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23 September 2006

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Albums and Singles

Disliked in their native country of New Zealand, associated with drug-assisted hallucinations and blackouts, and evidently crazy enough to plan their own deaths, the trio of Michael Morely, Robbie Yeats, and Bruce Russell also happen to be more brilliant than most bands they're compared to. This collection is superb: competent enough to entice new listeners and pull in folks that already love their music and want more.

Ba Da Bing!

The first disc covers everything from their first album up and until 1994. Songs from out of print 7" records, compilations, and album cuts all make into these first 13 productions. "Max Harris" is the first song from this New Zealand trio's first album, DR503, and it's an oddly tuneful mess of sound effects, solid rhythm, and some very nasty guitar. It's designed to repel and attract at the same time, as though it is constantly pulled back and forth between absolute improvisational performance and carefully planned, obsessively designed songs. "Angel" wants to be a love tune, but is too busy reveling in the discovery of reverb and echo to sober up and say what it means. "3 Years" sounds like it was intended to be a pop song, but the group never bothered to record it outside of their garage. While these three opening songs present very different perspectives. It is as close to getting lost in a city as I can get without starting up my truck and driving into Boston at night without a map. In a magnificent way, however, the buzz of the next song, "Maggot," pulls this triad of sound together.

"Maggot" is a huge and rhythmic monster of droning bass with the mutterings of a drunk prophet ready to utter his final breath. The music is moody, deep, and full of sound despite being the product of a trio. It creeps along at a pace that feels contagious, like it's a disease. Then Morely lets out this demented laugh and I'm certain the group must've been absolutely insane to make something like this. This is rock music of some kind, but aurally swathed in the kind of mystery that other bands can only pretend to possess. The nature of their songs inspires a sense of the massive and the unreal but it never escapes into pure fantasy. There's a visceral edge to their music that prevents them from escaping into pure fantasy, into some completely abstract realm where the music has no context and no human impact. This is, in the end, the best thing about this band: they keep their weird side in check all the time, with slowly pulsing melodies and simple rhythms or sometimes with huge amounts of noise rippling through their otherwise simple and attractive songs. Everything on the first disc is a song, something that stays in my head all day long. All of these songs come adorned though, they're filled to the brim with interesting details, enough to keep me coming back to the disc over and over again. Keeping it simple is something The Dead C. does very well. The result, however, is that the experience of listening to their music evolves and becomes complex. There seems to be so little to this band on the surface, but once drug into their songs, it's hard not to find something new with each listen.

The second disc moves from The Operation of the Sonne album from 1994 to The Damned record released in 2003. Through these songs it's apparent that the band went through a transitory period right in the middle of the '90s and ended up giving in to their improvisational tendencies. "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor" is a 14 and a half minute adventure in feedback and strange effects that never really takes on the trappings of a familiar song. Even the brief "Voodoo Spell" is mostly aimless experimentation, perhaps fun to listen to when in the right mood, but after listening to the first disc, it's a bit of a let-down. Had I listened to the second CD before the first one, chances are I would like it far more than I do, now. The music isn't bad, but it doesn't stack up the all the goodness that the first CD provided.

This is, however, a minor complaint about compilation that does everything right. It introduces The Dead C. to the ignorant gracefully, covers every base possible in such a limited space, and provides something for the fan that doesn't want to spend half a year's salary getting the small pieces missing from their collection. It presents the multiple faces of a band that had, perhaps, too many of them to count and it does without flinching away from the more unadulterated and formless material they fell in love with later in their career. I'm talking about them like their work is done, however, and I don't think that's the case. They played in the USA in 2002 at All Tomorrow's Parties and in 2004 they played at another music fest in Scotland. They're also on board for Thurston Moore's 2006 ATP fest in the UK. I get the feeling The Dead C. hasn't seen their last release and if this retrospective is any indication, they're still a band worth hearing.

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23 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This worthy album by sextet Sparrows Swarm and Sing links traditional song with post-rock and pantheist imagery. SSAS create beautiful music with apocalyptic undercurrents which at times achieves a cinematic splendor.

Magic Bullet

The complex instrumentation includes glockenspiel, cello, guitar, pianorgan, violin, drums and bass guitar. The band is composed of trained composers, visual artists and recording engineers, so the songs are complex, sophisticated and often extended in length. "Across Canyons/Canyons" begins with the sounds of twittering birds and a faint lonely guitar, then swells into an extended piece of sublimely simple melancholy. Reaching a crescendo around the 11-minute mark, it then lulls and peaks pleasantly for another quarter of an hour or so. Obviously, brevity and economy aren't the main goals for SSAS.

Normally I much prefer this kind of music to be purely instrumental pieces, or have only a light sprinkling of spoken word. Unfortunately, "Father Death/Mother Nature (Part 1)" includes vocals in addition to some very irksome yelling. I'd like to notify the members of SSAS: “You aren’t a mini-skirted chanteuse or a goosebump-inspiring choir of Bulgarian women in national costume, nor are you Marc Bolan, so please stop spoiling your music with your wordless vocals.” However, looking at Jason Fiske’s artwork—an anonymous pioneer, a praying figure bereft of flesh, the lifeforce streaming out of a deer's eyes, and the moon—the realization dawned on me that SSAS are simply communicating uncorrupted exuberance. I should let them be. In live performance, these vocals would probably work better in any case. Either way, the guitar backdrops during the second movement of the piece—strongly evocative of the epic yet understated qualities of Brokeback—and the final movement which digresses into a nice free-folk-jazz freak-out, are both worth the trip.

"Warm Blood Within (Part 2)" begins with a dynamic riff that is more Michael Nyman than Mogwai, then slips into unsatisfying vocals for a while. Thankfully, SSAS have the good sense to cut this short with a splendid cacophony, followed by a long section of stately cello, violin and piano. Once again, all is forgiven.

The final piece, "O Shenandoah," borrows a refrain from a traditional American folk song that has been collected by Alan Lomax and Carl Sandburg, among others, and is known variously as a West Indies rowing shanty, a river song, or a US army song. The song has various spellings and versions, but it is known to cavalry and wagon soldiers of the Old West, as well as Canadian and American mountain men, traders, voyagers and trappers. It's old as the hills. My favorite version refers to the courtship of a white trader and a daughter of the Indian chief, Skenandoah, an Iroquois. They happily ran away together but were caught, with consequences more severe than those suffered by Abelard and Heloise.

Somehow, SSAS do justice to a classic song like "O Shenandoah" without sounding like an embarrassing 21st century campfire sing-along. Lyrically, they shift back and forth from the river as metaphor, to the chief's daughter, before what sounds like bombs falling in the night and an eerie super-amplified wine glass announce the return of the apocalyptic post-rock beauty for which this collective are known. More tempered vocals appear before we are treated to a great quivering otherworldly ending which could almost come from the work of the late György Ligeti.

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23 September 2006

Albums and Singles

On his Kranky debut, Tokyo-based Chihei Hatakeyama sticks to making soundscapes which are quite enjoyable. Granted it is fairly mundane in 2006 to be pursuing glitchy processed music but Minima Moralia clicked with me. The album is cold and bright, and it has an austere quality which I like.

20 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This is a poorer than average effort from Christina. The four pieces are all meant to sound similar as they are all in the same key and made of the same chords, but for me, the results show little development beyond self indulgent jamming and sound thrown together and boring. This concept sounds less than exciting on paper and in practice it doesn't work as well as hoped.

Kranky

The droning guitar strums and Carter’s chanting of "Second Death" are promising for the first half of the song but the song loses its way around the six minute mark. It seems to get away from her and ends up covered in messy noodling that destroys the vibes that she has built up in the first few minutes. This is a similar story for the rest of Electrice. Throughout the album there are moments that could easily erupt into something more compelling but Carter always seems to pull back at the last minute. “Moving Intercepted,” the best piece on Electrice, has a touch of Swans about it, the guitar playing and vocals sound like they’re leading up to a crescendo but it never delivers. The first half of both these two songs ("Second Death" and "Moving Intercepted") are deceptively good. It's unfortunate that both pieces just fall apart and go nowhere, which can be said of this album as a whole.

The concept of using the same guitar tuning and chords hasn't achieved the results intended. It’s not a bold or an adventurous move. It instead highlights the limitations of Carter’s songwriting instead of showing how well she can use a limited palette. While she uses different effects on the different pieces to change the tone of the drone that she builds up with her playing, the four pieces are too samey. Any track taken on its own is fine but altogether it sounds more like multiple takes of one song rather than four distinct songs. This makes it hard to listen to as it feels like a bunch of demos that might lead to one great song in the end.

It's a shame because I know she's capable of better but Electrice and I don't see eye to eye.

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20 September 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

While back in San Francisco after a lengthy self-imposed European exile, Tuxedomoon recorded these spontaneous compositions for a film loosely based on Brion Gysin’s novel The Last Museum. The result is an inspired and tantalizing album that thrives independently of its designation as a soundtrack.

Crammed/Made to Measure

That Tuxedomoon tackles such a subject during their return home is particularly appropriate given the nature of Gysin’s book, which itself is a fictionalized recollection of his days at the infamous Beat Hotel as it is being relocated from Paris to Malibu to be installed in the Museum of Museums. The music is a mix of jazz-inflected instrumentals and field recordings of conversations and announcements. Many of the songs are anchored by guitar or bass while strings bring an uneasy atmosphere and horns carve subtle melodies from the air. Although they’re frequently relaxed, the songs never fully soothe and a sense of mystery is always close at hand. The field recordings range from things like a sojourn in Mexico to public transit announcements for Embarcadero Street without any sort of narrative transition to bridge the geographical displacement, giving a sense of both familiarity and dislocation that feels much like the style of Gysin’s book. Similarly, perhaps as a nod to the way Gysin’s novel flits between Europe and America and juxtaposes the present and the past, the group also includes a triptych of songs subtitled “The Show Goes On” that were recorded in Europe. Contrasted with the San Francisco material, these are much more brash and buoyant and even include some vocals, most prominently in “Loneliness.”

Bardo Hotel features its own Madame Rachou in the guise of “Mr. Comfort,” a hotelkeeper with a hilarious list of requirements for his guests, including the requisite no smoking, no drinking, and no drugs, but also forbidding bicycles in the room and insisting that guests are very quiet, smell nice, and smile when they see him. Although it’s hard for me to imagine a film related to Gysin without an appearance by the Master Musicians of Jajouka, the form of this recording mirrors his novel with such dedication that it’s easy to wave any misgivings aside. Regardless of how the film turns out, the album is a splendid journey in itself, a soundtrack for a state of mind.

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20 September 2006

Scott Mckeating

Albums and Singles

The Graveyards trio continue their journey past the last markers of free jazz playing with this, at times barren sounding, clear vinyl. Brokenresearch releases are well known for their superbly understated art direction, but this is probably their most striking cover yet. A bright yellow sleeve holds an image of a set of teeth, looking like a cross between Giger‚Äôs Alien and an aging Dracula.

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Most of the tracks here appear to be much quieter than an average Graveyards session, with much more space being left between the musicians. This is increase in silence is well served by the fidelity of the recording, this LP sounds incredible with every sound being perfectly picked up. For a band that seems to get lazily lumped into the unhygienic sounding scum jazz bracket, this is an ideal riposte.

The first two tracks are probably the best examples here of this avenue, with repeating warm horn motifs and the still rise of Hans Buetow‚Äôs sensitive cello strings. If anyone‚Äôs attempting to wake the neighbours it‚Äôs the sax, bursting in and petering out like a reversing ram raider. On the few occasions when the percussion does get loud, the snares are like Derringer shots and the bowed symbols like someone taking a chisel to a church lightning rod. On the b-side‚Äôs final track these cymbals join with the cello and sax in an attempt to create a single tone, instead gaps and sharp edges are left open like switchblades.

20 September 2006

Matthew Jeanes

Albums and Singles

Skam has finally released Bola's early, untitled 12" singles on a single CD called Shapes. I can't decide if the record avoids sounding dated because it is timeless, or because the state of vaguely dance-oriented, melodic electronic music hasn't progressed much since the late '90s. It's probably a little of both.

Bola's Soup remains one of my most played records because it captures that simple but entirely synthetic beauty of melancholic electro better than just about anything else. While Boards of Canada were warming up the analog tubes and Autechre were moving away from melodies towards complete abstraction, Bola was turning out the electro equivalent of love songs and power ballads made with drum machines. So, it's no surprise that I'm a big fan of Shapes, which is a record from that general era of Bola material between his first two albums.

Apparently the collectors have been clamoring for a re-release of this initially limited vinyl offering for some time, but I imagine that in some cases, that has more to do with completing Skam listings on Discogs than it does with actually sitting down to enjoy these tunes. The reissue is good for folks like me, though, who weren't on the right mailing lists when these records came out and don't routinely spend fortunes on eBay tracking down out-of-print vinyl.

What's a little strange about Shapes is the way it comfortably fits in Bola's discography no matter where I try to place it chronologically. While it shares a lot of the stylistic touches of Bola's oldest work (and indeed one of these tracks appeared on the Skampler compilation in some form,) if Skam had told me that this was just a completely NEW Bola record, I think I would have been none the wiser. In fact, when stacked up against the many other producers making this kind of emotive synth music in 2006, Shapes sounds positively contemporary.

That's probably a bit of a mixed blessing. Like a lot of bands that put out an early record that I love and then don't veer far from the formula, I imagine that when I want to reach for a Bola record I'll probably always just pull out Soup or the anomalous Mauver if I want to mix it up. Still, it's nice to have yet another example of impeccibly crafted electro mood music to drop when the grooves on the old favorites have worn thin. Besides, when I put the tracks all together on an mp3 player, I'll probably never tell them apart anyway.

19 September 2006

Albums and Singles

At last! Someone has had the good manners to include a CD-R with their lathe cut release. This 8” split sees both acts going in the opposite direction of their usual material, making the best records of their discographies so far. The Low Point label continues its roll of great music, with label head Gareth Hardwick offering up something a little more composed than usual and Last of the Real Hardmen hitting subdued free rock.