On Brendan Whitney's latest release as Alias, he's brought in kid brother Ehren tocollaborate, and together they have produced an album that is lush andethereal with a dream-like groove. Wide spaces of silence separate thetracks, giving a feeling of moving from one dream to another.
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Nice Nice are Jason Buehler and Mark Shirazi: a multi-talented duo fromPortland, Oregon who have demonstrated through their brilliant fulllength album, Chrome, that they can fill sound to the wallswith only a guitar and drums and some skilled real-time effects processing.With this series—a limited quartet of numbered CD EPs which had to bemail ordered directly through Temporary Residence—I hate to admit, onthe whole, I'm underwhelmed.
Though they originally hail from Washington, DC, Measles, Mumps, Rubella’s sound is not the stereotypical slashing punk sound popularized by bands like Fugazi and Jawbox immediately associated with the city. MMR are, however, clearly the kind of band that’s listened to Public Image Ltd very carefully.
David Jackman's release schedule obscures far too many of his best recordings, apparently to the extent that some his best work goes unreleased for years at a time. Die Stadt's 3" release of two never-before-heard 10" records exemplify why Organum has always been one of the most consistently excellent and intriguing projects of the last twenty-plus years.
As a duo Moha! seem to be reaching for a place of their own and failing. Settled between the large comforting bosoms of other discordant and unpredictable bands, Anders Hana and Morten J. Olsen are either jerking their instruments around as though handling a dead chicken by the neck or playing loud, formed jams and sounding indistinguishable from their brethren.
Those waiting on the next Stars of the Lid record can resteasy now as here is another diamond of the Texashinterlands, shining low and weary through the endless fenced-in wild yards andupturned bedroom windows of another druggy afternoon community.
Anyone with a cheap drum machine and a loose understanding of the bassguitar can probably crank out a record better than this in acouple of hours; but they'll need a dirty 4-track cassette recorder tocapture it any worse.
Simon Kealoha's Calika project brings a fresh perspective to bedroom vibe electronica. Fractured and reconstructed though it may be, Small Talk Kills Me is a record composed of songs more than experiments and that's a welcome change of pace.
For most in the international community, the last few years have been anything but good, chock full of bad news and an ever-worsening outlook for the future (United Defense stockholders aside). But for Brooklyn's Dr. Israel, all the war, death and destruction around the globe had a silver lining: how else would he have been able to muster all the outrage and righteous indignation that is Patterns of War?
Six songs of orchestral electronic suspension populate Ryan Teague's first album on Type Records and the majority of them are fairly bland examples of music I've heard before. I could toss the terms evocative or pretty or hypnotizing around all I wanted, but it wouldn't change the fact that I've heard better examples of this style elsewhere.
