30 March 2019

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Albums and Singles

"Azzazin is a double standout Muslimgauze album, first LP originally issued in 1996, as a CD and the second LP as a 10", tightly focused on a singular palette of monotone drones and swarming electronic buzzes, which arguably sound like a parallel to early Editions Mego.

They're probably the most minimalist Muslimgauze tracks you've heard, and even still he manages to express a fine range of abstracted emotions, from aggressive buzz to tender ambient pieces and spectral concrete prisms. Starting with an extremely minimal opening number -- it's no surprise Finnish experimental duo Pan Sonic are Muslimgauze fans, based on this track -- Azzazin has a much more electronic feeling than most of Bryn Jones' other albums, eschewing the traditional elements used elsewhere for a rough, quietly aggressive and disturbing feel. The fourth track, with its unpredictable keyboard snarls over a low, quiet pulse, and the sixth and seventh songs, with distorted, high-pitched noise tones mixed with a soft series of bass notes and a slight spoken-word interjection from time to time, are some of the strong points from this intriguing release.

Surprisingly this album contains no trace of percussion whatsoever and instead presents a dry and claustrophobic minimal electronics that sounds more like a Warp band or a project by some S.E.T.I.-inspired laptop artist than a Middle Eastern-inspired band. Outerspace sci-fi sounds meet with found sounds and human-made noises, isolationist experimental knob tweaking and mostly hi frequency material loops playing at random. Beats are used in an extremely limited way throughout Azzazzin, with rhythm, always a key component of Jones' work, more suggested at points by the nature of the keyboard lines than anything else. This record draws a picture of the artist that is different than the one we got to know. Closing with an equally minimal track, Azzazin won't be everyone's cup of tea, but adventuresome listeners will find themselves rewarded."

More information can be found here.

30 March 2019

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Albums and Singles

Twenty years ago, Jan Jelinek's debut album Personal Rock was released by Source Records. Under the pseudonym Gramm, it brings together eight tracks that have not been available on vinyl since their original release. Faitiche is very glad to announce the re-release of the album: Personal Rock will appear as a double LP featuring the original cover artwork.
What people wrote about Personal Rock two decades ago:

"Situated somewhere between Jelinek's much-loved Loop-Finding Jazz Records, Farben, Move D's Conjoint project and Atom Heart's most immersive work for Rather Interesting, it is a late-night album full of subtle production tricks and melodic House structures that belong to the pre-millennial IDM heyday, but which transcend its overly-masculine templates.” (Boomkat)

"Though many producers have pushed forward the clicks-and-cuts style of experimental ambience developed by German experimentalists Oval (among others), few have been able to match their knack for making abstract cuts into pieces of undeniable beauty. Jan Jelinek's first LP as Gramm is one of the precious few, and it is obvious from the opener." (AllMusic)

"Organized in organic structures and minimal movements, the tracks get into utopian states and super-desirable moods, offering superior contentedness and dependable taste of the kind seldom sustained for a whole album. (...) Subway-Escalator-Soul." (Spex)

Releases April 6, 2019 on Faitiche.

30 March 2019

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Albums and Singles

The latest liminal low-end odyssey from French shape-shifter Maxime Primault's BZMC entity swaps the screwed alien dancehall of past outings in favor of miasmic subterranean ritual, with compelling results. Born of "a few very intense sessions, in altered states of consciousness," the three sprawling compositions comprising Voyage Sacrifice ooze in slow, smoke-choked darkness, awash with dungeon groans, insectoid noise, reverbed bells, molten bass, and distant demonic mumblings. Primault speaks of recent creative strategies attempting to "delete time, or escape time," at which these pieces certainly succeed, entrancing the listener in their spiral sinkhole infinity: beatless, lightless, limitless.

Occasionally a rusted, lurching metronome emerges, infusing a drugged sense of forward motion, but the essence of Voyage Sacrifice is textural and tantric – "almost like some kind of prayer." Chants are chanted; the zone is black. The specter of dub still looms in the disorienting fog of FX and negative space but ultimately these sides exist outside (and deep beneath) any recognizable sonic lineage. This is cultic, questing music, deprivation chamber hallucinations "beyond good and evil, beyond sense and non-sense."

This Rorschach enigma dimension is foundational, as Primault admits: "It's a mental journey. I handled the sacrifice; the voyage is yours."

More information can be found here.

30 March 2019

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Albums and Singles

Low Distance is Deaf Center´s third full-length studio album and perhaps the most focused effort by the Norwegian duo to date. After their last record Owl Splinters (2011) was quite an eclectic endeavor, Erik K Skodvin & Otto A Totland draw their sound back into something more quiet and minimal.

The record starts with a piece of sweeping analougue electronics. It is a spacious, yet dynamic opener that leads directly into the static tones and piano motifs of "Entity Voice," which balances a new sense of abstraction with the classic Deaf Center sound. It's warm and close while sounding like it's set in the outer horizon. Overall Low Distance feels both alien and familiar with its atonal synths, close pianos and drowned-out noises.

After meeting in studio for the first time since 2011, the recordings came out of a 3-day session in 2017. It was then mixed at both EMS Stockholm and at Erik's home studio over a longer period to create a blend of deeply layered as well as stripped-down pieces. Both Erik & Otto have been active individually since their last meeting as Deaf Center: Otto released 2 solo piano albums, while Erik has furthered his descent into musical abstraction both under his own name and as Svarte Greiner. It is long overdue to hear them connect their personalities into something new. Low Distance is a welcome return replete with beauty, mystery and uncertainty.

More information can be found here.

24 March 2019

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Albums and Singles

As the conclusion to his Same Animal, Different Cages project, Brooklyn composer David First has again chosen to use an instrument with more limited applications than the first installments two (guitar and synth). The sitar has a very distinctive sound and specific cultural associations (which First discusses his struggle with in the liner notes). Aware of this, he pushes the boundaries of what a single instrument can represent, and also showcases his exceptional skills as both a composer and performer.

Fabrica

Knowing the instruments these four records would be based around beforehand, I had similar initial feelings about this one that I also had about the third volume, Civil War Songs.The first two albums, built from acoustic guitar and analog synthesizer, seemed easy enough, since both instruments are prevalent enough and part of so many genres of music that First limiting himself did not seem like that much of a stretch.The latter two, the aforementioned harmonica album (Civil War Songs) and this one seemed a bit more challenging, with both using very distinct sounding instruments.Civil War Songs succeeded; in no small part to First’s conceptual framing of the album as a modernized take on traditional Americana.Sitar Music of North Brooklyn, however, is a more of a purely experimental work.

First addresses how he struggled with the cultural connotations of the sitar in the liner notes, and concerns of his autodidactic approach to the instrument would be disrespectful of Indian music in general, as well as fears of cultural appropriation.The final work clearly demonstrates First's compositional dedication to experimental music while retaining the traditional sound of the instrument in a unique way, one that expands the possibilities of the sitar while still remaining faithful to its significant legacy.

Both "Sitar Solo 1" and "Sitar Solo 2" are an amalgamation of different playing styles that result in a distinct, yet unconventional sound.At times, especially on the former, it sounds as if First is playing the instrument as he would a conventional guitar, resulting in a traditional sounding playing stylethat results in non-traditional sounds.During other sections, it becomes less about the playing of the instrument and more about the treatment:moving frets and adjusted tuning pegs result in wobbling strings and off-kilter tones.The two compositions are similar, but "Sitar Solo 2" is less frenetic overall, allowing the sounds to expand and breathe more.

My fears that "Sitar & Bongos Duo 1" and "Sitar & Bongos Duo 2" were going to be throwbacks to late 1960s hippie clichés were allayed rather quickly.The first piece keeps the rhythms in the back of the mix, with frequent variations to them.The focus is unsurprisingly on the sitar, and here it is played in a hypnotically rhythmic context, with First’s playing building more and more intensity to some rather harsh moments."Sitar & Bongos Duo 2" features an overall faster tempo, with much of the playing centered on the lower register strings.These heavier frequencies and their associated harmonics give the piece a darker character overall, one of sinister hums and almost chant-like drones.

Like my initial trepidation with Civil War Songs, I was concerned Sitar Music of North Brooklyn would simply be too much of the same thing, and while the former was presented in a strong conceptual context, this one is solely about the music.David First's ear and ability as a composer, however, provide enough variation to sustain an entire album’s worth of pure sitar, and honestly he could have continued on with even more material.It makes for a fitting conclusion to a fascinating quadrilogy of albums that just impressed me more and more with each installment.

Samples Available Here

24 March 2019

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Albums and Singles

As fitfully brilliant as they can be, the Matmos of recent years has been more of a project that I respect and occasionally find fascinating than a project that I genuinely love. At the risk of torpedoing whatever experimental music cred I might have, I fear they might genuinely be a bit too far out for me…or at least too constrained by their passion for focused conceptual themes and unusual materials. Nevertheless, I am always quite happy to investigate whatever kitschy and perverse lunacy they have cooked up with each fresh album, as the results are never boring. In the case of Plastic Anniversary, Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt gleefully embark upon a morbidly funny celebration of all things plastic, assembling an arsenal of toilet brushes, breast implants, police shields, synthetic human tissue, and some hapless Bread records to make a host of bizarre and colorfully cartoonish sounds. As usual, Matmos' sheer ingenuity and resourcefulness is second to none, but the most compelling innovation of all was the duo’s decision to enlist Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier and a high school drumline from Montana.

Thrill Jockey

Plastic Anniversary is an album with a very intriguing and deliberate arc, unfolding a bit like a fun house that slowly transforms from the cartoonish and the slapstick into something considerably darker and more visceral.Naturally, that journey roughly corresponds to an escalating conceptual heft that mirrors humanity's dying love affair with all things plastic (this is a Matmos album, after all).The opening "Breaking Bread," however, captures the album's aesthetic as its most unapologetically kooky and light, as Schmidt and Daniel concoct a blocky, plonking, and squelchy groove "built entirely out of the plucked and twanged fragments of broken vinyl records by the Seventies soft rock group Bread."By the second piece, however, the album has already gone quite far off the rails sanity-wise, as "The Crying Pill" is something resembling a manically fragmented mash-up of cheery fanfares, lysergic synth-like melodies, and skittering percussion.It is admittedly endearing that it came from an exercise ball, a jockstrap, and an "amplified DNA kit," but it feels like being trapped in the head of someone with extreme ADHD trying to replicate marching band music with a cheap '80s synthesizer.For me, "The Crying Pill" is quite a rough endurance test, an experience similarly replicated by the "cod-medieval martial drums and horn fanfares" of the benignly radiant title piece.I doubt I would have continued much further if it were not for the early presence of "Interior With Billiard Balls and Synthetic Fat," which beautifully approximates the sickly and smeared synths of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works II with some pool balls, some dominoes, and an artificial corpse-replacement tissue used at medical schools.

Fortunately, the album's second half has a considerably higher hit rate than the first, culminating in the brilliant centerpiece "Collapse of the Fourth Kingdom."The title is a reference to plastic's early and optimistic projected future as a new kingdom beyond the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral ones and Matmos give its collapse a hell of a raucous farewell party, unleashing the Whitefish High School Bulldogs drumline at their full percussive fury (along with a crazed cacophony of whistles and duck calls).Aside from its explosive physicality, the piece is also quite an impressive tour de force for Matmos' production talents, as it morphs into a simmering, submerged-sounding, and duck call-centric groove at one point, then later warps all of the horn-like sounds into a deflating grotesquerie.Elsewhere, "Thermoplastic Riot Shield" is a fitfully violent eruption of psychotic squelching, gnarled textures, and pummeling percussion.The delightfully creaky and shuffling "The Singing Tube" is a more minor gem, unfolding as a polyrhythmic vamp conjured from PVC pipes, toilet brushes, and plastic pellets called "nurdles."The are a few other similarly pleasant rhythmic vignettes on the album as well, the best of which is the skewed exotica of "Silicone Gel Implant."I also quite like the heavy, ringing groove of "Fanfare for Polyethylene Waste Containers," though it is undercut by its more musical aspects (it sounds like someone trying to play New Age music with a plastic tuba).

Fittingly, the album closes with three minutes of windblown desolation, evoking a post-apocalyptic wasteland left by "the oceans of garbage that now choke our world."Unsurprisingly, that morbidly prophetic "field recording" is also a product of plastic, painstakingly assembled from the manipulated sounds of bubble wrap, straws, and plastic bags. It is quite a poetic conclusion to a very strange, disorienting, inventive, and unique album.I suppose all of those same adjectives could apply to nearly every Matmos album to some degree, but Schmidt and Daniel made a major creative breakthrough with Plastic Anniversary’s "it takes a village" approach.While no one surpasses Matmos at dreaming up a host of weird and vaguely disturbing sounds, that deranged and hallucinatory palette works best when it has a strong melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic foundation supporting it.In the case of Plastic Anniversary, Matmos' vision is elevated to a new plateau when Saunier and the Bulldogs are turned loose.For my taste, that does not happen quite enough, making Plastic Anniversary kind of an uneven album peppered with flashes of genuine inspiration and brilliance.Sometimes I wish Daniel and Schmidt were more drawn to the appeal of writing great songs than the appeal of "can we make an entire song with just a salad bowl?" (answer: yes, they can and they did), but I suspect the road that leads to a masterpiece like "Collapse of The Fourth Kingdom" could have only been built from restless experimentation, toilet brushes, and breast implants.

Samples can be found here.

24 March 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

It is quite a rare and improbable event for a self-released debut to amass so much buzz and acclaim upon its release, but All My People is quite a deserving recipient for such good fortune. For better or worse, Somerville's work is likely to draw superficial comparisons to Carla dal Forno or Liz Harris, as she is quite fond of simple drum machine patterns, reverb-swathed vocals, and minimal musical accompaniment. At its heart, however, Somerville's vision is a fresh and unique one, as that stark template is an unlikely framework for a delightfully eclectic and unabashedly pop-minded suite of songs (albeit pop in the classic sense, a la Pet Sounds). In that regard, the achingly gorgeous centerpiece "Dreaming" is the album's biggest draw, but Somerville is just as adept at the production side of the equation, taking these seven pieces in some delightfully inventive and unusual directions.

Self-Released

The opening "Eyes Don't Say It" is initially a deceptively subdued and hazy introduction, as a bittersweet ascending melody slowly creeps into a landscape of buried, heartbeat-like kick drum and blurrily impressionistic dreampop guitars.That languorous, navel-gazing lead-in proves to be kind of an ingenious bit of songcraft magic though, as the song blossoms into swooningly romantic and vivid color when the first chorus arrives and essentially remains there for the rest of its duration, steadily amassing more warmth and deeper harmonies as layers of breathy vocals pile up.It is quite a beautiful song and it would be a strong template for the rest of the album to follow.To Somerville's credit, however, she never goes back to the same well twice, gamely imbuing each of these seven songs with their own quirks and character.For example, the following "All I Ever Wanted" is a bit of suave and sensuous art-pop in the vein of Stereolab, but stripped down to little more than a breezily shuffling groove.It is quite a likable song in general, but the touches in the periphery are a masterpiece of sexy, subtle psychedelia, as bleary Theremin-like melodies, woozy washes of guitar, and a wandering, chorus-heavy bass line gradually build up to a hallucinatory crescendo of distant voices.The title piece pulls off a similarly delicious feat of psych-pop transformation, opening with a cavernous house thump and a ghostly haze of uneasy drones before being unexpectedly joined by a pretty, floating vocal melody that sounds like an a capella rendition of a traditional Irish folk song.It is a truly bizarre convergence of threads, as it feels like two radically different pieces of music mashed together, albeit in a pleasing (if disorienting) way.Gradually, however, a host of buzzing drones and other subtly lysergic elements fade in until the song fully takes shape as a coherent whole.

On the more unrepentantly hook-heavy side, the aforementioned "Dreaming" is the album’s unquestionable zenith, calling to mind a hypnagogic reincarnation of classic Patsy Cline (or at least an especially great song by underappreciated 4AD alums Tarnation).In lesser hands, such a piece would be dragged down by melancholy, but Somerville sounds like a wide-eyed ingenue sensuously crooning her favorite love song at a karaoke bar in a David Lynch film: surreal textures gnaw at the edges and the song occasionally threatens to dissolve into the ether, yet it never stops being an innocently warm, sincere, and absolutely lovely piece at its core.The closing "Brighter Days" is yet another dose of pure pop bliss, but it is a bit more straightforward, as a trebly, ramshackle drum machine beat cheerily lurches forward through murky major chords and dreamy vocal melodies.Much like "Dreaming," it feels like the pop of a simpler time when almost every song was about love and a great hook was everything.To an uncanny degree, Somerville is singularly skilled at channeling classic country or '60s girl group songcraft without a hint of irony or heavy-handed pastiche, coming across as heartfelt and reverent while still managing to make these recordings sound like they were dubbed over a badly worn Enya tape found in your childhood bedroom.

While "Dreaming" is already a lock for one of my favorite songs of the year, one immortal song does not necessarily make for a great album (it just makes for a great single).All My People comes very close to being a great album though, as the only real caveat is that its impressive cavalcade of sublime and ghostly pop gems is a bit too brief to amount to a completely satisfying whole.That said, I genuinely appreciate the perfect, uncluttered brevity of Somerville's catchiest songs: she can pack a lot of beauty, inspiration, and depth into a mere three minutes and wisely never sticks around longer unless she has a cool idea for an outro.On a deeper level, however, much of her brilliance is of the intuitive and intangible variety.Obviously, lo-fi bedroom recordings have been an indie pop trope for years, yet Somerville has that magic touch that transforms "hiss-soaked and sketchlike" into "intimate and undiluted."She also has a knack for making prettiness feel pregnant with hidden depth rather than lightweight, as well as a real genius for making for her more experimental flourishes feel like natural, organic elements that were gently coaxed out of their hook-filled hiding spots.Everything is done with an unerring lightness of touch and an endearing fluidity.Artists like Somerville are a true rarity: a gifted and soulful songwriter who is also effortlessly idiosyncratic enough to appeal to someone as cranky and jaded as me.All My People is a legitimately remarkable debut.

22 March 2019

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Albums and Singles

Both Stephen Vitiello and Taylor Deupree are seasoned collaborators. Each new collaboration is a new context, a new conversation and a unique opportunity to learn. Vitiello has worked with musicians such as Scanner, Steve Roden, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Machinefabriek. As an artist often represented in galleries and large scale sound installations he has also had the frequent opportunity to work with visual artists from the likes of Tony Oursler to Julie Mehretu and Joan Jonas. Deupree has a long history of collaboration including early works with Christopher Willits and Richard Chartier as well as Marcus Fischer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Bon Iver’s S. Carey. Fridman Variations is Vitiello and Deupree's third release together and continues their tradition of exploring their unique form of experimental improvisation.

Stemming from a live performance at NYC's Fridman Gallery, Fridman Variations was co-produced by the gallery and will remain as part of the gallery’s publications. Fridman Gallery is a visual exhibition space that also boasts a unique dedication to experimental music through their annual New Ear Festival, at which Vitiello and Deupree performed and recorded the main piece for this album.

Side A of Fridman Variations is the live recording, edited for vinyl while side B contains two pieces made with some of the same source material as the live performance and intended to be related, but entirely new, works. Guitar, modular synthesizer and a small tape synthesizer are at the heart of these songs. The improved layers draw on buried melodies and hint of field recordings and found textures. Not overly melodic, not overly noisy, Vitiello and Deupree like to find the edge between the pretty and the obscure, often suggesting more than laying their intentions bare. This type of sound is one that the duo often explores as an opportunity for Deupree to adventure beyond his melodic comfort zone and for Vitiello to work and experiment with new instruments and how they interact with his signature guitar.

One of the biggest inspirations to the artists for this work was the hushed and dreamy state of the audience during the performance. The late-night ambience added to the immersive quality of the surround speakers and helped to channel creativity and a sense of sharing.

Both artists feel that recording live performances is an opportunity to capture a unique moment that simply won’t happen again. Despite a performance’s flaws or imperfections the energy and interaction is a special moment in time for the performers and audience. The opportunity to not only document it for the listeners who were present but also to be able to share the moment with those who weren't there is a positive one. To further be able to expand on the ideas in the controlled studio environment serves to enrich the experience and further the communication.

More information can be found here.

22 March 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Nodding God were formed 666 years ago by Andrew Liles, David Tibet, and The UnderAge Shaitan-Boy in a Boys-Only preparatory boarding school in Babylon, since shut down by unfortunate events that took place there, in the night, in the dark.

Their first album, Wooden Child, is released on House Of Mythology in May 2019. Sung 93% in Akkadian by David, who has studied this language for many years, this New Baby God Who Nods—a Nodding God, a Godding Nod—Wooden Child is powered by Stars and Cuneiform and Pop and Drop and One Thousand Liles In One Thousand Axes.

Additional cryptic information can be found here and here.

22 March 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

As we approach the 20-year anniversary of the breaking of ground on the "Playthroughs" systems, I have begun performing the piece again on request, first at the Kranky 15th Anniversary party in Chicago, then at l'Auditori in Barcelona, finally picking up again for a trio of performances in late 2018, two of which are presented here in their unexpurgated states, exactly as they were performed & intended, with the "live to semiconductor" signals mixed with their in-situ environmental ambiances.

The settings of these two improvised performances; specifically, the Modern Art wing of a European Museum, then an outdoor floodplain in rural Western Japan flanked by mountains in all directions, couldn't have been any different, and so these two stagings, specifically, run at opposite sides of the possibility-sets of the piece: placid, calm, measured (Nantes) then wild, risk-enabled, chaotic (Naeba).

In addition to the two continuous performances, each broken up into three indexed "episodes", I'm including 10 still images taken during the time surrounding the performances, to give you further context on the music & its whereabouts.

More information can be found here.