The thought of solo electric guitar improv generally fills me with a mixture of extreme apprehension, apathy, and an overwhelming urge to be elsewhere, but Justin Wright seems to have found a very compelling little glacial niche for himself. White Ohms is a surprisingly hypnotic and unique album.
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Punning does not inspire my confidence. Neither do vague album titles, literary references, or super limited releases. This cassette suffers all four of those faux pas, but the music itself shows nothing but good taste. Considering my appetite for bubbly space music, I'll take it as a lesson not to judge by appearances.
Paul Taylor and Kevin Tomkins have been working together for well over 25 years, most notably as the notorious power electronics duo Sutcliffe Jugend. After a few reinventions of that project, they emerged a few years ago as simply SJ and created two albums, Between Silences and Threnody for the Victims of Ignorance that channeled the same dark atmospheres and tension, but expanded to more instrumentation than just raw synths and screamed vocals. This evolution has continued into Inertia, where guitar is the main instrument, but along with piano, clarinet, and other traditional instruments, to create dark and disorienting audio paintings.
In their third release on Thrill Jockey in barely a year, the fraternal trio continue their trek into Appalachia-damaged stoner rock that proudly wears its influences on its sleeve, yet takes their backwoods classic Sabbath through Earth sound into a realm all their own.
I don't know if music has ever been prescribed for people suffering from the vagaries of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. Perhaps it is yet to be. I don't know if this album, the debut full length release from the Austrian duo of Roman Gerold and Richard Eigner, would help with the attention aspect of the disorder (its lush textures allow the mind to drift along lazily). I am positive though, that its soothing sounds can certainly calm the frantic, hyper-driven tendencies of the modern mind.
Hans-Joachim Roedelius' stature in German experimental music is well documented in his work with Cluster, Harmonia and Brian Eno. Yet Roedelius' solo output often drifts sadly under the radar. Here Roedelius' 1979 solo effort, his second, is reissued so that once again his distinctive musical style can be seen unblemished by a surrounding group. With this freedom, Roedelius used his simple compositional approach to achieve one of his most whimsical and curious statements.
Fluxus artist Yoshi Wada has had a bit of a resurgence in the public eye lately due to a number of recent reissues of works that, in retrospect, fit alongside many of the best and most challenging minimalist works of the last forty years. Here, EM presents the fourth and final Wada release in their series with the world premiere of a 1974 performance in Syracuse, New York consisting of a single drone and four Wada-created "pipehorns" tuned to the frequencies of the room itself.
Sacros won the 1968 Chilean schools contest for "beat" groups. Five years later they recorded their only record: this Latin American country rock hymn cycle inspired in part by ancient Mayan and Andean Gods. Released September 18, 1973, seven days after a military coup installed the dictator General Augusto Pinochet, most copies were destroyed in the subsequent crackdown.
Almost disturbingly prolific, this is the latest (though that might change by the time you read this) disc from this noise/drone/metal duo. While they have been cranking the releases out in their relatively short career, they have at least been consistent with the quality of their releases, and Drenched Lands, for all its metal look and presentation, is one of the more subtle releases I have yet to hear.
