29 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

Over the span of a far-too-short 20 minutes, Ritual Howls manages to plow through a variety of styles that all rank amongst my favorites, with a lo-fi level of production that would make any "true kvlt" black metal band jealous. Even with all this ugliness, however, the material is more memorable than dissonant and at times leans into true song structures that are more memorable than what similar artists usually do.

Nostilevo

Opener "Turkish Leather" is the most conventional of the three on this tape.Via chiming guitar repetition, fragile drum machine and reverb encrusted vocals, it could almost be a lost, independent-era Sisters of Mercy demo that slowly builds to a fully fleshed out, dramatic conclusion.Appropriately histrionic, yet mired in cheap four track production values, it is one of the times that I feel the murkiness hurts, because I would love to hear what a more polished mix of this song would sound like.

The shorter "Scent of Skin" goes less for drama and more for punk, with a significantly higher energy level propelled by barely controlled guitar squalls and a rapid fire machine gun beat.The aforementioned nastiness helps here, giving it an appropriate level of grime and chaos fitting for the song.The lengthy "Laugh at the Moon" excises even more of the musicality into a junky, old school industrial realm.A deep oil drum rhythm pops up early on, but the remaining instrumentation is all trashy rhythms and shitty effects, but in the best possible way.At times resembling a more fleshed out early SPK or a less syntheticEsplendor Geometrico, it all comes together delightfully, aided by a perfectly distorted bass guitar.

There seems to be an identity crisis going on here, as Ritual Howls jumps between styles that are only loosely tied to one another, but each song is done so well, it is not a detriment at all.While I would prefer to hear "Turkish Leather" presented as a more polished, conventionally death rock song, it is still great in this rawer form, and the two remaining pieces benefit from the DIY production values. My biggest gripe is that there simply was not enough here, as the tape was over far too early for my liking.

samples:

• Turkish Leather
• Scent of Skin
• Laugh at the Moon

 

21 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

ExcitoToxicity: The third studio album release from Nurse With Wound and Graham Bowers

ExcitoToxicity ... an excess of most things, both mentally and physically, although exciting and pleasurable, can easily accelerate and rapidly become toxic ... on a cellular level, deadly.

We have thrown caution to the wind and gone overboard on the quality of the 8 Panel DigiPak artwork design and packaging for this release ... why? ... Graham liked all Steven's proposed paintings for the album ... so

Steven decided we should feature them all ... on a heavy board in full gloss, on a matte background.

The pre-release has been limited to a quantity of 100 and contains a unique and individual printed insert of one of Steven's featured paintings, it takes the form of an unusual post-card, stamped with stamps of the world, franked, signed and numbered by Steven and Graham.

Please visit www.red-wharf.com for audio excerpts and further details.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPMAXm-Q4P4&authuser=0

21 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

Reveries is the first collaborative effort of Noveller & TQA, two critically acclaimed lonesome composers welcoming us to an expanded guitar-based journey. Noveller is the solo project of Brooklyn-based composer Sarah Lipstate while Thisquietarmy is Eric Quach, unstoppable globetrotting musician from Montreal. Both use the guitar as their main instrument, creating some of the most impressive, hypnotic and rich-textured electric guitar works from the past years.

Empty architecture, luminosity, rocks and deserted zones. Somewhere between Antonioni's Zabriskie Point and Tarkovski's Stalker, there is a walk, a wait and an epiphany.

It happened. You were not there. You just read it. Or maybe it's the synopsis of it. It's written on the back cover of a dog-eared paperback that girl with the golden cap lost in the train you were just in. She was in a hurry. You'll never know its end, you just have to stick to the rocks and to the music.

Tomorrow is another day and tonight might be the night.

Recorded in January 2013 at Electric Blue Studios in Brooklyn, this new long player finds Sarah & Eric at their most luminous and aerial state, writing together layers of blissful drones resulting of a highly meditative and emotional four-parts piece.

More information here.

20 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

Brand new double LP from the duo of Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella, who also play in Cerberus Shoal and Fire On Fire. The duo also performed on Michael Gira's Swans LP, The Seer in 2012. Based out of Portland, Maine, Big Blood has dropped a ton of stunning self-released CDs and cassettes since 2006 as well as some fantastic vinyl releases for Time-Lag, Feeding Tube, Phase and Immune.

Big Blood's sound is rooted in folk and prime '60s / '70s garage psych. This new double LP sees them focus more on the electric side of things than on some previous releases with the addition of drummer, Shon. The record was recorded after Colleen spent a lot of time listening to Sabbath, Zepp and Dead Moon, so it definitely has a heavier vibe than some of their past releases.

The gatefold sleeve features artwork by Colleen, Unlikely Mothers refers to Colleen's mother (pictured on the inside) and Colleen's aunt (pictured on the outside), both were nuns. Her aunt stayed a nun and colleen's mom left (obviously) during Vatican II. The two images for the sleeve are from an ongoing series about women who buck common notions of who are the mothers in our lives.

More information can be found here.

20 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

First new material since 2001.  Six new songs plus two dub versions.

More information can be found here.

15 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

The reissue of ARISPEJAL ASTISARÓ+ on vinyl for the first time!, in expanded version (Double LP) with the four outstanding tracks "Noising in the Rain I - IV," included in the legendary Bruitiste compilation (1987) by RRRrecords.   Recorded between 1987 and 1989 and firstly published only in CD (1992) by Línea Alternativa,  an especially interesting period where the unique and characteristic  rhythmic-industrial Esplendor Geométrico style, developed along the eighties, turns more minimalistic, schematic, cold and rough.

Remastered in 2014 with a vastly improved sound, ARISPEJAL ASTISARÓ+ includes the 10 original tracks of the CD plus the 4 of Bruitiste, that constitutes the perfection of the eighties E.G. sound in all its aspects, included the voice of Arturo Lanz.  Aggressive siderurgical hammering ("Jari", "Arispejal astisaro"), mechanized tribalism ("Felacion", "Bi bajin"), and hypnotic spirals ("Catare").

Geometrik presents the reissue, on vinyl for the first time and remastered in 2014 from the original reel to reel tapes!, of SHEIKH ALJAMA, originally published only in CD (1991) by Daft Records (Dirk Ivens label).  Recorded  between 1987 and 1989, an especially interesting period where the unique and characteristic  rhythmic-industrial E.G. style, developed along the eighties, turns more minimalistic, schematic, cold and rough, with sporadic influences of Arabic musics and rhythms. SHEIKH ALJAMA is an Esplendor Geométrico classic and one of the best albums of their whole career, including their hit "Sinaya."  Sheikh Aljama stands out for the incorporation of sonorities, voices and percussions of Arabic influence.

More information can be found here.

15 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

On paper, this album seems like a lock for one of the most fun and memorable releases of the year, as Drew Daniel is one of the smartest and most innovative artists currently working in electronic music and he and his talented friends are reinterpreting some of the most spectacularly self-parodying music ever recorded (the album's subtitle is "Electronic Profanations of Black Metal Classics").  The reality, however, is more baffling than anything.  While Heathen certainly boasts a couple of inspired moments, its bulk lies somewhere in an unsatisfying no-man's land between one-note joke, head-scratching pastiche, and weirdly reverent homage.

Thrill Jockey

As ridiculous and contrarian as the idea of turning extremely hostile, uncommercial, and politically dubious metal into queer club anthems sounds, it is clear that Daniel went into this endeavor as a sincere fan of the genre who was just as intent on celebrating black metal as he was on calling attention to its more laughable aspects.  Drew clearly knows his metal, drawing as equally from first-wave classics by Venom and Hellhammer as he does from deep obscurities by Sargeist and An.  Also, for the most part, Daniel loosely leaves the original chord progressions and structures intact, which is simultaneously one of the album's greatest weaknesses and one of its most compelling twists.  Staying somewhat true to the original songs definitely inhibits Drew's ability to transform Satanic misanthropy into dance floor-packing pop gems, but the transformation can still be impressively radical, most notably with the soulful House take on Sarcófago's "Ready to Fuck" (featuring guest vocals from Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner).

Given those self-imposed constraints, Drew and his collaborators opt for fairly primitive strains of black metal, as they offer a far less restrictive canvas than more contemporary, baroque strains.  Still, these are not particularly catchy chord progressions for the most part, so Daniel and his cohorts are forced to create their dance anthems primarily through radical rhythmic overhauls.  The execution of that, lamentably, is where Heathen goes very wrong for me, as The Soft Pink Truth seem to combine metal fascination with a crash course in the last 20 years of underground dance music.  The end result often sounds (at best) like raspy metal vocals welded to second-rate Squarepusher or Venetian Snares, making the album both perplexing and instantly dated.  I can understand the conceptual reason for mashing the two scenes together, but it certainly is not easy on my ears.  I did not particularly like rave/house music in the '90s and it is sadly no better when metallized by the guys from Matmos.

That said, some great moments still shine through the clattering, synth-driven chaos, particularly the cover of Hellhammer's "Maniac," as the lazy, cartoonishly menacing verses are absolutely hilarious ("mayhem is my goal!").  Also, Daniel cleverly tosses in an unexpected percussive allusion to the completely unrelated "Maniac" from the Flashdance soundtrack.  That was a nice touch.  Venom's genre-birthing "Black Metal" is also quite fun.  More often, however, things that should be extremely funny just fall kind of flat, elicit a fleeting smirk, or are just are not particularly amusing at all.  The latter category is solely represented by an annoying (but brief) performance of an Anal Cunt side project's "Grim and Frostbitten Gay Bar."  As for the former categories, they are best represented by the C&C Music Factory snatches in "Satanic Black Devotion," M.C. Schmidt's attempt to sound vampiric, and Wasner's deadpan soul diva-wailing of lines like "I will lick you from the feets to the head, making you feel torrential orgasms."

Aside from my fundamental disinterest in taking a tongue-in-cheek trip through the history of rave with some metal vocals tacked on, the most damning flaw with Heathen is that it is just not as good as the music that it is mocking.  As silly as they are at times, most of the original songs are still bracingly, viscerally bad-ass.  These covers, on the other hand, largely feel like a very labor-intensive, elaborate novelty.  Also, several of these bands are better at being self-parodying than The Soft Pink Truth are at parodying them.  For example, Jenn Wasner's performance in "Ready to Fuck" is amusing, I suppose, but not nearly as funny as the singer from Sarcófago referring to his cock as a "penetrator hammer" with complete earnestness.  Consequently, Heathen falls short as both music and humor for me, which is very exasperating given the promise of the premise and the level of talent involved.  It is hard to imagine many people continuing to listen to this album after the initial curiosity subsides.  That said, Heathen does succeed in one regard: as subversive art, as the orgiastic cover art and campy collision of queer/rave culture with corpse-paint and evil posturing goes a long way towards de-fanging some of Black Metal’s more homophobic/fascistic/extreme right-wing tendencies.

• Maniac
• Black Metal
• Ready to Fuck

 

09 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

There has been an unusual amount of excitement about this debut and for good reason: Eric Holm takes a very cool and inspired idea and executes it beautifully.  Culled entirely from contact mic recordings that Holm made from remote telephone poles used by military listening stations in the Arctic Circle, Andøya is an unexpectedly rhythmic and haunting series of meticulously crafted industrial soundscapes that occasionally blur into weird minimalist techno.

Subtext

It goes without saying that unusual sound sources are hardly groundbreaking in today's experimental music landscape, but seeing them combined with a healthy amount of imagination and compositional talent is a legitimate rarity.  In most other hands, these pops, hums, and crackles would have been turned been into straightforward field recordings, academic-sounding sound art, or recognizability-obliterating noise.  To his credit, Eric has proven that he has the talent and vision needed to join the ranks of folks like Matmos and Klara Lewis in figuring out how to twist very non-musical sounds into structured, compelling music.

Holm is at his best when strongly emphasizes the machine-like rhythms of his recordings, as he does in the stellar opener Måtinden.  I suspect Holm must have encountered a particularly virtuosic and multitalented telephone pole for that piece, as the murky sub-bass thrum, repeating thumps, crackles, hisses, and shudders do not just combine to approximate minimalist techno–they combine to approximate quite complex minimalist techno.  Equally impressive is the fact that Holm manages to keep the piece compelling for almost 10 minutes simply by deftly fading components in and out. While Eric repeats that general template a couple more times over the course of Andøya (he has an extremely constrictive palette), he still manages to vary the pace and atmosphere enough to make pieces like the slow and echo-heavy "Stave" and the propulsively rumbling bassquake of "Kvastinden" seem similarly distinctive and striking.

The remaining three pieces, however, are a bit more abstract.  "Åse," for example, is built upon an insistent stuttering buzz punctuated by echoing scrapes.  "Høyvika," on the other hand, sounds like minimalist techno that has been deconstructed and abstracted into a murky miasma of fits-and-starts and hollowly echoing clatters and shudders.  The final piece, the titular "Andøya," is probably the most abstract of all, cohering into a pulsing sub-bass drone embellished with eerie metallic whines and dissonantly harmonizing hums.  While I personally prefer the more rhythmic pieces on the album, the more atmospheric pieces do not display any significant drop in quality.  I just happen to prefer experimental sound art with hooks to experimental sound art without them.

Aside from the excellent concept and massive amount of skillful editing involved in crafting Andøya, I also loved the sounds themselves: the telephone poles deserve some credit too.  Though knowing the origin of these sounds undeniably affects my perception of the album, I think Andøya's coldly inhuman array of buzzes, throbs, and clicks would have had no problem evoking scenes of paranoia and isolation even without their backstory.  Also, in a more specific sense, I loved that Eric used so many buzzing and throbbing low frequencies near the threshold of hearing.  That enhances the sense of mystery a lot for me, as it frequently feels like deep, elemental forces are cohering into something on their own rather than being shaped by some guy with an expensive laptop.  I am definitely the target demographic for sonic illusions, intentional or otherwise.

Obviously, an album like this is going to have niche appeal at best, but I think Andøya is intermittently great enough and musical enough to potentially lure in some adventurous listeners from beyond the sound art/experimental music communities.  I sincerely hope it does, as it deserves to be heard.  Also, I would very much love to live in a world where the reigning club banger of the summer was unwittingly penned by a telephone pole on a mountainous Arctic island.

• M√•tinden
• Stave
• Kvastinden

 

08 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

Capturing a single performance between these two titans of improvised music, labeling this three-plus hour set as "intense" would be doing it a disservice. Recorded in 1996, after Keiji Haino and Peter Brötzmann had worked together in the studio setting some time prior, so the two artists had some previous interactions to build from. Here augmented by the full Fushitsusha trio of Yasushi Ozawa and Jun Kosugi, it all comes together with a primal intensity few can match, and well up there with the best moments in both artists’ catalogues.

Utech

Like many (dumb) kids, I grew up deriding jazz as boring music for boring people, the world inhabited by people like Branford Marsalis and Kenny G.It was not until I received a dubbed copy of the Peter Brötzmann Octet’s Machine Gun that I reconsidered the possibilities that it could be something that I enjoyed, and while my tastes still stick to the more chaotic free jazz end of the spectrum, it was still a development for me, and one of the reasons why Brötzmann’s work always holds a special place in my heart.

To be fair, some of the groundwork had already been laid for me via bands such as God and Painkiller, the latter of which featured Haino in a few of their recordings.Had I heard this performance some 18 years ago (when I was still at the prime "jazz sucks" age), it would have likely pushed me a bit more close to jazz acceptance.Disc one begins with a series of erratic, trashy sounding snare drums and chiming bells, providing a pseudo mystical, spiritual introduction to what will come.After a few rushes of cymbals the band pares back to just return lead by a brilliantly distorted bass guitar.When the full band finally launches in, it is a full on drum pounding, sharp and monstrous roar that tenses and relaxes, lead by Haino's distinctive voice.

Brötzmann's contributions do not become prominent until the second disc, squealing through rumbling bass and hurdy-gurdy drone.The full quartet lock into a hellish expanse of sound that just gets louder and louder, with Haino’s vocals becoming more and more frightening.Moving towards a jerky stop/start structure lead by Brötzmann’s sax and beginning a duet with Haino’s guitar, the performance turns deliciously harsh.Both of these artists built much of their careers on an extreme, idiosyncratic approach to playing their respective instruments, and as such the two of them together playing in unison is simply transcendent.The performance surprisingly drops back to a more restrained, overtly jazzy sounding piece with muted horn and piano before ending the second hour with a nice blast.

The third disc leads off softly, at first propelled by unconventional sounding percussion, ambient horn and droning bass, until screamed voices from Haino leads things into a ritualistic direction.Functioning nicely as the calm before the (expected) storm, the players stay somewhat relaxed before building the performance in intensity and density.Everyone finally erupts into a brilliantly lurching psych rock outburst, not entirely unconventional but played with a force and intensity few could hope to match.The closing minutes drift into utter chaos and back again, wonderfully coming apart as the conclusion gets ever closer.

I am rather surprised that this gem has remained unreleased for nearly two decades, given that both Peter Brötzmann and Fushitsusha have a strong following and have had the support since prior to this performance.Regardless of that, Nothing Changes measures up to expectations based upon the players, and also apparently represents the first full length, commercially available Fushitsusha performance, and it is an exceptional one at that.

[note:song titles listed for samples are best guesses, each disc is indexed as a single track]

samples:

• Ango (1996 Version-Entering into Depths where Meaning Cannot Exist
• Layer upon Layer of Missing Answers, Swirl in Circles Speaking to Me "Still You Ask Why?" They Say
• Nattanjanai-Akin to This

 

08 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

Initially released in 1997, three years after Derek Jarman's passing, The Garden Was Full of Metal was a fitting tribute to the legendary director. It also, however, helped to demonstrate that Robin Rimbaud was a musician with a more significant artistry than solely relying on the novelty of presenting covertly recorded wireless phone conversations. Reissued for the 20th anniversary of Jarman's death, with four additional songs from the same sessions, it remains an extremely personal tribute to one artist from another.

Sub Rosa

Intimacy was always a major facet of Rimbaud's work as Scanner, but here he turns that inward, via an emotional tribute to an artist whom he was heavily inspired by.It might not be as an overt as secretly recorded telephone calls were, but there is an extremely personal and poignant gravitas in these recordings.Rimbaud speaks of these compositions as "sound Polaroids," utilizing recordings of places and locations important in Jarman's life as source material, with a restrained use of instrumentation and relatively simple processing and effects.Interspersed with this are excerpts from various Jarman interviews throughout the years.

"Experience" exemplifies the approach of this album, with its layered voice samples and basic keyboard sounds that fold back into themselves.The arrangement may be simple, but the result is beautiful."Drop" sees Rimbaud using both instrument and voice samples, largely reversed and paired with a brittle but memorable drum loop that is one of the few things that dates this album as from the late 1990s.Rhythms are used sparingly throughout the album otherwise, mostly via processed sounds or synth patterns. On "Their Own Space" the beat is generated from either a treated sample or bit of keyboard tone that makes for a nice contrast to the more mournful electronic sounds.

On a piece such as "Fravaer," the rhythm is less overt and more insinuated via light thumping noises that accompany string swells and what sounds to be field recording loops.The same feel bleeds into "Rosa Rugosa," with a simple skittering click sample as percussion with dramatic piano and strings that could easily be a film score piece.

The four newly added songs from the same sessions fit in beautifully with the remainder of the work."Circles of Stone" is another passage of melancholy synthesizers that are filmic without being unnecessarily dramatic."Translucence" is a short but sweet piece of new age-y electronics mixed with interview fragments, and "I Waited a Lifetime" is admittedly more skeletal than the remainder of the album, but its slowly progressing piano fits the album’s mood perfectly.The final piece, "Garden (Redux)" seems to be a mix of the album as a whole, and while it clearly has a sound collage feeling to it, it fits together better than most of this sort.

Even 17 years after its first issue, The Garden is Full of Metal retains all of the reverence and celebration of Jarman's life that it intended.Additionally, Robin Rimbaud's work remains just as distinct and powerful as it did then, and with the additional material added, the result being richer and more fully realized.It is a perfect example of how an artist and composer who is creating something so intimate and personal that it can transcend time and technology, a description that is apt for both Rimbaud and Jarman's art.

samples:

• Experience
• Drop
• Circle of Stone