This murky combination of raw electronics and mistreated guitar that knows when it’s time to roar, and time to just menace makes for a strong entry into the vinyl world for this relatively new project. What a debut it is though, in an ambiguous letterpressed sleeve and heavyweight marbled vinyl. Luckily, the quality of the music presented (a live session for WHPK radio) matches the packaging quite well.
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Following their two other collaborations, Tinnitus Vu and Tocsin -6 Thru +2, here Z'EV initially began reworking tracks from the Organum back catalog, and then collaboratively with David Jackman, who then took it upon himself to finish. What remains is characteristic of both artists' work, and is more reminiscent of Jackman's early work as opposed to his recent triptych of Sanctus/Amen/Omega.
The third album from Michael Begg and Deryk Thomas explores the moods and sounds of the witching hour: deep, dark chasms of sound littered with shimmering tones that dot the music like stars on a night sky. This album is good by day but playing it during the still, cold hours of early morning reveal a different hallucinatory creature. Instruments morph out of recognizable shapes into extended timbres and tones, voices call from somewhere beyond and an uneasy sorrow permeates the music.
After the critical success of last year's multi-disc fetish item recognizing Wolfgang Voigt's pioneering Gas project, Kompakt wastes little time in reissuing this less expansive, previously out-of-print collection of the producer's concurrent minimal techno works.
The promise of Fire on Fire's debut EP on Young God is easily met by their dream-like, somnambulistic follow-up. Less extravagant and aggressive than their previous effort, this Portland Maine-based quintet showcases their softer side with rich and mellow songwriting cut through by pining voices and twang-scored harmonies.
Montreal's Menace Ruine stormed onto the extreme music scene in early 2008 with their blistering debut Cult of Ruins. The enigmatic male/female duo's unusual mixture of black metal, noise, and dark ambient quickly won them a lot of fans (the world clearly needs an evil antipole to Mates of State), as they succeeded in sounding like absolutely no one else. A mere eight months later, they have made the dubious career move of temporarily abandoning much of that sound to release a medieval music-based concept album.
Tim Macuga and Dan Barrett's musical project is as much an ambitious and frustrating piece of conceptual art as it is a crushing and soaring rock record. Composed over a five year period, Deathconsciousness was produced with only the most basic equipment, is accompanied by a 70 page booklet describing a dead religion, and features cover art ripped right from Jacques-Louis David's overtly political masterpiece, La Mort de Marat. The music is excellent, but making sense of the rest of this monstrosity isn't easy.
Guitarists Loren Connors and Jim O'Rourke have individually been fixtures on the experimental music scene for years. Yet their frequent collaborations throughout the past decade have resulted in only one release preceding this, a collection of three pieces hand-picked by O'Rourke from performances the duo made on tour in Europe in 1997.
Given Neil Campbell's musical track record, it may be surprising to hear him state that, "I don't take psychedelic drugs." With a penchant for experimentation, Campbell's hallucinogenically inclined pallet has been an important presence on the British side of the experimental pond for years now. Having left the rock-drone pursuits of Vibracathedral Orchestra in favor of his own unit, Campbell continues to explore levels of electronic catharsis on this album, which moves from techno-inspired ravers to drifting expanses of electrified psychedelia.
This EP is the third collaboration between British artist/filmmaker Sam Taylor-Wood and the Pet Shop Boys. The trio seems to convene every five years or so to cover odd, semi-forgotten pop songs (they’ve previously tackled Serge Gainsbourg’s "Je T’aime…Moi Non Plus" and the uncomfortably sexual Donna Summer/Georgio Moroder disco smash "Love to Love You Baby"). This time around, they unearth a minor 1981 hit by obscure postpunk band The Passions. I am mystified as to how this wound up being released on Kompakt.
