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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Much like the roster of labels like Raster-Noton or Touch, Cristal work with a type of noise that is very different to the Merzbows and Whitehouses of this world. Instead of bludgeoning the listener with volume, these guys focus on the textures of the sound and keep the dynamics intact. The music on this album is like a macro photograph of a small but intricate piece of machinery covered in dust; there is a lot of detail but on a much smaller scale.
When I first encountered Cristal based on the Labradford connection, I was surprised at how atonal their music was (especially considering that other spin-off Pan•American produced music of such a similar vein to the parent band). However, listening to Re-Ups, this makes a certain amount of sense as although the aesthetic is quite different, both groups capture similar moods. The five pieces included here suit very much these longer nights and autumnal smells in the air; a sense of decay but in a dry and dusty way and not in a pungent or gooey way. The processes at work here are slow, not glacially slow but at a pace that allows sounds to live, breathe and fall away in sufficient detail.
While “Stars, Hide Your Fires” starts off as a fairly pedestrian ambient track, the tiny details that develop throughout the piece make it shine. It never becomes intrusive but yet it does become far more interesting than its first humble minutes would suggest. In contrast to this delicate piece, “Left of Swept” is ear-stripping stuff. Mastered at a substantially higher volume than the preceding pieces, it is quite the shock when it starts. It gets a bit wearisome but luckily is only four minutes in length. The final piece, “Avici,” returns to the quiet and grainy sound of before. After the massive volume of the “Left of Swept,” the calmness makes the tiniest details seem huge and multifaceted and serves as a reminder that Re-Ups is quite a good album despite the derivative harsh noise near the end.
Re-Ups might not be the best noisy ambient album I have heard (most of the albums on the labels mentioned in the opening paragraph would do this sort of thing better), it certainly is not a waste of time. The earlier Cristal releases all tread similar ground, having another is not a pressing issue but might be worth investigating if in need of something pleasant to listen to after dark. Just make sure to skip the fourth track so as not to wake the neighbors!
Miami's Harry Pussy combined the raw, undisciplined approach of old school punk rock, the atonal harshness of noise, and the micro-track lengths of classic grindcore into a muddy mess of distortion and chaos. An early precursor to the noise/rock vibe Wolf Eyes has been pushing, HP stayed more in the realms of dirty punk rock rather than the more electronic inspired work of the Michigan Boys, with the exception of the dirty analog synth of "MS20", which apes any noise band at their own game.
Most of the tracks here follow the same formula of sloppy rapid-fire drumming, improbably disjointed but somehow consistent guitar playing and shrieking vocals, all of which is slapped together in an overdriving, clippy mess of music. While bearing little direct physical resemblance to the genre's current form, the sound is pure punk, and beats that earlier vaginally named band Pussy Galore at their own game. While most stick to those short grindcore-esque blasts, there is some discernable differences among tracks: "Peace Of My Ass" is a track of pretentious spoken word over top a buried drum track that, thankfully, ends in laughter to indicate that it was not a half-assed Patti Smith attempt. "Mandolin" is one of the few tracks that cross the three-minute mark into high end cymbal racket and guitar attacks that are more noise than punk by far.
The disc is split approximately half and half from studio and live recordings, but the lo-fi recording quality as a whole makes the designation irrelevant. On the live tracks, the retention of the between-track dialogue from the original performances gives a great contrast to hear: Adris Hoyos' calm stage banter and announcements of the upcoming track couldn't be more far removed from the uvula ripping screams that immediately follow. The single tracked performance "Live at Salon Zwerge" in its entirety nicely summarizes the live material here, a clattering mess of feedback, drums and screams that mostly resembles an extended improvisation of "Mandolin" that, for all its length, doesn’t get tedious or dull.
One thing to be considered is that there’s a great deal of redundancy on here. Being mostly live recordings and rehearsal tracks, some songs appear in multiple forms. While it’s great to have such a sprawling collection of all of these tracks, I'm not sure if there really needs to be five different versions of "Smash The Mirror" and four takes of "Chuck!" Hardcore HP fans will be glad to have each and everyone of these takes, but the more casual fan will probably be happy to just skip around and dabble here and there. Listening to in a single sitting might be a bit ennui inducing, but reproducing the tracklists of the original vinyls or playing passages here and there will more than satisfy the need for a scum rock enema.
Rather than simply drawing elements from 20th century synthesizer music, Reinhardt instead recreates it with a sense of modernity and development that is not simply a nostalgic collection of tracks, but a disc that fully reproduces the sound and sensation of the avant garde pieces, soundtracks, and pop songs that classic analog synthesizers ended up pushing their way into.
In a way, this album represents a microcosmic study of synthesizer music from the past 18 or so years, because it features elements from so many genres, but still makes a cohesive set of songs that feels like a fully realized work. Some of the tracks like "Lyre of David" and "Blue Cutaway/Tore Earth Clinker" draw heavily on film scores and soundtracks of the 1970s and '80s. The beatless pieces and thick, dramatic synths call to mind the work of Vangelis (especially Blade Runner), Wendy Carlos Williams, and Carmine Coppola’s Apocalypse Now score. Obviously analog synths, they reproduce the sound of strings and brass as best as the technology could, but never lose that distinct synthetic quality.
Other pieces like "Every Terminal Evening" and "An Upright Fortune" integrate rudimentary drum machines into the mix which are closer to the spheres of synthpop than the other pieces, but still not quite The Human League or Depeche Mode. The former's highly sequenced bass synth and drum pattern feels like an antecedent of some of Throbbing Gristle's poppier material, but rather than the dark and subversive nature of their work, Reinhardt's is lighter and more atmospheric. The latter is more conventional in its rhythms, the deep bassy synths giving an almost danceable vibe.
There are some moments that integrate elements of current electronic music that bears little direct resemblance, but still has some of the same ingrediants. The constant kick drum thump rhythms of "Fast Blot Declining" and the beeps and proto-303 sawtooth synth leads of "Tentshow" have all of the makings of electro-influenced techno music, but instead remains dramatic and atmospheric rather than danceable. Even in "Lord Sleep Monmouth," the slow arpeggiated synths and swirling leads lean towards prog rock, but stays more open and spacious, rather relying on that genre's focus on the overly dense or complex.
The more "out there" tracks such as "Tandem Suns" and "Crept Idea For Mom" are more along the lines of the avant garde electronic music of the 1960s and 70s, the former is slower and propelled by a filtered drum machine and a greater sense of tension than the other more airy works, and is further altered by a noisier, grimier synth line at the end. "Crept Idea For Mom" is more rhythmic and less lush than the others on the album, full of odd sci-fi textures and effects and treatments that make it somewhat more esoteric than the other pieces.
While it bounces from genre to genre, the pieces are all self-contained, but strung together with a sense of atmosphere and mood that is the audio equivalent of a collection of short stories. While each differs and goes in their own direction, the overall feeling is a consistent and captivating work that shows the depth and variety of a now-dated technology that never lost its specific color or tone.
Richter displays a hitherto unsuspected sense of humor in composing music for ring tones. This is an intriguing concept, with an apt title and short pieces that prove surprisingly wide ranging and affecting. The only flaw is that if my phone sounded this good I would be loath to interrupt any of these tracks to answer it.
Max Richter's The Blue Notebooks was arguably one of the touchstones of recent modern classical composition. He incorporated Tilda Swinton reading from the writing of Franz Kafka and Czeslaw Milosz into some of the tracks. Scant use of the sound of a typewriter and her oblique narration lent a human quality to pieces which, for all their melancholic beauty, might otherwise have seemed emotionally impenetrable. A similar approach informed Songs From Before where Richter achieved lower notes resembling sonic depth charges which contrasted with pieces that featured Robert Wyatt reading the words of Haruki Murakami.
Not everyone finds Max Richter enough of a challenge. The pristine sound and aching melodies leave his work open to accusations of superficiality. Such a view fails to acknowledge the admirable economy and euphoric resonance of his albums as well as their undoubted mystery. That said, it was probably time for a change and he has embraced that challenge without abandoning his core methodology. The readings are gone and except for a few tracks such as "In Louisville At 7" which playfully incorporate human chatter, there are no passages for voice. What remains are piano, strings, found sound and electronics as 24 Postcards in Full Colour uses the instruments themselves to underline Richter's mischievous desire for exploring communication and setting puzzles. With hindsight this motivation now seems evident in the earlier albums, too.
MP3s sound worse than CDs which sound worse than vinyl. So goes a popular mantra amongst people of a certain age or listening experience. I would have put Richer down as a subscriber to that view. Here though, short of tackling the problem of musical birthday cards, he goes for the jugular of the next most annoying sound currently in existence. In the process he demonstrates that ring tones don’t have to be pitiful and annoying. It's not quite the musical equivalent of, say, I.M. Pei or David Bailey designing fast food containers, but you get the picture. "A Song For H/Far Away" weaves guitar, strings, radio broadcasts, bells, and goodness knows what else into a mesmeric elegiac piece. Several piano or string dominated tracks are ideal for staring into the middle distance and imagining that the breakfast of toast and marmalade you are making is of mystical significance. Other pieces, such as "Cascade NW by W" and "Tokyo Riddle Song" are perhaps the most likely ring tones in that they are more sprightly, repetitive, and bouncy.
In the past Max Richter has assisted Future Sound of London, Roni Size and Vashti Bunyan. He has worked on Ari Folman’s animated documentary Waltz With Bashir and excerpts from The Blue Notebooks were used in the film Stranger Than Fiction. Richter begins to emerge as lacking snobbery and being as unafraid of fun as he is of intellect and commerce. That said, his creations will probably always fall on the side of restraint and good taste. The theory behind the title is that postcards used to (and to a lesser extent still do) bring messages from elsewhere. Similarly, when the phone rings it is to herald the arrival of a similar missive in a different form. Plans to incorporate audience member's cell phones into performances may already have occurred. Richter's first solo record Memory House has also just been reissued.
With mainstay Vincent De Roguin absent and Stephen O'Malley exercising sharp restraint, Æthenor have released their best album and maybe one of the best live recordings I have ever heard. Assembled from three shows recorded in Oslo, Norway during 2010, En Form For Blå captures Æthenor improvising a loose electric sound bound expertly together by the talents of percussionist Steve Noble and one-half of the Ulver crew. Together they create a surprisingly intelligible sound, which betrays its impromptu origin.
At first, I understood why VHF advertised En Form For Blå as a kind of jazz mutant. With Derek Bailey collaborator Steve Noble playing drums and the duo of Daniel O'Sullivan and Kristoffer Rygg producing atonal melodies using, among other things, a Fender Rhodes piano, records like Get Up With It were destined to be used as a point of reference. It is immediately evident, however, that Æthenor are not a jazz quartet and that they aren't making anything like jazz music. Their sound on En Form For Blå is almost totally unique, coming closer to a Pan•American/Music is Rotted One Note/Charalambides hybrid than Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock. Thanks to their fluid style, creative open-mindedness, and a nice editing job—there is no crowd noise—Æthenor make this improvised live recording sound like a studio album. In fact, it wouldn't be hard to mistake it for a soundtrack, film score and effects included.
O'Sullivan and Rygg provide the bulk of En Form's weight. They alternate between trembling bass swells, noise walls, and lighter-than-air melodies, but typically use some combination of each to generate microscopic interchanges and hallucinatory field recordings. If their instruments aren't squawking or breathing, they're rummaging, flinching, or even slithering around in an environment rife with minutiae. There are a few massive crescendos dotting the record, but in general they avoid the chaos of wall-to-wall noise and focus their efforts on lucid instrumental exchanges. Synthetic vamps, which sometimes creep into Pink Floyd territory, frequently anchor the proceedings and serve to concoct a thoroughly ritualistic tone, which is spacious enough to include silence and pianissimo dynamics.
On more than one occasion, however, Daniel and Kristoffer's disconnected scribblings congeal into a groove, the same way clouds unexpectedly transform into recognizable figures. For instance, during "One Number of Destiny in Ninety Nine," Æthenor spontaneously sculpt an Om-like dirge from a sea of squirming effects and churning distortion, turning a storm of noise into a swaying and exotic dance.
It was during such passages that I first noticed Noble's drum performances. Among the resonant synthetic tones and apocalyptic horn blasts, Noble carves out a whole world of scampering percussive noises and bellicose rhythms. Initially, his cunning approach to the drums sounds supplemental, but on song after song it is evident that his talents are essential to the record's success. In many cases, his imitative cadences take center stage, with O'Malley, Rygg, and O'Sullivan playing the supplemental role. The importance of his contributions cannot be overstated; without his enterprising approach, En Form For Blå would be a much less exciting, much flatter recording.
Without a doubt, Noble's work is the star of this show, but the restraint and collaborative ability that Stephen, Daniel, and Kristoffer demonstrate is equally essential. I would love to see this incarnation of Æthenor in concert for myself because I find it hard to believe a record as coherent as En Form For Blå could be the product of a live engagement. If all of their live performances are of as high a quality as this album suggests, then Æthenor has to be counted as one of the best live bands around.
Although they appeared on a variety of compilations in the early 1980s, including the legendary Rising from the Red Sands, Pseudocode mostly remained unknown, putting out their own cassettes and the occasional odd 7", but never reaching the same levels of notoriety that contemporaries in the early industrial underground enjoyed. Nearly 30 years later, some of these earliest recordings have been issued, for the first time, in a deluxe double LP package.
This Belgian trio, consisting of Xavier S (Thrills) on vocals, Alain Neffe (Insane Music) on synths and horns, and Sub Rosa co-founder Guy Marc Hinant on guitars were essentially caught up in the post-punk and early industrial movements that were ongoing when these tracks were recorded between 1980 and 1982, with only a few being released on compilations in edited forms.The full package feels like a pristine copy of a C90 uncovered by one of the band members, and presented beautifully to a world finally ready to hear it.
Pseudocode definitely had their own sound and style, but there are influences to be heard.The guitar noise and atonal vocals of "Growing Down" would have fit in on the first DAF album, even if the monotone drum machine pound wouldn't, and the filtered rhythms and synth stabs of "Cut Up" resemble Throbbing Gristle, even more so considering Xavier's sounds quite a bit like Genesis P-Orridge via the echo chambered vocals.
Given their source, it is not shocking that there’s a few tracks that meander a bit longer than they should.The cheap synths and random drum machine rhythms on "You're Not Alone" bounce around for most of the song without going anywhere until the final moments, when it locks into a more aggressive, pounding sound that ends too quickly."Flesh Shop" has the same feeling, with the skittering and delayed rhythms propelling a track, that feels like it could use some editing, but throws in everything but the kitchen sink, sonically.Well, not the kitchen sink, but it sounds like someone left The Cure's Seventeen Seconds playing on a tape deck somewhere in the studio.
The strongest songs are where the band seems to click together in their improvisations:the trashcan drums, dubby bass, and sax on "I Don't Say More" put a perverse skronk into the otherwise un-funky collection."Sad Song" has metronomic snare rhythms that belie the more complex pianet melodies and analog synths, pushing the song more into an early electro pop realm."Fight Back (The Angels)" has a combination of filtered guitar, chintzy beats, and robotic vocals that also seem to straddle that line between intentionally abrasive industrial noise and early stabs at synth pop, which reminded me of some of those early Cabaret Voltaire experiments.
While I don't think Pseudocode will be spoken of with the same hushed reverence we have for the likes of Throbbing Gristle or Suicide, there are a lot of rough gems here that are just fine without any polish.Rather than mimicking their influences, this trio clearly integrated them, but had their own thing going on.It might not be a revelatory lost classic of proto-industrial music, but it's still a fun album. Plans for future releases of unreleased works is in the pipeline.
Recorded together using similar techniques, but vastly different source materials, these two releases feel like different parts of the same whole, with both of them emphasizing Mathieu's balancing of texture and melody, to excellent effect, through the use of processed, pre-recorded compositions.
Sourced from a mic’d gramophone playing 78rpm records from 1928 to 1932 with a cactus needle for a stylus, A Static Place has the more urgent, dynamic feeling to it.There is heavy use of hissing and layers of analog static to be heard on "Schwarzschild Radius", but it is used sparingly, burying processed choral arrangements and organ passages in its fuzzy warmth.
Vinyl surface noise is a bit played out in my opinion, which is why this disc excels in its measured approach to using it.There is far more overt use of the musical elements of the source material in the beautiful waves of sound, with the various forms of digital processing transforming, but not destroying, the music its created from.The two part title track clearly demonstrates this, with glistening, soaring melodies being teased out of the ancient vinyl, juxtaposing melody and texture, almost mimicking a journey through arid deserts and claustrophobic caves.The second part includes what must be piano tones and orchestra-like outbursts in its long journey.
"Dawn" seems to take even more of its source material to heart, intertwining jazzy melodies over what resembles rattling metal to create a slow piece that carries its beauty all the way to the final moments of the album.All five of the pieces display Mathieu's balanced hand in reshaping existing sound into beautiful new worlds.Probably due to their similar approach, I felt some parallels to Philip Jeck's work with turntables, but Mathieu is a singular artist that really sounds like no one else.
Remain, consisting of a single hour long track based upon Janek Schaefer's Extended Play, carries much of the same sensibilities of A Static Place, but instead projects it out into a long, sprawling work that has a slower, more deliberate pacing.Opening from quiet, open space, there are subtle vinyl clicks and pops that appear throughout, never being the focus but always adding to the album a slight sense of rhythm.
Early on there is a more pronounced leaning on the lower frequency spectrum, allowing bassy swells to appear abruptly, when they weren't as notable on A Static Place.There is an undercurrent of melody throughout the entire hour, but it doesn’t seem to be the focus; instead there is more texture and subtlety to be heard.There’s definitely "drone" elements, but I’m hesitant to say that since it has become almost a pejorative term, but here it applies in the most literal sense.
There is the same sense of comfort and warmth that carries over to here as well, with sustained notes that convey a familiar nostalgia that is universal.Throughout its full hour duration, the piece never seems to have a moment of filler, but slowly flows like a complex river of sound.It is haunting, with moments of sadness, darkness and triumph.
Both Remain and A Static Place share some definite qualities with one another, but each are their own album and focus on different compositional strategies by Mathieu.Remain is a slow building work, constantly evolving with a fluid sound to it, while A Static Place is more immediate, mostly due to the shorter pieces included.Both are gorgeous, evolving works of delicate melody and subtle texture, however, and I don't think I could pick a favorite between the two.
I don't understand how Erik Carlson has managed to stay so woefully underappreciated and low-profile for so long, as he has a very distinctive and appealing aesthetic.  Also, he has recently been largely infallible quality-wise. That hot streak continues here: wisely sticking closely to the sound he intermittently perfected with 2009's excellent Charmed Birds Against Sorcery, Carlson has delivered yet another impressive album of spidery, shimmering beauty.  It could benefit from a bit more bite though.
The core of Carlson's artistry lies in repetition, but he brings a deftness and lightness of touch to it that makes his vision uniquely his own.  Rather than sounding like a contemporary drone artist or a Reich-indebted minimalist, Erik manages to sound like a dream pop-damaged Oval: Map of Circular Thought is teaming with insistent glitchy-sounding loops that provide a rhythmic bed for warm organ drones and fragile, twinkling guitars.  On the album's lesser songs, the music shimmers and glitters quite pleasantly, but the pieces that truly shine are those where Carlson works a dark undercurrent into his narcotic dreamscapes like "Felt, Not Seen."  Around the ten-minute mark, the previously toothless reverie begins throbbing and quavering quite ominously and the remaining third of the song is spent in a disquieting nightmare.  The transition from light to dark is a very unexpected and seamless one, which is one of the things that I love so much about Area C: the mood of a song can turn with absolutely no warning.  It's a great trick– I wish Erik did it more often, but I guess I would start to expect it then (which, of course, he has probably already anticipated).  I cannot hope to outwit him.
In general, it is the longer songs that work best here, such as "In Toward the Wires" or the slowly pulsing drone epic "Ebbs to a Steady Burn," as Carlson is at his most emotionally rich and dazzling when he gives himself a lot of time to work.  Area C definitely requires some patience to fully appreciate, as Erik works very slowly and painstakingly: his intricate lattices of hazy drones and sparkling treated guitars are in no hurry at all to build to their full mesmerizing power.  Many of the shorter pieces boast some striking passages too, but hypnotic repetition, attention to nuance, and layering tend to be most effective when I am fully immersed in a song.  Area C is time-lapse photography for the ears.
As a progression from Charmed Birds, Map of Circular Thought is a bit of a lateral move.  On the one hand, it is clear that Carlson has become still more adept at compositional tactics like artfully weaving together multiple tracks, creating a pulse, and transitioning from one mood to another.  Also, I think his mood palette has expanded a bit.  However, he seems to have taken a significant step backwards texturally, as the lack of occasional bursts of harshness makes the woozy, looping, dreaminess of the album drag a bit.  Such touches do make some appearances, like the guitar noise and feedback in "In Toward the Wires," but they're often too submerged in the mix to make the needed impact.  Charmed Birds' better pieces were enhanced quite a bit by the well-timed use of scrapes, static, and voice snippets and I think those elements provide a very necessary counterbalance to Area C's drifting warmth.  I wouldn't be frustrated if I didn't have extremely high expectations though.  This is definitely a fine album by a master of his craft, but it is a bit too perfect and grit-free to be his masterpiece.
This album is very deceptively packaged and presented, but in the best way possible: the tame cover art and the word "folk" did nothing at all to prepare me for the extremely fun and quirky pseudo-surf gems within.  Of course, many of these pieces were originally folk songs, but they have been so jazzed-up with kitschy organs and twangy, tremelo-happy guitars as to make that term a wildly misleading understatement. Curator Stuart Ellis has assembled an improbable monster of a compilation.
Ellis unknowingly started working on this album in 2005, when he begun making mix CDs (and then box sets) of obscure world music for himself and his friends.  Gradually, he became more and more interested in how rock music manifested itself in non-western cultures.  Also, his record scavenging and trading began bringing him in contact with like-minded people scattered across the world. As a result, the project quickly blossomed into the excellent blog Radiodiffusion Internationaal and eventually led to the curation of 2008's Bollywood Steel Guitar compilation on Sublime Frequencies.Although Ellis's blog isn’t especially fixated on Pakistan (his tastes are pretty wide-ranging), the period covered here is pretty fascinating, largely undocumented, and quite short-lived: the Pakistani's embraced rock in a big way, but the recorded evidence of that phase does not sound much like any American or British rock that was happening (except for maybe the Ventures or The Shadows).  It is easy to see why he chose it for a subject.
The handful of artists collected on this double album are an eclectic bunch, ranging from respected film composers to largely forgotten bands that only managed to release one single.  Or sometimes even less, as The Bugs just got the B-side of the Do Raha soundtrack single and The Bluebirds' sole recorded output is just a few pieces on a film music compilation.  The material itself is no less varied, as the only way to get a record released at the time was to either cover a traditional song with rock instrumentation (possibly with some electric sitar thrown in) or to contribute to a film soundtrack.
Within those unusual confines, however, these young musicians went in some unexpected and inspired directions.  For example, The Panthers spice up the traditional "Bhairvi" with swooning, woozy guitars, while The Bugs pump up the thumping Do Raha theme with enthusiastic electric sitar and a catchy accordion motif.  My favorite piece is probably the noir-ish/spy movie-sounding "Aay Jays Theme," but this is a surprisingly good album from start to finish.  I suspect a lot of that has to do with the fact that this whole project has been organically unfolding for so long that throwing together two albums of killer Pakistani rock for a compilation was no problem at all for Ellis.  As a whole, I prefer the more "garage rock" interpretations to the more psych-inspired ones or those that just sound like folk songs played on the wrong instruments, but I never find myself skipping anything when I put this album on–Stuart's judgment is unerring.  In fact, I find that I like a lot of these pieces much more than I like the Western bands that influenced them.
Of course, the Pakistan captured here is quite a different place from Pakistan now, as long hair, rock music, wild nightlife, and drugs were pretty damn rampant during that country's brief cultural explosion.  Unfortunately, all good things must end and that momentum came to an abrupt end when a 1977 coup resulted in the institution of a markedly less rockin' and hashish-friendly Islamic state, causing many of the key musicians in the scene to move to North America and the UK.  Notably, Ellis has actually managed to contact some of them over the years and was often greeted with bewildered questions like "Why do you like this stuff?" or "Why do you care?"  That, of course, is the hallmark of any truly great Sublime Frequencies compilation: finding great music so ephemeral and forgotten that even the musicians themselves are left baffled and surprised.
Perhaps uniquely, Basil Kirchin’s appreciators include Broadcast, Coil, Sean Connery, Elizabeth Taylor, Brian Eno, and Nurse With Wound. Included here is music from his first film score Primitive London (1965) and the gangland movie The Freelance (1971). Kirchin was a pioneering twentieth-century master of texture and mood. His inventive, multifaceted music still sounds light yet off-kilter, eerie yet peaceful, both futuristic and nostalgic.
In the north London of December 1941, with the worst of The Blitz only just passed and rationing and nightly trips to the bomb shelter still in place, the teenage Basil Kirchin played drums in his dad’s jazz band. If that sounds gritty but humdrum, consider that The Kirchin Band evolved a highly percussive Latin-flavor which became so popular and respected that neither Sarah Vaughan nor Billy Eckstine would tour England without an assurance they would provide backing. Eckstine pronounced them the equal of the bands of Basie, Ellington, and Gillespie, and stated his disbelief that the group "aren’t American let alone that they are not coloured." Unusually, they had their own sound system which enabled Kirchin to record their performances. They were also recorded by George Martin, had movie star fans, and came near the top of several Melody Maker polls.
However, Basil Kirchin was not content to be, in his own words "a prisoner of rhythm." Born in Blackpool, he spent his last years in Hull. These towns in Northern England are on opposite (East/West) coasts yet only 111 miles apart. Kirchin, though, traveled much further, in both geographical and musical terms. Keen on exploring his own musical direction, he journeyed to India, Australia and the US. Upon returning to England, he embarked on various projects including writing music for imaginary and real films, and for the De Wolfe music library (with such excellent artists as Big Jim Sullivan, Tubby Hayes, Jimmy Page, and Kenny Wheeler). Kirchin also created his Worlds Within Worlds concept. This was an idea set in motion after a grant to purchase a cutting-edge Nagra tape recorder allowed him to slow down the sound of insects, birds, autistic children, gorillas, or whatever, to reveal sounds previously unheard. In this, he was miles ahead. (Years later, Eno would comment that slowing recorded sounds by more than fifty percent "does something to the timbre of sound...by bringing upper harmonics into hearing range".)* To these slowed sounds, Kirchin added cello, horns, and organ to produce two albums of pioneering musical soundscapes. Unfortunately, these have never heard been as intended: since Colombia and Island took turns to betray him and ruin his recordings.
The film Primitive London contains images as banal and sordid as those suggested by Kirchin’s weird, yet somehow "correct" mix of sounds, and a bizarre treat awaits its viewers. The score is by turns melancholy, melodic, repetitive, and sinister; tottering like a drunk in heels staggering home with the sun coming up on a beautiful day. Kirchin’s dreamlike atmospheres balance on the edge of oddness and optimism, without plunging headlong into either: a superb fit for the sense of tension which the film depicts, between the ordinary life of milk bottles and farms and that of wife-swapping and strip clubs. The recurring musical themes are simple and insistent yet Kitchin achieves contrast through varying pace and texture. Consequently, in the space of a few bars the mood can swing from sleazy to mundane and back again.
Kirchin’s film music is included in television productions and at least ten movies including Catch Us If You Can (a vehicle for the Dave Clark Five, 1965), I Start Counting (with Jenny Agutter, 1968), The Shuttered Room (Oliver Reed, 1967), and perhaps most famously The Abominable Doctor Phibes (starring Vincent Price, 1971). Also available on Trunk records by Basil Kirchin are Quantum, Charcoal Sketches/States of Mind, Abstractions of The Industrial North, and the slightly disappointing Particles. Also featured on Abstractions are selected cues from all the ten inch De Wolfe recordings from the same year (1966) including "Viva Tamla Motown" and "Pageing Sullivan" (named for the two featured guitarists).
The Primitive London release has the usual fine photographs and affectionate, enthusiastic and unpretentious sleeve notes we have come to expect from Trunk. Basil Kirchin deserves no less for if the histories of the genres of "library" and "ambient" music are ever set down, his name will be prominent in both. He was still working well into his 70s, hoping to leave signs to help younger people find their own ways to break out of creative constraints. "The challenge is to act before thinking," Kirchin remarked in 2003, just two years before his death.
* As quoted in Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound by Eric Tamm.
The first offering in four years from folk-rockjourneyman David Berman could easily have become a messy affair. Afteryears of booze, drugs, depression, and more booze, it seemed Berman waspoised to make the all important recovery record. It's a familiar one—it reeks of sorrow, redemption, and rehab—but Bermanknows he’s better than that, and as a result he’s peppered the newSilver Jews record with strange but brilliantly told tales of boozers,black Santa Clauses, and airport bartenders. Drag City
Opener “Punks in theBeerlight” tears out of the gate with a ferocity rarely heard inBerman’s previous work, and its tale of puking into paper bags and“burnouts in love” ensures that this will not be your typical recoveryalbum. While past Silver Jews records expertly mined the “aw shucks”alt-country vein with often excellent results, Tanglewood Numbers seesthe band entering a much more rock direction, a move seen on songs like“Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed.”
Although much of the album isconsistently good, I have to confess that I find the new “rock” sound abit contrived and less appealing than the shambling country approachfound on previous efforts (American Water comes to mind). Berman ismost effective when he’s there sharing the bottle with you, not onstage playing his guitar. As a result it is a good album that suffersfrom a split personality. A rock album has to rock, and thoughTanglewood Numbers does carry more sneers than its predecessors, itcan’t shake the feeling that it’s misplaced. Even so, the album isbalanced out by several standout tracks.
“K-Hole” features some ofBerman’s most desperate vocals, with him intoning “I’d rather live in atrashcan/ than see you happy with another man.” And while it would seemthat the overall mood of the record is all dark clouds and stormydepression, Berman does us the favor of lightening the mood withrollicking numbers like “I’m Getting Back Into Getting Into You” and“How Can I Love You (If You Won’t Lie Down)”, which features the warmbacking vocals of his wife Cassie Marrett.
Though it featuressome questionable shifts in approach, Tanglewood Numbers highlightsensure that it will be a worthwhile entry to the Silver Jews canon.