Thiswhole album is relaxing and feels warm through every listen. If theidea of being on an island or on a beach isn't appealing, then imaginesitting on a dock and fishing somewhere with nobody around—only thesound of crickets or the call of different birds all throughout theday—the water would pass slowly by and even the most pressing matterswould slip away with it.
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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After a full year off from touring and releasing new music, A Place to Bury Strangers are still going strong with their balance of sharp hooks and sonic firepower. Much like the Jesus and Mary Chain's significant leap in fidelity from Psychocandy to Darklands, this five-song EP will likely generate more discussion about its production and mixing choices than its well-constructed tunes.
I didn't know quite what to expect from a new Esplendor Geométrico album, aside from a lot of relentlessly repeating percussion loops.  However, I did know that I didn't expect Desarrollos Geométricos to be nearly as distorted and brutal as it is, as their last few studio albums have been comparatively clean and less-hostile.  In many respects, this surprise return to the fury of their youth is pretty striking and invigorating, but this Spanish duo still has yet to shake some of their more fundamental and recurring flaws.
No, it's not a much-needed tribute to the KLF/JAMMs, it's another 2xCDcollection of electronic music from friends of a musician who runs hisown label. It might not be as varied or densely packed like aTigerbeat6 comp or thematically tied as a Morr comp, but it doescontain some fine moments of both label-promoting and friend-promoting.Hrvatski's guitar and click "Lullaby" contribution reminds me all toowell that there aren't enough Hrvatski albums in the world, MikeParadinas' alias Kid Spatula serves up a dish tastier than any Mu-Ziqrelease I own, and the thoroughly entertaining collage of illegal hiphop samples, "Turntable Savage" by Hellfish. However, there are a fewvery weak spots: like the Vincent Gallo-lite contribution by Dykehouseand the obvious oversampling of Coil's "Hellraiser Themes" in thedrum-and-bass-by numbers "Defluxion" by Venetian Snares or theover-predictable, skippable Tusken Raiders track, "Pansy". In allhonesty, this collection would have probably been much more noteworthyif released in 1997. In the end I'm left affirmed by my affection forElectric Company and my interest in whoever this Joseph Nothingcharacter is. Must research deeper,...
Finally... Ant-Zen has returned to form. Or, I should say Cold MeatIndustry by proxy of Ant-Zen, since Azure Skies is a new projectcombining both males (or just one? I'm not too sure) of Sanctum andboth Durling brothers of Mental Destruction, two CMI mainstays. 
A few months after Earache released a 2-disc retrospective ("In AllLanguages"), Godflesh is back on a new label (Music For Nations/KochRecords) with a record of all-new material, a new band member(ex-Swans, ex-Prong Ted Parsons, who did live drums on the "Songs ofLove and Hate" tour is now a full time 'member') and anotherprogression in sound. While in 1999 Broadrick and co. moved to a more'electronic' dub-ish sound, with heavy use of drum machines and somesynth-work on their album "Us & Them", this new record sees themgoing back to the mostly guitar-based work they did early in theircareer. I don't know how hard it was to make this record for the band,but it is worth mentioning that bassist G.C. Green left Godflesh soonafter the release of this record. The main difference between thisrecord and the early stuff is Parsons' drumming, which gives "Hymns" amore open, spacious feel than say, the claustrophobic "Streetcleaner".Which is not to say that this is light record in any way -- if that'syour worry, don't sweat it, when the Black Sabbath-like "Voidhead" andit's outro/bridge of "why am I such a void?" or the absolutely crushing"Antihuman" crawls out of your speakers, there can be no doubt thatthis album is still heavier than almost anything else you heard thisyear. Broadrick has really made good progress vocally, and variety inhis vocals is a high point of this disc; many of the tracks have clean(but unintelligible) vocals. While guitar pyrotechnics was never whatGodflesh was primarily about, if you're a fan of heavy guitar, you'llget your money's worth on this disc.
Chris and Cosey - like their only real peers, Coil - are a band whose ideas have been mercilessly pruned from a succession of increasingly astounding albums by all sorts of different folk, whose tenacious influence is similar to the ghost in 'The Haunting of Hill House' - barely seen, but profoundly felt.
What if Tito Puente, Kraftwerk and electric Miles Davis had jammed ...what would that have sounded like? German electronic duo BerndFriedmann (aka Burnt Friedman) and Uwe Schmidt (Atom Heart, SeøorCoconut, etc.) may provide the answer with their Flanger collaboration,this being the third album in just a few years for Ninja Tune. Theirmusic is thoroughly jazz - warm, spacious, latino jazz - where everysound glows with clarity and every song comfortably glides over theeardrums, even when it's frantic. Vibes, electric and upright basses,guitar, synth, organ and some saxophone and vocoded phrases provide thepalette, framed within often complex and rapid rhythmic layers. It's aninternational affair all around with many live players recorded inSantiago, Copenhagen and Cologne, some track titles in French, Spanishand German, and the album title inspired by an essay by British sci-fiauthor J. G. Ballard. Uwe and Burnt seem to enjoy obscuring the linebetween what is programmed and what is 'played', only revealing thedigital enhancements and editing here and there, when they choose to.Not that it really matters mind you. The all important question is'does it have soul?' and the answer is a resounding 'yes'. It's anotherstellar 46 and 1/2 minutes worth of Flanger, more focused than ever.
I'll be the first to say I'm not that big of a fan of Venetian Snares.He seems to be praised and lauded from every corner of the earth as agreat innovator and musician, but most of his stuff bores the crap outof me. For the most part, he seems to be "experimental forexperimentality's sake," with a sort of anti-rhythmic edict and anI-must-change-time-signatures-every-twelve-seconds attitude. That getsreally annoying, in my opinion, and it's probably the biggest problemwith this latest album, but nonetheless I like it quite a bit.
Two years in the making, Michael Gira (SWANS, The Angels of Light) andDan Matz (Windsor for the Derby, The Birdwatcher) casually created andrecorded a dozen songs together in the relaxed setting of Matz's homes.Both men are simply credited with various instruments and vocals (plusengineering by Matz) and generally alternate lead vocals track to tracksave for a lone instrumental. The instrumentation is actually quiteextensive, approaching the ornate fleshing out of an Angels album:acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, organ, piano, synth,drums/percussion, drum machine, harmonica, banjo, a few samples andsome guitar by James Plotkin and background vocals by Anna Neighbor. Ifyou're coming to this disc via Gira and/or Matz's other endeavors, youwon't be surprised but will probably be as pleased with the results asI am. These are 'simple', spontaneous 'pop' songs as affected byAmericana as they are the avant-garde. And the pair's voices, poetryand basic song writing skills and styles complement one another well.The sound and feel is mostly slow and subdued, the mood in varyingdegrees of what I like to call 'uplifting melancholy'. Brief commentson a handful of tracks: "Pacing the Locks" beautifully mourns thepassing of time, "Is/Was" becomes soaked in shimmering synth bath andbell tones, "Lines" is pretty pop steeped in blue grass roots, "BrownEyes" and "Waiting Beside Viragio" are sparse, seemingly solo lovesongs, "Forcing Mary" will nod your head with driving guitar stabs and"Sunflower" is the peculiar instrumental, a droning hum with sprinklesof piano, guitar and whistling. Though I'm not (yet) as taken with"What We Did" start to finish as I am The Angels of Light's "NewMother" and "How I Loved You", I'm still more than happy with what theydid. Gira is currently on tour with The Angels of Light in NorthAmerica through mid December.
