Considering this new album has arrived so soon after David Tibet had finished his Aleph trilogy, it is not a shock to find that it essentially continues from where Baalstorm, Sing Omega left off. However, where Baalstorm, Sing Omega was vibrant and colorful like a decadent religious feast bathed in sunlight, Honeysuckle Æons is a night album; the yawn of a night sky speckled with stars and celestial bodies. The rock excess has dissipated and in its place Tibet returns to the introspective poet last encountered on Soft Black Stars and Sleep Has His House.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
|
While the term electroclash came in and out of style almost instantaneously, only a small number of the groups lumped together under that umbrella had the ability to continue on past one or two albums. Ladytron have since proven their ability to create brilliant hooks and infectious songs (as evidenced on this collection) long after many of their contemporaries of 1999 and 2000 dissolved.
There have been few albums that I remember waiting so impatiently for. Several years have gone by since Clodagh Simonds' first transmission under the Fovea Hex umbrella and finally a full length has appeared. Continuing on from an exceptional string of EPs and singles, Here is Where We Used to Sing finds Simonds and her ever shifting group exploring different aspects of their songwriting process. With more focused lyrics and more defined melodies, their music has solidified and began to sprout sharp, beautiful forms like crystals grown in a petri dish: equally perfect and fragile.
SSLEEPERHOLD's José Cota initially gained attention as part of the now dissolved Medio Mutante, but here he is working strictly solo. Still utilizing a largely synth based template, he touches upon abrasive late 1980s industrial, laconic soundtrack-like ambience, and a bit of everything between in these eight instrumental songs.
Most of my familiarity with Bullock’s work involves his compositions for contrabass, performed in his own distinctive style with the results being anything but conventional. On this LP, however, he puts the emphasis on modular synthesizers and electronics, with the bass and field recordings appearing on half of the album and even then through heavy processing. The result is a unique pair of works that both show his strength in composition as well as improvisation.
The large majority of Brooklyn based Zs' output consists of their work as a sextet—a varied body of work focused around rhythmic intensity and textures based on duality. To reexamine the group's early recordings is to make a sonic map of the changing attitudes of New York new music and how the talent in the area learned to hybridize their surroundings and their musical skills. In that sense, Zs are the New York avant-garde personified; their role as a bridge between loft bands and chamber musicians, lo-fi and "high art" represents a lot of the essential artistic ideologies in 21st century New York.
After a terrific debut EP in 2010, Bell Gardens finally return with a full album of mostly new music. As usual, the musical arrangements are lush and saturated with beauty as Brian McBride and Kenneth James Gibson try to recreate the moods and sounds of the golden era of pop studio recordings without using the typical computer-based short cuts and technological workarounds that have become de rigour for modern studio work. The end result is a triumph of song writing, musicianship and integrity, highlighting just how good humble songs can be without the need for following trends or to be striving to be the next big thing.
My opinion of Edward Ka-Spel has undergone a dramatic overhaul over the last few years, as the last several albums that I have heard have all floored me with at least one song (often more).  While he has been admirably devoted to making weird, uncompromising psychedelia for more than 30 years, he seems to be making some of the best and most disturbing music of his career right now (as evidenced here).  That is not to say that he has become dramatically less indulgent or difficult (unlikely to ever occur), but the high points of Ghost Logik are truly mesmerizing, haunting, and unique.
The worlds of dance and experimental guitar music rarely intersect (for good reason, probably), but the artistic director of Australia's Chunky Move company had a wild enough imagination to bring Ambarchi and abstract electronics maniac Robin Fox together to compose this soundtrack.  In many ways, that gamble paid off handsomely, as Connected is surprisingly inventive, challenging, and divergent (and no doubt inspired some very unusual choreography).  As a purely audio experience, however, it is pretty tame and comparatively characterless by either artist's normal standards.
