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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While Tuareg guitar music continues to gather acclaim through groups like Tinarawen, the wider context of poverty and rebellion in Niger and Mali remains obscured from the outside world. In response, Sublime Frequencies continues its vinyl series documenting Tuareg music in the Nigerian city of Agadez.
As backstories go, Group Bombino's is as hardscrabble as they come. In late 2007, fighting between the government forces and Tuareg rebels cut off northern Niger from the rest of the world. Fearing political violence, Group Bombino leader Omara Moctar went into hiding. The only road to Agadez was mined and visitors have only been allowed entrance to the city by armed escort. Dire as the situation is, it makes assessing Group Bombino's music a difficult task. Tuareg guitar music is political, an expression of the dissatisfaction festering in refugee camps and the impoverished cities bordering the Sahara. I'm sure the message is powerful to Bombino's home audience, but being ignorant of the language and unstudied in the region's history, I can't fully experience that aspect. The roots of this conflict stretch back decades, and it’s impossible to understand it with just liner notes and a few news stories to guide you. Cultural distance shouldn't prevent anyone from listening to this record though, because it's one of Sublime Frequencies' best so far. Even when you put the context aside, Group Bombino is still compelling.
The record is divided into acoustic and electric sides completely different from each in mood and fidelity. The first half was recorded by the band in the desert, and the mournful acoustic pieces preformed are evocative of nomadic solitude. (Even camels can be heard grunting the background.) The songs are gentle but always have a strong rhythmic pulse of chanting vocals and handclaps. The style is called "dry guitar" in the local vernacular, and the name fits well with the dusky, metallic tone of the playing.
The second half of the album was recorded live by Hisham Mayet at a wedding. Listeners acquainted with Sublime Frequencies’ raw, hands off approach will be familiar with the din kicked up here. The guitars are cranked up to full volume, backed with a booming, rubbery bass and furious drumming. The term Tuareg Blues is used sometimes to describe this music, and for Group Bombino it actually makes sense. The extended guitar solos and thick rhythmic chug on "Boughassa" seem impossibly related to '60s blues rock rave-ups by Jimi Hendrix or the Yardbirds. Bombino's playing is on par with the virtuosos of that time, but without the aristocratic pretensions that come with such comparisons.
Thanks to Sublime Frequencies for putting out music that may have just as well vanished from the face of the earth. As I have said elsewhere, it's easy for us to assume that the bulk of the world's music is available through distros, file-sharing groups, and specialty shops. These tools may ease some of the boundaries that politics and distance put up, but the hard work of documenting and releasing music is still needed. Critics sometimes accuse Sublime Frequencies of voyeurism and cultural appropriation, but Mayet shows an obvious affection and respect for Group Bombino and the Tuareg people that transcends such lazy claims. Amongst endless chatter about the failing music industry or the state of arts funding in America, Group Bombino is making music under difficulties harder than you or I will ever experience. They deserve to be heard, war and poverty be damned.
Released in the spring of last year, this album was well received but didn’t get enough lasting credit to make it into the annual retrospectives that followed. Listeners hungry for a new take on loop based ambiance should take notice, since Ecstatic Sunshine bucks the plodding and formless conventions of lesser artists working in the genre.
When they began around 2005, Ecstatic Sunshine first attracted attention by fusing nimble arpeggiated guitar licks with punkish blasts of distorted strumming. The band’s energetic playing aligned with fellow Balitmore artists Dan Deacon and Ponytail. Although they don’t share the hyper-color giddiness of those acts, there is a positivity and vigor to Ecstatic Sunshine. Way doesn’t have the spastic moments of the band’s previous records, but it is still about as light hearted as minimalist guitar composition can get.
“B” gets the album off to a rolling start. Guitarists Dustin Wong and Matthew Papich fire off in unison, and then veer off from each other into shifting counterpoint. The tempo gradually slows, and from there the duo stack up chiming notes and clicking harmonics that twist and resonate as they are multipied and repeated. It all builds into undulating mass that slowly disintigrates until all that’s left are silvery tones shimmering under a tremolo. The second track, “Herrons,” is a single warbling loop that is slowly weathered and dirtied by shifting clouds of hiss and fuzz. Since it lacks the dynamism of the album’s opener, the piece feels more like an interlude than a song, though it’s over seven minutes long. The bright mood returns with the third and last piece, “Perrier.” Crystal clear strumming drifts in and out over a bed of percolating notes, until the guitars gradually morph together for a final triumphant riff that’s repeated again and again until waves of distortion and reverb wash it away.
Last summer, my band had the good fortune to open for Ecstatic Sunshine while they toured behind this record. Just prior to that, Wong had left to play full time in Ponytail, but the group wasn't hobbled at all. Papich had gathered two new members to play samples and drum pads, and they seemed fully integrated into the group. Their music was just as intricate as it had ever been, but more chaotic and heavy. The synthetic percussion gave the spindly guitar a dubbed out quality that was disorienting in the best way possible. Finding out how quickly Ecstatic Sunshine could successfully reinvent themselves is what sold me on the band. As much as I like Way, I’m looking forward to what they will do next even more.
Apparently the first time around just wasn't good enough. Rune Grammofon, in celebration of another five years of great music, has decided to rerelease another gorgeous hardcover art book with a two CD compilation for perusal accompaniment. Initially planned as a revision of the original and now legendarily hard to track down first edition, the second edition instead scrapes the palette clean and builds from the ground up with a new design layout and art by Kim Hiorthøy and 25 mostly exclusive tracks from many of the label's favorites.
Great music and artwork aside, perhaps the most impressive facet of this collection is in its statement as a physical artifact. It is well recorded that as digitized music increases in accessibility, the market for musical objects diminishes, a trait which founder Rune Kristoffersen speaks to in one of the two interviews present within the book: "if we can't, or if labels, majors or indies, can't release products that people will pay for, we do have a problem." Rather than stand back and complain about it however, Kristoffersen stares the future down with product such as this, whose very tactility is one of its most rewarding aspects. In his own words, "try stealing this thieving bastards."
So just what is it that can't be stolen here? Well for starters, the two CDs are packed with Rune Grammofon allstars, each of which has shared in the creation of the label's legacy as one of the foremost purveyors of independently minded music today. Scorch Trio's "Hys," with its maniacally energized bass, drums and guitar lineup, continues to recast jazz improvisation into post-Hendrixian algorithms while Food and Nils Petter Molvær's "Tukpa," recasts Jon Hassell's treated trumpet environments as skittering washes of boreal light writhing above the arctic tundra. The stark, near ECM piano and drum interplay of In the Country's "Ashes to Ashes" glides gently along as it explores the spaces between Bill Evans, Paul Bley and Claude Debussy.
That each of these pieces can be so divergent in nature andcoexist so gracefully is testament to the label's strength of identity. Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's "When I Am Laid" takes eerily lulling vocals and melds them with spacious synthesizer melodies that are so engulfed in silence that it emerges out of the speakers light as air. That the claustrobic prog rock of Shining's cover of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" somehow arrives fittingly is a feat achieved not through similarities of sound but of spirit. Supersilent's "C - 6.1" presents a nearly 15 minute excursion down pseudoindustrial back alleys and smoke laden clock towers as their textural layouts spread themselves outward with restrained improvisational depth.
Of course the music is only half of the picture here. The book that houses it is equally impressive, presenting an abundance of the label's geometrically colorful artwork that has become a signifier of quality for so many over the past ten years. Photographs of band members, interviews, video stills, sleeve art, discographical information and essays by senior Rolling Stone editor David Fricke and Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis all contribute to filling the book with enough informative eye candy to last far beyond the discs' combined two and a half hour. Which means this is going to require multiple listens, which I assure you will be no major sacrifice.
Ultimately, it is this kind of care that the industry needs to display more often, and the collection serves as an important reminder as to the vitality of independent music. It seems no detail was too small in this piece's production, and the result is a breathtaking whole that blurs the lines between music and medium, overview and summation, and manufacturer and artist. And that is quite the statement indeed.
Loren Chasse is a busy man. A founding member of the famed Jewelled Antler Collective, he also takes part in projects as varied as the delicate dronescapes of Thuja and the woodsy pop of The Blithe Sons, both of which also feature label co-founder Glenn Donaldson. When he sets out on his own though, Chasse opts for the Of moniker, and it is in this habitat that he seems most at ease. Combining ambient subtlety with a dense and immersive drone aesthetic, Chasse creates initimate sonic structures that seem to resonate from the earth itself.
Much of Chasse's unique organicism stems more from his instrumental choice than any definite change in musical procedure. Forgoing the mostly electronic setup favored by most working in the compositional drone field, Of's sound is culled from homemade dulcimers, recorder, harmonium, cymbals, autoharp, singing bowls, drums, field recordings, and even gravel, sand and stones among a host of other sources. Though many are likely heard through electronic equipment—and perhaps even manipulated by way of it—there remains a natural sonic quality to each nuanced hum and clash here that simply can't be achieved through technical mimicry. Indeed, these recordings seem more in line with some prehistoric religious ceremony than with basement zone-out sessions.
Such can be seen on all of the eight tracks here. The opening "Rocks Will Open" may first appear to be much the same as the plethora of like-minded material out there, but Of's strength is in its details, and there are many to be discovered. Soft guitar hums and harp runs sing above tectonic backdrops that monolithically morph, shaping the work at a glacial pace that nevertheless gives the piece momentum, albeit an outward rather than forward one. The same goes for "Trail of Hornfel," whose beginning resonances continue to vibrate in an insular, cave-like setting over the whole of the work's 11 minutes.
Indeed, each piece is equally immersive here, despite the frequent change of setting. The near desert sprawl of "Coal Seams," the placid waterfall of "Violets In the Mountain Have Broken the Rocks" (named from a Tennessee Williams quote), and the oxygen rich skies of the closing "Agate Cups"—each is offered its own space and character that opens before you with patient wonder. Avoiding nearly all of the pitfalls of contemporary drone music, Of offers few answers while still providing enough content and shape to each of the works for the questions to exist. Simply assigning physical landmarks to each piece does not nearly do their intricacy justice.
If anything, there may be too much here for one album. At an hour long, the disc makes for a demanding listen when fully engaging with all of the material. Exhausting? Maybe. But only insofar as to make the album worth returning to. And if it gets too tiring, just listen to the birds; they make for wonderful accompaniment.
Mirroring the economy, Larsen appear to be undergoing a bit of a recession following many years of seemingly unstoppable growth. On their difficult 8th album (just ask Black Sabbath about that), there is less consistency than there has been in their previous releases. There are still some fantastic moments on this album (not least some wonderful parts with guest vocalist Little Annie Bandez) but they are tempered by some lacklustre pieces which unfortunately drag the album down a notch.
Some of the tracks feel like Larsen are just coasting, the opening piece “Dear Furry Window” sounds like a poor cousin to far better tracks on Play and Seies. This is immediately followed by the marginally better “Tu Ark,” which features some retro sounding synth action which does not totally fit with Larsen’s aesthetic. There is some excellent theremin playing later on in the piece that reaffirms my faith in these Italians. However, it is only by the middle of the album that things really get cooking with “Partial” which features Julia Kent on cello. This sounds like the obvious evolution of the sounds Larsen (and friends) explored on ABECEDA but with a more aggressive edge; Kent sounds like she is trying to saw through her strings.
Little Annie makes an appearance on three songs which all cover very similar territory with varying degrees of success. “Lefrak City Limits” combines all of Larsen’s best elements (a solid, simple melody, drones and powerful drums) and still leaves space for Little Annie to do her thing. Some of the lines are clunky and it goes on a bit long; by the end it feels like it has been playing forever. The other two songs with Little Annie work, “Flower” in particular, shows that the combination of her voice, her lyrics and Larsen’s music has the potential for great things.
After so many strong albums and collaborations, I was let down with La Fever Lit. While by no means a bad album, La Fever Lit does not have the same instant joy that I got with pretty much every album from Play onwards. On first listen, I was downright disappointed with this album but I must admit that it has been growing on me more with each listen. Perhaps it will grow on me over time but as it stands now, this is an uncharacteristically mediocre album from a band capable of far better.
Many (if not most) artists get maybe two albums out before falling into a rut and losing whatever magic they had. In the case of Stars of the Lid, the opposite occurred with their creativity only truly taking momentum a couple of albums into their recording career. This reissue of their debut shows the initial staggering steps that would eventually grow into the sure and elegant music that the duo now creates. This album may be patchy but it is here that the foundations for the unique Stars of the Lid sound are laid down.
Though this is far from being the jewel in Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride’s respective crowns, it is worth listening to this album to hear how the duo have honed their craft; the leap between this and the subsequent album, Gravitational Pull vs. The Desire for an Aquatic Life is a big but logical one. While some of the music feels like a mere sketch when compared with what was to come, it can be clearly heard on pieces like “Before Top Dead Center” that the SOTL magic was present from the start. On “Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy,” the layered and reverbed guitar drones mark the first time that McBride and Wiltzie really gel on record and it marks the highlight of the album.
Unfortunately, Music for Nitrous Oxide is smattered with heavy handed use of sampled dialogue (the human- race-as-alien-seed conspiracy theory bit on “Lagging” sounds especially hokey now). In addition, some of the pieces sound very flat in comparison to the stronger pieces on the album. It sounds like Wiltzie and McBride were still exploring how to create their powerful drones on “Madison.” Similarly, the collage work and looping on the aforementioned “Lagging” sounds clumsy, as if they were still working out how to fully exploit their hardware. Yet when I step back and consider the album as a whole, these flaws do not in any way ruin the album. Music for Nitrous Oxide is still a good album, it just would not be one I would recommend as an introduction to the band.
For those who already own the original release, there is nothing here to warrant buying Music for Nitrous Oxide again. It has been remastered and the sleeve has been changed to a digipack but the differences are not huge (the limitations of the 4-track tape recorder is still obvious but it adds a nostalgic air to the music). Still, it is nice that this is back in print again considering it was the only element in the SOTL back catalogue to be unavailable since the Carte-de-Visite compilation came out in 2007.
It is little surprise that French electroacoustic composer Berangere Maximin's musical path has consisted of both conservatory studies under Denis Dufour and stints in rock and world bands. Her solo debut consists of six works that expound upon the tape manipulations of Pierre Schaefer, but whose sense of drama maintains her contact with the popular musical forms that she has partaken in.
Maximin clearly has a knack for making the most of her tools. Using only tape and voice, she displays a highly mature sense of patience in her composition, allowing each piece to unfold into its own entity that is ripe with morsels of surprising humor and effect. On the opening title track, she begins by working with water sounds that bubble calmly beneath frozen melodic lines that spread out across the piece as small bits of rhythmic insect chatter emerge from the backgorund. The amount of sound at any given moment is impressive, but more impressive is the fine management of those sounds as Maximin never lets the work become claustrophobic, allowing each individual noise its own space in the mix. As birds come in, a catapult sound initiates an increasingly bustling world that goes from serene New England forest to steaming swampland without a hitch. It is as much James Ferraro as it is Luc Ferrari.
"Boudmo" further explores the organic take that the composer displays. Once she has created her own sonic landscape through field recordings, she concocts a pulse over which guitar strums are allowed to reverberate and punctuate. As assorted hollow sounds and clicks reutrn, the piece exhibits an affinity with the results of chance operation pieces; each moment is given its place and allowed to become an event of great significance.
Maximin herself speaks on the following "Ce Corps Vil, Part one and Part two," reciting sensual French prose beneath metallic caresses and echoed water drops. As her vocal recitations come and go, the background remains near stagnant in mood despite its ever changing makeup. "Voyages Morphologiques," the most overtly songy piece on the album, sees Maximin's world music affinities come to a fore as Afircan style acoustic guitar is melded with snake charming hornlines and folk fiddling, building in momentum as each bit hastens its immediacy to near fever pitch before harp enters to close the work with a wink and a shrug.
Despite the vast accomplishments of previous electroacousticians, Maximin manages to carve out her own corner of the sound. "Si Ce N'est Toi" begins with minimalist rhythmic movements as covered by nearly cheesy synthesized horns as bellows of vocal resonance bounce in the background. With great energy the piece plugs along before slipping down into a furrowed world of industrial static and dissonant pulse before Carl Stalling-like riffs briefly interrupt before allowing the work to subside under its own endless beat.
"La Mecanique des Ombres" closes the album with its longest track, a sprawling entrance into the hull of some ship. Using her sounds in a distinctly musical manner, Maximin uses a Varesian noise-as-compositional tool to create a percussive work whose end result is one of great energy despite the often minute sounds that are used. That the composer can utilize these sounds to create works of strong individual character and impressive emotive depth is a testament to her achievements and further potential as a sonic collagist.
Australian laptopper Mark Mitchell has made an insanely ambitious and hyper-literate psych-pop concept album. Unfortunately, it is also a veritable volcano of twee.
Lily Perdida consists of ten songs about the fictional, faux-folkloric titular character. It is difficult to decipher what exactly Lily's story consists of but I am fairly certain that there is some doomed love, a mining disaster, and possibly some witchcraft. The details are purposely left cryptic. Each song is written from the perspective of a different figure in Perdida's life (The Sister, The Narrator, The Eavesdropper, etc.) and offer differing and obscured post-mortem commentaries on prior events that are never made explicit. Essentially, Mitchell wrote a complicated folktale, then garbled it kaleidoscopically to create an enigmatic meditation on identity, the nature of truth, and perspective. As if that wasn't enough, the lyrics are frequently impenetrably complex ("All the while the copy in his mind that can stay every side has partial proportion and odd space and time.") and follow a dialogue-heavy Greek tragedy structure (there is even an omniscient chorus).
Mitchell is clearly a skilled and inventive multi-instrumentalist and arranger. While the songs are generally piano-based, Lily Perdida is packed with xylophones, organs, horns, backwards guitars, violins, and probably all kinds of other shit that I was unable to identify. It is remarkable that Mitchell made this album on a laptop, as the wall of sound he creates does not sound at all like the work of a solitary man and a computer. It is equally impressive how skillfully he juggles so many tracks and instruments with such clarity. Unfortunately, the trade-off to his exactitude is that the album is burdened with very smooth production that considerably mutes its impact. Also, Lily Perdida seems to suffer from the same flaw that ruined Of Montreal's Skeletal Lamping—way too many ambitious musical ideas to be forcibly crammed into just one album. The concept of space is woefully underdeveloped here.
The opener ("Lull For Dear Life") is one of the stronger, most melodic tracks and is the first of many duets between Mitchell and guest-vocalist Ellen Carey. Their vocals harmonize nicely and the song builds steadily as new elements are incorporated (xylophones, trumpets, layered backing vocals). It's astonishing that any of these songs are melodic and catchy at all, given that the lyrics resemble Homeric verse more than contemporary songcraft. "It's Here The Story's Straight" also starts out very promisingly with a warm organ riff and some cool off-beat ride cymbal, but rapidly becomes too saccharine and fluffy for my taste. Another track that stands out is "The Infinite Orphan." Its retro organ riff, bongos, and wah-wah guitar solo would not sound out of place on a Nuggets compilation. I believe there's even some righteous glockenspiel on display here too.
I cannot begin to imagine how long it must have taken Mitchell to conceive, record, and edit this album. Consequently, it is somewhat heartbreaking for me to say that I really didn't like it at all. In fact, I had a very difficult time making it through the whole thing in one sitting. Aside from the overproduction and the inherent impossibility in making something moving and enjoyable out of such an inviolably dense thicket of words, Lily Perdida just sounds cloyingly lightweight. When Carey is involved, the resemblance to a psychedelic poor man's Mates of State is particularly acute. Without knowing the album's backstory or seeing the lyrics, these songs could easily be mistaken for the work of any number of other bands. Granted, Mitchell is much more ambitious with his instrumentation than most, but this album has no immediacy, sharp edges, or relatable songs.
This is space opera at its finest. (As in the subgenre of science fiction literature where tales of romance and dare doing heroes fight power hungry villains and alien monsters, all set against the backdrop of the stars.) There are no ear splitting sopranos singing in German on this record, but sultry vocals cooed into a microphone over gorgeous synth lines and hypnotic guitar riffs. This was the perfect band to sit down and listen to as I waited for my flight to arrive inside a dimly lit spaceport bar.
Like a lavish valentine, with a star map of the constellation Cassiopeia on the front (personally signifying the influence of destiny on lovers crossing paths), and beribboned on the back with a heart sealed in hot silver wax, the package itself received the same caring attention and treatment as did the music inside. As with the soundtrack work of Current 93, Celestina was also conceived as music to accompany a short story. The subject matter in this case isn’t the claustrophobic worlds of a Thomas Ligotti or decadent Count Stenbock, but a tale of love, lust and betrayal scripted by 17 Pygmies lead man Jackson Del Rey himself. Like Jackson’s namesake (editor and author Lester del Rey), his story would find a fitting home amongst a pile of yellowing and well thumbed paperbacks from sci-fi’s Golden Age.
Initially inspired by the 15th century Latin novel La Celestina, the next link in Jackson’s associative chain of inspiration came to him upon reading the headline “Nasa astronaut Lisa Nowak charged with attempted murder in bizarre love triangle.” What emanated from his pen is an enjoyable story playing on the tropes of the genre, just as the music enclosed gives a psychedelic tribute to the 1950s-60s science-fiction motion pictures soundtracks it evokes. Downloadable as PDF from a web address disclosed in the liner notes, my only complaint about this release is that the story was not included with the rest of the beautiful package.
The score is an exceptional one and not only stands on its own feet, but in its own corner, apart from the crowd. The band does so to their own advantage, never rescinding on the vision that is integral to their surf infused psychedelic sound. The lasting power of this music will outlive the bands who spawn stale fads.
The first track of eleven on Celestina is reminiscent of a movie’s opening credits; with delicate guitar work and dreamy synth lines, it prepares me for the coming voyage to the Grand Nebula. Meg Maryatt, the lead female on vocals, (a slight change of lineup since their last 13 Blackbirds/13 Lotus release) makes her appearance on the second song. Her scintillating question, “Could this be heaven?” forms a smoky refrain we hear reprised later in the album.
Track five is an epic freakout describing the disastrous collisions that sometimes occur in the shadowy depths of deep space -an asteroid or errant satellite slams into the body of the Celestina like the throbbing drum hits punctuating the ears. Breathy vocals saunter in, a soft rattle hovers around a tightly woven ominous bass thrum, and a screechy high-end guitar is manically picked, like someone laughing from inside a padded cell. Meg sings out “Somethings wrong,” like a warning, like a siren.
The keyboardist sends out shooting stars that wisp and whiz by, diffusing the harried moments in a warm synthesized aura. The afterimages fade with plucked harpsichord guitar trills. Squiggles of computer hiss emerge, as if the machines on board are breaking down.
Perfectly spaced tings on a bell issuing from the right speaker begin track ten; a telegraph pulse responds from the left. This is the kind of music I could drift into a black hole listening to. No longer tethered to the spacecraft, catapulted out by a jealous lover, I am gradually pulled in by a majestic chord. My supply of oxygen is running out and when the synth comes to its abrupt halt, I know I’ve taken my last breath.
Colossal Yes is the quixotic side project of Comets on Fire drummer Utrillo Kushner. According to Kushner, this album was inspired by New Zealand indie rock bands like The Clean, The Verlaines, and The Tall Dwarves. Oddly, this influence appears to have had only a marginal effect on the band's sound, as they still most closely resemble the mellow '70s rock of The Band.
For this project, Kusher leaves the drum duties to the very capable Garett Goddard (Howlin' Rain) and devotes himself entirely to singing and playing the piano. He is also aided by Howlin' Rain guitarist Eli Eckert and Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), who handles mixing duties and plays on the instrumental "Permafrost Drip." The music, as alluded to earlier, is unabashed and unironic '70s rock worship and the trio do an impressive job covering the various tropes of the genre. The band's Achilles' heel, unfortunately, is Kushner's workman-like vocal performance. While his singing is not necessarily "bad," it is generally flat and unengaging. That is a troubling obstacle for a band that is largely dependent on the strength of its hooks (there is no focus on innovation or raw power).
That said, Colossal Yes possess a certain shaggy charm and the album has many pleasant moments. "They Feast On Us/We Feed On Them" opens with canned crowd noise, which is an apt harbinger for the arena rock piano balladry that follows. The rhythm section has a lagging, languid feel which suits Kushner's vocals quite well. Also, there is a recurring flute motif that serves as a memorable and effective hook. It's probably the best song on the album, primarily because Kushner's vocals tend to get overwhelmed when the band is at their normal degree of intensity. The closing "Smoldering Steeps" is similarly successful for the same reason. "The Fraudulent Singer," a fairly jaunty pop song with fuzzed-out bass and insistent double-time drums (before ending with a shredding dual-guitar solo and wild drum fills), is one of the few times on the album where the Kiwi indie rock influence is readily apparent.
However, that influence seems to have manifested itself in other ways. For example, this album is more guitar-based than its predecessor (Acapulco Roughs) and the production seems a bit more raw/lo-fi. Most importantly, Kushner has jettisoned meandering epic song lengths and generally adheres to a tighter and punchier three-minute pop song structure.
At this current stage in their career, it seems unlikely that Colossal Yes will make much of an impact, as people who are enthusiastic about '70s piano rock do not seem like the sort of people who will make the effort to discover semi-obscure new bands. Also, there is nothing particularly exceptional about this album. It is merely competent and intermittently enjoyable. However, Charlemagne's Big Thaw is certainly a step in the right direction and the harmonized dual-guitar solos and flute interludes are often endearing (both occur several times). If Kushner's vocals and songwriting continue to evolve, this could turn into something quite significant. Until then, Spirit and The Band can safely remain unconcerned about their genre dominance being threatened.
Dälek unleash industrial-strength beats, layers of juddering ambience, and a fierce verbal polemnic. Gutter Tactics matches rough, suffocating production to brutal subject matter. A few piano figures provide relief but the general mood of uncompromising defiance is signalled by the cover depiction of a lynched human recreated as a mtuant, and an opening track sampling Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
The new album opens with "Blessed Are They Who Bash Your Children's Heads Against A Rock," a track which should attract plenty of attention. It features Rev. Wright in combination with a slippery beat allowing plenty of space for his exact meaning to be heard. Either Wright is a great orator and Dälek have followed the rhythm of his speech or the gaps between his words have been cut into a suitable beat. Either way, the track perfectly flips the phrase "blessed are the peacemakers" into something quite different. Reverend Wright runs through a list of terrorist attrocities: Europeans seizing the USA from the Native American population; the kidnapping and subjugation of African slaves for labor; and dubious US military and foreign policy actions. It is the usual tale of blood, sweat, and tears in the cause of creating and defending our shopping malls, highways, and suburbs. There's no disputing the facts, just the interpretation. Wright cleverly says "we" to invite shared responsibility and punctuates his scorching diatribe with the word "terroism".
There's no topping the power and brevity of that track but there's plenty more combustive power on Gutter Tactics. "Street Diction" combines glistening, jangling detritus with thud and doom but the vocals are sometimes less audible than I'd like. When the musical radiation cloud clears a little, it's for a namechecking solidarity with other artists. A certain irony, since, as with Burial, the sound suggests humans coping with alienation, but projects an infectious isolation. This is music to be heard while alone. I suspect that even in the booming cars and at gigs these rythyms and rhymes do not create togetherness.
"A Collection of Miserable Thoughts" is lighter than much of this album but the words are a preemptive strike for artistic independence. Not as extreme as The Residents' manifesto of pure creation but the line "wasted breath or testament to the downtrodden" lays the stance out nicely. Dälek aren't really pushing the envelope on Gutter Tactics merely refusing to back down, apologize, or quit. The cover art shows a shadowy lynching, the afoementioned mutant, and NYC's Ground Zero; clear connections between a history of brutality and (what Rev. Wright calls) "chicken's coming home to roost." Thematically, "Los Macheteros/Spear Of A Nation" broadens the grievances beyond the USA by plucking barbaric incidents from the history of South Africa's apartheid regime.
Gutter Tactics is far from being preachy and heavy handed and it's quite possible to enjoy the disc without knowing "who Medgar Evars is". But the clues by which to appreciate these pieces in an broader historical and political context are here for those who wish to explore. That said, the lyrical content is not always impressive. "We Lost Sight," for example, is a dangerously seductive track, but when it's nearly done and the beats peel away all that's being said is: "We lost sight of how to use these mics/what scripts we write/how to choose the fights." The track is choppy and spry, but I can't work out if the message is aimed at other artists or at political figures. If it's the latter, then the unrepentant figure of the recently departed G.W. Bush naturally comes to mind, as do the words of Auden.
"Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets."