As a member of Minamo, Keiichi Sugimoto is no stranger to weaving tapestries of hushed sounds that are as familiar as they are alien. On this album he expands his approach to include more use of accidental rhythms and erratic jittering sounds, focusing not just on tones, but rhythms and textures as well.
It's another weekend of multiple podcast episodes of brand new music and gems from the vaults. Episode 694 features Belong, Annelies Monseré, People Like Us, Chihei Hatakeyama & Shun Ishiwaka, Causa Sui, Lee Underwood, The The, Dadadi, Nový Svět, Shuttle358, Keiji Haino, and Peter Broderick & Ensemble 0. Episode 695 has Miki Berenyi Trio, Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance, Olivier Cong, France Jobin & Yamil Rezc, The Cat's Miaow, Daniel Lentz, Efterklang, Mick Harvey, Lightheaded, Internazionale, Dettinger, and Jóhann Jóhannsson. Art table in Hammond, Indiana photo by Hilary. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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This is a case in which I went into listening to the album with some trepidation. While I’m no stranger to extremely conceptual works, knowing that this was based upon heavily programmed graphic piano scores, and that also that it included a link to a downloadable "listener's guide," I was concerned it was going to be a matter of concept over enjoyment. Thankfully, that wasn't an issue at all.
This Will Destroy You's self-titled debut was a fantastic and satisfying collage of familiar sounds, but it didn't prepare me for the depth of their latest LP. While other instrumental rock bands seem to be writing shorter, more compact songs, TWDY is now airing it out in grandiose fashion.
The flood of unreleased Celer material seems to have subsided a bit in recent months, but a steady posthumous trickle of Dani Baquet-Long's solo recordings has now appeared in its wake.  To my ears, the aesthetic difference between Celer's drifting drone and Chubby Wolf is negligible at best, but Turkey Decoy reaffirms my belief that most of the best Celer-related material is reserved for their vinyl releases (of which this is one).  This easily stands among Dani's finest albums.
By my count, Rutger Zuydervelt has logged nearly 100 releases since Machinefabriek's inception in 2004, making it extremely easy for his best work to get missed or overlooked.  Fortunately, this one managed to catch my attention, as Davis's skwonking contrabass clarinet may very well be the perfect foil for Rutger's somber drones and crackles.  The likable first half of this improvised collaboration was recorded back when the duo first met in 2009 and has already been issued once as a limited 3" CDr, but the truly excellent second half came together more recently and makes its first appearance here.
By its very nature D.o.A. is probably the messiest and least cohesive of the TG catalog. Assembled from the same mix of live and studio performance recordings that made up Second Annual Report, there is just a greater amount of stylistic shifts here compared to its predecessor.  It was followed by 20 Jazz Funk Greats, which constitutes the first true "album" from TG. That disjointedness though is what always drew me into this album, making it among my favorites they ever recorded.
Despite running a serious reissue campaign for Cluster and related releases, I am surprised that Bureau B have only come around to reissuing the first Cluster LP now. Featuring the core duo of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Jochim Roedelius, their debut also features the legendary Conny Plank both as a performer and as producer. This is the definitive reissue, it restores the original running order of the album and, best of all, it still sounds exceptional.
