After two weekends away, the backlog has become immense, so we present a whopping FOUR new episodes for the spooky season!
Episode 717 features Medicine, Fennesz, Papa M, Earthen Sea, Nero, memotone, Karate, ØKSE, Otis Gayle, more eaze, Jon Mueller, and Lauren Auder + Wendy & Lisa.
Episode 718 has The Legendary Pink Dots, Throbbing Gristle, Von Spar / Eiko Ishibashi / Joe Talia / Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Ladytron, Cate Brooks, Bill Callahan, Jill Fraser, Angelo Harmsworth, Laibach, and Mike Cooper.
Episode 719 music by Angel Bat Dawid, Philip Jeck, A.M. Blue, KMRU, Songs: Ohia, Craven Faults, tashi dorji, Black Rain, The Ghostwriters, Windy & Carl.
Episode 720 brings you tunes from Lewis Spybey, Jules Reidy, Mogwai, Surya Botofasina, Patrick Cowley, Anthony Moore, Innocence Mission, Matt Elliott, Rodan, and Sorrow.
Photo of a Halloween scene in Ogunquit by DJ Jon.
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Inhabiting a murky, future-primitive electronic world akin to some of Coil's best work, Formication blends opaque ambient passages with mutated, unnatural rhythms that carefully straddle the line between formless chaos and repetitive, occasionally almost danceable beats.
It's on tracks like "Solus Air & the Dream of the Heart Star" where the two structural opposites blend together perfectly, with amorphous ambient passages interspersed with erratic, but catchy distorted beats.The chanting voices and disorienting electronics convey a ritualistic feeling throughout.
"Slow Man – Personal Insults" falls more into the world of chaos, with disembodied voices and sputtering rhythmic elements careening together in a dense, heavy mix that has a sense of tension that’s almost tangible.The effect is even more pronounced in its sequencing next to "The Girls Spun Round in Fear," which is far more sparse and arid, even if it does have the sensibilities of an updated Blade Runner soundtrack. While it's not light in the conventional sense, it at least allots some breathing room.
I was most entranced by the pieces that fell more into the world of conventional electronics.The solid, pummeling techno beats of "Silver" are part of a track that is structurally pretty simple, but with an array of sounds that make it more captivating than it would seem on the surface.In a similar way, the fractured take on the Chain Reaction type sound that closes the album on "Absolute Will" makes for a great ending:it might not do anything out of the ordinary, but what it does, it does quite well.
While there are a couple tracks, like "I Had a Plastic Head that Melted" and "Dr. Umens May Care," that aren't all that memorable, the bulk of this album is a fresh take on electronic music that varies between dark drone worlds and dance floor oriented beats, two genres that are rarely paired together.
Early copies are packed with an additional CD-R remix EP that features Hoor-paar-Kraat stretching "Argentum" out into creepy space, Locrian making "This is Normal for Me" even more bleak than the version that opens the main album, and Formication themselves contributing "I Dare You," a beat oriented track that is great on its own, but would have been out of place on the main album.It's worth the few extra bucks for the remixes, that’s for sure.
While many, myself included, tend to think of New York’s Controlled Bleeding based on their harsh noise period in the mid 1980s, they always had a more multifaceted sound, and more recent works, such as Odes to Bubbler, have embraced more of a free jazz influenced rock sound. Paul Lemos and company do that genre quite well on here, though many CB fans may already own the bulk of this record.
Other than the first six tracks on here (and two uncredited bonus songs), this material was on the Vinyl-on-Demand Songs From a Sewer of Dreams LP box set, and also the first disc of the Gibbering Canker-Opera Slaves CD set.If you're an owner of either of those, such as myself, think of this as an expensive EP.
"Chum Grubber" and "Controlled Bleeding" reminded me of some of Naked City's best material, in that it puts just the right amount of ramshackle noise into a traditional rock framework, both tracks reaching out into harsh, noisy waters but being reigned back in at just the right time.On "Eye of Needle" and "Shards Blown Back," the band embrace more of a post-rock sensibility, relying less on instrumental freakouts and more on textural explorations, making for two very captivating songs.
The remaining material, which is previously released, takes its cues from the band’s long and varied discography.There's more of the jazz influenced noise freakouts, such as the four part "Bees," which nicely juxtaposes noise, jazz, and grindcore throughout, and "Spattered In the Key of "O"," featuring Weasel Walter on drums, treads similar waters, adding in some squawking horns to the machine gun rhythm fest.
"A Love Song (In Two Parts)" shows a bit of the band's playful side:for the first third it's a prog rock synth kaleidoscope of sound, but launches violently into a wall of harsh digital noise that harkens back to their earlier days, before closing out on a somewhat random (and goofy) piano and guitar ending."An Announcement," which is slightly different on here than the other places it appears, is a cute little track of the band if it was lead by a little girl.
The first of the two unlisted tracks grabbed me, with its slow building structure and dubby, Krautrock inspired rhythms that are equal parts Tago Mago and Metal Box, a combination that can’t go wrong in my opinion.It sounds as if it might have been recorded specifically for this disc, but I can't say for sure.
Other than the redundancy of this material when compared to the aforementioned box sets, Odes to Bubbler is a strong, if not completely coherent, album.While it jumps back and forth stylistically, pretty much everything Lemos and cohorts choose do, they do well.There are bits that do nothing for me (the jazzy scat vocals that pop up aren't my thing), but the whole package works well.Those who pine for the days of pure harsh noise will probably not be overly interested, but for me, it’s the right level of eccentric.
While his name may be most closely associated with the No Fun Fest he curates and the abrasive noise that is usually featured there, Giffoni’s own work tends to focus less on the harsh and more on the minimal electronics. On this album, he continues his focus on rudimentary analog electronics in a highly structured set of works that is arguably TOO structured.
The five pieces that make up this album all range around nine minutes, with the final, longer track clocking in at a bit over 12. Considering the ridgid structure each track is built on, the individual tracks tend to follow similar blueprints that unfortunately don’t vary too much from piece to piece. Opening track "The Endless Mirror" starts with a rattling set of synth notes that eventually lock into some sense of rhythm as lower pitched notes kick in. As the layers begin to pile on, the early rhythm almost becomes a traditional 4/4 kick drum as rougher square wave frequencies pierce through the mix. In essence, it feels like the soundtrack to a primitive Atari video game.
"A Son With No Father" similarly starts out with an odd electronic warbling chime that repeats, building a sense of rhythm as radio static enters the mix, giving the track an extremely textural feel. Even once the slicing white noise elements come in, it remains a restrained and cautious piece as opposed to an overly chaotic one. "This Is How You Pull The Trigger" opens with a pulsating old school analog synth that could have been lifted from any techno track, but the synthetic spaceship sounds and highly controlled noise parts keep it more in the abstract realm of sound, especially as it eventually transitions into harsher noise work.
"Comfort and Pleasure," however, shows the shortcomings of the disc. The repeated engine revving synths and phased noises call to mind the early days of power electronics, which is only increased by the rumbling bass sequences. While it is an interesting listen, it also feels about five minutes too long. All of the tracks follow this similar pattern of a stripped down introduction that slowly builds and builds in complexity before breaking back down to the introductory sounds.
The plus of this is that the mixing allows one to pay closer attention to the electronic textures that make up the songs that stay fundamentally raw: there’s not a great deal of effects or other processing going on here. The problem is that structurally the tracks all feel too similar and that leads them to being a bit too predictable. While I’m not saying it has to break into pure noise and end up in total chaos, it just feels too formulaic. Overall it’s a good album, but just a bit bland compared to what it could have been.
Returning with their second full length, the East Coast Portland (Maine) foursome manage to not only defend their reputation as capable purveyors of riffs most heavy but also to expand their sonic palette in an unexpected but welcome way. With greater control of dynamics, a female guest vocalist and songs played across time scales better expressed in geologic terms rather than minutes, this is one of the best metal albums of the year.
With a crashing thud, Ocean start where they left off on their debut: doom played at a snail’s pace. While it is no great departure for them, it is still an awesome sound that sucks the listener in from the moment it starts. However, another album in the exact same style would be tedious considering the wealth of bands exploring similar musical areas (Moss, Trees, Wreck of the Hesperus, and so on and so on). Ocean avoid stagnation by actively breaking up their already tried and tested sound. Halfway through “The Beacon,” the volume drops out and the sound shifts significantly. Rolling back on the distortion and introducing a female vocalist (Yoshiko Ohara from Bloody Panda), the change in mood is remarkable. Over the second half of this immense song, the power builds up again before burning out exquisitely.
“The Beacon” could have been an album on its own but Ocean have spoilt us by adding another shorter piece to flesh out the album (although at 23 minutes it is still a bruiser!). “Of the Lesser” again returns to the over- amplified plod of Ocean of yore. At first disappointing after the majesty of “The Beacon” but as the piece progressed, an almost ecstatic feeling Godspeed-like momentum builds up before slowing right down again; it is dizzying stuff.
With each subsequent listen of the album I get more and more enthused about the whole thing. Ocean could have very easily just repeated Here Where Nothing Grows but they have pushed themselves further than that. It will be interesting to see where they will go from here, personally further exploration of the quieter sound they have employed here on “The Beacon” would be intriguing. It is here that Ocean have gone from a group that I have liked and would listen to occasionally to a group that I feel have real potential to break apart from their peers.
As a closing remark I would wager that as nice as the 2xLP version is likely to be (Important did a wonderful job on the first album), with the length of the two songs the CD version is probably going to give the best listening experience.
There are just about enough thrills on this debut EP to ward off the nagging boredom of another guitar group traversing a well worn musical terrain. In this case: that which might be termed "surf-gaze."
Surf City kicks off in very promising fashion with "Headin’ Inside" which has a near-perfect ratio of propulsion, yelling, frantic rhythm, gliding melody and scratchy discord. The running time of 2:27 would also have been super jukebox friendly back in the days when, well, you know. "Records of a Flagpole Skater" has plenty of guitar fuzz, thumping energy, and a vocal afterglow suggestive of sounds launched in Paisley by the Reid brothers.
By contrast "Dickshaker’s Union" seems rather desperate and lifeless (no pun intended) and "Canned Food" sounds like half a song, as ordinary and uninspiring as the title suggests. The EP does well to recover from this lumpen phase and sure enough a livelier spirit returns. Surf City's charm lies in going for the throat while not pretending to be a radical departure. For example, during "Headin’ Inside" the unpretentious cries of "1-2-3-4" have a joyous abandon with no discernable irony or sense of embarrassment. Similarly, on “Mt Kill” the line “Shake, rattle, and roll your hands” sounds just fine whether or not it’s sung with tongue in cheek. One of the better pieces here “Mt Kill” begins with a guitar figure that might have been cribbed from The Church before mutating into a dynamic guitar tone and sense of rushing vocals often associated with prime Sonic Youth. There’s no let down on final song “Free The City,” either, with obvious echoes of The Cure.
Surf City orginated in New Zealand but I think I'll resist the urge to lazily mention any NZ bands. Better to contend that, on the one hand the four best tracks on the EP are just about perfect. On the other hand, the narrow focus runs the risk of what I like to call Giovanni di Varrazzano Syndrome. Adam Nicolson, in his book On Foot, describes di Varrazzona as an Italian navigator who in the 1520s found the sliver of barrier island which includes Hatteras, North Carolina. Just as may still be the case, mainland USA was beneath the horizon, not visible from Hatteras. According to Nicolson, di Varrazzano assumed he had found all there was to America.
Between his Nadja albums and his solo material, Aidan Baker releases enough music to frustrate all but the most ardent and obsessive collectors. Important Records have just released a two-CD compilation that won't solve that problem, but it features some of the best Baker material I've yet heard.
With so much music released in the last eight years, it's not hard to imagine Baker having a diverse amount of rare songs in need of greater exposure. I Wish Too, To Be Absorbed collects MP3 downloads and songs from CD-R albums that I know about only because reliable discographies of Baker's work exist online. Despite the multiplicity of styles and approaches Baker utilizes, both discs flow with a logical and pleasing continuity that suggests a proper album more than a compilation. The track selection and running order have little other rhyme or reason; both discs jump backwards and forwards in time, skipping multiple years in favor of shared aesthetics and natural progressions.
Disc one begins with Baker's first release, Element. "Element #1" serves to establish a mood and does little more than rumble and hiss in a threatening, slightly brooding manner. The tolling of deep, distant bells provides a ritualistic tone that resonates throughout much of the collection. "K" follows this mass of sound and lightens the mood considerably, exhibiting Baker's less intense tendencies. Cello and violin are featured heavily during the first half of the song and it's difficult not to imagine Baker taking some inspiration from bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Labradford, or even Rachel's. In a span of five minutes, the song's theme changes from one of memory and yearning to one of suffering and uncertainty. The strings on "K" disappear and the song resolves into a mess of scraping metal and unidentifiable clatter before ending and moving naturally into "Merge." These are the only two songs on the compilation that were originally featured on the same record, Wound Culture. This release was a book/CDr combo that dealt ostensibly with erotic themes in various forms; if "Element #1" set the tone for this disc, then these two songs add just a hint of sensuality to the record. Each of the following songs, whether they be ten or 20 minutes in length, bare traces of these first three compositions. There are hints of industrial influences on some songs and on others it's hard not to hear Baker incorporating shoegaze and krautrock stylings into his work. Whatever dress the music is wearing, it's always harboring a kind of sensuousness that isn't immediately discernible in all of Baker's music, especially not in Nadja. "Speed of Thought" ends disc one with a kind of jam-piece that sounds partly improvised, but also highly structured. It's perhaps the best song on the entire compilation and it represents a side of Baker's talent with which I am entirely unfamiliar. His pseudo-ambient, pseudo-metal, pseudo-drone projects receive plenty of attention, but this post-rock amalgam of a song has me completely spellbound. Hopefully Baker hasn't abandoned this approach and will be releasing more music like it.
Disc two collects the kind of music that I think must be most associated with Baker's solo output. Each of the five songs are long, abstract pieces with highly cinematic qualities. The focus on disc two is long, rolling sounds, muddy bubbles of synthesizer noise, and slowly developing melody. Both "Melusine" and "Esken (Bonedweller)" are mostly quiet pieces that thrive on minutiae and the mysterious qualities of hazy samples. Though definitely reliant on guitar, both songs are rich with tiny details that I can't imagine an electric guitar producing: there are sputtering motor-boats slowly sinking off foggy shores, foot steps tapping down long, ageless corridors, and gelatinous washes of bass-heavy noise creeping in and out of these songs to great effect. The title track is perhaps the most bizarre of all the songs and features a number of samples and tape loops oddly familiar to my ears. I'm nearly certain that a fraction of Autechre's "VI Scose Poise" (from Confield) is utilized on "I Wish Too, To Be Absorbed." The beginning of the song is laden with cut up, completely disproportionate samples that skip, jump, and skew the ocean of underlying guitars and synthesizers that populate the majority of the track. Bird calls, percussive glass, and mumbled vocals emerge towards the end of the song, but this array of sampling is far less manic than the rhythmic jumble that got the whole thing going. The rest of disc two is a quiet, almost-ambient affair that follows the lead of "Melusine" and "Esken (Bonedweller)."
In a way, I Wish Too... serves two functions: it highlights a number of Baker's musical styles and it functions as two complete and independent records. Both discs have natural peaks and valleys and both discs present a variety of Baker's musical approaches. Though I doubt that this release was meant to serve as an introduction to Baker's solo output, it fills that role perfectly and with a lot of class. I've heard plenty of good compilations and retrospectives before, but I Wish Too... goes above and beyond because it manages not to sound like a collection or retrospective at all.
Herbst9 bring into focus the trances and dream-quests of shamans and the primeval connection we all have to the primitive past. Drawing on the vast reservoir of the collective memory of the human species, Herbst9’s Henry Emisch and Frank Merten produce monumental music that simultaneously delves into deep time and memory, as well as the physically unfathomable depths of the subterranean.
This is no superficial attempt at ethno-ambient puerility, however, merely lashing voice samples of ‘primitives’ to anemic electronic washes or trip-hoppy tribal rhythms. Herbst9 haven’t gone for the easy option of tying together stereotypical elements in an attempt to create some dubiously portentous vision of the past. In some respects it feels as if they have discerned the secret of temporal elasticity, bent time to their will, and rendered the intervening period between then and now obsolete. Even so, they are only able to give us glimpses and fleeting flavors, partial sketches, distilling observations into representative and digestible bite-size chunks. Snatches of almost incomprehensible voices, with only the occasional word being understood, surface and fleetingly rise above seas of deep oceanic drone, before being sent once more into the depths. These are the voices of all our ancestors, familiar and knowable but simultaneously and forever beyond our understanding, alien even. It would be quite easy to let these voices become overwhelming, to form a warm fuzzy blanket, reassuringly comforting. Yet, there is a lot about these recordings that is distinctly unsettling and not quite as benign as intimated.
The chronological distance is one warning perhaps—that however much one would like to think we can somehow connect with those voices, the world it describes is out of reach and not the one of today. The samples used are indeed culled from the present, lulling one into a misleading belief that they are the bridge between the years. Couple those voices with the darkly-flavored and edgy swirls and drones constituting the medium upon which they float and have their being and alarm bells should start ringing. These background drones are meant to upset and disturb the equilibrium, even if only subliminally, their purpose is to serve as a reminder that these waters contain hidden dangers. The ‘ancestral voices’ are just one among many inhabitants of this temporal ocean, and not all of them are friendly and welcoming.
Dark ambient, when successfully crafted, is the conjuror of both sublime visions and dark unformed terrors. Herbst9 dig deeply and artfully ino the genre, coming up with resonances and music that burrows into the soul. The title track is entirely typical: softly shuddering washes and cavernous distant thunder roll ominously overhead with gentle whispers echoing in harmony. Gradually, the tone deepens, becoming darker, and it ushers in an uneasiness and a discernible coldness. This state is compounded and heightened by the introduction of a shuffling tribal percussive gait, portending a slow and unhurried doom. In contrast, the opening track “The Lament Begins” hints at deep loss and an even deeper grief, one that spans the years and continues to entrench itself ever deeper the more distance it puts between past and present.
It’s those tensions created by the chiaroscurotic dynamics that make this album successful. In other words, the interplay between the beguiling siren voices and the dark, dense, liquid medium from which they emerge make this album as good as it is. The tension reveals itself with subtlety, resulting in a subliminally-felt frisson rather than physical sparks. An indescribable dread descends, its source remaining undiscovered. Despite my generally positive outlook on it, it has to be noted that this album can't escape all negative criticism. My one disappointment, mild though it is, revolves around the fact that I felt there was a sense of uniformity; this album sometimes defines itself too narrowly and so its execution suffers.
Even with this reservation, I consider The Gods are Small Birds, but I am the Falcon to be a fine album, Emich and Merten exert a good measure of craft upon the dark ambient genre. Dark ambient is all about the evocation of mood and atmosphere, and by any of the criteria normally used to judge such genre efforts, I deem this to be a great deal more than adequate.
Our increasingly irregular feature looking at crucial new dance music returns this week with reviews of a two-disc DFA/Supersoul Recordings comp, a new collection of Balearic disco, an edits disc by Betty Botox, a mix CD by Optimo and the debut album by Yo Majesty.
"Death From Abroad Presents Supersoul Recordings: Nobody Knows Anything" DFA
DFA's European sister label Death From Abroad gives us a double-disc compilation of singles and b-sides, collecting pretty much everything released via vinyl and digital by Berlin's Supersoul Recordings. Supersoul is a relative newcomer in the dance music scene, putting out its first single in 2006. Founder Xaver Naudascher, who also records for the label, was previously best known for collaborations with Einstürzende Neubauten, remixes for Pylon and UNKLE, and production work on the Run Lola Run soundtrack. I will try not to hold that last credit against him. The label's unifying aesthetic is a focus on lateral-minded, genre-defying approaches to classic subgenres of dance music. A bit of fun can be had spotting the influence from track to track: "Oh, there's a Detroit electro piece," "This one sounds like Italo Disco," etc. However, these genre exercises are far from reverential or narrow in scope. The opener "Lost," credited to Naudascher, mixes messy, hand-played granular synth sounds into the rigid framework of Detroit 909/303 electro. The epic four-part "Moon Unit" by Mogg & Naudascher is krautrock-influenced Italo Disco, combining sparkling arpeggiations with spacious, longform kosmische meanderings. It's awesome stuff, easily matching the bar previously set by Delia & Gavin's The Days of Mars. Walter Jones aims for the ultracompressed disco-house aesthetic made famous by contemporary French producers, but ends up in territory that is no less sleek, crystalline and ultramodern than Naudascher's contributions. Other standouts include Plastique de Reve's two sides, both which find new and interesting ways to breath life into the corpse of Hi-NRG house music, whether with the sassy singalong refrain of the Radical Cheerleaders on "Resist," or the dramatic use of resonance, cutoff, stereo panning and EQ in "Lost in the City." There are a few clunkers across these two discs, but surprisingly few, as Naudascher clearly has a strong editorial voice, and almost everything he has released fits into his vision, bringing dance music's past kicking and screaming into an everpresent now.
Balearic House is less a genre than a particular approach: a buoyant, space-y, lighter-than-air take on sophisticated house and Italo Disco. There don't seem to be any particular rules for the genre, except perhaps for a slightly laid back tempo, 90-110 rather than the usual 120-140 BPM range. In general, there seem to be some affectations of funk, soul and even dub in the music, and a general avoidance of the kind of hard-synced roboticism of electro and trance styles. Instead, we get handclaps, finger snaps, echo, organic hi-hats and bass parts that sound like they might have been played live rather than sequenced on software. Belgium's Eskimo label presents this continuous mix of some of the newest and best examples of the genre by a bunch of faceless European artists you've never heard of, with a few leftfield choices thrown into the mix for good measure. I am often annoyed by commercially-released mix CDs, as they frequently fail as compilations, with tracks only allowed to play for their most action-packed 2-3 minutes, with so much crossfade that the songs are frequently useless for listening in isolation or using for one's own mixing purposes. This compilation is a happy exception, however, with all tracks playing for nearly their full running time, and the transitions seamless but never showy. Thanks goes to mixer/producer Skinny Joey. The breadth and variety of music collected here under the banner of "Balearic Beat" is impressive, from the chillout dub style of Coyote's "Grow Your Hair" to the melodramatic, devastating white soul of "Don't Turn Away From Love" by Lovelock. Though the mix certainly has crescendos and valleys, things never get amped up into tent-burning territory, even on ostensibly "noisy" tracks such as Homerun's "The Killer Storm." Probaby the most leftfield choice here is a Cosmo remix of a track by prickly British experimental post-punk-dance agitators Spektrum, but I must say it fits with the theme remarkably well. Lullabies in the Dark's "Estrella" is air-pushing speaker funk, crashing unceremoniously into Ichisan's spaceborne "Radar Pulse Is Sent," which may be about as corny and emotive as the disc gets. Depending on one's taste level, Cosmic Balearic Beats Vol. 1 might be rejected completely; it certainly doesn't have the crossover appeal of DFA or Ed Banger's output. Nope, I'm afraid this is pure European disco-cheese, and all the better for it.
Betty Botox is another face of producer/mixmaster JD Twitch/Optimo, largely reserved for his edits of material not originally conceived as dance music. I've long been confused as to what exactly the difference between a "remix" and an "edit" is, so if you're in the same boat don't feel bad. As near as I can figure, an "edit" is produced using only the stereo master, and is generally an attempt to whip the track into shape for the dancefloor with a minimum of alteration. A remix generally uses the individual stems and/or re-recordings of parts, and usually implies a much more radical reworking of the original material. Of course, as with all such terms, there is quite a bit of gray area, and in this era of digital audio and "blog house" there are plenty of so-called remixes that have used only the master, and plenty of edits in which there must have been access to the original track parts. Betty Botox leans a bit more towards the classic definition of an edit on Mmm, Betty!, however, presenting a mismatched suite of nine tracks by such unusual suspects as The Residents, Hawkwind and Zed. Some of the choices here are a bit more obvious, such as The Jellies' "Jive Baby On A Saturday Night," which was already a pretty solid disco number. Betty's treatment extends the song and emphasizes the beats and breaks, adding dubby touches here and there. Mostly this will appeal to DJs and amateur mixologists of all stripes, who slave away with beat markers in Ableton Live trying to make atypical songs sync up with a solid 4/4 beat. Here, all the work has been done already, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on the amount of personal pride one takes in doing the work for oneself. As a listening experience, this disc still provides some unexpected pleasures, such as the awesome edit of The Residents' "Diskomo," which was always meant to be a "disco" version of "Eskimo," Betty's remix helping it achieve maximum dancefloor potential. It's shocking just how well the song works as classic mutant disco. Ditto Hawkwind, who are given the Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve-style once-over with "Valium Ten," the repetitive motorik chug and synth lines emphasized. Naum Gabo steps in at the end for an awesome reworking of Zed's "Fremen," a 1970s French prog analog masterpiece. Mmm, Betty! contains more than enough outré dance energy to fuel an exclusive loft party for discriminating ravers, and it also inspires creativity in DJ sets by going well outside the genres usually considered for the dancefloor.
Glasgow's JD Twitch/Optimo (Espacio) has worked to position himself as the music snob's mixologist of choice. Spanning genres and time periods in an audacious manner, Optimo freely moves between populist, speciality and experimental avant-garde music with a magpie sensibility that finds dance mix potential in practically anything. In the case of mixes like the double-disc How To Kill The DJ Part Two (which we reviewed here upon its initial release), Optimo occasionally let the solid backbeat lapse in favor of adventurous explorations of strange juxtapositions and unorthodox mashups. Here on Sleepwalk, his debut for the relatively high profile Domino label, he produces a mix that is high in the music nerd quotient (Nurse With Wound, Coil and Cluster all appear), but very low on the dancefloor quotient. Instead, this is more of a sequenced, slightly crossfaded mix CD made by your friend with really good taste in music and an awesome record collection. As such, it cannot depend upon the usual mitigating factors of dance mixes; instead, it relies purely on whether or not you like Optimo's choices of abstract chillout music. It's hard to complain about the inclusion such perennial cult favorites as Eden Ahbez (cryptic poetry over exotica backing) and Mulatu Astatke (Ethiopian jazz with awesome psych guitar solos), but for adventurous music fans and MP3 blog junkies, most of the tracks included here will be old news. What music nerd hasn't heard of Arthur Russell or Lee Hazlewood or Karen Dalton by now? I suspect that a major attraction for Coil completists will be an "exclusive mix by Peter Christopherson" of "A Cold Cell" (entitled "A Cold Cell in Bangkok"), but it's really nothing special, closer in sound to the Ape of Naples version of the song, and further away from the superior Backwards-era demo included on the Wire Tapper comp years ago. It's hard for me to completely pan this, as so much of the music here is great, but the whole enterprise of releasing a mix disc like this seems creatively bankrupt by its very nature. Optimo is obviously talented (see the Betty Botox review above), but his input here is minimal-to-nonexistent, akin to putting your iPod on shuffle and recording the results. I'm calling bullshit on this whole niche market of commercially-released mix discs until further notice.
Yo Majesty, "Futuristically Speaking...Never Be Afraid Domino
On the other end of the taste spectrum from items such as Optimo's music snob-approved mix CD is Yo Majesty's debut album Futuristically Speaking...Never Be Afraid, which is also out on Domino. Yo Majesty is a female HipHop duo from Tampa, Florida, consisting of MC Shunda K and singer Jwl B. They are hard-hitting ghetto-ass lesbian thugs with foul mouths, and they might just save HipHop, offering a powerful riposte to the genre’s history of misogyny. Their beats are produced by the duo Hard Feelings UK, who combine 1980s electro, Miami bass and straight-up Dirty South crunk to provide a series of impossibly punchy backing tracks for the twosome to rhyme over. And rhyme they do, spitting out a series of obscene soliloquies about fucking, fighting, getting fucked up and fucking shit up. Oh, and they are also Christians. Though this is undoubtedly a HipHop album, it is also just as clearly a club album. The hard-hitting old school bass/electro style and number of refrains that are sung rather than rapped make this work just as well outside the usual HipHop club milieu. Their shows are the stuff of legend, with Jwl B often performing topless, both women provoking the audience with their unapologetically nasty, aggressive lyrical style. The refrain of "Club Action" (otherwise known as the "Fuck that shit" song) has already become famous due to its appearance on a number of underground mixtapes, as well as Girl Talk's latest album, and for good reason. It's infectious Babaataa/Dynamix-style backing track, and profane, lightning-fast rapping, are a recipe for music blog fame. However, there are more complex things afoot across the album, tracks such as "Night Riders" and "Never Be Afraid," in which Shunda K delivers political/philosophical/spiritual messages (incoherent though they may be) over HFUK backing tracks that display an intimate knowledge of the weird alien rhythm science that made Miami Bass and electro such innovative styles in their heyday.
Despite the reference in the title to the collector of souls, this collaboration between ambient trio Rameses III and Brad Rose of Digitalis, a.k.a. The North Sea, eschews the obvious direction of doom and menace. Instead, they journey into frequently blissful territory, with an emphasis on emotional textures that invite introspection and rejuvenation.
The album consists of two 18-minute tracks supplemented by a remix from Xela. Quiet drones and subtle strings with occasional plucked notes form the main compositional elements of “Death of the Ankou.” While a mournful strain runs through it on occasion, the track doesn’t come across as sad or depressing so much as accepting of things as they are. The effect is surprisingly soothing, if not comforting. Delicate chimes and a distant reed instrument provide the wistful ending, like the last gasp of stars fading in the sunrise. “Night Blossoms Written in Sanskrit” begins with a deeper drone, while higher pitches fly overhead. A strummed guitar surfaces momentarily before it’s absorbed back into nothingness. Some reverberating strums pop up again as the ending escalates toward a sunnier ending. Although the first one isn’t a downer by any means, this track builds from that one into something that’s more joyful and optimistic.
Xela’s remix, “Return of the Ankou,” combines elements of the two main tracks into one which becomes more active and less subtle. The strums are more in the forefront here, as are rattles, chimes, and slight doses of feedback. It’s a nice contrast to the two that precede it, yet linked enough thematically that it returns the album to the beginning in a cycle of death and rebirth.
The experience is both peaceful and invigorating, inviting frequent returns.
Ridiculously slobbered over by elite geeks as well as the far more fashionable new disco vanguard, the progressive music of Black Devil was allegedly rediscovered after years of obscurity, culminating in a handful of overblown, overlapping releases from Rephlex. Irrespective of the convuluted backstory's validity, original member Bernard Fevre's return after roughly three decades manifests itself as this nebulous collection of undated, unglamorous tunes.
Since Fevre has opted not to reveal just how old or new these six tracks are, I'm therefore compelled to eliminate all the evidently contrived hype from the equation. With context stripped away, what remains simply fails to dazzle beyond a few melodic glints hardly worth revisiting. Opener "The Devil In Us" shuffles through synthesizer soundbanks with untreated attention deficit disorder, while "On Just Foot" figuratively and half-literally farts along with a giddy proto-rave tinkling electro bell line. "I Regret The Flower Power" begins like some funky remix of Throbbing Gristle's "Hamburger Lady" before a bubbly bassline and sharp string patches jump into the forefront, though Fevre's vocals disappoint. Throughout the songs, Fevre's muddy muttering, indistinct trill, and wordless bleats sometimes make for surprisingly decent hooks, though typically lack presence, epitomized by the Moroder-esque "Coach Me" and "An Other Skin."
Other than those who still consider Richard James a tastemaker or delight in anything even remotely Metro Area-ish, I doubt that 28 After, released by a label that hasn't even updated its website to announce this release, can do much more for Black Devil's profile than neatly wrap up its 15 minutes of underground fame.
Christopher Leary combines beats with orchestral elements in this mostly airy and pleasant album. The songs are all solidly constructed and easy on the ears, but frequently lack distinction. Leary expresses a limited emotional palette on these compositions, and as a result the album is short on personality.
The first few songs are so similar that they’re nearly indistinguishable from each other, and none lingers in the mind after they’re over. Leary changes things a little bit with "Infotain Me," giving it a longer introduction before bringing back the beats. This one doesn’t quite go anywhere different from the others, but it’s a sign of change that continues as the album progresses. "Anomie" adds a slight distortion as a textural component, and the tempo picks up a little bit compared to those that precede it, but it still doesn’t necessarily do anything different.
"Open Top" has some metallic echoes in addition to its standard instrumentation. "Lifewish" is mostly ambient with slight melodies and no beats at all, like "Oneirist," which follows it. "Bluebottles" and the closer "Vegas" are both decent tracks, yet don’t have a whole lot going on that isn’t heard elsewhere on the album.
Since almost every song is ultimately driven by beats rather than melody, the orchestral elements often feel decorative rather than essential. They are frequently beautiful, but don’t evoke anything further. It’s certainly not a bad album, but it’s not terribly exciting or different, either.
While his name may be most closely associated with the No Fun Fest he curates and the abrasive noise that is usually featured there, Giffoni’s own work tends to focus less on the harsh and more on the minimal electronics. On this album, he continues his focus on rudimentary analog electronics in a highly structured set of works that is arguably TOO structured.
Returning with their second full length, the East Coast Portland (Maine) foursome manage to not only defend their reputation as capable purveyors of riffs most heavy but also to expand their sonic palette in an unexpected but welcome way. With greater control of dynamics, a female guest vocalist and songs played across time scales better expressed in geologic terms rather than minutes, this is one of the best metal albums of the year.
There are just about enough thrills on this debut EP to ward off the nagging boredom of another guitar group traversing a well worn musical terrain. In this case: that which might be termed "surf-gaze."
Between his Nadja albums and his solo material, Aidan Baker releases enough music to frustrate all but the most ardent and obsessive collectors. Important Records have just released a two-CD compilation that won't solve that problem, but it features some of the best Baker material I've yet heard.
Herbst9 bring into focus the trances and dream-quests of shamans and the primeval connection we all have to the primitive past. Drawing on the vast reservoir of the collective memory of the human species, Herbst9’s Henry Emisch and Frank Merten produce monumental music that simultaneously delves into deep time and memory, as well as the physically unfathomable depths of the subterranean.
Our increasingly irregular feature looking at crucial new dance music returns this week with reviews of a two-disc DFA/Supersoul Recordings comp, a new collection of Balearic disco, an edits disc by Betty Botox, a mix CD by Optimo and the debut album by Yo Majesty.
Despite the reference in the title to the collector of souls, this collaboration between ambient trio Rameses III and Brad Rose of Digitalis, a.k.a. The North Sea, eschews the obvious direction of doom and menace. Instead, they journey into frequently blissful territory, with an emphasis on emotional textures that invite introspection and rejuvenation.
Ridiculously slobbered over by elite geeks as well as the far more fashionable new disco vanguard, the progressive music of Black Devil was allegedly rediscovered after years of obscurity, culminating in a handful of overblown, overlapping releases from Rephlex. Irrespective of the convuluted backstory's validity, original member Bernard Fevre's return after roughly three decades manifests itself as this nebulous collection of undated, unglamorous tunes.
Christopher Leary combines beats with orchestral elements in this mostly airy and pleasant album. The songs are all solidly constructed and easy on the ears, but frequently lack distinction. Leary expresses a limited emotional palette on these compositions, and as a result the album is short on personality.
