 |
|
Three new episodes for your listening enjoyment. After two weeks off, we are back with three brand new episodes: three hours / 36 tunes. Episode 697 features music from Beak>, Brothertiger, Kate Carr, Gnod, Taylor Deupree, FIN, Church Andrews & Matt Davies, Ortrotasce, Bill MacKay, Celer, Kaboom Karavan, and Ida. Episode 698 boasts a lineup of tracks from Susanna, Nonpareils, KMRU, A Place To Bury Strangers, final, Coti K., Dalton Alexander, Akio Suzuki, The Shadow Ring, Filther, Aaron Dilloway, and Ghost Dubs. Episode 699 is bursting at the seams with jams from Crash Course In Science, Chrystabell and David Lynch, Machinedrum, Ekin Fil, Finlay Shakespeare, Actress, Mercury Rev, Dave Brown / Jason Kahn, øjeRum, d'Eon, Jeremy Gignoux, and Shellac. Mountain photo taken in Japan by Chris. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
|
An album presented in two distinct movements, one on each side of the LP, Olivia Block's latest work at first seems like two diametrically opposed pieces, but are thematically, if not evidently from the sound, tied to one another. Based partially on the idea of presentation, both in the form of musical performance and in the sociological perception of the self, Karren has conceptual depth, but is captivating even stripped of that fact.
The Stranger’s second album sounds very different from his 2008 release Bleaklow. Whereas that debut was doused with a sense of trekking over ancient stones and moors of Northern England, this record feels much more interior, claustrophobic and urban. The rhythms boom and snake through a threatening, shattered, dystopia like rats crawling through pipes beneath a recently evacuated building.
An entire album's worth of field recordings can be a daunting proposition. As an added instrument, they often are mixed into other albums all the time to great effect, but the idea of a full album of nothing else can be intimidating, unless it involves Chris Watson.  However, this five artist/one track performance works splendidly, emphasizing the varying elements of the genre and staying compelling throughout its nearly 18 minute duration.
A six year absence means nothing to Melt-Banana. Fetch is a minor refinement of past efforts in the band's 20 year career, unraveling over a bevy of short, aggressive songs to reveal itself as either an irreverently noisy pop album, or an intermittently poppy noise rock album, depending on your point of view. They have a knack for straddling the fence between kitsch and the vaguely obscene, and that grey area has never seemed so lived-in and comfortable as on their newest work.
Kid606 has never quite fit into a particular narrative as an artist, which I have always felt was the strongest attribute to surviving as an electronic producer in the flooded market of similarly supertalented electronic producers. Equally brooding, romantic, humored, and flat-out destructive, Miguel De Pedro makes no effort to coordinate releases, or to eschew the fleeting moods and odd moments that fill any life of a grown adult and derive inspiration from any and all of them. Happiness is another one of his "heart on sleeve" albums, full of airy downtempo compositions similar to P.S. I Love You or Resilience, which means that fans of the softer end of his catalog will probably love it and fans of hyperactive scene destroying genius nonsense (myself included) will mostly only tolerate it.
Jason Urick's second full-length for Thrill Jockey is an enigmatic and confounding one, as many elements of his laptop-based soundscapes rival the work of higher-profile kindred spirits like Tim Hecker.  However, his ingenious and unconventional production talents are somewhat undercut by a strange obsessiveness (which extends even to the title, as Urick was fixated on Marco Ferreri's 1986 film of the same name while working on the album).  That curious combination makes for a simultaneously striking and uneasy listening experience.
Mixing a fistful of covers with the band’s own original songs, this compilation shows the group at the peak of its messy adolescent period (which they fortunately never grew out of). Everything that made The Cramps one of the most perfect rock groups of all time is here; they were primitive, sexy and gloriously out of time with everyone but themselves. Their music penetrates my brain like a bolt of electricity from Dr. Frankenstein’s lab and I don’t think these songs have ever sounded any better.
The ringing of the bells and the long carrier tone that eventually emerges beneath it signals the beginning of a descent into the underworld. Two tracks on each side carry me down an icy river of song. The ingredients are minimal, but a good cook can do a lot with just a few things, and I never felt heavy or gross from a cluttered presentation or an over-saturation of fatty content. This sonic fuel burns clean. And like any good meal the nourishment derived from the listening experience strengthened my nervous system, while none-the-less tuning it to alien frequencies. Here is an example of automatic music, and the methodology produces similar unconscious material as that evoked in automatic writing. It all makes for a fascinating foray into electronica as prepared by such experienced exemplars of the craft as Drew McDowall and Tres Warren.
Beginning life as a Throbbing Gristle album back in 2007, this cover album of Nico’s Desertshore has had a tumultuous life. Its four parents went through a divorce when Genesis P-Orridge left the group in 2010 before unexpectedly losing Peter Christopherson a month later. Desertshore was Sleazy’s baby but Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have done their best to foster it and give it the chance it deserved. The end results are unsurprisingly mixed, the range of guest vocalists that have replaced P-Orridge are varied in background and skill which has not served the source material well but taken as a whole with its sister albums, The Final Report and แฝดนรก (Faet Narok), this is as good an ending to Throbbing Gristle/X-TG as possible as well as being a fitting tribute to Sleazy and his work.
The final part of the X-TG story is แฝดนรก (Faet Narok), a bonus "dark" version of Desertshore that comes as a download with the special edition of Desertshore/The Final Report. It is quite different from Desertshore even though it follows the same layout as the main album. The bonus album’s title roughly translates from Thai into "double hell," but the music is far from hellish, indeed it may be darker but it is nicely soporific and ambient. The vocals are treated and pushed into the music, becoming part of the sound rather than becoming background detail. Antony’s voice becomes a plaintive call from behind the veil, Bargeld’s a polyglot babble of madness. Even Grey and Noé sound much better here as disembodied forms than they do in the "proper" versions.
