Plenty of new music to be had this week from Laetitia Sadier and Storefront Church, Six Organs of Admittance, Able Noise, Yui Onodera, SML, Clinic Stars, Austyn Wohlers, Build Buildings, Zelienople, and Lea Thomas, plus some older tunes by Farah, Guy Blakeslee, Jessica Bailiff, and Richard H. Kirk.
Lake in Girdwood, Alaska by Johnny.
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Since assuming the recording moniker Hiro Kone in 2011, New York City-based electronic artist Nicky Mao has personalized a space predicated on dark layers interacting with rhythm. With her early EPs on Group Tightener and Bitterroots, leading up to the EP Fallen Angels and the acclaimed debut full length album, Love Is the Capital (both on Geographic North), Mao's meticulously crafted textures attracted collaborators like Drew McDowall (Coil), Little Annie, and Roxy Farman (Wetware) while driving against the grain of experimental techno. Mao's explorations often cast themselves against danceable structures, creating a duality of crisis and escapism.
For Pure Expenditure—her debut on DAIS Records—Mao continues to weave a labyrinth of electronic pattern, with an often economical usage of repeating sequences and ethereal stasis to drive the narrative. The title refers to the sovereign release of a surplus energy, divorced from all imperatives of utility, which otherwise threatens to become morbid. Working from this creative theme, Mao uses this theoretical concept to seek out a long form statement without regard for any immediate interpretation or return.
In the context and construct of the album's format, Pure Expenditure reaches into the psyche of sacrifice and the danger of excess, not in a traditional allegory, but in the actual investigation of where energy is absorbed and how it’s often negatively seeped into moral fiber. While the albums' seven tracks don't offer so much as a resolution to these conundrums as they do a case study, Mao's sound has developed forcibly into the conscientious voice of systematic injustice, albeit often without syntax. Pure Expenditure creates thought through concept and volume through space. Thematically, acclaimed visual artist Tauba Auerbach created the album art, lending a conceptual cohesion through her spectral dissection of structure and ornamental arrangement.
As a journey, Pure Expenditure plunges into meditation and throbs in and out of a lucid consciousness orchestrated by Mao, but never veering into vanity. Pure Expenditure is as much rumination as it is ritual, querying the corners of Capitalism by hypnotically circling its tenets in measured cadence.
Mixed by Telefon Tel Aviv’s Josh Eustis, mastered and cut by Josh Bonati.
Apollo welcomes ambient legend bvdub AKA San Franciscan Brock Van Wey for a new album Drowning in Daylight.
Van Wey's latest explores cavernous soundscapes on a grand canvas that throbs with a delicate intimacy. A stalwart DJ and promoter of the halcyon '90s San Francisco rave scene, Van Wey fled to China in the early 2000s to escape the curdling of his musical dreams as the scene became more commercial.
Since his return, he's been incredibly prolific in his creation, etching out peerless ambient works that have captivated listeners with their delicate melody and fascinating textures through releases for the likes of Echospace, Kompakt and Styrax - 2018's A Different Definition of Love marks his 30th bvdub album to date.
Classically trained in piano and violin as a child, Van Wey's symphonic approach to ambience is truly remarkable,
Epic in its scale with each of its 4 tracks clocking in around the 20-minute mark, Drowning In Daylight envelops the listener in swathes of nostalgic pads and nested layers of distortion, strings and haunted voices.
Drowning In Daylight could well be Van Wey's crowning achievement to date and a testament to the power of instrumental abstract music to emotionally engulf the listener.
2018 marks the 20th anniversary of Wisconsin-based guitarist Erik Kowalski’s expansive and expressionistic solo vehicle, Casino Versus Japan. Across the past two decades he has explored variously interwoven realms of ambient sound – hazy IDM, experimental shoegaze, cinematic drift – but his latest collection voyages even deeper into soft-focus abstraction, unspooling 73 minutes of emotive electric immersion.
Suicide By Sun accrued across countless home studio sessions, slowly sequenced into four sides of narcotic reverberation, reflective loops, and dream-soaked delay. Guitar gestures refract into twilit horizons; hymnal drones swell and shimmer; smeared notes sway like lullabies of quiet communion. This is pensive, patient, personal music, mapped with feeling and finesse by storied hands.
URUK comes from the meeting in 2016 of two totally unclassifiable musicians: Thighpaulsandra and Massimo Pupillo.
Thighpaulsandra has an impressive track record particularly playing on many Coil albums. Traces of this influence can be found in the keyboards used on Mysterium Coniunctionis. We could randomly pick such masterpieces as the two volumes of Musick to Play in the Dark and Astral Disaster, records that were and still are among the best ambient albums ever made. He has also made several records in his own name (including the unpredictable Double Vulgar) and was a member of the UUUU (Mego Editions) project in 2017 which also featured a particularly creative Graham Lewis (Wire).
Massimo Pupillo is well known for having slammed a lot of ears as the bassist with the highly imposing Italian jazzcore trio Zu (those who saw them on stage will understand). 2009's Carboniferous or the more recent 2014 collaboration with Eugene Robinson (Oxbow) still resonate for a lot of listeners. In 2016, Massimo was in Triple Sun (no doubt a reference to the splendid song by Coil, again..) alongside two well-known musicians at Ici d'ailleurs - Raphaël Séguinier and David Chalmin (The Third Eye Foundation).
URUK also and especially brought out their first album in 2017 - I Leave A Silver Trail Through Blackness (Consouling Sounds). This is an imposing piece of dark ambient music in which the two musicians proved that they are more than just the sum their respective experiences. They are sound explorers obsessed by grasping the detail that shifts listeners from one world to another.
Their second album, Mysterium Coniunctionis makes direct reference to the eponymous and testamentary work of the psychiatrist Carl Jung, subtitled An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy. It clearly reflects the duo's intention to create particularly immersive and meaningful music from supposedly opposing materials - in this case the meeting of electronic and organic sounds.
There is complexity in simplicity, and Sparrow Nights is Peter Brötzmann and Heather Leigh's most enduring record to date, and their first studio album. A series of emotionally rich and boldly elucidated tonal and timbral exchanges played like compositions on pedal steel and reeds, the tracks (released as a 6-track LP and 10-track CD) are cold-forged minimalist blues motifs dragged from instrumental laments.
After three years playing together Brötzmann/Leigh's connection and understanding is by now both cerebral and deeply invested in the physical and sensory possibilities of their combined sound, while retaining a melancholic distance. Within this duo there is fluidity – neither is the anchor – and these recordings sound with as much variety as the sea. At times Sparrow Nights carries the clarity and poeticism of still water and open horizon ("This Word Love"), and at others it contains the elemental and ferocious roar of white water breakers on black rocks ("This Time Around").
On their previous three live albums (Ears Are Filled With Wonder, Sex Tape, Crowmoon) the duo have developed an intimate and intense language that manifests here as a focus on power and control, where figures blasted of unnecessary decoration are drawn from the shadows and smoke of collapse. The studio setting also allows Brötzmann to bring a broader range of reeds than in live scenarios: where previously he has played primarily tenor, clarinet and tarogato with Leigh, here he delivers the heat of alto and the low pressure of bass saxophone and clarinet.
Brötzmann's duo with Leigh continues to trace a fresh new arc in his trajectory, and this release also falls at a time when Leigh releases Throne, her most song-based record to date. Here as a studio duo they play a new-old blues for times of complexity, noise and chaos, continuing to redefine and re-sound possibilities for improvised music.
Geographic North proudly presents Don't Look Now, our second frightening foray into Halloween-inspired sounds to delight and dismay throughout the season. Featuring 90 minutes of haunted, hellish hysteria composed by some of the most abominable names in ambient music, the compilation nearly splits at the seams with grotesque grace.
All proceeds from this morbid mirth go directly toward youthSpark, an Atlanta-based non-profit that works directly with, and protects, at-risk youth from exploitation, abuse and trafficking in the Southeastern United States.
The compilation opens with "The Visitor," a peculiar prologue that portends potential peril ahead and one of two bookends concocted by Arp, who serves as the compilation's crypt-keeper of sorts. As the fog begins to swell, Ka Baird’s "Clearing" brings a trickle of overcast textures and exquisitely disorienting organ tones. Algiers shatter into the scene with brooding vehemence, sounding like a biting mix of John Carpenter and the Pop Group. Perennial witching hour heroes Anjou bring a moonlit mantra of eroding melodies that blossom with decay. "Sada," composed and performed by Clarice Jensen, steers the action deep into the underworld, projecting an inverted soundscape of smeared beauty. Western six-string virtuoso Danny Paul Grody carries the bizarre bewilderment into an open den of shimmering, pristine melody and resonance. The first main passage is nailed shut by "Cement Dossier," one of three anonymous and obscene chapter breaks from the Geographic North house band.
Next up, Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett unfurl a hypnotic hymn of rustic kosmische bliss that balances a deathly mix of paranoia and resolution. Eluvium's "Surrounded by Illusion" is a mini-epic of textural maximalism that only confirms the Pacific NW ambient godhead's emotional prowess. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma summons the ghost of Hildegard von Bingen for an organ-filled interpretation of "O virtus sapientiae" that's both life-affirming and devastating.
Robert Donne (Labradford, Anjou) crafts a pummeling waltz of soot and emaciation with "Rakkauslaulu," a stinging salute to Mika Vainio. Ilyas Ahmed offers an ice-cold hand to lead you through the ornately crumbing decay of "Local Blues," blurring itself almost too perfectly into the eerie, almost too comforting calmness of Félicia Atkinson’s "Little Things." Richard Chartier assumes his Pinkcourtesyphone guise for a purely cinematic lapse into the netherworld. The incognito amusement continues with "Stabbing," an extended, slow-motion scene that brings some of Suzanne Kraft’' most volatile and vile work to date.
"Thunderhead," a menacingly paced slow burn from Moon Diagrams (Moses Archuleta of Deerhunter), could be the soundtrack to the most alluring haunted house you’ve ever seen, while Roberto Carlos Lange's "Indian Rope" casts a curiously charming spell of glitter and gloom. Vancouver's own Secret Pyramid crafts a bewitching bereavement from the North, permeating everything it touches with bedeviled beauty for an unforgettable climax of bleak allure. Arp returns again to bookend Don't Look Now with "Love Theme," a fitting epilogue that reflects on the receding haze with hopeful optimism.
Although the sun has finally rose, plenty of shadows remain.
Los Angeles-based DJ and composer Nick Malkin is perhaps best known for his noirish, backlit ambient dance music under the name Afterhours (Not Not Fun). Malkin's also moonlighted as a casual collaborator with LA Vampires and Sun Araw, served as an early DJ with Chinatown-based experimental radio station KCHUNG, and currently hosts a radio show of atmospheric selections on NTS radio called Post-Geography. Now, Malkin returns with Slow Day on Brilliant Drive, his most radiant work to date.
Along with Maxwell Sterling (double bass) and Jon-Kyle Mohr (percussion), Malkin self-instituted an intricate form of collaboration that required extensive amounts of improvisation, meditation, and editing. Malkin introduced a curated series of loops to his collaborators, who then embellished them with textures and muted motifs. Malkin then laid everything out and went to work scouring, polishing, and re-contextualizing certain elements into something entirely new, with elements within dating back to 2014.
The end result is a profound live-band ambient record that celebrates a curated but communal musical dynamic, along the lines of The Necks or Supersilent, but heavily informed by the micro-delicacy of Mille Plateaux’s most fathomless works. Even with the highly disparate sound sources, Slow Day on Brilliant Drive is a deeply cohesive and surprisingly intimate work that speaks to Malkin's uncanny ear and devotion to a concept.
Released October 10th, 1988 (LP reissue out Oct 12th, 2018)
BBL-96
Format: Orange LP reissue (pre-order)
I Am Kurious Oranj is The Fall’s eleventh studio album. Released by Beggars Banquet 30 years ago in 1988, it contains some of their most loved songs including “Cab It Up!” “Jerusalem” (which takes its lyrics from a poem by William Blake) and “New Big Prinz” which Pitchfork called “one of the songs that defined The Fall and Mark E. Smith”. They also said that it “has the sort of jaunty bass line that would later emerge on Pavement’s “Two States” to Blur’s “Parklife.” When Smith utters “check the record, check the guy’s track record,” the words melt into glorious nonsense a la “Surfin’ Bird.”
The album was written as the soundtrack to an avant-garde ballet titled “I Am Curious, Orange”, produced by the experimental Michael Clark Company and performed in London with The Fall playing live. As it said in the original ballet program, replicated inside this reissue, “Mark E. Smith is a history buff and admirer of Michael Clark, and I Am Curious, Orange spawned the idea of a thematic delving into the foibles and little-known psyche of William of Orange.”
According to Mark E. Smith in his book, Renegade, “We adapted the title from a Swedish porno film--I am Curious, Yellow. I was trying to make the point that we all share some kind of common knowledge that’s within ourselves; that comes out in all sorts of things. Some people call it a gene pool. It’s as if you already know subconsciously about historical incidents. You don’t have to have been taught it. It’s in-built. At the time I wanted to put this across, basically as a loose explanation of what was happening in Belfast: it’s in the head and bones and there’s nothing you can do about it. I was on a roll at the time. I’m rarely short of ideas, and I’m not into preserving them much, either. If it’s in your head and you’ve got the right people around you them there’s no better time to tell the story. You can’t be afraid of reactions when it’s like that. I think too many writers hold too much back for another time and then lose the initial spark. The idea was that Clark would do the ballet side to it and we’d come on and play every now and again. The band was very tight at the time and I reckon we could have played anywhere and delivered. We took it to the Edinburgh Festival and it was a real punch in the face for the artistes and critics. The confidence behind the production threw people; there were no half-measures. It was all very bright and brash, and those that got it really got it. You see it a lot more in films and on TV, historical fiction depicted in a brazen way. It was never intended to be high art or low art. I don’t know what those terms mean, to be honest. It was fuck-all like anything else. That’s good enough in itself, if you ask me. I’m not saying it was perfect or brilliant, but I know for a fact that those who did hook into it experiences something special.
“[The Fall have] retained the power to surprise, to provoke and occasionally outrage that only The Smiths could pretend to possess in the ‘80s.” - NME “Smith’s work was the manna that gave a certain cross-section of music culture sustenance for 40 years.” - Pitchfork
“Part musical hypnotist, part ranting madman, Smith was a singular figure in post-punk...Their songs were odysseys into his ever-verbose psyche, marked by repetitive rhythms and melodies.” – Rolling Stone
A. New Big Prinz Overture from ‘I Am Curious Orange’ Dog Is Life/Jerusalem Kurious Oranj Wrong Place, Right Time
B. Win Fall C.D. 2080 Yes, O Yes Van Plague? Bad News Girl Cab It Up!
While he has long been one of my favorite artists, Tim Hecker has truly blossomed into a creative supernova over the last several years, as each fresh album seems to set a new standard for the state of electronic music. For the most part, this latest release continues that improbable streak of masterpieces, though Konoyo's vision is radical in a much different way than Love Streams or Virgins. The raw material was quite a bold departure from the norm, however, as Hecker collaborated with a gagaku ensemble in Tokyo. Despite the unusual instrumentation and the unexpected participants, Konoyo still sounds perversely like a classic Tim Hecker album, albeit the broken, squirming ruins of one. I suppose that makes it feel like slightly less of visionary bombshell than some other releases at times, but that is merely because Hecker's focus was on more subtle evolutions this time around, stripping away unnecessary density and adventurously playing with textures and structures to present a hallucinatory masterclass in experimental composition that seethes and churns with dark emotion.
The conceptual premise for Konoyo ("The World Over Here") is rooted in some conversations that Hecker had with a friend (now deceased) about both the concept of negative space and a frustration with the ineffective overuse of density as a compositional crutch.The path between the original inspiration and the album that ultimately results is never a linear one with Hecker though: given his exhaustive and ambitiously transformative creative process, it is always a surprise to see what shape the music takes when it finally emerges at the end.For example, I suspect Tokyo Gakuso would find most of their contributions here to be fragmented, twisted, and decontextualized into utter unrecognizability.Hecker definitely took the thoughts about density to heart though, albeit not quite in anything resembling the expected way.In the opening piece, "This Life," the central theme of howling, swooping, and tormented strings unfolds over an unpredictably shifting backdrop that wanders from tumbling, smeared arpeggios to bleary chords to grinding, bass-heavy surges of power without ever building towards a stable structure or arc.It feels quite fluid and improvisatory, despite the fact that it was all painstakingly planned, as the structure of the piece feels like it is bending, waxing, waning, and dissolving in reaction to the serpentine movements of the main theme.That approach works beautifully for that specific piece, as the demonic strings are vivid and vibrantly alive enough to thrive on their own, particularly since Hecker is continually intertwining new sounds and transforming their dissonant harmonies.With a strong enough central theme, the underlying structure does not need to prop anything up or provide any sense of forward motion, so Hecker is free to use it instead to create a wonderfully disorienting sense of fractured and fragile ephemerality.Everything is changing all of the time and it is deliriously absorbing and gloriously hallucinatory.Not every piece on Konoyo manages to pull off that feat with the same aplomb, but it is certainly great when it works.
That free-form approach to compositional structure makes Konoyo a challenging album to wrap my mind around, as it feels like I am experiencing an endlessly changing flow of motifs and fragments over a willfully inconstant and unsettled foundation.As such, the album is more like a shifting series of compelling moments rather than a structured presentation of seven individual compositions.That deeply experimental approach is still quite compelling, as Hecker's music is characteristically wonderful and distinctive as ever, yet Konoyo is perversely like a John Coltrane live recording: it is undeniably dazzling on a moment-to-moment basis, but I will be damned if I can remember which songs were played or when they started or stopped when it is all over.That said, a few pieces besides the opening "This Life" stand out as especially striking, most of which fall on the album's second half.In particular, I love the many inspired textural flourishes that billow out of the brooding and amorphous "Keyed Out," especially the squirming, stuttering arpeggios and the buried sounds of distressed vinyl or mangled tape."A Sodium Codec Haze" is another favorite, as Hecker tears through a gorgeously swaying and rippling reverie with whistling howls and chattering surges of something like garbled machine noise.Also, the final stretch sounds like a chorus of slow-motion and nightmarish wind chimes, which is quite appealing as well.The album's two longest pieces are quite powerful too, as "In Mother Earth Phase" is the most nakedly beautiful and structured piece on the album, while the epic "Across to Annoyo" is a feast of skittering, gnarled, and strangled textures.
Aside from the radical transformation of his compositional technique, it must be said that Konoyo is also unique among Hecker's releases in its darkness, as its beauty is very much a bleak one.The strange and cryptic cover art is quite fitting, evoking a kind of contemporary urban dystopia that is cold and devoid of beauty, though ramshackle art can still blossom from its sad detritus. If Virgins sounded like it was recorded in a collapsing cathedral and Love Streams felt like it was recorded by a choir of angels, Konoyo feels like it was recorded in a post-apocalyptic junkyard by light of flaming garbage cans.  I will not attempt to guess what Hecker was feeling or whether he had any deeply metaphoric intentions, but the tone is definitely a heavy and striking one.In stripping away much of his usual artifice, Hecker has created a much more direct and raw emotional connection than usual.As such, this release is unlike anything else in Tim Hecker's discography and I love him for that.He could have easily made a universally beloved album by sticking to his rough trajectory, but instead he opted for a much more sorrow-steeped and difficult road.As such, Konoyo is probably the most challenging and prickly release in his discography, which may alienate some less-adventurous listeners.Artistic boldness and listenability rarely go hand-in-hand though and this is easily one of Hecker’s most ambitious and provocative statements to date.
Barnacles, the (mostly) solo project of Italy’s Matteo Uggeri (also a member of Sparkle in Grey) has released two albums nearly simultaneously, and even though the approach to each are drastically different, the final product is entirely complimentary. With one culled from source material of previous releases and the other with the legendary experimental Italian artist and composer, there is a wide gamut of sounds here, but one that has the unified focus of Uggeri’s compositional skills.
Air Skin Digger is the self-plunderphonic of the two:four lengthy pieces of complex, interlocking loops that are created exclusively from Uggeri's other projects with no other instrumentation included. Per composition there are also only four source sounds used.Even with these self-imposed limitations, the final product sounds far more complex and diverse.Opening piece "How a Slave, Who Had Perpetually Defamed Me and Desired to Have Me Killed, was Himself Killed and Eaten in my Presence" leads off with noisy loops and far off bagpipes (performed by Alberto Carozzi) that are cast atop a nicely drifting, echoing backdrop.Soon frenetic drum loops, originally recorded by Simone Riva, are added and the piece takes on a chaotic, but brilliant direction.
Comparatively, "Of the Manner in Which the Savages Ate a Prisoner and Carried me to the Feast" is a bit more electronic sounding, and also more rigid.Synth sequences and guitar loops make for a tighter structure, eventually relenting with the inclusion of 4/4 kick drum patterns and what sounds like tapes from a riot.For the second half things loosen up as more drumming from Riva and distorted noise loops take focus.The final piece, "My Prayer to the Lord God When I Was in the Hands of the Savages Who Threatened to Eat Me,"is a fitting climax, throwing a bit of everything together and it all solidifying amazingly.Franz Krostopovic's viola is mixed clearly to the front as Uggeri blends in some industrial sounding drum loops to contrast.The mix is great, joining in the slow, ambient passages with more aggressive rhythms.After an ambient breakdown he reintroduces those original sounds with the addition of actual drumming, ending the album on a strong note.
For Sidereal Decomposition Activity, Uggeri works from a wider palette with newly created sounds, alongside contributions from the legendary artist Maurizio Bianchi.The two have collaborated at various times since 2007, so it is no surprise that their unique styles end up complementary, with Uggeri focusing on the rhythmic and chaotic sounds, and Bianchi, in full new age mode, leaning heavily on the synths and electronics."Infinite Cosmic Eruption" opens the album with Uggeri’s noisy, loop-heavy din.The rhythms are there but more processed and sparse compared to his solo material.Bianchi contributes some spacious, droning electronics that nicely fit with his current work, but still the final product feels faithful to his classic material as well.
This nod to classic M.B. is especially prominent on "Sidereal Decomposition Activity," with its wobbling distortion and Bianchi's decrepit, decaying keyboard passages.The dour, bleak electronic sound is the focus, as Uggeri's rhythmic loops are subtly blended in and out, at times taking the stage more aggressively but never as to overshadow the electronics."Astral Fall Dynamism" is a bit more disorienting in its distant mangled voice loops and plucked string patterns.The result is an abstract, less structured piece of material.Concluding song "Unearthly Armagheddon Energy" takes the album out on an especially strong composition.From its noisily static opening and depressive melody, the two pile on the sounds, rhythmic and processed, coming together as almost song-like and traditional, but in their distinctly idiosyncratic way.Building to a dramatic crescendo and then stripped back like the post apocalyptic fallout after a cataclysmic explosion.
Matteo Uggeri’s loop-heavy, abstract sound sculptor approach to music as Barnacles nicely ties these two records together that, in some ways differ greatly from one another.With Air Skin Digger being limited to just treating and remixing previous works, and Sidereal Decomposition Activity having major contributions by Maurizio Bianchi, the two albums start from notably different concepts self-imposed constraints. While the two may not sound entirely similar, Uggeri's style leads to a synergy of sorts, resulting in two distinct albums that are both essential and complementary to one another.
While this is improbably the first Orphax release to be covered on Brainwashed, Amsterdam's Sietse van Erve has been a significant figure in experimental music circles for nearly two decades, running the fine Moving Furniture label and organizing events at the STEIM Foundation and elsewhere. This latest album is kind of a decade-spanning labor of love, as van Erve solicited audio files from a number of planned collaborators back in 2006 for a project that was eventually abandoned. However, he recently rediscovered some saxophone recordings made by James Fella and decided to revisit them, resulting in the cacophonously brilliant opening piece "JF." To complement that piece, Sietse then enlisted his father to make some fresh new recordings for him to work his transformative magic upon for a companion piece. While the two pieces sound quite different from one another, both are compellingly unusual forays into longform drone that lysergically swirl and undulate with vibrant harmonic interplay.
I suppose saxophone-based drone albums are not particularly common, but the instrument lends itself quite well to microtonal experimentation and sustained notes, so albums in this vein have likely been a relative fixture in experimental music since Terry Riley's early days.To his credit, however, van Erve's approach to this project is a bit of an unusual/outsider one.Namely, he is not a saxophonist and is merely harvesting the sounds from the instrument for his own vision.That might not seem like a big deal, but it completely liberates van Erve from any and all performance-based concerns, so he is not painstakingly assembling the piece in real-time using looping pedals nor is there any real limit to the number of layers he can amass and intertwine.Sietse is also far from dogmatic in his approach to drone in general with the opening "JF," as the central motif is a swaying dance of shrilly harmonizing tones that are constantly changing their relation to one another.He does not use passing dissonances as mere tool to build tension–he immediately creates a fundamentally dissonant world and happily stays there for the duration.There is no sense that the piece is ever on the verge of unexpectedly cohering into a passage of unearthly beauty, but it is visceral and vibrant enough to remain compelling without any conspicuous evolution or compositional sleight of hand: it is simply a wonderfully tense miasma of waxing and waning howls from start to finish, though there are some wonderfully spectral and ephemeral shapes swirling in the undercurrent.It is a truly stellar and unusual piece.
The following "JvE" is considerably less harsh, as its deeper, more throbbing tones weave a slow-motion reverie of buzzing, oscillating, and flanging drones.In fact, it does not sound much like a saxophone piece at all–more like a Sunn o))) that worshipped clarity, precision, and elegance rather than roiling power and density (or like an Eliane Radigue shrouded in fog with a wall of amplifiers behind her).Much like its predecessor, however, there is another layer of activity beyond the actual notes being played.Unlike "JF," however, "JvE" is understated, slow-moving, and spacious enough for the resultant oscillating cloud of overtones to feel like a prominent and integral part of the piece.As if to underscore that feat, the central motif pulls a bit of a vanishing act in the piece's final moment to leave only a drifting, dreamlike cloud of hazy melodies and submerged, sputtering entropy.That transformation is particularly impressive when the context of the entire album is considered, as Saxophone Studies began in feral, confrontational fashion and lost very little of its steam and ability to beguile as it slowly and purposefully made its way towards a quiet, understated, and nuanced coda.
I am quite fond of both pieces, making Saxophone Studies a uniformly strong release, but I am most struck by the comparatively harsh discomfort of the opening piece, which takes drone music to a wonderfully tense and confrontational place.There is a vast ocean of drone in the world and most of it all blurs together for me.Very little of it, however, sounds like it is about to leap out of my speakers to kill me, which is why Saxophone Studies is an album that will stick in my memory.With "JF," van Erve proves himself to be a master at wielding sharpness, shifting dissonance, and unresolved tension to make an extended drone piece feel like a squirming and disconcerting living entity.Of course, focusing exclusively upon "JF" does a bit of a disservice to the more subtle microtonal sorcery of the closer, but two pieces make a perversely effective pairing: it is "JF" that makes Saxophone Studies a memorable and attention-grabbing release, but the more subtle pleasures of "JvE" will remain to be revealed and explored long after I become numb to the howling power of its predecessor.