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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Now in his late 80s, Alvin Lucier has had a long career of radical compositions that explore phase interference, the resonance of spaces, and deeply unconventional sound sources. Although his output has certainly slowed in recent years, he remains as idiosyncratic and experimental as ever, recently becoming interested in unexplored possibilities for the electric guitar. The first half of this album is just such a piece, as "Criss Cross" was composed in 2013 for Stephen O'Malley and Oren Ambarchi (who perform it here). O'Malley and Ambarchi return for "Hanover" as well, albeit as part of an ensemble that roughly mirrors the 1918 Dartmouth Jazz Band pictured on the album cover (Lucier's father was the violinist). Needless to say, nothing on this album sounds even remotely like guitar music, though "Criss Cross" is not a dramatic departure from some of Lucier's previous work with competing phases. The nightmarishly spectral chamber music of "Hanover," on the other hand, is quite a large (and harrowing) surprise.
The prosaically titled "Criss Cross" is the first piece that Lucier ever composed for guitar and it has a very simple and aggressively minimalist premise: wielding E-bows, O'Malley and Ambarchi start at opposite ends of a semitone, then each of them slowly slides to the other end (and then back again…and again…and again).Thankfully, the chosen range falls in the lower frequency range, so the uncomfortably close harmonies that arise do not sound shrill at all.Instead, their proximity merely creates an oscillating pulse that speeds up or slows down depending on how close the two guitarists are to the same pitch.That steady, slow-motion see-sawing continues for roughly 16-minutes and it is the entirety of the piece.As such, its appeal is primarily conceptual, as it basically sounds like a droning thrum created by a wave generator of some kind, albeit with the length of the waves constantly shifting incrementally.Stylistically, it closely resembles some of Eliane Radigue's more purist drone work, though Lucier is perhaps even more austere.As such, the process itself is largely the appeal, as I never would have suspected that any guitars were involved at all if I did not know anything about the piece's background or its participants.
Though it is a considerably more "difficult" listening experience than the comparatively placid "Criss Cross," "Hanover" strikes a far more powerful and absorbing balance of concept and composition.Knowing its inspiration, it is also kind of a blackly funny piece, as few things could possibly swing less or clear a dance floor faster than Lucier's hazy miasma of queasy glissandi and uncomfortable, sickly harmonies.Ambarchi and O'Malley are additionally joined by a third guitarist (Gary Schmalzl), as Lucier replaced the banjos in the picture with guitars, but I am not sure it makes all that much difference who is involved, as any character or real distinction between the various musicians is essentially blurred into oblivion.Occasionally a single clear piano note will ring out, but the violin, saxophones. and guitars all smear and swirl together in a quivering haze.The best description of the piece that I can muster is that it feels like the hapless 1918 Dartmouth Jazz Band checked their tuning before launching into their set...only to have time immediately stop.Instead of their various notes ending naturally, however, all of the various pitches instead began to nightmarishly slide around in a kind of grotesque, slow-motion dance while they all watched in frozen horror.Naturally, I am exactly the target audience for something like that: "Hanover" is a wonderfully ugly and sinister fog of glacially evolving dissonance and tension.
I was not at all sure what to expect from this album, as I was a bit apprehensive about the idea of Lucier composing for guitars, particularly since O'Malley’s involvement suggested that some kind of awkward doom metal/conceptual sound art mash-up might result (both artists have strong and divergent signature aesthetics).Also, while Lucier never stopped working, it has been quite a while since he unleashed a provocative new major opus, so I had no idea where he currently was aesthetically.As it turns out, all of my concerns were happily unfounded, as Lucier has clearly not mellowed at all, nor did he allow Ambarchi and O'Malley's own aesthetics to hold much sway over his vision.This is pure, undiluted Lucier.In fact, this release not only befits his well-earned reputation as a restlessly inventive iconoclast, it actually bolsters it further.If this pair of new works has any flaw at all, it is merely that "Criss Cross" is essentially an interesting new way to revisit old territory rather than a complete leap into the unknown."Hanover," on the other hand, is a legitimate bombshell, viscerally illustrating that Lucier still has an impishly heretical approach to modern composition and that it has some very sharp teeth.
Despite being one of the shorter pieces on the album, the opening "Patterns For Alto" is perhaps the most striking and effective distillation of Bertucci's distinctive artistry, marrying the trance-like repetition of early Terry Riley with Pauline Oliveros's groundbreaking work in harnessing the natural reverb of unusual architectural environments.More specifically, Bertucci unleashes a rapid-fire cascade of trilling saxophone patterns in a cavernous space, deftly using the enhanced reverb to weave an undulating web of squirming notes and ghostly overtones.It feels a lot like an eerily pretty swarm of lysergic bees.Curiously, Bertucci does not return to similar territory at all with the remaining three songs, but I suppose that makes sense given that her definitive statement in that vein only needed to be made once.The longer "Accumulations" is still saxophone-based, however, albeit in a completely different direction (or at least a completely different time scale). It deceptively opens as a slow, billowing fog of sinister harmonies, but that early dissonance quickly gives way to a languorous and lyrical saxophone melody.That motif too proves to be a bit of a feint, as the piece ultimately transforms into something in between those two poles: a murky and uncomfortably dissonant swirl of gauzy, layered harmonies mingled with viscerally harsh squeals that resemble the death throes of a free-jazz freak-out.It is quite a challenging piece, as it is not particularly easy on the ears, but it is also quite a fascinating and bracingly violent one that takes some unusual twists.The final moments are especially unexpected, resembling a sax and heavy electronic noise duo performing at a placid beach surrounded by birds.
Bertucci's sax does not play much of a recognizable role in the album's second half, aside from being the source of the early blurry and smeared drones in the epic "Sustain and Dissolve."While nerve-fraying dissonance continues to be the water in which Bertucci swims, "Sustain" is a bit more understated and nuanced than its predecessors, resembling a lovely drone piece that is constantly slipping out of focus to produce curdling and unnerving overtones.Unexpectedly, however, that motif eventually "dissolves" into a strange coda of hollow metallic pulses and distressed-sounding field recordings that evoke a deeply hallucinatory afternoon at the oceanside.Curiously, the brief closer "At Dawn" is almost a complete reprise of that coda, but re-envisioned as a lonelier and more warmly beautiful experience, transformed into a fond and bittersweet memory that mostly edits out the presence of all the other humans.It is actually my favorite piece on the album, which I feel a little guilty about, given that it lacks the sharp edges found elsewhere on Metal Aether: it is just simple, perfect, and nakedly lovely.
It is very hard not to love an album that contains four strong, compelling, and distinctive artistic statements in a row, so my only real caveat with Metal Aether is that the degree of dissonance can be "difficult" at times.It is crucial part of Bertucci's aesthetic, however, as the most consistent thread that runs throughout her work is a genius for subtly accumulating and resolving tension.One more item of note is that this album sometimes feels more like a compilation than a coherent, intentional whole, which I suppose it is, as it spans work across three years and two continents.I am the absolute last person who would attempt to stop someone from releasing a uniformly excellent album that does not quite fit together seamlessly, yet it bears mentioning that "Patterns For Alto" and "At Dawn" sound like the work of two completely different artists.As such, I would be very hard-pressed to succinctly describe Bertucci's overarching vision.However, she definitely has one, as Metal Aether never feels derivative or particularly indebted to other artists: inspiration may came from different places, yet the end results are always triumphantly Bertuccian.I will definitely want to hear whatever she records next, even if I have absolutely no idea quite what direction it may take.In any case, this is a great album.I suspect that the sustained and roiling sax eruption of "Patterns for Alto" will be the piece that gets all the initial attention, but anyone who takes a deeper plunge will likely find that there are plenty of other highlights that just take slightly longer to reveal themselves.
Once you'll touch the sky you will never return to dust is a new 1-hour long instantaneous composition performed with a prepared mini-keyboard, a handmade shortwave receiver and Roberto Opalio’s patented alientronics and wordless vocalizations. It is a masterpiece of modern minimalism, an ecstatic voyage where time and space lose their meaning, thus glorifying the poetic lyricism of the "here and now," that "eternal now" that other visionary artists and vanguards of the past have always dealt with, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Muhal Richard Abrams. "Towards the Sun," headed Arthur Rimbaud. "Space Is The Place," asserted Sun Ra.
Eliane Tapes is a new series on Moving Furniture Records. All the music in this series is dedicated and/or inspired by the works of Éliane Radigue.
With her groundbreaking work already in the late '60s and early '70s Éliane Radigue created a path for many other musicians in the field of minimalism and drone music.
To celebrate the amazing work she has done (and still does), we ask musicians to create works that are inspired by her work and as such are a dedication to her.
The first release for Eliane Tapes is by Kassel Jaeger.
For Retroactions, Kassel Jaeger created "studies" trying to extend the gesture Éliane Radigue did with feedbacks, with a different and more "hi-fi" setup than the one she used at the time.
In 4 studies, he experiments with different feedback setups: controlled, non-controlled, processed and non-processed. He worked with 6 microphones and 10 speakers, feedbacks.
The Sky With Broken Arms is a further step ahead into the realm of the unknown, where the music made of minimal, dreamy guitar chords and eerie wordless vocals over a dense layer of crackling noise comes out of a strong conceptual idea.
As Roberto Opalio’s foreword to the work reads "On a winter day two years ago, I found out that an entire section of my vinyl collection was completely ruined by an inexplicable oxidation process. [..] As a first reaction, I decided not to play those records ever again... and that I did, for a long time. 'Til one night, exhausted, I felt the absolute urgency to listen to one of those LPs whose musical content got buried by the vinyl surface noise. In that moment, the shocking epiphany: [..] slowly, I began to perceive that not only were the old, beloved sounds that I was used to still there, but the layer of ground noise obliged me to even more attentive and active listening; thus I was discovering very subtle sound details now claiming their own being and pretending their own space. The idea of a new MCIAA album came out of this enlightenment. A new concept concerning the representation of music on the one hand and its perception on the other. A music so essential and precious as to be discovered by the listener little by little, because hidden by a blanket of crackling noise, which I obtained from the blank grooves of my damaged vinyls. Thus, here we are: infinite spaces of disintegration and psycho-existential ecstasy… essentially, spaces of non-limited, non-stoppable Poetry."
Northern California producer Fred Welton Warmsley III's solo work as Dedekind Cut (pronounced "dead-da-ken cut") has evolved from fractured industrial design into increasingly subdued and sublime ambient meditations across two years of dedicated activity. His second full-length collection, Tahoe – so named after the mountain lake town he now calls home – swells with widescreen grandeur, evoking vistas both inner and outer. There are echoes of his earlier, more tempestuous mode in tracks like "MMXIX" and "Spiral" but overall the album skews panoramic and pensive, muted synthetic mists contoured with choral melody, field recordings, and radiant drone. His compositional instincts feel alternately classical, contemporary, and conflicted, befitting an artist whose discography spans divergent labels.
Warmsley characterizes Tahoe as a "time peace," sifting through "the past, the present, future, and fantasy."
Norway's Kristoffer Oustad and the Finnish duo of STROM.ec (Jasse Tuukki and Toni Myöhänen) are no stranger to dreary, aggressive electronic music, so a collaboration between the two comes as no surprise. I have some familiarity with both artists and I have been a fan of everything I have heard from them so far, but it was rarely surprising or unexpected in sound. With these two projects coming together, however, the final product stands out even more uniquely than their solo material. New Devoted Human is richer, more complex, and more fully fleshed out than I expected, and has an impressive amount of depth and complexity that is strong and memorable on all fronts.
Of course the album is jam packed with distorted static and bleak passages of funereal drones, but the trio's use of more conventional song structures and instrumentation is what gives this record its distinctive sound and overall song to song diversity.Opener "Inherent Resurrection" is at first the expected overdriven synthesizers and menacing hum, but once the big, multilayered rhythms come in, the feel shifts more to a heavily distorted, noise laden take on EBM.Nothing here would be appropriate for a goth club of course, but it has a great, memorable sense of structure and rhythm.
"Fever Wave Dream Function" sees the trio retaining some of this mood but within a slower tempo.Melodic synth pads creep from the background, but explosive drums and bass heavysequences take center stage.A wide array of styles appear throughout the title song as well:power electronics style yelled vocals are blended with big, industrial drums and rhythms, but all augmented by some at times beautiful ambient synthesizer works.The standard ranting, screaming and aggression does take more of the focus throughout the album, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.For "Blood Consciousness", the angry and malicious vocalsare hard to fully decipher are mixed with harsher, brittle passages of noise and distortion.Even within all this chaotic violence, however, there is a clear sense of structure and organization.Similar styled vocals appear throughout "Reluctant Traveller" (by guest vocalist Grutle Kjellson), but within a diverse mix of crashing rhythms, jarring noise, and at times what almost sounds like a guitar appearing occasionally.
The less harsh moments of New Devoted Human are also memorable as a bit of pleasantness in this otherwise swirling maelstrom of chaos.Symphonic touches appear throughout "Nattsvermer," with the heavy drama enhanced by some unconventional programmed rhythms.The piece never goes into overtly aggressive territories, and actually has a rather pretty conclusion.Album closer "Kosto" also sees the trio working in some neo-classical bombast and structures, but its final moments finish the album on a rather light, almost uplifting note.
Extra kudos should be given to the Malignant label for issuing New Devoted Human on both CD and vinyl.Besides the latter's more luxurious presentation, the analog mastering gives an even more pronounced depth and richness to the album, elevating it as the strong artistic statement it is.Oustad,Tuukki, and Myöhänen may not have intended to create an album with any sort of human warmth to it, but it is there, lurking beneath the cacophonous rhythms and ranting vocals, and that edge makes for quite a standout piece of intentionally ugly music.
Both Kazuma Kubota and Mei Zhiyong are relatively new to the realm of harsh noise, but they have individually worked with some of the biggest names associated with the genre, such as Macronympha, Torturing Nurse, and Kazumoto Endo (among a multitude of others). This collaborative session is refreshingly no frills and stripped to the barest foundations of what traditional noise is and should be, and at a time in which so many artists are stepping away from the style, it is wonderful to hear something that is as classic and timeless as this.
Session June.12.2016 is just that:a recording of Kubota and Zhiyong together working their array of electronics and distortion pedals to create relentless, amelodic sheets of noise and at times piercing, painful tones.The stripped down feel carries into the simple packaging:a plain white sleeve, without any artwork or additional details that is fitting for the unedited, untreated recording that it adorns.Having thrown myself deep into the harsh noise world in the mid and late 1990s, this looks and feels like something I would have randomly ordered via a mailorder like Relapse or Anomalous without fully knowing what I would be receiving, but being very satisfied with myself once it arrived.
The duo waste no time in the performance, immediately blasting in shrill and stuttering electronics, with harsh, distorted stabs cutting in to end any semblance of conventional structure or sound.Cuts and edits are violent and jerky, building into painful walls of noise and then cutting them away to more jarring, jagged soundscapes.It is hard to ignore the influence of the classic practitioners of the genre:Kubota and Zhiyong go from the cut-up pseudo-rhythms of Pain Jerk, the manic stop-start structures of Masonna, and the multilayered sheets of noise pioneered by the Incapacitants.The performance never comes across as an emulation of any of these legends, but instead it feels like intentional, reverential nods in their direction.
Across the 45 minute session the two never let themselves fall into monotony:shrill, painful high frequencies are soon replaced with massive, foundation shaking low end bursts.Textures resembling rushing waves and sputtering computers appear, as do some nearly psychedelic passages of phaser and flanged layers of static.There is a sense of movement and activity throughout, but also a feeling of consistency and focus.Even with all of these changes, it never feels like Kubota and Zhiyong are just letting the machines do all the work, but that they are actively shaping and structuring the chaos.After a chirp-heavy build it seems to herald the end, with the layers of noise stripped back for the sake of sparser passages, but there’s one last shrill and bass heavy burst left before the two call it quits.
Kazuma Kubota and Mei Zhiyong admittedly are not breaking any new ground on Session June.12.2016, but that is not the point.With so many of the well-regarded noise artists either drastically slowing down activity or branching into less abrasive, more musically tinged work, it is simply refreshing to hear an unadulterated pure noise record.No pretense, no attempts at being provocative, simply a disc of extremely varied, high quality noise.It may not be anything wildly unique or innovative, but it is pure comfort food to an old school noise fan such as myself.
The title and artwork are most closely tied to the opening piece, the 11+ minute "Sample Sale."An array of stuttering musical loops full of schmaltzy electronics best resembles an ancient tape of mall musak in its final state of decay, as what could be fragments of shoppers conversing are peppered throughout.Within all of this Rossetto tastefully places layers of static and additional field recordings with various levels of processing.Disorienting loops eventually relent to a unrecognizable bed of noise, before finally concluding on passages of found sound and a far off television droning away.
The other lengthy work that concludes Fashion Tape, "Measurement" (with Matthew Revert) has all of the complexity of "Sample Sale," but structurally is more focused, and less collage-like overall.Rossetto delivers spoken word mostly of the piece’s title, as Revert adds in strange passages of repeated and recited numbers via a disconnected, monotone voice.Behind this there are lush cello-like passages that underscore the piece, adding a bit of melancholic beauty to the otherwise clinical spoken parts.However, she chooses to throw in some power tool recordings to blow up the composition’s more melodic tendencies; a drastic misdirection that I found quite enjoyable.
The shorter pieces between these two larger bookending works also do an exemplary job at capturing the varieties of sound Rossetto has been working with since her earliest releases."Memphis Milano" is a basic, but well crafted short piece of buzzing nasal electronics.Structurally it is not overly complex, but she does a great job at keeping it varied via ever changing volume shifts and dynamics."Fake Cheese" features more use of field recordings, multilayered and with treated pitches done just enough to make the sounds feel unsettling and unnatural.By the end she pushes the piece into dark ambient territory and with the addition of sinister whispers and overdriven digital noise, it builds into a bleak conclusion."Radiant Green" stands out via frequent use of some southern sounding gentleman discussing how he is seeing colors, as Rossetto weaves in layers of strange processing and random sounds.The final moments build to an amazingly aggressive volume shift that is reminiscent of (and likely as dangerous to speakers as) Whitehouse's "Torture Chamber."
Rosetto's exceptional ability at reworking field recordings and utilizing unspecific, but fascinating electronics run through this entire tape.There is a joyous disregard for genre boundaries and styles here as well, as within the same piece I felt the use of intentionally abrasive, chaotic passages as well as precisely focused works that are as compositionally tight as any formally trained academic is likely to produce.It is a weird, but unquestionably wonderful journey from beginning to end.
I recently stumbled upon this bizarre debut during an especially deep Bandcamp plunge and it is deliciously unlike anything else that I have ever heard. Both the artist and the label are shrouded in a decent amount of mystery, but Heschl's Gyrus draws its inspiration from Cottern's fascination with "psychical auditory phenomena." Stylistically, she builds her harrowing auditory hallucinations from heavy, earthy drones akin to Richard Skelton's recent work, but builds them to crescendos that often feel like a swirling and feverish psychotic break from reality. Sometimes it can be beautiful, but the true genius of this album lies in the profoundly disturbing, alien, and intensely uncomfortable heights reached by pieces of "Akoasm II."
No one will ever question Elizabeth Cottern's commitment to a theme, as this album not only borrows its name from the structure that houses the auditory cortex, but it consists of three numbered akoasms (a neurological term for auditory hallucinations).For its first few minutes, however, Heschl's Gyrus just feels like an atypically heavy, gnarled, and blackened drone album, slowly fading in as a hollow roar swarmed by submerged squalls of sputtering static.Gradually though, a slow-moving and elegiac melody begins drifting over the top and Cottern’s previously simmering battery of heavy textures overpowers the underlying drones.It is a compelling juxtaposition, as there is a lovely, dreamlike, and poignant "song" drifting through a haze, yet the roiling maelstrom beneath is the part that sneakily becomes the real focus.It unexpectedly calls to mind the oceanic shoegaze of Lovesliescrushing, as a glimpse of gorgeous, shimmering heaven seems to be fighting through a gale of roiling, sizzling cacophony.It is quite a stellar and epic piece, capturing Cottern at her most conventionally beautiful and comparatively accessible.The brilliant "Akoasm II" that follows, however, is clear evidence that accessibility is the least of her concerns.
Right from the start, "Akoasm II" is a disturbingly intense and challenging piece of music, as its simple structure of bleary drones is instantly disrupted by a nightmarish swirl of sickly, sliding synth tones.I am tempted to describe them as "shrill," but it would be more accurate to say that they have a visceral sharpness that creates an acute sense of deep discomfort.Unlike its predecessor, the underlying composition is not a significant part of the draw–there are some piano chords and a strange, rippling melody of harmonics, but those structured elements mostly just provide glimpses of an impossibly distant shore as I am enveloped by a lysergic sea of bubbling, swooping textures and ugly shifting harmonies.As someone who spends much of his time seeking out singularly strange and transcendent sounds, I can honestly say that Cottern's feverish miasma of strange gurgles and nightmarish glissandi is a deep mindfuck like no other.Whenever I hear it, I feel like I am trapped in a sensory deprivation tank and rapidly losing my grip on sanity, which is certainly an exquisite sensation.It is also an hopelessly impossible act to follow, so Cottern wisely heads in a somewhat different direction with the epic final piece.Clocking in at slightly over 30 minutes, "Akoasm III" is a bit more structured than its predecessors, unfolding as a sparse, repeating piano melody.Naturally, however, the real show is elsewhere, as a dense swirl of oscillating harmonies hovers above everything and steadily gathers power.Eventually, it becomes almost every bit as warped and absorbing as "Akoasm II," but it is a more nuanced and slow-buildingexperience, resembling a slow submersion into the otherworldly rather than being absolutely flattened by a nightmarishly psychedelic truck.
Obviously, I am quite curious about who Elizabeth Cottern might be, as Heschl’s Gyrus seems impossibly audacious, inventive, and sharply realized for an "unknown artist" with "no previous discography."Even if it is a pseudonym, I have no idea who would have both the musical ability and the depth of acoustic/neurological knowledge necessary to create something like this: Cottern takes drone music to a viscerally unnerving and otherworldly plane while simultaneously manipulating frequencies and overtones with the precision of a scalpel.It is a singular vision executed beautifully.In fact, this album genuinely feels like the culmination of someone's life's work rather than some secret side-project, so maybe Elizabeth Cottern is a real person after all.Whoever she is, I am damn glad she exists, as Gyrus completely blindsided me: this is an overwhelming, enveloping, and absolutely nerve-fraying delirium of an album.Instant classic.
Notably, this is not Schott's first dip into her friend John Cavanagh’s collection of Victorian music boxes, as Golden Morning’'s "The Heart Harmonicon" originated there as well (albeit from a recording made by Cavanagh himself).Back then, music boxes played a small role in Colleen's aesthetic, but Boîtes À Musique makes Cavanagh's collection the sole focus…sort of.There are a few exceptions and "Story" is one of them for a couple of reasons.For one, its dreamily chiming central theme is fleshed out considerably by Schott's classical guitar accompaniment.Secondly, much of the bittersweet beauty of "Story" is due to her transformative production wizardry, as the piece is a languorous swirl of backwards melodies, rippling arpeggios, and flickering hallucinatory flourishes.Schott takes a similarly loose thematic approach with the album's other centerpiece, "Your Heart is So Loud," which stretches and blurs a fragile melody to leave a heavenly shivering wake of afterimages.Though much shorter, "The Sad Panther" is also quite beguiling, unfolding as a slow-motion cascade of hazy backwards melodies.Despite their superficial differences, both "Panther" and "Heart" ultimately achieve the same aesthetic end, feeling like a time-stretched and lovesick tableaux unfolding within a dream-like snow globe world.
If the rest of Boîtes À Musique had deepened and expanded that vein, it would have likely been Schott's third stellar album in a row, but the remaining pieces are a bit more varied, whimsical, and sketchlike.The better ones are quite charming though, particularly the stumbling and fitful rendition of "Happy Birthday" that comprises "Charles's Birthday Card."In a similar vein, "A Bear is Trapped" sounds like an obsessive child maniacally trying to play "Pop Goes the Weasel" on a rusty music box that sounds like it is hemorrhaging crucial parts as the crank is enthusiastically wound too quickly.Elsewhere, both "Under The Roof" and "Bicycle Bells" are awkwardly pretty, as tumbling melodies of ringing notes unfold at an erratic pace.There are also a couple of smaller themes that stake out their own small parts of the album: a pair of gamelan-themed pieces and a pair of componium pieces (appropriately titled "What is a Componium?").The latter are some of the more substantial works among the idiosyncratic mixed bag of remaining pieces, particularly "What Is a Componium?Pt. 2," which is an undulating tapestry of sweeping, overlapping, and crystalline arpeggios.There is also one particularly bizarre and aberrant piece near the end, the cheerily pixelated "Calypso in a Box," which sounds like it could be the mercilessly annoying theme of a video game geared towards small children.I am not sure if that one necessarily counts as a misstep, however, as its brief candy-colored lunacy is certainly an effective palette-cleanser after the lovely "Your Heart is So Loud."I doubt many tears would have been shed if it had been accidentally omitted from the reissue though.
Obviously, it would be wonderful if every piece on Boîtes À Musique sank deeper into the warmly enveloping dream-state conjured by pieces like "The Sad Panther," but it is still an interesting, unique, and divergent release in its existing form.Schott would have been crazy to pass up an opportunity to step outside her usual working method and dive into a roomful of delightful Victorian contraptions.In hindsight, most of my previous grievances with this EP stem from a simple misunderstanding: I wanted Schott to make my new favorite album and she wanted to see if she could turn a treasure trove of antiques into a compelling hour of radio.She won (understandably).The important thing is that Boîtes À Musique maintains the fundamental mystique and endearing anachronism of the Colleen aesthetic and that this fleeting departure resulted in a couple of gorgeous new pieces that would not have otherwise existed.It may be a minor release within Schott's frequently brilliant discography, yet it is a minor release that unexpectedly hits some impressive heights every now and then.If this album can be said to have a significant flaw, it is merely the unavoidable one: all of these pieces have been decontextualized from their intended role in a larger piece.As such, less substantial pieces that once filled a crucial place in a continuous flow are lamentably isolated and presented as individual works.Understandably, they wilt a bit under that kind of scrutiny, even if it is not their fault.Hopefully, the original broadcast will someday reappear through the magic of the internet and belatedly right that wrong, but until then "The Sad Panther" and "Your Heart is So Loud" make great consolation prizes.