We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
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The title of the seventh cut, "Hassle Free Harmony", serves as anexcellent summation of the album in its entirety. Marc Bianchi returnsunder his HSH moniker with 'Manic Expressive', a release that iselegant, yet mellow and uncomplicated. From the three-minute stringarrangement of the opening track to the sweet and wispy vocals on "TheRinging in My Ears", the album blends an extensive assortment ofmusical sources, both organic and electronic. Melodically, the songsare aural decoupage: it's as if Bianchi gives the listener a sonicslide show, displaying bits and pieces of his favorite tunes by otherartists ("Dear Prudence" immediately springs to mind). The result,however, does not give the impression that these outside sources havebeen plundered, but rather form a charming homage. The juxtaposition ofan orchestral ebb and flow with subtle mechanical beats, hypnoticambient atmospherics and glistening guitar is handled with dexterity.Even when the otherwise humble songs surge with drama, Bianchi neverallows them to run amok. The orchestra pit warm-up that opens the firsttrack signals what is to come: the artistic and stylistic developmentof HSH since the previous effort, 'Home Is Where You Hang Yourself'.Break out the electric blankets; 'Manic Expressive' is perfectlistening for curling up in a warm bed on a snowy morning.
This full-length CD shares only a tiny amount from the 12" released earlier this year which bears the same name. (For my praise of those four songs from the first side, see issue 31 from this year.)This version opens with something so far beyond politically incorrectness but then breaks into a charming acoustic guitar bit. Of course it moves quickly on to of Cex's more well-developed electronic cut-up fuckery, with the occasional scatterings of kitchy sketch comedy (which Tigerbeat6 artists seemingly are becoming more known for), and only a subliminal hint of rap. Not what I was expecting from a guy whose live shows have had some fierce freestyle rapping lately. It's strange, that at first I was kinda set off by his rapping and comedy, but now I'm kinda wishing there was more of it on this disc. This is a truly fulfilling disc, however. Mr. Kidwell has got a keen mastery of mixing the elements just right for each song—low grooves, fun breaks, enough glitchery to make it interesting and not too much to make it laborious. A brilliant bit ends the disc on the theme of a high school crush shining through a mix tape. It may lead some to wonder "Is it real? Is it staged?" The pretentious European electronic music critics might not get all the jokes but Cex is surely more entertaining than nearly all of the critically acclaimed noodly drivel littering the shops.
Stichting Mixer is a 2-year-old foundation for minimal electronic/acoustic music, it's goal "to start and stimulate initiatives which encourage the encounter between sound and other media". Its recorded output, from knowns and unknowns alike, is released through the Mixer label. This disc is the first release on CD, limited to 500 copies.Battery Operated, apparently the duo of TomKz and Wade Walker, "chase" (i.e. DAT record) sound signals in 8 architectural non places, those modern structures of repetition such as airports, rail stations, hotels and shopping centers. Thus, they use the spaces themselves to construct soundtracks for them. The 8 tracks are roughly 5 to 6 minutes apiece and the digipack offers only the abstruse clue of a greyscale texture for each location. All sorts of unidentifiable sound tidbits are churned up and around, molded into quasi-rhythmic patterns and ambient-ish soundscapes. Tracks 3 and 8 are the real standouts though, simply because they're the most musically dynamic. The former in particular perfectly segues between cluttered and calm moments. Good stuff. Future Mixer releases I'll be keeping an ear out for include a split LP by Pimmon and K?n and a double 7" by Kaffe Matthews.
With only a single and a few collaborations out this year, Chicago's Locrian have been rather quiet, with this being their first (and so far only) full-length release of the year. The Clearing both recalls their earliest, noise-addled drone work while still looking forward to their current unique take on metal/prog/kraut rock.
At only four songs, the album is a bit more of a terse statement than the likes of Territories and The Crystal World, both of which more closely mirrored a "traditional" album structure.With three mid-length pieces and a side-long closer, each piece stretches out and is given time and room to develop.
The opening "Chalk Point" is the most consistent with their more recent song-oriented approach.Initially beginning with a lo-fi soundscape and oddly treated percussion from Steven Hess, the dark piano and slow rhythmic lurch eventually explodes into squealing metal guitar from Andre Foisy and full on drums.With the arrival of distant, detached vocals from Terence Hannum, the piece develops into the sweeping drama of prog rock, but with the experimentation of the best kraut artists.
"Augury in an Evaporating Tower" more closely matches Locrian’s earlier days, with its opening noise buzzes and layers of droning synth that eventually meld together into some sort of melodic construct.The distant guttural vocals and treated percussion exemplify this, going more back to their noise roots.This carries over a bit into "Coprolite," which is built upon a foundation of heavily processed, reversed guitar tones and electronic textures.With the use of percussion and acoustic guitar, the dissonant elements are well balanced by traditional ones.
The closing title track covers the entirety of the second half of the record.Initially a slow build from repetitive bass synth throbs and static outbursts, pained vocals and percussion arrives to give it more of that song-oriented sound that "Chalk Point" had before.However, just as quickly the structure falls away, leaving a ritualistic throb that echoes a living, breathing organism.With each passing moment it becomes bleaker and darker before collapsing upon itself, slowly dying.
Like the recent "Dort Ist Der Weg" single, The Clearing shows how well Locrian has become at balancing their musical impulses with their raw, chaotic noise background.The two come together perfectly throughout this album, which does a great job at defying genre conventions and any preconceptions.This is a wonderful balance of dissonance and melody, light and dark, melody and noise.
Recorded inside a 100-year-old Washington state church, this duo of Japanese residents Corey Fuller and Tomoyoshi Date, utilizes the natural reverberations and ambience of the space in which it was recorded to craft a melancholy, emotional work that uses electronic and acoustic instruments together seamlessly.
Recorded after a tumultuous year in both artists' lives, exacerbated by the Tokyo earthquake and subsequent nuclear concerns, Shizuku clearly is a work tinted with a sense of sadness and depression, though in a powerful, creative way.It is instead an essential piece that fleshes out this album perfectly.
"Rokuu" opens with surges of water and soft synthesizer tones, with the addition of field recording elements that, when combined, create a familiar, yet unidentifiable world of sound.While the first half of the piece is characterized by abstract passages, the latter is more familiar, bringing in acoustic and electric guitar, along with cello, creating a more conventional outro.
The cello reappears within "Aikou," and with the clear piano notes mixed with clinking improvised sounds and electronic textures to become something else entirely.Never clearly musical nor abstract, it is instead a unique hybrid of the two.The use of piano becomes a recurring theme, leading the slow, mournful "Saika" and the more textural "Kie."
Additionally, oddly clipped guitar notes appear with drawn out tones on "Guuzai," with distant, echoed percussive noises and unidentifiable field recordings.While the sustained tones are the focus, the distant percussive sounds and ambient sounds balance things out nicely.
The one misstep, which I don’t even think qualifies as one, is the use of spoken word on "Seiya" by the poet Tadahito Ichinoseki.While it is entirely in Japanese (a language I do not speak nor understand), his careful, deliberate method of speaking conveys an emotion that is beyond language.However, the use of voice is such a drastic change compared to the subtle melodies and mysterious sounds that surround it, causing it to stand out noticeably.It's just very unexpected within the context of the album, but not something I'd consider to be a mistake at all.
The blend of electronic and organic sounds on Shizuku is a compelling one, and the use of natural reverb and spaces makes it all the more powerful.While it has a bleak, sad overcast to it, it adds to the mood and emotion conveyed. Pensive, yet compelling, it is a wonderful combination.
Carsten Nicolai's latest album returns to the themes and concepts that he explored on 2008’s Unitxt (which has been reissued in a limited, artist edition to mark the release of the new album). Combining the ideas of a universal language, repetition and the relationship between data and sound, Nicolai has come up with a stunning collection of electronic music that bridges another one of the gaps between audio and visual art.
The opening piece, "Uni C," acts as a template for Nicolai’s approach throughout Univrs as he runs through about four or five themes in six minutes without the piece ever sounding fractured or forced. What strikes me most about this and the other pieces on Univrs is the speed at which the individual components move. It is not like Nicolai has turned his hand to gabba rave but many of the rhythms are built out of minute pulses. Crackles, pops and clicks move by so quickly that they barely pass the threshold for being a sensory input at the time. It is only their lingering after-image that actually gets processed by my brain. The result is that Univrs seems lighter than air as every component seems to have no real mass to it but like subatomic particles, they all interact to form a tangible whole.
Anne-James Chaton makes a guest appearance on "Uni Acronym" where he recites a list of three letter acronyms in alphabetical order. This ties in with Chaton’s own work which focuses on the rhythms underlying language; his staccato delivery forming a shape for Nicolai to hang his sounds on. Chaton forces the music to his beat, reinforcing the idea that underneath all this data and abstraction there is a human heart.
This human element is not so well defined elsewhere; the erratic, mechanical throb of "Uni Deform" builds on the foundations that Autechre laid on "Second Bad Vibel" from their Anvil Vapre EP. However, Nicolai uses this foundation only as a surface to break apart any traditional musical structures and any notion of tonality. Where Autechre were ground-breaking, Nicolai is atom-smashing. When the album closes with "Uni Pro," it easy to see the parallels Alva Noto has with the sounds explored during Warp Records’ glory days but like any good experimenter, he stands on the shoulders of giants to see further and prepares his own shoulders for the feet of the next great explorer.
This metaphorical human pyramid may point further from music than expected as Univrs is intended to be experienced as a piece of visual art as well as a normal album. Like Nicolai’s collaboration with Ryoji Ikeda earlier this year, the sounds on Univrs were picked out based on their appearance when visualised on particular scientific apparatus. In this case, the weapon of choice is a uniscope (the title of the album brings together the terms "universe" and "uniscope version"). There is a CD/DVD edition planned for release but unfortunately I am only able to experience Univrs in one sensory modality. I will be dropping my pennies in the Raster-Noton coffers to get my hands on the DVD as soon as possible.
The way Nicolai has almost reverse engineered music based on working through an abstracted visual system is impressive, especially considering how focussed and powerful the music sounds. Whether the marriage of sound and vision is as impressive remains to be seen (and heard) but as a standalone piece of audio art, Univrs is incredible.
Industrial Records’ reissue series begins with the album that set the tone for a short but potent career. The group’s first album (mischievously titled in order to make people go looking for a non-existent First Annual Report) is a master class in subversive anti-music that still packs a punch. Remastered and released as an LP and also in an expanded CD edition; all the gory details have been put into sharp focus, reanimating the still warm corpse of Throbbing Gristle’s glory days.
As I was not born during Throbbing Gristle’s initial activity, I can only imagine how stark and perhaps even boring the album cover for The Second Annual Report looked nestled in between other releases of that time. No graphics and no fancy typography, just a sticker with the barest of information on it. The dour, business-like nature of the sleeve is all the more surprising considering one member of the group was part of the Hypgnosis design firm. However, the simple design reflected the purpose of the album: this was industrial music made in an industrial way for industrial people. The Second Annual Report was meant to look like a normal dossier or file from an ordinary company rather than a piece of revolutionary music history.
While Throbbing Gristle had already released their debut single, "United/Zyklon B Zombie," The Second Annual Report reflected what the band were attempting to do in their live performances more than studio experimentations of the single. Most of the cuts on the A-side were taken from live shows, several versions of "Slug Bait" and "Maggot Death" forming the first half of the album. It goes without saying that within the repetitions of these pieces, there was huge variation as they used the basic ideas of each piece to springboard into terra incognita. The horror, the humor and the hullabaloo all coming together to make a form of atonal racket that has often been copied but never did it sound so vital. The schlock of "Slug Bait" jumps between the viscerally disgusting to the absurdly funny. However, the over-the-top weirdness of the first two versions of "Slug Bait" is countered by the version from Brighton where the group sample a disturbing interview of a child molester and murderer.
This dichotomy between the tongue-in-cheek moments and incredibly dark subject matter sums up everything that is enthralling about Throbbing Gristle, and the reason this album still resonates with listeners today. Yes, some of the material and imagery is rich pickings for an easy shock factor but by dressing it all up in a pseudo-industrial package and throwing campy Carry On… style humor into the mix, Throbbing Gristle highlighted the double standards, hypocrisy and corruption at the heart of British society. If they were the wreckers of civilization, it was only because civilization was a harsh reality that needed wrecking.
The B-side of the album was given over to the group’s soundtrack to After Cease to Exist, a grainy film made during the COUM Transmission days featuring Chris Carter getting castrated (which made his child with Cosey Fanni Tutti a few years later quite the miracle!). The piece lacks the violence of the first half of the album, at odds with the imagery that it was meant to accompany. It is one of Throbbing Gristle’s dreamier moments, especially in the early years.
The CD reissue of The Second Annual Report features an extra disc of bonus material including the tracks from the debut single (much like the original CD reissue) and selections from live shows from the same time period. None of this material is new but I imagine the live material will be unheard for many people considering the price and rarity of any previous live releases (not all these cuts were available outside the early live tapes, live compilation CDs or the various versions of TG24). The live material is fantastic but having got all these recordings already, I would have preferred to have seen some more exclusive extras (such as other studio cuts, if they exist) or a DVD of After Cease to Exist.
Paul Gough's latest album borrows its title from a line in Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, a dystopian novel where humanity regresses to a primitive, semi-literate state in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.  That reference seemed perfectly apt to Gough, as The Oansome Orbit drew much inspiration from meditations on loss, isolation, and disconnection.  Fertile themes for great art, certainly, but it was already pretty much a foregone conclusion that a new Pimmon album would be a noteworthy event: Gough has been making wonderfully complex and distinctive abstract soundscapes for more than a decade now and he only seems to get better with age.
As much as I enjoyed Pimmon's last album (2009's Smudge Another Yesterday), I was a bit frustrated by how fleeting and far between the sublimely melodic parts were.  Fortunately, that minor exasperation was largely balanced-out by the fact that Gough is one of the exacting and texturally creative producers currently working in abstract electronic music.  After hearing The Oansome Orbit, it almost seems like Paul heard my thoughts and purposely set out to spite me.  Aside from the billowing and shimmering drone of the opening "Passing, Never To Be Held," Gough makes very few concessions to conventional melodicism.  Instead, Pimmon now sounds more distinctly Pimmon-esque.
As it turns out, I was laboring under the misconception that Gough still had a bit of room to improve as a composer, whereas he was probably thinking that he could stand to jettison most similarities to other drone artists and go deeper and farther.  He was right and that's exactly what he did.  As a result, The Oansome Orbit sacrifices quite a bit in the way of accessibility and immediate gratification, but it is ultimately better art for it.  Paul hasn't made a good drone album–he's created a prickly, multilayered aural narrative.  It requires a bit of openness and focus to fully appreciate, but it is worth it (especially on headphones, where every detail of Gough's vibrant soundworld is audible).
The album is best appreciated as an immersive and cumulatively powerful whole, but there are naturally some individual moments that stand out.  In fact, the whole album is littered with unexpectedly transfixing passages, as Paul seems to have a deep aversion to both stasis and predictability (especially for someone working roughly within the drone genre).  The most striking stand-alone piece, however, is the woozy and warped "Arcangel In Reverse," which sounds like an angelic and blissed-out drone piece being slowly eaten by a tape player.  The lengthy and cryptically titled "Düülbludgers" is also attention-grabbing, but for very different reasons: it gradually escalates into an interlude of grinding cacophony before ending with an equally dissonant coda of clashing tones.
Such harshness is a definite anomaly though, as the pervasive mood is closer to free-floating melancholy (or something a bit more complex).  Regardless of its disposition, The Oansome Orbit is ultimately a constantly shifting and disorienting vista of sharply defined crackles, shudders, throbs, and corroded melodies hidden by an undulating mist of hiss and decay.  Which, I suppose, is exactly what Gough set out to achieve artistically.
Twenty years into Tom and Christina Carter's rich partnership, it has become next to impossible to identify outside reference points in their work. Charalambides exists in its own universe—insular, curtains drawn. Exile, their first release in four years, begins with "Autumn Leaves," a wordless prelude of Tom's austere guitar playing, setting the tone for the band's most laser-focused album since 2004's Joy Shapes.
Exile is a stunning album, one of Tom and Christina's best in a deep discography filled with contenders. It is also their most sparse, repetitive, and lyrically heavy work in recent memory. Themes of death and loss abound, from the suggestive song titles—"Desecrated," "Before You Go," "Into the Earth"—down to Christina's seemingly stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Just a few minutes into the album, on "Desecrated," she intones, "I am not on the side of the living," sounding exasperated, broken. Later on, she abstractly dances around what sounds like someone's passing: "She had to calm herself down / by becoming more ill / by becoming lethargic, one might say / by becoming extremely immovable." Perhaps in denial, she reassures herself, offering up an explanation for the inevitable: "It's hard to get good help these days."
Like much of Charalambides' work, Exile truly shines when its songs sprawl out, disregarding any notions of acceptable length. "Words Inside" is a prime example, based around a reverberating guitar line that repeats for 15 minutes, steady as a clock's hand, while Tom wails on his guitar over the top. As usual, Tom plays a sort of snarly, fractured blues, uniquely his own—at first controlled, then less predictable—nearly flying off the rails by the song's finale. Christina's words are mostly unintelligible, except for in brief flashes: "Touching / touch deep inside / the words inside / alone." This is dark, heady stuff, packed with improvised repetition, designed for total surrender and concentration—not easy listening, even by Charalambides' previous standards.
Christina's words aren't any lighter on side B, but at times, Tom's improvisational, snaky melodies become a touch less assertive. When he picks individual notes, they are sparse, muted. "Wanted to Talk" does away with all excess instrumentation, with Tom playing a simple, six-note figure on acoustic guitar ad infinitum, while Christina confesses to herself, "I've tried so many things tonight / but I didn't try to talk / I didn't try / and now it's time to say goodnight." Not every song remains so hushed: "Before You Go" nosedives into a stormy drone of guitar feedback and harmonics—an approach Tom hinted at with the warm, enveloping drone of "Desecrated" a few songs earlier. Here, though, an oppressive wall of feedback creeps forward into the mix like a rising tide, swallowing up Christina's voice until all that remains is a ghostly echo: "Before you go… before you go."
"Into the Earth" is Exile's centerpiece, functioning as a monumental showcase for Christina's voice. Finally at peace with her sense of loss, which she seemed to deal with earlier through a sense of detachment, Christina accepts the reality at hand: "And you have to go inside / into the earth, into the earth." A few minutes in, Tom's brilliant guitar playing takes over when Christina can seemingly no longer find words, echoing her vocal melody in counterpoint. It's a heart-stopping moment, one of the most beautiful and moving in Charalambides' body of work, and—dare I say it—the best 12 minutes of music I have heard all year.
Closer "Pity Pity Me" settles into what initially seems like a quarter-hour of piano, tape hiss and uncomfortable silence. Christina sings in an uncomfortably high, strained register (think PJ Harvey's White Chalk): "Pity pity me / pity me, I say / pity me, my darling / carry me away." Before the song fades, Tom launches into a storm of gritty, heavy feedback and left-field blues picking. It's a strong end to a very strong contender for the year's best album, from one of the most consistent groups of the last 20 years. Exile is essential listening for anyone with a taste for creative, challenging music that rewards repeated spins and complete immersion.
This is the long-awaited reissue of Mehdi Ameziane's incredibly scarce 2007 solo debut, which was previously only available as a self-released CDr edition of just 30.  Naturally, both Twinsistermoon and Natural Snow Buildings have evolved and blurred together quite a bit over the last four years, but at the time of its original release, these raw, fragile, and eerie pieces were a dramatic departure from the less distinctive drone/post-rock that Mehdi and Solange Gularte had been releasing.  While I definitely believe that Mehdi's work has only become stronger over the ensuing years, this remains a unique and mesmerizing highlight in his voluminous discography.
I have no idea what triggered it, but the years 2006 and 2007 were an incredibly fertile creative period for Natural Snow Buildings.  For one, they released a brilliant double album that many still consider to be their greatest work, The Dance of The Moon and The Sun.  Then, both Mehdi and Solange released stunning and wildly different solo albums (Solange's being Isengrind's Golestan).  There were always unusual threads running through NSB's sound, but up until that point, it was very easy to see close similarities to other artists like Tarentel, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Stars of the Lid, and Windy and Carl. Both the hallucinatory pagan drone of Golestan and thehaunting childlike folk of When Stars Glide Though Solid had no such clear reference points or precedents though: from 2007 onward, no one else sounded like Natural Snow Buildings.  Even since then, the "Natural Snow Buildings aesthetic" has seemed to be largely based upon perfecting and blending those two disparate threads (and they have been doing it extremely successfully).  It was a career-defining period.
The simplest way to describe Mehdi's sound for much of When Stars Glide Through Solid is "field recordings of a choir of undead children singing around a campfire," a rather singular vision best expressed in pieces like "Ojibway Ghost Trail Song" and "Momuzo."  Ameziane covers a lot of other stylistic territory as well, but tape hiss, sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment, soft childlike/feminine vocals, and an otherwordly sense of temporal dislocation are fairly omnipresent throughout.  While a number of the vocal pieces are quite strong ("To Breathe Underwater," in particular), my favorite moments tend to be the more abstract ones.  The opening "I Wish I Could Drown The World In Reverberation," for example, beautifully interweaves shimmering layers of shoe-gazing guitar, spectral wordless vocals, and quasi-tribal percussion into something that easily could been a highlight on The Dance of The Moon And The Sun.  The brilliant title piece also recalls Ameziane's work with Gularte, but goes even further: it seems far more in line with future masterpieces like Waves of the Random Sea...or something like a boisterous funeral parade for an imagined culture from several hundred years in the past.
I suspect that this album would have completely floored me if I had heard it when it was originally released, as I am quite used to Mehdi's strain of ghostly folk at this stage.  I miss having fresh ears.  Also, I can't help but compare everything he releases to the amazing ...And Then Feel The Ashes.  Despite that daunting mixture of familiarity and unfairly high expectation, however, I still managed to find quite a lot to love here.  This isn't the best Twinsistermoon album to start with, due to its somewhat primitive recording quality, but the content is absolutely essential for those already converted (particularly those who prefer Mehdi's more song-like side).
(Note: The vinyl version of this reissue includes one full side of bonus material, much of which is as good as the actual album.  Also, Solange's new artwork for the inner gatefold is among her best.)
Robert Haigh 'Strange and Secret Things' CD Siren Records : Siren 020 Release date : (30 October 2011)
'Strange and Secret Things' is the third and final part of Robert Haigh’s piano solo trilogy for Siren Records that started with 'Notes and Crossings' (2009) and 'Anonymous Lights' (2010).
In his quest to expand his solo piano expression, Robert employs two distinct yet complimentary approaches to piano composition. The first is based on shifting patterns - repetitive structures with minimal development. The second is a more organic approach which evolves out of unmediated improvisation.
Along the way, Robert has created compositions that are vital, exposed, melancholic, minimal and open-ended that never stray too far away from a unique melodic sensibility.
'Strange and Secret Things', comprised of 17 tracks, is a further continuation of the journey explored in the first two parts. It is the most intimate and powerful of the trilogy - with a wider palette of light and shade, emotion, texture and atmosphere.
This album is a must for anyone who has enjoyed the first two parts of the trilogy and his older legendary recordings on Le Rey Records. It will appeal to those who have an affinity with the piano language of Satie, Glass, Budd, Cage, Max Richter etc.
The album was mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering. As with the first two parts the CD comes with a limited edition hand-made miniature jacket sleeve + Japanese Obi designed by Faraway Press.