With the homemade aesthetic as marketable as ever, and luminaries of the cassette noise underground priming for the next JANEmagazine feature, it's a surprise the 80's industro-punker annals havenot yet been thoroughly stormed for reissue. Digitizing the past can befun and will sometimes produce a posthumous legend, but all too oftenthe process does nothing more than make undeserving, even undesiringheroes of the old, and uninspired imitators of the young. At presentit's hard for me to listen to a Wolf Eyes record without hearing aco-worker rattle on about the glory days of SPK, and my enjoying SPKgets complicated by a guard against someone else's glamorization. Mysalvation comes with reissues that can show me "new" things, like alost inspiration or the missing link in the evolution of a style, butwith an added suspension of recognition. In other words, the best musicmust allow me to lose myself, must first lead me astray, or wipe theslate clean, before revealing its true character. Luckily, this BoyDirt Car reissue, containing the group's best full length and theirside to a split with fellow Milwaukians F/i, is forged of such raresteel. Wintershows me a time when bands playing indulgent static dirges or whistlingthrough vocal effects formed just another dark corner of the localhardcore scene, a time when anyone could plug in a broken keyboard,start mumbling about the highway at night, and become genius for a day.Formed from a couple members of Die Kreuzen and some like-minded,Branca-inspired youths, Boy Dirt Car was fertile ground for a marriageof punk and industrial philosophies, coming to climax in '86-'87 withthese two releases. The unfortunately-named band took its blueprintfrom the slowed-down doom punk of bands like Flipper, shattering it toinclude the open spaces and electrified edges of early Neubauten. Oneof the most striking qualities of the music is how little the grouprelies on anything more than guitars to construct their elaboratetapestries of noise. Songs like "Forms Forced Surrender" and the brutaltitle track show evidence of either several moments of collectivebrilliance, or several dozen painstaking overdubs. Elsewhere, tracksrange from the Null-ian meltdown of "Invisible Man" to the opening"Smear," a delicate wound of crisp delay, amp buzz, and metallicpercussion. While the homemade vibe exists throughout, it neverencourages a preoccupation with process, instead reinforcing a sense ofyouthful exuberance in the music. Listening to Winter, thisexuberance and a kind of punk-ist abandon are hard to ignore, makingthe few moments of lyrical cheese, bad poetry, and guitar wank easy toswallow. As with any great punk band, clich? and indulgences soonbecome part of Boy Dirt Car's rather addictive appeal, and ultimatelythese humorous missteps help to form more of an accessible foundationfor the group's frequent excursions into righteous, blistering noise.
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With the homemade aesthetic as marketable as ever, and luminaries of the cassette noise underground priming for the next JANEmagazine feature, it's a surprise the 80's industro-punker annals havenot yet been thoroughly stormed for reissue. Digitizing the past can befun and will sometimes produce a posthumous legend, but all too oftenthe process does nothing more than make undeserving, even undesiringheroes of the old, and uninspired imitators of the young. At presentit's hard for me to listen to a Wolf Eyes record without hearing aco-worker rattle on about the glory days of SPK, and my enjoying SPKgets complicated by a guard against someone else's glamorization. Mysalvation comes with reissues that can show me "new" things, like alost inspiration or the missing link in the evolution of a style, butwith an added suspension of recognition. In other words, the best musicmust allow me to lose myself, must first lead me astray, or wipe theslate clean, before revealing its true character. Luckily, this BoyDirt Car reissue, containing the group's best full length and theirside to a split with fellow Milwaukians F/i, is forged of such raresteel. Wintershows me a time when bands playing indulgent static dirges or whistlingthrough vocal effects formed just another dark corner of the localhardcore scene, a time when anyone could plug in a broken keyboard,start mumbling about the highway at night, and become genius for a day.Formed from a couple members of Die Kreuzen and some like-minded,Branca-inspired youths, Boy Dirt Car was fertile ground for a marriageof punk and industrial philosophies, coming to climax in '86-'87 withthese two releases. The unfortunately-named band took its blueprintfrom the slowed-down doom punk of bands like Flipper, shattering it toinclude the open spaces and electrified edges of early Neubauten. Oneof the most striking qualities of the music is how little the grouprelies on anything more than guitars to construct their elaboratetapestries of noise. Songs like "Forms Forced Surrender" and the brutaltitle track show evidence of either several moments of collectivebrilliance, or several dozen painstaking overdubs. Elsewhere, tracksrange from the Null-ian meltdown of "Invisible Man" to the opening"Smear," a delicate wound of crisp delay, amp buzz, and metallicpercussion. While the homemade vibe exists throughout, it neverencourages a preoccupation with process, instead reinforcing a sense ofyouthful exuberance in the music. Listening to Winter, thisexuberance and a kind of punk-ist abandon are hard to ignore, makingthe few moments of lyrical cheese, bad poetry, and guitar wank easy toswallow. As with any great punk band, clich? and indulgences soonbecome part of Boy Dirt Car's rather addictive appeal, and ultimatelythese humorous missteps help to form more of an accessible foundationfor the group's frequent excursions into righteous, blistering noise.Read More
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Sometimes being straightforward and relaxed is the best thing amusician can do. Forget all that maniacal drum programming, ridiculoussound sequencing, and use of hyper samples featuring chipmunks oncocaine: let melancholia sweep up and over the horizon like a silkblanket and drown the world in night. Boy Robot does just that; theirexcellent song-writing combined with slick rhythms and just the rightamount of surprise makes Glamorizing Corporate Lifestylea hypnotic and delectable trip. Burning keyboards rebound and stretchacross space under the influence of drifting or lurching melodies thathum and soar slightly out of reach. Imperial horns sound just beyondthe next hill and the march of toy soldiers breaking the edge of sightsound monstrous as the clutter of sound swarms over the hills. Butthese soldiers aren't out to destroy; "Don't Panic It's Organic" is abouncey little piece more than a hounds-from-the-gates-of-hell wave ofdoom. The excellent melodies buried and transformed under reverb andecho mesh into each other and give birth to a firey piece ofdance-alicious pyschadelia that neither could have produced alone. BoyRobot doesn't always need a solid beat to sound wonderful, though."Loving You Makes Me Nervous" sounds like a children's junkyard full ofdefunct jack-in-the-boxes, miniature train sets, and plastic flutes.Yet, it's so very simple. Nothing here is overdone, there's nothingoutrageous taking place: melodies fade in and out of eachother, rhythmschug along, and deep, sensuous tunes are born out of simple and naturalmovements of sound. It's the use and choice of sound that makes adifference; bells, electronic xylophones, rubber band bass slaps, andthe cranking of gears all blend into eachother effortlessly; it's allas gentle as a taking a slow breath. Beginning with the welcoming"Likely Silly and Waterfull," progressing through the cyber-epic of"Old Habits Die Hard," and ending with the ghost-house story of "WhenBroken Consider It Sold," Glamorizing Corporate Lifestyle knows no boundary and sinks right into my bones. Everything should be so playful and resplendent as this.Read More
- Rob Devlin
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Those who have heard the gorgeous music coming from Ida are alreadyprimed and ready for Nanang Tatang, and chances are will find plentythere to appreciate. Mukiis the latest music coming from husband and wife Daniel Littleton andElizabeth Mitchell, Ida's core, and is laden with the same elementsthat make their music so compelling, as well as some interestingadditions here and there. Nanang Tatang's debut features downtemposongs and beautiful harmonies with quiet and sparse compositions, aswell as wild tracks and a new appreciation for drone and an oftenelectronic pulse. Gladly, for these two, it's the simplest things thatwork the best, and Muki is a welcome addition to their growingcatalog. Glitch beats and processed instruments create a lovely bed forMitchell and Littleton to play around on, and whether a song featuresone or the other solo or both singing their trademark gorgeousharmonies, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in awe of it all.Even though the format hasn't really changed all that much, there is afreshness to some of the arrangements and a forward-thinking stancethat shows their passion for trying new things hasn't dimmed. Thisappears to be a very personal record for the couple, almost a renewalof vows to each other, where they are the only collaborators needed notout of necessity but desire. Mitchell sings "You saved me from myself"and there's a sincere respect, not a desperation, in her voice; and theonly time the lyrics address the downside is in retrospect, as thoughthose times are long gone. It's a lush and sanguine recording, and eventhough complainers would have the same nitpicking joy here (too mellow,not enough percussion, etc.), let them stay away. This one is almostcustom-made for those who would appreciate this at face value: a loveletter to someone who supports you like no other.Read More
- Taylor McLaren
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There's a letter in this month's Wireabout a snarky review of a Muslimgauze disc, and predictably, theargument is all about politics. Inflammatory track names and linernotes, though, seem like lousy things to base a review of instrumentalmusic on, particularly in a world that's able to shrug off Snoop'slyrics for the sake of Dre's beats. As for the -music- on Red Madrassa,there's a lot of stuff that Muslimgauze fans have heard before: thepeacocks are back, as are some of the more prominent vocal samples anddub rhythms from the albums released in '98 and '99. Basic elements oftwo new tunes are mixed and matched with the old favorites to create 68minutes of gradually shifting material, and it works pretty well asactive-listening or background music. Jones' signature (jarring) rhythmchanges, bursts of distortion, and the head-nodding grooves that can goon forever are all here; this far into the process of mining what'sleft of his tapes for viable albums, though, it's also not surprisingto find a couple of moments where it sounds like he was just pissingaround with his gear. Red Madrassa won't change anybody's mind about his music, but if it's been a while since the last fix, this one should be pleasing. Read More
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Like the agonizing lament of a bereaved widow at a Bedouin funeral, like the piercing shriek of a peasant woman as her village is burned to the ground in some terrible holocaust ignored by the world, like the confrontational screech of a decadent French poetess-provocateur, like the guttural schrei of a German expressionist diva, or a stricken plague victim coughing up her last mouthful of blood and lymph, Diamanda Gal?' vocal ululations pierce straight to the heart, unearthing a swell of deadly inhumanity that bubbles up from our collective unconscious memory of the brutal atrocities of history.
She is wise to realize that there is something painfully cathartic in exorcising these demons, voicing the cries of the dispossessed, palpably invoking their spirits. Diamanda Gal? forges a blood pact between audience and performer, calling up sorrow and anger from her deepest emotional reserves and fearlessly exposing them. For her new solo operatic work Defixiones: Will and Testament, Gal? could not have chosen a subject more obscure or meaningless to Western listeners — the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides carried out by Turkey between 1914 and 1923 — but the varied texts she has chosen, the haunting musical settings and, most importantly, her forceful and emotive delivery vividly evoke this forgotten moment in history. The double album is packaged with a hardcover book which contains the libretto, drawn from various texts by an impressive array of authors including Armenian poet Siamanto, French poet Henri Michaux, Syrian poet Adonis, Romantic poet Gerard de Nerval and Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. This multilingual patchwork of texts, some dealing specifically with the Turkish bloodshed and some only suggesting the same outrage, sadness and psychological terror, forms a compelling narrative flow from the hysterical anguish of the 13-minute opener "The Dance" to the painful resignation of the concluding "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean." Diamanda's stunning four-octave instrument attacks this material with amazing technical and emotional virtuosity, transforming from a quavering falsetto to a throaty growl in a matter of seconds, enforcing the primacy of her moving drama, effortlessly referencing Greek liturgical music, American blues and Middle Eastern vocalizations. Upon listening to the first track, I was completely transfixed and listened to the entire two hours plus of Defixiones in one sitting. Her seductive performance creates a violent historical shadowplay for the mind that feels all too relevant to our times; the sentiments so universal that she could just as well be singing about the horrors of the Civil War, the ethnic cleansing of the Third Reich, the bombing of Hiroshima or the rape of Nanking. Diamanda Gal?' electrifying work is entirely without peer in the contemporary scene. Her avant-garde exorcisms of plagues, madness and despair sound simultaneously ancient and modern, allegorical yet viscerally direct, elusive and immediate, and Defixiones: Will and Testament should be required listening for anyone who has ever felt the pull of human history's dark chambers beckon.
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I couldn't imagine a more welcome gift this winter holiday season than two brand-new double albums from Diamanda Galàs. La Serpenta Canta is a live song recital, containing new performances of many favorite songs from her back catalog, her set drawing freely from blues, country, and Motown soul. The idea of a singer as possessed and theatrical as Diamanda Galàs covering American popular song may seem a novelty on the surface, but La Serpenta Canta has quickly become my favorite album by the Greek-American diva.
Her dissection of the familiar musical tropes of the Blues is absolutely spellbinding, grasping onto a thousand phantom spirits as her voice quivers, pokes and penetrates each precisely enunciated syllable. John Lee Hooker's "Burning Hell" is transformed into cubist Blues — a fragmentation and reassembling of the song that lays bare all of its emotional truth, drains its blood and leaves it for dead. Her "cabaret grotesque" performance on a pair of Screamin' Jay Hawkins songs — "Frenzy" and the perennial "I Put A Spell On You" — is an absolute joy to behold. Her own composition "Baby's Insane" from The Sporting Life (the collaboration with John Paul Jones), is sweet but deadly. The free jazz vocalizations on her cover of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" recall the unhinged improvs of avant-jazz screamer Patty Waters. In Diamanda's hands, the country melancholy of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" becomes a terrifying, multidimensional shriek of pain, regret and despair. Perhaps the most beguiling and transcendent of all the songs on La Serpenta Canta is the heartrending version of Diana Ross and The Supremes' "My World Is Empty Without You," with its distorted piano rumblings and Diamanda's dynamic vocals alchemizing the true essence of the song's fragility and pain. Like Nico's haunting The Marble Index, Gal?' beautiful collection of post-apocalyptic torch songs shines darkly with ravishing beauty and a haunting sense of loneliness that threatens to surround my heart completely.
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The art of the sound collage and drone music has a group of key members. Mirror, Christoph Heemann, Andrew Chalk, William Basinski, and perhaps just a few more are known and loved and create music that invokes images from other worlds; be those images frightening, sublime, or esoteric, it is impossible to deny their visceral impact. Andrew Liles has been added to that list of elusive and wonderful musicians with this release.
From the first moment All Closed Doors submerges me into a universe I'm unfamiliar with and perhaps slightly scared of. Furniture drifts through the air, children laugh and disappear down long hallways, shadows scream and laugh at eachother when there is nothing to cast them, and the echo of something ancient pours down over me in the form of a vacant sky. The impact of Liles' sound worlds on this disc is unavoidable, his imaginative and spectral cadences whisper and glide through the air in ways that effect the brain; scary stories are told without the aid of a voice, heaven spills over from the speakers into the room even though such a thing is unthinkable. There's a strange light that bounces and reflects off of everything in this world; there are oceans of singing fish and mountains bellowing their hate onto the helpless below. I can't stop coming up with images, it's as if my mind is flooded with an invisible light that forces it into overdrive, into a creative process that can't stop, that wouldn't stop if the album didn't end. Very rarely do I find an album so immediate and compelling as this; I often have butterflies while listening to it. It is perhaps the equivalent of a sexual release extened over fifty minutes of sound. None of the overtly sexual material from Liles' Aural Anagram/Anal Aura Gram is here, but there's that mysterious and ancient something looming over the whole of this release. It's a tension that can't be avoided, a physical tension created in the presence of an erotic and secretive resonance. 
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310 are back with a new album for Leaf that sees them taking a turn that may leave fans of their previous work out in the cold. It's always good to see artists making strides and tackling new challenges with their work, even when they are primarily working from a relatively accessible base as 310 are. However, 310's new direction seems to be one aimed at a larger audience, and as such suffers from an awkward directness.
Processional finds the group adding vocals to their established aesthetic of slow beats, smooth basslines and melancholy. The result is a record rooted much more in the pop tradition than their previous outings, and to some degree the familiarity of pop music dulls the edge. The album is slickly produced and has a clear, separated sound that other indie downtempo producers often strive for but fail to achieve; this could be major label material if it was trying. While much of the album is still instrumental, I can't help but come back to the vocal-rooted tracks as the ones that define the album's tone, mood, and direction. The instrumental pieces are nicely constructed and layered with bits of real-world ambiance, guitar, and polite rhythm programming but they never rise and fall with dynamics enough to make them especially memorable when they are placed up against the songs with singing. Whenever a human voice takes over, the songs seem more fully realized and the interaction of various sounds and timbres seems more deliberate. The album's more melodic and 'songy' moments are finely crafted and could be prime examples of a new kind of electronic pop music that inherits the sincerity and feel of synth pop pioneers without mining old records for ironic cues. However, despite the space-age production, dead-on playing, attention to detail, and obvious sincerity that 310 has for this material, it still feels at times a little flat. This is Pop Noir being created by able hands, but as with so many artists who make the leap from instrumental work to songs with singing, the vocal material overwhelms the rest and it all fails to fit into a smooth whole. Andrew Sigler croons more than sings over tracks with enough melodrama that it is sometimes difficult to listen to him without picturing a disaffected lounge singer in a velvet tuxedo. The Robin Guthrie-esque guitar is terrific in the background of "Pacific Gravity (Vocal Version)" but the voice pulls me out of the song too often. I'd love to hear this record without the few vocal tracks to see how it would flow as a pure instrumental, but that's not the record that 310 made.
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- Shadow Traffic
- Moving Platform
- Pacific Gravity (vocal version)
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Blue Star/Merge Parlour, the last in Lexicon Devil's series of F/i reissues is less essential than Winter only because it pales in comparison to previously re-released pieces of the F/i catalog, notably the full lengths What Not Now??Alan! and Space Mantra;however, like the Boy Dirt Car reissue, this disc goes beyond anostalgia trip or an attempt to cash in on recent trends. F/i wereentirely unique in their ability to rock as hugely as the greatEuropean psych bands, while sounding at the same time like a very exactproduct of the Midwestern wasteland. All the bombast and ascension intheir often sprawling songs feels tempered by layers of gloom andsuburban malaise; any futurism comes with an equivalent expression ofdisdain for an automated, static culture. The F/i sound could bedescribed as industrial psychedelic, with most songs taking off onrepetitive, kraut-influenced grooves and then treated to a healthyglossing of dirty space-age electronics. A clear touchstone would beearly Chrome, but F/i is less claustrophobic, more prone to slip intothe trance-inducing drone epics than barbed sci-fi theatrics. Theirapproach can feel tired at times, and is certainly more successful onthe aforementioned albums, but this disc includes some of the band'sgreat moments too, like the hard, swinging psych of "Blue Star,"sounding like Guru Guru blasted through a silo, or "Om Twenty-One,"where guitars fizzle and bend around grossly modulated synth tones likea punker's homemade homage to Ligeti's 2001 score. Merge Parlour,F/i's three-song side from a split with Vocokesh, shows the band movingin an increasingly electronic direction. "Pleasure Centres/The Beach,"the standout track from the split, and the best song here, is one ofthe most intense and abstract F/i songs ever, with steady torrents offeedback and distorted samples forming the backdrop for more of thefamiliar guitar squeal, waves of industrial percussion, and droningsynths. That the band's original lineup dissolved quickly after Merge Parlourproves they must have had excuses other than a stagnancy in the music.Lexicon Devil has done a nice job with these reissues, sticking to theoriginal material and liner notes without weighting them down withextraneous crap (my guess is there was more than enough). If anyone isto be canonized, it will happen, as it should, by merit of the musicalone.samples:
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If you've never heard of Milton Mapes, it's no big surprise. Just don't show up to their live gigs expecting to find Milton: the band takes their name from lead singer/songwriter Greg Vanderpool's grandfather. Their songs are straight from the dustbowl heartache fused with a country-rock sensibility that any bartender in a small town saloon would be glad to have playing on the jukebox.
Theirs are songs not about people or places or situations, just the moments that we all go through in our lives as we strive to find that perfect place to belong. Together with stalwart Roberto Sanchez and a host of guest musicians, Vanderpool spins his songs into a golden second album, easily sticking on the mind and in the heart. The album opens rather slow and deceivingly on "Great Unknown," a somber note about giving it all up to look for the love you've never had. On the next track, betrayal takes over, and for a moment it sounds like a veiled threat: "maybe you're gone, ready or not/maybe you're here, maybe you're not." The harmonica and pained vocal over a crunch Wilco had but lost almost do it alone, but the harmony on the second verse just slays. In fact, the album settles in for a good six songs of perfection before it hits a misstep, and even then the song in question ("Palo Duro") isn't so much bad as it just sounds like filler to make up time before the next great song kicks in. It does and they do on "This Kind of Danger" and "The Sad Lines," my favorite song of recent memory from an artist I've never heard before now. Milton Mapes, you see, is as much a character as he is a namesake, and his integrity, weakness, loneliness, and history are all over Westernaire. This time in his shoes is a ride of ups and downs, and I hope there's more tales in this vein saved up for next time.
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