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Fortunately, the title of Piano Magic's new album is not indicative of the music. There is a certain coldness and calculation to Glen Johnson's ensemble but it does not quite approach disaffection. Part of the album's chill is due to the explicit motif of ghosts and spectral images which cuts across both the music and the liner notes.
The album's insert is filled with negative photographic images, giving the impression of looking across some dimensional boundary into another plane of existence. On the cover there is the moderately disturbing photograph of a man's head lying in bed as if asleep or, more likely, dead. Tree branches emanate from the top of his skull like antlers. The whole scene is awash in grayness and the antiseptic bed linens and death-stare give the aura of an open-casket wake. The songs themselves are a mixture of two very different sounds found on the last two Piano Magic albums: the first one is found on Writers Without Homes and it is a post-rock big band sound which doesn't mesh well with my conception of the band as an electronically eerie and spacious outfit. The second sound is from the more recent The Troubled Sleep of Piano Magic and it returns Piano Magic to an electronically-assisted and vacuous moodiness which is more consistent with the band's roots. I am not very fond of this first type of Piano Magic sound. "You Can Hear the Room," the album's opener, is an example of the former sound. It begins humbly but metastasizes into some gargantuan full band jam by the end. There is no space for the ghosts to inhabit the notes even though the lyrics tend to suggest that the song is in line with the album's central conceit. The first half of Disaffected is replete with this sound. Guest vocalist John Grant of The Czars has his obligatory appearance and continues his droll infection and inflection of Johnson's songs, twisting them into something hard to listen to rather than something pleasant. I find this second type of Piano Magic sound much more agreeable. "The Theory of Ghosts" is a prime example of this sound. You can simply feel the emptiness and space which haunts the music. The song is also the epitomic example of where less truly is more. Careful tunesmithing replaces crowded instrumentation and the eastern-sounding string work is a beautiful arrangement ornamenting the song. Other songs which fall into this latter category are "The Nostalgist," "You Can Never Get Lost (When You've Nowhere to Go)," "Disaffected," and "Deleted Scenes." "Disaffected" is an extended and finely-crafted synth beat featuring Klima's Angele David-Guillou on vocals. A delicate acoustic guitar part bridges the first half of the song (the vocal half) with the clicky electronic jam at the end. "Deleted Scenes," on the other hand, is a thoroughly moribund and enjoyable New Order homage. "Love & Music" creates a category all of its own and doesn't fit into the dichotomy I have laid out thus far. The syncopated drum beat is, at the very least, unexpected from the band, creating almost a Bossanova sound. This alone places the song as a strong antithesis to what I consider to be Piano Magic's sound (of either the first or second variety). The lyrics are inexcusably repetitive and monotonous, crying out for an indictment of laziness on the band's part. Along the same lines, I want to like Johnson's seemingly autobiographical "I Must Leave London" (which details his forsaking of the Queen's country and his repatriation on the continent in Spain) better but it sounds exhausted and almost uninspired. Disaffected has trouble existing as one cohesive entity. In keeping too thematically with its motif, the album constantly has one foot in the land of the living and the other in the land of the dead, like a ghost unaware of its ghostliness.
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Planet Mu
Fortunately, the material on this CD, while largelyunspectacular, isn't nearly as self-serving and kitschy, perhaps due tothe fact that 2/3 of it was originally released on DJ friendly vinyl(with the latter 1/3 now available in 12" format as well). The JUST ADDACID technique Vibert has employed consistently in recent years hasproduced a catalog of music that dramaticallyvaries in quality, rangingfrom delicious disco of the Kerrier District project to theover-the-top gimmickry of Wagon Christ's Sorry I Make You Lush. No exception to this phenomenon, Lover's Acidis all over the map. Tedious numbers like "Funky Acid Stuff," "Come OnChaos," and the title track are examples of Vibert's noodling goneboring, lazily blurting and bleeping along with no direction orpurpose. A surprising execution of the formula comes on "Dirty Fucker,"a rediscovery of the dancefloor with snappy breakbeats and a dirtybleating bassline complete with ominous breakdown and a bonkers acidbuildup. Still, the best tracks here are those where Vibert isn'tgratituitously doling out sloppy globs of TR-303 like a dementedlunchlady. "Gwithian" brings back the spirit of Musipal, deepand jazzy with well placed vocal snippets for feelgood Sunday afternoonvibes. Deceptively starting off minimal and brooding, "Prick Tat"evolves quickly into a smooth hip hop groover shimmering with brightsynth patterns and spaced out effects. Despite my initial prejudices, Lover's Acidhas more merits than expected, yet still leaves me wanting forsomething better, something revitalizing. All I can suggest at thispoint is plead for Vibert to take a chance and return to his old Plugmoniker. Considering some of the more "liquid" records coming from drumn bass labels like Hospital, I'm sure he would be greeted with openarms.samples:
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Monika
Unsurprising considering Lippok's prior work,this new album from two prominent names in the Berlin music scene fallsinto this category, basking in the glow of that painfully familiarspace between pop and kitsch often found on To Rococo Rot records. I'munable to discern what influence Morgenstern, whose work I'm familiarwith from select compilation appearances, has had on these accessibleand light recordings. It's hardly a unique venture considering thesurplus of acts doing precisely the same thing, I'm nonethelessexpected to take Tesrimore seriously than their peers. I've heard enough of the music in thiselectronic pop subgenre over at least the past six years to know thatthis isn't as special as it wants to be. I'm not trying to discreditLippok or Morgenstern based on their minor celebrity, but I cannot helpbut expect more than a mere rehash of The Amateur View withguitar and piano. "Ein Knoten Aus Schwarz" and "Kaitusburi" could haveeasily been outtakes salvaged from old TRR studio sessions, tweaked andreworked for this release. This is an unfortunate situation consideringhow much promise the album starts off with. The exciting opener "PleaseWake Me For Meals" drops lush acoustic elements over a solid electrobeat, introducing bleeps, scratches, and airy analogue synths aboutmidway. "If The Day Remains Unspoken For" stands out as the mostluscious fruit of Lippok and Morgenstern's endeavor. Featuring thesoulful vocals of Telefon Tel Aviv's Damon Aaron, the tracksimultaneously oozes melodic warmth and clinical abstraction yet comestogether remarkably well. Perhaps if these two collaborate again theymight employ Aaron for more than just one song. Tesri is not abad release, and fans of Lippok's earlier material will not bedisappointed, yet I had hoped for something much more memorable andless spotty.samples:
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Scarcelight
It's almost always noise, loud andaggressive, often with loud percussive slaps to the face thrown in forgood measure. Rattus Rattusis certainly no exception, a cyclone of atonal, shrieking digitalclamor with buffeting, battering ram beats that explore every level ofthe audible range of sound in an attempt to assault the listener on allfronts. The CD seems to have a concept of sorts, the title and thecover art being suggestive of everyone's favorite household pestrodent. This is very different from Matmos' rat concept album (2004's Rat Relocation Program),as instead of sampling said creatures as Matmos did, Masami Akita optsmerely to suggest the presence of the creatures with a series of tinyclaw-scratched noise attacks and high, trebly shrieking. Masami alsoprovides the address of the PETA website on the back of the disc'ssleeve, suggesting that perhaps the album has something or other to dowith animal rights. It would be hard to say where the vegan messagereally comes into Rattus Rattus, unless the album were to betaken as a noisy screed against scientific experimentation on rats.Your guess is as good as mine in this respect. I've come nowhere closeto hearing every Merzbow record, and in fact I probably only own fiveor six CDs, so I'd have a very hard time coming up with a goodcomparison to any of his previous works. This one does have a very nicequality that might warrant repeated listens, however. All three trackscontain enough rapid shifts in tone, frequency, tempo and aggressionenough to keep things dynamic, as opposed to past Merzbow records thathave easily fallen into a background of white noise. There is no chanceof being lulled into complacency while listening to this CD, especiallyduring the final lengthy "Rattus Rattus Suite," which variouslysuggests an Alec Empire DHR-style cyberpunk explosion, an earlyWhitehouse album, something from the noisier end of Ant-Zen, and adigitized grindcore version of an Anal Cunt record or some other suchthrowaway splattercore. This is not to suggest that there is anythinghere that noise fans haven't heard a million times before. As Merzbowrecords go, this is definitely one of them.samples:
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Thirsty Ear
I was skeptical about the potential clusterfuck of a record featuring DJ Spooky, Dave Lombardo (from Slayer), and Jack Dangers, but the presence of two of my favorite MCs of all time, Chuck D and Dälek, pushed me over the edge into "I've got to at least hear this" territory. Often, pairings like this come from well-intentioned musicians who want to work together, but don't realize that the sum can never equal the parts, so I braced for the worst. Happily, Drums of Death manages to avoid most of the cliches of supergroups and celebrity musical pairings of this sort, and instead boils down some signature elements from each artist involved into a quite listenable whole. Jack Dangers' production is well balanced with Spooky's turntable antics, while the MCs simply do their thing over the rhythm section of Lombardo on drums and Dangers on bass. The Meat Beat head honcho proves that he's still one of the best groove bassline generators on the planet, and DJ Spooky's cuts and sample selections work well to enhance rather than drag down the proceedings. It's Lombardo's drums that I can't swallow all of the time, as they have an unshakeable "rock" sound that doesn't always serve the songs the way a more nuanced sounding kit might. The grooves are tight if a little clangy on the cymbal end, but it always sounds like a metal drummer slowing down into a hip hop groove rather than just an accomplished drummer gelling with his bandmates. That's not to say the drums are bad—in fact almost every track gives sample hounds a free shot at an unobscured drum loop from the session, but I just wish the drums were somehow more processed and fitting with the primarily dub-leaning vibe. Chuck D and Dälek enhance the record with vocal performances straight out of their standard playbooks and there's enough guitar noise and metal riff sampling to possibly draw the the long-haired set out of their comfort zone a little, which I have to imagine is the point with a lot of this. Skipping past the embarrassing Spooky on turntable/Lombardo on skins call and response piece, and the oddly-lifted Jack Dangers sci-fi soundtrack pieces, Drums of Death winds up as a suprisingly fun amalgam of styles and sounds that manages to overcome the threat of novelty, even if it never elevates to the heights of its contributors' individual accomplishments. Read More
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Twisted Village
By night,under the auspices of their group Major Stars, Wayne and Kate areequally enthusiastic purveyors of hard, loud and ferocious nonstop rockn' roll ecstasy. They've opened up for Comets on Fire on tour, eventhough their brand of high-octane, often instrumental rock is heavierand more substantial than the Comets' most wishful daydreams. This isnot to suggest that they are superior; rather that they are more pure,unadulterated and outright, unashamedly rawk. People who like to namethings call Major Stars a "psychedelic" rock band, but they're no more"psychedelic" than the sludge at the bottom of your Turkish coffee.What they are is kick-your-ass, balls-to-the-wall, energized freeformrock, full of big fat hairy riffs and powerful dynamics, rapidlyswitching gears to chase the next monstrous pummeling chordprogression. The foursome gel perfectly on stage, and this record,their first to be recorded in a state-of-the-art 25-track studio,captures the group beautiful, and is perhaps the best reflection yet oftheir live sound on record. The only things missing are the flyingsweat droplets and the heady breeze created by Kate's headbanging,hair-tossing stage theatrics. There are only four tracks and about 40minutes of music, but when the rock is this meat-and-potatoes, it can'thelp but leave me satisfied, even though I certainly wouldn't turn downseconds. "How To Be" wastes no time introducing their particular brandof crashing, resounding guitars, sounding exactly like Lester Bang'shyperbole-filled description of a Who gig, rather than what The Whoreally sounded like. The background is filled with a solid wall ofguitar runoff, Casey Keenan's caveman rhythms, forming a backdrop forWayne's soul-shredding post-Hendrix guitar performance, pulling farmore sound out of his instrument than should be physically possible."Song For Turner" is long and lyric-less, a study in reigned-in rockchaos if ever there was one, pausing for some detuned guitar noiseevery now and then, shifting to another rhythm and key when it suitsthem. It's totally accessible and totally grandiose, leading into thealbum's power-pop pit-stop "All Or Half the Time," which rivals TheBevis Frond for pure, pleasurable rock songcraft. Ending thingsbrilliantly is the 15-minute "Phantom #1," which starts out as slowlyshifting modal guitar drone, totally thick and hypnotic, beforeintroducing rhythm and rapidly upping the tempo until the song hasbecome a roof-lifting heavy metal beast, grinning and majestic. Nobullshit: Major Stars is just damned good rock music, so how come youhaven't heard this yet?
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Nothing can stop this band from forcing me to participate in the most sinister of feelings. They're soaked in evil, sex, and those lonely and terrifying sensations that only open, dead spaces can convey. Bohren und der Club of Gore associate themselves with doom metal via their own website, were formally a self-described "hardcore" metal act, have all the mystery and intrigue of the best David Lynch films, and yet none of these descriptions get to the core of this quartet's sound.
Geisterfaust, translated as "Spirit Fist," is broken up into five long floods of keyboard, sparse drums, and atmospheric sludge, each named after one of the fingers on a human hand. Never heavy or loud in the way that a metal act might be, Bohren manages to flatten everything in its path with its rather morose and morbid disposition. At the same time, having sex to this record seems to add a certain personality to the act, a kind of intimacy in the round, smooth edges of every sound that slow every sensation and motion down to near nothingness. It's appropriate to say that the song index on this record serves as a map to the movements of the entire record. Instead of having five completely distinct songs, there are simply five takes on a theme that is presented by "Zeigefinger." As the music moves forward, the quarter oscillates between moods, but never takes the tempo beyond its initial sluggish pace. Silence dominates the music just as much as any sound does; when the band goes quite there's an anticipation for the next chords or notes to strike. The structure of Geisterfaust builds up a sweaty uneasiness that pulsates almost maddeningly throughout each track until "Kleiner Finger" reaches its final moments. It's like knowing a monster is just around the corner, its thumping feet crunching forward ever so awkwardly, but having nowhere to run or hide. It's a long, hysteria inducing wait for a terrifying end. And, speaking of ends, the final two or so minutes is remarkable. The most simple of additions draws the album to a close and makes the barren wasteland that was paved before ignite with a lustfulness that can only be sparked by absence and resignation.
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Sub Rosa
They reach pastdeconstruction as a means or an end, entering new space, a labyrinthinelogic all their own. A lot of this probably has to do with the artist'sfavoring rounder instrumental combinations: strings of a chamberensemble sort, bare piano, brass, metal percussion. Akiyama's last, If Night is a Weed...,inspired Fennesz comparisons because of an ambitious textural grandeur,though this came obscured by spare compositional style and atemperament informed by the deliberate pacing and structural rigor ofclassical music. One of If Night..'s pieces was dedicated toSteve Reich, and Akiyama's music does reflect an attempt to carry thepure variants and divine gravity of Reich's Phase or Ensemblepieces into digital interpretation. If the last record was ambitious instriking a solemn, Reichian pose against the computer's pixilatedshimmer, then Small Explosions is ambitious in a new way. Stillin chamber-glitch mode, Akiyama works within much more scatterbrained,dissonant territory, sketching disquieted spaces through overlays ofwhat sound like largely improvised events. The coalescence of fragmentshere is the artist's most subtle, often stratified by atonalcounterpoints and layers of at-home ambience. Sounds of sleepybreathing in the first track indicate Small Explosions's increased interest in sound-travel and the unreality of dreams. Several of the string heavy sections recall, for me, the Waking Lifesoundtrack in their floaty circularities and spirited-away atmosphere.Akiyama shows also a new reliance on bell tones which give the music asense of distance and foggy boundaries that was not present within theintimate, single-room simulacrum of If Night.. and previousworks. Despite being probably the artist's most pared-down andsilence-ful music yet, with even a reduction in the field recordingsthat colored other records, Small Explosions feels the most far-out and heavily transporting of all.samples:
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Thirsty Ear
Often, pairings like this come from well-intentionedmusicians who want to work together, but don't realize that the sum cannever equal the parts, so I braced for the worst. Happily, Drums of Deathmanages to avoid most of the cliches of supergroups and celebritymusical pairings of this sort, and instead boils down some signatureelements from each artist involved into a quite listenable whole. JackDangers' production is well balanced with Spooky's turntable antics,while the MCs simply do their thing over the rhythm section of Lombardoon drums and Dangers on bass. The Meat Beat head honcho proves thathe's still one of the best groove bassline generators on the planet,and DJ Spooky's cuts and sample selections work well to enhance ratherthan drag down the proceedings. It's Lombardo's drums that I can'tswallow all of the time, as they have an unshakeable "rock" sound thatdoesn't always serve the songs the way a more nuanced sounding kitmight. The grooves are tight if a little clangy on the cymbal end, butit always sounds like a metal drummer slowing down into a hip hopgroove rather than just an accomplished drummer gelling with hisbandmates. That's not to say the drums are bad—in fact almost everytrack gives sample hounds a free shot at an unobscured drum loop fromthe session, but I just wish the drums were somehow more processed andfitting with the primarily dub-leaning vibe. Chuck D and Dälek enhancethe record with vocal performances straight out of their standardplaybooks and there's enough guitar noise and metal riff sampling topossibly draw the the long-haired set out of their comfort zone alittle, which I have to imagine is the point with a lot of this.Skipping past the embarrassing Spooky on turntable/Lombardo on skinscall and response piece, and the oddly-lifted Jack Dangers sci-fisoundtrack pieces, Drums of Death winds up as a suprisingly funamalgam of styles and sounds that manages to overcome the threat ofnovelty, even if it never elevates to the heights of its contributors'individual accomplishments. samples:
- Assisted Suicide (featuring Dälek)
- B-Side Wins Again (featuring Chuck D)
- Incipit Zarathustra
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ICR
Both recordings centeraround a metallic center that floats, sometimes soundlessly, throughevery shift and turn. Haphazard sounds often leap and stutter inperfectly flawed ways, unannounced, but appropriately and not without acertain dynamic effect. Listening to the November recording, I'm struckby the sound of rainfall, giant caverns, low mist hissing like a snake,and the images of monstrous architecture long forgotten populate everyhollow shuffle of electronic vibration. I'm tempted to say that Potterand Bradley went somewhat psychedelic that day, their time-laped soundphotography catching all manner paranormal phenomenon and, in a lot ofways, it is hard to escape that idea. The low rumble and sitar-likeblosoms that shapeshift on each song sound completely cosmic, betrayingtheir computer and electric origins. Most surprising, however, were thesymphonic flourishes and wooden bells that hit at the last moment onthe November piece. Bradley and Potter have found a way to take theirbest studio work and translate it into a live environment withoutsounding entirely too busy or far too worried about any one sound. Itsounds as though they went into these performances almost entirelynaked, armed only with the notion of some textures and a nice, solidtheme. The minimalistic and generally open feeling of this record setit apart from their other work, but also show that a live experiencesuch as this can be just as good, if not better, than what's done in astudio. Only 200 copies of this release were pressed, each coming in ahand finished sleeve and signed by Potter and Bradley. It's anamazingly vivid and unfortunately rare recording of this duo at theirfinest.samples:
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Fonal
Instead of the likes of Mum and Sigur Ros, I must now contendwith decidedly more difficult names to spell like Kemialliset Ystavatand Paivansade. The music itself is a bit more difficult as well,varying expressions of an idiosyncratic, indigenous folk music, all ofwhich seems to share a sense of organic looseness and a fractured,experimental nature. The scene has recently gained internationalmomentum because of a predictably bandwagon-jumping feature in a recentissue of The Wire, but Finland's interest in homegrown experimentalpsychedelia has an inheritance that reaches back to the 1960s, withPekka Airaksinen and The Sperm, all the way to more recent years withbands like Circle. Tampere's Fonal Records has been the main outlet forthe Finnish underground since the mid-90s, and this beautifullypackaged new album from Finnish psych mainstay Islaja is a greatexample of the kind of quality on offer from the label. Islaja is asinger who draws on elements of traditional Finnish song, but shareswith her labelmates a penchant for whimsically esoteric arrangements:fractured melodies, complex layers of shambolic percussion, sampledbirdsong, droning bits, enticing compositional fragments andoverlapping, multitracked vocals. At first listen, Palaa Aurinkoonsounded unstructured, underproduced and generally unfocused, butslowly, over the course of the album, I latched onto Islaja'shauntingly childlike vocals as a guide through the sub-arcticwilderness, and came to understand the unique ways in which thedisparate pieces of the puzzle fit together. Throughout the album,there is a lovely sense of gentle chaos, with instrumental parts,percussion and vocals placed willfully askew in the mix, without overlymassaging them to fit a specific, rigid song structure. This loosenessshares much in common with the Incredible String Band or any number ofnewer psych-folk acts, but Islaja's expressions are uniquely affecting,the exotic timbres and phrasing of her mother tongue, as well as thedense evergreen forest that the players seem to inhabit, lending apeculiarity all her own. Everywhere there are the signs of a wintercoming or winter just passed, a communal group of musicians squattingon the permafrost soil to rifle through a bottomless bag of stringedand woodwind instruments, harps, keyboards and assorted noisemakers,trusting instinct and a momentary impulse to create impressionisticarrangements around Islaja's warm, whispery vocals. The music istop-notch throughout, but perhaps because of a compounding effect, thealbum seems to get stronger as it goes, reaching an apex with the lastfour tracks, each of which are particularly emotionally affecting. Theswansong "Rukuos" ends the album on a wistful note, an enchanting vocalduet matched with harmonium drones and ravishing flourishes of flute. Palaa Aurinkoonjustifies the hype surrounding the Finnish scene, a gorgeous andfragile souvenir from a strangely inviting sub-arctic forestwonderland.Read More
