Being thankful for an earful.
Brand new music by Marie Davidson, Niecy Blues (feat. Joy Guidry), CEL, Marisa Anderson and Luke Schneider, Stina Stjern, Carmen Villain, Murcof, A Lily, and Far Golden Pavilions, with music from the vaults by Tomaga, Ozzobia, Jan Jelinek.
Sushi photo by Lindsay.
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While it has only been seven years since my first exposure to Jenks Miller's Horseback (2009's The Invisible Mountain), the amount of change and evolution the project has undergone is astounding. What began as classically minimalist Sabbath worship veered toward psychedelic southern rock and has now come back as an idiosyncratic electronic record full of untreated vocals and captivating melodies. Even with this wide variation in sound, Dead Ringers manages to stay consistent with Miller's previous body of work while still sounding like a different, but no less amazing beast.
The transition was not as abrupt as it may seem on the surface, however.The Stolen Fire tape (later reissued in the A Plague of Knowing collection) featured some of Miller's first overt excursions into the world of drum machines, synths, and samplers, but compared to the lush arrangements and orchestrations of Dead Ringers, those earlier pieces feel far more like demos or experiments compared to these fully fleshed out songs.
For instance, the snappy drum machine and fuzzy guitar that lead offalbum opener "Modern Pull" is an odd pairing of up tempo rhythms and dissonance, but the two disparate elements meld together perfectly.Most shocking is, besides the synthesizer focus, is Miller's clean, undistorted vocals, which rarely appeared in such a naked manner.It may not sound like it at first, but there is a vintage electronic pop aspect to the sound, but one that is undeniably Horseback once the classic rock inspired guitar soloing kicks in.
On "A Bolt from Blue", the electronic sounds take on a more deconstructed avant garde sound as an almost 90s R&B rhythm section underpins bizarre chimes and twang-heavy guitar.There is a distinct lightness to the sound, but one that is almost uncomfortably strange once the vocals kick in.The same goes for "Lion Killer", with its rich synthesizer arrangement and bass guitar lead, with bent electronics and marimba giving a bizarrely psychedelic edge to what could almost pass as a pop song.
The Horseback of old still appears here and there on this record, however."In Another Time, In and Out of Form" feels like a throwback to the Invisible Mountain days with its circular, chugging riffs and what sounds like live drumming, the only distinction being Miller's singing as opposed to the demonic growl that featured more heavily in his earlier work."The Cord Itself" channels the greater abstraction that defined Forbidden Planet with its dubby echo chamber rhythms and dark guitar drone, building to an intense wall but never going full metal.
Dead Ringers is, like much of the Horseback catalog, difficult to fully explain, which is exactly what makes it so fascinating.Genre tags are somewhat useless, because the wide array of instrumentation and production styles are pulled together on here that contradict one another, yet in the hands of Jenks Miller make perfect sense alongside each other.It really just boils down to the fact that this is a Horseback album, and no one makes them quite like he does.Each one thus far has had a distinct sound, and this is no different.But perhaps the most striking element is how his songwriting and arrangement has grown.Not to demean any of his previous work, but Dead Ringers is extremely impressive in its composition and production, giving it an added depth that amazes with each listening.
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Little Annie’s latest solo album is a bit of a freewheeling evolution upon her recent cabaret/torch song work with pianist Paul Wallfisch, though Wallfisch was notably still involved in the lead single "Dear John."  For the rest of the album, however, Annie alternately collaborated with Toronto multi-instrumentalist Ryan Driver and Brooklyn electronic trio Opal Onyx.  Naturally, the more rhythmic and spoken-word-themed electronic pieces are the more dramatic departures, recalling some of her ‘80s work as Annie Anxiety.  While the Driver pieces show a considerably more subtle change, that seems to be the more significant and (presumably) more lasting one, taking Annie’s "chanteuse" persona in a more lush, lively, and conventionally beautiful direction.  Also of note: the title piece is easily one of the finest pieces of Annie's career.
As an outside observer, the central problem with Little Annie's oeuvre to date has been one that most other artists would probably love to have: she has a magnetic presence and flair for style that seems quite difficult to fully capture on a recording.  Also, while her current role as smoky voiced chanteuse is ideal for showcasing her power as a performer, reverent renditions of subdued and smoldering jazz standards are not particularly conducive terrain for conveying the full "Little Annie" experience.  It is a classic "square peg, round hole" scenario.  With Trace, however, Annie has found a much better balance between cabaret stylist and her more idiosyncratic gifts.  Those two sides rarely coexist easily within the same song, but at least both sides are somewhat equally represented here–the Opal Onyx bits are especially effective at highlighting Annie’s eccentric edges.  Even if pieces like the brief acapella opener "Cold World" or the throbbing, sassy, and delightfully absurd "Bitching Song" are not particularly substantial, they provide a welcome injection of personality and serve as a very effective contrast to the album’s more straightforward and jazz-based fare.  One of the Driver pieces ("Midlife Lazarus") is even more radical, beautifully weaving Annie's spoken-word with doomy guitar sludge and a very unexpected choir.  It sounds like absolutely nothing else on the album, but works well as a self-contained entity.  Annie should strongly consider sending Sunn O))) her resumé.
Impressively, the pieces written by Annie and Driver fit quite seamlessly with the album’s two standards ("India Song" and "You Don’t Know What Love Is").  I am not sure it is ever a good idea to go toe-to-toe with Billie Holiday or Nina Simone without at least radically overhauling an arrangement, but Annie definitely gets points for at least picking good songs to cover and she very much holds her own. More importantly, Annie's own "You Better Run" sounds like something that Holiday or Simone themselves might have incorporated into their repertoires if the timing were different.  I am also quite fond of the sensuous Latin jazz of "Break It You Buy It," as it takes Annie’s characteristic sultry melancholia in a sexier and livelier direction than usual.  The album’s highlights, however, are the very different "She Has a Way" and the closing title piece.  "She has a Way" is one of the Opal Onyx pieces and its industrial-tinged narrative sounds like the belated perfection of Annie’s previous Jackamo-era aesthetic.  A lot of Annie’s most compelling work occurs when she delves into her misfortune-strewn urban character studies, though they generally require a lightness of touch to avoid erring on the side of too maudlin.  "She Has A Way" does not have a light touch at all, but it perversely works anyway.  On the other hand, "Trace" is just a tender and gorgeously lush love song with perfectly understated accompaniment, an irresistible hook, and a truly impressive vocal performance from Annie.  It is unquestionably one of the most moving and beautiful pieces of Annie's long career, but it is equally noteworthy that just about every original song on Trace seems better than either of the two standards.  While Annie excels as an interpreter/stylist, she is still generally at her best when she is channeling her own words.
If Trace can be said to have a flaw, it is only that it is a bit kaleidoscopic: it is readily apparent that Annie had multiple collaborators and shifted directions several times while the album was gradually taking shape.  In an uncharitable light, that could be seen as a lack of clear vision.  I think that that variety (whether intended or not) actually serves Annie quite well though, as a full album of torch songs or piano ballads can get quite numbing regardless of the artist’s abilities due to the inherently limited palette and unrelentingly noirish mood.  While Ryan Driver's guidance and arrangement talents definitely deserve a lot of credit for Trace's success (he apparently talked Annie into singing more and growling less), the biggest strength is the songs themselves.  Annie has always had a wonderfully soulful and throaty voice and charisma to burn, so it is always just a question of finding or writing strong enough material to bring that out.  Also, Trace excels in some less tangible ways as well, as it feels like a more fun and vibrant affair than some of her previous "jazz chanteuse" albums.  I have no idea if that is a result of the production, the performances, the arrangements or all three, but I definitely like it.  Whatever convoluted formula Annie has here, I sincerely hope she continues using it.  I suspect Soul Possession will probably forever reign as my favorite of Annie’s albums, but Trace is probably the high point of her creative rebirth as a cabaret diva.
 
Following up the concept of their most recent works, the duo of noise artist Mattin and Brainbombs member Anders Bryngelsson have again chosen to subvert two niche genres of music and attempt to recreate them in their own, deconstructed noise rock style. In this case, one album of Harsh Noise Walls, and the other three lengthy treatments of various subgenres of heavy metal. Unsurprisingly, the duo's reconstruction of this music ends up being less about imitation and more of a study and critique of what is expected by those specific styles.
Rapid Moment/At War with False Noise/Decimation Sociale/Pilgrim Talk
Harsh Noise Wall, or HNW, is a relatively specific offshoot of what is generally labeled noise.Its main practitioners are known for their monochromatic audacity (Vomir, who's Romain Perrot runs the Decimation Sociale label) or approach that borders on personal obsession (The Rita).As a consequence of this, often less emphasis is placed on the actual sound, to the point of it being an almost tongue-in-cheek self-awareness that many styles lack.Mattin and Bryngelsson chose to attack the genre via a guitar and drum duo arrangement, each using their respective instruments to mimic the immobile white noise monolithic sound.
Unsurprisingly, the actual output ends up being dissimilar to actual HNW via the rapid-fire erratic beats and shrill, metallic tinged guitar assaults.Try as they might, they cannot fully replicate that dull roar for the album’s nearly 30 minute duration.Instead though, it sounds more like the detritus of a grindcore demo tape, or the most dissonant moments of a multigeneration heavy metal show bootleg.It also rejects the notion that all HNW style noise sounds the same, or that it is entirely simplistic and unchanging (the best stuff has never been).
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On Metal, however, the duo took a more audience participation approach on the three pieces contained.Each were recorded live at a different venue, with audience members playing Mattin and Bryngelsson a metal song they had never heard off of the audience member’s phone or mp3 player.From this, the duo tried to recreate, or at least improvise based upon what they heard."Heavy Metal" begins with some bleed through of the audience member’s chosen song as Regler slowly get themselves going.At first it sounds like nothing in particular, but after around three minutes the performance fully locks in, with a truly heavy metal sound to it (albeit one that is improvised and messy, as opposed to tight, riff heavy arrangements), ending on an almost progressive rock note.
For "Thrash Metal", the duo chose to replicate the taut guitar riffs and drum passages in a more abstract manner, via a jerky stop/start erratic structure to the earlier parts of the piece.Those dramatic breakdowns become tense pairings of noise and silence, never locking into a comfortable pattern.The final work, "Black Metal" is perhaps the closest reading of the genre the two performers do.It is fully appropriate that, when mimicking a genre that is so focused on low production values, the result is shrill feedback and a dull roar of noise.The piece has the two mostly creating a dull roar (not unlike the HNW album), but allowing some more conventional metal moments through, even at times allowing the piece to approach some sort of approximated punk/thrash sound.
Like HNW, Metal features Regler playing with the accepted tropes of a genre, but subverting them into an entirely different sound, while simultaneously addressing the criticism that metal (like noise) is a simplistic genre "anyone" can do.By attempting to improvise what they heard, the creation is something entirely different and one that finally bears little resemblance to what they were attempting to imitate.Both albums are excellent, if at times intentionally difficult listening, but Metal stands out a little more as being a more diverse suite of music, but also one that is conceptually strong and still not afraid to bring in a bit of levity in an otherwise dour genre.
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Blizzard is a luxurious reissue of a CDr Aaron Dilloway originally put out on his Hanson imprint back in 2009, presented here in high quality double vinyl. Dilloway and Robert Turman recorded these four pieces together during an actual blizzard, which not only further enhances mood, but also seems to creep in throughout these lengthy compositions. Largely based upon analog synthesizer and tape manipulation, the duo not only captures the frigid, isolated mood of being caught in a massive snowstorm, but the sounds of one as well.
The story goes that Dilloway was set to move from Ohio back to Michigan (where his wife and child had already begun settling in) when a massive storm hit.Rather than stay in his then empty house alone, he paid a visit to Turman, and the two decided to record this album.Four pieces, each spread across a side of vinyl, capturing these studio collaborations with a fully fleshed out, composed sense to them.They channel this cold and desolate mood perfectly, and without as much harshness as I would have expected.
The first piece sets the stage very well:a sustained semi-melodic passage of synthesizer has a distinctly musical tone to it, but all the while casts a creepy shadow.What almost resembles haunted voices and ancient woodwind sounds drift through the piece.The icy and lonely mood is amplified all the more by the sound of violent, blowing storm winds that may either be a field recording or an extremely accurate in studio simulation.
The second part continues with the buzzing synth theme, here a bit more dissonance than before.Beneath this the two cast layers of deep, churning distortion that adds a tasteful bit of menace without pushing it too far into dark ambient sounding realms.Textural passages become the focus, having a wet, crunchy sense to them like piling snow.The composition finally transitions into more heavy distortion, like whiteout snow conditions until dropping away into a blackened expanse, like a moment of peace on a clear, frozen night.
The second record begins on a more rhythmic note, with loops of static and noise leading to some sense of rhythm, mimicking a snow plow crunching off in the distance.The piece is dense with looped layers, high register hisses bursting over pulsating bass passages, resulting in a very dynamic and rhythmic piece.The concluding composition sees the duo going back to the buzzing synths that defined the first record, tinged with unadulterated static.There is a bit that could be a voice, or could be a horn, and that ambiguity just adds to the strength overall, closing the album on a cold, empty note befitting its title.
Very rarely does a record’s title so accurately describes the contents, and the duo do an undeniably excellent job at capturing the environment that cold day in January of 2009 in solely audio form.It could not have hurt that the conditions under which Blizzard was recorded had a significant impact on the mood of this album, but I imagine that Turman and Dilloway could have created just as compelling of a work on a warm summer’s day.Fabrica should also be commended for getting this album back out there, and in such a luxurious way.
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The quartet of Nakama (Adrian L√∏seth Waade on violin, Ayumi Tanaka on piano, Andreas Wildhagen playing drums, and Christian Meaas Svendsen providing double bass) expand upon their use of silence in juxtaposition with experimental jazz from their previous record, Before the Storm, into this newer, more conceptually structured work. The album is based upon Svendsen's structuring, which instructs the performers to improvise their playing reacting to a visual structure, giving the work an additional layer of complexity that makes the album all the more compelling.
These seven pieces are all improvisations based on each performer’s "compositions" (what they actually play) as part of a larger "form" structure that determines when parts are played, or when they transition into a new composition.These sort of game-like rules are not necessarily new to jazz improvisations, but Nakama clearly put their own spin on things.I admit at times the conceptualism went over my head (and the included diagrams in the printed insert triggered some old geometry anxiety), but completely divorced from the concept, the music stands on its own.
Almost half of the album is taken up by the lengthy "Doremingo + Taiko" (using the "Grand Line" form included in the insert).Waade's restrained violin, Tanaka's building drama on piano, and Wildhagen’s buzzing cymbals build from its quiet opening rather quickly into a heavy roar.At times the piano takes the focus, making for a conventional beacon in an otherwise dissonant mix, while at other times, the drums and Svendsen’s double bass lock into steady, metronomic rhythms that soon fall apart.
Throughout its 28-minute duration, each player manages to take the focus via conventional sounding compositions, but also just as quickly slip away into abstract squeaks and scrapes, rattling drums or rumbling bass.It is an extremely dynamic work that playfully goes from structure into chaos, taking on an almost collage-like sound as the players jump from composition to composition, at times pausing to allow for a break, with the silence excellently underscoring the dissonance.
The next five pieces are substantially shorter in length and, not surprisingly do not demonstrate quite the drastic variances in structure that "Doremingo + Taiko" did.For "The Sun", violin and piano lead off right away to set a more melodic mood, as open space and understated performing keeps things a bit more peaceful.Conversely, "Nanika" is a mass of taut string plucks and shrill scrapes.Again, the four players keep a healthy use of silence there, but the overall sound is definitely on the experimental side.
The other lengthy piece, the closing "Daily Choices" (which uses the "Metro" form, my guess is some form of mass transit map), uses a somewhat different, though just as effective strategy for its 14 minutes.Rather than the chaotic mass of "Doremingo + Taiko", here there is an emphasis on repetition:recurring strings, simple but steady percussion, with the occasional unexpected bass string pluck or scraped string.The repetition seems to be signified in the "Daily Choices" title, but these bits of "glitch" in the routine at times leave the piece sounding like a malfunctioning computer, occasionally spitting out bits of music erratically, to make for a more fresh, and overall looser and more fun sounding composition.
Christian Meaas Svendsen's approach to structure and performance on Grand Line may be a rather complex and conceptual one, but by no means is being able to follow it integral to enjoying this record.There are times where the patterns being utilized are more obvious than others, but even without that in mind, Nakama have created a work that falls under the general heading of "free jazz" (though it is not as free as it may sound), but one that also embraces subtlety as much as chaos.
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The latest from Los Angeles synthesis figurehead M. Geddes Gengras consolidates his entire arsenal of techniques and compositional tricks into a four-sided opus of immersive sound worship. Recorded and assembled across six years and far-flung geographies (California, Connecticut, The Netherlands), Interior Architecture was imagined as an "impossible object," simultaneously stark and lush, sprawling and concise, analog and digital. Gengras' array of processing modules allow for a near-infinite complexity of texture and movement: tones rise and morph and recede, inscrutable chords float in space, elements integrate and then refuse resolution. Long-time associate Seth Kasselman guests on clarinet throughout Side C but otherwise Architecture is, as per usual, a solitary affair – the rogue alchemist alone at his mainframe, the laboratory thick with smoke. His is an ambiguous and experiential form of tactile psychedelia, electronic rorschach tests for the 21st century. Gengras' own assessment is suitably consuming: "At its best it should feel like sinking into really warm quicksand or dying of hypothermia."
More information can be found here.
To many outside of East Africa, the Kenya Special Soundway compilation released in 2013 was their introduction to the full spectrum of the musical landscape of 1970s and ‘80s Kenya. The promotion of Kenyan music on an international level from the mid-eighties onwards had often been within a narrative of ‘otherness’, where releases were marketed as world music, focusing on a few genres with clearly defined sounds, such as benga and Swahili rumba. Kenya Special did more or less the opposite by highlighting songs and bands that couldn’t easily be categorized. Many of the featured songs seemed to bend the rules, break away from existing genres and sometimes borrow from foreign music trends. Whereas the world music campaigns of the 1980s were moderately successful in drawing in young audiences, the more recent wave of reissues has caught on with a demographic that’s one or two generations younger than those listeners that were originally interested in the music that was recorded in Kenya from the 1960s to the 1980s. The approach to musical rediscovery that is behind Kenya Special has its origins in a youthful movement of vinyl collecting (and to some extent club culture), which has, in the past decade and a half, carved out its own niche alongside the established music industry.
Despite the renewed interest in music from Kenya’s past, finding these tracks and their rights holders hasn’t become any easier. Only a handful of music archives around the world harbour collections of Kenyan music, and just a few private collectors in Kenya and abroad have been sharing catalogue info online or privately. One of the problems with East African music of this era is that much of it was originally released only on 45 rpm, seven-inch vinyl singles, many of which were only ever produced in tiny runs of a few hundred. 45s with their thin, paper sleeves do not age as well as LPs and are often far more susceptible to the elements. The compilers of Kenya Special 2 have gone to great lengths to disclose a small part of what is slowly being accepted as an essential element of East Africa’s cultural heritage: the history of recorded popular music. We hope you enjoy it.
As always with Soundway releases, Kenya 2 comes with extensive liner notes, photos and artwork from each 45.
Out October 7th, 2016. More information can be found here.
M. Geddes Gengras’s Collected Works (The Moog Years) was a huge album for me, but one of reasons that it is so great is that it distilled the best material from several tapes and several years of work.  I wish such retrospectives were more frequent: Gengras’s prodigious output has an exasperating tendency to dilute his artistry, as he is extremely restless in his creative evolution and it seems like every new step winds up publicly documented.  That tendency is probably cool for obsessive fans, but it also has the unfortunate result of leaving a voluminous wake of releases that fail to live up to their potential.  Granted, Gengras is never short on ideas–I just wish he would linger on them long enough to craft something lasting and great more often.  Consequently, this latest record under Gengras's analog techno guise is quite a wonderful surprise, capturing him in unwaveringly fine form.  This is exactly the kind of album that I was hoping for.
Despite my love of The Moog Years, Personable is probably my favorite of Gengras's many projects, as the pulse and mesmerizing repetition of techno is the perfect foil for his burbling and twinkling synthesizer wizardry.  More importantly, he seems to have deep intuitive grasp of the form's mechanics and knows how to use its components to maximum effect.  Also, his vision is anything but static: on 2012's Spontaneous Generation, he sounded like a sped-up, hyper-visceral twist on early Tangerine Dream.  Four years later, Oyster almost sounds like the work of a completely different artist: replacing barreling momentum with stripped-down, understated, and perversely hooky sophistication and crystalline clarity.  The excellent opener "Gambetti," for example, sounds like a somewhat caffeinated instrumental dub remix of a great Kraftwerk song.  At the very least, it is a dynamic wonder, embellishing its throbbing pulse with spectral and dissipating snatches of melody and a complex arsenal of textural and percussive touches.  In theory, a four-on-the-floor beat and a simple repeating bass line is about as straightforward as dance music can possibly get, but Gengras juggles his snares and cymbals so expertly that it all feels deliciously unpredictable, vibrant, and organic.
Curiously, the following "Window" is built from very similar components, but twists the groove into something much more stumbling and stuttering.  It is not quite as strong as "Gambetti," but it is a neat trick nonetheless, as it is filled with odd lags and idiosyncrasies that continually disrupt its forward motion.  It feels like there are three or four different musicians involved and they are all intent on ratcheting up the intensity, yet rarely ever manage to all be in sync at the same time.  The following "Oyster," on the other hand, returns to the unmolested and infectious momentum of the opener, but transforms the formula with the addition of blurting, dynamically shifting bass notes; a relentlessly insistent one-note synth pulse; and some appealingly dubby percussion flourishes.  It is probably the most minimal piece on the entire album, but it works beautifully because its unstoppable flow handily compensates for the lack of hooks.  Also, the lack of a strong melody provide lots of room for Gengras to play around with echoing and panning arpeggios and fills.  The highpoint of the album, however, is the divergent, lush, and fluttering closer "Cormorant."  While a thumping beat eventually kicks in, the piece is not at all typical for Personable, sounding much more like a gorgeously warm and melodic drone piece embellished by a wonderful array of hallucinatory squeaks, creaks, and echoes.
If Oyster can be said to have a weakness, it is only that the two songs that comprise its first half sound so similar to one another.  Viewed as variations on a theme, however, they do make an interesting pair.  More importantly, the weaknesses that I actually expected and thought were inherently unavoidable turned out not to be issues at all: while Gengras's modular synthesizers are absolutely delightful on a textural and dynamic level, they do not lend themselves at all well to multi-part compositions.  Everything is unavoidably pattern-based, so these four songs are all essentially sophisticated vamps on a groove.  In lesser hands, that would be a real problem when songs regularly tend to extend for 8, 10, or 12 minutes.  In Gengras's hands, however, these pieces rarely overstay their welcome and he manages to start and stop them with seamless grace.  The execution, lightness of touch, and attention to detail are all superb here–Gengras definitely makes the most of his inherently limiting set-up.  In fact, Oyster is easily one of his strongest albums to date, both creatively and in terms of sheer craftsmanship.
 
Ecstatic offer a deeply arresting and definitive collection of Works by erstwhile Serbian factory worker-turned-synthesist Abul Mogard; containing selections from two cassettes released in 2012 and 2013 on Steve Moore and Anthony Paterra’s VCO Recordings, as well as a cassette only release last year on Ecstatic, never before available on vinyl.
Abul Mogard’s relatively unusual path to releasing music is well documented, but bears repeating here. Upon taking retirement from a job at a factory which he held for decades, Mogard craved the mechanical noise and complex harmonics of the industrial workplace, and found that the best way to fulfil that need was through electronic music - using a limited set-up of Farfisa organs, voices, samplers and a self-built modular system to realise a peaceful yet haunting, sweetly coruscating sound that resonates uncommonly with music from Leyland Kirby to Alessandro Cortini, or Fennesz and Tim Hecker.
The nine tracks on Works are soused in an emotional richness that’s hard to forget once experienced. Broad daubs of distorted bass and naturally glorious harmonic progressions paint panoramas of wide open, grey-scaled skies whilst equally conveying the intimate feel of a person with their nose to the machine, toiling for a sound or feeling that really means something to them, and by turns, us.
The fact that Mogard hails from an area hardly well-known for its synth music, and that he’s of an age where most people take up gardening or lawn bowls, rather than synth music, only helps to aid the enigma and magick surrounding this remarkable artist and his addictively emotional music.
More information can be found here.
A virtual six-disc, 25-track masterpiece from Natural Snow Buildings, following up from their previous Vulpiano Records installments The Night Country and 2010 Vulpiano exclusive The Centauri Agent. As towering as Daughter of Darkness, a favorite release of mine from their impressive catalog and what introduced me to NSB in the first place, I am incredibly pleased to offer Aldebaran to you as a Netlabel Day exclusive. The release also includes beautiful album artwork, giving a hint to the unearthly content within.
More information can be found here.
Hallow Ground continues their impressive recent run with two vinyl reissues from these erstwhile Coil collaborators and eternally provocative and intriguing iconoclasts.  Both of these releases were originally issued as very limited CDrs on the band’s own Anarcocks label in the mid-2000s, so they never managed to get the attention that they richly deserve, making this quite a worthy pair for a vinyl resurrection (one more so than the other, admittedly).  Unsurprisingly, the Coil influence is quite strong on both, as Massimo and Pierce traffic primarily in stuttering, hallucinatory electronics and eerie moods.  In fact, Jhonn Balance himself even contributes vocals (of a sort) to Toilet Chant’s "E2 = Tree 3."  If Black Sun Productions are derivative of Coil here, however, they seem to have been focused primarily upon the bizarre and unpredictable fare of the Unnatural History series.  More Coil-eque music in that vein is certainly fine by me, but each album also boasts at least one piece that admirably transcends that long shadow to blossom into something wonderfully beautiful and unique.
Toilet Chant was originally released back in 2004, in an edition of 99 numbered CDrs that each featured a no doubt highly collectable thumbprint/shitstain (Massimo and Pierce were, of course, no strangers to the base and scatological). Despite its more deviant, transgressive, and earthbound trappings, however, Toilet Chant is actually quite a complex and otherworldly suite of songs.  In fact, parts of it are legitimately brilliant.  Hallow Ground seem to have valiantly tried to eliminate as much of that potential cognitive dissonance as they could, as aside from not being shit-smeared, this reissue also no longer features the original cover art of two urinals in a graffiti-covered bathroom (though the new artwork could potentially be an abstract sphincter).
In any case, the music here often reaches some truly spectacular highs.  The opening title piece, for example, is essentially just six minutes of eerily inhuman howls, lying somewhere between grinding metal and a pack of wolves while still managing to sound improbably ritualistic.  Elsewhere, "E2=Tree 3" resembles a slinky, sexy, and Latin-tinged groove built from the dissonant whines and crunches of massive machinery.  I think it features actual wolves, as well, who perversely seem a lot less feral and a lot more intent on hitting the right notes than Jhonn Balance (he basically turns up just to yowl for the final minute).  Yet another highlight is "Glüewürmlitanz," which sounds a lot like a bagpipe drone piece might sound if the bagpipes were replaced by slithering and fluttering Lovecraftian horrors.  That is not an easy aesthetic to pull off.
The rest of the album definitely has its moments as well, though the remaining three pieces are somewhat hobbled by some arguable missteps.  The most bizarre and original of the remainder is probably the 13-minute "Spermatic Cord," which is a deeply abstract tour de force of ugly shudders, throbs, deep gurgles, and ominously dissonant drones.  It is more of an uncomfortably long vision of hell than a song though.  As for "Anarcocks Rising" and "Yesterdays Dream," they fall short solely because they contain actual recognizable instruments and attempts at conventional melody.  That would normally not be a deal-breaker, but the rest of Toilet Chant weaves such a perfect illusion of being a beautifully hallucinatory nightmare that any conspicuous evidence of human interference is like being splashed with cold water.
The considerably shorter Dies Juvenalis EP (2007) remains heavily Coil-influenced, but (for better or worse) sheds nearly all of the disturbing elements of Toilet Chant.  In fact, the opening "Percettive Riflessioni" is quite tender, melodic, and almost rapturously beautiful.  Built upon a dense chorus of stuttering and heavily processed voices, it sounds like the sort of religious music that someone like Bach might have made if he only had a laptop and microphone at his disposal (and possibly also a rooster).  There are also some snatches of classical music in there, but it is truly the chopped-up voices that do all the heavy lifting; the occasional orchestral swells only serve to intensify the epic feel of an already heavenly masterwork.
Unfortunately, opening Dies Juvenalis with such a perfect piece leaves nowhere to go but down afterwards.  The remaining two pieces are not necessarily bad though–they just feel extremely underwhelming beside the creative supernova that preceded them.  The title piece sounds like a cross between American Minimalism and a haunting soundtrack to a Japanese avant-garde film, as it combines a very Reich-ian marimba motif with eerily layered flutes and explosive snarls of brass.  The album then closes with "Veneration XXX," which the label describes as "an ethereal homage to pleasure and lust."  I guess that is as good a description as any, as it sounds like a haze of wordless vocals over a NIN-groove that took a massive dose of ketamine.  In any case, I could probably do without it.  I do not want to hear Black Sun Productions sounding like an industrial rock band sleepwalking though a jam–I want to hear Black Sun Productions being the exact opposite of that.  Oh well.  They cannot all be winners.  Adding to the sense that Dies Juvenalis exists only as a showcase for "Percettive Riflessioni" is the fact that different versions of "Dies Juvenalis" and "Veneration" were already featured on Chemism.  If Massimo and Pierce were that committed to filler, they would have been much better served by including two more versions of "Percettive" instead.
As I noted with Toilet Chant, Massimo and Pierce seem to be at their peak when they abandon conventional instrumentation altogether and just plunge wholeheartedly into hallucinatory abstraction.  When they do that, this EP is great.  They just do not do that nearly enough for my liking.  Though Dies Juvenalis is otherwise a fairly minor and insubstantial release, "Percettive Riflessioni" does admittedly offer nearly ten minutes of the duo at their zenith.  Thankfully, the digital version is still available through Anarcocks, so the merely curious need not splurge on import vinyl just to track down one absolutely unmissable song.
 
