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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Mike Cooper is a difficult artist to situate, straddling as he doesseveral radically different musical spheres. There is thesinger-songwriter of the 1960s, working in a traditional folk-bluesvein alongside legends like Son House, Bukka White and John LeeHooker. There is the free-improvising maverick of the 70s,producing genre-defying free-folk-jazz with improv luminaries such asKeith Rowe, David Toop and Max Eastley. Then there is the mostrecent phase of Cooper's career, producing idiosyncratic modern exoticacombining his passions for Hawaiian lap-steel guitar with fieldrecordings, dusty record loops and forays into drone and noise.
In the past, I've made the case for Mike Cooper as a unique and largelyunderappreciated voice in modern music (read my previous reviews here and here),and these two new CD-Rs on the artist's own Hipshot label present yetmore evidence of Cooper's willingness to push out the boundaries of hisart. Spirit Songs attempts a complex synthesis of the three approaches mentioned above - song, improv and loops; while Giacintois an understated tribute to Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, afascinating tangent into abstract guitar drone. Once again, bothalbums are limited, handmade CD-Rs available exclusively from theartist himself, who suggests putting cash inside a birthday card andsending it to his address in Rome.
Spirit Songs is my favorite of the pair: a glorious marriage ofall three of Cooper's previous musical strategies; creating a stunninghybrid. The album contains 10 songs performed on fingerpickedacoustic and electric lap steel guitar, often looped and treated inreal time, with Cooper singing lyrics in a quietly meandering,semi-improvisatory manner that recalls a more polished Jandek. The style of songwriting is immediately recognizable as blues, but anintuitive, idiosyncratic form of folk-blues, with Cooper narratinglaments over matters personal and global, gentle universalisms thatdouble as political messages. All of this occurs over a looserhythmic framework provided by various noisy loops, with cracks,scratches and pops, echoes and distortions skipping out from everyrefrain. It's a gentle cacophony with subtle undercurrents ofbeauty and sadness, effortlessly nostalgic but still very rooted in thenow. I think that Mike Cooper can genuinely call this style hisown; I've never heard anything remotely like it, and it worksbeautifully, highlighting both song and singer, as well as the happyaccidents resulting from the intersection of structure and chaos. Most tracks seem to be recorded live to tape, with the title trackcoming from a live performance in front of an audience. In asense, Cooper prepared us for this direction with the unexpectedintrustion of song into his otherwise shambolic live CD-R Reluctant Swimmer/Virtual Surfer released last year, but Spirit Songs fully fleshes out the ideas only briefly glimpsed in that performance.
Giacinto represents yet another new approach from Cooper, thistime using the specific sound archicture of his National tri-plateresophonic guitar, exploring the sound produced on open strings with ahandheld battery-operated electric fan. This produces acontinuous note, not unlike an e-bowed electric guitar, but on theNational tri-plate acoustic it produces strange overtones and complexharmonics that shift, bend and mutate as the fan is applied atdifferent angles to differente combinations of strings. Thisresults in a suite of strikingly unique drone pieces which have aspecific alien resonance that immediately sets them apart from mostother drone musics produced with analog or digital methods. Ofcourse, Cooper cannot help but fill out these drone compositions withhis live-sampling and looping techniques, producing several long-formpieces that gradually build up layers of hypnotic drone at differenttones and pitches, building up an immersive sonic atmosphere that attimes reminded me of Sublime Frequencies' Broken Hearted Dragonflies CDof "insect electronica" recorded in Southest Asia. The differencehere is that Cooper makes his insects buzz, hum and sing along with hisincredible improvisatory instinct; only occasionally does the joke wearthin on Giacinto, which is a lot more than I can say for many other current groups producing low-tech drone.
Sometimes it can seem—especially to people like me who write aboutmusic and receive thousands of flimsy CD-R demos and promos everymonth—that recording and releasing music has become almost too easyand democratic these days, leading to an underground market floodedwith homegrown crap that would have been better left languishing on thebedroom floor. An artist like Mike Cooper, however, with hiswillingly unprofressional and strictly uncommercial home operation, isproducing amazing music to rival the best of the current critical"canon" of experimental music, can restore my faith in the newdemocracy of the digital age.
Hard techno purists have come to rely on the handful of twelve-inchesfrom the Collabs series, brainchild of Joachem Papp (a.k.a. Speedy J)in partnership with select formidable co-conspirators. Here, one suchparticipant, globetrotting DJ/producer Chris Liebing, adds hisdancefloor know-how to the mix, yielding powerful results.
The insertion of an apparent "equal partner" with a somewhat less reliable solo discography led me to wonder if Metalismmight contain a diluted, tamer sound. Thankfully, such fears wereunnecessary, and those who have followed Paap's career to this pointcan rest assured of what lies beneath the plastic shrinkwrap. Darknessundeniably defines this industrial strength outing, starting from therumbling ambience, and subsequent rhythmic as well as arrhythmicinterruptions, of "Lego," which segues smoothly into the machine funkof the following track "Modish Ride."
Still, the album's truly nasty side remains relatively subdued until"Hilt," a clanging, howling track driven by a heavy, sludge-soaked beatakin to labelmate T. Raumschmiere's ugliest work. From there on, thetempo rises as does the noise level, with the distorted bass of"Tunox," and arpeggiated squelches of "Acid Trezcore" capable ofensnaring helpless clubgoers and passive home listeners alike. Thelengthy breakdown on "Cream 3" is nothing short of decimating and thethought of experiencing these grinding, frying electronics on asuperclub's soundsystem inspires chills. Thankfully, the initiallybeatless "Eventide" gives weary feet a break with swelling cinematicstrings and bleak supportive drones before finishing with the disperateclosers "Lava" and "Assault." A live recording of "Trikco," originallyreleased on a Collabs 12" from the duo, appears as a bonus and, whileappreciated, disrupts the album's flow, preventing much in the way ofclosure.
While never quite matching the expansive journeylike qualities nor the furious BPMs of Paap's 2002 stunning Loudboxer, Metalismmakes up for its occasionally haphazard lack of cohesion with animpressive 74 minute presentation of high caliber composition andproduction acumen. I should have expected nothing less.
This five-song EP is just what the title says: free music. The entire album can be downloaded from the 50FootWave Web site,along with artwork, and the band is encouraging downloaders to sharethe love through online file sharing, burning CDs for friends, oranything other means they can think of. And music this good should beshared.
Kristin Hersh and her post-Throwing Muses band are back with not only atight EP of solid rock, but a different approach in delivering thatmusic. 50FootWave is one of the growing number of bands who actually encourage the sharing of officialreleases among listeners. Fed up with the money-mindedness of the musicindustry as a whole, Hersh is lashing back by taking the opposite tack.The music is what matters here, not the money, and reaching fans is thegoal, rather than reaping profits. Word of mouth has always been thebest advertisement and while giving away an entire EP of brand-newmaterial might be a risky move, I think 50FootWave will see it pay off,and in spades.
Looking past the delivery method, the EP itself is five songs of roughrollicking guitars and Hersh's distinctive sandpaper-wrapped voice. Sheclearly hasn't lost her edge and the songwriting is as strong asanything the Muses ever released. The lyrics are distilled down to thebones, cutting with a sharp bare directness and filled with images ofclear blue skies, dark dark days, and coming to terms with it all. Itsometimes seems a voice as soft as hers can be could be drowned out bythe heavy guitars, but she overwhelms them with sheer attitude. Hersh'sguitar may not snarl the way it on Limbo or University, but the soundhas a menace all its own, much like the band's watery moniker itcrashes down in a more solid and inescapable way.
This small set of songs is perfect in a way to release in this form;there's more than enough here to get any new fan hooked and headed tothe record store to find more and just enough to satisfy an older fan,at least until the next full-length release.
Once again a small collection of Four Tet music is packaged with a comprehensive all-inclusive DVD of Four Tet videos and once again the results are thorough enough to please everybody. Domino
Everything Ecstatic Films is a collection of music videos for every song from 2005's Everything Ecstatic: some are homemade by Kieran Hebden's close friends, others are clearly professional. The first one I saw last year was for the song "Smile Around the Face," which I continuously show at my music video night in Boston. Only a small few Americans recognize the lead character—British actor Mark Heap, who I know as the offbeat oddball Brian from the fantastic TV comedy Spaced—as the camera is focused only on his head as it follows him from a shower, to a walk around town, and to various other places (even a little kid jumps on him at one point!).
A lot of the other videos are less geared for an MTV-crowd but provide excellent visuals that could either backdrop Four Tet live performances or serve as excellent visuals at a music video night in a loud bar. "A Joy," for example, is a stunning, colorful animation by Jodie Mack, while "High Fives," by Ed Holdsworth, has surreal animations with actual people, including Kieran sporting four eyes. Other videos like "Sun Drums and Soil," by Jason Evans and "Fuji Check," by Kieran, himself, are of home video quality, but not displeasing at all, especially "You Were There With Me," which features uber sweetheart Kathryn Bint jumping in circles in various places all across the world!
The companion audio portion is Everything Ecstatic 2, an EP of previously unreleased recordings, including a 16 minute/16 second long version of "Turtle Turtle Up," originally only a brief piece on last year's Everything Ecstatic. "Sun Drums and Soil (Part 2)" includes a lot of elements from the first version but is more jazzed up. "Watching Wavelength" and "Ending" aren't terribly memorable, while the highlight for me is the new song, "This Is Six Minutes," which doesn't sound like a toss-away or outtake, but a typical track in reliable Four Tet form: it's constructed entirely from samples of other music, however it's far more complex than most other Four Tet music, with multiple layers of guitars, drums, keyboards and marimba-like instruments, all weaved together to form an intricate audio tapestry.
Together with the DVD/EP release of "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth," the entire music video collection of Four Tet can be obtained. Once again I want to stress to all the industry professional bitching about lower sales of CDs: stop holding back. Give people something special, like this, and the praise will follow.
TheDanbury, CT-based Equation Records is home to Troum's latest release: afantastic picture 12" disc LP with four new Troum mini-masterpieces,limited to 500 copies and hand numbered with as much loving care asTroum put into their music.
While Troum are known and worshipped (in unfairly small numbers) fortheir vast, gorgeous soundscapes, this time, they sound far moreaggressive and serious. The 'open' side begins forcefully with"Tatan," as its relentless, echoed, driving rhythm is decorated withthe bleeding howls of guitar noises and ghostly sounds. "Aurddrach"eases in more quietly, with a signature Troum depth-defying sound and afaster paced, but more subtle rhythmic loop. Both rhythm and atmospherebuild concurrently until the sound is so massive, and then it breaks,quieting down, as if they're laying a beast to rest.
The 'closed' side is far more reserved, contained, and concealed. Rhtyhms of "Chertanovo" only barely evolve after about four minutesinto the piece, and even then, they're provided by the echoes of themain sound sources, which are thunderous and rumbling. It's like beinghidden deep, beneath the earth in the massive darkness, where only afew glimmers of light can be seen through cracks far above. "Chertanovo" doesn't make a grand exit, it only creeps off into theinfinite darkness. "Yemanja" ends the release with a sad and slowanthemic melody. Elongated and emotional, it's a reminder that it'salmost criminal that Troum aren't as praised as much as the bands likeSunn O))) and Godspeed who have followed their foosteps on the same trails, but havereached different peaks and valleys in their expeditions.
Kazumoto Endo is a name sometimes referred to by harsh noise artists as the man that changed noise for them. Typically displeased with how noise came across on record, Endo's work was fresh, an attempt to generate new perspectives in a genre that could seem stale. Beyond the Valley of the Tapes collects a lot of his early and out of print material in attempt to bring that same perspective to a larger audience.
This double disc set from Troniks and Ninth Circle Music collects a lot of noise. The combined running time is 144 minutes and two seconds. Listening to both of these discs straight through is like asking for a migraine and then a boxing match with a bulldozer. Despite being two discs long, there are only eleven tracks on the collection, most of them running between nine and 20 or so minutes long. Just getting through the first half of the first disc can be a bit of a chore. The first three tracks are from a demo tape Endo released in 1994 and the fourth track is the first side of the Brutal Rainbow tape originally released in 1995. That series of noise is over an hour long all by itself. These tracks are definitely loud and definitely harsh, but every time I listen to them I have trouble finding whatever unique qualities others may have heard in those pieces. It isn't until the four shorter pieces start that I'm really taken by Killer Bug and what he did with noise.
The Cunt Explosion! and Your Wife Is Mine EPs were both released in 1995 and it is easy to see why they would have garnered some attention from the noise community. The tracks from those EPs that are included on this disc are short, roughly two to three minute long bursts of cluttered sounds, screams, junk being tossed around inside a metal box, and total feedback. Instead of being densely layered clouds of almost total chaos, Killer Bug's sound is more refined on these EPs, slightly easier to take in, but no less harsh for it. It's easy to think that these were more closely watched and more caringly constructed sound pieces than just freeform noise riots. Both "Masked Porno Star" and "Slaughter on the Beach" are strangely lo-fi sounding extracts of freaked out equipment buzzing and burning away in a series of rapid flashes and blazing edits. Listening to them is a lot more fun than trying to get through the first half of the disc in one sitting. I've been able to listen to these over and over with a great deal of pleasure. Though the first half of the disc is both uneven and sloppy, listening to a track here or a track there without feeling the need to associate them with anything else on the disc is nice. It at least provides a sense of movement in Endo's composition, showing exactly how he grew in the year between his demos and his earliest releases.
The second disc, with the exception of the live track, is much like the first half of the first disc. Live, Killer Bug must've been amazing. Despite the recording being slightly muffled, it's clear that Endo enjoyed throwing sucker punches at his audience. Everything from high-pitched synthesizer-like belches to unhinged screams populate his live performance. If his longer compositions had been as entertaining as his live performances were, sitting through the first fifty minutes or so of the second disc would be much less of a task and far more exciting. And this is evidently Killer Bug's first live performance. He came out strong, so I can only imagine his live material got stronger.
Regardless of whether or not all of the material on this relase is amazing or not, Killer Bug's material has its merits. "Steaming Gash," if listened to by itself, is a thrashing groan of cut up and destabilized anger punching its way through twenty minutes of sudden left turns and unexpected pitfalls. Trying to keep up with Endo's approach is fun enough, but trying to understand where it all came from is even better. It's as though Endo knew just how to open up his machines so as to make for the most insane ride of static eruptions and nose bleeds. The two EPs included in this collection are excellent slices of short, abusive noise that can't be found anywhere else. Everything else on the collection is worth hearing to some degree, but just make sure to listen to it a little bit at a time. Otherwise the whole collection can seem a little too intimidating and sometimes a little too repetitive.
Phil Spirito's oRSo project offers poor musicianship and lazy production on this holiday release. Featuring a band that might belong to a small Appalachian town, each of these songs sound like a drunken evening spent reveling in the depression of the winter season.
There are eleven musicians credited on this six song release and yet it sounds like one drunken man clumsily fumbling through a song about whether or not Christmas is today or yesterday. It's appropriate that he doesn't know, sounding as intoxicated as he does. The rest of the musicians sound the same, half-heartedly plucking their way around banjos and violins or honking on saxophones that merely compound the tepid nature of the compositions and add to the sense that this was all thrown together at the last second. Apparently the record was assembled to accompany an Arthur Pembleton gallery dedicated to his deceased mother, a woman that suffered from dementia and couldn't remember when Christmas was. That's all fine and dandy, but there's no reason to make five really crummy versions of a song in order to preserve her memory. One would've been enough and even that's stretching it.
After hearing "Is Christmas tomorrow? / Or was it yesterday?" over and over again for a period of ten minutes, I wanted to drive a hot poker through my ears. I had to take out this already brief EP and listen to something else before I could come back and listen to the final two songs. The poor quality of the recordings and the way that Spirito enjoys layering instruments is irritating. His incessant use of poorly tuned instruments and faded production values makes the entire record sound like it was recorded in a dive bar where nobody was paying attention to anything that was going on. Even if this CD wasn't entirely out of season by this point, it'd have nothing to contribute to the Christmas spirit. Unless, perhaps, I felt like finding a knife and slashing my wrists on Christmas Eve. There are better drinking albums dedicated to ruining the spirit of giving than this and there are certainly better Christmas and holiday albums to be found. This is an unnecessary contribution to a brand of music that is already choked with elf manure and sleigh bells from hell.
Quintron's organ is dirty. It's custom built, has enough power behind it to level any guitar, and he plays it while simultaneously manipulating his own drum buddy creation, another drum machine, a hi-hat, and singing. If his dirty organ isn't enough to get down to, then surely his attitude and Miss Pussycat's love for hand-puppets will inspire many horizontal polkas and vertical ass bumping.
History be damned for a moment: Quintron, his organ, Miss Pussycat, and her puppets are all from New Orleans. To be more specific, they claim to be and sound absolutely like they are of the swamp. Not from it, though. Forget any conventions concerning origin and musical influence via geography—they might as well have been born in a swamp and thus their music is just as murky, muddy, sweaty, and hot. Catching Quintron and Miss Pussycat live might be a bit mystifying at first. When I saw them live with the Cramps in St. Louis, I wasn't sure whether I was watching a performance art group or a musical duo. Quintron was a shirtless, one-man musical machine manipulating what looked like an entirely pointless tin can lit up from the inside and boasting a bevy of switches and knobs, playing hi-hat here and there, and messing about with other drum equipment. Miss Pussycat was decked out in a blue dress like one a flight attendant from the 1950s might wear, shaking maracas, and generally playing off the role of totally hot sex kitten meant to seduce every man and open minded woman in the crowd. Then there were the puppet shows. I remember termites of evil intent, alligators, crawfish, and other denizens of the swamp interacting in fits of hilarity and seeming nonsense. What was clear was that when they played, there was no shortage of energy or libido for them to draw from. They were having a blast on stage and everyone in the crowd was as well, despite St. Louis crowds being notorious for their complete lack of enthusiasm towards new and unfamiliar bands. I didn't forget them, to say the least. At first, their appearance on Tigerbeat6 didn't strike me as being appropriate, but after hearing Swamp Tech my mind has changed entirely.
This album was recorded live. Thank god, too. My memory of Quintron and Miss Pussycat as a live duo hasn't been spoiled by this album. The tour was a long time ago, but as soon as "Shoplifter" started, I was quite sure this was, in fact, the same band doing exactly what they did so well on stage. What they do so well is rock out like two lovers high on the powers of heavy beats and chaotic road life. There is no multi-tracking in rock n' roll and these two understand that. There can be only sweat, blood, beer swilling, and boot stomping and that is all this duo provides, with just a few twists. Their rock n' roll is laden with a southern swagger that'd make Lynyrd Skynyrd blush and most art-rock groups run for cover. Here is a world of Madison Squirrel Gardens, strange free-association, Kiss covers, bouncing beat boxes, and the promise of a night full of wanton disaster and drunken vandalism. This southern bounce isn't afraid of the word faggot or the promised thrill of shoplifting, the only fear is that one day there will be no boogie and who knows what'll happen to the body when the boogie dies. When they bother to slow down, their music comes across as a steamboat stroll through the evening, lit only by fireflies and heavy drinks that never seem to empty. No matter what the mood, no matter what the occaision, Quintron and Miss Pussycat bleed their music, letting all the excitement of New Orleans and the surrounding area seep from them in glorious perversion and strange hallucinatory bouts of dance.
When Miss Pussycat sings, there is no room for confusion. She's always excited, screaming for all her lungs are worth and when Quintron lets himself loose, it's like being smacked by a wave of swagger and bravado that could only be acquired by hitting the road and living life the hard way for a long time. There are moments when the album drags just slightly. For all its raw power, there are a few bells and whistles tossed in musically that I could do without. That's just me nitpicking, though. This is balls to the wall music, meant for feeling awesome in the light of pure adrenaline-induced activity. The DVD that comes with the CD edition of Swamp Tech features some of Miss Pussycat's puppet shows. So, after listening to their awesome cover of "God of Thunder" (who knew I could like a Kiss song?) a billion times and bellowing its lyrics as though they meant everything in the world, watch the DVD and be prepared for some comedy. This isn't novelty music, this is power and groove harnessed through an organ, an organ that'd make all the machismo of a guitar look limp and pathetic in its wake. Rock n' roll might've somehow died, but Quintron gets the idea. Give the drunken organist another shot and turn the volume up.
This disk combines recordings from two well-known Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP )researchers: Raymond Cass, whose work makes up the bulk of this disk, and Dr. Konstanin Raudive, who not only produced thousands of tapes during his lifetime but is also alleged to have appeared on recordings himself after his death. (In case you were wondering, Dr. Raudive says he's "living fine.")
The packaging for this rarely available release (it's gone out of printtwice in seven years) is lush and obviously produced with care. Thebooklet includes not only an essay explaining EVP, but also includesdetailed and thorough biographies of Cass, Raudive, and FriedrichJurgenson (who pioneered the technique after finding voices on histapes of bird calls). The cover image—an adaptation of apolygraph—and the photos of Cass and Jurgenson are printed in asilvery ink with a slight metallic sheen. The polygraph image isrepeated in the inside of the booklet and is the perfect visualrepresentation of eerie, distorted speech. The title itself issignificant too...a ghost orchid is a tiny and rare flower, hard tocome by and grow.
I was a bit apprehensive of listening to this CD initially—I'm thesort of person who avoids scary movies and covered her eyes during thebloody bits in Gladiator—but I actually did not find the recordings to be particularly scary orcreepy, perhaps because I was expecting them to be. If I walked into an emptyroom where these recordings were being played, however, I can't say I wouldn'tbe scared half to death. The voices do sound ethereal and other-worldly at times;at other times they sound like a commercial or the oldies stationbeing played on a cheap stereo down the block. They speak in English,German, Russian, and Latvian, and sometimes combinations of severallanguages (the so-called "polyglot voices"). They sing, laugh, and aresaid to respond directly to researchers and address them by name. Eachfragment is repeated three times to give the listener a chance toreally hear and absorb the voices.
These voices are said to be ghosts attempting to communicate from theafterlife (including Winston Churchill), psychic impressions from theresearcher himself, and even extraterrestrial beings (the evidence forthis being their bad grammar). I'm not sure I buy any of thoseexplanations myself, but I do find these recordings fascinatingand compelling. Some of the transcriptions of the voices are a stretchand don't sound to me much like what they're "supposed" to (I've alsopossibly identified an "unknown" alien word as a German surname). Evenviewing these recordings as the results of radio interference, cordlessphones butting in, or CB or shortwave radios breaking through, they canbe enjoyed as the sonic equivalent of a found poem.
The second release from this New England singer/songwriter is aquiet, twangy gem that brings to mind slow and sad days long gone. His voice is plaintive, lonely, spare, vulnerable, andsometimes charmingly out of tune.
His delicate playing is almost asexpressive as his singing. He blends bluegrass with a little blues anda touch of old-time country for a sound that's almost like ancestralmemory. It's hard to tell if there's anyone else on the album besides him, butI wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn the album was recorded bySmaldone picking his steel guitar and wailing into a 4-track in a dustyempty room.
Hither and Thither is a 40-minute trip back into ablack-and-white silent film world of fragile beauty. It's familiar butthe era it recalls is so far gone it feels new again, like a book fromchildhood found and reread as an adult.
It seems that nine times out of ten whatever instrument Keiji Haino turns his hand to (or whoever he collaborates with) he comes out of the experience with an hour or so of brilliance. This electronics-based recording features a bundle of obscure black boxes and a digital theremin that he uses and investigates to create more than just your average everyday abstract soundscapes.
There aren’t many artists with as persistently interesting, diverse and quality discographies as Haino and even fewer who can dip between solo blues and heavy electronics in a year. Seeing as, for some, he’s a near sacrosanct Japanese icon of free playing, noise, guitar noodling blues and jazz warfare it sometimes feels like Haino could never do any wrong. Whatever the truth of the matter, there isn’t a single fault or misstep on this whole record. It’s a mark of the man’s genius how incredible this release manages to sound.
Haino seems to have stumbled on the secret of balancing the ‘letting go‘ of musical exploration with creating coherent, interesting and musical pieces that can both be enjoyed and dug into. These exploratory movements gel into four separate pieces that go from susurration to all out warfare and never dip into showmanship or masturbation. This is an instantly accessible wondrous auditory hit where his other 2005 release Global Ancient Atmosphere (a solo percussion exploration) still hasn’t yielded any joy despite long hours.
The four untitled tracks here range in length from an eight minute opener to the literally dizzying near thirty minute finale. Both "Track 1" and "Track 3" create a lush sounding lost tropical forest environment through (what I imagine to be) the spiralling of his fingers through the invisible electric air. Its difficult to get my ears close enough to the speakers to pick up all the twittering and ‘monkey call’ SFX and duelling sine waves that never touch.
"Track 2" is a slightly more typical electronic noisy number; a sludgy howling blizzard mix of mauled vocals, squeaks, fog horns and that droid from Buck Rogers on vocals. The war horns and calloused thumb DJ scratch sounds add to the motionless madness, piling it on. But it’s "Track 4" that lifts the album into a whole other dimension/league. Rising up with digi-droplets in a wind tunnel into an insane bed and beautiful flute line the track is an astonishing ride. Featuring more bleeps than the first 10 Warp 12"s ascends into an oceanic expanse of ecstasy rushes and waterfalls of inchoate flourishes of his hands. Firecrackers create powerful ripostes through a basic melodic overlapping pulse lines which appear utterly unrelated to any other sounds on the rest of LP. The spare use of probing, haunting whistling drone is almost monastic in its loneliness sounding like broke-down blues recorded in the empyrean. Seriously, this track is a must hear, I can’t stress this point enough.
As for a translation of the title, Babelfish comes up a blank. I don’t think I want any clues, I’m happy to bathe in the sound.