After the two most recent Jesu works had returned to the heavy guitar sound the project began with, Justin Broadrick saw fit to separate that project into two distinct entities: Jesu for heavy guitar music, and Pale Sketcher (named for the Pale Sketches compilation) for the more ambient and electronic pop sounds. Considering that the two most electronic Jesu releases are among my favorites from that band (the split with Envy and Why Are We Not Perfect), I had high hopes for this project. After hearing it, I think there's a lot of potential with Pale Sketcher, though I don't know if this album demonstrates that inherently.
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With a few exceptions, most of Mehdi Ameziane's recording career can be broken down into two simple categories: "great albums" and "albums that would have been great if they had been pared down a bit." Then Fell the Ashes... happily falls quite squarely in the former category. There is definitely some evidence here that Mehdi is continuing to evolve and improve, but the more important thing is that this is one of the most perfect distillations of everything that makes TwinSisterMoon so unique and wonderful. This is one of my favorite albums of 2010.
Apparently the penultimate installment in the long-running series of compilations from Sub Rosa, this volume continues the tradition of putting some of the bigger names (Z'ev, Stephen O’Malley) with some newer and up and coming artists (Torturing Nurse, Robert Piotrowicz), but this time with a seemingly stronger bent towards contemporary "noise," which is a good thing.
The third in a series of three releases (completing the arc that began with Retreat and Return, both released simultaneously last year), this piece also formed the basis of Eleh’s one and only live performance earlier this year at Mutek. Diverting from the usual pursuit of pure tone, Repose sees Eleh adopting a grittier, grainier palette of sound in addition to those ethereal sound waves which dominate the rest of the releases. This is a bewitching but regrettably short experiment with positive results.
The combination of Carsten Nicolai’s Alva Noto persona and Blixa Bargeld has been established as a live entity and the videos that have surfaced online have been tantalizing. This first official output by the duo has finally landed and this EP lives up to all my expectations. Across the two sides of this 12", Nicolai and Bargeld cover huge amounts of ground in a short space of time. From typical Raster-Noton electronics to songs about moles (the digging mammals rather than skin tags), this is as surprising as it is brilliant.
In 1991 three exceptionally creative and influential records were dropped on a mostly deaf audience. It took many years for people to catch up with Talk Talk's Laughing Stock and Slint's Spiderland, and by then numerous other bands had already borrowed their ideas and built new ones upon them. Unfortunately, Swans' White Light from the Mouth of Infinity is still waiting for people to catch up. It completes the trajectory that was begun with Children of God and it perfects the ideas that were only half-realized on The Burning World. More than an influential record, it is arguably Swans' finest and most concise accomplishment to date.
Close on the heels of last year's Caress, Redact, the latest work from Public Speaking’s Jason Anthony Harris (along with some friends) is an even further refinement of his deconstruction of soulful pop and R&B sounds. With equal measures vocals, piano, found sounds, and synth noises, he shapes these disparate elements into catchy songs, albeit within a depressing and bleak context.
Easily the most maligned release in Swans' discography, there is a definite awkwardness to it, no doubt in part to major label pressures and the heavy hand of Bill Laswell on the production. However, listening to the material in context, it does show the evolution of the band's sound, even with its obtuseness. While it does have a certain "sore thumb" quality to it, it is a necessary evolutionary step for the band that’s flawed, and a flawed Swans album is better than most other bands at their best.
This is the kind of music that makes my brain feel like it is chewing itself. The five short works here act as a kind of clearing house for my mind; listening enforces defragmentation. These works act like miniature vacuum cleaners, erasing all the info-garbage that tends to accumulate after a few uninterrupted hours of total media immersion. Visceral and cacophonous it reminds me I have a body. Listening to noise is healthy.
