Ulan Bator is a French avante art rock trio who apparently take theirname from the capitol of Mongolia. "Ego : Echo" is their third albumand it was for the most part spontaneously created during 3 weeks ofsessions last summer in Florence, Italy with producer and Young GodRecords head Michael Gira (SWANS, The Angels of Light). Ulan are allabout tight and minimal, tense and repetitive guitar/bass/drum rockgrooves - both noisy and subdued - as musical and (French) vocalpassages become hypnotic head noddin' mantras. Add organ, piano, bow,keys, horn, tape loops, electronic drone, 'la la la' styled backingvocals and Gira's dry, crisp, clean and full production. Comparisonsto Can, Faust (Jean Herve Peron contributes horns to 1 song), the BadSeeds and Gira's own projects is inevitable as everything is sparseyet beautifully melodic and the sound and feel is similar, at the veryleast, in spirit. The 16 minute centerpiece "Let Go Ego" in particularprovides the variety of most everything Ulan Bator do in one song withextensive stretches of drone, somnambulant sonic meandering, heavy rockout and lengthy coda chant. "Ego : Echo" is a dynamic rock record thatresonates with passion and a sense of straightforward urgency. It'sone of a handful of cool musical things lately from France and it fitsright in with the rest of the Young God catalog. Up next from YGR arealbums by Calla and Flux Information Sciences in January and the newAngels of Light album "How I Loved You" in February.samples:
Can't say I'm terriblysurprised that a label run by the Autechre folks would put out an EPlike this. Team Doyobi's style is relatively remeniscent of an older,more squarish 4/4 beat-filled Autechre sound, yet the group exploresmore with melodic motives than Booth and Brown seemingly did back in"the day." The release is an eight track mini-lp stretchingapproximately a half hour. The music is enjoyable, bright and bouncey,with innovative usage of sampled and synthesized sounds tapping out themelodic rhythms. Fans of glitchy Mouse On Mars beat music willdefinitely be keen on this one as there's various video-game esquesamples and over-processed primitive sounding analogue syntheticstossed in to color the tunes. As good as it is, however, it's nice tohave it short and sweet. There's not an incredible amount of variety interms of tempo change and feeling between the different songs, sosomething like this would be a bit heavy to digest had it been twice aslong.
Following the energy fromthis year's spectacular full-length offering, "And then Nothing Turneditself,..." Yo La Tengo have come up with three pleasant newinstrumental gems. The group called all three songs Danelectro andcoupled them with a remix of each to round out the CD EP. A short butsweet hip-hop variation is brought to the table by somebody who goes bythe moniker of Q-Unique, while a rather intense jazzy cut, spliced andover-layered version has been treated by San Fran's Kit Clayton. Myfavorite however would be the 11+ minute electronic sunshinereinterpretation from Nobukazu Takemura. In my opinion, whileTakemura's work was in no way 'cut out' for him, he did have theprettiest source material to work with. While I'm fond of Yo La Tengo'sLPs and this EP, these songs might sound rather out of place on analbum from the group known for their vocal pop rock material. There'ssomething that's somewhat indescribable about the brightfulness of themelodies themselves, it's almost as if they possess a certain Holidayspirit. Perhaps this EP was intended to be a Christmas-type releasefrom the NY threesome. I'm not aware of this yet I'm not convincedotherwise.
Talk about variety, thesecond Echoboy album of the year once again follows a seeminglymulti-genre'd blueprint as Volume 1. Richard Warren, who goes by thename of Echoboy has gathered another ecclectic collection of nineself-recorded self-produced delves into audio experimental popinfluenced rock tunes. Whether it echoes early 80s electro pop a'laPeter Schilling's "Major Tom" or 90s analogue synth retro, Warren'senergy is fiery and relentless, his talent as a songwriter and musicianis undying. Some songs carry a feverish pulse, with a utilization ofguitars and vintage keyboard sounds not entirely unlike good oldSuicide or Trans Am. When the slower paced tunes creep through thespeakers, the music is never less saturated. The usage of variousorganic drums with electronic drum machines, guitar filters, bass linesand special effects . Echoboy's loved by critics and adored by collegeDJs all over the world, I assume because it seems like the guy's arabid music fan like the rest of us, and hasn't decided to make a'band' to only focus on one style. If I only had one complaint aboutEchoboy, it would be that this guy has way too many limited editionsingles and EPs of which many tracks will probably be lost, never tosee the light of day again. Brilliant asshole.
With a fondness of vintage analogue keyboards and rockin tunes is this defunct (?) Detroit duo. Herein lies 23 tracks recorded between 1996 and 1998, pulled from various out of print 12" and EP releases. Le Car's automobile has been retrofitted with analogue keyboards, but it drives quite smoothly and is exciting to show off.
My appreciation of Spencer Yeh has increased in recent years due to his clear disinterest in re-covering familiar and expected territory.  Nowhere is that creative restlessness more conspicuously on display than here, an entire album of charmingly ramshackle left-field pop.  As it turns out, Yeh has been concealing a knack for songwriting all these years, as Transitions is a legitimately excellent and charismatic effort that makes me wish he had been doing this all along.  These are some of the most instantly likable songs that I have heard all year.
Sometimes, an artist sticks to a style even though they have done it to death but lack the vision to move on from the one idea that they briefly got right. Then there are artists who take this one idea and make it work, over and over again. A Place to Bury Strangers fall firmly into this second camp. They continue to sound as fresh as they did on their debut, which is impressive, considering the musical coffers of My Bloody Valentine and Jesus and Mary Chain should be well and truly bare by now. A Place to Bury Strangers have created a magnificent and charged work that demonstrates they have plenty of fire still to be unleashed.
Initially a work inspired by Cage's 100th birthday this year, this album began life as a soundtrack to his One11 film. However as those recordings progressed, Australian composer Lawrence English began to develop a wider body of pieces that were inspired, both directly and indirectly, by the legendary artist, and take on a life of their own.
Locrian has spent the better part of the last four years distinguishing themselves from the also-rans of the post-Sunn O))) drone scene, crafting their own distinct sound and identity amid many less engaging acts. While much of their recent work has been focused on the deconstruction of metal symbolism, paired with a more conventional rock bent, here the trio go back to their dissonant, abstract roots, with help from legendary audio and visual artist Christoph Heemann.
