As tribute albums go, one dedicated to a painter is not something I’ve encountered before. Being a fan of Francis Bacon, I was very excited to hear this album but alas half of it is useless. The other half though is great although only one of the four tracks really nails the feeling that I get from looking at one of Bacon’s paintings.
Hotter than July. This week's episode has plenty of fresh new music by Marie Davidson, Kim Gordon, Mabe Fratti, Guided By Voices, Holy Tongue meets Shackleton, Softcult, Terence Fixmer, Alan Licht, pigbaby, and Eiko Ishibashi, plus some vault goodies from Bombay S Jayashri and Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin. Solstice moon in West Midlands, UK photo by James. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Every time I think I’m done with Merzbow he releases an album that grabs me by the face and screams “LISTEN TO ME!” F.I.D. (standing for Fur Is Dead) is one of those albums. It is powerful and burly but surprisingly not as brain drilling as usual. The chaos normally unleashed is instead channelled into a droning, pulsing muscle. This is one of the most exciting Merzbow releases I’ve heard yet.
You can either be wowed by the fact that this is his first piano/vocal LP in a series of 54 LPs, or by the fact that this is one of the outstanding releases of the year; this should be a compulsory listen either way. It’s unfortunate that the Jandek myth has swollen to such a ridiculous size that it’s coming between people wanting to hear the music. Those cranky elitist fucks that obsess over their reclusive prodigious artist are going to shit the bed over this double CD.
Bibio's second release on Mush is a looped daydream of the English and Welsh countryside. It is a fluid affair with acoustic guitar, manipulated field recording, sparingly used fipple flutes and piano, tiny scraps of found sound, and—in a new departure for him—singing. As pleasingly blurred as a half-developed photograph or a landscape painting smudged by spots of rain, I only wish the elements of treatment and decay went further.
For all of The Ties That Blind I may as well be listening to any other one of a number of Neurosis clones that have emerged in the last five years. Even Neurosis sound jaded playing in the chin-stroking style they pioneered, so when a band like Mouth of the Architect trot out the same formula it gets to be a pain. The band play well but I question the necessity of another album that is too familiar the first time I hear it.
The new album by Alexander Tucker is pure bliss. I had high expectations of this release and they have been more than met. Taking his droning, folk improvisations further than before, Furrowed Brow is his best work yet. In the short time I’ve had this disc I’ve found it impossible to stop listening.
Most of the Arthur Russell material (re)issued by Audika Records so far has been in the idiosyncratic chamber-pop mold (World of Echo and Calling Out of Context), with the recent First Thought Best Thought collecting the artist's orchestral works. In contrast, this CD contains material much closer in style to the "Mutant Disco" of Russell's classic Sleeping Bag 12" sides, packaging never-before-released avant-dance tracks alongside a DFA remix and a scattering of rare material.
His most relevant work in what seems like ages, Gerald Simpson's latest matches the feverish vitality of the early acid house era without resorting to Vibertian schtick or pure retro reproduction.
