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16 January 2011

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Although she has taken part in a multitude of collaborations, as well as having an impressive resume as a visual artist, this album is Bullock's first true "album" to be released. Consisting of four unified conceptual pieces and two distinct separate ones, Ray of Dark demonstrates a sense of ability that many similar artists strive for in the twilight of their careers.

Sedimental

The first four pieces are solo tracks from Bullock and her bandmates in Twilight of the Century that she reworked, giving each a distinct sound, but also a unifying consistency as well."Navigational Madness," by Rambutan (Eric Hardiman, also of Burnt Hills and Century Plants) drags guitar detritus through submerged amplifier noise, creating a dense mix with infrequent piano-like outbursts, all the while a dirge rhythm clicks away.

Her reworking of husband Michael T. Bullock‚Äôs "Line's Dead" focuses on fragments of radio transmissions and distorted electronics, with the occasional heavy rhythmic outburst, with shrill, filtered noises occasionally making their presence known.Fossils From The Sun's "Stage Evil" (Ray Hare, also of Century Plants) takes on a scraping, intense bit of live chaos with carefully rationed feedback and improvised found sounds, resulting in a heavy, but restrained noise piece with occasional outbursts.Bullock's own "Ray of Dark" becomes a miasma of irregular, dubby drum machine beats and noisy guitar squalls, leading into a syrupy set of textures and decaying noise.

Of the remaining two pieces, "The Story of Mike" is by far the lightest moment to be heard here.Field recordings of distant crickets and frogs are met with layered conversations discussing the birth of Mike Bullock in a suitably absurdist manner, eventually with some deep guitar pulses to be heard.The closing "A Specific Gravity" features both Bullocks working together, mixing soft tones with abrasive textures, all the while a mechanical hum fills the air.

Linda Aubry Bullock's "sound" is one that is not easily categorized or pigeon holed, but there is a definite strain of dark, post-industrial experimentalism to be heard: it is as an influence more than as a defining quality.The multitude of sounds and approaches to be heard here are definitely Ray of Dark's strongest feature.While "The Story of Mike" may feel a bit out of place with its more absurdist, comical tone, it works well as a ray of light in an otherwise dark, but compelling album.

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16 January 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image Celer is not the amazing ambient and drone unit that every blog, webzine, and message board in the universe claims it is. At least, Ariill doesn't prove it. Released as a pair of free MP3s in 2007 by Archaic Horizon and presumably related to a self-released CD-R of the same name from 2005, these two half-hour drones represent the start of Celer's prolific four-year run, which I assume yielded better music than this.

Archaic Horizon

Following Anthony D'Amico's review of Vestiges of an Inherent Melancholy, I sought out whatever information I could about Celer. All the blogs and message boards I found trading their music made it sound as though Will Long and Dani Baquet-Long's recorded output was a heavenly ambient gospel inspired by the same gods that Jacob Kirkegaard, Chris Watson, and Rosy Parlane proclaimed. Such comparisons and high praise sent me looking for anything I could find by them. Thanks to Archaic Horizon, I didn't have to look far, because they provide Ariill absolutely free of charge on their website.

A paragraph or two can be found there that tries to describe Ariill's central conceit, but it's poorly written and more confusing than helpful. The grandiloquent description only explains that these two pieces began life as piano sonatas and were transformed into something new using a relatively simple looping process the band refers to as "triangular synthesis." There's a diagram included with the download that is supposed to make that process easier to understand, but it's entirely unnecessary and only makes Celer look pompous. Whatever they did to transform their piano music into respiring drone noise, the effort just wasn't worth it.

During the first half-hour, distorted tones, which are stretched to the breaking point, crackle and stutter amidst steaming vents and a rippling, nearly melodic background. The effect is a pleasant one, at least initially, but after 15 minutes it becomes tedious. There is no development, nor is there much in the way of depth, and after just a couple of minutes the song is essentially spent. But Celer keeps the same thing going for an additional 28 minutes. Only very minuscule elements are added or subtracted, so that by the end all I can hear is a repetitive, grating noise, like Charlie Brown's mom speaking through a broken megaphone. It isn't meditative and it isn't poetic, it's just a long, plodding exercise in generic feedback manipulation.

The second half-hour manages to be worse. A single undulating tone begins the song, and over the course of 32 minutes it is transformed by various effects and the addition of other tones, which interfere with it. As these echoing sine waves lap over one another, distorted chunks of audio similar to those from the first song pan across the stereo in short fits. Again, the effect is pleasant enough at the start, but prolonged exposure generates only frustration. Making matters worse are a number of abrupt frequency changes, where the song's central tone is either lowered or raised in a distracting and unpleasant way. Without them the song would be better, but it would still go on for far too long.

With some editing, Ariill might have been a fine EP of under-produced drone, but as a full-length release it is severely flawed. Even in abbreviated form, it would lack the color and ingenuity found so abundantly in the music of people like Andrew Chalk or Jonathan Coleclough (check out Jonathan's Period for an excellent example of highly processed, piano-derived music). It isn't hard to imagine that Will and Dani released better music during their short time together; this is only their second release, after all. But, for now, I have to conclude that if Celer is as great as everyone says they are, the proof is somewhere else, on one of their other 57 releases.

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16 January 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image Disappears' 2010 debut (Lux) didn‚Äôt connect with me at all, largely because the band's more Neu!-influenced elements were often buried beneath busy, heavily distorted guitars: it wasn't bad, but it didn't conspicuously stand out from a lot of other bands either. This time around, Disappears went with a more spacious sound that places the focus squarely on their killer rhythm section and all of the pieces seem to have now fallen properly into place. ¬†Guider finds a nice balance between precise motorik repetition, muscle, and deadpan urban cool.

Kranky

The basis for "the Disappears sound" seems to have narrowed a bit with this album, as all of the songs except the title piece are built from a propulsive, endlessly repeating mid-tempo groove. ¬†This tendency was much less evident on Lux, as that album was a bit more varied in both tempo and structure. ¬†Variety is not something that suits Disappears very well though, as they tend to be at their best when they cling closest to their formula: guitarists Brian Case and Jonathan van Herik are remarkably adept at assimilating disparate influences in novel ways to keep their very narrow stylistic terrain fresh and compelling. ¬†They have embraced minimalism and restraint in a big way here, effectively filling out the songs with heavily delayed strums, hollow-sounding twangs and tremolo bar dives, simple repeating patterns, and controlled bursts of squalling chaos. ¬†None of those things are new to the band, but they have definitely improved at making them matter through intelligent use of space.

The album's clear centerpiece is the epic "Revisiting," largely because it is the longest piece. ¬†The success of a Disappears song is almost entirely based upon the strength of the groove and how long it is allowed to unfold and "Revisiting" hits the mark on both counts, pulsing hypnotically for nearly 16 minutes. ¬†"Not Romantic" and "New Fast" also lock together quite impressively, but they end too soon to achieve similar levels of snowballing power. ¬†I actually find the song lengths to be a bit puzzling and arbitrary, as most of the album's six songs last just three minutes or under, which suits the punchier, more "garage rock" pieces like "Guider," but seems frustratingly insufficient for some of the others. ¬†Limiting the album to just six songs was a good idea though, as Disappears songs tend to blur together in large doses (there are some great songs buried on Lux that I missed initially).

The primary downside to Disappears, however, is that strong songwriting is not a clear priority: the emphasis is on style and attitude rather than content, which inhibits how far these songs can insinuate themselves into my consciousness. ¬†Fortunately, the band undeniably excels at the extremely specific thing that they do: if I were making a movie that had a scene where a totally bad-ass band was ripping it up in a sweaty club, these guys would be obvious candidates. ¬†Also, it seems like their limited effort towards songcraft is very deliberate, as it's not like vocalist Brian Case tried to write catchy hooks and great lyrics and failed. ¬†Instead, he seems to alternate between a chant-like monotone and urgent post-punk shouting in order to avoid distracting from the groove with anything at all approaching melody. ¬†Disappears are not trying to make an emotional connection‚Äìthey are trying to rumble over listeners like a damn train (albeit a somewhat art-damaged one).

Notably, Guider is the band's final album with drummer Graeme Gibson, a huge setback for a band so single-mindedly devoted to krautrock-influenced grooves. ¬†Fortunately, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley has stepped in to temporarily fill the void, so I have no immediate concerns about these guys losing their impressive momentum anytime soon.

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15 January 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image These two recent releases from Garet both showcase drastically different styles and compositional methods. Meta, a single 52 minute piece derived from a four channel installation, does an excellent job of conveying the original‚Äôs work of physical space. The other, 60' Cassette, is exactly what it sounds like: an hour long work derived completely from magnetic tape in various states of disarray. Even though the work represents two extremes, Garet's adeptness as an artist and composer results in two significantly different, but equally wonderful works.

LINE

Meta's initial intent and construction was to draw out everyday, mundane background noises and place the focus on them.The original installation encouraged movement between the four sound sources, and to experience the sounds directly, as well as through objects and from a more significant distance.Of course being mixed down to a stereo CD hinders the original artistic vision, but Garet does an admirable job at capturing the dynamic shifts and evolutions into this format.

Unsurprisingly then, much of Meta is made up of quiet, distant vibrations, subtle noises, occasional buzzing, and at times abrasive scraping.Given its conceptual nature, he conjures images of buzzing florescent lights, loose air conditioning ducts and humming vehicles in the distance.Some passages sound as if they are coming from the ultrasonic spectrum:vibrations that are seemingly less heard and more felt, both at extreme high and low frequencies.As a whole it has a grey, concrete and steel feeling to it and despite its non-intrusive nature, it never becomes forgettable or easily ignored.

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While Meta is defined largely by its use of space and quiet, 60' Cassette is as direct and blunt as its title would insinuate.The first side of the tape immediately begins with loud textures built from sputtering motors and crackling magnetic tape.White static rapids crash throughout as the occasional fragments of what sounds like voice or whatever was previously recorded on an erased tape slip through walls of decay and interference.Garet mangles his magnetic source material into passages of crackling wood or heavy rain, constantly moving and never standing still.

Helen Scarsdale Agency

The second half of the tape lightens up on the crunch (though some drastic crashes and bangs cut through at the onset) and instead puts a focus on tone and space.Wet bursts, buzzing bees, and patterns of noise break up moments of tonal shimmering.As the piece goes on, Garet generates echoing, cavernous space teeming with ambiguity, and later into frigid, windswept tundra.

Between Meta's construction from the mundane and the everyday into a largely hushed, quiet electronic composition and 60' Cassette‚Äôs forceful and violent sounds of decay and deconstruction, Richard Garet captures two distinctly different extremes in the world of sound art.Perhaps most impressive then is the fact that he tackles the dichotomy so brilliantly, with both being exceptional in their diversity and quality.While my personal bias may lean more towards that analog crunch that is all over the cassette release, the cold purity of Meta is no less exceptional.

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15 January 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image Much of Milwaukee artist Climax Denial‚Äôs previous work has drawn heavily from that fetish tinged sleaze aesthetic that has been prevalent in the genre since its inception decades ago. However, divorced of all that, Dehumanizing Environments is a complex, varied work that emphasizes both disorder and structure, coming together in a nuanced, diverse approach that results in a high water mark for aggressive electronic music.

Malignant

Climax Denial‚Äôs harsh predilections are never far away on Dehumanizing Environments, of course.Distortion, belligerent analog electronics and a sense of unpleasant darkness pervades through all four of these pieces.Those features do not define the record though, which is exactly why it is so commendable."The Womb as Vestibule" may open the album with a deep rumble and a synth passage with all the subtlety of a buzzsaw, yet significant depth lurks around the harshness.Icy tones pass through with a sense of melody, and through the harshness there lies open passages and an overall song-like approachof structure and composition.

The following "Fingering Dead Ashes as Evidence" may have a more crude title, but the music is the opposite.Combining rumbling low end and less abrasive mid-range passages of electronics, melodic sweeps drift in an out over the noisier moments.CD continues expanding and evolving the sound, blending beautiful tones with ugly noise, building to a heavier, denser conclusion.The lighter synths that introduce "Morning Following Dried Blood" make for a bit of a false start, as harsher passages are added.Between the overall dark and dour mood and violent, stuttering electronics, the piece is an unsettling, yet extremely captivating.

The penultimate piece, "Environments for Paranoid Necrotic Masturbation", besides sounding like a Carcass b-side, is the already strong album's high point.Glassy, vibrating drones set the stage, along with an extremely loud bass-heavy passage that is physically intense, testing the limits of any good subwoofer.Vocals appear for the first (and only, as best as I can tell) time on the album, and rather than the expected violent and processed screaming it is instead calm and spoken.While the effects render the actual words nearly impossible to decipher, it is that calmness that makes them all the more disturbing.¬†This small snippet of humanity, lurking behind and orchestrating all the bleakness and darkness that surrounds the album, makes it all the more terrifying.

Given the paraphilliac subject matter and sense of pervading malignance throughout Dehumanizing Environments, the more open moments conjure a greater sense sense of impending doom or tension than any sort of peaceful release.But rather than being an album of rote distortion and canned violence, CD crafts a more diverse approach and actually composes, rather than just blurting out guitar pedal blasts of noise.This unexpected depth, coupled with the unsettling overall mood, comes together as an exceptionally strong record.

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15 January 2011

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Albums and Singles

‘Seasons They Change’: a book by Jeanette Leech featuring C93 and many others

A wonderful, imaginative, insightful and comprehensive book written by my friend Jeanette Leech has just been published. It is highly recommended by me! I asked Jeanette to write something for the Coptic Cat website, which follows:

David has offered me the opportunity to introduce my book, Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk. It’s a long narrative of the innovations in folk music from the 1960s to the present day, covering the artists often called ‘acid folk’, as well as the wider story of experimental attitudes to folk music over the decades.

I interviewed over a hundred artists for the book including David Tibet/Current 93, and many with whom David has collaborated – Shirley Collins, Clodagh Simmonds, Bill Fay and Simon Finn. Other artists covered include Comus, Vashti Bunyan, Espers, Pearls Before Swine, Dredd Foole, Stone Breath, Devendra Banhart, The Tower Recordings, Incredible String Band, Alasdair Roberts, Donovan, Holy Modal Rounders, C.O.B., Pat Kilroy, Mark Fry, Josephine Foster, Islaja, Tim Buckley, The Sun Also Rises, Joanna Newsom, Fern Knight, Marissa Nadler, Simon Finn, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Perry Leopold, Sonja Kristina, Trader Horne, Bread Love & Dreams, Linda Perhacs, Trees, Sharron Kraus, The Owl Service, Mellow Candle, Will Oldham, Circulus, Jane Weaver, Vetiver, Forest, Susan Christie, Dr Strangely Strange, Lau Nau, Spires That In The Sunset Rise… and many, many, many more.

The book can be bought from major booksellers across the UK and US, online retailers, Rough Trade and other record shops, and can always be ordered from your local independent bookstore.

And below is the official press release by the publishers:

In the late 60s and early 70s the inherent weirdness of folk met switched-on psychedelic rock and gave birth to new, strange forms of acoustic-based avant garde music. Artists on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, Pearls Before Swine and Comus, combined sweet melancholy and modal melody with shape-shifting experimentation to create sounds of unsettling oddness that sometimes go under the name acid or psych folk. A few of these artists – notably the String Band, who actually made it to Woodstock – achieved mainstream success, while others remained resolutely entrenched underground. But by the mid-70s even the bigger artists found sales dwindling, and this peculiar hybrid musical genre fell profoundly out of favour. For 30 years it languished in obscurity, apparently beyond the reaches of cultural reassessment, until, in the mid-2000s a new generation of artists collectively tagged ‘New Weird America’ and spearheaded by Devendra Banhart, Espers and Joanna Newsom rediscovered acid and psych folk, revered it and from it, created something new.

Thanks partly to this new movement, many original acid and psych folk artists have re-emerged, and original copies of rare albums command high prices. Meanwhile, both Britain and America are home to intensely innovative artists continuing the tradition of delving simultaneously into contemporary and traditional styles to create something unique.

Seasons They Change tells the story of the birth, death and resurrection of acid and psych folk. It explores the careers of the original wave of artists and their contemporary equivalents, finding connections between both periods, and uncovering a previously hidden narrative of musical adventure.

Author

Jeanette Leech is a writer, researcher, DJ and music historian. She writes regularlyfor Shindig! magazine, and as part of the B-Music collective she has DJ’d throughout the UK, including at the female acid folk events known as ‘Bearded Ladies’ and the Green Man Festival. She writes extensively in the health and social care fields. Seasons They Change is her first book about music.

15 January 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image Turntable artist Philip Jeck has a long history of crafting rich and absorbing albums with a very distinctive style, so I was very much looking forward to hearing a new opus from him, especially given that he has not released anything particularly substantial since 2010's excellent An Ark for the Listener. ¬†Sadly, Cardinal is not quite the album I was hoping for, as it is not so much a painstakingly composed masterpiece as it is a unconventional catch-all for a bunch of unreleased live highlights, soundtrack commissions, and stray home-recorded material. ¬†Some of the pieces are quite good, so I have no qualms at all about the album being released, but Cardinal is necessarily a much more fractured, disorienting, and exhausting experience than any of Jeck's recent proper albums.

Touch

Given its wide-ranging origins, Cardinal is a surprisingly cohesive album, covering several years of performances spanning an impressive swath of the Western world (Austria, England, North America, Greece, etc.). ¬†A large part of that success is presumably because Jeck did a lot of re-editing and reworking of the material, but these 13 pieces nevertheless feel weirdly like they belong together. ¬†Not in the expected way, however, as Cardinal feels a lot like a deliberately misassembled jigsaw puzzle. ¬†That seems to have been a curious and intentional move on Jeck's part, as none of pieces that are related to one another are presented together or in their original order. ¬†For example, the live soundtrack for Guy Maddin‚Äôs Cowards Bend at the Knee is included as a Part One and a Part Five with three unrelated songs between them. ¬†Consequently, the "Bends the Knee" pieces are not just separated from their original context, they are also decontextualized from each other and recontextualized to serve the sequencing of Cardinal.

That intentional jumbling is a very bold and counterintuitive move, which I can certainly appreciate: Jeck's strength has always been the thought and cohesiveness that goes into his compositions. ¬†Cardinal gutsily goes in an opposite and uncharacteristically kaleidoscopic direction, which unsurprisingly yields mixed results. ¬†On the one hand, Cardinal is a wildly unpredictable, vibrant, and varied album, as any given piece is equally likely to feature warmly crackling drones; warped experimentation; or harsh, nightmarish cacophony. ¬†On the other hand, that means that the ground is constantly shifting under my feet as a listener. ¬†I certainly enjoy surprises and challenging listening experiences more than most people, but one thing I have never been able to embrace has been rapid transitions between disconnected themes. ¬†If anything can happen at any time, nothing can have much meaning.

That said, there are plenty of promising and enjoyable pieces throughout Cardinal, but they all feel like false starts or mere oases in a sea of chaos. ¬†It is impossible to get absorbed in a piece when I know that it is doomed to never truly evolve or develop. ¬†For example, three minutes of the cavernous and throbbing drone of "Saint Pancras" is certainly wonderful, but it would be a lot better if it segued into the rest of Jeck's St. Pancras Church performance rather than a shuddering, moaning, and ominous excerpt from the Full of Noise festival. ¬†Jeck's music offers little in the way of rhythm, melody, or harmony, so taking away a couple of the few things that it does offer (depth and immersiveness) is bound to cause problems. ¬†Cardinal basically feels like restlessly channel-surfing through all of the cool sounds that Jeck can create.

I recognize that such an aesthetic has its appeal (people sure seem to like Oneohtrix Point Never), but it largely leaves me cold. ¬†I still mostly like Cardinal though, albeit in a cerebral rather than gut-level way. ¬†Jeck definitely tried to do something different here, as this is neither another predictably stellar Philip Jeck album nor is it a mere compilation. ¬†It is something in-between and it is also compelling art, despite its significant weaknesses as a pure listening experience. ¬†I would probably have loved it if Jeck had made Surf, Part Two instead of Cardinal, so it is admirable that he opted not to repeat himself and chose instead to make a disorienting, precarious hall of mirrors of an album that no one saw coming. ¬†I can respect that Cardinal is primarily an interesting experiment and a curious window into some of the artist‚Äôs darker, noisier impulses. ¬†It may not rank among his finest releases, but the consolation prize is that it at least deepened my appreciation for Jeck's artistry and willingness to attempt some bold new twists this deep into his career.

(Note: the physical album comes with a download of a complete (non-fragmented) 2015 performance from Caen, France, which is excerpted below)

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15 January 2011

Albums and Singles

Perhaps a little bit too superfluous, being a little bit different from more droney music albums, which maybe a good thing, but in this case, it works against itself. ¬†This is an experimental improv album featuring an out of place Madonna sample, not once, but twice on two separate tracks. The samples seem to be random and kind of annoying sometimes and it makes the listener turn their heads, as if almost saying, "Was that Madonna I heard between the blips and bloops?"

15 January 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image This third album from J.R. Robinson‚Äôs shifting ensemble is primarily based upon the life and work of Carlo Gesualdo, a radical and visionary early composer of sacred music who is much more famous for murdering and mutilating his wife and her lover. ¬†A second and shorter piece is additionally included that draws inspiration from the brutal prison death of Boston priest and prolific pedophile Father John Geoghan. ¬†Both thematically linked stories are certainly fertile ground for a very wild and disturbing album, but Night of Your Ascension unexpectedly falls a bit short of Robinson‚Äôs previous albums. ¬†There are certainly still plenty of highlights, but Robinson seems to be in a bit of a rut, repeating his previously successful formula with increased predictability and diminished returns.

Thrill Jockey

In classic Robinson fashion, Night of Your Ascension again enlists an improbable line-up of Chicago underground music luminaries from several different scenes. ¬†There are also a couple of inspired surprises welcomed into the fold, such as Marissa Nadler and Einst√ºrzende Neubauten's Alexander Hacke. ¬†Still another surprise is that the album‚Äôs title piece is ostensibly a loose reworking of one of Gesualdo's madrigals ("Ahi Dispietata e Cruda"). ¬†That seems like quite a quixotic undertaking, as Robinson chose that piece for its microtonal properties, which seem like they would be hopelessly lost amidst the full-on extreme metal bombast that "Night of Your Ascension" gradually becomes. ¬†At first, however, that choice definitely makes a lot of sense, as the opening third of the piece is a timelessly beautiful reverie of Nadler‚Äôs ghostly vocals, eerily dissonant church organ (or harmonium), and Mary Lattimore‚Äôs celestial harp.

Gradually, the heavenly opening movement segues into still more neo-classicism, as Nadler and the organ are displaced by a melancholy string ensemble, then a remarkably convincing sacred chorus of female voices. The choral interlude is short-lived, however, as "Night" soon erupts into a predictable doom metal transformation around the halfway point. ¬†Granted, I am not much of a metal fan, but I am hard-pressed to understand why Robinson thought this was a good idea. ¬†There just is not much happening: a glacial drum beat and a simple, heavily distorted chord progression. ¬†Then it explodes into a sudden, unearned crescendo of crash cymbals and unintelligible, heavily reverbed male chants and moans. ¬†I suppose it all works as a show of force, as it is certainly loud and there are some cool drum fills, but it all seems arbitrary and meaningless to me. ¬†As does the next crescendo, which throws some distorted black metal howling into the mix‚Äìplenty of fury, minimal content. ¬†Admittedly, there are some neat things happening in the periphery at times, but the second half of "Night" basically sounds like a competent metal band with too many members and too few ideas, which is very disappointing from a mind like Robinson's and this pool of talent.

"Run Priest Run" is about half as long and lacks anything quite as striking and wonderful as the opening movement of "Night," but it somehow works a lot better as a whole. ¬†For one, it is considerably less heavy-handed and considerably more unusual, as the metal elements are not the focus. ¬†In fact, they are heard through a rhythmic wash of static and my attention is consumed mostly by the piece‚Äôs drifting, hallucinatory, and angelic vocals. ¬†Eventually, the female vocals are replaced by howling and distorted male vocals from The Body's Chip King, but this time the transition works much better, as Wrekmeister‚Äôs lumbering doom metal is increasingly embellished with roiling electronic chaos. ¬†Unlike "Night," which clumsily transitions from motif to another, "Run Priest Run" is just a long steady build and is all the better for it.

Assuming that Robinson‚Äôs deep love of metal is not going anywhere, "Run Priest Run" seems to be the way forward for Wrekmeister Harmonies, as it uses metal drumming and heavily distorted guitars to add heft to themes that are much more unusual and abstract rather than as an end unto itself. ¬†That is dramatically more effective than basically just flipping an "ok, we‚Äôre a metal band now" switch midway through a song. ¬†Also, a lot of the appeal of metal lies in its songcraft and riffage, neither of which Wrekmeister offers‚Äìand even if they did, there is no shortage of other bands already doing that quite well. ¬†The world does not need one more middle-of-the-road metal band, particularly from someone who is demonstrably much more adept at making drone music or channeling Arvo P√§rt. ¬†I appreciate Wrekmeister Harmonies for their dissimilarity to other bands, not for their ability to play power chords. ¬†It is the abstract, inventive, and artistic aspects of this project alone that appeal to me, but Wrekmeister's dubious desire to rock is at odds with that on "Night." ¬†Hopefully, Robinson will soon find a better way to balance those two sides of his vision ("Priest" is certainly a good start). ¬†All grumbling aside, however, at least half of Night of Your Ascension is quite good, so it is not a complete misstep or disappointment by any means. ¬†It is, unfortunately, the weakest of Wrekmeister's three albums to date though.

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09 January 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image Just as good, if not better than, his Kranky output, Keith Fullerton Whitman's latest full-length is a prismatic burst of field recordings, tape manipulation, and synth wrangling via Pierre Henry and Kraftwerk. Disappearing behind elaborate electronic processes, Keith gives in to chance and lets his machines churn out two side-long pieces of frequency manipulation, helicopter rhythms, runaway melodies, and plenty of noise. Few things released last year are as thrilling as side two is: the five years Keith put into hatching it definitely paid off.

Pan

Keith's description of this record at Mimaroglu reads like a technical manual for aspiring composers, but it serves as an excellent introduction to the music. Utilizing a Nagra mono tape recorder, contact mics, modular synth, his own live recordings, and other varied gadgets and processes about which I know very little, Whitman pieces together a coherent half-hour of haphazard, absolutely electric audio in tribute to his favorite aleatoric and automatic sounds.

Anyone who has been to his live shows in the last couple of years will be familiar with Keith's modus operandi, at least in part. Nearly all of the first side's frequency burps, echoes, low-end rumbles, and reverberated voices are improvised into existence, not composed. Sounds happen, but they've been tied together in a knot. For a little while, the music is the sound of that knot coming undone. Voices, cars, street noise, metallic crashes, and a symphony of other vibrations collide with one another in accidental fashion until, around half-way through, the sensory overload gives way to patterns. Whether by accident or by design, clusters of acoustically-related noise are stretched and warped into a series of busy crescendos, each of which concludes with a sudden dynamic shift. These shifts are typically from loud to quiet, or from manic to calm, and they help mark out each of the piece's varied passages. The effect is sometimes comedic, like someone burping after a homily, and sometimes jarring, like a car wreck that wasn't seen coming. Either way, passive listening is discouraged, because the little details are as important as the big, structural ones. Things are shaken up as synthesizer tones are slowly introduced and Whitman segues from musique concr√®te to mutant concr√®te.

The album's second half features a steady mechanical rhythm, blasts of broken chords, and an assortment of noises that serve to compliment both. In one way it is the opposite of the first side's seemingly chaotic movements: there are melodies, a steady pulse, and forward movement, which creates a sense of imposed structure, illusory or otherwise. In another way it is the synthetic companion to side one: it continues a theme established on the first side, the melodies are as irregular and broken as the tape sounds are, rhythms converge only to deviate, and I have yet to discover any kind of purposeful structure in the proceedings, aside from the infectious pulse. "Disingenuousness" unfolds as if by chance. Listening to it is like watching an impossibly complex, naturally occurring Rube Goldberg machine unfold spontaneously in time: someone must have made such a thing possible in advance, but discovering that someone in the machine itself is almost impossible.

Only 500 copies of Disingenuity/Disingenuousness were made. When it sells out, I hope a second edition will be pressed. This is easily one of Keith's best works, and it deserves a much larger audience. Of course, I doubt the second edition will have such beautiful packaging. Pan obviously went to great lengths assembling this LP: the heavy vinyl and and silk-screened jacket definitely contribute to the record and make it feel extra substantial.

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09 January 2011

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Albums and Singles

cover image For their seventh full length, the Wizard have opted for a more hard rock focussed style. Scummy biker riffs are pushed to the front; the pummelling smoked doom is still present but has become less overt. Overall, I am not sure if the shift has truly paid off but I cannot deny that this is still a decent album once I allowed myself to become totally immersed in it.

Rise Above

With Witchcult Today and their side of the split with Reverend Bizarre, I was beginning to think that Electric Wizard were in danger of becoming the most unholy, heavy and brilliant metal band on the planet. Their earlier albums are unimpeachable but Witchcult Today represented a perfect musical alchemy; their mix of sleaze, occult references, drugs, metal, and '70s heavy rock coming together in a fantastic orgy of obliterating sound. Therefore, my first time listening to Black Masses was with high expectations and at first I must admit I was underwhelmed. What always had impressed me about Electric Wizard was how full the band sounded and something about this album felt flat to me. The drums and the bass, particularly on the opener "Black Mass," did not have the same oomph as before and Jus Oborn‚Äôs guitar tone has undergone a change. However, after a few play-throughs of the album, it began to cast its evil spell over me.

Evil is definitely the most apt word to describe Black Masses, Oborn‚Äôs lyrics drip with the kind of imagery that should be hokey and cringe worthy in any other setting but comes alive with horror with Oborn‚Äôs singing and the backing of the rest of the band. "Venus in Furs" (not a Velvets cover but a reference to the film of the same name) comes closest to the classic Electric Wizard formula but has a killer sing-along chorus that lifts the music to a new level. The buzzing, psychedelic guitar solo that rips out of the song is the final element I needed to hear to decide that yes this is a great album and my only real problem with it is that I expected something else from the group.

The album does tread water a little but it changes with each listen as to which songs I feel are sub-par, suggesting that it might be just my moods that are off. However, there is not a huge amount of variety here aside from the monster, space-time continuum crushing closer "Crypt of Drugula" which completely departs from the rest of Black Masses. A lot of the other songs are interchangeable; songs like "Patterns of Evil" do not do a whole lot more than fill out the disc. Elsewhere, songs like "Satyr IX" and "Turn Off Your Mind" do a much better job of conjuring up the kind of vibes I feel the band are reaching for throughout the album. "Turn Off Your Mind" will easily be regarded as classic Wizard with its perfect blend of rotten psychedelia and phenomenal riffing.

Black Masses may not be Electric Wizard‚Äôs best effort but it certainly does not do them an injustice. It may well represent a transitional period for the group and I am interested to hear how the songs sound live and what might come next. In the meantime, I plan to give Black Masses more of my time as Electric Wizard always improve with more exposure.

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