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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Arrayed in dystopian garb and armed with righteous indignation, Black Mountain's newest record explodes and pounds in unison with the bombs and wars that populate Stephen McBean's lyrics.
The world is a bleak place in McBean's eyes. It is full of violence, injustice, doubt, and little else. What hope that does exist lays dormant in a shelter under the constant threat of dehumanazing and near-invisible evils; there's plenty of melodrama on In the Future and much of its bombast serves to positively amplify Black Mountain's unusual approach to rock 'n' roll. "Stormy High" begins with a sudden and heavy jerk. It stomps about wearing tattered guitars and half-moaned vocals with confidence, drawing its sex and grit together closely enough to warrant thoughts of "The Lemon Song" and Robert Plant convulsing on stage in a rage of orgasmic delight. McBean's idea of danger, however, revolves less around his penis and more around enslavement and the kind of demons that haunt lazy or uninspired men. Their debt to blues and '70s rock made apparent, the band proceeds to carve the lazy "Angels" out of sweet pop mechanics and epic synthesizer swells. This is the first sign that Black Mountain is about to attempt something a little bizarre, which is the fusing of psychedelic pop, rock, and metal with the stylings of America's "southern rock" music. It is true other bands have done this, but Black Mountain's particular blend of these elements is especially bold. They sacrifice little of the elements that make each of these genres distinct and instead mash them together with tremendous force, pulling equal amounts of heavy guitar mashing and LSD-inspired madness from their instruments and tongues.
"Tyrants" represents the first all-out mashup on the record. When it begins it sounds like a titanic march across a barren desert, a march so large that war drums are an unnecessary addition to the stomping of the army's feet. With a dusty bass line and resigned drum beat, the song quickly shifts into a lower gear. Enormous spaces open up in the music and a seething synthesizer begins to circle through the song like a vulture. The lyrics and music then work themselves back into a frenzy propelled by an infatigable disdain for the evil men do. A deep serenity pervades much of the song in the form of cascading electronic melodies and a rubbery rhythm, but its all sandwiched between heavy guitar riffs and a solo that calls Satan to mind more than Timothy Leary. In contrast, "Wucan" emphasizes psychedelic rock's influence on the band. After a fuzzy and vaguley funky rhythm section sizzles out, the music is shot through with thick, almost cheesy keyboard atmospherics. They shimmer and wobble in acidic light while the band plugs along beneath their vast reach. I had to make sure Richard Wright wasn't listed anywhere in the liner notes after the song ended.
The bombast doesn't always work in the band's favor, however. There are moments where the music is as awkward as some of McBean's introverted and indecipherable lyrics. "Stay Free" clunks along with a beautiful melody and an ethereal vocal performance, but it sounds flat sandwiched between "Wucan" and "Queens Will Play;" the band's more playful elements are absent and the lyrics are, for lack of a better term, confounding. Perhaps someone with more time than I have can make sense of these lines: "Bodies at sundown / Stiff on their knees / Beautiful ponies / So beautiful / They'll kill us all." Even when the band is firing on all cylinders, their tendency to shoot for the epic causes some amount of stumbling. "Evil Ways" could be a great voodoo jam spiced with American brute force, but ends up sounding awkward due to the rather lackluster employment of an organ and a chorus that feels out of place on this album.
"Bright Lights," the album's 16 minute dénouement, brings every song's best and worst qualities together. The lyrics are less than stellar, but the instrumentation blends the bands gentle and aggressive qualities without flaw. The entire middle portion of the song is an extended psyche-jam with all manner of minutae populating the drone that serves as the song's core. The band's physical and creative energies shine through on this song most clearly. "Bright Lights" also highlights just how fragile some of the band's compositions are; in their quest for fusion they sometimes overlook the fact that some of their songs offer little more than that fusion. Their energy helps to carry them through some rough spots, but without it a few of these performances might've ruined the record.
This quintet's energy is their greatest virtue and when it is paired with solid songwriting Black Mountain sound both unique and as massive as their name implies.
Kevin Doherty of Sleep Research Facility originally released this album in 2001, based on the first eight minutes of the film Alien and named after the freight ship of which Ripley was a crew member. At the end of 2007, it was reissued with new artwork and a bonus track on the original label.
Going to see director Ridley Scott's groundbreaking sci-fi space epic was one of those markers of my teenage years that I will not easily forget; principally so for the fact that the claustrophobic atmosphere and edge-of-the-seat suspense was superbly drawn and masterfully handled but also secondarily because this was the first '18' certificate film I ever saw. The viewing was accompanied by a certain frisson of excitement because I had lied about my age in order to get into the cinema (I was barely 17 at the time). I was also (and still am) a fan of the work of HR Giger, he being one of the profoundest influences on my own artistic output both then and now. Needless to say it made a huge impression on me at the time and it appears that it made an equal impression on Kevin Doherty.
Alien is nearly three decades old now but is still a deeply affecting film, on both a straightforward action level and a deeper psychological one, and has passed into the canon of films that are essential viewing. The scenes on which this album is based are the ones in which the Nostromo (the interstellar ship in which all the action takes place and a reference to Joseph Conrad, the author of Heart of Darkness—a particularly apt metaphor for the ship and what happens on board) is slowly coursing through the deep black void of space. The film above all dwelt on the claustrophobia, tight confines, and isolation of the setting along with the helplessness of the characters confronting the unrelenting, unthinking, and instinctual face of evil—oppressively dark, dank, and dripping corridors, little hiding places where anything could be lurking and the heightened sense of dread and fear palpably stalking the ship. Doherty successfully translates all these qualities of the film into sound: low bass rumbles and gentle susurrations (some just barely discernible and some ebbing and flowing wave-like) get deep and firmly into the psyche and create a sense of unease, creating a feeling that something brooding and malevolent is stalking or lurking just around the corner.
Additionally present is the feeling of intense freezing coldness and vast isolation, of immeasurably incomprehensible distances and voyages lasting years, and that whatever happens you are far from the ken of man and safety; that whatever you face you face alone. Just like in the film, the evil was for the most part not necessarily an overt in-your-face species of evil, but implied; indeed for most of the film its face was not even revealed—nevertheless the tension subtly telegraphed imbued the film with a sense of impending soul-crushing doom. Reflecting that aspect the same is true of all the pieces on here. They are not overtly dread-inducing but the insistent quietness and subtle deep undertones impart a tense anticipation and expectation, a feeling that something unwelcome is just out of sight and hearing but whose presence is nonetheless felt.
Bearing in mind that this was Doherty's debut release, the album is a tour de force of atmosphere and tension building, pitched at just the right level and judicious in its use of sounds. Subtlety is the keyword here and the vein of implied dread running through the music on here is all the stronger for that subtlety.
For their fourth release, these black metallers from Israel have produced an album of no worth whatsoever. The music is unimaginative and some of the lyrics are downright ridiculous; two huge problems that are not redeemed by even a shred of any sort of passion. This sounds like music made by people who understand how the genre should sound but do not actually like it.
The music is technically good black metal, the drumming is relentless and the guitars are a metallic dirge, but there is something lacking. There is no (hell)fire to the performance, it is more like black metal by numbers. This is not helped by Larenuf's vocals which are devoid of any menace or power. He sounds bored, when he roars it is a limp, dead croak which is normally something to be proud of in a band like Tangorodrim but here it just highlights how run of the mill this album is.
It does not help that the lyrics are cheesy and poor even by black metal standards, at least with a powerful performance a substandard lyric can be transmutated into something more. However, there is not much that can be done with the lyrics to the album's title track: "I am standing in a naked forest/And worship the clean ones!/They smell nice, I have to take a shower." Now I don't know if they are taking the piss but even if they are this is a poor attempt at any sort of humour.
By the end of the album (granted it is short), Justus Ex Fide Vivit has proven itself to be generic and bland, not words that would normally be associated with this genre. There are some excellent bands out there that are playing around with the black metal formula to make some riveting music but Tangorodrim is not one of them. I would not mind such an old fashioned approach to this kind of music if it at least had a bit of energy to it but this is a flaccid collection of music if ever I heard one.
As a way of celebrating a decade of his label Intransitive, as well as the anniversary of his first album, Stone Blind, Boston based tape fetishist Howard Stelzer returns to his roots and dissects that early work to construct something entirely new but remaining true to his love of all things cassette.
Few artists would actually be willing to expound their love of this recordable magnetic medium. Everything about the cassette seemed more about convenience than art: fidelity was far from great, conventional packaging limited the visual impact of the medium, and brand to brand of blank tape could vary greatly in quality and reliability. Stelzer is one artist who takes these technical limitations of the format and uses them as a sonic palette to paint soundscapes that can be somber, soft and reflective, or terrifyingly oppressive torrents of violence.
Separated into two long tracks, much like the alternating sides of a C60 cassette, both pieces open with a slow build from tape hiss. The first track is all hiss and vibration from the tape heads moving, a subtle cluster of sounds that somehow begin to form a musical interlude, or perhaps it is just an artifact of my mind creating something from the chaos until everything is blown apart by a whiteout layer of pure, crunchy noise. The noise builds in both depth and sharpness as field recording elements and a deep hum rears its head and tries to add melody to the proceedings, but can't quite get its act straight. Even those cheap condenser mics built into so many cassette recordings are used to full effect, in this case for low end explosions to supplement the audio of mechanical failures. Then, after the barrage of controlled blasts and demolitions, a more expansive field of ambience begins to unfold, bleeps and tones that begin to roll upon themselves into noisier territory once again. Somehow this mass becomes musical by the end and sounds like a voracious cassette player devouring an entire music catalog.
The tape hiss from hell that opens the second part acts as the yin to the buried, filtered rumble of rotating tape heads yang, creating a deep sinister rumbling from caverns of analog technology long forgotten. Field recording elements are a bit more pronounced on this second track: random found sounds, someone whistling, etc. The harsh elements are just as harsh, and at times the tape elements are so processed that they resemble black metal guitar riffs, which makes perverse sense given that scene's love of "kvlt" lo-fi production. The disc comes to a close the only way it conceivably could: with a slow trail off to tape hiss and the sound of tape deck being turned off.
Stelzer's return to the material that formed his first release is a fascinating document that is so narrowly focused on one specific theme, and yet sounds neither monotone nor forced. In some ways I was reminded of Akifumi Nakajima/Aube's more subtle noise compositions, but with a more diverse amount of sounds making up the proceedings than his work. Bond Inlets is a fascinating disc that has both strong compositional elements as well as a lot of chance, chaotic noise explosions that work extremely well together.
This single track, 18+ minute improvisation by a veritable super-group of six string abuse and experimentation (including members of Wilco and Sonic Youth), aided and abetted by the No Fun Fest curator and analog electronics wizard, actually has a misleading title. While these guitarists could be expected to create a squall of guitar noise like a bag of wet cats rolling down a hill, it instead shows an admirable level of free jazz type restraint and balance.
While it is balanced and restrained, it is never dull or too subtle. Instead, it has a massive sense of space in which the three guitarists are allowed to experiment and improvise; occasionally with massive amounts of effects, other times stripped down to the purest of guitar tones. Monotract member/solo artist Carlos Giffoni's electronic noise never overwhelms or dominates the space, but instead functions as yet another instrument that provides a good contrast to the generally more lower-end focused guitars.
Unlike would be the case with a similar conglomeration of pretentious 1970s rock guitarists, I for one have no way of clearly identifying the work of any specific artist over another, which makes the improvisation more of a cohesive entity instead of an exercise of whammy bar masturbation. The more quiet, reflective passages of lesser treated guitar work might be more consistent with some of Nels Cline's work with Wilco, while there is more than enough screech and feedback to show Lee Ranaldo's Sonic Youth background. And, I'm not going to lie; I'm not familiar with Alan Licht's stuff, so I won't pretend to be.
Over the duration of the long track, the sounds waivers from warm noise sheets to quieter, guitar driven passages. As aforementioned, there are never extensive harsh noise passages, but there are times in which haunted house style tones mix with carefully controlled feedback and deep, explosive pulses of electronic noise. When the noise is more prominent, it has a greater sense of tactile texture and thickness. It is plenty harsh and distorted, but in a complex, fascinating way. Giffoni even manages to work out a few solos on his electronic gear, sometimes resembling a trumpet, other times a snake charmer's flute.
Free jazz is the greatest parallel I can think of to describe this release, because these artists show that same level of restraint and working of each other's playing as would be expected from the likes of Sun Ra or Ornette Coleman's genre defining album. The liner notes, originally written for Lou Reed's Rock 'n Roll Animal are appropriate for the force presented here but sell short the subtly and complexity of sound that is also present.
Recorded live in the studio over two nights, this is a double CD of jams by the ever wonderful Bardo Pond and Japan's equally loveable LSD March. The music tilts from sounding like outtakes from Bardo Pond's Selections CD-Rs to LSD March's heady live sound. All the descriptions and superlatives that have been attributed to either band apply just as well to this monster of an album that they have spawned.
The opening track of the first disc, "We are LSD Pond," fades in like the jamming has been going on for some time before we have been allowed to listen in. Based around a solid groove, the piece is like one long solo where everyone solos. It sounds self- indulgent (and sitting in a studio jamming all day is a fine way to indulge yourself) but it is fantastic nonetheless. There is only one way to describe the music and that is that it is white hot.
Amazingly, from such a high octane start the jams get wilder and better as the album progresses. Most of the pieces work so well thanks to the fantastic drumming on every track. Despite there being three people credited with drums and percussion, it never sounds over the top. On "Utuwa No Naka No Mizu," a Kraut inspired drum pattern allows for the rest of the band to go hog wild with some very exciting guitar with wah pedal solos going on.
On the second disc, the line up has been augmented slightly as it is from a second day of recording. The songs with this line up are substantially longer and unlike the instrumental first act, Isobel Sollenberger contributes vocals to the mix. It begins with a radically different "We are LSD Pond." Sollenberger's voice gets masked by the music, it sounds like she has a PA set up at monumental volumes in another building and it is bleeding through the walls over the maelstrom of LSD Pond's freakout. It works well with this and the subsequent tracks but it would have been nice to have some cleaner vocals too.
I cannot finish this review without mentioning the gorgeous presentation of this album. Archive always have attractive packaging for their releases and this is no exception. Designed by Keith Utech, this release has a textured outer sleeve with a design like old fashioned wallpaper contains a small booklet of photos from the sessions and the CDs (encased in simple black sleeves bound with more of the wallpaper-style card). The physical package matches the sounds heard on the disc perfectly.
Overall this is a phenomenal album, both bands have come together to form a glorious whole and a glorious din. This is a stand out album no matter which band's back catalogue you consider. It is one of the first new releases of 2008 and I would be very surprised if I was not still spinning it in December.
The story is that these four songs are all that's left of Scatter's scrapped final album. As that free folk assembly went on their separate ways, thankfully vocalist Stephanie Hladowski has collated the tracks into this 10" EP. It feels like these songs have been pulled through the liquid mirror of a now-closed world, with this world being better off for having them. These brief glimpses of the past reveal themselves as further puzzle pieces in the reconfiguration of British traditional songs as part of a living present.
Alex Neilson's extensive liners make it difficult to say anything that doesn't sound like paraphrasing of his perfectly on-point thoughts. Hladowski has a strong vocal that is ferociously fragile: a voice sometimes lost in character; broken but determined to finish her narrative. The accapella "In the Month of January" is no less musical for its simplicity. Instrumentally, it is an understated set of performances from The Family Elan's Chris Hladowski and Isobel Campbell. T
he contribution of the thin smooth flesh of Campbell's cello bleeds all the emotion of the worst moments of warmth over a pair of tracks. The steady tempo and beauty of Chris Hladowski's bouzouki on "Willy O'Winsbury" moves like the leisurely springs on a honeymooner's bed. It is his backing on "Andrew Lambie" that provides Stephanie's weary vocal bones a place to rest, his warm electric/organic hum filling the song. The final moments of this vinyl are the most startling with the end of the record leaving the sensation that something has been stolen from the room (life, air, words, resolution, perhaps a presence?). Even by returning to those last few seconds countless times, it is still unclear what it was.
The MV half of MV&EE creates tense, cosmic music with very little. His meandering voice and sparkling guitar sound lonely, weird, and oddly comforting. A good match, actually, for some of Philip K. Dick's obsessions: identity, authenticity and transformation.
The A side of this 7" has an alluring and fractured sensibility. The hypnotic effect is like sitting in a car in the desert, turning the radio dial, and stumbling upon ancient transmissions returning from deep space. Valentine's elusive lyrics ensure that the exact reason why he has chosen to consider the great writer, along with baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan, remains a puzzle. Perhaps it hints at an encounter similar to Dick's VALIS. I only wish the latest scandal to "rock" baseball could be the discovery that Ryan is an android.
The flipside, "We Can't Build You," is a longer piece with a title negating that of a P. K. Dick short story. It is even less decipherable, with a similarly sparse atmosphere, slightly more effusive guitar effects and an occasional bend into a warped doo-wop or rural blues sensibility. The only problem with this strange addition to the ever-expanding body of work inspired by PKD is that it is not a whole album.
Accessible, improvisational jazz is given new life at the hands of this exceptional quartet. Australian pianist Marc Hannaford leads his group through a variety of musical approaches, drawing a lively dialogue out of each of them that entertains with ease. This quartet reaches deep into their imaginative bag of tricks and pull out one stunning performance after another.
In some ways it seems all too easy to release an album of improvised music. With the advent of cheap recording it is possible for almost anyone to assemble a bunch of half-assed recordings produced over the course of a few extended jams and call it an album. Woe to the thoughtless noise-maker indeed, for his kind is populating the internet with increasing regularity. I expected so much from Marc Hannaford. I must admit a certain amount of cynicism when it comes to modern jazz recordings; all too often they favor technique over content and, as is the case with other genres that claim improvisation as a cornerstone of their craft, fail to provide much to appreciate beyond the technique itself. Hannaford, Scott Tinkler, Ken Edie, and Philip Rex know a thing or two about improvisation, however. They exhibit a thoughtfulness in their play that the likes of Albert Ayler and John Coltrane recognized as invaluable to the art form. With an eye on certain compositional principles and methodologies, each member of this quartet contributes their own character and reason to eight superb recordings of controlled chaos.
"Sauna Twins" begins with Hannaford's incongruous and drunken piano playing; he stumbles and careens across his ivory keys in seemingly random jumps, ranting with a persistent vigor that pretends coherence. Philip Rex soon answers his call on bass, entering open spaces in the conversation with light jabs and punchy deliveries. It's not hard to imagine that the two musicians are in conversation with each other, one calling out in a certain chord, the other responding with a quick urgency. The addition of Edie's drums and Tinkler's trumpet suddenly clouds this exchange, but soon each musician falls in with the other, filling in the gaps that one or the other leaves. In no time at all (and without introduction), the massive "G.E.B." is in full swing. The instruments have, in the span of just over four minutes, become characters of their own. Sometimes they compliment each other by falling into near silence together, other times they appear to argue, one yelling in order to claim dominance, the other three huddling together before launching a counter-attack. The beauty of many of these performances is that they feel genuinely organic, like the best written dialogues. For all the random components at play, however, there is a unifying theme at work in the background, a theme that each of the musicians manage to keep in mind as they parade through their own musical arguments.
Clocking in at over 17 minutes long, one might expect "G.E.B" to become boring or overwrought, but each of its varied movements not only seem necessary, they're downright beautiful. Tinkler's trumpet performance, especially in the last five minutes or so, is nearly epic in all its 64th-note glory. Rex's percussive force is immense, his hands creating a virtual parade of power throughout the entire piece. It might be argued that "G.E.B." lays too many cards on the table too early; both "Pure Evil" and "All Booze" seem small in its shadow, but both are appealing and set the rest of the record up quite well. The initial and deceptive calm of "I'll Go Down..." (Hannaford's solo piano performance) is all the more powerful because of the way it contrasts with "All Booze" and "Pure Evil" features some pseudo-funky bass and drum explosions that'd make Squarepusher more than just a little jealous. There is a lot going on throughout The Garden of Forking Paths. It is equally diverse, random, tight, well-conceived, and welcoming. I'm as impressed with the music as I am with the technique that spawned it.
Rolan Vega's ambiguous debut on Community Library suffers from its unfocused genesis. In part a tribute to movie and television soundtracks, Documentary is an intriguing compilation of Vega's synthesizer compositions but not an entirely successful album.
Released last year, Documentary wobbles between being an academic salutation and a directionless compilation of synthetic melody and rhythm. The music itself was composed at different times for different media and purposes; these songs were used variously as live scores, soundtracks for short films, and accompaniments to Vega's own video projects. The result is an uneven collection of songs. No matter how intriguing many of these compositions are, listening through from beginning to end can become a chore. While an emphasis on completion may have demanded the inclusion of many short and unique tracks, their inclusion on Documentary represents the majority of the album's disposable fare. Video may have originally given depth to these tracks, but standing alone they inspire little more than an anxious desire to move to the next song.
Fortunately Vega is an adept composer capable of producing uneasy moments, triumphant crescendos, fecund sound-scapes, danceable rhythms, and unique aural episodes. Given time and patience, Documentary blooms and showcases some undeniable gems.
Both "Viva Myria" and "Playlite" contain an enchanting depth and complexity. The former relies upon synthetic drift to weave its spell while the latter hums to the stuttering of a suffocated percussion section. Neither offers more than a minimal number of musical sources, but both call very strong images to mind with little effort. If it were not for the two intervening shorts, "4 Autiim" would have complimented them both nicely. For five minutes it pulses with electronic waves of sound and metallic snares, engendering a fleet of sci-fi memories as played by whirring robotic musicians. My three favorite pieces on this album call to mind sci-fi movies, actually, all of them dense and distorted with an undeniable element of foreboding included.
The disc closes with "Documentary," a piece sure to call some other soundtrack-obsessed musicians to mind. With the sound of chirping birds in tow, Vega ends his album with a warmth characteristic of the soundtracks composed for nature documentaries and PBS specials. It does not come as an unexpected surprise nor is it wholly un-listenable, but its simply a disappointment. Vega is at his best when he's cutting his own path, not emulating someone else's. Documentary provides enough to enjoy, but lacks both continuity and consistent quality.
Rare records are funny things; to some people the value of the record is in how many were pressed and the quirks of individual pressings. To others it is the music that counts, to hell with catalogue numbers and whether it has misprinted labels. This is a release to appeal to those in the former category, rare as hen's teeth but nothing to write home about.
A lot of this album sounds like jams without much direction; the music does not have enough energy to warrant a jam for jam's sake. Moments of excitement do occur like the savage bass line of "Burcak Tarlalari" or the organ solo in "Zeytinyagi" (which is strangely faded out just as it gets going). However, much of the music just blends into one amorphous blob. There is no identity to the music, no fire in the performance and considering the 35 years since its first release, there is nothing here that does not sound completely dated.
This is surprising considering that according to the album's sleeve notes Ozkent was a whiz kid when it came to modifying and inventing instruments. Yet despite the talk of guitars with extra frets and his apparent mastery of electronics, Genclik Ile Elele comes across as a soulless version of Can's Ege Bamyasi as covered by the resident band of a tacky Istanbul drinking establishment. It fades into the background just as much as a holiday resort band does, it does not command attention in any meaningful way.
I can understand why B-Music would like to reissue this considering that the breaks are pretty cool but I would rather hear the end results of this being sampled for use in other works. Even then, I am not sure how important a good break beat is any more considering the vast majority of sampled music (read: pop) is incredibly boring and astoundingly lazy. What was cutting edge in the early days of the turntable is a hackneyed standard now but I digress.
Genclik Ile Elele is of curiosity value for those who do not have big enough wallets to buy an original copy or for those afraid of devaluing an investment. Yes it is a rare record but rarity does not equal quality.