01 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

The worlds of free jazz and harsh noise have always shared a lot of commonalities: both eschew the limitations of structure and melody for the sake of pure tone and texture, and both can either come across as structured, compelling chaos, or inane, boring noodling. Burning Tree have managed to straddle that line between jazz and noise as well as few other artists have, and with unrelenting brutality, on this first full length release that stands with the titans of both genres.

Utech

The two genres have always had a lot of overlap:the squall of Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and John Coltrane’s "Ascension" have often been cited by the likes of Merzbow and Hijokaidan as influences, both of whom have demonstrated jazz tendencies on their own recordings.But Burning Tree is pulled between those two poles unlike few others, save for Borbetomagus and the Nihilist Spasm Band.

Coming from the same European school of jazz that birthed the likes of Peter Brötzmann, this duo of Dag Erik Knedal Anderson on drums and Dag Stiberg on saxophone play with a fury and physicality that rivals that of his best work on Machine Gun or Nipples.Anderson’s drumming has the blast beat intensity of Napalm Death or even Agoraphobic Nosebleed, but with the variation and nuance of an accomplished percussionist.

At the same time, Stiberg's horn playing at times sounds nothing at all like the woodwind that it is, and instead starts to blur together like a wall of microphone feedback, such as on the breakneck paced "The Point."The shrillness is occasionally supplanted by a squeaking, exasperated sound, but the whole time it is propelled by a rhythm that sounds more like a thunderous roar than a collection of individual beats.

On "Divided," Stiberg's horn take on a nauseating, guttural quality like a slowly dying wildebeest, with Anderson's jackhammer like pounding coming together like some of John Zorn's best, heaviest work.The entire B side of the record is reserved for "No Return," a side-long piece that does not differ that much from the A side, except it is channeled into a single, non-stop composition.The squealing horns and machine gun drums continue, with the duo putting together noises that do not sound the slightest bit human.Most impressive is the breakneck pace that it follows, outpacing most grindcore records by a large margin with nary a pause or stop until the ending.

If there is a shortcoming of Lammergyer, it is its monochromatic nature.The entire album is simply a sax and drum duo, and thus while technically impressive, it can be a bit fatiguing at times.Which is no different than a good noise album, however:I love the Incapacitants, but I can only listen to them so much in one sitting before I have to switch to something else.However, the sheer force and brutality of this record, as well as its precarious balance between jazz and noise far outweigh this limitation, and actually just add to the physical intensity of listening to it.

samples:

• The Point
• Divided
• No Return

 

01 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

If Keith Rowe and Graham Lambkin haven't produced one of the most mind-bending records of 2013, they're at least high in the running. Making A shares its name with one of Cornelius Cardew's Schooltime Compositions. Written in 1967, these pieces were designed to help musicians and non-musicians develop their own methods of interpretation and music-making. They emphasize process over finished products and personal development over pretty results. Rowe and Lambkin's unusual recording emphasizes process too, but turns the spotlight on the listener. The album changes color and shape with the light. Sometimes improvised, sometimes structured; it constantly reflects its audience and hides its perpetrators. Few other records like it come to mind.

Erstwhile

For over forty years, on nearly every recording and at nearly every concert, Keith Rowe has played a guitar of some kind. He has spent much of his life wrestling with the instrument, pulling it apart, recreating it, and developing a personal technique for playing it, which he compares to painting. But on Making A the guitar is gone. Rowe is credited only with "contact mic/objects/field recordings"; Lambkin with "contact mic/objects/room." A more comprehensive list for both artists would include tape dispenser, paper, pencil, scissors, water faucet, plastic, and perhaps a few other common materials and utensils.

A good deal of the record consists of Keith and Graham using these objects to draw, color, or to otherwise undertake seemingly non-musical actions. They amplify the sound of crumpled paper and the stroke of a pencil, combine those with the sound of traffic outside a window, then cut to an extreme close-up of rippling adhesive and intense noise: a car engine, the sound of gas igniting on a stove, the roar of a train speeding through New York toward Poughkeepsie. Sounds repeat themselves, others distort and fizzle out, still others reappear at different volumes with different effects applied.

Acousmatic confusion abounds, but not just with regard to the sounds. A semblance of Rowe's gestural guitaring survives this guitar-less performance, but distinguishing his contributions from Graham's borders on the impossible. Few personal identifiers survive their time-bending, space-expanding edits. That's why Rowe ditching the guitar is significant, and why the connection to Cardew's "Making A" matters.

In a 2009 interview with Jon Eyles of All About Jazz, Keith is asked if he can look five years into the future and describe where he might be musically. Rowe replies: "Obviously no, but I have a kind of sense of wanting to have a kind of performance that is based on the live experience of being. I think too many performances are actually a bit like the live performance of the CD… I think I would like what I do to be the trace of a process. It is just there in that unique moment of looking, in the opportunity to see it, and then it is gone and you can never see it again."

In the absence of melody and a solid rhythm, without clear structural markers, on a record that barely even demands its audience's attention, the musicians all but disappear, along with the music. The thought of instruments goes out the window. We're left with the fading image of two men travelling, drawing, cutting, maybe pouring a drink of water. No message comes through these events; just a sense of place, the passing of time, and movement. A trace. Making A does for its audience what Cardew's Schooltime Compositions are meant to do for the performers: give them a chance to react and interpret on their own terms.

With so little in the way, thinking creatively about the music is that much easier. What does the "A" in Making A stand for? Couldn't anyone with some pots and pans make this music too? What are the musicians trying to say by making noise like this? Is it even music? Cardew can't tell you that; neither can Keith Rowe, nor Graham Lambkin. And neither can I.

samples:

• Over C
• Making A
• Wet B

 

01 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

There is something endearingly heroic about The Dead C, as they have been gleefully blurring the lines between inspired deconstructionist rock and messy, half-assed indulgence to widespread indifference for almost three decades.  Unsurprisingly, this latest release finds them obstinately splashing about in the same ambiguously muddied waters as ever.  I suspect these two fairly challenging long-form pieces are unlikely to win the trio any new fans, but they are absolutely certain to please the already indoctrinated, as they rank among the group's finest.

Ba Da Bing!

In their early days, Wire famously had a list of rules that defined their aesthetic, dictating that they always "stick to the point" and avoid such perils as rocking out, embracing Americanisms, or needlessly embellishing their songs in any way.  At this point in their career, I suspect The Dead C probably have an even more restrictive set of guidelines that likely includes such dictates as "no melodies, no structure, no consistent rhythm" and "never, ever seem like you are trying."  While I am being (somewhat) facetious, it is very hard to hear a song like "Armed" and not think that its genesis was anything other than "Hey, I've got a great idea for a new song: I'm going to stomp my distortion pedal and play a chord.  Then I am going to keep flogging that same goddamn chord relentlessly for the next 20 minutes with no apparent variation.  You guys in?"

While I do not think I am being too unfairly reductionist in that description, "Armed" still somehow works beautifully and avoids sounding like any of the "amplifier worship" bands (Sunn O))), etc.) that tread similar-sounding territory.  The secret seems to lie both in the details and in avoiding the expected trajectory, as guitarists Bruce Russell and Michael Morley imbue that droning chord with a great deal of simmering tension through layers of snarling wah-wah and distorted sizzle.  Drummer Robbie Yeats, for his part, alternates between clattering fills, silence, and an array of tumbling, lurching, and off-kilter martial-sounding beats.  The whole effect is quite impressive, resembling a constantly shifting smoldering wreckage of a song that never turns into anything more, yet never gets tiresome.

The second-half of the album, "Courage," arguably captures the band in "song" mode, as Morley initially mumbles and moans some half-asleep-sounding vocals over an electronic buzz, some tinkling piano, something resembling a beat, and some understated guitar abuse.  Gradually, however, Yeats' drumming gets more propulsive and the guitars get a bit harsher and the piece begins to resemble a perverse parody/homage of a motorik beat, albeit one with a drummer who has no intention of sticking to the script at all.  Then, around the half-way mark, all forward momentum halts and the piece gradually transforms into a fading, understated outro of slow-burning guitar noise that again resembles the gutted, ruined corpse of a rock song.

As far as Dead C albums go, Armed Courage is deceptively great: it initially seemed like two shambling, off-the-cuff jams to me, but the pieces all gradually fell into place after a few listens.  As inscrutable as these guys are, they definitely seem to be intuitively and inventively improvising against one another in a way that steers guitar noise into a realm that it is uniquely their own.  Notably, this is the first Dead C album where I have begun to appreciate the mad genius of Robbie Yeats' drumming, as his unpredictable transformations and derailments of even the simplest of beats keep these two songs  sounding like they could go barreling out of control at any moment.  That omnipresent sense of danger makes everything Morley and Russell play sound precarious and somewhat tense, which is no simple feat.  In anyone else's hands, an album like this would be crushingly boring: no melodic movement, no cathartic explosions–just 40 minutes of endlessly simmering guitar noise with seemingly random drums and no pay-off.  In The Dead C's hands, however, it is a refreshing and invigorating triumph of bloody-minded wrongness.

• Armed
• Courage (excerpt one)
• Courage (excerpt two)

 

 

01 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

Rashad Becker is a fairly revered and influential figure in experimental music circles due to his role as the resident mastering genius at Basic Channel's Dubplates studio.  That association is a bit deceptive here, as anyone expecting anything resembling dance music will be spectacularly wrong-footed by his debut release. Becker has taken abstract experimentalism into some very exotic, disorienting, and gloriously wrong territory.  I do not think I will hear a stronger or more unique noise (or utterly uncategorizable) release this year.

PAN

The most immediately striking aspect of Traditional Music is that I have absolutely no idea how Becker got the completely unhinged sounds that populate these eight pieces.  While there are a number of textures that seem like they potentially could have emerged from an abused and overprocessed modular synth, my best guess is that the album is almost entirely based on samples of field recordings that have been manipulated into unrecognizable oblivion.

While nominally divided into two suites, "Dances" and "Themes," the overall feel is of being inside a menacing, unhealthy, and lysergically warped rainforest that sometimes seems to be in the midst of a catastrophic earthquake or volcano.  That is to say: there is not a lot that could be construed as "music" per se (even by a purely notional species).  Rather, Becker crafts a sonic menagerie of impossibly vibrant, creepily metallic-sounding, and violently pitch-shifting animal and insect noises.  In fact, the rare non-animal noises that appear only serve to make Traditional Music even uglier, more visceral, and more disturbing, such as the clattering metal and horrible retching noises that embellish the crescendo of "Themes IV."

While willfully deranged, brutally processed abstract music is certainly nothing new, Becker's execution of it is quite peerless.  All of Rashad's disturbing sounds are delivered with pristine clarity and twine together to form an organically squirming and slithering tapestry of blurting and buzzing horror.  Everything seems completely deliberate and each horrible sound is allowed all the space it needs to make its full unpleasant impact.  Also, Becker never breaks his illusion with anything resembling a wrong or thematically inconsistent move, nor does he resort to using dense layering or "noise" to lend power to his mangled wildlife sounds.  Instead, all of Traditional Music's formidable menace is earned the hard way: though the meticulously interwoven interactions of just a few textures mastered for maximum presence.

It could easily be argued that this is a weirdly perfect album, as any of Traditional Music's apparent faults are entirely dependent on the perspective of the listener.  For example, anyone expecting anything resembling Basic Channel will probably find this absolutely unlistenable.  Also, even those amenable to challenging and dissonant experimental music may not like that these eight pieces all sound very similar to one another or that they do not follow any kind of dynamically satisfying compositional trajectory.  However, to critique this album for any of those reason is take issue with what Tradition Music is not, rather than what it is...and what it is is brilliant, visionary sound art.  There are few moments scattered among these eight pieces where the "music" resembles anything created by a human: it actually feels far more probable that these are actual field recordings from hell, someone's nightmares, or a very distant and  horrible planet than the product of some German guy's studio (even though I know better).  It might not be pleasant, but Becker has unquestionably crafted something truly otherworldly with no clear precedent that I am aware of.  That is a damn fine achievement indeed.

• Dances I
• Dances IV
• Themes IV

 

01 September 2013

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Albums and Singles

Pitre's latest offering is a fine companion piece to last year's stellar Feel Free, achieving a similar outcome through composition rather than computerized randomization.  Built upon Duane's now-characteristic pointillist plucking, shifting drone swells, and Oliver Barrett's swooping and sliding cello moans, Bridges delivers yet another swaying, languorous reverie that I could happily listen to in an endless loop.  It may not quite scale the heights of its predecessor, but that is more of a commentary on Feel Free's brilliance than it is upon Bridges' shortcomings.  In fact, in many ways, Bridges displays an impressive evolution.

Important

Bridges takes its name from Pitre's original plan for the album, which was to "bridge" traditional Eastern music with Western forms like medieval religious music and Modern Classical.  I am not sure if the project gradually evolved into something different along the way, but the influence of Western music is not especially apparent to me in the finished work, aside from the instrumentation used and Duane's willingness to get a bit dissonant.  That is not a complaint by any means, but the album's most significant traits seem quite indebted to Eastern drone, as Pitre eschews anything resembling a strong beginning or end and focuses much more on the harmonic interactions of sustained notes rather than on crafting any sort of graspable, discrete melody.

Much like its predecessor, Bridges is ostensibly divided into multiple parts, but is essentially just one long-form drone piece.  However, it can also be viewed as two separate (side-long) pieces for those who prefer their drone in 20-minute doses rather than 40-minute ones.  In addition to their structural similarities, Bridges shares a lot of common ground content-wise with Feel Free as well, in that it is essentially Feel Free Redux (sustained strings sliding and swelling above a drifting bed of plucks and drones), albeit with all of the randomness removed (and an emphasis on droning rather than on richly twinkling harmonics).

That creates an interesting predicament, as Feel Free's ingenious computer-generated bed of randomly generated harmonics was the primary reason why it was so wonderful and endlessly listenable.  Pitre gamely tries to replicate that element with his mandolin playing at various points during Bridges (with some success), but it is not nearly as hypnotically unpredictable and layered.  That is a shame, as Barrett's cello parts are wonderfully gnarled, visceral, and emotive–if  the underlying bed was nearly as strong as the string parts in the foreground, Bridges would handily eclipse Feel Free.  As it stands, it is a significantly deeper, darker, and more moving piece, but it lacks the sense of glittering infinity that its sister album possessed.

That said, Pitre has certainly proven himself to be reliably rewarding artist who is restlessly intent on getting even better.  In this particular instance, he seems to have evolved laterally rather than surging forward, but he appears to be closing in on his masterpiece regardless (which lies somewhere between Feel Free's twinkling richness and Bridges' earthier passion, I suspect).  In any case, this is yet another excellent Duane Pitre album.

• Excerpt One
• Excerpt Two
• Excerpt Three

 

26 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

With the constant resurgence of various genres co-opted by younger generations, many an inactive artist has returned to the fold to capitalize on their previous notoriety. The synth pop trend of a few years back has unsurprisingly brought with it the revival industrial and goth scenes (and all of their various permutations), much as it did three decades ago. However, the reappearance of Mike VanPortfleet’s Lycia has little to do with this, and more to do with pure synchronicity: Quiet Moments is made up of material recorded over the past seven years. As such, it manages to fit in nicely with their earlier work while still sounding like new roads being taken, and also appearing at the right time to capture some much deserved attention.

Handmade Birds

As a point of full disclosure, I personally missed out on most of the Projekt scene Lycia was associated with in the early to mid 1990s, as my tastes then were pretty much just rooted in the industrial and death rock subgenres exclusively.In those pre-WWW days and having little in the way of peers with similar taste, it mostly slipped by.However, going back and revisiting the era, Lycia's current material has stayed true to their earlier works, without sounding as dated as many of their peers do.

One thing that clearly has not changed is the overall bleak and dour mood to VanPortfleet's music, which manages to be lugubrious without being plodding or overly ponderous.It is slow and depressing, but never in a way that feels like it is trying too hard or forcing a mood for the sake of attention.Which is no easy feat on an album where most of the song titles reflect winter wastelands, and the closing triptych all contain the word "dead" in their names.

The front end of Quiet Moments is what harkens back most to their early days:the slow, funereal keyboards, reverb drenched digital drum machines, and the heavily processed guitar that has a distinct Robin Guthrie influence without sounding like any of his work.The opening title song exhibits all of these, alongside VanPortfleet's resigned, but not overly processed or dramatic vocals.The same elements lead in to "The Visitor," although at a much shorter length it comes together much quicker, throughout a hushed, fragile performance.

The middle portions lean more into ambient soundscape territory with a lower use of drums and vocals.The spacious and expansive "Greenland" is as cold and isolated as its namesake, with the double tracked vocals sounding more like a lost spirit than a second person in the mix."Grand Rapids" leads off with some combination of gorgeous electronics or guitar, conjuring an almost isolationist sounding piece that is largely beatless until the end, and is only slightly hampered by the overdramatic vibrato vocals.

The closing "Dead" trilogy is much more contemporaneous, with the stiff drum machine replaced with mangled electronic loops and sheets of static noise taking the place of the resonating synth pads.The guitar retains its characteristic sound throughout these, but in a very different context.Closer "The Soil is Dead" is perhaps the most drastically removed, with Tara Vanflower's vocals often coming across as disturbingly manic and wordless, but capturing a different, just as effective form of darkness.

The oddest moment is the uncharacteristically upbeat titled "Spring Trees," that, via its faster pace and lighter vocals, actually feels somewhat ethereal and not nearly as dreary as the ten songs that surround it.Ebullient it is not, but it does make for a brighter hued moment in an otherwise album of gray tones and frigid textures.

While even at its lightest moments there is little uplifting about Quiet Moments, but as an archetypical rainy (or snowy) day record, it works perfectly.It captures the mood and the vibe of that environment without coming across as stereotypical.Even though it stays within that certain feel, the duo never feels stuck, and instead examines all facets of that mood in ways that both recall their past but look toward a new, but still appropriately desolate, future.

samples:

• Greenland
• Spring Trees
• The Soil is Dead

 

26 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

The first side of this cassette leads off in a realm closer to noise than anything of a more musical approach: thin, flaky distortion obscures deep, bellowing tones that are not necessarily dissonant, but not inviting either. Through this a churning, distorted rhythmic passage sneaks to the surface, bringing with it a bit of melody, albeit barely perceptible amidst the abstraction that surrounds it.

Opal Tapes

The UK’s Rejections, a relatively new project, has a consistent undercurrent of subverting more conventional, beat oriented electronic material.Although on this album they have stretched that abstraction even further, with most of these sidelong pieces keeping away from any overt rhythms and instead sneaking them in below layers of noise or other detritus.

Throughout the first side, there is a constant sense of movement as the piece moves from part to part and segment to segment. Submerged swells clash with sustained, shimmering electronics and an almost marching band like rhythm all make appearances in the half hour work.At times textural and meditative, and other times made up of blasting, ugly harsh bits of noise, the piece never stays still, but there is a logical and composed flow from one moment to the next.

The flip side of the tape is a little more constant in its approach, and its simple, reverberated drum machine opener is a bit reminiscent of the recent Clones EP from the project, which stayed closer to the traditional signifiers of techno music.Even when the overt beat drops out, the rhythm continues via more abstract loops and layers, even when it finally devolves into actual noise it ends up coming back around to a more musical close via a slowly pulsing bass synth passage.

While I enjoyed the more minimal techno orientation of Clones, here I favor the less traditional, more collage-like first half that eschews the obvious rhythms for more insinuated ones.It is a wonderful example of how something can be messy and tactile, yet still have a well developed sense of rhythm and structure, no matter how hidden it may be.The more rhythmic second half is no slouch either, but stands out as less unique and powerful in comparison.

samples:

• A (Excerpt 1)
• A (Excerpt 2)
• B

 

25 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

As half of avant metal duo Menace Ruine, S. (or whatever permutation of that initial he uses) does not like to be confined to that style, and his S/V\R side project does the same thing with harsh noise and industrial rhythms. At times grating and abrasive, and other times structured and pensive, this tape nicely covers those two extremes while still sounding like a unified whole.

Union Finale

Split into two conceptual halves, the first part, "Le Chaos," is definitely the more noise oriented of the two sections."Vanités" immediately launches in with maxed out noise layers that grind with the intensity of an old Macronympha tape.What stands out, however, is a feeling of organization and structure, albeit subtle.The same holds true for "Suspecte":on the surface it is chaotic churning noise, but it has a sense of shape and order throughout, but never relenting until its dramatic, dead stop ending.

"Désordre" differs a bit in that comes across somewhat more disjointed, but there still order to be heard, even if it is a bit less overt amongst the sandpaper like layers of distortion."Anéanti" also opts to be a bit different ,beginning with some non-distorted electronic tweaking, but also hints at a deep, stuttering rhythm amongst the metallic ringing and massive pounding.

In some ways this is acts a teasing of the other half of the tape, "La Nuit," which scales back the noise dramatically and instead focuses on rudimentary electronic drumming and percussion."Contrition" begins the exact opposite as the other side, with a massive, echoing expanse and a monotone, heartbeat like thump that eventually becomes more complex, but rather than intense it comes across as more hollow and isolated.

The following "Désœuvrement" hinges on a noisy low end surge with thin and brittle drum machine rhythms atop.With that combination of basic rhythms with harsher electronics, I caught a bit of an early Esplendor Geometrico vibe, with a more ambient and less techno orientation.Closer "Blessé" drops the rhythms all together, leaving some grandiose synth pads that have a distinctly gothic sensibility to them, but carefully making sure to stay out of overwrought territories.

S/V\R definitely integrates some of the familiar tropes of noise, power electronics, and old school industrial into their sound, but it never fits perfectly into any specific classification.The dichotomy of sound and dynamics, clearly defined all the way to the split tape shell colors, makes for a powerful duality that I would be curious to hear more integrated together.

samples:

• Vanit√©s
• Contrition
• Bless√©

 

25 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

This project takes a different approach to field recordings in that it does not strive to capture a phenomenon that most will never experience, nor does it rely on something overly conceptual. Instead, it essentially acts as an audio postcard of the Cape Cod region, both the natural surroundings as well as the people and places. These recordings then form the foundation for artists such as Loscil and FourColor, amongst others, to create their own compositions from, which makes for a very impressive compilation.

Hear Cape Cod

The disc of field recordings, captured by Steve Wilkes, who also curated the set, does an admirable job at capturing the sound and surroundings of the Cape Cod area, such as the recordings of waves at the various beaches and ferries that move people about the area.Fragments of conversations picked up in local eateries and grocery stores have a distinctly different sense to them, and almost a voyeuristic one, an aspect many recordings of this nature lack.

I very much enjoyed the pieces that provided the most drastic juxtapositions, such as the sparse recordings of cicadas and the sound of wind turbines, because while they could not have been more different in their sources, both result in a similar sort of sustained drone that could just as easily be the result of a synthesizer or software patch.

The second disc of this compilation sees the recordings acting as the seeds for a number of minimalist composers who often work with the sounds of nature, but each maintaining their own distinctive approach.Both Marcus Fischer and Simon Scott employ the source recordings the most overtly, with Fischer especially working with the beach recordings and some ever so slight processing.His integration of guitar and other instrumentation builds upon the natural beauty of the recordings without ever intruding on it.Scott works more electronics atop the field recordings, slowly guiding them up until reaching a rather rich musical conclusion.

Both Loscil and FourColor go much further in their contributions, making the field recordings an even less prominent aspect of their compositions.Loscil throws together synth like swells and a rhythmic like feel that leads to a taut take on ambient, while keeping the field recordings as another instrumental element rather than the specific focus.FourColor uses the source material more, but processes them nearly beyond recognition, resulting in what is initially a stuttering, sputtering outburst of sound that eventually settles into an understated sort of rhythmic surge without any distinct pedigree.

The first disc on its own is a bit of an odd release since it captures what it seeks to very well (while I have not been to Cape Cod, I have been close enough to vouch for its authenticity), but it does not go for the exotic heights an artist like Chris Watson does.It does provide a different sort of feeling though, almost like a guided tour as opposed to an ethnographic study, and at that it excels at Wilkes' hand.The second disc, however, is where this compilation shines, as the eight artists who contribute do a splendid job at working the sounds of Massachusetts into their own distinct compositions.

samples:

• Bourne-Cicadas
• Signals.2: Marcus Fischer
• Signals.6: FourColor

 

25 August 2013

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Albums and Singles

Rephlex is almost definitely behind EDM (Electric Dance Music) A2 and B2, but they’re not owning up to it. Neither disc sports a label, neither comes with liner notes, and except for a few Jodey Kendrick aliases, most of the 13 featured artists are unrecognizable. Alain Kepler, Rob Kidley, and Trevor Dags could be anyone, but with electronic music as hyperactive and acid washed as this, the first anyone that comes to mind is Richard D. James.

Electric Dance Music

Anonymity cuts like a double edged sword, especially for IDM producers or anyone else in the general vicinity. It drummed up a good deal of attention for The Tuss and Steinvord, but the question of authorship can overshadow whether a record is any good or not. Unfortunately, A2 and B2 suffer that fate, if only a little. Nearly every song is exciting and memorable, and there’s plenty of diversity here. Artists like Rob Kidley and J.K. obviously have some bubblebath in their blood, but Kepler, Heidi Lord, and Trevor Dags pull both records though smears of ambience and clubby pastiches that break away from the braindance bill. The familiar throb of drum ‘n’ bass shows up too, followed by the quiet sizzle of micro-sculpted dance and the analog hum of droning waves. Not everything inspires dance, but the title feels appropriate nonetheless.

That variety makes it hard to believe that one person could be behind every song, but both discs play more like albums than compilations, and they flow into each other as if they were one album assembled by one hand. A2 begins with a solid beat and keeps it going for more than half the album. Abrupt samples and distorted fragments cut in and out of the mix, and multi-threaded melodies criss-cross each other in jumbled chunks, but always in service of a syncopated rhythm. The songs also stick close to a four and a half minute limit, leaving an impression just by their blur of their movement. Repeat plays help to solidify the impact.

In the last 12 minutes, the music mellows into a series of relatively low-key ambient shorts. That leads naturally into B2, which proceeds at a more relaxed pace. These songs rely less on glitches and more on instrumental color. A few are just electric sketches, others are longer, more hypnotic tracks, but they caress more than punch. The artists blend beat with atmosphere and toy with acoustic samples, and J.K. tosses a fragment of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue into the mix on a song called "Man Hunt 1"; I can almost hear him laughing behind it. By the time Heidi Lord kicks the second half of B2 into full gear, everything’s very cool, blue, and chilled out. The record is still playful, but it loses much of its dance-y flavor and drifts into more ambient, psychedelic territory. It ends in a much different place than where it began, but the shift is gradual enough to keep the records linked up.

Maybe old man A-F-X shows up somewhere in the middle, or maybe that’s what Rephlex wants you to believe. Either way, it’s a frustrating game. Whether or not he’s releasing music is less interesting than the music itself. Does Heidi Lord have another record out there somewhere? Has TX81Z—aggravatingly named after a Yamaha synthesizer—produced anything else as trippy as "Googol?" Is Jodey Kendrick secretly one of the best electronic producers out there and the sole man behind this series? For now, nobody knows.

samples:

• Rob Kidley, "Men Part 2" (EDM A2)
• +10, "covu" (EDM A2)
• Heidi Lord, "Heidi Kann Brauchen" (EDM B2)