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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Finally... Ant-Zen has returned to form. Or, I should say Cold MeatIndustry by proxy of Ant-Zen, since Azure Skies is a new projectcombining both males (or just one? I'm not too sure) of Sanctum andboth Durling brothers of Mental Destruction, two CMI mainstays. This disc is almost like a renaissance for .. er .. "rhythmic noise" (Iloathe that term, but I'm at a lack for better words). It was ratherunexpected on my part, but it pulls no punches and places Ant-Zen backon the roadmap it was beginning to explore with the early rhythmicnoise releases... it reminds me of one album in particular, ImminentStarvation's "Nord," a classic album. But it goes beyond that. Sprinkled throughout the album are achingly beautiful structure andmelodies (no doubt written by the Sanctum member[s]), which add untoldamounts of character and replay value to a genre like this. The harsh,drilling beats in "Crater" are offset by a warm, calming melody ...which is literally a breath of fresh air. "Bring Nothing Back" isobviously influenced by Jan Carkelev's (Sanctum) sideproject ParcaPace, which was a 18-minute masterpiece of beats, chants, and violins -they're all here, but the beats are made even better by the Durlingbrothers. Brilliant. Though, the album does get a tad bit repetitious at points... but doesit ever go so far as to be boring? Nah. You also should stay away fromthis release if you're expecting dance music - it has beats, but thisis mood music. The album is beautifully packaged in a jewel case withwarm, cool tones throughout and a picture of - what else? - beautifulazure skies gracing the cover. For anyone who felt betrayed withAnt-Zen's recent releases (PAL's "Release".. *cough*), this album is areturn to form and a must-have.
For their Warp Records debut, Antipop present a 7 track EP that's donespinning in less than 17 minutes. Warp may seem like a strange placefor an MC trio to be, but APC's hip hop is as electronic and forwardthinking as anything else on the label. NYC's Beans, Priest and Sayidfastidiously flow mile a minute rhymes, as always, and are as involvedin the sparse yet phat production as producer/engineer/arranger/mixerEarl Blaize. "Tuff Gong" gets right up in your face quick, Sayidletting you know within the minute that he "have the need to tell whatI see". "Splinter" is as close as you'll get to verse chorus verse butlike "Vector", it's a bit too laden with annoying synth notes. Moog andsynth lines help propel the instrumental future funk groove of"Dystopian Disco Force". In "39303," Priest testifies, "I write like aman who can't read / feelin' the need / to seize his mind of reason / Ispit treason / MCs in season / vets freezin' / I rap like there'snothin' left to believe in / clumsily uneven," seconds before his voiceis panned to one channel and digital gurgles fill the opposite one.Next, "Pit," disorients with 2 minutes worth of veering tones, off/onbeeps and ping pong ball percussion, then "Perpendicular" adds another2 minutes of tasty piano and atmosphere enhanced hip hop beats. Thisdisc is all over the place, much like an APC album, but it's all themore obvious in such a short time span. And unfortunately, I'd say only4 tracks are really necessary (but hey, it's only ~$7) so here'slooking forward to the debut album for Warp set to drop early nextyear. In the meantime, get "Tragic Epilogue" and "Shopping CartsCrashing" if'n you don't already have 'em.
The fourth full-length studio album from this English quartet is boththeir most vocal and most structured release to date, focusing moresoon songcraft and development than ever before. Fear not, however, asthere's still a large amount of improvisational influences and playfulfuckery on nearly everything, including sounds of the bathtub, cellularphones, and kitchen utensils alongside the intentionally mis-playedstandard rock instruments, classical and jazz wind instruments,strings, accordion, and numerous percussion tools. If there's one thingsmoking pot teaches you, it's how to become a craftsman (how to makethe best bong out of a melon, etc,...) and I have always consideredVolcano the Bear to be a crafty group of lads. Over the few releasesthey've had, it's clearly visible how the lot is increasinglyharnessing that craftmanship into a more organized, bridled chaos. Onceagain, the group recorded with Kev Reverb — once described as "a tenfoot tall cowboy with sunglasses, dressed all in black and possessing avoice like The Voice Of DOOM" — who runs an appropriately named'Memphis studios' out of Leicester, UK. The album contains punchdrunksurrealistic singalongs like the opener, "Hairy Queen" and parts of"Seeker" as well as lengthy drawn-out mostly instrumentaleverything-and-the-kitchen-sink pieces like the title track, withsuggestive hints of traveling minstrals in the album's closer, "I amthe Mould". If I could recommend any album to aquire and memorize onlyto bring to your school's art class only to play and sing along withand confuse the fuck out of those "artistes," this would be it. 'FiveHundred Boy Piano' is their second release for Steven Stapleton'sUnited Dairies label, and features artwork from each of the members aswell as Stapleton, himself.
#15 in the Fading Captain Series, this release from Airport 5 is thefirst LP Rob Pollard has recorded with Tobin Sprout since the latterleft Guided By Voices to focus on his solo career. Given those keypieces of information, one could probably form a pretty solidpreconception about the sound of this record and what they might findwhen listening to it. Let's face it: Pollard is one of those artiststhat you either love or despise. So those who don't Like any ofPollard's music with Guided By Voices or the plethora of other bandshe's in, skip right over this review. The other camp will be happy toknow that these two artists still make magic together, and it's in rareform all over this release. From the first track, "Burns Carpenter, ManOf Science," you're drawn in to that weird land where anything ispossible, at least lyrically speaking. And it's an amazing thing,considering that the music and words were recorded separately (possiblyeven written separately). Sprout is an amazingly talented musician,capable of playing all the components that make up your average bandstructure, and writing melodies that hold great hooks and fantastictwists and variations. And Pollard is just plain weird. Any man whowrites songs about bright paper werewolves or scientists creatingliquid forms of love has some issues to resolve. But together it makesfor fascinating music, as it has in the past. I'm glad theses twomusicians are working together again, because these initial results areproof that thos combination still works. I hope to hear more fromAirport 5 soon.
The prolific, multi-instrumental and continually tasteful O'Rourke'slatest release appears to be following in the direction of last year's"Halfway To A Threeway" EP but with a slightly rougher edge. Althoughthe seven well-crafted tunes on "Insignificance" vary musically,drawing on 60's garage rock, 70's AM radio, a touch of tropicalia andalt-country with some damn fine pickin', they uphold the fundamentalsof a great pop record. Song topics seem to be about frustration andself-degradation with "It's All Downhill From Here", depravity on thedark "Get A Room" and the weight of triviality on the title track.Tongue-in-cheek titles such as "Memory Lame" and "Life Goes Off"further augment the unique lyrical content. The musicianship is nothingshort of complete. O'Rourke's choice guitar, bass, piano, Wurlitzer andvibraphone performances are consummated by a group of fine musiciansincluding Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, great simultaneous drumming on sometracks by Glenn Kotche and Tim Barnes , bassist Darin Gray, pedal steelfrom Ken Champion and cornet and sax from Chicago jazzers Rob Mazurekand Ken Vandermark. The disc's order of tunes flows nicely from startto finish, ending in a glitch frenzy, which may be the bridge to thelaptop oriented, soon-to-be-released "And I'm Happy..." disc. As with1999's "Eureka", you shouldn't have too much trouble spotting thisdisc's artwork on the wall of your local vendor.
I'll be the first to say I'm not that big of a fan of Venetian Snares.He seems to be praised and lauded from every corner of the earth as agreat innovator and musician, but most of his stuff bores the crap outof me. For the most part, he seems to be "experimental forexperimentality's sake," with a sort of anti-rhythmic edict and anI-must-change-time-signatures-every-twelve-seconds attitude. That getsreally annoying, in my opinion, and it's probably the biggest problemwith this latest album, but nonetheless I like it quite a bit. That's right, I like the album quite a bit. The atmosphere and samplesreally work well (not to mention the *awesome* Trevor Brown artwork) -"we be friends with a child killer..." but of course the mainattraction is the percussion. Which is the best part of the album aswell as the worst part of the album. Like on the last track, "All theChildren Are Dead"... that is insane percussion. And I mean *insane*. But then, as on the first track, "Pygmalion," the percussion can holdso much potential and then fall completely utterly flat. Crazy awesomebuildup, as if everything were going to explode right in your bigstupid face, and then - it stops - and doesn't start again. What aGODDAMNED let-down. And these same kind of moments occur throughout thealbum... points where you THINK you should hear a break, or a drum, orsomething - but no! Aaron Funk is experimental! He is not drum'n'bass -this is not dance music! Yeah, whatever. Go have sex with Kid 606.
I wish I could properly credit whoever once said, "Talking about musicis like dancing about architecture." To Rococo Rot have assembled acollection of music about architecture that, could very quite easily bedanced to. The group return to the core trio for this unique release,out now on the German Staubgold label. The disc features twelve new,unnamed three-minute tracks which provided the sound for anarchitectural exhibit earlier this year. The music is meant torepresent the building of the same name, which consists of twelveequally sized single units, efficiently designed for both living andworking space. (Gosh those Germans sure do love their crafty designs.)While the group consciously chose to work within the 3-minute frameworkfor each track, the tracks are far from identical. Everybody gets thesame amount of space but can do whatever they want within that space,essentially. While it may not be considered a bonafide, typical fullTRR release, many of the songs are quite clearly TRR, using a healthyvariety of electronic beats, organic bass and guitar, and warm synths.The songs vary from mid-tempo multi-instrument interplays to beat-lesssoftware-based aural wallpaper. While it may have been designed for amore chin-scratching artsy acceptance, it's a great listen in,ironically enough, the home office.
The use of 8 bit chiptune sounds has been extending beyond the insular video game world and into other genres.  Dusty old Nintendo consoles and Commodore 64 computers have been reprogrammed into musical instruments for years now, and there is an entire compilation album of artists using only the Game Boy based Nanoloop software.  Return of the Bloop Beep Buzz pushes this concept even further, using the even more primitive Atari 2600 as its primary source, resulting in a limited, but still unique sonic palette.
While the venerable 2600 isn't the most primitive of video game technology, it certainly is close, producing limited graphics and even more limited sounds.Mike Bourque sticks mostly to just the stock system, throwing in processing via the occasional guitar pedal, but never enough to obscure the underlying sounds.
Tracks like "Xenotropolis" and "Red Dragon vs. Square Dude" shape the white noise blasts into a rudimentary drum machine, pushing out a gabber-type throb over bassy abstract loops and Pac-Man like melodic outbursts.Hints of some of the earliest Digital Hardcore releases pop up, but the sound is completely unique.
"Interlocking Secrets" and "Full Attack Mode" also keep a rhythmic structure to them, but it's less of a focus, and more about obtuse loops and dissonant electronics."Wave 44" also is as conceptual as it is rhythmic, building from a dramatically thin, brittle rhythm in to a slightly thicker, but still heavily filtered ending.
The early-Autechre like glitchy crunch of "Dr. Mindbender in the Lab" and technoid thump of "Jammas on the Amazon" round out the multifaceted beat-centric tracks, but there’s also a few abstract, ambient-heavy moments scattered throughout.The textural, amorphous "Xenotropolis" leans into ambient techno realms, but in anything but the conventional sense.
"The Zaxxonian Theory" also is arrhythmic, with outstretched passages of sound and less of a perceptible formal structure, similar to the closer "Into the Darkness we Goeth".This track lets in a bit of industrial rhythmic thump, but ends in an over-driven, noise laden blast, perhaps taking the sound the furthest from its simplistic roots but never fully hiding where it came from.
I've always considered the "chiptune" scene more of a novelty than any meaningful music genre, and I’m probably the biggest video game fan on staff here at Brainwashed.However, this album goes beyond just novelty and is more of a study of limited instrumentation, reshaping the familiar lo-fi sounds into both beats and ambience.While the reliance on a singular source cuts the track-to-track diversity down a bit, the variation in structures covers for it nicely.Surely gamers will get more out of the disc than others, but its appeal wouldn't be limited to just that group.
This album actually came as quite a surprise as soon as I started spinning it. I've always associated Wiese with hyper-kinetic, harsh laptop-sourced noise above all, and the seven tracks on this compilation instead show a tamer, more droning electronic sound, with the occasional bit of abstract electro-acoustic collage.
The pieces were created between 2004 and 2010, with some being sample-focused studio recordings, and others straight up live performances.What links them together is a focus less on raw dissonance, and more on sparse textures or droning electronics.
Opener "The New Dark Ages" heralds this immediately.The deep bassy rumble and tiny bits of static seem like they could open into full bore noise at any time, but instead they move at the speed of tectonic plates, blending in droning tones that never become too dominant."Burn Out," recorded live at No Fun Fest in 2006 is a similarly restrained work, slowly introducing deep, rattling tones and subtle noise.While the sound gets a bit raw later in the piece, things never get out of hand.
"Corpse Solo" and "Don't Move Your Finger" are less about the droning and more found sound/electro-acoustic improvisations.Taut, chaotic outbursts surge through both tracks, with the former drifting into slightly harsher territories, reminiscent of the Dadaist cutups of Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock.
The two long pieces that were recorded in 2010 are the culmination of the other tracks, encapsulating both jarring outbursts and tonal resonations."Scorpion Immobilization Sleeve" sounds like its built on a foundation of captured guitar feedback and erratic percussive thuds.It constantly changes forms as it goes on, picking up some of the collage-y elements and even a bit of harshness, but never going too far.
"Don't Stop Now, You're Killing Me" brings in some identifiable sounds, namely human voice and cymbal rattles, with neither used in a conventional manner.The voice (from Angus Andrew) is instead a guttural, pained death rattle that barely sounds human.While some of the other tracks have an inviting, almost mellow sound about them, here it’s purely sinister.
While I knew Wiese had expanded beyond just harsh noise, I didn't know his repertoire had become this diverse.Owing as much to the modern drone/doom world as the old school of experimental electronics, it’s a compilation that feels like a well planned, diverse album, which is no easy feat.Even people without a Merzbow record in their collection (if such people exist) can appreciate this one.
This "musical illustration" of the events occurring in the brain following a lethal stroke is a dramatic, chilling and emotional portrait. Musically, it is removed from anything else Nurse With Wound have done (even if it does touch on similar influences as the rest of Steve Stapleton’s body of work) as Bowers adds a more composerly hand to Stapleton’s surrealist drift. Bowers and Stapleton have crafted something unique that does not fit neatly into any categories, even amongst Nurse With Wound’s expanded horizons. This is draining, devastating and utterly compelling.
Bowers’ work in the medical field designing environmentally controlled rooms for operating theatres and medical imaging suites has added tremendously to the power of the piece. Listening to this from two different perspectives, firstly from that of an enthusiastic experimental music listener and secondly from my professional perspective as a neuroscientist reveals an impressive and moving synthesis of art, science and pathos. Concepts such as memory and disinhibition of neural networks are played out in the music; a warped sample of Mendelssohn’s "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the sound of children’s voices appear to represent the resurgence of memories in the minutes before death (possibly due to metabolic disturbances within the temporal lobes of the brain). The disrupted electrophysiological rhythms of the brain are represented in the discordant and tumultuous rhythms of Bowers’ playing.
Towards the end of the album, various permutations of "My Blue Heaven" are played, gasped and hinted at. The protagonist/patient/spirit promises to see loved ones (whether living or dead, we are unsure) in their blue heaven. The effect is moving and unsettling, my own memories at the loss of loved ones (albeit not from a stroke) emerging in the fabric of the music. While I have always found Nurse With Wound’s music to be enthralling on a number of levels, this is the first time I have ever felt Stapleton’s music to connect in such a powerfully emotional way. I have been frightened, entertained, humoured and provoked but never have I felt grief.
The weight of Rupture is crushing; this is not music to turn on, sit back and relax to. It is intrusive, captivating and mentally exhausting. Each time I listen to the album, I feel like another little part of me has changed. Aptly, the titles of the segments sum up not only the medical and physiological implications of a stroke but my feelings as a listener following this work: "A life as it now is, is not what it was, and will never be again."
Two sides of a paranormal equation are presented in this cluster of songs. Decorated with primitive drums, avant drones, eclectic voices, and an array of stringed splendor, the two groups arrive at a meeting ground in the crossroads, with the arcane formulas of folk magic flowing down one street, and the poetic musings of a post-modern bard immersed in his lyrical wonderland on the other. Where one is ecstatic in the throes of Dionysian abandon, the other zones out into a haunted, rarefied Aethyr.
On the first side of this split 12" the group Stone Breath cauterized my wounded soul with the mythic sounds of their merrymaking. Playful and serious, reminiscent of wood elves and fey kicking around on some hand drums, banjos and dulcimer at a moonlit barn dance; the freshly painted hex sign above the wide double doors is charged by their sonorous vibrations, and the lunar light.
Of the three tracks the first is a slivered fraction of the two longer players. A brief line in a stanza, the lyrics are punctuated by deft finger picking. Resonant silver strings explode in a quick pattern that vanishes before its structure can be discerned, an experience both beautiful and terrible. "Scorpion Tears" shows off the highly focused ritual vocals which swerve back and forth from male to female, in a fiery dance. The deep male vocals are noble and assured and like a pink beam aimed at the third eye the words contain revelations. Where the second song is woody and deep, the third releases bright ripe notes. It feels racy and full bodied. "The Sky's Red Tongue" contains the same fast fingerpicking, but here the various guitars are dominant, whereas before the banjo was sustained in the foreground. Low whistles and flutes drone along, not quite trilling, a subtle bed the rest of the sounds swirl over. Until such a time as enough pressure is built up and the waters of the song poor over the spillway. Stone Breath manage to create songs that feel both decorous and informal. Good thing they have released a full length album, also titled The Aetheric Lamp and also out on Anti-Clock.
Stone Breath has a definite pagan quality, while Mike seed in contrast, is a touch more biblical, if not apocryphal. The second side, while being roughly around the same length of the first, feels a tad more substantial in that there are five songs, each of a medium length. Within them Mike Seed shows what he is capable of when he joins forces with the Language of Light. This guy has a seriously eerie voice and delivery style, but hey, I like eerie. As the first song, "Commit to Water," begins I hear the slosh and the slush of the stuff. An enervating, sourced-from-who-knows-what sound then appears, like a piece of driftwood to latch onto for survival, as Mike starts to extemporize on angels, Satan, and the soul.
"Rough Old Night" is my favorite song here, smack dab in the middle. The wormwood star makes an appearance in the lyrics for this one, as the narrator of the song rambles down to a desolate beach contemplating judgment day. The electronics lend it a favorable charm, dizzy oscillations power-surging at the right moments to embellish, with a moody punch, the darkness of the words. "Abraham's Guest" veers into bluesy terrain, with slurring slide guitar. Mike Seed sounds raspy and desperate, but resigned to his fate, which he finds in a deranged sputter of firework effects and the ominous beat of a dream. This fades seamlessly into the last number, an instrumental which offers reprieve, like a good friend giving shelter when it is most needed, protecting me from invisible forces who may not have my best interests in mind, sitting up with me until dawn when the madness goes away. A simple and elegant melody, on autoharp, dulicmer, or guitar. Does it really matter? It sounds wonderful and makes for a smooth finish.
Sorry, no audio samples. I don't have an easy way to transfer vinyl to digital.