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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.

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Piano Magic, "Disaffected"

Sunday, 15 May 2005

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Music

Fortunately, the title of Piano Magic's new album is not indicative of the music. There is a certain coldness and calculation to Glen Johnson's ensemble but it does not quite approach disaffection. Part of the album's chill is due to the explicit motif of ghosts and spectral images which cuts across both the music and the liner notes.

Robert Lippok & Barbara Morgenstern, "Tesri"

Sunday, 15 May 2005

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Music

With any collaboration, searching for that elusive balance betweenrespective styles doesn't necessarily yield fantastic results, with thepitfalls of compromise and dominance playing significant roles in thesongwriting process. Many times, the sound of one musician will drownout the voice of another.

MERZBOW, "RATTUS RATTUS"

Sunday, 15 May 2005

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Music

Everyone pretty much knows by now that it's pretty useless to review anew Merzbow album. Merzbow is Merzbow, and he'll always be Merzbow, andhe "does" Merzbow better than all of the Merzbow copyists out there,and it will probably always be that way. Aside from a few minorquibbles over whether digital-era Merzbow is better or worse than theoriginal analog Merzbow, there really isn't a whole lot of criticaldivision over Merzbow's output.

Drums of Death

Sunday, 08 May 2005

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Music

Drums of Death winds up as a suprisingly fun amalgam of styles and sounds that manages to overcome the threat of novelty.

Autechre, "Untilted"

Sunday, 08 May 2005

Jim Siegel

Music

Thankfully Autechre have slowed down the rate of their output to onealbum every two years, with less EP releases in between. This hashelped allow them to create albums with only minor adjustments to aformula that has made them one of the best acts making electronicmusic. Untiltedis heavy on fractured rhythms and has very little of the whirlingambient sounds that featured prominently on some of their previousreleases.

Colin Potter & Paul Bradley, "Live"

Sunday, 08 May 2005

Lucas Schleicher

Music

There is now a live document of this duo that actually rivals theirstudio output. Two live recordings from October and November of 2004compose this record; both have the timeless feel that Potter andBradley's music almost always has, but now the live environment istransformative, cohesive, and wholly coherent.

MAJOR STARS, "4"

Sunday, 08 May 2005

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Music

Major Stars are Boston's best-kept secret, as anyone who has witnessedtheir live performances over the years can certainly attest. By day,under the auspices of their basement record shop Twisted Village—trulya Boston institution—Wayne and Kate are purveyors of psychedelic rockand hard-to-find underground sounds from around the world.

Bohren & der Club of Gore, "Geisterfaust"

Sunday, 08 May 2005

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Music

Nothing can stop this band from forcing me to participate in the most sinister of feelings. They're soaked in evil, sex, and those lonely and terrifying sensations that only open, dead spaces can convey. Bohren und der Club of Gore associate themselves with doom metal via their own website, were formally a self-described "hardcore" metal act, have all the mystery and intrigue of the best David Lynch films, and yet none of these descriptions get to the core of this quartet's sound.

Mitchell Akiyama, "Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep"

Sunday, 08 May 2005

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Music

I wrote about Akiyama's last record, describing him as a kind ofaccidental hero of the instrumental glitch musicians. His newerrecordings, alone or with Desormais, channel the same tugging, emotivebaggage and fragile tension as other real-time deconstructionists(clearest touchstone: Christian Fennesz), but Akiyama's are mostcomplex, less dependenton a single instrument or one's traditional referents.

"Drums of Death"

Sunday, 08 May 2005

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Music

I was skeptical about the potential clusterfuck of a record featuringDJ Spooky, Dave Lombardo (from Slayer), and Jack Dangers, but thepresence of two of my favorite MCs of all time, Chuck D and Dälek,pushed me over the edge into "I've got to at least hear this"territory.