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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Thrill Jockey Tortoise are the undisputed heavyweights of that hopelesslyoverpopulated field of instrumental music dubbed post-rock. Aftervirtually christening the genre with their 1994 debut, then pushing outthe boundaries with the superlative Millions Now Living Will Never Die, Tortoise seem somewhat content to rest on their laurels. Their new effort, It's All Around You, the band's first full-length album since 2001's Standards, shows the band attempting new strategies, and falling back on old reliable techniques. Following a similar blueprint to Standards, this new album is yet another step back from the techno and dub influences that saturated Millions and TNT;most digital processing has been concealed in favor of stressing thetypically harmonious group dynamic. The deliciously over-mic'd drums,distorted keyboards and fuzzy guitars of Standards have beencarried over into this album. As ever, producer John McEntire isextraordinarily proficient in his ability to turn what amounts tohigh-concept elevator music into alchemical gold. If Krautrock, dub andIDM influences flavored their past efforts, the primary inspiration on It's All Around Youappears to be film music. Many of these tracks have an epic, cinematicsweep redolent of film composers like Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota."Crest" swells and subsides along with emotive string arrangements,with squalls of anthemic guitar punctuating each passage, like Hendrixjamming along to a soap opera soundtrack. The album maintains aconsistent MOR sunshine-pop vibe, with a sparkling atmosphere ofheroism and patriotic grandeur. The sampled chorus of breathy "aahs" on"The Lithium Stiffs" recalls the atmospheric light-rock of 10CC's "I'mNot in Love," not exactly a popular reference point for cutting-edgeindie rock. Much care has been taken in sequencing these songs, withthe first half of the album threaded together into a continuousnarrative. "Stretch (You Are All Right)" is pure Tortoise-by-numbers,with its point-counterpoint conversation between vibraphones andguitar. The songs on this album seem more composed than ever before,excising the elements of chance and improvisation almost entirely. Thisresults in an album that at times feels a bit calculated andover-composed, the same problems that have plagued recent efforts byStereolab. However, with musicians as talented as Tortoise, even aneffortlessly tossed-off record like this one can prove to be quiteengaging. Although the album loses much of its momentum in its lasthalf, "Salt the Skies" reconnects with the themes from the opening songsuite and serves as a fittingly bombastic conclusion. There is no doubtwhatever that Tortoise are an immensely gifted group of musicians, andit seems a shame to complain that an album as lovely and accomplishedas It's All Around You seems phoned in, so I'm not going to. I'm just going to shut up and listen to it.
Ground Fault They Were Dreaming They Were Stones can't be considered apurist's field recording composition, as Murmer's Patrick McGinley doesincorporate "operated" devices like a car seat massager and telephonefeedback/ringtone; however the majority of the five-part piece wasgathered from locations as idiosyncratic and rich with colorfulassociations as the resulting music. McGinley takes sound from elevatorshafts, airplane cabins, a Turkish football victory celebration,Hewlitt's Cove Marina in Massachusetts and the Brooklyn Bridge amongother disparate spots, transforming them into a diverse current ofnoise dominated by thin drones and loose textural scatter, never busyand nicely blended. The artist seems more interested in creating musicwith its own private momentum and internal reference points thaninstigating the kind of environmental illusionism or detail-oriented,"investigative" technique common to the field medium. Even afterreading the liner notes and discovering the origins of McGinley'srecordings, it remains near-impossible to pin certain sounds onparticular sources to the exclusion of all others. When, at the end of Stones'"Prologue," traffic sounds from the Brooklyn Bridge begin to interruptthe shrill tones of telephone(!) feedback, the cars are far fromdisruptive, hardly cars at all and more suggestive of the low rumblesthat come from the 600-gallon steel watertank that appears in "PartFour." The creaking wood and chiming mast sounds from the marina in"Part Three" only reveal themselves when thrown into relief against thevacuous thudding of the elevator shaft, which could itself be thewatertank or part of the airplane's ghostly interior. Through carefultiming and expert fades, McGinley manages these discrepancies withoutmaking the resulting confusion the focus of the piece. The artistmatches the rhythmic and tonal structures of his individual segments,splicing them together so that points of flux do not emerge arbitrarilywith the chance swells of a particular component but at calculated andanticipated moments in the whole. Recognizable melodic turns, viaringtones presumably, reappear throughout several parts, reinforcingthe involved, almost symphonic character of Stones. Only once,during the piece's first part does McGinley run into trouble. Thecyclical rhythm of an old gas meter in his basement provides thedominant noise during this part, and the artist could've tried harderto submerge the meter in the surrounding atmospherics, as the rhythm,while appealing, stands out as too forced or persuasive an elementwithin the otherwise sublime, organic progression. McGinley recoverswith the longer, climactic "Part Four," which (somehow) drives theaforementioned watertank and cabin ambience into a heavenly chorus ofdroning activity, almost Eno-esque in its resounding warmth.
Poeta Negra Peekay Tayloh is actually electronic collage artist PantelisKakaroglou, and his first CD is a valiant effort that sadlyaccomplishes little but reveal some of his influences and portray aderivative style. That's not to say there isn't potential, or that hedoesn't master some amazing beats on the debut, which he doeseffectively and consistently. Peekay Tayloh just utilizes a tried andtrue formula — big beats and jazz structures plus a love for hip-hopwith odd and new sound samples or live instruments mixed in for goodmeasure — without doing something incredibly original with it. There'sa real taste for the talent involved, but an overwhelming feeling of"I've heard this before" clouds the entire release. Sure, there's noway to protect against this sort of thing from time to time, but whenI'd swear I heard the exactsnare or cymbal sound that I've heard on several records, and can evenpull them out for a quick reference listen with no real trouble, I'mnot impressed. I wanted to step into the music with an open mind,however, so I let that go after a while and just basked. A few tracksjust plain smoke, like "Rumbus Rooms to Let," where the track moves ina certain direction but switches it up and puts the pedal to the metaltowards the end. And the use of guest alto sax and vocals wasn'toverpowering, just intriguingly added to the mix, which said that notonly does Peekay Tayloh not ram something down your throat but hechooses artists who will complement not take over the music. The piecesare all there, but the resulting product doesn't make the cut.Interestingly, the last cut is a remix by Beefcake of a track earlieron the record that takes the same elements essentially and ups thewattage by 150%. It's all about showmanship, and for his next projectmaybe Peekay Tayloh will show some more.
Anomalous Conceived as a therapeutic agent for Anomalous label head Eric Lanzillotta as he suffered from a serious lung infection, Lung Cleaneris just the kind of dizzying, confused music I'd specifically avoid ifever visited by a similar illness. If the artist's goal was to create aseries of immersing sound-environments for the bedridden, then he'ssucceeded, only these four tracks are hardly comforting, and with nameslike "Dizzy From the Cold Meds" and "Coughing up the Lung Cleaner,"they seem more appropriate for a healthy person looking to simulate theinfected state. If there is any fluidity to the music it's only becausethere is rarely any silence, each moment tempted by multiple layers ofqueasy sound, never very noisy but always arriving at warped,uncomfortable angles. To his credit, Deutsch does take sound from avariety of inviting sources, including wine glasses, bells, musicboxes, even baby toys, each left well enough intact to make forsurprisingly warm, physical compositions, despite the reliance ondigital technology. Certain sections of the disc, especially theopening "Nice Day, Some Rain" with its cascading violin-like washes andgurgling water percussion, sound as if they could be played by bucolicdrone ensemble Pelt; however, Deutsch practices little of that group'srestraint when applying thick, busy layers of amplified clatter fromhis own unique box of gadgets. The degree to which he is able toorganize so many small, fleeting sounds into dense and coherentclusters, without the digital process stripping them of theirlivelihood, remains an amazing feat throughout, but sadly, this is thelimit of Lung Cleaner's appeal. The compositions seem for themost part aimless, with no progressive intent behind their changes inpalette and texture. And while logical progression might be outside ofthe artist's immediate interests, his creations here are too shambolicand scatterbrained for their created environments to be at allsatisfying. There's no release to the aural nausea induced by thesetracks; even the closing "Sleep Fields (go to sleep)" provides nosolace for the sickly, it's slowly repetitive gurgles and pangingnoises winding up again and again for another anxious heave. That said,it is also rare to find music of similar creation that sounds as"alive" as Lung Cleaner, leading me think that either I couldbe trying harder to hear these quasi-"familiar" sounds in new ways orDeutsch should be more wary of the redundancy created in pushingalready animated source material into a frenzied compositionalstructure. Then again, maybe I just need to get violently ill, pound abottle of Robitussin and have another listen, compare and contrast.
Sublime Frequencies Radio Palestine is the most recent of Alan Bishop's amazingradio collages released on his Sublime Frequencies label. "Palestine"is used here as a blanket term to denote the whole of the EasternMediterranean encompassing the various locations where these soundswere recorded over the summer of 1985. Bishop captures a stunningsnapshot of a region splintered by political upheaval and violence, butunited in its teeming, eclectic overload of cultures, traditions andlifestyles. Radio Palestine cycles through an endless multitude ofdisparate styles: the Nile River Nubian folk of Southern Egypt, modernArabic pop from Beirut, orchestrals from Cairo, Greek sartaki,Palestinian folk, shortwave signal jamming, Jewish Klezmer and othertraditional forms, European pop hybrids, Jordanian reverb guitar andscores of news reports, commercials and radio station IDs in aBabel-like cacophony of languages and dialects. English news reportsprovide grim details of terrorist bombings and political tensions inthe region, clearly showing just how little has changed in theintervening two decades. This prismatic approach to splicing togethermusic and dialogue is extraordinarily effective, juxtaposing absurdlyoverwrought French lounge music from Beirut with minimalist, hypnoticfolk of Egypt which might suddenly and unexpectedly segue intoshortwave radio interceptions of messages from military spies,clandestine political organizations and what sounds like fieldrecordings of gunfire and explosions recorded in the midst of Israeliskirmishes with the PLO. And I was just as likely to hear that kind ofhuman bloodshed as I was to catch a few seconds of Robert Wyatt's "SeaSong" or experimental female vocal pop sounding not unlike a LebaneseKate Bush. "Tangental Psychedelico" contains an amazing performance byan unknown Jordanian artist, calling up the spirits of Islam with theresonant echoes of his desert-surf guitar. Radio Palestine is apowerfully constructed document that forgoes making any politicalstatements, instead painting a painfully ephemeral portrait of acountry in violent flux.
Sublime Frequencies Out of the thousands of tedious archival record labels popping uprecently in this accelerated age of information overload, it's great tofind a label as fascinating as Sublime Frequencies. Alan Bishop of theSun City Girls created Sublime Frequencies as an outlet to releasevideo and sound recordings collected in his travels around the globe.Bishop's release schedule thus far has vividly illustrated his view ofthe third world as an alien landscape, an enticing ethnic cacophony ofmarginalized cultures and traditions, obscure music, vibrantenvironmental noises, hallucinogenic otherness and unraveled threads ofthe human narrative. Alan Bishop neatly sidesteps all of the tiredimplications of "world music" by refusing to editorialize; he simplyreleases unadulterated vintage recordings, impromptu radio collages,untreated field recordings and personal home videos. The recordings arequickly slapped onto the digital format and released with a minimum ofpost-production or fussy packaging. Radio Moroccois the sixth CD released on the Sublime Frequencies imprint, and it'salso one of the most intriguing. Culled from recordings of radiotransmissions intercepted all along the Moroccan coast in the summer of1983, Radio Morocco is a kaleidoscopic trip throughFrench-Moroccan pop, French and Arabic news reports, Berbertrance-folk, Arabic divas, Middle Eastern orchestral music, Europeannew wave, hypnotic jajouka and shortwave radio noise. I was immediatelyreminded of the revolutionary cut-ups produced by William S. Burroughsand Brion Gysin on Break Through in Grey Room that were oftenculled from radio and field recordings from Tangier. Interspersedthroughout are live recordings of Arabic divas like the legendary OumKoulthoum, who perform for an enraptured crowd of men who zealouslyshout "Allah!" at the end of each sexually charged refrain. At varioustimes, Radio Morocco operates as a sonic avatar, an audio timecapsule, a free-form diary through the crossroads of Western Africa, orexpressionist collage. Although Bishop clearly sees Sublime Frequenciesfulfilling the same sort of archival musical preservation function of alabel like Smithsonian Ethnic Folkways, Radio Morocco simplydoesn't work on that level. None of the performers or musical stylesthat we hear throughout the disc are identified in the liner notes, soits historical value is questionable. Instead, Radio Morocco isa postmodern collage of cultures alternately melding and clashing,replicating the fragmented memories of a unique time and place. Uponrepeated listens, these sounds can download into the listener's brainas an anti-virus to an unimaginative, safe and homogenized Westernculture that daily threatens to erase our uniqueness and culturalheritage forever.
I'm certainly not the first to observe this strange paradox, and I won't be the last, but it seems that the release schedule of new Muslimgauze albums has somehow increased exponentially since the death of Bryn Jones. Every month since Jones' untimely passing has brought at least one new release to his already preposterous discography, often two or three. At this stage, I'm actually having a hard time believing that even the absurdly prolific Bryn Jones committed this much unreleased material to tape before his demise. By this point, Gauze might actually have crossed that Biggie Smalls milestone, having released more albums posthumously than those released during his life. I have to admit however, perusing the newly released 77-minute Alms For Iraq on Soleilmoon, it's hard to say who else could have produced this music other than the singular Muslimgauze.Soleilmoon
Multiple tracks of sampled rhythms abruptly explode out of nowhere, spraying violent distortion across layers of interwoven samples of Arabic music. Scattershot, sweltering tabla rhythms are suddenly phased and mutated across the stereo channels, with moments of arrhythmic hiccupping and digital blurring maintaining a consistently aggressive, intense atmosphere. "Pale Elegant Egyptian" sounds like something Coil might have recorded for Horse Rotorvator, a mysterious Nubian folk loop matched with a pounding, hashish-filtered industrial rhythm. For most of the album, the dials are turned all the way up in an effort to push the distortion into the red zone, so many of the beats converge into a thick amorphous cloud of smoke. Dub techniques are utilized in unique ways, quiet passages that serve as the quiet before the storm, giving way to machine gun rhythms and fiery distortion. For those masochistic enough to be Gauze completists, the quality of the music on this disc is pretty much irrelevant: no doubt you've already purchased this. For those who enjoy only the occasional dip into this artists' imposing catalog, however, I can guardedly recommend Alms For Iraq as one of the better examples of late-period Muslimgauze. One thing that stands out about this release is the packaging: a tall cardboard wallet with six panels of disturbing images culled from alternative media websites dedicated to publicizing the ongoing atrocities in Iraq and Palestine. It's well-known that Bryn Jones was deeply moved by the plight of the disenfranchised Palestinians, and I would further conjecture that he felt his music could serve as audio terrorism, a series of violent missives to spread a message of an oppressed group of people. The cover image shows bare Arabic feet above a pair of sandals bearing the words "ISRAEL" and "USA." To the uninitiated, this might seem like a plea for tolerance and unity, until you realize that for Arabs, anything that touches the bottom of their feet is vile and unclean. One thing that Israel and the Western allies seem unable or unwilling to understand is that the "war on terrorism" will never be won. Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease itself. Anyone at the CDC would agree that the cause of an epidemic must be attacked, not its symptoms. Terrorism is the last brutal resort of a people who have no other voice, but refuse to surrender.
Razing Darkness Razing Darkness is the five years young solo project of South Carolina resident Jason Danielson. He is also a longtime member of the Tapegerm Collective, a "non-profit community of loop-based recording artists" in which members from around the world may cross pollinate megs upon gigs of sounds via good old fashioned file transfer protocol. Razing Germs is the result of 30 others' contributions being fed through the Razing Darkness filter over two years. Danielson adeptly composes and mixes with a palette that includes all manner of machinations, synth sounds, some percussive elements, heavily manipulated samples and various other more easily identifiable samples like bird song, lapping water and electricity. Nearly every track surrealistically (though more serious than humorous) juxtaposes moments of controlled calm and barely controlled chaos. The noisier end of the spectrum is well represented and listenable throughout but it's the more ambient end that I find most intriguing. "Bottom Dweller" announces itself with metallic sheen and later transitions to somnambulist drift and near-tinnitus tones. "In Death's Dreams", the lengthiest at nine minutes and my favorite, subconsciously shifts from deep moans and grumbles to brighter rays and surges, gradually revealing a light at the end of the tunnel. "Dimension Arachnia" opens with a gorgeous melodic loop then slips into fluid electronic waves and random-ish bleeps and faux disco beats. The occasional rhythm or melody comes off a bit forced but overall it's an almost surprisingly cohesive whole. Danielson is an amateur on his way to becoming a pro. Also of note is the wonderful cover art by DeVico, an antiquated partial profile of a woman whose beautiful features transition into tree branches and reptilian scales.
NFI After years in Trans Am collaborating on sounds from the extremelyexperimental to the completely inane, Sebastian Thomson finally giveshis own songs a go with The Frequency, and the results are enough tosend my head reeling into eternal confused giddiness. Thomson plays themajority of the instruments himself as well as handling vocal duties,with guests here and there as necessary. This album was finally anexplanation to me for TA, as most of the songs have a new wave/Beat Streetsoundtrack vibe. That's not to say "Blame Seb for that piece of crap,"but instead to say that his desire to make an '80s club booty recordmay have driven that release and bleeds over to this one. At momentswhile listening to this debut, I felt I was listening to the long lostmusic of hitchhikers on the Autobahn, then I wanted to breakdance, thenlaugh out loud the shouts of "move dat ass! move dat ass!" followed bysynchronized thrashing a la Warrant. In the middle of it all, though,is a unique voice trying to get out, and for that and trying to shakesome posteriors Thomson deserves some props. The style-meter is allover the place for this band, and that's sometimes the problem as theswitch can jar uncomfortably. Nevertheless, there are real nuggets tobe found. "Erasing Myself" is an arena rock anthem of magnumproportions, destined for inclusion on some teen angst coming of agecompilation bust still cutting-edge enough that indie rock and hairmetal fans might blast it. The gutter bass, snare snazz, and space saxof "Allnite" may just be the solution to the boredom on manydancefloors, where "You're the Perfect Size" and "Moonburn" are hardrock intensity with vague sexual innuendo spread throughout — withextra panting on the latter. There's also near-death metal here andthere, like on "Tell Me" and "Forgot," and a touch of that familiarTrans Am sound on "Chicas." Thomson appears to wrestle with thedifferent sides of his personality much in the same way Trans Am does,but he's at least decided on a pop-song structure, which in and ofitself puts him ahead of the pack in the electro-rock genre. TheFrequency are on tour soon opening for Trans Am, so show up early for ataste of this live.
V/Vm Test Records For V/VM this is love in the time of controversy, and it's especiallyfitting for them to be making some of the hottest music of theircareers while in the hottest water yet. After I obtained a copy of thisnow rare commodity through means I will not disclose — a process othersmight find difficult, as well — I immediately dimmed the lights andfired up the candles and twinkle lights to get in the right mood forthis revisiting of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood classic. Truth betold, I knew my body was about to be rocked, just not this hard and notwith so much of a history lesson involved. This being the 20thanniversary of the original release of "Relax," it seems V/VM wanted toshare some of the more interesting tidbits of the single's background,and some of the controversy that surrounded it, as well. Hence, theartwork that closely resembles the sleeve of the Frankie single, andsamples throughout the remixes of radio programmer reactions and otherstrangeness. As for the digital reconstruction that is the musicitself, I was floored by some of the showmanship involved. V/VM havegathered remixes from a number of manipulators, including Animal,Toecutter, Shitmat, The Alien Porno Midgets and more that succeed incapturing the essence of the track and then obliterating allconceptions about it. Several of the tracks don't even feature the wordthat is the song's title, cutting and splicing the bassline and choiceother phrases, creating a neo-stomp in pasting it all back together.There's odd combinations to be sure, but they work so well: the uses of"Auld Lang Syne" and "Smoke on the Water" are particularly noteworthyfor their originality and creation of an irreplaceable leitmotif in mybrain. Where other V/VM releases have seemed to pick apart and mock theartist in question, I felt that this was an earnest homage to theorginal and to the process of remixing in general. This is more of astatement than V/VM have ever made, and it hits on all levels; thusunintentionally they defy the issue that makes it difficult to find inthe first place, as well as those responsible for it.
Quecksilber With her previous full-lengths, Head Slash Bauch and Westernization Completed,Antye Greie-Fuchs proved entirely capable of creating beautiful andunique electronic music without the help of her Laub bandmate Von Jotkaor frequent collaborator Vladislav Delay. Reaching an early peak onlast year's Westernization, AGF's mature style is both morechallenging than her past work and more rewarding. The increasinglyabstract free-association of Greie's characteristic speak-singing seemsto have found perfect accompaniment in a new loosening of songstructure which, instead of dissolving substance, allows for thecareful buttressing of her words with basic and unclutteredsound-forms, accentuating the language and aligning the music moreclosely with the power of suggestion. The "instrumental" portion ofAGF's music remains a recognizably laptop-based affair, full of crisp,bass-less beats, clean synth-like melodic lines, and a delicateunderpinning of digital drone and flutter; however on Westernization and to a greater degree on Language is the Most,these elements are treated with greater economy of use, layered lessfrequently or abundantly, and approached with more attention to varietyand improvisational flow. It's as if Greie treats instrumental soundlike it were part of her vocal, as if these melodic shards and openrhythms have assumed fixed places in the artist's advancing word bank,lent the same concise, charged delivery as her speech. This effect isconsistent with the broader theme of Language is the Most,essentially a live recording from AGF's performance at the ArsElectronica Festival's Klangpark in 2003. The theme of the festivallast year was "Code - The Language of Our Time," and it's hard toimagine an musician engaged in a more literal dialogue between digitalcode, musical composition, and spoken language than Antye Greie. Westernization is as much sound poetry as it is patient left-field electronica, and Languagemakes the distinction even more complicated. The live setup, by forceor by choice, has Greie's voice appearing with less regularity and lessreliance on structural cues, creating music whose success is largelyreliant on the tact of the artist's speech and the resonance of herwords taken alone. Her compositions progress along astream-of-consciousness logic, incorporating numerous field recordings,samples and organic-sounding clatter to make Language AGF'smost complex listen to date, despite the equally unprecedented amountof open space appearing throughout. Compounding the event's thematicinterest in coded language, text, and the relevancy of establishedcommunication methods, Greie incorporates pieces of Westernization, as good a document of the artist's own "language" as any, into her live set. This decision has ended up granting Languagesomething of a "companion piece"-status, and while I'd be more likelyto recommend the former to new listeners, the live disc has provided anequal amount of rapturous listening and contains the seeds of newrefinement in AGF's sound, making it just as essential.