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.
It would be misleading to say that Cosey Fanni Tutti has been a singularly unprolific solo artist, as her oeuvre has never been constrained to simply music, but it is noteworthy that her last original solo album (Time to Tell) was released almost four decades ago. That album was stellar, setting quite a high bar for future releases. Also significant: Cosey's career has undergone a well-deserved renaissance in the last couple years, culminating in the release of her acclaimed memoir Art Sex Music. As a result, Tutti has the somewhat unenviable curse of being an album preceded by months of anticipation and high expectations. For better or worse, Cosey has nimbly sidestepped that situation to some degree, as Tutti is more of a soundtrack than a major new artistic statement…musically, anyway. On a conceptual level, this album is loosely intended as a career-spanning self-portrait built from reworked archival recordings. Cosey took that "reworking" part quite seriously though, so this album often feels like a warmly hallucinatory collection of instrumental Chris & Cosey remixes despite the submerged ghosts of more abrasive and transgressive days.
The initial idea for this album originated as part of the 2017 COUM Transmissions retrospective in Cosey's hometown of Hull, as she was asked to create a new work for the event.She chose to make an autobiographical film that recounted her early life in the city through family photos and various visual ephemera from the era.She accompanied it, appropriately enough, with a live soundtrack assembled from various audio fragments of her life, visual/performance art, and music.Thankfully, that particular COUM Transmissions retrospective did not scandalize an entire nation or get Tutti rebranded as a wrecker of civilization.It did, however, result in this album, as Cosey later expanded upon the original performance in her studio.That said, if I did not know the album’s background, it is unlikely that I would ever deduce its inspirations and hidden depths, as it often feels more like a series of pulsing grooves than a poignant journey through evocative samples or a monument to a life's work.The title piece is an especially prominent example of that aesthetic, as it barrels along as a throbbing, motorik-sounding bit of propulsive synth pop, albeit one enlivened by a smoky cornet solo and skittering, shuddering flourishes of dub-style production.The rest of the album is a bit less straight-forward than that though, as it often feels more like an indomitable throbbing, thumping groove keeps getting submerged in woozy backwards melodies and eruptions of strange noises, yet quickly fights its way back to the surface each time.Much of the album occupies an interesting gray area that is not quite pop, yet teems with grooves and snatches of melody blurred into something more elusive.
That said, there is a definite structure and arc to the album, as the first several songs are more beat-driven, while the second half steadily grows more abstract and soundscape-esque.Unsurprisingly, those early pieces make the strongest initial impression, particularly "Moe," which sneakily builds from a hallucinatory flutter of backwards guitar into a sensuously throbbing groove.The preceding "Drone" is noteworthy as well, as a host of gnarled and ugly Gristle-like sounds increasingly blossom from a squelching, off-kilter beat.As I grew more familiar with the album, however, it was the album's more strange and subtly lysergic fare that began to leave a deeper impact.My favorite piece is "En," which feels like an impressively sophisticated dub-influenced revisitation of Gristle's murky ugliness, as a submerged groove quietly burbles and simmers beneath a phantasmagoric soup of vaguely sinister buzzes, swoops, and animal-like howls."Split" is similarly dark, gradually building from a subdued and benign-sounding pulse into a crescendo of massive shuddering sounds that feels like a plague of sky-blackening, mechanized birds with malevolent intent.Between those plunges into Tutti’s darker past, however, lurk a handful of more melodic, tender, and light pieces."Heliy," for example, feels like a distant relative to more romantic moments like "October Love Song," albeit one that has been stretched and blurred into dreamy abstraction.The closing "Orenda" is similarly lovely, unfolding as a languorous procession of warm, shimmering clouds that feel like they have enveloped and softened the sounds of a bustling city.
As likable as Tutti can be, however, I cannot help wishing that I could have experienced these songs in their original and intended context, as this album is kind of a perverse self-portrait on its own.In fact, it verges on self-camouflage, as Cosey’s voice is the most iconic and instantly recognizable aspect of her musical work and it rarely surfaces here (and even then only in heavily manipulated form).That makes this a bit curious album, as it feels more like an impressive feat of production and craftsmanship than it does a bold artistic statement: there are plenty of strong ideas here, but they have been smoothed over by (admittedly skilled) artifice into something more accessible than challenging or provocative.
That said, Cosey is at the peak of her powers in many ways, as this is a catchy, fast-moving, vividly realized, and expertly sequenced batch of songs (even if there are no obvious singles).I just would have expected a solo album to be more personal departure from Carter Tutti (or Carter Tutti Void) rather than a variation of those styles sans collaborators.I suspect that the film got the lion’s share of the vulnerability and emotional depth in this multimedia project though and the music was primarily for color, pace, and mood.I am definitely the victim of my own expectations here.Granted, Time to Tell was amazing and this second solo release has been a long time coming, but Art Sex Music and Carter Tutti Void were great and Cosey’s creative energies have been spread in a lot of different directions over the last few years.No one can endlessly churn out bold reinventions and significant statements across several disciplines forever.As such, Tutti is merely another very good album and a solid addition to an already wonderful body of work.Fans will definitely dig it, but it is more of a pleasant treat and a polished, breezily listenable tour of her artistic evolution than it is a fresh masterpiece or culminating achievement.
The theme of Rabelais's intended magnum opus is unquestionably a Romantic one, as both the album title and the names of the individual songs allude to Shakespeare's 116 sonnet.Clarifying that further, the album's accompanying text is a lengthy etymology of the word "love."That subject has historically been quite fertile ground for inspiration and the four lengthy movements of CXVI appropriately have the scope and feel of a sprawling, immersive epic.The vaporous structure of the album makes it a very elusive and deliciously ungraspable piece of art though.That is especially true of the opening "which alters when it alteration finds," which opens with a gentle, submerged piano motif in a sea of roiling hiss and wobbly distorted tones.Eventually, however, all of the noise abruptly gives way to reveal a simple and tenderly melancholy piano interlude from Budd.As it progresses, however, the spaces between the notes increases and the focus shifts to their lingering, ghostly afterimages.That evanescent and subtly phantasmagoric approach to composition is the one clear thread that runs throughout the entire album, as each piece is roughly twenty minutes long and is defined by a single strong motif that pierces through the languorous haze of spectral abstraction.Those oft-lovely windows of clarity are bridged together by surreal passages of near-silence, murkily faint strings, and frayed, rumbling drones, however, which dissolves any real sense of these songs beginning or ending.Instead, CXVI unfolds like a fever dream that occasionally coheres into passages of vivid, gorgeous lucidity.
The album ends on quite a sublime, enigmatic, and rapturously beautiful note, however, as "an ancient, arcane air inscribed to 78rpm vinyl by Stephan Mathieu" gradually replaces Smith’s voice for a final coda that sounds like a duet between a lovelorn angel and an antique music box.It is a perfect conclusion to a near-perfect album, as my only critique is that Rabelais has an occasional weakness for openly derivative stylistic touches (not unlike David Lynch’s attempt to replicate "Song to the Siren" via Julee Cruise, actually).I genuinely do not mind that particular proclivity in Rabelais' case, however, as he occupies a curious kind of gray area as an artist.In fact, he is kind of analogous to Andy Warhol in a weird way: Warhol's actual skill as a painter was fairly irrelevant, as his true "art" was his overarching vision and his genius for recontextualizing the recognizable.Similarly, Rabelais' talents as a composer are beside the point as well, as his own genius lies in painstakingly threading together all of his various, wide-ranging fascinations (ASMR, Ernst, photography, language, Shakespeare, French accents, the crackle of vinyl, etc.) into bold and coherent new work filled with beauty, mystery, and wonder.Aside from perhaps Spellewauerynsherde, Rabelais has never done that better than he has with CXVI.
A week before leaving, I bought a dictionary and phrasebook.
Covered in rain, during the days and even the nights, Shanghai was lit in a glow, a mist turning to a constant grey fog. Buildings lined with neon and lcd screens flashed, and from around corners and behind buildings, the night was illuminated much the same as the day. Cars separated the classes, their horns voices punctuating the streets, as pedestrians in groups loosely scattered the streets, talking and walking on speakerphone.
Standing by the metro escalators, there in the square with the overhanging trees of a park, there is construction all around. The buildings seem to be climbing into the darkness at this very moment. Leaving behind and moving forward. We seem to know everything already, our illusion of experience. I imagine taking your hand, I imagined taking your hand, and the lights in the subway flicker as we go deeper. Transit bookmarks each experience, every daydream, and in the end they're interchangeable and indistinguishable between reality and imagination. Try to remember which is real.
To Hangzhou the maglev reached 303 km/h, the towering apartment buildings hunch under construction, passing by in blurs on the flat farmland landscape. I fell asleep, as you were dancing but to no music. The lilies on the lake nodded in the rain, dipping into the water. There was a Wal-Mart near the hotel where I won a pink bunny from a claw machine. I remember the beauty of the architecture of Hangzhou station, birds swirling around the pillars near the top, the echoes of the deep station interior, and the laughing at being lost. There at least we have each other, that memory, or that daydream.
Everything moves faster than we can control. Days are just flashes, moments are mixed up but burned on film, and all of the places and times are out of order. If it could only be us, only ours. If it was ours, if it was us. Sometimes everything goes faster than you can control and you can't stop, much less understand where you are. I bought a dictionary and phrasebook, but "xièxie" (thank you) was the only word I ever got to use.
Some time ago, when I made the decision to disband the most recent line up of Swans, I did so not only with trepidation, but also with a great measure of sadness. This, after all, was the longest lasting grouping of core musicians in the 35 year plus history of Swans, and we made some great work. We were (and remain) friends and collaborated seamlessly as an ensemble. However, a too-comfortable familiarity had taken hold and none of us could see the music surprising us further, so we ditched it, at least for the time being. Following our final performances at Warsaw, in Brooklyn, in November of 2017, after sleeping for what seemed like 6 months, I set about writing new songs for the next version of Swans. I’ve completed about a dozen, and you’ll find 10 of them on the CD we're releasing as a fundraiser to help with the recording and production costs of the new Swans album. These are as close to the bone as it gets – just my acoustic guitar and voice. Should you delve into this collection, you'll discover that the material leans heavily towards words (lots of them) and vocals, which I suppose is a natural inclination after 7 years of immersion in music that was so adamantly geared towards long instrumental passages… Though I’m certain these are fine performances here, these are demos, which means that they are skeletal versions intended as a guide for building the songs with other musicians. And build them (and expand them) I will - presumably to my usual excessive degree, though in this case that proclivity won’t be expressed in a musical style similar to the chapter of Swans that recently concluded. That much I know. Just how things will actually end up sounding is another matter. I have lots of thoughts about how the orchestrations should go, but for now they’re still amorphous, and I’m looking forward to diving in with other musicians in the studio and following where the sound we generate leads. As always, I’ll be looking for the unintended. During a recent phone conversation with my friend Bill Rieflin, I expressed my uncertainty about where this record would lead, especially after 7 years of knowing pretty much in advance the timbre and vocabulary that would be used when we (the recent, past version of Swans) played, and Bill said something I’ll employ as a guide for this new chapter: Follow the uncertainty, make that the thing. A person could do worse than to follow the advice of a supreme musical savant like Mr. Rieflin, so I intend to keep his words in my head as we work. Joining me in this slippery quest will be the following:
The Necks: (Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton). This transcendental improv combo will play basic tracks to my guitar part on 2 songs, and the songs will be further orchestrated and sung to thereafter. Tony will also play various instruments on other songs.
Kristof Hahn: Stalwart stabber of the sky, recent Swan, and past member of Angels of Light, will play various guitars and lap steel.
Larry Mullins: Stellar past Swans and Angels of Light member, will play drums, orchestral percussion, piano, organ, and whatever else seems appropriate.
Yoyo Röhm: Yoyo is a Berlin bassist and composer/arranger, and he’ll play double bass and electric bass, and will also lend his considerable arrangement skills to the proceedings and will help in gathering orchestral musicians and additional signature players.
Ben Frost: Composer, recording artist, maker-of-sounds and psychic landscapes. I will sit down with Ben once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Anna von Hausswolff and Maria von Hausswolff: Anna is singer, organist, and composer and her sister Maria is a filmmaker who sometimes sings with Anna. Their voices combine wonderfully. They will sing myriad backing vocals on the record.
Baby Dee: recording artist, chanteuse extraordinaire, harpist and pianist. I wrote a song specifically for Dee to sing, and she has consented generously to come out of retirement to do so. She’ll also sing backing vocals, as will her friends Fay Christen and Ida Albertje Michels.
Jennifer Gira: Sometimes contributor to Swans, professionally arcane. Will contribute backing vocals and critique. She sings the song "The Nub" on the What is This? CD.
Bill Rieflin: Long time honorary Swan and past Angels of Light contributor, currently a member of King Crimson. Bill plays everything. I will sit down with Bill once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Cassis Staudt: Past member of Angels of Light and passionate accordion pumper, she will play on various songs.
Thor Harris: Robust recent Swan and past Angels of Light superman, recording artist, percussionist, drummer, torturer of homemade instruments. I will sit down with Thor once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Dana Schechter: Recording artist, past member of Angels of Light, bassist, vocalist, soundscape maker. I will sit down with Dana once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Heather Trost and Jeremy Barnes: Long time purveyors of exotic Eastern European/Balkan/Turkish homemade hoedowns of psychedelic import as A Hawk and a Hacksaw. They sing and play multiple instruments. I will sit down with them once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Norman Westberg, Phil Puleo, Christopher Pravdica, Paul Wallfisch: Heroic recent Swans members, ex-Swans, and Swans again forever. I will sit down with them once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
M.Gira will sing and play guitar and produce the record."
Some time ago, when I made the decision to disband the most recent line up of Swans, I did so not only with trepidation, but also with a great measure of sadness. This, after all, was the longest lasting grouping of core musicians in the 35 year plus history of Swans, and we made some great work. We were (and remain) friends and collaborated seamlessly as an ensemble. However, a too-comfortable familiarity had taken hold and none of us could see the music surprising us further, so we ditched it, at least for the time being. Following our final performances at Warsaw, in Brooklyn, in November of 2017, after sleeping for what seemed like 6 months, I set about writing new songs for the next version of Swans. I’ve completed about a dozen, and you’ll find 10 of them on the CD we're releasing as a fundraiser to help with the recording and production costs of the new Swans album. These are as close to the bone as it gets – just my acoustic guitar and voice. Should you delve into this collection, you'll discover that the material leans heavily towards words (lots of them) and vocals, which I suppose is a natural inclination after 7 years of immersion in music that was so adamantly geared towards long instrumental passages… Though I’m certain these are fine performances here, these are demos, which means that they are skeletal versions intended as a guide for building the songs with other musicians. And build them (and expand them) I will - presumably to my usual excessive degree, though in this case that proclivity won’t be expressed in a musical style similar to the chapter of Swans that recently concluded. That much I know. Just how things will actually end up sounding is another matter. I have lots of thoughts about how the orchestrations should go, but for now they’re still amorphous, and I’m looking forward to diving in with other musicians in the studio and following where the sound we generate leads. As always, I’ll be looking for the unintended. During a recent phone conversation with my friend Bill Rieflin, I expressed my uncertainty about where this record would lead, especially after 7 years of knowing pretty much in advance the timbre and vocabulary that would be used when we (the recent, past version of Swans) played, and Bill said something I’ll employ as a guide for this new chapter: Follow the uncertainty, make that the thing. A person could do worse than to follow the advice of a supreme musical savant like Mr. Rieflin, so I intend to keep his words in my head as we work. Joining me in this slippery quest will be the following:
The Necks: (Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton). This transcendental improv combo will play basic tracks to my guitar part on 2 songs, and the songs will be further orchestrated and sung to thereafter. Tony will also play various instruments on other songs.
Kristof Hahn: Stalwart stabber of the sky, recent Swan, and past member of Angels of Light, will play various guitars and lap steel.
Larry Mullins: Stellar past Swans and Angels of Light member, will play drums, orchestral percussion, piano, organ, and whatever else seems appropriate.
Yoyo Röhm: Yoyo is a Berlin bassist and composer/arranger, and he’ll play double bass and electric bass, and will also lend his considerable arrangement skills to the proceedings and will help in gathering orchestral musicians and additional signature players.
Ben Frost: Composer, recording artist, maker-of-sounds and psychic landscapes. I will sit down with Ben once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Anna von Hausswolff and Maria von Hausswolff: Anna is singer, organist, and composer and her sister Maria is a filmmaker who sometimes sings with Anna. Their voices combine wonderfully. They will sing myriad backing vocals on the record.
Baby Dee: recording artist, chanteuse extraordinaire, harpist and pianist. I wrote a song specifically for Dee to sing, and she has consented generously to come out of retirement to do so. She’ll also sing backing vocals, as will her friends Fay Christen and Ida Albertje Michels.
Jennifer Gira: Sometimes contributor to Swans, professionally arcane. Will contribute backing vocals and critique. She sings the song "The Nub" on the What is This? CD.
Bill Rieflin: Long time honorary Swan and past Angels of Light contributor, currently a member of King Crimson. Bill plays everything. I will sit down with Bill once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Cassis Staudt: Past member of Angels of Light and passionate accordion pumper, she will play on various songs.
Thor Harris: Robust recent Swan and past Angels of Light superman, recording artist, percussionist, drummer, torturer of homemade instruments. I will sit down with Thor once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Dana Schechter: Recording artist, past member of Angels of Light, bassist, vocalist, soundscape maker. I will sit down with Dana once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Heather Trost and Jeremy Barnes: Long time purveyors of exotic Eastern European/Balkan/Turkish homemade hoedowns of psychedelic import as A Hawk and a Hacksaw. They sing and play multiple instruments. I will sit down with them once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
Norman Westberg, Phil Puleo, Christopher Pravdica, Paul Wallfisch: Heroic recent Swans members, ex-Swans, and Swans again forever. I will sit down with them once the songs have taken on a shape and I will say OK: What?
M.Gira will sing and play guitar and produce the record."
Anoyo ("the world over there") draws from the same sessions which led to the 2018 work Konoyo, but rendered starker, solemn, and stripped back, with more of a naturalist tint. Hecker's processing here moves in veiled ways, soft refractions and whispered shrouds woven within improvisational sessions of traditional gagaku interplay, evoking a sense of vaulted space, temples at dawn, shredded silk fluttering in the rafters.
This is boldly barren music, skeletal and sculptural, shaped from wood, wind, strings, and mist. Modern yet ancient, delicate and desolate, Anoyo inverts its predecessor to compellingly conjure a parallel world of illusion, solitude, and eternal return.
"My Disco finally unveil their debut album for Downwards, a brilliant rendering of concrète/industrial styles recorded in the same Berlin studio often frequented by Einstürzende Neubauten, Pan Sonic and Keiji Haino, somehow channeling the spirit of all three. It's an intensely rich and wildly unexpected trip that takes in the ragged intensity of Suicide alongside gong recordings and a kind of isolationist ambient spirit that resides somewhere between Selected Ambient Works Vol II and Raime.
Environment finds My Disco in the midst of deep synth despair, leaving behind the gnashing guitars in favour of cold metallic percussion and gloomy pads reverberating in derelict, factory-like space. Gutting out the driving, mathy repetition of their prized early work (2010's Steve Albini-produced "Young/You" is a favorite of Karl O’Connor/Regis), the Melbourne-based trio now recall the ungodly offspring of Raime and Swans, operating with an increased appreciation of space, rhythm and tone that will shock even the hardest to please explorers of avant-rock and industrial fault lines.
In no uncertain terms, its 8 tracks plumb the depths of a foul mood, strafing thru a series of antechamber-like stations like some inelegant beast encumbered with clanking manacles and ankle restraints. Thanks to the visceral, vivid nature of the recording and production, the devil lies in the synaesthetic sonic/visual detail, riddling a mostly wordless narrative that perfectly says it without saying it.
Biting down first with the jagged metallic klang and gnawing drones of "An Intimate Conflict," the album continues to fetishize both bleeding-raw and cinematic themes thru the torture chamber ambience of "Exercise In Sacrifice," and the red-lining tone poem "Act," leading into belly of the beast bass growls on "Rival Colour," before the dissonant, keening might of "No Permanence" calves off into a closer to end all closers, with the band's Cornell Wilczek feeding Buchla Easel tones into the empty tank strikes and fetid atmosphere of "Forever" with a febrile effect worthy of Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement.
By any measure, Environment is one of Downwards’ most singular albums, and a must-check for disciples of proper, unheimlich sonics. Trust it’'l wipe that art school smirk right off your mug."
Brace, Brace is Julia Reidy’s soaring Slip return: a dread-tinged incantation unfurling from breath-down-the-neck field recordings, auto-murmured voice, synthetic hum, and irrepressible guitar kinetics.
Reidy's signature 12-string playing - precise, burrowing, rhapsodic - dominates the LP's outer cuts, framing a plaintive electric centre. Blooms of arpeggiations and desolate strums re-inflect slow-moving pitch sequences; the music feels at once on fire and graceful, inevitable.
Perhaps most surprising is how organic Brace, Brace's expanded palette feels. Reidy's electronics are subtly eerie extensions, alien resonances of her playing, both embedding her instrument and making it somehow unreal. This strange smear of body and apparition is neatly nailed in Reidy's sung-to-herself vocals, coaxed out and encroached upon by autotune.
Succeeding issues of her work by Feeding Tube and Room 40's A Guide To Saints, Brace, Brace is a definitive statement from a blazing, restless talent.
While Frederikke Hoffmeier is justifiably best-known for her solo Puce Mary project, she has had a hand in quite a few collaborative projects over the years as well (a common trait within the Post Isolation milieu). Most have been one-off events, but this duo with Jesse Sanes (Liebestod/Hoax) has held together long enough to make a second album (or arguably a third, if their earlier Fejhed project counts). I am delighted that it did, as JH1.FS3 have evolved from a solid noise act into something considerably more distinctive and wonderful. In fact, Trials and Tribulations shares a hell of a lot of common ground with last year's brilliant The Drought, though the focus is shifted away from Hoffmeier's confessional-sounding spoken word and more towards an inventive and vibrant onslaught of mangled and haunting textures. It sounds like two dueling noise artists at top of their games, except they are trading imaginative, sharply realized textures rather than escalating ferocity. And it also feels like Hoffmeier has brought the same incredible level of compositional and editing rigor to this album that she brought to her most recent solo work. The Drought was one of my favorite albums of 2018 and Trials and Tribulations will likely be one of my favorite albums of 2019: it is a bit more seething and understated, but it is every bit as masterfully crafted.
For an album recorded by two artists with such a history of extreme music, Trials and Tribulations is an unexpectedly slow-burning and nuanced affair.As a result, I was only fully drawn into it after being beguiled by its Puce Mary-esque centerpiece "Every Little Detail."On its surface, the piece is quite a compelling and unnervingly intimate tale of erotic obsession that unfolds within a shifting and evocative miasma of ghostly harmonies and tormented electronics.As I listened to it more and more, however, I began to appreciate its deeper complexity and detail, falling in love with the wobbling and distorted "tuning fork" sounds and the way that the clouds occasionally part to allow some tenderly beautiful harmonies to fleetingly dispel the tense, creepily voyeuristic mood.Also, Sanes and Hoffmeier unleash quite an impressive firestorm of strangled, squirming, jabbering, and snarling noise while the rest of the piece calmly and quietly moves forward as a languorous reverie.It is a brilliant balancing act, adding visceral bite to the piece's more melodic and tenderly human core while allowing enough space for each fresh eruption of ferocity to be felt deeply.Naturally, once I became entranced by the sheer depth and craftsmanship of "Every Little Detail," I began to notice and appreciate similar small-scale flashes of inspiration through the rest of the album. In that regard, Trials and Tribulations does not fully catch fire until its second half.The pleasures of the first half are a bit more overt and expected, though they are still pleasures.For example, the opening "Far From Spring" is a mournfully heaving and undulating thicket of moaning, sliding, and squealing strings.Elsewhere, "The Chaos of Illusion" is a wonderfully stark and brooding bit of industrial ambiance, as the duo's overlapping spoken voices murmur over a throbbing and reverberating bed of machine-like clatter and hum.
While it is probably fair to say that "Every Little Detail" is decisively the album’s strongest moment, the final four pieces are cumulatively on a similar level, as they add up to quite an impressive hot streak."At the Bottom of the Night" is the most unexpected and straightforward of the bunch, as it is a gorgeously warm and dreamlike swirl of lush chords and floating vocal melodies without a trace of violence to be found.The following "Pipe Talk" partially returns to more expected industrial fare, but the hollow, churning pulse is interspersed with an innocent-sounding dialogue sample that sounds like two people flirting at a county fair.Elsewhere, "Infinite Emptiness of a Heavy Heart" is an especially strong example of Hoffmeier's genius for making dissonant and ugly experimental music feel perversely melodic and structured, as the howling chaos beneath her voice is held together by a wobbly, lurching bass line and glimmering synth motifs occasionally blossom into welcome splashes of color.The closing "Nice" also simultaneously flirts with and subverts noise convention, as its crackling textures and howls of feedback coexist with a bittersweetly lovely synth melody.Also, the foreground is occasionally overtaken by a drifting recording of Hoffmeier blissfully singing "As Tears Go By" to herself (though not always remembering the lyrics).Such playful touches may not seem all that radical, but they are very effective when wielded wisely.Sanes and Hoffmeier intuitively grasp a crucial truth that eludes a lot of similar artists: catharsis and raw power make a much deeper impact when balanced with some human warmth and vulnerability.Contrast, balance, space, and lightness of touch are all woefully underappreciated elements of great art and all can be found here in the proper amount.
I occasionally see artists from the Posh Isolation scene dismissed as "industrial-lite" (or whatever) and it always makes me want to throttle someone, as Hoffmeier's recent work (along with a couple of earlier Croatian Amor albums) is exactly the sort of thing that rekindles my oft-flagging interest in the noise milieu.I am sure someone will soon arise to prove me wrong, but plenty of noise artists have already taken visceral brute force and editing mastery as far as they can go, so there is no real need to try to replicate those achievements (and plenty of artists are already doing exactly that anyway).No one needs another purist artist dogmatically worshipping Whitehouse, Merzbow, or SPK.With albums like The Drought and Trials and Tribulations, Hoffmeier is not making a more accessible version of a beloved underground subgenre so much as she is injecting it with new vitality by pulling in cool touches from elsewhere and shaping them to fit her needs.As much as I appreciate the scope of her vision, however, the true beauty of Hoffmeier's recent work lies primarily in its execution.The sounds are vivid and given plenty of space to breathe, no ideas ever overstay their welcome, and all of the harmonies and nods to conventional structures converge and shift with fluidity and elegance.There is no point on Trials and Tribulations where Sanes and Hoffmeier explicitly betray any of their more wide-ranging influences, nor do the more melodic and song-like elements ever feel forced or unnatural: the pair make incredibly layered and complex soundscapes feel organic and effortless.This is a hell of an headphone album.
This latest EP is a companion piece of sorts to Caminiti's 2017 Toxic City album, albeit one that draws its inspiration from NYC's hidden oases of calm and space rather than its more claustrophobic and dystopian elements. Much like its predecessor, Refraction continues to explore Caminiti's deep interest in dub techno, yet he has stretched the boundaries of the form in an intriguing, thoughtful, and almost quixotic way: with these four pieces, he attempts to replace the rhythm of the dancefloor with a more languorous and organic pulse ("like a circulatory system made audible"). With casual and relatively inattentive listening, these experiments feel kind of like a classic Basic Channel or Mille Plateaux release that has been deconstructed and stretched into something vaporous and drifting rather than pulsing, but the depth and quiet beauty of Caminiti's unconventional vision comes into vivid focus when Refraction is experienced through headphones.
Given that Refraction was released by Make Noise, it is no surprise that Caminiti composed these four pieces using a synthesizer.However, describing it as a "synth album" would be quite deceptive, as Caminiti's approach to the instrument was every bit as inventive as his approach to dub.In fact, he arguably subverts the whole idea of making a synth album, but it would probably be more accurate to say that he exploits that constrained palette in ways that illustrate some intriguing and fresh possibilities.Each piece is built primarily from a single patch recorded "live," but that recording was then fed into a different "dub-style" patch to transform it into something quite different.For the most part, all of the essential components of classic dub techno are present (warm synth chords, reverberant decay, loads of hiss, throbbing bass), but everything has been slowed down and recontextualized so that it adds up to a dreamlike ambient fog rather than a groove.Or perhaps those elements have merely been transformed into a new type of groove that approximates the tempo of slow inhalation/exhalation (the key difference lies mostly the timescale rather than the structure).In essence, Caminiti has crafted an understated and subtly hallucinatory soundtrack for a meditative nocturnal stroll, which makes perfect sense, as many of the EP's non-synth sounds are field recordings that he made in Brooklyn Bridge Park on summer nights.Much like with the original synth patches, however, those field recordings are more of a lingering ghost than a consistently recognizable, palpable presence.The essence certainly remains, but usually not in the original form.
The opening "Refraction Praxis" is a fairly representative piece, as a hissing chorus of crickets drifts in and out of hearing while a series of warm, shivering chords fitfully propel the song forward.It would be a strong start to a conventional dub techno gem, but Caminiti never allows it to fully cohere into a consistent pulse, opting instead to let it linger in an unusual state of suspended animation.If that was the full extent of his vision, it would be a bit frustrating, as it feels like a promising theme has been reduced to a limping and precarious shadow of what it could be.Instead of completely languishing in neutral, however, "Refraction Praxis" is a vibrant feast of playfully unpredictable dynamics and false starts, as phantom chord changes and bass throbs endlessly hint at a transformation that never comes.The other, subtly different, type of piece on Refraction is best represented by "Mutation (Version)."In a lot of ways, it closely adheres to the same template as "Refraction Praxis," yet the spaces between the chords are allowed to fill with long, reverberant decays and gurgling, wobbly bass pulses.While that is structurally quite a minor difference, it has a significant impact on the feel of the piece, resembling an undulating fog that occasionally blossoms into more defined shapes.The remaining two pieces do not depart much from those twin templates, but they offer enough variation to keep the release compelling.In "Neurotoxin," for example, the underlying chords lock into in a slow-motion pulse of whooshing swells as a moaning, spectral theme elusively drifts through the foreground.The closing "Revealer (Reduction)," on the other hand, almost completely dissolves any recognizable structure, slowing to just a glacially repeating chord in a sea of hiss, albeit one illuminated by hints of a buried, burbling melody that is never allowed to fully surface.
Each piece is texturally vibrant and unusual in its own way, which amounts to a solid EP, but Caminiti was wise to make this a fairly concise release: Refraction is all tease with no pay-off.While these pieces work to some degree as both experimental dub and shimmering, ghostly ambience, their ability to fully satisfy as the latter is limited by the starkly minimal palette: Caminiti is wringing as many shades of emotion and intriguing transformations as he can from a single patch, so building a steadily deepening longform piece from that would be a tall order. As the former, however, Refraction is quite a characteristically impressive achievement.Over the years, Caminiti's vision has taken many shapes, but the thread that runs through it all is his ability to master a form, then intuitively reassemble the component pieces into his own distinctive take that bleeds through the expected boundaries and opens up new territory.Based on the wonderful and varied textures he conjures and the skillful way that they are juggled and manipulated here, it is safe to say that Caminiti could have easily made a stellar straightforward dub album if he put his mind to it, but likely have been bored out of his goddamn mind in the process.Admittedly, I would have been perfectly happy to hear him try his hand at more instantly gratifying fare, as I can count the number of great recent dub albums on one hand (an amusing dearth, given how pervasive it is as an influence).From an artistic standpoint, however, I am glad that Caminiti chose this more challenging path instead, asattentive listening reveals Refraction to be a unique and memorable gem of understated beauty.
This prolific Nottingham-based duo are back with their fifth formal full-length and the first to be released on their own Extreme Eating imprint. Unsurprisingly, Eton Alive does not tamper much with the band’s signature backdrop of spare, simple grooves and Jason Williamson has no shortage of fresh topics that displease him. That consistency is a huge part of Sleaford Mods' charm though (along with Andrew Fearn’s eternally deadpan, head-bobbing presence, of course): sometimes the grooves are quite good and sometimes they are not, but they exist primarily as a platform for Williamson to unleash his vitriolic, heavily accented, and sometimes blackly funny stream-of-consciousness critiques of everything that rankles his sensibilities. Given the pair's continued hyper-constrained aesthetic and one-note approach to mood and melody, Eton Alive is a characteristically hit-or-miss affair, as everything depends the inspiration or impenetrability Williamson’s wordplay and how it fits with Fearn’s minimal, repetitive beats. That is to be expected though. During its strongest moments like "Top It Up," Eton Alive can be quite a bracing and invigorating reminder that Sleaford Mods are a singular bastion of integrity and spirited, free-floating hostility in a world that desperately needs both.
On its surface, the almost cartoonish simplicity of Sleaford Mods' music can seem quite ridiculous and infantile, particularly on the lead single "Kebab Spider," which feels like an amusingly wrong-headed mash-up of The Offspring and Tone Loc.Such dubious decisions are not exactly the wisest path to a great album, but they arguably serve a real purpose, balancing the bile of Williamson's motor-mouthed spoken-word with a healthy dose of dumb fun.Interestingly, Fearn's solo beat tapes as EXTNDDNTWRK show that he has plenty of inventive and nuanced ideas and the skill to execute them, but such experimental fare is almost entirely anathema to the Sleaford Mods aesthetic.In fact, it would not surprise me at all to learn that many of the beats Fearn brings to the project are intended solely to amuse and wrong-foot Williamson.Sometimes his more absurd curveballs work surprisingly well though, like the cell phone ringtone disco groove of "Discourse."More often, however, it is Fearn's legitimately great beats that yield the strongest songs.For example, "Negative Script" feels like a wonderfully squelching and sexy '90s hip-hop party jam.While the ratio between great beats and beats that fall somewhat flat is not entirely optimal, I find Fearn's overarching vision to be a legitimate stroke of outsider genius: at their best, Sleaford Mods do not feel like a band–they feel like someone just stepped onto my subway car, set down a boombox, and erupted into a scathing torrent of free-form poetry enlivened by some truly first-class swearing.
That is just one facet of another, larger stroke of genius that partially explains Sleaford Mods improbable ascent and deep relevance though.I am not going to foolishly pronounce punk dead, as there are always a handful of bands that miraculously manage to reanimate its weary carcass.However, endlessly rehashing the "three chords and a bad attitude" formula of the genre is a depressing and grotesque perversion of the original punk ethos.Similarly, very few people are clamoring for rap albums by middle-aged white men.Consequently, it is extremely hard for embittered forty-somethings to lash out at a stupid and corrupt world without looking ridiculous, as the prime window for being sneering and antisocial is when you are young, attractive, and stylish.The audience tends to dwindle precipitously as one ages into a grizzled and craggy crank, which is one of life's cruelest tragedies.Anyone that has suffered through an additional few decades of dashed dreams, bad jobs, and failed relationships likely has quite a bit of deep disillusionment and sad wisdom to share, yet has few options for artistically articulating their thoughts to the masses.
To their credit, Fearn and Williamson have found a perfect formula for making angry music by and for adults and it rightly resonates with people: no posturing, no pretensions, no frills, and an effortless disregard for genre tropes and trends–just a direct and very real connection to a charismatic working class malcontent with some colorful grievances to share over some minimal beats.On this album, the most striking manifestation of that connection is "Top It Up," as Williamson unleashes a frenetic and fiery rant over a backdrop of just a two-note bass line and a lurching drum shuffle.I truly have no idea what he is going on about most of the time, which is weirdly quite charming, as he is a basically a broken fire hydrant of British slang, eclectic allusions, imagined dialogue, surreal scenes, and apparent non sequiturs.Even after reading the damn lyrics to "Kebab Spider," I still have absolutely no idea what is happening, yet Williamson’s conviction and intensity almost make it all seem cryptically meaningful.
Curiously, there does seem to be some indication that Williamson is evolving a bit as a songwriter, as several of these pieces have snatches of almost-melody that act as a chorus of sorts.That is probably a solid instinct career longevity-wise, but it is still a work in progress, as melody is not a big factor in stand-out pieces like the throbbing creep of "Into The Payzone."If Eton Alive has a genuine weakness, it is merely that there just are not enough solid songs to amount to a great album, but Sleaford Mods have always been far more of a singles band anyway.That is hardly news.However, I am also reminded of a throw-away line from the documentary A Bunch of Kunst, where someone from Williamson's circle observes that the project has transformed from a mirror on Williamson himself to a mirror on society.That makes sense, as Williamson’s world has transformed quite a bit since Sleaford Mods' early years: he is no longer a cranky nihilist with a miserable factory job–he is a successful musician dealing with tours, press, and record labels.As such, much of his bile is focused on the shallowness, fakery, and disposability of the culture industry these days.Those are deserving targets to be sure, but for me, those songs do not hit on quite the same deep, existential level as his hilariously bitter tales of desperation like "Jobseeker."Of course, expecting Williamson to still pretend he is that same person would be to fundamentally misunderstand the honesty and realness of this band.Still, I cannot help it if I relate more strongly to Williamson's downtrodden and embittered everyman phase: whether celebrities are fake or not has no bearing on my life at all.Fortunately, Williamson remains the sort of guy who could deliver an impassioned and scathingly funny reading of a phone book if he put his mind to it, so I do not see myself looking away anytime soon.