Podcast Episodes 717-720 are live!
After two weekends away, the backlog has become immense, so we present a whopping FOUR new episodes for the spooky season!
Episode 717 features Medicine, Fennesz, Papa M, Earthen Sea, Nero, memotone, Karate, ØKSE, Otis Gayle, more eaze, Jon Mueller, and Lauren Auder + Wendy & Lisa.
Episode 718 has The Legendary Pink Dots, Throbbing Gristle, Von Spar / Eiko Ishibashi / Joe Talia / Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Ladytron, Cate Brooks, Bill Callahan, Jill Fraser, Angelo Harmsworth, Laibach, and Mike Cooper.
Episode 719 music by Angel Bat Dawid, Philip Jeck, A.M. Blue, KMRU, Songs: Ohia, Craven Faults, tashi dorji, Black Rain, The Ghostwriters, Windy & Carl.
Episode 720 brings you tunes from Lewis Spybey, Jules Reidy, Mogwai, Surya Botofasina, Patrick Cowley, Anthony Moore, Innocence Mission, Matt Elliott, Rodan, and Sorrow.
Photo of a Halloween scene in Ogunquit by DJ Jon.
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The news of this intriguing collaboration delighted me, as Klara Lewis has carved out quite a wonderfully idiosyncratic and incredibly constrained niche over the last few years by largely avoiding any recognizable instrumentation. Consequently, I had no idea at all what would happen when her surreal collages collided with Simon Fisher Turner's formidable talents as a composer. As it turns out, a pure collaboration resulted, as Care does not particularly resemble either artist's previous work. Instead, it feels like several divergent albums have been deconstructed, warped, and obliterated to leave only some lingering shards in a shifting and hallucinatory fantasia of drones, textures, and field recordings. That fundamental disjointedness can admittedly be a bit challenging at times, but Care ultimately comes together beautifully with the lushly rapturous closer, "Mend."
Freedom of Speech bursts with tons more energy than the group's debut. Whereas the first Phantom Band album seemed to meander with more style than substance, here the group have a target to use the sharp edge of their music on. Although not a perfect record, this is head and shoulders above their debut as they finally manage to fully integrate their new world music influences into their tight, groove-based music.
I will admit that I have always been a bigger fan of Masami Akita's collaborative efforts than the unscalable mountain that is his solo material. As the de facto figurehead in the Japanoise scene (and arguably, noise as a genre, including the artistic controversy, irreverence, and the platitudes of misanthropy so seemingly representative of the scene), Merzbow has, for me, always remained a reliable proof-of-concept but not something I would consistently find myself listening to. However, there has always been interesting results to come from his working with just about anyone who would dare test his aesthetics, and this latest product is no exception. Scott Miller and Lee Camfield (ex-Sutekh Hexen) provide a backdrop of (relatively) human instrumentation and occasional sense, which is then deliciously cannibalized by Akita's digital processing.
Were it nothing but the title song alone, Landing's Wave Lair would have still made a pretty strong impression on me. Prodding curiously at the fabric of pop songwriting, Landing finds an experimentalism in a new style fit to augment its hazy sentimentality. With drummer Daron Gardner on bass, the band turns to drum machines for rhythm and finds direction in heady drone and blurry passages of sedate dream pop. It also happens that the rest of the material on this album is solid as well, finding a few glimpses of brilliance in familiar forms.
On this second full length release, Geneviève Beaulieu (Menace Ruine) and James Hamilton (Nebris). continue their partnership in this uniquely medieval tinged modernized folk ensemble. Working with a rather Spartan selection of instruments, From The Wells is six songs that at first sound deceptively simple, but are much more layered and nuanced than that first impression gives.
Of Justin Broadrick's multitude of ongoing projects, Jesu has perhaps been the one in the most constant state of flux. Initially capturing the more introspective side of Godflesh its demise, it soon shifted on electronic pop and then finally back to a shoegaze metal sound. Here, some ten years after its inception, Broadrick has finally unified all of those sounds into a single work.
Most of Chartier's recent work and collaborations, both under his own name and his Pinkcourtesyphone alter ego, have focused mostly on presenting tones, both natural and synthetic, in a myriad of understated, minimalist contexts. It is perhaps for this reason that Interior Field has such a different character and mood in comparison, as it of a completely different approach. Made up of field recordings, a technique he has not used since 2010's Fields for Mixing, there is a more hollow, bleaker darkness to be explored here that is quite different for him.
Invention happens when an artist uses the tools at hand to create something novel, whatever those tools may be. This thought is particularly relevant in considering how to use a 300 year old church organ for a new piece of music. Whatever inspired its first listeners, whatever tastes they possessed, have long since expired. On Fantasma di Perarolo, Burial Hex employs that sense of dusty, half forgotten ambiance as a catalyst, using the instrument’s antiquity as a concrete element in the recording.
