23 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

This is Staubgold's second architecturally-oriented release, the first being To Rococo Rot's Kolner Brett, a disc which set about creating a kind of audio simulation of Cologne's Kolner Brett building, situating tracks within a quasi-geometric framework and streamlining the group's austere sound into a series of registers meant to represent different parts of the biulding. Soundchambers is different, more of a commemoration or a traditional response piece than To Rococo's stylized production.

Staubgold

The three seasoned Viennese and German musicians teamed up at the opening of the Museu Serralves in Porto, Portugal for a ceremonial live improvisation, Suchy with processed guitar and laptop, Hautzinger with his trumpet, and Ehlers manipulating piano samples and machine noise via computer. The result feels markedly less site specific than Kolner Brett, with a spaciousness that could be associated with Serralves' sprawling gardens, but feels almost at odds with the building's "chambered" construction.

I've listened to the disc in a number of different spaces trying to gauge the closest approximation, and so far it feels most appropriate in transit, speeding over trainyards on the subway or strolling a city block flanked by walls of glass. Hautzinger's trumpet, with its characteristic breathy flights and hesitant abbreviations, would seem the perfect companion to the microsound noodling of the two computer musicians, yet he delivers a refreshingly lyrical, linear performance for most of Soundchambers. His lush and expansive lines drift through and bisect Ehlers' and Suchy's abstractions like a street musician's horn through the city's mess, warping the mood to make every crushing noise a miniature buttress for the fragile howl of one man's breath.

The computerists do not work against their protagonist, rather covering his lesser moments with warm piano tinker or swirls of guitar that keep the mood buoyant and coolly triumphant. The musicians practice a treacherous kind of hesitant, near-impressionistic playing, drifting across subtle movements and phrases with the threat of dissolution ever-present, especially given the amount of swift processing required to transform so much brushed guitar or industrial noise (Ehlers sourced sound in the heating rooms of Stuttgart) into such coherent, immediate swells. The severe geometry of Serralves, as indicated in the sleeve's graphic component, feels far enough removed from Soundchambers' tenuous construction for me to question whether experiencing the building would be at all emotionally consistent with the music. Luckily, a finer appreciation of the architecture's genesis or deeper implications is not required to fully engage with this beautiful recording.

samples:

• 1
• 2
• 4

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23 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

Ninja Tune
Ninja Tune has strayed away from the things that worked for it ahandful of years ago and as such, it hasn't been a label I've followedmuch since the heyday of Dj Vadim and Amon Tobin. Their new signing isa Polish act called Skalpel whose name conjures much more dire imagesthan their music, but works as a reference to the idea of surgicallycutting records together. Taking samples and bits from Polish jazzrecords and recombining them into new tracks, Skalpel do what so manyhave done before them, but with an amazing amount of precision andcare. The songs on their self-titled debut are mostly laid-back, mutedarrangements of horns and upright bass flowing effortlessly over funkydrums and the occassional hint of exotica. Polish Jazz records from the60's and 70's make up the bulk if not all of the source material,giving the album a steady, cohesive sound that rarely changes timbresenough to alert the listener that the record is made up of samples.Upon first listen, it all sounded a little too familiar as others likeKruder & Dorfmeister have travelled similar roads before. However,Skalpel bring a level of refined sophistication to the game that makesthe album something worth putting on again and again. Loops don't justrepeat here, they are changed and arranged organically so thateverything has the feel of a live band playing over some vinyl surfacenoise. The cheeky samples about dancing all night to jazz and playingPolish records are to be expected, but those are the only signs thatthis music is a conscious decendant of the jazz-record pillaging scene.The rest of the record plays as an homage to martinis and the dapperyoung people who drink them, and to the wonderful history of Polishjazz of which most people who hear this record will have noforeknowledge. While it's not a groundbreaking technical achievement,the production is seamless and ultra-smooth making this a perfectchill-out record or post-modern bachelor pad soundtrack. The disc alsoincludes three short films arranged to tracks on the album that helpround out the presentation. Their stark black and white imageryflickers and reminds me of hep cats in tuxedos and of the fondfalse-nostalgia for a bygone time that afflicts those of us who werenever alive to experience the things we see only in pre-color images.

samples:

• Break In
• High
• Quiz

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23 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

Smalltown Supersound
The press release calls it an assembled "history of extreme music,"covering death and black metals, free jazz, VU/Swans guitar walls, andthe power electronics spectrum. And while the cheeky title reiteratesMarhaug's impossible ambitions, it issafe to say that this disc represents one of the Norweigennoisemaster's most unrelenting works yet. As half of Jazzkammer and afrequent collaborator with noisemakers from across the globe, Marhaughas affixed his stamp of curdled feedback and precise digital doctoringto the range of experimental musics, from Jazzkammer's irreduciblepinprick landscapes to Maja Ratkje's operatic abstractions and on intothe dark densities of Merzbow and Kevin Drumm. The work of the lattertwo is where The Shape of Rock finds closest comparison.Consistent with his recent live shows, Marhaug explores the limits ofguitar feedback here, forcing shards of low-end click and hum throughrows of screeching effects and into the computer where things arereassembled into grainy staccato pulsings and writhing pools of sludge.Titles like "Sleeper" and "Magmadiver" point to the legacy of Norway'sblack metal scene; however, as far as audible similarity is concerned,other examples of electronic music paying homage to metal (like COH's Iron or any of Drumm's recent releases) come closer. For all of its excess, The Shape of Rockhangs onto a certain amount of the crisp, cool atmosphere thatcharacterizes much of the artist's work and begs to be associated withhis Nordic roots. Rather than peaking with dramatic transitions intorandom, deconstructive meltdown, the tracks climax with effectiveregroupings, organizing into thick laths of sound more likely toconjure images of looming, night-lit skyscrapers than Gothic ruins.Marhaug often exploits the digital foundation of each piece by guidingthe bulk of certain tracks into stuttering 'skip' patterns, a techniquethat works with the science fiction feel of the disc. Overall this is asolid addition to the catalog of one of Norway's most prolific andsuccessful noisemen; it is also one of his surprisingly few soloreleases, as good an entry point as any.

samples:

• Sleeper
• Magmadiver
• It Is My Kind Of Top

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23 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

Piehead
Piehead's third offering this year comes from the melodic electronicsolo act, Portland. Those familiar with the pioneering n5md label willprobably recognize the name, if not the sound of Portland, and that'slikely because Portland offers little to call his own on Uprox Detox. While the album charts a path through melancholic, beat-oriented IDM (a label used specifically to illicit memories of Artifical Intelligencecompilations and those who love them) with minor key synth tones andclicky, punchy drums, it ultimately plays as a tribute to those whohave gone before. Every moment of Uprox Detox is predictable,just as every sound coaxed out of the computer has been coaxed outbefore. Portland's pedigree lies firmly in the Warp/Skam family tree,and while this album is a worthwhile addition to a catalog of musicthat follows a certain set of rules, it never strays from those rules.These may not be preset drum and synth patches, but they might as wellbe, as most songs sound as though Portland has called up the "EarlyAutechre Kit" on some softsynth in order to compose. The songs arelikeable, genuinely nice in fact, but they aren't poised to startle orupset anyone, and that seems to be my biggest complaint. When thisstrain of IDM's progenitors took a staid techno formula and fucked withit to build something new, it was a little bit shocking, daring, andweird. Now, those same production tricks are nothing more than ashorthand for the kind of music that is characterized by blocky,condensed Helvetica typography and technologically-minded alternatespelling. Portland has rendered a polite and polished album here, butone that never quite cuts loose the way I wish it would. Uprox Detoxis a fine addition to a collection of otherwise ambiguous records, butI hope that next time he colors more outside of the lines.

samples:

• Laerned
• Ocacsax
• Ten Sky

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16 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

Beta-Lactam Ring
With the Drum MachineEP, the inimitable Peat Bog and the irrepressible Beta-Lactam RingRecords proffer three tracks and twenty-three additional minutes ofmolten mind expansion designed to sink even further into the murky,neo-primitive quagmire first experienced on Earthmonkey'sStapleton-produced debut. Only this time, Mr. Bog has upped the anteand reinvented himself, fully engaging the techno-Prog tendencies onlyglimpsed in his previous work. For better or worse (though certainlyfor the better), Drum Machine sounds like the overfed bastard offspring of The Orb's Adventure Beyond the Ultraworld and Coil's Love's Secret Domain being sexually molested by the Ozric Tentacles' Strangeitude. Where the debut had the stomping Neolithic beats and fuzzy riffage of some mid-70's Kraut-Prog castoff, Drum Machineunashamedly explores the connection between Kraan and The KLF; acid andecstasy; peyote visions and Bedouin trance. "Varana Swing" createsdense, subterranean tunnels connecting Ibiza to the darkest heartAfrica, full of cyclical tribalisms, layers of resonating synthesizersand queasy, dislocated sound effects that creep across the stereochannels. "Hanumantra," in addition to invoking the Be Here Nowimperatives of Baba Ram Dass, also sports a lovely zero-gravity guitarmelody that paints a backdrop for tranced-out group chanting and wavesof mutated cosmic debris. The track inhabits a similar post-Industrialspace-rock territory familiar from mid-to-late period Pink Dots. "BeThat Charge" is certainly the most unorthodox song that Earthmonkey hasyet devised: a whirling dervish of hardcore punk and Middle Easterndance music; The Stooges and a sect of Merkabian desert mystics meetingunder the Saharan moonlight for an all-nighter of hashish-addledslam-dancing. Although it references ethic musics, Earthmonkey's soundis unbounded by its location in spacetime, thrillinglyextra-geographical, suggestive of a world community of switched-onheads stretching from the parched American neo-tribal desert ofBurningman back to the musical primalisms of pre-Babylonian man. 

samples:

• Varana Swing
• Hanumantra
• Be That Charge

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16 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

Beta-Lactam Ring
For the mere pittance of $4.00, Beta-Lactam Ring Records is offering the latest in its Beta-Beat Samplerseries. Where previous volumes were quick-and-dirty, minimally packagedreleases compiling and excerpting new and upcoming music on the label, Death's Last Life's Breathcomes in a printed sleeve, and includes a brand new Nurse With Woundtrack exclusive to this compilation. And it's no mere fragmentaryouttake meant to entice the unwary consumer, but an epic 15-minutefantasia of unhinged Stapletonian whimsy. "A Wasted Life of PhagocyteFoot Fetishism" plays like an extended, free-associating riff on theSpace Age Bachelor Pad music for which Stapleton has always professedhis affection. The track goes everywhere, of course, from a concerthall full of toy xylophones to sudden explosions of tabla rhythms,eventually floating up to a dense cloud bank of gently shimmeringkeyboards. If this were the only worthwhile track on Death's Last Life's Breath,it would still be more than worth the price of admission. Luckily, therest of the nearly 80-minute disc is chock full of the kind ofear-opening sonic exploration I've come to expect from the Beta-Lactamlabel, from the lysergic folk of Japan's Green Milk From the PlanetOrange to the eclectic, post-Prog collages of art-rock legends La STPO.Whitelodge's "Masters Within Spaces," excerpted from theirsoon-to-be-released debut, adds a level of post-rock sophistication tothe melancholic, apocalyptic themes explored by esoteric mainstaysCurrent 93 and Death in June. Judging by the distortion-blasted electrogroove of "Comedown," Edward Ka-Spel's new Pieces of 8 promisesto be his best in years. Matt Waldron's irr.app.(ext.) projectcontinues to find new non-corporeal identities in the labyrinthineinner workings of memory and synchronicity, on full display in a trulyunsettling excerpt from the forthcoming Perekluchenie album.Beequeen's "I'm Searching For Field Character" is a perfectlymysterious concoction of drones, dialogue samples and all manner ofindescribable textures. It came down to two choices this week: feed andclothe my Somalian sponsor kid for another month, or use my loosepocket change to buy Death's Last Life's Breath. Sorry about the lack of clean drinking water, N'Dugu, but I'll be happy to burn you a copy of this CD.

samples:

• Whitelodge - Masters Within Spaces (excerpt)
• Nurse With Wound - A Wasted Life of Phagocyte Foot Fetishism
• irr.app.(ext.) - Perekluchenie: The Stairway to the Blue Light Subsides (excerpt)

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16 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

Fat Cat
There is no other, more clever way to say that this is by far the mostrefined Animal Collective recording to date. The album showcases astyle that Animal Collective have made all their own over the last fewrecordings: multitracked acoustic guitars, organic rhythms, primitivesound effects, sound samples, and atypical/moderately unpredictablelyrics. This time around, however, the band sound far more competentand confident in their skills as musicians, writers, and producers. Sung Tongsis both relaxed and playful from the beginning through the end. Itopens up with the chugging of "Leaf House," which ends with cat callsand continues on with "Who Could Win a Rabbit," both with a rich, fullsound and chugging with a cheery energy. "The Softest Voice" is thefirst song of the disc of sheer brilliance: drum-free with the layeringof gorgeous acoustic guitars and lush, pretty vocals. It's here whereit's strikingly apparent that the band have honed both their writingand production skills as everything subtly blends in with the morphingghostlike sounds through the middle and to the end. "Winters Love,"however, is probably most reminiscent of the earlier, more calmer"field" recordings, with a springy nostalgic guitar riff and loads ofunburied tape hiss for the first half, and the same riff repeated justcompletely re-interpreted and rearranged throughout the second half.While they sing of winter, for this and nearly all of the disc, I can'tshake the mental images of walking around in a pavement-free field witha blindingly bright sun while girls on bicycles ride by with longblonde hair blowing in slow motion. The epic 12+ minute "VisitingFriends" is like an abstract musical interpretation of the ocean asguitar chords are strummed in repetition, blended, and changed whilebeing multi-layered is similar to the tide coming in, washing over eachprevious wave. Animal Collective are undoubtedly influenced by popmusic, electronics, and psychedelic folk, but to me, their music isneither "folk" nor "free" nor Syd Barrett nor Beach Boys nor IncredibleString Band. It doesn't seem like their goal is to make tunes for thesole sake of easy digestion and widespread appeal, however, thankfullytheir appeal is wide enough to allow them to expand their audiences andevolve in the studio. Sung Tongs might be a little peculiar at first, but over repeated listens, it is creeping into my mental top for the year.

samples:

• The Softest Voice
• Kids on Holiday
• Good Lovin Outside

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16 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

When Piano Magic starts singing about libraries, things are right in the universe once again. By a similar axiom, a good Piano Magic album is marked by its invocation of libraries in one or more songs. Thus, the "The Tollbooth Martrys," the seventh song on The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic, is evidence that Magic has produced another splendidly ethereal album. This wasn't the case with the previous album, Writers Without Homes, which was noticeably devoid of libraries.Green UFOs

There are very certain elements which work for Piano Magic: sounds of desolation; wind-swept soundscapes; eye-blisteringly good artwork; female vocals of approximate age eight which expound on libraries; eccentric post-studio sounds, some of which sound like electronic birds, others of which sound like electronic mauls and hacksaws. What happened during the thankfully brief and innocuous flirtation with the 4AD label (the band has moved on to the Spanish label Green UFOs) was that the band eschewed and disregarded these elements. The cover art (once a beauty equaling and sometimes surpassing the music itself) became the generic "new" 4AD look, which plagues all their recent releases; the music became far more baroque and populated by more and more instruments; it was filled out (in other words, less desolation and isolation) to the point where it approached post-rock jam band; the vocals became burdensome instead of bolstering. But now, Piano Magic have found a way to reconcile some of the old elements with the new. "Saint Marie" starts off this new album humbly enough: a tremulous guitar line syncopated by frontman Glen Johnson's hushed vocals. Soon, though, a pulsing stereo of guitars rises and falls alternately, which itself is then punctuated by fast programmed beats of a drum machine. It's an engrossing and compelling sound that persists for the better part of four and a half minutes. It doesn't change much, but it doesn't need to. And this is precisely what used to make Piano Magic magic: the ability to make the sustained repetition of a created sound utterly compelling. Indeed, there are some moments which feel like sloppy seconds from the 4AD affair, but they are mediated by stronger songwriting and a moodier atmosphere. "Speed the Road, Rush the Lights," the weakest song on the album, could be a vestige of Writers Without Homes, and yet I can sense the band turning away from a song like this throughout the rest of the album, which thereby makes this song more palatable. Another illustrative track is "The Teacher's Son," which contrasts the old and new sound of Piano Magic perfectly. For the first minute of the song, there is a spare and lovely guitar line with Johnson's vocals amidst it. An old Piano Magic song could have maintained this sound for five minutes without tiring or growing tedious. But at about 1:15 into the song, the other instruments (bass and percussion, not of the electronic sort) crash in. During the brief 4AD period, the song would have been irreparably marred by these instruments. Yet the ensemble makes it work in this case, and I suspect it has to do with the stronger song-writing. Curiously, Piano Magic has retrieved most of its gothic gloom and beauty ever since its divorce from 4AD, though one might have thought it would have surely increased threefold in that marriage. In any case, it's good to see the band has rediscovered its eloquence for libraries and the sound of desolation, and I can only hope the next album will reintroduce the electronic birds I once adored so much. 

samples:

• Saint Marie
• The Teacher's Son
• The Tollbooth Martyrs

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16 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

Kranky
If Playthroughs was a meditation on the blurred landscapes of sleep, Antithesiscomes as a particularization: a focus on the sounds happeningin-between. Things are evidently different the moment "Twin GuitarRhodes Viola Drone (for LaMonte Young)" begins. Though steeped in themystique and subtle caress of electric moans, "Twin Guitar Rhodes..."is blessed with the pure and unaltered sound of piano melodies, choralecho, and unmistakable guitar rhythms. It's incorrect to say that KeithFullerton Whitman's sound is evolving, all of these tracks wererecorded between 1994 and 2002. Whitman is showing us another sidethough: "Obelisk (for Kurt Schwitters)" plays through a labyrinth ofeerie howls, altered vibrations, and percussive rattles. The shaking ofmetal and the rolling of low drums establishes a whole new world ofsounds I've not heard from Whitman before and it sounds fantastic.While the first two tracks had me excited, it's side B that sounds mostawe-inspiring. "Rhodes Viola Multiple" begins with an oddly phrasedmelody that tiptoes over the rest of the song; it produces the image inmy mind of a small girl dancing in the summer. The background is filledwith sound of spaceships launching into space and cars buzzing by underthe sun - the music begins to hum as a unified whole eventually and thesound drifts off into a haze of bird calls and interdimensional timewarps. "Schnee" comes as the biggest and most welcome surprise. Thetrack begins with the melodic plucking of a guitar underscored by thetribal rhythm of tomtom drums and heavy cymbals. Slowly the buzz andform of an electric guitar climbs over the mass of rhythm and ushersforth smoke and shadowy figures, feeling like, at times, the soul of asnake-charmer. The electric and acoustic guitar struggle with eachother, each establishing a new melody over the last, and all the whiledrum solos trace out the pulse of the struggle. Everything about thisEP is gorgeous. The music is a an excellent treat from Whitman - thesongs reveal a side of his compositional skills I've never heard beforeand they're nothing short of magical. 

samples:

• Obelisk (for Kurt Schwitters) (1997)
• Rhodes Viola Multiple (1995)
• Schnee (2002)

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16 May 2004

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Albums and Singles

Mute
Following the Finnish-born duo's most intense live journey, the groupreleases their most ambitious recording to date. In the three yearssince Aaltopiiri,live opportunities have taken them to the most remote corners of theworld including Europe, Spain, the Americas and Easter Island, this isall following that now famous ad in The Wire magazine asking people in interesting places to put them up and pay them a small amount. Kestois four CDs of all new material, recorded over the last year in Berlin,but with sources and inspiriations from the group's extensive travels.Pan Sonic fans know that while the group's instrumentation remainssomewhat constant, their styles bounce back and forth betweenear-bleeding beats to quiet drones or heady field recordings. Unlike onAaltopiiri, where everything was sort of all mixed in together, on Kesto,things are separated. The first two discs are the fucking sexiestthings I've heard all year: pounding with an unparallelled abrasivebeauty, the beats that mark many of their most receptive live rock 'nroll (or at least as close as Pan Sonic can come to rock) performances.On these discs are 140 minutes of vicious assaults and trademark PanSonic sounds, where the group even pays homage to a number of theirinfluences like Bruce Gilbert, Keiji Haino, Suicide, and ThrobbingGristle, mimicking sounds they've done in almost reinterpretive pieces.Disc three begins the quiet half of the set, with songs that arefrequently filled with the unfilling sounds of silence. It opens with atoilet bowl flush and continues for the rest of the tracks mostly fromprocessed sounds of non-musical sources. While discs one and two areperfect blasting music for a night on the town, disc three isdefinitely something that is best at home, as the silences in oddenvironments trigger the "is this thing still playing?" reaction overand over again. The set ends with the CD-long track "Säteily,"(translation: "Radiation") which is a chilly 61:16 minute drone. Itwould easily make any fan of Time Machines purr like a kitten.It's perfect for lulling any beast (party animal or other) to sleepafter a multi-disc set which could be best described as an endurancetest! While this is undoubtedly the best multi-disc set of new materialreleased by anybody this year, I do have one minor issue with theflimsy packaging, which came unglued only on the second day, so bewarned on that account, but don't be afraid of the aural treasuresinside.

samples:

• Pakoisvoima (transl: Fugalforce) - from CD 1
• Ilma (transl: Air) - from CD 4
• Säteily (transl: Radiation) - from CD 4

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