The latest album to feature Chris Watson shows a different side to his art, harking back to his roots in Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio while staying true to his current role as a field recorder. The two pieces (one a collaboration with Marcus Davidson and the other a solo work) are both designed as performance pieces utilising Watson’s recordings of nature as the source. However, trickery and aesthetics play a role here that has been absent from his body of work for a long, long time. It sounds like you are there but "there" is not as it seems.
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!
|
Recorded and rebuilt over half a decade ago, this odd little collaboration between Wastell, a cellist who for this album plays only a tam-tam gong, and everyone's favorite Norwegian noise master on processing and composition, finally sees the light of day on this single track album. Over the course of 40 minutes, the single instrument source is bent and reshaped so much that it bears little to no resemblance to its untreated counterpart, and that’s why this work succeeds.
Marielle Jakobsons' trajectory since her stunning solo debut as Darwinbitch in 2009 has been devoted to rather curious and specific stylistic detours, dabbling in both Indian classical music (with Date Palms) and Eastern European traditional music (on Myrmyr's The Amber Sea).  This time around, however, Marielle and Agnes Szelag eschew any overtly global/traditional nods and play things comparatively straight, delivering an alternately enchanting and disturbing suite of classical-damaged drone pieces.
With his latest album as Asva, G. Stuart Dahlquist (Sunn O))), Burning Witch, Goatsnake) leaves metal behind and sets out on his own distinct path. Recent interviews tell me that he has spent the last three years investigating Josef Albers' color theory, losing musical weight on the Arvo Pärt diet, and studying the way sounds mutate and dazzle us when set in different contexts. As a result, his music has become less extroverted, more sonically inclusive, and equally more profound. Presences of Absences impresses with its density of sound and a fantastic vocal performance from Kayo Dot's Toby Driver, but its simple and patient manner is what makes it exceptional.
For her fifth album, Marissa Nadler has started to let the light into her music. The reverb pedal has been left aside and her words have been put into stark relief by new instrumentation that gives her music a more country feel. This change in style has not diluted her vision; the move feels natural and sounds like it was meant to happen at some point in her career.
For their fourth album, Michael Begg and Deryk Thomas continue the development they began on 2009’s Black Hill album; deeply nocturnal, mournful and staggeringly beautiful music which takes in everything from the slow decay of time to post-colonial regret. This is undoubtedly their most superbly made and personal album to date.
Obsessively edited and finalized over the past four years, this new side project of Whitehouse's William Bennett has certainly had its share of pre-release hype, and thankfully it exceeds the expectations I had for it. While there are a few similarities to his other work, there are also a great deal of differences to be heard, making it a distinctly different project.
Recorded live on a boat in 2008, this CD documents the first performance of Comus in over 30 years. Evidently whatever pact they made to make First Utterance had a retirement clause in it as the band sounds remarkably potent here. Had this been an archive recording from their creative zenith, I would have been impressed but bearing in mind this is the first time they had taken a stage together in over 30 years, this is phenomenal.
