While Low are still known best for their basic three instrument arrangements, they have continuously been pushing their studio recordings to places beyond the signature sound and fan expectation. With Drums and Guns, they may have gone a bit too far. As much as I love Low and consider them one of the best rock music songwriting entities ever, no matter how much I listen to this album, I can't connect with it as a whole as much as I want to.
Give us an hour, we'll give you music to remember. This week we bring you an episode with brand new music from Softcult, Jim Rafferty, karen vogt, Ex-Easter Island Head, Jon Collin, James Devane, Garth Erasmus, Gary Wilson, and K. Freund, plus some music from the archives from Goldblum, Rachel Goswell, Roy Montgomery. Rubber ducks and a live duck photo from Matthew in the UK. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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VP Records, the best known reggae label operating in the United States today, has gone above and beyond the call of duty with these four lovingly prepared double-disc collections of King Jammy's legendary 1980s dancehall productions. An extraordinary undertaking, this series branches off from and unequivocally surpasses last year's primer King At The Controls with an unhealthy level of meticulousness.
Hot on the heels of their highly praised full-length, Deerhunter drops this new set of stunning pop songs. Concise and catchy, these four tracks reveal remarkable development from their previous outing, further strengthening their growing reputation.
While some of this album is fun, there is not enough fun to go around. Many of the songs are boring, trying to counter a lack of imagination with volume. Listening to this album does get my foot tapping but so do most bar room blues and covers bands. There is nothing to engage with; I am not yearning for anything particularly intellectual but something more than rehashing the same blues scales and vocal histrionics would be nice.
I love music that forms images in my mind because the transformation from one medium to the next seems so mysterious to me. That a musician can turn sound into the most vivid photograph ever without defaulting to the ease of field recordings seems a metaphysical conundrum, but some are quite good at it and others are veritable masters of the process. Tim Hecker may be the finest sonic photographer around, the rerelease of Radio Amor being further evidence for this claim.
The three piece improv group return with their second album which is more of the same structureless music that brings to mind John Cage's prepared piano works if they were disarranged for a free jazz ensemble. This album is interesting (in a beard stroking kind of way) but the group does not challenge the listener enough for all its pretenses. The players hold themselves back more often than is necessary; the power of their music is reduced greatly as a result.
Chemism is the "mutual attraction, interpenetration, and neutralisation of independent individuals which unite to form a whole". Strangely though, the collaborations here tend not to come across as collegial, not through any enforcement or dictates by the duo, but through the strength of the chemistry between this collective's core. Black Sun Productions may have gathered a cast of like-minded souls to shape this album, but this still feels like the work is led by the distinctly European vision of the single mind of Massimo and Pierce. In this way, it seems like an ideal description of their working process.
This debut from Doueh and his group is outstanding. His playing is electric in all senses of the word; he effortlessly channels all the power of a sandstorm onto the six strings of his guitar. The recording quality may be patchy but the power of the music still comes through strong. The celebratory nature of the music combined with the skill of the players make this vinyl only release a joy to listen to.
The old saying about books and covers come to mind when I look at the sleeve of this album. Instead of austere, minimalist electronica; Per Henrik Svalastog serves up some gorgeously vibrant electronic(ish) music that uses the warm tones of traditional Norwegian instruments where normally glitches and icy synthesisers would be the first port of call. Solidly produced and performed, Woodwork is a marvelous album well worth investigating.
