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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This is the third album from the wonderfully eclectic Barbez. Mixing mainly eastern European traditional music with cabaret, avant garde and straight up rock Insignificance is both unique sounding yet it sounds utterly familiar. A less than standard instrumentation and an immensely talented singer make for a gem of an album.
Insignificance is bathed in eastern European charm, no small amount of thanks to Russian singer Ksenia Vidyaykina whose operatic yet folky voice holds centre court whenever it appears. At first I found Vidyaykina’s voice hard to listen to, it reminded me of poor goth metal bands who employ a classically trained female singer to bring them some artistic credibility but I was allowing prejudices to get in the way of appreciating the quality of her performance. Her voice is powerful yet controlled, sometimes though it breaks through into a more passionate and less stiff phrasing, especially on the traditional songs “As for the Little Grey Rabbit” and "The Sea Spread Wide."
The rest of the band are not playing second fiddle to Vidyaykina, each of the other players are equally tight and talented. Tunick’s marimba and vibraphone add a more worldly feel to the album, expanding its borders past the obvious eastern European settings. There are two different drummers and it’s hard to tell that it wasn’t the work of one regular drummer, both play sympathetically to the other musicians and are obviously well versed in various forms of traditional music. Most tracks change timings throughout their duration, rarely is something as a 4/4 beat present yet it doesn’t ever sound like Barbez are trying to make the music more complicated for the sake of being complicated. In fact it sounds beautifully simple.
What I can’t let go unmentioned is Pamelia Kurstin’s incredible theremin playing. When I first listened to the album I thought there were violin and cello players, on consulting the sleeve notes it appears I was very much mistaken, all of the “strings” were Kurstin. The theremin is famously hard to play as a tonal instrument and I must take my hat off to her for producing such wonderful melodies from it, it’s easy to see why the late Bob Moog held her in such high regard. After hearing “Strange” and “Song of the Moldau” (originally “Das Lied von der Moldau” by Brecht and Eisler) it has completely opened my ears as to how a theremin should sound.
It is very hard to find fault with Insignificance. Nothing sounds forced or contrived. The performances from all the musicians are flawless, they all are clearly comfortable with their chosen instrument and with playing with each other. It can take a couple of listens to fully come to terms with the songs, they are carefully crafted and it needs some effort and attention from the listener to appreciate them. This small amount of effort pays off in the long run as these songs are so intricate that every time I listen to Insignificance I find something new lurking between the notes.
I don't really give a damn about psychedelic free association or extended mind jams. Typically all any of that adds up to is a mess of strange guitar solos and warped sounds bouncing of each other, all in an attempt to sound like a German group from the 70s. Luckily the Finnish employ that nasty word in a completely different manner and, in the case of Lumottu Karkkipurkki, the music is closer to bizarre, alienating sound collages than anything produced in the '70s with a guitar and acid.
The title translates as "The Enchanted Candy Jar (Free System)" according to the Fonal website and, though it wasn't picked up by a hip label, stands up well against the Kellari Juniversumi album also released last year. The format of the album is roughly the same as the one used on that album. Many of the songs are anywhere from two to four minutes and are free standing collages of broken or poorly tuned instruments, toys, analog sounds, and kitchen sinks (who knows exactly what the band used to put this all together). It was originally released in 2001 as a double 8" lathe cut picture disc and is most likely impossible to find in that enticing format. Luckily Fonal has decided to re-release it so that I can sit in my chair uncomfortably and twitch to the music provided.
The title comes from a Finnish book of children's stories and details that travels of a child who has a magical candy jar. Every time he takes a different candy from the jar, his surroundings change. Aside from the drug connotations that can be read into this story, the idea is intriguing enough and works well with the aforementioned format. Each track stands separate from all of the others, united only by their amorphous construction and lack of any recognizable melody. Kemialliset Ystävät adhere to strictly textural principles in the production of their songs, allowing for static, reversed keyboards, tumbling acoustic guitars, electric chicanery, and other random sources to assault the stereo at will. I can only presume that these songs must represent, in some way, a child's adventures with the candy.
If this all sounds a bit messy, that's because it is, but that's also where Lumottu Karkkipurkki gets all its charm. All the sounds are genuinely alien, demonstrating the group's ability to create unique worlds within a small period of time and with an obviously explosive imagination. The album sounds best when a series of short, deliberately chaotic pieces follow each other immediately, such as the series from "Puttos" (track 10) to "Systeemi 4" (track 13). The sudden changes in sound sources causes immediate mood shifts, throwing me off balance and out of sorts every time I listen to it. The monotone, often bleak passages on the album are the most interesting: Thomas Ligotti, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and others come immediately to mind every time I hear them. Their black souls are hidden behind other song's more playful attitudes, but the plucked guitars and their twisted melodies can only inspire pictures of desolate landscapes and hazy figures, too frightful to imagine, wandering in the distance.
All this makes Kemialliset Ystävät far more interesting than many of their contemporaries, all of whom seem to be interested in forging a new and strange "folk" movement. I'm not sure exactly how Kemialliset Ystävät got mixed up in the category to begin with. Kemialliset Ystävät are far more modern, using technology both old and new to forge horror stories and plays out of sound instead of words or sets. The outlets that have covered Fonal and especially this band seem to want to place the band in a musical phenomenon that it has nothing to do with. If there is anything folk-like about the band, it comes from the background, in the inspiration the band draws from in making their records. Tribal, peace, love, and happiness-derived free rock this is not. Thankfully this group delivers more than most of that pretend intellectual or spiritual crap.
At first I thought Calla's third album was good but before long I’ve come to think of them as the sort of band that owns the entire Low back catalogue but didn’t pay attention when Low's class was in session. Collisions is an ultimately bland record, not bad enough to warrant the master tapes being destroyed but certainly not interesting enough to make new listeners want to discover older albums.
From what I can tell, Calla used to be a well respected band. Previous releases on Young God and Sub Rosa should be making me raise an eyebrow or two but Collisions has made me wary. What I can only presume is this album is the product of a band getting lazy and resting on its old credibility while watering down its music to appeal to the kind of people who think Coldplay are the most experimental band on earth.
Collisions is well executed but irredeemably unoriginal, I don’t know about the rest of the world but here in Dublin every “sensitive” rock band sounds like this. Granted most of them aren’t even half as talented as Calla but a lack of inspiration is a lack of inspiration no matter how good a musician you are. “So Far, So What” is typical of being well played but completely unmemorable. In fact listening to the record for what seems like the tenth time over the last few days I don’t actually remember hearing most of these songs before. The band seems to wake up towards the end of the album, after eight tracks of boredom there is all of a sudden a couple of tracks with backbone. “Testify” is about as good as it gets and for most of the song it is very good. The guitars are spiky, the drums are pounding and there’s some nice electric organ in the chorus. The vocals let it down, Valle sounds like he’s on a heavy dose of sedatives. “Swagger” continues the strong musical element, creating a powerful rhythm with guitars chugging and dancing all over the place. Valle still sounds doped to the eyes.
I can honestly say that apart from the couple of good tracks mentioned above, this CD will not be likely to be spun again under my roof.
For Still Valley Mirror mainstays Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemanncollaborated with Jim O'Rourke between May, 2002 and January, 2004.Much of Mirror's output has suffered from prohibitive pricing and/orfrustratingly limited runs but thankfully CD re-issues such as these can bring the music to more masses.
For Still Valley Mirror mainstays Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemanncollaborated with Jim O'Rourke between May, 2002 and January, 2004.Much of Mirror's output has suffered from prohibitive pricing and/orfrustratingly limited runs but thankfully CD re-issues such as these can bring the music to more masses. Die Stadt
The disc comes in an olive green die-cut sleeve with a kitty-shaped cutaway and the inner sleeve has photos of aged small town buildings set in a forested valley. Thus, the music seems to be an encomium of a particular "still valley," but certainly transferable to the many others that still pepper the world. There are three tracks, the original two from the LP being over nineteen minutes in length and the one in-between being about nine and a half minutes. All are of the same aesthetic as oscillating drones turn over ever so slowly and smoothly while indeterminable bits of sonic minutiae accentuate the movement.
While many Mirror albums fill a room with an aura just shy of nothingness, this one is a little more forward but still brimming with the same sort of space and analog warmth. Pure ambient field recordings might have been more evocative of a valley but these pieces are wholly beautiful in their own. There is a timelessness to this music that equals the stillness of the valley. Chalk and Heemann have all but mastered their art.
No word just yet as to what's next from Mirror, but Chalk has since released The River That Flows Into The Sands and Heemann has begun a new project with Timo Van Luijk called In Camera.
I turned on to Bpitch Control around the Berlin 2001 compilation, which at thetime was the only available CD release besides its counterpart, Berlin 2000, the first label sampler. The things that first drew me to the label were its punker-collective ethos,reflected in the sleeve designs and the prideful futurism and homogeneity ofpresentation, and the glistening, urban mash-up of their aesthetic, injectingseams of industrial grit, glitchist abstraction, and flashy homage to passétechno and trance classics into the sleek German electro sound.
With the electro revival in full swing at this time, thelabel seemed to ignore, eclipse, or simply swallow all else. With trends fully-waned last year, anever-stronger Bpitch honored its 100th release with a second pair ofdefining compilations, emphasizing both the range of artists “under theirtent,” and the continuing relevance of their effortless and unnamable groupaesthetic, from darkened, seductive portrait of Berlin to crystalline global popdone over with the sexy insurgence of punk or industrial ideologies.
BPC 101, the first Campingis a retrospective of classic Bpitch tracks from the beginning. Obviously, at 20 tracks, essentials get leftout (one of the most noteable being TokTok and Soffy O’s out-of-printmasterstroke, “Missy Queen’s Gonna Die”), but many of the best Bpitch artistsare well-represented by some of their best tracks, starting with Kiki’s “LovSikk,” a track representative in its beautiful complication of mood. To a thin, tin-canned bell pattern rhythm, aglossy, Night Rider throb rides thecartooned, chiming swells of a decadent house anthem. The plasticity of these melodic surface parts,in juxtaposition with the coolly dark momentum and stiff pan-ethnic attempts ofthe rhythm track, create tickling complexities that remain subtle andinviting. Nearly every track here begs asimilar analysis, connecting them with a pantheon of popular styles and anunbiased willingness to experiment with texture and association, all in a kindof understated support of collectivity and inspiration through contrast.
The only thing slightly aggravating about Camping is the exclusion of many fine orhard to find label tracks for a few newer or more mediocre ones. Several tracks (Tomas Andersson, Kiki, PaulKalkbrenner) get weighted down in a bottom-heavy, numb techno obsession,feeling particularly unrepresentative of the artists and shrinking the etherealqualities of some of the label’s more seminal tracks also included. The only complete dud, Housemeister’s “Do YouWanna Funk” inexcusably repeats a clip of Kid Rock’s Joe C engaged in banaltoasting that is so annoying I can hardly imagine its appeal even to Europeansless incensed by the Kid Rock phenomenon.
Camping 2 existsnot as an attempt to correct the small missteps or exclusions of itspredecessor; instead its an equally indispensable collection of newer,vinyl-only tracks from some of the most recent Bpitch platters, curated byEllen Allien. The label-founder hasalways included plenty of label tracks into her mixes, and it is an especiallynice follow-up to the first Camping’s‘greatest hits’ presentation to create a vision of the label’s diverse future.
The compilation touches extremes with several subdued b-sideremixes or left-field tracks from the likes of Mochipet, Modeselektor, andFeadz rich with elements of dubby glitch or IDM that have entered labelconsciousness more recently. Elsewhere,newer artists like Tomas Andersson and stalwarts like Paul Kalkbrenner throwdown some of the hardest, four-to-the-floor techno the label has seen,foreshadowing the sound of the more recent batch of 12” singles, dominated byAndersson’s daunting tracks which seem just as robotic and self-generating as theyare perfectly ecstatic, button-mashing rave-ups. Where this direction ended murky orbottom-heavy on the first Camping,here all is refined and sequenced nicely under Allien’s touch. It's especially nice to have rarer remixes,like Miss Kitten’s of Allien's “Alles Sehen” or Kiki's of “Your Body is MyBody,” on compact disc, as well as Allien's own highlights from so many greatBpitch records, hard to find or too numerous to collect.
The latest album from ADULT. is a fun collection of punchy electro tracks. Gimmie Troubleis more polished than previous releases and ADULT. sound more sure ofthemselves now that they have expanded to a trio. The album stumbles alittle but could be the start of something bigger and better from them.
Gimmie Trouble starts off promisingly enough, the title trackstomps along to its retro sounding drum machine as the guitar andsampler jerk about around the simple beat. Kuperus’ vocals are asmelodramatic as ever. The album continues in the same style and as thealbum goes on I found that Kuperus’ voice started to wear thin. Hereccentric pronunciations and diction were quirky at first but aftermultiple listens of the album it lost its charm. What I can't fault heron is sounding distinctive and full of conviction, something which alot of vocalists lack.
New member Samuel Consiglio provides the guitar on Gimmie Trouble.He borrows heavily from players like Rowland S. Howard and Keith Levenewithout adding anything distinctive to his licks. In fact, the meolodyin the final track “Seal Me In” sounds like it was lifted directly from“Wild World” by The Birthday Party. The post-punk chic of the guitardoes however fit in with ADULT.'s aesthetic considering all the drummachines sound like they belong to the age where you were lucky to haveany more than 8 samples in a box the size of a laptop.
ADULT. for me work best in small doses. I would gladly play a track or two off Gimmie Troubleat a DJ gig, any of the songs on this disc would get a dance floormoving. However as an album the songs are too similar to each other andthis makes listening to the album in one sitting a tedious job. Aslight bit of variation would have made this a far better album.Perhaps I’m being too critical as there are some great songs on it like“Disappoint the Youth” and “Helen Bach,” which are both first ratetracks. Gimmie Trouble is no masterpiece but the few standout tracks are worth a listen and the entire album can be boogied to very easily.
Up until this release I've never liked Aaron Dilloway's solo material. It's always seemed a little too keen in 'going for the all out 100% sick assault' as opposed to any gradients between that and anything less than pitch black. This release sees a ditching of density in favour of a little cheap subtlety putting it up there with the best of his work with Wolf Eyes, if not amongst the best of 2005's total Noise output.
His relocation to Kirtipur, Nepal (where this was recorded) during his split / break from Wolf Eyes obviously has something to do with the sample sources but it'd be impossible to say what effect this had had on his actual sound. Dilloway himself claims the release is 'cruder than usual' and it may well be made with less sophistication in terms of instrumentation and sonic building blocks but the result is outstanding. Only closer "Rotting Nepal 8" comes within the range of straightforward hurricane in your ears as the rest of the tracks delve into shortwave radio manipulations and jolting incontinent electronics. Dilloway gets hands-on with the revving up the digital dirt bike of "Rotting Nepal 4" from a steadily pulsing collection of buzzes, squeaks and clicks that loosens into a screeching chugging whine.
There seems to be a lot more control on Rotting Nepal than I've noticed previously, with some 'almost' delicate balancing of shortwave signals that are kept on the very edge of freefall distortion. The trapped rodent scream and alien growl of "Rotting Nepal 6" come together like an ugly melody and settles into what could happily pass as a Daelek beat before its overcome by distortion. "Rotting Nepal 1" is the highlight here, mixing up chopped and reverberated Nepalese speech samples and splinters of native instrumentation between subtle sandblasts of static. The piece has a rough dubby production style of handmade echoes, clicks and distorts spiked with clicks of scrambled signal. Throughout the album there are rhythmic shreds of cloudy noise throughout the album that eventually explode from their controlling valves ending in messy static. Amidst the endless conveyor built of releases this is one solo Wolf Eyes release that's really worth scrabbling about for.
Matthew S. Waldron's releases are more like captured events than bits of recorded material. This may be the result of his chosen methods of construction or it may be the product of the information and systems that feed his non-philosophy. Several interviews reveal him to be a deeply passionate individual whose music serves as an (irrational) extension of his beliefs and thought processes; this is made quite clear on Perekluchenie. He unveils a wrecking ball of written, spoken, and musical dialogue both immersive and fascinating, a complete package of reflection and strange association.
Perekluchenie is also the most peculiar album I've heard from Waldron. Granted there are quite a few unreleased and limited edition albums floating around, but the unsettling artwork, the short play that constitutes the liner notes, the odd reference to water bears and their even stranger abilities, all coalesce into an experience that isn't unlike learning to listen for the first time. It is strange not because Waldron has upped the dada-like ante to unheard of proportions, but because the whole thing is approachable. Embedded in the deepest part of these subterranean moans and monstrous pulsations is the warm heart of a human being attempting to make some sense of history, choices, and the immortality of subjective existence. Sounds broad, maybe, and it may sound a little exaggerated, but there is no exaggeration in the depth of Waldron's considerations. Perekluchenie, if it is to be judged as music and as a statement, is clear and illuminating, full of thoughts to be chewed upon.
Part of my excitement is due, at least in part, to my background in philosophy. The liner notes, a strange play consisting of a mutated peasant and donkey-headed "dandy," detail ethical and moral considerations while outlining historical concerns and the differences between rational and compassionate choices. Between the dialogue exists a series of unbelievable events that the two actors seem intimately involved in. Their strangeness increases with each exchange until finally Waldron ends the entire scene in a bit of irony. All of this spirals into and congeals with his music. It's a dense work of vocal samples, unintelligible drones, manic guitars, and a multi-sectioned ode to a hypothetical creature that is quite real. The title track, perhaps the most removed from the rest of the album, but bearing its title, is nearly silent except for the inclusion of voices provided by Diana Rogerson, Django Stapleton, Windy Chien, and others. Its concentration on a surgically altered narrative acts as an introduction, despite its position as the second track on the album. The rest of the album seems to revolve around this piece's meditation on decay of all kinds.
As usual, Waldron's compositional style lends itself to organic comparisons and the album itself admits of many biological influences. The artwork depicts seed and pod-like creatures emerging from disfigured human and avian bodies. There is room for vaginal and phallic discussion, as well. The constantly twisting metamorphoses that constitute both "Wretched Density" and "Hypothetical Tardigrade Resurrection, Parts 4, 5, & 6" acknowledge and increase those influences to the point that it becomes necessary to regard Perekluchenie as a biological event in and of itself. That event, however, escapes classical definition and consideration, such that anyone unwilling to open themselves to the experience will simply exclaim that there's "nothing to it."
More than anything I am impressed by how focused of an album Waldron has released this time around. His music and strange approach to sound mutation has always attracted me and, in many ways, that is no different here. There are new approaches present that I had not heard before from Waldron, but it is the melding of artwork, the written word, and music that makes this release so enjoyable and engrossing. The presentation is exquisite and the execution is concise, despite being full of symbolic and literal discourse that is worth some time to think about. If, however, this all seems too much, too conceptual in its extension, then take some comfort in knowing that this record is as enjoyable as anything Irr. App. (Ext.) has released and that it can be enjoyed by itself, without the deep reflection that was put into making it.
It would be easy to not give Brakes a second chance. The Englishfoursome have all the tics and tendencies that make me want to paintthem with the “British Post-Punk” brush and move along. Spiky guitars?Yep. Pissed of vocals? Check. Record released by Rough Trade?Obviously. But there's something else here that won't let me do awaywith them just yet.
Give Blood can certainly be misconstrued as just another entry into thecurrent crop of British bands mining the sights and sounds of 1980spost-punk and new wave, but there’s a certain genteelness that runsthroughout, a stumbling grace that saves it. “Heard About Your Band”and “I Can’t Stand to Stand Beside You” boil with sneers and barbedhooks. But while these and several other songs dutifully serve theirpurpose as the rockers on the albums, other songs are couched in theslouchy country that groups like Silver Jews have built their careerson. More remarkable is that Brakes are capable of being comfortable ineither guise. Witness their cover of Johnny Cash’s “Jackson,” which inthe hands of pent up vocalist Eamon Hamilton and guest star Liela Moss(of the Duke Spirit) becomes a nervy hoedown.
Meanwhile, “NY Pie” is awide-eyed country jaunt that manages to be charming without beingsickening. While the band does share a member with renowned Englishgroup British Sea Power, Brakes avoids that bands tendency forself-indulgence. Some of the songs here work better then others. Songslike “Cheney” and “Pick Up the Phone” seem like piss-takes if you askme, while genre exercise “All Night Disco Party” finds a lukewarmgroove before the band collectively realize it’s a joke.
For the mostpart though, this album finds a unique niche of hyper-activity and laidback. The album feels less like a record and more like a fun weekendproject. That being said, Brakes aren’t rewriting any rules here, buttheir tasteful and sprite rock will surely find some fans somewhere.
Carrying the same amount of silence, space and field recordings as itdoes accessible melody, this single forty minute piece is a patchwork ofplaces and memories. This is an album that journeys through differenttimes, styles and moments in real time stopping off every once in awhile to take in the view. Last Visible Dog
Taking sounds, samples and sections of instrumentation from differentinformal sessions and sources, choosing the most appropriate or each,and putting them together as a coherent whole is not as easy thing tomanage and often all that’s left is an obvious mishmash of elementsbetter left as individual tracks. With this piece, Rinaldi has createdan extended mood of recollections that flows between the precise(acoustic guitar, piano and violin) and the vague (drones, clicks andpeace) with an overall feeling of looseness and warmth. This abstractbed allows sections of sound to come and go in the mix like oncetangible thoughts.
It’s difficult to pinpoint Rinaldi’s exact technique because at timesit’s obvious that the music has moved somewhere else entirely and othertimes the transition is utterly seamless and it still sounds perfect;it never feels random or contrived though its obviously one of the twoat certain points. There are times when the parts flow into each otherbut more often than not there is silence and the sound of open airbetween them. It takes quite a bit of skill, nerve and sincerity tobegin an LP with the sound of birdsong, sunshine and laconic alfrescoplaying and even more to carry it off for over forty minutes.
There are peaks of beautiful loose strumming running over halfsung broken vocal lines and many unidentifiable sounds (the creaks,twitters and jangles) and even a distant, but very real, brieflyringing telephone. A plectrum scratches the notches on a guitars metalstrings as wooden floors creak under the weight of someone walking byand Birds fall silent as piano notes ring out and are given time tofade back into silence before ringing out again. Hoarse Frenzyis music and melody composed on an abstract canvas of breathing spaceand empty mornings and succeeds in making a collection of ephemeralsounds into a lasting work of real beauty.