26 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Ostensibly a hard rock band, there is much more to Black Love lurking beneath the superficial. Drummer Tony Cicero and Sergio Segovia’s bass (and electronics) may sound like a conventional arrangement, but David Cotner’s vocals and unconventional additions (a mule jawbone, for example), add an additional layer of depth. Across these four songs there is more than a hint of broken romance bitterness, but with the right amount of sardonic and wry self-awareness to make it anything but trite.

Hertz-Lion

At first listen, Unlust is heavily steeped in a bass driven, garage sound; a rawness that is reminiscent of the Touch & Go/Amphetamine Reptile roster in the early 1990s.Opener "Insight" takes a bit of time with its minimalist bass/drum/bells, but it soon locks into a groove that catchy yet abrasive.Cotner's vocals are up front, uncomfortable and twisted befitting the subject matter."Airlessness" follows similarly, but puts an even greater emphasis on Segovia's bass and more unconventional percussion courtesy of Cotner, all the while taking on a slightly more aggressive tempo.

The second half of the record leads with "Being Stabbed," all rattling noisy bass and big, booming drums.Lyrically violent and disturbing, with the content working both on the literal and figurative implications of the title, the band somehow manages to shape such ugliness into a memorable chorus. The longer "Had a Bad Dream" is where all of the best pieces of the Black Love sound come together the most effectively.The lengthier duration allows the trio a more expansive, experimental opening that leads into a throbbing bass guitar and subtle percussion.A dirgy march, with frustrated and nihilistic vocals, it eventually goes into a faster paced groove but never strays far away from sounding heavily dismal.

While lyrically and thematically Unlust is a single-note affair of wretched anti-romantic pessimism, Black Love combine just the right amount of self-awareness, and big, noisy bass and drums, to result in an album that is not the plodding emo-fest it could otherwise be.Instead it is appropriately bitter and unpleasant, but not necessarily one of the records that are only pulled out after a particularly bad breakup.With those themes coupled with an excellent rhythm section, Unlust comes together perfectly.

samples:

• Insight
• Airlessness
• Had a Bad Dream

 

26 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Back in 2013, Oiseaux-Tempête’s excellent debut established them as something akin to Europe’s answer to Godspeed You Black Emperor, which is not a bad niche to occupy at all.  For their follow-up, however, the band have changed things up a bit, significantly altering both their approach, their vision, and their line-up (they enlisted bass clarinetist Gareth Davies).  While they generally seem like good moves in theory, the aforementioned innovations have resulted in something of a confounding and (at best) lateral transformation, as Ütopiya? is generally a bit weaker and more bombastic than its predecessor.  There are unquestionably a handful of bright and inspired moments to be found, of course, but Ütopiya? mostly lies somewhere in the unfortunate no-man’s land between "misstep" and "transitional album."

Sub Rosa

From their inception, Oiseaux-Tempête offered a lot of promising elements that distinguished themselves from anyone treading similar territory.  For one, their work was conceptually intertwined with that of photographer/filmmaker Stéphane C, who was documenting the political and economic chaos in Greece.  Also, the band's debut adeptly balanced their more straight-forward post-rock tendencies with a healthy amount of electronic touches and well-placed field recordings and snatches of dialogue.  With Ütopiya?, however, the band have toned down their more conceptual, ambitious, and multimedia-inspired tendencies.  There is still a vague political theme (this time centered on Sicily and Istanbul), but the foursome have musically chosen a more muscular and stripped-down sound, presumably one that translates much better to live performances: minimal layering, minimal electronics, and plenty of explosive crescendos.  In some ways, that works quite well, leaving plenty of room for Stéphane Pigneul's visceral bass riffage and Frédéric Oberlands' alternately tender and explosive guitarwork.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of very persistent flies in the ointment.  The main problem is that Ütopiya? has the relentlessly dour tone of a prolonged lament.  That may be entirely befitting of whatever they are trying to convey politically, but it unavoidably makes the album a bit of a slog to get through.  In fact, the slow-motion brood-fest only truly lifts at the very end of the album with the absolutely stellar guitar-shimmer-and-crickets reverie of "Aslan Sütü (Santé, Vieux Monde!)."  The CD version additionally tacks on yet another gloom-free piece in the propulsive 22-minute percussion work-out and space-guitar improv of "Palindrome Series (Live at Saint-Merry)," but the first nine songs on the album are generally very much all in the same vein, both mood-wise and structurally.  That structure part is the album’s second shortcoming, as every song seems to follow a very similar formula at a very similar (and rather leaden) pace: Oberland plays clean, delay-heavy melodies and arpeggios over a meaty bass riff while Davies' clarinet meanders around the central theme, then it all gradually escalates to a dramatic and stomping crescendo of crash cymbals and guitar pyrotechnics.

Admittedly, the band conjure up some very appealing variations on that formula, but it is a conspicuous formula nonetheless.  The most significant twist is definitely "Ütopiya / On Living," which features a haunting monologue courtesy of The Ex's G.W. Sok.  Yet another highlight is Oberland’s absolutely apocalyptic wah-wah firestorm at the end of "Someone Must Shout That We Will Build The Pyramids."  The other great moments are a bit more understated, however, best exemplified by the way Pigneul’s disco-damaged and PIL-worthy bass line emerges from the sound collage of "Yallah Karga (Dance Song)."  I am also quite fond of "Soudain Le Ciel," as drummer Ben McConnell slows down his standard crawl to an appealingly stumbling and broken-sounding degree.

Other times, unfortunately, Oiseaux-Têmpete misjudge an entire song, laying on the sadness and drama too heavily without anything particularly compelling to offset it.  "Requiem For Tony," for example, sounds like the crescendo of an early King Crimson epic without any of the surrounding song.  I also winced a bit when the dramatic minor key piano appeared in "Fortune Teller" and wished that the otherwise masterfully hallucinatory "I Terribili Infanti" did not depend so heavily upon a foundation of melancholy acoustic guitar.  In general, however, Ütopiya? misses the mark solely because the band is so hell-bent on evoking one mood and just keep going back to same well over and over again.  That said, I have a personal and highly subjective antipathy towards anything resembling cinematic instrumental rock, so those without such a bias will probably like this album considerably more than I did, as there is an enormous amount of that sort of thing here.  I mostly just like Ütopiya? for "Aslan Sütü (Santé, Vieux Monde!)" and Oberland’s howling guitar solos though.  While I believe that this album occasionally attains greater heights than Oiseaux-Têmpete’s debut, the songs are just not fluid and varied enough to cohere into nearly as strong of a whole.

• √útopiya/On Living
• Soudain Le Ciel
• Aslan S√ºt√º

 

26 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

As much as I have enjoyed both Barn Owl and Evan Caminiti’s solo work in the past, his career has certainly been an unusual and chameleonic one, generally alternating between heady drone and his own particular strain of desert rock.  In theory, that history of creative restlessness should have prepared me for Meridian, but I truly did not see this monster of a synthesizer album coming.  The surprise is not that Caminiti’s guitar is nowhere to be heard or even that he made an entirely electronic album–it is that his first foray in this direction is such a mesmerizing tour de force that effortlessly transcends the rest of the synthesizer pack (and most of Evan's own previous discography).

Thrill Jockey

For all of my griping about the cloying trendiness and general glut of synthesizer albums, I certainly still wind up listening to a hell of a lot of them for some reason.  Unsurprisingly, there are several recurring issues that I find irksome, but the main one (aside from gear fetishism) is that so many artists are so insistent on recording "live" with no overdubs, placing the purity of the performance above their actual compositions.  In some cases, that spontaneity and simplicity work quite well (Alessandro Cortini and Sam Prekop spring to mind), but in a lot of cases I find myself wondering how much better an album could have been if it that performance had been expanded into something more ambitious and multilayered.  Evan and I apparently see eye to eye on that, as his talents as a composer and producer more than keep pace with his abilities as a musician on Meridian (to quite a striking degree, actually).  While most of the songs themselves are very good, the real magic often lies in what Evan does with them, transforming his ideas into densely buzzing, rich, and dynamic works of beauty.  This is a massive-sounding and complexly layered album from start to finish and it is clear that a great deal of time was spent obsessing over details and textures (and not spent in vain).

Curiously, Evan buries most of his strongest pieces quite late in the album.  My personal favorite is probably "Signal," which marries a gently burbling backdrop to an eerie host of quivering, strangled, and dissonantly harmonizing sustained tones.  It strike a wonderful balance between John Carpenter-worship/retro-kitsch and something much more ugly and visceral.  Such dissonance is far from the norm, however, as most of Meridian's other highlights center around seamless, stunning transitions or passages of warm, immersive beauty.  "Excelsior," for example, opens as a hypnotically rippling and throbbing drone piece that gradually becomes increasingly sizzling and pulsating.  Then, suddenly, it all gives way to a simple, heavenly thrum that is propelled along by hollow percussion and sonar-like pings as its edges gradually fray into distortion.  "Steam" is yet another gem, buzzing and throbbing along amiably with a lurching beat until something that sounds like a broken carousel fades in, tearing the song into a series of alien, shattered-sounding pulses swelling out of a vibrant and dense bedrock of sputtering sub bass.

The sole area in which Meridian falls short of greatness is that a number of the songs end somewhat abruptly, as if Caminiti was not sure quite where to go once he reached the crescendo.  That is a little weird, since he otherwise transitions between themes quite seamlessly and often ingeniously.  Fortunately, the album's strong points greatly outweigh that one quibble.  In fact, they absolutely bury it–there is no end to the number of things that I could praise about this album.  It essentially feels like Caminiti set out to make an excellent synthesizer album, succeeded, then threw himself wholeheartedly into artfully breaking it and purging it of as many derivative tropes as possible.  No beat is ever straightforward (they all wobble, lurch, stutter, echo, and/or quickly dissipate) and no motif is ever safe from collapsing upon itself, being torn apart, or being transformed into a sizzling, crackling ghost of itself.  I love that.  This is a huge leap forward for Evan Caminiti.

• Steam
• Signal
• Excelsior

 

19 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Even with their reappearance in the past five years, the earliest days of Swans are the ones that are often cited as the most important and essential. It almost is a perfect example of the hipster cliché of "Oh I only like their EARLY material (or pre-Jarboe)". The fact is that Swans were amazing from their inception to today, and whatever stylistic shifts they made were brilliant, if sometimes drastic and unexpected. Amidst their always-expanding touring and recording schedules, Michael Gira has initiated a reissue campaign, beginning with an expanded version of their debut, Filth. A template for most heavy music that has followed, the originator is still peerless, and could be released today and be just as deserving of the accolades and admiration it has received since 1983.

Young God

Filth somewhat predates Swans at their most brutal, which is a sound that mastered on the Cop and Young God records.With Filth, there was still a vestigial trace of post-punk and no-wave inclinations that came through most clearly on the debut EP, which is included here for the first time since the first CD release of Filth.The first two discs of this collection of three captures the same material and bonus tracks of the Filth/Body to Body, Job to Job reissue that appeared back in 2000.While it was not in dire need, it does sound as if there has been a subtle remastering that gives the bass a little more force and power.

The material clearly set the stage for the big violent riffs and slow, lugubrious pacing that many associate with Swans, and were adapted by so many followers.The opening seconds of "Stay Here" make this abundantly clear, from the rusty bass pounding and squall of Norman Westberg's guitar noise into Gira's shouts of "Be strong!/Be hard!/Flex your muscles!" introducing one of the most angry, hate-filled (most often self-directed) records ever recorded.While it may superficially be a lumbering beast of detuned bass and clanging metal, "Weakling" actually disguises a blues shuffle that shows the influence artists like Howlin' Wolf had on the band even in those most dissonant days.

What sets Filth apart from what came later are the odd, uncharacteristic moments such as the almost danceable, snappy beat of"Big Strong Boss"; a tempo and a sound that was more in tune with their earliest work compared to what came later.The short "Freak" is another odd one:tape collages and treatments with Gira's manic ranting on top, closing with one of the best bass guitar attacks ever, all within the span of barely over a minute.Swans loosen up on "Right Wrong," with a more improvised feeling, but they never lose that aggressive thud of the rhythm section of Harry Crosby, Jonathan Kane and Roli Mosimann.

Disc two, Body to Body, Job to Job, acts largely as a compilation of early versions of Cop/Young God era material, unreleased songs, and work that was only performed live, not in the studio.Well-known songs such as "Half-Life" and "Cop" are not drastically dissimilar to their final forms, but have a slightly more raw feel that compliment the album versions extremely well.A song like "Seal it Over" captures the transition from Filth Swans into Cop Swans, displaying the latter’s penchant for slowly trudging structures, but the former's more experimental approach to using guitar as an accent rather than the primary focus.Interspersed throughout are tape loops that were used in live performances in the 1982-83 era and on their own capture the proto-industrial vibe they would return to on Greed and Holy Money.

The material on the third disc is what I was most interested in, having owned the previous compilation of the first two discs for a number of years.The debut EP features the elements that we all know and love as Swans, but with a different approach and style.The nervous bass, complex drumming and abrasive saxophone stabs of "Laugh" works perfectly as a distinctly American take on the early Factory sound.The same goes for the melodic bass lead "Speak," where the harsh guitar sound is more of a textural element, and Gira is singing, rather than the shout/scream he was so fond of on the early records.Moments of these songs could almost be the Talking Heads, if they were belligerent drunks rather than effete art kids.

Following the EP is a selection of live tracks from 1982-84, largely familiar songs in a live context.They might not be the best quality from a recording standpoint, but are still entirely listenable and make for some unexpected variations of familiar work.Obviously not professionally captured, the sound is more on-par with the rougher moments of Body to Body, Job to Job. "Big Strong Boss" is slowed down and sloppier, while "Clay Man" is a rolling storm of guitar noise rather than big sustained riffs.

The final three performances are a selection of songs from 1984 that would later appear on Cop and Young God, heralding that slow, pugnacious sound the band became most known for.The recording quality might not be optimal, but the over emphasized bass gives an additional layer of intensity to the already oppressive sound of "I Crawled" and the slow assault of "Why Hide".

Given that two of the three discs of this Filth reissue were themselves reissued only a handful of years ago, the interest for most Swans aficionados is going to be on the third disc’s rarer EP material and unreleased live content.Neophytes drawn in by the massive critical acclaim for To Be Kind will definitely find this a comprehensive, if daunting history lesson.Personally, I think the asking price is worth it alone for the remastered debut EP material.No matter what, however, this period of Swans has lost none of its impact or power three decades later.

samples:

• Weakling
• Speak
• Clay Man (Live at CBGB 1982-1983)

 

19 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Heitor Alvelos is no stranger to the Touch label, having collaborated as a visual artist with the big names of the label such as Fennesz, BJ Nilsen, and Philip Jeck, as well as issuing sound work under a variety of pseudonyms on the associated labels. Faith is a collection of processed sound recordings and "audio irregularities", and due to their more personal and autobiographical source, it is the first record released under his own name. Essentially a single composition split into 12 segments, it is a sparse and murky record, steeped heavily in an analog sound.

Touch

Culled from a variety of unspecified recordings collected by the artist since 1972, most of Faith has Alvelos sticking to an open mix, working in bass heavy sounds at often very low volumes, conjuring a sense of space and ambiguity that often becomes unsettling."Exodus" and "Edict" both have a ghostly rumble to them, distant and unspecific but always there.During the latter he begins to increase the volume and simultaneously the intensity.

On "Allvion" into "Pseudoself" the sound becomes deeper:a wavering expanse of noise that evolves into something with significant depth and variety, but never stops being discomforting.The latter especially sees Alvelos working with monotone electronics and a heavy low-frequency passage that slowly evolves and changes to become all encompassing, climaxing and leading into the silent passage of "Vicarious Solace".

He builds the minimalist, rumbling hum back up on the lengthy "The Way of Malamat." Superficially, the droning bass may seem static, but perceptible variations become prominent, at times looping into an almost rhythmic passage that again reaches a heavier, denser saturation point but never too oppressive.This continues through "Peirasmos" and "The Other," the latter resembling the muffled vibration of machinery.

In its concluding minutes, "The Hopeful Night" has him stripping the piece back to its barest essentials, largely consisting of a low volume buzz that would not be out of place on Bernhard Günter's work, albeit his sound being more digital than the analog warmth that is more prominent on Alvelos' work.The single piece that is Faith never becomes overly boisterous or forceful, but its concluding passages are especially understated.

The intentionally ambiguous source of the recordings Heitor Alvelos used to construct Faith does add an extra layer of interest to the album.Rarely does anything ever resemble what we usually consider to be a field recording, so either his processing or his selection of unconventional sources are what makes this album, probably a connection of both.It is sparse and minimalist, but done with an exceptional sense of grace and poise.

samples:

• Pseudoself
• The Way of Malamat
• The Hopeful Night

 

19 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Ba Da Bing Records has a history of releasing Natural Snow Buildings records of epic length. The Snowbringer Cult is a two-and-a-half hour album we reissued. Night Coercion Into The Company Of Witches is a three-hour album we reissued. Daughter of Darkness is an eight-hour album we reissued. And now, we present the most epic of all Natural Snow Buildings releases, the new album Terror’s Horns which almost reaches an astounding 45 minutes in length! Yes, in the world of NSB, the length of Terror’s Horns makes it arguably a single, but here is an album which encompasses all that makes this band great in doses that won’t cause you to fear you’re being hypnotized or in need of hydration.

It would be a stretch to call this Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte's pop record, for Terror's Horns continues in the duo's tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still pride themselves on a slow development, and the album's progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers that you will never unsee once experienced.

You can pre-order the album now, along with a special bonus, courtesy of the band. For those who mailorder and choose the Special Edition, you will additionally get a completely different record entitled The Ladder which, in classic Natural Snow Buildings form, is limited to fifty handmade/drawn/constructed CDs. These are gorgeous editions with stunning artwork. Also, the first 32 of you that order will get a limited print by Solange Gularte made especially for this edition.

19 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

I am not particularly familiar with any of the four artists involved in this unexpectedly audacious and unique album, but Celadon is definitely a kindred spirit to Important's previous iconoclastic, raga-influenced drone epics by Catherine Christer Hennix.  Charlemagne Palestine is yet another artist that unavoidably springs to mind, but favorably so: while this album is anything but derivative, Maja Ratkje and her collaborators share his willingness to take drone music into some very dissonant, uncategorizable, and cathartic territory.  Put more bluntly: Celadon is probably not for the average drone fan, as Ratkje's vocals gradually build to an almost demonic, window-rattling intensity, but it is nevertheless a bold, striking, and deceptively ferocious artistic statement that is like absolutely nothing else that I have heard.

Important

There are a number of curious elements to Celadon and not all of them have ready explanations.  For one, I have no idea how these four musicians are interconnected or how they all wound up together recording an album in this vein this amidst the fabled acoustics of Norway's Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum.  Yet another idiosyncrasy is the unusual choice of instrumentation, particularly Camille Norment's glass armonica, which I do not think I have ever heard so prominently on an album before (if ever).  Consisting of a series of glass bowls or goblets played with finger friction, Norment's armonica provides a haunting, hazy, and eerie backdrop throughout Celadon.  In fact, the opening "Beneath the Bough" largely feels like a stark duet between just the bleary shimmer of rubbed glass and Ratkje's chant-like, quasi-ritualistic vocals.  Wesseltoft and Galåen admittedly contribute some gently buzzing textures via harmonium and zither, but their presence does not truly come to the fore until the following "The Green Flood."

Initially, the lengthier "The Green Flood" just feels like more of the same, but as it progresses, it becomes clear that the album is slowly building into something considerably more daring and ambitious than its opening suggested.  The transformation is far from forced though: Celadon is primarily a languorously swaying reverie for much of its duration, keeping the music extremely minimal and spacious and allowing its darker underbelly to only surface slowly and organically through subtly massing islands of dissonance. By its halfway point, however, it is clear that "Flood" has sneakily become quite heavy, cohering into a dense miasma of uneasily harmonizing harmonium drones while Ratkje’s previously sedate vocals occasionally break into clear, banshee-like wails.  Initially, her trips into the upper registers maintain an operatic level of control and force, adding a welcome power and unpredictability to the piece.  On the final piece, however, the remaining thin veneer of mannered artifice is gutsily torn down, transforming those same soaring and angelic vocal crescendos into something positively feral-sounding.

"Afterglow" is initially quite similar to its predecessors, however, despite being a bit darker and more ominous right out of the gate.  That said, no amount of uneasily harmonizing drone thrum could have possibly prepared me for Maja’s blood-chilling howl that occurs around the six-minute mark.  From that point on, Celadon has far transcended its somewhat subdued and humble origins for good and we are in uncharted territory to stay.  Wisely, the vocals pyrotechnics do not continue unbroken, but any sense of calm is decisively shattered: while the quartet intermittently fade back into a smoldering equilibrium, there is always the threat that Ratkje will again erupt into something resembling a shrieking exorcism or menacingly low-register Tuvan throat-singing.  Such a performance would probably give me an instant headache in most other hands, but it does not here: the visceral explosiveness of Ratkje's vocals is certainly startling, extreme, and intense, but it feels more like a tour de force performance by an insanely gifted performer rather than a more modest talent pushing herself beyond her capabilities with reckless abandon.  Also, it not only fits the surrounding music, it elevates it into something rather amazing and otherworldly.

If Celadon has any flaws, they are definitely minor ones–mainly that it gets off to a fairly slow start and takes a long time to distinguish itself as a radical departure from more traditional drone.  Those somewhat meandering, improvisatory traits ultimately work in its favor though, making the explosive crescendo that much more stunning and satisfying.  Obviously, Maja Ratkj'’s almost-supernatural performance deserves a huge amount of credit for making this such a wonderful album, but the entire ensemble worked beautifully together.  While I was personally most enamored of Norment's glass armonica, all four musicians seamlessly cohered to form an egoless and dynamically simmering backdrop without a single misstep or false-move.   This is a genuinely prodigious achievement. I have absolutely no idea what I would even call this genre (Outsider drone? Pandit Pran Nath-damaged minimalism?), but I am certain that Celadon has decisively earned a place within its pantheon of classics.

Samples:

• Beneath The Bough
• The Green Flood
• Afterglow

 

18 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Sunn O)))’s Stephen O'Malley delivers an incredible solo work for Demdike Stare’s DDS imprint, recorded together with French 35-piece improv orchestra ONCEIM.

The dark interpreter, Stephen O'Malley ov Sunn 0))), presents his towering debut orchestral composition Gruidés; commissioned by French 35-piece improv orchestra ONCEIM - l'Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisation Musicales - and released thru Demdike Stare's DDS label.

In early 2014 O'Malley was approached by pianist and composer Frédéric Blondy to write a work for the orchestra, comprised of exceptional musicians from the fields of contemporary, jazz, experimental, improvisation and classical. Understandably intimidated by the prospect, but encouraged to "just be punk rock about it," the preternaturally gifted composer has conceived a technically demanding - for the players at least - and richly rewarding longform drone piece intently focused on harmonic experimentation and overtone study. During its 35-minute lifespan, Gruidés requires the musicians to sustain pitches for several minutes (which is difficult enough for strings, and a real feat of endurance for woodwind), yielding a gloaming spectra of eliding dissonance rent in sliding tone clusters and lucent geometries punctuated by a similar whipcrack percussion as used in his Scott 0))) collaboration. It makes great use of the acoustic qualities of Saint Merry church, central Paris, as captured in the recording of IRCAM's Augustin Muller and mastered by Matt Colton with a detached spaciousness evocatively distilled in the cover art by Jean-Luc Verna. It’s an incredibly immersive piece that comes highly recommended if you’re into the work of Phill Niblock, Alvin Lucier, Ellen Fullman, Harley Gaber and, indeed, Sunn 0))).

Via Boomkat.

12 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

In a perfect world, an artist of Amara Touré’s caliber would need no introduction at all, but the real world is weird and mysterious enough to definitely warrant one in this case, so here it is: Touré’s innovative, sensuous, and sexy Cuban-influenced grooves basically ruled the nightlife in Cameroon and Senegal for roughly two decades, but he only recorded a handful of songs and then disappeared without a trace around 1980.  This collection compiles all of his known singles as well as his sole album and it is all great.  To my ears, this is a lock for the most crucial reissue of the year.

Analog Africa

The album kicks off with the only piece that most listeners are likely to have heard before: the smoky and slinky "N'Niyo," which surfaced on Honest Jon’s 2009 Africa Boogaloo collection.  Its original release date appears to be unknown, but it was recorded with The Black and White Ensemble in Cameroon sometime between 1973 and 1976.  Despite being one of his earliest releases, it is nonetheless a strong contender for Touré’s finest song.  If not, it still certainly exhibits all of characteristics that make Amara's work such a singular pleasure: a slow, lazily sexy Latin groove; smoky saxophone; spidery guitars; punchy horn stabs; strong hooks; and his own distinctively passionate and sadness-tinged vocals.  Notably, Touré was a vocalist/percussionist, so I would expect those to be the strongest aspects of his work, but the details that I actually like the most are the intricate, clean guitars and the wounded, lovesick-sounding horns.  Those details work, however, precisely because Touré had such a brilliantly intuitive grasp of mood and pace as a bandleader, avoiding all of the usual pitfalls of the era in favor of a stylish, understated, and deeply sensual aesthetic.

The rest of Touré’s work with The Black and White Ensemble (they recorded a total of three singles together) basically sticks to the same vein of smoldering, Latin-tinged sex music with a similarly consistent degree of success.  There are, however, some shades of mood that differentiate the six pieces.  "Temedy," for example, is a bit more funky and driving, while "Fatou" is a bit more breezy and tropical-feeling.  The only truly significant divergence is "N'ga Digne M’be," which sounds deeply indebted to America soul ballads of the era, which arguably makes it the weakest piece on the album.  I still like it, but it is primarily a vocal showcase, completely eschewing the Latin-influence and propulsive grooves that characterize Touré's best work.  The remaining pieces, however, ably fill that void (particularly "Lamento Cubano").

The final four songs are all culled from Touré's sole album, released in 1980 with Gabon's Orchestre Massako as his backing band.  Unsurprisingly, they are all wonderful as well, but they are a bit more muscular, adventurous, and urgent than Amara's earlier work.  They are also a lot more raw, sound-quality-wise, which I actually like (these pieces feel more "live" and immediate).  The best of the bunch by a landslide is "Salamouti," which boasts a wonderfully staccato and stumbling descending melody.  "Tela" is yet another stand-out due to its thick, lazily lagging bass line, but it is the closing "Africa" that is most attention-grabbing, as Orchestre Massako embellishes their funky, sinuous grooves with unexpectedly flanged and spacy guitars.

Overall, "Salamouti" is probably Amara's finest single moment, but I otherwise prefer his more sensuous and distinctive early singles to his full-length.  That said, Touré's voice and songwriting remained as strong as ever until the very end–I just happen to prefer my classic African music to be more Cuban-influenced and laid-back.  In any case, Analog Africa did a characteristically amazing job with this release, which is no small feat since the artist in question has not been seen in over 30 years and no one knows whether he is alive or dead.  To his credit, Samy Ben Redjeb found several associated musicians to interview and compiled a fairly comprehensive biography of a genuine enigma.  I wish that there had been more recordings to find: Touré's entire 10-year run with Le Star Band de Dakar as Senegal’s hottest nightclub musician (1958-1968) is entirely undocumented (recording studios were a tragic rarity in Africa back then).  Still, I will happily take what I can get: this is an essential release for anyone interested in African music and one of the true jewels of Analog Africa’s discography (alongside Diablos Del Ritmo, of course).

• Tela
• Salamouti
• N'Ga Digne M'Be

 

12 July 2015

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Turn off the mechanical, logic-soaked part of your brain and sympathetic resonance sounds like a magic trick, and looks like one too. It’s the phenomenon that explains why opera singers can shatter glass from across the room with nothing but their voice. Whether bright or ominous, the spontaneous ring (or explosion) of an untouched body or an unplayed string is provocative. It is a sign of sound’s invisible inner life, the one that has nothing to do with intentions or compositions, the one that John Cage implied when he suggested that writing music was a means of "waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord." That is the sort of life Mike Majkowski is after on Neighbouring Objects, his latest cassette on Astral Spirits. The title suggests sympathetic resonance abstractly, but it also describes Majkowski’s instrumentation, which for the first time includes bass guitar, accordion, piano, and percussion alongside the core of his double bass. Magical though it may seem, Majkowski uses these tools to emphasize both the affective and the measurable, more physical properties of sound.

Astral Spirits

Even before it begins, "Chandelier/Gondola/Echoing Stars" makes the curious suggestion that a decorative light fixture, a Venetian mode of transportation, and several distant balls of plasma might have something in common, or might be, in some way, neighbors. Finding precise musical analogues for these objects is beside the point, but the piece is arranged into three parts, and those parts echo one another. The first one is populated by a tremulous drone that hums like an industrial saw in an empty warehouse. The sound is acoustic and fricative, filled with fluctuations and disturbances that highlight the space the sound is resonating in almost more than the sound itself. Taken together the source and the space produce a rough harmony that flashes and wanes like a candle.

The second section contains a higher pitched noise generated by a bow and strings, the grind and scrape of horsehair replacing the whir of the buzzsaw. The bowing is quick and sharp and, again, distinct from the accompanying tones that float around it. Here the relationship between the two components is more clearly established. As Majkowski moves up and down the neck of his concert bass, the ringing tones follow suit. This resolves suddenly into the final section, which combines elements from the first two with a melody played on electric bass and chimes. Those chimes twinkle like stars against the darker pulse of the drones and signal the completion of the song’s upward trajectory. Whatever the status of the objects in the title, all of Majkowski’s instruments finally line up, from the lowest register to the highest, in a kind of harmonic syzygy.

On the second side, "Carnival of Decay" utilizes similar techniques to render a more dramatic effect. Majkowski begins by interlacing his double bass and bass guitar. They swell and recede alternately, then merge into a single throbbing tone as a piano, an accordion, and a set of rattles enter the mix. After the accordion wheezes its last wheeze, the sound of Majkowski’s bow also disappears, leaving only a hollow murmur. A single note, which matches that murmur perfectly, is played on the piano over and over while a small host of squeaky toys chirp away like laughter. Sympathetic resonance anchors this piece too, but this time, instead of holding the different instruments together, the anchor drags the music down into the depths, where something sinister is apparently waiting. If the inner life of the instruments is the subject of side A, then side B showcases the inner life of the attentive mind, which resonates sympathetically with both the dreariest and most luminous of musical phenomena.

samples:

• Chandelier/Gondola/Echoing Stars
• Carnival of Decay (excerpt 1)
• Carnival of Decay (excerpt 2)