Being thankful for an earful.
Brand new music by Marie Davidson, Niecy Blues (feat. Joy Guidry), CEL, Marisa Anderson and Luke Schneider, Stina Stjern, Carmen Villain, Murcof, A Lily, and Far Golden Pavilions, with music from the vaults by Tomaga, Ozzobia, Jan Jelinek.
Sushi photo by Lindsay.
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I know I am not the only person who has caught himself in a public situation hearing some sort of malfunctioning machinery and thought it would have sounded great on record. Obviously not, because it is that concept specifically that defines Blake Edwards' newest album, a gorgeous picture disc with accompanying CD-R of related material. It is his careful mixing and understated processing that make this shine, however.
Crippled Intellect Productions/Ratskin Records
Even though it is made up of loud, occasionally obnoxious machinery noises, much of Fait a la Machine is actually reserved and almost serene at times.While "Metal Scrapping Facility, Exterior (Conveyors, Loaders, Compactor, Baler)" resembles early Esplendor Geometrico with its use of miniscule delays that give it that vintage spring reverb feel (which may have simply been a natural occurrence), the overall sound is warm and almost calm."Lathe, Vertical Turning Machine, HVAC System, Air Compressors, Gas Compressors, Cooling Fans, Factory Acoustics" has a similar placid quality via its slow and droning atmosphere, but here tainted by a sense of menace.
Perhaps most impressive are the pieces that lock into a rhythmic groove that is so tight and effective that it sounds programmed and sequenced.The idling on "Metal Scrapping Facility, Interior (Chain Conveyor, Alligator Shear, Loader, Hammer Mill)" sets the foundation for the piece, but everything else expands it to a polyrhthmic, almost catchy piece of mechanized clattering.The layered, inhuman chugging of "Hydraulic Hammer, Diesel Engine, Forge, Die Mold Cutter" does this as well, with whistle-like white noise bursts and machinery sounds resulting in the most complex piece on here. "1600 Ton Forge Press, Milling Machine, Cylindrical Grinder" is rather sparse compared to the rest of the album, with a slower paced metallic kick drum sound that is rather repetitive, but also functions well as a deconstruction of techno music.
Unsurprisingly, the recordings do—at times—dissipate into unadulterated noise, in the best possible way."Diesel Engines, Lathe, Sander, Gas Turbines" sounds like pure white noise covered in heavy reverb, like the Incapacitants playing in a vacant aircraft hangar."Lathe, Loader, Vibrating Conveyor, Chain Drive Conveyor Belt, Hydraulic Motors" is similarly devoid of rhythm, but has more nuance to it, becoming more textural and varied throughout its duration.
The accompanying CD-R, Machines Domestique, is a single hour-plus length composition that presents machinery on a smaller, more ubiquitous scale.Focusing on HVAC systems, computer server ventilation, and turntable motors (along with some of the larger scale machines), it has a quieter, slowly developing pace to it that works better both with the sonic clarity and length possible with a digital medium.
Unlike a lot of recordings of natural and dissonant phenomena, Fait a la Machine works just as well as a piece of music as it does an audio documentation of the world surrounding us.It makes that leap from interesting to enjoyable in a way few such recordings can.Even though I do not think Edwards did much in the way of direct sound manipulation, his careful mixing and structuring is what crosses this over into something far more musical than it would seem on the surface.
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This reissue offers the chance to hear another obscurity from the NWW list. With perfect backing, Vian plays synths, sequencer and piano, to create an exotic, space-age soundtrack that is quite distinct from his more raucous music with Red Noise.
Patrick Vian’s only solo album sounds as carefully structured as Kraftwerk but with plenty of spontaneity, too. The influence of former Gong (and Miles Davis) drummer Mino Cinelu adds a deft touch that is complemented by the playfulness of Georges Grainer on such instruments as Fender Rhodes electric piano, noise, and scissors. For all that, the opening piece, "Sphere," explores an devilishly scratchy riff set in motion by Bernard Lavialle’s guitar. The record is a prime example of the brilliant and adventurous music of its time, all too often ignored for falling outside the easy spotlight and rock categorizations of the dominant UK and US markets. A limited edition of 500 vinyl copies are probably all snapped up by now, but CD and digital download are available.
The electronics and futuristic atmospheres of Bruits et Temps Analogue are a departure from the proto-punk aggression of Red Noise. That group played its first gig in the Sorbonne during the 1968 student occupation, with Patrick Vian on guitar. He later wrote some of the music for the now seemingly lost 1975 film Hu-man starring Terence Stamp and Jeanne Moreau, with the former cast as an actor placed in various dangerous situations throughout time where his fate is decided by viewers.
Red Noise's Sarcelles-Lochères began with the sound of a toilet flushed. Perhaps Vian learned at an early age the desirability of playfulness and polymathic experimentation. His father, Boris, was a contemporary of Camus and Sartre, musician, inventor, actor, critic, engineer, and writer of such works as Froth On A Daydream and (as Vernon Sullivan) I Spit On Your Graves. That latter work, which he reputedly wrote in 15 days to prove he could churn out a best-seller, would inadvertently trigger his early death. Rising from his seat a few minutes into the film premiere of his book to yell abuse, the elder Vian suffered cardiac arrest after blurting out "These guys are supposed to be American? My ass."
 
After amplifying their homes and magnifying the subconscious; after reshaping kitchenware into instruments and finding voices in the buzz of computer fans, distant traffic, and the crunch of dirt; after transforming the spaces around them and constructing a space-time of their own, Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet finally turn the microphones on themselves. And not just on the noises they make, but on the places they grew up, on the people they've known, on the ideas that have driven their work, the sounds they love, and ultimately on the past and their memories. Don't come to the show expecting self-portraits though. On Photographs Graham and Jason make enigmas of themselves. We get to see a shadow of them in these pictures, but everything they do and every event they capture points to a subject somewhere outside the frame.
Photographs work by suggestion. Take any photo off the Internet and start asking questions about it: Who is that in the picture? What is it that they're standing in front of? When and where was it taken, and why from that angle? Who is behind the camera? What we see in them and what they show are inevitably unequal. The image presents the viewer with an apparent set of facts, but without context or witnesses or some personal experience bringing everything into focus, the subjects fail to take definite shape. Something is missing.
So it is with Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet's music. The apparition of familiarity presents itself to the listener by dint of the material employed: intelligible conversations, fixable locations and precise directions to them, a loop from Kiss's "Great Expectations"—our acquaintance with sights and sounds such as these, plus the incredible artwork with family, friends, place names, and the images of Graham and Jason as children—it's as if they're opening a door into their personal lives, or pointing us to a keyhole through which we might spy a handful of their private thoughts. How could it be otherwise?
To answer that question it's best to ask another one: what is it that we actually see and hear in these songs? Disc one in this two-disc set begins with "Loss," in which a pair of anonymous voices explain what the word "loss" means to them. One of the respondents discusses the loss of their grandparents, the other describes a feeling of daily disorientation: he wakes up and is unsure of where he is despite a firm mind, familiarity with the local geography, and a copy of this year's calendar. As he elaborates, the audio suddenly cuts out. We hear clicking, a compartment opening and shutting, as if the tape needed changing mid-sentence, and then the conversation continues.
From that point forward the listener is subjected to the same kind of confusion. By way of sudden edits, seamless transitions, and invisible leaps, Lambkin and Lescalleet navigate the streets and sights of Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom, where disc one was recorded. They capture a morning church service in "Quested to St. Hilda," converse with unnamed participants at tea time, and in the absolutely brilliant second half, hitch a ride with a banjo player, talk with Graham's sister about her new car, fill up their gas tank in a rain storm, and discuss walking along the harbor during winter. It's a whirlwind of bewilderment and constant flux made all the more exciting by the voyeuristic thrill it inspires.
The catch is that these events butt up against a blend of slowed down recordings, synthesizer melodies, and manipulated audio morsels à la Luc Ferrari. Places blur together, time accelerates or slowly loses its shape, conversations start and stop with an invisible logic. It's natural to ask where Graham and Jason are, who they are with, and when. Is that a clock I hear in the background or does "Danger of Death" capture the machinery of a hospital visit? As with Air Supply, it's tempting to work the confusion out and invest the sounds with a specific meaning, a temptation that's reinforced by the subject matter and presentation. The image for "Danger of Death" that's included in the artwork is ominous, and it's hard not to read that content into the audio.
But the impossibility of putting it all together is insured by the same means. Having a clear sense of where Graham and Jason might be, and knowing that family and friends are involved, only complicates matters, it doesn't clarify anything. The juxtapositions and edits disorient and create more confusion this way. The conversations, with all their allusions and suggestions, gain weight, become overloaded with meaning, and nearly burst. Every interaction and reference, no matter how slight, acquires a special significance. Even the skillet in the Lambkin kitchen seems important.
Appropriately, the second disc begins with a conversation about change, specifically the changes that towns undergo. It's unclear whether the town in question is Boylston or Worcester, Massachusetts, where disc two was recorded, but the message is the same either way. What we hear in Photographs is only a fragment: a snippet of audio, the memory of a time or place that's gone now, little bits and pieces of something bigger, each incomplete in itself and each leading out in potentially every direction—from the sound of church bells to the watery echo of tea time in slow motion, from cash registers to traffic jams and opinions about plum pudding. There's no stepping back and getting a wider view, unless maybe you're Graham Lambkin or Jason Lescalleet.
Their memories and their sense of place and time ground Photographs. For everyone else, the music hovers in the air. What was true of household items on The Breadwinner and of the half-unheard noise on Air Supply is true even of such solid things as the local grocery store and past events. There's no wrapping it all up or making sense of it as a whole. Perceptions twist, details shrink and expand, memory loses its clarity. As soon as we think we have a grip on anything, it changes shape and spills to the floor.
That's how Graham and Jason conclude their trilogy. The secret sounds they found hiding in their homes and in the studio spills over into the places they grew up and into the relationships they formed. The music is in what they remember and in how they remember it, but it's not fixed in stone. We also get the chance to see and hear, and in observing we find that the pictures change. Maybe they gain or lose meaning. Maybe they're just pretty shots from some place far away. Whatever the case, the images merely point us in a direction. The music emerges in the tension between what they suggest and what we perceive.
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Pre-orders are now available for the limited edition debut vinyl 10" EP from PROTECTION, a new synth duo featuring long-time Brainwashed contributor Daniel McKernan and bandmate Sam Houston, based between New York and New Orleans. Their debut EP features Little Annie on vocals for the track, "Jack/Rabbit," which is also included remixed by Bruno Coviello (formerly of Light Asylum). This is limited to 250 copies and will be shipping in spring 2014 from Daniel's new label, Formlessness Press.
Pre-order it now here.
The EP was written & recorded by Daniel McKernan & Sam Houston in New York & New Orleans, 2011-2013. Mix/mastered by Bruno Coviello. "I Worry If You're Warm" also features Christiana Key (Zola Jesus, Cult of Youth, Delphic Oracle) on violin. Hear a few of the tracks (including Brother Bruno Coviello's remix of the Little Annie vocal track) here and here.
Everything that I loved about Hecker's past work is present yet again, but it is now mingled with some wonderfully unexpected violence and dissonance. This is Tim Hecker's masterpiece. - Anthony D'Amico
Carter Tutti, "Coolicon" (Conspiracy International)
Swans, "Not Here/Not Now" (Young God)
"Touch30" (Touch)
Eliane Radigue, "Adnos I-III" (Important)
After years of mastering for the finest vinyl mastering outfit, the man steps out to make the highest charting debut album. Well done.
As with most things in life, I did not fully appreciate Jason Molina until he was gone: I figured he'd always be touring and writing great songs and I that I could always catch back up with him when I got around to it. Sadly, I will have to do that posthumously now, but he left behind quite an impressive body of work for me to sift through and I am belatedly realizing that I slept on a lot of great Magnolia Electric-era stuff like a total chump. In retrospect, I have no idea why I tuned out (too "rock?"), as the sole Magnolia Electric Company album that I picked up (What Comes After The Blues) is quite good and "Leave the City" has been in fairly heavy rotation in my life for almost a decade now. I always loved Songs:Ohia though: I still get chills when I hear "Steve Albini's Blues" and Ghost Tropic obsessed me for months when it came out. And every single one of those albums features at least one absolutely amazing song, as Molina was an utterly transfixing force of nature when he got a song just right–like a deeply haunted, world-weary Neil Young who had made a pact with Satan and was nervously dreading the time payment would come due. Songs like "Coxcomb Red" are not just beautiful-they are actually scary in their intensity. I can't think think of many other songwriters (if any) who can make that kind of impact on me. Jason Molina was truly one of a kind. You will burn on in my soul forever, Captain Badass. - Anthony D'Amico
It's hard to talk about Jason Molina without resorting to superlatives, but that's because he was one of the best songwriters and bandleaders around. He never stopped changing his sound from his first 7" to his last album, he wrote ceaselessly, toured every chance he got, and released one great album after another, often with completely different bands. By the time Magnolia Electric Co. came out in 2003, he had recorded nine albums in roughly seven years, plus numerous singles and EPs—at least 15 in total between 1995 and 2002—that were scattered across various labels, from Palace Records and Secretly Canadian to Acuarela, Western Vinyl, and Temporary Residence. He then went on to record one EP, two 7" singles, and seven more albums with Magnolia before he died, three of which were bundled together in the Sojourner boxed set and recorded in the same year. Somehow, within that same time span, he found the energy to write, record, and release four more albums, three under his own name and one collaboration with Will Johnson. He collaborated and released records with so many people it's hard to keep count: The Arab Strap, Will Oldham, Alasdair Roberts, Scout Niblett, Oneida, My Morning Jacket, Mike Mogis, Steve Albini, Jennie Benford, Richard Youngs, Edith Frost, David Lowery—the list goes on. And what's more, they're all worth hearing, even the rougher stuff. Some musicians need quality control and restraint: Jason Molina simply couldn't release enough, and if it's true that he burned or destroyed a lot of music on top of what he released every year... well then who knows. There's apparently still many recordings of his left in the vaults. I hope to hear them eventually, but nothing will ever beat seeing him on stage with Magnolia Electric Co. and hearing him sing. No one was better at it than he was. - Lucas Schleicher
At the funeral of John Balance (Geff Rushton), Peter Christopherson described him as this force of energy, like a bolt of lightning, difficult to predict and too bright to look at directly. Molina, too, was a force of energy, more powerful than this world could handle. In his short lifetime, he amassed an incredible volume of material that is peerless. It, as Lucas stated, is all worth listening to as he always had something worthwhile to say and was an amazingly talented composer, performer, and singer. I have been a fan for close to 15 years at this point and selfishly, I am angry there will be no more new music. However, as a listener, it will continue to take me years to come to truly get to the heart of each song on each album. It breaks my heart to not be able to see him once or twice a year as I did when he was doing the Songs: Ohia thing, solo thing, or the Magnolia Electric Co. We always had great talks and while I didn't consider him a true "friend" in the conventional sense, we knew and appreciated who we each were and what we do. I'm glad to have been one of the rare few who was able to corner him and get some great interview and live footage. He truly achieved an amazing amount in his lifetime. - Jon Whitney
 
 
 
 
 
 
When I learned of this album, it seemed like a dream come true, as I love both Nina Simone and past Xiu Xiu covers (especially "Ceremony").  Consequently, it seemed like an entire album of Jamie Stewart interpreting Nina's songs could be amazing...if I did not think too much about it.  As it turns out, it is not amazing.  It is an interesting experiment with occasionally impressive results though: Nina sounds like Jamie Stewart making an art-damaged, wildly melodramatic cabaret album with some free-jazz elements thrown in.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does not bear much resemblance to either Nina Simone or classic Xiu Xiu.
While it has been several years since I have considered myself a serious Xiu Xiu fan, a project like this highlights what made me one in the first place: Jamie Stewart has always been an unpredictable and gutsy artist with great taste in influences.  Unfortunately, tackling a full album of Nina Simone songs is a fundamentally doomed endeavor, particularly when married with Stewart's current aesthetic vision.  For one, Simone's songs were great largely because she was the one singing them–not many other singers can approach her sexiness, soulfulness, intensity, or style.  The "intensity" part is not a problem for Jamie, obviously, but his hushed, quavering voice turns Nina's songs into something somewhat grotesque and Lynchian.  Equally importantly, Xiu Xiu's best work was spectacular because Stewart combined great hooks with unconventional twists and a constant sense that things were on the verge of barreling completely out of control.  On Nina, he seems intent on burying the hooks and melodies and compensating by making the surrounding music just sound a little "wrong" or "off."
Still another hurdle is that Nina is essentially a showcase for Jamie Stewart's trembling, anguished vocals and I always liked Xiu Xiu in spite of his singing rather than because of it.  While Jamie surrounded himself with an eclectic and game batch of collaborators for this project (most notably guitarist Mary Halvorson), most of these songs are very much in the "torch song" vein, so the accompaniment is generally very minimal and jazzy.  Which is a shame, because Stewart's ensemble kicks up quite a wonderful cacophony when they finally get a chance on "You'd Be So Nice" (the album's "single").  For most of the other songs, Stewart tends to be accompanied by little more than languid saxophone and some strummed jazz chords.  There are some occasional bits of guitar or sax dissonance, which are nice, but otherwise the bulk of Nina could be considered surprisingly straightforward were it not for Stewart's quivering, on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown vocals.
One final problem that I have is that most of Nina's songs were not written by Nina Simone: they were merely popularized by her.  Consequently, Stewart is basically doing radical re-interpretations of Nina's own wildly different interpretations of songs by Cole Porter, Kurt Weill, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, and others.  That situation is perversely exacerbated by the two Simone originals that Stewart did choose to cover: "Four Women" and "Flo Me La," as both are bizarre, highly questionably forays into cultural appropropriation.  "Flo Me La," for example, is based upon a traditional African warrior marching chant.  "Four Women," on the other hand, features Stewart singing lines such as "my skin is black" and "whose little girl am I?," which I found quite cringe-worthy coming from a white male.  Fortunately, Stewart did have the tact to avoid the line "my parents were slaves" and the clattering, lurching free-jazz accompaniment is one of the album's best moments.
All of that adds up to quite a flawed, perplexing album, but not one that I would consider a complete failure by any means.  After all, "You'd Be So Nice" is spectacular.  A whole album of this stuff is definitely numbing though.  While I have seen Nina pilloried as one of the worst albums of the year elsewhere, I found it to be just an exasperating, overlong execution of a potentially great idea (and I would much rather see Jamie gamble and fall flat than re-tread familiar territory).  If Steward had chosen some more fun songs ("Do I Move You?," for example), thought up some livelier and more adventurous arrangements, and stripped away all the more middling material, this could have been a stellar EP.  In its current state, Nina kind of resembles the work of a bumbling alchemist who transmutes gold into copper: it's definitely an interesting feat and the end result still has value, but it probably would have been better if he had just left the material alone instead.
 
 
When she is at her best, Brooklyn-based experimental guitarist Sarah Lipstate is capable of creating work of almost breathtaking beauty.  On this, her debut for Important, she is at her best exactly once.  The rest of album is filled with perfectly likable, if unexceptional, forays into muted ambient soundscapes, but it is the Popul Vuh's Aguirre-meets-gnarled-guitar brilliance of the title piece that makes No Dreams an album worth hearing.  I certainly wish the rest of the album were similarly spectacular, but it feels silly to complain that Lipstate only composed one must-hear masterpiece this year.
Several years ago, when I was still an aspiring musician, I tried to record an album that I never finished.  The problem was that every time I composed a new song, it made all of my previous songs seem comparatively inadequate, so I just kept endlessly starting over again with an increasingly unattainable baseline of quality.  The reason I bring that up is because Lipstate seems to have encountered the exact same problem with No Dreams, but solved it by just putting out everything she had anyway.  That is certainly a much more productive option than total, heartbreaking creative paralysis, but it means that No Dreams is essentially one sublime, stunning piece and a lot of vaguely pleasant (or sometimes ominous) ambient background.  "No Dreams" is not just a centerpiece or highlight; rather, it feels like the entire album's sole reason for existing.
At least, that is how it sounds at a normal volume.  When I play it loudly, No Dreams becomes significantly more compelling, as all of its many complexities and nuances come into sharper focus.  Given the proper volume and attentive listening, songs like the throbbing "Manahatta," the slow-burning, roiling "Purchase," and warmly hissing and swelling "Fighting Sleep" all sound nearly as inspired as the title track.  I guess that makes No Dreams a good headphone album and explains how it wound up as one of The New Yorker's Best Albums of 2013, but I truly wish Lipstate had not smoothed everything over into a gently pulsing and shimmering bliss-haze.  The edges and quirks are what make Noveller unique and they rarely surface here, aside from the overdriven guitar howl of "No Dreams" and a few textures amidst the creepy dissonance of "The Fright."
Ultimately, No Dreams is a curious moment in Noveller's discography, as it arguably contains the single greatest piece she has ever recorded, but otherwise feels like a transitional effort.  There are a few reasons for that, as Sarah has broadened her palette beyond guitar for the first time ever to embrace synthesizers, pianos, and muted beats.  Also, she has spent a lot of time working on soundtracks recently, which seems to have influenced her work enormously.  In fact, most of No Dreams would probably be an excellent soundtrack, as it evokes depth and mood without ever demanding my full attention.  That is not what I want from a Noveller album though.  No Dreams is like going to a renowned steak house and getting a salad–it might be a very good salad, but it kind of defeats the whole purpose of going there.  Stone-cold masterpiece title track and compositional evolution aside, I would have liked this album much, much more if it had been more forcefully and uniquely "Sarah Lipstate."
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The New Alchemy creates transformational music from simple elements: voices, guitars, organs, and saxophones. The music moves deliberately, contrasting an intense, blistering, squall one might associate with screams from human sacrifice, with an airy, spacious, psychedelia.
Per Svensson and Ebbot Lundberg share vocals, guitars, and keyboards throughout this album. Part of the charm of their vocals comes from stony repetition of phrases and some from the second-language "otherness" of their English. There are also passages of spoken word incantation which add genuine strangeness rather than unintentional hilarity. Guitars shift backwards and forwards, keyboards strike incongruent shapes, and Max Gustafsson’s saxophone at times closely resembles another fuzzed out guitar. The wildest sections are the short opening "Solar Eclipse" and the slowly evolving 24 minute closer "Extra Terrestrial Blues." Such an extended piece could easily be self-indulgent in the wrong hands but here is not a moment too long.
Between these extremes, several tracks reference very well known late 1960s psychedelia and 1970s space rock. "Creatures" resembles an energetic channeling of The Misunderstood or 13th Floor Elevators. Clay Ketter joins on drums for the title track; a stretched-out and bombastic piece with vocals that are sometimes repeated back in a slightly dumb and delirious fashion. (It reminds me of the creepy way the character of Dim in A Clockwork Orange repeats Alex's singing during the gang home-invasion scene.) "Silver Chain" has a more threatening atmosphere, including such found sound as church bells, with hints at the coming sonic, skin-blistering, wind-tunnelesque, weirdness of "Extra Terrestrial Blues."
Not that the music is doom laden or intensely dark and sludgy. Rather it is cathartic, ritualistic and invigorating. I shouldn’t be surprised if The New Alchemy take their name from Alan Watts’ 1960 essay which discusses the quest to turn base metal into gold as being more a symbol of the quest for spiritual immortality. For Watts this may have been through a chemical elixir, and less literally about eternal life than the development of consciousness outside of the restrictive realm of time. On The Other Side of Light takes a different approach to something broadly similar.
Mika Vainio's collaboration earlier this year with Joachim Nordwall was enjoyable, but this new release grabbed my attention immediately and did not relent for a moment. ÄÄNIPÄÄ, with Stephen O'Malley on guitar, Eyvind Kang (viola), Moriah Neils (contrabass) and Maria Scherer Wilson (cello) has more in common with Vainio's work with Pan Sonic than his recent projects, and with Alan Dubin screaming the poetry of Anna Akhmatova on two of the pieces, it surprisingly resembles a Khanate revival.
First paired together for a Suicide cover about five years ago, Vainio and O'Malley are very different artists, the former working mostly with clinically clean sources and the latter known for metal tinged guitar work.Through a Pre-Memory does not throw in any curve balls in that regard because both stick to what they do best, but the pairing of fractured electronic rhythms and noisy guitar works perfectly.
Opener "Muse" and closer "Watch Over Stillness/Matters Principle" are the two pieces that feature OLD/Khanate shrieker Alan Dubin and he is used to excellent effect.The former is a mix of mangled 909 kicks and snares while O’Malley's guitar mimics the rhythm with slight variations to keep it from sounding stale.Later on the proceedings become more electronic and atmospheric, with the beat dropping and scrapes of viola settling in.Dubin's screams are the same tortured, pained squeals he is known for, and when linked with the fragmented guitar bits, it does sound like Khanate.
The closing composition has the project weaving the vocals in to the mix rather than having them stand sharply in the foreground, with a tasteful amount of electronics and processing to keep them from sounding too rigid.With the stop/start nature of the mix and emphasis on beats rather than guitars, there is distinctly different feel than "Muse" had but still feels cut from the same cloth.
"Toward All Thresholds" is more of a concrete electronic piece at first, with only bits of drum or guitar popping through the otherwise complicated electronic-centric mix and only the contrabass standing out clearly as a traditional instrument.The guitar becomes more forceful, as does the rhythm, with the closing minutes having more of an industrial flair to them."Mirror of Mirror Dreams" also has ÄÄNIPÄÄ presenting drastic dichotomy, with raw feedback and electronics bouncing between more pleasant tones and the traditional instrumentation, bouncing everything between pastoral hills and post-apocalyptic wasteland.
One of the most surprising aspects of this album is that it does sound like Vainio and O'Malley jamming together.Both have become rather entrenched in the more esoteric world of musique concrete and experimental sounds, so hearing synthetic beats and overt guitar right from the start was comforting, as I am a fan of both of their most known projects.Amidst those touchstones lies a wealth of texture and sound, however, so their more abstract tendencies are never far behind.
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Prurient has taken a backseat in the past few years in favor of Dom Fernow's more recent high profile projects. The last major Prurient releases too were somewhat baffling: the EBM noise of Bermuda Drain and minimalist techno of Through the Window screamed out as an identity crisis compared to the harsh historical releases. This 7" is a tentative step back into the world of more abrasive, but is not quite the Prurient of the early days.
There is nary a kick drum or synth bell to be heard on these two songs, but they do retain that digital clarity of those recent works, and sits in nicely with his half of the JK Flesh collaboration from last year."Doors Closed in Secrecy" is the harshest of the pair, although does not seem that way at first.What sounds like a programmed bass synth sequence is perhaps the most musical element here, with shrill electronics bathed in reverb and indecipherable bits of voice popping in and out.
For the most part, all of the pieces of early Prurient are here, but cleaner and executed with more restraint.Later on, noise shrouded rhythmic patterns appear, and the feedback becomes aggressive enough to dissolve everything into a wall of noise that is not as far removed from his old work as I had expected.
"Washed Against The Rocks" is more ambient in comparison, initially hinging upon a simple repetitive synth pattern that could have been lifted from a Vatican Shadow song.Noise lurks beneath, occasionally flaring up in the form of distorted blasts or clattering rhythmic textures but not to the extent as on the other side.Overall it calls to mind the softer, more structured material from Pleasure Ground.
Given that Vatican Shadow and Christian Cosmos have become Fernow's projects of choice, I have wondered what the future of Prurient would be, because it seems like such a regression to just go back to his Macronympha worshipping ways.Washed Against the Rocks seems like the best direction to continue in, retaining the aggression and chaos of noise but with a more orderly and song oriented touch.
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