20 October 2013

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Albums and Singles

For some reason, my favorite albums always seem to be those that come from unexpected places, a trend that delightfully continues with this third effort by Belgium's Bram Bosteels.  I was vaguely familiar with Bosteels already, but only because I had previously heard 2011's Barra Barra and casually dismissed it as "a bunch of murky soundscapes for obscure theater productions."  After hearing this latest effort, however, I found myself desperately rummaging around my house in vain hope of finding and revisiting my long-forgotten copy of its predecessor.  Hokus Fokus is absolutely deranged in the best possible way, resembling nothing less than an extremely disturbing carnival-themed nightmare.  This is easily one of the strangest albums in recent memory.

Miasmah

This is one of those rare albums that inadvertently opened up exciting new vistas of weirdness and lunacy for me, as I was completely unfamiliar with most of the artists that I have seen referenced as Bram's current kindred spirits (Gultskra Artikler and Anworth Kirk, for example).  Calling anyone a kindred spirit to Bosteels at this point is a bit of a stretch though, as Hokus Fokus finds him (mostly) abandoning his gloom-shrouded ambient past to plunge gleefully into sounding like a clown's bad acid trip.  Or a zombie Django Reinhardt performing at the cantina on Tatooine.  Or singing puppet show in hell.  Or something else equally playfully perverse that no one else has ever considered pursuing.

Despite all that, Hokus Fokus is a surprisingly musical effort, in its own gloriously wrong way.  The best pieces, such as "The A Theme," combine jaunty, jazzy guitar hooks with oddly lurching or clunky rhythms and a wonderfully wrong-footing periphery of inhuman gibbering and ghostly dissonance.  That winning formula repeats itself again somewhat with "KipKap," which sounds a boatful of demonic Oompa-Loompas singing a work song as they drift along an underground river.  The rest of the album does not quite replicate those levels of bizarrism (how could it?), but the "haunted carnival" feel of Hokus Fokus continually finds new and unexpected ways to surface as the album unfolds (noir-ish sax motifs, chattering incomprehensible voices, random honking, comically lumbering kitchen-sink percussion, etc.).

The final twist is that some parts of the album sound far more like dissonant modern classical than maniacal outsider art.  This tendency is most prominent (and effective) in the opening "Kolik," as Bram creates a wonderfully nuanced and disquieting bed of string swells and woodwinds beneath a  creepily squealing, exhaling, and echoing haze of non-musical sounds.  Remarkably, Bram handled the bulk or the instrumentation himself this time around (Barra Barra was more of a collective effort), though  a guest trumpet player turns up for one song. The fact that there is a crazy Belgian out there who can play just about anything, compose in wide-ranging and disparate styles, blend them all together into a unique and hallucinatory whole, and then happily sabotage it all with funny voices, kazoos, and an anarchic sense of humor makes me very, very happy.

My sole (minor) grievance with Hokus Fokus is that Bosteels' former dark ambient tendencies still sometimes tend to get the better of him, causing occasional lulls in the action.  Those same tendencies also make even the most cheery passages sound delightfully warped, but the balance could be a bit more optimal.  It seems silly to complain that such a massive, unexpected leap into bold new musical terrain falls short of being perfect though: I am now very much an enthusiastic fan of Bosteels and his deeply unsettling vision.

• Kolik
• KipKap
• The A Theme

 

20 October 2013

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Albums and Singles

Ba Da Bing have officially blown my mind yet again, following their 4LP reissues of the epic Night Coercion Into the Company of Witches and The Snowbringer Cult trilogy with an even more ambitious project: reissuing 2009's incredibly rare and overwhelming Daughter of Darkness cassette series as a massive 8LP box set with hand-painted album art (which took months to complete).  While it is not the best Natural Snow Buildings album by any means (no band can make a uniformly great 8-hour album), it is still quite a good one and it is unquestionably their longest, which offers a unique appeal all its own.  There are probably are not too many people who find the prospect of plunging into a seemingly endless rabbit hole of roiling, hallucinatory, quasi-ritualistic drone very appealing, but those who do have probably just found their Holy Grail.

Ba Da Bing

Daughter of Darkness is a curious anomaly within the Natural Snow Buildings catalog for many reasons, its staggering scope being just one piece of the puzzle.  For example, many of its longer pieces seem quite primitive and monolithic by the duo's standards, sounding like rather lo-fi and improvisatory experiments in oceanic, multi-layered guitar noise allowed to unfold until the tape ran out.  While that is not a bad thing at all, it feels like the formative work of a band who had not yet reined in their more indulgent impulses or turned their attentions towards structure and songcraft.

It is not, however, as Solange and Mehdi had already recorded and released at least two of their most beloved and fully realized albums by that point (the aforementioned Snowbringer and 2006's The Dance of the Moon and Sun).  Also, Daughter of Darkness was recorded in 2008, a year of utterly stupefying activity, yielding two separate triple-albums, 6 CD-Rs, and two cassettes.  Given that the duo were already near the top of their game and immersed in a bewildering melange of other projects, Darkness is not a noisy, chaotic, and sprawling monster by accident, inexperience, or youthful over-exuberance.

Consequently, the best way to view Daughter of Darkness is as a conscious attempt to push drone to its furthest possible extreme: this album is far more of an immersive, trance-inducing experience than a mere collection of songs.  In fact, there is nothing resembling a "song" at all, though some of the shorter pieces (particularly the rippling, eerie "The Source") sound very meticulously composed.  Actually, I suspect the entire album was meticulously composed on a grand scale, but that is not readily apparent when I am enveloped in the midst of it, as there are long stretches where it feels like the duo are basically treading water for ten or twenty minutes.

In reality, however, they are just working on a very different time scale than I am used to, as such stretches almost invariably give way to something wonderful that makes the whole journey seem both worthwhile and necessary (like the heartbreakingly lyrical feedback interlude lurking within the often harsh, 45-minute "Devil's Fork").  Also, Mehdi and Solange were just as ambitious with their textures, layering, and detail as they were with Daughter's duration, as they regularly make such an unearthly and apocalyptic racket that it is almost impossible to believe that it is coming from two people rather than some of sort of occultist, extra-dimensional army on the march or a horde of demons clawing their way out of the underworld through an incompetently drawn pentagram.

As awesome as that sounds, Daughter actually evokes quite a few other moods as well, which was a very good move listenability-wise.  In fact, a few interludes can reasonably be described as warm or beautiful, like the gently quavering outro of "Black Pastures" (intrusions of strangled-sounding guitar noise aside) or the lush swells of the surprisingly innocent-sounding "Will You Die For Me?"

In another context, some parts of the album ("Body Double," for example) could probably even be seen as "pretty," but not in this one: Daughter's rare oases of calm are made deliciously tense and uneasy by the fact that they are surrounded by gnarled plunges into the void with names like "A Thousand Demons Invocation" or ancient-sounding funeral processions like "Her Face Is Not Her Real Face."  While many aberrations occur all over the album's brain-frying duration, the balance of the material definitely veers between roiling, wall-of-guitars drone; quasi-occult death marches; and buzzing Eastern strings and discordant flutes.  All of those threads appear on other Natural Snow Buildings albums (and are often better executed there), but the cumulative effect is quite a staggering one nonetheless.

As with most of Natural Snow Buildings' oeuvre, Daughter of Darkness successfully maintains an unbroken and otherworldly illusion of being field recordings of some arcane ritual by a forgotten and vaguely sinister culture in the very distant past. While it is not nearly as clear, sophisticated, and nuanced as their best albums (possibly because the nuance and sophistication is obscured by the smeary, distorted production), it succeeds despite that, as the sheer scope, immensity, and extremity easily eclipse all details of the execution.  The best analogy that I can come up with is this: Daughter of Darkness is less like great, brilliantly realized art than it is like being trapped in a museum that is on fire (while an earthquake simultaneously rages).  There would certainly be beauty, vision, and genius all around me, but that definitely would not be what I remembered about the experience, which would be a lot more lasting, deep, and unique than simply seeing a lot of nice things.

(Note: the CD version of this set includes two very long bonus tracks from the Daughter of Darkness V cassette (2009, Recollections of Knulp), which are very much in the vein of the main album.  I do not think that their inclusion particularly enhances or detracts from the album in any way, but I will say that it is much more convenient to listen to an 8-hour album when you do not need to keep flipping records over. The vinyl set includes only the songs from the original Daughter of Darkness (2009, Blackest Rainbow), so that might be a better bet for feeble types who can only handle 7 hours of heavy drone in one sitting).

• The Source
• Slaves for the Afterlife
• Devil's Fork

 

20 October 2013

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Albums and Singles

For the longest time, I could not understand why people were so excited about this act, but last year's Carter Tutti Void album re-ignited my curiosity enough for me to give it another chance.  While it still remains a mystery to me how Factory Floor became so quickly revered, their first real full-length is intermittently wonderful and dramatically better than much of their earlier work.  Obvious Chris & Cosey comparisons aside, this trio is definitely onto something uniquely their own, stripping their thumping, retro-dance formula down to little more than a beat, a simple modular synth pattern, and Nikki Colk Void's appealingly languorous sexy-android-on-heroin vocals.  As it turns out, that is all they need.

DFA

The power of minimalism is a remarkable thing, as the only substantial difference between earlier, somewhat generic-sounding Factory Floor songs and their more recent (and superior) work is that the trio have purged themselves of all unnecessary drama, density, manic energy, and ornamentation to leave behind only sharply realized, precision-executed doses of the things that are absolutely indispensable: an insistent, unrelenting groove and (occasionally) some kind of vocal presence.  In this sense, they actually share a lot more common ground with a band like ESG than they do with Chris & Cosey.  While Void certainly sounds a bit like Cosey sometimes (and tends to also play a guitar unconventionally), Factory Floor's so-basic-it-almost-seems-naive palette of a simple beat and a few synth bleeps and blurts bears only passing resemblance to anything Chris Carter-esque (aside from perhaps sounding like it involves cutting-edge dance technology from 25 years ago).

When the formula works, it works beautifully, as Factory Floor's endless repetition and robotic blankness make for hypnotic listening (and a perversely distinct sound as well).  The most extreme example is the opening "Turn It Up," which features almost nothing but Gabriel Gurnsey's muscular, constantly shifting beat and a few creepy, heavily processed mutterings from Void.  The rest of the album is a bit more ambitious musically, but not too much: the band's resident knob-twiddler (Dominic Butler) walks a tight rope, offering up just enough of a bloopy synth hook to give each of the songs some semblance of structure, character, and catchiness, but never enough to grab the spotlight (and never anything that consists of multiple parts).  In fact, most of Butler's "riffs" have so few notes that they can be counted on my fingers and the idea of throwing in a chord change for a chorus or something seems to be utterly unthinkable (or possibly just impossible, given the gear used).

Butler's finest moment comes with the rapidly stuttering chord that makes up the entirely of the music for "How You Say" (the album's clear highlight for me), but he almost always manages to leave enough space for Void's breathy vocals, echo-ey guitar noises, and subtle samples to make their full impact.  Few bands are as adept at staying out of each other's way as Factory Floor.  As deceptively simple and regressive as some of this music might seem at first listen, it is hard to imagine many other artists handling similar territory this effectively.  It would only take the slightest misstep or bit of clutter to wreck or hopelessly blunt the impact of these songs.  It may have taken them several years to reach this degree of craftsmanship (Factory Floor have been around in some form or other since 2005), but it is not a plateau where they have much company.

The few critiques that I can make are basically ones that can be made for almost all dance albums: there are only a handful of strong "singles" amidst these ten songs and listening to a full album of such similar-sounding material tends to be become increasingly draining as it unfolds–there is a very good reason why 12" singles are the preferred format in underground dance.  Also, three pieces are basically just brief interludes rather than songs and some of the actual songs are a bit too self-consciously, kitschily "retro" for my taste ("Work Out" sounds like a mid-'80s break-dancing jam, for example).  That said, almost all of the other potential singles are stellar (a category that also includes "Here Again" and the previously released "Fall Back" and "Two Different Ways") and it is very convenient to have them all in one place, as endlessly buying singles is annoying.  In fact, Factory Floor comes damn close to being a debut album that doubles as a greatest hits album–there are certainly a few other wonderful Factory Floor songs out there (Optimo's remix of "R E A L L O V E" springs to mind), but not many are quite as good as these.

• Fall Back
• How You Say
• Two Different Ways

 

14 October 2013

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Albums and Singles

Lee Stokoe has been active for two decades but has maintained a relatively low profile with limited and self released recordings, with his biggest claim to fame having spent time with the legendary Skullflower. Like that band’s head Matthew Bower, Stokoe works heavily with guitars and a legion of guitar pedals, but the result is less raw and aggressive, and more hypnotic and minimalist. Across these two side-long pieces are repeated, meditative drones that seem to lurk just out of view, in a distant fog or mist.

Fabrica

The A side of this LP, "How She Cut Herself," is all deep muffled guitar noise.Surging, slow paced rhythms are there, but out of reach.Via filtering and reverb, he places the source of this racket somewhere in the distance, almost perfectly emulating the sound of a black metal guitar noise squall coming from a garage just down the street.Elements of harsh noise are definitely here in its singular, wall-like approach to sound, but it is never that jarring or oppressive.Throughout its 17-minute duration it hardly changes, and when it does it is mostly due to variations in frequency or equalizer settings being shifted.

On the other side, "An Oath" retains that distant, obscured effect to the sound, but has more variation and diversity throughout.Slowly rising swells of guitar begin the piece, and a wider sonic spectrum is present.Throughout the muffled recording, a multitude of harmonics become prominent amongst the unrelenting walls of noise.Harsher, forceful stabs of feedback pierce through here and there, only to pull away again, as minor variations push the composition toward a tenser, bass heavy conclusion.

Gateshead Graves is definitely not a recording everyone could appreciate.Its staunch minimalism and intentionally repetitive nature are an acquired taste, as is its idiosyncratic production style.However, the change and variation that is underlying makes for fascinating walls of sound that are closer in approach to Vomir or The Rita than a guitar-based project, but even compared to those projects the sound is more dynamic and nuanced, resulting in a difficult, but powerful record.

samples:

• How She Cut Herself
• An Oath (Excerpt 1)
• An Oath (Excerpt 2)

 

14 October 2013

Administrator

Albums and Singles

In a spate of recent releases, Room40 label head Lawrence English has produced three very different works on the always beautiful Winds Measure label, with some recorded as far back as a decade. While he utilizes field recordings from Japan and Australia on all three, each one sounds nothing like the other but all are indicative of the Australian artist’s ability at capturing and manipulating familiar sounds into something else entirely.

Winds Measure Recordings

Boombana Echoes, a collaboration with Japanese artist Akio Suzuki recorded in 2005, the emphasis is definitely more on instrumentation, both traditional and electronic.Suzuki performs on the Analapos, an instrument of his own creation that consists of two metal cylinders connected with a coil spring."Manorina Melanophrys" showcases this instrument immediately with its scraping, resonating metallic sound, initially jarring and violent, but then becomingmuch more calm, with almost rhythms and light, ethereal electronics finishing the work out.

"Ficus Watkinsiana" stays a bit more dissonant, with a disconcerting voice echoing around immediately setting a darker sensibility.Soon an oddly bent/shaped melody, which almost sounds like a sampled cat meow constructs some semblance of a melody amidst the heavy use of reverb and echo, before ending with a thin percussive blast from English.

Suikinkutsu No Katawara Ni is a collection of traditional field recordings from English.Recorded between 2003 and 2011, he captures various locations in both Japan and Australia extremely effectively, at times being easily identifiable sources, and other times not at all.A consistent sound that appears throughout a number of the pieces here, especially "Taima Bells" and "Slowly Turns Blue" is a wet, metallic pinging sound likely of dripping water.The former has a rapid, almost frenetic pace to it, while the latter has a calmer, more meditative pacing to it.

The plinking sound appears as a more subtle counterpoint on other pieces, such as the winds and distant birdsongs of "Bamboo Shinjuku" and the dense cicada calls and organic sounds that punctuate "Minor Lori Swings".The resonating metallic hollowness that is "Chamber" is perhaps the most different piece here: the endless reverberations of what sounds like a recording from a metal tank dominating the sound while birds can be heard far in the distance.

Studies for Stradbroke sees English recording material closer to home, namely via hydrophone on Stradbroke Island in both January and August of 2007, reflecting the two seasonal extremes.The opening and closing versions of "Slide" are the most boisterous of these eight recordings, sounding like wide expanses of silence interrupted by what could be a sped up and slowed down tape of white noise, but most likely not.

Between these two conceptual bookends are a variety of hushed, slight recordings that capture the various textures from under the water."Reeds of Brown Lake," for example, uses the subtle vibrations captured, likely ripples and waves in the water, to build an almost heartbeat like thump that adds a great sense of tension to an otherwise understated piece.

The strongest works here are the ones that present fascinating, but unidentifiable textures and natural rhythms.This is at its most obvious on the quiet clattering that almost sounds like wooden objects on "Intercepted Communications" and the brittle, yet submerged crackles of "Rock Walls," which is occasionally punctuated with a bird call or other natural interruption.In other moments they are used infrequently and amidst long passages of silence, such as on the occasional sloshing of "Slipping Grains."

All three of these releases stand strongly on their own, but I must say my personal preference leans towards Studies for Stradbroke.Even amidst its limited source material, Lawrence English captures a sonic microcosm of low frequency pulses and wet, crackling sounds that are far from being easily identified.Boombana Echoes is also notable for its significantly different approach, using more traditional techniques to create a very unique, almost musical EP of sound art.Suikinkutsu No Katawara Ni is not bad by any means, but its traditionalist approach to field recordings causes it to stand out less next to these other two very diverse works.

samples:

 

• Manorina Melanophrys
• Ficus Watkinsiana
• Taima Bells
• Chamber
• Slide (Open)
• Rock Walls

 

14 October 2013

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Albums and Singles

Gilbert has not been a prolific solo artist even after departing from Wire, but whenever he has released new material, it has been of the utmost quality, and this record is no different. A concept album on global warming and floods in collaboration with Beaconsfield Art Works (David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin) is no different. Mixing treated field recordings and electronic instrumentation, Diluvial is another high water mark in his impressive discography.

Touch

On pieces such as "The Void," the field recordings are either processed beyond recognition or are entirely absent, as the focus is on melodic drones that have a distinctly mournful mood them.Bits of static and interference come through but on the whole it is a subtle composition of understated melody and beauty."Lights" has a similarly electronic approach, mixing dark low frequency tones with ring modulated noises and crackling static.Even when the more dissonant elements take over in the second half, it always shows admirable restraint.In Esse this most certainly is not.

The natural recordings do appear clearly on "The Expanse," in the form of hollow, metallic rainfall that follows aquatic sounding oscillator passages.The closing half of the 12 minute composition is especially gentle, capturing just the most subtle sounds of water that are almost inaudible.The exact opposite atmosphereis drawn on "Dry Land," in which what could be arid desert winds are paired with subtle clicks and vibrations, and perfectly matching the imagery of the title.

"Beasts of the Earth" also goes for the literal interpretation of its name, with both recorded nature and synth derived insects swarming, as is the use of actual and virtual bird calls on "Creatures of Sea and Air."Like "The Void," "Rest/Reflection" also drops the field recordings to focus on depressive, echoing electronics that perfectly channel darkness and disaster without succumbing to cliché tactics.

The aforementioned "Rest/Reflection" ends Diluvial on a perfect note, as that final composition has the ideal balance of tension and pensiveness.Gilbert, Crawforth and Siderfin manage to capture a significant number of themes, both historic and modern, throughout this album. Creation myths and social advocacy aside, the music contained here stands on its own and serves as a reminder just how brilliant Bruce Gilbert is as an artist, and that his genius has shown no signs of reduction as time passes.

samples:

• The Void
• Dry Land
• Rest/Reflection

 

14 October 2013

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Albums and Singles

Much of Daniel Lopatin's work has been characterized by uncertainty. Even in his best moments, there was a hesitance, an aversion to commitment which staggered the fluidity of his material. In his initial presentations of synth arpeggios, there was the voice of a burgeoning artist struggling to move past process, to bridge the gap between idea and execution, to make a full measure. On R Plus Seven, Lopatin has fully realized this goal. Filled with a stupefying sureness, this record once again finds Daniel reinventing his style from the ground up, combining the dated provinces of new age music, soundtracks, and corporate ambience into something tremendous.

Warp

There are plenty of critical approaches to Oneohtrix Point Never's music, but they are rarely as interesting as the music itself. I might find a keen satire of zealous consumerism in his use of stock choir pads and chintzy muzak pianos, a laughing mockup of music from the soulless recesses of the dot-com bubble. Or, barring that exhausted approach, I could argue for an embrace of the kind of surreal futurism new age music had promised, a genuine appreciation for the art of unfettered idealism. But R Plus Seven really ought to be examined for the music alone—the innate beauty of the record upon first listen. I am instantaneously able to understand the order and chaos in the universe Lopatin has built with R Plus Seven. It is an experimental release by most standards but it is also strangely, undeniably pop.

In speaking on his creative process, Daniel Lopatin seems to entertain ideas of irreverence and simultaneously a strict working order. In minutiae, it is the former; R Plus Seven lives as a series of variables, finicky and fleeting, a compendium of far-flung, seemingly irrelevant detritus. Sudden bursts of inspiration jut in and out, and the best melodies never last long enough. There is a very direct attempt at reworking each song on this album into a frail and fractured thing; each time an order seems to be established, there will be a transition into choral drone or a sudden glottal stop that cuts it short of its inevitable crescendo, breaking it apart into fragments. But in a larger picture these pieces are the most structured work he has ever done. It is a difficult effort to find commonality between disparate pieces, but each song on this release shares a (sometimes subconscious) fraternity. The piecemeal construction makes a huge logical leap in what normally comprises a song, but in taking that leap it opens up a whole new approach to Lopatin's craft. I find myself listening to the record over and over again, bent on discovering those patterns and links with giddy bemusement. It is a triumph of function over form, and as a result the form becomes the new normal.

"Boring Angel" opens the album with a solemn drone, a jittery triplet of voices, a sudden dropout into silence, and a nonsequitur church organ. The sampled choir, a defining instrument of the album, is the most accessible entry point to this album but eventually becomes the most alienating. I have not heard something so deeply nestled in the uncanny valley in a long while, nor as purely fun. Following that is the spectacular "Americans," with its smeared microsamples and anxious clutter giving way to jubilant polyrhythmic percussion and a major key gear shift in the final minute. "Zebra" is possibly my favorite song off the record, an electrifying upbeat staccato synth pulse rolling along in conjunction with a human choir made android by granular time stretching. It then collapses, as if following the unwritten motions of a choreographed dance, before settling into a quiet peace in its latter half.

There are too many perfect bits to mention in this review, despite my want to include all of them. Among the best small wonders: the "wait" signifying the slowing of "Problem Areas'" clanging metal loops, the swung shaker beat on "Cryo" that I just cannot quite pin down, and the completely phantasmagorical climax of "Still Life," made all the more unnerving by its accompanying video, a Jon Rafman-directed spectacle of fetish horror and gratuitous digital flesh. There is a moment in "Chrome Country" where all other noise drops out and a solitary choir voice freezes in place, and I am stuck in time with it. It is at once coldly mechanical, like a program running out of memory, and warmly cathartic, human as a strained voice pushed past its physical limits. In essence, this is R Plus Seven's modus operandi: the natural/unnatural dichotomy, finding human qualities in mechanical sounds, and how well Daniel Lopatin manages to accomplish that feat.

I think the strongest praise to be said for R Plus Seven is that for all its cuts and edits, all its obtuse conceptual ambling and strangeness, it is a fully realized piece of music. In Replica, I could spot the moments where a stronger choice might have been made or a punch had been pulled. Likewise, Lopatin's early work on Rifts and thereabout was very much a fluid, improvise-then-edit kind of gradual product. R Plus Seven is immaculate; I cannot spot a piece that can be moved without ruining the puzzle. Lopatin has found an inspired path, happier and braver, run amok with grand ideas, and imbued with explosive potency. Outstanding, fantastic stuff.

Samples:

• Americans
• Zebra
• Problem Areas

13 October 2013

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Albums and Singles

This Chicago band’s career trajectory has been a singularly impressive and curious one, as they have somehow managed to continually reinvent their sound while still getting exponentially better with each new album.  Era makes that trend seem even more remarkable, as Disappears have made yet another huge leap forward despite tampering with what was arguably their best feature (Brian Case's dissolute-sounding, deadpan vocals) and losing drummer Steve Shelley to Lee Ranaldo's new band. As it turns out, neither are missed, as the band more than compensate by paring their aesthetic down to pummeling, machine-like precision mingled with great hooks and well-placed eruptions of chaos.

Kranky

The first time I put this album on, the opening "Girl" made me nearly jump out of my skin, as its transition from a clean, unadorned bass riff to full-on rock fury could not have been more abrupt or unexpected. As far as songcraft goes, it is far from the album's best moment, but its collision of drum solo, guitar squall, and obsessively repeating, heavily processed vocals achieves quite an impressive amount of brute force while staying grounded enough by its bass line to feel like a groove.  It is no small feat to sound explosive for the entire duration of a four-minute song, but Disappears somehow did it.  Presumably exhausted afterward, the band settles down noticeably for next six songs, but a few core motifs from "Girl" stick around for the duration, namely the use of guitars as a textural tool (rather than a melodic one) and Brian Case's surprisingly effective tendency to endlessly repeat brief phrases (and slather his vocals with effects).

The following "Power" is a bit of a mixed bag, as it finds Case regressing a bit into his former GVSB/Mark E. Smith-esque vocal affectations, but he certainly sounds cool doing it and it is probably the album's strongest choice for a single, mixing a darkly sexy groove, subtly snarling wah-wah, and quite a bit of laconic, syllabically enhanced charisma.  The album's other two stabs at fairly straightforward rock ("Era" and "Weird House") do not quite hit the same heights, but "Weird House" does offer some appealing unhinged vocals and some neat guitar sounds.  Fortunately, the remaining songs are all great enough to compensate for any comparative lulls the album might have.  The least of them, "Elite Typical," is a bit of a throwback to early Gang of Four/Pop Group-style post-punk (which I am the target demographic for), but the other two are a bit more unique (and both are also inarguable career highlights).

Due to both its length (9:30) and sheer greatness, it is hard to see "Ultra" as anything other than the album's centerpiece and crowning achievement.  It certainly has a lot going for it, as it combines an alternately stomping and stuttering beat with some kind of machine sample, loads of elegantly restrained guitar abuse, and some of Case's most cryptically menacing vocals (centered around an echo-heavy deadpan mantra of "If you go, I'll go").  Of course, it is the execution that matters most and that is where Disappears shine brightest, particularly the rhythm section: the groove is insistent, yet constantly shifting, maintaining a strong tension without ever quite offering any kind of relief or catharsis.  Also, in a broader sense, "Ultra" could only be a Disappears song, a significant achievement for such a historically chameleonic band, particularly since they manage to sound unique through restraint and understatement (no real choruses, no real melodies, no real riffs).

That said, my favorite song of all is the closing "New House," which has stayed stuck in my head for weeks now.  Much like "Ultra," it is built upon little more than a subdued drum part (just toms and a high-hat) and a looping bit of machine-noise, but it is even more sparse this time around and Case's vocals are even more brilliantly creepy and echoing.  I cannot think of many people besides Brian Case who can endlessly repeat a phrase like "a new house in a new town" until it sounds like nothing less than the ghoulish musings of a man with a backyard filled with dead prostitutes (I also happen to be target demographic for ghoulish musings).

Era is truly a landmark album for this formidable foursome–everything has finally come together.  While it is not quite perfect from start to finish, it may as well be.  It is hard imagine any way that its best parts could have been any better: it is basically a master class in how to sound amazing, as Disappears prove that all you need is a strong rhythm section, some good ideas, enough space for those ideas to make an impact, and enough time to strip away anything that detracts at all from overall badassness.  Equally importantly, Era is both the first Disappears album that I can happily listen to in its entirety and the first album where there are some brilliant songs that sound distinctly like Disappears and not like Disappears skillfully channeling one of their many influences (I am almost certain that I will be dismissing new bands as "too derivative of Disappears" within the next couple of years).  This is going to be all over "best of 2013" lists in a couple months.

• Power
• Ultra
• New House

 

08 October 2013

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Jason Kahn
"Things Fall Apart"

Herbal International 1302 CD
http://herbalinternational.blogspot.ch

Jason Kahn: drum set, voice, metal objects, radio, mixing board, contact microphones,
magnetic coil, speaker, computer, chairs, plastic bags

1. Catcher 5.03
2. Im Raum 2.01
3. Dreaming Of 3.36
4. Message For 4.24
5. We Fall 2.51
6. Mornings 5.45
7. Split Hum 5.22
8. Calling 3.27
9. Semblance 2.22
10. An Arc 2.26
11. Wait 1.52
12. Speaker 13 4.06
13. Last Drum 5.55
14. Night 3.47

Recorded in Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich, Switzerland on April 14, 2013.
Mixed and mastered May 2-31, 2013.

Cover art and liner notes Jason Kahn.

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Jason Kahn
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Back in 1981 I was studying at the University of London in the School of African and Asian Studies. One lecturer had us read Chinua Achebe's novel "Things Fall Apart." Aside from the book moving me immensely, the title stuck with me all this time. And for the past couple of years I've been turning these words over in my mind, as they seemed to speak so much about what is falling apart around us, in terms of social structures, economies, the environment, even whole nations.
Often when I start thinking about a new work I begin with a title. The sound of the words or their meaning give me a sense of direction to work in. Chinua Achebe died in March this year, and perhaps his passing prompted me to finally get working on this CD. But though I felt these words spoke to me, I still couldn't get a grasp on what they were saying.
The novel "Things Fall Apart" deals with the imposition of British colonial rule over a region in Nigeria and the eventual demise of that society, where, quite literally, everything that bound the indigenous populations together through religion, culture and family falls apart. For me, though, I wanted to apply the words "things fall apart" to a way of working, or, perhaps more accurately, not working. What happens when our preconceived notions, all our carefully laid-out plans, even the place we choose to work, fall apart? When in the moment it seems we have finally begun only to find that we have to start over again, forget all our clever ideas and re-think from that moment on to the next? When things falling apart becomes the creative process in itself and this lack of cohesion offers the clearest path to discovering something new?
This was the situation which faced me when I arrived at the Kunstraum Walcheturm to start recording. The Kunstraum Walcheturm is an art space located in the center of Zurich, not far from the main train station. The building itself belongs to a former Swiss army barrack, built around a large courtyard spreading out in front of the Kunstraum Walcheturm, which used to house the army's stables. The room I recorded in is large: 320 square meters with with a 3.80 meter high ceiling. Both floor and ceiling are of wood, giving the room very warm acoustics, aside from the fact that the floor creaks tremendously when one walks over it! I've performed many times in this room, heard many concerts there and know its sound very well--or at least I thought I did.
A few years ago I used the room to record two pieces for the cassette "Walcheturm" on the Banned Production label. At that time, though I was attracted to the sound of the room, I think my primary concern was to just have a quiet place to record in. Patrick Huber, the director of the space, recently offered it to me again during a pause in his production schedule. In fact, only a very short pause of one day. So I took this as an opportunity, with what I thought were all my ideas ready to realize.
Arriving the evening before to set up my instruments and recording gear, everything was quiet. For once, the adjoining restaurant didn't have a disco going or some boisterous event. The sounds of the city barely registered from outside. Unfortunately, it was late and I was too tired to start recording. I decided to return in the morning and get an early start.
When I arrived the next day, the first thing I noticed was the many horse-drawn wagons parked directly in front of the Kunstraum Walcheturm and all around the courtyard. Zurich's annual Sechselaeuten parade was about to start in a few hours and the courtyard provided a convenient place to park the horses and wagons until the parade got rolling. The jingling of all the horses' bells and their insistent neighing and whinnying filled not only the courtyard but the inside of the Kunstraum Walcheturm as well. Obviously, there was no way I could start recording now. Instead, I decided to walk around and make recordings of the ambiance there, hoping I might use this for the CD. I'd originally been thinking of just using this day recording as a means of collecting material to compose with later. The idea of recording complete pieces direct and unedited wasn't on my agenda at this point.
I finished recording and went to grab a coffee. When I returned, the horses and wagons were gone but now a huge wedding pary was slowing filing into the restaurant next door. And this wasn't just any wedding party, but a Tamil wedding party, complete with a band and what looked like at least a couple hundred guests! It seemed now that things were truly falling apart for me, as when this party got going I would surely not be able to record anything except maybe the party itself. But, amazingly, the party wasn't that loud and deep in the recesses of the Kunstraum Walcheturm's main room I was able to start working.
Walking around the room alone now I slowly felt how the acoustics of the space and the sensation of being there cast something akin to a spell over me. The idea of just collecting a bunch of material to work with later now seemed completely irrelevant. I decided that I wanted to work with the room, activating the space with my sounds and in turn letting the space activate me with its atmosphere and acoustical possibilities. The pieces on this CD were recorded "as is," which is to say I didn't re-work them. Just some basic equalization and editing off the empty space before and after each pi ece's beginning and end. None of these pieces were planned, which doesn't mean "improvised" (though they were) but that in most cases I really didn't have any preconception of what I wanted to do over the course of the day, instead letting my intuition and the room itself guide me from one piece to the next. The idea of working with my voice really only occurred to me as the experience of spending so many hours in the space began to grow on me. I felt prompted to use my voice, that the space practically demanded this from me. When the party next door finally dispersed later in the evening, I was left with a very silent space--which made it possible to do some of the quieter takes on the CD. The piece "Night" was the last piece I recorded that day.
So, yes, in the end many things fell apart here: the actual feasibility of the recording space, my ideas for working--even to the point that I tried approaches which I'd never pursued before. Much fell apart but in the end this collection of pieces miraculously came together.

30 September 2013

Administrator

Albums and Singles

With Gates of Atlantis, Phelios (the solo project of Martin Stürtzer) has created a soundtrack in search of a film. It has a distinctly cinematic tone and structure to it, and even follows a loose narrative structure. However, there is far more than incidental sounds and music cues here, and it simply is too complex and varied to function with any other media.

Malignant Records

The opening title piece does exemplify this film-like structure right off the bat.Liberal applications of reverb and plucked synth strings set the stage before oppressive, dramatic crashes herald the arrival of monolithic kettle drums and intense dramatic flair.Intentional or not, it makes for perfect opening title credit music in its sound and bombast.Similarly, the closing "Ascension" both exemplifies its title and an uplifting ending to an apocalyptic narrative.Lighter synths abound, and when darker moments show up they are quickly battled away.

Between these two exceptional mood-setting moments, there exists a combination of both dynamic oriented grandiose compositions and more restrained, moody ones that keep things flowing for the album’s duration."Spiritual Possession" takes the connotations of its title literally, beginning with what sounds like a distant open door banging from the wind(or other forces) and bleak ambience.Things soon come to a head, with banging ritualistic percussion and what almost sounds like a fuzzed laden guitar squall that comes to a climax, and then ends peacefully.

Other moments are scaled back and understated."Temple of Yith" is all murky synthesizers and bass heavy rumbles that are the very definition of dark.A slow progression of noise and distortion comes and goes, but never does it become too aggressive. "New Stellar Age" is cut from a similar cloth in both its sound and mood.Again keeping the drums away, it opens in a subtler, haunting way as the surging keyboards build tension in a slow burn development.

Phelios may be one of many in the nebulous subgenres of dark ambient and death industrial, but his guile at composition puts him head and shoulders past most of his contemporaries.Not too many albums manage to capture such intense moods and conjure such powerful imagery based upon its sound alone (even though the packaging is rather Spartan, it has its own movie-like presentation).Gates of Atlantis is clearly a high water mark for the current state of the genre.

samples:

• Gates of Atlantis
• Spiritual Possession
• New Stellar Age