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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As the latest installment in his Songbook series, Mattin continues building from the concepts of those that came before, namely recording in a live setting with a variety of collaborators. This time the set was recorded at the Digging the Global South Festival in 2017 and is quite a politically charged recording, with Mattin drawing from two events early in the 20th century and what he sees as the parallels to the current resurgence of fascism in Europe (and by extension the rest of the world). Sprawling and challenging, the final product is anything but impenetrable though, and Mattin does a perfect job presenting the concept without ever sacrificing the music.
During my first listen to Songbook #7, which was done intentionally without consulting liner notes or any other textual information, I was rather taken aback by the applause at the end.As a whole, the album sounds far too controlled and structured to have been a live piece.This does not mean that it is an overly restrained record, however.There is plenty of chaos and noise to go around, but it was the abrupt stylistic shifts from piece to piece (and even within each section) that came across as almost too drastic or dramatics to be in a live setting.
Songbook #7 is broken into seven pieces, the first six of which are right around seven minutes long (see a pattern?).Mattin constructed the performance based around the first seven months of 1917 in revolutionary Russia, and the anarchist Germaine Berton, who murdered the leader of the far right French Action League in 1923.Drawing parallels to the world a century later, he recontextualizes these events; one at the macro-societal level and one at the individual, into a similar set of present day conditions that, thus far, have not been associated with a similarly drastic response.
His spoken word narration opening each section (titled for a month in 1917, January to July) ties the pieces together, but each stands alone as well capturing different styles fitting Mattin's intent with the record as a whole.Mattin's harsher noise background is the most prominent to be heard, from the wall of digital noise that opens "January," the engulfing layers of static on "April," and swirling passages in "May."The layers of electronic sound, provided by Moor Mother and Farahnaz Hatam, augmented by sampler work from Lucio Capece, Marcel Dickhage, and Cathleen Schuster, vary dramatically throughout, keeping a strong since of variety amidst the chaos here.
There are less synthetic moments here as well:Capece's clarinet outbursts on "February" and the deconstructed jazz rhythms by Colin Hacklander on "March" make for some organic signposts in an otherwise electronic swamp.Hacklander's drumming also gives propulsion to the thrash punk tinged parts of "February" and the sustained noise of "April" as well.Besides that the use of spoken word throughout also gives a bit of humanity within the swirling electronic storm.Mattin, Dickhage, and Schuster all provide text, and "June" sticks out as a meta-exploration of the album’s themes via direct conversation about the topic as it is ongoing.
Mattin's texts may make the underline themes clear throughout Songbook #7, but it is the structure and dynamics of the record that solidify this most.Aimed as a pointed critique of how various anti-fascist movements are attempting to accomplish their goals, the sprawling chaos of the sound, jerking and jumping from one sound to another, encapsulates this lack of focus perfectly.The more conventional sounding punk outbursts on "February" and "July" that feature Mattin's shouting vocal work come across as intentionally ineffectual:he is obviously angry, but the actuality comes across as him practically screaming at a wall.These two elements capture that critique of political efforts well:there is rage and good intentions throughout, but they are unfocused and therefore unable to accomplish much, especially when compared to the Russian revolution and Germaine Berton’s actions over a hundred years ago.The final product is as ugly as the political climate Mattin is critiquing, but in the best and most fascinating manner.
This quartet is the culmination of Glen Steenkiste’s long fascination with the harmonium, expanding beautifully upon the themes laid out by Helvette's sprawling Droomharmonium (2018). That said, this album feels like a bit of a different animal altogether, as this league of Belgian drone artists takes the kernel of Steenkiste's vision to a considerably transformed place. In fact, Het Interstedelijk Harmoniumverbond feels like an inspired continuation of the grand tradition of La Monte Young-style minimalism, weaving complexly harmonic and gorgeously undulating dronescapes that favorably call to mind masterpieces like The Electric Harpsichord.
The earliest origins of Steenkiste's long love affair with the harmonium remain unknown to me, but it was the band Pelt that first opened his eyes to the possibilities of making it the foundation for his own work.It was more of a slowly gestating philosophical evolution than a radical, immediate transformation, however.Though Steenkiste had played similar instruments before, it was not until he was touring through England in 2010 (as part of Sylvester Anfang II) that he finally got to spend time with the real deal.It is quite fitting that it was an Anfang tour that ultimately (if indirectly) lit the fuse for this endeavor, as it seems like nearly every experimental musician in Belgium has done time in one of Anfang's incarnations.In the case of the Harmoniumverbond, Steenkiste shares that history with Steve Marreyt (Edgar Wappenhalter), though I am delighted to report that they were also both involved with something called Chainsaw Gutsfuck.The quartet is rounded out by David Edren, who previously collaborated with Steenkiste in Brahmen Raag, as well as Brecht Ameel of Razen.All four artists live in different cities, so it was not until Steenkiste was approached by Kraak about creating an ensemble for the Eastern Daze festival in 2017 that a project of this scope became a viable possibility.Prior to that, Steenkiste had experimented quite a bit with multitracking himself to achieve a similar effect, but the fixed nature of that approach fundamentally undercut the organic, flowing vision that he was trying to achieve.
The album is divided into two side-long pieces, "Balg" (Bellows) and "Reit" (Reeds).In a general sense, the two pieces are quite similar, as each is essentially a single rich chord that endlessly waxes, wanes, and subtly transforms over the course of roughly twenty minutes.The two pieces have somewhat divergent trajectories though, as "Balg" opens with a dense, dissonant chord teeming with murky, ugly harmonies, while "Riet" opens with a single, quavering tone and steadily builds from there.The starting point is almost irrelevant, however, as it is the blossoming and gently hallucinatory evolution of each piece that is the real show: pulses and oscillations cohere, clouds of overtones swirl, shades of darkness and light flicker and vanish, and new chord shapes endlessly converge and dissipate.If I had to choose, "Balg" is probably the stronger of the two pieces, as it achieves a kind of majestic, transcendent heaviness right from the start, seamlessly blurring the lines between immersive, hypnotic reverie and a menacingly shivering and shimming haze of uneasy harmonies."Reit," on the other hand, is more of a slow-burning affair, gradually amassing density and complex harmonies as it quietly moves towards a quivering and elegiac crescendo.Both pieces are wonderful and unfold in a very satisfying and absorbing dynamic arc.
It is not exactly fair to compare this album to Droomharmonium, as the latter was a solo release and Het Interstedelijk Harmoniumverbond is very much a collaborative endeavor, but it does feel like Steenkiste's vision became much more focused over the last couple of years.However, it is equally possible that his vision did not change at all and he merely benefited greatly from recording in an actual studio and having three other artists to help shape these pieces into their optimal forms.I would be curious to know if these pieces were performed completely "live" and how much overdubbing or editing might have taken place, as Steenkiste took quite a purist approach when he was on his own.This album feels considerably more edited and is the better for it.Rather than suffering from "too many cooks" syndrome, Het Interstedelijk Harmoniumverbond have chiseled that vision to taut, uncluttered, and fluidly unfolding perfection.While it might be a stretch to call these drone pieces "compositions," these loosely structured channelings feel thoughtfully condensed and distilled, unhurriedly yet ceaselessly moving forward at all times and never wasting a single note or lapsing into stasis.Moreover, the spell this album casts is a beautifully timeless one, deftly dissolving the delineations that separate the medieval, the ritualistic, and the contemporary experimental music scene. Het Interstedelijk Harmoniumverbond is the rarest of jewels: a four-way collaboration that can easily stand with any of the individual artists' strongest work.
Pale Bloom finds Sarah Davachi coming full circle. After abandoning the piano studies of her youth for a series of albums utilizing everything from pipe and reed organs to analog synthesizers, this prolific Los Angeles-based composer returns to her first instrument for a radiant work of quiet minimalism and poetic rumination.
Recorded at Berkeley, California's famed Fantasy Studios, Pale Bloom is comprised of two delicately-arranged sides. The first – a three-part suite where Davachi's piano acts as conjurer, beckoning Hammond organ and stirring countertenor into a patiently unfolding congress – recalls Eduard Artemiev's majestic soundtrack for Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. "Perfumes I-III" employs the harmonically rich music of Bach as a springboard for abstract, solemn pieces that sound as haunted as they are dreamlike.
While the first half of Pale Bloom showcases Davachi's latent Romanticism, the sidelong "If It Pleased Me To Appear To You Wrapped In This Drapery" reveals the Mills College graduate's affinity for the work of avant-garde composers La Monte Young and Eliane Radigue. Softly vibrating strings rise and fall like complementary exhalations of breath. As the fluctuating pitches create overtones that pitter and pulse, the piece slowly and subtly evolves – suggesting a well-tempered stillness, yet without stasis.
A deconstruction of Ska, Rocksteady and Skinhead Reggae from the '50s, '60s and '70s. Rather a passionate deconstruction of a genre than compositions or remixes per se, this incantatory tribute favors abstraction using loops, distortion, compression, variations of speed and height, and effects (delay, reverb, chorus). Recorded in different states of altered consciousness, Mt. Gemini is built of spontaneous and unexpected combinations. It is an attempt to generate inner spaces where the borders between reverie and reality blur. An hallucinatory shock, a journey made of distant echoes, an atmosphere imbued with joy and nostalgia.
Written alongside and as a follow-up to Disambiguation, Cruel Diagonals' Pulse of Indignation is a mighty next leap in Megan Mitchell's musical trajectory. Whereas, for Mitchell, Disambiguation was about sense-making and uncovering some of the traumas surrounding Mitchell’s early musical career as an adolescent and young adult, Pulse of Indignation is about recognizing the exploitation, grooming, and pain that she was subjected to as a young woman under the watchful eye of men with power in the music industry. It's about harnessing the righteous anger, repulsion, and indeed, indignation, at the proliferation of these experiences for young women and non-men. If Disambiguation was about mourning the loss of Mitchell’s self-volition through uncovering layers of previously obscured suffering, Pulse of Indignation is about moving through to the next stage and owning the narrative she projects into the world.
"Azzazin is a double standout Muslimgauze album, first LP originally issued in 1996, as a CD and the second LP as a 10", tightly focused on a singular palette of monotone drones and swarming electronic buzzes, which arguably sound like a parallel to early Editions Mego.
They're probably the most minimalist Muslimgauze tracks you've heard, and even still he manages to express a fine range of abstracted emotions, from aggressive buzz to tender ambient pieces and spectral concrete prisms. Starting with an extremely minimal opening number -- it's no surprise Finnish experimental duo Pan Sonic are Muslimgauze fans, based on this track -- Azzazin has a much more electronic feeling than most of Bryn Jones' other albums, eschewing the traditional elements used elsewhere for a rough, quietly aggressive and disturbing feel. The fourth track, with its unpredictable keyboard snarls over a low, quiet pulse, and the sixth and seventh songs, with distorted, high-pitched noise tones mixed with a soft series of bass notes and a slight spoken-word interjection from time to time, are some of the strong points from this intriguing release.
Surprisingly this album contains no trace of percussion whatsoever and instead presents a dry and claustrophobic minimal electronics that sounds more like a Warp band or a project by some S.E.T.I.-inspired laptop artist than a Middle Eastern-inspired band. Outerspace sci-fi sounds meet with found sounds and human-made noises, isolationist experimental knob tweaking and mostly hi frequency material loops playing at random. Beats are used in an extremely limited way throughout Azzazzin, with rhythm, always a key component of Jones' work, more suggested at points by the nature of the keyboard lines than anything else. This record draws a picture of the artist that is different than the one we got to know. Closing with an equally minimal track, Azzazin won't be everyone's cup of tea, but adventuresome listeners will find themselves rewarded."
Twenty years ago, Jan Jelinek's debut album Personal Rock was released by Source Records. Under the pseudonym Gramm, it brings together eight tracks that have not been available on vinyl since their original release. Faitiche is very glad to announce the re-release of the album: Personal Rock will appear as a double LP featuring the original cover artwork. What people wrote about Personal Rock two decades ago:
"Situated somewhere between Jelinek's much-loved Loop-Finding Jazz Records, Farben, Move D's Conjoint project and Atom Heart's most immersive work for Rather Interesting, it is a late-night album full of subtle production tricks and melodic House structures that belong to the pre-millennial IDM heyday, but which transcend its overly-masculine templates.” (Boomkat)
"Though many producers have pushed forward the clicks-and-cuts style of experimental ambience developed by German experimentalists Oval (among others), few have been able to match their knack for making abstract cuts into pieces of undeniable beauty. Jan Jelinek's first LP as Gramm is one of the precious few, and it is obvious from the opener." (AllMusic)
"Organized in organic structures and minimal movements, the tracks get into utopian states and super-desirable moods, offering superior contentedness and dependable taste of the kind seldom sustained for a whole album. (...) Subway-Escalator-Soul." (Spex)
The latest liminal low-end odyssey from French shape-shifter Maxime Primault's BZMC entity swaps the screwed alien dancehall of past outings in favor of miasmic subterranean ritual, with compelling results. Born of "a few very intense sessions, in altered states of consciousness," the three sprawling compositions comprising Voyage Sacrifice ooze in slow, smoke-choked darkness, awash with dungeon groans, insectoid noise, reverbed bells, molten bass, and distant demonic mumblings. Primault speaks of recent creative strategies attempting to "delete time, or escape time," at which these pieces certainly succeed, entrancing the listener in their spiral sinkhole infinity: beatless, lightless, limitless.
Occasionally a rusted, lurching metronome emerges, infusing a drugged sense of forward motion, but the essence of Voyage Sacrifice is textural and tantric – "almost like some kind of prayer." Chants are chanted; the zone is black. The specter of dub still looms in the disorienting fog of FX and negative space but ultimately these sides exist outside (and deep beneath) any recognizable sonic lineage. This is cultic, questing music, deprivation chamber hallucinations "beyond good and evil, beyond sense and non-sense."
This Rorschach enigma dimension is foundational, as Primault admits: "It's a mental journey. I handled the sacrifice; the voyage is yours."
Low Distance is Deaf Center´s third full-length studio album and perhaps the most focused effort by the Norwegian duo to date. After their last record Owl Splinters (2011) was quite an eclectic endeavor, Erik K Skodvin & Otto A Totland draw their sound back into something more quiet and minimal.
The record starts with a piece of sweeping analougue electronics. It is a spacious, yet dynamic opener that leads directly into the static tones and piano motifs of "Entity Voice," which balances a new sense of abstraction with the classic Deaf Center sound. It's warm and close while sounding like it's set in the outer horizon. Overall Low Distance feels both alien and familiar with its atonal synths, close pianos and drowned-out noises.
After meeting in studio for the first time since 2011, the recordings came out of a 3-day session in 2017. It was then mixed at both EMS Stockholm and at Erik's home studio over a longer period to create a blend of deeply layered as well as stripped-down pieces. Both Erik & Otto have been active individually since their last meeting as Deaf Center: Otto released 2 solo piano albums, while Erik has furthered his descent into musical abstraction both under his own name and as Svarte Greiner. It is long overdue to hear them connect their personalities into something new. Low Distance is a welcome return replete with beauty, mystery and uncertainty.
As the conclusion to his Same Animal, Different Cages project, Brooklyn composer David First has again chosen to use an instrument with more limited applications than the first installments two (guitar and synth). The sitar has a very distinctive sound and specific cultural associations (which First discusses his struggle with in the liner notes). Aware of this, he pushes the boundaries of what a single instrument can represent, and also showcases his exceptional skills as both a composer and performer.
Knowing the instruments these four records would be based around beforehand, I had similar initial feelings about this one that I also had about the third volume, Civil War Songs.The first two albums, built from acoustic guitar and analog synthesizer, seemed easy enough, since both instruments are prevalent enough and part of so many genres of music that First limiting himself did not seem like that much of a stretch.The latter two, the aforementioned harmonica album (Civil War Songs) and this one seemed a bit more challenging, with both using very distinct sounding instruments.Civil War Songs succeeded; in no small part to First’s conceptual framing of the album as a modernized take on traditional Americana.Sitar Music of North Brooklyn, however, is a more of a purely experimental work.
First addresses how he struggled with the cultural connotations of the sitar in the liner notes, and concerns of his autodidactic approach to the instrument would be disrespectful of Indian music in general, as well as fears of cultural appropriation.The final work clearly demonstrates First's compositional dedication to experimental music while retaining the traditional sound of the instrument in a unique way, one that expands the possibilities of the sitar while still remaining faithful to its significant legacy.
Both "Sitar Solo 1" and "Sitar Solo 2" are an amalgamation of different playing styles that result in a distinct, yet unconventional sound.At times, especially on the former, it sounds as if First is playing the instrument as he would a conventional guitar, resulting in a traditional sounding playing stylethat results in non-traditional sounds.During other sections, it becomes less about the playing of the instrument and more about the treatment:moving frets and adjusted tuning pegs result in wobbling strings and off-kilter tones.The two compositions are similar, but "Sitar Solo 2" is less frenetic overall, allowing the sounds to expand and breathe more.
Like my initial trepidation with Civil War Songs, I was concerned Sitar Music of North Brooklyn would simply be too much of the same thing, and while the former was presented in a strong conceptual context, this one is solely about the music.David First's ear and ability as a composer, however, provide enough variation to sustain an entire album’s worth of pure sitar, and honestly he could have continued on with even more material.It makes for a fitting conclusion to a fascinating quadrilogy of albums that just impressed me more and more with each installment.
It is quite a rare and improbable event for a self-released debut to amass so much buzz and acclaim upon its release, but All My People is quite a deserving recipient for such good fortune. For better or worse, Somerville's work is likely to draw superficial comparisons to Carla dal Forno or Liz Harris, as she is quite fond of simple drum machine patterns, reverb-swathed vocals, and minimal musical accompaniment. At its heart, however, Somerville's vision is a fresh and unique one, as that stark template is an unlikely framework for a delightfully eclectic and unabashedly pop-minded suite of songs (albeit pop in the classic sense, a la Pet Sounds). In that regard, the achingly gorgeous centerpiece "Dreaming" is the album's biggest draw, but Somerville is just as adept at the production side of the equation, taking these seven pieces in some delightfully inventive and unusual directions.
The opening "Eyes Don't Say It" is initially a deceptively subdued and hazy introduction, as a bittersweet ascending melody slowly creeps into a landscape of buried, heartbeat-like kick drum and blurrily impressionistic dreampop guitars.That languorous, navel-gazing lead-in proves to be kind of an ingenious bit of songcraft magic though, as the song blossoms into swooningly romantic and vivid color when the first chorus arrives and essentially remains there for the rest of its duration, steadily amassing more warmth and deeper harmonies as layers of breathy vocals pile up.It is quite a beautiful song and it would be a strong template for the rest of the album to follow.To Somerville's credit, however, she never goes back to the same well twice, gamely imbuing each of these seven songs with their own quirks and character.For example, the following "All I Ever Wanted" is a bit of suave and sensuous art-pop in the vein of Stereolab, but stripped down to little more than a breezily shuffling groove.It is quite a likable song in general, but the touches in the periphery are a masterpiece of sexy, subtle psychedelia, as bleary Theremin-like melodies, woozy washes of guitar, and a wandering, chorus-heavy bass line gradually build up to a hallucinatory crescendo of distant voices.The title piece pulls off a similarly delicious feat of psych-pop transformation, opening with a cavernous house thump and a ghostly haze of uneasy drones before being unexpectedly joined by a pretty, floating vocal melody that sounds like an a capella rendition of a traditional Irish folk song.It is a truly bizarre convergence of threads, as it feels like two radically different pieces of music mashed together, albeit in a pleasing (if disorienting) way.Gradually, however, a host of buzzing drones and other subtly lysergic elements fade in until the song fully takes shape as a coherent whole.
On the more unrepentantly hook-heavy side, the aforementioned "Dreaming" is the album’s unquestionable zenith, calling to mind a hypnagogic reincarnation of classic Patsy Cline (or at least an especially great song by underappreciated 4AD alums Tarnation).In lesser hands, such a piece would be dragged down by melancholy, but Somerville sounds like a wide-eyed ingenue sensuously crooning her favorite love song at a karaoke bar in a David Lynch film: surreal textures gnaw at the edges and the song occasionally threatens to dissolve into the ether, yet it never stops being an innocently warm, sincere, and absolutely lovely piece at its core.The closing "Brighter Days" is yet another dose of pure pop bliss, but it is a bit more straightforward, as a trebly, ramshackle drum machine beat cheerily lurches forward through murky major chords and dreamy vocal melodies.Much like "Dreaming," it feels like the pop of a simpler time when almost every song was about love and a great hook was everything.To an uncanny degree, Somerville is singularly skilled at channeling classic country or '60s girl group songcraft without a hint of irony or heavy-handed pastiche, coming across as heartfelt and reverent while still managing to make these recordings sound like they were dubbed over a badly worn Enya tape found in your childhood bedroom.
While "Dreaming" is already a lock for one of my favorite songs of the year, one immortal song does not necessarily make for a great album (it just makes for a great single).All My People comes very close to being a great album though, as the only real caveat is that its impressive cavalcade of sublime and ghostly pop gems is a bit too brief to amount to a completely satisfying whole.That said, I genuinely appreciate the perfect, uncluttered brevity of Somerville's catchiest songs: she can pack a lot of beauty, inspiration, and depth into a mere three minutes and wisely never sticks around longer unless she has a cool idea for an outro.On a deeper level, however, much of her brilliance is of the intuitive and intangible variety.Obviously, lo-fi bedroom recordings have been an indie pop trope for years, yet Somerville has that magic touch that transforms "hiss-soaked and sketchlike" into "intimate and undiluted."She also has a knack for making prettiness feel pregnant with hidden depth rather than lightweight, as well as a real genius for making for her more experimental flourishes feel like natural, organic elements that were gently coaxed out of their hook-filled hiding spots.Everything is done with an unerring lightness of touch and an endearing fluidity.Artists like Somerville are a true rarity: a gifted and soulful songwriter who is also effortlessly idiosyncratic enough to appeal to someone as cranky and jaded as me.All My People is a legitimately remarkable debut.