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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Those lucky enough to have witnessed Burning Star Core in solo form will expect more than just a single idea bled into 40 minutes. This release captures three different 2004 shows that give an excellent example of the styles that C Spencer Yeh can rip, both alone and as a team player. It never does any harm to get an all-star cast either.
The restraint of the lineup on the opening piece has to be heard to be believed. Joined by two thirds of Hair Police (Trevor Tremaine and Robert Beatty) and noise merchant Mike Shiflet, this is not the expected blowout racket. Though it does reveal, especially to those who haven’t seen any live shows that Yeh is a far more energetic sounding player than his mild-mannered exterior would imply. The hardcore wall of whistling feedback and pitch-fucked swoons are soon revealed as sourced from his violin, not a ten strong gang of doom metallers. A rabble of free percussion buck shots punch through melodic riffs that seem to crack open as soon as they are birthed. The piece has a rising feel of a static lift off, focused electric power forcing the sounds into elevation.
"Two" is a duo piece with the aforementioned Beatty fights the closer for disc’s top slot. Fluttering violin and flickering film reel sounds reveal an instant interplay between the two players. This soon becomes gorgeously twisted up by DJ scratch-like high frequencies and metallic chiming sirens. After a brief lull comes a wall of dial manipulation and some painful throat work, Yeh sounds like a brutal cross between Mike Patton’s throat rips and Gonzo from the Muppets.
His solo closer is a voice, black box, and wires piece that rattles along in a sweetly sinister style. The handling of electronics here is astounding listening, and amongst his best works ever. The constant bed of clatter, like the rattle of an underground drain, is a slowly warmed through murk that’s driven by propulsive drifts of synth sound. At times it seems like a static organ part floats over piece, levering departed souls up and out of the music. This is at times before glorious and chilling, making the 14-and-a-half minute ride totally transfixing. 2004 appears to have been a very good year for Burning Star Core.
All the bands and side projects in the yoyo oyoy collective—including Fjernsyn Fjernsyn, Blob Back Farenheit and Kirsten Ketsjer: The Rock Band—contain one or more of Slütspürt's members. This brilliant EP on Ninth World Music demonstrates a fierce improvisation associated with sometime labelmates Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, all-too-fleeting echoes of 1979 Manchester/Cleveland, and a brief prettiness that could hide in plain sight on the Songs of Green Pheasant record.
Den Luftbårne Koksiske Hændelse works as five separate tracks but is even better as a seamless piece. There is a breadth of instrumentation and a concentrated feeling for contrast and flow, achieved by (I think) guitar, power tools, drums, reeds, strangled strings and perhaps very restrained laptoppery. The result is drone, noise, feedback, repaired folk, rabid jazz, a wintery ambience, and one almost perfect electro-metallic garage freakout. As if emulating desperate attempts to prevent an ice-covered aircraft skidding from runway to crowded pre-school "Tai-ai hey back off chief" is a grating, attention grabber which bleeds into the marvelously controlled "Jørgen, Søeren og Magrethe" a throbbing, yelping, gliding, ghostly Nordic relative of Pere Ubu and Joy Division.
Next, "Jesuspiben" uses unknown (perhaps) bowed and blown instruments to conjure a sacrificial rural sensibility at which Woven Hand appear to have been aiming. This gives way to a calmingly intense out-jazz, before slowly mutating into the beautiful “Guldfisk” which emerges as sneakily as an unreliable narrator yet hangs around long enough to please those of us who will always mourn the passing of John Fahey.
Finally, “Et Nul For Meget” takes clocks, chimes, synths, bells, reeds and unknown percussive objects to a place where Texan composer Jerry Hunt could guide a listener. Slütspürt may be in Berlin or could have relocated back to Copenhagen. Their name actually means something crushingly dull, but in English affords the same brief sniggering enjoyed when signposts for Wank, Germany or candy bar ads for Spunk were first glimpsed. Den Luftbårne Koksiske Hændelse contains a lot more invention and pleasure than most bands manage in their unfailing attempts to fill every last bit of nearly 80 minutes of disc space.
A late-period Force Tracks artist aids in resuscitating this once feared lost patient, though like many stroke or heart attack survivors, life after near death is never quite the same.
The financial collapse of European music distributor EFA in 2004 sounded the death knell for countless independent labels. Of these perhaps the most unfortunate casualty was Achim Szepanski's electronic powerhouse Force Inc. Music Works, which housed a handful of potent sublabels including the pioneering tech-house imprint Force Tracks. Recently, Szepanski quietly relaunched a handful of these under new names. After a few tasty twelve inches through Disco Inc., the Force Tracks brand was fully revived just in time for Unai's debut artist album.
So is A Love Moderne the resplendent triumph fans have been waiting for? One would expect so, given the potential displayed on the A-side to his 2003 EP and 2005's promising pre-release singles for "I Like Your Style" and "Oh You And I." Yet the silky subtlety of Unai's microhouse pop template which worked so well on that particular hooky cut falls blunderingly flat when transferred to a full length album. Everything here plays out as listenable and, on occasion, memorable, but honestly that alone doesn't cut it for a label that made its mark pumping out instant classics. Erik Møller's voice, to which critical comparisons to Neil Tennant I find misguided and entirely off base, proves all air and no substance, offering purely decorative texture to skeletal compositions like "Blissful Burden" and "Moderne Love." Where some emo lovers could endear themselves to the sentiments literally echoed on the sparse "Heart Is To The Left," a keener listener will instead see a weak, straining performance masked by deft studio trickery. Sadly, this flaw pervasively saturates the entire CD's duration.
Pleasant enough, A Love Moderne doesn't come remotely close to achieving the brilliance of previous Force Tracks full-lengths such as Dub Taylor's Detect, Luomo's Vocalcity, or MRI's Rhythmogenesis. Instead, this mild album sits lukewarm on the shelf as an example of the excesses of minimalism, a concept less oxymoronic that one might suspect.
CocoRosie has spread its seed and this is the result. This trio of musicians try to separate themselves from their obvious influences, but fail at doing so just before putting me to sleep. It's an effort staying awake from beginning to end and not because it's a relaxing listen.
I'm going to have a child one day and by the age of three it could potentially help me record a very hyped record. It would only sing, perhaps laugh and cry, and maybe shake a few percussive instruments, but it would be enough to meet the aesthetic needs Our Brother the Native and other bands they resemble. Take some minimalist composition, acoustic guitars, a rattle or two, and then toss in lazy, inexpressive vocals for a stew of finely layered boredom.
Tooth & Claw has all of the ingredients necessary to stir up the interest of all the pseudo hippies worshipping at the feet of Animal Collective and everything they do. That, in itself, is enough to wreck the album. The group worked so hard to give the album a free and flowing sound that in the end is nearly falls apart in the attempt to sound earthly or something else ridiculously comparable. I'm not sure if the band thought they could summon the earth mother and win the adoration of the music-buying public by recording a dull album or not, but in the end that seems to be what they've done. Derivative is an old word, but if I could pretend it weren't then I'd say the origin stems from the release of this album in some way.
After a few listens it becomes evident that the guitar (the same guitar used throughout ad nauseum) is pretty in and of itself, but that ultimately it doesn't matter because it never really expresses anything, never stands out on the record. It'd be nice if Our Brother the Native understood dynamics on a level that wasn't confined to the innards of a song because the whole album sounds as bad as Kansas looks flat. Drive across Kansas sometime, in fact, and the way this album sounds will become perfectly clear: it's featureless, annoyingly cute (or tries to be), and devoid of any inspirational features or original concepts across the board.
Now that The Postal Service have become ubiquitous enough for your mother to know about, shoegazing electronic indie pop acts employing near-falsetto vocals are pretty much a dime a dozen. Some of these, however, still sound pretty good.
Never reaching the higher BPMs of the most memorable cuts from that Ben Gibbard / Jimmy Tamborello project's Give Up, Uphill Racer's debut for German electronica label Normoton finds its strength in cognizant structures, in welcome familiarity as opposed to post-new wave gimmickry. Dreamy emo warmth laminates these quite accessible tracks, with the essential ingredients of acoustic guitar, trembling chorus-laden singing, light piano tinkling, and soft rock rhythms on proud display throughout.
Opener "The Fat Grin Of The Enemy" sets the stage with a lively downer full of cryptic lyrics and well-timed musical peaks and valleys. "Burns First Dies First" soars with ornate strings and a fluid chorus that, while difficult to sing along to, rivals most of the empty gestured adult contemporary balladry plaguing the VH1 Top 20 Countdown. A shameless sample from sappy late '80s show The Wonder Years hits about two minutes into the nonetheless thrilling "Polarbear," and an equally cringeworthy one from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind kicks off "One Face Down," though these minor stumbling blocks don't damage the album all that much. The closer, an untitled "hidden" track, reprises themes explored in the prior 45 minutes, with odd field-recorded samples and less natural tones that create moods and break them as needed.
Charmingly sensitive enough to captivate the scruffy Williamsburg massive and those in the like-minded blogosphere, Uphill Racer's home listening tearjerker centerpiece will complement any post-break-up Sunday afternoon or Grey's Anatomy cliffhanger. Rest assured, Mom will dig it too.
Bryce Kushnier fuses his experiences in Winnipeg’s electronic and indie rock scenes for his latest full-length as Vitaminsforyou. A nod to a hill in Manitoba known for saving townspeople from 19th Century floods, the result is a huge, sprawling electropop epic showcasing the best of both worlds.
The dam holding back Kushnier’s stockpile of ideas ruptures on this disc, overflowing every song and yet with remarkably little filler. The first real song on the album, "So Long Pleasant Bay," smoothly integrates field recordings, banjo, xylophone, and electronic beats. The song, like many of the others that follow, is frequently busy yet never crowded or cluttered and takes its time evolving structurally with little gratuitous repetition. On its heels is "The Ukrainians" featuring group vocals that come across like some odd, digital age town hall hootenanny. As with "Pleasant Bay," "The Ukrainians" seems to come from more of a rock background despite the electronic beats, but the songs that follow inch closer and closer to the dance floor. The strategy works, though, because even when the beats take the fore, the songs still retain plenty of warm, melodic dressing to heighten their appeal.
Not only do some of the arrangements evolve drastically as the songs progress, but Kushnier keeps the track sequencing from becoming predictable, too. The album opens with "I Move," a tape recorded conversation, and has intermittent surprises like the phone messages from friends on "A Call From Curtis," "A Call From Ghislain," and "A Call From Emm," or the experimental "Everything Is Always." Similarly, "Welcome to Echo Valley, Saskatchewan" is an unusual track of electronic warbling while "When We Were Young" consists of fuzzy ambience.
Despite the disparity between some of these musical styles, the album holds together with a surprisingly tight and consistent weave. I’m not always crazy about Kushnier’s shy voice or some of the serviceable lyrics, but these are easy to ignore since there’s so much more going on in these songs that draws my interest. Strangely enough for an album over an hour long with almost twenty tracks, there are few missteps and no outright duds on this disc. Although there are many pop elements within, that none of the songs is perfectly polished for mass consumption is one of its many charms.
Veteran producer Sherard Ingram, perhaps best (un)known as the mysterious Drexciyan DJ Stingray, drops a full length of delectable abrasive electro that honors the memory of James Stinson while challenging conventions and often experimenting wildly.
After Stinson's tragic death, amidst the collective mourning lay the question of who would, or even could, take up the reins of deep Detroit electro that he and cohort Gerald Donald made together and individually under a plethora of shadowy monikers, the most infamous being the aquatic beings of Drexciya. Rephlex has thankfully decided to press forward with this, dropping Arpanet's respectable Quantum Transposition last year, and now this gritty sophomore full length from Urban Tribe. Those familiar with the project's Mo Wax recordings or Ingram's collaborative work with luminaries like Juan Atkins and Kirk DeGiorgio might be caught off guard by this atonal funk workout.
To clarify, Authorized Clinical Trials does not engage in derivative Drexciyan mimicry. Dissonant hits and industrial snares trump the deep sea beauty and late-period interstellar noodling of that unavoidably retired project, not to say that the album is wholly drained of melody. Ingram peppers minimalist tracks like "Axon" and the previously released single "Biohazard 17284" with synth flourishes among the bass, beats, and noise. "Amino Acid Sequence" stands out with a heavy 4/4 kick-snare combo supplemented by an addictively vibrant yet sparingly used bleepy loop, reminiscent of some of the best moments on Harnessed The Storm or Neptune's Lair.
As implied before, Urban Tribe perfoms as expected from a contemporary of the Detroit greats yet brazenly defies convention, taking creative risks with the cocksure attitude of an iconoclast. The chord progressions of the pads on "RNA World" give it a certain retro-future quality essential for any self-respecting electro artist album, though its steady punchy rhythm appears more informed by classic techstep than by-the-numbers Motor City techno. The prototypically hip hop infused closer "Stop Codon" plods along ominously like a march to a 21st century Golgotha after the dancefloor fury of everything that preceeded it.
Sometimes the tempo turns "intelligently" erratic, sped up too fast for anyone to reasonably groove or dance to, as in the case of the skippable "Phospholipid Bilayer." Yet despite this the album hand-delivers enough filthy electro power to satisfy pious bass worshippers at home, in the club, or even under the sea.
Nils Erga is absent and gone with him is his viola. In his place is Anders Hana, member of Ultralyd and Moha!, and some tight underwear presumably hugging a woman's ass. Hana has some big shoes to fill with Erga gone, but manages to make great use of his guitar, summoning electric freak outs to accompany the band's mucky delivery.
The name Anders Hana scares me: I didn't like his solo release on Utech (it bored me to tears) and Moha! isn't a band to write home about. Each release demonstrated Hana's love for the guitar, but didn't showcase a single ounce of song writing talent. Noxagt, on the other hand, are precise and powerful. For all their energy and manic presentation, their music is beautifully arranged and written. It would seem, then, that Hana has found himself a home. Paired with the heart-attack-inducing, rhythmic convulsions of Kjetil D. Brandsdal and Jan Christian Lauritzen, Hana's guitar finally sounds fantastic. His love for the instrument brings the whole album home.
Brandsdal and Lauritzen still like to sound as though they're trying to fight themselves out of a paper sack with a chain-saw, but their sloppy, muggy chops are now highlighted by a guitar. At first the difference isn't readily apparent. Erga's viola work was magnificent, making the instrument sound natural in a setting it wouldn't normally be placed in. Replacing that sound with a guitar has its advantages, though, one of them being Hana's ability to let the instrument lead him as much as he leads it. Feedback, the light hum of strings being teased, and the shriek of an abused fret board figure heavily on this album, making it a rougher and more sizzling album than anything else in the band's discography.
The differences are not enormous, even if they become more obvious later. This album chugs more than their other records, it has more open space rather than more chaotic arrangements. Everything is much slower and more focused on timbre this time around. Noxagt remains the same in the most essential ways, Hana has simply entered to modify their presentation. Noxagt fans might be disappointed by the lack of viola power on this record, but Hana has finally proven he's a competent musician and band member. In the end, this is a tweak in the band's work that I suspect will birth more and different fruit in the future.
Dave Pajo has historically been known as the go-to man for guitar ability and sound: when Billy Corgan told Matt Sweeney "I want to get that guitar sound in Slint," Sweeney's reaction was simply, "Why don't we just get the guitarist from Slint?" On his second release under his last name, Dave has taken things further and demonstrated he has mastered the technique of total songcraft, something deftly exhibited on Pajo but perfected here.
When I first saw his first self-led project live, Aerial M, David wouldn't even face the crowd, nevermind singing in front of a crowd. Over the years his vocals have become more prominent and here it seems like they're no longer just another instrument, but in the driver's seat of the song, taking front row center at times while an arrangement of organ, piano, and strings now accompany competant guitar, bass, and drumming. I have always been impressed with every step Pajo has taken along the way with the evolution of his own projects, but more than ever, he is showing his true talents as a fully-realized multi-faceted composer.
For the most part, David presents an album with a heaping amount of variety. Not only does he show that he can do Beatle-esque blues and power pop with songs like "We Get Along, Mostly" and "Foolish King," but he even makes a kind of nod to the old Aerial M days with the instrumental "Insomnia Song." Most of the first half of 1968 is very dark, subject wise, despite the bright, white cover and lush, elegant booklet. "Who's That Knocking" opens the album with words like a very grim lullaby and musically it shifts between some contrasting movements without a weak spot in its nearly six minutes. "The Devil Wants His Revenge" comes up a couple times, adding more evidence to my theory that Pajo must have signed a pact similar to Robert Johnson's: Dave's just too damned talented.
Even though he has been spending much of his time recently in Brooklyn, he's almost more in touch with his country roots than he has ever been, comically singing about "hillbilly killers on the run" in "Wrong Turn," followed by a murder and cannibalism by a river story in "Cyclone Eye." Additionally, he makes a nod to the Papa M singles series (the One, Two, Three,... EPs where songs were recorded at friends' places), however, where Papa M would include the collaboration of friends, "Walk Through the Dark," is a very introspective song with the recording made alone in a hotel.
The full sound returns for the endearing "Let It Be Me," and if there's a drum machine playing these beats on this or any of the other songs on 1968 (like it sounded like on Pajo), he's done a briulliant job of making them sound real nearly everywhere. "I've Just Restored My Will To Live Again," ironically ends the album on a very lyrically bright and optimistic note, completely contrasting the context of the song, recorded with only a simple guitar and voice on what's probably a very crummy, hand-held recorder.
1968 is very fluid, comfortable, and full sounding, and it's time that David Pajo isn't just "that guy who played with Tortoise, Stereolab, Royal Trux, Zwan, and Slint" (and that alone wouldn't be a bad way to be known) but regarded for his own strengths as an excellent composer and arranger.
Seattle's Jon Weisnewski (Bass/Vocals) and Nat Damm (Drums, ex-Tight Bros From Way Back When) have solidified a unique and devastating sonic battle axe left embedded in numerous skulls. Hand picked for the Alternative Tentacles roster by Jello Biafra, they encompass everything that has made rock, punk, and metal a dangerous sound for the last 18 years. Hungrily devouring the corpses Zeppelin and Sabbath; dissecting the still quivering bodies of Black Flag and Drive Like Jehu; infusing the essence of the still beating heart of The Melvins, Akimbo has released four pounding albums (on Alternative Tentacles, Seventh Rule Recordings, Dopamine Records, and Rockandroleplay). With a relentless touring schedule and an ever growing nation wide fan base, the Akimbo juggernaut is bent on leaving audiences a stunned, deaf, shuddering mass. Headed overseas to terrorize Europe in September and October 2006 with Jade Tree artists Young Widows (ex-Breather Resist). ===========EUROPEAN TOUR DATES===========9/20/2006 Acu Utrecht, Netherlands9/21/2006 TBA Den Helder, North Holland, Netherlands9/22/2006 Lintfabriek Kontich, Antwerp, Belgium9/23/2006 Le Batofar Paris, France9/24/2006 Le Caravan Serail Toulouse, France9/25/2006 TBA Basque Country, Spain9/26/2006 Dublin Carballo, A Coruna, Spain9/27/2006 TBA TBA, Portugal9/28/2006 Iroquai Jaen, Spain9/29/2006 Arrebato Zaragoza, Spain9/30/2006 TBA Lyon, France10/01/2006 Le Brooklyn Cafe Rouen, France10/02/2006 TBA Amsterdam, Netherlands10/03/2006 TBA Caen, France10/04/2006 Votre Choix Schifflingen, Luxembourg10/05/2006 ExHaus Trier, Germany10/06/2006 Exzess Frankfurt, Germany10/07/2006 Komma Esslingen, Germany10/08/2006 Stadtwerkstatt Linz, Austria10/09/2006 Yacht Club Brno, Czech Republic10/10/2006 007 Prag, Czech Republic10/11/2006 Immerhin Wurzburg, Germany10/12/2006 TwH Berlin, Germany10/13/2006 Juzi Göttingen, Germany10/14/2006 Ungdomshuset Copenhagen, Denmark10/16/2006 Juze Treff 9 Heidenheim, Germany10/17/2006 TBA Amsterdam, Netherlands ===========official band site: http://www.livetocrush.com/ myspace: http://myspace.com/akimbo photos by Lars Knudson: http://www.pbase.com/pistolswing/akimbo YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn_u78Ye_58 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VVg1dBcJ94 Read More
Barbara Morgenstern's whirlwind world tour inspired themes of changes and the nature of time on her first album since 2003's Nichts Muss. Her arrangements are frequently minimalistic, yet she strikes a delicate balance between warmth and precision that indicates a maturation of her pop sensibilities.
Exposure to new cultures informs the observation of the title track, an incantation that’s more piano than electro. That balance is rectified with the addictive “The Operator,” one of the album’s singles. Beat-friendly, its chorus is alluringly bittersweet in its reflection of constant motion even as it seems a little out of place among the album’s less frenetic material. The electronics are on equal footing with her piano playing when Morgenstern slows down on “Polar” and “Das Schöne Einheitsbild,” supplementing her melodies with blips and rhythms that prevent the songs from straying completely into unadorned singer-songwriter territory.
Morgenstern does a good job of keeping things fresh with changes in mood and instrumentation. On “Juist,” a slower instrumental, she brings in distorted elements that grab noticeable attention. Likewise, on “Alles Was Lebt Bewegt Sich,” the fuzzed sounds belie the song’s pop sheen and slowly gain prominence. She returns to electronic beats on “Quality Time” and “Mailand” before closing with the melancholic “Initials B.M.” The countries she visited on tour may not reflect so much in the music itself, but appear instead in her lyrics. “Die Japanische Schranke,” for instance, refers to a squeaky railway gate she encountered in Tokyo while “Unser Mann Aus Hollywood” is a story about an unhappy dream. In addition to the songwriting itself, one of Morgenstern’s strengths is her voice, which is pleasant to hear whether singing solo or with her own backing harmonies.
A few of the tracks could stand to be shortened, but that’s only a minor complaint for such an accomplished and satisfying album.