14 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

I have never been all that deeply immersed in the international noise scene, but I have certainly been aware of the scatological insanity of Rudolf Eb.er for a couple of decades now. I always viewed his work like an anarcho-punk might have viewed GG Allin: a compelling spectacle, for sure, but in a completely different category than the serious music that truly mattered. After hearing this singular and bizarrely brilliant mélange of "psychomagick spells and occult yogic instructions," however, I definitely need to go back and cautiously revisit more of Eb.er's previous ouevre: he clearly grasps something elusive and profound that most other people do not. This release may be the birth of a transcendent and entirely new phase, however, as Eb.er has allegedly "conquered the nether scatological regions" and moved onto "psycho-spiritual cleansing rituals." As a listener, I did not feel particularly psychically cleansed by this album, but I did not feel coated in filth afterwards either, which is an unexpected step in the right direction. With Om Kult, Rudolf Eb.er seems to have emerged from the grotesque purification ritual of his previous work as some kind of wild-eyed and uncomfortably intense shaman operating at an unusually high plane of consciousness.

self-released

This is the first part of a planned trilogy that is apparently a continuation of Brainnectar's "studies of psycho-spiritual forces."There seems to be quite a lot of conceptual and philosophical background to this release, which makes a lot of sense, as I suspect someone can only get to this place through a combination of intense thought and an even more intense desire to transcend consciousness entirely.That latter has always been a driving force for Eb.er, as his work has historically tended to have a very primal and physical component.That drive manifests itself in a compellingly different way on Om Kult though, as these 31 fragments manage to mingle a meditative feel with a strikingly animalistic and guttural sensibility.Those two threads normally could not easily coexist, but Eb.er's approach to Zen lies more in the acceptance that he will inevitably die, rot, and be reabsorbed by the earth than in imagining a peaceful stream or feeling any sense of oneness with his fellow man.While I definitely appreciate where Eb.er is coming from conceptually and artistically, the world is littered with underwhelming albums birthed from interesting ideas.Fortunately, this is not one of those albums, as Eb.er's approach to composition was every bit as ingenious and unconventional as his inspirations.Much like Graham Lambkin, Eb.er proves himself to be the kind of artist that can create something truly bizarre and memorably disturbing with only a microphone or a crappy tape recorder.

Being able to make a complex and absorbing album from virtually nothing is undeniably an impressive feat, but it is also something much than that: in reducing his palette to just his voice and some field recordings, Eb.er eliminates any artifice that might have blunted the raw, direct connection of these pieces.The sole concession made to conventional musicality is the occasional use of a sine wave generator, which Eb.er generally uses to create a shifting and uneasy backdrop of subtly menacing drones at uncomfortably close frequencies.At other times, however, the sine waves sound like an emergency broadcast tone emanating from a living room television as the room's occupants are being messily and loudly devoured by blood-thirsty demons.The album's latter half is especially rife with such viscerally nightmarish moments, particularly "Hexenerscheinung," "Beelzefest," and "Schmerzmasse abfaulend," which seem to form an infernal triptych of shrieking women, crackling fires, demonically pitch-shifted voices, and shuddering machinery.All three resemble a troublingly realistic field recording of hell opening up to engulf a small village in fiery, murderous chaos.If the album was entirely in that vein, it would be quite a grueling and unpleasant experience, but Om Kult has such a thoughtful and deliberate arc that such moments actually feel earned and cathartic by the time they arrive.The majority of the album resembles a slow-building and phantasmagoric series of vividly textured abstract vignettes built from tape hiss, chittering insects, rusted industrial machinery, falling water, and recognizably distressed and cryptic snatches of voices.

Of course, those are just the bits that I can recognize–there countless additional touches that will either lurk just outside my consciousness forever or only reveal themselves with time and deeper listening.Eb.er apparently spent two years accumulating and processing the sounds for this album, wandering Japan's forests, fields, and monasteries and recording everything from chanting monks to maggots feeding on dead animals.Also: dirt and haystacks.I have no idea how much some of those sounds actually provide a noticeable element in the final collages, but I certainly appreciate how deeply committed Eb.er was to earthy authenticity and the darker realities of matter and life.I could not hope for a more complete or thematically coherent celebration of ephemerality and decay.By any standard, Om Kult is a remarkably intense, memorable, unnerving, and one-of-a-kind album.I definitely would not describe it is significantly more accessible than Eb.er's usual confrontational and polarizing artistry, yet it is unquestionably a tour de force of…something.Whatever is happening here feels meaningful and important and like great art.If it is not, it is at least one hell of a convincing illusion.I think I might have just become a rabid Rudolf Eb.er fan.No one else will release anything even remotely as outré or timelessly otherworldly as Om Kult this year.Or possibly for several years to come.

12 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

There is an old Norse myth that says the great northern glaciers stored energy until they burst with fluorescent light, creating the Aurora Borealis. Saariselka is inspired by the meeting of earth and light, where slowly moving land masses merge with enveloping light fields. This sonic collaboration is between composers Marielle Jakobsons (Fender Rhodes, organ, synthesisers) and Chuck Johnson (pedal steel guitar and treatments).

Chuck Johnson is an Oakland, California based composer and musician. He approaches his work with an ear towards finding faults and instabilities that might reveal latent beauty, with a focus on guitar, experimental electronics, minimalism and soundtrack composition. Recordings of his work have been published by VDSQ, Trouble in Mind, Scissor Tail, Merge, and Three Lobed, among others.

Marielle V. Jakobsons is a composer and intermedia artist based in Oakland, CA. Her compositions evoke minimalism with melodic drone and enveloping polyrhythmic soundscapes of synthesizers, strings, and voice. She has published recordings and toured internationally on Thrill Jockey, Mexican Summer, Students of Decay, Digitalis, Important Records, among others.

Artist notes:

"Ceres is inspired by whiteouts, where the rhythm of your breath and body become a container for experiencing the fine gradations of your surroundings. The process of creating this piece was one of learning how to get out of the way, and of emphasizing the use of space and decay to alter one’s perception of time. With a skeleton formed by a simple chord progression, we focused on the compelling sonic subtleties of the pedal steel guitar, Fender Rhodes electric piano, and a Yamaha electric organ.

One of the many profound lessons I learned from my studies with Pauline Oliveros was the concept of truly existing inside the sound. Rather than thinking about a sonic structure as a horizontal timeline as in a score or audio editing software, or as a vertical stack of frequencies as depicted in a spectrogram, Oliveros' approach invites us to exist inside a piece as if it was a three dimensional structure that surrounds the listener like a sphere. In fact, in her meditation exercises she encouraged participants to think of any sonic environment as a composition that is always available if one is willing to listen. These ideas inform my music making to this day." (Chuck)

More information can be found here.

12 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

When is one plus one not two? When two paths converge and a new one appears. But what is this newly activated neural pathway? A Third Mind? In the 1960s, multimedia artist Brion Gysin cut through the words of a newspaper and rearranged them to reveal a new kind of truth contained within the words but not freed until his knife cut it loose. He described this as part of the Third Mind. Likewise, Limpid As The Solitudes cuts through sound-making techniques to enter a new zone of sonic revelations.

If you had to look for musical precedents, you might say the record recalls the turn-of-the-century Mille Plateaux glitch era, the warmth of La Monte Young's raga-inspired microtonal electronic "dream house" drones, a sense of adventure evident in the acousmatic non-space recordings made by GRM artists in the 1960s/ 1970s, 4AD's floor-gazing guitar sound circa Cocteau Twins peak, and blissfully diverse field recordings. But you could equally equate it with entirely different recording sources.  Limpid As The Solitudes has a widescreen sound that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Warm, comforting and also unsettling in unpredictable ways. Deliberate yet exploratory. It’s a record composed of opposites and contrasts. Following historical guidelines yet also throwing them out of the window. It's hard to tell if the process of creating it was more akin to abstract painting but it might possibly be easier to understand if it was a large museum painting (to steal a thought from David Stubbs). To describe the album as ambient would indicate a much too passive engagement with the sound – leave it to play in the background and you’ll miss a lot of the joy.

Felicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma describe the record as a series of postcards - things and sounds that happen vertically as a slow ascension, vessels communicating in dreams.  In this collaborative recording, there is a feeling of "becoming" - things metamorphose - a concrete sound turns into a electronic sound that turns into a spiral-like melody which then furls / unfurls at the same time.

The title of the album - Limpid As The Solitudes - as well as track titles, are all verses stolen from Sylvia Plath's poems. If you look at the cover, you’ll find another key clue - you’ll see an image created by photographer Julien Carreyn of a young women wearing destroyed jeans, playing with bubble wrap. The image is intended to give the viewer an eerie 1990's feeling that echoes the recording.  Think films like Trust (Hal Hartley, 1990) or Chungking Express (Wong Kar Wai, 1994).  It's the ultra modern solitude of characters lost in an early-digital urban vacuum, looking for a more time to wonder, a soul mate or just some compassion in the grey sky.

Among the many other references for this album is how Google Maps have created new digital perceptions of space, Gilles Deleuze's examination of Alice In Wonderland, Andre Breton's poems, and more films including the classics Sacrifice (Tarkovsky), Passenger (Antonioni), and Last Year In Marienbad (Resnais).  To dig into the more of the ideas and sources behind this record, you'll simply have to talk to the duo.  We simply cannot give you the full depth here.

Be sure to come back to this record more than once - it's then that its power will work - you'll recall the sound of a lover, a garden you once walked through, an echo of a record you once loved. To be appreciated, Limpid As The Solitudes requires you to immerse yourself as if in a hot spring, letting the sounds float over you and alter your perceptions and memories.

More information can be found here.

12 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

Brace Up! is the first ever studio release from the duo of Chris Corsano (drums) and Bill Orcutt (guitar). Recorded in Brussels at Les Ateliers Claus by Christophe Albertijn on March 19th and 20th, 2018. Stage dive photograph by Jason Penner.

"Over the past six years or so, drummer Chris Corsano has proven to be one of Bill Orcutt's most reliably flexible collusionists. Regardless of whether Bill is cluster-busting electric guitar strings, weaseling around with cracked electronics, or playing relatively spacious free-rock, Corsano is able to provide the proper base for his aural sculpting. A lot of Orcutt's instrumental work has traditionally felt hermetic even though he's exploring caverns of explosive ecstasy. One often got the impression Bill was operating in the way John Travolta did in the classic 1976 ABC television drama, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Orcutt's actual interaction with collaborators emerged not from communication so much as pure observation. While he was fully cognizant of his musical surroundings, his reactions to it were walled off. This approach did not encourage sonic dialogue so much as parallel streams of discourse. These streams could interact with each other, but not in particularly standard ways. On Brace Up! , their first ever studio release, this precept has changed considerably. Whether it's a function of emotional familiarity or an intellectual choice I dunno, but there's a whole new kind of duo exchange going down on this record. Bill and Chris are clearly playing off each other's moves throughout the album. And it really raises the level of the music to an all-time high. From the cop car see-saw of "Poundland Frenzy" to the mutual pummeling of "Paranoid Time" (possibly a Minutemen tribute?) to the lazychicken-gets-stung-prog of "She Punched a Hole in the Moon for Me," the sounds on Brace Up! display a constant flow of ideas and instantaneous conjugation of newly forged verbs. As great as Bill and Chris's previous duo records have been, this one's greater." -- Byron Coley

More information can be found here.

12 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

To simply categorize the music of Rivulets as spare or desolate is to unjustly deny it the hot blood sizzling through its very veins.

Sure, on the band's 6th album In Our Circle, there are prairies of space over which notes and tones often hang like dust specks in a light beam. But there is a pulsing intensity to these moments, these Rust Belt incantations. Denver-via-Minneapolis Songwriter Nathan Amundson might be laconic in his presentation, but his music is abound with thoughtful sentiment and rich in soul. Think of the way the seemingly austere music of Low (with whom Amundson has toured and collaborated), Jason Molina or even, say, the repetitive psych-metal of the vastly under-appreciated Lungfish, vibrated with raw nerve and dark energy. In Our Circle vibrates with a similar hard-earned confidence and perhaps with an even darker energy.

In Our Circle dwells heavy in a contemporary American psyche. Rare is the news that doesn’t feel worse than the day before. If we're currently in the Autumn of the American Era, then In Our Circle sits out there in late November in a first snow made of ash. And this is from a band who once called an album We're Fucked. But the hounds of time are really nipping at our heels now.  "Another dark day, another dark day, another dark day, another dark day," Amundson quivers in his lovely, breathy tenor over a slo(ooo)w shuffling strum and a striking lap steel. Coming at the album's midpoint, one might see this as Rivulets waving the white flag halfway through. But there's a comfort in these blues, some sort of communal sadness in the dark. If the dad in Cormac McCarthy's The Road had a guitar in his grocery cart, these would be the last songs he played before he used the guitar for campfire kindling.

More information can be found here.

05 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

BEAST is a new project by composer Koen Holtkamp, known for his sweeping, maximalist work with Mountains, as well as his labyrinthian solo recordings. While taking some time away from music to focus on working with light and color his approach shifted, opening himself up to new working methods which led to the creation of a virtual ensemble of sorts. The process of refocusing on music found Holtkamp gravitating towards pieces centered on simple rhythmic patterns which, when built upon one another, create elaborately intertwining castles of sound. On Ens, Holtkamp reins in his sprawling sound with new resolve, crafting tightly constructed pieces of engaging and ecstatic beauty.

Ens was made during a time of anticipation of change for Holtkamp: the birth of his first child. Having recorded and mixed the album late at night and at odd hours in the months leading up to the birth and during the early sleepless days of fatherhood, Ens (which means entity or existence) is a profoundly intimate and heartfelt journey into Holtkamp’s psyche. The constant motion created by the ebb and flow of rhythmic elements connects Ens’ diverse compositions and mirrors the building expectation of such a momentous change.

Holtkamp’s initial recordings as BEAST (Vol 1 & Vol 2) were mostly conceived for the immediacy and physicality of performance and were directly linked to a series of visual environments he created with 3D laser projections. As a purely studio project, Ens takes on a more precise and contemplative approach. Moments of blissful grandeur such as the convalescence of melodies in "Paprika Shorts" are at once overwhelming and crystalline in the placement and clarity of each sound. Deceptively simple pieces like "Boketto" and "Miniature" appear more sparse and subtle, but the arrangement of sounds reveal deeper levels of nuance with each listen. By carefully arranging and selecting each element, Holtkamp both references genre tropes, from classical minimalism to beat-driven dance music, and constructs a sound all his own. The intricately detailed depth of field gives the album an almost sculptural presence. This level of detail is underpinned by Holtkamp's move towards more virtual instrumentation which he utilizes to push beyond the physical limitations of their acoustic equivalents, as well as to synthesize new instruments.

As BEAST, Holtkamp has nimbly altered his process of creating dense, immersive music. Ens stands as not only the culmination of his newfound methods, but also a deeply personal moment. In crafting the graceful and passionate sonic tapestries into compact compositions, BEAST's Ens masterfully melds the earthbound and the ethereal.

More information can be found here.

05 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

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.

More information can be found here.

05 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

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.

More information can be found here.

05 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

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.

More information can be found here.

03 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

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.

More information can be found here.