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Cut adrift when Kindercore Records went dormant a few years ago, this Athens, Georgia, band took the separation in stride. Since then, their musicianship and songwriting have evolved, resulting in a more deliberate and energetic style that evokes a broader range of experience. On this, their first new album in four years, Maserati gets everything right.
I have to admit that when I first heard the group years ago, I was a little concerned that they had taken their name from a car and played instrumental rock not terribly different from Trans Am. Yet the years since their last album have given them the opportunity to grow past their infatuation with their inspiration and into a more patient and mature group with a sound that distinguishes them from their peers. The first sign of this transformation that I noticed was the notably clever video for "This Is a Sight We Had One Day From the High Mountain" that showed up last year in anticipation of this album.
One of the things that has helped them quite a bit is the addition of drummer Gerhardt Fuchs, who also played with !!! and LCD Soundsystem among others and who brings a propulsion and dynamism that heightens the band's dimensionality. His drumming infuses "Synchronicity IV" with much of its personality and provides the power behind the pummeling finale of "Show Me the Season." Parts of this album reward patience, like the slow opening of "Inventions," which builds for several minutes before unleashing its danceable payoff at the six-minute mark. They have several tracks that run over seven minutes, but these have enough changes within them to keep them from feeling overlong or unnecessarily repetitious. Shorter songs like "Kalimera" or the brief "Kalinichta" are atmospheric excursions that balance the rock moments with a more obviously emotional texture.
The recording quality itself is lush, opting for a more intimate feel rather than the distance-putting iciness of a lot of this sort of music. Whereas examples of the latter approach to instrumental rock can get boring fast, that doesn't happen here. Yet the excellent production is only one of the many elements that make Inventions for the New Season such a triumphant return.
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This release is a beautiful finish to Clodagh Simonds' beautiful Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent trilogy. It is as fabulous as the short previews available online have hinted it would be. There is a further increase in complexity and power, much like the progression from Bloom to Huge. The sound is less abstract but still ethereal, like a familiar setting enveloped in mist.
Die Stadt / Janet Records
Like the other two EPs, Allure is painfully brief (although at 25 minutes, it is significantly longer than the others) and is made up of three finely crafted pieces. As anticipated, the vocals throughout are exquisite. The lyrics convey a sense of extraordinary ordinariness, Simonds' knack for taking a normally unnoticed detail and turning it into something magical is strong. When she sings on the title track: "The sun pours in when the morning comes/And the floor's all gold," the effect is devastatingly moving. Allure is not just lyrically impressive, the music carries as much strength and emotion as Simonds' voice does. On "Allure," her words are backed by a gorgeous string arrangement delivered by John Contreras and Cora Venus Lunny. Both musicians playing to the mood of the song, Lunny's virtuosity shining through like the sun in the lyrics.
Lunny's father, Donal, makes an appearance playing bodhran on the following piece, "Long Distance." Simonds manipulates the sound of his percussion into something completely unrecognisable, instead of the throbbing beat of the bodhran, there is instead a dripping rhythmic noise, completely unlike the instrument's distinct character. Surprisingly, Robert Fripp also turns up on this piece. Electric guitar is not an instrument I thought would have worked within Fovea Hex but Fripp does not disappoint and makes it work perfectly. His playing veers between the straightforward and the sublime, a feat he nearly always manages. "Long Distance" is the most dramatic piece to come out of the Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent series, it is a fitting climax to say the least.
Unfortunately, production delays have meant that the bonus disc featuring The Hafler Trio's reworking of Allure is still not ready but will be sent out at a later date. What information is available about it is intriguing: it will be an hour long (much longer than the previous bonus discs in this series) and it will be the last new Hafler Trio work to be made available in a traditional audio format. Aside from already finished works awaiting release and reissues, this is the final audible broadcast from Andrew McKenzie. It is fittingly entitled "An Answer," although I expect like most of McKenzie's work, this answer will be cryptic and some time will have to spent thinking of the right question to go with it. Plans to move The Hafler Trio in a new direction are afoot but what direction this will be is still a mystery.
I cannot express how much I have enjoyed these EPs; each one has been a new exploration in beauty. My one hope is that Simonds follows her own tenet and does not remain silent. Her recent work both with Current 93 and Matmos suggests that she is eager to be heard but it is no surprise that her voice has been strongest with Fovea Hex. As such, I eagerly await further releases from this project and in the meantime, I will enjoy listening and re-listening to Allure as much as I have enjoyed the other two EPs.
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It’s Cold when Birds Fall from the Sky was originally released by Archive two years ago and sold on Khanate's tour at the time. The set on this disc includes the entire Capture & Release album (all two songs of it) and "Pieces of Quiet" from their debut. The performance captured by Scott Slimm (the man behind the Archive label and most of his label's fantastic live recordings) can only be described as feral. The band stalk through the pair of lumbering and muscular songs from Capture & Release, the tension is beyond heavy. All the strain that the foursome have built up during the first forty minutes is unleashed upon their audience in the form of "Pieces of Quiet." The squealing feedback that pierces the song is like being slashed with a broken bottle across the face after the slower and longer songs that preceded it.
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As one of the more obscure Khanate releases, it is great to finally hear the KHNTvsSTOCKHOLM album. Recorded in 2004, a very small CD-R pressing was made of this disc at the time and up until now was going for silly money to collectors. While this version is also a limited edition, it will reach far more ears than the original release for a far better price. Despite the "Special Low Fidelity Edition" tagline to KHNTvsSTOCKHOLM I found the sound clear enough, the kind of quality from a good bootleg after someone with a good ear has tweaked the audio. Most importantly, it sounds just as intimidating as every other Khanate release. The only distraction is the sound of people chatting around whoever is recording the show.
Pummelling their equipment, the intensity of this gig is crushing. After nearly twenty minutes of the snuff horror of "Fields," "Pieces of Quiet" rears its shrieking head again. It is even more earth shattering than it was on It’s Cold…. The feedback is sharper and the music is even more violent. The highlight of KHNTvsSTOCKHOLM is undoubtedly the immense rendition of "Under Rotting Sky" that closes the set. This has always been the defining Khanate song for me and this version haemorrhages out of my headphones like the river of gore that takes the lift in The Shining. It may lack the polish of the studio version but it retains the power and increases the menace.
Both of these discs are essential documents of a group that were far more important and exciting than any other metal band of the last ten years. While no live album can ever be representative of the sheer force of experiencing Khanate live, they are a damn sight better than nothing. Khanate's criminally small back catalogue means that I will scramble for all I can get by them and both It's Cold… and KHNTvsSTOCKHOLM sit proud next to the other albums.
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Release date: July 24th, 2007.
This 7" is limited to 400 copies and was designed, signed and numbered by Barbez's Dan Kaufman. 100 are on red vinyl and 100 are on white vinyl. These two intense numbers were inspired by both a pleasant trip through a small historic neighborhood in Mexico city and the detestable Iraq war. Cover art was inspired by the abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Look for the next Barbez record sometime soon on Tzadik.
These two songs were recorded and mixed by the great Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, John Zorn, Swans) at B.C. studios near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY in 2006. They were mastered by Fred Kevorkian (White Stripes) at Avatar Studios. The first song, Mexico City Impressions, was conceived on a trip to Mexico City while strolling through a lovely neighborhood called Coyoacan where Frieda Kahlo, Leon Trotsky and Diego Rivera once lived some 60 years ago. There's a kind of Parisian feeling to the neighborhood and to a little park there with a carousel and people selling little bags of Mexican sweets. It's an extremely vibrant place, full of Meso-American sounds and colors floating about. This short pulsating song is my impression of that vibrancy, color and heartbeat of Mexico City, and an homage to the enchanting sound of the marimbas you hear everywhere in that city.
The second song, Somebody Get Rid of the King, is an angry lament that comes out of a great fury at the Iraq War and especially at the cruelty of the United States towards the detainees it holds in Guantanamo and in the tortures it perpetrated at the Abu Ghraib prison. The subject was close to my heart as I spent several years working as a researcher with famed journalist Seymour Hersh on his book, Chain of Command, which detailed these outrageous war crimes. The song begins in a slow and mournful vein only to transform into a punk-rock blowout full of rage.
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Release date: July 24th, 2007.
Organized Pitches Occurring in Time consists of two 25 minute pieces of music, both spawned from the same conceptual composition/score by Duane Pitre, titled Ensemble Drones. With their form reminiscent of works by La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music and their tonality touching on the floating works of Terry Riley, The Ensemble Chord in Eb with a Minor 7th and a Pump Organ Base & The Ensemble Chord in C with a Major 7th and a Guitar Base are aural tapestries based on a minimal tonal palette with their instrumentation consisting of guitars, alto saxophones, bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, tone generator, and pump organ.
The Ensemble Drones composition varies from the traditional sort as it is rule-based with the score consisting of a set tonic, set pitch classes, playing methods, technique restrictions, and spontaneous conduction. The score is a structure for the performing ensemble to improvise on—order spawning chaos producing order that is different on each occasion of a performance or recording. Ensemble Drones is discipline and freedom, both within each other, the first major focus of the work. Variance is the second major focus of the composition; with instrumentation, ensemble performers, tonic, pitch classes, and the physical space varying from performance to performance, the results can never be the same.
One way to view Ensemble Drones is like a compositional "body" as in the composition taking human form. The score is the skeletal structure that gives the "body" its general shape and feel. The pump organ, for instance, could serve as the circulatory system, the bass clarinet as the muscles, cello and saxophones as the internal organs, the electrically generated tones as the nervous system, guitars as the flesh, viola as the skin, violin as strands of hair, and the listener—the listener acts as the eyes. Not in the sense of vision, though—each listener will "view" the same compositional body differently, and, in return, the body will view itself differently with each new set of eyes. This helps to analogize the last major focus of the Ensemble Drones score/composition, which is perception.
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Release date: July 24th, 2007
Eleh's Floating Frequencies/Intuitive Synthesis Vol. 2 requires dedicated and careful listening. High volume and/or headphone use is highly recomended for maximum experience - especially on the B-side which is focused on ultra low end bass pulses being slowly modulated by bass frequencies well below the level of human hearing. Side A is a detailed account of the emerging frequencies resulting from the carefully crafted meeting of seven sine waves.
It is also highly recommended that stereo listeners are seated at least seven feet away from their speakers, centered, with ears at speaker height. 500 made. 200 gram vinyl. Deluxe letterpressed jackets. Dedicated to Charlemagne Palestine.
Eleh was formed to specifically to pay tribute to early experimental minimalist pioneers especially La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros and Charlemagne Palestine. This record is pressed in a deluxe edition of 500 on audiophile quality 200 gram vinyl.
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from Drag City's Web site:
Up for (re-)evaluation this summer are a couple of seminal works of Mimir, that lynchpin of the ever-mysteriously-shrouded Streamline imprint. Let’s whisk a veil or two aside, shall we? Streamline is the brainchild of Christoph Heeman, leader of such projects as H.N.A.S., Mirror, the Dom records label, and yes, even and especially Mimir! He’s bequeathed to Drag City the manufacture and distribution of such Streamline projects as, uh, H.N.A.S., Mirror, and yes, even Mimir (also CDs from Andrew Chalk and Limpe Fuchs; LPs from Nurse with Wound and Xhol Caravan and both formats from Little Annie). There’s a word for what Christoph does — and if anyone says nepotism, they don’t have ears! The Streamline sound is a subtle but deep examination of silences and repetitions, atmospheres and controlled improvisations. The two Mimir reissues forthcoming catch Mimir in two different phases — and if two separate Mimir releases aren’t potentially confusing enough, these two Mimir titles should do the trick: one’s called Mimir and the other’s Mimyriad. Of course, hardcore fans of Mimir will know the difference, and if you don't come on too strongly they might deign to explain it to you.
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Originally released in 1971 as a tiny private pressing in Japan, this rare psychedelic album finally makes it to CD for the first time. Apparently it took a couple of years to track down the material, but the effort was certainly worth it. Great musicianship, excellent production, and the skillful mixture of various styles make this album enjoyable from beginning to end.
Grounding the album's stylistic shifts are several carefully constructed rock songs. "Foolish Guy" and "Tears of a Child" are concise and catchy examples of pop, and the Dylan-impersonating "Grey Hound Bus" is almost convincing enough to be mistaken as a cover. Yet the band truly excels when they have the time to stretch out and turn their material into sweeping emotional experiences. "Mother Nature's Sun" is a touching anti-war protest that goes through a variety of moods, while "Tomb Stone" is a wandering desert plainsong in which the protagonist yearns for death. In contrast, "To Reiko" is a soft and gentle antidote for existential angst.
Although their rock songs frequently recall a predominantly West Coast style, Brush also have an experimental side that's equally vital and interesting. "The People of Glass" from the opening suite starts things off with a dire warning from a solo 'electric effects organ,' providing a mystifying introduction to the group. Elsewhere, the brief piano flourish of "Day Break (Bridge Is Drumming)" changes the direction of the album into something more classical. But the band’s not heading toward parlor respectability, either, as proved by the free-for-all demolition that is "Die a Dog's Death (In Vain)."
The booklet that comes with the disc is void of liner notes, but it has plenty of illuminating photos and illustrations as well as lyrics. Each of the songs on this album is distinct, and the running order continually keeps the experience fresh. With such quality songs and worthwhile diversions, there's very little to dislike about this album.
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One of the most revered musical pioneers of the 20th century, Erik Satie also had connections to the avant-garde of other artistic disciplines. This album contains primarily his collaborations with Picasso and Cocteau, as well as a couple of other seldom heard works. Performed by Bojan Gorisek, who has recorded Satie's entire piano oeuvre, this is a playful and entertaining collection that presents another fascinating side of this eccentric composer.
The most famous of these collaborations is Cocteau's controversial ballet Parade, which was specifically written to promote the aims of cubism. Cocteau commissioned Satie to compose the music and Picasso to design the set and the costumes, bizarre examples of which adorn the cover of this album. Two versions of this are presented here, one on piano and another with the backing of the New London Orchestra. Sound effects were performed along with the music in the original production of the ballet, predating Edgard Varese's similar tactic in Ameriques by several years. Yet the sound effects were imposed against Satie's wishes, and subsequently, they're left off of the piano version here yet restored on the orchestral version. The music is lively, betraying little of the theory behind his elegant yet innocuous "furniture music" or the endurance-testing Vexations. If anything, the melodies reflect Satie's previous day job performing at cabarets and music halls than his serious compositions. What makes them distinctly his, however, are the number of brief, tongue-in-cheek passages and their propensity for irresolution, something that irked many of the popular sensibilities of the day.
Mercure was also a ballet, and this time Picasso developed the scenario as well as designed the sets and costumes. Its premiere was a scandal of sorts, with elements of the Dada and Surrealist movements infighting and creating enough of a disturbance that the performance ended prematurely when members of the audience were arrested. The music of Mercure is, as its title suggests, a number of brief tracks that frequently shift moods unpredictably. Of these moods, several suggest the placidity of Satie's better-known material while plenty of the up-tempo sections keep things moving.
Also included is "Divertissement (La Statue Retrouvee)," a piece commissioned for a wealthy society figure's masked ball under the direction of Cocteau, with Picasso again doing the sets and costumes. The song is unique in that it was written for an organ and ends with an unexpected trumpet solo. Characteristically, the novelty's over all too briefly.
Satie rightly gets a lot of credit for changing the course of music with his unique ideas, which makes his collaborations with other highly regarded artists that much more intriguing. The performances on this collection are excellent, and I'm especially appreciative of the orchestral versions included here, sound effects and all. Gorisek and the New London Orchestra have done Satie justice, illustrating again why Satie's reputation continues to grow with age.
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I doubt anyone would disagree that following up last year's stellar In the Maybe World would be a difficult feat, so Young God and Lisa Germano decided to reintroduce this scarcely available 2003 release (ironically frequently heralded as her best release to date) to a larger audience, adding a bonus disc of home demos and live recordings.
Young God
For 20 years, Germano has gone from backup musician to front and center stage, courted to dumped by major labels, critically acclaimed singer/songwriter to "retired" and working as a retail clerk yet staying connected and collaborating with some large names (Neil Finn of Split Enz/Crowded House, Johnny Marr, and Wendy of Wendy and Lisa/Prince & the Revolution, for example, all appear on this disc). Over the time her lyrics have, if anything, become far more candid and less opaque while her arrangements have become more intoxicating but through their own delicacy: piano, strings, guitars, marimba, xylophone, and various other instruments are always complimentary, never competing for loudness' sake.
Lullaby for Liquid Pig on its own is a masterpiece, her return after a five year absence following her final 4AD release, Slide. Songs vary from the haunted house proto-pop of "Candy" or the more hit-friendly "It's Party Time" to the sparsely arranged, tinkling piano and hushed strings of "Pearls" to the dark and creeping "Liquid Pig," driven by pulsing drumming and bass guitar, accented by unhuman noises and sound effects. Through her lyrics she channels ranges of themes and emotions from the personal to the abstract, taking the roles of a caring friend, a hopeless romantic, a little girl, and a drunk over the course of the disc. There's no points that feel weak or flawed nor are there ever any moments that are the slightest bit predictable or cliché.
The bonus CD is an extra present for those who are finally getting the disc but it's also more than worth the price of admission for hardcore fans. Extra CD for Pig is approximately 20 minutes longer than Lullaby for Liquid Pig and contains 20 songs in 11 tracks. The song order is unique: it goes back and forth from a home recording to a string of live songs contained within one track. Of the home recordings, Germano gives us stripped-down versions of the otherwise maximal "Candy," "Dream Glasses Off," and "Liquid Pig;" plus a drum machine-enhanced "Making Promises," an old version of "It's Party Time" and something the fans have passed around for years; "It's a Rainbow," recorded originally in 1997 with OPB; and a new unreleased song "My Imaginary Friend." The live recordings took place in both Lisbon and Los Angeles and are all solo performances with Lisa on piano, organ, or guitarselections include material from In the Maybe World, Slide, and even Moon Palace.
This Young God reissue is a fantastic breather until the next record and with the success of last year's monumental release, I'm sure 4AD are shitting themselves that they ever let her go and will undoubtedly make their catalog more available (if they haven't already). Then again it's a perfect time to collect the stuff for those who are only new to her sound.
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This 3-CD compilation of singles, non-album tracks, and unreleased material by Amp stays true to their mantra of honoring composition and accident equally. The resulting harmony is by turns uplifting, somnambulant, frustrating, lush, raw, glorious, and imprecise while a hollowness seems to lurk beneath the distorted beauty.
In a sense, Richard Amp and Karine Charff are Amp, but the band's history has involved many collaborators (27 are listed in the notes to this collection). Disc A opens with "Sketch a Star," featuring Richard Amp on guitar. This previously unreleased piece is described in the liner notes as "an exercise in getting an 'analogue' saturated sound replicated using computer technology." Perhaps due to the inclusion of bass and drums, "Remember," the band's first single, is as structured as anything here, but takes a while to get off the ground. The dreamy strum, fuzz, and warble of "Melatonin Red" have an evaporating gorgeous quality.
It took me a while to warm to the vocals on this record, as some of the instrumental pieces seem more intense. Although Karine Charff has always been considered the first "proper" Amp vocalist, Dave Mercer did some singing after the very short-lived tenure of someone called Jo. Ironically, Jo's rather pleasing aaahs and ooohs are featured, along with piano and Ray Dickaty's flute, on "There She Goes." Things take an open and airy turn through the hypnotic delays and tape-loops of "Walking A Line" and the (primarily acoustic) guitars of "A Small Light." A muffled contrast is apparent on "ICU," however, which uses the sampled voice of a baby and sounds like dub in a hospital. The dark and penetrating "Frise" is less an example of shoegazing than a sonic x-ray of the foot and, per its title, "Strangely Charming Quark" comes across as a slow relation of Hawkwind.
Disc M starts brilliantly. In terms of glorious distortion, clanging atmospherics, and complementing vocals, "Beyond," from 1997, is hard to beat. In an ideal world it would have been a chart-busting smash! The track "Silencer" benefits from the kind of ghostly vocals that the sister of Kate Bush might mutter if she existed and was kept locked away in the cellar. The simple analog synth, bass, and guitar of "Ipsu Factum" work like a palate-cleansing piece of ginger during a sushi binge. "Le Revenant" is a previously unreleased early version of "Songe," a lovely composition of French spoken word, guitar atmospherics and piano. Another highlight is the urgent trippiness of "Left It [Too Late]" where Olivier Gauthier adds his programming to the core duo.
The third disc, P, which includes some excellent covers, starts with "Ombres" from 1996, credited as a joint Amp/3rd Eye Foundation release. The track is heavy on juddering echo and percussion, becoming either muddled or cloudy with a chance of complex showers, depending on your perspective. "Je Veux," a piece that was apparently mislaid sometime around 1997, has a feeling of urgency, where layers build into a blistering crescendo of guitar, piano, drums, and rather wonderful moaning, perhaps in French. My favorite item here, "Moon Tree," previously only available on the 1997 compilation Angelfood Electronics, is majestic and mournful, with intense shimmering waves of guitar coupled with effects and feedback codes by Dave Pearce of Flying Saucer Attack. It is six minutes of total bliss.
The traditional piece "Scarborough Fair" is treated spaciously with well-placed accordian and harmonium. A cover of the Silver Apples’ "Seagreen Serenades" is a whirling piece of droning percussive brilliance like music for a slideshow of polaroid negatives set on fast forward. Things slow down beautifully with "So Hot (Wash Away All Of My Tears)," a Spacemen 3 cover that trips delightfully and then stumbles to a stand-still. The effect is like flickering light, waves, or something equally mesmeric. "Televisionface" is metallic and primal, but the cushioned drums create a fuzzy distance between the music and our ear. "Shadowfall," from Amp's first studio session in 1995 and eventually released on the Kranky vinyl version of their third album Astralmoonbeamprojections, is a brief excursion into sonic nothingness. What follows is the original demo of "Tomorrow" from 1998's Stenorette—a fine piece of percusion, piano, and gorgeous lulling vocals overlaid with sweet guitar discordance. There's no mention of accordion, but my ears suggest otherwise. Richard Amp's keyboard, guitar, bass and programming on the scorching, fluttering "Yonder" result in a piece that is as about close to dub as the band come. "When You Have Love" goes on for ages and then, of course, gets most interesting in the last two minutes. Ain't that always the way.
A 2001 track called "Wild Wine Gaze," consisting of field recordings and treatments mixed for inclusion on this compilation, could offer a route into soundtracks or modern classical work. All Of Yesterday Tommorrow is an undoubted treat for fans familiar with either Amp, Movietone, and Flying Saucer Attack. Naturally, the collection looks back, but I suspect that future listeners will also look kindly upon Amp.
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