18 April 2016

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Albums and Singles

Following their 2012 self-titled debut release, this Austin trio largely return to the sound that made that album so strong: namely dissonant synthesizer work, slow and stiff drum programming, and unsettling, yet gripping vocal work. That is not to say that Graphic is more of the same, but rather a development and refinement of the sound they did so well previously, culminating in an infectious, yet dour and dark piece of music.

Holodeck

Near the beginning of this album, the title song quickly establishes the style and mood that will follow.Taking the pace of a funeral dirge, distorted rhythms and slow, pulsating synthesizers lead the way.While the sound may be awash in cavernous reverb, that never fully obscures a strong melodic underpinning.While the piece may be slow, it never relents, and Amber Goers' vocals start far away and echo heavy, but eventually culminate in a terrifying horror film scream to conclude the song.

A song such as "Not Here" is a comparably lighter affair.With more of a synth pop like opening and a more stripped down mix, the sense of tension and oppression is less pronounced.Goers’ vocals are also calmer and gentler in delivery, and while they build in drama, the piece stays more beautiful than frightening."Nothing"sees the trio going back to their colder roots, with the clap-heavy analog drum programming driving buzzing electronics, and a vocal approach that shifts from aggressive to coldly disconnected.

The strongest moments of Graphic are saved for its conclusion, however.The penultimate piece, "Sundowner" begins with Goers' grimy bass guitar leading the way, as dissonant, snappy beat boxes come together with a heavy sense of chaos.With an overall jerky, stop/start structure, great energy, yet frightening use of electronics, it makes for the high point of the album.

It is closely followed (both in strength and album sequencing) by the lengthy "Torch", which features the trio using its eight-plus minute duration to construct and destroy various arrangements.What begins with sawtooth-heavy synthesizer patches and minimal rhythms, a more aggressive, thudding beat falls into place and the synth leads convey an epic sense of drama.The tempo shifts, and the intensity builds, ending the record with an intense vocal performance by Goers that fits both the tension and darkness of the music perfectly.

As a whole, Graphic does not feature Troller stepping too far away from the sound that defined their first record, but there was no need to.Working with a more conventional synth-pop type approach to music, but with a dark and unsettling spin placed on it was already an excellent formula.Graphic works then as a further refinement of this sound, polishing in some ways and others displaying a growth in songwriting and arrangement skills.Either way, it makes for a perfect complement to their already amazing first record.

samples:

• Graphic
• Sundowner
• Torch

 

17 April 2016

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Albums and Singles

As much as I love Swans, one of 2015's great mysteries for me was trying to figure out why some people liked Norman Westberg’s solo 13 album so much, as it just seemed like a very straightforward ambient-drone album in every way.  Consequently, I did not have especially high expectations for Room40’s second Westberg reissue, which compiles three even earlier pieces from his homemade, self-released CDrs.  As it turns out, however, MRI is a hell of a lot more compelling than its predecessor.  While the general aesthetic is basically the same (hazy processed-guitar soundscapes), MRI features considerably more in the way of subtle dynamic shifts and disquieting dissonances.  Aside from just being deeper, more complex, and more nuanced than what I had previously heard, this album is actually quite distinctive and unique as well.  I now completely understand why Lawrence English was so keen to unearth Westberg's largely unheard solo oeuvre.

Room40

The prosaically titled MRI ostensibly takes its inspiration from magnetic resonance imaging, which Westberg underwent when he discovered that he was experiencing uneven hearing loss.  However, the degree to which that experience shaped this album is quite hard to unravel, as the provenance of these recordings is a bit confounding.  Of the three pieces included here, one ("Lost Mine") is a new piece dating from 2015 and another ("410 Stairs") was the title track of its own self-contained 2012 release.  Also, the original "MRI" apparently surfaced in 2012 as well, but it is something of a phantom: it only appears in Discogs as part of a compilation pulling together Westberg's MRI, 410 Stairs, and Plough EPs.  Moreover, "MRI" is not particularly obvious in its nods to medical scanning technology, seemingly borrowing only the subtle cycling/pulsing sounds and perhaps evoking a bit of immersive unreality of being cozily inserted into the heart of a machine. Westberg thankfully did not derive any inspiration from the annoying buzzing sounds common to MRIs.

While Westberg used SoundForge to originally edit these newly remastered pieces, the originally recordings were done with a very stripped-down set-up that usually consisted of a just a guitar, some delay effects, and a couple of amps recorded to tape.  Also, "MRI" was essentially recorded "live" in one take.  Nothing on MRI sounds improvised or sketchlike though, as the overall effect is one of elegantly simple variations on a theme.  The theme itself is quite simple as well, as Westberg essentially just creates a warmly droning bed of guitar haze and tape hiss, then embellishes it with quavering rhythmic waves and shivering dissonances.  Working with such a limited palette proves to be very effective here, as each minor shift in pulse or harmony is able to make maximum impact because there is no clutter to hide behind and no melodies to grab the focus: just a beautiful, gently throbbing drift that gradually changes moods as the smallest changes engineer new oscillations and complex, unexpected harmonies.  On the opening title piece, the drones gradually become more shadowy and ominous, culminating in the brief eruption of an undercurrent that sounds legitimately gnarled.  The longer and more beautiful "410 Stairs" is not nearly as haunted-sounding, however, instead maintaining a consistent mood of bittersweet warmth that gradually builds in power with layers of jangling, bell-like waves.  The closing "Lost Mine" initially starts in a somewhat similar mood, but heads in a very different direction, as blurry, treble-heavy layers bleed into one another and drift in and out of sync to create a gently psychedelic blur.

Interestingly, Room40's Lawrence English describes Westberg's work as "embedded strongly in the American Minimalism tradition."  I am not sure who he specifically had in mind, but these pieces certainly do betray an affinity for patterns and repetition.  In any case, something transcendent is certainly happening: the tools and textures employed on MRI share a lot of common ground with what other experimental guitarists were doing around the same time, yet the best moments show that Westberg was operating on a much higher plane compositionally than his peers.  To my ears, MRI positions Westberg as a kind of a DIY/low-tech Eliane Radigue, attempting to distill drone down to its purest, most minimal form: a single sustained tone that comes alive as a number of small, controlled changes cumulatively create their own shifting pulse and harmonic arc.  On the gorgeous "410 Stairs" and some sections of "MRI," Westberg comes as close to reaching that state of drone nirvana as anyone.

• MRI
• 410 Stairs
• Lost Mine

 

17 April 2016

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Albums and Singles

In recent years, Shelter Press has carved out an unusual niche for itself through a series of highly conceptual and ambitiously esoteric releases that blur the boundaries between various forms of art.  One of their more intriguing projects as of late is this one, in which a trio of composers attempts to recreate the aura of Thomas Mann's 1924 masterwork The Magic Mountain (even going so far as to do some field recording in Swiss Alps where the novel was set).  The end result is quite a pleasant and subtly phantasmagoric reverie, as the composers' individual voices are subsumed by a beguiling series of crackling classical music snippets, ominous drones, and ambient outdoor sounds.

Shelter Press

It has been more than a decade since I last read The Magic Mountain, so any attempt on my part to try to link Zauberberg to any specific passages would be hopelessly doomed.  Thankfully, I do not think that there are many links to be found anyway, as the composers seem to have very much gone for abstract mood and feel rather than anything concrete or literal.  The foundation of that aesthetic here seems to be recurring interludes of blurred, reverberant classical music snatches, which is both temporally appropriate and very effective at evoking the beauty, sadness, mystery, and isolation of a sanatorium nestled in the mountains.  Curiously, however, none of the participants' signature aesthetics surface much at all, which I suppose makes this a successful collaboration in at least one way.  I am not particularly familiar with Rabelais' previous work, regrettably, but the only conspicuous shades of Jaeger and Mathieu throughout Zauberberg are occasional intrusions of ominous electronic throbs and drones.  Those touches create an interesting tension with the rest of the album, as it see-saws back and forth between crackling, pulsing abstract menace and lively, organic sounds like chirping birds and opera records.  In many superficial ways, Zauberberg is a lot like a Caretaker album with some birds and pleasantly babbling brooks thrown in.

Compositionally, however, Zauberberg is very much its own entity, as it is kind of a slow-motion flow of dream-like vignettes that bubble up and dissipate for almost an hour (the album is just a single long-form piece).  I have mixed feelings about that structure, as it feels quite amorphous and the classical music samples seem to do most of the heavy lifting.  That latter part is probably not intentional, but I am sure that the shapeless, drifting structure was very much by design.  Such an aesthetic has some inherent shortcomings, however–most notably, there is little on Zauberberg that stands out as particularly memorable or inspired besides the many classical music samples.  Nevertheless, it works quite well as literal "ambient' music, softening the edges of reality and imbuing my otherwise mundane surroundings with a pleasant atmosphere of hallucinatory melancholy.  If that was all Zauberberg offered, however, it could easily be replaced by simply opening my windows and quietly playing "Swan Lake" with a lot of reverb added.  Fortunately, the final third of the album gets quite a bit more compelling and justifies the album's existence, as murky, haunted-sounding drones unexpectedly give way to much more aggressively processed classical music snippets.  That textural change is very effective, as the piece suddenly feels more grainy, hissing and present.  Even more effective is the ambiguous closing finale of distantly booming and popping fireworks (or possibly World War I) and the final chilling and ghostly howls as the piece fades away.

Notably, I have listened to this album at least a dozen times now and I am still having difficulty forming a solid opinion, as there are different facets pulling me in different directions.  I certainly wanted to like Zauberberg more than I do, as it has a great premise that seems tailor-made for my personal delight and I have enjoyed much previous work from both Mathieu and Jaeger.  Also, I loved the hazy sadness that pervades the many classical music interludes: whoever was tasked with manipulating their textures did an impressively effective job.  More significantly, the final few minutes are absolutely beautiful–the trio pulled quite a wonderful rabbit out of their collective hat with that crescendo of sad fireworks.  Unfortunately, however, Zauberberg is just too diffuse to offer a satisfying arc, as any sense of momentum dissipates into frequent lulls and moments of seeming barely there at all.  Also, the combined powers of three talented experimental musicians should not result in me thinking mostly about Tchaikovsky instead.  It is as if Jaeger, Mathieu, and Rabelais had nearly everything in place for an absolutely perfect and sublime album except for just one or two very crucial elements.  As such, Zauberberg is ultimately a good (or even very good) album that shows exasperating flashes of what could have been a masterpiece.  I suspect many other people will appreciate it more than I did though, as my perception was unavoidably colored by my (perhaps unreasonably) high expectations.

• Excerpt One
• Excerpt Two
• Excerpt Three

 

17 April 2016

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Albums and Singles

This latest release from Aranos is an especially unusual one (even within the context of his already singular discography), as it is a varied suite of songs exploring the twin themes of mortality and joie de vivre.  It has always been clear that Aranos knows a thing or two about living an interesting and vibrant life, but it is worth noting that he has also technically died once (and been resuscitated) as well, so he has some perspective on that side to offer as well.  While it is the subject matter than ostensibly brings all of these songs together, the most immediate and striking feature of Omen of Good Times is its prevailing mood of eccentric, cockeyed fun: there are few shades at all of Aranos's more experimental leanings here, just a one-of-a-kind raconteur/performer channeling everything from Eastern European folk music to religious spirituals to swinging Django Reinhardt/Stephane Grappelli-style string jazz.

Aranos

Like most people, I first became aware of Aranos though his early collaborations with Nurse With Wound, though that awareness did not go much deeper than noting that Acts of Senseless Beauty had some violin on it.  Neither that album nor Santoor Lena Bicycle made me particularly curious about Aranos's solo work might sound like.  Both albums were good, of course, but I casually attributed that success to Steven Stapleton's imagination and collaging abilities.  Much later, however, I wound up hearing some of Aranos's solo albums.  I also saw him live and was pleasantly bewildered to discover that he is quite a mesmerizing character and a legitimate iconoclast.  Knowing what I know now, it actually seems crazy that Aranos is best known for his experimental, abstract collaborations: the raw, spontaneous, and undiluted Aranos is far more strange, memorable, and unpredictable.  For better or worse, I consistently have absolutely no idea where Aranos is coming from or what his latest album will sound like.  The twist is not that he is making unimaginable, otherworldly sounds, but rather that he seems superhumanly sincere and unselfconscious, as well as blissfully unstuck in time.  Case in point: aside from one song, Omen of Good Times could easily have been recorded in the 1930s.  As far as his relation to contemporary trends in music is concerned, Aranos may as well be from another planet.

Perversely, I tend to like Aranos's actual music the most when he is in "Gypsy violinist" mode, such as on the jauntily lyrical waltz "Dring of Stars" or the more sadness-tinged "Hawthorn Blossom."  That is not where Aranos is truly unique, of course, as I probably could not walk a block in Romania without tripping over another violinist equally well-versed in similar fare.  Rather, Aranos's more substantial musical gift lies in how many different styles he has absorbed and how effortlessly he seems to filter them through his own skewed sensibility.  Sometimes the results can admittedly be a bit perplexing, as on the almost-barbershop-esque/Triplets of Belleville-like crescendo of "Going Downhill" or the near-musical theater "dig a hole, dig a hole, dig a hole" interlude in the otherwise beautiful "Build Me a Coffin."  The latter is an especially fascinating example of Aranos's chameleonic artistry, as he also veers into croaking torch song and an elegiac falsetto chorus of multitracked voices (all his) along the way.  Elsewhere, he delves into spirited tango ("Contact Penumbra") and a number of bouncy Reinhardt-esque jazz forays with varying degrees of eccentricity and unexpected eruptions of vocals.  The true heart of Omen of Good Times, however, lies in its two fully formed songs, "Just Around the Corner" and "Good News."  While certainly charming and catchy, both are far more significant for their lyrical content: Aranos genuinely wants to make life better and offers plenty of helpful advice in that regard. Also, he thoughtfully reminds us all that we are divine in the lurching, tender, and fluid closer. That is quite a rare feature for an album to offer.

While it is not perfect by any means, Omen of Good Times is unquestionably quite ambitious in what it sets out to achieve and quite wonderful and singular when it achieves it.  At its worst, it is merely entertaining and a little confounding.  For example, I do not understand why an abstract experimental piece like "Bread Machine" wound up here, nor do I entirely understand why some songs end abruptly or spontaneously erupt into vocals.  Aranos can certainly be an enigma, albeit quite an endearing and irascible one.  In fact, he seems a lot like an archetypal character that belongs in old grindhouse Kung Fu films, something like a laughing monk that initially seems like comic relief, but who is ultimately revealed to be the wisest person in the entire town.  As such, he can be quite inscrutable, somewhat scattershot, and a bit hammy, but he never boring and he is always very much himself.  As cliché as it sounds, Aranos's life is the real art and Omen succeeds primarily because it offers one of the clearest windows into that life.  As such, Omen is best viewed as something akin to a freewheeling and anachronistic one-man cabaret show, passing through some weird detours and tonal shifts along the way, but cumulatively adding up to a powerful, guileless, and sometimes moving portrait of a truly unique artist.

• Hawthorn Blossom
• Build Me a Coffin
• Dring of Stars

 

16 April 2016

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Albums and Singles

Despite decades of activity and having crossed paths in various collaborations Editions Mego is honoured to release the first ever duo recording from two of the most highly regarded citizens of planet experimental electronic. Individually, Jim O’Rourke and Christian Fennesz have been responsible for numerous legendary works which merge the traditional avant-garde with contemporary sensibilities. On It’s Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry these giants of experimental electronic practice come together for an immensely powerful sonic experience.

The signature of both O’Rourke and Fennesz cohabit this new release with O’Rourke’s gurgling harmonies swimming amongst the shimmering frequencies and strummed melodies produced by Fennesz. Two side long tracks situate themselves as a warm electronic adventure. Simultaneously radical and comforting these works shift from gentle sonorities to fully distorted explosions all of which reside within a template of tension between musical and non-music matter.

Timeless in execution and presentation It’s Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry is a deeply rewarding sonic experience from two of the most romantic gentlemen active in experimental music today.

Out June 24th.  More information can be found here.

10 April 2016

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Albums and Singles

Himukalt seems to be more than a bit of an enigma. Other than being the solo project of Ester Kärkkäinen from Nevada, there is very little to be found online about her work. That ambiguity suits Conditions of Acrimony (her first release, at least in a public capacity) rather well though. Drawing from a diverse array of abrasive, challenging styles of music, she expertly blends order and chaos, as well as rhythm and dissonance throughout these six pieces.

Helen Scarsdale Agency

The cassette's opener, "Completely," certainly feels like a nod back to the early 1990s variant of industrial and power electronics championed by the likes of Tesco and Cold Meat Industry via its use of sputtering electronics and broken voice samples.She bounces the piece back and forth between this harsh rhythmic throb and wet, pulsating electronic noise before ending it on a passage of wide open static.This use of voice samples is a recurring theme throughout, often times sounding like a random grab from a transient shortwave burst or an out of tune radio broadcast, and rarely discernible as far as what is actually being said.

This is very evident on "This Conflict," in which the crackling voices appear within the context of massive echoing crashes and raw, metallic scrapings.There are more pronounced expanses of drone, but as a whole it comes across like a tightly structured and organized piece."Without Laughter" is an appropriate title for the dull hum and isolating emptiness that comprises it.As a whole Kärkkäinen keeps the piece at a slow and creepy dynamic, with some occasional jet engine like outbursts of noise to keep things from sounding too complacent.

The opening of the b-side of the tape, "Tuberculosis," stands out mostly due to its less rigid structure.Rather than the slow building creepy electronics that mostly define the album, this is more of a jerky, cut-up piece of jackhammer loops and jagged surges of harsh noise.On paper it sounds not unlike the classic work of Pain Jerk, but there is a less hyperactive, more overall dour color to the sound.Sustained shimmering electronics reappear on "I Started", again paired with a throbbing low end to introduce a semblance of rhythm, continuing the clash of structure and noise.The dark closer "Please Don't Call For An Ambulance" ends the tape on a grinding note.With a heavy emphasis on the mid-range, Kärkkäinen works with exploding noises and ambient space, resulting in a bleak and unsettling conclusion.

With apparently no other Himukalt releases publically, and a website that mostly just showcases Ester Kärkkäinen’s visual art, Conditions of Acrimony is an amazingly well developed, fully realize piece of unsettling noise and raw electronics.The combination of obscure sound sources and a strong sense of composition elevates her work to the quality matching the titans of these styles, such as Maurizio Bianchi, Brighter Death Now, or Anenzephalia (amongst others), without ever sounding like an attempt to emulate them, making for an extremely compelling debut.

samples:

• Completely
• Without Laughter
• Tuberculosis

 

10 April 2016

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Albums and Singles

Tim Hecker’s first album for 4AD is already a major event, unexpectedly garnering praise from sources as mainstream as The New York Times and Rolling Stone.  We live in strange times indeed.  Naturally, it deserves all the accolades it gets, as Tim Hecker seems physically unable to make a disappointing album at this point in his career, but far more interesting than the quality is how Love Streams is such a conspicuous departure from many of Hecker’s usual tropes.  Also, despite its atypically high profile and widespread coverage, it may actually be the most perversely bizarre and experimental album that Hecker has yet released (My Love is Rotten to the Core excluded, of course).

4AD

I am fairly sure that the first Tim Hecker album I ever picked up was Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again, all the way back in 2001 or 2002.  I instantly fell in love with it, of course, but Hecker's work nevertheless fit very comfortably into a milieu that I was already quite immersed in: Oval, Fennesz, Pita, Jim O’Rourke’s laptop work, etc.  It was great, but not entirely revelatory.  As the years passed, I continued to dutifully buy each new Tim Hecker album, yet I found that I was increasingly in no hurry at all to get them as soon as they came out.  While I knew I would like them (they are almost all stellar albums), there was a creeping familiarity that dampened my ardor.  The reason that I bring this up is because that trend of diminishing returns unexpectedly reversed for me with 2011's Ravedeath.  Rather than being a reliable old friend, Tim Hecker transformed into an artist who was hell-bent on relentlessly moving forward and constantly reinventing himself.  Since then, each new album has been like Hecker hit a "reset" button on his career.  Granted, he still always sounds unmistakably like Tim Hecker (fuzzed-out, warm, richly textured, and pulsing), but there is a lot of room to move around within those confines.  On Love Streams, the twist is that Hecker has unexpectedly decided to focus on working with vocalists for the first time (in this case, an Icelandic choir).

If the languorous flutes in the opening "Obsidian Counterpoint" or the clipped, warbling vocals of "Music of the Air" sound suspiciously like classical or religious music, it is because that is exactly what they are…albeit in quite an altered state.  Love Streams partly originates from Hecker's interest in 15th century polyphonic composer Josquin des Prez.  Unusual grist for a contemporary experimental music album for sure, but the beauty of Hecker's artistry lies in how he ultimately decided to use des Prez's work to suit his own ends.  Using software called Melodyne, Hecker converted recordings of des Prez's pieces into sheet music, which he then edited to better fit his own aesthetic, lowering the pitch, slowing it down, and removing some unwanted notes.  The revised compositions were then presented to Jóhann Jóhannsson, who conducted the choir.  Jòhannsson then juggled the syllables of the Latin to strip the words of all meaning.  As if that was not enough, Hecker periodically chimed in with helpful instructions, such as urging vocalists to sing like a drugged Chewbacca.  It is hard to imagine a choir of hapless vocalists following such instructions sounding anything other than insane, but a finished Tim Hecker album presumably bears little resemblance at all to its source material: Love Streams has very much been ProTooled into sublime unrecognizability.  In fact, it is surprisingly subdued, given how tense and nerve-jangling its predecessor Virgins could get.  Hecker rarely bares his teeth at all here, aside from the seemingly randomized electric guitar in "Voice Crack," the gnarled distortion of "Black Phase," or the grinding, warped crescendo of "Collapse Sonata."  For the most part, Love Streams is just an immersive, heavenly blur that snatches of inspiration continually bubble through.

If Love Streams has a flaw, it is merely that it is rather lean on pieces that explode from the speakers and leave my jaw on the floor, which is surprising since Ben Frost was once again involved.  Nothing at all on this album comes close to matching the intensity of Virgin's best moments, though both "Music of the Air" and "Violet Monumental I" are both quietly gorgeous masterpieces.  I do not quite think that the album itself is a masterpiece though, despite being an exciting and ingenious late-career creative breakthrough: the strengths of Love Streams lie in its novel aesthetic and its dream-like, quasi-spiritual mood rather than in its compositions.  Naturally, that was a conscious choice and fits well with the celestial, processed voices and shimmering drones, but it makes much of the album feel like a diffuse reverie occasionally punctuated by bursts of melody or rare sharp edges.  While it all works beautifully, Hecker does not quite distill his new vision enough to make its maximum impact.  As a Tim Hecker fan, however, I am perfectly fine with that: I would much rather see him stretch into bold new realms and overreach a bit than watch him continue to perfect well-worn territory.

10 April 2016

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Albums and Singles

I suspect someone could probably spend years compiling a thesis that contextualizes and explains the ideas, techniques, and inspirations behind Jan St. Werner's bizarre Fiepblatter series, but its overarching concept is apparently a simple desire to "dismantle genres." Last year’s completely bonkers and uncategorizable Miscontinuum took care of that objective quite conclusively though, so there was not much left to prove with this follow-up.  I am not sure if St. Werner would necessarily agree with me or not, but Felder is certainly a hell of a lot more listenable than its prickly, disorienting predecessor.  That said, it is still quite an unapologetically alien and uncompromising release, gleefully taking organic, orchestral elements and mangling them into a stuttering, splintered, and kaleidoscopic mindfuck.

Thrill Jockey

Much like the Fiepblatter series as a whole, Felder is (by design) quite a difficult album to summarize.  The general aesthetic, however, can best be described as resembling a quiet chamber music performance that has been stretched, chopped, digitized, and otherwise mangled into near-oblivion.  The degree of obliteration varies quite wildly, however.  Also, St. Werner has no problem at all with departing from even that loosely defined unifying theme when the mood strikes him.  While it certainly makes for a disorienting listening experience (I feel like the ground is constantly being pulled out from under me), it is not an extremely jarring or unpleasant one, as the overall feel is more "ambient soundscapes with a lot of surprises and sharp edges" than "manic free-for-all." Sometimes, in fact, a slow-moving and completely unmolested melody unexpectedly emerges from the squall, like the mournful French horn theme in middle of "Singoth."  Of course, there is still all kinds of surreal chaos erupting in the periphery while that is happening.  In fact, controlled chaos seems to be St. Werner's muse throughout Felder and he delivers it in consistently inventive and vibrant ways.  For example, the end of the aforementioned "Singoth" bears virtually no resemblance to the beginning or middle sections, as it closes with a surprisingly menacing duet between densely buzzing and ominous drones and a rather sinister-sounding bird.

Given the fractured, constantly shifting nature of Felder, declaring any one piece to be a highlight is a dubious enterprise.  This album is the musical equivalent of that hackneyed regional joke about waiting around for a few minutes if you don’t like the weather.  Of course, the flipside of that is that if you do like the music, it is still going to quickly change anyway.  As such, Felder is best appreciated as a whole.  That said, there are a number of great moments amidst all the entropy.  The closest thing that Felder offers to a single is undoubtedly the all-too-brief "Foggy Esor, Pt.2."  At the very least, it boasts both a coherent structure and a strong melody, sounding like a slowed-down pop song crafted from a hollow, pitch-shifted koto and a steel drum.  Sadly, St. Werner does not expend much time or effort expanding upon that promising motif, instead opting to transform it into a gently twinkling electronic and cello coda after only a minute.  The opening "Beardman," on the other hand, might be the most fully realized and consistent piece on the album, approximating a woozily languorous collaboration between a jazz bassist and early Fennesz.  It still has a bunch of uneasily coexisting segments, but they flow together much more smoothly than elsewhere on the album.  Also, the closing 30 seconds is quite beautiful, sounding like a chorus of sea-sick, pitch-shifted flutes tenderly fluttering. I also quite liked the opening section of "Kroque AF," which sounds like a melody desperately trying to come into focus amidst a host of squelches and processed engine-revving sounds.  The lengthy, melodic, and unexpectedly subdued "The Somewhere That is Moving" is yet another stand-out, as its insistent, hazy piano pulse proves to be an effectively solid foundation for St. Werner's experimentations.

Given that St. Werner is completely unwilling to sustain any single mood or idea for longer than a minute or so, I would be hard-pressed to call Felder a great album.  It is quite imaginative and listenable though and it may very well be a tour de force of…something.  Unfettered imagination?  Mercilessly aggressive processing?  Unpredictability?  I do not know.  It certainly is not boring, but its excesses would be a lot more palatable if they were balanced by a bit more structure and a few strong hooks or rhythms.  This is definitely the sort of album that will be more admired than beloved.  That said, however, Felder seems to be exactly the album that St. Werner wanted to make, as his many sudden transitions into passages of sublime fragility or fleetingly wonderful melodies make it clear that he was in complete control the entire time.  The most likely explanation for Felder seems to be that St. Werner completed a perfectly enjoyable album of melodic, neo-classical electro-acoustic pieces, listened to it, decided it was boring, then decided to enthusiastically chop it to pieces.  Then he probably listened to that album and decided "I bet I can go even further!"  Then he listened to that album and decided "I can go further still!"  And so on.  That imagined process certainly makes for a highly original, challenging, and complex album, but Felder definitely feels like an album where the target audience is unapologetically Jan St. Werner himself.  While there is a lot to like here, it definitely takes some effort, indulgence, and patience to fully appreciate St. Werner's skewed vision.

• Beardman
• Kroque AF
• Foggy Esor Pt. 2

 

10 April 2016

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Albums and Singles

Harpist Mary Lattimore’s excellent second solo album is the fruit of a grant-financed road trip across the US, inspired by various natural wonders along the way and recorded at several friends' houses.  While traveling around with a harp does not sound particularly convenient to me, it certainly seems like Lattimore knows how to put grant money to good use.  She also knows the fastest way to my heart, which happens to be naming an album after a Joan Didion essay.  Naturally, At The Dam is a beautiful album, as the harp is always an inherently pleasant instrument when in competent hands.  Lattimore goes much deeper than the expected lovely, rippling arpeggios though, crafting five pleasantly relaxed and languorous pieces enhanced with a healthy amount of experimentation and sublime laptop-tweakery.

Ghostly International

The album opens in fine fashion with the twinkling, sun-dappled arpeggio patterns of "Otis Walks into the Woods," a lovely elegy to Lattimore's blind dog who vanished into a forest one day.  Taken strictly as a composition, it is quite wonderful, as Lattimore slowly builds up force and forward motion while weaving overdubbed melodies into a beguiling web.  My favorite aspect, however, is the way that it gradually becomes increasingly psychedelic, as notes start subtly pinging, panning, plunging, and quivering around the central theme.  That is a very effective and evocative move, as it gives the piece the feel of an increasingly phantasmagoric journey without sacrificing any of its momentum.  Eventually, however, the structure completely dissolves into a dreamy coda of drones, pulses, and backwards harp swells and it is absolutely gorgeous: the transcendent soundtrack to a faithful dog leaving all earthly concerns behind.  The considerably shorter piece that follows ("Jimmy V") is not nearly as heartbreaking, thankfully, as it bizarrely takes it inspiration from basketball coach Jimmy Valvano.  It is still quite lovely, however, gradually evolving from somewhat straightforward harp fare (sweeping and rippling) into a wonderfully unraveled and delay-heavy coda that unexpectedly re-coheres into a final fragile, wobbly, and submerged-sounding melody.

The similarly brief "In the Quiet of Night" initially seems somewhat unexceptional, but then unexpectedly blossoms into the single most gorgeous melody on the entire album.  Also, Lattimore proves to be something of a genius with harmony and dynamics, twisting and embellishing her heavenly melody until it feels like a fluidly dancing, shimmering entity completely independent of the song’s pre-existing structure or time-signature.  Lattimore returns to more slow-burning, longform fare for At The Dam's two remaining pieces, however.  On the otherwise languorously undulating and diffuse "Jaxine Drive," she intermittently reprises the laptop tweakery of "Otis" with a vengeance, transforming a gentle reverie into something considerably more hallucinatory and insectoid.  For the most part though, "Jaxine" is a very quiet and subdued piece.  Amusingly, it sometimes seems like The Edge stopped by to lay down some atmospheric guitar coloration, which I suppose is weirdly appropriate since much of this album was recorded on a friend's porch in Joshua Tree.  All of At The Dam's pieces seem to boast some kind of "showstopper" moment though and the one for "Jaxine Drive" unexpectedly turns up after about 8-minutes: the complexly layered web of harpistry transforms into a dreamy, shimmering heaven of processed, backwards swells.  The final "Ferris Wheel, January" follows a similar trajectory, beginning with seemingly improvised sweeps of rich, reverberating arpeggios.  Gradually, however, the piece's raison d'être becomes clearer, as the increased use of looping and delay transforms it into a blissfully lysergic haze that eventually blossoms into a slow-motion, hypnagogic waltz (of sorts).

Enjoyable as it is, however, "Ferris Wheel" inadvertently highlights a couple of ways in which At The Dam could have been a better album.  For one, it clocks in at over 13 minutes, which feels like a bit much.  The material is certainly strong, but it would be even stronger if it were somewhat more distilled.  Also, there is a brief moment near the end where a field recording of either breaking waves or a passing car on a rainy street intrudes.  That fleeting moment made me realize that: 1.) I wish Lattimore had included ambient sounds from the various stages of her trip to provide a shifting sense of place, and 2.) just about every song on At The Dam relies very heavily on laptop processing for its dynamic arc.  Fortunately, Lattimore executes her mildly psychedelic enhancements very effectively, so I do not mind that she kept returning to the same well.  I just do not think that she used all of her options.  I can definitely see why she made the album the way she did, however, as there is an endearing purity and simplicity to these pieces: while there is ample evidence of processing and overdubbing, it still feels like Lattimore restricted her palette to just the sounds produced from her harp on that porch in the desert.  Also, hypothesizing about the ways in which At The Dam could be even better shifts the focus away from everything that Lattimore did beautifully.  Each of these five pieces is richly melodic, tender, and evocative and there is nary a misstep to be found, as every single one gradually gives way to at least one absolutely gorgeous passage.  While its pace admittedly meanders at times, it is hard to complain when the ultimate destination proves to be well-worth the journey.

Samples:

• Otis Walks into the Woods
• Jaxine Drive
• Ferris Wheel, January

 

09 April 2016

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"Too Many Voices is the fourth album from Andy Stott, a follow-up to 2014's Faith in Strangers (LOVE 098CD). It was recorded from 2014-2016 and sees a diverse spectrum of influences bleed into nine tracks that are as searching as they are memorable.

The album draws inspiration from the fourth-world pop of Japan's Yellow Magic Orchestra as much as it does Triton-fueled grime made 25 years later. Somewhere between these two points there's an oddly aligned vision of the future that seeps through the pores of each of the tracks. It's a vision of the future as it was once imagined; artificial, strange, and immaculate. Full of possibilities.

The album opens with the harmonized, deteriorating pads of "Waiting For You" and arcs through to the synthetic chamber pop of the closing title-track, referencing Sylvian and Sakamoto's "Bamboo Houses" (1982) as much as it does the ethereal landscapes of This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance. In between, the climate and palette constantly shift, taking in the midnight pop of "Butterflies"; the humid, breathless house of "First Night"; and the endlessly cascading "Forgotten." Longtime vocal contributor Alison Skidmore features on half the tracks, sometimes augmented by the same simulated materials as on the dystopian breakdown of "Selfish," and at others surrounded by beautiful synth washes, such as on the mercurial "Over" or the dreamy, neon-lit "New Romantic." It's all far removed from the digital synthesis and the abstracted intricacies that define much of the current electronic landscape. The same cybernetic palette is here implanted into more human form; sometimes cold, but more often thrumming with life."

-via Experimedia

Out April 22nd on Modern Love.