09 September 2012

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Albums and Singles

On these ten original songs Monti renders the dramatic political history and culture of Italy into animal characters. Sounding passionate, sarcastic, unhinged, and ahead of her time, she uses the stinging words of Italian anti-Fascist writer and persecuted homosexual Aldo Braibant, framed in mysterious found sounds and synthesizer by Alvin Curran - here combining for the first time with Steve Lacy on soprano sax.

Unseen Worlds

Maria Monti acted in films such as Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite and Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 along with roles in television. Her musical exploits began in the 1950s in cabaret and by the 1970s she had become something of a dramatic avant-folk artist. ll Bestiario (The Bestiary) has some wild poetic lyrics which can be read in a PDF at the Unseen Worlds site. The track titles translate into such things as "The Peacock," "He Believes The Sheep To Be A Horse," and "The Snake in Love." At the climax of the album are two longer pieces, "The Hibernating" and "Air, Earth, Water and Fire," which seem to allude, as does the whole project, to the value of allowing nature in its many forms to flourish, and to show the corruption of the powerful. In part this stems from real attempts to link sexuality with the politically undesirable, as in the case of the prosecution and four year imprisonment of Braibant; a tool by which to embolden the old order and political right by demonstrating that Communism was corrupting Italian youth and families, and to split the left who—despite the waves of free love and rebellion which climaxed in 1968—were far from universally accepting of homosexuality. Many intellectuals such as Moravia, Eco, and Pasolini protested. Apparently, one of Braibant’s co-defendants was released earlier under the proviso that he live with his parents and only read books that were more than 100 years old.

It is unclear how Curran and Lacy came to be involved with ll Bestiario although both were living in Italy at the time. I like to imagine that someone had heard Lacy’s 1966 live album The Forest and The Zoo almost as much as I want to believe that Curran took inspiration of working with Monti into his own 1975 release Songs and Views of The Magnetic Garden. Maybe it was just that both were living in Italy at the time and were happy to collaborate with a well-known talent such as Monti. For this is not a mere dabble in music by an actress, Monti has released many other records and while neither Curran or Lacy is at their most challenging, the undercurrent sound and arrangements are subtle and intriguing. They have the good sense to allow Monti’s heartfelt and scornful voice to get full rein so that the overall sense is of a real labor of love, at times similar to Linda Perhacs’ Parallelograms, but at others a great deal more theatrical.

Guitarists Luca Balbo and Tony Ackerman also feature, along with Roberto Laneri on baritone sax. There is insane cabaret, weird and lovely psychedelic folk, and minimalist avant-expressionism aplenty on this past and future rarity. Il Bestiario was released on the Italian Ri-Fi label in 1974 and this reissue is limited to 500 copies.

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09 September 2012

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Albums and Singles

This is one of the latest in Mode Records long-running and expansive John Cage series and is one of a myriad of releases that are coinciding with his 100th birthday. The three pieces are all from the same late period in Cage’s composing career (indeed Thirteen is his last ever composition) and reflect an artist that was continuing to challenge himself, the musicians he worked with and listeners with new ideas on music and listening. The ensemble Essential Music took up this challenge and have created a stunning set of interpretations of these underrated pieces.

 

Mode Records

For the uninitiated, the Number Pieces all follow a general formula; in brief, an ensemble whose size matches the number in the title of the piece follows the brief but quite prescriptive (for Cage anyway!) instructions which usually entail the use of exact times down to at least the second. Most, if not all, the renditions of these Number Pieces end up sounding very similar but Essential Music do their best to create innovative and exciting versions of the works (probably because these recordings are all from 1994, not long after all these pieces were composed). For example, Five allows the performer to use any instrument so Essential Music look outside their usual armory of gear to the humble glass bottle. Although the idea was initially met with skepticism by Cage, it turns out that the group’s decision to perform Five by blowing into bottles that corresponded to the particular pitches specified in the score turned out to be a simple but highly effective idea. The distinctive tonal palette of glass bottles gives this particular rendition a unique sound (something close to alien flutes) and the sense of play that is appropriate to Cage’s work in general.

Picking up their regular instruments, Essential Music follow the more traditional route for the remaining two pieces. For both Seven and Thirteen, Cage specifies the type of instrumentation that would be fairly common in smaller ensembles along with varying emphasis on what each instrument is allowed to do. In Seven, the woodwind and percussion are very restricted whereas the strings and piano are given more freedom so Essential Music have created a staid, beautiful piece where the strings move in and out of consonance with each other and the piano.

The final piece, Thirteen, takes up the bulk of the disc at 30 minutes. Here, Cage’s directions state that long notes must be played quietly but short notes can be of any dynamic. As expected, a low, quiet hum creates the foundation of the piece as louder, almost hysterical, stabs of strings, piano and percussion leap out like electric shocks. The piece drifts into the kind of places György Ligeti might venture, though probably not by design (I wonder if Essential Music had been working on any Ligeti at the time as the influence is quite strong in places). What is truly striking here is that this is music that is governed mostly by a stopwatch but feels to ebb and flow entirely naturally, as if plucked from the ether.

While these pieces are deceptively simple in their instructions, even if generally quite specific for Cage, they do highlight the shortcuts in thinking that can happen when a musician is faced with such scores. Essential Music manage to perform with the spirit in which Cage intended and in the case of Five, in a way which he had not. This is a good example of what I believe Cage always wanted to achieve, a way to foster creativity without sacrificing the discipline of the performing artist.

samples:

• Five
• Seven
• Thirteen

 

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09 September 2012

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Albums and Singles

These three albums document a historical tour of Japan by John Cage in 1962. Accompanied by David Tudor, they join a number of similarly minded Japanese composers and artists in presenting a fascinating program of Cage’s own music and compositions along with Japanese and other international composers. The result is not so much a culture clash as an allying of forces against tradition. Yet, it seems a little cynical to me to promote these releases as John Cage releases when in fact they offer up a wealth of non-Cage compositions and performances (Tudor seems to be more central to the tour than Cage even!). Be that as it may, these are a powerful collection of recordings of an almost mythic tour.

EM Records / Omega Point

Shock Vol. 1 opens with Toru Takemitsu’s Corona for Pianists, which is very much indebted to Cage’s own indeterminate pieces for piano. Here Tudor performs with Yuji Takahashi, both pianists using extended technique to wrestle sounds from the piano that are outside the usual realm of the pianist. While the results are not as ear-opening as something like the prepared piano or even something like Charlemagne Palestine’s Strumming Music, Takemitsu’s piece at least demonstrates how the ideas of the New York school were not confined to the usual list of experimental composers in the West. In fact, the way that Corona for Pianists stealthily leads into the following piece, Christian Wolff’s Duo for Pianist & Violinist highlights that these global connections were stronger than expected based on my usual reading of contemporary composition (for example Alex Ross’ fantastic book The Rest is Noise still takes a largely western perspective on what was far from just a western phenomenon).

The first Cage piece in the Shock series comes in the form of Variations II, performed here by Tudor and Cage himself. Other recordings of this piece have veered towards the raucous but here the spaces between the sounds predict Cage’s work in later years, particularly those of some of his Number Pieces (see here for a review of The Number Pieces 6). An occasional cough, the hiss of the recording tape and the sound of the performers shuffling around on the stage are as important here as the brutal piano and electronic amplification. The same constant noise found on some other recordings pales in comparison to this masterful use of punctuated activity.

samples:

• Takemitsu - Corona for Pianists
• Wolff - Duo for Pianist & Violinist
• Cage - Variations II

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstück X is the first piece on Shock Vol. 2, a piece initially dedicated to and meant to be performed by Tudor in 1961. Beaten to the premiere by a week by Frederic Rzewski in Palermo. The piece sees Stockhausen’s use of serialism knocked down and re-imagined in a complex, difficult way. It sounds almost like some of Cecil Taylor’s free jazz experiments but with a heavier, cloying sound. While I admire Stockhausen’s electronic works (and his incredibly ambitious ideas like the Helicopter String Quartet from the Licht series of operas), his works for piano have never excited me in the same way. As such, presenting Klavierstück X in the middle of a program of far more interesting piano works only serves to highlights the slightly stifling nature of Stockhausen’s piece; too many parameters and too many instructions that can only hem in a pianist rather than allow them the room to develop.

The rest of Vol. 2 is given over to Cage’s 26'55.988" for 2 Pianists & A String Player. The piece is a combination of two separate works, one for two pianists and another for a string player in which Cage specifies not only preparations for the piano but, in typical Cage style, an undefined X factor which is left to the performers. In the minds of skilled pianists like Tudor and Toshi Ichiyanagi, the piano part of this piece is bubbling with energy (especially in contrast to the Stockhausen piece preceding it). Violinist Kenji Kobayashi takes on the string player’s role but it is the addition of Yoko Ono on vocals that takes this piece to unexpected places. Her time in America engaging with Ichiyanagi in the Fluxus group translates well into her performance and it certainly seems quite left of center, even for Cage. Her sexualized panting is not something I would readily associate with the prepared piano! It is worth noting that at this time, her marriage to Ichiyanagi had fallen apart, perhaps adding a note of tension to this performance (and indeed the Japanese tour as she acted as Cage and Tudor’s interpreter).

samples:

• Stockhausen - Klavierst√ºck X
• Cage - 26'55.988" for 2 Pianists & a String Player

Based on the lighthearted atmosphere emanating from the audience, tension is not something that could be ascribed to the performance of 0’00" which is included on Shock Vol. 3. While the notorious 4’33" was intended to focus the listener on the ambient and incidental sounds around them, its "sequel" instead focuses the listener on the particular non-musical actions of an individual. Described by Cage as:

"…nothing but the continuation of one’s daily work, whatever it is, done with contact microphones, without any notion of concert or theater or the public, but simply continuing one’s daily work, now coming out through loudspeakers. What the piece tries to say is that everything we do is music, or can become music through the use of microphones,"

it is easy to see this piece as being one of the clearest examples of the Cagean philosophy of music. It is also fascinating to consider that performances of 0’00" by necessity have a visual (if not theatrical) element to them but there is no description in the liner notes as to what Cage was doing on stage during this performance. Was he writing music on stage? Organizing his diary? The only indication is a single photo of him lighting his pipe but that could not explain the 18 minute duration of the piece nor the odd bits of laughter from the audience. Instead, we are left only with the music of his actions, divorced from the performance itself.

The rest of this final disc is given back over to the piano with Michael von Biel’s Composition II for 2 Pianos and Ichiyanagi’s Music for Piano #7. Both composers have strong links to Fluxus and both pieces highlight different aspects of the movement. von Biel’s piece is almost percussive as the pianists pounce on the keys sporadically with the inside of the pianos being scraped and caressed from time to time. There is little of the tongue-in-cheek conceptual ideas that I would normally associate with Fluxus (such as La Monte Young’s contemporaneous scores that involved releasing a butterfly into the music hall or feeding a piano with hay) but the deliberate undoing of any logical or traditional musical structure is wonderful. On the other hand, Ichiyanagi takes the oddball madness of Fluxus and runs with it to equally great effect. Music boxes, violent piano stabs and random tape recordings come together to create a sonic circus. Together, the three pieces on Shock Vol. 3 carry the most power as they still have the capacity to inspire awe in the average listener even in this age of overexposure to sound art, noise and improvisation.

samples:

• Cage - 0'00"
• von Biel - Composition II for 2 Pianos
• Ichiyanagi - Music for Piano #7

 

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05 September 2012

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Albums and Singles

Bloom is the first in a series of three releases by the collective known as Fovea Hex. Quiet and moving, this is a very promising first chapter by a group that contains some of ambient and experimental music’s most golden children backing up some equally golden voices. 

Die Stadt

Fovea Hex sees the likes of Brain and Roger Eno team up with Cloadagh Simonds (most famous for her work with Thin Lizzy and Mike Oldfield) and Carter Burwell (famous for soundtracking pretty much all of the Coen brothers’ works) to make some beautiful songs that touch on traditional, ambient and experimental music. As well as playing on one of the tracks, The Hafler Trio’s Andrew McKenzie has performed his production magic on each of the tracks. His influence is apparent but not overpowering. Simonds is the focus of the group, these are her songs.

Simonds’ lyrics are powerful, especially because of her delivery. On“That River” she conjures up images of a house that morphs all of asudden into this beautiful description of a river: “She swerves asapphire soul over the land.” Her singing is wrought with emotion, hervoice blends a few traditional styles of singing, most prominentlyIreland’s sean nós singing. I found that the other vocalists and musicians were all sympathetic to this style (half of the members of Fovea Hex have a solid traditional Irish music background) which means that the songs don’t end up sounding like a hodgepodge of new age commercial rubbish like the demon queen Enya.

As expected by the line up, the music is all soundscapes and ambience. Despite the mention of fretless bass and zither in the liner notes, the opening track “Don’t these windows open?” seems to consist entirely of disembodied voices with Simonds dancing lyrically over them. The entire record makes great use of sound as a three dimensional phenomenon. By walking around the room the sounds take on different characters. This is the subtle McKenzie effect I referred to above, it’s a trademark Hafler Trio technique but Fovea Hex does not sound like the Hafler Trio. Fovea Hex is more reminiscent of Coil’s work in their Solstice and Equinox series.

With some editions of the EP there is a bonus disc of reworkings by Andrew McKenzie. “The Explanation” is a single track of abstracted drones and utterances from Bloom. It gels together well, I wasn’t sure (considering how strong I thought the original songs were) that such a CD would work but McKenzie dissolved any doubts I had. This disc along with the main EP makes for a very fine piece of work. Bloom marks the beginning of the Neither Speak nor Remain Silent trilogy but if the quality keeps up I hope Fovea Hex keep going beyond this.

samples:

• We Sleep You Bloom
• That River
• The Explanation

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05 September 2012

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Albums and Singles

The third release from Canada’s Tangiers is the kind of recordtailor-made for vinyl. A thick shroud of cigarette smoke and lo-ficackle emanates from the records twelve tracks here. My sense is that thelabel “garage-rock” has been slapped all over it, but that doesn’tentirely get it.

French Kiss Records

The classicism here recalls plenty of scruffy looking bands of yore:the modish bent of The Jam, the persistent hooks of Hoboken pop bandsThe Bongos and The Feelies, and the cassette tape hiss of Guided byVoices (indeed, former GbV drummer Jon McCann pounds the skins here).While Tangiers hardly breaks new sonic ground, the result of The FamilyMyth is a record that is punchy and upbeat without sacrificing theband’s gruff charm.

On “A Hundred Million Feathers’ Weight,” JoshReichmann’s slurred vocals line up nicely with his treble-drenchedguitar and the simple keyboards of Shelton Deverell. “Dragging theHarbour” follows and manages to recall spirit of ’77-era Buzzcocksbetter than even the Buzzcocks can managethese days. If there is acomplaint to be lobbed at The Family Myth, it’s that there is littleallowing the tracks to stand apart from each other. The songwriting istight as an unopened lid, but my sense is that Tangiers may have yet towrite their best batch of songs.

We get a small hint of what else theband can do when they write the best Echo and the Bunneymen song theynever wrote on “Your Pristine Hands.” The song percolates on ahigh wire guitar part and understated keyboard fills. McCann meanwhileis all ride cymbals on this one, a tactic that would have cluttered upother songs but which works surprisingly well here. I’m sure hoards arebanging down the door to call this stuff “garage rock” but, like Isaid, that doesn’t quite get it. Their sound is a bit too intelligentand restrained.

Tangiers may drink at the same bar as The Strokes andthe Mooney Suzuki, but I get the sense they're more inclined to show upfor quiz night then happy hour.

samples:

• That Russian Bastard
• Dragging the Harbour
• Your Pristine Hands

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03 September 2012

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Albums and Singles

Laetitia Sadier is one of the most distinctive voices in all of popular music. Two years after The Trip, her first album under her own name, and a deliberate step away from Stereolab, comes Silencio. With Moog, oscillators, krautrock and bossa nova rhythms, Tim Gane on guitar, and Sadier's confident, alluring voice, this is familiar and beloved territory.

Drag City

Silencio is the closest thing to a new Stereolab record. Not that Sadier has abandoned the looser structures which worked well for The Trip; wherein she expressed some of her feelings about the death of her sister. Indeed, she returns to that loss on the heartfelt and ethereal "Silent Spot" However, the aforementioned elements, along with the pacing of certain of these new tracks, as well as the setting of socialist economic and political analysis against light, hypnotic, retro-futurist beats is a good reminder of Stereolab's persuasive guile.

"The Rules of The Game" starts the record slowly, as if depicting someone gradually waking in a lonely but familiar apartment. Yet there is a hint of menace which is made absolutely clear with the lines: "The ruling class neglects again responsibility over indulged children/Drawn to cruel games, pointless pleasures, impulsive reflexes–a group of assassins." This theme is similar to the roots of the heartless, seething, psychotic rage of the bullying proto-fascist in Robert Musil's 1906 novel Young Torless and, probably, also takes inspiration from Jean Renoir's classic 1939 movie La Règle Du Jeu. It also speeds up in a way that will please Stereolab fans.

By contrast, the hints at sexual politics in "Lightning Thunderbolt" come across as mere playful jabs. The uptempo examination of The Body Economic that is "Auscultation to the Nation" is, of course, jangly and light, as Sadier lashes the G20 and the "too big to fail" houses of international finance. The title also has me wishing for a future collaboration with Helen Gillet, who often performs live with cello and stethoscope. That tool of medical examination is one of several elements which show the core theme of this album: the means by which to reveal inner or hidden truth.

There are some clues and perhaps some red herrings, but am reminded that in Lynch's Mulholland Drive the Club Silencio was the place where trickery was openly acknowledged, even as it continued to be perpetrated. Similarly, the final track has Sadier in a French church—her voice double-tracked whispering in English and speaking in French with a layer of reverb—inviting us to enjoy the truth by listening to the silence. Of course, as with Cage's "4'33"" the remainder of the track is far from silent. I remember that Stereolab had a marvelous track called "John Cage Bubblegum".

It is common for people to claim—of voices they love—that they would be happy to hear so-and-so sing the phone book. Her music may now be less of a seamless, stylized, vision of the future set in a golden age of design, fashion, and travel, and I do not find her political lyrics to be at all dull, but Laetitia Sadier's voice still meets the "phone book" standard.

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03 September 2012

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Albums and Singles

Lescalleet has been expertly mangling old and decrepit electronics for years, but the past few months have been especially productive with these two high profile releases and a recent tour. His work has consistently inhabited that gray world between noise and avant garde electronics, placed somewhere between harsh brutality and beard-stroking experimentalism. These new works, both solo and with Aaron Dilloway, continue this, making serious art with some occasionally not so serious undercurrents.

Erstwhile Records/PAN

The double disc Songs About Nothing is clearly inspired by Big Black's notorious Songs About Fucking, from the title to the artwork, to even some of the track titles and samples used.Titles are not so subtle references to that classic album ("The Beauty of Independent Music", "Escargot", etc,), and he even works it in to some of the source material.The former begins with a microscopic opening sample of "The Power of Independent Trucking" before engaging in a pile of shrill feedback and ugly noise.The complicated drones and layers could actually be rather beautiful, if not so painfully skewed towards the higher end frequencies.

Even more overtly, "The Power of Pussy" takes the opening amp hum and feedback from "Kitty Empire" and stretches it out to infinity, eventually melding with another pastiche of unrecognizable music before opening the gates of Hell."The Loop" is just that:an erratic loop mixed with field recordings and mangled tape noise that is simultaneously subtle, creepy, and then humorous, with what sounds like a kid yelling "good evening, motherfucker!" from somewhere near by at the piece's end.

"Beauty is a Bowtie (HTDW)" mostly stays away from the world of noise entirely, instead constructing a deep, muddy ambience with heavily treated fragments of voice occasionally poking through."Escargot" seems to bring in a bit of that Albini guitar scrape, but it eventually becomes an expansive, though low-end rumbling drone.Disc one closer "In Through The Out Door and Another Whore" mixes the worlds of digital and analog noise in a stuttering and fragmented mess before ending on a note of pure decay.

While the first disc was made up of a bunch of short pieces, the second one, Road Test, has just one:the 43 minute "The Future Belongs to No One."This closely mimics Lescalleet's recent live work, via tapes of cars, crowds, and industrial moans mixed together with electronic treatments.Compared to the ADHD laden first disc, there is a slow, deliberate sense of composition here.Staying on the more restrained end of chaos, stuttering elements of chopped and screwed musical samples pop up here and there, culminating in a slowly tempo-increasing drone that eventually reveals itself to be the chorus of Depeche Mode's "It's No Good" before collapsing to end the disc.

samples:

• The Beauty of Independent Music
• Beauty Is A Bowtie (HTDW)
• The Power of Pussy

The Lescalleet/Dilloway collaborative LP has less of that sense of fun about it, but it is by no means a dour, pretentious work.While both artists are known for (and employ here) working with cassettes, it is instead their combined use of analog synths that define the two side-long pieces here.

"Shattered Capsules" is all slow, phasing analog waves mingling with one another.Stretched and effected tape sounds pop up here and there, but it is the dying pulses of the synths that command focus for the first half.The second is mostly textural analog creaks and groans, resembling nothing in particular other than captivating sound, closing on a shrill and somewhat unpleasant chirpy analog burst.

The other side of the record, "Burning Nest," goes more for the noise rather than the experiments.Opening with puffs of white noise, it pretty soon goes full bore into a wall of noise.It is not overly harsh or painful though, and instead has that cold, detached feeling of MB's earliest work, without the lo-fi murkiness or overextended reverb.That wall of noise disintegrates throughout the track, eventually replaced by creepy, Psycho-score like tape loops and overdriven loops.

There is a distinctly more serious feel to Grapes and Snakes, and a darker one in comparison to Songs About Nothing, and its not necessarily better or worse, just different.If anything, it exemplifies Lescalleet's flexibility as an artist and composer, going from almost jovial chaos and nuanced structure on the former, and serious, slow burning electronics and harsh noise on the latter.Aaron Dilloway's contribution is not to be ignored either:he has been continually refining and retooling his approach from harsh noise maven into a more refined composer, without losing his sense of experimentation.

Either alone or in this case with Dilloway, Lescalleet has not been a slouch before, but is thriving this year from his live shows and these two high profile releases.While his work might not be for everyone, made abundantly clear with his penchant for tinnitus inducing swells of noise, his work can not be simply pigeon-holed as noise or experimental, unlike a lot of one-dimensional artists working with similar approaches to sound art.

samples:

• Shattered Capsules
• Burning Nest

 

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03 September 2012

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Albums and Singles

Like many bands, Dreamscape came about as an antecedent to the oblique, often challenging pop of The Cure and The Smiths, and tried to make a name in the then-nascent shoegaze scene. With only one single and one 12" EP in their discography, they have been barely a historical footnote, if that. This disc compiles that EP, an unreleased second EP, and a single incomplete track. Looking back, their sound may not be entirely unique, but it makes for a great combination, and is performed with such earnestness and passion that transcends time and labels.

Kranky

Dreamscape was the trio of Scott Purnell, Jamie Gingell (both of whom were later members of Secret Shine) and Rebecca Rawlings on vocals.The first four songs here make up the unreleased Greater Than God EP from 1993, followed by the released Cradle EP (1992), and one demo, the only surviving track from their final sessions.Oddly enough the "Blackflower" 7" referenced in the liner notes does not appear here, potentially for legal reasons, since the other material here was recorded for the La-Di-Da label specifically.

Probably the clearest parallel to draw would be, at least superficially, the Cocteau Twins.This is largely due to the chiming guitars and very obvious drum machine (for Dreamscape, a then-contemporary Alesis SR-16), and use of ethereal female vocals.However, the material for the unreleased Greater Than God EP lacks the excessive reverb in the production, and Rawlings' vocals are not only clear, they are actually understandable, so the connection is tenuous at best."Separate Sense" and "Finally Through" hinge largely on the stiff, unnatural sounding drums, the latter especially focusing on the rhythm track.The former mixes up the dynamics more, balancing quiet, vocal heavy passages with rich, soaring instrumental ones.

The Cradle tracks employ a bit more processing and effects, but in a tasteful and restrained manner."Nine Times to Die" is where the reverb takes more of the focus, enshrouding synth strings and a simple metronomic beat leading to a song that just leans a bit too far into repetition.The longer "Dreamsleep Eternal" does this the right way, mixing the stiff beats and beautiful vocals with dense, complex layers of guitar and keyboards."No More But Thought," the unfinished demo, sadly shows what could have been:starting with the drums right from "Just Like Honey," the final track heads into more aggressive territories, with faster tempo and heavier distortion on the guitar.The sound overall is rawer and harsher, and not due to the condition of the original tapes (there are a few obvious skips and pops to be heard, but nothing problematic), but a different edge the band was working on.Sadly, this song was never finished, nor have any of these other pieces from these sessions survived.

Dreamscape may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time:the early 1990s in which they were active was a fertile time for the UK alternative scene, and surely many really good bands were lost in the shuffle, spurned for the sake of groups with more style than substance.Dreamscape would not have attained the same level of critical acclaim that My Bloody Valentine or the like did if people had been more aware of them, these recordings are certainly a lot better than many of their contemporaries.The delicate vocals, rich guitars and stiff drum machines are certainly of the era, but they have aged quite well.Hopefully this wider release will at least bring attention to a forgotten band, and with the climate towards '90s alternative nostalgia and shoegaze revivalism, it is perched to do so quite well.

samples:

• Separate Sense
• Nine Times To Die
• No More But Thought

 

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03 September 2012

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On first blush, it's tempting to characterize Ascent as, for all intents, a brand new Comets on Fire record, or more specifically, as Ben Chasny fronting a Comets jam session. All the Comets guys are backing Chasny here, and the album was recorded live in the studio, like a true collaborative effort. But on further listening, it becomes clear that Ascent is Chasny's baby.

Drag City

Ascent has a spontaneous, organic quality that reminds me of some of the best live rock albums of decades past—Live Rust, Europe '72, and so forth. There's an ebb and flow to the sequencing that is key to its enjoyability, each track flowing into the next with common lyrical threads. Still, this is far from a Comets reunion: Chasny penned all the music and words himself (save for "Even If You Knew," which goes back roughly a decade to his membership in the Comets line-up). Chasny also takes care of all the lead guitar playing, while the backing instrumentation provides a foundation for him to unhinge and explore musically. (At least half of these tunes simply involve Comets setting up a groove while Chasny lays solo after blistering solo over the top, like an improvised live performance.) Opener "Waswasa" sets the tone early: it is both Ascent's heaviest song, nearly Sabbath-ian in its muscle, and its most propulsive. It doesn't quite unhinge into a sprawling, oscillating wash of sound like Comets' Field Recordings from the Sun, but I get the sense this is by design: less pure chaos, more musical variance, and flat-out better songs.

Musically, the lion's share of Ascent is the antithesis of last year's pastoral, mostly acoustic Asleep on the Floodplain, which is to say, psych guitar heaven—a glorious head trip through Chasny's fiery, unhinged playing. Two of the best songs are actually electric reconfigurations of Six Organs songs that appeared on a couple of Chasny's Holy Mountain records nearly a decade ago, which he has played live in various configurations over the years. "One Thousand Birds" originally closed 2002's Dark Noontide as an Eastern-tinged folk song, complete with its own face-melting guitar solo. On Ascent, the acoustic guitar riff at the song's core is picked up by a bass guitar, its tempo slowed; Chasny's soloing is more patient than in his youth, less a pistol duel than a pummeling 12 rounds in the ring. The real stunner, though, is "Close to the Sky," from 2003's Compathía, which shifts from pure acoustic to full-on psych guitar freakout, with Chasny meditatively intoning, "I never knew anything could exist without you," before his playing rockets into the stratosphere for a breathless five minutes of bliss.

Themes of outer space run through the album lyrically: every song mentions a variance of Earth, sky, sun, wind, dust, storms, blackness, deep space, or the void. Beneath the space analogies, Ascent seems to meditate frequently on loss or death, Chasny's voice passing through filters, reverb and echo, as if beamed in from Jupiter. There is one exception where Chasny and his backing band flip off their amplifiers: "Your Ghost" is his most yearning tune in some years, and one of his most straightforward musically. Chasny's acoustic picking is unadorned, less complex and Eastern-tinged than most anything from Asleep on the Floodplain, and leaves plenty of space for his words to make a gut-punch impression: "I was your voice, I was your light, I was your ghost," he reflects plaintively, repeating varinces on the phrase a few times, building its impact. Ultimately, "Your Ghost" is a three-minute reprieve before the fuzzed-out baseline of "Even If You Knew" charges onto the scene, and just like that, Ascent reverts back to distorted rock 'n' roll bliss.

Samples:

• Close to the Sky
• They Called You Near
• Your Ghost

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02 September 2012

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Albums and Singles

Holy Other has been more or less in constant rotation for me since 2010's perfect We Over single, which makes it kind of surprising that the mysterious Manchester producer is just now getting around to releasing an actual full-length album.  I was a little worried that his very narrow aesthetic (drugged, deteriorated, slow-motion sex music?) would make a longer release drag a bit, but my fears were mostly unfounded. While I do not think the comparatively dark and minimal Held quite hits the heights of some of Holy Other's categorically stellar earlier work, it is still pretty damn good and likely to play an indirect role in many pregnancies.

Tri-Angle

Holy Other, along with Balam Acab, has always been one of the most compelling and representative examples of the "Tri-Angle Records aesthetic" (despite their best attempts to diversify): melancholy downtempo electronica with a healthy predilection towards both innovation and hookiness.  Holy Other stands a bit apart though, finding a sexy and sensuous niche a bit more abstract than intermittently excellent label mate How to Dress Well, who veers much closer to "song" territory and actually has lyrics and choruses.  Despite eschewing all such "pop" trappings, Holy Other's vision has always been a surprisingly catchy one: achingly slow, minimal beats beneath thickly throbbing synths and cut-up R&B vocal snatches.  While that is admittedly a fairly trendy thing to be doing right now, Holy Other is large part of the reason that the trend exists in the first place and he executes it much, much better than most (or perhaps he is simply one of the most vicious self-editors around, which would explain his trickling output).

Held does not take many liberties with Holy Other's very successful formula, but it still take more than I would have expected.  In general, it is a bit more restrained and meditative than its predecessor, the With U EP (which was a "break-up album" of sorts).  Part of that may be due to his recent fascination with Gregorian chants (there is a curiously somber, sacred feel to some passages), but I suspect it is more attributable to both an evolution towards subtlety and the demands of sustaining a mood for 35 minutes rather than just writing a killer single or two.  There are some killer singles to be found, of course, as the languorously swelling "W(here)" and the ghostly coda of "U Now" are appropriately infectious, but the emphasis seems to have been much more on creating a brooding and sensuous whole rather than a collection of "hits."

Uncharacteristically, this is one of the rare times where I actually prefer catchy singles to depth and maturity, but only a little–I would unhesitatingly steer anybody unfamiliar Holy Other towards With U over this (unless they are resourceful enough to track down the out-of-print We Over 7").  That is not to say that Held is a disappointment–it is not.  Far from it.  It admittedly lacks some of the immediacy of its predecessors, but there is not weak song in the bunch and Holy Other is at the top of his game with his vocal sample manipulations ("Nothing Here" being pretty much a clinic on how to use cut-up and pitch-shifted vocals movingly).  Of course, addressing the details and subtle changes in style misses the elephant in the room here: Held contains nine solid new songs by a consistently excellent and distinctive artist that had previously only formally released six songs to date.  For me, that constitutes a legitimate event and it was worth the wait.

Samples:

• (W)here
• U Now
• Held

 

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