03 July 2016

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Albums and Singles

Over the years, I have come to be extremely wary of any collaborative releases involving artists I like, as all they tend to fall into one of two categories: disappointing compromises or (much more frequently) tossed-off improvisations.  Consequently, I did not have particularly high hopes for this album, particularly since so many recent Fenn O’Berg releases have failed to live up to their enormous potential.  Happily, however, It’s Hard for Me to Say I’m Sorry largely delivers upon the promise heralded by its luminous participants.  Given that Fennesz has a much more distinctive aesthetic than the chameleonic O’Rourke, it is not surprising at all that this sounds a hell of a lot like a Fennesz album at times, but the line separating laptop-era O’Rourke from Fennesz is a very blurry and narrow one.  In any case, this is quite a strong album, albeit one that starts to lag a bit in the second half.

Editions Mego

Suspiciously, this album is divided into two longform pieces that each clock in at around twenty minutes, an arrangement that usually smacks of improvisatory origins.  If that is indeed how these pieces originated, however, Fennesz and O'Rourke definitely did a fine job covering their tracks when they edited everything together, as both "I Just Want You to Stay" and "Wouldn’t Wanna Be Swept Away" (for the most part, anyway) both feel like gorgeously lush and deliberate compositions that follow a coherent arc.  There is definitely a drone-like drifting amorphousness running throughout the entire album, but the ebbing and flowing is too effective to be purely spontaneous, as is the vibrant interplay between the various elements.

The opening "I Just Want You to Stay" begins with warm, woozy guitar swells that sometimes sound like an EBow and other times seem like pedal steel, though any sense of bliss is soon curdled by some rather grinding and dissonant textures that start to creep up through the haze.  For a while it seems like those darker elements are going to take over the piece, but they unexpectedly dissolve into a beautiful vista of lush exhalation-like chords, watery shimmer, and a tapestry of distorted guitar arpeggios that accumulate to a fuzzed-out roar.  Gradually, Fennesz makes his presence more prominent, however, as the piece coheres into a stuttering, pixelated melody that sounds like a malfunctioning synthesizer while guitar swells gently undulate in the background like passing clouds.  Throughout it all, the duo manage to strike a perfect balance between warmth, beauty, and controlled violence: the piece may be pretty, but some broken, corroded, and gnarled touches are always gnawing at its edges right up until the unexpectedly dreamy Endless Summer-esque coda of multilayered laptop heaven.

"Wouldn’t Wanna Be Swept Away" opens with a very different tone, as thick, sleepy "vintage synth" tones unfold a melancholy motif colored by gentle guitar shimmer and hiss.  Slowly, however, it transforms into more guitar-based fare, as heavily processed and ringing shoegaze-damaged arpeggios form a backdrop to O'Rourke's languorously sliding pedal steel.  In fact, it sounds a lot like two separate and artfully competing songs, as the more frenzied and distorted guitars seem to constantly threaten to eclipse the pedal steel with their engulfing roar.  That creates quite an effective tension before the entire piece seems to get sucked into a black hole of watery, burbling psychedelia.  Unsurprisingly, that does not proceed predictably either, as the more New Age-y atmosphere soon finds itself beset by some more ominous and space-y textures.  Later, it transforms yet again into something resembling a deconstructed rock song embellished by fluttering, warbling, and pitch-shifting synth tones.  I suppose it works on at least one level, as it has a definite slow-motion, fragmented, and druggy appeal, but it is a bit too meandering for my taste.  Also, O’Rourke and Fennesz do not pull an unexpected rabbit out of their hat at the end like they did with "I Just Want You to Stay."

While I like the controlled storm of guitars at the beginning of "Swept Away" quite a lot, the piece only succeeds as a collection of inspired moments rather than as a composition.  It definitely feels like Fennesz and O’Rourke had more time to fill than they had ideas with that one, as it seems like they were running out the clock a bit and allowed some themes to conspicuously overstay their welcome.  Consequently, the real meat of this album is the absolutely sublime "I Just Want You to Stay," which totally justifies the album’s existence by itself.  Aside from that, the secondary appeal of It’s Hard for Me to Say I’m Sorry lies in how simultaneously similar and dissimilar this album sounds to each artist's solo work, as it is rare treat to experience a more loose and extended strain of Fennesz's vision and Jim O’Rourke is the perfect foil for such an outing.  He is probably the perfect foil for just about any musical endeavor, actually.  While I wish the duo had spent more time perfecting the album’s second half, I suppose Christian Fennesz could not linger around Tokyo forever and a mostly great album that limps to a close is still a mostly great album.

• I Just Want You to Stay (excerpt one)
• I Just Want You to Stay (excerpt two)
• Wouldn't Wanna Be Swept Away

 

03 July 2016

Administrator

Albums and Singles

“Like much of the music made by the artists who entrusted her to reflect their mercurial spirits, Bayer’s pictures are magic”

-from the introduction by Michel Faber

Bringing together, for the first time, the music photography of Ruth Bayer, who has documented key players in the English musical post-punk underground since the mid 1980s.

With unprecedented access and intimacy, Ruth has photographed luminaries and legends including Marc Almond, Little Annie, John Balance, Peter Christopherson, Cyclobe, Shirley Collins, Baby Dee, Norbert Kox, Tony (TS) McPhee, Steven Stapleton, David Tibet, Tiny Tim and many others, in a career spanning three decades.

A unique collection, featuring over one hundred timeless and iconic images of some of the most influential, eccentric and sometimes controversial musicians of their times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ruth Bayer is an Austrian photographer, based in London, whose work has been exhibited at galleries all over the world. Her photographs have appeared in numerous music and style magazines over the past two decades and most recently in the book ‘The Play Goes On: The Rituals of the Rainbow."

More information can be found here.

03 July 2016

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Albums and Singles

There's a reason why our relationship with The Dead C is Ba Da Bing's longest running. It's not because they are the hardest working band we've ever met. It's not because they are the largest selling band we've ever released. It's not because we're inspired to support our local music scene.

Yes, there's definitely a reason....please give me a minute...oh ok, I got it (just put on this record). Like every time I hear their recordings, I'm reminded that they are one of the greatest rock bands to ever pick up a guitar and attempt to play it wrong. Listening to The Dead C causes me to think differently. It brings up emotions of which I'm otherwise unfamiliar. It strikes to the essence of my being and reveals that which otherwise remains hidden. I take solace in knowing that one out of every thirty of you reading this know exactly what I'm talking about.

On the spectrum of The Dead C's sound output, Trouble could very well be seen as springing from the same realm as the massive "Driver UFO," one of the band's greatest tracks ever, off Harsh '70s Reality. There's a youthful aggression here, a churning anger, deadened by pounding drone. Much like H70s, this record serves as a gateway drug - if you were ever looking for an album to play to a newbie curious about experimental rock, this would be it. The visceral strength of their performance trembles out of the speakers. The magnificence of their stamina survives each album side.

We are in a creative highpoint for the trio at the moment. Bruce Russell has just released a captivating solo album on Feeding Tube, while Michael Morley's solo project Gate just put out a release on MIE. Robbie Yeats has been performing of recent as backup for Alastair Galbraith. The fact that there are still means to commute between Lyttelton and Port Chalmers on the South Island of New Zealand means these three can still find time to get together, and allows for what we have here today. And it's fucking glorious.

Out on August 12, 2016.

More information can be found here.

03 July 2016

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Albums and Singles

Scott Walker’s orchestral soundtrack to The Childhood Of A Leader is being released by 4AD on Friday the 19th of August.

A key and compelling component to Brady Corbet’s directorial debut, it is Walker’s first O.S.T. work since his remarkable score for Pola X in 1999.

Partly inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s short story of the same name, The Childhood Of A Leader is a tense psychological drama tracing the formative years of a young boy and set against the backdrop of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference that led to the establishment of the Treaty of Versailles.

Walker continues to work with long-term collaborators Peter Walsh (co-producer) and Mark Warman (musical director), with the latter conducting an orchestra comprised of 46 string players and 16 brass for the studio recording. Both Walsh and Warman were involved in the live film score performance of The Childhood Of A Leader, alongside a 74-strong orchestra, an event which closed the Rotterdam Film Festival in February this year.

More information can be found here.

03 July 2016

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Albums and Singles

"Opal Tapes’ Black Opal series juice four cuts of glistening technoid synth music by M. Geddes Gengras in Personable mode, some years since he helped start up the label with Alternate/Other and a split with Dwellings & Druss.

It’s techno-not-techno, effectively, putting an intricately idiosyncratic side-spin on established tropes with whirring hyper-shuffle technique in "Gambetti," and a colourful, nervy electro style recalling Gifted & Blessed in "Window."

The record’s longest cut, "Oyster" spreads out farther with exponentially sprawling delays applied to a tangy techno throb, before reining it the groove and expanding the spatial dimensions with an etheric ambient techno oddity, "Cormorant.""

-via Boomkat

More information can arguably be found here.

03 July 2016

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Albums and Singles

Melissa Guion is MJ Guider. She lives and works in New Orleans and previously released the Green Plastic extended play cassette in early 2014 on the Constellation Tatsu label. Using heavy washes of bass and a deft touch in mixing, she provokes stark contrasts to construct a semi-surreal environment. The result are songs that exist in a wholly contained sound environment, minimal yet lush, spare yet saturated, and most importantly, entirely compelling.

Precious Systems is inspired and influenced by the landscape in and around New Orleans, particularly the juxtaposition of the natural with industrial and commercial constructs as they reflect life here. The songs on the album attempt to create contrasts of their own as a means of inducing unreality or altering perspectives.

The sounds come from a variety of sources, but are anchored by several aging, outmoded machines. A beloved Rickenbacker 3000 in combination with a Roland R-8 drum machine and RE-501 tape echo set the tone of "technology-in-subsidence."

Having recently expanded to a trio, the group will be making select live appearances following Precious Systems release.

More information can be found here.

20 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

Continuing his concept of "sound recycling", Sebastian Banaszczyk’s latest work is the studio recording of a piece first performed in 2014. As part of the Festiwal Dekonstrukcji Slowa in Poland, he performed this work (translated as "The Old Writer") as a tribute to William S. Burroughs on his 100th birthday. Consistent with his work to this point, it is a brilliant deconstruction of sounds that bear little resemblance to their source, but perhaps what is most surprising is the amount of conventional music he chose to employ, giving an added layer of depth to an already complex record.

Oniron

These musical elements take the form of snippets of recordings of traditional Moroccan music.Befitting the subject matter, Banaszczyk chose not to recontextualize them as drastically as he tends to do with his source material, and instead lets some of the traditional rhythms and melodies shine through.This is perhaps the most pronounced on "Agent Lee" and "Tangier".The former features him blending painfully sharp stabs of noise with hints of distortion with low fidelity rhythmic loops, while the latter is also built upon Middle Eastern stringed instruments, with a tasteful amount of processing done to give them an otherworldly quality, while retaining their traditional sound as well.

Comparisons to Muslimgauze are inescapable at this point, because Banaszczyk is working with similar material, and is also treating said material electronically.However, the comparison is a loose one, because here the sounds are less harsh, conjuring more of a pensive mood than the aggressive style Bryn Jones would often employ."Memories of Tangier", which closes the album, functions as a distillation of the aforementioned composition, heavily featuring percussion loops and some distinctly raw moments that also appear.

The pieces in which rhythms are not as prevalent are, unsurprisingly, more reminiscent of Banaszczyk’s previous work, but again exemplifying the strides he has made as a composer."The Mayan Caper", for example, is an excellent collection of weird textures and dissonant buzzes, leaving no obvious clues as to where the material was sourced from.The lengthier "The Western Lands" is more of an exercise in subtlety, building from a quiet opening into haunting passages of sound.At times the sound peaks into more sci-fi tinged spacy moments that are not unlike some of Robert Hampson's best work, but still sounds entirely like Bionulor.

Sebastian Banaszczyk has been using his Bionulor guise in a growing array of contexts, expanding both his compositional methodology as well as working in a greater multimedia context, such as his previous recordings for dramatic performances.Like those, however, Stary Pisarz works as a record completely divorced from its conceptual roots.I especially enjoyed his concessions to rhythm and melody, which gave those pieces an even more compelling quality.But even without these new developments in his sound, the record excels on the strengths of its unique tones and textures as well.

samples:

• Agent Lee
• The Western Lands
• Memories of Tangier

 

19 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

Hypnopazūzu is the duo of none other than the legendary gentlemen Youth (Killing Joke and 1008 other worlds) and David Tibet (Current 93 and 93 other worlds). They both first skipped together on Current 93's debut album Nature Unveiled in 1983. Create Christ, Sailor Boy is their new album, and their first as Hypnopazūzu. 93 years in the making, this elaborately-packaged 3-sided LP (it will have a laser etching on Side 4) contains ten songs and brings together spheres and planets for the Ultimate Hallucinatory PickNick.

This album will come with two different front covers – one by David Tibet, the other by Youth. We will make a bundle option for both, for ye die-hards.

Out Summer 2016.

More information will soon be available here.

19 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

To his everlasting credit, Rhys Chatham has remained a restlessly evolving and adventurous composer well into his 60s, as well as quite an endearing perverse and unpredictable one.  Case in point: roughly a decade after composing his monumental A Crimson Grail for 400 guitars, Chatham is now is now experimenting with ways to perform his harmonically complex compositions all by himself in real-time.  Also, he has picked up the flute again (his original instrument, which was summarily abandoned for electric guitars after Chatham first experienced the Ramones).  As if that were not enough divergence from the norm, Chatham also employs a special Pythagorean/just-intonation tuning system for his guitar.  Despite all of those innovations, Pythagorean Dream is first and foremost an impressive performance rather than a bold new artistic statement.  I suppose that makes it a fairly minor release within Chatham’s oft-influential and frequently large-scale oeuvre, but it is still surprisingly effective for a one-man guitar/trumpet/flute tour de force and certainly sounds like absolutely no one else.

Foom

To say that the first half of Pythagorean Dream opens with a trumpet solo would be very deceptive and misleading, but that is indeed exactly how it starts.  The twist is that Chatham does not play a single clear note, opting to instead to create a sputtering, breath-like sound not unlike a deflating balloon.  The guitar playing that soon follows is similarly eccentric and wrong-footing, as Chatham fingerpicks unfamiliar arpeggios and layers them using feedback loops of differing lengths.  While his prickly and pointillist fingerpickings are offset by an occasional strum or deep pedal tone, the increasingly complex and overlapping fingerpicked motifs are the real meat of the piece, resembling nothing less than a harmonic swarm (a destination quite far from its stated Fahey inspirations).  While the overall aesthetic is undeniably very much Chatham's own, it will probably seem a bit familiar to anyone who has been following his work at all closely.  Aside from the tremolo-picked low-end that is a favorite recurring Chatham theme, the whole fingerpicked section sounds extremely similar to some sections of his recent Charlemagne Palestine collaboration.  In fact, it is either a variation of that exact same piece or Rhys has been very much fixated on a exploring and perfecting that one idea for a while.  That said, I like it and I also quite like the comparatively brief interlude of shifting EBow harmonies that appears around the first part’s midpoint.  Sadly, that EBow segment does not stick around long enough, which highlights a fundamental flaw with the piece: Chatham's rigorous adherence to the purity of his process prevents him from fully capitalizing on the piece's strengths.  Those shifting EBow tones would have complemented the thorny arpeggios nicely and likely yielded a compelling cloud of overtones, but Chatham is just one man and he can only do one thing at a time.

At first glance, the second half of the piece does not seem to have much in common at all with what preceded it, though it opens with the first half's fading guitars.  Once they fully dissipate, however, the piece evolves into a warm and gently undulating bed of flute drones.  In a broader sense, however, the two halves of Pythagorean Dream are very much explorations of similar terrain: the way layers of loops can bleed together to yield a rich web of self-perpetuating harmonies, overtones, and oscillations.  Gradually, however, Chatham’s flute starts to emerge from its haze with a series of increasingly wild trills and flutters.  On one level, it sounds like a particularly languorous strain of free-jazz, but the overarching idea remains the same as ever: flurries and clusters of notes blurring together.  It does not stick around long enough to get very complex, lamentably, as the flutes gradually fade away to be replaced by the return of jangling and dissonant fingerpicked theme as it all winds to a close.

As an album, Pythagorean Dream is a mixed success, as it is not so much flawed as it is greatly limited by its process.  It is unquestionably a fine and inventive performance though, as Chatham successfully pulled off quite a juggling act with his three instruments.  That is not quite the same as a great composition, however, as Dream's flow and trajectory suffer a bit from its "one-man band" premise.  While the piece admittedly follows a logical course and comes full circle, there is never a sense that is ever building into something more substantial.  That said, Chatham remains a distinctive and inventive voice despite his radical downsizing and shift in direction.  Not many composers remain this vital four decades into their career.  Chatham also did quite an impressive job of showing what just one person can do if they put enough thought into their set-up, as parts of Dream certainly sound like the work of a small guitar orchestra.  This is probably not the first Rhys Chatham album that I would recommend to someone curious about his work, but it is definitely a welcome return that shows that Chatham is still tirelessly forging his own unique path (even if that path has detoured a bit to find some fresh ground to break).

• Part One
• Part Two (excerpt one)
• Part Two (excerpt two)

 

19 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

The Legendary Pink Dots have been in the midst of a creative renaissance for years now, fitfully releasing some of the finest work of their career amidst the unending and distracting tide of solo projects, reissues, live albums, and archival discoveries.  The lion's share of Edward Ka-Spel's best ideas, however, have definitely been winding up in LPD's more abstract and experimental work.  I am personally perfectly fine with that, as that is the side of the Dots that I have always preferred anyway.  I suspect that most longtime fans were initially drawn to the band by their songs though and they have presumably been suffering through quite a long dry spell in that regard.  Pages of Aquarius is an album for them, as it is a solid, concise, and hook-heavy collection of industrial-tinged songs that harken back to the Dots of earlier times.  In fact, if I did not know better, I would have guessed that this album was recorded in the early '90s.  I am not sure if that is necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, but there are a definitely a handful of instant classics here regardless.

Metropolis

For better or worse, the opening "Mirror, Mirror" is a near-perfect song that sets an almost impossibly high bar for the rest of the album.  While the distorted power chords definitely feel like a retro-throwback of sorts, the band is nevertheless at the height of their talents, as Edward Ka-Spel's lyrics are wry and biting; his melodies are strong; the clattering drum programming is unconventional and dynamic; and the more psychedelic touches build the song to a crescendo rather than derailing its momentum.  As far as hookiness is concerned, "Mirror" is Aquarius's pop zenith and sets the template that most of the following songs try to follow.  They may not always succeed, but they all at least fulfill some role in unfolding whatever cryptic narrative arc Ka-Spel has in mind and offer some scattered delights along the way.  While the album's lyrical content seems to have a loose and somewhat inscrutable astrological/techno-dystopian theme, the overall thread linking these eight pieces together musically is quite a bit clearer, as there is a definite formula of propulsive drum programming, buzzing synthesizers, memorable hooks, and comparatively tight songcraft running throughout Aquarius…at least for a while, anyway.  Things definitely get quite a bit more abstract near the album’s end.  The star of the show is largely the drum programming though, which simultaneously calls to mind the poppier strains of '90s industrial while still being lively and unusual enough to elevate the surrounding material.  The rolling sex groove of "D-Train" is admittedly a bit much (and certainly does not benefit from an interlude of proggy bombast), but the vaguely Latin rhythm in "The Greatest Story Ever Told" is great and the deeply wrong-sounding lounge groove of "Touching the Forelock" is even more striking.

Of course, the problem is that there are initially not many occasions besides "Mirror, Mirror" in which everything is going well at once.  For example, a few songs are derailed by maddeningly insistent sing-song melodies that resemble nursery rhymes ("The Greatest Story" is heavily indebted to "The Alphabet Song").  Elsewhere, Ka-Spel errs on the side of shrillness or the band lets their more indulgent psychedelic impulses overstay their welcome a bit.  Nevertheless, Aquarius is ultimately a very listenable and enjoyable album due to its strong rhythmic component, even if it does not scale particularly impressive heights at times.  There are a handful of notable exceptions though, particularly the understated and slow-burning ballad "Prodigal," which boasts a great vocal melody, elegantly minimal synth accompaniment, and a dub-wise percussion backdrop of quietly escalating intensity.  I am not certain that it needed to stretch out for almost 9 minutes, but it never stops being great, so the extended duration is not a problem at all.  The extended three-part closer "Don't Go There/Page Aquarian/Jacob’s Ladder" is yet another highlight, weaving a simmering and complex groove of burbling percussion; buzzes and beeps; and fake brass before taking a deep and prolonged plunge into far more lysergic territory.  Again, all of it is great, but the fact that it sprawls out for over 17 minutes might make it a tough sell for those not fully indoctrinated into LPD’s fluid understanding of time.  To my ears, it is a journey well-worth taking, as Ka-Spel and company build to quite a wonderful crescendo of mind-warping abstraction mingled with interludes of haunting melody.  It is absolutely the perfect way to end the album, but the digital and 2xLP versions toss in yet another kaleidoscopic descent into the rabbit hole of Ka-Spel’s mind in form of the 20-minute "Weight of Water." Most fans will not want to miss that bonus track, as it is probably substantial enough to have warranted its own EP.

The only real flaw with Pages of Aquarius is just that there is just too damn much of it and that not all of it is wonderful.  The presents a problem when all of the best material occurs at the beginning and the end: Aquarius could have been an absolutely perfect album if all of the breezier pieces in the middle had been culled.  While almost every song in that lull boasts at least a few things I can appreciate, the cumulative effect is that it is kind of a slog to get to the part of the album where things start to truly catch fire.  There are certainly far worse problems to have than a massive surplus of fully formed ideas, however, so it would be a shame to dwell on that.  Rather, the important thing is that Pages of Aquarius boasts at least three absolutely stellar songs.  In fact, I would even say that it is easily one of the Dots’ finest albums, as they are certainly at the peak of both their songwriting and hallucinatory powers.  Granted, this absolutely wonderful single album has the editing misfortune of being buried within the format of an exasperatingly overstuffed double album, but that is nothing that an ambitious listener with access to iTunes cannot easily fix.

• Mirror, Mirror
• Prodigal
• Don't Go There