Last year, the earliest known recording of the human voice was discovered to have been made in France in the mid-19th century. This limited edition is beautifully packaged but seems superfluous; the brief recording is not exactly catchy and is available easily across the net as it is. I can only assume that there are more recordings made in the same way and it would make more sense to package them up together. Yet evidently only this one recording is interesting enough to be singled out for release.
Hotter than July. This week's episode has plenty of fresh new music by Marie Davidson, Kim Gordon, Mabe Fratti, Guided By Voices, Holy Tongue meets Shackleton, Softcult, Terence Fixmer, Alan Licht, pigbaby, and Eiko Ishibashi, plus some vault goodies from Bombay S Jayashri and Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin. Solstice moon in West Midlands, UK photo by James. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Om's first studio album with Grails' Emil Amos on the drum throne contains some of the most confident, ambitious, unexpected, and brilliant work in the bands' history. Exasperatingly, however, there is not very much of it.
Christopher Riggs can't keep still, but it is to our benefit that the seemingly ADD-riddled guitarist produces output that makes even the most ambitious musicians and labels blush. Riggs returns with Gold Danny, another venture into perverted guitar noise from the current Michigan resident and former Oberlin Conservatory student.
A big deal has been made in the underground music press about China’s new music. Comparisons with other geographically unified music scenes like New York’s No Wave movement echo throughout the web but as Sub Rosa’s recent overview of Chinese music has shown, the idea of a single scene (or even a geographical localisation of protagonists) is a false notion. This duo from Beijing sound nothing like any of their contemporaries and they sound little like their admitted influences. White impressed me greatly last year when I saw them live in London and now that their debut album is finally available, they have floored me yet again.
While Conference Live does not come near to representing the true live sound of Om (mainly due to the amplification limitations of any home stereo), it is a huge step up from the miserable-sounding Live at Jerusalem LP that emerged last year on Southern Lord. That recording’s muddy sound quality turned Al Cisneros’ and Chris Hakius’ thunderous roar into a tinny yawn. This time, the music is clearly defined and has buckets of body to it. Sound is not the only change, Emil Amos from Grails is now beating the skins instead of Hakius. It is a big change but Amos fills Hakius’ drum stool most capably.
Taking a moment out from Jackie O Motherfucker, Nick Bindeman’s schizophrenic assault on psychedelic pop has resulted in a filthy and ecstatic collection of songs that makes his usual band sound meek and girly by comparison. Throughout this limited edition cassette, Bindeman tries to merge as many different streams of rock and pop music together into one glorious, drugged mess.
Following his brilliant stoner rock by way of minimalist compositions album The Invisible Mountain, Horseback’s Jenks Miller has delivered another release of carefully calculated minimalism in the old school vein, but here with a bit more of a noise and shoegaze sense.
Both artists on this brief 7" are going in directions that are perhaps unexpected with their sound, and that’s for the best. The Stillbirth track mixes elements of traditional noise and bits of music, while Prurient’s work is an electro-acoustic collage with some overt synth work that’s not far from something that’d be heard from his work in Cold Cave.
A new album from Lisa Germano is always a noteworthy event, as each of her periodic hiatuses has threatened to be a permanent one. Magic Neighbor, Lisa's first new album in three years, shows that an evolution has been occurring during her recent silence: an unexpected amount of light is now filtering into her creaky, melancholy, and decayed little sonic snow globes. This shift in direction, however, is still in a bit of an awkward stage.
The Tupac Shakur of dissonant Islamic dub, death hasn’t slowed down Bryn Jones, who has still been prolific for over a decade after he passed away. The 11 tracks on this LP and 12" set are all from his most prolific period in 1997. Unsurprisingly, this is Muslimgauze by the numbers that does nothing drastically different or innovative than the slew of other releases from the era, and thus is really only recommendable for hardcore zealots and the dabbler who hasn't picked up an album from Jones in awhile.
