Podcast Episodes 721 & 722 are live!
Mid-November midweek special
Two new episodes are now available.
Episode 721 features Throwing Muses, Eros, claire rousay, Moin, Zachary Paul, Voice Actor and Squu, Leya, Venediktos Tempelboom, Cybotron, Robin Rimbaud and Michael Wells, Man or Astro-Man?, and Aisha Vaughan.
Episode 722 has James Blackshaw, FACS, Laibach, La Securite, Good Sad Happy Bad, Eramus Hall, Nonconnah, The Rollies, Jabu, Freckle, Evan Chapman, diane barbe, Tuxedomoon, and Mark McGuire.
Wine in Paris photo by Mathieu.
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Initially a work inspired by Cage's 100th birthday this year, this album began life as a soundtrack to his One11 film. However as those recordings progressed, Australian composer Lawrence English began to develop a wider body of pieces that were inspired, both directly and indirectly, by the legendary artist, and take on a life of their own.
Locrian has spent the better part of the last four years distinguishing themselves from the also-rans of the post-Sunn O))) drone scene, crafting their own distinct sound and identity amid many less engaging acts. While much of their recent work has been focused on the deconstruction of metal symbolism, paired with a more conventional rock bent, here the trio go back to their dissonant, abstract roots, with help from legendary audio and visual artist Christoph Heemann.
My life was never the same after hearing Fushitsusha for the first time. The second live album was a gargantuan asteroid of free rock headed straight for the center of my brain. The group has undergone many line-up changes and periods of inactivity but on this first album in about a decade, and the first since Yasushi Ozawa’s death in 2008, Keiji Haino is rejoined by Ikuro Takahashi on drums (Takahashi having previously filled the drum stool for Fushitsusha as well as other stalwarts of the Japanese psych scene like High Rise, Kousokuya, Aihiyo and LSD March) and by bassist Mitsuru Nasuno (a long-time collaborator with Otomo Yoshihide and former member of Ground Zero).
While 2010's excellent Endless Fall was a bit of a curve-ball, Scott Morgan has historically not been a man prone to surprises or grand gestures.  As a result, Sketches from New Brighton sounds almost exactly like I would expect a new Loscil album to sound.  There are certainly some minor evolutions and thematic changes, but Morgan is more or less covering very familiar territory once again (lush, pulsing, aquatic-sounding soundscapes).  Fortunately, I am quite fond of that territory.
Ebony Steel Band are a primarily eleven-person group of Trindadian and Caribbean musicians most well-known for paying tribute to other bands. Not to pay disservice to their original works, as they have produced Steel Away! (1976), Best of Steeldrums (1990), and Carnival (1998), but still, no one can deny their ability to breathe new life into classic songs. After their tribute to The Beatles with 2010's Popular Beatles Songs - Caribbean SteelDrums, director Ian Shirley challenged EBS to cover Kraftwerk, one of the most classic and enduring pioneers of electronic music in history. Their effort was a complete success.
It seems like any American city (or even large-ish town) has at least one local noise band. Perhaps it is the ubiquity of the Internet or a handful of Wolf Eyes and Merzbow albums that received some significant hype and distribution, but what was once a style that was baffling to most is on par with punk or hardcore as far as local representation goes. Manchester Bulge, hailing from Fargo, North Dakota, preceded this American noise band explosion (or sloppy outburst, depending on perspective) though, dating back to 2001. This collections captures a band at the forefront of what somehow managed to become a scene and makes for an excellent window into one town’s premiere noise project.
There are a number of great labels unearthing and breathing new life into forgotten treasures these days, but it is truly rare for anyone to match Dust-to-Digital when it comes to presentation and sheer comprehensiveness. Each major release feels like an event years in the making, certain to send at least one circle of obsessive music fans scavenging for additional extant releases from an eclectic array of previously unknown or obscure artists. This latest opus is an especially big hit with me, collecting a remastered trove of '50s East and Central African rumba recordings by South African/English musicologist Hugh Tracey. I had no doubt that these recordings would be unique and historically important, but I was legitimately blindsided by how incredibly fun these songs can be, often resembling a raucous, inebriated, and Latin-tinged street party where everyone knows all the words to every song and nearly everyone seems to have inexplicably brought along a kazoo.
New York based composer and pianist Kelly Moran has been quickly developing a body of work that rich and complex with not just piano and electronics, but also her exceptional and nuanced approach to production and sound design as well. The instrumentation of Optimist may seem basic: all nine songs feature piano (prepared and unprepared) and some additional synthesizer and electronics, but the finished product has so much more depth than it would seem. It comes together as a fully realized, gorgeously diverse series of compositions.
