This week's series of episodes features images from Asheville, NC, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene this past week.
Please consider donating to the various organizations in and around the area.
Episode 714 features music by Pan•American, Maria Somerville, Patrick Cowley, The Gaslamp Killer and Jason Wool, Der Stil, Astrid Sonne, Reymour, Carlos Haayen Y Su Piano Candeloso, Harry Beckett, Tarwater, Mermaid Chunky, and Three Quarter Skies.
Episode 715 has Liquid Liquid, Kim Deal, Severed Heads, Los Agentes Secretos, mHz, Troller, Mark Templeton, Onkonomiyaki Labs, Deadly Headley, Windy and Carl, Sunroof, and claire rousay.
Episode 716 includes Actors, MJ Guider, The Advisory Circle, The Bug, Alessandro Cortini, The Legendary Pink Dots, Chihei Hatakeyama and Shun Ishiwaka, Arborra, Ceremony, Ueno Takashi, Organi, and Saagara.
Hans-Joachim Roedelius is better known for his work as a founding member of the bands Cluster and Harmonia, both household names for fans of 1970s krautrock. This solo album, Selbstportrait Wahre Liebe, feels like a more clinical approach to krautrock, with all of the difference and repetition and none of the bombast. Filled with stately electronic keyboards and synthesizers, this minimalist document has the hair-raising effect of a calm, deliberate tea ceremony.
The opening piece, "Spiel im Wind," is a shifting kaleidoscope of small repetitive figures, like an avant-garde song in the round. "Wahre Liebe," translation "true love," is a piano led piece that unfolds like a poem, in a meandering stream of thoughts both beautiful and unsettling. "Winterlicht," loosens the formalism of earlier tracks and explores a duet like an open conversation, with pauses for contemplation. "Nahwärme" has many layers of sound, with the principal piano voices subsumed by ambience that lifts the curtains to let the sunshine in. "Gerne" conjures the spirit of Steve Reich with its propulsion in repetition, and interlocking pieces moving like the gears on a steam engine.
The tone remains consistent throughout the album. It is engaging enough to place full attention on while still having the quietude of a soundtrack to a slideshow film. Fans of krautrock, minimalist composition, and even some post rock will find this album engrossing.
Like a lot of work centered on modular synthesizers, there is an extremely kinetic feel throughout all five compositions on this record, but even with all the chaos, there is a distinct sense of composition and structure."Euzo Found Guitar," for example, is a swerving ball of inorganic guitar sounds and dramatic, synthetic string scrapes for its opening, complex and multilayered.However, it is not long before he shifts things to a rhythmic, almost skeletal techno sound before closing things up on a tense, forceful note.
The same hints at traditional structure can be heard on "Elektros Spong" as well.Opening with an amazing approximation of pummeling drum sounds, Piotrowicz injects an array of jerky, erratic synth sequences that on the surface sound like pure entropy, but instead reveal a multitude of organized, interlocking sections.He transitions from heavy to skittering drum sounds and low bit rate synth layers before closing things out on a satisfyingly disjointed note.He utilizes a bit of everything on "To Fleh," opening from sputtering laser beams and big dramatic synth swells into faux birdcalls and chiming bells.In many ways it reflects his soundtrack work, as there are all the big, dramatic stings of an action movie trailer, but far too varied and nuanced to work in that capacity.
Intensity largely reigns supreme throughout Euzebio, but there are of course moments where the album relents.There may be some wet synth thuds throughout "Flares Et Wasser Hole," but resonant bell tones and carefully constructed melodic fragments are more at the forefront.Closing piece "Ocarina Wars" makes for the perfect conclusion to the record.Opening with a dense wall of malfunctioning 1970s computer mainframes, he throws in a healthy selection of laser bursts and mangled synth leads.There is also the occasional synth thud that, the way it is used, could almost herald the opening of a thumping techno track, but he never allows it to get off the ground.
Even when Robert Piotrowicz was deep in purely synth records, he always had a knack for balancing the unpredictability of what miles of patch cables can do with a composer’s sense of construction and dynamics.It would seem his collaborations and soundtrack work have further influenced him, because the hints of music and film score bombast are prevalent here, but nicely subsumed into his own repertoire.I have never found a dull moment in Piotrowicz’s catalog, but Euzebio is certainly a new high water mark for his work.
The start of the album made me think of what my grandmother would have said: "What is this twaddle?" and "Is this what you call music?" White is foremost a drummer, first founding Dirty Three with Warren Ellis and Mick Turner, and with bands as varied as Cat Power, PJ Harvey, and The Blackeyed Susans. Conversely, Marisa Anderson is a classically trained master of melancholic guitar rooted in American folk, neo-classical and African guitar styles, with an early foundation in country, jazz and even circus bands. With musicians as these at the helm, this becomes perfect jam music; not jam as in "jam band" or Grateful Dead, but a rich psychedelic tapestry woven by practiced hands that take pleasure in breaking the rules of jazz foundations and serve to transport the listener to new heights.
There’s a lot going on with each musician bringing much to the table. It kicks off sounding like noise, chaotic and disjointed to the untrained ear, and it is, but there’s a pining melody on this first track that holds it together if you listen. Push through, because once past the first track, it leads to a complex, but rich and transcendental experience. I come from a familiarity with Jim White as part of Xylouris White with Cretan lute player Giorgos Xylouris, a duo who blend Greek folk into Avantgarde rock with an abandon of free jazz. White brings it here as well, incorporating modern and ancient drums to Anderson’s melancholic guitar.
As background music, it may sound like each musician has their own agenda, but a careful listen reveals the mastery of each musician being able to hold their own agenda, reining it in, blending with each other, and smoothly taking back the reins to reveal the uniqueness and strength of each musician on their own chosen instrument. "The Other Christmas Song" is a perfect example of this. "The Lucky" showcases the skill of each musician, bringing out the best in both.
As a self-professed fantasy geek, the title immediately suggests the event in The Highlander films in which an immortal warrior beheads his opponent and a surge of energy from the deceased occurs. The victor then experiences "The Quickening," absorbing all the power and knowledge the opponent had obtained in life. The play between the two musicians hints at a powerful collaboration, less a competition, as if the two have sought to teach and learn from each other, working to form a tightly knit bond such as to be one mind. With no words to get in the way, you can make your own imaginary film to this as the music gets in your head and your mind starts to wander, creating stories from the soundtrack that is provided by White and Anderson.
Oud, Lute, acoustic guitar, or lap steel guitar? While my musical knowledge is varied, my ear is not trained to pick out the many instruments used or mimicked by Bishop. He makes guitars sound like any of these aforementioned instruments, at any point in time, with practiced fingers and the equivalent musical knowledge of a library with every note he plays, a master guitarist proficient in a variety of guitar techniques and knowledge of music traditions. His latest album excels in his freer use of experimentation with theme and electronics, crafting a "dream pharmacy" as the title implies.
His previous releases have been focused on exploration of a particular genre. The Freak of Araby was a carefully crafted homage to late Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid, while the tracks on Tangier Sessions explored the sounds of a C. Bruno guitar from the 19th century that Bishop purchased in Morocco. For Oneiric Formulary, he further expands his already impressive repertoire of styles (Indian Raga, flamenco, surf, baroque, and many others) to craft an "oneiric" feel throughout. He takes turns adding unlikely sounds in the way of electronics that hum behind acoustic guitar, switching to near pop-embellished tunefulness, then leads the listener into nightmare visions in the very next track. Bits of drone experimentation are strewn throughout and unique synthesized sounds diverge from the usual guitar fare.
One such example of Bishop straying from his guitar is found on the opening tracks, "Call to Order." The shortest track of the batch, it kicks off the album with a mild nightmarish feel, or if you'd prefer, David Lynchian dreams, provided by an alien, synthesized theremin. "Celerity" goes back into more familiar territory and showcases Bishop's practiced dexterity, while "Mit's Linctus Codeine Co." sounds like an imaginary soundtrack to a film an alien cantina, or hold music at your local small town grocery store. "Renaissance Nod" is precisely that, a nod to what you might hear a minstrel playing at a Renaissance Faire. It isn't until "Graveyard Wanderers" that Bishop fully takes us into Tim Burton electronic territory, creating an auditory backdrop of rattling chains, dripping water and tortured souls, all of which may or may not have guitar as their original foundation.
"Dust Devils" is a catchy tune reminiscent of bagpipers in the Scottish highlands backed by tabla or djembe. The immediate standout track is "Enville," a pleasant acoustic track worthy of everyone's ears, one of his most melodic and memorable to date, that showcases his obviously practiced fingerpicking. "Black Sara" reminds me of a Spanish film. "The Coming of the Rats" is a wonderful interplay of electric and acoustic guitar, with acoustic guitar forming the baseline, and the electric guitar adding complexity, and seems to tell a story. Closing track "Vellum" concludes the album with a waltzy feel with scattered time signatures.
Dreams don't always make sense. They are not always logical, and can jump from storyline to storyline. Much is the same with this album, and Bishop is always mindful of the varied nature dreams can take. It is a journey of pleasant valleys, dangerous peaks and subterranean nightmares, all on the same album.
Creating memorable music is not always about throwing musical spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks; like any recipe, there are common ingredients to music’s magic—tempo, chorus and yes, a certain predictability—and the best dishes come from the extrapolation of the cook’s own prime ingredients into their own musical concoctions. Having a formula is no more dangerous to "real" music as a recipe is to a "real" chef; the best music in the hands of masters balances an adherence to these rules with free-flowing creativity, while those less experienced either know nothing about the recipe, or follow the recipe too strictly. Boston based trio E comprises all masters: guitarist Thalia Zedek (Come, Uzi, Live Skull), guitarist and inventor Jason Sidney Sanford (Neptune) and drummer Gavin McCarthy (Karate). Their third release doesn’t create any new formulas, but rather expounds on the tasty blend of the prior two releases, honing the skills of three masters into an even finer dish of practiced and precise dark energy.
"Caught" initiates the recipe and the group bands together to deliver their formula of lots of crunchy chord structure right from the start; tight guitar interplay between Zedek and Sanford is marshaled by McCarthy’s furious rhythms. There is no bassist here, but it isn’t missed at all with Sanford’s handmade instruments filling in the gaps. Zedek, a legend in the alternative indie scene since the eighties, makes her weary and impassioned vocals present in the rallying cry "don't be silent, don't go quietly without a fight, there's no alibis - I wanna hear you." And there are plenty of reasons to fight here; ingredients include less than savory bacteria and virii, the flavor only salvaged by the promise of hope and a new future. "Acid Mantle" mockingly appeals to better living through science, asking the listener to "Anoint me with oils, inject me, complete me." "In the back of a lab, we engineer the germs, witness diagnosis man, I can confirm: it's contagious, spread it around" eerily echo current events in "Contagion Model," a model which seems to "synthesize, terrorize, dehumanize, normalize."
Like any good recipe, the resulting concoction will be rejected if not edible, and viral ingredients are offset by the sweet flavor of hope in "Sunrise" as Zedek urges the listener to "regenerate yourself again, start from the end and begin." In the midst of poisonous "Miasma," we are reminded that an open window, an analogy for pressure release, can work wonders: "Open a window, vapors are rising, miasma retreating, the patient reviving." Even "Gelding," the title referring to a castrated horse, can have a positive outcome in what some may view as a vicious act. In the act of castration, hormonally driven behavior is eliminated, allowing the animal to be more gentle, thereby experiencing "freedom at last in the absence of need." The fight is not unrecognized, and there’s inspiration to continue fighting. "Like a Leaf" addresses the struggle of feeling like you just want to let go, but encourages "take your time and you can set the tempo, if you fall into a heap." Yeah, they get it, the chorus knowingly reminding us that "sometimes along the way we break down, yeah...we all break down."
There is a saying that too many cooks spoil the broth, but for this recipe, each member takes equal turns, never overpowering each other and creating a balance of noise and warmth. No song is over four and a half minutes, allowing for a concise and masterful blend of loose aggression and technical skill. It is a recipe that has held true for two prior albums, full of melodic guitar lines, Zedek’s unique voice, McCarthy’s powerhouse drumming and Sanford’s musical ingenuity. The album is a powerhouse of honesty, a trait Zedek has been skillfully practicing for years, and she lets us in on her humanity in the closer "Apiaries Near Me" via the lyrics "I'm just trying to hold the tide, to draw the line."
I know very little about Nicole Oberle and I suspect that suits her just fine, as she self-describes as a "digital recluse." What I do know is that she is based in Texas and that she has recorded quite a prolific stream of self-released material over the last year or so. One of those releases was last fall's Skin EP, which has since been picked up and reissued in expanded form by Whited Sepulchre. That is great news for a couple of reasons, as I would not have encountered her work otherwise and this new incarnation of Skin is a significantly more substantial and compelling release than its predecessor. In fact, the newly added songs are some of my favorite ones on the album. As such, I suspect this incarnation of Skin will rightfully go a long way towards expanding Oberle's fanbase, as there are appealing shades of both Grouper and erstwhile labelmate Midwife lurking among these eleven songs. The most fascinating parts of the album, however, are the ones where those influences collide with Oberle's divergent interests in ghostly, downtempo R&B grooves and unsettling, diaristic sound collages.
The album opens in supremely creepy fashion, as the murky, brooding ambiance of "Shipyards" resembles a grainy and enigmatic video tape that that a serial killer might send to taunt the detectives on his trail.Granted, evil-sounding dark ambient drones are far from my favorite thing, but such an opening is extremely effective in setting a dread-soaked and nightmarish tone for the album.Also, Oberle does quite an effective job of further deepening the sinister atmosphere with distorted and mostly indecipherable bursts of speech.That said, I was both relieved and surprised when that oppressively dark and claustrophobic mood opened up into the warm and undulating dreamscape of "Self-Speak."Oberle's aesthetic is quite a varied, unpredictable, and evocative one, as all of the songs on Skin feel like they occupy the same shadowy, twilight state of hallucinatory semi-reality, yet they all seem to evoke very different scenes within that unsettling and hypnagogic world.In the following "Unnamed," for example, a lovely progression of piano arpeggios unfolds in a heavenly haze of chopped vocal fragments, cinematic string swells, and buried snatches of warbling psychedelia."Cold Metals," on the other hand, feels like a ghostly and deconstructed bit of gloomy pop that makes extremely effective use of a blurred vocal hook.That piece also highlights Oberle's unusual and intuitive feel for dynamics, as it unexpectedly gives way to a brief breakdown of ringing, subtly dissonant chords before the beat kicks back in for the final act.The final song from the original EP ("A Knot in Twos") is yet another spectral pop foray, calling to mind an instrumental outtake from Slowdive's Souvlaki before blossoming into a brief spoken word interlude that feels like a cryptic fragment of an overheard phone call.
The second half of the album, which is composed of entirely new material, opens with another teasing instrumental approximation of melancholy pop ("Cigarette Burns"), then segues into a surprisingly strong and seductive dive into spectral, soft-focus R&B ("Stay With Me").At only two minutes, "Stay With Me" is woefully brief, but it is the closest thing that the album has to a great single, as it calls to mind Tri-Angle's brief run of killer witch house acts like Holy Other.That piece is followed by a hazy, beat-driven interlude ("Tired of This") that abruptly cuts out to give way to the album's most sustained passage of poignant, eerie beauty: the one-two punch of "Nobody Knows" and "I'm Just Stuck."The two pieces segue together into what is essentially a single sound collage, but the character of the underlying music differentiates them, as the more melancholy first half transforms into something akin to heavenly (if fatalistic) beauty.The music mostly just provides coloration though, as the truly haunting heart of that diptych is the spoken word recording that runs across the two pieces, as it feels like the final voicemail left by a woman who is about to vanish forever.In fact, it is easily one of the most heartbreaking and unsettling passages that I have heard on any album this year.I cannot think of much that could follow such an emotional wallop and Oberle wisely does not try, opting instead to close the album with just a floating, bittersweet coda ("Separation"), granting me a few comparatively peaceful moments to process what I just heard before abruptly breaking the spell with the final click of a tape machine.
If Skin has a weakness, it is only that several pieces feel more like sketch-like vignettes than actual songs, but that may very well be intentional, as the album has the uncomfortably voyeuristic feel of flipping through the journal of a troubled friend.Or, put more poetically, it feels like a supernatural fog that occasionally parts enough to reveal fleeting, decontextualized glimpses of various eerie, mysterious, and disturbing scenes.Another notable aspect of Skin is that Oberle seems like she is being pulled in a number of different stylistic directions at once, which would normally be a real issue for me.However, she has an uncanny talent for weaving together seemingly disparate threads into an arc that feels organic and unforced.Very few artists can pull off such a feat.Aside from that, Oberle shows a real knack for small, unexpectedly poignant touches that give the album a beautifully raw and intimate feel, as Skin is filled with great textures and details like exhalations, lighter clicks, distressed and warbly voice recordings, and the audible starts and stops of a tape machine.All of those fragments combine into quite an impressively absorbing and emotionally resonant whole that is quietly heavy in a way that few other albums can match.I am not sure if this quite counts as a formal debut (Oberle has previously released a few physical tapes on her own), but it will be an incredibly strong contender for the best debut of the year if it does.
Spirit Fest is a supergroup built around acclaimed Japanese duo Tenniscoats, featuring members of Notwist, Jam Money, and Joasihno. If an album could be adorkable, this fits the bill. Mirage Mirage is an album for flower picking and bubble blowing, and it charmed me from the first listen.
Spirit Fest use a treasure trove of odd instrumentation and percussion to assemble their beguiling avant pop songs. The experiment works brilliantly and yields finished pieces that are sweet and pleasant to hear. The whole double disc album is a brisk walk through a studio filled with toy-like instrumentation, including harmonica, kazoo, idly grazed piano, trumpet, recorder or some kind of folk flute, harmonium, triangle, accordion, brushed drum, and a panoply of quirky percussion. To top it all off, most songs include solo or duet vocal tracks exhaled in a puff of smoke, sung in a mix of English and Japanese.
The title song "Mirage" is a standout. The cuckoo whistle and insistent beat makes it sound like a zany clock that never tells the right time. Plucked strings tick the seconds while folky guitars and vocals tell a story of heartbreak. The refrain of "Mirage, Mirage" encircles the cacophony like the spectre of a lost lover.
"Amadoi," my favorite song, sounds like a fawn delicately stepping into the meadow, while the sunlight shimmers its invitation. It consists of the plink-plonk of piano and guitar footsteps, and a warm bed of stately female vocals. "Hi Ma Wa Ri" is a more low key and contemplative, moderately paced song with a touch of swing to it—finger snaps and singing along are welcome. Finally with "Saigo Song" the album concludes with a repeated motif. It feels like a nursery rhyme sung in the round with all the joy of group singing.
I haven't heard a folk pop document so warm, gentle, and playful since another supergroup I love, International Airport. Spirit Fest's clever and exploratory compositions present as polished, easily digestible folky pop, with an innocence and levity that evokes a sense of nostalgia for simpler times.
Louise Bock is the latest guise of iconoclastic composer Taralie Peterson, who is best known for her role in psych-folk luminaries Spires That in the Sunset Rise. It is probably fair to describe some of her previous work as "polarizing" or "an acquired taste," as she is not one to shy away from dissonance or nerve-jangling intensity. However, it is also fair to say that she has recorded some truly transcendent and impressively wild pieces over the years. In some ways, Abyss: For Cello captures Peterson in comparatively accessible form, but that is mostly because there are limits to how much infernal cacophony one person can create with just a cello and a saxophone. That said, that limit is considerably higher than I would have expected, as Abyss is quite a churning and heaving one-woman tour de force of cello-driven violence. Moreover, it is quite an impressively focused and tightly edited one as well. It is quite a pleasure to witness Peterson's power so beautifully harnessed for maximum impact, particularly on the album's brilliant centerpiece "Oolite."
This is the second album that Peterson has recorded as Louise Bock, as the project made its debut back in 2018 with Repetitives in Illocality (Feeding Tube).Prior to that, Peterson's solo albums were released under the name Tar Pet, but she decided that a new name was warranted for her cello-focused works.It is also worth noting that this album is the seventh installment of Geographic North's "Sketches for Winter" series, meaning that it was "composed during and intended for the dead of winter."Having now heard the previous Louise Bock album, I think I can safely say that Abyss's ostensible winter theme has not radically shifted Peterson's tone in any significant way, but this release is a bit more unrelenting in its intensity than its predecessor.In general, however, intensity is a defining trait with most of Peterson's work. In that regard, Peterson gets almost immediately to work on the lead-off "Horologic," as the opening drone quickly descends into a churning miasma of sliding dissonances.There is some bleak beauty to be found in the simplicity of "Horologic" as well, however, as Peterson manages to make the descending, elegiac chord progression feel heaving, sensual, and organic as masses of rich, woody tones languorously plunge and swoop.
The following "Jute" takes shape from a similarly droning foundation, but heads in a very different direction as Peterson saws away at a stuttering melodic fragment that is never allowed to reach completion.At first, it is not nearly as strong as "Horologic," but eventually those paroxysms resolve into a haunting and semi-melodic outro of deep drones.Peterson's saxophone then makes its first appearance with "Actinic Ray," which achieves an intriguing collision of fluttering Philip Glass-style minimalist patterns and Decasia-style ruined and discordant strings.Peterson's palette expands yet again with the gorgeous "Oolite," as the moaning and sliding foundation is fleshed out with a lovely and warm melodic figure and a very cool splash of garbled, ululating vocal sounds.Apparently "Oolite" also features some guest guitar work from Kendra Amalie, but I am hard-pressed to find anything resembling a guitar in the piece, so I suspect she must be somehow involved in the vocal-like sounds.Regardless of who is doing what and how they are doing it, "Oolite" is an absolutely sublime and wonderful piece.The closing "Prithee" returns to more expected territory, however, as a darkly churning bed of gnarled cellos lazily undulates in a state of uneasy ambience that fitfully breaks open to offer glimpses of a more radiant and tender piece lurking beneath.It is quite an impressive compositional achievement, as it feels like it is continually dissolving and reforming while casting a simultaneously brooding, epic, and precariously hopeful spell.
As someone who first encountered Peterson's vision in the wilder, more freeform context of Spires That in the Sunset Rise, I was pleasantly surprised by how tight and exactingly composed this album feels.There is not much about Abyss that feels improvised or at all indulgent, as Peterson has masterfully distilled her art into a perfect and concise series of emotional gut punches.Aside from that, I was also struck by how much some of these pieces transcend their instrumentation.Using a term like "neoclassical" to describe Abyss feels completely misleading and inadequate, as the cello seems like a natural extension of Peterson herself: this does not feel like an album composed for cello—it feels like a cello just happened to be the most effective tool for expressing the harrowing and cathartic sounds that were swirling around her head.That said, it does not hurt that this is a cello album, as I have always loved the warmth and the physicality that accomplished players can wring from that instrument and Peterson makes the most of those attributes (particularly the latter).Regrettably, I have yet not delved deeply enough into either Spires or Tar Pet to confidently assess how this album stacks up against Peterson's oeuvre as a whole, but it is difficult to imagine that she has recorded many pieces that can top "Horologic" or "Oolite."Then again, maybe she has.In any case, Abyss is a hell of an album that captures Peterson in wonderfully fiery and undiluted form.
I was quite curious to see which direction Klara Lewis's latest album would take, as her previous solo releases were generally quite radical and hyper-constrained in their avoidance of anything resembling conventional instrumentation. While both Ett and Too are aptly described by Editions Mego as "eerie rhythmic variations," such a summary falls short in conveying the uniqueness of Lewis's vision, as it often felt like she was quixotically attempting to compose pop songs solely from murky field recordings and decontextualized fragments of beats and melodies. With Ingrid, however, Lewis makes a dramatic and unexpected aesthetic reversal, as she slowly transforms a haunting and melodic cello loop into a wonderfully gnarled and heaving longform piece.
This album, a one-sided LP, is intriguingly billed as an improbable blend of William Basinski-style loop disintegrations and black metal intensity.In a general sense, I suppose Ingrid can reasonably be described as exactly that, but the similarity to Basinski's work lies primarily in Lewis's compositional technique rather than its tone.Great Basinski albums like El Camino Real and 92982 are extremely nuanced, tender, and dream-like affairs.Ingrid, on the other hand, evokes something considerably more raw and primal.In fact, it can reasonably be described as "nightmarish," though it definitely feels nightmarish in an arty Japanese horror film way rather than a "shrieking church-burners in face paint" way.Moreover, it maintains an earthy, physical foundation even as it becomes increasingly volcanic and frayed.In more practical terms, that means that Ingrid opens with a bittersweetly beautiful and emotionally resonant cello melody, but it soon becomes disconcertingly frozen in time, damned to repeat the same short melodic fragment for all eternity (or at least the duration of the album).While the initial melody is a poignant and sensual one, the "locked groove" moment isolates just a brief fragment of slow-motion, see-sawing melancholia and obsessively repeats it for the next nineteen minutes.
Admittedly, that frozen melody is quite a cool trick, but the meat of the album lies in how Lewis increasingly corrodes and distorts that fragment as the piece unfolds.At first, the transformation merely manifests itself as a quivering and shimmering haze that radiates outward from the dense and groaning string loop.I cannot tell exactly what Lewis is doing or how she is doing it, but it seems like the loop and its lingering hallucinatory nimbus begin to increasing feed back upon themselves, resulting in fluttering oscillations and occasional swells of sharper, more ringing tones.As that happens, the low end starts to gradually amass rumbling intensity as well, as each repetition of the loop feels like a more intense subterranean surge than the last.At a certain point, the central loop starts to feel like just one component in a much richer tapestry of layers, as it becomes increasingly subsumed by the roiling, distorted low end while the high-end shimmer coheres into something resembling a structured chord progression.Aside from that, the piece's rhythm transforms as well, as the gnarled, smoldering undercurrent of distortion lingers and lags enough to fall out of phase with the central theme's original pulse.Once it reaches its seismic crescendo, however, Lewis gradually allows the heaving elemental power of the low end to fade away, leaving behind an unexpectedly tender and lovely coda that almost feels like dreampop or shoegaze.
For the most part, I have absolutely nothing critical to say about Ingrid, as it is a flawless, hypnotic, and impressively relentless piece of music with a purposeful trajectory and an elegant symmetry.I even appreciate the unusual format, as it drives me crazy when people release longform pieces that require me to flip a record at some arbitrary midpoint.It is heartening that Lewis both acknowledged the limitations of the vinyl format and found a clever way around them (an important skill in this current period of vinyl supremacy).However, I will say that Lewis's earlier albums were objectively a bit more original and unlike anything anyone else was doing.That said, plenty of wildly inventive artists release disappointing albums because originality and execution are two separate things.My favorite artists tend to be those that manage to strike an optimal balance between bold ideas, vibrant production, and compositional craftsmanship and Lewis absolutely nails that trifecta with this album.
Given that, I feel fairly confident in stating that Ingrid is a major creative breakthrough for Lewis and possibly her best album to date as well.It is undeniably still a cerebral and conceptually interesting work, but those artier tendencies are a hell of a lot more effective when they are woven into a roiling tsunami of visceral power and emotional intensity.I suppose that might be where the metal influence most strongly manifests itself, as Lewis has blossomed into a formidable composer who has managed to extract the cool and dangerous elements of the genre without bringing along any of its flaws.The result is an experimental music album that sounds like it could beat me up, steal my girlfriend, and decimate a hotel room, which definitely has a stronger and broader appeal than any similar fare with a less favorable balance between the cerebral and the physical.
International sound art label Flaming Pines has collected 24 singles in the Tiny Portraits series to form this pay what you want compilation of music dedicated to overlooked places. Each artist was asked to examine a physical space or location, and create a portrait of that space using whatever mode of creative inquiry they have in their toolbox. As an album, the music veers through manifestations of sound, with peaks and contours that are mostly peaceful in character. The result is an evocative, varied collection, with each piece a startlingly unique contribution to the whole, to be enjoyed as part of a journey through physical reality.
The elements of composition used are primarily field recordings, soundscapes, ambient effects, and embellishments from acoustic instruments and noise makers. The field recordings include found sounds, human, animal, and insect activity, birdsong, heavy machinery, radio, and the chatter and clatter of life in a modern city. Some of these pieces are abstract, evoking moods and emotions without the rigidity of structure. Others have a strong narrative arc to the piece, tracing the story from start to finish with more explicit musical elements.
Some of my favorites are "My Childhood Is My Only Home," a lounge ambient song with saxophone, keys, and meandering thoughts in jazz; "Andrejosta. Rudens Vilcieni (October sketches 2015)," a dark, slinky mishmash of upright bass and field samples, like the banging of grocery carts and emptying delivery trucks in a big box parking lot; "The Same Sun," field recordings from the streets of Cairo interrupted with chanting in unison, perhaps in prayer; and "Dean Clough C2," a beautiful flute and running water piece that calls to mind the compositions of Oliver Messiaen.
Tiny Portraits includes the work of composers from across the globe, as far as Australia, Canada, Latvia, Ukraine, Egypt, the UK, and more. While it bears the name of a complete compilation, it shares no overlap with the Tiny Portraits collection that Flaming Pines issued on CDR in 2013. These pieces have surfaced over the years since but all have been inspired by the same conceptual prompt. It's a wonderful way to experience some of these remote locations in this difficult point in time when travel is limited.
Hot on the heels of our crucial Deep Listening double LP is another essential reissue enjoying its vinyl debut on Important Records. This is the first in a 3 part series of vinyl releases for Tod Dockstader's Aerial 1-3. Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work and this first volume is available in a double LP edition of 500 copies with 100 copies on clear vinyl exclusively for Imprec mailorder customers.
15 years in the making, Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life-long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere.
Opening with airwave drones, Dockstader gradually allows elements to slowly come and go, summoning an ominous atmosphere of ethereal cloud clouds. Malignant placidity continues, giving the feeling of eavesdropping upon late-night audio activity not unlike discovering number stations while sweeping the dials. These sounds pull you in as their density and rhythms come and go. Backward voices, deep echoing choruses of conversations flowing under the surface, ocean sounds, pulsing electro-rhythms, all seem to be created via the collaging of many hours of source recordings. A masterwork of collage and juxtaposition by an overlooked pioneer of American electronic music.
Artwork by John Brien (Imprec) is inspired by the propagation of shortwave radio signals throughout the earth's atmosphere.