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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Somewhere, in some dingy squat-house performance space, someone is flipping out over Hair Police. Totally loving that "shit man, they just don't give a fuck!" and that their craggy noise-scapes are probably pissing off the neighbors. When Hair Police are done he or she will light a cigarette and congratulate themself for being in on the cutting edge. Judging by the lack of anything captivating on Drawn Dead though, it would be a safe bet to say that the Louisville, KY trio is next in line to fall off said edge. Drawn Dead isn't so much a record that is out and out terrible, but suffers from the fact that I've heard this all before, generally from better bands. What makes this even more frustrating is that I know the kind of oral brutality Hair Police are capable of. Whereas albums like Obedience Cuts grabbed me by the nuts and flung me around the room in a PCP-fueled rage, Drawn Dead limps into action, taking a few half-assed swipes at me before deciding it would rather do something else. Despite this, there are some decent moments that save Hair Police. "Untitled 1" features garbage disposal gurgles that cut in and out along with what sounds like breaking piano strings, all of which slowly build for the songs eight minute duration. Throughout, ghostly guitar squiggles and distant whispers appear, furthering the tension. "Untitled 3" alternates between barrages of short-circuiting noise and almost ambient white noise, making it at least somewhat interesting. The band finally achieves something of a groove on the final minute and a half of "Untitled 4" where Mike Connelly's demented guitar squall and Robert Beatty's pissed off electronics shed more bile and blood then Jason Voorhees at summer camp. But small signs of light can't help Hair Police escape this dark night. As Jon Whitney correctly pointed out in his review of Wolf Eyes' Burned Mind, "People love beats and they love repetition." It's a spot-on assessment and is perhaps one way of explaining why Drawn Dead is so unsatisfying. While Hair Police are no more abrasive then Wolf Eyes or perhaps Throbbing Gristle, it's the fact that the songs on this release simply languish there—all noise and no swing—that makes them so frustrating. Never do the rhythms (of which there are little to none) rise above crawling, which makes me feel stuck in some sort of noisy fog that will never pass. While Hair Police are very abrasive and confrontational, that does not give them a free pass. Drawn Dead gives too little and demands too much, leaving me unsatisfied and annoyed. By the end, I couldn't be any less interested.
It's been five years since the birth of Stefan "Pole" Betke's label,~scape, and in that time the artists he's chosen have had a bit of achore living outside of the shadow of Pole's near-genre definingversion of minimalist dub. Early ~scape releases were easily linked tothe "Pole sound" of clicky, spacious percussion, filtered melodies anddeep, dubwise basslines. With the Staedtism compilation series,Betke didn't help things at all by selecting artists and tracks thatwere more than happy to color inside the lines established by thegrowing roster of artists like Kit Clayton, Jan Jelinek, andDeadbeat—all of whom managed to spin Betke's sound into somethingunique, but certainly linked to the aesthetic. Now, with the fifthanniversary collection, ~scape appears to be making a decided breakfrom history, and a departure from the forumla that has thusfar guidedits sound. The results, as with most label comps, are mixed. It's easyfor laptop prodcers all over the world to grab onto frgments of hip hopculture and front like they are a part of that tradition, but it'sanother thing for them to successfully groove without sounding likethey are simply borrowing what is fashionable. David Byrne probably hadit right when he named his compilation "The Only Blip Hop CollectionYou Will Ever Need," as the sound has already worn out its welcome.Still, ~scape is moving in different directions, and with some amazingsuccesses. John Tejada's "And Many More" is the first truly memorabletrack on this disc, and it's a wiggly slab of melodic electro thatwouldn't sound out of place on a Bola record, but is somehow morefleshed out too. Triola's track "Neuland" is a bit too new agey for mytastes, but Jan Jelinek more than makes up for it with his brushedbroken jazz homage full of looping detuned guitars. Andrew Peckler alsoplays with the Jazz references, perhaps bridging the gap between fansof sample-based and improvised music even better than mid-1990s eraacid jazz. Deadbeat continues to shine as one of ~scape's most talentedartists, even if "We Like It Slow and Steady" is immediately familiaras "old school ~scape" with it's wandering synth stabs and filteredpercussion over dub backing. In Triosk, ~scape is even working with aband, Manitoba, and the sound is both warmer and more mature than manyof the tracks with a similar vibe that more obviously hatched out ofsomeone's hard drive. The ~scape version of pop music complete withvocals is less successful than it should be, but will likely find anaudience all the same. "But Then Again" shows a label willing to flexits stylistic muscle a bit, even if there are a few bumps and bruisesin doing so. With the number of good to great tracks here relative tothe duds, it's impossible to fault the effort. 
Kilo is deconstructed techno made by two guitarists. This fact makestheir abstraction from and disregard for the rules of technoimmediately understandable, but it doesn't automatically explain howthey can craft such beautiful tracks out of so many fragments. Theguitar is the new laptop, I'm sure of that. For a while, almost everydisc that came across my stereo was obviously and proudly the productof a laptop or desktop computer, created by musicians flying in theface of traditional instruments and methods for composition. Now, asthe obvious and clumsy backlash, every indie electronic record comingout has some sort of guitar playing or sampling or abusing it, and it'sbecome almost a calling card of artists who want to be taken seriouslyas musicians rather than simply known as accomplished button-pushers.That's okay though, as records like this give the trend successes thatare worthy of the bandwagoning. The loops and pieces of guitar areeverywhere on Augarten and yet it sounds very much like anelectronic, synth-driven record. The rhythms are all minimalist technoconstructions, something I would have expected from a label that's tiedinto the Kompakt stable. The melodies, however, are tied to thatfamiliar six-stringed instrument that has grounded the majority of allpopular western music for decades. There are slivers of folk and rockand blues and even country twang woven in amongst the ribbons of deepbass and techno structures so that the record feels grounded intradition while still being completely fresh. Well, maybe completelyfresh is a bit of an exaggeration—Kilo don't stray tremendously farfrom the formula of clicks and pulses and thumps that drives most ofthe Kompakt, ~scape, and Ritornell rosters. Still, there is a warmth inthese songs owed to the guitar that makes them not only accessible topeople who might otherwise shrug off sparse electronics, but gives thema kind of time and place to call home. Other people are making clickyminmal techno, and others still are fracturing guitars throughsoftware, but I've not heard a recent attempt to bring the two togetherthat succeeds as well as this. 
This disc from Alejandra & Aeron is an ode to grandmothers,dedicated specifically to and featuring the voice of Bousha, Aeron'sgrandmother. I know this: if I had recorded a record like this andgiven it to my grandmother, she would not have known what to make of itother than to conclude that I was a little "Off." Sometimes, even musicwith the best intentions falls on deaf ears because there's a culturalor generational boundary that people are unwilling to cross. Bousha Blue Blazesis likely to make a lot more sense to young, forward-listening peoplewho are reflecting on their own relationships with grandparents than itwill to grandparents themselves. What Alejandra & Aeron havecreated is a delicate lattice of live room recordings, faintinstruments, and occassional voices that recalls the hazy sun-soakedafternoons I spent with my grandmother as a child. Bits of sound hanglike dust in the air as the pair play and process and record fragmentsand then arrange them into structures that are held together by onlythe finest filaments of melody. The record plays almost like ahand-written letter composed to Bousha that I might have discovered inan estate sale some decades after Bousha, Alejandra and Aeron were alllong gone. These songs are intimate, delicate, and they are at oncelighter than air and soaked with the weight of memories and personalconnections. I know my own grandmother wouldn't know what to make ofthis record, but life's erosion from time is here in every movement ofspliced ambiance and in every whisp of guitar. It's a lovely testamentto grandmothers everywhere, and even if they don't understand it, maybegrandmothers everywhere are listening to this record and smiling. 
Thealbum was, in part, recorded live in St. Augustine Church, Galway andthe cover art reflects the religious content, not just with the angelon the cover, but in the slip the package is housed in. It immediatelyreminded me of many of the Virgin Mary shrines I've seen and it made mewonder: what is Aranos up to? The first four tracks have all thebeautiful echo and warmth a cathedral can possibly provide, but for themost part these songs are composed of drums, bass, organs, and violinplayed at very subdued levels. When "Yevka Sings" hits, it's quite ashock because the choral chanting is so utterly sublime and powerfulabove the instrumentation that its emotional and physical impact canonly be compared to being smacked gently by a massive diesel engine.The music caught me so off guard that I felt my stomach drop and Iimmediately began the song over just so I could prepare myself for itand feel the vocal bliss about to come. I'm not sure if this quartet ofreligiously soaked music is supposed to share or counterpoint anyfeelings raised by No Religion (though "Breath of Unknowing" comes awfully close to sharing a name with the mystical text The Could of Unknowing),but what is obvious is that Aranos is capable of bringing out the moreomni benevolent emotions tied with good mystical or "religious" music.The final six tracks employ varied methods of making music to create acarnival-like atmosphere, a whirlwind of musical ideas that, as far asI can tell, share little to no relation with the first part of thealbum. The atmosphere is almost always soft and careful, as though itwere made to procure images of prowlers or ghosts shifting through thetrees and tall grass at night, but in other places Aranos comes rightout of hiding to paint slightly more vivid sound pictures housed inspastic movements and rock n' roll attitude. "Crab Life" sounds exactlylike its title; small sounds jumping and skipping about, recalling theshuffled steps of crab on the ocean floor. "Silver Goat," on the otherhand, is fronted by Aranos' unmistakable and piercing voice, the musica galloping mix of staccato violins and racing rhythms propelled by afinal, violent movement. This is perhaps Aranos' most varied album, butalso one of his most consistently enjoyable. Other albums by him mayonly be appropriate for certain moods, but I keep coming back to thisalbum and finding that it adheres to almost any of my capriciouslistening needs.
This handsomely packaged slabof vinyl contains nearly 40 minutes of enticingly obscure, cinematicear candy, and is as experimental an album as EKS has ever recorded,with the possible exception of Textures of Illumina.Simultaneously harking back to the earliest of early LPD and EKScassette experiments, and looking forward towards new and tantalizinglyesoteric future trajectories, this LP moves through a sequence ofnightmarish sound dramas with a puzzling but eerily familiardream-logic that sounds like the product of pure Surrealist automatism.The album's black-and-white, Max Ernst-style sleeve graphic depicts acraggy tree populated with unblinking human eyes instead of leaves,with three eye-shaped diecuts revealing three bluegreen eyes peekingout from the inner sleeve. Just as in symbolist paintings, the ocularimagery here seem to instruct the listener to look within, and to thinkof the sounds within as primarily visual rather than strictly auralphenomena. Everywhere on O Darkness, EKS seems to be takingupon himself the misery of the world, evoking current events in hismorbid, pessimistic opening monologue: "When the bell tolls at twelve,my thoughts will go towards those who were simply at the wrong place atthe wrong time. I will concentrate, focus, mourn in my own peculiarway. And I honestly think I can keep it up." With this simultaneouslyfunny and depressing soliloquy, EKS kicks off the record's first side("The Rim of the Pit"), which introduces a vivid urban soundscapebustling with noisy streetcars, the distant tinkling of soft piano jazzfrom an open apartment window, hurried footsteps accompanied by aseries of booming bass throbs that seem to prophesy a vague and gloomyfuture full of dread and anxiety. It's hard to tell if ole Ed hasgathered these sounds from period films or radio broadcasts or if theseare field recordings he has gathered and spliced together; it's equallydifficult to discern if the incidental, maudlin Hollywood soundtrackmusic heard throughout the album is sampled or created in the studio byEKS and Silverman. Either way, it's a real head-trip, palpably real andhauntingly nostalgic, vintage sounds that Boards of Canada would givetheir two left testicles to be able to make. One of the movementsinvolves a fractured, programmed beat assembled from cut-up femalevoices, resonant church bells ringing, a lonesome foghorn, afascinatingly unorthodox use of sequencers that recalls Nurse WithWound's "Yagga Blues," among other things. EKS continues his paranoidinterior monologues over a series of shrill, jarring car alarm bleats:"I was stuck between the 15th and 16th floors when it happened. Itsounded bad out there. Whatever the damn thing was it behavedmethodically. One room at a time." The last time I'd heard such aterrifying horror story masquerading as experimental music was Current93 and Thomas Ligotti's I Have a Special Plan For This World.Side two ("Wings Trapped in Amber") involves a further descent into themaelstrom, with anonymous passengers boarding a train to who knowswhere, varispeed bouncing ball rhythms juxtaposed with ocean sounds,laughing children, a street musician and encroaching drones that giveAlan Splet's subterranean Eraserhead sound environments a runfor their money. Unexpectedly out of the din comes a clattery,ramshackle group tribal improvisation placed amidst a jungle full ofsquawking birds. By the end of this tangibly real dream-space, it tookme some time to touch down and reconnect with my "real" time and place.O Darkness! O Darkness! is a conduit into EKS' nightmares, which depending on your sensibilities, could be either a gift or a curse.
With anoverwhelming anglo-dominance in the techno scene, it is perhaps all-tooeasy to be ignorant or forget that even the genre's most obvious rootsare black in origin and, I assume, Lars Fenin is hoping to somewhatrectify that injustice. Though not at the level of Rhythm & Sound'snear-impeccable, devotional aesthetic, Fenin's debut album evokes arespect for this heritage and lineage with an accessible aural lessonwhere the barriers between the two genres are regularly crossed withouthesitation or explanation. Deep dancy cuts like "Aware" and the bassheavy "Konstrukt" may seem like familiar territory (or even old hat) toinformed clubgoers and home listeners who have embraced these types ofsounds, but they will likely be impressed by the heavier portions ofmore traditional reggae thrust into the mix on the opening title track,moreso particularly with its unabashed reverence to the stickiest ofthe icky. Here, vocalist Gorbi, who contributes his rootsyWailers-inspired voice to the album's finest tracks, adds a truly vitaledge to Fenin's work that sets it apart from many of his peers."Thrills," the album's lead single, bounces with a bumping downtempobeat, springy synth bass, and just enough vocal to make this apotential breakout summer jam. In that same vein, "No C.I.A." recallsthe political and social passion of the finest Jamaican toasters, withGorbi riffing fantastically over Fenin's sparse three note melody andclicky percussion. The fusion of the genre's fits together rather wellon the dub-tech groover "None Of Them," where Gorbi drops in on thefirst hard 4/4 kick and rarely ceases for most of its duration. Groundedcloses out with the subtler shuffling rhythm of "South," where thestudio aceticism of masters like King Tubby and Lee Perry is paidwell-deserved homage, making for a fiiting end to this reverent debutfrom a producer I hope to hear much more from in the future.
This is not to say thatit is a facsimile. Rather, it is a flirtation with the structures andtropes put forth by Jeff Mangum and company. Consider the evidence: thequiescent initial invocations of each band's protagonist (for NMH, theTwo-Headed Boy; for Okkervil, the Black Sheep Boy) occur in the firstsong and then roar grandiosely into attention-grabbing second songs.The protagonists both rear their (abhorrent) heads throughout the songson their respective albums, causing listeners to shudder and rejoice atthe same time. Songs are all similarly connected by common threads andthemes, be they musical or lyrical. The communion between NMH andOkkervil goes beyond simply the brash employment of brass instrumentsin certain songs, such as in the waltz-like "A King and a Queen." Songson both albums gracefully flow into one another, perhaps takingOkkervil's aquatic moniker too literally on one side. Okkervil River'smeditation for this album is the Black Sheep Boy's (it's unclearwhether it is a proper name and should be capitalized, or rather anarchetype and thus lower-case; excuse my presumption but I am goingwith the proper name and upper-case solution) modern-day ostracism andrejection. He seems to be some modern hybrid of the ancient figures ofAnubis, Dionysus, and the Cretan Minotaur. If the artwork on the albumis any indication, he is a grotesque abomination yet is as undeniablyfascinating as a savage automobile accident. The album begins with theeponymous "Black Sheep Boy," a proper intro of one minute and eighteenseconds which elegiacally introduces the main character with a lightcollection of guitars, strings, keyboards, and brushed percussion. Theintro seamlessly elides into the first real track, the name of whichfittingly is "For Real." Even at a first cursory listen, the song willtransfix you. It enters methodically with repetitive and monotonepluckings only to have the guitars and drums crash in unexpectedly andunannounced without breaking stride. Will Sheff's voice is occasionallystrained to its upper reaches, on the precipice of cracking for themore sonorous parts of the song. The effect is startling without beinggrating or abrasive. By the end of the song, Sheff's vocals areshattering delicately all over the place and the raw energy released bythis is pleasing and welcome. The song's energy then decays into thedulcet lethargy of "In a Radio Song" which meditates wistfully for overfive minutes. It is the gentle eddies of placid waters to the class 5rapids of "For Real." Lyrically, Okkervil River are formidablestorytellers. Their narratives sing of imperfect lives, unrequitedloves, and the darkness of forced hermitage. The ponderous "A Stone"decries the injustice of a girl who chooses to love the callous andunadoring rather than the dedicated and true. Towards the end, there isa remarkable moment when the instruments drop into the background andthe vocals emerge to narrate this allegorical and modernized fairy taleabout stones and queens and flowers. Sheff starts to insert more andmore syllables into each line (more than would normally be seemly) inorder to economize and fit the story into just one or two verses. Theresult is a two-tiered narrative which weaves itself elegantly into thestructure of the song's large ensemble/instrumentation. Like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,there is a satisfying alternation of rockers with ballads. Energy isexpended and recouped throughout the album and requires intercedingsongs of quietude to buffer the harsher numbers. "So Come Back, I amWaiting," the penultimate song, captures both of these loud and softextremes in its pure majesty and does a fine job of condensing andsummarizing the themes from the album. In past efforts, Okkervil Riverhave hit on a mixture of successes and, well, non-successes on theiralbums. Black Sheep Boy is the full realization of the band'ssuccess into a musical suite of eleven well-formed songs, bearing noneof the ugly horns or murderous tendencies of the album's titlecharacter.
