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13 February 2012

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Albums and Singles

cover image A six year absence means nothing to Melt-Banana. Fetch is a minor refinement of past efforts in the band's 20 year career, unraveling over a bevy of short, aggressive songs to reveal itself as either an irreverently noisy pop album, or an intermittently poppy noise rock album, depending on your point of view. They have a knack for straddling the fence between kitsch and the vaguely obscene, and that grey area has never seemed so lived-in and comfortable as on their newest work.

A-Zap

The departure of Rika Hamamoto has served to further focus the distinct, poppy sound that became Melt-Banana's M.O. on Bambi's Dilemma and hinted at in past releases. At this point, all non-guitars and non-voices serve a streamlined, utilitarian purpose, aiding the lead instrumentation in overwhelming the senses. The hi-fi, crystalline mastering adds to the controlled chaos, filling the midrange to the point of aural fatigue. Yasuko Onuki's inimitable bubblegum-and-glass cadence has usually been the most difficult barrier to entry in enjoying Melt-Banana's brand of splintered noise rock. As Melt-Banana's grindcore edges were slowly whittled down and sanded smooth, though, Onuki learned to cut loose more, to care less, and to sing with a more confident, punky sourness which complimented the depreciation of the band's formerly caustic and incalculable melodies. Similarly, the guitar work of Ichirou Agata has grown conciser and more smartly composed; clear chords ringing through on choruses where before there was only hissing, ear-splitting saturation. The cacophonous pedal abuse has mostly been pruned down to staccato loops and the occasional laser gun blast.

Songs like "Candy Gun," "The Hive," "Lie Lied Lies," and the closer "Zero" are all instant classics as a product of this massively increased attention to detail. They are sharp without being impossible to like, and easily some of the catchiest material the band has worked with. Waylaid prior by extraneous band members, perhaps, this newest effort keeps a stranglehold on one idea and makes a killer argument for total musical tunnel vision, with a success rate that can sometimes seem to paint a lot of their past work as too cluttered. If that seems blasphemous, I am surprised too. Nothing overstays its welcome here. Even odd song out "Zero+" sells as an interlude, a glitched guitar cycling through accidental melodies before resolving in froggy silence.

In essence, Fetch is a gleeful embrace of the band's innate kitsch, which always lay under its surface. In past albums, it was an inversion of the trope: a rock band jokingly dangling its own freakish clone of pop cheer above the noise. Now Fetch finds them in contrast, having traversed the harsh end of the spectrum, finding there might be a way to write more accessibly without resorting to self-censoring their best qualities. A song or two flirts with thrash and some of noise pop's dancier excursions, occasionally at the expense of the reckless exuberance of earlier releases, but it is still one of the least commercial releases likely to be given coverage by more well-known publications. Jaded fans clamoring for a now uncharacteristic shift to the old familiar chaos have had about a decade to adjust, and if the biggest complaint to be leveraged against the band is that after two decades they have gotten a little more focused, they have nothing to worry about.

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13 February 2012

Administrator

Albums and Singles

cover image Kid606 has never quite fit into a particular narrative as an artist, which I have always felt was the strongest attribute to surviving as an electronic producer in the flooded market of similarly supertalented electronic producers. Equally brooding, romantic, humored, and flat-out destructive, Miguel De Pedro makes no effort to coordinate releases, or to eschew the fleeting moods and odd moments that fill any life of a grown adult and derive inspiration from any and all of them. Happiness is another one of his "heart on sleeve" albums, full of airy downtempo compositions similar to P.S. I Love You or Resilience, which means that fans of the softer end of his catalog will probably love it and fans of hyperactive scene destroying genius nonsense (myself included) will mostly only tolerate it.

Tigerbeat6

Happiness comes at the tail end of a lot of personal changes for De Pedro, who has recently relocated to Los Angeles, and much of the press around the album will make note of this. It is not particularly new territory, however; PS I Love You was the most endearing and exquisitely brief of his more emotional excursions, and some of his older songs ("Parenthood," "For When Yr Just Happy To Be Alive") have been demonstrating his knack for simpler, more idyllic compositions since back in the early 2000s. It seems strange to say but a wistful Kid606 is often best handled in small doses; those songs were great because they lay at the opposite end of a barrage of rambunctious breakbeats and appropriated ragga grooves. They stood out because they did not have to be there, because they were an oasis of sincerity and exploration that showed Miguel's emotional and technical range and because there was an implication that something important had to be said, if only briefly. Those softer moments were Kid606's self-therapy in practice; a catharsis for a frustrated artist who sometimes got tired of their own schtick.

There are a number of solid songs on the album that make a good case for it being culled down as an EP. "Coronado Bay Breezin'" basically succeeds where the first three songs on the album fail; a bit of early afternoon beach-drive downtempo with a smart balance of empty space and manipulated effects to undercut the sparseness of the melodies. "Happiness Is A Warm Kitten" and "If I am only allowed one song on the album with cut up female vocals then this song is it" fill the quota for tongue in cheek song titles along with being genuinely pleasant slices of ambient electronica. "Taco Time" and equally alliterative "Tarsier Treehouse" are all too brief highlights as well, all clipped loops of thick fuzz and fake strings fumbling around in processed uncertainty, masquerading as interludes. Happiness does not demonstrate any new range of talents or moods, though. It just reinforces the same things we already knew.

For the most part I can not help but think that as technological improvements and stylistic shifts have settled into a comfortable equilibrium, some of De Pedro's edge as an innovator has suffered for it. He was functioning at his best when he was pushing against the boundaries of how and why music in the scene was being made. No longer moving and changing, Happiness represents little more than a staid devotion to a kind of inoffensive electronica that has always been in need of a serious sea change. This is the last thing to expect from a Kid606 album, so while it is impossible to hate something so aimlessly pretty, it also does not offer enough to grab onto to earn any kind of lasting attention.

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12 February 2012

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Albums and Singles

cover image

Jason Urick's second full-length for Thrill Jockey is an enigmatic and confounding one, as many elements of his laptop-based soundscapes rival the work of higher-profile kindred spirits like Tim Hecker. ¬†However, his ingenious and unconventional production talents are somewhat undercut by a strange obsessiveness (which extends even to the title, as Urick was fixated on Marco Ferreri's 1986 film of the same name while working on the album). ¬†That curious combination makes for a simultaneously striking and uneasy listening experience.

Thrill Jockey

I think Jason Urick must have a lot of the same software as Daniel Lopatin, as I could easily have been convinced that this was a lost Oneohtrix album when I first put it on. ¬†That unavoidable comparison pretty much smacked me in the face as soon as the weirdly warped and shuddering synthesizers (or voices) came in on "I Love You," but on a deeper aesthetic level, Urick is doing something very divergent from Lopatin or anyone else. ¬†That distinction becomes increasingly noticeable as the album progresses: Urick's pieces tend to involve just one or two key samples or motifs that are enthusiastically stretched, slowed, and processed until they sound thoroughly vibrant, ravaged, blurred, and impossibly thick.

That doesn't mean that these five pieces are simple though‚Äîthey're very dense, ingeniously textured, and complex in their own way. ¬†It's just that Jason tends to focus all of his creative energies on honing his primary themes into something unnaturally immense and distorted‚Äîthere isn't too much happening into periphery or any apparent interest in space or dynamic variability. ¬†Such a "maximizing minimalism" approach is a very unusual one, but it is not unsuccessful. ¬†There is a great deal of life and depth to Urick's melodies, as he clearly knows how to craft (or appropriate) a solid hook and is not at all shy about tweaking it into woozily quavering otherness. Also, his forceful, tightly structured presentation make his songs immediately accessible, memorable, and heavy. ¬†The resultant downside, however, is that there aren't terribly many secrets or surprises left to discover with repeat listens.

Notably, there's also an element of the perverse or paradoxical to I Love You, as the songs sound futuristic and processed into oblivion, but they're often built upon recognizably traditional samples. ¬†In fact, on "Ageless Isms," it even sounds like he took an old ballad from the Far East in its entirety and just slowed, pitch-shifted, and generally garbled it into utter unrecognizability. ¬†"Don't Digital" seems to achieve similarly impressive levels of chopped-and-screwedness with an accordion and a fiddle. ¬†I could have that completely wrong though, as Urick's manipulation of his source material is so drastic that it could be almost anything (reggae and dub tend to come up quite a bit as possibilities whenever this album is discussed).

Regardless of where he is borrowing from, I find it conceptually amusing: applying cough medicine-fueled hip-hop tactics to traditional Asian music is just as inspired as using dub tactics to shred dub into utter abstraction. ¬†Still, my favorite pieces are the album's more drone-based book-ends: the title piece and "Syndromes" essentially sound like spaced-out ambient synth music muscled-up to a rumbling and shuddering intensity level. Also, the ghostly, warbling sample (koto?) at the end of "Syndromes" might be the single best thing on the album.

Despite all those great attributes, however, I Love You can be a tough listen. ¬†The album's most significant and fundamental flaw manifests itself most strongly with the candy-colored synth psychedelia of "The Crying Song": Urick's music is so dense, busy, over-processed, and over-saturated that it can be absolutely exhausting to listen to in large doses. ¬†There's no space, nothing natural, no breathing room‚Äìjust an unrelenting, undulating mass of thick synthetic sounds. ¬†That makes this a very difficult album to love, but it is definitely not a hard one to be impressed by: despite its flaws,¬†I Love You is still one of the most full-on, attention-grabbing abstract electronic albums that I have heard in a while.

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12 February 2012

Albums and Singles

cover image Mixing a fistful of covers with the band's own original songs, this compilation shows the group at the peak of its messy adolescent period (which they fortunately never grew out of). Everything that made The Cramps one of the most perfect rock groups of all time is here; they were primitive, sexy and gloriously out of time with everyone but themselves. Their music penetrates my brain like a bolt of electricity from Dr. Frankenstein's lab and I don't think these songs have ever sounded any better.

12 February 2012

Administrator

Albums and Singles

cover image Mixing a fistful of covers with the band‚Äôs own original songs, this compilation shows the group at the peak of its messy adolescent period (which they fortunately never grew out of). Everything that made The Cramps one of the most perfect rock groups of all time is here; they were primitive, sexy and gloriously out of time with everyone but themselves. Their music penetrates my brain like a bolt of electricity from Dr. Frankenstein‚Äôs lab and I don‚Äôt think these songs have ever sounded any better.

Munster Records

What strikes me first when listening to File Under Sacred Music is how The Cramps manage to take something as homogenous as the rock and roll of the ‚Äò50s or schlocky horror-by-numbers B-Movies and turn them into something entirely unique. Granted hundreds of bands have come and gone since The Cramps founded which have tried with varying success to build on this sound (Nick Cave even went as far as to nick Kid Congo Powers for his own band) but none manage to capture the essence. For Lux Interior, Poison Ivy, Nick Knox and Bryan Gergory (and later the aforementioned Powers), rock and roll was the gospel and these were the psalms they needed to worship at the altar.

As such, their cover versions go far beyond an interpretation. Interior‚Äôs vocals on the sparse arrangement of "Lonesome Town" pull the song into another dimension and the group‚Äôs wonderfully wretched take on Peggy Lee‚Äôs "Fever" sounds like a plague of lovesick rockabilly vampires. Even on their original compositions they venerate and desecrate the classics in pursuit of the ideal rock and roll song; "Twist and Shout" takes The Beatles through the hell of Charles Manson to a place where George, Paul, Ringo and John would probably have never gotten to even in their worst trips.

Personal favorites like "Human Fly" and "Garbageman" stand out only because I love them so much. Taken in the context of this compilation, it is easy to see that The Cramps were consistently burning as hot and as bright as an arc welder. Tracks like "The Mad Daddy" and "New Kind of Kick" have always sounded good on other records but here they show their true character and it is hard to see why these did not get the same kind of recognition as some of The Cramps more enduring songs.

While most of these songs have ended up on either their first two albums or one of the many compilations that have surfaced over the years, File Under Sacred Music is a welcome addition to The Cramps catalog as it brings together all these amazing songs into one place while at the same time making available some of the rarer pieces that seem to have been forgotten over the last 30 years. The Cramps are one of those bands that are often cited but I feel always get the short end of the stick when it comes to reissues and remasters of their work so to have such a loving compilation in my hands (and more importantly on my stereo) is a small step towards the respect they deserve. I really hope Munster Records give their other singles and albums similar treatment.

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12 February 2012

Administrator

Albums and Singles

cover image The ringing of the bells and the long carrier tone that eventually emerges beneath it signals the beginning of a descent into the underworld. Two tracks on each side carry me down an icy river of song. The ingredients are minimal, but a good cook can do a lot with just a few things, and I never felt heavy or gross from a cluttered presentation or an over-saturation of fatty content. This sonic fuel burns clean. And like any good meal the nourishment derived from the listening experience strengthened my nervous system, while none-the-less tuning it to alien frequencies. Here is an example of automatic music, and the methodology produces similar unconscious material as that evoked in automatic writing. It all makes for a fascinating foray into electronica as prepared by such experienced exemplars of the craft as Drew McDowall and Tres Warren.

The Spring Press

I‚Äôm sure there are psychic messages contained in the coiling grooves of this clear vinyl LP. Being of a transparent nature they seep into my brain in slow trickle of melting tones a little over a half hour long. Yet that time stretches out and dilates in strange ways. The clock keeps ticking but my subjective experience of it is wobbly. I find myself looking for landmarks in "A Terrain of Constant-Low Intensity" and it is in this piece that I find most of them. The steady rhythm of bells starts out fast. Then, as the warm fuzz of an over-driven tube amp drone comes along, sound events slow down, moving into the supreme moment of kairos. And to me, this is what all excellent music will do: take me out of myself and the concerns of my daily trivial mind and into a moment of emergence where the deeper strains of true thought live. Again, this is akin to automatic writing in the way a steady stream is brought forth from deep chthonic currents.

Next the imagination casts about in darkness like a flashlight moving into less familiar territory. As the name suggests "Frying Oil Transient Aura Detector" is a song of mystery. Here the body of the song has been lubricated into a slippery, sensual mix of shifting, distorted timbres. The personality of the piece glows around the edges in an extended enunciation of itself. Without plot, it is free to meander through its own landscape, create its own map, and ultimately arrive at a destination a paltry piece of music, composed according to formulas and styles, would never be able to find.

Flipping the record over the disorientation into foreign domains continues with "Hox Cascades," a short but luminescent passage about as familiar as a half remembered dream. Personally, these are the kinds of sounds I like to bathe in, to fill my house with, and to spend my time among. Pedestrian pop is readily available, and thoughtless noise is also easy to find. Introspective provocations, not so much. When the short track ends, I move into "Mountain Village Malaise" as a beat returns to the proceedings, coaxing my neuro receptors back into a vague semblance of normality. The steady low-end bass pulse is still trance inducing and weird, while hallucinatory guitar-like swishes phase in and out. Buzzing sine waves float above in a higher register. This is a tribal music for loners who‚Äôd rather drift along in their own fanciful stereo daydreams. In doing so I found myself at home among the cavorting creatures conjured up by this auditory phantasmagoria, there, dancing between the edges of silence.

The first pressing of this 200 gram virgin clear viny was in an edition of 250. Sorry, no samples.

12 February 2012

Albums and Singles

cover image The final part of the X-TG story is ‡πÅ‡∏ù‡∏î‡∏ô‡∏£‡∏Å (Faet Narok), a bonus "dark" version of Desertshore that comes as a download with the special edition of Desertshore/The Final Report. It is quite different from Desertshore even though it follows the same layout as the main album. The bonus album's title roughly translates from Thai into "double hell," but the music is far from hellish, indeed it may be darker but it is nicely soporific and ambient. The vocals are treated and pushed into the music, becoming part of the sound rather than becoming background detail. Antony's voice becomes a plaintive call from behind the veil, Bargeld's a polyglot babble of madness. Even Grey and No√© sound much better here as disembodied forms than they do in the "proper" versions.