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.
Rema-Rema : Announce Debut Album, 'Fond Reflections', 40 Years After Disbanding. 14th January 2019
Rema-Rema featured former members of The Models and Siouxsie and The Banshees, and their much-loved Wheel in the Roses EP (1980) was among the first records to be released on 4AD. Their only contribution to the label, they split-up just before its release, going on to form or join bands as diverse as Renegade Soundwave, The Wolfgang Press, Mass, and Adam and the Ants.
The debut album that never was, Fond Reflections, comes almost forty years after their debut EP and has been culled from the band’s rich archive of reel-to-reel and cassette recordings, with member Gary Asquith and mixing engineer Takatsuna Mukai painstakingly working on them to make this collection as cohesive as possible.
The resultant ten tracks that make up Fond Reflections pretty much reflect the band’s live set and is the closest to what their debut album could have sounded like. Worth noting too that although all their 1980 EP tracks are present on the album, they all come from different recordings.
The album will be available from the 1st of March on both Double CD and LP, as well as most digital platforms. In addition to the new album, the CD edition also comes with a second disc entitled Extended Wheel in the Roses. As its title suggests, it’s the four EP tracks as they were plus ‘Entry’ (taken from the same studio session as the EP’s A-side of ‘Feedback Song’ and ‘Rema- Rema’) and ‘No Applause’ and ‘Murdermuzic’, two more tracks recorded at the same Albany Empire, London show in 1979 as the EP’s B-side, ‘Instrumental’ and ‘Fond Affections’.
Fond Reflections is available to pre-order now from the 4AD store, here. Fans in London can also attend a Q&A with the band on release day at Rough Trade West by pre-ordering the album here.
Fond Reflections: Double LP Edition
A1 Feedback Song (Halligans Live Rehearsal Version) A2 Rema-Rema (Halligans Live Rehearsal Version)
B1 Gallery / Oh Rock ‘n’ Roll B2 Lost My Way B3 Short Stories
D1 Instrumental (Halligans Live Rehearsal Version) D2 Entry (Halligans Live Rehearsal Version)
Fond Reflections: Double CD Edition
Disc One: Fond Reflections 1 Feedback Song (Halligans Live Rehearsal Version) 2 Rema-Rema (Halligans Live Rehearsal Version) 3 Gallery / Oh Rock ‘n’ Roll 4 Lost My Way 5 Short Stories 6 International Scale 7 Fond Affections (Portobello Road Version) 8 Why Ask Why 9 Instrumental (Halligans Live Rehearsal Version) 10 Entry (Halligans Live Rehearsal Version)
Disc Two: Extended Wheel in the Roses 1 Feedback Song 2 Rema-Rema 3 Entry 4 Instrumental 5 Fond Affections 6 No Applause 7 Murdermuzic
On February 1st, 2019, Beggars Arkive will release a 20th Anniversary Edition of Bowery Electric’s classic Lushlife album mastered for vinyl by John Davis (Lana Del Rey, Massive Attack) at Metropolis.
Originally released in early 2000 by Beggars Banquet, Lushlife peaked at No. 14 on the CMJ Top 200 chart and No. 11 on the Core Radio chart. Nearly two years in the making, Lushlife, in what would become the band’s final album, took even greater strides forward from previous releases. The album teems with atomized sounds, each one opening a portal in the mix, importing a haze of space and history, evoking the distant buzz of the city beyond the studio. Throughout, gilded strings build, sway and exhale, plugging the music into the sumptuous melancholy of Philly soul, the emotive Mancini-inspired arrangements of Gaye and Mayfield and the edgy soundtrack scores of David Shire. Yet with all the experiment and variation, Lushlife is actually quite a deliberate and enticing affair for the ear and mind.
Lawrence Chandler and Martha Schwendener met while working at Andy Warhol's Interview magazine and formed Bowery Electric in late 1993. The band earned critical acclaim for experimentation across genres, mixing elements of ambient, drone, electronic, experimental, IDM, minimal and rock music with '70's soul soundtracks, disco, drum and bass, dub and hip hop. Their self-titled debut was named by Pitchfork as one of the best shoegaze albums of all time. Their second album Beat was praised by The Wire as "genre-defining". On Lushlife the touchstone is trip-hop - but set in Brooklyn and through the Bowery Electric filter. The beats are lithe, crisp and deep and lines are perpetually blurred between samples (of which there are more than 75) and live instruments.
Following the Lushlife tour in 2000 the band went on hiatus. Chandler studied composition privately with La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros and at The Juilliard School and Goldsmiths College and worked for Philip Glass. He returned in 2009 with “Everybody Here Is Fine” commissioned for Make Music New York. Recent works include “Music for Rock Ensemble” commissioned for 18 Years of Minimalism and The Tuning of the World, a 24-hour sustained tone composition. His current band is London-based alternative / electronic duo Happy Families.
Schwendener released the solo electronica album Sola in 2003 on Instinct Records and is now a highly regarded art critic on staff at the New York Times. She is also a visiting professor at New York University and a critic in photography at the Yale University School of Art.
"A morphine drip of an album" - Austin Chronicle
"The duo seems to thrive on the thought that opposites attract - bleeding Erik B. & Rakim-flavoured beats into Nick Drake samples into Massive Attack-etched symphonic swirls into Cocteau Twins-hued melancholia" - Billboard Critic's Choice
1. Floating World 2. Lushlife 3. Shook Ones 4. Psalms of Survival 5. Soul City 6. Freedom Fighter 7. Saved 8. Deep Blue 9. After Landing 10. Passages
Without question, The Shadow Ring were one of the strangest and most inscrutable bands to ever exist, yet Graham Lambkin's gnomic solo career frequently makes his previous band look downright conventional by comparison. That is not an unambiguously wonderful achievement, however, as a lot of Lambkin's work leaves me wondering what on earth he is trying to convey and who such albums are for. For better or worse, the presence of Áine O'Dwyer does little to steer Lambkin towards more musical terrain. In fact, this latest release only doubles down further on Lambkin's recent cryptic, no-fi aesthetic, seemingly unfolding as a fragmented and abstract travelogue of a couple's travels across England, Ireland, and Sweden.  As with all Graham Lambkin albums, Green Ways is certainly unique and intriguing, but it is more of an unsolvable mystery and an experiment in extreme artistic constraints than it is a great album.
The opening "One and One is One" is quite possibly the most fascinating riddle on the entire album, as well as the most self-conscious bit of deliberate art, recalling O'Dwyer’s own Music for Church Cleaners if the organ was replaced by strange vocal drones, whooshes of breath, rhythmic clapping, and mumbly wordless jabbering.No explanation is provided, of course, yet it sounds like O'Dwyer and Lambkin are giving a memorably bizarre performance of sorts to a presumably bewildered audience that unexpectedly explodes into applause and cheering.Much like the rest of the album, it feels like I am missing a sizable part of the picture, though my imagination has decided that the performance was a surreal and morbid puppet show.More likely, however, it was just the couple sitting in chairs on an empty stage, enthusiastically and semi-maniacally creating something out of nothing.The following "One and One is Two" is perhaps even weirder, as it sounds like two minutes of Lambkin rhythmically splashing around in a pond while grunting and gasping until the performance is abruptly ended by a much louder, larger splash.The curious suite of similarly named pieces is concluded with "One and One is Three," which sounds like the distant plinking of a broken or prepared piano heard through a quiet sea of tape hiss.While it is damn near impossible to figure out what any of those three pieces mean or how they are linked together, they nevertheless feel distinct from the rest of the album because it seems like O'Dwyer and Lambkin were willfully creating "music" (of a sort).That pretense is summarily dropped with the next piece and rarely resurfaces, as the bulk of Green Ways just sounds like Lambkin turned on a recorder in the middle of some interaction or experience and just let it run for a while.
For example, "The Mushroom Field" is literally just a field recording of the pair wandering around collecting mushroom and idly chattering, though the microphone is either being windblown or constantly rubbed up against a bag to create a disruptive roar.The following "Greenways," on the other hand, sounds like a boat with the microphone up against the motor while someone rattles chains nearby.Throughout it all, there are snatches of mundane dialogue, but very little happens and there is no processing to add any further depth, sound quality, or musicality to what transpires.Nor is there any larger arc to these seventeen vignettes that could likely be deduced by anyone other than Lambkin and O'Dwyer.In some ways, it would be fair to call Green Ways artless, as it is almost entirely devoid of conscious artifice.In other ways, however, it is art in the most honest and intimate sense, as Lambkin and O'Dwyer are framing and presenting their very lives as art and doing it in a radically impressionistic and unglamorous way.Rather than selectively picking and choosing the most beautiful or significant episodes from their shared life, Lambkin and O'Dwyer have instead woven a disorienting, ragged, and uneven tapestry of memories that pulls in a bit of everything: their wedding(?), street fairs, charming snatches of singing, facts about Vikings, deranged-sounding accordion performances, and lazy conversations about plants over some tea.It is not always particularly captivating material, but it does perversely work somehow and occasionally yields some lovely surprises, such as the tender "Down by Sally Gardens," in which a pretty and delicate piano melody embellishes the antics of some very loud cows.Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, there is the seething, grinding, and darkly phantasmagoric "Night Music," which sounds like a desolate, windblown shipyard at 4am and would certainly send any small child diving under their bed to hide from imagined terrors.
Notably, while O'Dwyer is arguably both the muse and a ubiquitous presence on Green Ways, this release is very much a Graham Lambkin album in its aesthetic and it is probably an album that only he could have made work.It is not unlike Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal, in fact: if a lesser/unknown artist had presented their own toilet first, no one would have cared at all.It was a significant statement because of who was making it and why.Appreciating Green Ways is similar, as there is not much about it that feels instantly gratifying, but if I trust Lambkin and believe in his art enough to let myself get enveloped in this lazy swirl of enigmatic scenes, some of the album's secrets become unlocked and glimpses of quiet beauty start to emerge.That said, I do not completely trust Lambkin, as he has always seemed like an elusive and complex collision of prankster, madman, charlatan, and genius with inscrutable motivations to me.Sometimes his work is revelatory and sometimes it is very much the opposite, but it is almost always a curious and unique experience (my favorite piece on Amateur Doubles is seemingly just Lambkin listening to a French prog rock album and occasionally sneezing).I do trust Erstwhile's curatorial instincts though and I am delighted that they gave this strange collage a formal release, as it likely would have eluded me otherwise.Green Ways is far too weirdly paced and indulgent to be a great album in any conventional sense, but it has burrowed into my consciousness and left a lingering impression like few other albums have from this year.
In the past, I have favorably compared John Hannon's shapeshifting post-industrial collage project to This Heat, but this latest release leaves that signpost far behind and heads in a darker and more idiosyncratic direction. Bolstered by a new group of collaborators, Hannon's latest salvo more closely resembles an avant-garde string quartet soundtracking a tense Eastern European thriller. I have some mixed feelings about that change of direction, as the album's sustained fever pitch of dramatic intensity can be a bit exhausting. That said, Hannon's vision remains a bracingly vivid and visceral one and the new members inject some wonderfully unusual and inspired touches into the ever-changing Liberez aesthetic.
For this latest incarnation of Liberez, Hannon is joined by Matthew Reay, Sylvia Maria Saunder, and Iñigo Ugarteburu, all of whom were previously unknown to me, though I have since seen the latter described as a "virtuoso guitarist."I suspect Ugarteburu must be virtuosic at some other stringed instruments as well, as guitars do not play a particularly prominent role on this album.Rather, Way Through Vulnerability is a heaving maelstrom of tense violins, violently churning strings, and brutally pounded toms.The musicianship of the participants feels uncharacteristically relevant this time around though, as many of these nine pieces feel more like the work of an actual band than they do the masterful studio collages of years past.I could definitely see this version of Liberez being a powerful live act.If I were to glibly describe the new ensemble's aesthetic, I would probably say something like "Liberez may have left their This Heat influence in the rear-view mirror, but the new road they are on seems to be headed straight towards Godspeed You! Black Emperor city!"While typing that rightfully made me wince and hate myself, there is definitely some truth to such an assessment, though Hannon and company happily made a sharp detour into more ragged and rustic territory before they became fully immersed in melancholy cinematic grandeur and mannered artiness.In fact, Way Through Vulnerability feels like it was conceived by a rural commune of polyglot revolutionaries with a bent for traditional European folk music.
As intense and vital as the foursome's fiery vision can be, however, the new dynamic highlights some significant cracks in the Liberez aesthetic: Hannon has breached the blurry line that separates soundscapes/sound collages from songs and his compositional gifts are not quite on the same level as his textural brilliance and production intuition.That said, the album's bookends are quite good, particularly the opening "Celophane Window."In fact, it is kind of a masterpiece of coiled tension, as a hushed male voice cryptically delivers a monologue in a foreign language (Hungarian?) over a simmering bed of understated hand percussion and strangled, stuttering strings.The following "M'aidez" opens with another enigmatic spoken-word passage (presumably from Saunder and possibly in Russian), but soon erupts into an apocalyptic crescendo of crashing cymbals, pummeling toms, guitar noise, and tormented minor key string melodies.For better or worse, that is essentially the template for the entire album: atmospheric interludes of slow-building tension followed by episodes of volcanic ferocity that are akin to being curb-stomped by a disturbingly violent and cello-wielding Slavic folk ensemble.That certainly has its appeal, but the dark intensity of Way Through Vulnerability quickly starts to feel a bit one-dimensional and yields diminishing returns after a few songs.While there are certainly some beautiful pieces to be found, like the sensuously undulating and Flamenco-tinged "Here is the Proof," they feel like rare oases in album that is in a near-permanent state of boiling over.
That said, I genuinely love a lot of the details on Way Through Vulnerability, even if the overall arc of unrelenting drama and unresolved tension is a bit much for me.I especially enjoyed the newly added clapping rhythms and Hannon's continued genius for strangled and sharp stabs of feedback and bowed strings.I am also quite fond of the overarching vision, particularly when compared to the "hallucinatory radio transmission" aesthetic of 2013's stellar Sane Men Surround: this album is a viscerally, vibrantly "real" eruption of wood, steel, passion, and anguish undiluted by artifice.It is very easy to picture a room full of broken strings, splintered bows, and blood-splattered violins left in the wake of these sessions.The only real issue preventing this album from being an unambiguous leap forward rather than a compelling (if difficult) mixed success is one of balance: Hannon's dark clouds only part to let in some light, beauty, and tenderness on the closing title piece.Some more glimpses of that would have brought some welcome contrast and additional depth to the album.Without it, Way Through Vulnerability is far more polemic than poetry.Such raw elemental power certainly makes a strong impression, but it is not quite enough to make this Liberez's strongest album.
The Threats Of Memories 2LP reissue, on United Dirter, by Steven Stapleton and David Tibet features three side-long tracks, newly edited by Andrew Liles, from their albums The Sadness Of Things and Musical Pumpkin Cottage. The fourth side is a previously unreleased version, titled "DreamBreath," from the Musical Pumpkin Cottage recording sessions. It comes in a gatefold sleeve, reproducing Babs Santini's artwork from the original releases and a photograph of Steven and David by Ruth Bayer, as well as an insert containing all lyrics and credits, and with HandWriting by David Tibet. The 2LP was mastered by Andrew Liles, and the cover was designed by Ania Goszczyńska. Photography by Andrew Thomas.
The Threat Of Memory 5CD boxed set, on United Dirter, by Steven Stapleton and David Tibet features all of Steven and David's previously-issued recordings, made under their "Steven Stapleton & David Tibet" faces, on the first four of the CDs, as well as a fifth CD with previously unissued out-takes from the Musical Pumpkin Cottage recording sessions. It does not include the unissued out-take on Side 4 on Side 4 of The Threats of Memories 2LP.
It comes in a hinged box, with new artwork by Babs Santini on the CDs' individual sleeves, as well as on the box's cover with a booklet containing all credits and lyrics, and with HandWriting by David Tibet. The CDs were mastered by Andrew Liles and the cover was designed by Ania Goszczyńska. Photography by Sarah Stapleton.
More information can be found here, as well as information on the related Dead Memory LP.
Phill Niblock's Music For Cello collects three pieces from the '70s and early '80s, performed by cellist David Gibson.
This CD includes a 16-page unpublished interview with Phill Niblock.
Since the late sixties, Phill Niblock has been composing long-form acoustic drones with a focus on the rhythms and overtones that rise from closely tuned instruments. His highly original and influential music is an exploration of timbre, microtonality, stability, duration and psychoacoustic phenomenon.
"'3 to 7 - 196' is very direct, aggressive, and gritty. The overtone patterns that are produced by the proximal pitches become more prominent with louder volume. So please, play this piece very loud. This was the first piece of mine in which the musician was precisely tuned, in which I chose exact pitches in hertz. We used a sine wave oscillator and frequency counter for the tuning.
'Descent Plus' has four cello tones descending one octave over twenty-two minutes, from 300 hertz to 150 hertz. David Gibson played these tones without lifting his bow from the strings, constantly retuning. I made four different scores, manually changing an oscillator to which he was tuning, for each track's recording. For the revision, we added six more tracks, with David playing long tones which were not descending. The second part of the recording was made nearly twenty years later.
'Summing II' (one of four parts) is mellow and sonorous. David plays two strings simultaneously, one of which is retuned for each successive recording of that pair of tones. This is a mix of an eight track tape. It's better played loud also."
The recently composed “Ricochet Lady” (2016) is the only work for solo acoustic glockenspiel by the American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. Following in the manner of his pieces "I Am Sitting In A Room" and "Vespers," "Ricochet Lady" embodies Lucier's approach toward sound's individual function and mobility within space. This CD defines this approach through four realizations recorded in four dissimilar spaces, ranging from the standard to extraordinary: a university rehearsal hall with walls of drywall and glass, a chapel made of oak and stone, an empty forge and foundry warehouse for steel railway wheels, and a 36-meter tall dilapidated cement grain elevator.
Never one to shy away from convention, Lucier intensifies each performance by instructing that the glockenspiel be placed against a wall or other reflective surface where the soloist systematically traverses the entire range of the instrument in rapid, repetitive patterns, actively disseminating the glockenspiel’s sustain, clicks, and interferences throughout the space. In doing so, the glockenspiel maps the unique acoustical characters of each space as each space helps to compose the piece. Created in close collaboration with Trevor Saint, a rare (if not the only) specialist of experimental music for glockenspiel, Lucier has further enhanced the sophistication of this re-imagined instrument while maintaining his devotion to letting spaces speak.
So You … (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) is a major new work by legendary experimental composer Alvin Lucier. It is an hour-long epic that tracks the familiar Orpheus myth from a less familiar perspective: that of Eurydice as imagined by poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle); a Eurydice who rails at Orpheus for his hubris in attempting to rescue her.
So You … (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) was originally commissioned by Documenta 14 and first performed as part of Documenta in Athens in 2017. Two key, and formerly distinct, aspects of Lucier's practice come together in this piece: the exploration of interference patterns in closely tuned intervals, and the exploration of resonant chambers. From speakers mounted inside amphorae a constantly turning braid of beating sine waves trace the descent into the depths of hell, and then the doomed attempt to climb back into life. Singer Jessika Kenney and long-time Lucier collaborators Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis embody the three title characters in deeply focused performances that assert themselves against the process of the sweep, or become enfolded in it. The electronics were mixed in real time by programmer and equipment designer Tom Erbe. This record has all of the mind-bending acoustic effects expected from a Lucier piece, but also features a strong sense of narrative drama and flashes of raw emotion that are unexpected and deeply affecting.
More information on both albums can be found here.
This record documents music made by two women — one American and one Korean — who have both made a profound impact within experimental music. Ellen Fullman’s Long String Instrument has been a long-term life-work of incredible ambition and dedication. The result is immediate, exciting and inspirational. Okkyung Lee has completed rewritten the possibilities for the cello in solo and group improvisation whilst maintaining a steadfast defiance to the many attempts to contain her work within pre-defined genres.
The Air Around Her was recorded on February 20th, 2016 during the First Edition Festival for Other Music in Stockholm, Sweden at Kronobageriet — the former bakery to Swedish Royalty that dates back to the 17th Century and is now the site of the city’s Performing Arts Museum. The Edition Festival was given access to the space while renovations took place and Fullman allowed the requisite time to install and tune her long string instrument along the full 26 meter length of the room.
It occurred to me the other day that Richard Skelton's artistic trajectory almost resembles the stuff of myth and folklore, as he was once akin to an enchanted bard who made achingly gorgeous and sensuously churning music full of life, heartache, passion, and darkly flickering light. Gradually, however, he became so disillusioned with mankind that he started playing for the moors, the hills, the earth, and the buried remnants of the distant past instead. Or, in his more ambitious moments, for the cosmos themselves. With the comparatively modest and exploratory Front Variations, however, Skelton is not straining for the stars nor focusing his elemental power to world-shaking intensity, but instead uses the disappearing ice sheets of Iceland as an unconventional muse for a pair of slow-motion feedback experiments.
Appropriately, the two "Front Variations" were both birthed in Iceland, as Skelton lived in Seyðisfjörður during a residency back in 2016.The theme of the residency was "Frontiers in Retreat," which seems to be one that Skelton took quite literally and adhered to faithfully.Front Variations is specifically inspired by the ice-albedo feedback mechanism, which is kind of a natural death-spiral of sorts: ice sheets reflect solar radiation, so as their surface area decreases, the earth absorbs more solar radiation (less is being reflected).Absorbing more solar radiation naturally means higher temperatures, which means more melting ice…which means even less reflection of solar radiation…and then even higher temperatures, less ice, etc.With these two longform pieces, Skelton gamely tries to replicate this phenomenon through a simple palette of sine waves subjected to escalating erosion from feedback, distortion, and ring modulation.The resulting sound art is roughly akin to dark ambient, as the decaying waves manifest themselves primarily as a murky, subterranean-sounding hum further clouded by shifting and dissonant overtones and ugly harmonies.Unlike drone or dark ambient music, however, there is an organic unpredictability that pervades the brooding thrum, as the changing harmonies create oscillations and throbs that continually blossom and dissolve.Also, the textures and the frequencies are similarly fluid, as the deep, seismic hum periodically breaks into an eerie whines, hollow ringing, or scorched and corroded-sounding ruin.
Given their identical foundation, the two versions of Front Variations share quite a lot of aesthetic territory, but there are some significant differences in their overall feel.The first variation feels like an ominous hum slowly rising from a wind-blasted and inhospitable arctic wasteland.At times, it coheres into a hollow pulse, yet any sense of structure or appealing melodic convergence seems to be entirely chance-based and ephemeral.The most striking moments tend to be those in which Skelton's mutated sine wave unexpected transforms into a deep, slow-motion howl that feels like it is emanating from the bowels of the earth.There are also some nice textural touches that surface as well, as the blurred thrum sometimes approximates an eerily bell-like timbre or swells into ragged, blown-out signal overload.The superior second variation takes things a bit further: rather than sounding like some ageless horror has started to awaken deep beneath the ice, it now feels like the ice itself has started to menacingly shake and warp.Again, however, the unpredictable interplay of the feedback and the sine wave dictate the arc, so there is no focused and linear escalation towards a full-on ice-quake.Rather, the deep and hollow thrum endlessly twists, plunges, waxes, wanes, roars, and subsides on its own glacial timescale.The howling crescendos just happen to be a bit more shuddering and visceral this time around.
While the sine wave's transformations are certainly quite intriguing and heavy at times, the comparative absence of Skelton's compositional hand unavoidably makes Front Variations in somewhat minor release in his discography.It is more of a process-centric experiment than a truly satisfying aesthetic work, which I suppose was its intention: set up a system that mirrors the decay of a massive ice shelf and see what happens.The results of that experiment were certainly worth releasing, but I suspect they will be primarily of interest to serious fans of sound art who have a deep appreciation for the subtleties of colliding frequencies and their resultant oscillations.As for everyone else, Front Variations is memorable largely for (unintentionally) beingthe closest evocation of the Dyatlov Pass Incident infrasound theory that I have heard to date: this is the sound of an inhospitable frozen void that has unnervingly come to life with creeping subterranean menace.
Plastic Anniversary features music crafted entirely out of sounds sourced from plastic objects
Matmos will tour Plastic Anniversary worldwide
Matmos by Theo Anthony
Praise for Matmos' 2016 album Ultimate Care II: "Samples of gurgles and motor noise, along with live drumming on its metal sides, made a piece that was sometimes abstract, sometimes rhythmic, sometimes silly." - New York Times
“Maybe this is what "heavy metal" should be from now on?” - Time Magazine
"One of the most purely enjoyable albums I've heard recently - more so than most of the purely electronic works I stumbled across -- must come from this interweaving of the real and the power of the virtual.” - The Wire
Thrill Jockey Records is pleased to announce Plastic Anniversary, the new album by Baltimore-based electronic duo Matmos, due out March 15th, 2019. Pushing off from the restricted palette of their last album, the critically acclaimed Ultimate Care II, which was composed entirely from the sound of a washing machine, Plastic Anniversary is also derived from a single sound source: plastic. The album was crafted as a celebration of Matmos' Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt's own anniversary as a couple and explores the world's relationship to plastic - a material whose durability, portability and longevity, while heralded by its makers, are the very qualities that make it a force of environmental devastation. Through its reliance on discarded plastic, the album shows at once the boundless creativity of Matmos and pervasive nature of the material, and therefore the urgency for solutions.
True to form, the band have assembled a promiscuous array of examples of this sturdy-yet-ersatz family of materials to create the sounds on the record: Bakelite dominos, Styrofoam coolers, police riot shields, polyethylene waste containers, PVC panpipes, pinpricks of bubble wrap, silicone gel breast implants and synthetic human fat. The bounce and snap of the duo’s programmed rhythms are supplemented by a sweatier and more unruly human element than on previous releases, provided by a surprising cast of guest musicians including Members of the horn and drumline sections of the Whitefish Highschool Bulldogs from Whitefish, Montana and drummer Greg Saunier of Deerhoof.
Over the course of the album, Matmos glide from the tongue-in-cheek fun of "Breaking Bread" to Cronenbergian body-horror yet sunny grooves of "Interior with Billiard Balls & Synthetic Fat" and "Silicone Gel Implant." If side one is playful and poppy, side two is sharper and darker in its implications, with the ominous political and sonic allusions of "Thermoplastic Riot Shield" and "Collapse Of The Fourth Kingdom." After a volatile and vibrant suite of poppy plastic electronics, Plastic Anniversary ends in an acknowledgement of the planetary price yet to be paid.
Geelriandre/Arthesis is named for the pieces that fill its two sides. "Geelriandre," realized on an ARP 2500 synthesizer in 1972, features Gérard Fremy on prepared piano, for whom the piece was originally composed. "Arthesis," realized using the University of Iowa's Moog in 1973, comprises the full duration of side B.
Eliane Radigue has received much deserved praise for her transcendent compositions for tape, synthesizers and acoustic instruments. Her work is deep, slowly changing and timelessly resonant with timbre so dense you can listen through the sound to find infinity. Accute physicality, overtones and psychoacoustic activity fills your space, follows you, grounds you, pulls you in or lets you go. It's all here/hear.