Plenty of new music to be had this week from Laetitia Sadier and Storefront Church, Six Organs of Admittance, Able Noise, Yui Onodera, SML, Clinic Stars, Austyn Wohlers, Build Buildings, Zelienople, and Lea Thomas, plus some older tunes by Farah, Guy Blakeslee, Jessica Bailiff, and Richard H. Kirk.
Lake in Girdwood, Alaska by Johnny.
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Cortini is best known as a member of Nine Inch Nails and How to Destroy Angels, but his work with Trent Reznor is quite a bit different from this opening salvo of a planned trilogy of releases using a Buchla Music Easel as his sole instrument.  Given my justified weariness of the recent vintage synthesizer revival, it is hard to say whether I will stick with Alessandro for the entire project, yet I have to admit that his work in this field is much better than most.  In fact, the opening and closing pieces of this double album are great enough to transcend any of the limitations that I erroneously felt this genre had.
In some ways, Forse ("maybe") is a reaction or counterbalance to Cortini's work with Reznor, as Alessandro found the enormous amount of tools at NIN's disposal somewhat paralyzing as a composer.  Using only the Buchla might seem like an extreme antidote to that predicament, but the idea also interested Cortini because he has come to believe that changes in how notes sound can be just as powerful as melodic or harmonic transitions.  Forse certainly gives him ample opportunity to test that theory, as he opted to record the whole album live as well, limiting his already-limited palette still further.  Given that, along with the fact that all three volumes of Forse were composed and recorded in a single month, these pieces are by necessity fairly simple experiments in exploring the potential of both the instrument and of strict self-imposed compositional constraints.
Cortini is not wrong in his belief that changes in dynamics and spectra can be hugely effective, but the catch here is that it is just about all that is changing in each piece: the Buchla does have a small keyboard, but it is impossible to get very adventurous with it while still paying close attention the various oscillator, envelope, and filter controls involved.  Cortini, to his credit, does an excellent job striking an effective balance between melodic motion and tone manipulation, yet it is still the pieces with the strongest melodies or chord progressions that stand-out.  The most striking one is the opening "Basta," which unfolds a melancholy four-chord progression in dense, glacial swells that vibrantly buzz, reverberate, and dissolve.  The similarly affecting closer, "Sera,", on the other hand, is like a muted and ghostly negative image that eventually snowballs in power to a sizzling and snarling crescendo.
All of the pieces in between are fairly varied and enjoyable in their own right, which makes for a satisfying album, but they are more "great for something played live on a Buchla Music Easel" than "great" in a more universal sense (though the throbbing, futuristic "Gira" makes a strong argument for the latter).  That is fine by me though, as two songs that wildly exceed my expectations are a lot more than most albums offer–Cortini is not a goddamn sorcerer, so there is only so much he can do with the tools at hand, no matter how talented he is.  The Buchla does sound quite spectacular though: Cortini is able to achieve a presence, density, and unpredictability with his pieces that I do not often get to hear.  They may be locked into simple patterns, but those patterns often sound huge and alive and can erupt into all kinds of roiling chaos at a whim.  I like that.  I would probably like it even more if I could get excited about vintage synthesizer forays, but I will concede that Forse is exactly the sort of album that could make someone (at least, someone less burned-out than me) excited about such things.
This project takes a different approach to field recordings in that it does not strive to capture a phenomenon that most will never experience, nor does it rely on something overly conceptual. Instead, it essentially acts as an audio postcard of the Cape Cod region, both the natural surroundings as well as the people and places. These recordings then form the foundation for artists such as Loscil and FourColor, amongst others, to create their own compositions from, which makes for a very impressive compilation.
The disc of field recordings, captured by Steve Wilkes, who also curated the set, does an admirable job at capturing the sound and surroundings of the Cape Cod area, such as the recordings of waves at the various beaches and ferries that move people about the area.Fragments of conversations picked up in local eateries and grocery stores have a distinctly different sense to them, and almost a voyeuristic one, an aspect many recordings of this nature lack.
I very much enjoyed the pieces that provided the most drastic juxtapositions, such as the sparse recordings of cicadas and the sound of wind turbines, because while they could not have been more different in their sources, both result in a similar sort of sustained drone that could just as easily be the result of a synthesizer or software patch.
The second disc of this compilation sees the recordings acting as the seeds for a number of minimalist composers who often work with the sounds of nature, but each maintaining their own distinctive approach.Both Marcus Fischer and Simon Scott employ the source recordings the most overtly, with Fischer especially working with the beach recordings and some ever so slight processing.His integration of guitar and other instrumentation builds upon the natural beauty of the recordings without ever intruding on it.Scott works more electronics atop the field recordings, slowly guiding them up until reaching a rather rich musical conclusion.
Both Loscil and FourColor go much further in their contributions, making the field recordings an even less prominent aspect of their compositions.Loscil throws together synth like swells and a rhythmic like feel that leads to a taut take on ambient, while keeping the field recordings as another instrumental element rather than the specific focus.FourColor uses the source material more, but processes them nearly beyond recognition, resulting in what is initially a stuttering, sputtering outburst of sound that eventually settles into an understated sort of rhythmic surge without any distinct pedigree.
The first disc on its own is a bit of an odd release since it captures what it seeks to very well (while I have not been to Cape Cod, I have been close enough to vouch for its authenticity), but it does not go for the exotic heights an artist like Chris Watson does.It does provide a different sort of feeling though, almost like a guided tour as opposed to an ethnographic study, and at that it excels at Wilkes' hand.The second disc, however, is where this compilation shines, as the eight artists who contribute do a splendid job at working the sounds of Massachusetts into their own distinct compositions.
Rephlex is almost definitely behind EDM (Electric Dance Music) A2 and B2, but they’re not owning up to it. Neither disc sports a label, neither comes with liner notes, and except for a few Jodey Kendrick aliases, most of the 13 featured artists are unrecognizable. Alain Kepler, Rob Kidley, and Trevor Dags could be anyone, but with electronic music as hyperactive and acid washed as this, the first anyone that comes to mind is Richard D. James.
Anonymity cuts like a double edged sword, especially for IDM producers or anyone else in the general vicinity. It drummed up a good deal of attention for The Tuss and Steinvord, but the question of authorship can overshadow whether a record is any good or not. Unfortunately, A2 and B2 suffer that fate, if only a little. Nearly every song is exciting and memorable, and there’s plenty of diversity here. Artists like Rob Kidley and J.K. obviously have some bubblebath in their blood, but Kepler, Heidi Lord, and Trevor Dags pull both records though smears of ambience and clubby pastiches that break away from the braindance bill. The familiar throb of drum ‘n’ bass shows up too, followed by the quiet sizzle of micro-sculpted dance and the analog hum of droning waves. Not everything inspires dance, but the title feels appropriate nonetheless.
That variety makes it hard to believe that one person could be behind every song, but both discs play more like albums than compilations, and they flow into each other as if they were one album assembled by one hand. A2 begins with a solid beat and keeps it going for more than half the album. Abrupt samples and distorted fragments cut in and out of the mix, and multi-threaded melodies criss-cross each other in jumbled chunks, but always in service of a syncopated rhythm. The songs also stick close to a four and a half minute limit, leaving an impression just by their blur of their movement. Repeat plays help to solidify the impact.
In the last 12 minutes, the music mellows into a series of relatively low-key ambient shorts. That leads naturally into B2, which proceeds at a more relaxed pace. These songs rely less on glitches and more on instrumental color. A few are just electric sketches, others are longer, more hypnotic tracks, but they caress more than punch. The artists blend beat with atmosphere and toy with acoustic samples, and J.K. tosses a fragment of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue into the mix on a song called "Man Hunt 1"; I can almost hear him laughing behind it. By the time Heidi Lord kicks the second half of B2 into full gear, everything’s very cool, blue, and chilled out. The record is still playful, but it loses much of its dance-y flavor and drifts into more ambient, psychedelic territory. It ends in a much different place than where it began, but the shift is gradual enough to keep the records linked up.
Maybe old man A-F-X shows up somewhere in the middle, or maybe that’s what Rephlex wants you to believe. Either way, it’s a frustrating game. Whether or not he’s releasing music is less interesting than the music itself. Does Heidi Lord have another record out there somewhere? Has TX81Z—aggravatingly named after a Yamaha synthesizer—produced anything else as trippy as "Googol?" Is Jodey Kendrick secretly one of the best electronic producers out there and the sole man behind this series? For now, nobody knows.
The Red Wharf website shop has a small quantity of the CD Parade (Nurse With Wound and Graham Bowers) for sale.
The CD Diploid (Epilogue to Parade) is now also available from the shop.
Please note that the above do not in any way constitute the Special Limited Edition and numbered Package which included a full colour, signed and numbered artwork insert released in June.
You may also be interested in the Special Limited Edition of 200 of Graham Bowers’ Trilogy, which consists of
‘Of Mary’s Blood’, ‘Transgression’, and ‘Eternal Ghosts’. Plus a signed A3 composite print of the artworks from all three albums.
A distinctly different release than his last, El Tren Fantasma, this album not only acts as part of an overall larger project (a collaboration with faculty at Durham University), but also focuses on nature, rather than that disc’s use of man made transportation. Not just nature, but an attempt to capture the essence of of Lindisfarne Island as it would have sounded to St. Cuthbert in 700 AD. The result is an album that is a bit less compositionally oriented than El Tren Fantasma, but one that does an impeccable job at capturing a feel and an environment via audio.
This disc is part of an exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels in England, and is intended to provide an audial context for the environment in which Eadfrith, the Bishop of Lindisfarne, was writing and illustrating the gospels that are being exhibited.Even disconnected from this context, the album is another example of Watson's unparalleled ability at capturing sound in a completely engrossing manner.
The album is broken up into four separate pieces, each titled for the season in which they were recorded.The vibrancy and activity of the recordings is closely tied to the time captured:the droning wind and infrequent bird calls of "Winter" are so much more cold and isolated than the aggressive avian flocks that permeate "Sumor."
Appropriately, both "Lencten" ("Spring") and "Haerfest" ("Autumn") sit somewhere between these two extremes in fauna and activity.The former captures the almost human like calls of land and water birds amidst a greater sense of life and vibrancy in comparison to the preceding piece."Haerfest" channels the bleakness of oncoming winter in its more muffled, darker sound.Gaggles of birds can be heard, likely migrating away to warmer climates while the vocalizations of seals and deer bring a bleaker, foreboding sense of the cold to come.
Surely the changes of climate have changed the environment that is the island of Lindisfarne from its medieval days, but Watson's recordings sound completely timeless, largely devoid of any human presence to solidify the isolation the Bishop experienced while completing the gospels.In fact, the only hint of humanity is the simple ringing of a hand bell towards the end of each piece, representing a call to prayer that would have been heard over 1300 years ago.
Watson's work definitely would make for an ideal accompaniment to the exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels, but even removed from that context it is a captivating, and beautifully captured disc of field recordings.It seems to be less of a composed work than some of Watson's other output, but even just a raw capturing of the environment makes for an amazing work.Again, there does not seem to be an environment that Watson cannot distill to its most fascinating sonic elements.
Innocuous enough as a sampler of some deeper, more sprawling artistic discography, The Source Family OST serves a second function as the audio equivalent of an ad pamphlet for its titular utopian cult. Nothing about them needs embellishing; Father Yod's colorful DIY psych collective is as convinced of their own message as they hope you'll be. Every aspect of the Family seems to match the beautiful, spontaneous mythos they spread, even Yod's appropriately spectacular demise. Behind all the posturing and spiritual gravitas, though, laid real music, and a group who made some interesting ideas come to life.
Broken up into a couple of bands, The Source Family OST explores different territories of now hallowed ground in rock and pop music. Spirit Of 76, the first group on the album, lays psychedelic flourish to gospel and traditional folk. Children Of The Sixth Root Race do something similar but more conventional, with "How Long In Time" not sounding too far off from the house band for some '70s educational cartoon. The Original Source Family repurposes old spirituals with chilling results, "Chant 10" being particularly stark and harrowing. Ya Ho Wa 13 has the most adventurous sound of the groups and is considered the primary artifact of the Source Family legend; distorted guitars, krautrock rhythms, and swirling phase effects are all standard fare. Each song by Ya Ho Wa 13 tries out some different styles, "I'm Gonna Take You Home" and "Penetration" striking as especially inspired. The biggest disappointment about Ya Ho Wa 13 is that every song included is an excerpt. This stringent editing brings an especially anticlimactic dissolution during Yod's address to the Beverly High School class of 1974 promoting free improv which, musically progressive and just a little bonkers, preludes a performance which gets cut off to save time.
The music is difficult to approach without a little context. Even setting aside the cult of personality behind Yod—prominent beard enthusiast, possible murderer, definite polygamist—and the organization of the Family, the songs here have serious historical weight. They borrow from acid psych, drone folk, krautrock, gospel, and occasionally a freaky hybrid of those genres unlike many things recorded at the time. They are sleek, even in their frayed looseness and hyperactive genre-hopping, and they commit fully to each disparate sound and style. The bands have serious chops, and there's not a bad song to be found, only a strange story likely to overshadow each note.
The Source Family isn't some cryptic, malevolent assembly of dark figures. They were (and still are, in some cases) business owners, community members, and devotees to an experiment more attuned to the aesthetics of culthood than the textbook social manipulations it entails. A product of their time, their forms and practices can be rediscovered in modern bands who adopt the same kind of sacred personas. The difference between then and now is Yod and Family grew up in a time where religion was to them a sweet, pure commodity, something adopted for secular means but used in total sincerity. Whatever Yod's past might have revealed about him and his intentions, the point is moot. It is, after all, the "eternal now." This is a document of how the fractured weirdness of an original hippie collective manifests itself, in strange and pleasing song.
SKULLFLOWER presents a trinity of sombre meditations evoking Europe after the rain, drowned ruins, sunken dreams: spiders run across harpsichords in deserted schlosses and chateaus, doors slam and phantom demon choirs are summoned at seances by Blatavskian crones, whose impenetrable china blue dolls eyes open onto Tibetan vistas, terrible, ancient and remote...
MASTERY is improvised one man cosm(ag)ick. Total berzerker black metal, rooted in the tradition of true grim blackness, but filtered through Mastery's cracked perception, transforming this into something beyond true; a droned out and damaged, outsider blackness, that sounds pretty much unlike almost any other black metal.
Ltd x 500 copies.
Standard edition: 400 copies on purple vinyl. Special edition: 100 copies on green vinyl through Cold Spring mailorder only!
Skullflower: A1: Wolf Age (7:13) A2: Red Crystal Serpent (7:18) A3: Black Sunshine (9:15)
Brand new studio album from Wicked King Wicker. WKW return to Cold Spring with their seventh album proper. Thick, black noise is underpinned by monolithic, crawling doom, in a way that only Wicked King Wicker can deliver. Total annihilation spread over 4 immense tracks. 45 minutes of music to shatter souls. Features cover art from Steve Cerio (The Residents' regular designer).
1. The Devil Must Learn The Limitations Of The Host (10:00)
A side band of Maurice De Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues) with Eric from Mowlawner, Aderlating embraces some of the same power electronics/harsh noise sensibilities, but casts them within a different sonic murk, alongside demonic black metal snarls and flailing free jazz drumming. Somehow, those disparate parts work together in ways that sometimes baffle in the best possible way.
"Opening of the Tomb," a fitting introduction, actually encapsulates the best moments of this album.From its simmering bass heavy noise introduction, chiming ritualistic strings and guttural incantations, it manages to stay just on the respectable side of corny.With the slow introduction of marching drums and the mix becoming so chaotic as to devolve into a sprawl of noise in its closing moments, a strong sense of composition is there to be had.
Composition in a more conventional sense shows up on "A Vulture's Tongue Disease" via the droning subterranean electronics, bits of what may be guitar, and oddly distant and brittle drumming.With these components and the monstrous vocals, it actually comes together as a song structurally, while still retaining chaos and rawness.
"Dragged to the Smouldering Pits of Infinity" also takes a more melodic tact, hiding a haunting synth passage beneath chaotic drumming and heavily processed snarls.Probably most complex is "Spewed on by Slaves of Inhumanity," with its immediate distorted kick drum introduction and siren like melodies.Amidst the thin, bitcrushed noise and acidic cymbals, a notable, but hazy musicality arises, nicely paired with some hyperkinetic, jazz like drumming throughout.
Agarttha is a solo project of Francesca Marongiu, who is also half of the Italian project Architeuthis Rex, and to some extent that project is reflected in this album. A similar noise/industrial/metal hybrid shines through, but Marongiu’s project stands out with its slightly lighter, vocal centered approach, and the six songs manage to capture occasional moments of blackened, dissonant experimentalism with segments of pure, unadulterated beauty.
A Water Which Does Not Wet Hands is not tied down to any specific sound, but one constant is the understated, yet beautiful vocals throughout.There is not any easy comparison to make as far as her individual approach, but her hushed, largely unprocessed voice fills each song with a distinct warmth, never overshadowing what is going on around it but instead providing a human element when often there is no other.
To some extent it is her vocals that tie things together as an actual album, because there is a lot of stylistic shifts around her voice."Lambsprinck," for example, is a subtle guitar squall and echoing bass throb that is paired with hand percussion, leading to a sort of folk/progressive sound, the latter of which is emphasized when a boisterous organ passage pops in at the end.
This is quite different from the depressing electronics and echoing drums of "Melusine," which has a gothic, but tasteful feel throughout.As the percussion cranks up and a guitar lead swoops in, it takes a dramatic turn for the best, resulting in an extremely engaging piece of music.On "Chymische Hochzeit," the pounding drum machine and overdriven low end gels together like a female lead Godflesh/Jesu hybrid that works extremely well.
"Storms as He Walks" goes in an idiosyncratic direction, with a more varied percussion style mixed with jagged, overcompressed guitar riffs that defy any sort of classification.While it might not be as immediately memorable as "Melusine" or "Chymische Hochzeit," it definitely stands strong from an artistic standpoint.For me it is only "The Sphynx" that drags a little.There is nothing lacking about its intentionally stiff, programmed drums, sitar-like bent guitars and multitracked vocals, it just does not stand out as being quite as unique as the other five songs on the album.
While it is unclear how much of a role Antonio Gallucci (Marongiu's partner in Architeuthis Rex) plays on this album, it is clearly Francesca's show.The influence of AR can be heard; no doubt because of the shared personnel, but A Water is a warmer, more inviting album that does not conjure up the same intense imagery.Instead the two projects compliment each other beautifully, each one showcasing different sides to the sound, with AR embracing more of the metal/noise elements, and Agarttha focusing on more delicate, ethereal moments.
Aquarelle's second album for Students of Decay caught me off-guard a bit, as Ryan Potts' aesthetic has evolved noticeably from 2011's Sung in Broken Symmetry, but not in the expected way at all.  Rather than playing up his talents for crackle, hiss, and artful obfuscation, August Undone mostly jettisons those elements in favor of a kind of a jacked-up, guitar-noise-heavy pastoralism.  While I was a little disappointed that none of the new pieces were immediately striking as Symmetry's "With Verticals," this more understated follow-up is a more complex, varied, and lushly absorbing whole.
"With/Without" opens the album with a very strong statement of intent and foreshadowing of what is to come, as its warm tones and unusual, sitar-like guitar ripples are almost immediately engulfed by a dense guitar thrum mingled with washes of static or crashing waves.  Eventually, the eruption subsides and the piece returns to a variation on its original motif, only this time the sublimely floating guitars cohere into a pulsing rhythm accompanied by some understated percussion.
Perhaps feeling that he may have erred too much on the side of "nice" with the lead-off piece, Potts opts for a bed of heavily distorted guitar for the lengthy "This is No Monument."  Well, at first, anyway.  That piece quickly takes an unexpected detour too, blossoming into a simple, repeating piano pattern that initially resembles classical minimalism, but gradually becomes looser and more sustained until it dissipates entirely into warmly droning reverie.  It might be least lazy drone reverie that I have ever heard though, as Potts turns it into something vibrant and unusual with a host of buried noises and something that resembles several guitarists tremolo-picking variations of the same arpeggio at once on treated guitars (they have an oddly metallic, harpsichord-like texture).
The second half of August Undone is less prone to unexpected twists and detours, but is not at all lacking in strong themes.  In fact, I prefer it to the first half.  "A Flare," for example, resembles a particularly hallucinatory gondola trip, as its bright, shimmering chord progression sounds vaguely Spanish or Italian, but it is bolstered by a second-half geyser of gnarled, shoe-gaze-damaged guitar roar.  "Sandpaper Winds," on the other hand, is a fairly straightforward drone piece structure-wise, but it transcends that wonderfully through inspired multilayering and a host of complementary textures (buzzing guitar noise; reverb-heavy piano plinking; sharp, clear acoustic guitar strums; high, melancholy-sounding EBow tones, etc.).
Potts opts for a similar structure for the strong closer "Clockless Hours," but nicely enhances his quivering, oscillating guitar shimmer with some swooping and moaning cello from guest Brandon Wiarda.  More than any other piece on the album, "Clockless Hours" demonstrates that Potts has become a serious and formidable composer–it is very easy to imagine someone of Harold Budd's stature recording something similar and thinking "This is one of the best things that I have ever done."
Potts' greatest gift, however, might be as a producer: while he admittedly had some mastering assistance from the omnipresent James Plotkin, some of these pieces reportedly used all 64 tracks of Ryan's digital workstation and it sounds like it.  I mean that in the best possible way, as there is an enormous amount of small-scale and peripheral activity happening at all times, making August Undone sound very engaging and alive.  Equally impressive, Potts managed to juggle all of those tracks without  ever sounding muddy or overblown.
Since I am me, I (of course) still have some small quibbles, but they mostly relate to my extremely subjective taste, as I wish August Undone's warmth and beauty had been balanced out by a bit more dissonance, chaos, and grit.  There are certainly a lot of roaring, distorted guitar passages to be found, but only  "A Flare" gets gnarled enough to offer any threat to Ryan's meticulously crafted idyll, as most of the other eruptions seem intended to provide heft and texture only (the oceanic immensity of prime shoegaze is there, but none of the edge or warp-age).  More objectively, Potts could also benefit from a lighter touch in regard to said eruptions, as it sometimes seems like they are operating from an on/off switch rather than intertwining organically with the other sounds.  Such concerns are very minor when compared to August Undone's successes, however–this is both an excellent album and an impressive evolution.