Despite technical issues and 1 set tragically cut short, Michael Gira's
The Angels of Light shined in Austin and Oklahoma City. Virgil Shaw
opened with a rocked out set of pleasant folk/blue grass/country-ish
tunes. Gira, looking smart as usual in his fedora, gray dress jacket
and slacks and cowboy boots, sang and played a black Guild acoustic
electric guitar. Surrounding him were solid multi-instrumentalists Thor
Harris, Larry Mullins and Dana Schechter on drums, percussion, vibes,
piano, hammer dulcimer, autoharp, bass guitar, keyboard, melodica,
organ and backing vocals. The sets are about an hour and a half worth
of new songs and ones from "How I Loved You", Gira's "Solo/Acoustic" CD
and a couple of SWANS reworkings: Evangeline, What Will Come (new),
Nations (new), My Suicide, All Souls' Rising, New York Girls, The Rose
of Los Angeles (new), What You Were, On The Mountain, Goddamn the Sun,
Failure and Two Women. The new songs are fantatic, especially the
memorable mounting groove of "Nations" and the violent orgasm of "All
Souls' Rising". Gira did not disappoint, especially in OKC when he
became the possessed man I've become accustomed to witnessing: eyes
closed, head bobbing around and mouth moving as though he's chewing an
imaginary cud, yelling off mike, reeling in his stool and strumming
hand slamming the guitar to the point of drawing blood. The tour swings
back through the Midwest and ends in NYC on the 20th. See
younggodrecords.com for dates and more info.
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Anticipated and found were: the visions of beauty in the blindness ofchaos, the sound of confusion to adore, the overlapping of panic intosensuality, and the questioning angels in the shadows. The setting - asubterrenean sunset still from Orphee. So if it's good enough forCocteau then it's good enough for me - listless beauty and all that.What I hadn't anticipated was to find that Cyclobe have embraced evenfurther the peripheral vapour-trails left by Luminous Darkness, theirdebut, and created a stunning and completely unique take on what I callectoplasmic music: it feels like the sounds are leaking out of thespeakers and seeping into the listeners ear-drums. It has taken form,if that's the right expression, and unfolds over the seven tracks of'The Visitors'. Or it could also be the little specks of chaos onlyhitherto peeked at in Sun Ra moog solos, LSD-period Coil, earlyThrowing Muses and The Fall.
On first listen to Dntel's new album, you want to swear that it'sEuropean; yet another brilliant out-of-nowhere young German makingbeautifully skittery electronica on their laptop. But the first of manysurprises on this breathtaking record is that it's a product of LosAngeles native Jimmy Tamborello, with the magical help of a whole slewof friends.
I will never forget the night of December 14th, 1998. It was a Mondayevening downstairs at the Middle East in Cambridge. An unusually cold,desolate scene from what is typically packed and overbearingly hot. Theattendees got to sit down on chairs for a change and witness a largescreen with incredible black and white images of the trecherous seasoff the coast of the Aleutian Islands (Alaska). The film was 'DutchHarbor' and the Boxhead Ensemble were improvising the soundtrack as wewatched. Three years and three album releases have passed and theensemble has finally released something that doesn't have anything todo with 'Dutch Harbor', but I can still feel the chill. I stepped inthe car earlier this week late at night with the crisp, cold NewEngland air numbing my face. As I popped the disc on, everythingclicked into place. The dark drive wasn't so bad, there was nobody elsein the car and nothing to say but just sit and listen, watching mybreath in front of me, waiting for the heater to kick in. The recordingopens with a short violin, drum, acoustic guitar and background noiseintro, then moves onto a second track with familiar sparse guitar,strings and drums. It's hard not to sound like the Dirty Three whenboth Jim White and Mick Turner are involved, despite them beingcredited on the 'secondary' list of ensemble members. Boxhead Ensemblehas always been loose enough to sound improvisational, but collectedenough to sound composed. Bit by bit, other instruments are introducedto the mix, including double bass and more bowed strings. Over thecourse of the next few songs, the focus moves from empty andalone-sounding bits to a much warmer sound. Drones, chimes and basssounds eventually fill the space by the time the car heater has kickedin. By the time the sixth piece, the gorgeous "Requiem" comes on, thedrummer and guitarists have been silenced and the strings havecompletely taken over. Gentle guitar and drums return on the next tuneand an elegant interplay continues through the end of the disc. Thefeel returns to the earlier sense of chilly solitude, but at thispoint, the sound is majesitc enough to be an aural impression of agorgeous snow-capped Vermont mountain. It ends with a short epilogue,the instruments mimicing a bitter, cold wind blowing. Although they maynot have done it to somebody else's movie -this- time, the ensemble hasonce again created an appropriate soundtrack for the cold, outdoorexperiences of the northern hemisphere in the wintertime.
Chris Dooks, the musician behind Bovine Life, understands thatpost-techno electronic music need not be a dour affair with art-galleryjustification. His debut full-length CD is thoroughly fun andenjoyable, proudly home-made and full of inspired musical ideas, whilesitting within that strange gray area between dancable electronica andcontemporary computer music. One-finger melodies and concisecompositions (averaging two and a half minutes long) dominate thealbum, which is a nice touch. That Dooks uses very few elements in eachsong is to his benefit as well; he establishes an open and engagingatmosphere that persists even on the darker, more abstract pieces. Themost interesting aspect of "Social Electrics" is the home-made natureof the recordings. The album makes remarkable and inventive use of thetechnical limitations of DIY home recording; a Dr. Sample makes itspresence known many times, as does the factory pre-set hand-clapkeyboard sound, the telltale rise-and-fall swoosh of a ring modulator,and the unmistakable stutter of computer time-stretching. Evidence ofhuman interaction with the sound-producing materials is presentthroughout in the form of manually turned knobs and punched keys, quitethe antithesis to the faceless and flawless sheen of Raster-Music orMille Plateaux. I suppose it's similar to the raw sound of DATPolitics, so a fan of one artist would do well to check out the other.Pretty damn fun stuff.
Peaceful, serene, warm and endearing. I wonder if there's a farm where Thomas Morr harvests all the prettiest electronic music composers. Although Schnauss' album is actually released from City Centre Offices, Morr Music (you remember, that Lali Puna album you keep meaning to pick up) handles the worldwide distribution outside of the UK.
Every once in a while a record comes along that is so avant garde, sodifferent, so completely not like anything I've heard, that it almostdefies description. Starlight Mints almost do that. This music isobviously not aimed at radio, not aimed at any one test market, noteven classified by one genre that it's almost impossible to determinewho exactly would listen to it. I would recommend it to anyone wholikes the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev (no brainer there - HellfireMarketing represents all three bands in different capacities), but doesit really sound like any of them? No, not really. In fact, if I wasgoing to describe this, the best I could come up with is Spiders FromMars-era Bowie fronting an art-rock guitar band with a small stringsection, occasionally intermingled with interesting noises for maximumconfusion and effect. Which is funny, since I read ther bio afterforming that opinion, and it name checks Bowie, as well. I mean, it's areally confusing listen. The music grabs you immediately, and it won'tlet go. But where some bands sound like they're confused by their ownmusic, not quite sure how to focus, harness, or direct it, StarlightMints aural confusion is completely MANUFACTURED. That's right:Starlight Mints WANT you to be confounded by this noise. And it isconfounding, but utterly listenable. I mean I CANNOT TAKE THIS CD OUTOF THE PLAYER, it calls to me so much. But I don't know why. Is thatstrange? Yes. But so be it. The only complaint I have is that as thealbum goes on, some songs use similar chord progressions or structuresand dynamics as earlier ones, so it almost sounds gimmicky compared toearlier tracks. But it is always fresh. The lyrics are equally as odd:"sir prize" features the line "Shaking hands with the cats in themirror." And I don't think he means "cats" in that "Hey, that guy's apretty hip cat" sense. He means cats. With four legs and tails. "sugarblaster" says "Follow me to the echo machine." Weird. Try it out, as itis the strangest release you'll hear all year. And that's a good thing,really.
The signature sound of Tsyoshi Nakamaru's Tagomago project is astrangely clipped sample, looped against the beat as if the song andthe loop exist in two different pieces of music played simultaneously.This peculiar trait makes its appearance on nearly all of his albumsand gives his otherwise almost-innocuous techno-pop an edge that, atfirst, is difficult to place. A funky upright bass and a looped chunkof violins kicks off "On the Upper Level", the first tune on Tagomago'sseventh solo album, with the urgency implied by the album's title. Theenergetic pulse that drives the album's first half makes occasionalnods to mainstream drum n'bass or to lazily paced trip hop, though mosttracks keep to a slightly stuttering and repetitive groove which callsto mind the band whose magnus opus Nakamaru borrowed his moniker from.The latter half of the disc slides into drumless analogue synthesizerdrift, several tracks of low throb punctuated by sci-fi squeals andairy feedback. Previous Tagomago albums have featured lovelyinstrumental pop molded from looped sitars and other conspicuously"psychedelic" ingredients, but this latest CD draws mostly fromshimmering orchestral hits and instrumental flourishes (think: 1970stelevision themes). "ASAP" is a fine set of understated, upbeat tunesthat never gets too sweet, though it's closer in spirit to NobukazuTakemura and the Childisc crew than to Nakamaru's much strangerproject, the great Nerve Net Noise.
Tomahawkis Mike Patton's newest project on Ipecac, featuring Patton on vocals,Kevin Rutmanis (Melvins), John Stanier (ex-Helmet,) and Duane Denison(Jesus Lizard). It's Good Stuff. Stylistically, it reminds me of theother band-work Patton's done — specifically Faith No More — becausethe music does have a certain "rock" or "punk" vibe about it, mixedwith a certain eclecticness that keeps it from being just plain rock orpunk. There are no writing credits, lyrics or any extraneousinformation and all liner notes are kept to an absolute bare minimum(seven short lines, including the tracklisting.) The recording qualityis excellent and although the Patton's vocals are the center ofattention, the music does play it's part and balances out theforcefulness of the vocals. The music itself is part humor and partnoir (e.g. "POP 1" and it's screamed bridge of "This beat could win mea grammy!"). Patton's vocal abuses are a highlight of the record,especially the screams and nuances of infliction he does so well. Agreat release for fans of vocal gymnastics, and a pretty good album ingeneral.
