and engaging live show, lots of underground DJ support, and even a few music videos that made their way to the masses by way of traded MTV's 120 Minutes, VHS tapes, and public access music video shows before the era of YouTube would make such things seem quaint. But the music world was beginning to get caught up in a new brand of rock music, so there wasn’t yet a platform for forward-thinking electronic pop music.
The album has its share of instrumental tracks too, though it’s easy to forget that the songs don’t have words when the samples work so well to provide the narrative. “Hello Teenage America” takes a jazzy piano riff and marries it with thick electro percussion, creating a unique hybrid of styles that might be considered a precursor to acid jazz. “Hallucination Generation” hearkens back a bit to the kind of collage-based songs from Meat Beat’s earlier work, but when it kicks into full gear, it sounds crisp and funky, as if the rough edges had been finely polished. The record is still fun and exploratory and a little bit unpredictable, but it never quite steers off the track the way that Armed Audio Warfare did. Or perhaps more precisely, the track for 99% is just a bit more narrow, so it feels less dangerous but no less entertaining.
99% is an album full of songs that I danced to and sang along with in my youth—something that can’t be said for its predecessors. It spawned singles and remixes galore and it helped the band gain a foothold in burgeoning techno culture, leading to an eventual mashup knockoff in the form of “Tainted Cash” (Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” mixed with MBM‘s “Radio Babylon.”) It’s hard for me not to think of 99% as Meat Beat taking it deliberate step away from the world of art music and into the world of club music. But songs like “Dogstar Man” and “Deviate” are still punchy, aggressive, a little subversive, and full of the kind of bite showcased in “Strap Down” and “I Got the Fear.” Though it’s a more successful club record than Armed Audio Warfare, it’s still got a handful of surprisingly risky tracks that skate along the edge of post modern disco and noise.
Lopez’ music has a way of getting under my skin, in the same way the faint whine from fluorescent lights and computer screens in an office or the background hum of refrigerators and appliances at home do. While listening to Amarok it becomes part of the environment and the mind filters out its steady subliminal assault. At times I almost forgot I had an album playing, but then the pressure either built up with noise reasserting itself, or it halted abruptly at which times I felt an immediate sense of ease and relaxation. These moments don’t last though and the underlying anxiety (both frigid and animalistic) inevitably returns.
Although one continuous work, there are clear movements or sections within Amarok. The first is like a slow wind that gradually builds up into a gale of near white noise with a driving pulse of low-end macerating beneath. The storm of sounds disperses abruptly before descending back into an icy oblivion where it meanders around for a while longer.
For me, the high point of the 64 minute soundscape comes early on, in what I hear as a second movement to the work, starting around the 16 minute mark. It also places the recording in the context of its given name: Amarok is a monstrous wolf in Inuit mythology that tracks down and devours anyone who is foolish enough to hunt alone at night. I can hear the bestial snarls of this creature—compoundeded from what manner of source material I know not—as it tramples through snowy arctic wastes. At first it sounds like chains being drug across the ice, or the heavy chug of an ocean liner. Whatever the original field recordings were of, they quickly transform into vaporous snarls. The bestial growls of terror become slightly more defined while leaving plenty of room for my imagination to fill in the gaps.
The long remainder of the album is not as blatantly horrific though it is unsettling. Recorded between 2007-2009 and evocative of desolate isolation, Lopez claims it is the “spookiest work I’ve ever done.” It is easy to agree with him on this point, based on what else I’ve heard from this extremely prolific sound artist. He is clearly a master at creating soundtracks for inner cinema. Approaching the work as if I was at one of his concerts, blindfolded, I am able to pay proper attention to the minutiae of sound. As a cunning craftsman he is able to shape it to precise effect.
What initially drew me to Anthony Mangicapra’s work was his reminiscence to classic Nurse With Wound and irr. app. (ext.) pieces and over the last few years his own style has become more distinct, his own artistic voice becoming a firm command to listen. On this cassette, the sound he has been developing appears to have undergone another shift and both sides of the tape reveal new facets of his approach to sound.
On “What the Flame does not Consume,” Mangicapra explores the ritualistic aspects of his work as Hoor-paar-Kraat. Sustained tones and plucked strings fill the listening space while ominous percussion sets the mood for it all. It is one of the most menacing things I have heard from Mangicapra but much like a siren, the danger is accompanied by a transfixing beauty. There are echoes of some of the pieces from his Eureka Tapes trilogy but it is evident that Mangicapra is developing a new sonic palette; richer and earthier than before.
A very different piece takes up the B-side of the tape; “Oil & Ash” is a collage of comedy and spoken word recordings spliced together to remove the context, the sense and indeed the punchlines (or leaving just the punchlines). The chirpy babble of cut up voices eventually degenerates into a soup of chipmunk vocals, vinyl static and disembodied sound. Any of the whimsy present at the start of the piece has been dispatched as he leaves us in a clearing, far away from any recognizable landmarks. We are lost as the darkness falls.
Among the current crop of instrumental bands that worship at the shrine of Cluster, Tangerine Dream, and Manuel Göttsching, Roll the Dice are perhaps the most underrated. In the wake of their enjoyable, self-titled debut on Digitalis last year, In Dust is a massive step forward—as striking and cinematic as the best synth-based albums I've heard in recent years.
The liner notes of In Dust read like a dream for fans of this stuff. The album was recorded in Stockholm on purely analog equipment (in a nutshell, synthesizers and piano); mixed in a remote studio in Norway; mastered by Stefan "Pole" Betke in Berlin. There's a fantastic depth of sound throughout, and a constant sense of forward propulsion as the synths buzz, echo, shudder, pitch, throb and reverberate—subtly evolving, even as they circle around the same chords over and over and over. Listen, for instance, to the oddly uplifting "Way Out," which repeats for 11 minutes like a music box built around the same four chords, before dropping out in a flash—out of batteries, it seems.
Ultimately, "Way Out" is an anomaly; it floats, light as air, whereas the rest of In Dust is constructed around a dark, heady undercurrent. The propulsive "Maelstrom" is a textbook example, with its densely layered synth oscillations, muffled low-end pulse, and detached piano playing. There is no shortage of well-crafted drama as the album plays on; if anything, the tension has been cranked up significantly since last year's debut. Outside of Roll the Dice, Peder Mannerfelt played guitar and keys with Fever Ray a couple years back and his bandmate, Malcolm Pardon, cut his teeth on TV and film composition. Together, it was only a matter of time before the duo married a Kosmische pulse with cinematic grandeur this seamlessly.
If there's a parallel to be drawn, Roll the Dice's Olympic leap forward on In Dust is not unlike Emeralds' progression into mellifluous, hi-fi synth-scapes on Does It Look Like I'm Here?—perhaps that band's peak. In Dust is as sonically rich and sprawling as that album, if not as condensed; while Emeralds distilled their core sound into three- and four-minute "pop" songs, Roll the Dice take the opposite approach, generously stretching out. Nearly everything settles comfortably in between five and eight minutes, but never feels overcooked or dull. Rather, the length maximizes the widescreen nature of the songs, allowing the meticulous arrangements and production to become truly immersive.