Silbur Records is reissuing some remastered versions of old Lycia records. I don't think I would have had the taste for them in the mid '90s, and the intervening decade and extra knob-twiddling hasn't changed that.
Look up Music for gazing upwards brought to you by Meat Beat Manifesto & scott crow, +/-, Aurora Borealis, The Veldt, Not Waving & Romance, W.A.T., The Handover, Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri, Mulatu Astatke, Paul St. Hilaire & René Löwe, Songs: Ohia, and Shellac. Aurora Borealis image from California by Steve. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
|
You can either be wowed by the fact that this is his first piano/vocal LP in a series of 54 LPs, or by the fact that this is one of the outstanding releases of the year; this should be a compulsory listen either way. It’s unfortunate that the Jandek myth has swollen to such a ridiculous size that it’s coming between people wanting to hear the music. Those cranky elitist fucks that obsess over their reclusive prodigious artist are going to shit the bed over this double CD.
Bibio's second release on Mush is a looped daydream of the English and Welsh countryside. It is a fluid affair with acoustic guitar, manipulated field recording, sparingly used fipple flutes and piano, tiny scraps of found sound, and—in a new departure for him—singing. As pleasingly blurred as a half-developed photograph or a landscape painting smudged by spots of rain, I only wish the elements of treatment and decay went further.
For all of The Ties That Blind I may as well be listening to any other one of a number of Neurosis clones that have emerged in the last five years. Even Neurosis sound jaded playing in the chin-stroking style they pioneered, so when a band like Mouth of the Architect trot out the same formula it gets to be a pain. The band play well but I question the necessity of another album that is too familiar the first time I hear it.
The new album by Alexander Tucker is pure bliss. I had high expectations of this release and they have been more than met. Taking his droning, folk improvisations further than before, Furrowed Brow is his best work yet. In the short time I’ve had this disc I’ve found it impossible to stop listening.
Most of the Arthur Russell material (re)issued by Audika Records so far has been in the idiosyncratic chamber-pop mold (World of Echo and Calling Out of Context), with the recent First Thought Best Thought collecting the artist's orchestral works. In contrast, this CD contains material much closer in style to the "Mutant Disco" of Russell's classic Sleeping Bag 12" sides, packaging never-before-released avant-dance tracks alongside a DFA remix and a scattering of rare material.
His most relevant work in what seems like ages, Gerald Simpson's latest matches the feverish vitality of the early acid house era without resorting to Vibertian schtick or pure retro reproduction.
The latest album by Bardo Pond is a corker. Many of the pieces on Ticket Crystals combine floaty and sparse playing with heavy concrete dirges. Mostly this formula pays off in spades and only rarely does the album lapse into mediocrity. Some great songs on this CD make the lesser ones seem worse than they really are, overall even mediocre Bardo Pond is still worth listening to.
This tour-only 3" CD is a postscript to Matmos' recent The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast, a masterpiece of audio portraiture that payed homage to queer heroes. This three-song EP continues the theme, taking as its subject the mathematician, philosopher, cryptographer and homosexual martyr Alan Turing, and featuring the vocals of David Tibet as well as sounds sourced from a functioning Enigma Machine.
