19 July 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Upset the Rhythm

Their nervous energy is apparent from the beginning with songs like “A+ Cannibal” and “Toffee Coffee.” Drums race forward while the vocals spew raw and vitriolic. As elsewhere on the album, the flute and clarinet come across like jagged spurts of free jazz that retain their shape just shy of chaos. But they have other uses, too, like on “Boomer,” in which they form a demented march. Drums often burst from unexpected places, and the vocals are frequently confrontational. Anarchy never seems too far away, lending the album the impression that it could implode at any moment. Thankfully, it never does.

It’s only fitting that such an uncommon configuration would have a unique sound, and Death Sentence: Panda!'s sound is only heightened by an aversion to anything resembling typical songwriting. Although it’s hard for me to guess how long such an unconventional arrangement can last, especially considering that the group breezes through eight songs in just 11 minutes on this record, I certainly hope their creativity continues to flourish like it does on this excellent debut.

samples:

• A+ Cannibal
• A Time to Bear Arms

19 July 2006

Albums and Singles

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19 July 2006

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Albums and Singles

ICR/United Dairies

With 18 untitled tracks, there’s no shortage of the mutant voices and clanks from the darkness that I’ve come to expect. However, I was most surprised by the amount of rhythmic material found here, especially on the second half of the disc. “Track 10” could very well be a backing track left over from the Rock and Roll Sessions. Strangely enough, “Track 12” is a techno song with little of the Nurse With Wound signature other than some operatic elements and the oblique, gaping maw of an ending. It’s actually not a bad example of that type of music, perhaps aided by the element of surprise. “Track 14” actually has lyrics as a growling voice riffs on television news over a big beat and atmospherics. “Track 16” starts with frogs and insects in what could be the foley track of a film before drums and an explosion tear it open into a primal kraut romp with guitars and buried vocals.

There aren’t a whole lot of tracks with obvious forebears, although the bell sounds from Thunder Perfect Mind recur on “Track 4,” “Track 6,” “Track 11,” and perhaps “Track 15.” Also from that album is the jackhammer drill briefly reworked as “Track 13.” The disc concludes with a spoken word collage of musicians’ names, many of which pass too quickly to differentiate, and then ends with the statement, “All of these bands are complete shit,” followed by a scream. Considering that many of those named are well-respected in underground circles, it’s an amusing send-up and perhaps serves as a companion anti-statement to the band’s infamous list of greats from Chance Meeting.

Although a few of the longer songs grow a little dull in the context of other shorter, fragmentary tracks, the album is still generously entertaining with many unique entries to the Nurse With Wound canon.

samples:

• Track 10
• Track 12
• Track 16

19 July 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Morr Music 

Throughout the album, each song follows a similar predictable formula: a straight from the box drum machine loop plays and some very basic guitar strumming is repeated over it. Although nothing Fleischmann does on the album is in any way revolutionary or original, it all fits together well. Most of the music is pleasant, the kind of music that I’d put on when I didn’t want to be too taxed or distracted. It’s nice but it’s hard to sit down and enjoy it as anything more than muzak.It simply doesn’t engage me.

Christof Kurtzmann lends his voice to “Gain” and “From To,” both songs are among the better pieces on the album. “Gain” has a bit of tremolo thrown on the guitar and a great organ sound accompanying it. “From To” has a Kraftwerk vibe to it at first as the beat and sample of a what sounds like a sharp intake of breath reminds me of their Tour de France releases. Kurtzmann’s voice is one of those weird “shouldn’t be a singer but sounds good” voices. There’s a feeble, faltering quiver running through his singing, he sounds almost too human. It suits Fleischmann’s laid back music very well. Kurtzmann plays clarinet on “Static Grate” but it doesn’t add much to the piece, it could just be another one of Fleischmann’s synths.

“Phones and Machines” is the only track that is in any way memorable. The rhythm is out of joint and jerky, it sounds like it’s constantly skipping or stalling. I liked that effect but it still doesn’t strike me as being that noteworthy. The remainder of The Humbucking Coil is far from offensive to my ears but it’s also far from being attention-grabbing. I imagine that if I ever enter a coma, this is what it will sound like.

samples:

• Broken Monitors
• First Times
• From To

19 July 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Temporary Residence

I didn't mind that the band's DNA seemed to be genetically engineered from their influences (Thymine=Anomie; Adenine=Isis; Guano=Yage; Cytosine=To Dream of Autumn). Though a little soulless, Envy were able to make compelling enough music to keep me chasing after elusive 7" singles on the Japanese H:G Fact label. But a few too many releases without much diversity caused me to lose interest rapidly in the band. Envy's switch to Temporary Residence has partly helped to resuscitate my interest, but not nearly as much as the evolution of their music.

Previously, the band relied on a series of simple decibel crescendos under the veil of patented power chords to induce the anthemic quality of the music. To be honest, they still fall back on this maneuver. But they have also peppered their songs with more guitar complexity underlying the volume increase, recorded in such a way that you can hear all the intricacies while being enveloped by a tsunami of noise. The outright softer moments are accompanied by spoken-word vocals, reminding me a little of the August Born album of last year where Chasny's guitar pieces were punctuated by Hiroyuki Usui's breathy words. "Crystallize" even has some softly sung vocals, but most of the singing is done in the louder segments and some might hesitate to actually call it singing. Rather, it's a hoarse Eastern rasp reminiscent of a more continental style of post-hardcore. Think French hardcore, in particular: Fingerprint, Jasemine, Amanda Woodward, Rachel. To be honest, it's a sound which can get old quickly.

Envy have fortunately tempered their reliance on this sound and the album benefits from it. Furthermore, Envy has capitalized on the recombination of the post-rock genome into their music. Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, and countrymen Mono have helped to inform the band's approach.. Witness the patience of "The Unknown Glow." The old Envy would have been unable to harness and check the energy unleashed from the first five minutes of this song, content for the song to consume itself after those first minutes. Yet this more mature Envy allows an infectious guitar riff both to quell and to proliferate the song, drifting into ruminative quietude for a bit, and then gathering the storm once more. The end of the song is a template for snare drum histrionics, but, again, they have learned well from their contemporaries.

Drama is just something which is innate to Envy. You have to buy into the intentional gravity of the music before you enjoy it. "Night in Winter" and "A Warm Room," the final two movements, showcase the dramatic weight of the band nicely. The songs vibrate with a hollow spookiness and surge towards the sky. Though Envy are convinced they are up to something profound and deep, they often find themselves lighter than air, buoyant despite the proposed weight of their music, floating ever upwards.

samples:

• Further Ahead of Warp
• The Unknown Glow
• A Warm Room

18 July 2006

Scott Mckeating

Albums and Singles

Recorded live at Newcastle upon Tyne’s intimate Morden Tower venue during his 2005 European tour, these two tracks are more radical rethinks than acoustic tributes. As one third of Sun City Girls, its Bishop’s obvious right to explore his own material, but these beautifully energetic takes seem utterly revitalised by anyone’s standards.

NO-FI Archive Series

While still referencing the great ‘American primitive’ acoustic guitar players, both these instrumental cuts go far enough for me to place Bishop in that esteemed company. The audience going apeshit at the end of both songs is proof enough that Bishop is a player that has harnessed both incredible skill on the instrument and the ability to pump out an unbelievable amount of energy.

Both “Space Prophet Dogon” and “Esoterica of Abyssynia” contain passages of frenzied strumming that feel like solid blocks of heavy corrugated sound. These sections retain elements of gracefulness with the headlong percussive charges. His ability to unify virtuoso mastery of style, a straight up punchy playing and nimbleness that must’ve been something special to witness in that front room sized venue. “Space Prophet Dogon” blends an out-of-nowhere Irish folk sound into a mix of different genres that gathers splinters with every wrist twist and flourish.

This 7" is the first release from the NO-FI gig promotions outfit, and who better to archive their gig recordings than the people who put the effort into putting the shows on in the first place. These two songs thankfully don’t fulfil any terrible premonitions of Bishop trotting out the old hits as Sun City Girls Unplugged, but instead inspire both a looking forward and looking back.

17 July 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Temporary Residence

Sweeping layers of guitars tinged with melancholy start many of the songs, followed by some spoken lyrics as the tempo and intensity build to a peak in which the singer’s speech turns into hoarse screams. The beginnings of songs like “Scene,” “The Unknown Glow,” and “Night in Winter” are misleading, for while the intros are among the prettier moments on the album, they too revert to the formula suggested by the first two tracks. However, the dark thumping ending “The Unknown Glow” is one of the few exceptions and proves that the group has the ability to experiment, I just wish they’d do it more often.

Another problem is that the singer uses his screams to cover all of the emotional bases. If he’s not talking, he’s screaming, which leaves little room in-between for any other type of expression. Maybe that’s an unshakeable holdover from the group’s hardcore days, I don’t know, but it’s a shame because the music is otherwise excellent, and sometimes even gorgeous. The exception to the screaming is the singing that appears a few minutes into “Crystallize,” which is a nice change of pace and suggests other avenues for the group to explore. Yet even this moment of refuge eventually leads to an emotional level that can only be communicated further via screams that sound like all of the others on the album, spoiling much of the track’s uniqueness. Used sparingly, this vocal approach would be more effective but as it’s currently utilized, I found myself bracing for the moment it entered the mix rather than finding the catharsis intended in its appearance. The spoken moments are obviously less grating but almost as predictable.

The rest of the band’s dynamics work well with its melodic guitar interplay and versatile rhythm section, and the music alone is often reason enough to listen once the vocals have numbed me into submission.

samples:

• Crystallize
• Scene
• A Warm Room

17 July 2006

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Inside this inverse carcass sleeve art comes a slice of fresh white vinyl, a very un-Dead Machines like piece of plastic; most Wolf Eyes side projects look like they’ve been scraped from the walls of a suicide watch art workshop. This is Mr and Mrs John Olson’s most straight and soundtrack-like work to date, managing to upset the neighbourhood’s canine contingent while retaining that trademark low tech malignant sound.

Ypsilanti

Varispeed croaks turn into clockwork splashes as the slow start-up of gruff Steam trains usher in this latest Dead Machines sticklebrick sludge. The spirit of Lee Perry’s chicken bone voodoo parasitically lives on in the edge of a survival knife dub found on both sides of this disc. Everything here (well, everything but the horn on side B) is shakily plumbed through the band’s handmade operating aesthetic. Standing Kraftwerk style behind battered suitcases of open backed reverb boxes, reused elements are birthing tiny tunes amid the space and clank.

A detour through a summer storm of hi-frequencies eventually bails out with some weird hookah / party horn work. The edges of these sounds are feedback blips, chips of notes blown across foggy battlegrounds days after steel has finished cleaving guts from bellies. Birthday kazoo blasts slashed bedding of spinning greys, only to peculiarly morph into the sound of a fatally wounded llama. Dead Machines really are an odd pair.

Another element in their homespun charm is hearing someone moving over creaking floorboards to get to a new instrument or add another cracked box into the mix. This apparent air of ‘now’ just helps to demonstrate the instinctive chemistry between these two.

Dub trailed chimes of single plucked string (piano, guitar: it’s hard to tell) create a befuddling but beautifully clear landscape in sections of this release. The A Side hits its finale to the sound of a fly disintegrating on a windscreen, mics picking up torn insect flesh at infinitesimal levels.

The flip is a little more focused and sedate, avoiding the space and intangible fuzzy edges of the other side. Mr. Olson’s horn might be wedged in-between the spokes of a clang and clank radiator grill but still he still manages to persuade delicate lines from it. As Mrs Olson tries to sharpen a mallet between the crank of pistons and wrecking yard pus, he sails on a spare air of inquisitive horn parts. Colliding streams swim with the kind of grace normally found in genres other than noise improvised from detritus / junk. This almost traditional musicality is brought to earth with the levity of call and response kazoo / percussion and a succinct tiny one note beat box part. This mixing of elements continues to build the band into a formidable and expansive minded pairing.

samples:

• Side A
• Side B

 

17 July 2006

Albums and Singles

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17 July 2006

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Albums and Singles

Kranky

I had expected Feels Like Home to be a much simpler and more stripped-down acoustic affair as it seemed like Bailiff was moving away from the dense layering of her first two records with her last effort. Instead, she's chosen to refine and compact the sound that she explored on Hour of the Trace and Even in Silence, bringing some of the vocals to the foreground while leaving out the epic scale of 7-12 minute songs.

Of course, the drawback to this approach is that the songs that really kick at three or four minutes feel like they could easily go on for twice as long without getting stale. With shorter songs and more up front and transparent production, Bailiff turns her dreamy washes and lyrics into something more closely resembling pop songs, but she keeps convention at bay with a series of false endings and otherworldly transitions that remind me that these aren't songs that have been stamped out of a mold.

The album's second track "We Were Once" is a beautifully clean and to-the-point fairy tale, standing out as what would likely be the album's "single" were Bailiff and Kranky truly aiming for pop glory. Later on, the whispering of Russian voices in that begins in "Cinq" adds a new flavor to Bailiff's work, while "If We Could" is a drone piece that might have worked just as well the basis for an eight minute song as it does a 2:45. "Spiral Dream" gives the album its most dramatic moment when a reverb-drenched piano is suddenly engulfed in a wall of fuzzy bass, guitar, and breathy voices that would make any Spacemen 3 fan blush.

For longtime fans of Bailiff's work, this new approach of making quick points rather than building long growing spaces might be a little bittersweet. The songs here represent some of Bailiff's best, most melodically approachable material ever, but they are also some of her shortest songs! Luckily they work amazingly well in condensed form, but can I really be blamed for wanting more?

samples:

• We Were Once
• Spiral Dream
• If We Could