28 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

With Mathew Sweet's third release for Kranky, he secures himself as the arch-mage of death soaked acoustica. Again employing mostly his guitar and breathy vocal, while momentarily reaching for further instrumentation, this album is less hidden-away sounding than previous Boduf Songs recordings. It is, however, still imbued with inimitable sense of intimateness, darkness, and magic.

 

Kranky

"All of my heroes died the same day. All of them fallen away."  Thus begins the what could have easily been one of the most depressing records of the year. There is however a sense of power and dare I say hope here that I did not find on Mat Sweet's previous releases. I still worry that once winter arrives, this record might chance putting me into some sort of foul midday slumber. But alas, it is the beginning of fall and for this recording there isn't a better time for it to emerge. The artwork on this release is a bit schizophrenic but will cue in any unassuming listener as to what they are in for. Dark, minimal graphic design work adorns the cover in true Kranky aesthetic. Inside: an F.W. Murnau still and a reversed black and white image of a line drawing titled "The Sleeper" features ghostly figures swirling about a woman asleep in her bed. The back cover contains a classic Beksinski painting  of a decrepit and imposing pillar in the midst of a graveyard; doomy.

To the impatient ear, How Shadows Chase the Balance might seem like simply more of the same, but Sweet has given us a record of significant improvement. "Things Not to Be Done on the Sabbath" features the welcome addition of picked and strummed banjo to the mix. The vocals are haunting, yet full of strength and confidence in their harmonies. I have no complaints about the inclusion of more familiar territory like "I Can't See a Thing in Here," executed with slowly plucked guitar and steady vocal mantrams. It is the songs like this where Sweet is allowed to show of his amazing ability to mix a truly delicate sound.

The majority of the following songs each have their own anomaly: "Quite When Group" features a cutting 4/4 snare-heavy beat; "A Spirit Harness" ends with piano accompaniment; "Found on the Bodies of Fallen Whales" begins with plodding electric bass, guitar, and atmospherics that would not sound out of place on a Labradford record; and the records closer, "Last Glimmer on a Hill at Dusk," will not pull anyone further down into the darkness Sweet erects around his albums, with its strummed banjo and relatively upbeat pace. This is a record filled with obscurity, secrecy, and wickedness; but it seems Sweet may have something even more in mind and in store.

samples

• Things Not to Be Done on the Sabbath
• Found on the Bodies of Fallen Whales
• Mission Creep

 

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28 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

Eschewing any species of frills or frippery, the simple card and paper-fastener packaging encasing this latest entry from Machinefabriek in Staalplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series resolutely reflects the aesthetic of Dutch musician Rutger Zuydervelt. Although sparse is the operative word here, Zuydervelt's lean compositions and quiet tiny sounds, carefully sculpted around deep spaces, are nevertheless harmonically and richly complex, ranging from fragile gossamer tones to deeply sweeping friezes. Moreover, the music is warmly inviting and enticing, indeed inviting and enticing one to explore a strange and slightly surreal world.

 

Staalplaat

There are times when the word 'ambient,' when applied to music, is woefully insufficient to encompass the kind of music that Zuydervelt creates from nothing more than a guitar and computer. There are times when the guitar parts are separable from the computerised, but at others it is hardly to be recognised as a stringed instrument at all, such are the shimmering and liquid qualities that Zuydervelt coaxes from it. Track one, “Bathyale 1,” grasps like a distant series of memories, whose shapes are only dimly to be discerned and details obscured; just occasionally something sharp stabs through with startling effect. The first minute or so is complete silence, shattered by the astringent explosion of a sharply plucked string. Plangently gentle hums float languidly and lazily wrap themselves around stretches of quiet, plucked guitar and harmonics bursting serenely in small sonic blooms. Drones hover just out of reach, just like those sought for memories that remain resolutely elusive and resist the most determined of searching fingers. Inevitably, images and sounds dissolve in the finale, atomising into mist, compounding frustration and memory.

That elusive character continues with “Bathyale 2,” surging and retreating, with a string figure repeating over and over like a thought that refuses to resolve itself into anything concrete. Against this is set scratching and howling, whispering and emergent droning, small, partially formed hints and images that keep suggesting possibilities that never quite form complete pictures. These snatches appear more fully formed, but the detail is still somewhat fuzzy and dream-like. The images gently fade back into the dreamscape from whence they emerged, indistinct shades once more, as delicate and insubstantial as dew-bedecked spider’s webs on a fall morning, glistening in crisp sunlight. Touch it and it breaks apart.

The third instalment, “Bathyale 3,” resolves into something with mass and solidity as it rumbles into existence from the far distance, coalescing into view in its own slow time. Given the preceding flighty tracks, it may seem slightly misplaced.  Slow, weightily symphonic, and sedimentary movements swirl and accrete, the drone layers building over long cycles, piling on each other, constructing gargantuan edifices that defy gravity. I once remember seeing a painting, by the surrealist René Magritte, of a castle sitting atop a colossal chunk of rock floating in a cloudy blue sky, hovering insensibly above the sea.  In the same way that the Belgian artist’s painting depicts the juxtaposition of two polar opposites, setting the world at odds with itself, so does this third track. “Bathyale 3” simultaneously possesses a cyclopean weightiness and a feathery lightness, the friction between the two qualities creating a sound-painting of hypnogogic power. It is this power which gives it its place here, this weighty insubstantiality. More to the point, Zuydervelt has an assured touch with the material, so that both qualities are present, each in their own measure, to create that marvellous effect.

Machinefabriek’s world is dream-like: a place where colors run and bleed and outlines are fuzzy and blurred. The music is fluid and sometimes lacks a definite shape, and has something of the alien about it. Yet, having said that, there is still something vaguely comforting and familiar to me about it after all, like those elusive memories alluded to earlier. The images evoked tumble in and out of focus, appearing briefly and flowing swiftly, just long enough for them to remind me of something but too fleeting for me to register completely. The music possesses a willow o’ the wisp evasiveness, enticing one to chase after it but never allowing one to come near it. In that sense, it’s alluringly beautiful music, beckoning saucily but at the last moment running away. If I listen carefully, I might just be able to make out faint rills of laughter.

samples:

• Bathyale 1
• Bathyale 2
• Bathyale 3

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28 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

Apparently they do make them like this anymore. A mere 38 years after it was begun; Fotheringay's second album is released. Another chance to hear the voice of Sandy Denny, famously described as like 'a clean glass in a sink full of dirty dishes.'

 

Fledg'ling Records

It might be heretical and fogeyish but sometimes I wish that anyone coming out with supposedly new or alt-folk could do a few standards first. Just to prove they can do it. Come on, even Picasso did some fantastic conventional portraits before embarking on the radically different path down which his imagination led.

But I digress and rant. Fotheringay were the first of Sandy Denny's post-Fairport Convention projects. After one album, produced by Joe Boyd, the group dissolved and Denny embarked on recording under her own name. For the uninitiated, Fairport Convention has been compared to a British version of The Band in that they respected and amplified folkroots to create an exciting new sound which illuminated the past. They included Richard Thompson, who, if music were gauged in sporting terms, is arguably Britain's best ever guitar player. Fotheringay lacked Thompson but they created their own intriguing balance between UK folk-rock and US country-rock that could play as well at the Queens Head, Belper, as at the Kerrville Folk Festival.

The opening song, an anti war epistle called "John The Gun" comes with the unwanted surprise of Sam Donahue's saxophone solo.It is said that he was in from Nevada, visiting his son Jerry,  and Denny insisted he contribute. Fotheringay 2 has solid and subtle playing throughout but the highlight is Denny and her ability to create a majestic sound that lifts the mood far above the everyday. Trivia buffs might note that she remains the only singer to guest on a Led Zeppelin recording. On what may be her best version of "Wild Mountain Thyme" her voice sounds like a series of inspired sighs. Equally, with "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" she casts an intoxicating spell in the role of a kept, yet betrayed, woman. Her ballad singing can induce shivers on a humid 90 degree afternoon. A phrase sung by her hangs in the air like a sunlit spider's web covered in frost. 

Denny also sang with The Strawbs (who first recorded her signature piece "Who Knows Where The Time Goes"). It is appropriate, then, that the last track here is a piece written by the Strawbs bandleader, Dave Cousins. Ironically, his composition "Two Weeks Last Summer" was one of the first songs he ever recorded, and yet Fotheringay's version is perhaps the most modern sounding of all the music on 2. Don't be fooled by the term ‘modern', though, as there is no concession to the 21st Century here - mainly because Jerry Donahue has completed this project in a seamless manner respectful of the roots and vision of his fellow original group members. His task was complicated since all lead vocals were originally recorded with the intention of being overdone and the master tapes were scattered across the archives of various record companies. I don't know if Donahue had final say in the cover art but the depiction of an embroidered number 2 that is not quite finished is modest and apt: for this record will never truly be finished.

Fledg'lng also carries the work of Shirley & Dolly Collins, Chris McGregor, Leon Rosselson, Davy Graham and many others. This tiny label has a catalog of music and information full of varied delights. The site links several discographies, such as those of Thompson and Robert Wyatt, as well as Martin Carthy's which is truly spectacular. We still don't know where the time goes, but this record sounds fresh and vital even though Trevor Lucas has been dead for almost 20 years and his lover Sandy Denny has been gone for three decades. Fotheringay 2 is a throwback, for sure, but to a time and place worth revisiting.  

samples:

• Knights of the Road
• Two Weeks Last Summer
• Wild Mountain Thyme

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28 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

It’s refreshing to hear an album of sonic abstraction that falls into neither of the following categories:  minimalist drone, harsh noise, or crossover into other electronic realms.  Not that there is anything wrong with those at all, I enjoy many works that fall into those aforementioned categories.  But works like this collaboration between the Illusion of Safety member and long time sound artist and master for hire Dimuzio are fascinating in that they are focused only on the nuanced textures of sound.

 

No Fun Productions

Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the 15 tracks that compile this album are based upon live collaborations over a period of only three days.  The pieces were not overdubbed or otherwise processed, but only mixed after the performances to give a more cohesive flow.  As in any good recording of this nature, the specific instrumentation and tools of performance remain a mystery (the liner notes credit laptops, sampling, and “sound sources”), but their output is captivating.  The lengthy opener “Deregulation” begins quietly:  electronic loops deep in the mix as fragments of voice and computer data tones swell up, later matched by lush, almost classically dark ambient synths and eventual digital data sputtering, like a hard drive in its death throes. 

Some of the tracks also have some obvious intended contrasts:  the thick, organ like tones that comprise “In God We Trust” have a distinct holy quality, especially next to the machinery hum and hellish detuned orchestra of “Devil’s Torrent,” which immediately follows.  Similarly, the quiet, pitch bent sound of “Operative” is followed up by the heavier “Aggregate,” with a thick distorted synth element that places it somewhere near the realms of current power electronics/death industrial.

Other pieces exist solely on their own, without any easy point of reference to draw:  “Infecticidal” is based upon a loop of what sounds like creaking springs, but is matched with what resembles ethnic percussion, thick stabs of noise, and what sounds like birds chirping.  It's an odd and somewhat disorienting combination of sounds that these two artists manage to sculpt into a fascinating track that sounds like very little else. 

The album closes on an especially odd note with the penultimate “Mediastorm,” consisting of odd chattering noises and dense reverb blasts which resemble the recordings of hurricane forced winds more than anything else. The actual last bit is almost pure silence mixed with the occasional odd sound (it may be the artists dismantling their gear after the show).

Although from live recordings, this collaboration has a distinct cohesive feel that, even with all its abstraction, feels like a fully realized album.  While there are the occasional traces of other genres that show up, as a whole it stands on its own as a collection of sonic textures that further listening only expand upon.

samples:

• Deregulation
• In God We Trust
• Aggregate

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28 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

From the band's name, I was expecting something more along the lines of pretentious 1970s prog rock, but this most definitely is not the case.  While a rather short album, the three expansive tracks that comprise it encompass a vast variety of sounds and styles that create an ethnographic, soundtrack experience unlike many others.

 

Utech

The disc opens and closes with two longer pieces and a shorter, more conventional track sandwiched in the middle.  The opening of “Night Soil” begins with all metallic swelling reverbs and pronounced field recordings including birds loudly chirping.  Eventually the abnormal nature sounds are supplanted with improvised percussion and subtle, restrained strings that eventually builds to a level of pure explosive noise before retreating back into a quiet realm of harmonium and organ before again growing dark with bass heavy loops to end the track.

The short title track is the most musically conventional on here: a rhythm section made up of heavily reverberated clattering, plaintive acoustic guitar, and gentle vocals that, while heavily multitracked and echoed, never lose their human quality.  Layers of effects and production serve to add complexity, but never obscures the core musicality of the song.

Finally, the closing “The Dream Kingdom” is especially cinematic, opening with a subwoofer rattling low end and gong before segueing into tense, rumbling strings and bits of metallic percussion.  The more conventional movie soundtrack sound is later mixed with noisy electronic textures and eventually martial snare drumming that builds in darkness and intensity until pulling away, leaving only harmonium and the final reverberations of strings to close the album.

Although an all too brief release, Shivers and Voids is a remarkable piece of cinema for the ears that, though atmospherically it makes sense, probably would not make for a good soundtrack because there is simply too much going on.  Instead, it is probably best relegated to the auditory realm so it can be the focus of attention.  It would have been nice for there to have been a bit more material on here, however, as it clocks in as more of an EP than a full album, but the good far outweighs this shortcoming.

samples:

• Night Soil
• Shivers and Voids
• The Dream Kingdom

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27 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

Sublime Frequencies presents a CD reissue of a limited edition vinyl by this Tuareg rock group featuring the enigmatic guitar hero Bibi Ahmed. The group brings to its hybrid of roots rock, Afrobeat and plugged-in fuzz rock a political urgency, the music having its origin as a political weapon used to communicate from Libyan refugee camps within the Republic of Niger in the 1980s and '90s.

 

Sublime Frequencies

Even without the background of political and social unrest that informs Tuareg guitar rock, the music here would be fascinating and well worth anyone's time. The sound is both tense and celebratory, a fertile combination of Arabic music, Afrobeat and Western rock tropes, with elements familiar from the Ethiopiques group of artists, but with a distinct rhythmic chug all its own. The lyrics are sung in the language of Tamacheq, spoken by the nomadic desert people known as the Tuareg, a distinct ethnic minority that have traditionally gotten short shrift in colonial disputes, and were forced into refugee camps in Niger and Mali. The unique elements of Tuareg culture could fill a small volume, but suffice to say that their distinct cultural heritage informs their unique blend of influences, creating an ethnic music quite unlike anything I've ever heard before. Urgent, shuffling dance rhythms form a backdrop for funky, rootsy electric guitar runs, with male group vocals occasionally punctuated by the shrill ululations of female singers.

The sound is social, and the recordings here are refreshingly human, capturing the sound of the room in which they were recorded, full of people engaged in musical celebration and communication. Hisham Mayet, a name that is frequently seen on Sublime Frequencies releases, handles the recording here. Mayet acts more as a field recorder than a music engineer, simply hitting record and staying out of the way. Though all of the tracks (except for the first, which is from the Group Inerane archives) are recorded in crisp stereo, there is still a warmth to the proceedings, mostly because the group themselves are loosely mic'd, and the sounds of amplifier distortion are allowed to remain.

Although the liner notes offer nothing in the way of translations of the Tamacheq lyrics, they do offer compelling background information on the Tuareg and the rebellions and political disputes that caused their marginalization. The guitar rock made by Group Inerane has its origins in North Saharan rebel music, with incendiary political lyrics railing against the governments of Niger and Mali. During the 1980s and '90s, this music was recorded onto cassettes and distributed throughout refugee camps as a way of disseminating the message of the Tuareg resistance. Now that a peace accord has been reached between the Tuareg rebels and the governments of Niger and Mali, music that was once banned is now quite popular. After hearing this story, I couldn't help but wish that instead of a recording of a modern group, Sublime Frequencies had instead attempted to reissue some of the old underground rebel cassettes. Whatever fidelity might have been lost would surely have been made up for with authenticity.

But it's best to focus on what is on the album, rather than what isn't. What Group Inerane present is a collection of ten great songs, many of them based on originals by Abdallah Oumbadougou, Bibi Ahmed's mentor. If I had not been told that many of these songs reflect the tragic destiny of a whole generation of Tuareg, I might never have guessed, as most of these tracks are upbeat, energetic and jubilant. The rhythms are similar to what one might expect from Afrobeat, but quite a bit simpler, lacking complex polyrhythms, no doubt because of the presence of only one drummer, rather than a group. The dual fuzz guitar attacks are unique, a kind of extra-geographical style that takes in Western rock n' roll, jazz, funk and Arabic modes and spits out something utterly singular. The quartet of female singers frequently reach a hair-raising chorus of glossolalic ululations that could be taken either as a funereal shriek or an ecstatic outpouring of positivity.

This is another classy release for Sublime Frequencies, highlighting a genre of music that is very likely unfamiliar to all but the most adventurous of world music listeners. The liner notes and press material persist in calling the music here "psychedelic," a term which I object to because I'm sure whatever mind-expanding qualities the music may possess are mostly the result of its exociticism. Were we familiar with the Tuareg cultural heritage, the music might not sound strange or unorthodox at all. For all we know, Group Inerane is the Aerosmith of Tuareg guitar music.

samples:

• Kuni Majagani
• Awal September
• Tenerte

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27 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

Most attendees at a Suicide concert these days would claim to respect the "work" of the streetwise electronic innovators—provided that said "work" consists of their confrontational eponymous debut and, possibly, their glorious Ric Ocasek helmed sophomore album.  I, on the other hand, am a Suicide fan, one who eagerly pounces on the members' infrequent solo albums with the same vigor as I did the reissues of their underrated third and fourth records.  Simply receiving a copy of this release in the mail was a perverse joy unto itself.

 

File 13

Last time we heard Martin Rev on record was his last File-13 release, 2003’s lo-fi rocknroller To Live, which superficially appeared to be comprised of hooky tracks that Suicide vocalist Alan Vega rejected for 2002’s American Supreme, rightfully reclaimed by their creator.  Far heavier than his prior output and even a tad conventional for the aging auteur, it violently contrasted with the sincere bubblegum pop found on See Me Ridin’ and Strangeworld.  Evidently, Rev had no intention of being boxed in by expectations, his youthful zeal and fuck-you attitude stubbornly refusing to wane over time.  I admire this, and at the handful of Suicide gigs I’ve managed to attend this century I’ve been all too willing to express this sentiment, perhaps to the dismay of less passionate concertgoers.  Let them be perturbed by my unrestrained enthusiasm and uncouth willingness to throw elbows, I say.  I have a right to force my way to the front of the stage, hooting and hollering all the while at living legends, at royalty.

That passion—tinged with an otherworldly optimism otherwise lacking from the rest of my daily life—surged upon receipt of Les Nymphes.  Opener “Sophie Eagle” excites instantly with springy electronics speckled with the serene plink-plonk of a piano and some breathy vocal echoes.  With just a little guidance from someone more familiar with today’s dance music scene, the groovy “Cupid” could do more than affectionately nod backwards towards stabby 90s house classics.  Dripping with dubby and near tropical vibes, “Venise” brilliantly resurrects and remixes the dreamy melody from “Misery Train,” a highlight from American Supreme. 

However, not everything here is quite as appealing or effective.  The puzzling “Triton” palms a dated KMFDM-style guitar riff straight out of Gunter Schulz’s classic playbook, saturates it in murky effects, and slides under this gelatinous gloop a limp-wristed loop unfit for The Crystal Method to wipe their filthy trainers on.  “Les Nymphes Et La Mer” nearly recycles that formula, though fortuitously sidesteps the non-blockrocking beats.  While sonically adequate, “Valley Of The Butterfly” comes across as almost comical with such wanton oddness, though I suspect that I’m not meant to snicker at the spoken word bellows of Rev’s longtime partner Mari.  I wont even go into the awful elevator funk of “Nyx,” which seems hardly fit to grace the stereo at my dentist’s office.

Having had the time to experience these 11 tracks, I find myself marginally satisfied as a fanatic. As a music journalist of the lowest order, however, I’m decidedly not on the fence about Les Nymphes, an unbalanced basket of tasty tangerine dreams and a disproportionate number of discarded orange peels.  I’m meant to believe that some Greek mythological theme carries the album, yet the only musical constant I perceive here is Rev’s craven lust for the wet reverbs and delay effects he deliberately drenches these tunes in, no doubt to ferment them into ambrosia.  No such luck.

Samples:

• Venise
• Nyx
• Cupid

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27 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

I relish the opportunity to expose our readership to new independent music on a regular basis. For this writer, it is the ultimate high to help lift from obscurity a worthy band that lacks the marketing muscle of a major label machine, and, like a crusty hygiene-deficient junkie, I am instinctively trying to score the next great fix, regularly on the lookout for such opportunities. That dutiful yet addictive sentimentality is precisely how I got conned into trying this band, lured by the unfulfilled promise of moderately morose music akin to those early Factory Records artists that LTM Recordings has such a veiny hard-on for.

 

Electric Lights Music

As a scruffy, shifty-eyed frequenter of many a record store I am almost ashamed to admit that I have fallen for this bait-and-switch on more than a few occasions.  Time and time again I succumbed to tantalizing assurances, to off-the-cuff favorable comparisons of some unknown band to one that I genuinely adore. Released on a minor label incidentally run by the album’s two producers, Surprise Attacks indeed takes its inspirational cues from Joy Division and Section 25, as well as their modern progeny.  Ribbons’ key deficiency, however, is an inability to move beyond those weighty influences in any meaningful way, rendering the girl-boy duo unsuited to compete with the bountiful harvest of postpunk revivalists stomping and pouting in rock clubs worldwide.  

Construing some half-hearted amalgam of The Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer’s lower register, Justin Warfield’s (She Wants Revenge) forced inflection, and Ian Curtis’ apathetic detachment, multi-instrumentalist Jenny Logan displays such a paralytic aversion to vocal range that, stripped of intent, it practically counts as parody.  From song to song, she mutters indistinctly, too cryptic and cool to carry a tune.   Drummer Sam Roudman, while competent enough for such milquetoast fare, offers little in the way of competition for Brian Viglione or Stephen Morris.  Marred by a stark dearth of inventiveness, Surprise Attacks rotates through a routine of lazy plodding and clumsy floundering for its half-hour duration, its self-destructive sameness blending each drearily dull track into the next. “More,” the closest thing to a highlight here, boasts a catchy angular intro but quickly abandons that premise for a much blander verse, returning to the original refrain far too late to rescue the track.  Beyond this, there is little to enjoy.  In particular, I can’t help but cringe at awkward out-of-place handclaps that attempt to add spice to “Bastille Day.”

“No Clouds” poorly apes Radiohead’s “My Iron Lung” on the verse, though that mimicry is hardly Ribbons' most egregious act of pilfering.  “About Them” disgracefully rips off the untouchable New Order classic “Ceremony” so obviously that the insincere Southern twang injected between the flagrantly stolen bits is cold comfort. This shameful offense alone should disqualify Ribbons from further serious consideration by anyone.  Surprise Attacks ought to be retitled Sucker Punches because that’s exactly what it amounts to: cheap shots.  I’ve been cheated, bamboozled even.  I mean, I actually paid for this insufferable hunk of mediocrity and regurgitation. I’d sooner dump it in the gutter than listen to it ever again, as that would finally afford this malevolent hipster-baiting trash some much-needed class. 

Samples:

• About Them
• No Clouds
• More

 

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27 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

Girls Against Boys frontman Scott McCloud's half-whispered, cigarette burnt vocals on this, his telling solo debut, channel the scuzzy street-level vibe of that seminal Touch & Go band, leavened by the sagacious musings of an unblushing, unpretentious gutter poet. For this fan, these wizened, largely acoustic ditties frequently spark thoughts along the lines of "Gee, these sure would make some great GVSB songs."

 

Cycle / Konkurrent

Freed from the otherwise flawless GVSB template, Paramount Styles gives McCloud the well-deserved chance to showcase a rather weighty lyrical solemnity sometimes obscured by the chest beating and bluster of his raucous noise rock dealings.  Throughout Failure American Style, McCloud comfortably adopts the tone of a bedraggled elder statesmanship akin to fellow New York resident Lou Reed.  As such, the specter of urban classics like "Walk On The Wild Side" and "Coney Island Baby" are spiritually evoked and unconsciously emulated more often than not.  Like the Rock 'N' Roll Animal, he's roamed these mean streets long enough to call out the fakes and spot the hustlers that still remain in the post-Giuliani period.

Considering the severity of the strangely beautiful material, McCloud is frighteningly believable yet simultaneously captivating.  His perceived machismo obviously intact, McCloud shares his gripes and dispenses his wisdom as if from a hastily patched-up barstool in a New York City dive bar that disregards the long-standing smoking ban.  With smirking references to a "booty call Valentine", "Drunx, Whores & MZK People" warns of and moans about those leeches that always want a piece of even a minor celebrity who, in turn, feeds off their neediness.  Buoyed by the sweet backup pipes of Scottish singer Angela McClusky, McCloud sneers at those who aspire to fame on the virile and occasionally vitriolic "Come To New York," arguably this album’s finest tune.  Still, Failure American Style feels phenomenally personal and gutsy in its seething honesty and less than cautious masculine sensitivity.  These eleven songs are not the boastful tales of rockstar success and excess, but instead the twilight unburdening of coagulating frustrations driven by heartache, disappointment and loss that eat away at a man bit-by-bit, driving him to vice and compounding bad decisions.  Over a thumping 4/4 beat, McCloud tempers his bubbling rage for "Race You Til Tomorrow", vacillating between reassuring words and despondent cynicism over a maddening relationship apparently worth salvaging.  

Perhaps even more startling than the soul bearing is the absence of the dissonant wall of noise fans have come to expect from McCloud musically.  Most of these songs revolve around his jagged acoustic guitar strums, some of which are downright pleasant.  “Hollywood Tales 2” is eerily spartan in its simplicity, while the sonically fuller though still relatively unadorned “AllEyesAreOnYouNowMyPet”—this record’s most single-worthy cut—sort of reminds me of Bob Mould’s recent album. Snarling like a wounded beast, Paramount Styles doesn't necessarily intend to be disagreeable, nor does it care if anyone takes offense.  McCloud's hurt may be on display on Failure American Style but rest assured that the album's primary purpose is not to entertain—which it thoroughly does—but rather to lash out.

Samples:

• AllEyesAreOnYouNowMyPet
• Come To New York
• Race You Til Tomorrow

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27 September 2008

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Albums and Singles

Out of my latest order of three releases from Faraway Press, the current CD from this infrequent Mirror collaborator and often overlooked co-conspirator of Faraway Press (alongside Andrew Chalk) has been by far the most rewarding. On this, her second solo release, she has consciously let go of the single-piece-per-side mold and created a decidedly not-drone album.

 

Faraway Press

Chalk, Mirror, and Heemann fans are loyal because they're assured of the quality of the releases and in that respect, this is no exception. Like the Faraway Press catalogue, Whispering Pages is calm, reflective, and the packaging is top quality both aesthetically and practically. Unlike the other releases, it consists of nine distinct songs and Jackman's main instrument is the piano, but the variety of pieces makes for an exceptionally well-rounded album.

She opens surprisingly with a song filled with subtle electric pulses and hums underscoring her atmospheric and echoed playing. Tonality is key on "The Snow Queen" as certain notes are chosen to resonate more than others, creating a gorgeous all-encompassing sound bath. "Empty Rooms" sounds exactly like that: Vikki playing solo in a room on a still summer evening accompanied only by the sound of her shifting on the piano bench and what could possibly be some wind chimes hanging in a doorway off to the side, the hiss of the slow moving air adding to the atmospherics. "The Softest Blue," my favorite piece (and one which I featured on last week's Podcast) is a drastic contrast: multilayered with low-end synthetic string swells that any Stars of the Lid fan would immediately latch on to, yet it's accented with backwards echoes and a plucking of high strings on top that sets it far apart enough from the duo. Swelling backwards-like echoes make the tones on "Nightingales" reminiscent of Nurse With Wound's "Funeral Music for Perez Prado," closing what would be side 1 of this disc, had it been a record.

Jackman once again reintroduces electronic pulses and inhuman frequencies on the opener of the second half, "Never a Wave," and maintains the feel through the Chain Reaction school of dub influence on "Two Clear Eyes," as now there are low end bass lines underneath the Hammond organ-esque echoes.  The music returns to the serene with "Dreams" and "A Summer Interlude," both with Vikki's piano front and center bathed in the sounds of the outdoors: birds, wind, an occasional train passing by. Whispering Pages concludes with a two distinct (and not cross-faded) pieces sharing a singular track index: "Sleep in the Woods" reprises the sound of "Nightingales" while "Reprise" is reminiscent of "Empty Rooms." I don't consider this a mis-step but I think more attention could have been played to actually closing the song (and thus the album) with a finite cadence.  

With Whispering Pages, Vikki Jackman has established her own identity apart from Faraway Press and Andrew Chalk and has done it with an exceptionally good album. While more famous publications will probably not catch on to her for a few more years, I would hope that offerings from other recording companies might boost her profile. Although she may not be seeking that, I personally think more music listeners deserve to hear something this great.

samples:

• Empty Rooms
• The Softest Blue
• Two Clear Eyes
  

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