On their second album, Jordan McKenzie and Emi Honda have created a mesmerising experience somewhere between revolution and fairytale. It is difficult to place it accurately in any standard musical taxonomy but with elements of folk, world music and a fierce rock and roll spirit, Elfin Saddle have created some of the most stirring songs to enter my ears recently. From my glib description, they sound on paper to be yet another freak folk act with their own novelty but they are much more than that.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Taking a similar approach to the classic likes of Aube, Bionulor is billed as being focused exclusively on "sound recycling," or using only a single sample or sound as the basis for an entire piece. As a self-imposed limitation this sometimes does keep the compositions to a Spartan minimum, yet just as often become a chaotic mess of layered sounds and effects.
A reissue of an extremely LP from 2007, with an extra 28 minute bonus track, Chain Shot is an accurate title for this extremely lo-fi disc of junky metal, violent raw frequencies, and the complete exploitation of analog technology. Rather than being simply a blast of noise, it is instead a study of textures, as rough as they may be.
This tape only release from Bong's Mike Vest sees him create some thick, stoner atmospheres with his guitar but unfortunately the riffs he unleashes with his main band are nowhere in sight. Instead he explores an ambient guitar style that does not quite pay off. Granted there are moments of psychedelic brilliance but the for the most part, the aimless guitar noodling gets in the way of something truly awesome.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about Derek Bailey is that, despite having left this world over three years ago, he is still releasing albums of such high quality. Out of all his posthumous releases, there are few that feel like they are cashing in on his name now that he is not here to object. This latest album sees Bailey perform as part of a frankly spectacular ensemble; the music lives up to the album’s title as it swings from a gentle abstraction to an uncompromising and visceral pummelling.
James Blackshaw has released a number of introspective and genre-defying records since his debut on Digitalis Recordings. He has, however, saved his best work for his debut on Young God. With a couple of familiar Current 93 faces behind it, The Glass Bead Game exhibits Blackshaw's experimental preferences, but also showcases his strength as an emotive and able songwriter.
Brendan Burke and Fred Lonberg's quiet, unassuming debut on Flingco Sound flirts with the conventions of both glitch and chamber music, though it obviously favors the latter. Composed primarily of piano and cello performances, Over All of Spain... is a beautiful and mostly pastoral record fleshed out by the minimal use of samples, loops, and other odd sounds.
As part of the spilt series by the Baltimore label Wildfire Wildfire, this single gives two exciting examples of fluid electronic songcraft. By different means, both groups evoke feelings of retro-futuristic goodwill by combining digital composition with analogue musicianship.
Using shortwave radios to pull sounds out of the ether has been a longstanding tradition in experimental music. Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage were perhaps the first to explore this area, fascinated by the possibilities inherent in using the radio as an instrument. It is often left to a second generation of explorers to further develop the discoveries made by the first trail blazers. In 1982 William Basinski carved out his own territory in the worlds of shortwave sound with nothing more than a receiver and his trademark loops of tape. First released on Noton as an LP in 1997, it has been made available once again, this time on compact disc from Basinski’s own label.
Kawabata Mokoto and his spacey pals have dispatched another communiqué of shambling kitchen-sink psychedelia from whatever mental place they currently inhabit. As is often the case with this band, I am left scratching my head and wondering whether Kawabata is a genius or a charlatan (or both).
