As two of the more recent works from the prolific Eric Hardiman (who also performs and records as a member of Century Plants, Twilight of the Century, and a slew of other projects), Remember Me Now and Surface Language are distinctly different facets to the Rambutan project. The former is a diverse collection of instrumentation and sound, from found processed recordings, improvised percussion and guitar. The latter, however, has a more consistent focus, built from repeating motifs and loops fitting a more tautly structured composition. Both, however, capture Hardiman’s penchant for bending objects and instruments into often unexplainable sounds, yet result in nuanced compositions of melody and abstraction.
Look up Music for gazing upwards brought to you by Meat Beat Manifesto & scott crow, +/-, Aurora Borealis, The Veldt, Not Waving & Romance, W.A.T., The Handover, Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri, Mulatu Astatke, Paul St. Hilaire & René Löwe, Songs: Ohia, and Shellac. Aurora Borealis image from California by Steve. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
|
This brilliant and mind-bending solo opus by Natural Snow Buildings' Mehdi Ameziane was originally issued as an LP by Dull Knife in 2009 and sold out within hours. Fortunately, it has now been reissued and remastered and augmented with a massive amount of bonus material for those of us that weren’t fast or well-informed enough to catch it the first time around.
While perhaps known better for their lush, hazy guitar abstractions, the duo of Melissa Arpin-Duimstra and Scott Cortez are not afraid to push their sound even further into the reaches of the sonic galaxy, as this new reconstruction proves. Originally issued on a tiny Peruvian label in 2007, Chorus was a conscious attempt to remove guitars and instrumentation, and simply work with the sound of Arpin-Duimstra’s voice. For its reissue, the entire album is reworked yet again, using the tiniest of vocal fragments to weave a beautiful atmospheric tapestry of sound.
Recorded live in January of 2009, this collaboration is one that is more organic than a lot of what Oren Ambarchi and Jim O’Rourke are known for: no laptops here, the former only provides guitar, the latter piano. Meanwhile, Keiji Haino acts as the focus, providing his idiosyncratic vocals with flute and electronics, with the result sounding like ethnography from another planet, spiritual sounds that simply are extra terrestrial.
Philippe Petit’s recording career has always been characterized by his dual passions for reinvention and fruitful collaboration, but this audacious and imaginative album still managed to blindside me. A turntablist/laptoppist/self-described non-musician by trade, he has nevertheless managed to produce an ambitiously wild, weird, and noise-damaged avant-jazz opus with the aid of a bevy of talented pals (including a very unexpected Graham Massey on bass clarinet).
After many years, the third instalment in Nurse With Wound’s classic Automating series of compilations has been unveiled. Digging up old nuggets from the last 26 years, this is another trip through the dustier, forgotten regions of Steven Stapleton’s back catalogue. Not quite as dazzling as the previous entries in the Automating series, this compilation still shows the strength of Nurse With Wound’s expansive approach to sound and most importantly, saves me a lot of leg work in tracking down old compilations.
The third solo album of original tunes for acoustic guitar and banjo reveals Glenn Jones as among the most likely to preserve the adventurous spirit of truly relentless guitar pioneers such as John Fahey and Robbie Basho. I habitually add review discs to my MP3 player and chuck the chaff later; but I'm keeping all these tracks.
APTBS' debut album was a collection of different EPs and singles recorded over a number of sessions; as such it was a bit rough and ready in terms of recording quality. With this follow-up, they have done their songs more justice in the studio. They have further cemented their position as New York’s loudest band but they have moved beyond simple volume wars. Under the distortion and feedback are solid songs that are as infectious as the H1N1 but no way as unpleasant.
The second collaboration between Eno and the guys from Cluster (originally released in 1978) fails to captivate in the same way as Cluster & Eno from the previous year did. Disparate in its approach to style, it feels like it is going to collapse at any moment and at times it falls flat. However, some genuinely superb moments bring After the Heat back from the brink and save it from being a poor cousin to the other work these artists have done together.
