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Vogel Musik is the sort of album you prepare for listening to instead of being in the mood for. It is a challenging listen: the entire album, from the dense and dramatic music right down to the elegant sleeve (painted by Christoph Heemann), is an amazing piece of work that is full of wonderful and intriguing sounds.
In conveying the essence of birds, Fuchs is like a cubist painter in that there are elements of the familiar present but arranged in a way that is contrary to "normal" perception or interpretation. With the title of the opening piece, "Das grosse Huhn," the music makes perfect sense as an audio caricature of a big hen. Although, taken on its own it could be anything. This is not a criticism of the piece but rather shows how Fuchs can make such otherworldly music and leave enough clues for the listener to then ground themselves back in reality.
After two feminine and delicate pieces dedicated to hens there comes a bruiser of a piece in honor of the rooster. "Der Hahn" is full of aggressive drums and baritone saxophone, Fuchs and her companion Christoph Reiserer sound cock sure of themselves after the relatively gentle pieces that preceded this one. It is a strange piece (and that is saying something considering how strange all of this album is), while it fits with the rest of the music on Vogel Musik there is also something about it that sets it apart from the other tracks. I am not entirely sure I like it but I want to keep listening to find out.
The album revolves around its longest piece, "Fliegen." Flying is an obvious choice of subject matter for an album about birds but it is an odd concept to put in with music about chickens (not a bird renowned for its aerial distance). It is also a concept that has been interpreted musically for aeons, to the point where few artists can capture the magic of soaring through the air. However, Fuchs approaches it from a different angle to most. Instead of an epic score symbolising the power and freedom of flight, she plums for an isolationist view of flying. The stark nature of this piece conjures up feelings of icy winds to glide on through lonely skies. "Fliegen" further highlights Fuchs' way of taking a familiar idea and turning it on its head.
Vogel Musik may be too theatrical and fussy for some tastes but for those willing to put a little effort into listening, it is worth setting time aside for. It was difficult for the first couple of times I played it but with a little perseverance Vogel Musik revealed itself to be an album rich in texture and detail, I imagine there will always be something new to it every time I put it on.
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title: Likeness
catalog #: krank113
formats available: CD
release date: october 29, 2007
content: Likeness is the newest release from the duo of Tom and Christina Carter. Recorded over a period of several weeks during the Spring of 2006, the album is a return to the spontaneous composition of previous Charalambides records such as Houston and Union. With the exception of "The Good Life", which appeared in a primitive version on the Wholly Other CDR Home, all of the tracks on this release sprung forth after 'record' was pressed, and were fleshed out via overdubs, editing, and a malfunctioning space echo over the course of the next few months. Lyrical content largely derives from public domain American popular song from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, edited, rearranged, and largely deconstructed by Christina into abstract 'protest' songs for the century at hand. Musically, the album departs from the warm psych of A Vintage Burden in favor of the lush and layered vocal strata of Christina's later solo works, and a chillier, more abrasive guitar sound that favors the Velvets over the Byrds. Though containing much of the compositional concision that gave A Vintage Burden much of its appeal, the sound here just as frequently turns the corner into the abstract echoing spaces that characterise the more discordant sounds of Charalambides at the dawn of their kranky residency.
context: Charalambides has been recording and performing live in various configurations since 1991. Originally a duo comprised of Tom and Christina Carter, Charalambides released a cassette called Our Bed Is Green on their own Wholly Other label in 1992. The two Carters showed a firm grasp on the haunting nature of American blues and country, as well as a mastery of tape manipulation, a disregard for genre boundaries, and a tendency towards vertically stacked guitar drone. Charalambides has released nearly two dozen albums in various lineups since then, and in late 2003 returned to concentrating on their duo work, fusing introspective, open-ended, and often spacious song structures with blasts of feedback and explosive sound often startling to fans familiar only with the band's deceptively low-key reputation.
track listing: 1. Uncloudy Day 2. Do You See? 3. Figs and Oranges 4. Memory Takes Hold 5. The Good Life 6. Saddle Up My Pony 7. Feather In the Air 8. Walking Through the Graveyard 9. What You Do For Money
quotes:
"This far into their musical careers, Tom and Christina Carter still sound as if they are still peeling back the layers of their souls, never completely defining who they are, which is good, as the music is still fresh and vital, not the sound of rehashed obsolescence." - Urban Pollution
"It would surely be possible to name check a few other rural space progenitors, but the references would be so arcane as to be ridiculous." - The Wire
"Charalambides are not suited for everyman’s record collection, but the netherworld they forge is a musical feast, a field of music that explodes finely, like the sparklers you burn in the heart of a summer night." - Stop Smiling
"With a sound that seems at once both spacious and intimate, Tom and Christina Carter showcase their seemingly innate ability to lock into a shared orbit across the darkening sky, their luminous drift scaled down to its essential, irreducible core." - Pitchfork
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title: The Patron
catalog #: krank112
formats available: CD
release date: october 15, 2007
content: The Patron is the debut full length release by To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie. The songs center around an underlying love story between two merging corporations that manage to capture the raw sentiment of isolation, profound discovery, and morbid betrayal. The Patron is about the corruption of an idea that is at first welcomed and later destroyed.
The recording process typically began with a basic vocal and guitar structure which was then slowy developed by adding electronics and manipulating sounds, until the orignal outline is blurred yet still identifiable. The steady passing of sounds and samples are most important to TKAPB’s recording process, and they rely heavily on the loss of translation between each pass.
But the importance of the technical details of any sound recording should be considered infinitesimally small when measured against the end result. Many sound artists have read both the pop and noise manifestoes and tried to join the two seemingly opposed theories into a cohesive whole, yet few have succeeded. Invariably, the artist makes a conscious or subconscious decision to stand firmly in the one camp where their beliefs truly lie and to occasionally tip the cap to the other to remind both themselves and the listener of their original intent. What TKAPB have produced however, is a near perfect storm of structure and chaos, melody and noise, the precise and the random, fused into their own unified musical theory of everything that at times soothes while simultaneously grabbing your throat.
context: To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie consists of Jehna Wilhelm, guitar and vocals, and Mark McGee, electronics and sound manipulation. Originally from Richmond, VA, the duo has been involved with this project for 4 years and has been supported by an ever-changing cast of players and musicians. They now reside in Minneapolis, MN where they run their own label, The Riley Bushman Recordings & Archives, which they use as an outlet to release various projects and collaborations.
track listing:
1. The Patron 2. The Man With The Shovel, Is The Man I’m Going To Marry 3. Lovers & Liars
4. Long Arms 5. Dedicated Secretary, Liaison, Passionate Mother 6. I Box Twenty
7. You Guys Talk, We’ll Spill Our Guts 8. With Brass Songs They’ll Descend 9. Very Lovely
10. Window Shopping
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title: Prism of Eternal Now
catalog#: krank110
formats available: CD
release date: october 1, 2007
content: After years of outer space exploration in Yume Bitsu and Surface of Eceyon, as well as stints as a hired gun for a multitude of artists including Dirty Projectors, Jackie-O Motherfucker and Devendra Banhart, Adam Forkner decided to turn his focus inward and began to record solo material. And focus he did, working at a dizzying pace that culminated in the production of the 5CD/1DVD White Rainbow Box (2006 Marriage Records). The remarkable thing about that album was not that it was 4.5 hours long, but that the overwhelming majority of it was of extraordinary quality and not mere filler.
With the release of …Eternal Now, White Rainbow has surpassed typical solo project territory and is now a virtual elemental force. At a somewhat brief 71 minutes, his kranky debut pulses and flows with mantric chants, clattering percussions, sighing sustains and guitar leads unashamed of their scorching transcendence. He breathes new life into archaic sub-genres such as progrock, new age, and hippie folk incantations, while never stooping to the negative aspects of any of them, and at the same time remaining a step ahead of the technologically crippled and virtuosuo-less looper pedal scene. Prism of Eternal Now leaves behind the bounds of gravity for a free floating meditational headtrip of inner space exploration.
Note: the vinyl edition of ‘Prism..” is available via Marriage Records
context: White Rainbow is the solo moniker of Adam Forkner. He runs the Yarnlazer cd-r label with Honey Owens [Valet]. He works, lives and plays in Portland, Oregon, a small rural village near the bustling metropolis of Astoria.
track listing: 1. Pulses 2. Middle 3. For Terry 4. Mystic Prism 5. April 25th 11:14PM 6. Warm Clicked Fruit 7. Guitars 8. Waves 9. Awakening
quotes: "The real treasure in Adam Forkner's work is his innate ability to capture the perfect tone of sounds, whether it be a flanged guitar or an ancient drum machine." indieworkshop
"Warm synths and reverbed-out layers of guitar pave a solid foundation for drum loops, vocal tracks, and various other instruments to weave in and out of at their own pace. Tinymixtapes
"Each movement of ambient sound and melodic drone becomes impossible to dissect. It becomes a part of your memories." Tinymixtapes
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title: Silver Tongued Sisyphus
catalog#: krank111
formats available: CDEP
release date: september 17, 2007
content: The first Cloudland Canyon release for kranky was recorded in Brooklyn, Germany and Memphis. It follows on the heels of the well received "Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004" album released on the Tee Pee label.
Silver Tongued Sisyphus is a secular call to prayer with humming, looping and loping ambient passages interspersed with bursting rhythmic energy and agitated guitar lines. Recent live shows have sounded like an unauthorized soundtrack to netherworld versions of The Swimmer or The Scorceror.
Pulling influences from the foggy ether of generations past, Cloudland Canyon has staked their claim to the shadows of cult musical culture of the late 1960's and early 1970's German underground scene.
context: Kip Uhlhorn and Simon Wojan began collaborating under the moniker Cloudland Canyon in 2000. Both have toiled in various music scenes (hardcore, psych and punk) since the last century. Recent collaborations with kranky artiste Lichens and others have taken the duo into transcendental musical territories. Cloudland Canyon has toured throughout the United States and Europe. The group is in the final stages of mixing a new full length release to be made available early in 2008 on kranky.
track listing: 1. Dambala 2. Silver Tongued Sisyphus
quotes for the debut album:
"...a stunning neo-psychedelic experience where the musical spirits of This Heat, Ash Ra Temple and The Mahavishnu Orchestra are evoked, celebrated and absorbed inside Uhlhorn and Wojan´s shifting cloud formations of sound." The Wire
"The group´s debut album Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004 is a starry-eyed psych rock opus with mystical aspirations and a Ph.D in minimalist-drone composition. It´s as if they have read the world´s great religious tomes and studied drones under mastery minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Terry Riley." Alternative Press
"Bolstered into a deep mystical vein of sonic poetry and rare melodic beauty they make most freak folkies sound like fey daisy-pickers." The Stranger
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My biggest criticism of this duo's first CD for the considerably waning NovaMute sublabel was its lack of cohesion as an album, an all-too common pitfall that techno artists fall into when signed based on their dancefloor prowess. Upon receiving this in my mailbox, I had hoped that Mr. No and Bryan Black would use their second shot on plastic to accomplish something better, to learn from their influences instead of just impersonating them. I should have known better.
On its face, there is nothing wrong with a CD packed with clubby updates of Nitzer Ebb and Front 242. Still, as the electroclash and technowave once touted by DJ Hell's Gigolo label has been completely co-opted by hygiene-deficient hipsters and simultaneously diminished by the boisterous ascent of the far more exciting French wave, electronic body music rehashes like "Drug Punk," the acid washed "20 Volts of Steel," and the previously released "Bleep #1" just don't carry much weight. DJs who still hold tight to the dark machine beats will dig the ghoulish horror house grooves of "Re-Format" and the Daft Punk-foraging title track. Still, there is nothing new here musically when compared to Klunk, their debut released just last year. Perhaps some time away from the studio will give these guys a chance to reevaluate their position, though I think I have learned my lesson enough to pass on whatever might come next from them. To paraphrase our bumbling president, I wont get fooled again.
What makes Unhuman such a bitter pill to swallow is not even Motor's complacency for mere adequacy and emulation, but that Novamute, once among the vanguard of electronic music’s imprints, would continue to nurture such retrograde entertainment. This is the same label that brought Richie Hawtin to international superstardom with several Plastikman albums and three DE9 mixes that raised standards, rewrote rules, and seduced generations. Admittedly, Novamute has put out its share of throwaways, but it is easy to forgive a few missteps when weighing those decisions against classics from Luke Slater, Soul Center, and Speedy J, to name just a few. The latter of these especially had a profound impact on my appreciation for electronic music with A Shocking Hobby, a challenging monolith of a record that shook the foundations with its post-industrial drill n bass and eviscerated techno. Unhuman, another middling collection of Motor's possible singles in lieu of a proper album sullies the legacy of this formerly great sublabel, now more likely to be absorbed into the EMI failure factory and hopefully euthanized out of its misery.
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Creating new compositions by sampling from popular music has been going on longer than I have been alive. Yet, this debut, perhaps one of the most important albums ever to appear on Kompakt, showcases the work of an exceptional musician operating in and redefining this proud yet still controversial tradition.
One could claim that Axel Willner, the producer behind The Field moniker, has taken the most blatant of shortcuts, even worse than those undertaken by liberally plunderphonic mash-up artists. After all, even the reviled-or-revered Girl Talk deserves credit for interweaving so many recognizable hits into each of his seamless, genre-defying tracks. Approaching From Here We Go Sublime on its superficial surface, Willner, however, appears to have simply sliced just a few fatty seconds out of some of his favorite tunes, lazily pasted them into sparsely populated loops, and called it a day. Such shortsighted and close-minded presumption closes people off to these wondrously minimal neo-trance sounds that breezing through their speakers. Many electronic music fans have cringed at this new terminology, still recoiling from the rapid explosion and subsequent crude gluttony that turned euphoric crescendos into prepackaged commodities. Yet like his similarly impressive though methodologically opposite labelmate Kaito, Willner resurrects that inexplicable bliss in which so many of us exulted at permissive nightclubs and sweaty warehouses worldwide.
By restricting his sonic palate in the manner that Willner has as The Field, the journey to discover that inexplicable essence of what fills the soul with jubilance and joy becomes more refined than ever. “The Little Heart Beats So Fast” practically lifts me off my feet every time I hear it, wasting little time to introduce its handy little stolen melody, soon letting acidic bass and indecipherable blossoms of uplifting sound raise the blood pressure and dilate the pupils. The smooth retro snares and gurgling breathy stabs that ignite “Everday” make it extraordinary, but the vocal, appearing roughly three minutes in, brings this already gorgeous track and the album itself to a whole new level of grandeur. Yet not every cut here begins with such instant aural gratification. Upon first hearing the monotonous accordion slump and grind of “Silent”, I never imagined the poppy euphony that would soon come and, to my delight, ultimately dwarf all other elements.
Part of the fun of From Here We Go Sublime comes from trainspotting the source material. In a few of the cases, this is downright elementary, while others are much more subtle and even elusive. The closing title track practically bludgeons listeners with its obvious theft and merciless manipulation of The Flamingos’ ghostly 1959 doo-wop cover of “I Only Have Eyes For You.” In contrast, the dreamily Balearic “A Paw Over My Face” delivers its secret as more of a punchline, waiting for the very end of the track to give away those distinct fragments of Lionel Richie’s chart-topping “Hello”. Though I’m only remotely familiar with her catalog to identify the actual track, I strongly suspect that the ten minute epic “The Deal” has taken its ethereal vocals from none other than new age songstress Enya.
Though constantly criticized by message board trolls and curmudgeons, Kompakt has entered into a renaissance in 2008, with From Here We Go Sublime as its first of many testaments to that. Stitching together familiar strains of pop, techno, and ambient music with such fine threads is a task unto itself, but creating a tapestry greater than the sum of its parts is something different altogether. The Field’s plucky debut marks a crucial moment in the history of electronic music, and, though surely divisive among the faithful, will easily rank among one of the best albums of the year.
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This gorgeous package from the the Leaf Label contains eight songs showcasing a new collaboration between Jeremy and Heather of AHAAH, playing with a group of seasoned Hungarian musicians. Rounding out the cast are a few members of Beirut. What results is a brief but exhilarating extra-geographical jaunt through Hungarian, Serbian, Romanian and klezmer forms, as only AHAAH can produce.At the inception of this project four years ago, one might have been justified to accuse Jeremy Barnes of a cynical kind of musical exoticization, borrowing heavily from Eastern European folk forms as a readymade repository of the surreal and evocative. For a musician who was previously best known for playing on willfully eccentric Neutral Milk Hotel and Bablicon albums, the criticism might have seemed to have some basis in reality. However, four years and several albums down the line, it is becoming much more difficult to level the accusation of audio tourism against A Hawk and a Hacksaw. Barnes, Trost, and co. have so doggedly pursued their particular soundworld that it is now impossible to see their elaboration and exploration of Slavic, Jewish, and Magyar musics as anything other than completely genuine. As the music becomes less about unorthodox cultural hybrids and more focused on faithful, spirited performances of these various cultural strands, it also loses any associations it might have once had with indie dilettantism.
I am noting all of this up front because this EP on the Leaf Label contains some of AHAAH's best recordings yet, and even though it is relatively short, it contains such a wide breadth of musical styles and moods that it might be accused of wanton eclecticism. This is very far from the case, however. Instead, this newly-extended musical collective uses their extensive knowledge of various folk musics to produce a breathlessly exciting and beautiful mini-album that is perfectly sequenced, weaving together original compositions with vigorous performances of traditional melodies. Opening with Heather Trost's composition "Kiraly Siratas," dominated by swoops of violin and the haunting tones of the cymbalom (a Hungarian dulcimer-like instrument), the atmosphere is established: joyfully dramatic, undeniably cinematic, unashamedly romantic.
"Zozobra" is the most energetic track on the EP, a fast-tempo slapstick combination of expertly played cymbalom, accordion and percussion. I've never been a dancer, but I found it difficult to resist the urge to jump out of my chair and manfiest bodily the joyful uptempo polyrhythms. "Serbian Cocek" is an ensemble piece, combining the full compositional abilities of all the musicians. Parallels will no doubt be drawn to the music of Beirut, because of the Mariachi-by-way-of-Budapest trumpets. Even with the big-band setup, the track is emotionally expressive and even impressionistic at times, an effect of the imperfect, slightly off-kilter playing. All of the performances captured here sound like just that: performances. Real human beings playing instruments, rather than clinical, surgically-edited and overdubbed studio creations. "Romanian Hora and Bulgar" is actually a live recording, but the only way that it differs from the rest of the EP is the smattering of audience noise, which merely serves to intensify the energy and drama of the performance. "Ihabibi" elaborates upon a peculiarly Balkan understanding of Arabic music, and is one of the most dynamic and beautifully textured songs on the disc. The EP ends with a trio of traditional songs, an ensemble piece ("Oriental Hora") featuring the trumpet of Zach Condon, sandwiched between two sparser pieces: one a solo on cymbalom ("Vajdaszentivany"), and the other a showcase for the Hungarian bagpipes, expertly played by Bela Agoston.
This generous set also includes a DVD featuring a 20-minute documentary about AHAAH, splicing together clips of the group in the studio and during live performances in Albequerque, in Hungary and all across the European continent. It's a very skillfully assembled set of clips that left me wanting more, but definitely clued me in to the intensity and intimacy of the AHAAH live experience, which previously I had only witnessed via the group's appearance on The Eye nearly two years ago. I have the feeling that the next full-length album from Barnes, Trost and co. is going to be a true masterpiece, if this stunning EP is any indication of the exponential growth-rate of this unique group.
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Espen Sommer Eide and Dag-Are Haugan return as Alog for yet another fantastic album. They further refine their symbiosis of natural and electronic sounds, always sounding at once earthy and cosmic. Never utilizing weird sounds just for the sake of it, the dozen tracks on this CD are all pieces of music that sound more than beautiful. As expected from Alog, this is a remarkable album that reveals more and more with each listen.
What I enjoy most about Amateur (and this applies to pretty much all the other albums put out by Rune Grammofon) is the attention to detail in terms of sounds and sound treatments. Eide and Haugan are not afraid to leave a sound as it is if it has the right character or to tweak it if it needs a little help fitting in with the rest of the sounds. Although I must admit, sometimes it is hard to tell what has been treated in the studio and what is a "real life" sound as there are so many unusual instruments used on and built for the album. Not only that but Alog approach voices from an interesting perspective, the vocal layering of "Write Your Thoughts in Water" sound like a living church organ (and from what I can tell, there no little digital trickery going on here).
Amateur has a dreamy, meandering feel to it. Many of the pieces (especially the aptly named "The Learning Curve") begin with random sounding noises, like the recording has started while the two musicians are trying to figure out what instruments they are playing. However, as if by magic, it all comes together to form a delicate and captivating whole. A good example of this is "The Future of Norwegian Wood," which for the first half of the piece is a cut up of the sound of nails been hammered into wood which makes for interesting listening on its own. When the treated piano comes in over this unusual percussion, the effect is startling and gorgeous.
Most of the album is fairly laid back but Eide and Haugan can bring the music to the boil when they want to, the powerful staccato of "The Beginner" and the middle part of the lengthy "Bedlam Emblem." While Amateur is far from a boring album, it would have been nice to have one or two more livelier pieces on it but that might be entering the realms of greed. As it stands it is a cracker of an album, a logical and fitting continuation of Alog's journey through sound.
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The gregarious melancholy and eye moistening turn of phrase are still present, even if his voice is now a little ocean weathered and saddened since the spark-eyed melancholy of 2005's Sings Songs and Plays Guitar. Where other artists mine their lives for songs only to maul them into genericisms, Richard Dawson achingly strings this song with clearly personal details of his life. Despite this, his writing doesn't feel the least bit didactic or dogmatic, it feels more human than most. The forced verbosity of some lines just gives the song an even bigger personality. "Ornithology" is a stream of incidents laced together by birds, beginning with a tale of finding a dying seagull and touching on his grandfather's POW-installed dislike of rice. Lyrics this explicitly personal often fall foul of their own quirks, but Dawson's simplicity, idiosyncratic cadence and homespun beauty make this a touching, cracked thing of delight.
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This is collaboration between Bower and Basque noise artist Mattin. Its emphasis on harsh noise is similar to Sunroof!'s newest album, Spitting Gold Zebras, only more tedious. The title is homage of sorts to the Virgin Prunes, whose first release is this CD's namesake. I find it misleading because aside from the title there is little musical commonality between the two groups and none of the eclecticism and humor that the Prunes were known for. The lone track is built by a solid yet unvaried riffing buried under brittle, rumbling electronics. These components don't play off each other but continually battle for dominance, never disengaging form spot they are rutted down in. The big chords and riffs are not allowed to decay or ring out in the manner that they demand to, and any sort of modulation or timbral variation in the electronics is masked from hearing.Mattin has stated that the new goal of noise is achieving freedom, but this release sounds for like repression than anything.
He and Bower fall into the familiar conceptual trap of many harsh noise artists; that a piece must at all time maintain a maximum level of abrasiveness in order to intense or compelling. In that approach though, there is no relief that attends freedom, only sounds tensed into shapelessness.
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