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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PALESTINE is one of the cornerstones of YANN TIERSEN's next album DUST LANE. Ici,d'ailleurs asked some members of collective This Immortal Coil (DEADVERSE [Dälek], CHAPELIER FOU, THE THIRD EYE FOUNDATION [Matt Elliott] and Yann Tiersen himself) to deliver their own reading of this emblematic track for a EP to be released in vinyl only.
PALESTINE, an original track and 6 interpretations by 6 strong-tempered personalities...
Cornerstone of YANN TIERSEN's next album DUST LANE, PALESTINE stands at the crossroads of the artist's multiple talents. It is the expression of an itinerary without fail where the toy piano harmonises altogether with the electronic instruments, Dave Collingwood's implacable drums and Matt Elliott's characteristic voice. An invitation to travel, in an undoubtedly troubled time, but, above all, a humanistic hymn beyond boundaries, reflecting unfailing hope.
Ici,d'ailleurs asked some members of collective This Immortal Coil (of which Yann Tiersen himself) to deliver their own reading of this emblematic track.
DEADVERSE (Dälek) gives the opening shot with a version worthy of an armoured division ready to blast away all genres and walls; heavy hip hop with industrial rhythms, both insistent and devastating, for modern dancefloors. CHAPELIER FOU, with a complex rhythmical cartography - in the vein of his début album to also be released in March - cleverly de-constructs the boundaries of PALESTINE in a sequenced slow motion crumbling, like a deeply moving continuous shot where sound gives life to images. MATT ELLIOTT brings his project The Third Eye Foundation back to life for a totally unbridled comeback and blows minds away with his unique dark shadowy dub to once more prove the obvious universality of his language. YANN TIERSEN, in trans-genre-hobo way, brings peace to his track by opening its own boundaries to the spectres of serial composers, of German precursors of the digital age as well as the post-Timothy Leary of the years 2000, to deliver a yet unknown face of the artist.
The PALESTINE EP will be release in march 2010 in 12" vinyl with a download coupon (the digital version includes a 20 mn bonus version from ORKA ) The limited colored vinyl edition (500 red / 500 green) will only be available by mail order or during the concerts.
Preorder now & choose your color The 18 first copies of each series (except black) will be signed by Yann Tiersen. Orders will be sent on mid-march.
While comparisons to Cold Cave are going to be somewhat inevitable in this day and age, this four track EP from Clockcleaner vocalist/guitarist John Sharkey III embraces the new wave nostalgia to some extent, but the result is closer to early '80s death rock than the more synth heavy projects, owing far more to the likes of Christian Death than New Order.
The four tracks that comprise this 12" follow a similar recipe, but never feel overly redundant or repetitive. The opening "Not My Idea" joins a fuzzed out bassline to a monotone drum beat. The funeral march is fleshed out with some very 1980s analog synth parts and deep, monotone death rock vocals. "Torture" mines similar territory, with slow pounding echoed drums and morose vocals, all of which plods along depressingly.
"Let’s Make Friends" has a bit more "rock" sound to it, the synths and drums are a lot sharper and there’s a more traditional verse/chorus/verse structure to it, but still with the same dour and angry sound to it. The shorter "This Is Murder" immediately calls to mind something off The Cure’s Faith, but with all of the production and reverb stripped away to near nothingness.
The embracing of 1980s synth sounds on here will surely put it next to the likes of Cold Cave, but the results are quite different. There is a more stripped down organic feel here, with most of the tracks being only bass, synth, drums and vocals in various configurations, without a lot of post-production or effects. The sound is nature and sounds a lot more like it was recorded to a 4 track instead of a Macbook. It also carries over a good amount of the sleaze from Clockcleaner, but focusing much more on the goth sounds of them than the scuzz-rock of that band. The vocals occasionally start to go a bit too far into rock territory, contrasting with a genre that’s normally more restrained in its approach, but the shift isn’t too strong as to kill the vibe of the material.
Having been stalwarts in the Japanese electroacoustic microsound scene for over a decade now, the quartet has always focused on unifying the usually disparate worlds of laptop based programming and improvised organic music. For their second release on the 12k label, they have done exactly that, marrying acoustic guitar with software patches, all presented in a warm, post-rock influenced analog audio bath.
The opening of "Elementary Domain" matches beeping tones and distant noises with the untreated pure sound of guitar strings and bells. The structure is definitely one of a more abstract and laptop-composed nature, but the parts used are definitely warm ambient pop, weaving together a complex piece that is far more natural and inviting than expected. "Help Ourselves" has a similar feeling to it, but employs a great deal of warm piano, shimmering analog strings, and all so subtle laptop noises.
Surprisingly enough, the remainder of the songs are, for the most part, actually more "natural" sounding. "When Unwelt Melts" is a slow building piece that begins with the gentle chimes of a music box, with a bit of acoustic guitar above. As it continues, the addition of analog and digital instrumentation fleshes out the song, leading through a natural evolution that delicate and beautiful. "Helical Scenery" also joins acoustic guitar and shaker percussion with soft synth textures. As the track is given room to grow and change, lush accordion-like tones and more pronounced guitar intermingle above the subtle keyboards.
Towards the latter half of the disc the music becomes slightly more forceful and obtuse, but never out of control. "Be Born" mixes lush, infinite harmonium and harmonica passages with abstract organ noodling, and by the time the massive, crashing percussion shows up at the end, the track rivals some of the best krautrock out there. The long piece, "First Breathing At Last," again uses the digital elements as instruments alongside synths and guitar to create a structured, yet rhythmically disjointed piece that definitely has structure to it, but a very abstract and esoteric one. The track allows the heavier synths and electronics to rise up at the end, creating a heavy, but not oppressive sensation.
One thing that separates them from so many other laptop artists is the fact that Minamo is a band. They play together, mostly working with live recordings, and use laptops and other digital based technology as instruments, not as a crutch. The music they create has that organic, "live" feel to it, even though the instrumentation is at times anything but traditional. Like label mates Small Color, there is a warmth and soul here, proving that digital music does not need to be abrasive and inhuman.
After successful releases on Sedimental and Tilt Recordings Thanasis Kaproulias was invited to the venerable VPRO Radio to perform a piece live, and unsurprisingly it has been released on the Staalplaat label for the rest of the world to hear. The single 47 minute track covers the composer’s sound as it is being refined, capturing elements of other artists such as Francisco Lopez and Bernhard Gunter, but still retaining an identity all his own.
The earliest parts of the performance are most inline with Gunter’s work, consisting of an extremely quiet hiss with microscopic textures that are almost psychoacoustic in their changes. It has a slow build in volume and texture, with shrill tones appearing extremely low in the mix, but still enough to be noticeable. Kaproulias’ penchant for shocking the listener is definitely here, as on his previous work, with an abrupt, violent clattering of field recorded noise crashing in unexpectedly. This appears as a loop, with the subsequent reprises being far less violent and jarring than the first.
The hiss continues under the clattering, which eventually rises into a rushing stream of white noise: a monochrome hiss that initially sounds like simply static, but slowly morphs into a complex composition of chaotic sound. Under the dissonance of the noise, tones that resemble a processed piano appear below the blanket of sound. Occasionally a rhythmic blast of destroyed digital sound comes up to act as a counterpoint to the more inviting tonal elements, but it never lasts for long.
The white noise cuts in and out in Kaproulias’ preferred style, eventually reappearing more as an apocalyptic swarm of locusts that swells into harsh stuttering noise, with the piano-like tones holding on for dear life amidst the end of the world chaos that surrounds it. Eventually it all relents, with the closing minutes mirroring the first moments of near silence, which left me on edge for another moment of jarring noise that never quite happened.
Novi_sad’s style obviously works in a live context, as it does in a more composed studio format. The overall structure is one that is more restrained and minimalist than what was showcased on his other releases, but it never feels overly limited or simplified at all. As usual, the label has packaged this radio performance in a unique way, this time in a digipak style fold-out made of recycled LPs, held together by the ubiquitous center pin. It has a cool appearance to it, and from the sound of other reviews, it’s not going to render the disc unplayable.
The debut release from this synthesiser duo of Andrew Fogarty and Ivan Pawle is a raw but ultimately unsatisfying release which fails to capture the full potential of the group. The basic ingredients are here but they have not come together yet. That being said, this is far from a bad release but based on this EP alone there is not a lot to separate Boys of Summer from the countless other CD-R/tape culture groups out there.
Like any newborn creature, here Boys of Summer take their first uncertain steps, still covered in the glistening afterbirth that protected them until now. With V they show signs of their capabilities but fail to co- ordinate them properly. “Summertime Greys” at first sounds like a deformed and far lengthier cousin to Throbbing Gristle’s “Industrial Introduction” before launching off into the upper regions of the atmosphere and hovering unnaturally. However, it begins to shudder after a while and falls back down to earth; the piece seems to be far longer than it needs to be. Although, they do rescue it at the very end with a monster jam that sounds like reality rupturing but unfortunately the momentum is lost too early in the piece to salvage it fully.
“Aerial Harassment” finally sees Boys of Summer firing on all cylinders. The queasy dissonance creating a haze of upset noises which show what kind of power is lurking within these men and their machines. It is probably no coincidence that this sudden burst of incredible music features two extra musicians who help expand the range of the group beyond the straightforward but interesting take on jamming with synths that makes up the rest of the EP. Finally, the bonus track on the 2nd edition of this EP, “Zoned out of Life” revisits the ground explored during “Summertime Greys.” This piece is less busy than “Summertime Greys” and works better overall but misses out on the awesome ending of “Greys.”
Having seen these guys live (and based on their second EP, click here for more on that), I know they have more going for them when they get into their stride. The untempered music has its moments of power and V and even at its weakest, it is still a decent exploration of the limits of analogue synths. Yet at the end of the day, V feels more like a warning shot than a fully realised work.
Expanded to a three piece, this second EP from Dublin’s Boys of Summer hits all the spots that V failed to tickle. With a far richer palette of tones at their disposal, the group offer an immensely satisfying journey through the dustier regions of that piece of meat between the ears that calls itself a brain. Like transmissions from another planet, these three pieces are alien sounding and utterly bewitching.
Immediately Pharaoh sounds fuller than its predecessor V. The combination of a smooth but rumbling low end and some of the most beautiful synth tones I have heard this side of Venus make the opening title track sound as regal as the ancient kings it takes its name from. Undulating slowly over the course of the track, the drones coaxed out of the machines by their operators create a hypnotic, vivid tapestry of sound. Unfortunately, at just over 9 minutes, it is way too short.
Luckily there’s plenty more where that came from. Both “Coriolis” and “Beyond” are exceptionally good, the textures created by the various players in both tracks feel like the shimmering expanse of space. “Coriolis” battles with “Pharaoh” for being the highpoint of this EP, its epic scope makes me feel like the insignificant speck of dust I am in the universe but in a totally wonderful way. The humming ambience rolls like waves across the room, expanding as it moves towards me. Taking things down a peg, “Beyond” is less captivating than its counterparts on this CD-R but it is still a beautiful piece and caps off Pharaoh nicely.
Along with Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never and their ilk, Boys of Summer are a group who are taking the things I love about bands like Cluster, Coil and the spacier side of Ash Ra Tempel and explore the territory these greats first claimed in the name of music. I am not sure whether Boys of Summer (or indeed any of the new wave of Kosmiche music) have reached the lofty peaks of these pioneers but they certainly show with Pharaoh that they mean to travel far further into the deep space of the synthesiser than many dare to go.
Despite being best known for being half of Cluster, Hans-Joachim Roedelius’ career outside of that group has been even more prolific. Throughout the '80s he released as many albums as I have fingers and most of them are out of print. Thankfully Bureau B are continuing their amazing job of reissuing the Cluster-related back catalogue with this and a Dieter Moebius solo effort out this month. Here Roedelius is in fine form, surpassing himself with this fine selection of melodious pieces. Mixing a very ear-friendly approach to music making with some genuinely thrilling sounds, this album is one of the best things he’s put his name to (even beating all but the most classic releases he’s been associated with).
Opening the album, the title piece calls to mind the softer parts of Harmonia’s Deluxe or the works of Brian Eno (either in collaboration with Cluster or not). The beautiful synthesiser rhythm has a dreamy quality which plays well against the second synthesiser part that explores the full tonal range of the piece. The quivering high notes are like mechanical birdsong in a clockwork forest. “Veilchenwurzein” immediately follows along the same path, interlocking melodies and soaring lead lines creating a beautiful and rich sonic landscape. Roedelius could easily pursue an entire album in this vein and keep me very happy but, forever restless in his creativity, Wenn der Südwind weht is an even better album for its variety.
Roedelius pushes his music outside the territory he and Moebius usually occupy with Cluster. On “Freudentanz” the music truly lives up the title (“joy-dance” being my approximate translation of the title) with more than a little Chuck Berry breaking into the normally unearthly electronic body of Roedelius’ work. In a complete about-turn in terms of mood, “Saumpfad” takes the more ambient approach explored by Roedelius in his previous solo albums and takes it to a darker, more intimidating place. The deep pulse at the centre of the piece has an evil heartbeat character to it, a murmur in the cosmic electrocardiogram.
With Wenn der Südwind weht Roedelius has simultaneously consolidated his previous approaches to his music and opened a number of new paths for him to investigate in later years. Each of the tracks is a miniature masterpiece, capturing both the time the music was created in and the endless possibilities of the future. Like Cluster’s final albums prior to going on hiatus, Wenn der Südwind weht is a document of unbridled exploration that resonates as loudly today as ever.
The solo project of Sami Hynninen is by turns slightly creepy, unexpectedly profound, and quite hilarious as his unwieldy guitar-based songs and wild imagery reference necrophilia, rainbows, sado-masochism, bunnies and fart sniffing.
Cobra records claim that Opium Warlords is an identity secret with this disc arriving from persons unknown. But many other sources seem to know that it comes from one person: Sami Albert Hynninen, known for his work with The Puritan, Reverend Bizarre, Armanenschaft, Spiritus Mortis, and more. The release is full of the contradictions which come from naming your "group" Opium Warlords and residing, at least symbolically, in the territory of death metal or Satanic rock. Despite the clichés, Live at Colonia Dignidad offers a few surprises. For example, the splendidly named “Suck My Spear, Servant of Satan” turns out to be an unexpectedly relaxing listen rather than an ode to some darkly stylized oral sex ritual. The piece is almost pseudo-medieval in tone, as if Tortoise had been inspired by a dub version of a Wishbone Ash instrumental.
Much of the album is ponderously paced. This slowness is doubtless meant to convey threat but also suggests a lack of technique. At times the music does indeed (as claimed on the Opium Warlords MySpace page) sound like "a bad Bolivian Metal band practicing a riff" but some patches stir up an odd sense of humans wallowing in mud and leaves a la Samuel Beckett’s story How It Is. The vision is of depressed or wretched ones refusing to stop crawling through crap, even enjoying it. At such times, Opium Warlords’ contemplative, brooding tempo is nicely out of sync with the dizzy but superficial haste of modern life.
Photos on the website show Hynninen from the back, stripped to the waist and wearing a hip-hugging bullet belt and boots. He is slouching near a bare tree and in his right hand is a hardback book which, given its heft, looks rather paradoxically like Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Obviously that’s not the case, but maybe it is a reasonable signal of the dilemmas inherent in approaching this music. For in the year 2010, it is hard to imagine that devil-worship exists as anything more than sexual fetish, nostalgic symbolism or a stance to annoy self-appointed moralists. At the same time, while it is hard to swallow this album with a straight face it is easy to grasp that Hynninen fully realizes both the humor and the paradoxes. On some pieces, such as “Meet Me at The Iron Place” and particular on the urine erotica song "Let it Pour, Let It Pour" he enunciates his words to good effect. Elsewhere his cartoon-constipated grunt voice obscures lyrics which are as likely to divide opinion as Pynchon’s infamous excrement swallowing scene in Gravity’s Rainbow. Luckily, samples of these (images of raw sex, painful depression, fluffy animals and forest mythology) are in an accompanying booklet along with childlike sketches, occult references and an ad for Zyprexa tablets with the requisite (devilish) barcodes.
The repetitive medium-paced instrumental “Feel The Strength” is (at three minutes) much shorter than most of the songs, a few of which could have been trimmed. The sole fast track is “Support the Satanic Youth.” This lasts just five seconds but for some reason I found it genuinely uncomfortable. On the one hand, it’s a laughable, throwaway, incomprehensible speed rant, but that had me half-wondering if the humor is not a double-bluff similar to the circular logic of those Christians who claim that the best trick the devil ever pulled was to convince us that he doesn’t exist. I conclude that, as in the spheres of politics and religion, reality in the world of metal is whatever the participants decide it to be; a handy device.
For all its lumpy predictability, Live at Colonia Dignidad is also heavy and uncompromising in a good way. During some of the slow rambling guitar work, away from the ham-fisted lyrical signifiers, Hynninen stumbles upon mystery. His choice of the name Opium Warlords is terrific, and befitting of the complex and hilarious nature of human “evil.” The name conjures such hidden or murky histories of war and trade as those of the British in China, the French in Vietnam, the heroin labs of Marseille, the Golden Route, and the US involvement with international crime syndicates. It evokes excellent stories such as the release of Lucky Luciano and the role of the Mafia in assisting the Allies in opening a second front in WWII. It reminds of the marvelous saga of Fidel Castro’s exploding cigar, and the less amusing legend of Ollie North’s covert exploits in Colombia and Iran. It hints at recent fables of CIA tolerance for Afghan opium production and export during the US backed Afghanistan war against Russia. But amidst all these, the alleged payment of $43 million to the Taliban government for crushing opium production, just months before the US invasion of Afghanistan with the support of the Afghan opium warlords, may be the most incredible tale of all.*
First released in 1984, this album represents Dieter Moebius’ first foray into solo composition after over a decade playing with some of the giants of the German avant garde in the 1970s. There’s always a danger with serial collaborators that they cannot reach the same heights as when they are supported by other artists but Moebius proved that he could hold his own with this gorgeous little album. Although it sounds exactly as expected based on his previous collaborations, it is far from retreading old ground as you can get. Each of the pieces are packed with crystalline melodies set to precise beats and rhythms, all finely crafted and comforting in their familiarity.
Compared to Hans-Joachim Roedelius’ output from around the same time, Tonspuren is not much of a jump from Moebius and Roedelius’ previous work as Cluster. During the '80s, both artists took time out from Cluster to forge solo careers that, although meandering, never strayed too far from the sounds and compositions developed through their collaboration together. The first few pieces on Tonspuren could easily sit on Cluster’s Curiosum without sounding out of place. “Contramio” is one of those sweet, melodic pieces that define the Cluster sound as much as their experiments in ambient electronic drift do. It is evident from listening to this and Roedelius’ own solo work that Moebius was responsible for much of Cluster’s more sugary moments.
However, this is not to say that Tonspuren is just more of the same from Moebius. On “Etwas,” Moebius has incorporated some of the more interesting ideas from his sessions with Mani Neumeier and Conny Plank on Zero Set; skittering noises jump across the beats in a dizzying way. The heavy beat of “B 36” combined with the kind of synth lines that are more air raid siren than anything else evokes the tension of the Cold War with its threat of nuclear war, the B 36 being a prime contender for carrying such a devastating payload. The fear that filters through the piece is palpable even in the absence of any real contextual information (according to the Internet B36 could also be a soccer team).
Even taking the Cluster “template” (if such a thing could be said to exist), Moebius challenges himself to create new textures from familiar arrangements. “Immerhin” clocks in at well under three minutes but contains enough variation to make it seem like a much grander piece of music. On the surface it is a facile and easily digestible piece but the grain in the sounds used make it far more interesting than a superficial listening would suggest. Deep listening is usually associated with the dronier side of minimalism but here Moebius shows that the same approaches should be applied to more “active” forms of music.
While not the pinnacle of his lengthy back catalogue, Tonspuren represents a point in Moebius’ career where he finds himself at a point where he needs breathing space. Not as prolific as his partner in Cluster, he still had been working pretty much constantly for the last decade on a lot of challenging and rewarding music. Therefore it is no surprise that there is not a huge leap between his earlier efforts and the music found here. As I argue above, familiarity does not always imply stagnation and Moebius shows that it is possible to take something that could almost be described as formulaic and reveal details in music that were invisible before.
artist Mouthus/Bulbs title: split catalog #: IMPREC255 release date: Feb 16, 2010 format: LP
Limited edition of 500 numbered copies. Screenprinted at Monoroid. Bulbs features William Sabiston formerly of Axolotl.
Mouthus: Drum and guitar explosion through tape manipulation and a total synth bath. Collided through a number of recording sessions and strings of modulation to elevate the particle riffage to a heightened state of platectonic rock.
Bulbs: Like tuning your radio slowly between far off New Age stations in the most serene way possible. The marriage of muted melodies existing below feedback skwerls and electronic swerls. Transmissions from a better place.
It is nearly impossible to find any concrete information about this shadowy psychedelic collective, aside from the fact that they first surfaced in Alaska about fourteen years ago and that they are now active in Oakland as both Nommo Ogo and Katabik Soundsystem. How they managed to maintain such a low profile is still more of a mystery, as this collection contains some of the most otherworldly and unique music currently being made.