Originally released on vinyl only in 2008, this album sold out almost immediately and it is quite clear why: these are some thoroughly raucous jams and nobody but Sublime Frequencies is likely to be scavenging though Algerian 45s from the 1970s anytime soon. Ain't no party like an Algerian party.
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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8-Bit artists and circuit benders active in today’s vibrant scene have met their match—and their aesthetic ancestors—in the League of Automatic Music Composers. Regarded as being the worlds first computer band, their unique foray into electronic sound worlds began in tandem with the budding world of microcomputers, which in the mid-1970s were just then newly available on the commercial market.
This is the fourth beguiling release culled from Honest Jon's plunge deep into the EMI Hayes archive of forgotten 78s. Like Sprigs of Time, Living Is Hard, and Give Me Love before it, this is a singular and expertly curated exploration of some seriously obscure music. Unlike those albums, however, Open Strings also features the curious (and possibly misguided) addition of a companion album of modern artists that mine similar territory.
In 2006, Steven Stapleton and his crew played their first official live concerts in over 20 years (the previous performances were not billed under the Nurse With Wound name). These performances in San Francisco saw the group focus mainly on the musique concrête- and krautrock-inspired elements of Nurse With Wound, eschewing recognisable tracks for live jamming with (what was then) new sounds and samples. The end result is a remarkably good album whose almost incidental ambience is as unsettling as it is compelling.
The unobscured natural photography on the cover of this disc sets up what is contained within. While the label is usually focused on the dark, opaque droning sounds, Gargaud’s contribution to Utech is much clearer and lighter, at least in relative terms. Mixing abstract electronics with some occasionally plaintive guitar playing, it stays relatively warm and organic throughout, with a few intentional, but compelling bumps along the way. At its core, it feels like a more stripped down version of Fennesz.
Consider this in the running for the "minimalist/maximalist" release of the year. While releasing an album on a USB flash drive is not a new thing, few of the ones thus far have had the same quality of presentation. Packaged in a small bamboo box, just slightly bigger than a matchbox, is an engraved bamboo drive which contains a total of ten unreleased albums, recorded between 1999 and 2008. Ten hours of music in a small box, which costs barely more than a single CD. However, with that much material, there is going to be a bit of overload.
In 1969, Mississippi Fred McDowell plugged in an electric guitar, and like Bob Dylan just a few years earlier, alienated many purists who could not fathom such radical change. So as not to encourage any ambiguity or doubt, McDowell's first electric record was titled I Do Not Play No Rock 'n' Roll. Whether or not Jack Rose is trying to cure ambiguities of his own with this record is unclear, but it is obvious that he's ready to move into new territory.
Fabrique documents many of the performers included in Lawrence English's long-running experimental music series. The focus is largely on laptop-based ambient glitchery, but several artists contribute strong-based tracks that depart from this aesthetic (usually by incorporating human or organic elements). Notably, the lesser-known artists (such as Tujiko Noriko) often steal the show from more established folks like Scanner or KK Null.
Soundtrack music has always held its own odd space in the music world. Living in constant relation to the images it is meant to accompany, soundtrack music can (and has) made movies as well as destroyed them, as any Ennio Morricone fan can attest to. Yet the best soundtrack music has always been able to positively shape a film while still standing on its own as strictly a musical work removed from its image-based companion. It is, it seems, this trait alone that separates the comparatively schlocky Hollywood mood-manipulations of a John Williams score from the intrinsic depth and subtlety of form found in an Anton Karas, Carl Stalling, Nino Rota, or Bernard Hermann piece. JG Thirlwell (most know him as the man behind Foetus, Wiseblood, Steroid Maximus, etc.) proves himself more than an adept contributor to the genre.
Montreal's trio of talented multi-instrumentalists hit pay dirt on this album. Revolving around a core of keyboards, drums and French horn, the group has carved out a pleasant niche for themselves inside the well traveled corridors of cinematic psychedelia, employing numerous other devices and useful effects along the way.
