14 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

This is a well-deserved and expanded vinyl reissue of the absolutely stellar My Body is A Dying Machine EP, which Justin Broadrick quietly released in digital-only format back in 2010. So quietly, in fact, that I completely missed it the first time around.  As with most expanded releases, the added material in this case is not exactly crucial, as most of the best songs were already on the original EP.  It is quite good though and the appeal of Black Dollars does not lie so much in its enhancements as it does in the fact that Downwards have resurrected some prime Broadrick material that snuck by most casual fans.  Stylistically, Black Dollars is very much in the "instrumental version of Jesu" vein, capturing Broadrick at his shoegaze-mode zenith.

Downwards

Black Dollars opens in fine fashion with its previous namesake, "My Body is a Dying Machine."  Built upon an insistent, overdriven bass throb, "Body" unfolds as a languorously swaying and sizzling haze of slow-moving guitar and synth tones.  The bass foundation is an essential part of the piece's success, as the deep undercurrent of dense, distorted rumble prevents the dreamy foreground from ever seeming too weightless.  Also, Broadrick makes some inspired textural choices, as the bass has a nice stuttering sizzle that sounds like a hapless amplifier being pushed to its limits.  Also, one of the many half-buried layers in the piece sounds like a vocal track that has been time-stretched and reversed.  That creates an extremely cool effect in which it seems like words are trying to fight their way through all the guitar shimmer, but never quite making it far enough to be intelligible.  It is an absolutely sublime and perfectly realized piece of music.

Happily, "Body" is not the only piece of that caliber birthed during that fertile creative period, as both "Gravity" and "Black Dollars" scale similar heights.  In fact, "Gravity" both reprises and improves upon the same formula of driving, distorted bass; drifting guitar shimmer; and buried vocals by ratcheting up the sizzle, hiss, and snarl.  "Black Dollars," however, goes in a bit of a different direction, pushing the bass deep into the background to make room for warmly hissing ambiance and a beautifully slow-moving, twinkling, and reverberant guitar melody.  The remainder of the original EP was rounded out by a live version of "My Body is a Dying Machine" (straight-up filler) and a likable bit of lazily glimmering treated-guitar drift ("A Slight Return").  Naturally, both appear on Black Dollars as well (albeit in different sequence).

Unexpectedly, one of the bonus tracks added for this reissue manages to be something of a highlight itself, as "Flow River Flow" reprises the territory of "A Slight Return" in considerably more gnarled, textured, and vibrant fashion.  In fact, it sounds a lot like a cool outro guitar solo on a classic shoegaze song being played over warped and pitch-shifted field recordings of church bells and a bubbling cauldron.  I sincerely hope that it births a hot new sub-genre.  "The World is Not Waiting for You" is yet another pleasantly surprising addition, returning to the more "rock" structure of Black Dollars' best songs, but doing it in a more soft-focus, burbling, melodic, and feminized way (the vocals are softened and pitch-shifted to the point of at least androgyny).  The remaining dreamy ambient-meets-feedback squall of "The Eternal Daydreamer" is also quite likable, if a bit less memorable than Black Dollars' more propulsive and structured pieces.

If Black Dollars can be said to have any flaws, they are not particularly significant ones.  For example, I do not see any need for the live version of "My Body is a Dying Machine" to be included, as it is not radically different from the studio version in any way.  However, the decision to bookend the album with two versions of one of its best songs is admittedly a nice sequencing move.  Also, the more "ambient" pieces are generally not on the same level as the rest of the album, but that is because the rest of the album is so great, not because the album is padded with substandard material.  I suppose I should not be surprised that Black Dollars boasts at least three instant classics, given Justin Broadrick's long history of excellent and innovative music, but…damn, I am.  Quite pleasantly so.  At its best, Black Dollars hits the absolute perfect balance between heaviness, hooks, and experimentation.  And at its worst, it is merely another very good release by a musical titan.  This is a hugely welcome reissue.

• My Body is a Dying Machine
• Gravity
• Black Dollars

 

08 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

"The first vinyl release of Charlemagne Palestine‘s Godbear, a 1987 solo piano recording originally scheduled to sit alongside Sonic Youth and Swans in the catalogue of Glenn Branca‘s Neutral Records but eventually released on CD by the Dutch Barooni label in 1998. Although Palestine has worked in an enormous variety of media, his long form performances for solo piano are perhaps his most acclaimed works. Palestine immersed himself in the study of overtones throughout the 1960s, working first with carillons and then with electronic synthesis, searching for the 'golden sound.'  Beginning in the early 1970s he continued his exploration of the complexities hidden within seemingly simple tones and intervals on the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano, the ‘Rolls Royce’ of pianos. With the piano’s sustain pedal constantly depressed, Palestine hammers out rapidly repeated notes, allowing a complex cloud of overtones to rise above the percussive texture of the struck keys. Initially working with simple intervals such as octaves and fifths, Palestine gradually expanded the harmonic range of his piano performances over the years, while still retaining their ecstatically single-minded nature. Revisiting his signature piano style in 1987 after several years focusing on visual art, Godbear presents three distinct variations that demonstrate the development of his piano music after the classic recordings of the early 1970s.

Occupying the entire first side, "The Lower Depths" stages a slow descent from the piano’s mid-range to the Bösendorfer’s cavernous additional low octave, building into a thundering swarm of booming overtones. Breaking entirely with the stereotype of clinical minimalism, Palestine’s journey to the depths embraces passages of darkly romantic melody before slowly ascending to its starting point. The version of "Strumming Music" performed here condenses the developmental arc of the piece into eleven minutes, fanning out from a single octave to a complex harmonic wash that calls to mind Palestine’s enthusiasm for Debussy and Ravel. "Timbral Assault" is like an evil twin of "Strumming Music," transforming its insistency and harmonic complexity into aggressive intensity and creeping dissonance, foreshadowing Palestine’s later collaborations with Christoph Heemann. A classic release, and one that, because of the variety of approaches surveyed within, serves as an ideal introduction to Palestine’s ecstatic and mysterious sound world" –Francis Plagne.

Remastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Presented in a deluxe gatefold sleeve designed by Stephen O’Malley.

More information can be found here.

08 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

This collection is an impeccable and crystalline assortment of beautiful music from the deep southwestern provinces of Menabe and Tulear in Madagascar, recorded and assembled by Charles Brooks. Charles has made many friends in these lesser-travelled regions over the past 20 years. Outlier: Recordings from Madagascar represents a compilation of his more recent encounters (2011-2012).

"Madagascar is an island that would bleed into obscurity if not for the rhythm of its name and the mysterious tailwind that follows it. Filled with natural wonder, it’s a land where places, conversations, and names are spoken with a liquid tongue, where people and setting come together to create a unique array of music and culture. Sites can become extraordinarily charged with an unseen presence where heavy air, summoned spirits, and a transformative energy collapse natural constraints of place. The Malagasy call this mingling of forces ‘maresaka’—a permeating vibrational aura. Maresaka pulls you in and places you in the moment, to participate through a saturation of sounds, smells, and colors. When caught inside this kind of atmosphere, levity comes; you release your anchors of self-control. Beautiful unfettered music surfaces. Here, that is to say where I’ve been brought to listen, music lives and moves.

The artists represented in this compilation play, and their music has many different roles—both natural and supernatural. Music can be performed as much as it can be recorded, but here it’s mostly played. These exceptional artists share within such practice.”

- Charles Brooks - 2015

(Limited Edition LP comes with full-size insert of text and photographs by the compiler Charles Brooks)

More information can be found here.

08 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Black Truffle is honoured to present the first vinyl reissue of the classic debut album from AMM, AMMMusic. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its recording in 1966, this reissue makes one of the cornerstones of the experimental music tradition available again in its original form, replete with Keith Rowe’s beautiful pop art cover and the terse aphorisms by the group that served as its original liner notes. A testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the countercultural underground, the album was originally released on Elektra, recorded by Jac Holzman (the label’s founder, responsible for signing The Doors, Love, and The Stooges) and produced by DNA, a group that included Pink Floyd‘s first manager Peter Jenner. (Pink Floyd paid tribute to AMM’s influence on their improvisational sensibility with the track ‘Flaming’ on their debut album, named after the piece that occupies AMMMusic’s first side, ‘Later During a Flaming Riviera Sunset’).

08 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

"Blinding 3rd volume of wave obscurities sourced from hard or impossible-to-find tapes originally issued in the early-mid ‘80s! Color Tapes again reveal a hitherto unheard slice of British garage cold wave recordings ranging from certifiable dancefloor aces to synth escape pods and integers between.

We’re spoilt for highlights, taking in Duke Of Disrespect’s taut, jabbing electro stunner "You Tell Lies (Banging Away)" alongside the Hypnobeat-style drive of Disintegrators’ "Oscillations" and the cold, emotional pull of Silicon Valley’s abstract instrumental "Holborn Station 3 am, 3rd January 1982" on the front, whilst the other sparks up killer dancefloor material in the razor sharp 808s and synth voices of "Club Paris" by Beserk In A Hayfield (big stars of the first 2 volumes), and the roiling analogue psychedelia of Stereo Machines & Kinesis.

No mistake; this is bona fide essential business for fans of early wave music."

-via Boomkat

08 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

"Kerridge returns to Downwards in 2016 with the custom-built electronics of Fatal Light Attraction following last year’s incursions on his own Contort label.

The project premiered at Berlin’s Atonal 2015 edition, featuring Kerridge working alongside Andrej Boleslavsky & Maria Júdová to create an intense, kinetic shadowplay synched as an illusive counterpart to the music and performance.

As Kerridge's 3rd long player, it marks a more fluid, or effluent, refinement of his sound, blurring the boundaries between organic audio sources and custom-constructed synths to flooding the senses with waves of bristling, oxidising industrial tones and coruscating texturhythm seemingly intent on separating flesh from bone.

It’s evil stuff, all seven tracks of it, forming a closed feedback system of guttural, choking frequencies and cardiac arrhythymatics."

-vai Boomkat

07 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Like photographs, field recordings suggest unaltered reality. Suggests, not captures, because as in photography, there are artists who use field recordings for more than reproducing objective phenomena, if objectivity is even possible in the first place. Whether there’s an answer to that question, it at least points in the direction of impressionism and perspective, not just in visual productions, but in audible ones too. Whatever the medium, the artist brings more than a machine or a technique to the proceedings. Keeping with the comparison to photography, decisions about where to shoot and at what time, about exposure, and about dodging and burning all have parallels in field recording. They’re imprecise parallels, but they are clearly illustrated in the abstract shapes and bruised-blue colors of Michael Trommer’s Night Swimmer.

Unfathomless

On his website, Michael Trommer describes himself as a sound artist focused on "psychogeographical explorations." Both halves of that psychogeographic descriptor are well evidenced on Night Swimmer, but the geographic component is worth sussing out first. Night Swimmer was recorded in 2013 at Southern Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada, the 5,800 square mile bay of Lake Huron sometimes referred to as the sixth Great Lake. Home of the Anishinaabeg, Wendat, and Tionontati people, it is now also dotted with small Canadian cities and towns, like Lion’s Head, Owen Sound, and Wiarton, and is traversed by both commercial and private ships, including the MS Chi-Cheemaun, which connects the northern portion of Highway 6 with its southern portion. Due to the dramatic combination of exposed granite and tall white pines, and because one of its members owned land there, the Canadian Group of Seven often painted Georgian Bay, and today it attracts tourists interested in its beaches, islands, and pronounced peaks. Though far from isolated, had Trommer desired it, he could have represented the area in its state as a national park, not untouched by humans, but sometimes relieved of them.

Instead he opens the record with children playing in the water. One of them asks, "What am I going to do? Drift to shore?" To which another responds, with some excitement at the suggestion, "No, you’ll drift out to sea." Trommer continues to focus on the children for awhile. Other sounds both sharp and vague float by: the lapping of water against a boat, paper shuffling, Trommer’s breathing. Beneath these a deep, almost seismic tone rumbles, like the sound of music heard through a wall. Insects fade into the mix, then voices that seem to be artificially warped or time stretched, and then there’s a sudden electrical buzz, like a quick cut to a sizzling transformer, and the children disappear. All that’s left are the insects and that muddy, indistinct tone.

It resurfaces later on the same track as a pulsing bass figure and then again on "Night Swimmer 2D," where it becomes more or less obvious that Trommer is dunking his microphone into the bay. The resulting whir and thrum is both a kind of literal representation and a blurred image of the sounds above and below the surface of the water. It also brings an ominous mood to the music, especially as it is included in close proximity to electrical signals and sudden cuts for which there is little or no context. The lack of human sounds in the latter part of "Night Swimmer" further amplifies the stillness and enigma of the composition, and therefore of the surrounding area, and the deep, seemingly synthetic rhythms at the song’s conclusion serve as keen reminders of the breadth of the region. Where the expanse can’t be captured literally, Trommer recreates it poetically.

"Night Paddler" dives further into that stillness. The boats and voices discernible early on in the piece eventually recede into a cavernous space dominated by the echoing call of a solitary bird, a sound as beautiful and as lonely as any melodic figure you can name. After a short time, Michael inserts the sound of a popping flask lid. Water (or Canadian whiskey) can be heard rushing down his throat. There is no crackling fire, no indication whatsoever that this was all recorded at night, but it can be felt. The small sound of crickets, the odd rush of wind, the long, uninterrupted bird calls, they all scream blue and purple and silver light on black sky.

Trommer tips his hand at the end with "Night Swimmer 2D," a kind of pronounced re-imagining of everything before it, shot through with more noticeable post-production, loops, jump cuts, and denser sound fields. It casts some light on the techniques used throughout the album and it emphasizes the psychological half of Michael’s psychogeographic pursuit. Unable to see or hear or smell the places where these recordings take place, everything is transferred to an inner cinematic eye, which fills in the blanks and brings the personal to the purported solid ground of reality.

samples:

• Night Swimmer
• Night Paddler
• Night Swimmer 2D

 

07 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

Quietly released between two major Mamiffer releases: last year's Crater with Daniel Menche and the upcoming The World Unseen, this limited cassette solo release from Faith Coloccia, under the name of M√°ra hopefully will not get lost in the shuffle. Surfacing is a sparse, intimate tape that showcases some of her contributions to the more dramatic Mamiffer sound and deserves just as many accolades as her better known "primary" project.

SIGE

Clocking in at around 18 minutes, Surfacing is a short collection of seven songs, most of which focus on Coloccia's voice and piano, with a tasteful amount of electronics and processing scattered throughout.These elements often appear on Mamiffer records, but here, isolated, their impact is even more significant.Recorded to a four track and a hand-held tape recorder, she strips her music down to the barest of essentials, which stand beautifully in their simplicity.

The opening "The Gift of Life" and closing "Healing for the Wounded" have Coloccia working from a similar melodic theme, and while the arrangements are intentionally sparse, the details shine through in the unassuming austerity.Both pieces feature her vocals layered in such a way that juxtaposes delicateness and power, and the former’s ambient ending is brilliantly continued in the latter’s introductory moments.

Her ethereal voice acts as the centerpiece of "Saint'Elia a Piansi," multitracked wonderfully and accompanied by a simple piano passage, woven together into a song that seems all too short.Both "Nothing of Everything" and "Love and Infinity" have melodies that are a bit on the lower register end of the piano, and coupled with Coloccia's reverberated vocals there is a more spectral feel to them, the latter especially punctuating her lighter vocals with some more bass heavy piano notes.

The two more electronic tinged pieces have a distinctly different feel to them, but still one that resonates with Coloccia's singular sound."Warmth, Shelter, Oblivion" features her vocals up front and clear over a swirling, lush arrangement of processed tones and echoing voice, weaving a dark and bleak tale."Flask of Hermes" is for the most part an instrumental piece that stands out as the most oddly dissonant on an otherwise gentle release.Low fidelity recorded piano and an incidental radio broadcast are mixed together in a noise-tinged haze that, while by far the least beautiful moment on the tape, still results in a brilliantly strange centerpiece and excels with its unexpectedness.

I have always been a big fan of Faith Coloccia's untreated vocals and piano work that have been scattered throughout her projects for years, so being able to hear them standing here on their own, recorded with an intimate closeness that brings out the strong and soft timbres of her voice perfectly.The songs never feel incomplete throughout, but the overall brevity of Surfacing is its only shortcoming.

samples:

• Warmth, Shelter, Oblivion
• Flask of Hermes
• Healing for the Wounded

 

07 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

It occurred to me today that modular synthesizer albums are a lot like rodeos: it is immediately clear which cowboys are bad at riding broncos and which ones are good, but it is very rare for any of their individual personalities to come through while they are trying not to get bucked.  Despite only recently taking the plunge into modular synthesizer-centric composition with 2014’s Essays in Idleness, Bissonnette is one of the few artists able to transcend the limitations of that analogy.  While Pitch, Paper & Foil is not necessarily one of the best Christopher Bissonnette albums, it does boast a few of his best pieces and there is no question that this is a fruitful direction.  More importantly, Pitch still sounds unmistakably like Christopher Bissonnette, proving that the entropy of electronics is no match for Bissonnette's rigorous focus and control.

Kranky

It is almost tragic that the opening "Epoch" is such an amazing piece, as it instantly raises expectations that the rest of the album cannot possibly match.  Of course, the trade-off is that I immediately wanted to hear the rest of the album in hopes of proving myself wrong.  In any case, "Epoch" is essentially the logical culmination of Bissonnette's career to date.  He was already an excellent composer and that has not changed.  Now, however, he has taken the lush and dreamlike ambient drone of his early work and used his self-built synthesizer to focus on making the textures and details as rich and vibrant as possible.  In "Epoch," Christopher forms a wonderfully buzzing and oscillating bed of dense drones, while the foreground is a beguiling haze of undulating shimmer and hiss; muted twinkling; and powerfully sizzling, crackling, and sputtering surges.  The balance between structure and unpredictability is perfect, as the piece feels like a massive mysterious presence slowly surfacing in a lovely, sun-dappled lake.  Happily, "Epoch" is not entirely a fluke either, as "The Rate of Delay" scales similar heights much later on the album, albeit in much more subdued fashion, allowing its warm, wobbly thrum and gently breaking analog electronic waves to just drift and ripple along in a beautifully languorous simmer.

The remainder of the album, however, is considerably less engaging, as Bissonnette is a bit less ambitious in his vision.  Speaking charitably, I might say that Pitch, Paper, and Foil is "varied," but it is hard not to be disappointed by a pleasant interlude of amiably twinkling and bubbling analog electronics when I have already experienced a dazzling, immersive, and fully realized soundworld.  For the most part, the other six pieces are basically the audio equivalent of a calm bay or an overgrown field on a breezy day: the scene is quite static in a larger sense, but there is a lot of soothing swaying and rippling happening on a smaller scale.  The execution remains impeccable, of course, but it is simply too gentle and fragile to leave much of an impression on me.

Of course, some pieces are still better than others.  "Keeping Guard," for example, maintains a strong sense of forward motion, an appealingly unpredictable pattern of deep bloops and trebly twinkling, and an escalating undercurrent with some muscle.  I also quite liked "Shuttering Slides," as its otherwise lazy reverie is beautifully embellished by a host of stuttering, fluttering, and undulating textures.  Unfortunately, other pieces like "Surcease," "Dualism," and "Textbooks of the Elite" are basically pastoral squiggles, twinkles, or drones that never fully manage to transcend early New Age territory ("Dualism" and "Surcease" would seem perfectly at home on I Am The Center).  Bissonnette departs from that benignly radiant template a little by leaving in scratches and hiss, but the grittier events on the periphery do nothing to add heft to the main themes.

I suspect that I would have liked Pitch, Paper & Foil a lot more if it had come out five years ago, which is unfortunate.  Or maybe it is wonderful (for me, anyway), as my tastes are considerably more sophisticated and discriminating now.  In any case, I am far too deadened by the constant onslaught of new modular synthesizer albums to enjoy anything that is merely pleasant and well-executed now.  Most of this album falls quite unambiguously into that category, making it a bit of a mixed-bag for me.  However, the good news is that both "Epoch" and "The Rate of Delay" managed to surpass my increasingly unreasonable and unfair standards for this type of fare.  In fact, they are easily two of my favorite Christopher Bissonnette pieces to date, so this recent synth-centric phase of Bissonnette’s career is a looking a lot like a fitfully triumphant creative renaissance.  As such, Pitch continues a very promising evolution, but the culmination of that evolution is not quite here yet.

• Epoch
• Shuttering Slides
• The Rate of Delay

 

01 February 2016

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Albums and Singles

In many ways, these two recent albums (one physical, one digital only) are the quintessential works from Will Long’s Celer guise. Both Akagi and Soryu are expansive, lengthy single piece works that at times are so hushed and delicate to almost be imperceptible, yet they remain compelling and beautiful from beginning to end.

Two Acorns

Akagi especially seems to have been composed specifically in a way that tends to drift in and out of consciousness..The work was originally created to accompany a live yoga event in Japan, requiring music that would not just be understated and unobtrusive, but that could convey a meditative quality to it as well.The piece was based around two tape loops of synthesizers, with similar, yet at times contrasting structures that result in peaks and valleys of volume and intensity.

Akagi was obviously composed with the CD format in mind since it clocks in at mere seconds shy of 80 minutes, the accepted maximum for a disc.Additionally, it has such a quiet dynamic to it that the imperfections in most analog media would overshadow the music.The early portion of the piece is especially quiet, requiring attention to hear the most subtle of sounds that Long utilizes.When the music is the most prominent, it retains the distinctly Celer sound of haunting, but not sinister spirits captured in audio form.

When Long pulls the volume back, the result is an odd, delicate sound that is positively shimmering, a fragile sound that is so delicate it sounds as if it could break at any time.Eventually he blends in some dense, heavier yet still warm low-end passages that make for a more commanding sound, but one that never becomes too strong or overwhelming.The somewhat more forceful, attention-grabbing moments balance those relaxed, calm passages extremely effectively, so that even a work which is designed to sometimes fade into the background cannot fully be ignored.

samples:

• Akagi (Excerpt 1)
• Akagi (Excerpt 2)
• Akagi (Excerpt 3)

Soryu in some ways feels like a demo or an early attempt at the strategies employed in Akagi.It has a similar structure, being a single, 63 minute piece that strays way from the drone heavy reputation that much of Celer’s work previously was based on.Instead of repetition it is vast expanses of tone and melody.Long again takes the piece from more commanding to near silent moments, like sunlight passing through the clouds, but it comparably has less focus.It is by no means a bad album, but in comparison to Akagi it lacks that delicate touch and conceptual strength.

Both Akagi and Soryu do act as a subtle variation on Long’s prolific work as Celer in that they are less pure drone oriented and have structures more akin to classical ambient work.While he works with a similar palette of lengthy, hushed tones and textural expanses, the pieces are less about repetition and more of a sense of vast structure and delicate composition.The quiet dynamics, especially on Akagi is at times so peaceful it could potentially lull me to sleep, but due to it achieving the goal he intended more than any sort of dullness.

samples:

• Soryu (Excerpt 1)
• Soryu (Excerpt 2)
• Soryu (Excerpt 3)