Duke Of York

18 October 2015

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Irisarri’s latest album is not rooted in a particularly happy place, as it was recorded after most of his gear and possessions were stolen during a cross-country move.  The experience ultimately proved to be artistically liberating though: without his usual studio set-up or his backlog of material to work with, Rafael decided to use the occasion as an opportunity for an aesthetic rebirth.  That was the plan, anyway–to my ears, A Fragile Geography is not a particularly radical or revelatory transformation.  It certainly feels a bit more structured, composed, and grainy than before, but is still basically more of the likable and warmly hissing synth-based ambient music that I have grown to expect from Irisarri (albeit now with slightly broader appeal).  Fans of label head Lawrence English or early (read: less dissonant) Tim Hecker will likely find this album appealing, while longtime Irisarri enthusiasts will presumably require no adjustment period at all to appreciate his change of course.

Room40

The opening "Displacement" favorably (and unavoidably) calls to mind yet another of my favorite artists: Angelo Badalamenti.  While the resemblance is not at all derivative and "Displacement" is far too understated to recall any of Badalamenti's more iconic pieces, Irisarri does a masterful job of mingling hissing, dreamy beauty with a subtly menacing and disorienting undercurrent that suggests that something is not quite right.  While the piece never quite evolves into anything more, its lushly brooding ambiance is a very pleasant place to linger for four minutes or so.  The next several pieces thankfully get a bit more ambitious though.

The lengthier "Reprisal," for example, enhances an otherwise straightforward drone motif with an inspired array of hollow, whooshing, undulating, and shimmering textures as it gradually snowballs in power and volume.  I especially enjoyed how the more static-like/white noise elements blossomed to take over the foreground as the more melodic elements faded into the distance.  "Empire Systems" is yet another highlight, as a slow-moving drift of chord swells gradually surge in power while increasingly fraying around the edges.  The following "Hiatus" is even more inspired, as Irisarri enhances his usual chord pattern with a nimbus of wobbly, fluttering, and strangled-sounding synth tones.  Sadly, it only lasts for about two minutes though.  The much longer "Persistence" achieves a somewhat similar (if lesser) feat, but its appealingly quivering and burbling tones are regrettably pushed to the background by the piece’s languorous and melancholy melody.

That unfortunate penchant for getting bogged down in melancholy completely takes over the closing "Secretly Wishing for Rain," which is an 8-minute slog of sad piano arpeggios, gloomy synths, and cello from guest Julia Kent.  That type of overt, mopey melodrama leaves me quite cold and is probably the best illustration of the gulf separating Irisarri from the genre's top tier.  Another somewhat exasperating facet of A Fragile Geography is that each piece feels like a single motif extended and embellished until Rafael eventually loses interest and fades out.  It is certainly possible to make great ambient or drone music with that approach (and many artists have done so), but the trick is to not be so transparent about it.  Also, it is perplexing that two of the album’s strongest themes wind up being represented by the shortest songs ("Hiatus" and "Displacement").

All grumbling aside though, Irisarri is absolutely wonderful at detail and texture, which makes a piece like "Reprisal" an extremely compelling headphone listening experience (there is something hidden in there that sounds like a submerged field recording of wolves or whales that is completely lost without them).  Consequently, "Reprisal" gets an enthusiastic, heartfelt, and unqualified recommendation from me.  I just wish the other five pieces had hit similar heights (or at least stuck around longer when they hit them).  Irisarri definitely needs to get better at playing to his strengths.  Also, there should probably be more whales and wolves on future albums (or at least more prominent use of field recordings, as Rafael's use of unusual/buried textures is probably what most differentiates him from the ambient drone herd).  That said, A Fragile Geography is still at least half of a very good album and marks a promising step forward for Irisarri.  I suspect that his best work is still ahead of him.

• Reprisal
• Empire Systems
• Hiatus

 

17 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

Threshold Archives has just released eight Coil CDs.

Read about it here.

17 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

"Sheathed in some of the best album artwork of 2015, Mika Vainio and Franck Vigroux reveal the buzzing and psyched-out electronic sculptures of Peau froide, léger soleil on Shapednoise's Cosmo Rhythmatic label.

The latest and arguably most powerful in a long line of collaborations between the Finnish producer and his peers aesthetically finds him closest to the crushing electronics + processed guitar equations of Life (… It Eats You Up) (2011) or Kilo (2013), but also with a couple of brilliant runs into vocodered, sidereal electronics that really set this record apart.

Three years in the making, following a live collaboration in Paris 2012, Peau froide, léger soleil is an exercise in sensitive intensity and spatial scale, seamlessly mapping Vigroux's alchemical guitar process into Vainio's free swaggering structures and tonal extremities.

From the deep freeze intro and craggy peaks of opener "Deux," they take in the ice palace designs of "Mémoire," which first reveals the strange voices that come to haunt the rest of the record, emerging from the buzzsaw blasts and subbass waves of "Souffles" like the ghost of Bruce Haack, or creeping like hyaline spectres from the microtonal gloam of Ravages."

However, if you're after out-and-out Vainio wreckage, they excel at that too with later trax such as the white-out guitar storm of Parabole," and certainly in the finishing move of funked-up electro bass riffs and banking amp buzz entitled "Le crâne tambour."

Effectively it's the heaviest you'll hear from this icy and bloodied corner of the field this year, and surely marks the Cosmo Rhythmatic label as one to watch."

-Via Boomkat

17 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW! RELEASED FOR CASSETTE STORE DAY ON OCTOBER 17th.

Last year's reissue of the first 6 of Potter's tapes for CSD proved to be very popular, so we are re-releasing his last 3 ICR tapes, Recent History 1 & 2 and See and also 3 'new' tapes, Hiss Story 1 & 2 and Are We Nearly There Yet?, which collect various unreleased, compilation & remixed tracks from the same era. All have artwork by Jonathan Coleclough and are professionally duplicated on chrome tape.

This is what Boomkat says :

"Following last year's instantly sold-out set, Colin Potter's ICR label piece together six tapes of sought-after, unreleased and remixed material from his late '80s phase, just as he was really getting to grips with his gear..

After topping our reissue best-of list in 2014 with the last batch, he's likely to repeat the trick with this collection, staking out more spacious, celestial dimensions and subtly elevated production/engineering values.

This lot look to 1989-1990 (the last set scanned 1980-1982) with two volumes of Recent History touching on a lush, floating new age sound full of diaphanous synths and vaulted reverb settings thru to experimental, recursive guitarscapes and Escher-esque sequencer tessellations that spiral off in dizzying fractals.

By contrast, See (1990) is a pure, unbroken vision of widescreen ambient sound-scaping recalling the sweeping nocturnal flightpath of Goodiepal's Havet - which was written in the same year - travelling from sublime to darker ambient tones which would come to define the tail end of that decade.

But, for collectors and Potter fiends, the last three tapes are perhaps most invaluable, covering the hidden points of his least well-known period, from the pulsing industrial dance music of "Know More" to the blood-curdling darkness of "No Good" in the Are We Nearly There Yet? tape, beside two volumes of dead hard-to-find compilation cuts and obscurities collected as Hiss Story."

More information can be found here.

11 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

Having recently partnered with Bill Kouligas to relaunch his Lost Codes imprint as Codes, Visionist takes a defining step forward with the release of his PAN debut album, Safe.

The South London artist born Louis Carnell broke during a period of experimentation in UK music when, with the disintegration of the dubstep scene, emerging producers began looking to juke and Chicago house for inspiration. A pair of EPs on Lit City Trax (and a collaboration with Fatima Al Qadiri) in 2013 and 2014 introduced Visionist’s minimalist take on fractured R&B and liquid grime, establishing him as a leading voice in new-wave UK soundsystem culture.

On Safe, Visionist sculpts and extends that signature into new terrain and makes his most personal statement yet. Distilling his influences down to a sparse palette of manipulated folk, pop and R&B acapellas, icy synths, and metallic drum samples, he plays off ever-present anxiety and his own battle not to let it overwhelm him. “Comfort, protection, salvation—this is what we search for,” he says. “We are taught that a life of no worries is better for us, and therefore we try to create one that is 'Safe.'”

But while safe as a musical concept implies conformity, Safe as an artistic statement is anything but. At a moment when the UK scene, once known for innovation, has settled into rehashing old tropes, Visionist continues to propel his sound into more experimental territory. The album traces the arc of an anxiety attack, from its onset through to recovery. Following the stately discord of brief opener “You Stayed,” the grimy, ballistic assault of “Victim” sends its targets diving into mirrored corners. “I’ve Said” is a brutal, almost militant advance, its sound cutting in and out as though transmitted via shortwave radio. “Too Careful To Care” trades in skittering paranoia, with the soporific “Sleep Luxury” closing out affairs.

More information can be found here.

04 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

"This is all for the glory of creation." Harry Bertoia

In the late fifties Harry Bertoia began working on long-form improvised compositions by utilizing pure acoustic tones produced using his own pure metal sound sculptures.   Bertoia coined the term "Sonambient" to describe the music of his sculptures and the lush overtones they evoked, renovated a barn on his property deep in the PA woods, and often recorded his nightly sessions in the barn using 4 overhead microphones and a 1/4" tape recorder. Bertoia dedicated the last twenty years of his life to his Sonambient work and in 1970 he released the first Sonambient LP. In 1978, in the final months of his life, he selected recordings from his archive and produced 10 more Sonambient records. He would not live long enough to see these records in person.

2015 is the centennial celebration of the birth of Harry Bertoia on March 10, 1915. To celebrate Harry's life and work Important Records Important Records will release a CD box set containing the complete edition of Bertoia's privately pressed Sonambient LPs.

Harry Bertoia's use of the term "Sonambient" to describe both his sculptures and their sound pre-date the term "ambient" being used to describe a form of music. The origins of his Sonambient sculptures are found in his brilliant, early monotypes. It wasn't until 1960 that he began the exploration of these tonal sculptures and then not until the early seventies that he began recording his lengthy concerts. He ritually played his meditative performances in his post and beam barn on 200 acres in Barto, Pennsylvania up in the hills not far away from his Bally, PA studio. It's the sacred, personal feeling one has in Bertoia's barn that we hope to evoke with the packaging and archival materials accompanying these recordings.

"We live in a new age with sounds never before heard. They can be strident, tranquil, violent, fluctuating, depending on the metal, the size of the rods, or the group of the rods. I always feel more drawn to this barn, the changes are omnipresent and every person has the responsibility to find new ways of making things. This is what forms our character. I cannot say that I am not unchangeable. There is a progression in the world. It is part of my role in life to discover this progression."

Harry Bertoia 1978

The works of Harry Bertoia celebrate the bounty of the good earth; shimmering sheafs of golden wheat stalked in endless rows on 'the fruitful plain'; great crashing cataracts, with crystal-pure and steel hard volutes; or the swift, mystic rushing of myriad-rayed comets against the sky's infinity. To suggest so much, by means so simple, is the mark of a great lyrical poet.

Bertoia's sculptures and his sounds are a conceptual string, or literal vibrations, that weave together all of his work. You see the shape of the sound sculptures appear in his mono-prints and suddenly even his famous chairs resonate with sounds when you pluck at them or run a pencil down the lines. Through Sonambient, Bertoia's lifetime of work resonates, echoes, bubbles with overtones and comes alive.

Harry's single greatest piece of art is the totality of his life which is nearly impossible to measure but somehow easy to feel.

The Complete Sonambient Collection will be released on Nov 27, 2015 on Important Records.

28 September 2015

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Surprisingly Sentimental Something is the first vinyl album release from Richard Chartier’s less aesthetically academic, but brilliantly ambiguous Pinkcourtesyphone project. The music, with all its 1950s and '60s kitsch trappings and imagery, is no less complex and just as rich and beautiful as his self-titled work. Regardless of the format, these three compositions continue PCP’s penchant for generating hazy landscapes of frigid tones and obtuse worlds of sound.

Important

It almost seems that, on comparison, Sentimental Something is an even more disconnected, cold sounding record from a project that has fully embraced that sound and aesthetic.A piece such as the side-long "Fabric Illusion/High on Neuroticism" does this, but also with an additional sense of intensity.Heavy, rattling bass appears throughout, countering the panning, spectral expanses of sound and noise.Everything seems to be engulfed in a (pink) fog of intensity before Chartier scales the piece back to a more restrained and depressive mood, leaving lingering melodies and a tasteful amount of dissonant crackle.

"Tears of Modernism" (featuring frequent collaborator Evelina Domnitch on theremin) first begins with an understated passage of droning electronics, but it soon builds to a piece of similar heaviness to "Fabric Illusion."It retains the same lost-in-the-mist ambiguity and isolation as well, but there is a darker, further reaching sense of heaviness to it.Haunting bits of melody drift through the vapor, which just adds an additional haunting layer to the already ghostly mood generated.

The fog lightens some on "Casual Encounter/Formal Encounter," allowing Chartier to bring string-like melodies to the forefront, along with an uncharacteristic bit of pseudo percussion to add an additional layer of variation.Throughout it has a slowly meandering feel to the piece (which I mean as a compliment) before the mood is upset by some shrill, phantasmagorical outbursts of noises that pierce through.It is only in the closing minutes that the female dialog sample, a staple of the Pinkcourtesyphone aesthetic, appears.

Richard Chartier has been prolific as PCP since its inception, even more so than the work he puts out under his own name.The project may have appeared almost fully formed with 2012's Foley Folly Folio, but the distinct style and intentional sonic ennui have become more and more polished with each release.The aesthetic and atmosphere may differ between PCP and his main project, but his ability to work from the most skeletal of sounds to compose something so multifaceted and beautifully nuanced is peerless.

samples:

• Fabric Illusion/High on Neuroticism
• Tears of Modernism
• Casual Encounter/Formal Encounter

 

27 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

Michael Hann’s work as Marreck has always kept one foot on the dance floor, and the other in uglier, noisier realms. Computerized beats and programmed synthesizer leads abound, but always under a distinctly dissonant, corroded cloud of production that makes his work stand out distinctly. For his new vinyl EP, Yuda, he shifts that balance more towards the aforementioned ugly side of his work, but never fully abandons his techno inclinations on these five increasingly chaotic compositions.

Alien Jams

The descent into dissonance begins from the most conventional piece on here:the muffled, but thumping "Uco."The components are nothing unique:deep bassy kick drums and synth lead melodies. Hann, however, muffles and filters them to generate an oppressive, distant quality to the music.It does not sound like the music is being piped in from a few buildings over, but it does have a similar sense of space to it.The ambiance of "Bagun" is similar, but a few steps further into the noisy descent.A sold thudding rhythm again acts as the backbone, as Hann weaves in slowly surging, white noise drenched electronics, slowly pushing things further and further into entropy.

By the journey’s midpoint, "Prakoso," the bass rhythm becomes an unrelenting molten wall of noise, as spiny FM percussion skitters atop.It adds a harsh and metallic quality to the sound, which continues to surge as the piece becomes thicker with added layers of sound, but retaining the same structure.The expansion in sonic depth paired with the taut and restrained construction results in an unrelenting bit of tension throughout the piece."Eka" has Hann working with a traditional synthetic kick drum beat again, but programmed so rapidly and distorted to more accurately resemble a submachine gun than something to dance to.Crashing, junky noises are abruptly mixed in to jarring effect, as less abrasive synth drones only slightly offset the noise.

Things intentionally fall apart at the concluding "Rama."Propelled by a decaying, gurgling keyboard lead, expansive electronics resonate over a jerky, wet rhythm.Again Hann keeps the structure simple, based on only a few repeating bars, but his blending of additional layers, as well as adding more and more to the mix as the piece goes on, keeps it from becoming too stagnant.Instead it is a tense, but constantly evolving piece of destructive electronics.

From the first to the last piece, Yuda is an excellent encapsulation of Michael Hann's deconstruction (and idiosyncratic reconstruction) of contemporary dance music.Its beginning minutes may seem somewhat conventional and unsurprising, but it does not take long before things are dissolved in unexpected ways, then put back together into erratic structures and unconventional textures that bare no resemblance to where it began.It is this pulling apart into bizarre realms that make this such a unique and fascinating record.

samples:

• Uco
• Prakoso
• Rama

 

27 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

Four long years after their seismic performance at London’s Short Circuit Festival, Carter Tutti Void have finally returned with their first proper studio album.  Equally noteworthy is that fact that f(x) is the first new music to be released by Industrial Records since 2012's Throbbing Gristle/X-TG swan song Desertshore/The Final Report.  Given those circumstances, it would be hard for any record to live up to the resultant expectations, so it is not especially surprising that f(x) falls a bit short of the mark.  The problem is not that the trio were lacking ideas or inspiration, however: they have just backed themselves into a very constrained stylistic niche that cannot realistically yield multiple albums of compelling material.  That said, f(x) is still quite an enjoyable album, even if it is essentially Transverse Redux (albeit with some of the sharper edges sanded down a bit).

Industrial

One of the many perils of music criticism is that it is very easy to develop a skewed perspective when I am a longtime fan of an artist.  That revelation smacked me in the head when I tried to figure why I was not nearly as thrilled by f(x) as I wanted to be.  Upon deeper reflection, it occurred to me that Carter Tutti Void is a fundamentally perverse and unsustainable project: I enjoyed Transverse because it was exciting to see three oft-dormant artists that I like team up for an unexpected, visceral, and explosive performance.  Only later does it occur to me that Transverse lacked almost everything that I love about Throbbing Gristle or Chris & Cosey: it was not transgressive, it was not sexy, it did not have great hooks, and there were not any actual songs.  What it offered instead was Chris Carter's wonderfully unique lurching, clanking and wheezing grooves; plenty of energy; and the wild spontaneity of Nik Void and Cosey Fanni Tutti's smoldering and echoing guitar improvisations.  As it happens, that was more than enough to make a cool album, but it was a very precarious cocktail indeed: Cosey is an iconic vocalist and performer, but I would probably not queue up to buy a solo improv guitar album by either her or Void.  Carter Tutti Void are not a band that entirely play to their strengths.

Notably, the trio have not made any significant alterations to their formula with f(x), which is essentially more of the same, except recorded at Chris & Cosey's home studio in Norfolk rather than at a gig.  Even the approach was roughly the same, as they set up for the recording process as though they were playing a live show in the studio–the sole significant innovation being that they allowed themselves three takes and assembled the finished pieces from those components.  Oddly, the sound quality is cleaner, but not always better–f(x) often feels quite a bit more mannered than its predecessor, even though the grooves are a bit more sexed-up.  Musically, however, Chris Carter is in prime form, unleashing six more throbbing and propulsive grooves that sound eerily like a living machine.  The best of lot is the opening "f = (2.4)," which sounds like a sinuous and sultry Carter Tutti song warped into a haunted, hallucinatory, and sci-fi-damaged juggernaut.  Later on, Carter delves into something that sounds like it belongs in a strip club scene in a film like Escape From New York ("f = (2.2)"), a burbling and insistent Motorik work-out ("f =(2.6)"), and an awesomely throbbing groove that sounds plucked from an '80s S&M club ("f=(2.7.)").

Notably, the "John Carpenter Strip Club" song is absent from the vinyl version of the album, but that gets at something very important about f(x): it absolutely does not matter at all.  While the best pieces are definitely the book-ends ("Warped Carter Tutti Song in Space" and "Retro S&M Sex Groove"), these six (or five) pieces are otherwise more or less interchangeable due to their hyper-limited palette.  There are no melodies, no chord changes, no hooks, no real development, and no real vocals (aside from some chopped and heavily processed howling and chanting).  The songs are all just vamps that play out for 8 or 10 minutes, then wind to a close once they have run their course.  Cosey and Nik certainly make quite a bit of racket on their end, but there is only so much they can do to make a song memorable when playing bowed guitar through a battery of effects pedals.  For all intents and purposes, these songs live or die by their grooves: the gnarled guitar cacophony over the top just serves to keep things interesting and unpredictable.  Also, these pieces are so similar that listening to more than a few at a time yields quickly diminishing impact.

All of that adds up to an alternately bracing, exhilarating, exhausting, frustrating, hypnotic, and wild whole (or maybe a handful of very cool (if overlong) singles, if viewed in a more charitable light).  In any case, my feelings regarding f(x) are deeply conflicted.  On one hand, it is always wonderful to hear more of Carter's weirdly heaving and imperfect rhythms and it is great that this project is bringing Chris & Cosey's work to new audiences.  On the other, I cannot help but feel that Carter Tutti Void have driven themselves into a creative cul de sac and that they desperately need to find a way out: this is not a well that they can viably keep returning to.  I am hoping that they eventually either take the plunge and write some actual songs or find some way to harness their rhythmic genius into something more immersive and longform.  In fact, I was hoping that might happen with f(x).  Alas.  Maybe next time.  For now, however, f(x) is a very likable, albeit minor, album.  It may not be the revelation that Transverse was, but the material is not necessarily weaker–it just feels that way because Carter Tutti Void tried to dazzle me with the same trick twice.

Samples:

• f = (2.4)
• f = (2.2)
• f = (2.7)

 

27 September 2015

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Albums and Singles

Bayou Electric is the final part of an unplanned trilogy that began with the wonderful Feel Free and continued with the almost-as-good Bridges.  Much like the two previous installments, this latest release has its origins in an unusual and compelling idea: in this case, composing a long-form piece that organically complements and interacts with an unaltered field recording taken from Pitre's native Louisiana.  Unlike previous installments, however, Bayou Electric's laudable ambition regrettably exceeded Pitre's ability to do it justice.  The problem is not that this is a bad album–it is not (at least not for those who enjoy pastoral ambient drone).  Rather, Bayou is disappointing solely because it fails to be particularly distinctive or moving, which is an especially tragic fate for an album with such sincere and personal aspirations.

Important

The field recording in question was made by Pitre himself back in 2010 at Four Mile Bayou, where his family has owned land for several generations.  There is nothing particularly exceptional about the recording, aside from its inherent poignancy for the composer, but any competent night recording of a rural area in the Deep South is invariably going yield a vibrant and complexly textured thrum of insect life.  This one is no exception and Pitre recognized that.  In that regard, I greatly appreciate what he set out to do here: find a way to use the recordings without chopping, tweaking, or shaping them or relegating them to just a minor layer of added texture or background.  For Duane, the chittering, droning hordes of crickets and frogs are the raison d'être for Bayou Electric, both richly musical and deeply meaningful (his family have been living among these sounds for almost a hundred years).  Unfortunately, this is not an album by Chris Watson, master sound-recordist; this is an album by Duane Pitre, electro-acoustic composer.  Consequently, Bayou Electric's impressive ideals get muddied quite a bit by the artificial textures of synthesizers and sine waves.

Such a choice is extremely perplexing coming from Pitre, as he has historically been quite fond of more timeless instrumentation such as cellos and violins.  There are some of those here too, but Bayou Electric is an album that begs for earthy, organic instrumentation that can fit seamlessly amidst a wildlife chorus of croaks, buzzes, and hums.  Anything else just sounds either false or blandly homogenizing.  For better or worse, this album errs more towards the latter.  While there is evidence of a concerted effort to shape the music around the very vocal crickets and their bayou friends, Pitre's sustained, radiant synth swells unavoidably grab much of the focus.  Consequently, Bayou Electric largely sounds like a beatific ambient drone reverie circa 2015 playing in a room with all the windows open.  The only significant difference from such a reductionist dismissal is that the crickets are sometimes as loud as the instrumentation (or louder), so imagining that someone helpfully gave them microphones and an amp yields a somewhat more accurate picture.

Of course, my disappointment is highly subjective and is shaped by my own expectations based upon both the album's description and my previous encounters with Pitre's work.  With Feel Free, he proved that he is an imaginative and innovative composer capable of making great, distinctive art.  With Bridges, he proved that he is restlessly evolving and appreciates the power of dissonance.  There is no dissonance or distinctiveness to be found this time around though.  While I do not think that Duane forgot what made him a compelling composer in the first place, I suspect that his desire to move away from using other musicians combined with a wish to record a tender tribute to his home steered him into some dubious and toothless aesthetic territory.  He did have a great idea though–things just went a bit awry with the execution, at least as far as creating compelling, forward-thinking art is concerned.  As far as pleasant (if unspectacular) ambient drone is concerned, Bayou Electric is reasonably effective at scratching that particular itch, approximating some of Stars of the Lid’s more benignly pastoral work.  There is certainly a place for that, but an artist of Pitre’s caliber has no business lingering there.

• Excerpt One
• Excerpt Two
• Excerpt Three