In 1997, Bristol's trip-hop troubadours Portishead released their self-titled sophomore album, a deeply moving account of agonizing, feverish love and world-weary heartbreak. Its forlorn brilliance stunned me, leading me to privately refer to it as the soundtrack to a suicide. Now, another British electronic musician follows up a critically acclaimed breakthrough with a superlative sequel that, for me, shares both that ominous honor and my firm vote for Album of the Year.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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With the freak folk empire still flying its tattered psychedelic flag, it a relief to see Dumb Supper arriving on the horizon unconcerned with scrambling the folk format. Mainly a collection of traditional re-tellings, the Tylers manage to both stay true to the form's roughened simple roots.
For those who don't frequent the sites of MP3-only, Creative Commons-licensed netlabels, Jan Gleichmar's Jahtari is a go-to virtual imprint enamored with the long-departed sounds of 80s digital dub and dancehall reggae. Since 2004, his simulated 7" releases both there and elsewhere in the netlabel world built up enough of a reputation to warrant this physical release to showcase his balmy eight-bit informed productions.
With 2 CDs and around 57 tracks, there's a lot of bang for the buck here, so long as various forms of electronic noodling is a plus, and thematic cohesion is something to stay away from.
Although a rough stab at naming a genre, the UK "noise rock" scene started as a darker outgrowth of the distortion and effect laden shoegaze genre, though with more of a nod to proto-Industrialists like SPK, Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle. As a scene it was rather incestuous, with many of the major artists such as Skullflower, Ramleh and Novatron often switching members between projects, and even connections with some of the more rock oriented bands like Godflesh, Cable Regime, and Bodychoke. If there was a definitive disc for this time, IIIrd Gatekeeper might just be it.
Kevin Hufnagel (Disrhythmia) and Colin Marston (Disrhythmia; Behold... the Arctopus; Infidel?/Castro!), collectively known as the New York ambient noise outfit Byla, team up with ex-Swans siren Jarboe for Viscera, an album of noise and acoustic soundscapes utilising the guitar as its main sound source. A year in the making, from spring 2006 to spring 2007, the five pieces on this CD have been carefully crafted by the Hufnagel/Marston duo to create an album full of atmospherics, harmonics, power, and above all richness, the whole complemented by Jarboe's vocal accents.
The second album since the adoption of the more formal sounding name of Carter Tutti is a strange beast. The title of the album made me expect a more violent and frenetic style but the duo show that being feral is not all about bared teeth and naked aggression. Feral can be more beautiful and tender than any tamed creature or thought. The music is wild in that it is free from much outside influence. Immediately it is obvious that no matter what the name on the CD case is, this is the same animal at heart.
Coming so soon after their exquisite Vintage Burden and their Electricity Ghost outtakes collection, this is an album that Charalambides could have done without dropping. The solo work of both Tom and Christina Carter is evolving at a furious pace, releases coming monthly that both investigate and fulfil their countless ideas. If rumor is to be believed, these songs were recorded live in one take and then overdubbed with numerous effect and layers. It is in this extra work that the fault lies, leaving Likeness in the void between song and improv.
I cannot say I am a hip hop guru (hip hop is for the most part is one of those "must investigate at a later date" areas of music for me) but I know what I like and I like Northern State. Although their new album is not consistently great, the bits that shine are bright enough to obscure the weaker moments. The album is fairly formulaic but these ladies have a charm which lets them carry the songs off.
Two of ambient music's greatest strengths are conjuring up isolated locations and immense timelines. In Time Frost, Robin Storey uses them to imagine a Europe chilled by ocean currents altered by global warming. It is easy to be cynical about climate change as an artistic subject considering its status as Hollywood's pet-cause of the moment. Time Frost does something far more satisfying: it calls to mind vivid images that do not need to be interpreted through an ideology.
