Lou Reed's original release of Metal Machine Music had gathered an awful lot of mythology by the time I got around to hearing it. However, my tolerance for noise already well developed thanks to more modern noise artists, the impact this album had on me was negligible. I appreciated the power of the statement but the actual musical content was underwhelming. Since my first encounter with it, I have grown to enjoy it more, no longer looking for a sensory overload or volume one-upmanship. Instead I accept it as a harsh sonic soundscape, something to pick apart rather than endure. As such, when I initially read about Zeitkratzer's arrangement of Metal Machine Music, my interest was piqued to say the least, how would "ordinary" musicians play Reed's noise?
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This ferocious triptych from the esteemed duo of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff lacks that gauzy, narcotic quality of Jesu's increasingly popular heady metal shoegaze, though it more than compensates by being imperiously steeped in consummately sepulchral aesthetics.
As members of Zoviet France, Mark Spybey and Robin Storey helped expand ambient music from new-age window dressing to something more dark and compelling. Starting almost 29 years ago, they were among the first artists to fuse the caustic sounds and spartan imagery of Industrial Music with dreamy atmospherics and indigenous insturmentation. This album, their second as Reformed Faction, encompasses the varied sounds and techniques in its members' formidable back catalogue.
Formication are the Nottingham based duo of Alec Bowman and Kingsley Ravenscroft who have recorded for Lumberton Trading Company (Thighpaulsandra, Experimental Audio Research). My previous experience of their music tells me the ideal way to submerge myself in their latest mini-album is through headphones, by candle light with an ice cold Guinness in hand.
Sightings sound like they come from another galaxy: their trashed metallic gutter rock has been giving earthlings tinnitus for a few years now. I expect it's how Chrome would sound to my Grandma. Their latest on Providence's Load is a little different. Something's changed.
Sharp-edged yet danceable, Pylon's 1980 debut was among the first to bring attention to the diverse musical hotbed of Athens, Georgia, and yet somehow it slipped through the cracks when the world went digital. Thankfully this egregious oversight has been corrected and released back upon the unwary world sounding better than ever.
Between playing in Wolf Parade, Frog Eyes, and Swan Lake, Spencer Krug has managed to come up with another full-length from the band he originally started as a bedroom project, Sunset Rubdown. Somehow it manages to be both catchy and immediate even though its songs are longer and more complex than the usual pop fare.
Leave it to Editions Mego to release something that is so unclearly either random electronic improvisations or a highly structured piece of experimentation. But whatever it is, Altars of Science is a captivating piece of computer wizardry that is surely even more fascinating in the included 5.1 surround sound mix.
Those recordings that can successfully create visual atmosphere as well as an audio one are rare, but here is one that conveys, through field recordings, vintage electronics, and digital processing, a sense of cold and isolation, yet familiarity at the same time.
One of two Pollard solo albums released on the same day, this one contains jagged rock fragments, choppy rhythms, and snippets of alien transmissions. It's the more immediate and visceral of the two, with a huge sound and great performances, and it's easily one of the best rock albums I've heard from Pollard-or anyone, for that matter-in a long time.
