01 November 2015

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Albums and Singles

Swans continue their remastered reissues series on Young God Records/Mute with the release of White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and Love of Life on Dec. 4 2015.

The two albums will be initially released as a limited vinyl box set, presented in the original restored artwork, which includes paintings by Deryk Thomas. The 2500 micron black lined box - with original logo in silver foil block in black paper - will also include 2 rare posters, a CD of outtakes and contemporaneous live recordings and a download code for both albums.

In addition, White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and Love of Life will be available as a 3xCD set (which will include the bonus disc), individual vinyl albums and digitally.

White Light from the Mouth of Infinity, Swans’ seventh studio album originally released in 1991, is considered the starting point for the second section of Swans' inimitable history. Described as "…the glistening, glimmering sounds of the pensive countryside" by Stereogum, this will be the first time White Light from the Mouth of Infinity has been available on vinyl since its original release on Young God Records in 1991. The vinyl issue will include the track "Blind," not included in the original release.

Love of Life, the band’s eighth studio album, followed soon after in 1992. According to Allmusic’s Ned Ragget, "Love of Life continues the astounding creative roll Swans found themselves on … yet another Swans masterpiece." The vinyl version of this album has also been unavailable since its original release.

More information can be found here.

31 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

Steve Hauschildt's new album is his first since the late 2012 release of Sequitur. Although Where All Is Fled sonically harkens back to his earlier albums such as Rapt for Liquid Minister and Tragedy & Geometry, it slowly becomes apparent that it is also a divergence from those recordings.

Both the artwork and the music on this new work were heavily inspired by surrealist landscape paintings, early alchemical emblems, and recurring visions.

The result is a pristine series of cascading melodies, fantastical terrains of layered lattices, and overlapping patterns of synthesizers superimposed with orchestral instrumentation. Hidden in the crevices of the album are processed crowd sounds, re-sampled text-to-speech synthesis, piano, and animal noises which reveal themselves after repeated listens and blur together notions of artificial and natural sound. While slowly unfurling, each sound is given it's own place and space, never hurried, never cluttered.

More information can be found here.

31 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

Zelienople exist as a unique entry in the pantheon of Chicago musicians pushing the boundaries of genre. The quartet takes basic song-structures and textural palates of folk and rock and infuses them with the spontaneous fluidity of jazz and the shimmering haze of ambient music, emphasizing subtle facets of each genre to create their own individual style.

Show Us The Fire is Zelienople’s first album for Chicago’s Immune Recordings and shows the band taking a more simplified approach to recording. These songs were written with live performance in mind, with each band member sticking to their primary instrument on every song. Zelienople, like Codeine before them, are masters of hushed anxiety, burying anger and discontent under layers of reverb and masking it with slow tempos.

More information can be found here.

25 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

I do not think there are two currently active artists that capture the classic ambient sound, faithful to its inception, with an appropriate tinge of post-industrial darkness than Troum and raison d'étre. The former lean more towards a lighter, delicate sonic purity, while the latter's work is colored with the darkness and malignant sounds of the associated Cold Meat Industries label. This collaboration then seems the perfect setup for these two artists who are similar, but complement each other well in their differences. The result is a largely satisfying collaboration that sounds as it should given the two artists, but occasionally hindered by some duller moments.

Essence Music

The best elements of De Aeris In Sublunaria Influxu are those that most clearly show the two projects both shining through, resulting in a contrast that is never too drastic, but strikes a perfect equilibrium.The all too short opening "Folia" sets the bar high, with the artists pairing light and peaceful electronics with a more unsettling rattling crunch.At only three minutes, it feels like it should go on a bit longer."Atmosphaera" is a similar piece, pairing pure, ghostly tones and a slightly noisy crackle.The second half, however, becomes more focused on the tone.

When the projects bring in more rhythmic components, albeit very subtle, it also results in strong, standout pieces."Oculum Mundi" features a heavily reverberated rhythmic pattern that is mixed with murky, subterranean sounds.With hints of melody shining through the darkness, the piece feels more like raison's than Troum's.The nearly 19 minute "Meditationum" brings so many of these elements together, first from a light electronic opening into sweeps of noise that make for a strong textural counterbalance.Later, a rhythmic pulse is intertwined with a slightly fuzzy, noisy sheen that verges on dissonance but never fully departs from a more peaceful, musical mood.

Other moments, however, are strong but simply do not manage to captivate as effectively."Alio Tempore" is constructed from a combination of deep booms and lighter chimes, acting the foundation that sweeping electronics are layered upon, building to a thicker, richer sound by the conclusion.However, I felt my attention dropping in and out throughout, because there is not a significant amount of variation to be had."Ad Infinitum" is one of the heaviest, darkest moments on the record, but its tension is offset by sounding a bit too much like dark ambient by the numbers, rather than any specific creativity or originality.

Taken as a whole, however, De Aeris In Sublunaria Influxu is a strong collaboration between two artists who have well established their expertise with this style of music.At nearly 70 minutes, it is not all too surprising that an album of this length, and of this style, would have moments where it would drag.Those less intriguing moments are not necessarily bad, they are just a bit too predictable and straightforward.The strong moments definitely eclipse the lesser ones, however, making for a strong collaboration.

samples:

• Alio Tempore
• Atmosphaera
• Meditationum

 

25 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

I enjoyed L A N D’s debut album quite a bit, but I was completely knocked sideways by the radical transformation that has occurred with Anoxia.  Now apparently a Daniel Lea solo project (Matthew Waters is gone), this latest album completely abandons the industrial noir-jazz aesthetic of its predecessor in favor of something that resembles some sort of sci-fi tribal death cult armed with nothing but junkyard percussion and some stolen construction equipment.  I could not possibly be happier or more surprised with that change.

Important

Content aside, the most fascinating aspect of Anoxia is that Daniel Lea does not appear to have played any of the percussion on a solo album that is almost entirely percussive in nature.  Instead, he is credited with sound design, field recordings, processing, and electronics, which I suppose makes L A N D something of an Ivo Watts-Russell/This Mortal Coil scenario: an artist with a bold vision outside the scope of his abilities, but a distinct talent for finding collaborators who can make it happen.  It makes sense that Daniel Lea is a sound designer though, as the only real similarity between Night Within and Anoxia is that both sound great.  Lea clearly has superb attention to detail and a deep understanding of space and density.  Also, he was smart enough to involve Rashad Becker and Ben Frost for mastering and mixing, thus ensuring that these pieces emerge from speakers with maximum visceral force and crystalline clarity (no one does loud and visceral better than Ben Frost).  Actually, I suppose there is a second similarity as well: both albums are extremely "cinematic" in nature, but with a very important distinction: Night Within sounded like a decontextualized soundtrack in need of a film, while a piece like Anoxia's "Metamorphosis" could make a ten-minute shot of a goddamn wall seem intense and menacing.

Unlike This Mortal Coil, however, Daniel Lea actually composed all of these pieces, which is equally fascinating given how precious little non-percussion music Anoxia contains.  In fact, I suspect I could have easily been fooled if someone had presented Anoxia to me as "the Black Pus/Lightning Bolt guy made an ambient album."  That is how it seems at first glimpse anyway, as only a handful of pieces boast any prominent musical component at all.  For example, "Transition" gradually builds into a beautifully quivering and shivering drone motif, while the aforementioned "Metamorphosis" is built upon a wonderfully tense and spectral throb.  In most other cases, however, the "music" is relegated to a vague haze that seems to bubble up or simmer over a complexly bludgeoning and hypnotic percussion pattern.

When scrutinized more closely, however, it is clear that most of the composing is just not immediately obvious because so much of Anoxia was played on unconventional instruments like crotales, an aluphone, and an array of copper pipes.  In fact, nearly every groove on the album is embellished with at least one layer of chiming, plinking, clanging, and ringing metal.  Also, it all sounds beautifully sharp, immediate, and physical due to Lea's talents as a sound designer.  That is where Anoxia borders on genius, as there are several pieces that sound like someone is beating an oil tanker hull with a sledgehammer, playing drums in an empty cistern, or jackhammering the studio.

For the most part, Anoxia so completely eclipses Night Within that it sounds like a completely different band.  That said, however, it is dogged somewhat by one of the same flaws as its predecessor in that many of these nine pieces sound like vamps on a single motif rather than structured, evolving compositions.  Fortunately, most of Anoxia’s pieces are so vibrant and compelling that it does not matter.  Also, Lea did a fairly ingenious job sequencing the album, allowing each piece to segue into the next relatively seamlessly, successfully creating the illusion that some kind of evolution or transformation is occurring within each song. It is not an illusion that Anoxia is a huge evolution for L A N D though.  Daniel Lea has truly outdone himself with this pummelingly heavy, inventive, complex, and distinctive tour de force.

• Metamorphosis
• Seconds
• Anoxia

 

25 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

Simply put, Tortoise has spent nearly 25 years making music that defies description. While the Chicago-based instrumental quintet has nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica and minimalism throughout its revered and influential six-album discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly, even stubbornly, their own.

It’s a fact that remains true on The Catastrophist, Tortoise’s first studio album in nearly seven years. And it’s an album where moody, synth-swept jams like the opening title track cozy up next to hypnotic, bass-and-beat missives like “Shake Hands With Danger” and a downright strange cover of David Essex’s 1973 radio smash sung by U.S. Maple’s Todd Rittman. Throughout, the songs transcend expectations as often as they delight the eardrums.

Tortoise, comprised of multi-instrumentalists Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker, has always thrived on sudden bursts of inspiration. And for The Catastrophist, the spark came in 2010 when the group was commissioned by the City of Chicago to compose a suite of music rooted in its ties to the area’s noted jazz and improvised music communities.

Tortoise then performed those five loose themes at a handful of concerts, and “when we finally got around to talking about a new record, the obvious solution to begin with was to take those pieces and see what else we could do with them,” says McEntire, at whose Soma Studios the band recorded the new album. “It turned out that for them to work for Tortoise, they needed a bit more of a rethink in terms of structure. They’re all pretty different in the sense that at first they were just heads and solos. Now, they’re orchestrated and complex.”

“All of the songs went through a pretty intensive process of restructuring,” adds Parker. “We actually had quite a lot of material that we ended up giving up on. Oftentimes, we’ll shelve ideas and come back to them years later.”

The album’s single “Gesceap” embodies the transformation of the original suite commissions, as it morphs from two gently intersecting synth lines into a pounding, frenzied full-band finish. “To a certain extent it’s more of a reflection of how we actually sound when we play live,” says McEntire of Tortoise’s heavier side. “That hasn’t always been captured as well on past albums.”

Elsewhere, “Hot Coffee” resurrects an idea abandoned from the band’s 2004 album “It’s All Around You,” gliding through only-on-a- Tortoise-album sections of funktastic bass lines, straight-up dance beats and Parker’s fusion-flecked guitar bursts. “It’s progressive experimental music with pop sensibilities,” says Parker.

“Rock On,” which McEntire says he and McCombs simultaneously had the idea to cover after having remembered hearing it on the radio all the time as kids, isn’t the only vocal moment on The Catastrophist. Also included is the bittersweet, honest-to-goodness soul ballad “Yonder Blue,” sung by Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley. “We’d finished the track and decided it would be good to have vocals on it,” recalls McEntire. “Robert Wyatt was our first choice, but he had just retired and politely said no. We were discussing asking Georgia to do something, but not that track in particular. Then we realized it would totally work.”

Tortoise is planning an extensive world tour in support of The Catastrophist. Admits McEntire, “figuring out how to reproduce these songs live will be a bit of a challenge. But I also feel like it might be time to dip into the back catalog a bit. The pool we draw from has been really consistent for quite awhile.

As ever, Tortoise has conjured sounds on The Catastrophist that aren’t being purveyed anywhere else in music today. There’s a deeply intuitive interplay between the group members that comes only from two decades of experimentation, revision and improvisation. And at a time when our brains are constantly bombarded by myriad distractions, The Catastrophist reminds us that there’s something much greater out there. All we have to do is listen.

More information can be found here.

25 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

Composed in the aftershadow of SUNN O)))'s most recent successes in immersive collaboration -- the group having worked with Scott Walker on Soused, and Ulver on Terrestrials in 2013 and 2014 -- and also from the broad and influential wake of their epitomic Monoliths & Dimensions, Kannon emerged both independently as a conceptual entity and with roots in the legacies of those projects, yet was fully realized years later in 2015. The album consists of three pieces of a triadic whole: "Kannon 1, 2 and 3."

The album celebrates many SUNN O))) traditions; Kannon was recorded and mixed with SUNN O)))'s close colleague and co-producer Randall Dunn in Seattle, in Studio Litho, Aleph and Avast!, and the LP includes performances by long-term allies and collaborators Attila Csihar, Oren Ambarchi, Rex Ritter, and Steve Moore to name a few. At the core, the composition centers around the dynamic and intense guitar and bass interplay of SUNN O)))'s founders: Stephen O'Malley & Greg Anderson.

It is possibly the most figurative album SUNN O))) has created, which is unusual as they usually dwell in layers of abstraction and subjectivity. On the other hand the album is the most outright "metal" in years, drawing personal associations and memories of cherished albums like Panzerfaust and Twilight Of The Gods again to the forefront of consciousness. Kannon is also very close to the cyclical character of mantra which the band has evolved into as a living creature, the enormity of intense sensate detail and manifestation of the live in concert element of SUNN O))), the organism that has flourished, metamorphosed and transcended tremendously over the past ten years.

The literal representation of Kannon is as an aspect of Buddha: specifically "goddess of mercy" or "Perceiving the Sounds (or Cries) of the World." She is also sometimes commonly known as the Guanyin Bodhisattva (Chinese: 觀音菩薩) amongst a plurality of other forms. There is a rich lineage behind this idea tracing back through many Asian belief systems, with as many names and cultural personifications of the idea.

SUNN O))) commissioned critical theorist Aliza Shvartz to write text and liner notes around these ideas and topics. She also explores the relations and perceptions to their approach to these ideas via the metonym of music and SUNN O)))'s place/approach within the framework of music and metal overall. The band also enlisted Swiss designer/artist Angela LaFont Bollinger to create the cover artwork, an abstracted sculpture of vision of Kannon. French photographer Estelle Hanania captures portraits of the core trio (Csihar, Anderson, O'Malley) in the impressive and obscurant Emanuel Vingeland mausoleum in Oslo.

Kannon will be available on gatefold LP, CD and digital formats worldwide on December 4th.

More information can be found here.

25 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

cory arcane found her comfort zone in a constant state of crisis, and her liberation through love, sensuality, and high-speed internet access.

as some might recall, she used to struggle with her own decay, navigating an intricate web of bureaucracy, endless social-media scrolling, 24-hour news channel feeds and marketed strategies of seduction.

her intense and continuous obsession for surf, breakdancing and cat videos might have saved her from a silent decline, but it would be her first attempts at integrating a professional ballet company that provided the initial spark. her unorthodox dance movements were often considered shocking, transgressive, and barely legal; and even though some recognised her genuine talent, it was clear she would never make it into this structure. this is when she started her slow drift towards the outer limits of society, in search of the way to achieve the conditions for absolute freedom.

her emancipation was surely marked by different forms of excess: the inappropriate use of fireworks, the consumption of large quantities of alcohol and controlled substances, as well as the occasional blasts of kitchen appliances.

she bypassed the gender war and became an expert in advertising sabotage. soon cory would give academic courses on the true liberation of the mind, or, in her own words, the apotheosis of senses.

lately, she could be seen squatting in the outskirts of different giant metropolises, embracing the mayhem, contemplating the crumbling of a system. the sound of the city, mixed with the music on her headphones, would weave complex rhythms and futuristic textures into a beautifully coloured, pixellated surface.

looking out onto this fabulous chaos, she smiled.

»cory arcane« is kangding ray‘s fifth album on raster-noton and will be released as CD, double vinyl LP, and digitally.

25 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

On his Sounds Like Noise website, Jay-Dea Lopez expresses concern that the natural sounds found in the northern part of New South Wales, Australia are disappearing. Suburbia, as he puts it, is ever-encroaching and with it has come the suffocating noise of commercialization and technology. That the one will snuff the other out, or damage it irreparably, appears inevitable. Motivated by that threat, Lopez recorded sections of the Main Arm valley in New South Wales, near Mullumbimby at the Queensland border, and used them to compose The Australian Gothic, an album that reproduces some of the unique sounds made by the fauna in that region and, curiously, combines them with man-made noises and rhythms. Without the distortion and the apparently manipulated segments, Gothic would be an audio index of birds, insects, and domesticated animals—a recording of the soon-to-be departed. With them, it’s a more complicated composition, a piece of music that attempts to imitate and preserve nature, but that ultimately integrates it with a touch of its so-called opposite.

Unfathomless

The distinction between artifice and nature—often reduced to the human and non-human—is tougher to make than it appears. The first question that comes to mind is are humans natural or are they somehow separate from nature? If the answer is that they are a part of nature, a second question follows, which is whether or not the products of human labor aren’t also natural. This is not the same thing as asking if humans have harmed the environment, but such questions are often conflated because there’s a strong inclination to link what is unnatural to what is harmful, nevermind that the concept of unnatural things might not make any sense. Had Jay-Dea Lopez wanted to preserve what is natural around the Main Arm valley in a simple sense, he might have done everything possible to erase the signs of human activity in the region. The album could have been any number of things: one continuous recording in an established area, a series of recordings from different parts of the valley, or a semi-exhaustive documentary of photos and sounds with track names identifying the variety of noises captured by Lopez’s microphones.

Instead, The Australian Gothic is a single self-titled piece with minimal geographic information attached, accompanied by only a few clear photographs, which depict as many humans as animals. In fact, except for a picture of what might be a cow, the only trace of animal existence in the artwork is an image of white feathers clumped together in the grass, a symbol of humanity’s ever-growing impact on the ecosystem.

Intentional or otherwise, the absence of insects, birds, reptiles, or any other non-human species lends Gothic its ghostly constitution and amplifies the already intense noises Lopez caught during his sessions. Singing crickets and warbling birds figure heavily into the opening, less obvious calls and a more subdued atmosphere follow: frogs, perhaps, and cicadas, as well as bats, monkey-like kookaburras, and other noises that walk on the edge of the animal/mechanical divide. Certain textures could be the product of closely mic’d cattle or of a contact microphone attached to an electric generator. More obviously synthetic sounds snake their way through the mix too, usually in the form of pulsing bass figures or repeating percussive patterns.

The inability to distinguish the one from the other sort of proves Lopez’s point, that the human world is slowly taking over the non-human one, but it also highlights how the two exist together, and how humans imitate their surroundings in surprising ways. If his aim was to emphasize the negative impact of human life on non-human life, then he fails. The link between his subject and his music only begins to solidify once the music ends and a little bit of research begins. With the context in mind, The Australian Gothic still doesn’t portray mechanical noise as the beastly representative of destruction that it may in fact be, at least in certain places. It does, however, catch the place where two worlds cross. Not, as one might expect, natural and unnatural worlds, but visible and invisible worlds, worlds that we take for granted or ignore, or slowly forget as we reproduce our own images and project them more forcefully into places where, surprisingly, we are still aliens.

samples:

• The Australian Gothic [1]
• The Australian Gothic [2]
• The Australian Gothic [3]

 

25 October 2015

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Albums and Singles

Colin Potter is a bit of an unusual case, as he is a justifiably well-known figure in experimental music circles due to his involvement with Current 93 and Nurse With Wound (among many others), yet his solo career remains something of a woefully underheard and underappreciated endeavor.  A large part of that is because most of Potter’s oeuvre to date has quietly gone out into the world via limited edition CDRs and cassettes on his own ICR label, thus eluding most casual fans.  Consequently, it is something of an event for Rank Sonata to get released on vinyl.  It certainly warrants it though, as the album’s epic centerpiece and raison d’être, "A Wider Pail of Shale," is a trance-inducing tour de force of industrial-damaged outsider techno that should not be missed.

Hallow Ground

It is difficult and dangerous to try to identify a distinct "Colin Potter sound," given that he has had his fingers in so many different and divergent pies over the years, but I most closely associate him with ambient drone music.  After all, Colin and ICR are tied to many of the genre's most revered releases (Andrew Chalk, Monos, Ora, Jonathan Colecough, etc.).  That being the case, I was not surprised at all when "A Wider Pail of Shale" opened Rank Sonata with its dreamy swells of limpid drones.  My surprise instead arrived about two minutes later, as the blissed-out warmth unexpectedly began to cohere into a thumping four-on-the-floor house beat and wonderfully buzzing and squelching pulse without dissipating any of its hallucinatory spell.  In fact, the spell only deepened, as the thumping, throbbing groove gradually grows more and more complex, embellishing its perversely organic proto-techno beat with metallic percussion flourishes and a host of appealingly clattering and flanging textures.  All the while, the drone elements continue to evolve as well, creating a druggy, buzzing, and floating haze that sometimes takes over the song completely.  For nearly 20 minutes, "Wider Pail" beautifully waxes and wanes, filling the entire first side of the album.  And as far as I am concerned, it could have easily gone on for twice as long (or even more) with absolutely no danger of diminishing returns, as Potter has essentially created an endlessly compelling, complexly layered, and richly vibrant Möbius strip of a piece.

Given that "Wider Pail" is essentially perfect, the rest of the album has an incredibly difficult act to follow.  In fact, it is hard to imagine any piece that could possibly sustain or build upon the momentum of Rank Sonata’s first half…unless that piece is perhaps a reprise, so that is naturally what Potter included. He saved that for the end though, opting to flesh out Sonata's remaining time with a couple of well-chosen older pieces.  The B side opens with "And," an enjoyable remastered piece from Potter's And Then album (2000) that marries a slinky half-comic/half-noir motif with an ingenious clattering rhythm that sounds like the fruit of a day spent gleefully experimenting with a contact mic and a kitchen full of pots and plates.  The following "Knit Where?" originates from 2006's Brainwaves compilation.  While not as substantial as the other pieces, it makes for an enjoyable interlude nonetheless, as its simple repeating theme is gradually consumed by a host of field recordings that sounds like a meadow full of mechanical crickets trying to drown out a ping-pong match as a distant giant lumberingly approaches.  Then, of course, there is "Beyond the Pail," which is essentially a relentless and maniacal dub version of "Wider Pail" that ratchets up both the pace and intensity of the original.  It is similarly great, though considerably shorter.

If Rank Sonata has a fault, it is only that Potter recycled some old material and that it is not on the same level as the two versions of "Wider Pail."  In Potter's defense, however, both "And" and "Knit Where?" definitely feel like they belong and both contribute significantly to Sonata's effective sequencing.  Also, it is not like either piece is widely available or remotely overexposed: I have enjoyed Potter’s work for years and have still only heard a fraction of it, so anything from Potter's somewhat distant past is likely to be new to many other listeners as well.  More significantly, however, Rank Sonata's strengths easily eclipse its arguable weaknesses (and its wince-inducing puns) and render them irrelevant.  As far as I am concerned, the only real problem is that Sonata is currently limited to only 300 copies, as "Wider Pail of Shale" is easily one of the most mesmerizing, infectious, and inexhaustible pieces of music that any experimental musician will release this year.

Samples:

• A Wider Pail of Shale
• And
• Beyond the Pail