12 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

A distinctly different release than his last, El Tren Fantasma, this album not only acts as part of an overall larger project (a collaboration with faculty at Durham University), but also focuses on nature, rather than that disc’s use of man made transportation. Not just nature, but an attempt to capture the essence of of Lindisfarne Island as it would have sounded to St. Cuthbert in 700 AD. The result is an album that is a bit less compositionally oriented than El Tren Fantasma, but one that does an impeccable job at capturing a feel and an environment via audio.

Touch

This disc is part of an exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels in England, and is intended to provide an audial context for the environment in which Eadfrith, the Bishop of Lindisfarne, was writing and illustrating the gospels that are being exhibited.Even disconnected from this context, the album is another example of Watson's unparalleled ability at capturing sound in a completely engrossing manner.

The album is broken up into four separate pieces, each titled for the season in which they were recorded.The vibrancy and activity of the recordings is closely tied to the time captured:the droning wind and infrequent bird calls of "Winter" are so much more cold and isolated than the aggressive avian flocks that permeate "Sumor."

Appropriately, both "Lencten" ("Spring") and "Haerfest" ("Autumn") sit somewhere between these two extremes in fauna and activity.The former captures the almost human like calls of land and water birds amidst a greater sense of life and vibrancy in comparison to the preceding piece."Haerfest" channels the bleakness of oncoming winter in its more muffled, darker sound.Gaggles of birds can be heard, likely migrating away to warmer climates while the vocalizations of seals and deer bring a bleaker, foreboding sense of the cold to come.

Surely the changes of climate have changed the environment that is the island of Lindisfarne from its medieval days, but Watson's recordings sound completely timeless, largely devoid of any human presence to solidify the isolation the Bishop experienced while completing the gospels.In fact, the only hint of humanity is the simple ringing of a hand bell towards the end of each piece, representing a call to prayer that would have been heard over 1300 years ago.

Watson's work definitely would make for an ideal accompaniment to the exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels, but even removed from that context it is a captivating, and beautifully captured disc of field recordings.It seems to be less of a composed work than some of Watson's other output, but even just a raw capturing of the environment makes for an amazing work.Again, there does not seem to be an environment that Watson cannot distill to its most fascinating sonic elements.

samples:

• Winter
• Sumor
• Haerfest

 

11 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

Innocuous enough as a sampler of some deeper, more sprawling artistic discography, The Source Family OST serves a second function as the audio equivalent of an ad pamphlet for its titular utopian cult. Nothing about them needs embellishing; Father Yod's colorful DIY psych collective is as convinced of their own message as they hope you'll be. Every aspect of the Family seems to match the beautiful, spontaneous mythos they spread, even Yod's appropriately spectacular demise. Behind all the posturing and spiritual gravitas, though, laid real music, and a group who made some interesting ideas come to life.

Drag City

Broken up into a couple of bands, The Source Family OST explores different territories of now hallowed ground in rock and pop music. Spirit Of 76, the first group on the album, lays psychedelic flourish to gospel and traditional folk. Children Of The Sixth Root Race do something similar but more conventional, with "How Long In Time" not sounding too far off from the house band for some '70s educational cartoon. The Original Source Family repurposes old spirituals with chilling results, "Chant 10" being particularly stark and harrowing. Ya Ho Wa 13 has the most adventurous sound of the groups and is considered the primary artifact of the Source Family legend; distorted guitars, krautrock rhythms, and swirling phase effects are all standard fare. Each song by Ya Ho Wa 13 tries out some different styles, "I'm Gonna Take You Home" and "Penetration" striking as especially inspired. The biggest disappointment about Ya Ho Wa 13 is that every song included is an excerpt. This stringent editing brings an especially anticlimactic dissolution during Yod's address to the Beverly High School class of 1974 promoting free improv which, musically progressive and just a little bonkers, preludes a performance which gets cut off to save time.

The music is difficult to approach without a little context. Even setting aside the cult of personality behind Yod—prominent beard enthusiast, possible murderer, definite polygamist—and the organization of the Family, the songs here have serious historical weight. They borrow from acid psych, drone folk, krautrock, gospel, and occasionally a freaky hybrid of those genres unlike many things recorded at the time. They are sleek, even in their frayed looseness and hyperactive genre-hopping, and they commit fully to each disparate sound and style. The bands have serious chops, and there's not a bad song to be found, only a strange story likely to overshadow each note.

The Source Family isn't some cryptic, malevolent assembly of dark figures. They were (and still are, in some cases) business owners, community members, and devotees to an experiment more attuned to the aesthetics of culthood than the textbook social manipulations it entails. A product of their time, their forms and practices can be rediscovered in modern bands who adopt the same kind of sacred personas. The difference between then and now is Yod and Family grew up in a time where religion was to them a sweet, pure commodity, something adopted for secular means but used in total sincerity. Whatever Yod's past might have revealed about him and his intentions, the point is moot. It is, after all, the "eternal now." This is a document of how the fractured weirdness of an original hippie collective manifests itself, in strange and pleasing song.

samples:

• Chant 10
• How Long In Time
• Penetration (Excerpt)

 

07 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

Artist: Skullflower / Mastery
Title: Skullflower / Mastery
Catalogue No: CSR165LP
Barcode: 5060174955419
Format: LP
Genre: Doom Metal / Noise / Black Metal
Shipping: 26th August

Pre-order LP

SKULLFLOWER presents a trinity of sombre meditations evoking Europe after the rain, drowned ruins, sunken dreams: spiders run across harpsichords in deserted schlosses and chateaus, doors slam and phantom demon choirs are summoned at seances by Blatavskian crones, whose impenetrable china blue dolls eyes open onto Tibetan vistas, terrible, ancient and remote...

MASTERY is improvised one man cosm(ag)ick. Total berzerker black metal, rooted in the tradition of true grim blackness, but filtered through Mastery's cracked perception, transforming this into something beyond true; a droned out and damaged, outsider blackness, that sounds pretty much unlike almost any other black metal.

Ltd x 500 copies.

Standard edition: 400 copies on purple vinyl.
Special edition: 100 copies on green vinyl through Cold Spring mailorder only!

Skullflower:
A1: Wolf Age (7:13)
A2: Red Crystal Serpent (7:18)
A3: Black Sunshine (9:15)

B1: Blood Electric (17:40)

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07 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

Artist: Wicked King Wicker
Title: Evolving
Catalogue No: CSR154CD
Barcode: 5060174954139
Format: CD
Genre: Doom Metal / Noise
Shipping: 26th August

Pre-order CD

Brand new studio album from Wicked King Wicker. WKW return to Cold Spring with their seventh album proper. Thick, black noise is underpinned by monolithic, crawling doom, in a way that only Wicked King Wicker can deliver. Total annihilation spread over 4 immense tracks. 45 minutes of music to shatter souls. Features cover art from Steve Cerio (The Residents' regular designer).

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05 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

A side band of Maurice De Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues) with Eric from Mowlawner, Aderlating embraces some of the same power electronics/harsh noise sensibilities, but casts them within a different sonic murk, alongside demonic black metal snarls and flailing free jazz drumming. Somehow, those disparate parts work together in ways that sometimes baffle in the best possible way.

Black Plagve

"Opening of the Tomb," a fitting introduction, actually encapsulates the best moments of this album.From its simmering bass heavy noise introduction, chiming ritualistic strings and guttural incantations, it manages to stay just on the respectable side of corny.With the slow introduction of marching drums and the mix becoming so chaotic as to devolve into a sprawl of noise in its closing moments, a strong sense of composition is there to be had.

Composition in a more conventional sense shows up on "A Vulture's Tongue Disease" via the droning subterranean electronics, bits of what may be guitar, and oddly distant and brittle drumming.With these components and the monstrous vocals, it actually comes together as a song structurally, while still retaining chaos and rawness.

"Dragged to the Smouldering Pits of Infinity" also takes a more melodic tact, hiding a haunting synth passage beneath chaotic drumming and heavily processed snarls.Probably most complex is "Spewed on by Slaves of Inhumanity," with its immediate distorted kick drum introduction and siren like melodies.Amidst the thin, bitcrushed noise and acidic cymbals, a notable, but hazy musicality arises, nicely paired with some hyperkinetic, jazz like drumming throughout.

From the intentionally vulgar song titles to the "16th century woodcarvings meets Photoshop" art design, Gospel of the Burning Idols is presented in a way to stay entrenched in the death industrial/black metal scene, which belies the moments of genuine innovation that can be heard.While it certainly has a sound consistent with these often stigmatized genres, it does not stay rooted in the clichés and instead spreads outward into lesser traveled concepts and ideas.

samples:

• Opening of the Tomb
• A Vulture's Tongue Disease
• Spewed On By Slaves of Inhumanity

 

05 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

Agarttha is a solo project of Francesca Marongiu, who is also half of the Italian project Architeuthis Rex, and to some extent that project is reflected in this album. A similar noise/industrial/metal hybrid shines through, but Marongiu’s project stands out with its slightly lighter, vocal centered approach, and the six songs manage to capture occasional moments of blackened, dissonant experimentalism with segments of pure, unadulterated beauty.

King of the Monsters

A Water Which Does Not Wet Hands is not tied down to any specific sound, but one constant is the understated, yet beautiful vocals throughout.There is not any easy comparison to make as far as her individual approach, but her hushed, largely unprocessed voice fills each song with a distinct warmth, never overshadowing what is going on around it but instead providing a human element when often there is no other.

To some extent it is her vocals that tie things together as an actual album, because there is a lot of stylistic shifts around her voice."Lambsprinck," for example, is a subtle guitar squall and echoing bass throb that is paired with hand percussion, leading to a sort of folk/progressive sound, the latter of which is emphasized when a boisterous organ passage pops in at the end.

This is quite different from the depressing electronics and echoing drums of "Melusine," which has a gothic, but tasteful feel throughout.As the percussion cranks up and a guitar lead swoops in, it takes a dramatic turn for the best, resulting in an extremely engaging piece of music.On "Chymische Hochzeit," the pounding drum machine and overdriven low end gels together like a female lead Godflesh/Jesu hybrid that works extremely well.

"Storms as He Walks" goes in an idiosyncratic direction, with a more varied percussion style mixed with jagged, overcompressed guitar riffs that defy any sort of classification.While it might not be as immediately memorable as "Melusine" or "Chymische Hochzeit," it definitely stands strong from an artistic standpoint.For me it is only "The Sphynx" that drags a little.There is nothing lacking about its intentionally stiff, programmed drums, sitar-like bent guitars and multitracked vocals, it just does not stand out as being quite as unique as the other five songs on the album.

While it is unclear how much of a role Antonio Gallucci (Marongiu's partner in Architeuthis Rex) plays on this album, it is clearly Francesca's show.The influence of AR can be heard; no doubt because of the shared personnel, but A Water is a warmer, more inviting album that does not conjure up the same intense imagery.Instead the two projects compliment each other beautifully, each one showcasing different sides to the sound, with AR embracing more of the metal/noise elements, and Agarttha focusing on more delicate, ethereal moments.

samples:

• Lambsprinck
• Melusine
• Chymische Hochzeit

 

04 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

In his March 3rd interview with Ibiza Voice, Martin Müller proudly lists the synths, drum machines, and effects units he used to make Behind, his first album without youANDme partner Daniel Stroeter. Among others, he names: the Waldorf Microwave 1 and Roland Alpha Juno 2, the TR-808 and TR-909, the Jomox Xbase 888, a Verona DRM, a Moogerfooger, a Sherman Filterbank, and various other resonators, compressors, and equalizers. He loves his gear, and every song on Behind begins and ends with it. Whatever the results— jet black Detroit house, dub, ambient noise, or some other variety of electronic music— Martin’s machines matter most. Everything else comes second.

Ornaments

Müller underlines his focus on color and texture from the get-go. After the brief, weightless wash of "Entrance," "Perception" hits with wave after wave of staccato synthesizer sound. Over and over again, the same emphatic pulse pushes through the air, throbbing insistently for every second of the song’s almost six minutes. Riding on the crests of those electrical waves is a foamy mix of vocals, percussive accents, and other sound effects, like field recordings. Some of them pop off the rhythmic background and fizzle out, others get tucked into the mix and work away secretly beneath or within the persistence of the bass drum. But the elements are always simpatico, in some cases just a hair's breadth removed from each other.

This is how Martin works. He hypnotizes first with hammering rhythms and catchy melodies, then woos with slick, but seriously deep textures and sound effects, wrapping them all together in a way that makes taking them apart impossible. Nearly every song proceeds that way: the beat provides the canvas and the textures provide the color, as well as the energy and intrigue. Müller pulls it all off by concentrating on the smallest units. He builds his songs thinking less about form and more about how and where sounds will mingle. All the repetitive passages, small variations, and mirrored rhythms, techno-flavored as they are, pay more homage to tone color, texture, and density than to the almighty beat.

Ambient passages help break the album up and give it some formal variety, although they feel secondary to the rhythm-centric productions. Müller definitely shines brightest when he’s messing with club-approved fare, adding depth and subtracting flash in favor of subtlety. The way he handles the vocal tracks still amazes me. The first time through those vocals were the biggest obstacle to my enjoying the record. Repeat listens quickly removed that obstacle. Thinking about it now, they are a little corny, but Martin uses them to such good effect that it doesn’t matter. By the end of the record they have disappeared into the machines that Müller so adores.

samples:

• Perception (feat. Brothers' Vibe)
• Drift (feat. Bajka)
• Sway

04 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

Aquarelle's second album for Students of Decay caught me off-guard a bit, as Ryan Potts' aesthetic has evolved noticeably from 2011's Sung in Broken Symmetry, but not in the expected way at all.  Rather than playing up his talents for crackle, hiss, and artful obfuscation, August Undone mostly jettisons those elements in favor of a kind of a jacked-up, guitar-noise-heavy pastoralism.  While I was a little disappointed that none of the new pieces were immediately striking as Symmetry's "With Verticals," this more understated follow-up is a more complex, varied, and lushly absorbing whole.

Students of Decay

"With/Without" opens the album with a very strong statement of intent and foreshadowing of what is to come, as its warm tones and unusual, sitar-like guitar ripples are almost immediately engulfed by a dense guitar thrum mingled with washes of static or crashing waves.  Eventually, the eruption subsides and the piece returns to a variation on its original motif, only this time the sublimely floating guitars cohere into a pulsing rhythm accompanied by some understated percussion.

Perhaps feeling that he may have erred too much on the side of "nice" with the lead-off piece, Potts opts for a bed of heavily distorted guitar for the lengthy "This is No Monument."  Well, at first, anyway.  That piece quickly takes an unexpected detour too, blossoming into a simple, repeating piano pattern that initially resembles classical minimalism, but gradually becomes looser and more sustained until it dissipates entirely into warmly droning reverie.  It might be least lazy drone reverie that I have ever heard though, as Potts turns it into something vibrant and unusual with a host of buried noises and something that resembles several guitarists tremolo-picking variations of the same arpeggio at once on treated guitars (they have an oddly metallic, harpsichord-like texture).

The second half of August Undone is less prone to unexpected twists and detours, but is not at all lacking in strong themes.  In fact, I prefer it to the first half.  "A Flare," for example, resembles a particularly hallucinatory gondola trip, as its bright, shimmering chord progression sounds vaguely Spanish or Italian, but it is bolstered by a second-half geyser of gnarled, shoe-gaze-damaged guitar roar.  "Sandpaper Winds," on the other hand, is a fairly straightforward drone piece structure-wise, but it transcends that wonderfully through inspired multilayering and a host of complementary textures (buzzing guitar noise; reverb-heavy piano plinking; sharp, clear acoustic guitar strums; high, melancholy-sounding EBow tones, etc.).

Potts opts for a similar structure for the strong closer "Clockless Hours," but nicely enhances his quivering, oscillating guitar shimmer with some swooping and moaning cello from guest Brandon Wiarda.  More than any other piece on the album, "Clockless Hours" demonstrates that Potts has become a serious and formidable composer–it is very easy to imagine someone of Harold Budd's stature recording something similar and thinking "This is one of the best things that I have ever done."

Potts' greatest gift, however, might be as a producer: while he admittedly had some mastering assistance from the omnipresent James Plotkin, some of these pieces reportedly used all 64 tracks of Ryan's digital workstation and it sounds like it.  I mean that in the best possible way, as there is an enormous amount of small-scale and peripheral activity happening at all times, making August Undone sound very engaging and alive.  Equally impressive, Potts managed to juggle all of those tracks without  ever sounding muddy or overblown.

Since I am me, I (of course) still have some small quibbles, but they mostly relate to my extremely subjective taste, as I wish August Undone's warmth and beauty had been balanced out by a bit more dissonance, chaos, and grit.  There are certainly a lot of roaring, distorted guitar passages to be found, but only  "A Flare" gets gnarled enough to offer any threat to Ryan's meticulously crafted idyll, as most of the other eruptions seem intended to provide heft and texture only (the oceanic immensity of prime shoegaze is there, but none of the edge or warp-age).  More objectively, Potts could also benefit from a lighter touch in regard to said eruptions, as it sometimes seems like they are operating from an on/off switch rather than intertwining organically with the other sounds.  Such concerns are very minor when compared to August Undone's successes, however–this is both an excellent album and an impressive evolution.

• Within/Without
• Sandpaper Winds
• Clockless Hours

 

29 July 2013

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Albums and Singles

This new album continues the trend of Michael Page's 2012 album, There I Saw the Grey Wolf Gaping, balancing massive, epic length pieces with shorter ones and a slew of diverse collaborators (Nocturnal Emissions, Vomit Arsonist, Slogun, and others) to push his work even further into its own unique, esoteric sonic space.

Obfuscated Records

At five songs and well over an hour in duration, Pas is definitely not a light, buoyant work.Opener "Na Fir Ghorm" is the shortest, clocking in at around eight and a half minutes, and sets the stage similar to last year's "Carne[val]", although this time with Nigel Ayers contributing.The stuttering, static laden rhythm and bent music box sounds put an occult spin on carnival trappings, made all the more excruciating by the pained bagpipes of Craig McFarlane.

The title piece follows, a bit more collage-like overall with its quaking, apocalyptic crashes and junk metal percussion, with an occasional guitar-like squall slipping through.Through its insect like buzzes and interlocking layers of noise, it builds to a disorienting haze that mercifully relents up a bit in its closing minutes, giving a needed relief."Vessel-Abstractions" (featuring contributions from John Balestreri of US power electronic legend Slogun) is structurally similar, although a bit more simplistic in its approach.Subterranean echoes and spectral drones are occasionally interrupted by thin analog synth passages and distant banging noises.As it devolves into a primordial muck of noise and reverb, it is extremely effective, although not as singular sounding as others on the album.

At nearly 21 minutes, "The Longest Day Heralds the Darkness to Follow" makes for the definitive centerpiece to the disc.At first understated, there is a leviathan like lurk just out of reach, even amidst the relatively more understated moments.Pulsing synths underscore grandiose strings, with occasionally identifiable piano melodies making it through the fog.While still a dark, oppressive feeling throughout, there are almost hints of lightness to be had, like those final dying rays of sun hinted at from the title.

Closing piece "Fuligin Cloak" is a bit more basic structurally, at least in comparison to what preceded it.An engine revving into opaque space, there is an impregnable wall of sound (aided by Andrew Grant, a.k.a. the Vomit Arsonist) that stays throughout, dense but not overly oppressive, with layers of electronics and subtle percussion keeping the piece from becoming stagnant.As a whole it follows the trend from "The Longest Day…", allowing a bit of sunlight into the cavernous layers of noise.

Like There I Saw the Grey Wolf Gaping, there is a strong sense of consistency from piece to piece, but even with the diverse roster of collaborators, it feels singularly like Page’s album.Hints of later period Coil and early Current 93 show up here and there, but as influences and not emulations.Sky Burial albums have been on an excellent trajectory, with each one topping the brilliance that followed it, and Pas is no exception at all.This is Michael Page at his fully realized and actualized, and it is a mesmerizing work from start to finish.

samples:

• Na Fir Ghorm
• Vessel-Abstractions
• Fuligin Cloak

29 July 2013

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Mixing old with new both in technology and imagery, Montreal's Aun (Martin Dumais and Julie Leblanc) capture the audio aesthetic of time worn 1970s low budget sci fi film soundtracks via a malfunctioning TV, sometimes erring into abrasive territories, and other times coming across like lost four track Tangerine Dream demos rotting in an attic. Modern MIDI equipment clashes with unreliable analog technologies to produce a sound that is as retro sounding as it is innovative.

Denovali

With titles like "Koenig," "Vulcan," and "Voyager," the imagery is pretty clear on Alpha Heaven, but the sound itself is not as cliché riddled as it could be at first glance.For all the titles, there is nary an overwrought synth bleep or ray gun sound effect to be had.Instead, the album is more subtle and musical in its approach.Some of the songs are definitely more rock oriented, like the overt guitar and clipped bass rhythms of "Koenig" and the dramatic thrust and percolating keyboards of "Alpha."  However, it all is enshrouded in a low fidelity haze that makes it feel like a garage rock band’s demo from the past, which adds a warmth to the experience rather than detracting from it.

Ambient, both traditional and of the darker variety, is spread throughout, and the moments that resonated most with me are the ones where drum programming appears, such as the heavily echoed beats of "Viva."  That, meshed with the sharp, processed guitar was like a throwback to the days of ambient dub, such as Deliverance/Colossus/Evanescence era Scorn.The same applies to "Voyager," with its dubby echoes and fragmented voices recalling a more immediate, engaging Bill Laswell track from the mid 1990s.

The echoing wash of vocals on "War is Near" and the aforementioned "Voyager" give those songs a distinctly different sound, with Leblanc's voice processed enough to sound like another instrument, but still retaining enough of its human quality to stand out.The former, despite its menacing title actually has one of the lighter vibes on the album.

There are a few moments that feel a bit more like filler in comparison, such as the sputtering, flanged tones of "Vulcan" and sparse moments of "Peacecalm" that simply do not stand out as unique amidst the other, more complicated compositions.Even the light, synth heavy "Floodland," which is also rather underdeveloped on its own, is fleshed out with some obvious guitar focused passages that help it come together well.

What Alpha Heaven boils down to is a multitude of great songs with a unifying feel to them, with a few pieces throughout that simply do not manage to engage quite as well.As a whole though, it does an admirable job of conjuring that mood: lazily watching B grade science fiction movies via a television with questionable reception:something I can remember occasionally doing myself as a child.It hits the right balance of low fidelity production, creative structures, and the warmth of times passed.

samples:

• Koenig
• Voyager
• Alpha