14 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

Mentiras may be BOAN's first release, but the duo of vocalist Mariana Saldaña and José Cota (who also record as SSLEEPERHOLD) previously made up two thirds of Medio Mutante, who also mined similar classic synth-centric sounds. Working exclusively with classic equipment and embracing the limitations of such, the result is a wonderfully vintage feeling album of five songs that capture an era while having their own unique identity at the same time.

Holodeck

It has become rather trendy for bands to be heavily invested in using classic analog synth and drum machine technology, but BOAN take this pseudo-Luddite approach even further.Besides ensuring the full production suite is appropriately vintage, they also allow the flaws of this early electronic technology to show through.For example:the slightly out of tune keyboards that open "Babylon" and a few moments of partially off-time sequences that pop up throughout show a true dedication to the flaws of technology like control voltage sequencing rather than driving vintage gear with the inhuman precision of MIDI.

The duo's sound then is unsurprisingly rooted in the early 1980s, as synth technology was moving out of prog rock bloat and academic experiments and into the world of pop music.The aforementioned "Babylon" is heavily rooted in this, with a strongly echoed vocal from Saldaña, a memorable melody and extremely effective rhythms that perfectly capture that transition from disco to synth pop, akin to New Order circa 1982.

The same atmosphere runs through "Secretos" as well.The duo utilize a complex synth sequence to drive the piece, while the vocals alternate between intimate whisper and disconnected flat affect capture a similar feeling.The perky arpeggiated bassline and glassy leads of "Mentiras" keep the tempo up, but there is still a sadness throughout, which cannot be uprooted by the bombastic gated reverb drum programming.

BOAN step out of this framework on a few songs, however."Freak Snake" might feature the fat, thudding drums and percolating synth accents of other songs on this record, but the emphasis is placed on rhythm and a more raw, distorted keyboard lead.It still fits into the record as a whole, but stands out as a unique song.The nearly 11 minute "BOAN Acid" is clearly aimed at the dance floor, with the repetition of the title and a beat heavy sound.The first half may be purely dance floor oriented, but the second deconstructs the piece into less repetitive, more abstract shards of keyboard and rhythm.

Saldaña and Cota's minimalist approach to songwriting on Mentiras, as well as their staunch devotion to vintage technology, is what gives this album its unique character.The simplicity of stripping the music back to the bare essentials of rhythm, bass, lead, and vocals makes way for memorable melodies and gripping drums.This, along with Saldaña's vocals being mostly in Spanish throughout, result in a record that has tinges of familiarity, but also a distinct sound and identity.At its core, however, it is a strong set of catchy, memorable pieces of electronic music, and that is all it needs to be.

samples:

• Babylon
• Freak Snake
• BOAN Acid

 

14 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

During their prime, Zoviet France pioneered a strain of music variously known as either ethno-ambient or sci-fi tribal, but they quickly moved on and nobody since has quite been able to quite fill the resultant void for me.  Others have certainly tried, but they usually have an "overwrought" or "overproduced" feel that dispels whatever illusion they are trying to evoke.  Consequently, I was absolutely delighted to find out about Phil Maggi and his eerie, mesmerizing, and loop-based sound collages.  Maggi's aesthetic is exactly what I was looking for, particularly on 2011's Ghost Love.  His similarly fine (if not even better) new album is a travelogue of sorts, culled from field recordings and snatches of traditional music accumulated during a 2011 trip through Umbria, Italy.

Idiosyncratics

Motherland begins in a very perverse and deceptive way, as someone (Maggi?) happily strums away at a ukulele while nearby birds chirp and burble, painting quite a bucolic picture indeed.  Very quickly, however, that ukulele disappears to make way for slowly massing, densely buzzing, and quite menacing synth drones.  That does not seem to faze the birds much, but it certainly changed the tone of the album in a big way for me.  While that brief synth piece ("Epona Ballade") is not representative of the entire album in any specific sense, it is a fine example of what Maggi excels at: taking rather innocent field recordings and transforming them into something much darker and stranger with a few simple tweaks.  There is a definite naturalness and ego-less-ness to this deeply unnatural music, as Phil does not use the field recordings as building blocks for his compositions; rather, he uses his compositional talents to bring out the most hallucinatory and nightmarish aspects of the recordings themselves.  Admittedly, these brief pieces never quite evolve into anything larger before they end, but they always dissolve into something new and similarly bizarre long before they begin to seem tiresome or one-note.

Throughout Motherland, Maggi casts quite a wide net for his raw material and finds some very effective and ingenious ways to juxtapose disparate recordings.  The best moments tend to be the most hellish ones, however, which seems to be a talent that Phil truly relishes.  I have no idea if he uses actual tape, but most pieces have a very "tape loop" aesthetic of obsessive, relentless repetition and snowballing lunacy.  One such highlight in that vein is "Shine/Pyre," which marries a diseased-sounding horn snippet with a chorus of gibbering, chattering voices to evoke a cacophonous march of the damned.  The following "Congratulator" also has a curiously "medieval parade"-like feel, albeit a far more majestic one than its predecessor.  It is still far beyond the pale, however, as it sounds like the cavalcade in question is entirely subterranean and experienced only as a distant echo.  Most of the other pieces are considerably less triumphal though, like the jabbering and queasy reverie of "Golden Age" or the clattering, buzzing, and stuttering cacophony of "Roma."  Though there are a few appealing divergences mood-wise, Phil's default setting generally seems to be "simmering horror" when he is not in "sinister parade" mode.  I am a fan of both.

If Motherland has a downside, it is only that Maggi does not develop his best ideas further than he does.  For example, the lushly gorgeous "Riots For The Sun" is basically an entire William Basinski album condensed into under three minutes, while the album's rare forays into less inspired ambient gloom are given equal time.  As an entire album, however, it works beautifully–not every song is a masterpiece, but the pieces are all short enough to maintain brisk momentum that draws me deeper and deeper into Maggi’s deeply warped and kaleidoscopic world.  This is an album of constant transition, motion, and cumulative power.  As far as I am concerned, Motherland is a huge success on at least two levels.  As sound art, it is a vibrant, evocative, distinctive, and masterfully constructed whole.  More impressive still, however, is Maggi's power as an illusionist: much like Natural Snow Buildings at their best, Phil is able to erase any sense of either the present or the artist's presence to yield something that feels like a recording from a completely different time and place.  I love this album.

• Epona Ballade
• Roma
• Congratulator

 

07 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

I have been a fan of Piotrowicz’s electronic, usually modular synthesizer-centric work for a number of years now, and I have quite enjoyed following his evolution and development as an artist. With Samoobrona, however, I went in with some trepidation. Not because of my lack of faith in his work, but more the nature of the recording: a radio play exclusively in Polish. I was happy to find, however, that his electronics are still the primary element throughout the two side-long compositions and even without following the narrative, the result was enthralling.

Bolt Records

The play, originally written by Helmut Kajzar between 1974 and 1975, was recorded three times previously, once for the radio and the two remaining times in the authors home.Piotrowicz and director Lukás Jiricka chose to strip the dialog down and include stage directions in the narrative, transforming the author’s work while remaining faithful to his original intent, especially on the themes of physicality and death.This performance features acting by Klara Mielawka, Joanna Drozda, and Milogost Reczek.To be fair, the included insert features an English translation of a selection of dialog presented in the performance, so not being able to understand Polish does not mean narrative part of the work could not be understood.I did, however, intentionally listen to it first solely as a piece of music to form my early opinions and impressions.

For the most part, anyone familiar with Piotrowicz's previous works are going to feel comfortable here, since his use of synthesizers and electronics are in full effect.The piece opens with backwards and forwards electronic sounds and noises, with spoken word appearing early on, but never being overly dominant in the mix.It is a chaotic piece, with some passages sounding more in the spirit of free improvisation, but constructed entirely via electronic instrumentation.

Surges of sound are introduced as the mix becomes denser, with abrupt changes adding to an ever-growing sense of tension.The dialog part of the performance is more heavily mixed and collaged, treated at times almost like another instrument rather than the centerpiece (an intentional decision by Piotrowicz and Jiricka).Eventually he works in an almost rhythmic electronic thud that is rhythmic in the most liberal application of the word, as noises shift and change chaotically.The piece concludes with clanking machinery noise, voice loops and swirling synths.

The second half of the performance continues the same themes and concepts sonically.Hints of rhythm appear, simplistic but effective in their application.Following wobbling pitched electronics, voices are cut up, delayed, and paired with more aggressive almost pseudo-rhythms that do an excellent job at conveying aggression without being too blunt.Amongst this disorienting collage of noises, Piotrowicz works in synthesizer passages that brilliantly approximate the dissonance of an electronic power drill.

Even though this is technically an audio play, Robert Piotrowicz and Lukás Jiricka do not follow convention and treats the actor’s work as any other instrument in a composition.With their subtle treatment of the dialog and Piotrowicz's consistently exceptional ability at creating bizarre electronic sounds, Samoobrona works as a narrative of anger and madness without even a single word being understood.

samples:

• Samoobrona (Side A, Excerpt 1)
• Samoobrona (Side A, Excerpt 2)
• Samoobrona (Side B)

 

07 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

An artist working primarily with guitar used in abstract compositions, Jeff Barsky, also known as Insect Factory, does an exceptional job of carefully using effects and processing to create complex compositions, rather than chaotic walls of sound. On this solo cassette and older split LP, he avoids the temptation to simply run his instrument through a battery of guitar pedals on every song and instead uses that technique sparingly, along with less obscured, more conventional playing. It is his careful balance of texture and mood with conventional melodic playing that makes his work fascinating.

Found Tapes, Insectfields

Barsky's work on these releases also differs from piece to piece as well.In general, the limited handmade tape of Mind has him working with a more loop-centric approach, building from repeating, simple motifs into richer, more expansive passages of sound.The first of two pieces on the first side of the tape (I assume, there is no documentation at all on the cassette) begins from a simple repeating swell of guitar noise.From this most basic passage effects are placed, with the sound becoming more and more cacophonous and metallic, with scraped strings and distorted outbursts all mixed together into a wall of dissonant, but still beautiful noise.

What I assume is a second piece on the side (or an abrupt change) does initially see Barsky using the "pile of pedals" method I alluded to before, but generating a beautiful ringing cloud of sound rather than a dull roar.Bright, colorful passages explode as tiny fragments of string scrape noises sneak out before the piece is pulled apart and also reorganized into a more rhythmic loop-heavy framework.The second side of the tape again works with looped guitar tones and weirdly clipped noises.The loops are expanded upon again, but here it less of a metallic harshness and more of a soft, textural sound in nature.As the piece progresses, more conventional melodies and guitar playing shows up, ending the side on an especially beautiful passage of heavy sustained guitar notes.

samples:

• Mind (Side A)
• Mind (Side B)

The Insect Factory half of the split LP with Earthen Sea is more expansive and far less loop-heavy than what was on Mind.What resembles a shrill bowed guitar opens the piece, mixed with a jerky passage of oddly clipped, processed guitar notes.Blended with a beautiful passage of drone, the mix of erratic guitar noise and massive walls of melody is a brilliant one.Eventually the piece becomes a pile of layered guitar noises, with each layer seemingly vying to be the dominant sound but instead becoming entwined like string.

Earthen Zone

The other side of the record is very different comparably.Earthen Sea's Jacob Young keeps his piece more subtle and restrained compared to Barsky's half.Immediately it is a passage of expansive ambient electronics, generating a light atmosphere while soon blended with deep bass rumblings, almost resembling a drummer far in the horizon.The piece keeps this sparse feel throughout, with the expansion of the mix staying subtle, and having an overall haunting sound.The changes are small and understated, but extremely effective, especially Long's delicate concluding passage.

These may be two recent entries in Jeff Barsky’s discography as Insect Factory, but the very different sounds here show just how diverse of an artist he is.With the cassette focusing on slowly building loops, and his half of the split LP emphasizing layered passages of guitar, he covers a wide variety of sound with his guitar, never losing his identity or style to a pile of effects.I am less familiar with Long's work as Earthen Sea, but within the confines of that split record, his gentle and vast electronics sound provides an excellent counterpart to Barsky's gorgeous chaotic mass of guitar experimentation.

samples:

• Split (Insect Factory)
• Split (Earthen Sea)

 

07 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

Given how much I loved Cascade, my curiosity about this more ambitious companion album made for quite an impatient month of anticipation.  Unfortunately, now that The Deluge has finally arrived, I do not know quite what to make of it.  My initial gut feeling was that Basinski's added intervention diluted a piece that was already perfect and complete, but it has since grown on me quite a bit with repeated listens.  While I still feel that Cascade is the superior album, The Deluge mostly balances out its flaws with some higher highpoints than its predecessor.  Also, it will likely hold a lot of appeal for anyone who has always wanted to love William Basinski, but wished he were more dynamic (though I personally prefer him as just an invisible guiding presence).

Temporary Residence/2062

Unsurprisingly, The Deluge sounds almost exactly like Cascade when it begins, as it is constructed from the same brief, bittersweet, and endlessly looping piano motif.  The only noticeable difference is that it feels a bit like it is being played on a somewhat wobbly and erratic tape player this time around.  Gradually, however, Basinski's numerous, varying-length feedback loops begin to make their impact more and more prominent and the piece begins to take on a bleary, smeared, and after-image-heavy identity of its own.  That said, it still takes some time before it becomes fully evident why Basinski and Temporary Residence thought The Deluge warranted its own album.  For me, that point comes around the 8:40 mark, when ghost-like shuddering swells start to surface from the melancholy haze of fragile piano.  While that particular feat of illusion does not stick around for very long, it is more than enough to justify this album's existence, as it is completely unexpected, weirdly natural-seeming, and eerily beautiful, as if the tape loop finally became worn down enough to set free the dark, buried secret fluttering beneath the notes.

About ten minutes later, The Deluge offers up yet another surprise, as the delicate piano theme slowly fades away to be replaced by a stuttering and overlapping new piano motif.  Again, however, that transformation is short-lived, as The Deluge then surges into an obsessively repeating orchestral crescendo before fading into a single undulating drone.  That might seem like a logical ending point, but the piece resurfaces yet again…sort of, anyways: the last ten minutes are an unadultered reprise of the Cascade album (part of it, at least).

There is definitely a lot to like about The Deluge, as Basinski’s transformative use of feedback loops managed to extract an added layer of mysterious beauty from a piece that was already one of my favorites.  Also, the orchestral passages are a bit of an unexpectedly playful, yet darkly evocative new facet to Basinski's aesthetic.  If it had been perfectly executed, I would place The Deluge near the top of Basinski’s discography, but it regrettably has some quirks that take it down a few pegs.

The first is a huge peeve of mine:  releasing pieces on vinyl that are too long to fit on one side of an album.  To his credit, William at least found a logical stopping point, as the first side feels like its own complete piece (the opening piano loop fades out 20 minutes after it started).  The problem is that that is not the end of the piece, as the remaining movement kicks off the second side and feels like something new altogether.  Also, there are some odd transitions and a feeling of being condensed as well- I did not like Basinski's tendency to always fade into silence between motifs, nor was I thrilled about how the appended version of Cascade lasted only ten minutes, as duration was an extremely important part of the original Cascade’s power.  Ultimately, I still think The Deluge is a great album, but I cannot escape the exasperating irony that Williams’s successful attempt to expand his scope as a composer coincides with the unfortunate decision to compose specifically for the media most ill-suited for its presentation.

• The Deluge (excerpt one)
• The Deluge (excerpt two)
• The Deluge (excerpt three)

 

07 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

Haley Fohr's Thrill Jockey debut finds her again returning to the idiosyncratic singer-songwriter vein that first surfaced on 2013's Overdue.  There is a new twist though: Fohr is now backed by a full band of Chicago music scene luminaries in additional to returning collaborator Cooper Crain (of Bitchin Bajas).  The result is quite a strange, kaleidoscopic, and temporally dislocated one, drifting from inspired experimentalism to '70s-style folk-rock to something resembling Diamanda Galas fronting a Led Zeppelin cover band.  Personally, I vastly prefer her experimental side ("Dream of TV" is absolutely stellar), but there is no denying the singular power and otherness of Fohr's voice.

Thrill Jockey

Haley Fohr is the quintessential Artist That I Do Not Understand At All, which I suppose is what keeps me coming back to her work: I might not always like what she does, but I vastly prefer being puzzled to being bored.  For example, the Circuit Des Yeux albums before Overdue were largely experimental and instrumental, making little use of Fohr's incredibly haunting, unique, and powerful voice.  Now, with In Plain Speech, she is largely repressing her previous experimental tendencies to make a somewhat straightforward "rock" album, except that it actually sounds like a fantasia on four or five different albums from the '70s rather than like anything happening now.  That said, she also sometimes sounds incredibly contemporary or betrays her background in ethnomusicology–the cryptic, feminist first single "Do The Dishes" sounds an awful lot like a Sublime Frequencies' Thailand compilation before the singing comes in.  I never know exactly where she is coming from or why she is choosing to come from there.  Essentially, the entire album is just a whole lot of disparate things bizarrely colliding together or the proverbial square peg relentlessly, inexplicably trying to fit into a round hole (best exemplified by the bombastic, yodeling vocal pyrotechnics at the end of the subdued folk rock of "A Story of This World").

The best analogy that I can come up with for In Plain Speech is that it is like watching someone learning how to use a rocket launcher: every fresh attempt is certainly a compelling display of force, but the target is hit only rarely.  While there are ostensibly nine songs, a third of them ("KT 1," "KT 5," and "Guitar Knife") are very brief (if likable) instrumentals.  Then another four pieces find Fohr and her band trying on various classic rock guises with varying degrees of success, ranging from quasi-operatic hard rock ("Ride Blind") to mellow Eastern-tinged psychedelia ("In The Late Afternoon").  There plenty of fine performances and explosive crescendos scattered about, but the bulk of the album is just too chameleonic, too bombastic, and too "rock" for me to like almost any pieces in their entirety.  I often found myself wondering who this album could possibly be for, as it is variously deeply personal, wildly over-the-top, and unable to ever fully commit to any one clear aesthetic.  It admittedly works as a show of force, but I just could not connect with anything that was happening on any kind of deep level.

There is, however, one notable exception: the nearly 8-minute centerpiece "Dream of TV."  Beginning with gently plucked viola, the piece gradually becomes a beautifully arranged reverie of quavering flutes, guitar noise, melancholy strings, and hallucinatory electronic chaos…and then the drums come in alongside Fohr’s beautifully warbling, wordless vocals and it transforms from merely great to absolutely sublime.  I also like "Do The Dishes" quite a bit, but it is primarily "Dream of TV" that highlights the amazing potential that Fohr has when surrounded by appropriately sympathetic and talented collaborators.  I suppose the unfortunate downside is that "TV" unintentionally highlights the shortcomings of the rest of the album, but it is also the first clear evidence that Haley can be a great composer in addition to being a powerful and unique voice. Ultimately, In Plain Speech is still a mostly flawed (or at least deeply perplexing) album, but it is one that boasts one of the finest songs that I have heard this year.

• Do The Dishes
• Dream of TV
• Fantasize The Scene

 

 

 

05 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

Flying Saucer Attack release Instrumentals 2015, their first album in 15 years on Friday the 17th of July 2015. Comprised of 15 fresh David Pearce solo performances recorded in characteristically lo-fi manner at home, using guitars only on tape and CD-R, Instrumentals 2015 is an album that will appeal both to FSA diehards and those wholly unfamiliar with the outfit's recorded output.

The 15 tracks on Instrumentals 2015 present an impressionistic narrative which transports the listener through the excoriating dronescapes and rueful introspection of the album's early pieces to the more redemptive cadences of its closing half. Given its sense of momentum, maintained through Pearce's thoughtful sequencing, this is an album that should be experienced in its entirety, the better to appreciate its deliberate emotional arc.

More information can be found here.

05 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

Think big, girl, like a king, think kingsize. Jenny Hval’s new record opens with a quote from the Danish poet Mette Moestrup, and continues towards the abyss. Apocalypse, girl is a hallucinatory narrative that exists somewhere between fiction and reality, a post-op fever dream, a colourful timelapse of death and rebirth, close-ups of impossible bodies — all told through the language of transgressive pop music.

When Norwegian noise legend Lasse Marhaug interviewed Jenny Hval for his fanzine in early 2014, they started talking about movies, and the conversation was so interesting that she asked him to produce her next record. It turned out that talking about film was a great jumping off point for album production. Hval’s songs slowly expanded from solo computer loops and vocal edits to contributions from bandmates Håvard Volden and Kyrre Laastad, before finally exploding into collaborations with Øystein Moen (Jaga Jazzist/Puma), Thor Harris (Swans), improv cellist Okkyung Lee and harpist Rhodri Davis. All of these musicians have two things in common: they are fierce players with a great ear for intimacy, and they hear music in the closing of a suitcase as much as in a beautiful melody.

And so Apocalypse, girl is a very intimate, very visual beast. It dreams of an old science fiction movie where gospel choir girls are punks and run the world with auto-erotic impulses. It’s a gentle hum from a doomsday cult, a soft desire for collective devotion, an ode to the close-up and magnified, unruly desires.

Jenny Hval has developed her own take on intimate sound since the release of her debut album in 2006. Her work, which includes 2013's critically celebrated Innocence Is Kinky (Rune Grammofon), has gradually incorporated books, sound installations and collaborations with poets and visual artists. For Hval, language is central, always torn between the vulnerable, the explosive and total humiliation.

More information can be found here.

05 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

»sleepstep« is the first collaboration between raster-noton and dasha rush. the record's subtitle »sonar poems for my sleepless friends« describes its underlying concept – »sleepstep« is a trip through electronically alienated micro-compositions and sound collages that, interwoven with text passages, aim at creating a dream-like atmosphere.

the stations of this journey are striving for oblivion of time, an immersion, a drifting in universal states – death, life, birth, grief, desire. the titles often appear to be raw sketches, fugitive, surreal short stories that rather want to break open than execute.

the musical arrangement, in this context, can be described as rather subtle and fragile. though electronically manipulated, no production technique is pushing itself to the fore. and though clichés are not dreaded, »sleepstep«, as a result, stays away from being cliché. the sonar poems for her sleepless friends are feminine, subtle and personal reports. a musical dream journey in the form of a classical concept record – an album that also stands in the tradition of ambient music.

dasha rush is already known as a techno dj and producer. here on »sleepstep«, she celebrates her alter ego. the cd version comes with a 32-pages booklet that also shows her photographic interest and includes the aforementioned poems written by her.

more information can be found here.

05 June 2015

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Albums and Singles

It has been seven years since Audika last issued an album of Arthur Russell material. The wait ends this summer with Corn, nine tracks Russell recorded in 1982 and 1983. In collaboration with Russell’s partner Tom Lee, Audika’s Steve Knutson compiled Corn from Arthur’s original, completed 1/4” tape masters. Russell himself compiled this material on three separate test pressings—labeled El Dinosaur, Indian Ocean, and Untitled, respectively— in 1985.

Russell fans know something of the Corn sound from Audika’s debut release, Calling Out of Context (2004), which included four songs from these sessions: "The Deer In The Forest Part 1," "The Platform on the Ocean," "Calling Out Of Context," and "I Like You!"

This new collection includes rhythmic alternate versions of "Lucky Cloud," "Keeping Up," "See My Brother, He's Jumping Out (Let's Go Swimming #2)," "This Is How We Walk on the Moon," and "Hiding Your Present From You," along with "Corn," "Corn (Continued)," "They and Their Friends," and the closing instrumental "Ocean Movie," one of the most beautiful and curious Russell tracks ever to see the light of day.

With Corn, Audika reveals yet another side of Russell’s staggeringly diverse artistry, following the avant-electrodisco of Calling Out Of Context, and its companion EP, Springfield; the orchestral works "Instrumentals" and "Tower Of Meaning,” compiled and released as First Thought Best Thought; the "Buddhist Bubble Gum Pop" collected on Love Is Overtaking Me; and Russell’s definitive solo masterpiece, World Of Echo.

TRACK LISTING - ALL VERSIONS PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED:

• Lucky Cloud 5:04
• Corn 2:34
• Keeping Up 2:07
• See My Brother, He’s Jumping Out (Let’s Go Swimming #2) 5:31
• This Is How We Walk On The Moon 7:12
• Corn (Continued) 9:54
• Hiding Your Present From You 5:17
• They And Their Friends 3:20
• Ocean Movie 3:20
  
  More information can be found here.