Over the course of four albums and some relentless touring, Mono have proven themselves capable of making some noise. On You Are There, however, the band doesn't burst in with guns blazing, but quietly sneak in through the side door. They haven't succumbed, however, to making an MOR record by a long shot.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Hecq’s latest album is presented with a stark, well-composed black andwhite landscape photograph and that cover image is the perfectintroduction to an album that’s also well-made but lacking identity.
There are no marks on this collection suggestive of product or capital. The music, packaged in a jewelry box with five heavy stock cards, bares no trace of greed or dishonesty. The entire package is, on all counts, a work of art far removed from concerns about ownership or illegal practices. The simple act of opening this package is a joy, a revelation of personality and craftsmanship and the importance they still carry in the world of music.
There’s still something about split seven-inches that carry a buzz of discovery. It’s even better when both acts follow dissimilar visions instead of the label going for the safe option of similar sounding acts.
If it was 20 years earlier, an album like this wouldn't havesurprised anybody by popping up on Paisley Park Records, as it's gotsome sort of fragile white soul that Prince seemed to frequently chase and salivate over,but the fact that it's been released on Temporary Residence, a labelknown more for instrumental guy-rock, is a bit of a surprise. 
Pressed on gold vinyl and packaged in a black sleeve with gold print depicting Medieval interpretations of the apocalypse, Angel Coma looks like it’s going to be heavy. Each side contains a single, long track, one by each band. Both tracks were recorded with the current lineups from the bands; Sunn O))) including vocals via Xasthur and noise provided by John Wiese and Oren Ambarchi; Earth being the Hex lineup of Carlson and Davies plus three.
It's been written that this ground has been walked on before, but such a statement is an ignorant one that fails to acknowledge the finer moments of Chihei Hatakeyama's work. These recordings are anything but common, exhibiting an unusual attention to detail that surpasses the efforts of many like-minded musicians. Hatakeyama's work practically defines how musicality and expressionism can work well together.
Tsunoda is one of my favorite artists working with fieldrecorded media mainly because of the way in which his body of work tests thedefinitions and possibilities of “environmental” sound or music.
Imust confess that Andrew Chalk has been scoring my ritual eveningrelax/unwind "me-time" almost exclusively for the last few weeks. The newest release is exceptionally fantastic, reminding me why peoplepay outrageous amounts for his releases at online auctions.
Behind all the bells and whistles singing and stretching across every second on this album is a beautiful, childlike song. The duo of Jason Frederick Iselin and Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens wrestle with unconventional sound and pop, folk, and classical sensibilities over the duration of Things Past. The tension that plays out between the odd and the familiar opens up a stream of ornate and soft music both catchy and laden with little treasures just waiting to be unearthed.
