As I mentioned in my review of the split 7" a few weeks ago, these are easily two of my favorite artists working in the more experimentally focused metal scene (that currently doesn't have an inane genre tag, which I'm perfectly fine with). Unlike that single, this one sided LP has the two projects working collaboratively, with the results completely living up to expectations.
Look up Music for gazing upwards brought to you by Meat Beat Manifesto & scott crow, +/-, Aurora Borealis, The Veldt, Not Waving & Romance, W.A.T., The Handover, Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri, Mulatu Astatke, Paul St. Hilaire & René Löwe, Songs: Ohia, and Shellac. Aurora Borealis image from California by Steve. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
|
Jesu is back with another mammoth slab of religious iconography, loathing, and detuned metal chords played deadly slow. If Loveless wasn't already taken, that might be a more fitting title for this record of empty-hearted love songs.
This compilation of German experimental music from the last five years is a nice sketch of what is going on outside of Berlin these days. The material covers field recordings, atmospheric electronics and bits of noise. The material also covers the good, the mediocre and the bad.
Twenty Knives follow the compiled track "The Royal Vomitorium" and free EP The Royal Invitation with an intriguing album wherein a spaceship crashes and the pilot explores a weird terrain guided by a small robot. With an overblown digital game sensibility and an air of glam-electronica, this is slightly dated harmoniously malfunctioning music. I enjoy it more for knowing nothing about the artist and the whole concept being almost as laughable as it is mysterious.
The articles in Datacide Eleven are just the sort of critical discourse, on subjects I am endeared to, that I have been hungering to read. When it came in the mail I nearly devoured it all in one sitting. After gorging I had to slow down, due to the density of the information, even though I’m used to binge reading. It was like stuffing down a big bowl of pasta only to groan later when it has expanded to the point of bloating. Expanding the brain instead of the gut is healthier in the long run, though it still takes time to digest and absorb. But when it comes to studying up on the culture of Reggae sound sytems, of pirate radio signals leaking out from the margins into the mainstream, the paranoid and the conspiracy ridden underpinnings of the Tea Party Movement, it is the kind of work I’m willing to do in order to lead a robust textual life.
While the use of old blues samples in modern songs is hardly a new idea, this is a great example of when a seemingly overused concept is reinvigorated. Here, the jazz pianist Adam Fairhall teams up with Paul J Rogers (best known to readers of Brainwashed as a member of The Long Dead Sevens) to mix the old with the new, highlighting the continuum of recorded music in the 20th century and performers in the 21st. The merging of Fairhall’s skill as a pianist along with Rogers more studio-orientated talents has lead to this fantastic collection of recordings which may not shatter all expectations but certainly put more life into the blues than most contemporary efforts.
The first part of Andrew McKenzie's unresolved sex trilogy was created as a soundtrack for performance artist Annie Sprinkle's "masturbation ritual," a role that it apparently filled quite successfully.  As a stand-alone effort, however, it is not among McKenzie's most rewarding and enduring works.  The problem is not lack of quality or ideas, but rather that it feels too unnaturally condensed to be truly satisfying.
Following logically from the female-centric Masturbatorium, the lengthier and more complex Fuck (1992) shifts the focus to male sexual energy, which manifests itself in considerably more visceral and aggressive music.  Having exclusively heard Andrew's more abstract late-period work before I finally got ahold of this album, I was completely blindsided by its explosive and visceral nature.  I like it– brute force suites The Hafler Trio beautifully.  This album is great.
Cut from a similar cloth as the previous single and EP, the first full fledged album from Puerto Rico Flowers doesn’t take any drastic leaps in style, but instead is a more developed, refined version of the former Clockcleaner vocalist John Sharkey III's modern goth pop project that perfectly balances nostalgia and modernism, and has been doing a good job of getting stuck in my head ever since I first heard it.
