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I can't remember the last time that I was this wrong-footed and bewildered by an album.  Ostensibly, this is a soundtrack for a silent Ho Tzu Nyen film, but it is difficult to imagine music this jarring accompanying anything.  It's also quite difficult to process that this is even a Black to Comm album, as it sounds mostly like being terrorized in a nightmare by Scott Walker or an undead Jamie Stewart.  I am not sure that is necessarily a good thing (a bit nerve-jangling, actually), but Marc Richter has definitely convinced me that he is capable of making some very bold, unique, and uncompromising music.
There are probably a lot of factors that resulted in Earth being as bizarre and otherworldly as it is, but tellingly, it seems like the least significant of them is that Marc Richter wrote most of the music while on heavy painkillers due to a broken leg.  It is hard to gauge how much that altered state impacted his creativity, aesthetic, or judgment, as it sounds like there is probably still something resembling a Black to Comm album lurking here.  It's often quite hard to notice that though, as Earth prominently features David Aird of Vindicatrix and his haunted, quavering, and theatrical vocals invariably become the focus of attention every time they appear (which is quite often).  Also, it should be noted that film itself is pretty goddamn bizarre: De Stijl describes it as "a post-apocalyptic collage based on paintings by classical European painters (Caravaggio, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Géricault)" and that is probably as dead-on a description as possible.
Rather than delivering coloration, subtle background, and atmosphere like a typical composer, Richter (perhaps emboldened by his painkillers) opted to engage Ho Tzu Nyen's visuals in an apocalyptic, avant-garde game of chicken.  I'm not sure who won, but I am certain that seeing the film with this accompaniment is certain to be cathartic, exhausting, and alienating sensory overload in the best possible way—it's very easy to imagine a flood of people stumbling out of the theater in a state of semi-shock afterward.  Most of Earth's disturbing and haunting power is due to Aird, of course, as he invariably sounds quite creepy, intense, and possessed.  Richter also adds some unexpectedly dark and unsettling touches of his own though, like the Lynchian chorus of backwards children's voices in "Stickstoff II" or the broken-sounding, discordant acoustic guitar in "Water."  There are also many more subtle bits of uneasiness scattered about: Marc explicitly set out to convey decay and accomplishes that by using creaking, crackling static, and strangled strings to make it sound like the very fabric of the songs is unraveling.  "Thrones," in particular, pulls off the extremely neat trick of making some of Aird's vocals sound like they are emanating from a malfunctioning Victrola.
Still, there are several moments of Richter's characteristic warm, dream-like beauty amidst all the ruin and portentousness, such as the fragile, shimmering piano in "Thrones."  Also, the closing "Mirror" sounds suspiciously (and pleasantly) like a carved-up loop of John Cale's "Hanky Panky Nohow."  However, it is very hard to fully appreciate Rutger Zuydervelt's singing bowls or Christopher Kline's singing saw when it sounds like a corpse has just clawed its way out of the earth to gurgle, croak, moan, and caterwaul cryptic dystopian pronouncements.  Aird is simultaneously the best and worst thing about this album, as the sheer otherness and force of his contribution make Earth seem like something very different than a Black to Comm album (though it doesn't exactly sound like a Vindicatrix album either).  That, coupled with the intensely uncomfortable mood, ensure that this is likely to be the absolute last album I will reach for when I need a Black to Comm fix.  Nevertheless, I still respect Earth enormously as a remarkably ego-less and perversely brilliant accomplishment for Richter and his collaborators: repeat listenability could not help but be collateral damage with such a daring, expectation-defying plunge into strikingly original sound art.
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Robert Haigh’s latest piano-based album is his first for US-based label Unseen Worlds. It has a finely crafted pace with such richness and delicate variety that even the most languid and pristine tracks avoid the doldrums of melancholy.
Creatures of the Deep begins with "Portrait with Shadow," a mesmerizing solo piano piece. With little apparent effort it plunges immediately into a sublime atmosphere which affected me long after its two minute duration. "Secret Life of Waves" and "Sunken Pavilions" have an eerie inevitability and something of the liquidity in the vast landscapes of Yves Tanguy—who was in the merchant navy and the son of a sea captain before becoming an abstract painter.
The whole record is a masterful construction, but here and there the music hits peaks of a soft yet intense ecstasy. "Birds of Cadence" sways back and forth as if notes were held aloft on winged messengers between Earth and Heaven. The track "Autumn Fool" recalls bits of Virginia Astley’s classic pastoral record "From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.""I Remember Phaedra" had me straining to hear any echoes of the Tangerine Dream record of a similar name. Perhaps that is why, on first listen, I was absorbed in the dark tones and completely missed that it includes the tune of the traditional English folk song "Scarborough Fair."
After listening to this new work, I plunged more into Robert Haigh’s back catalog. His approach to modern classical music has definite echoes of his jungle, drum and bass, dark ambient, and experimental work as—or with—Omni Trio, Sema, and Nurse With Wound. Picture a steam train running on a track parallel to an electric train. Beyond the differences in tempo and softness, there are similar stylistic loops, moods, and rhythms. As such, Creatures of The Deep is melodious and tuneful but the reflections and signals from his earlier work keeps it from being dull or mellow.
Haigh has said that composing at the piano imposes a discipline on the process which makes one "an instant minimalist" and that he is interested in exploring "the interface between the tonal and atonal." I know that the aforementioned "Portrait With Shadow" made me an instant fan and by the end of this album I was scurrying for more of his music. Comparisons are not necessary, but this record inhabits a place outside time—a quiet cave where Erik Satie once scratched marks on the stone, or Harold Budd left a footprint in the soil. Perhaps it is a deserted snow-covered train station where no one is checking tickets, or simply any place where a slight deviation in sound can be stunningly beautiful.
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Date Palms’ Gregg Kowalsky has been atypically quiet over the last several years, as his last solo full-length was 2009's inspired and fitfully mesmerizing Tape Chants. I am a huge fan of tape loops, so it would have absolutely delighted me if Kowalsky had spent most of the last decade secretly deepening and perfecting that side of his art. It is certainly possible that he has been, but L'Orange, L'Orange is not Tape Chants II. Instead, Kowalsky consciously set out to make an album that "felt like a human made it." He certainly succeeded at that, as L'Orange, L'Orange is a warm, drone-based twist on Date Palms' sun-dappled psychedelia. Aesthetically, it also shares some common ground with a lot of the Cluster-loving analog synth fare so much in vogue these days, yet the best moments achieve a lushly enveloping, meditative bliss that is uniquely Kowalsky-ian.
I suppose it would be somewhat reductive and misleading to describe L'Orange, L'Orange as Kowalsky's "California album," as he is a Mills College alum that has been a Californian for quite a while.The California of his current home of Los Angeles is quite a different place than the Bay Area, however, and this album is a very deliberate reflection of Southern California's clear blue skies, endless sun, and perfect coast (it is no coincidence that Malibu is directly referenced in one of the track titles).Kowalsky's surroundings are not the only thing that has transformed over the ensuing years, however, as L'Orange marks a significant change in philosophy as well.Aside from the aforementioned move towards warmth and humanity, Kowalsky has also embraced quiet simplicity, eschewing anything resembling his cassette-based installation work for twinkling and serene synth drones.In some ways, that transformation is a hard sell for me, as I am most drawn to tormented iconoclasts obsessively working in seclusion and Kowalsky now seems like the exact opposite of that: L'Orange is almost beatifically calm and radiant.There are almost no sharp edges or dark undercurrents roiling beneath the surface of these seven pieces–just dreamy, drifting contentment.The only real exception is "Ritual Del Croix," which casts some shadows across its tranquil idyll with some frayed textures and ominous swooping synth tones.Fortunately, the execution elsewhere can be quite wonderful as well, as Kowalsky has a strong intuition for textural variation, effective layering, and small-scale dynamic transformation.When he hits the mark, the results can be quite sublime.
He does not always hit the mark.However, L'Orange is an assured and consistent album with no real missteps (though the opening "L'Ambiance, L'Orange" ends a bit too abruptly for my taste).To choose a metaphor that Kowalsky himself might appreciate, this album is a placid bay on a warm summer day as a light breeze gently rustles the surrounding palm trees.It is certainly a enjoyable and calming place to be, yet it is more of an ambient pleasure than something that commands attention.Much like, say, Malibu, however, there are some achingly beautiful vistas that offer quite a bit more than that.One such vista on L'Orange is the absolutely sublime "Pattern Haze," a wonderfully hissing and gently pulsing bit of drone heaven.Elsewhere, "Maliblue Dream Sequence" is similarly lovely, beautifully balancing a swirl of warm, hazy harmonies with the heft of deep, melodic bass tones.There are also a couple of enjoyable (if less substantial) piano pieces.The better of the two is "Tonal Bath For Bubbles," which marries rippling, cascading piano runs to a slowly flanging, hallucinatory haze and some gently burbling synth pulses."Blind Contour Drawing for Piano" has its own appeal though, resembling a tender Harold Budd piece filtered through a healthy amount of tape decay.
It is somewhat amusing that L'Orange, L'Orange was released on the eclectic Mexican Summer label, as it is very much a quintessential Kranky album by a quintessential Kranky artist: understated and quietly beautiful ambient drone music of the highest caliber.As such, L'Orange should have no trouble finding an audience, but it is more like a familiar old friend or comfort food rather than an exciting breakthrough.I would personally prefer a more adventurous Kowalsky to a reliable one, but a good album is a good album: covering well-traveled territory is hardly problematic if it is done well.Kowalsky does it well.Obviously, there are some exasperating glimpses of a possible superior album in highlights like the absolutely wonderful "Pattern Haze," but that could be said of almost every album ever released: few artists ever release albums featuring wall-to-wall classics.Most albums do not have any at all, in fact.L'Orange, on the other hand, features a couple of real gems.The rest is just fine by me, as this is a solid and thematically coherent suite of songs–I am glad to have another Gregg Kowalsky album in the world.I may not be exactly the target demographic for this particular release, but I definitely appreciate the nuance, craftsmanship, and uncluttered simplicity that he brings to the form.
 
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Few people have played as crucial a role in shaping the experimental music landscape as Terry Riley, yet his impact and historical significance have not necessarily translated into a discography of timeless classics ("Poppy Nogood" excepted). This particular reissue, originally released on Shandar back in 1972, still sounds remarkably fresh and contemporary though. Part of that is pure luck, as we are currently in the midst of an aesthetically similar analog synthesizer renaissance, yet these two improvised performances would probably seem immortal and transcendently consciousness-altering in almost any cultural context. Though the two pieces take somewhat different paths and evoke different moods, the overall experience is like being present at an organ mass that slowly transforms into a mass hallucination where all the notes bleed and swirl together in a lysergic haze of otherworldly harmony.
I am quite perplexed about where the "surgery" bit of this album's curious title originated, but Riley was much less cryptic in paying tribute to both Persia and dervishes, as this "composition" grew from his lasting fascinations with Rumi, ancient Middle Eastern culture, and Sufi devotional music.Surgery-wise, I suppose Riley may have been excising both conventional composition and standard tuning from his life, as well as normal consciousness from his listeners.If that is the case, I suppose the operation was a successful one on all fronts.While I cannot say I personally achieved any sort of ecstatic rapture over the course of this sprawling and somewhat overwhelming double-album, it definitely evokes a kind of trance-like and hallucinatory delirium (much like one of My Cat is An Alien's recent massive opuses).Part of that achievement is due to Riley’s odd yet minimal arsenal of gear: a modified electric organ (tuned to just intonation) and a reel-to-reel tape delay.The rest is due to the nature of the piece itself, as both versions combine a drone-like undercurrent with rapid flurries of blurry notes (not unlike John Coltrane’s "sheets of sound," albeit much more hazy and disorienting).The combined effect of the unusual tuning, "pipe organ" sound, obsessive repetition, and smeared textures is quite a singular one.Both pieces have a ritualistic, mesmerizing pulse at their foundation, but the foreground is a consciousness-eroding blizzard of whirling, swirling, and bleary notes that unpredictably see-saws between pattern and entropy.
Both performances are roughly 45 minutes long and ostensibly spring from the same motif (a repeating minor key arpeggio pattern).In the case of the first piece, recorded in Los Angeles in 1971, that motif has a rather slow, deep, and elegiac feel.For the Paris performance, recorded a year later, Riley presents a brighter and livelier version of the pattern.That change makes quite a significant difference in the feel initially, as the Los Angeles version packs the dark gravitas of a requiem, while the more listenable Paris version feels like an extended psych freak-out by a formidable prog rock band. As Riley's ecstatic improvisations build momentum, however, the differences between the pieces start to blur and disappear (though I do love the oddly see-sawing throb that coheres for a while in the Paris version).Obviously, the primary appeal of both pieces today lies in the strange harmonies and the mantric, Eastern-informed drone pulse.There have certainly been many better drone albums since Dervishes was released, but the just intonation still sounds somewhat radical and alien to my contemporary ears.Also, this remains a deep and sustained mindfuck by any standard.One thing that absolutely no one else has been able to replicate or build upon, however, is the virtuosically varied and free-wheeling breadth of Riley's improvisations.While it certainly verges on indulgent at times, Riley's blithe genre fluidity is arguably also his greatest strength, as Dervishes seamlessly dances through classical minimalism, the blues, psychedelia, Eastern drone, and hymn-like organ reveries with vibrant spontaneity.That deft unpredictability is compelling in its own right, but it also serves an essential purpose, as Riley's periodic eruptions into melodic riffing act as a necessary tension release from his swarming crescendos of rapidly hammered notes.Without them, Dervishes would be a numbing experience.With them, Riley is able to sneakily ratchet up the intensity and psychic vertigo without losing my attention.
Persian Surgery Dervishes is a pointed reminder that the most striking and important albums are not always the most perfect ones, nor are they always the ones with the most focused vision.This album is undeniably messy, imperfect, and indulgent at times (and perhaps also overlong as well), yet it remains a dazzling and inspired tour de force.There is something quite beautiful, intimate, and almost heroic about these performances.It is almost as if Riley were certain that if he found the right combination of notes and maintained the necessary intensity, he could dissolve the boundaries between dimensions and lead his audience to a higher plane of existence.Obviously, these two performances would not even have been possible if Riley had not already spent decades performing, composing, thinking deeply, studying traditional Eastern music, and revolutionizing minimalism, yet the very essence of Dervishes is simply that of a lone man with an electric organ trying to whip up a spontaneous and unique performance so wild and transformative that it would blow the minds of some of the world’s most sophisticated concertgoers.If my own experience listening to a mere recording four decades later is any indication, I would say he probably succeeded: this feels more like an enthralling document of a mass religious epiphany than a mere album.
 
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As a devout fan of drone's weirder fringes, I was casually aware of Razen before this album, but I had never taken the time to dive particularly deeply into their bizarre sonic sorcery: Brecht Ameel & Kim Delcour have historically erred a bit too much on the side of shrillness for my taste. I certainly admired their frayed, idiosyncratic, and somewhat unhinged approach to the genre, but it still made for a somewhat rough listen. This latest release, their first for Three:Four, falls quite squarely in my comfort zone though. For one, there are no bagpipes or modular synths to be found, just an organ and a curious array of traditional acoustic instruments spanning several cultures. More importantly, the band believes that "a presence" surfaced in the church where they recorded these improvisations and that the resulting tapes were supernaturally altered in some way. I am not a big believer in the spirit world, but whatever transpired certainly led to a uniquely compelling album, as the best pieces on The Xvoto Reels take ritualistic acoustic drone to a wonderfully hallucinatory and haunting place.
The original recordings for this album were made back in August of 2015 at St. Martin's Church in Asse, Belgium.The church has quite an interesting history, as no one quite knows when it was built.In theory, it is at least a thousand years old, but it was apparently destroyed and rebuilt several times as various wars swept through the region.I suppose that makes it as fertile a location for a good haunting as practically anywhere, but the particular spirit that Razen (here expanded to a five-piece) encountered was far more subtle than your usual phantasm, manifesting its presence solely in unusual dynamic transformations and bizarre acoustic phenomena.According to the band, the resultant recordings were perplexingly unrecognizable documents of the actual performances that occurred, as the usual Razen elements of "randomness, unexpectedness and irrationality" were all dramatically heightened.It was certainly kind of the apparition to be so sympathetic to Razen's established aesthetic, as a less sensitive ghost my have tried to add beats or something.In any case, there are definitely some strange harmonies and overtones swirling above these languorous ragas, so there is no denying that the church had an unusual and distinctive acoustic character that played a significant role.There are also some more obvious dub-like fluorishes to be found as well, as erratic shifts or disruptions in tape speed occasionally appear throughout Xvoto.I suppose that is a cool touch to some degree, yet the eerily beautiful music itself is far more compelling than trying to spot the handiwork of any sonic phantoms that may have been fluttering around the rafters.Also, on pieces like "Ash Reversal," Razen's swirling haze of dissonant recorder and organ harmonies is legitimately spine-chilling without any extra occult intervention being needed.
As much as I enjoy those darker moments, the true beauty of The Xvoto Reels lies in its more transcendent and ritualistic pieces, as pieces like "Dunes Spell Runes on the Edge of Town" feel like they could be impossible field recordings of ancient pagan ceremonies.Razen also have a real genius for balancing the sublime with the ragged and gnarled, a mesmerizing tightrope act best illustrated by "Rover Fortunes," as the higher notes sometimes dissolve into distorted sizzle and Pieter Lenaerts's churning and moaning upright bass sounds absolutely feral.That particular piece is probably where Razen cross the line into absolute goddamn genius, as it is essentially a wonderful drone piece that unpredictably shudders and undulates like a living entity…while individual notes unexpectedly transform into howls of anguish…and a roiling and snarling undercurrent threatens to tear the whole thing apart.It is truly epic.The closing "Death Reel" is another stunner, albeit a more understated one.It kind of sounds like Razen somehow isolated just the eerie harmonics from Tuvan throat-singing, resulting in a ghostly whine that drifts through a warmly melancholic bed of tape hiss, droning strings, tender recorder melodies, and clattering tablas.It is exactly the kind of dreamlike, hypnotic Eastern-influenced drone that I could easily listen to in an infinite loop, but the entity lurking in St. Martin's apparently had other plans: as the title cryptically alludes to, the tape grows increasingly garbled and then abruptly falls completely silent around the ten-minute mark.It is certainly an abrupt end, but ten minutes of sustained drone nirvana is still ten minutes of sustained drone nirvana.
Interestingly, Ameel and Delcour considered not releasing this album, as they felt it was "too personal, intimate and obscure to let out into the world…the sound of a deeply private dream, a message from the subconscious."It is hard to imagine any other band recording their masterpiece, then debating about whether it is morally acceptable to allow others to hear it, but Razen are quite a unique duo and I believe them.Skepticism towards the supernatural aside, something special undeniably did happen on that day.I have no idea if Razen channeled the divine (with some additional help from the surrounding architecture and a malfunctioning tape), yet the confluence of chance, mysterious variables, and genuine inspiration resulted an album that is on a whole different plane than anything else I have heard from them.This is as soulful and transcendent as drone gets.Of course, an album like The Xvoto Reels could not have happened if Razen had not set the stage for it, as it feels like Ameel and Delcour have been shuffling around strange and mismatched puzzle pieces for a while and finally got them to all fit together by casting aside all traces of the modern, finding some like-minded collaborators, and diving deep into a half-real/half-imagined ancient past.As a result, this album would have probably been a huge breakthrough even if it were recorded under completely mundane circumstances.Instead, Razen have somehow managed to achieve something even better still: a visionary record that sounds like the secret ecstatic recordings of a long-forgotten religious sect.
 
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Artist: Psychic TV
Title: Batschkapp
Catalogue No: CSR162CD
Barcode: 8 2356650722 2
Format: CD in jewelcase
Genre: Industrial / Ritual
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Recorded at Batschkapp, Frankfurt, West Germany, 10th December 1984. Originally issued as a bonus CD for the first 1000 copies of 'Were You Ever Bullied At School - Do You Want Revenge?' (CSR27CD, 1999). That first edition sold out immediately and has not been available in any form for 12 years.
Personnel: Genesis P-Orridge, Alex Fergusson, Paul 'Grimsby' Reeson and John 'Zos Kia' Gosling.
Tracks: 1. Thee Legge Songe | 2. Soul Eater | 3. Unclean (Bring Out Your Dead) | 4. Godstar (Never Forget) | 5. I Can See Your Eye Can I | 6. Ov Power, Corruption And Magick | 7. Papal Breakdance...
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23five is delighted to announce the release of our two latest publications -- Areal from the intrepid New York intermedia artist Richard Garet, and a posthumous release from Helmut Schaefer, featuring Will Guthrie, Elisabeth Gmeiner, and Zbigniew Karkowski.
On Areal, Garet continues his ongoing research with electromagnetic disturbances through radio. Garet treats the radio process of transmission and reception as a routing system for the audio signal, all the while deliberately agitating and distressing the nodes that direct the course of that signal. For example, an electrical motor might be situated near a radio's antenna disrupting its ability to properly receive a transmission that Garet is broadcasting from nearby. Through the controlled use of electro-acoustic techniques (some rough and volatile, some refined and delicate), he organizes the signal distortion, the crackling static, and the ever-present tendencies for feedback into swarms of chiming resonance, electrically sourced harmonics, tactile bricolage, and impressionist din. As much as Garet's process pushes the interaction of sound and electricity to the brink of self-immolation, Areal balances his crunched textures with extended passages of radiant blooms of blurry noise and drone, finding common ground between the glassine density from Rhys Chatham and the splintered excursions of Kevin Drumm.
Schäfer posited Thought Provoking as a radical shift from his brutalist electronic engineering to a spatialized, open-ended composition based on the muffled tones from an ad hoc instrument he built from salvaged church organ pipes and hair dryers. The first presentation of this work took place in his home town of Graz, Austria in 2003; the second was a collaboration with violinist Elisabeth Gmeiner in Vienna two years later; and the third & final performance occurred in 2006 with percussionist Will Guthrie and Gmiener at the St. Andre Church where he first presented it in Graz. After Schäfer's death, Guthrie reconstituted the rehearsal takes from that performance for this recording of Thought Provoking III, attempting to re-imagine the controlled energy of those sessions with Schäfer's aesthetic framework at the forefront. The bellowing hums from Schäfer's organ pipe and hair dryer contraction ebb and flow amidst intermittent percussive flourishes, subtle gong overtones, sustained violin trills, and fizzling electronic mark-making. On the second track of this disc, long-time friend Zbigniew Karkowski presents a smoldering electro-acoustic remix of Thought Provoking III as a fitting tribute to Schäfer.
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Artist: Psychic TV
Title: Paramartha
Catalogue No: CSR161CD
Barcode: 8 2356650712 3
Format: CD in jewelcase
Genre: Industrial / Ritual
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Recorded 22nd September 1984 at Pandora's Music Box, Rotterdam. Originally issued as two bootlegs in 1985 - 'Paramartha' and 'Unclean', now remastered and cleaned from the two, to create the full live show, not heard before it its entirety.
Participants: Genesis P-Orridge, Alex Fergusson, Paul 'Grimsby' Reeson and John 'Zos Kia' Gosling.
Tracks: 1. Southern Comfort | 2. Godstar | 3. Unclean | 4. Ov Power | 5. Alright | 6. Jungle
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Artist: Psychic TV
Title: Ov Power
Catalogue No: CSR160CD
Barcode: 8 2356650702 4
Format: CD in jewelcase
Genre: Industrial / Ritual
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Live at Klecks Theatre, Hamburg, 16th September 1984. Originally issued as a vinyl bootleg in 1985 in an edition of 500 copies. Completely remastered and expanded. Psychic TV at their most Industrial.
For thee realization ov this project Psychic TV were: Genesis P-Orridge, John 'Zos Kia' Gosling, Paul 'Grimsby' Reeson and Alex Fergusson.
Tracks: 1. Turn The Golden Thread | 2. Spin The Blood Red Thread | 3. Rope Your Self | 4. Unclean (Dead Dog River) | 5. Godstars Never Fade, They Merely Re-Incarnate | 6. Ov Power | 7. Shango And Come Back!
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Chartier's work is never something that could be considered "easy" to listen to, but the result is always a rich, rewarding experience. Recurrence, which is a project that was splintered off of one of his earliest works Series, follows this trend. It might be difficult at times, but he has consistently excelled in creating work that captures the intersection of music, visual art, architecture, and science, and again, Recurrence is no different.
Made up of two distinct, but related pieces, the 21 minute opener "Recurrence (Room/Crosstones)" is by far the more Spartan and minimalist of the two, even in relative terms.For most of its duration it is a repetitive, low-end hum that mostly maintains a consistent pitch, but the shape and dynamics exhibit subtle changes throughout, eventually transitioning into the higher registers of the sound spectrum.While it seems rather static overall, played on a decent sound system with good bass response results in a more physical, and captivating experience.
The other piece, "Recurrence (Series)," clocks in at 51 minutes, and while it is mostly constructed upon the same slowly evolving tonal throb, there is a significantly greater amount of development and variation to be had.This becomes apparent from the onset, where higher pitched, shimmering waves of sound expand outward, disrupted by the occasional reverberated click or pop that adds a bit of organic to the clinical sound manipulation.
Rather than emphasizing only tonal variations, Chartier includes passages of what resembles the amplified hum of everyday electronic gear, bits of white noise, and other unidentifiable textures.His use of these fragmented, but idiosyncratic sounds—like roaring waves of static into what sounds like a swarm of alien locusts—call to mind an approach to sound art similar to that of Robert Hampson, albeit with a more minimalist bent, and I mean that as serious compliment.
While Recurrence was intended as pieces for performance and multi-channel installation, they work quite well coming off of a CD through a standard home stereo system.Even in that comparatively basic environment, his use of tone and texture still creates a tangible sense of space that stretches far beyond audible perception.
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Reto Mäder is quite a prolific artist, from his solo work as RM74, with Steven Hess in Ural Umbo to his role in Pendulum Nisum. His more metal-influenced work as Sum of R (Mäder with guitarist Julia Wolf) has a relatively small discography, with this being his second full-length work other than a few self-released CDRs. Ride Out the Waves makes for a dense, psych tinged experiment that recalls some of the best moments of early Godflesh, juxtaposed with abstract free-form experimentation.
The opening "Growing Into Something Special" sets up the album perfectly:initially a slow ambient build and far-off rattling and crashes, it quite jarringly launches into sharp drums and detuned guitar riffs, paring that dissonant, murky space with steady, lurching chords and knife-like beats.
It is this combination of stiff, aggressive drum programming and grimy, sludgy guitar that make for the best moments of the album.The jerky stop/start structure and loud, ugly guitar of "In The Fields of Trust" work especially well, even though it comparatively makes for a more tame song.The same goes for "Echo," a foggy sludgefest that crawls along with a slow, menacing pace.
"Alarming" takes the same blunt approach, going right into pounding machine and guitar like old school Godflesh, channeling that same slow, depressing but not necessarily angry vibe.With the addition of shrill sine waves and an air-raid siren lifted right out of "War Pigs," it closes the album on an especially chaotic note.
Mixed between, however, is some less head-nodding, more beard stroking moments of experimentation and composition.The sparse piano, static, and understated guitar playing of "Mist of Tears" demonstrates that Sum of R are not afraid to step away from the riff and into more ambient territories.While "Captured Lightning" might come across as a bit dense, there is an almost progressive vibe to it, with more insinuated tension rather than outward aggression.
As the project's full length follow up to the 2008 self-titled album on Utech, Sum of R is developing a distinct identity amongst Mäder’s slew of side and solo projects.Capturing both dark, creepy atmospherics and aggressive, memorable guitar work, it nicely balances the formless and the structured, and works quite well as a fully realized album.
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