Enigmatic Afro-Transcendentalist figure Laraaji has a long, fascinating history with music and is still very active at the age of 76. He is known for being "discovered" by Brian Eno, and working with such underground darlings as Sun Araw, Dallas Acid, and Blues Control. He studied piano composition in college, and then found himself with Eastern mysticism and began improvising with zithers and mbira. This album finds him returning to his roots with an all instrumental piano meditation.
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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Plone's album Puzzlewood continues in their very specific oeuvre of midtempo music with a playful, childlike hue to it. It's all soft edges and singable tunes in a digital mishmash that includes electronics, synths, trumpet, piano, guitar, strings, and exotic percussion. This happy orchestration yields bite sized songs full of lift and happiness. The album is a comeback after a twenty year absence, and although the genre they helped pioneer has fallen out of favor, their self-consciously retro sound makes their music a timeless affair.
On Microphone Permission, Jasmine Guffond has created some truly rapturous detours and alleyways in sound. The ever shifting musical landscape is like an aural house of mirrors, though there is nothing circus-like about this project. It contains inward, reflective compositions—at times somber and at other times buzzing about—but always interesting and beautiful.
Los Angeles' Flatworms kicked off their career creating psychedelic-tinged and feedback-driven guitar riffs embedded in a foundation of high-octane garage punk, with lyrical content to match. The latest direction finds the trio of vocalist and guitarist Will Ivy, drummer Justin Sullivan and bassist Tim Hellman (Ty Segall, Oh Sees) painting on a less fuzzy canvas, with a more refined sound and finer songwriting precision, with both Steve Albini and Ty Segall in the engineering booth. Segall's '60s psychedelic influence can be felt here, as well as Albini's commitment to high fidelity, but some of the musical experimentation heard on their prior work has been traded in for a more well-oiled machine, albeit a well-oiled machine with punk sizzle.
The debut from Montreal’s Bodywash is an album that sounds lovely for casual listening, but after focused listening reveals deeper pockets of brilliance. In the past couple of decades the MP3 audio format, much in the same way as CDs and cassettes, has allowed for a viable "listen and run" approach. Digital music has offered tremendous convenience but has also encouraged less immersive music listening. With the emergence of many lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, now is the perfect time to settle in and get deeply immersed into a full-length piece of music. Comforter is a work full of familiar and, yes, comforting sounds, and it is a great place to practice immersive listening.
I can think of few other projects that have elicited such a wide and continually shifting range of opinions from me as Portland's Golden Retriever, as Jonathan Sielaff and Matt Carlson sometimes seem like immensely talented and idiosyncratic visionaries and sometimes seem like dedicated revivalists of my least favorite strains of kosmische musik. This new collaboration with Oakland-based pedal steel master Chuck Johnson, however, is unambiguously a marriage made in heaven, as Johnson's warm and soulful ambient shimmer provides the perfect context for Sielaff and Carlson to work their magic. At its best, Rain Shadow feels a bit like a long-lost Brian Eno/Daniel Lanois collaboration, but one that has been updated with sharper edges and a more sophisticated approach to harmony (and, of course, a heavily processed clarinet). This is very likely the strongest album that either Johnson or Golden Retriever have ever recorded.
Ren Schofield might be living in a new country (England) and releasing music on a new label (Alter), but no one need worry about those differing circumstances having any impact at all on the single-minded and relentless brutality of his work as Container. That said, Scramblers is (rightly) billed as a more "high-octane" incarnation of Schofield's punishing aesthetic, as it evolved directly out of his aggressive live performances. To some degree, such a statement is largely academic, as just about every Container album has felt like the techno equivalent of a runaway train, but it is true that this particular album offers virtually no breaks at all in the intensity of Container's splattering and pummeling rhythmic assaults. That is just fine by me, as Schofield's primal violence is consistently executed with surgical precision and visceral power, but more casual fans may find themselves wishing that Container would someday evolve further beyond the mercilessly one-dimensional onslaught of previous albums.
It is a safe assumption to say that most folks who buy a ticket to a concert expect to hear a few songs from their favorite band's latest album; after all, this is how bands showcase their latest music, but also provide fans the chance to hear their earlier work. Anyone seeing Wire since the '00s can assume no such thing; entire tours have included nothing but their newest work, barely acknowledging the fact that they've been around since the '70s. Wire does what Wire wants. Thankfully, they're great at it. It's a testament that Wire can still sound like Wire, maintaining that certain "Wire" sound, and yet continuously reinvent themselves, creating memorable - and fresh — music after 40 years.
It has been roughly three years since Lawrence English last released a proper solo album (2017’s Cruel Optimism), though he has kept himself quite busy with collaborative work since then (most notably as half of HEXA). Nevertheless, I have always been quite fond of his solo work, so I was hoping that he had something ambitious in the pipeline and this latest release hits the mark in that regard. While I am not sure that I would necessarily characterize Lassitude as one of English's major releases, it is at least half brilliant and takes quite a different approach to drone than his usual fare. Part of that uniqueness lies in the fact that English focused entirely upon the pipe organ for this release, but Lassitude is perhaps even more significantly influenced by its inspirations, as one piece is inspired by Éliane Radigue and another by Phill Niblock.
This long-running Chicago slowcore trio has been uncharacteristically silent for the last five years, though vocalist Matt Christensen has been as tirelessly prolific as ever as a solo artist. Given that lengthy hiatus, it is not entirely surprising that the Zelienople that has resurfaced with Hold You Up is a somewhat different beast than the Zelienople of old. Admittedly, the band's usual fragility, languorous pacing, and pervading sense of melancholia have definitely not gone anywhere, but this latest release is considerably more driving and pop-minded than the fare I have grown to expect from the band. That said, I suppose I should put "driving" and "pop" in quotes, as the closest Hold You Up comes to the mainstream is an aesthetic indebtedness to Mark Hollis's solo work. Zelienople are still considerably more monochromatic and minimal than Hollis ever was though, so none of the band's distinctive character has been sacrificed—they have merely gotten a bit better at enhancing their vision with a greater emphasis on hooks and grooves. Needless to say, that evolution suits them well.
