08 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

Colleen is French multi-instrumentalist Cecile Schott, who uses her voice and the treble viola da gamba (a baroque instrument with gut strings), to weave intricate stories about the human mind and heart. Captain of None is the most melodic album in her repertoire, with fast-paced tracks rooted down by prominent bass lines and assorted percussive effects. It is also an album that breaks new ground for Colleen in terms of production. While previous works centered around sample-based or looped, minimal compositions, on Captain of None Schott significantly changed her approach, setting her viola and her voice as focal points. Captain of None is inhabited by delicately crafted, other-worldly pop songs incorporating dub-inspired techniques.

Captain of None was recorded, mixed, and produced entirely by Schott in her music studio in San Sebastian, Spain. Schott tried to open the gates in the way she played, sang, and wrote lyrics for the album, and set out to explore how effects like delay and echo could go from the "cosmetic sound varnish" role they usually play to a fully dynamic, constructive, song-shaping role.

Although the influence of Jamaican music is subtle, its implicit impact is felt throughout Captain of None. As a child, Schott became enamored with a cassette tape of Lee Perry tracks from 1976 to 1979. She continued to explore the music of Jamaica, awed by the amount and the variety of incredible music that was recorded with such breathtaking inventiveness. This infatuation can be heard on tracks like "Eclipse," where Schott utilizes some of the more common dub production techniques, such as using an echo effect on the percussion and vocals. Her love of Augustus Pablo can be felt on "Salina Stars," in which Schott uses the melodica, an instrument that she played for years but never used on her albums. She incorporates a Moogerfooger delay pedal to create vocal feedback and analog glitches, and used homemade devices — chopsticks, an Indonesian metal printing block — as percussion.

As for her unique main instrument of choice, Schott first noticed the viola da gamba in the film Tous les matins du monde when she was 15 years old. The instrument, which has been said to be the musical instrument that most resembles the sound of the human voice, heavily resonated with her. However, rather than bowing the instrument in a traditional manner, and heavily influenced by African music from different countries, genres, and eras, Schott tunes the viola da gamba like a guitar and plucks it, opening up a new world of sound that she explores in great depth on Captain of None, an addictive, unconventional pop album.

More information can be found here.

08 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

This posthumous release, following last year’s Handbook for Mortals, presents the peak of Letha Rodman-Melchior's compositional work. Traversing landscapes of affective registers with the organizational ability of Christine Sun Kim and the diversity and intimacy of Throbbing Gristle, Rodman-Melchior re-categorizes objects to find the foreign in the familiar. Moving in and out of focus, her musical patterns themselves grow and become more and more self-aware.

As a response to possession and the human/nonhuman interface, Shimmering Ghost recalls the most moving of performances by Roger Reynolds. It exposes the overlap between senses and suggests that resonance, as distinct from hearing, is a source for beauty beyond sense. And by the use of sense’s special effects, Rodman-Melchior crafts a language that is simply a pleasure. Mary Lattimore's harp playing at times is reminiscent of Three Musicians' Music from the Rochester Folk Art Guild, but with urgency heard nowhere else.

More information can be found here.

08 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

Over the course of its two-decade existence, Lightning Bolt has revolutionized underground rock in immeasurable ways. The duo broke the barrier between stage and audience by setting themselves up on the floor in the midst of the crowd. Their momentous live performances and the mania they inspired paved the way for similar tactics used by Dan Deacon and literally hundreds of others. Similarly, the band's recordings have always been chaotic, roaring, blown-out documents that sound like they could destroy even the toughest set of speakers. Fantasy Empire, Lightning Bolt's sixth album and first in five years, is a fresh take from a band intent on pushing themselves musically and sonically while maintaining the aesthetic that has defined not only them, but an entire generation of noisemakers. It marks many firsts, most notably their first recordings made using hi-fi recording equipment at the famed Machines With Magnets, and their first album for Thrill Jockey. More than any previous album, Fantasy Empire sounds like drummer Brian Chippendale and bassist Brian Gibson are playing just a few feet away, using the clarity afforded by the studio to amplify the intensity they project. Every frantic drum hit, every fuzzed-out riff, sounds more present and tangible than ever before.

Fantasy Empire is ferocious, consuming, and is a more accurate translation of their live experience. It also shows Lightning Bolt embracing new ways to make their music even stranger. More than any previous record, Chippendale and Gibson make use of live loops and complete separation of the instruments during recording to maximize the sonic pandemonium and power. Gibson worked with Machines very carefully to get a clear yet still distorted and intense bass sound, allowing listeners to truly absorb the detail and dynamic range he displays, from the heaviest thud to the subtle melodic embellishments. Some of these songs have been in the band’s live repertoire since as early as 2010, and have been refined in front of audiences for maximum impact. This is heavy, turbulent music, but it is executed with the precision of musicians that have spent years learning how to create impactful noise through the use of dynamics, melody, and rhythm.

Fantasy Empire has been in gestation for four years, with some songs having been recorded on lo-fi equipment before ultimately being scrapped. Since Earthly Delights was released, the band has collaborated with The Flaming Lips multiple times, and continued to tour relentlessly. 2013 saw the release of All My Relations by Black Pus, Chippendale’s solo outlet, which was followed by a split LP with Oozing Wound. Chippendale, an accomplished comic artist and illustrator, created the Fantasy Empire's subtly ominous album art, and will release an upcoming book of his comics through respected imprint Drawn and Quarterly. Brian Gibson has been developing the new video game Thumper, with his own company, Drool, which will be released next year. And, of course, Lightning Bolt will be touring the US in 2015.

More information can be found here.

08 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

Drumm has just released an extended mix of his 2012 Editions Mego EP Relief (composed for pulse generator and shortwave radio).

More information can be found here.

08 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

White Hills are proponents of psychedelia as transformation. The music made by Dave W. and Ego Sensation is risky and cutting edge, rooted in dystopian futurism and hyper-conscious of society’s constant desire for a new and better drug. That progressive aesthetic is at the heart of White Hills’ newest album Walks For Motorists, a radically stripped-down record that emphasizes rhythm and groove. The album bursts forth with a new kind of intensity, one born out of laser-focused precision and detail-oriented songwriting. Possibly surprising to fans familiar with the Hawkwindian guitar squall of earlier albums, the songs on Walks For Motorists began as a keyboard melody or bass line, and several songs on the album don't even feature guitar at all. This is propulsive, open music, surreal to its core but made to inspire people to get out of their seats and move.

Walks For Motorists was recorded with David Wrench (Caribou, Bear in Heaven, FKA Twigs, Owen Pallet) at Bryn Derwen Recording Studio in Bethesda, Wales which borders the Snowdonia National Forest.  The band had 24-hour access to the studio, which allowed them to work whenever inspiration struck. Wrench's expertise producing and mixing electronic music was an essential asset when perfecting the crisp tones heard throughout the record. This is the first album the band has recorded outside of New York City, and the vast, rolling Welsh landscape that surrounded the studio influenced the album’s uncluttered sound. Walks For Motorists is also White Hills’ most diverse album to date. Fuzzed-out rockers sit comfortably next to kraut-infused grooves, and there are more vocal contributions from Ego than ever before.

More information can be found here.

08 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

This Brooklyn trio’s fourth full-length almost did not happen, as the band was plagued by a host of tensions, false-starts, and creative second-guessing before everything eventually came together.  Ostensibly, Transfixiation is an attempt to translate Strangers' live intensity into their studio work in hopes of creating something more dangerous and unhinged, but their intensity has never exactly been in question for me: narrowness of focus might be a bit of problem, but lack of bad-assness definitely is not.  Transfixiation sounds more or less exactly like I would expect a new APTBS album to sound (like a darker, more pissed-off Jesus and Mary Chain), which is perfectly fine by me–they are what they are and they are very good at it.  All I hoped for was a few more great songs and Transfixiation did not fail me at all.

Dead Oceans

A Place To Bury Strangers have a well-deserved reputation for excess due to their ear-melting live volume and vocalist/guitarist Oliver Ackerman's impressive array of self-designed effects pedals (he runs Death By Audio).  However, not many people seem to notice that the trio have a similar gift for restraint as well, which is one of my favorite aspects of their sound.  On the opening "Supermaster," for example, the entire song is driven by Dion Lunadon's muscular, propulsive bass line and drummer Robi Gonzalez barely even touches his cymbals.  As far as I am concerned, it is a perfectly constructed piece: there is a great groove, excellent dynamic variation, masterful use of space, some killer bursts of warped guitar and it is all over in about 3 minutes.  Everything that is supposed to make an impact does exactly that, as there is literally nothing unnecessary that could have been carved away.

When they stick with that lean and hooky formula, as they do with the even better "Now It's Over," APTBS are a great band.  When they stray from that formula, however, things get a bit more complex.  Obviously, if they released an album with 9 largely interchangeable variations on a single theme, it would get tired very quickly.  Unfortunately, the divergences from that comfort zone can be a mixed bag.  A few of them work quite well, like the barreling, full-on garage rock chaos of "I'm So Clean" or the warped, woozy, and treble-heavy "Love High."  I also enjoyed the masterfully fucked and wrong-sounding pop of "What We Don't See" quite a bit.  The darker, more menacing "Deeper" is something of another stand-out, gradually escalating from deep subterranean bass drops and threatening pronouncements into some kind of post-industrial sex jam with guest vocals from Emilie Lium Vordal.

The enjoyment of the rest of the album, however, hinges mostly upon how much a given listener loves blown-out and mangled shoegaze guitars.  I myself like them quite a bit, but vastly prefer them when they are employed in the service of a great song.  "We've Come So Far," unfortunately, is basically just an excuse for a howling guitar blow-out, while the closing "I Will Die" is so fried and in-the-red that it is probably more treble sizzle than actual content.  That said, it is crazy to fault APTBS for failing to churn out a start-to-finish masterpiece given how brutally constrictive their chosen niche is: for a band four albums deep into their career, I would say that they have wrung a surprising amount of variety and excitement from a formula of deadpan, range-less vocals coupled with wild guitar eruptions.  Granted, it probably is not enough variety and excitement to actually carry an entire album, but I have always viewed APTBS as more of a singles band anyway and I cannot think of anyone else who is doing a better job at mining this particular territory.  Given that arguably half of Transfixiation consists of strong singles, it seems like as fine an album as any sane person could reasonably hope for.

• Supermaster
• Deeper
• Now It's Over

 

 

07 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

Simon Crab was one of the founding members of Bourbonese Qualk, who were easily one of the most strange and compelling bands to emerge from the ‘80s underground.  They were also sometimes one of the best, but they never quite achieved the stature in the post-industrial canon that they deserved.  A good part of that is probably due to their constantly shifting and eclectic style, though they seemed to perfect their singular mélange of electronic music, mutant funk, gamelan, and experimentalism by 2001's On Uncertainty (their final album).  With After America, Crab essentially picks up right where his band left off (though sans funk), offering up a distinctively kaleidoscopic and uncategorizable fantasia on the evergreen theme of America's decline.

Fathom

I was not quite sure what to expect from Crab after what was essentially a decade-long hiatus, but I am very happy to report that After America seamlessly embodies the very same "anything and everything is fair game" aesthetic that made late-period Qualk so great.  What Crab does is very different from self-conscious genre-hopping though: there is no "look what I just did!" showiness or attempt to blow my mind with how adroitly he can juggle seemingly disparate threads, nor is there any clumsy appropriation of "ethnic" music to heighten the exotic or psychedelic aspects of these pieces.  Instead, Crab just sounds like an artist with very wide-reaching and unusual tastes coupled with the ability to skillfully assimilate those elements into something all his own. That is a truly rare combination.

Curiously, there truly is no common factor that unites After America's best moments: sometimes Crab's bizarre synthesis works brilliantly, sometimes it just works well.  My personal favorite piece is probably "Saccades" which sounds like a blearily soft-focus, slowed-down hip-hop anthem.  The following "Wintex-Cimex 83" is another stand-out, combining an ominous, mechanized crawl with wild live drums and a languorous flute melody.  I suspect that both Discogs and I may have those two song titles reversed, however, as there is a 20-minute piece called "Saccades" that Crab released in 2013 that includes part of the alleged "Wintex-Cimex" above.  In any case, they are still both great.  Yet another highlight comes much later on the album in the form of the woozy guitar and organ reverie of "Pareidolia."

Elsewhere, Crab successfully delves into a noirish strain of dub ("Useful Idiots"), sublimely hallucinatory and submerged-sounding ambiance ("Foreign Objects"), ominously robotic sound art ("Stammheim"), and gently burbling electronic grooves ("For Jian-an").  In other places, such as "A Whole Distant World," Simon and long-time collaborator Andy Wilson weave something that resembles an achingly beautiful film soundtrack augmented with field recordings.  There are also a few instances that recall Crab's work with Bourbonese Qualk, such as the sinuous groove and druggy haze of "Kropotkin."  In still other pieces, After America sounds like an ambitious evolution upon that past work, a feat perhaps best exemplified by "Lullabye," which sounds like a dub techno piece that has been shattered and stretched into skittering otherworldliness.

With very few exceptions, Simon excels at just about everything he tries with After America.  While there are a few pieces that seem weaker or less inspired than others, the album’s only real shortcoming is a highly subjective one: Crab rarely allows any of the individual pieces much time to grow and evolve; rather, the album is a collection of short vignettes that explore just one theme for a few minutes until a new vignette appears.  However, it is abundantly clear that that was a deliberate artistic decision rather than a compositional failing, so it is not particularly fair to critique After America for what it is not (a collection of songs).  Crab seems to have achieved exactly what he set out to do with this album, composing a complex, unusual, dynamic, perfectly sequenced and occasionally moving suite that adds up to a very rewarding whole.  I would have been happy just to have Crab back to making albums again, but he unexpectedly seems to have returned at the height of his powers.

• Saccades
• Wintex-Cimex 83
• Pareidolia

 

06 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

28 February 2015

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Albums and Singles

Jasmine Guffond’s reinvention under her given name appeared a few months ago amidst a surprising amount of buzz and favorable comparisons to artists like Grouper and early Julia Holter, which is somewhat surprising for an artist who is already this deep into her career.  I suppose those Grouper comparisons will certainly grab people's attention and I accept that Liz Harris is a decent reference point in some respects, but Jasmine's not-quite fully formed aesthetic sounds like it is mostly her own to me (or is at least amorphous enough to make her influences largely irrelevant).  At its core, Yellow Bell is very much a warm and lush drone album, but its appeal lies in how tender, human, and unconventional Guffond can be within those confines.  While not quite a start-to-finish triumph, the bulk of Yellow Bell is indeed quite good or even sublimely beautiful.  The buzz was not misplaced.

Sonic Pieces

Guffond, an Australian currently living in Berlin, has been making unusual music for roughly two decades, which makes me puzzled as to how I have avoided encountering her work until now.  I went back and investigated her previous Minit and Jasmina Maschina projects and enjoyed them, so maybe the lesson here is that I need to pay closer attention to what Staubgold is releasing in the future.  In any case, Yellow Bell is a stylistic break from all that preceded it, which explains the new label and the name change.  The amusing irony here is that Guffond is actually stepping away from vocals and guitars, yet now she gets pegged with the Grouper comparisons.  In a general sense, Yellow Bell certainly has a Harris-esque mood of bleary mystery at times, but it mostly just seems like an atypically inventive drone album to me.  The catch is just that the album’s single most memorable moment is the crescendo in "Elephant" where Guffond’s achingly melancholy, reverb-swathed vocals unexpectedly emerge to supremely Grouper-esque effect.

Most of Yellow Bell’s other high points, however, come from either Guffond's unusual aesthetic choices or her use of field recordings.  In the aforementioned "Elephant," for example, Jasmine’s distant, wordless Siren-esque vocals emerge from a warmly quivering synth bed beset by layers of crackling found sounds,  soon disappearing entirely to be replaced by a heavy metallic shimmer and subterranean throbs.Although the vocals eventually return for the haunting refrain, the bulk of the piece’s 10-minute trajectory works so well primarily because of Jasmine’s intuitive and nuanced talent for dynamics, textures, and melody.  Jasmine's ability to manipulate density and seamlessly chain together disparate passages is extremely impressive.  It is hard not to think of liquid when listening to Yellow Bell, as its defining characteristic is most definitely its fluidity and ability to ebb and flow from one motif into another.

Another highlight is the shuddering, pulsing, and dreamy "Core Notions," which is kind of a production tour de force: not much changes structurally or melodically over the course of its six minutes, but Guffond juggles the various layers so masterfully that it feels like the piece is gradually being torn apart to reveal a harsher, more menacing interloper.  "Useful Knowledge" begins in similarly blissed-out and hallucinatory fashion, but then a sultry, shuffling pulse transforms it into something that would be right at home in a creepy seduction scene in Twin Peaks...before it seamlessly winds up in a very different place altogether.  Another piece, the double-entendre-friendly "Lisa’s Opening," is even more unusual, gradually shifting from something resembling sci-fi chamber music into a bittersweet reverie amidst ambient chatter (presumably from an art opening) before ultimately resolving into a ghostly, barely-there song.

Yellow Bell concludes with another epic, the complexly layered 10-minute "RR Variations," which explores another new direction that lies somewhere between analog synth drone and Reich-ian obsessive repetition.  It is probably the most ambitious, unusual, and labor-intensive piece on the album, as it sounds like there is an entire orchestra being chopped and sped-up by the end, yet it lacks the vulnerability and humanity that make the rest of Yellow Bell so great.  I suppose that gets at what is so unique and fascinating about this album: its flaws and its triumphs are nearly impossible to come to a firm opinion on.  When Yellow Bell seems derivative, it usually comes about in a fresh and memorable way; when it plunges into more abstract, comparatively untraveled territory, it sacrifices some of its character and ability to connect.  The reason it all works, of course, is because Guffond is able to so organically drift between those poles and always sounds great doing it.  That places Jasmine in a curious no-man’s-land, as I am very hard-pressed to nail down Yellow Bell’s aesthetic, but I was certainly very happy to drift around to wherever she decided to go.

• Elephant
• Useful Knowledge
• Lisa's Opening

 

28 February 2015

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Albums and Singles

Paul Thomsen Kirk’s output as Akatombo has always leaned more into the harsher side of danceable beats and electronics, but on his fourth album, he has pushed that envelope even further. Huge bass-heavy beats, weird lo-fi sample loops and random sounds abound, and the result is an album that is reminiscent of a more westernized Muslimgauze or the best moments of late-period Techno Animal.

Hand-Held Recordings

Other than contributing to Graham Lewis’ recent All Over record, Kirk has been largely silent since 2012's False Positives.Sometime, Never feels like the logical follow-up to that record, but with a decidedly rawer edge.Kirk's use of intense bass and distortion is even more prevalent on here than it was previously, giving Sometime, Never a more sinister, angry vibe compared to the other albums.This may be the result of serious health concerns that Kirk has faced since the release of False Positives, resulting in a more aggressive, but cathartic record.

His use of big, but ragged lo-fi drum loops on songs such as "Snark und Troll" and "Vincere vel Mori" are where I felt the greatest parallels with Bryn Jones' work.While lacking the use of tabla and other Middle Eastern percussion, his weaving together of dramatic, noisy drum loops and distorted found sounds has that same oppressive, yet memorable harshness while retaining a catchy beat.

Other songs harken back more towards the aggressive tail end of the ambient dub scene, which burned out aggressively via the early 2000s output of Scorn and Techno Animal.The foundation shaking heavy dub bass of "Stasiland" has the same low frequency pummeling intensity of Mick Harris' work, but within a denser, less minimalist framework.The forceful ambience and heavily processed vintage drum machine sounds, blended with explosive outbursts and excessive distortion on "Click/bate" balances that complexity and chaos as Techno Animal did on their run of brilliant Position Chrome singles in the late 1990s.

Kirk's work may have similarities to the other artists I mentioned, but never does it sound like a direct copy or emulation.He also dials back the intensity here and there, such as on the more hip-hop paced "Matching Muzzles," which seems to be a blend of random voice samples with extremely angry dot matrix printers.He attempts a more conventional techno rhythm on "Mission Creep," but it is pushed into the red and brilliantly distorted.For "Scans & Needles," he drops the rhythms entirely, instead making for a brilliantly disturbing slice of cinematic music fitting the frightening title.

On the latter half of the disc, he even introduces some guitar to push the overall sound in another direction entirely."Convict A45522" has hints of sampled guitar amidst the big, bleepy industrial beats, while "Cold Call" goes balls out into an industrial metal guitar chug.Rife with overdrive and programmed rhythms, it is one of the rare instances where an industrial metal techno hybrid works extremely well.

Kirk’s darker, more aggressive mood may have been brought on by the darker moments in his recent years, but channeling it into Sometime, Never has resulted in a gripping, powerful album that never relents.Maybe it is just the greater amount of darkness or aggression that I am latching on to, but as of now this is a high water mark in his already impressive discography.

samples:

• Snark und Troll
• Click/Bate
• Cold Call