Peter Broderick joins the cast of young contemporary multi-instrumentalists who create evocative classically-tinged minimal music with his debut full-length on Type. Delivered is score music for any day.
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Nina Kernicke is not a composer concerned with bombast. Her already developed (and superb) atmospheres and sinuous melodies are joined on her first full-length by a newly acquired sense of patience and interconnectedness. One song at a time, Kernicke assembles a thriller of a record that triumphs because of its unhurried development and thickly amassed tension.
Following last year's interstellar transmissions as part of the collaborative duo Echospace, the venerated American techno producer touches down on Planet Earth, immersing himself in eerily lush soundscapes inspired by cityscapes and punctuated by steady rhythms. Simultaneously expansive and claustrophobic, his latest captures the duality of the modern metropolis and conveys its essence over ten absolutely gorgeous compositions.
Whoever decided not to run a limited reissue of this album on 8-Track should be flogged to death by hot chicks in hot pants using hot fuzzy dice. Jade Stone's 1977 self-release looks like it was born in a bargain bin but sounds well weird. It's hard to decide if it's a minor classic or obnoxious nonsense.
Besides running the prolific Crouton label, Jason Mueller has also been extremely busy working on his own music this year (this is his eighth release on Table of the Elements this year, that says quite a bit!). This collaborative release with Jason Kahn shows both artists heavily affecting their percussion far beyond what it originally sounded like, in addition to a bit of cassette tape and analog synth.
Given that the band has maintained a staunchly absurdist and secretive presence online, matched with the typically useless but nonetheless entertaining blurb on the Load Records website, it's hard to know anything about these guys other than a: they obviously have a sense of humor and b: they also love loud noisy rhythms.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that had not Death In June come along way back in the '80s, then today's martial/neo-folk scene would never have existed, spawning as it has numerous similar-sounding acts since that time; the same could probably be said of Boyd Rice in the 'industrial' scene, both as himself and NON. Plowing much the same furrow then it was perhaps inevitable that these two would eventually collaborate and indeed this they did back in 1996 along with John Murphy and others, recording as Scorpion Wind—and back then this album was released with the title Heaven Sent. Now, 12 years later, NERUS, the American division of the New European Recordings label, has seen fit to re-issue a remastered and renamed version of the album.
As part of Tzadik's ongoing Composer series, this album highlights the many sides to Maja Ratkje's approach to sound. Ranging from her vocal work to her manipulation of recorded sound and all the way up (or down depending on your views) to her writing for other musicians. The versatility and flair she employs throughout this album, and indeed her career, is staggering. Even within a piece she shows more originality than many composers in a lifetime.
The span of this Irish composer's recorded works encompasses 30 odd years, having released something on the order of 25 albums (including an LP, Rapid Eye Movements, on Steven Stapleton's United Dairies in 1981), in addition to creating scores of commissioned works for theater (Doyle is a co-founder, along with Olwen Fouere, of the Operating Theatre group) and others. The Ninth Set is the third and final volume in his major work Passades, which Doyle worked on between the years 2002 and 2007, composed as an accompaniment to a wordless Operating Theatre production with the music performing the role of the text.
