16 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

Even though 12k head Taylor Deupree has made it a point in recent years to focus on face-to-face collaborations (as opposed to file swapping), the two most recent products of this have their own distinct sense of isolation and loneliness to them. With Cameron Webb's Seaworthy, it is literal: the record perfectly captures the feeling of being alone in the woods with only an acoustic guitar present. With legendary artist Ryuichi Sakamoto, it is more of an implied, intimate and hushed loneliness via muted tones and extended ambience.

12k

Wood, Winter, Hollow is the most organic and stripped down of these two projects, with untreated field recordings interspersed between the three long pieces.Recorded during the winter in a New York nature reserve after Hurricane Sandy, the constant sound of snapping branches conjures the disarray of the area perfectly.With the absence of animal life due to the season, there is a cold isolation prominent throughout.

These recordings make their way into the three compositions reflected in the title."Wood" sounds like riverside recordings, with heavy emphasis on acoustic guitar that may have only the slightest of processing and treatment to them.The electronic influence is a little more prevalent on "Winter", with some ever so slight pitch bending and intentional digital clipping to offset the guitar.What might be a soft passage of electronics (or electronically treated organic instrumentation) cautiously underscores everything, even when it ends in an uncharacteristically lo-fi collapse.

"Hollow" turns up some bells to be paired alongside the guitar, with what may be actual analog synths making themselves known, even with the more aggressive field recordings.The latter moments become surprisingly raw and chaotic, given the otherwise restrained nature of the album, but then end in a quiet, tranquil moment.

samples:

• Winter
• February 22, 2013
• Hollow

Disappearance, Deupree’s collaboration with Sakamoto, is more of a studio product, and unsurprisingly has some obvious, untreated piano playing.However, at times the notes are just as important as the sounds surrounding them, such as the varying registered tones of "Jyaku," which are interspersed with what sounds like in-studio found sounds and organic movements.

The sparseness is upset by bits of digital interference and more monolithic, expansive tones on "Frozen Fountain," which manages to be simultaneously rich, yet sparse in its overall composition.Buzzing strings and a delicate, churning textural foundation on "Ghost Road" are a perfect fit for the title, conjuring a sense of passing spirits in the distance.

"This Window" in some ways feels like a subtle reference to the Wood, Winter, Hollow with its sounds feeling like an isolated, chilly forest, albeit underscored by a piano flourish.Slowly, but steadily, it transitions from frigid, gale winds into a rich passage of tone and an inviting warmth.

Ichiko Aoba makes an appearance on the long closer "Curl to Me," with her heartbeat becoming the rhythmic foundation.Filtered rising and falling tones and elongated, stretched out tones make for a beautiful, yet isolated experience, with the heartbeat feeling like the only organic elements to be had.Aoba's vocals appear too, and they are so slow and faint they are almost imperceptible, but work perfectly given the intimacy of the song.

I was impressed with the moments on Wood, Winter, Hollow in which things took on more clearly dissonant, low fidelity turns, but as a whole Disappearance is the richer experience for me.The guitar and field recordings on the former is a bit too rooted in Deupree's comfort zone, so I was pleased to hear his distinct, light touch given to an album that sounded a lot different than his recent works, which is the case with Disappearance.Both, however, are exemplary, yet significantly different albums of minimalist brilliance.

samples:

• Jyaku
• This Window
• Curl To Me

 

15 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

Catherine Christer Hennix has certainly had a very curious career, to say the least: she worked at MIT's Artificial Intelligence lab in the '70s, was a research professor in mathematics at SUNY New Paltz, studied with Pandit Pran Nath and LaMonte Young, collaborated with Henry Flynt, and made some singularly challenging and adventurous music that somehow never got formally released until her 1976 performance of The Electric Harpsichord was finally issued by Die Schachtel in 2010.  Now in her mid-60s, Hennix has beautifully capitalized on the belated interest in her music to become the reigning queen of deep, Eastern-influenced drone.  This latest release is not a far cry from last year's fine Chor(s)san Time-Court Mirage album, but it is every bit as good (if not better).

Important

I must admit that I was pleasantly wrong-footed by Hennix's current direction after being initially exposed to her through the somewhat maniacal and sinister-sounding The Electric Harpsichord, as she now sounds like a completely different artist.  Of course, that makes perfect sense, given that over 30 years separate the recordings and that none of the evolution that occurred between them was ever formally documented or released.  Also, neither this nor the Chor(s)san album are solo endeavors: for Svapiti, Hennix is rejoined by Chor(s)san vocalist Amelia Cuni, as well as new collaborator Werner Durand (credited with "invented wind instruments" and "drones").

Given that Svapiti is about as "drone" as music can get, it might seem like Durand played a very dominant role in the album, but the trio's contributions are so blurred together that it is often impossible  to tell who is doing what.  In any case, the crux of the composition seems to be a gently quavering, hazy, and layered bed of Hennix's vocals accompanied by a steadily buzzing sitar or tambura drone.  In fact, for long stretches, that is all there is (the piece clocks in at nearly an hour).  The beauty lies in the details and the transitions, as the trio gradually embellish their hypnotic thrum with Durand's viscerally breath-like and stuttering wind instruments, as well as Cuni's increasingly prominent and ritualistic-sounding chants (which take their inspiration from Indian classical singing).

Svapiti also steadily grows in density and power as it progresses, but does so in an impressively organic and slow-burning manner.  The most prominent change is the introduction of some deeper wind instruments, which unpredictably blurt and throb rather than languorously drone.  Also, some of the higher-pitched wind instruments begin to swirl together to create a roiling, dissonant miasma that dissipates almost as quickly and unexpectedly as it came together.  That is ultimately the piece's harshest moment, but a few other surprises gradually emerge from Svapiti's ebb and flow as well, the most memorable of which is a juddering, burbling interlude of Cuni's heavily processed vocals.

While Born of Six definitely take quite a bit of their direction, as well as their name*, from Indian classical music, there is actually a bridge that links Svapiti to The Electric Harpsichord—the use of Just Intonation.  I imagine that there are also quite a lot of deeper philosophical and/or behind-the-scenes structural concepts linking them as well (Hennix is big on that sort of thing), but the two albums are as different as night and day from a listening perspective.  Consequently, it is very hard to contextualize Svapiti within Catherine's (very limited) discography.  It is also a bit reductive to even classify this album as "drone," as it is prone to some rather jarring, strangled, and somewhat abrasive passages that occasionally push the piece into somewhat challenging and nerve-jangling territory (a trait shared by labelmate Pauline Oliveros' recent work as well).  The important thing, however, is that it is all very good (which it is).  The Electric Harpsichord probably remains the most bracingly original and essential release in Hennix's oeuvre, but Svapiti deserves a place of honor for presenting her distinctive vision in a much more listenable way.

(*"Born of Six" refers to the Vedic sage Narada's assertion that the tonic note originates from a combination of nose, throat, chest, palate, teeth, and tongue.)

• excerpt one
• excerpt two
• excerpt three

 

13 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

Interbellum "This was an important place in their lives"

FSS 022 CD / Digital Album

Release Date: Oct. 14, 2013

Brendan Burke details the inspiration for the new Interbellum album thusly:

I moved into a new apartment in the same building.  A family with two small children had been living here for several years previously. The textured wallpaper in the bedrooms has all these "sun shadows", where art and pictures had previously hung.  These spots are much darker than the other spots on the wall, and so they form rectangular areas that are easily discernable and where other people's memories and things used to be. To me, that's sort of an interesting thing.

From the initial bass dredging on “Some Rather Poor Advice,” it is evident that layers of static and disruption have been woven into Burke’s plangent melodies. A palpable sense of absence, loss and contradictory discovery are expressed across This was an important place in their lives.

This Was an Important Place In Their Lives is the second Interbellum album and the first completely realized by Burke alone. It is being released in a limited edition of 200 CDs packaged in Cortland linen weave photo folders with a photographic print and as a download.

These compositions subtly weave thorny electronic treatments into a slow-burning exchange of melody between the two performers, ensuring that the lyrical, thoughtful instrumentation never spills out into cumbersome sentimentality. Excellent, and highly recommended. Boomkat

Music to play on end on a long winter day. Vital Weekly

…the overall drifting experience is that of pure musical exploration. Throughout the album, the sound vibrates, travels, and floats in and out of our peripheral hearing, until the slightly audible voice becomes almost coherent, only to drown again in the harmony of bowed and struck strings, which flips between the major and minor scales, like a child laughing through the tears after a fall. Headphone Commute=

Track Listing:

1) Some Rather Poor Advice 2) I Wish You Hadn’t Done That Richard 3) We Are All Micromentalists Now 4) He Looked Beyond My Faults (and Saw My Need) 5) Cayo Costa

11 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

Artist: Scott Miller / Lee Camfield / Merzbow
Title: No Closure
Catalogue No: CSR185CD
Barcode: 5060174955426
Format: CD in jewelcase
Genre: Noise / Industrial / Experimental
Shipping: 30th September

Pre-order CD

“No Closure” is the collaborative output of ex-Sutekh Hexen members Scott Miller and Lee Camfield, with Japanese noise mastermind, Masami Akita, aka Merzbow. Mixing elements of psychedelia, black metal, doom and industrial music, the three musicians created a spellbinding work of experimental art.

Conceptually crafted in a dark basement recording studio in the Mission District of San Francisco and later fleshed out in Tokyo, Japan, Miller, Camfield and Akita have completely pushed the boundaries of sound far beyond their individual comfort zones. With the implementation of standard instruments being force fed through loop pedals and precise layering, multi-instrumentalists Miller and Camfield set out to build an album rooted deep in the exploitation of intentional rhythms and deliberate patterning.

Through their use of guitar, bass, drums, organs, synths and vocals, purposely devoid of their usual feedback drenched and oscillator projections, they left the inevitable incorporation of varied sound manipulation and textures strictly to Akita, thus giving birth to these two tracks. A 44 minute long masterpiece of epic mind warping experimental composition.

Tracks:1. I (20:00) / 2. II (22:00)

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11 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

Artist: Troum
Title: Syzygie
Catalogue No: CSR183CD
Barcode: 5060174955433
Format: CD in jewelcase
Genre: Drone / Dark Ambient
Shipping: 30th September

Pre-order CD

Formed by Glit[S]ch and Baraka[H] in 1997, Troum rose from the ashes of Maeror Tri. The duo create unbearably beautiful drones, multi-layered transcendental noise, and highly atmospheric dream-muzak.

Syzygie: Zusammenkunft und Gegenschein zweier Planeten, or: an antithetic relationship between (personified) beings of the spiritual world and their shadows.

A collection of rare / deleted tracks from compilations Vol. II (1999-2002). Everything recorded by TROUM between November 1999 and May 2002 on analogue 8-track. 9 meticulously crafted tracks, carefully compiled by Troum and delicately remastered by Martin Bowes (Attrition).

Cold Spring will release the brand new studio album from Troum in 2014.

Tracks: 1. Ater / 2. Makaria / 3. Ganymed / 4. Fantauma / 5. Uegh[Cunabula] / 6. S’engourdir / 7. Khan-Arachnid / 8. Wit Wists Fra-Qistjan / 9. Thrausmata Enos Oneirou

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09 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

Troller's debut album is the perfect example of the imagery not matching the music. The late 1980s metal woman on the cover and script font screams some sort of early thrash revival, when the album contained is actually a lush, bleak piece of electronics heavy death rock from this Austin, Texas trio. The result is a disc that definitely feels rooted in that era of smeared mascara and smoke machines, but with a clearly modern day sensibility.

Holodeck/Light Lodge (LP)/Handmade Birds (CD)

The six main songs that constitute this album (with four instrumental passages between them) all work from a similar template:sluggishly paced drum machine, distorted bass guitar, complex, effects heavy synths and distant female vocals.Even though there is that similarity from one to the other, the songs all stand out unique on their own and never blend together.

"Tiger" is all slowly clapping drum machine and fuzzed out bass, but the lead here is the synth, with the vocals buried amidst the two like any other instrument would be."Milk" instead emphasizes the bass, with the keyboards twinkling away farther off in the mix.Again the voice is buried, cold and emotionless, but in the most effective way.

The strongest songs are the ones that put emphasis on the writing and structure rather than just the mood and texture."Best" is overall more spacious, with the surging bass guitar and synths underscoring the more vocal-centric performance.The vocals are still buried and low in the mix, but it feels more like the driving force here, rather than just another sonic element.

The same goes for the almost upbeat feeling, keyboard lead "Winter," which has a faster pace and again showcases the singing, although here I desperately wanted to turn the vocal track up louder than it was.The closing "Peace Dream" may not be as spryly paced, but is instead more gauzy and ethereal, rather than the bleak, occasionally oppressive sounds that preceded it.

Shades of The Cure's Faith are abundant on Troller's debut, and for my ears that is a great thing.There is that sameness that could possibly wear thin over a greater span of time, but it stays strong here.The best moments are the ones where the trio delves more into pop approaches rather than the meditative, textural pieces that are also here.Those interstitial bits also add to the record as a whole, and make the actual songs all the more effective, making for a promising introduction to the band.

samples:

• Tiger
• Best
• Winter

 

09 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

Splitting most of his time between his blackened southern rock behemoth Horseback and playing guitar for the alternative country Mount Moriah, Jenks Miller has not had much time to record true solo work. Spirit Signal is technically his third solo release, following Approaching the Invisible Mountain and the intentionally difficult Zen Automata Volume One, and is comparatively a more fleshed out album in the traditional sense, while still retaining a distinct stripped down, truly solo sound.

Northern Spy

The six pieces on Spirit Signal were recorded in only three single day sessions, with seemingly few, if any overdubs.Compared to his other work, here Miller emphasizes his guitar work, as opposed to the electronics that defined Zen Automata.Both "Slide Guitar Improvisation in a Blues Style" and "Slide Guitar Improvisation in a Noise Style" are completely self explanatory works, with the former sounding a bit more traditional and the latter not quite as much noise as it is free improvisational in nature.

The brief "By the Haw" clocks in at a hair under two minutes, yet makes for an strong combination of what sounds like noisy field recordings and harmonica.It is so simple, yet results in a chilling song that conjures up a sinister, dark night in a southern forest.The title track and "Through the Fog" make for a clear pairing, both being untreated guitar playing over a droning organ passage.It again has a loose improvisational feeling, but in a very organic, inviting manner as opposed to a raw or dissonant sound.

Half of the album is made up of the nearly 22 minute "Miró," which is the closest to the Horseback project that this album gets.It keeps the sparse, bluesy guitar sound of the preceding pieces, heavily tremolo-ed but played both clean and distorted.It harkens back to the less structured, more obtuse early Horseback recordings in its stanch cyclic minimalism, even featuring vocals that are distant and moaned rather than Miller's usual demonic shrieks.

While I admittedly have been a big fan of Miller's pushing of Horseback toward more conventional structures and sounds, it was refreshing to hear him reach back to where he began.With Spirit Signal, he is producing a distillation of some of his influences, namely blues, free improvisation, and Tony Conrad influenced minimalism.It is less immediately engaging, but makes for a slow build, with everything coming together powerfully after a few spins.

samples:

• Slide Guitar Improvisation in a Noise Style
• Through The Fog
• Mir√≥

 

02 September 2013

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The name of the game is "metal" for this collaboration between Vainio (Pan Sonic) and Nordwall (Skull Defekts, Sons of God), both in the genre and literal sense. Fragments of Sunn O)))'s deconstructed riffs, plate reverbs and Einsturzende Neubauten's earliest days all show up here, in a wonderfully cohesive, oppressively dark recording that is surprisingly organic, given all its metal trappings.

Touch

The long "Alloy Ceremony" is where the genre of metal is at its most overt. Dark bass guitar rumbles and resonating noises insinuate what eventually comes forth: an overt guitar part, with nearly Tony Iommi riffs. Rather than Sunn's monolithic repetitive style, it instead more varied and dynamic. The notes are spaced out over the robotic bassline, and eventually transition to a more improvised, grinding style that recalls the best of Big Black.

Beyond this, the guitar is more understated, reappearing as tortured outbursts on "Live at the Chrome Cathedral," amidst roaring electronic and nasal noise surges, leading to a monolithic wall of noise. There is a bit of fragmented six string playing on "Promethium" as well, as scrapes and plucks, coupled with the more sparse and open mix it sounds more free improvisation than metallic in nature.

Metal as an instrument is more noticeable on "Midas in Reverse," which processes scrapes and grinding noises into a collage-heavy mix riddled with ghostly noises that appear all around. On "Irkutsk" it is far more obvious, in the forms of banging and clattering noises over a basic bass guitar rhythm, reminiscent of Neubauten's earliest, most dissonant work. Which makes quite a bit of sense given this album was recorded in the legendary band's own Berlin studios.

On "Praseodymium," things are a bit lighter, even with the distended passages of feedback and hollow, metallic noises. What almost resembles a xylophone can be heard, and the greater emphasis on the midrange sonic spectrum gives it a more distinct warmth than most of the other compositions here. Similarly, "In Sheltering Sanctus of Minerals" closes the album in a drastically different mood than "Alloy Ceremony" opened it. Perched atop a low end, resonating organ, the piece is far more about sustained tone and almost hints at melody at times. Bits of feedback slowly rise to the surface, but never become too much, ending Monstrance on a more pensive, contemplative note.

Not a light recording by any means, Monstrance is an intense, rumbling piece of jagged metal that, even in its lighter moments is unsettling and uncomfortable. But despite its iron trappings and serrated surges of noise, it is indisputably organic, a sensibility that is rarely associated with Vainio's output. It comes across as natural though, and results in this bleak, moody recording that excels in its darkness.

samples:

• Alloy Ceremony
• Irkutsk
• In Sheltering Sanctus of Minerals

 

01 September 2013

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Billed as the "sonic and visual documentation of the journey of a lone astronaut into deep space, as imagined by a seven year old boy," there certainly is a lot of outer space imagery on Steve Fors' second release under the Aeronaut moniker. Conceptual trappings aside, this album is a strong piece of ambient noise that stands completely on its own as a slab of majestic tones and lush, beautiful textures.

Fabrica

That is not to say that the conceptual nature of the album is irrelevant:the packaging, which resembles an early 1980s kids’ science book, drives this point home with its bright colors and minimal graphics.Even more so with the inclusion of old red/blue 3d glasses, which themselves feature some rather They Live subliminal messages on them, albeit seemingly unrelated to the album.All four 15 minute pieces do an exemplary job of constructing the narrative on their own, as well.

"Preflight/Launch" is a bit overt at first, with its use of fuzzy mission control transmissions and requisite radio static, but built upon a slowly increasing bed of guitar feedback acting as a propulsive rocket engine. Eventually the noisiness retreats to allow the buried, soft tones to become the focus: a light, weightless near melody.

"My First Space Walk" also begins with one of the other overt concessions to the conceptual storyline:a pulsing, radar beacon like tone.Past this it is a dramatic synth string-like melody that is just a bit wobbly and out of tune, like a fluttering magnetic tape nearing its demise.The whole thing is appropriately dramatic and film-score like, with a slow and circular structure that continually builds upon itself.

The filtered noise and static of "Crossing the Oort Cloud," as well as the processed guitar feedback recalls the textures of the Coronal Mass debut, here mixed with a series of slowly rising and falling tones that give everything a distant, melancholy type sound to it, somewhere between dissonant and abrasive.Of all the pieces here, this one perhaps changes the least, but is no less fascinating.

The tones continue into closer "Into The Magellanic Stream," but stripped down and largely without noise.Like a sorrowful, drifting melody, it slowly becomes more and more boisterous, building to a louder and heavier volume without ever becoming too much, coming to a satisfyingly intense climax while still retaining that drifting through space feel.

Following the narrative via the overall concept and the individual song titles, Fors has done an admirable job at constructing a well rounded experience with Your Space Transmissions Listening Kit, although even if this were packaged in a plain black sleeve with only numbered compositions, this album would be just as compelling.Aeronaut expertly balances textural noise with lush, rich tones in a way that most can only dream of, and regardless of how he chooses to present it; the results have been beyond captivating thus far.

samples:

• Preflight/Launch
• My First Spacewalk
• Into the Magellanic Stream

 

01 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

The worlds of free jazz and harsh noise have always shared a lot of commonalities: both eschew the limitations of structure and melody for the sake of pure tone and texture, and both can either come across as structured, compelling chaos, or inane, boring noodling. Burning Tree have managed to straddle that line between jazz and noise as well as few other artists have, and with unrelenting brutality, on this first full length release that stands with the titans of both genres.

Utech

The two genres have always had a lot of overlap:the squall of Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and John Coltrane’s "Ascension" have often been cited by the likes of Merzbow and Hijokaidan as influences, both of whom have demonstrated jazz tendencies on their own recordings.But Burning Tree is pulled between those two poles unlike few others, save for Borbetomagus and the Nihilist Spasm Band.

Coming from the same European school of jazz that birthed the likes of Peter Brötzmann, this duo of Dag Erik Knedal Anderson on drums and Dag Stiberg on saxophone play with a fury and physicality that rivals that of his best work on Machine Gun or Nipples.Anderson’s drumming has the blast beat intensity of Napalm Death or even Agoraphobic Nosebleed, but with the variation and nuance of an accomplished percussionist.

At the same time, Stiberg's horn playing at times sounds nothing at all like the woodwind that it is, and instead starts to blur together like a wall of microphone feedback, such as on the breakneck paced "The Point."The shrillness is occasionally supplanted by a squeaking, exasperated sound, but the whole time it is propelled by a rhythm that sounds more like a thunderous roar than a collection of individual beats.

On "Divided," Stiberg's horn take on a nauseating, guttural quality like a slowly dying wildebeest, with Anderson's jackhammer like pounding coming together like some of John Zorn's best, heaviest work.The entire B side of the record is reserved for "No Return," a side-long piece that does not differ that much from the A side, except it is channeled into a single, non-stop composition.The squealing horns and machine gun drums continue, with the duo putting together noises that do not sound the slightest bit human.Most impressive is the breakneck pace that it follows, outpacing most grindcore records by a large margin with nary a pause or stop until the ending.

If there is a shortcoming of Lammergyer, it is its monochromatic nature.The entire album is simply a sax and drum duo, and thus while technically impressive, it can be a bit fatiguing at times.Which is no different than a good noise album, however:I love the Incapacitants, but I can only listen to them so much in one sitting before I have to switch to something else.However, the sheer force and brutality of this record, as well as its precarious balance between jazz and noise far outweigh this limitation, and actually just add to the physical intensity of listening to it.

samples:

• The Point
• Divided
• No Return