05 May 2014

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Albums and Singles

The two artists who are paired together on this split release differ in their sense of style and instrumentation, but what also unites them is a distinctly unique take on jazz improvisation. Millevoi may stick with a single instrument, the guitar, while (Onibaba)’s more diverse production and instrumentation has a different feel comparably. However, it is this improvisational nature of the recordings that makes it excel for both artists, with the right balance of order and noise.

Ivory Antler

Millevoi (of Many Arms, Deveykus, and others) has played guitar in numerous different styles and configurations, but on his half, titled Numbers on the Side, he delves right into the rawer, harsher sounds the instrument can produce.Squalls of feedback, distortion, and infrequent riffs might sound (by that description) like a number of other projects, but his underlying compositional sense is what defines his half, resulting in a noisy piece of carefully ordered chaos.

The lengthy "Howling After the Endless Tandem Suns" leads off with a nicely raw bit of sustained guitar amp buzz, and any bit of subtlety is tossed out the window when the huge overdriven riffs kick in and extend outward under layers of distortion and fuzz.Millevoi is not afraid to throw on the guitar effects, but he uses them tastefully, never fully obscuring the instrument’s standard sound.Towards the end, however, he cranks everything up to be full on noise, alternating between shrill and guttural passages.

On "Rockets Redglare," what at least sounds to be an improvisation based on the "Star Spangled Banner," he doles out the scratchy, high pitched clanging notes to give it a harsh and aggressive.The jazz influence is rather clear here, however, with what at first sounds like being messy improv actually having a tight, underlying structure that remains obscured.A more conventional note progression eventually bubbles to the surface of "Where is the Crime?", but it is first a bunch of echoing scrapes and grating noise that is anything but musical.

(Onibaba) is a trio, and their improvisation style is a bit less obvious in the instrumentation compared to Millevoi, but the two lengthy pieces they contribute has the same combination of order and deconstruction."Sinking" immediately begins all dark and creepy, via echoing looped percussion and droning feedback.Bits of noise slip in and pull away just as quickly, and the clattering occasionally sneaks away, but continues to lurk in the background.

The other piece, "Dust," keeps the evil but scales back the dissonance a bit.There is a greater sense of space to be had, though it is frequently broken up by heavily reverberated thuds.Humming, wet digital drones and crackling static keep the ambience from getting too light, hiding the maliciousness that lurks just beneath the surface.

Superficially the jazz/improvisational feel of this split might seem subtle, but in actuality that sense of freedom with an underlying structure is all over this disc.Millevoi’s half would sound like something Ornette Coleman could have done if the guitar was swapped for a horn, and (Onibaba) work nicely as a trio, working off of each other to present a wide array of sounds without losing its loose sense of structure.Both artists contribute challenging compositions on here, but rewards are great, if admittedly dark and bleak in their nature.

samples:

• Sinking
• Howling After the Endless Tandem Suns
• Rockets Redglare

 

05 May 2014

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Albums and Singles

Bleep:10 is a celebration of ten years of music on Bleep. A decade of enjoying and working with some of the best artists and labels, and hopefully conveying our love of the vibrant music community we are a part of.  For this fourteen track compilation we have sought out new and unreleased gems from some of our favorite artists, all of whom continue to shape the direction of the Bleep store. Together they represent different labels, scenes and genres that are important to us.

We open the compilation with an enveloping, never before released track from Wolfgang Voigt's revered Gas project. Lone provides his first new track since last year's massive "Air Glow Fires," whilst there is further explosive dance floor material from Untold, μ-Ziq, Modeselektor and Byetone.  Shackleton turns in a relentless track of rough and thrilling techno, while Autechre's contribution "SYptixed" is a dark and precise piece of heavy electronic experimentation. Oneohtrix Point Never and Nosaj Thing provide moments of ambient respite, while Dabrye's playful beat track "Click Clack" is the first solo production to be released by the artist since 2009.  Nathan Fake closes the release in fine style with glistening epic "Vanish North."

More information is available here.

05 May 2014

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Albums and Singles

After two full-length albums released by Matador Records, Cold Cave (aka Wesley Eisold) released a series of limited edition singles via his own Heartworm Press and Deathwish Inc.  Full Cold Moon is not a new Cold Cave album, but a compilation of these singles in chronological order on one digipak CD.

Release date: May 13th.  More information is available here.

04 May 2014

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Albums and Singles

This latest Daniel Higgs-era full-length is in some ways a logical progression from 2011's memorable Peer Amid, offering up another healthy dose of muscular avant rock and bizarre shamanic stream-of consciousness vocals.  However, significant notable changes have taken place, most notably that group now seem more musically indebted to taut Gang of Four-style post-punk than they do to their messier, noisier influences.  That emphasis on precision, punchiness, and economy proves to be a fascinating backdrop for the band's metaphysical mantras and fables, as that bedrock of normalcy and control makes Dances' weirder elements seem even weirder than usual.

Thrill Jockey

Dances opens with one of its strongest songs, "Pattern of Thoughts," which does a beautiful job of making the group's aesthetic intentions very clear right from the start.  Several (if not all) of the song's themes recur again and again throughout the album, most prominently Henryk Rylander's gift for propulsive, tom-heavy grooves and the guitarists' knack for simple, repeating riffs and jarring, discordant chord stabs.  For better or worse, "Pattern" also makes it clear that the Defekts are lyrically a band like no one else, as they immediately let me know that that are leading an ancient dance that was carved into a cave sealed with human bones.  They also note they the dance in question may be a sex magick ritual or used for controlling animals (or for just having a good time).

My feelings about hearing such lines casually delivered with complete sincerity and conviction are quite complicated, which makes The Skull Defekts a very tough band to fully embrace or wrap my head around, as their surreal, metaphysical and/or science-fiction-inspired narratives are so prominent and strange that is very hard to pay attention to much else.  That is very much a double-edged sword, as I think the Defekts' quixotic devotion to this path makes them quite a memorable and singular band while simultaneously ensuring that no one will notice how great their music can be.  Also, some songs are so outlandish that they almost defy belief, particularly "The Fable," which chronicles a number of curious trips that the narrator took after being drugged at a banquet (spoiler alert: he took a trip to Pluto and back and adapted an anthropoid disguise).  The closing "Cyborganization" is also a tough one to swallow, as the lyrics consist entirely of the titular made-up word endlessly repeated as a kind of mantra (and one with some extra syllables somehow added to boot).

I truly cannot get over how wrong-footing it is to hear stream-of-consciousness rambling about psychic warfare and traveling to the cosmos combined with such bad-ass, snarling, and no-frills post-punk.  It almost sounds like a particularly drug-addled prog rock band accidentally stumbled into a Birthday Party rehearsal and started obliviously recording the spoken-word passages of their convoluted rock opera over the din.  Admittedly that sounds fascinating, unique, and appealing in theory and it sometimes is in reality too, but I am also sometimes left wondering "why on earth are these guys doing this?"

Consequently, Dances is an album that I find thoroughly perplexing and inspired in equal measures.  I do not know that I would necessarily say that it actually works though, as there is literally no band on earth that would not fade into the background when they are seemingly joined by a grizzled prophet from the future eager to discuss his improbable travels through time, space, and his own mind.  Consequently, I honestly do not know quite what to make of The Skull Defekts at this point in their career: either they are making a series of increasingly terrible decisions or they are heroically avoiding the expected at all costs.  I am not sure being interesting or unpredictable is quite as cool as being unambiguously good, but I certainly appreciate that The Defekts remain as enigmatic, lively, and adventurous as ever.

• Pattern of Thoughts
• The¬†Known Unknown
• Cyborganization

 

04 May 2014

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This album is a bit of an experiment in simplicity for Bissonnette, as he decided to limit himself solely to sounds generated from a synthesizer that he built himself.  While I was initially dismayed to see that such a reliably excellent composer had tossed in his lot with the recent glut of synth-worshippers, I am pleased to report that Christopher has not completely lost his mind and that he is still making music that is distinctively his own.  As a complete album, Essays does not quite stand with Bissonette’s lusher and more varied previous work, but some of the individual pieces are certainly quite good and I always like it when an artist takes an unexpected gamble.

Kranky

As Kranky are quick to mention in their description of Essays in Idleness, Bissonnette wields his synthesizer a bit differently than most of his contemporaries, choosing to focus primarily on slowly transforming sustained tones.  In that regard, this album makes perfect sense, as Christopher is no stranger at all to droning, drifting ambiance and the right synthesizer can offer some rather amazing possibilities for the real-time textural manipulation of such sounds.  While Bissonnette does not rely particularly heavily on that feature, he certainly manages to score impressively with the opening "Greenish in its Light," an absolutely beautiful mélange of warm drones, randomized buzzes, and melancholy bloops.

Unfortunately, Christopher then haplessly blunders into one of my personal peeves with "A Deplorable Corruption," opting for some dated retro-futurist textures that scream "‘70s science program soundtrack."  That just about derails the album entirely for me, as he seems quite fond of those glistening artificial sounds, repeating them yet again on the following "Entanglements."  Thankfully, "Delusions" restores some of the lost momentum, gradually evolving from gently buzzing ambiance into something much more complex, quavering, and emotionally resonant.

From then on out, Essays is almost unwaveringly solid, though none of the remaining four songs quite manage to topple "Greenish" as the album’s reigning highlight.  "Missing Chapters," for example, evokes an otherworldly tableaux of bittersweet loneliness and distant memories, while "Uniformity is Undesirable" dabbles uncomfortably close to those accursed science film textures, but keeps them pleasantly ominous with some well-placed swoops and snarls.  Similarly dated textures dog the weaker "Another Moving Sight," but it at least boasts an appealing throb and builds to a likable (if a bit understated) crescendo. Essays then concludes in fine fashion with the sublimely twinkling and blissed-out coda of "Wasting a Little Time."

All of that adds up to a perfectly likable album, but Essays is definitely a relatively minor and divergent addition to Bissonnette's discography.  If I were not so predisposed to like Christopher due to his previous work, I probably would not have allowed myself much of a chance to get drawn in beyond "Greenish in its Light."  However, once I started actively looking for reasons to like Idleness, I certainly found them.  While I think that anyone new to Bissonnette should probably bypass this one, as its very limited palette sacrifices quite a bit of depth and humanity, longtime fans will likely find this to be a pleasant enough detour (and will need to at least hear "Greenish").  Or they will be absolutely heartbroken that Christopher's first solo album in seven years is so different from what they were expecting.  It is hard to say.  God, I wish Bissonnette was more prolific.  Damn.

• Greenish in its Light
• Delusions
• Uniformity is Undesireable

 

04 May 2014

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Albums and Singles

Inventions is the new band formed by longtime friends, tourmates, and labelmates Matthew Cooper of Eluvium, and Mark T. Smith of Explosions In The Sky. It began in earnest in 2013 when Cooper invited Smith to collaborate on a song for Eluvium's otherworldly double-album, Nightmare Ending. The track, "Envenom Mettle," was a standout on an album full of them, and just like that a longstanding friendship blossomed into a full-fledged creative partnership. There are plenty of talking points here: The fact that Cooper hasn't been in a “band” of any sort since he was a teenager; no member of Explosions In The Sky has released an album outside of the context of EITS since their inception in the late 90s; and, of course, this is a dream duo for anyone familiar with the unparalleled emotional resonance of Cooper and Smith's respective day jobs. However, thirty seconds into their eponymous debut album, you realize that the esteemed pedigree is irrelevant. Inventions exceeds all expectations by discarding them from the get-go. They have created their own tiny, wondrous corner of the world, one with ever-changing sounds and colors.

More information is available here.

04 May 2014

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Albums and Singles

Qa'a is a long-running psych-rock project centered around Spain's Victor Hurtado (Huan) and it is quite a bizarre one, both conceptually (magical/quasi-ritualistic in intent) and musically (it sounds like a lost dispatch from Krautrock's weirdest fringes).  Consequently, it is no surprise that Hurtado has collaborated with Nurse With Wound in the past or that Qa'a's work has been championed by the über-eccentric Julian Cope.  I am not certain that I myself necessarily champion this overwhelming triple-LP, but Sang is undeniably significant and ambitious, resembling nothing less than the spiritual successor to folks like Can and Faust, albeit one that is also indebted to noise, outsider art, and Miles Davis' wilder fusion-era excesses.

Màgia Roja

There are two aspects of this opus that immediately eclipse everything else about it.  The first is the length, as listening to almost 100 minutes of psych-rock squall, effects-heavy caterwauling, and electronic entropy is more of an event than a mere listening experience.  However, Sang is one of those rare albums where the vinyl format actually enhances listenability in a meaningful way, as each of its three records are intended to work as discrete sections that can be played in varying arrangements.  The other prominent feature of Sang is how remarkably authentic it sounds, as Qa'a are definitely not some guys who liked Tago Mago a lot and decided to make their own pastiche.

Rather, Hurtado and his bandmates seem far more like lost members of the Amon Düül commune that emerged from a forest after 18 years with some self-made instruments and wondered where everyone else went.  That said, I think Can probably was a huge influence, as Qa'a share Damo Suzuki's very "free" approach to vocals and lyrics, as well as the band's penchant for strong grooves (and periodic forays into ethnographic forgeries).  While a few songs, like "El vent mou l'aigua," admittedly do sound a bit too Can-like for my taste, Qa'a's version of Krautrock usually seems to be a significantly more snarling, chaotic, and primal strain than that unleashed by their forebears.  No one will ever accuse Qa'a of having motorik grooves nor will anyone ever be able to fall asleep with Sang playing in the background.

Happily, Sang’s best songs also tend to be its longest.  I definitely do not think that Victor squandered a single second worrying about things like hooks or structure, but Qa'a's gleefully unfettered freedom and spontaneity yield quite a few striking passages and surprises.  While the band primarily focus on free-form psych jams with crescendos of howling vocals and cacophonous guitars, they rarely overstay their welcome or allow themselves to meander for too long.  Rather, the longer pieces tend to be broken up or separated by collage-like interludes or passages of noise/industrial electronics.  I get the definite sense that Sang was culled from hundreds of hours of improvisations and experiments.  I also think several hundred more hours were then spent painstakingly shaping it all into a sprawling psych-rock voyage that frequently casts both rock and reality aside in hopes of creating a mindfuck of epic proportions.

Whether Qa'a actually succeeded in what they were trying to do or not is not entirely clear to me, as I am not personally a huge fan of a lot of their revered influences and kindred spirits.  A strong case could certainly be made that Sang is a towering monument to self-indulgence that sounds like it was culled from incompletely shaped improvisations from 30 or 40 years ago, but I could probably level a similar charge at some Can albums.  I did find some of Hurtado's spontaneous-sounding vocalizing to be a bit annoying though.  Still, Sang feels like a major statement nonetheless and it appeals strongly to my love of outsider art: Victor is clearly someone who absolutely, completely does not care what the rest of the world is doing and Qa'a's bizarro, ritualistic free-form psychedelia is delivered with total sincerity and conviction.  I suspect that Sang's unique charms will resonate most strongly with obsessive fans of Faust, Can, and the like, but Qa'a might also appeal to those looking for a dispatch from rock's fringiest and most uncompromising outer limits.  In that regard, Sang is hard to top.

Samples:

• Sang
• Vermell Profund
• Mort a les Formigues

 

 

30 April 2014

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Albums and Singles

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!”

28 April 2014

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Albums and Singles

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.

Black Plagve

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.

samples:

• The Mechanics of Embalming
• By All Means...
• Suo Gan/Last Rights

 

28 April 2014

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Albums and Singles

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.

Musik Atlach

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.

samples:

• Ceaseless/Do You Care?
• In Obscurity
• Melt