In the over three decades since he first began the project, Paul Lemos has guided Controlled Bleeding all over the sonic map, from the early power electronics days into 1980s industrial, and eventually jazz and prog tinged rock improvisations. It makes sense then that, for the first full length release of mostly new work since 2002 (releases since then have been either reissues or contained earlier work), he and his assembled crew of Chvad SB, Mike Bazini, and Anthony Meola have put together two albums of work that draws from all of these eras, and effortlessly manages to shift between periods of the band’s lengthy history at every turn.
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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After a number of years listening to Celer's slow, expansive take on ambient and drone sounds, I would have never expected Will Long to suddenly start making house music. But he has, in a series of three double 12" singles (and compiled into a double CD compilation), and it only takes a few minutes to realize that it is actually a very good combination. Even with the addition of drum machines, Long’s knack for creating warm, inviting spaces of electronic music is still vividly on display, and with some assistance from ambient legend Terre Thaemlitz (under the DJ Sprinkle guise), it may be heralding an entirely new direction in his work.
In 1984, long before anyone's grandparents were only a few keystrokes away from obtaining every morsel of information, this non-descript album cover appeared in the shops. Nowhere on the record were there band member photos or names and roles, producer credits, or lyrics. It was a gamble to purchase a costly import record if you were located here in North America, especially without hearing it first, but most of those in-the-know would gladly take that risk. In this case, it certainly paid off.
Some of Jason Anthony Harris' previous recordings as Public Speaking have flirted with more traditional song-like material, but would just as often end up being more in line abstract and chaotic world of noise. For this newest album, however, it seems as if he has settled more comfortably into the role of songwriter, and here, across these seven pieces, he creates a dark, at times very disturbing world presented as off-kilter, bizarre electronic pop.
This collaboration between David Tibet and early Current 93 alum and erstwhile Killing Joke bassist Youth is quite a fascinating, bizarre, improbable, and intermittently perplexing release.  Given how little attention I pay to mainstream music, I had completely forgotten that Youth also has an ongoing project with Paul McCartney (The Fireman) and a long history of production and remix credits involving artists like U2, Depeche Mode, Erasure, and almost Duran Duran.  In short, he is primarily an ingenious chameleon whose greatest gift lies in adapting to new situations, figuring out how to make the most of them, and egolessly fading into the background.  That is exactly what he has (mostly) done with Create Christ, Sailor Boy: consciously opting to be as invisible as possible.  As such, this album is primarily a showcase for David Tibet's snarling and singular poetic rantings presented on an epic scale, some of which rank among his best.
This latest opus captures The Dead C at their most endearingly perverse, brilliant, and anti-virtuosic, as they have somehow managed to craft a double album without actually having any conventional content at all: no real riffs, no hooks, no grooves, and no songs (unless some mumbling in a sea of feedback counts).  That approach seems to tailor-made to alienate most potential new listeners, but the towering monolith of guitar squall that is Trouble is an absolute delight for the faithful like myself.  These five sprawling and amorphous pieces sound like someone dropped napalm on rock music, leaving nothing but a smoldering, heaving, and howling wreckage.  Occasionally something resembling a melody will emerge from the blown-out entropy, but the album’s real appeal is its visceral chaos.  In some ways, this may very well be The Dead C's finest album yet.
Unsurprisingly, this newest work from Maryland’s Jeff Barsky is cut from a similar cloth as his recent works, such as his split record with Earthen Sea from 2014. To be clear, this is a very good thing, as it is clear that Work again emphasizes his judicious use of effects and processing on understated guitar work. Because of this, he is able to hit that difficult sweet spot between novel sound treatments while still retaining the instrument’s natural sound. As a result of that careful production and performance, Work is a beautiful, complex record that demonstrates his skill both as a performer and as a sound artist.
The influences that helped shape Turkish artist Ekin Üzeltüzenci’s latest work, and her work under the name Ekin Fil overall are not hard to place. For the most part, Being Near is an album of pop songs, yet enshrouded in gauzy reverb and blurry production that gives them a somewhat alien, but simultaneously melancholic edge. Sounds of guitar, voice, and electronics all define these eight songs, but the whole is greater than the sum of those familiar parts, culminating in an achingly beautiful excursion of music.
In Versatile Ambience’s second half, Jeph Jerman and Tim Barnes cobble together a sequence of individual words and short phrases from a small ensemble of speakers. As each solitary fragment, captured with varying degrees of fidelity, falls into place, a kind of instructional sense emerges from the cut-up poetic randomness: "Your voice arrested; the smithy’s forge displacing hard footfall with scrutiny of boot-leather. Attempts to redirect equally malleable." A final exchange points the way to Versatile’s heart: "You, the anvil?" someone questions. A faded voice replies, "I’m the hammer." Using insect and animal life, tape noise, and acoustic performances from Jacob Duncan and Ken Vandermark, Jerman and Barnes temper their field recordings like a smith tempers metal, constantly moving from ambiguity to particularity and back again, molding their music with heat and cold. Seemingly inconsequential sounds, like the dry splash of fallen leaves, become intricate explosions. The wooden hum of a violin unfurls and sinks like a wave at sea and the album sways between modes, constantly eluding the firm grip of a total view.
