26 March 2023

Duncan Edwards

Albums and Singles

I can hardly think of anything better for Aguirre to have reissued on vinyl than Morgan Fisher's collaboration with Lol Coxhill, originally released in1980 on Fisher's short-lived Pipe label. More than four decades later Slow Music is a rare phenomenon: a masterpiece which truly sounds like one. It remains an ambient landmark, an elemental work of art and imagination, and a painstaking labor of love.

Aguirre

Coxhill started out in standard jazz, Fisher in popular music, but from these fairly conventional points, both set about making creative leaps to develop their talents, and vice versa. Fisher quickly went into and out of such disparate groups as Third Ear Band and Mott the Hoople before his penchant for experimentation led—via Miniatures (his 1980 collection of 51 one minute tracks by everyone from Gavin Bryars, XTC, and Penguin Cafe Orchestra, to Ivor Cutler, Robert Wyatt, and The Damned)—to his own radically experimental music. Coxhill accelerated into his distinctly wild yet restrained style of saxophone playing, bringing him into contact with future members of the legendary Hatfield & The North, Kevin Ayers, Shirley Collins, Derek Bailey, and many others, in addition to acting roles on stage and screen. The pair worked together for the first time one year before Slow Music when Coxhill came into the studio for Fisher's Hybrid Kids, ostensibly a collection of various mutant art-punk groups, all of whom were in fact Morgan Fisher in disguise.

With his own studio and a distribution deal from Cherry Red records in the bag, Fisher set out to create something different, something we might now see in a similar vein as a few of the 1970s releases on the Obscure label: ambient, post-rock, improvisatory, studio-as-instrument, modern classical. Given the time period, synthesizers would have been the obvious choice of instrument upon which to base his first ambient exploration, but Fisher opted for a more radical component: Coxhill's saxophone. The result was a great example of "musical sausage-making," as in the success of the end product relying on the quality of the ingredients. Of course, Fisher's working ideas and processes were also quite extraordinary. Take the opening track "Que En Paz Descanse," for example. He has casually described this mesmerizingly mournful classic as "a bit like a Mexican funeral march," which is really selling it short. The raw material is Coxhill performing Handel's "Largo" which Fisher recycles through tape delays, VCS3 filters and octave shifts to create an unforgettable piece. This track, and the final title piece are the undisputed highlights of Slow Music.

The entire album is a fascinating exercise in uncategorizable tape collaging minimalism, with overdubs, layers, and loops done to create passages of both hypnotic beauty and gob-smackingly clever sound manipulation. Coxhill's instrument is transformed to where it remains sonorous and timbral, yet rarely sounds like a saxophone. There are two tiny pieces on the record, one sounding very much like the reversal of the other, which makes sense given they are called "Flotsam" and "Jetsam." I like to imagine that Fisher took those titles from J.R.R.Tolkien, but that is probably unlikely and doesn't actually matter in the slightest.

The title track, "Slow Music/Pretty Little Girl," is 26 minutes of bliss based upon the melody of the final three or so minutes—where Lol Coxhill sings "Pretty Little Girl" as if accompanied by distant church bells. With guitar, bass, piano and voice, Morgan Fisher recorded his own piano, guitar, bass and vocal versions of that simple tune. He then spent weeks cutting approximately 5 mm of tape off from the start of each note, by hand, looping each melodic phrase, and recording these loops as new tracks which he then manipulated with tape delays. This seminal work has been cited as an important influence by several other artists, not least Haruomi Hosono.

Slow Music was reissued on vinyl in 2020. Lol Coxhill, subject of the documentary Frog Dance, passed away in 2012 at the age of 79 after a long illness. Morgan Fisher lives in Japan where—amongst other things—he hosts artist salons, exhibits his abstract photography called Light Art, and has composed music for television commercials and for the anime/live action film Twilight of The Cockroaches.

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26 March 2023

Duncan Edwards

Albums and Singles

The Notwist tend to regard their live shows as launchpads where they can blast off from their studio albums on voyages of discovery. Live from Alien Research Center is a terrific document of that process, as the group re-explore the contents of Vertigo Days; their 2021 release which featured an array of guests from Angel Bat Dawid to Juana Molina. 2021-23 might seem a speedy recycling of the same material, but there is valuable quality of freedom and looseness in these live versions; stretched out and stitched together in the kosmische style.

Morr Music

As enjoyable as it has been to spend the past week on an accelerated hypnostroll through The Notwist discography, that probably cannot compensate for the inattention I've paid to it for around two decades. Over that 20 year period, there has been encouragement from reliable sources, which caused the opposite effect… since nothing provokes the contrarian quite like another person imagining they've discovered something which aligns with our own taste. At any rate, and not only in my imagination, The Notwist has been something of an invisible or taken-for-granted phenomenon, at once both subterranean and ubiquitous, not being there while always being there. With no evidence whatsoever, I feel they are content with this position. After all, without being a pastiche, their music and methodology mirrors the long revered German and European music revolution which sparked Tangerine Dream, Faust, Popol Vuh and others into a Year Zero rejection of both the shackles of military history and the occupying force of US music.

Back in 2016 the group released their first live album Superheroes, Ghostvillains + Stuff, a lengthy recording of the last of three sold out concerts from December 2015 in Leipzig, which focuses primarily on material from the group's Neon Golden album (itself a quantum leap from their early noisy incarnation to a sound balancing a melodic popular sensibility with avant-outsider electro-cool). For Alien Research Center the group worked out the song arrangements and then recorded everything in one take—for obvious reasons without an audience. The question of whether this event was a gig should not keep anyone up at night, not least those of us who have attended shows where the group vastly outnumbered the crowd. At 45 minutes it is considerably shorter than the previous live recording, yet performs the same trick of reinventing another of their creative leaps forward, Vertigo Days, by harnessing their absolutely obvious joy of performing. This joy is clearly lapped up by fans. Indeed, the headline to a piece on this gig and album, by Felix Heinecker, translates as "The Return of Our Incredible Humans."

As on the studio album, "Into love / Stars" is a highlight, even more so here extended to an eight minute duration, moving from ultra fragile hyper-melodic vocals and blinking percussive bleeps to blissful, driving, hypnotic krautrock. Cosmic European music, if you will.

On "Where You Find Me" the group sound like it is walking a tightrope strung between Stereolab's shed and the back garden of Eden Ahbez, without falling off. The angular rhythms of "Ship" could easily slot into any Tarwater album, particularly the later ones. I enjoyed the absolute nothingness of "Intermission" as both a palate cleanser and a primer for the smoother second half of the recording. Everything merges into a seamlessly blissed out mantra as "Into the Ice Age" leads into "Oh Sweet Fire," "Sans Soleil," and the achingly wonderful closing piece "Loose Ends."

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26 March 2023

Duncan Edwards

Albums and Singles

This first volume of Valentina Goncharova's home studio recordings is devoted to her remarkable solo work over a four year period from 1987. The first six tracks in particular illustrate her genius for balancing written composition with spontaneity, and for manipulating sources (such as her voice and cello) into beautifully hypnotic maelstroms of melodic dissonance.

Shukai

I have read about the breadth and artistic vision of Valentina Goncharova, her classical studies, her quest for experimentation, her embrace of musique concrete and drone, free jazz and underground rock, her interests in Boulez, Riley, Stockhausen and others, and her wildly inventive home studio shenanigans. None of which fully prepared me for the mind-melting allure of her best music, with it's hypnotic frequencies, and mastery of space and spirit.

Writers from John Lydgate, to Cervantes, Donne, and Shakespeare, have all agreed that comparisons are odious, but the title of Goncharova's fantastic piece called "Insight" brings to mind a comparison which I cannot resist. More than 40 years ago I went to see Buzzcocks and was stunned by the 30 minute set from the support group—Joy Division*—after whom Pete Shelley and co sounded like The Monkees. Had Valentina Goncharova appeared first on that bill—blasting manipulated cello strings and synthesizer keys—she would have made Ian Curtis and co sound like The Monkees and Buzzcocks sound like The Archies. Just listen to the magic and power she generates on "Insight" (even the first 60 seconds will be enough). More than noise, more than avant-garde exploration, there is a cathartic and poignant quality to the extraterrestrial reverberations and exotic drone of both "Insight" and "Passageway to Eternity." In the face of these two tracks I groped for descriptors and, as usual, found only ludicrously subjective mental pictures: of electrical pulses whining along phone wires in the desert, an exhausted UFO fighting to stay aloft but losing power and sinking beneath quicksand. Separating these masterpieces is the delicate and eerie "Zen Garden'' which sounds like a duet between (and I have no experience of playing either) a Scottish fiddle and an Atari game console, as they pass in space aboard separate satellites.

"Maitreya" appears to consist of little more than muted clanging bells and the sound of Goncharova wailing into her cello strings, yet after getting "the treatment" the combined and altered sound ends up as a transcendent hyper-mantric exorcism of reason. "Higher Frequencies" the shortest tune on the album is initially sweet sounding but does have an odd atmosphere of approaching dread, like signing a 12 month lease and then realizing you've moved in next door to Craig Leon and The Clangers.

My preference would be for the album to end right there, and if this music had been released before CDs and digital downloads, then it may have. Certainly the final four tunes, including the 18 minutes of "Metamorphoses," all add to the experimental variety, yet to me they sound like they belong on a different disc. Dissenters can just be happy with the bonus. Make no mistake, though, Vol1 is an astonishing discovery, as mystifying as it is satisfying. I picture two trains on parallel tracks. One train is called composition and the other is improvisation. Valentina Goncharova is driving both. She keeps both trains close, makes them switch tracks, even runs both on the same track, all without causing a crash.

*Joy Division has a completely different song called "Insight."

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05 March 2023

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This debut album from Danish artist/multi-instrumentalist Cecilie "Cisser" Mæhl is easily one of the strongest releases from Berlin's Sonic Pieces in recent memory. Mæhl has already carved out an impressively distinctive niche. Innemuseum first began taking shape in the summer of 2019 when Mæhl made a bunch of field recordings while working at a mountain lodge in Norway (though those recordings would ultimately become a very small part of the puzzle). After moving to Oslo, she rented a studio space and eventually met some inspiring people who helped guide her towards realizing her unconventional vision (Jenny Hval, Stephan Mathieu, and the increasingly ubiquitous and versatile Lasse Marhaug). The involvement of the latter was especially surprising for me, as this album has the intimate feel of a bedroom chamber pop masterpiece conjured from little more than a violin, a drum machine, and an ancient piano, which is generally not where I expect someone from Testicle Hazard to turn up. That said, the homespun, elegantly minimal feel of these pieces is presented in beautifully detailed, crystalline clarity, which is presumably where the Marhaug magic came into play. I suspect this album would still be quite good even if submerged in tape hiss and murk, as Mæhl has a lovely voice and plenty of great ideas, but the fact that these otherwise hushed songs explode in vivid color beautifully elevates Innemuseum to another level altogether.

Sonic Pieces

The opening "Menneskeaftryk" kicks off the album in strikingly lovely fashion, as Mæhl sensuously sings in Dutch over a backdrop of muted arpeggios that fitfully blossoms into swooningly romantic orchestral swells. The following "Små Ting" is similarly stellar, as a shuffling drum machine groove propels Mæhl's playfully dancing melody into a realm somewhere between a seductive cabaret performance and the "haunted fairytale" aesthetic of Brannten Schnüre. While both pieces succeed primarily due to the strength of Mæhl's melodies and the charisma and soul of her vocal performance, there are a number of interesting compositional and production nuances that make them stand out even further. The big one is that Mæhl's vocals (and presumably several of the instruments as well) are close-mic'd, which gives every piece a sense of intimacy and physical presence, but there is an organic fluidity to the vocal melodies that feels wonderfully spontaneous and alive as well.

The structures and arrangements are similarly intuitive, as Mæhl's songs feel far more like miniatures or poems than structured songs. That is intended as a compliment, as they do not feel sketchlike at all. Instead, it feels like a beautiful theme is given just enough space and time to develop fully and it does not ever linger around for long once that objective has been reached. Moreover, Mæhl seamlessly avoids recognizable pop tropes like verses, choruses, and repetition, as she can make pop magic in its most distilled form just fine without them (simple, direct, and refreshingly human). Of course, that tendency towards brevity understandably results in quite a short album (under 30 minutes), but it also means that absolutely nothing ever overstays its welcome and that nearly every single song feels like a legitimate highlight ("Banegård" and "Se Nu Stiger Floden" stand out as especially strong). Innemuseum is an absolutely gorgeous and fully formed debut.

Listen here.

05 March 2023

Duncan Edwards

Albums and Singles

Archangels has an unhurried pace which I find deeply satisfying. John Bence shapes electronics, voice, piano, percussion and orchestration into dense and haunting forms, and although he creates some dynamic and challenging sounds, he never forgets that human ears need melodies and tunes. The spiritual concerns underpinning this creation also make it a good stepping off point to investigate and learn about a variety of concepts which have occupied people throughout human history.

Thrill Jockey

It is no accident that the album begins with a piece entitled "Psalm 34.4," a simple form of which states "I sought the Lord, and he heard me, And delivered me from all my fears." Quite what Bence is getting at here matters more for him than me, because my main concern is that Archangels is a genuinely intriguing and enjoyable album to listen to. Although given his victory over addiction, perhaps the album documents Bence's interest in his spiritual health, or even his gratitude for divine help. In an increasingly secular world, where such matters as diet, finances, physical fitness, and relationships blare incessantly for our attention, Archangels sounds like one man listening to himself and searching for faith.

Where Bence's search has led I am not going to surmise, and nor will I lay out the meaning behind each of the fascinating track names on this album. To give the gist, and hopefully a taste to explore more, let me first refer to "Metratron, Archangel of Kether," where we are plunged into shuddering dynamics and a brooding atmosphere of sacred mystery. This atmosphere then changes by blending a distant siren or children's voices or the squeaking wheel of a wooden cart, with an oddly disturbing marching beat. Metatron or "The Youth'' is the angel who led the people of Israel through the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt. Kether, meaning "crown," being the topmost of the sephirot of the Tree of Life in Kabbalah, lies between Chokhmah and Binah and it sits above Tifere. The definition of Kabbalah varies according to traditions and aims of followers, from its origin in medieval Judaism to its later adaptations in Western esotericism (Christian Kabbalah) and Hermetic Qabalah. Whether the composer is a follower of any or all of these traditions is unclear, but he definitely manages to compose music which does justice to his chosen topic; no easy task.

Throughout the album, Bence adeptly blends his chosen elements majestically and violently, and he uses dissonance and juxtaposition with enough restraint to give space for the music to convey awe, emotion, fear, and mystery. On "Gabriel, Archangel of Yesod," a female voice, appears to signal a joyous event with subtle yet richly ecstatic tones that are entirely appropriate—since Yesod means the foundation upon which God has built the world and Gabriel, herald of visions, is the Archangel who appeared to shepherds to alert them of the birth of Christ. The piano repetition intro to "Michael, Archangel of Hod" works superbly before being joined by sonorous male voices which bring a sense of comfort and peace. Both these tracks are superb but I would like them to have been several minutes longer. Not to focus on any one piece of music, but "Raphael, Archangel of Tiphareth" is quite stunning, with a densely shimmering electronic foundation upon which deeply resonant voices are laid. The moment when the voice cracks slightly is genuinely eerie.

I have read that Archangels was created out of a regime of daily prayer and meditation. Actually it said "ritual" not regime but I'm changing that because the word ritual gets on my nerves if it hints at anything occult. Apparently Bence relied somewhat on Damien Echols's book Angels and Archangels when composing a couple of these tracks, and his approach seems, shall we say, inclusive rather than selective or dismissive. Hopefully it stops short of embracing the occult, which in the minds of it's advocates and followers refers to supernatural beliefs and practices outside the scope of religion and science, I tend to think that nothing falls outside religion and science: be that otherworldly phenomena, magic, mysticism, extra-sensory perception, parapsychology, or whatever. Then again, my idea of a golden dawn involves being thankful for the new day, yogurt and granola, even bacon, coffee, pancakes, and a walk with the dogs. The combined wit and wisdom of Helena Blavatsky, William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Paschal Beverly Randolph, Emma Hardinge Britten, Arthur Edward Waite, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, Israel Regardie, Gerald Gardner, and, I don't know, L. Ron Hubbard, plus ayahuasca, crystals, and magick (however you wish to spell it) isn't going to help with that.

John Bence may be banishing his demons, evoking divine assistance, doing both, or something else entirely. Certainly he is going about making some extraordinary music.

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05 March 2023

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This latest enigmatic find from Arizona's eternally far out and fascinating Was Ist Das? label will be an absolute revelation for anyone who misses Natural Snow Buildings as much as I do. Otherworld is apparently the debut release for this project, but any further details beyond that are non-existent other than the fact that these four pieces were recorded by someone named "Joe" in 2022. While the label's description name-checks a few '70s psych heavy-hitters as reference points in addition to Natural Snow Buildings (Third Ear Band and Popul Vuh), those elements manifest themselves much more subtly, as Otherworld is an oft-transcendent plunge into folk horror-inspired cosmic drone sorcery. That all-encompassing devotion to heavyweight drone majesty is also where Myriad Valley departs from Mehdi and Solange's path, as Joe does not let himself get distracted by any songcraft aspirations, opting instead to focus entirely on crafting massive, sustained psychotropic drones that feel like ancient field recordings from some remote mountain cult hellbent on opening an extra-dimensional portal through sheer vibrational magic.

Was ist Das?

The opening "Hanging Crystal Garden" makes for quite a mesmerizing introduction to Myriad Valley, as slow waves of buzzing tanpura lap at the shores of an occult nightmare. The buzzing tanpura drones are a ubiquitous feature throughout the album, as is ritualistic hand percussion (in this case, something like rattling bells), but this particular piece has an especially otherworldly and sinister vibe due to the strangled dissonance of the pipes and the way the notes increasingly bleed together and dissolve into sharp feedback. Notably, "Hanging Crystal Garden" is the album's shortest piece (at eight minutes) despite being the most inspired, but that makes sense given its nerve-jangling intensity. The much longer second piece is considerably calmer and more radiant (at first, anyway), almost calling to mind a restorative early morning yogic meditation to clear the mind of the previous night's cosmic horror, human sacrifice, and demon summoning.

While I do enjoy the piece's "slow-motion sunrise burning through the morning mist" feel, it definitely starts to overstay its welcome a bit, but that lull is thankfully obliterated by an incredibly strong finale of ritualistic processional drums and a mind-melting phantasmagoric feast of flanged-out drone heaviness. The remaining two pieces do not offer many fresh surprises in the wake of that opening one-two punch, but they are similarly enjoyable and the lazily undulating tapestry of strums and buzzes that forms the foundation of the title piece is particularly beautiful. While I imagine some drone heads will will find this album a bit too loose, dissonant, or one-dimensional to fully connect with, I am not one of them, as I very much appreciate Myriad Valley's single-minded and unswerving devotion to sheer buzzing physicality and transcendence through sustained psychotropic drone-age.

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26 February 2023

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This quadruple LP boxed set is likely to be an absolute revelation for Laraaji fans, as Numero Group has combined his landmark 1978 debut (Celestial Vibration) with the equivalent of three lost albums recorded around the same time. The albums in question surfaced in 2021 when some acetates from an abandoned storage locker were auctioned off and passed through a flea market and Ebay before being spotted by eagle-eyed college student Jake Fischer, who snapped them up for $114 after recognizing Laraaji's given name (Edward Larry Gordon, the name he was still using at the time of Celestial Vibration's release). Amusingly, even Laraaji himself is a bit mystified by the provenance of these recordings, as the documentation states that they were recorded at a studio in Long Island 200 miles from where the Celestial Vibration sessions took place (ZBS in Fort Edward). While it remains unclear whether the Fort Edward tapes were merely transferred in Long Island or whether these recordings actually originate from a different session altogether in Queens, they are unmistakably Laraaji and they are frequently as good or better than the album that actually got released. Finds like this are exactly why there are Discogs fiends hunting for lost private press New Age music, as the late '70s and early '80s were a golden age for bedroom visionaries who thanklessly explored the cosmos with little hope of ever reaching an audience. Laraaji deserves a particularly special place in that pantheon, as he may have been the most forward-thinking visionary of them all and also took his autoharp to the goddamn streets to expand the consciousness of unwitting strangers.

Numero Group

The story of how former Baptist/Apollo Theater comedian/cult film actor/Marvin Gaye collaborator/street musician/West Village folk scenester Ed "Flash" Gordon eventually transformed into Laraaji is far too lengthy for me to do it any justice here, but one especially significant event was that Gordon became very interested in Eastern spirituality after his role in Putney Swope stirred up doubts about the righteousness of the path he was on. A "paranormal sound-hearing experience" and a fateful decision to trade his guitar in for an autoharp at a pawnshop soon followed, as well as the similarly fateful purchase of a contact pickup and some effects pedals. While the autoharp was an entirely new instrument for Gordon, he dove wholeheartedly into exploring open tunings and effects and quickly arrived at a new sound he dubbed "Celestial Vibration." Having reached that point, I suspect Laraaji would have been totally content to play in parks, dance/yoga studios, and holistic centers around his community forever, as getting a record deal probably does not seem all that important once you have already figured out how to channel celestial vibrations. Exterior forces intervened, however, and Gordon met a lawyer named Stuart White who was absolutely enthralled with his music and eager to start up an independent record label (SWN). That resulted in the release of Celestial Vibration (now regarded as a classic), but not many people noticed and the label soon folded. Thankfully, Laraaji met another motivated fan soon after (Brian Eno) and the two eventually collaborated on 1980's Ambient 3 (Day Of Radiance). I am tempted to say that the rest is history, but Laraaji's work only started getting regularly anthologized and reissued in the last decade.

Given the volume of material and the sprawling, improvisatory nature of the performances (each piece spans an entire side of vinyl), Segue To Infinity defies any easy generalizations, but Celestial Vibration's "Bethlehem" provides the best condensed tour of the Laraaji aesthetic that one could reasonably expect. The heart of Laraaji's "Celestial Vibration" vision, of course, are the dreamily shimmering waves that radiate outward from his chord sweeps. In fact, I half-expected that this collection would mostly be four hours of that (which would have been fine). Instead, however, those admittedly gorgeous New Age/ambient passages are regularly interspersed with forays into wilder, more avant-garde territory. In just "Bethlehem" alone, for example, there is a section that sounds like John Cage violently attacking a prepared piano's innards (as well as another interlude that feels like Steve Reich on a tropical vacation). Elsewhere, there are passages that almost feel like free jazz, some kind of Ellen Fullman creation, wind chimes, water dripping onto a pan, or a psychotropic jaw harp hoedown (the final minutes of "Pervading"). The one consistent theme seems to be that nearly every sound that Laraaji produces feels resonant or visceral in all the right ways. Beyond that, the other big revelation is the strength of the six previously unheard pieces. In fact, I suspect Celestial Vibration would still be considered a classic even if it had been replaced in its entirety with any of the other pieces here (none were intended for release, by the way, as studio banter is included). Hell, Celestial Vibration might even have become more of a classic if "Koto" or any of the "Kalimba" pieces had made the cut. This feels like it could have been a goddamn greatest hits retrospective. And maybe it is, albeit only accidentally. Given that this is a characteristically lavish Numero Group set with all the usual accouterments (photos, insightful liner notes, etc.), I expect every serious Laraaji fan is already snapping up the vinyl, but the digital version would probably be an excellent entry point for the curious. While I already enjoyed Laraaji beforehand and recognized him as the most unique and fascinating figure to emerge from the New Age underground, I definitely needed Segue To Infinity to show me that I was still not appreciating him nearly enough.

Listen here.

26 February 2023

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This latest opus from INA GRM's François J. Bonnet is loosely inspired by René Daumal's unfinished philosophical novel Mount Analogue (1952), which recounts an imagined expedition in which explorers hunt for a mountain that can "only be perceived by the application of obscure knowledge." It has been a few decades since I last read Mount Analogue or watched the film it partially inspired (Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain) so my memory of both is blurry at best, yet that did not impair my appreciation for the album, as Bonnet characteristically channeled the theme in his own inventive and compelling way. The gist is that familiar sounds and structures become increasingly rare as the album unfolds, but Bonnet had a deeper philosophical agenda as well, as Shifted in Dreams is a meditation on how our current world is in a "blurred and uncertain state where the reality of signs loses its consistency while, paradoxically, the reality of senses and impressions becomes imperative, obvious." Bonnet is clearly not a fan of that situation, unsurprisingly, and refers to it as "the reality of demons." Putting aside the death of meaning and general existential horror of our times, however, the dissolving of the familiar is wonderfully fertile creative ground for a Kassel Jaeger album, as Bonnet is exceptionally good at layered and evocative sound design. This is a beautifully crafted headphone album (but probably only for those armed with the obscure knowledge of how to listen deeply).

Shelter Press

In keeping with the central theme of dissolving familiarity, the opening title piece is the most conventionally musical stretch of the album, resembling a warm but melancholy organ mass. There is admittedly a lot of tape hiss and murk obscuring the sound of the organ, but that is probably as close to the recognizable physical world as this album ever gets and that situation does not last long at all (the piece plunges down a rabbit hole of mindfuckery after a few minutes). The general vibe is best described as "I am in a numbing fog of painkillers in a cathedral during an air raid, but everything is in slow motion and also made of crystal." While those crystalline sounds remain a regular occurrence for the duration of the album (Bonnet got his hands on a Cristal Baschet), just about everything else is an elusive and shape-shifting fog of field recordings, asynchronous loops, analog synth, processed guitar, and studio wizardry.

The album's centerpiece is "Dissipation of Light," which feels like a floating world of gently pulsing, flickering, and dissolving melodies that steadily becomes more haunted and tense before unexpectedly blossoming into a cosmic fantasia. That piece also kicks off a great mid-abum run, as the following "Gullintoppa" and "Sôlên I" are highlights as well. The former combines slow, lovely chord swells with texturally vivid field recordings to evoke the feeling of a sun-dappled autumn reverie in a park while more unsettling and ominous sounds increasingly gnaw away in the periphery. "Sôlên I," on the other hand, unexpectedly transforms from deep exhalations and electronic drips into a buzzing, chirping, and psychotropic synth dronescape. Again, however, all is not right with the world, as it also sounds like there is an orchestral nightmare blearily howling from a nearby void and maybe even another slow-motion air strike as well (one of the sounds lies somewhere between "streaking fighter jet" and "blurred and softened air raid siren"). As for the remaining pieces, they call to mind everything from a chopped & screwed improvisation on a broken calliope ("Barca Solare") to a hapless brass band frozen in suspended animation ("Allée des Brouillards"). That is not an experience that many other albums can promise, but the real magic of this album lies in its vivid, exacting, and inventive execution. Given Bonnet's central role in contemporary sound art, the fact that he has a real gift for crafting richly immersive sound worlds is hardly breaking news, but Shifted in Dreams is unquestionably one of his more inspired statements.

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26 February 2023

Creaig Dunton

Albums and Singles

Written and recorded immediately following 2021's Even if it Takes a Lifetime, Chicago's Anatomy of Habit's newest album is sonically similar, however it does not sound like the second half of a double album. Instead, Black Openings is a stand-alone work that features the same sense of consistency but overall sees the band further refining and expanding their sound, and in this case returning to the bleakness that pervaded their earlier works so brilliantly.

self-released

Listening to Black Openings, I realized that the closest band similar to Anatomy of Habit was the short-lived God, helmed by Kevin Martin.  Both are "supergroups" (in the sense that they featured members from various bands from different, yet complimentary genres) and both balanced intensity and complexity perfectly.  The most significant distinction here is that while both bands draw heavily from various shades of rock, avant garde, electronic, and noise music, AoH forego the jazz component and delve more into electronic music.  The driving force behind AoH's sound is defacto band leader and vocalist Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded, Intrinsic Action, and a multitude of other projects): his commanding voice is always identifiable and makes for a commanding presence in all three of the album's songs.

No time is wasted in the epic 18-minute-long opener "Black Openings," where Anatomy of Habit—a band that's no stranger to epic length material—locks into the album's distinctive sound. Alex Latus's layered guitar and heavy bass from multi-instrumentalist Sam Wagster form the foundation as Skyler Rowe's drums and Isidro Reyes's percussion creeps in.  Once all the elements are established, it is AoH at their most post-punk sounding, with clear influences of Killing Joke and Joy Division to their sound.  Latus' guitars get heavier as Solotroff's distinctive vocals arrive.  Over the lengthy duration the band eventually disperses into a more spacious electronic soundscape before coming back together even more intensely, with especially aggressive vocals, leading to an appropriately dramatic climax.

The two shorter (relatively speaking) songs that make up the second half of the album are more polarized in mood, with "Formal Consequences" representing the band's lighter sound, and "Breathing Through Bones" the heavier.  Even though "Formal Consequences" opens with martial dirge elements, Rowe's vibraphone hints in a different direction, with the layers of synth and acoustic guitar solidifying this shift.  Even Solotroff's vocals are more traditionally sung, and while things eventually transition to a heavy metal chug combined with junk percussion, the bleakness is held a bit more at bay here.  Not so much on "Breathing Through Bones," where dour guitar and clanking metal are met with slow, commanding vocals.  The piece builds dramatically throughout, with layered synths and the band at their heaviest before ending with a pummeling conclusion.

While I thought Even if it Takes a Lifetime hinted at lighter, less oppressive moods by the end of the record, that would not seem to be the case on Black Openings.  Instead, the band is back to their relentless intensity, but one with enough beauty and nuance within the darkness to give it an excellent sense of depth.  It is one of those records that is viscerally intense, but with a dazzling array of detail within its intensely dark shadows.

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26 February 2023

Duncan Edwards

Albums and Singles

Here is a stunning history of Peruvian sound poems from 1972-2021. The album concentrates on material which has been recorded and edited, and yet showcases the compositional technique and sound organization across the spectrum of the discipline. It's an important and refreshing collection of 22 inherently absurd musical pieces, accompanied by seriously good liner notes.

Buh

Sound poetry can arguably be traced to oral poetry traditions, but I'm more inclined to believe it emerged from the Dadaist reaction to the horrific carnage of World War One, specifically through Richard Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara. Certainly it progressed through the 20th century parallel with the evolution of recording and editing technology. As mentioned, The Verbal Matter covers all the evolving styles, including montage, verbal dexterity, algorithms and computational parameters, and the use of AI.

The Verbal Matter has myriad brilliant examples of montage technique, juxtaposition and simultaneity, to really ignite one's imagination. The childlike innocence of Mario Montalbetti's "Music For Quince Grullas Tied On Their Paws" is a lovely start, with children's voices, piano, and upright bass, creating a spirit of playful innocence. Quite a contrast to Carlos Estela's "Unco Erpo,'' which is more like hearing snatches of a phone call as you lay barely conscious in the dirt of a local gangster's remote pig farm awaiting your fate. I love every track on this record, but am particularly taken with the hallucinatory one-two punch of a pair of tracks. Florentino Diaz Ahumada's "Wind Poem," a weaving, teasing piece of music, sent me off on a mental journey: sitting at a cafe in a walled medieval city during a festival of death or fertility, listening to the ghost of an ex-spy, and suddenly realizing the coffee has been spiked. It is a master stroke to follow that with the sublime jolt of Luisa Fernando Linda's "State of Emergency (Commonplace)," a mindblowing piece of bizarre blurred vocal echoes, bookended by sirens. Having said that, "Pop es cia'' by Giancarlo Huapaya and Omar Córdovar is perhaps the wildest piece, with voices competing for attention through a fog of magnetic hum, and electronic bleeps whirring as crazily as high-speed Conet number stations bouncing off one of Michael Collins's fillings on the dark side of the moon.

Vocal performance skill is represented here by several phonetic and concrete conceptual works, none more astounding than Omar Aramayo's "Tribute to Marcela Castro," parts of which genuinely sound as if he's gorging himself on acidic radioactive dust seeping from the froth-corrupted lungs of a diseased monk or achieving an ecstatic state by choking down a dish of raw frogs. On "Sensual Reading Architecture: Persistent Music," Enrique Verástegui uses an algorithmic framework in which to produce the insanely sonorous equivalent of a monk required to endlessly repeat modal yodeling of an eye chart. Artificial intelligence is used to create a couple of pieces, including the fantastic space age tones of Francisco Mariotti's "Dada Manifesto 1918 Reordered 1985," which sounds remarkably how I imagine a suitably shell shocked version of Robert the Robot from Fireball XL5 might sound, and the brief final manic "Hypercommunication" from Luis Alvarado. Alvarado, founder of Buh Records, has compiled this fine collection and contributed essential listening notes.

Tragically, in 2022/23, Peru is ruled by a dictatorship where security forces massacre those who dare to protest. An absurd situation and not at all refreshing. Naturally people try to carry on living and working. Respect to Buh for doing just that and producing one of the best albums of 2022, or indeed any year.

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