27 is a small band. There are two numbers in the name and three people in the group. Brittle Divinity, their latest full length, is appropriately enough a small record. Their last outing, 2007's Holding on for Brighter Days was bigger and broader, more produced and more varied than what they are doing here. But I like this better.
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After so much hype, the long awaited collaboration between Sunn O))) and Boris was bound to disappoint. It starts off amazingly but overall there is something missing from the album. With 17 different musicians contributing a few of the pieces get too muddled and everyone finishes the album a bit lost. In the end it is a great idea that doesn’t quite work.
This is a degenerate two guitar record that sounds like it was dredged from the Mississippi along with rotted bodies and tin can telephones still attached. Sludgy doesn’t even begin to describe the muck that these two guys are playing through. This is avant-garde blues as seen through carburettor syrup and burnt amps.
Available as two vinyl LPs or as this one CD these four solo guitar pieces range in length from around 16 to 20 minutes. On his favored Breedlove 12 string, Cam Deas plays guitar like ringing a (Tibetan) bell and with an intimate intensity that is by turns wild, meditative, melodic and transporting. Within an extended structure he rubs and thrashes the strings into an extraordinary, calm, deliberate, fluttering frenzy.
With its "fuck you" attitude to any sort of musical or genre conventions and raw, broken four track analog aesthetic, this Ohio duo’s work recalls other artists, but sounds like no one else at all.
Peat Bog—surprisingly not a nom de plume—is a frequent Nurse with Wound contributor, playing with Stapleton's Inflatable Sideshow on Rock 'n Roll Station, An Awkward Pause and other NWW classics. On his own, Bog records as Earthmonkey. His third full-length (and first in four years) is a monstrous double album that finds him in top form, assured and comfortable in his own skin.
This is my first exposure to Rishaug's work, but he has maintained a somewhat high profile in Scandinavia though his work with the improv ensemble ARM. On this, his third solo album and first for Dekorder, he seems to draw a lot of his inspiration from the laptop-based drone/ambient of Mille Plateau/Rittornel's golden age. He's admittedly a bit late for that particular party, but he seems to be endearingly and stubbornly well-aware of that. Fortunately, I am quite fond of that particular period in recent music history, so these deep and thoughtfully constructed soundscapes frequently hit the mark for me, despite the fact that they don't bring anything particularly "new" to the form. Good music is good music.
Marc Hellner's long-running synthpop/art ensemble is back from their lengthy hiatus and they have made some significant changes. For one, new vocalist Chanel Pease has joined the fold. Also, Hellner has chosen to largely or completely eschew software use, opting to whole-heartedly embrace the fabled and elusive analog sound that I hear so much about. Regardless of how it was made, Charade is Gold boasts some great singles that easily hold their own against the rest of current wave of synthpop devotees.
"Beach Fervour Spare" is the second installment of the deep bass journey begun last year with "Deep Space". This time around the band is minus Bill Laswell and Jaki Leibeziet and plus Mark Sanders - drums, Chris Cookson - guitar and production, Paul Schütze - atmospheres and Marc Angelo Lusardi - production and retains Clive Bell and Jean Pierre Rasle. I don't (yet) have the first album so I can't compare the two cds and bands, but there's no doubt that this unit has played together for some time.
