Plenty of new music to be had this week from Laetitia Sadier and Storefront Church, Six Organs of Admittance, Able Noise, Yui Onodera, SML, Clinic Stars, Austyn Wohlers, Build Buildings, Zelienople, and Lea Thomas, plus some older tunes by Farah, Guy Blakeslee, Jessica Bailiff, and Richard H. Kirk.
Lake in Girdwood, Alaska by Johnny.
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The Soft Pink Truth is the solo alter ego of Drew Daniel, one half of celebrated Baltimore-based electronic duo Matmos. After a decade of silence in which Daniel concentrated on Matmos and becoming a Shakespeare professor, The Soft Pink Truth is set to release Why Do the Heathen Rage? whose subtitle “Electronic Profanations of Black Metal Classics” reveals its bizarre agenda as an unrequited love letter to a justly divisive genre. A gleeful queer travesty of black metal’s undying obsession with kvlt authenticity, Why Do the Heathen Rage? is also a formally precise homage executed with a scholar’s obsession. With the guitar chord transcription assistance of Owen Gardner (Teeth Mountain, Horse Lords) and a coven of guest vocalists, including Antony Hegarty and members of Locrian and Wye Oak, Daniel meticulously transposes the riffs, structures and patterns of black metal chestnuts and deep cuts by Darkthrone, Venom, Mayhem, Sarcofago and more into oddly hybrid new forms. Cruising camp absurdity by forcing a sticky tryst between the two mutually incongruous early 90s subcultures of rave and black metal, the results are bracingly strange on first listen, but curiously addictive as the album sinks in.
Imitating the countless black metal albums that begin with ominous intros, the album commences with “Invocation for Strength”, a spoken word track in which a Radical Faery poem used by gay activist Arthur Evans in his classic Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture is read by Drew Daniel and Antony (Antony and the Johnsons). After this queer hymn, the rhythmic assault begins with an industrial gabber take on Venom’s genre-founding song “Black Metal”, featuring vocals by Baltimore artist Bryan Collins and screams from Daniel. Stark trap beats and rave synths meet two-step house bounce on “Sadomatic Rites,” originally by Beherit, whose electronic opus H418ov21.c was an inspiration to Drew as he was making this album. Adding a witchy twist to an underground metal classic, Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Dungeonesse) lends her smoky, soulful voice to an orgasmic house deconstruction of Sarcofago’s redlight anthem “Ready to Fuck.” After a surprisingly sensitive guitar led intro, “Satanic Black Devotion” erupts with full on screaming vocals from Terence Hannum (Locrian), paired with IDM beats, synthetic banjo, and a rather glaring plunderphonic re-working of a recognizable dancefloor classic. Side Two kicks off with a stark, vogue-ball inspired rethinking of Darkthrone’s “Beholding the Throne of Might”, with whispered vocals from London based free improviser/composer Jennifer Walshe and a spoken interlude from David Serrotte of the vogue ball crew House of Revlon. The goth factor spikes on “Buried by Time and Dust”, in which Daniel’s Matmos partner M.C. Schmidt croaks the lyrics to the vampiric Mayhem original on top of MIDI harpsichord while a moldy 808 drops the “Planet Rock” beat. In an Ouroboric final gesture, the album concludes with a paroxysmic take on “Grim and Frostbitten Gay Bar” by Impaled Northern Moonforest, the parodic fake black metal project of Anal Cunt’s Seth Putnam. A blizzard of snippets of pop, house, crust and metal are shredded and smothered in lo-fi screaming and arctic field recordings, ending the album on suitably contradictory notes of mockery and celebration. The album’s controversial artwork, which will remain redacted for the time being due to the extreme content it portrays, fits those themes as well, depicting a volatile, extremist scene undergoing a long overdue queerification, coming out rich and strange, shiny and pink.
The Soft Pink Truth was started in 2001 when legendary UK house producer Matthew Herbert challenged Drew to “make a house record,” resulting in the project’s slyly funky debut album Do You Party?, which Herbert released on his own Soundslike Records. Daniel has also produced floor-burning remixes for Bjork, Herbert, Grizzly Bear, Dat Politics and many more under The Soft Pink Truth moniker. “Why Do The Heathen Rage?” follows his 2004 release “Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth?,” a collection of electronic interpretations of UK punk and American hardcore songs. As a member of Matmos, Daniel continues to break down established norms of experimental and pop music practice by filtering genres through unique and brilliant conceptual lenses, and has established himself as one of the most individualistic electronic musicians of the past several decades.
Disclaimer: Aesthetics and Politics are neither equivalent nor separable. Black metal fandom all too often entails a tacit endorsement or strategic looking-the-other-way with regards to the racist, anti-Semitic, sexist and homophobic bullshit politics that (still) pervade the scene, on behalf of either escapist fantasy talk, shaky invocations of art as a crypto-religious path to transcendence, or--the oldest cop out in the book--the quietist declaration that “I just like how it sounds.” Just as blasphemy both affirms and assaults the sacred powers it invokes and inverts, so too this record celebrates black metal and offers queer critique / mockery / profanation of its ideological morass in equal measure. Mixed emotions about a murky, diverse and self-differential scene are all very well, but, as Barack Obama is so fond of saying at press conferences just before legitimizing drone warfare, let’s be clear: No apologies, no excuses, and no escape clauses are hereby offered. Murderers are murderers. No safe space for fascist garbage. The Soft Pink Truth hereby abjures black metal homophobes, racists, and Nazis categorically and absolutely: MAY THIS CURSE BIND! Remember Magne Andreassen!”
A pseudo-political noise project in the vein of the Grey Wolves, the debut from U-731 (also known as United Front) channels a lot of that legendary duo's punk infused angst but a little less of its tongue in cheek sarcasm. With guest spots from members of Steel Hook Prosthesis and the Vomit Arsonist, it results in a forceful record that makes no attempt to hide its disdain for the current state of US politics.
The songs featuring John Stillings (Steel Hook Prosthesis) lie somewhere between the menace of death industrial and the onslaught of power electronics.On "Forced Neurotic Displacement," a thin electronic drone sets the stage for heavily processed and flanged vocals, a staple of the latter genre.Hollow samples and an overt synthesizer progression give it its own feel, however, and an added layer of nuance and complexity.The intensity is ratcheted up on "The Mechanics of Embalming," with the vocals a bit more forceful and a harsher electronic backing, without ever becoming too noisy.
While there may have been subtlety and restraint on the front end of the album, the two long pieces with Andy Grant (The Vomit Arsonist) are anything but."F.E.M.A. Care" may begin with erratic samples and slow, menacing electronics, but it soon launches into a full on assault, with blasting noise and hate filled shouts.The title piece mimics the same pattern, initially ambient and sample-based before transitioning into a blast of pure anger and explosive electronics.
The two pieces that do not feature any guest vocalists stick to a more atmospheric mood, opting for a slow burn rather than an overt affront on the senses."Aktion-Freedom, Re-Aktion Resistance" has the trio building up cautiously, dripping with menace lurking beneath echoing samples but never releasing that tension.The closing "Suo Gan/Last Rights" follows suit, utilizing on historical speech samples in place of a vocalist.
The guest vocalists may add a lot to the overall force of By All Means, but the pieces without vocals demonstrate that the band itself played a predominant role in the overall mood and direction of the project.With its violently apolitical tone and imagery, U-731/United Front are nicely perched to succeed in a genre that so many others do not do nearly as well.
Melt is an unexpected pairing given my previous experience with both artists. Higuchi I have heard mostly in an almost conventional jazz context, marked by conventional piano playing and her powerful, idiosyncratic vocal style, while Cris X (Cristano Luciani) I associate with harsher, more noise oriented abstractions. Neither deviate too far from what I expected from them on here, but the odd pairing works surprisingly well and comes together as more than the sum of its parts.
There is a shifting dynamic between the two artists across these five pieces, with one seemingly taking the lead on different pieces, while the other sits squarely between the two artists' respective styles."Ceaseless/Do You Care?" is one of the pieces that seems to favor Higuchi's solo work more, with her slightly pained vocals and piano playing sticking in the foreground, accented by Luciani's crackling textures and distant noisy clattering.
A similar sense can be heard on "Tell Me What You Got to Say," where the sound is stripped back to sparse piano chords and calmer vocals, with the more dissonant moments reserved for backing textures.In contrast, "In Obscurity" is more consistent with what I have heard from Luciani before, with its sharp, piercing electronics slicing through the otherwise peaceful piano and vocals.For the second half the noise dulls to a dark rumble and far off field recordings, but dissonance stays as the primary focus.
On "Sister/You Left Me So Insane," the two seem to be at equal footing, with Higuchi's piano swells and dramatic vocals pairing with Luciani's dense, reverberated noise backing to create a hybrid of the two artists' repertoire.Though both are equally represented stylistically, the darkness is undeniable.The closing title piece stands out perhaps the most as sounding somewhat like neither artist specifically, but something altogether unique.A slow bed of traditional Japanese percussion underscores the constantly shifting vocals (in mood and tone) that remain harsh without every truly becoming noisy.Even when the more familiar sound of Higuchi's piano arrives, it remains more of an accent than the primary focus.
Higuchi and Cris X work with very different sounds and styles on their own, and while superficially the two may not seem complimentary, the overreaching dark but beautiful mood is what draws them together.Normally I would expect the more unsettling moments to come courtesy of the electronics, but the most chilling moments were largely Higuchi's contributions.It is the combination of both, however, that causes Melt to excel.
Watter is a new trio made up of close friends and collaborators whose collective pedigree reads like a desert island list of must-haves in experimental rock musicians. Multi-instrumentalists Zak Riles (Grails) and Tyler Trotter are anchored by legendary drummer Britt Walford (Slint, Evergreen) on six genre-defying pieces of monolithic mood music.
For Riles and Trotter, it's a chance to dig deeper into the sandbox in which Grails have sculpted many mercurial masterpieces in recent years; for Walford, it's the opportunity to play a substantial role in a new active band for the first time in nearly twenty years.
Written, recorded, and produced entirely in the group's collective studios in Louisville, KY, This World is a stunning combination of heady psychedelic rock, vintage cinematic New Age explorations, and sinister Krautrock, performed with seemingly endless stamina. Born out of many late-night jam sessions, many songs also feature fellow Louisville icons – Rachel Grimes (Rachel's) provides several of the album's most sublime moments, and The For Carnation's Todd Cook lays the heavy, bass-driven foundation for the penultimate epic, "Seawater" – as well as a subtle, sinister contribution from legendary King Crimson bassist Tony Levin. This World is the kind of album that inspires renewed wonder in the mysterious powers of Louisville's water supply. It draws impossibly broad inspiration from decades of Eastern and Western folk, rock, ambient, film score, library music, and neoclassical, and masterfully emerges with an ever-enveloping suite perfectly befitting its constantly curious composers.
Steve Gunn and Mike Gangloff (Pelt) combine six-and 12-string guitars with gongs, tanpura, singing bowls, shruti box, and banjo fora gorgeous collection of improvised compositions. The two artists took it pretty far off the beaten path for Melodies for a Savage Fix, sequestering themselves for an overnight session in the remote farmhouse/recording studio of noted roots-music engineer Joseph Dejarnette (Carolina Chocolate Drops, Bruce Greene, Curtis Eller) in the countryside of Floyd County, Virginia.
There in the tiny community of Topeka, miles from the county's one traffic light, they set up an assortment of six- and 12-string guitars, gongs and Indian instruments, plus the banjo Gangloff sometimes plays at monthly square dances at a country store just up the road, and settled in for an intense night of improvisation.
Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.'s new album Astrorgasm From The Inner Space features their original vocalist Cotton Casino and is being released in conjunction with their two-month tour of the USA beginning April 23rd at the Mercury Lounge in New York City. Available on CD and deluxe double LP.
As usual, AMT delivers to Important their most scorching tracks. They've included, appropriately since Important is set to issue Grayfolded on triple vinyl, a brand new recording of "Dark Star Blues" with Cotton Casino. On Astrorgasm From The Inner Space, Acid Mothers Temple look towards their source (the band turns 19 this year) while also evolving towards their next stage.
If there is a nod to the sun-dappled radiance of Endless Summer, it comes with the opening "Static Kings," which offers up a lazy melody and some strummed acoustic guitars, though they are warped and churned fairly aggressively by Christian's laptoppery.  Unexpectedly, however, "Static" also features a bold new innovation: an actual band…of sorts, anyway, as Fennesz is joined by bassist Werner Dafeldecker and drummer Martin Brandlmayr.Their contributions are fairly subtle and last only for the one song, but Christian is uncharacteristically joined by other musicians twice more before the album runs its course.
After that, however, Christian’s inspiration seems to wane a bit, as the remaining four pieces do not quite offer anything new, just more variations on the established themes or single ideas explored without significant development.  "Palles Athene," for example, is a lengthy bit of brooding, spacey ambient that just drifts along ominously for six minutes, while the title piece evolves from jarring, quavering single notes into yet another roaring torrent of static that conceals a poignant melody.  It is admittedly almost as great as "Liminality," but its impact is dulled a bit by the fact that Christian has already pulled this particular rabbit from his hat once before.
Adam Wiltzie and Dustin O'Halloran's latest offering is a rather lean one, but it is surprisingly beautiful and satisfying nonetheless.  Atomos VII offers up essentially just one new song (a short piece from the forthcoming Atomos full-length) backed by an old outtake and a lengthy Ben Frost reinterpretation of the title piece.  All are enjoyable, but it is the Ben Frost collaboration that elevates this brief EP into something more than just a teaser of what is to come.
The Atomos album (due this coming fall) is a score to a dance piece choreographed by the Royal Ballet's Wayne McGregor, an enthusiastic fan of AWVftS's debut.  While it is impossible to say what the rest of that album will sound like, "Atomos VII" sounds almost exactly how I would expect a new Winged Victory piece to sound, as the aesthetic leap from "neo-classical business-as-usual" to "dance score" is virtually a non-existent one for Adam and Dustin.  In fact, the only truly significant change is that "Atomos VII" is entirely devoid of piano, opting instead to augment its warm, serene drones with nothing but a languorously unfolding series of string swells that slowly builds to a crescendo (before, of course, dissipating once more into tranquil ambiance).
The rest of this brief release is rounded out by an outtake from the duo's debut ("Minuet for a Cheap Piano, Number One") and the aforementioned (and comparatively lengthy) Ben Frost collaboration.  The prosaically titled "Minuet" delivers exactly what it promises: a lovely, understated solo piano piece, albeit one floating in a warm haze of ambiance.  More importantly, it makes perfect sense as a companion piece for "Atomos VII," ably furthering this EP’s themes of simplicity, elegance, fragility, and understatement.  The same cannot be said for Frost's stab at re-envisioning the title piece, but "Greenhouse Reinterpretation" works quite wonderfully as a densely roiling and dynamic counterbalance.  Ben is an unexpected participant in this endeavor, as he is not someone I normally associate with quiet or subtle music, though he has worked with McGregor before.  Everything he touches these days sounds great, however, as he has a distinct knack for bringing out the best in anyone fortunate enough to collaborate with him.  That trend continues unabated with "Greenhouse."
Despite its brevity, I think I actually prefer Atomos VII to Winged Victory's debut...or perhaps precisely because of its brevity (and its variety).  While it certainly seems to end too soon, I find myself immediately starting it again as soon as it ends, whereas the self-titled full-length felt a bit too one-dimensional and overlong for me to fully embrace.  It is hard to say how much of this EP's success is due to its truncated length and the presence of Frost and how much is due to Winged Victory's evolution as a band, as all are significant, but I suppose that riddle will be answered when the full-length Atomos eventually surfaces.  In any case, it will have a tough act to follow, as Atomos VII is the rare teaser EP that completely succeeds as its own self-contained release.
An all instrumental offering from Carl Hultgren (one half of Windy & Carl) is set for release on 20th MAY 2014. A Limited Edition Double LP of 500 copies (one album on ORANGE VINYL, the other on BLACK VINYL) will include a DOWNLOAD CODE of the complete album, along with 6 ADDITIONAL BONUS SONGS recorded during the same sessions.WITH THE ADDITION OF THESE EXTRA SONGS, IT BRINGS THE RUNNING TIME OF THIS AT JUST UNDER 2 HOURS LONG *** THESE DOWNLOAD ONLY BONUS SONGS ARE AVAILABLE ONLY WITH THE PHYSICAL VINYL OR CD PURCHASE.
A change of scenery can change a person. It reshapes their mind, shifts emotions, and brings forth new modes of creation.
Tomorrow was started in 2011, shortly after moving to a new neighborhood and into an enchanting 1930s Art Deco inspired Tudor. Orignally known as The Elmdale, its casement windows and recessed plaster cove ceilings combined to reshape Carl's thoughts and views. Surrounded by beautiful old trees and shimmering sunlight, Carl started working on Tomorrow. Its tracks are a manifestations of tranquility and joy, of an assuredness in forward motion.
It is instantly apparent to any long time listener of Windy and Carl that these new tracks show a marked change from the 20 years of dense guitar drones and and walls of sound the duo have released. Carl's first solo album is instead a lighter, more stripped down affair – the tracks showcasing his new found humility and confidence. There are touchstones - in tracks like "No Other" and "As Sure As" the cascading guitars hint at LC era Durutti Column, in "Spirits" you can hear a nod to early 4AD Dif Juz in all its reverb and atmosphere, while "In This Land" has a Gene Clark psychedelic country twang.
Tomorrow is not all about a love for guitars – "Hidden" brings together glimpses of Wolfgang Voigt's GAS project with the industrial percussion of Einsturzende Neubauten's Perpetuum Mobile album.
A change of scenery has meant the freedom to explore new lands and be completely comfortable in them. Keyboards and found sounds sit very contentedly next to airy guitar compositions.
The album's opus is undoubtedly "Transparency And Light". Coming in at over 18 minutes and filling a full side of the double lp, it is Carl's most accomplished work. Restrained, refined, glistening guitar tones that ebb and flow like the rings of skipping rocks on a lake. Placid. Genuinely beautiful. A masterpiece.
Throughout the 12 tracks, Tomorrow shows the confidence of Carl's compositions, of his use of restraint and an edict that less is more. The songs are like postcards from a lover – each with a story all it's own, written from the adventure of a lifetime. Songs that tell the story of change. Of beauty and light. A new day. Tomorrow.
Released earlier this year as a single 120 minute cassette, the two variations on Pisaro's composition for guitar, performed by Barry Chabala, appears as a gorgeous new two CD reissue on the Winds Measure label. While it may lose a bit in its transition from analog to digital, the clarity of the CD format actually enhances the contrast between the two separate versions.
"Black, White, Red, Green, Blue" is an hour long, five part composition for electric guitar that is focused on specific tones, but was open to interpretation by the performer as far as tempo and pacing goes.Besides the notes used, each part differs with the method of guitar playing utilized.For the first part, a soft, repeating malleted chord is used, almost mimicking a tolling church bell that conjures a lot of warmth in its sparseness.
For the second movement, the piece shifts to light, gliding tones from single played notes.The dynamics shift from quiet to almost silent, with long passages of actual silence between the sounds.By the third movement, the sounds moves more into actual pseudo-chords while retaining its long gaps of silence.The depth and intensity builds as Chabala switches to an ebow, staying low but into thicker, vibrating moments before switching back to a mallet, resulting in an ending similar to the opening.
Most of the original piece remains intact on the second piece, "Voyelles," but processed cassette tape hiss and other incidental sounds gleaned from that dated format are added in.While "Black, White…" was sparse and pure, "Voyelles" is a bit more ragged and messy in the best possible way.Right from the onset, the repeated note is paired with a rough, grinding type sound of a cassette tape motor above it.
The sound of tape noise appears via slight processing throughout:soon the aforementioned motor sound is replaced by what sounds like tape hiss amplified to imitate surging rain, before reassembling into an almost painful, super high frequency like an ancient, slightly off-track audio tape.The addition of the analog noise pushes the piece into an entirely different direction, but never loses its original character.
"Black, White, Red, Green, Blue" in its original form surely benefits greatly from the clarity of the CD format, emphasizing the silent spaces and low tones with digital purity, something that may have been obscured in the original cassette format.On the other piece, however, the innate tape noise would have made each playing different depending on conditions and equipment.Even with the clarity, "Voyelles" works wonderfully, and I have to admit to favoring that version of Pisaro’s composition, the contrast between pure guitar and raw textural noise works perfectly.
Straddling the line between carefully programmed electronic rhythms and aggressive dissonance, this EP strikes an odd, yet fascinating balance between the two. Parts of the album are familiar, reminiscent of late 1990s electronica, but Damaskin takes the final product in a different direction, however, and puts a unique spin on a familiar sound.
I could not help but detect a bit of drum and bass influence to the sound of Unseen Warfare, though it would not necessarily sit too nicely amongst the classics of that genre.While the skittering rhythms on "Glory" might fit into that same rhythmic template, the standard drum and synth samples are replaced with sloshing water and cricket like noises to resemble something entirely different.
The same complex, chaotic rhythms appear on the title song as well, heavily panned and bouncing erratically from left to right.The careful, deliberate rhythm programming is not too far removed from the likes of older Photek or Source Direct, but again the sound is made up of a slew of violent and aggressive noises rather than anything clearly identifiable or traditional.
The flip side of this vinyl leans into more of a traditional techno sound, but maintains the same ugly, unique identity.On "Remembrance of Death," there is a looser, slightly off kilter sense to the song, overall, that at times almost seems to drift off-beat in a way that keeps things on edge.The rhythm is more conventional, but features some wonderfully processed handclap sounds that violently slice through the mix.
"Contra Theatra" closes the record, and initially is heavily steeped in repetition.Thin, brittle rhythms at first lock in solidly atop a distorted synth pattern that could almost work on a dance floor.Soon, however, pieces come and go, layers shift in dynamics, and everything around that steady beat keeps changing and evolving to excellent effect.