It'seasy to dismiss Ladytron: they rode the high wave of electroclash andcrashed with a stinker of a sophomore album during the electroclashbacklash that swiftly made everybody forget who Fisherspooner andPeaches were. The first two songs on their latest album, however,are powerful enough to lay waste all prejudices.
Hotter than July. This week's episode has plenty of fresh new music by Marie Davidson, Kim Gordon, Mabe Fratti, Guided By Voices, Holy Tongue meets Shackleton, Softcult, Terence Fixmer, Alan Licht, pigbaby, and Eiko Ishibashi, plus some vault goodies from Bombay S Jayashri and Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin. Solstice moon in West Midlands, UK photo by James. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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After reviewing Vega, I was sure that Andrew Chalk had some new tricks up his sleeve. Albums like Fall in the Wake of a Flawless Landscape and Over the Edges were dynamic by virtue of their tonal range or through the use of multiple layers shifting throughout the record. Vegasaw Chalk working with the subconscious, slowly pulling it apartthrough slow spatial manipulation. Here, Chalk centers his attention onthe guitar and develops a series of meditations that gives his musicnew depth.
Miwon’sdebut for City Centre Offices comes at just the right time of year forme, when a contemplative, quiet record of subtle melodies and soothingrhythms is just what I need to complement the freezing rain andice-covered trees.
When the only complaint I have about a record is that it's far, far tooshort, that's got to be a good thing. This collaboration betweenJessica Bailiff and Rachel Staggs could go on for another hour and I'dbe more than happy to get lost in it.
Minimum-Maximum is a fine overview of Kraftwerk’s career. When I first heard the CD version
I was glad to hear again what I had experienced live but only with this DVD do I feel that the
Kraftwerk live experience has been reproduced in the quality that it is worthy of.
This single precedes Film School’s forthcoming album. If the album is as patchy as On and On then I’ll probably steer clear. If it avoids the pitfalls of the dodgy B-side included on this single, it might be worth a look.
Edith Frost’s music has always had a certain derivative quality to it.Past releases have always hewed a little too close to the alt-countryline to make it stand out amongst the rest. Her previous release,Wonder, Wonder, saw her incorporating more overt pop flourishes toprovide her well-defined sound with a few more options. On It’s a Game,Frost strips her sound to its basics, both returning to herwell-defined sound yet tweaking it just slightly so as to providelittle gems that allow the record to avoid rote repetition.
On paper this album is a great idea. Give some babies toys, instruments or whatever and record the results. Unfortunately Kindermusik amounts to nothing but uninteresting tracks that are essentially field recordings of playrooms. Nursery With Wound it isn’t.
Kites' 12" single with Prurient excited me quite a lot. The circus-like approach to noise that Christopher Forgues took on as Kites sounded fresh because it didn't sound like one long stream of random noises; a popular approach to making "free noise." Forgues' latest on Load is a scattered album, however. His often compelling ideas aren't articulated very well and though I'm convinced a political message peppers the entire album, the music and words are often too scattered to understand exactly what message the album might have, if any.
Paul Dickow's Community Library label, formed in the Spring of 2005, subscribes to a mantra of sorts: music without borders or community without geography. It's a costly mantra in the case of Sawako's first recording on the label. "Sawako +" is Sawako assembling various sound samples given to her by friends and musicians from all over the globe. If it weren't for its brevity, Omnibus would be a very unsatisfying grab bag of strange, random sound.
