After years of living as a rumour, Mike Patton has finally unleashed his Peeping Tom project. Firmly rooted in hip hop and overcrowded with special guests, the first of two planned albums is disappointingly average. The album has its peaks and troughs; granted the highs are high indeed but too much of the disc is kooky hip hop by numbers.
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Last fall, when I was listening to the Headlights’ EP persistently, I saw that they were playing a bunch of shows in the Boston area. I didn’t make it to any of them. This was part laziness and part befuddlement. My irrationality aside, I am kicking myself presently because Headlights’ full-length Kill Them With Kindness explains how an unassuming band which plays obscure shows can conjure a remarkable album’s worth of pleasant indie-pop rockers and ballads, the perfect arrangement for a any high school or basement show despite its numbers and ages.
This CD was originally issued on the Point Music label in 1994 to little fanfare, and it quickly went out of print. It was the first posthumous release of the work of Arthur Russell, who died of AIDS in 1992, but significantly pre-figured the resurgence of interest in the artist a decade later. To meet the new demand, it has now been reissued by Philip Glass' Orange Mountain Music label, in an edition nearly identical to the 1992 release. It easily ranks among Russell's best releases, filled with memorable, idiosyncratic songs drawn from the Russell's vast private tape archives.
Although some might have called Tietchens’ United Dairies release, Formen Letzer Hausmusik, his first industrial release, this EG title, eighth in the reissue series, is truest to the form.
Emptiness is the primary influence guiding the sounds of this record. A tangible calm pierces each moment, lifting the music from the physical world and placing it firmly in the unreal. Aidan Baker's subject is dreams and it's remote, dream-like music he's producing on these two discs.
Those lucky enough to have witnessed Burning Star Core in solo form will expect more than just a single idea bled into 40 minutes. This release captures three different 2004 shows that give an excellent example of the styles that C Spencer Yeh can rip, both alone and as a team player. It never does any harm to get an all-star cast either.
All the bands and side projects in the yoyo oyoy collective—including Fjernsyn Fjernsyn, Blob Back Farenheit and Kirsten Ketsjer: The Rock Band—contain one or more of Slütspürt's members. This brilliant EP on Ninth World Music demonstrates a fierce improvisation associated with sometime labelmates Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, all-too-fleeting echoes of 1979 Manchester/Cleveland, and a brief prettiness that could hide in plain sight on the Songs of Green Pheasant record.
A late-period Force Tracks artist aids in resuscitating this once feared lost patient, though like many stroke or heart attack survivors, life after near death is never quite the same.
CocoRosie has spread its seed and this is the result. This trio of musicians try to separate themselves from their obvious influences, but fail at doing so just before putting me to sleep. It's an effort staying awake from beginning to end and not because it's a relaxing listen.
