12 February 2023

Duncan Edwards

Albums and Singles

This is the second offering from Wormhook, and it is a fine blend of cathartic inner voices with something akin to ancient incantations from the great beyond, augmented, but not swamped, by hand-chamfered electronics and fragile guitar. Umpteen lyrical references to clouds, nature, stones, rain, and heaven, cannot obscure that Wormhook's radical psalmody is far from the tangled common or garden variety of free folk hedgerow bustle, approaching instead the trance-state wisdom of a delirious time-traveling street corner prophet deciphering Sumerian inscriptions to an audience of none.

Akashic

Which is not to say that the record is anything less than rather holy and crystal clear. Wormhook may sound at times as if they are channeling the spirit of a Beckett character, joyfully and defiantly hauling themselves through wet leaves by their elbows, but they never sound as if they are channeling the confessional voice from author Adam Thorpe's unforgettable chapter "Stitches" - only decipherable every thirty or so readings after a midwinter nap, four glasses of sherry and a game of naked Twister. Indeed, the lyric sheet enclosed with the vinyl version of Workaday Strangeness is hardly needed. Unless, like me, you simply can't believe that double glazing is mentioned not once but twice (in separate songs) and to good effect.

The feel of the album is unique—as much rain-washed urban outsider crying space dust into the neon-tinged gloom as spectral presence singing sacred 12th century hymnal—but here and there I hear, mostly in Wormhook's anguished and alluring voice, some accidental echoes of the plaintive warmth with which Sandro Perri sang on his Tiny Mirrors record, and Jacob Olausson wailed on Moonlight Farm. The album needs to be heard in its entirety, on repeat. Paradoxically, I could highlight any track for praise, but will limit this to mentioning "Shiver," as it sounds like it might be the apparition of a disappeared cantor haunting the night shift of a factory assembly line. Another key piece is "Folk From The Vaults of A Death Cult D&B Version," which could hardly be more beautiful if it were a magic carpet woven from the unpicked woolen sweaters of a choir of octogenarian virgins praying for forgiveness in the ruins of a wave-battered stone chapel, on the coast of a newly discovered island halfway between Devold and Fair Isle.

The album also reminds me of the medieval poem Pearl in that it similarly benefits from offering up almost-but-not-quite understandings, and an exotic mysterious quality which will not easily be dissolved. I applaud that Wormhook has plunged into deep creative waters, determined to "swymme the remnaunt, thagh I ther swalte"—to swim across, or die trying.

Wormhook is Martin Steuck. They are a Glasgow artist into a broad range of different but connected creative mediums. The physical album has their hand painted labels and there's an optional 24 page book of their paper cuts. Workaday Strangeness is reportedly born of a therapeutic necessity, and this is made plain from the track "Disappear" and other allusions to ancient pain, rain, demons, disease, and modern disconnect. Yet what emerges is a defiantly poetic anti-manifesto pleading, nay fighting, for solidarity, joyful inclusion, and mutual survival.

listen here

05 February 2023

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

Given Celer’s incredibly voluminous discography, releasing any kind of comprehensive retrospective would be one hell of a quixotic and cost-prohibitive endeavor, but this collection does the next best thing. Weighing in at 14 discs spanning 10 albums, this boxed set celebrates an especially significant and prolific era in the project’s evolution: the self-released albums that Will Long and the late Danielle Baquet-Long (Chubby Wolf) recorded as a duo before the latter’s passing in 2009. Not all of them, mind you, but this collection seems to at least cover the ones that matter most. Given that Celer is based in Japan and Bandcamp was still in its formative stages back then, I suspect very few people were hip enough to pounce on the duo’s early CD-Rs at the time of their original release, but the world definitely began to take notice soon after, as I remember Celer albums being a very hot commodity sometime around 2008/2009 when they started getting widely re-released. Unsurprisingly, there are some remastered fan favorites from that era included here, such as Continents and Cantus Libres, but I have grown so accustomed to Long’s current elegantly minimalist dream-drone aesthetic that I was legitimately surprised by the wider palette of moods and atmospheres explored at the project’s inception. Naturally, the gorgeously warm ambient dreamscapes that Celer has long been synonymous with are still the main draw here, but they are not the only draw, as I found it very illuminating to revisit the less-remembered noirish and sci-fi-inspired sides of the duo’s exploratory beginnings.

Two Acorns

This collection is only being released as a limited edition physical boxed set, which makes a lot of sense for a couple of big reasons. The mundane one is that all of these albums are already readily available in remastered form, so this retrospective is very much for the project’s more devoted fans. The more poetic and heartfelt reason is that this boxed set is essentially a memorial to the Dani era and music was merely one facet of the duo’s artistic vision. Obviously, the music is the biggest and most relevant reason for Celer’s continued appeal, but the project has always been something of a multimedia love story/travel diary as well, as the accompanying images and texts often provided important context, clues, and deeper shades of meaning. In fact, I sincerely doubt that Celer would have made such a deep impression if Will and Dani had not found a way to make ambient/drone music feel like something personal and intimate (a feat very few others have achieved). Consequently, making this a collection a physical object with all of Dani’s poems and photos intact seems like the only proper way to celebrate the duo’s shared story. That said, nearly all of the texts, images, and song titles do tend to be teasingly enigmatic. In fact, they almost act like an inversion of the film/film score relationship, as they color my perception of the music without providing much actual information beyond a sense of place and an impressionist glimpse of how Will and Dani were feeling about both life and each other at the time. While I would probably love a Will Long memoir or travel diary, the decision to portray that period instead as an elusive, elliptical, and mysterious collection of dreamlike sounds, images, and words is admittedly the more alluring and Celer-esque path to take. Words and unambiguous meanings are cool and all, but struggling to express the ineffable is a beautiful and noble way to spend an artistic career.

As often happens with William Basinski’s similarly minimal work, it is easy to (wrongly) dismiss a lot of Celer’s work as a few simple loops endlessly repeating, but it seems more like a near-religious obsession with reaching towards the sublime to me. In fact, my favorite Celer pieces tend to be exactly those in which a single blurred and frayed melodic fragment is simply allowed to endlessly loop into infinity (or at least for 20 minutes or so). Obviously, progression and evolution have their place, yet distilling something beautiful to its absolute essence and straining towards the transcendent offers a more rare and exquisite pleasure than what I generally expect to get out of albums. When I hear a truly great Celer piece, I am reminded of the film at the heart of Infinite Jest that is so lethally compelling that no one can stop watching once it starts. In Celer’s case, there is instead a gift for crafting loops so gorgeous that I am perfectly content to let them hypnotically unfold forever without any transformation. When everything about a piece is already perfect, there is no valid reason to break that spell other than the inherent durational limits of physical media.

Needless to say, there are plenty of Celer pieces both new and old that achieve that illusion of an infinite, endlessly billowing heaven and those are usually the pieces that I am thinking of when I describe something as “Celer-esque.” However, spending an entire weekend absorbing this 14-disc retrospective has reminded me that there has been considerably more variety and experimentation with this project than I remembered. For example, this boxed set covers at most only two years of recordings and just from a compositional standpoint alone, there are albums comprised entirely of short pieces, albums comprised entirely of longform pieces, a single album-length track (Para’s “Leave Us Alone To Be Together”), and a collection of 22 brief loops intended to be played in a newly shuffled sequence every time (Voodoo Crowds).

There is quite a lot of stylistic variety as well, albeit exclusively within the realm of ambient drone. The pieces from Sunlir (first released in May 2006) in particular are especially varied and unique. For example, the opening “Spelunking The Arteries Of Our Ancestors” feels mostly like the Celer I know and love, yet also features an oscillating and sci-fi-damaged industrial thrum in its depths that provides an unfamiliar edge of psychotropic unease. Soon after, “How Long To Hold Up A Breathless Face” approximates a fragment of an orchestral film noir score that has been frozen in quivering suspended animation. Not long after, “Espy The Horizon, Miss The Long Road” seems to reprise that trick with a brooding and epic-sounding fantasy score. Elsewhere, “Whimsical At The Cretaceous Extinction” is probably the biggest Sunlir-era revelation, as it feels like a steadily intensifying cosmic shudder of futuristic menace. There are some dark surprises lurking on the other disks as well, however (albeit less frequently). For example, “Archival Footage of Only The Lost And Forgotten” from Scols resembles a time-stretched nightmare orchestra, while Continents’ hallucinatory “Fast Forwarding Sleep” evoked the “haunted ballroom” magic of The Caretaker years before most people had even noticed that The Caretaker existed. The phantasmal horror of “Brackish Nagas Too Low In The River” was yet another bombshell for me, evoking a supernatural howl of anguish that would have made a fine (if harrowing) score for 2001 or Solaris.

While I tend to gravitate towards the one-offs, outliers, and “roads less traveled” on this collection due to my reasonably strong familiarity with Celer’s usual oeuvre, I suspect complete familiarity with Celer’s discography is an unattainable state. In fact, I would be surprised if even Will Long remembered everything collected here. For example, I probably have somewhere around two dozen arguably well-chosen Celer albums in my collection (weighted heavily towards this era, no less), yet there were still plenty of classic pieces that I had not encountered before Selected Self-releases entered my life. There were also plenty of seemingly familiar pieces that made a deeper impression on me now that I have revisited them more than a decade after their original release. I have no idea how much of that shift is due to my evolving taste, the magic of remastering, or because I simply did not listen closely enough the first time around, but it feels like I just unearthed a fresh treasure trove of hits regardless. In particular, I was enraptured by the smeared, hissing, and buzzing magic of Scols’ “Municipally, I Let It Slip,” much of Cantus Libres, some of Continents and Neon, “Sans Heavens, Hand In Hand,” and a handful of quivering feedback-gnawed pieces like Sadha’s “The Once Emptiness Of Our Hearts,” but that is by no means a comprehensive list.

My conservative estimate is that there are at least three or four hours of prime/classic Celer highlights to be found here, which is extremely damn impressive for a retrospective encompassing just two years of a project that has nearly spanned two decades. Obviously, Will Long conjured this boxed set into existence primarily for Dani and Celer’s most ardent fans (only a hundred copies were made), yet this is the sort of retrospective that deserves to ripple outwards to turn new and casual fans onto some underheard gems from the early days. Obviously, there have been a healthy amount of stellar Celer releases in more recent years as well, but Selected Self-releases is a necessary reminder that Will and Dani were onto something wonderful and distinctive right from the start.

The individual albums can be heard here.

05 February 2023

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This third album from former lifeguard/Brussels-based electronic composer Poirier may very well be the most beautiful distillation of his gently psychotropic strain of loop-driven, summery, surf-side electronica to date. The same could have been said of 2020's Hotel Nota, of course, but Poirier's work genuinely seems to become more fascinating with each fresh album (and each new detail that I read about his inspirations). Unsurprisingly, Living Room does not dramatically depart from the "Jan Jelinek inspecting a coral reef" aesthetic first debuted on 2016's Plage Arri​è​re, but it feels like Poirier's sundappled, beach-friendly vision of languorously flickering loops is increasingly headed deeper into more exotica-inspired territory, which is almost always a good move in my book. Aside from that continuing stylistic evolution, Living Room is also significant for being the first Poirier album to feature another one of his long-standing fascinations: the innate musicality of the human voice (particularly when de-coupled from language and meaning). Unsurprisingly, Poirier incorporates that new feature in a characteristically compelling and poignant way, as the album is peppered with chopped, screwed, and decontextualized fragments from his musician father's sample collection. The result is not quite "pop," yet it gets surprisingly close to it at times and those ephemeral glimpses of human warmth suit Poirier's swaying and sublime tropical dream beautifully.

Faitiche

The opening "Statuario" is a reasonably representative introduction to the album's multifarious delights, though its lazily sensuous bass pulse creeps more into a loscil-esque strain of aquatic-sounding dub techno than most of the other pieces. Aside from that, however, "Statuario" is a moonlit fantasia of chirping psychotropic frogs, submerged and enigmatic orchestral fragments, blurred and hissing textures, and sophisticated harmonies. That latter bit is a surprisingly crucial part of the album, as Poirier's chord progressions and melodies rarely feel conventional–there are almost always passing shadows of dissonance and hints of uneasy harmonies gnawing at the edges of Poirier's Endless Summer-esque bliss. That element makes Living Room a more complex and mysterious experience than I expected, but Poirier displays an impressive lightness of touch with his more jazz-inspired tendencies. I am tempted to describe the baseline aesthetic of Living Room as "bathtub-recorded Endless Summer" meets "loscil doing a DJ set at a tiki bar," which admittedly sounds very appealing, but there are too many interesting twists throughout the album for that glib assessment to feel right. There are obviously other artists who have made killer recordings in this vein before Poirier, but that does not prevent Living Room from rivaling those earlier classics and Poirier brings an especially fresh and innovative aesthetic to the table.

While I am quite fond of the aforementioned "Statuario," there are a number of highlights deeper into the album that rival or surpass that opening statement. The first such highlight is stammering and gently convulsing "Bespoke," which almost feels like a sexy but deconstructed R&B song struggling to remain in focus as dimensional barriers dissolve, time erratically stretches and condenses, and hallucinatory electronics flicker and smear in the periphery. Soon after, the warmly flickering and undulating "Anna" delves even deeper into sultry R&B territory to similarly great effect (I especially love the slippery and sensuous "hook" at its heart). The final two pieces on the album are instant classics as well. "Les grandes lignes" feels like a languorously pulsing locked groove burrowing into a psychotropic jungle of hissing and shivering insectoid sibilance, while the closing "Superstudio" feels like a Beach Boys classic a la "Wouldn't It Be Nice" or "Good Vibrations" aggressively deconstructed into a single stuttering moment of summer bliss immortalized in suspended animation forever. As for the remaining pieces, the most damning critique I can muster is that some of them are too brief or feel like an extremely promising foundation for something more fleshed out. Mathematically, that means that roughly a third of this album touches greatness, but it is crucial to note that this is not the sort of album that I normally go into expecting to find a bunch of hot singles. The fact that they exist and that there are so many of them is basically icing on the cake, as Living Room is an immersive, beautifully textured, and masterfully crafted album from start to finish.

listen here

05 February 2023

Duncan Edwards

Albums and Singles

Although initially premiered on Bandcamp in 2021, Eiko Ishibashi's ode to Jack McCoy—Sam Waterston's character from the television show Law & Order—was remixed by Jim O'Rourke and issued on vinyl in 2022. It is a dazzling album of crisp ambient tones, colored with aching jazz and minimalist drone, wherein Ishibashi creates dense, mysterious, but also light and dreamy atmospheres. Such a fine balance is perhaps to be expected from a composer and multi-instrumentalist who grew up banned from listening to pop radio, has worked with avantgarde giants such as Merzbow, made an album about her family's role in Japan's sins in Manchuria, yet also takes inspiration from Genesis's prog anthem "Supper's Ready," scored anime, had an Oscar-nominated soundtrack (for Drive My Car), loves Columbo, and watches Law & Order.

Black Truffle

From what I have gathered, the character of Jack McCoy has a somewhat vague backstory, so it probably doesn't matter that I've never actually seen him on screen or even heard his voice, as this is no barrier to enjoying Eiko Ishibashi's affectionate depiction of his emotional life and personal history. Indeed, from first to last, the 40 minutes of For McCoy are completely enjoyable. The album is perfect, an expert balance of organic progression and structural know-how. Ishbashi's haunting flute playing, delicate synths and organ are complemented by the superb violin work of MIO.O, O'Rourke on double bass and (I think) guitar, along with the light-touch drumming of Joe Talia and Tatsuhisha Yamamoto. More icing on the cake comes from both Ishibashi's wordless vocal work (almost a la Norma Winstone) refreshing the album at precisely the right moment, and the multi-tracked saxophone of Daisuke Fujiwara. The latter shoots a lonesome gumshoe detective quality into proceedings, rather like part of the blissfully gut-wrenching soundtrack to Polanski's unforgettable Chinatown.

Around 35 minutes of For McCoy are spent with "I Can Feel Guilty About Anything," now split into two parts for the purpose of sides A and B on the vinyl record. This, along with the shorter piece "Ask Me How I Sleep at Night," makes for a real wormhole journey of an album, meandering across a broad sonic landscape without ever losing its way for a moment. Electro-acoustic sections blend with saxophone, skittish drums with guitar chimes, outdoor sounds (did I imagine feet crunching on gravel?) voices, pulses, and much more, before the flutes return like with classic Main and End themes. If this was the actual music to a television series I would probably never miss an episode.

listen here

05 February 2023

Creaig Dunton

Albums and Singles

Mike Griffin's Parashi project has never been an easy one to pin down as far as expectations go. While never predictable, the material was usually abstract and not musical in the conventional sense, existing somewhere on a continuum between harsh noise and less abrasive, almost early Cabaret Voltaire like treatments of tapes and effects. For Vinegar Baths, he certainly retains these elements, but the emphasis is on guitar, bass, and surprisingly, vocals.

Carbon

It is possible that this shift was precipitated by Griffin's role as guitarist in the upstate NY rock supergroup Sky Furrows, or perhaps motivated by something else entirely. A song like "Letters in the Wrong Order" straddles the line between music and noise, with abstract guitar and noisy loops establishing a foundation, but with Griffin's vocals and more conventional guitar added it feels like an attempt at folk music with the wrong instrumentation, and I mean that as a compliment.

"Winding Song," previously released as a lathe-cut 7" is Parashi at the most conventional. Sure, there are some strange loops, echoes, and improvised percussion, but acoustic guitar and Griffin channeling his best Tom Waits vibes make for a strangely musical work. A bit more out there is "Those Lazy Planners," but the combination of guitar, six string bass, and spoken word vocals are still rather musical in nature.

Of course, the "old" Parashi is still around, with the pedal manipulations and bleakness throughout "The Questioning Kind" and a litany of tape delays on "The Merry Oaf," but Griffin's songwriting approach is what made Vinegar Baths stand out the most to me. It was different than I was expecting, but the blend of conventional and unconventional elements comes together beautifully on here.

listen here

05 February 2023

Duncan Edwards

Albums and Singles

Ernest Hood is best known for the 1975 release Neighborhoods, a unique album of locations recorded during his travels through Oregon combined later with his zither and synthesizer music. It is far more common now but Hood was a pioneer in the use of "found sound." Back To The Woodlands harks from the same (1972-1982) period but has never been released until now. It is a fine addition to Hood's legacy of work which is reflective, warm, and inviting, without being easy, silly, or overly sentimental.

Freedom To Spend

Neighborhoods is a classic. It was originally intended as a gift for housebound people in order that they could listen and enjoy feeling transported somewhere else. This was something dear to Ernest Hood's heart, himself having been stricken with polio since his twenties, forced to spend a whole year in an iron lung, and thereafter get around on crutches or in a wheelchair. Unsurprisingly, there is a bittersweet quality to all of Hood's music. His location recordings capture children gently mocking each other (a playground chant of "Johnny's got a sweetheart" is riffed into the 11 minute track "After School" on Neighborhoods), the thud of basketballs, birdcall, frog croak, insect chirp, snippets of conversation, an ice cream truck, screen doors, a model T driving over a manhole cover, hollers, clanging metalworking tools, small planes, tales being told, a can kicked down the road, and more. All merge with Hood's instrumentation to create a tender and tangible nostalgic sound, sound which is naturally capable of stimulating remembrance of our own childhood memories: father whistling, the smell of baking, the wet brain-damaging smack of a cement heavy caseball, the lady next door sunbathing with the radio on, and so on.

Back To The Woodlands contains field recordings which are quite different from those of its predecessor. The sounds of the small town (as if preserved in a time capsule) have been replaced by a timeless environmental ambience of nature. "Rain" for example is simply the sound of rain cascading down mixed with bright zither jangles. You could say that the track doesn't "go anywhere" but it surely can take you somewhere nice. "Into The Groves" is an evocation of sunlight winking through leaves, while "Warm Pathways" almost brings to mind the singular musical genius of gospel preacher Washington Phillips. "Pleasant, This Garden" sounds like a gentle ramble set at about the pace of a stroll in the countryside.

I love the—all too brief—contrast of "The Jantzen Rag (Racoons)," a swinging upbeat interlude which bursts in and out as if someone has turned on a television theme tune for barely a minute. "Beaver's Pond" is equally brief, with the quality of a fine pencil sketch which might have been turned into a larger picture. Indeed, the album is full of such sketches, using music to convey solitude, the sanctity of natural places, the sense of human optimism, and, this being Ernest Hood, the profound ache of nostalgia. Found sound is much less audible and prominent on Woodlands, though, to the point where I wonder if several tracks do not include any at all.

"Bedroom of the Absent Child," as evocative a title as I have ever seen, is one of several tracks which caused me to reflect. It's hard to describe, but it was like remembering with sadness and affection a group of frequently visited and occupied rooms in a house long since demolished and built over by people with no memory of those of us who lived there before.

Throughout his life Ernest Hood was a keen contributor to local life. He valued the atmosphere of community life even as he sensed it changing and disappearing. His field recordings and the art he made from them preserve the feeling of a sweet remembered childhood. A jazz guitarist in his youth, he adapted his choice of instrument in response to the illness which rendered him paraplygic. His creations sometimes resemble old half-forgotten radio and television themes, and at other times (with parts of Neighborhoods) seems as if they could be the actual audio version of a movie. He kept his sense of humor and was modest about his music, suggesting that if it sounded sour or bitter compared to the sweetness of the field recordings, it is because that is the true essence of nostalgia.

The final piece, "Untitled," is the most abstract track here, with zither notes plucked in a rather formless fashion and ending suddenly, as if suggesting unfinished business. Ernest Hood leaves behind his albums and will also be remembered for earlier radio programs (travelogs which predate his albums) and for becoming a pioneering campaigner for the right to die with dignity. As his life was coming to an end he struggled gamely to be allowed to leave it on his own terms. Eventually, he won the right to decide to discontinue medical care, and had all the details agreed including a good glass of wine. However, when the time came, his physician left him in the lurch and a covering junior doctor did not feel able to carry out his wishes. Finally, a young family member assisted and set him off on his next journey—out of this world.

listen here

05 February 2023

Creaig Dunton

Albums and Singles

With a debut in 2007, the enigmatic Darksmith has a relatively dense body of work centered around manipulated tapes and electronic excursions. Imposter is one in a series of releases sharing these qualities, as well as consistently strange artistic consistency visually. Unexpecting changes from meditative to chaotic are the norm in this chaotic, yet beautiful disc.

Throne Heap

Originally slated to be an LP, Imposter maintains the original structure intended, presented as two side long pieces on the CD with some roughly discernable pauses where I believe original breaks were intended to be. The first half (side?), "Looking for Idiots/Problem with Everyone," is comparably the mellower one. Leading from a steady tone and flat, white noise, he builds with strange digital interference sounds and crunchy layers. With bits of field recordings weaved in and out, the first section is almost peaceful in its own, disjointed way. The second half is a bit rawer, with violent clattering, scrapes, banging, and what almost sounds like a horse running around and wrecking everything.

The other half, "Personal and Embarrassing/Hold Everything," is a bit bleaker from the start. Heavy tape hiss and scattered, processed sounds come across as less ambient and more menacing. After mangling the tapes a bit, he shifts the sound shifts to rattling machinery and almost rhythmic loops of noise. The whole thing becomes rather obtuse and alien, as the shift then goes from glitching and violent outbursts back to a diverse textural crunch to conclude the piece.

Existing in a nebulous space somewhere between harsh noise, field recordings, and tape experimentations, Imposter is a strange one from beginning to end. The mix between calm textures and harsh outbursts makes for a relatively tense experience, but that unpredictability is what makes it so captivating. It is simultaneously beautiful and disgusting sounding, and to me, that's a perfect combination for this type of work.

listen here

29 January 2023

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This latest release from this eternally innovative Stockholm-based composer is a durational tour de force that first began to take shape in empty Berlin concert halls in the early months of the pandemic. While I note with grim humor that the pandemic has itself become an endlessly shifting durational tour de force, Malone’s primary inspiration came instead from the ambient sense of unreality and distorted time that became pervasive as the fabric of normal daily life quickly unraveled. Like many other artists, Malone suddenly found herself with plenty of free time during that period of dread, isolation, and uncertainty, yet she was fortunate enough to get an invitation to record new music at Berlin’s Funkhaus and MONOM and even luckier still to have some extremely talented friends around with newly open schedules themselves. In short, the stars were in perfect alignment for one hell of an avant-drone dream team to form, as Malone (armed with 72 sine wave oscillators) tapped in like-minded souls Stephen O’Malley and Lucy Railton and the expected slow-burning dark sorcery ensued. Does Spring Hide Its Joy feels like an inspired twist on the longform drone majesty of artists like Éliane Radigue, as Malone employed just intonation to layer complex and otherworldly harmonies while her collaborators gamely helped ensure that the crescendos were visceral, gnarled and snarling enough to leave a deep impression.

Ideologic Organ

I have no doubt at all that Kali Malone brought her usual compositional rigor to this “study in harmonics and non-linear composition with a heightened focus on just intonation and beating interference patterns,” but Does Spring Hide Its Joy is more open-ended than her usual fare and leaves some welcome room for spontaneity and improvisation. Malone envisioned the piece as a puzzle of sorts that is assembled from five-minute blocks approximating a ladder that the musicians can choose to ascend or descend. The total number of blocks is fluid as well. For example, the album versions of the piece are an hour long while the live version can sometimes stretch to 90 minutes (note: the CD includes three performances of the piece while the LP includes only two). On top of that inventive structure, Malone deliberately wrote the piece with her collaborators’ styles and techniques in mind, envisioning the composition as a “framework for subjective interpretation and non-hierarchical movement.” In practical terms, that means that this piece is essentially a drone fantasia of bowed strings, smoldering distortion, and shifting harmonies that occasionally blossoms into something more fiery and transcendent. This being a Kali Malone composition, however, the organically evolving harmonies and oscillations are invariably absorbing, sophisticated, and distinctive regardless of the shape the piece takes. Notably, this album is also a bit more earthy, psychotropic and texturally varied than previous Malone opuses. It feels akin to a ghostly ballet or hallucinatory tendrils of smoke, as the sustained tones of the three players languorously intertwine and dissipate in a dreamlike haze of lingering feedback, overtones, and harmonics.

Given the inherently fluidity of that compositional approach, the album’s two or three pieces are essentially variations upon the same theme and the differences between the individual discs or LPs are largely irrelevant. They each unfold differently, of course, but they are essentially the same elements combining at different times (somewhat akin to out-of-phase tape loops). That said, there is an unconventional arc of sorts, as the drones tend to boil over into churning and howling intensity with increased frequency as each part creeps into its second and third movements (though those delineations would be hard to notice without a numbered track list as a reference). That said, Does Spring Hide Its Joy feels more akin to watching slow-motion footage of a storm forming at sea than it does a planned composition, as terms like “beginning” or “end” lose all meaning: elemental forces simply gather and dissipate at their own pace and occasionally there are metaphorical flashes of lightning or masses of dark clouds. That fundamentally unpredictability makes for an impressively absorbing listening experience, as each new harmonic development could potentially be the early stages of a howling tempest.

Obviously, experiencing the slow-motion massing of Malone’s otherworldly harmonic clouds right from the beginning is the probably the best way to appreciate the eerie beauty of this album, but Spring is also the sort of piece in which I could drop into its shifting currents at nearly any point and find myself quickly entranced in medias res. That unusual feature did not elude Malone, unsurprisingly, as there is also an installation version of the piece that is coupled with video work from Nika Milano. I am sure I would absolutely love that, as it is doubly immersive to have a cool visual accompaniment while I dissolve into oceanic harmonic bliss, yet Spring is a mesmerizing experience as a stand-alone album too. As was the case with previous Malone classics like The Sacrificial Code, what I get out of this album depends largely upon what I put in: deep listening brings deep rewards. My gut feeling is that Spring is destined to topple that previous masterpiece as my personal favorite Malone album, as it is every bit as sophisticated as its predecessor yet has more bite and spontaneity. Then again, maybe I will conclude that I prefer the more focused and minimal pleasures of Malone by herself at a pipe organ. They both have their place, certainly (that place being “heavy rotation”). Regardless of where Spring ultimately lands in my personal Kali Malone canon, I have no hesitation at all about proclaiming this to be yet another brilliant and fascinating statement from an artist on quite an impressive hot steak.

Listen here.

29 January 2023

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

This mammoth and category-defying opus is easily the most wildly ambitious debut in recent memory (if not ever) and also happens to be one of my absolute favorite albums of 2022. It was one hell of an enigma at first as well, as Stroom quietly released the album back in October with absolutely no background information provided at all. Given the absolutely bananas volume of material (4 ½ hours) and the consistently high level of quality, I expected that it would be revealed to be some sort of decade-spanning art project involving an all-star cast of sound art luminaries, but I turned out to be spectacularly wrong about most of that. As it turns out, Voice Actor is instead a recent collaboration between Noa Kurzweil (Supertalented) and Levi Lanser (Ludittes), neither of whom I had previously encountered. However, I was at least partially right about the “art project” bit, as Sent From My Telephone collects three years of pieces that the duo originally intended as a radio play (and there are plenty of guest collaborators involved as well). The heart of the project, however, is Kurzweil’s seductive voice and her enigmatic diaristic monologues, which makes Félicia Atkinson a close kindred spirit, yet Lanser’s varied and phantasmagoric backdrops elevate the project into a mesmerizing durational mindfuck that effortlessly blurs the lines between spoken word, plunderphonics, ambient drone, outsider R&B, psychedelia, and Hype Williams’ hypnagogic sound collage side.

Stroom

The piece that immediately sucked me into the album was “Another Day,” which feels like an elegantly blurred and subtly hallucinatory channeling of a sexy French pop song before it dissolves into a mirage. In some ways, “Another Day” is far from a representative entry point into the album, as it is one of the more hook-driven and structured pieces, but it does capture the album’s sublime magic in a more general sense, as all of the best pieces resemble a decontextualized voice memo of casual, off-the-cuff beauty set to music. That sketchlike nature would probably feel a bit exasperating in lesser hands, but Lanser and Kurzweil transform their mosaic of elusive fragments into a moving and immersive tapestry of intimate and enigmatic moments. I have absolutely no idea if Kurzweil is simply talking about her daily life or playing a character, but experiencing 100+ ephemeral glimpses into that real or imagined life is quite a fascinating and oft-beautiful way to spend 4+ hours either way. I especially love how multilayered and malleable the listening experience can be, as it works as both an instantly gratifying surface experience (Kurzweil has a lovely voice and the underlying music is quite good) and as a non-linear Memento-esque narrative puzzle (What does it all mean? How do the pieces relate to each other? Where does each moment exist in space and time?). Adding to the enigmatic fun is the fact that the songs are presented in alphabetical order, so the arc is fundamentally jumbled and fragmented right from the start and lends itself nicely to endless shuffling and recontextualization.

Given the volume of material here, some pieces are inevitably much stronger than others, but that only adds to the charm for me: one man’s “too much filler” is another man’s shapeshifting durational mindbomb. That “deep plunge” approach sets the stage for plenty of surprises, as being immersed in an extended ambient daze nicely primed me to be completely blindsided by unexpected emotional bombshells, perfect pop songs, or amusingly leftfield samples. “Pelli” is a particularly striking example of the “emotional bombshell” side, as it begins as a hushed monologue over a woozy bed of drones and strangled feedback before unexpectedly blossoming into a haunting coda centered around police scanner recordings from the early moments of 9/11. My favorite of the poppier pieces is currently the looping and sensuous “Carefully,” but there are way too many highlights to list and my favorite pieces will likely be in a perpetual state of flux forever, as every listen reveals fresh details and emotional shadings that I’d previously missed. Also, focusing on any individual piece feels like missing the point, as the whole is such an absorbing and vividly realized wonderland of melodies, dream fragments, confessional monologues, pop songs erupting from radios, sublime reveries, foreign radio transmissions, and a host of blurred, stretched, hiss-soaked, or submerged sounds from city life. I can think of few (if any) other albums that evoke such a poignant and oft-gorgeous distillation of a life’s peaks and valleys. Nearly every emotional shade of life's rich pageant makes an appearance here: love, regret, ennui, anxiety, vulnerability, comedy, tragedy, sex, violence, hope, dread, and many compelling stops in-between. The voyeuristic and elliptical nature of the album is quite fascinating as well, as I feel a bit like a cab driver trying to piece together the events of a mysterious stranger’s life solely from snatches of overheard late night phone conversations. Even that analogy does the album a disservice though, as the experience feels far more like the flickering impressionist logic of a beautiful dream (albeit one with some dark passing shadows). If I were Voice Actor, I would be extremely tempted to ride off into the sunset now (or would have chosen to stay completely anonymous all along), as trying to come up with a worthy follow up to such a monster opening statement is definitely not an enviable position to be in. That said, being the people who already made Sent From My Telephone feels extremely damn enviable indeed. This album is a masterpiece.

Listen here.

29 January 2023

Anthony D'Amico

Albums and Singles

The French Standard In-Fi label has been one of my casual obsessions over the last few years and this second album from Omertà was my favorite release that surfaced from that milieu in 2022. From what I can tell as an outsider, there appears to be a loosely knit family of artists, psych enthusiasts, and avant-folk weirdos that convene periodically in varying configurations and occasionally an album will eventually surface documenting whatever magic transpired. Omertà unsurprisingly shares key members with other fitfully killer projects like France and Tanz Mein Herz, but this ensemble is an unique animal for a number of reasons. The most striking of those reasons are the breathy, sensuous vocals of Florence Giroud, who I believe is only active in this one project (as far as rock bands are concerned, at least). Giroud’s vocals aside, Omertà is also far more informed by eroticism, dream states, pop music, and chansons than the usual Standard In-Fi fare. To my ears, something compelling almost always seems to happen whenever Jeremie Sauvage & Mathieu Tilly assemble a group of like-minded artists, but Collection Particuli​è​re’s “Amour Fou” and “Moments in Love” are easily among the most beautifully distilled and haunting pieces that the label has released to date.

Standard In-Fi/Zamzam

The album’s title translates as “private collection,” which is an allusion to the prolonged saga behind the striking and unusual cover image from Giroud’s younger days. Since the band that has existed at the nexus of art, sex, and dreams since its very beginning, Giroud had hoped to use an image from the same series for the band’s 2014 debut, but when she managed to track down the artist, she learned that a fire had destroyed his workshop and damaged the hard drive containing all the digital copies. The artist vowed to send some images when the data was recovered, but then he abruptly died instead. Later, Giroud was able to contact the artist’s daughter who was managing his archive, but she was only able to provide a photo of a single damaged piece, as the rest of the series had all found its way into private collections. In the original piece, Giroud’s torso was covered with a wax image of a playing card (“holding the ace of spades and the ace of hearts, Eros and Thanatos”), but the wax melted during the fire to become transparent. In keeping with that theme of serendipitous changes in plans, Omertà itself originally blossomed out of an opera that Giroud was working on back in 2013.

I am not sure if that opera ever surfaced in its intended form (Giroud is a sculptor as well, incidentally), but there is nothing remotely operatic about Omertà, as this latest opus feels like an inspired collision between Tortoise, Serge Gainsbourg’s work with Jane Birkin, and arty psychedelia. That marks an delightful evolution from the band’s more single-mindedly psych-focused debut album, as Omertà seem to have gotten very serious about distilling their vision into something more tight, focused, and pop-adjacent (albeit pop from another era). While I enjoy that previous album too, Collection Particulièr is on another level altogether, as Omertà definitely play to their strengths much more this time around and feel like a far more distinctive entity as a result. Unsurprisingly, the main strength is Giroud’s seductive vocals, but the band’s newly muscular rhythm section is another big improvement, as the band make extremely effective use of their two bassists (one laying down a meaty groove, the other taking a more melodic role). The strongest pieces tend to be the sexier ones (“Amour Fou” and “Moments in Love”), as Giroud is an undeniably charismatic, compelling, and sensuous vocalist, but the band’s overall vision is also extremely cool one due to the casual virtuosity of the musicians, the unusually minimalist arrangements, and the propulsive physicality of the grooves. I am normally the absolute last person on the planet who would say something like “I really dig that dude’s bass tone,” but the bass playing on Collection Particulièr has enough visceral heft and richness that it would still be a great album even if the guitar, organ, and synth vanished. Instead, however, Omertà use that simple yet killer bass and drum foundation to create a vacuum in which every cool spacy synth flourish, string scrape, or warm organ chord makes an impact. Granted, not every song quite hits the mark with a perfect bullseye, but even the lesser pieces are still quite enjoyable and the album’s highlights capture a band whose vision, execution, and control are truly on a plane all their own.

Listen here.