23 January 2012

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Albums and Singles

In their third collaboration, Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto go for a more conceptual approach: Sakamoto recorded 24 piano improvisations to open concerts during a Japanese tour, each within a different key. These 24 pieces were then handed over to Fennesz, who added his touch to them. The result is a compelling, if sprawling, work of gentle improvisation.

Touch

The 24 pieces, and roughly 2 hours of music, follow similar blueprints:Sakamoto’s piano playing usually appears unmasked, or only slightly processed, up front, while Fennesz adds additional layers of guitar, electronics, or further abstractions of the piano.Like 2007's Cendre, the piano is the focus, although here that seems even more so.

This does vary somewhat throughout the individual tracks, however."0318" is clear piano notes creating ripples in a shimmering pool of sound initially, but as the piece evolves, the more abstract electronic instrumentation takes hold.Dissonant sounds, including the unmistakable buzz of a guitar cable, vie for attention on "0328," even if the piano often wins out.

While the piano tracks tend to be untreated, there are moments where digital processing commands even more attention.On "0319" and "0409," Fennesz transforms the piano sounds drastically, reshaping it into a thin, digital voice on the former and an almost xylophone like resonance on the latter.The result is more memorable and distinct tracks, and I personally wish there would have been a bit more of this strategy employed.

Fennesz's penchant for tangible atmospheres shows on "0320," which has all of the trappings of a late-summer lakeside sunset, a mood he is unparalleled at creating.He also reiterates a bit of his glitch-tinged past on "0325" and "0401," where the piano is enshrouded by noticeable, but tasteful layers of sonic grime.

I found myself actually drawn more towards the primarily acoustic pieces that are here, such as "0411," in which the synthetic parts are almost imperceptible, replaced by untreated guitar and strings that have a lot of breathing room around them, allowing a greater amount of subtlety to come through.

This album's greatest weakness is its length, however.The previous collaborations were an EP and a tidy album, respectively, so being spread across two discs, the pieces tend to blend together.Taken as individual albums, or a few tracks at a time, the rewards are much more significant.Fennesz's recent Seven Stars EP was an evolution to a more "song" oriented place, while here his work is more fragmented and oblique. It works but it doesn’t grab me as strongly.

Flumina fits nicely in with the prior two collaborations of the duo, blending Sakamoto's subtle piano improvisations with Fennesz's careful additions.While I personally prefer the more song-oriented direction Fennesz has been toying with, his abstractions work well here, balancing the organic piano notes well.Taken in small doses, this is a great disc, but in a marathon listening session, the impact is lessened.

samples:

• 0319
• 0320
• 0411

 

22 January 2012

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Albums and Singles

This archival release, captured live in Philadelphia, is a valuable companion piece to the previous Bardo Pond and Tom Carter session, 4/23/03, which was originally released on CD nine years ago, and is receiving a vinyl reissue this week. It is a joy to hear another side of Carter and Bardo Pond playing together, this time in a live setting.

Three Lobed

Bardo Pond's mile-wide discography is a fan's dream (or a bit of a nightmare—depending on prices and availability), overflowing with live recordings, side projects, one-offs, compilation tracks, and other miscellanea. As such, the band has never shied away from collaboration. Their history with experimental guitarist Tom Carter can be traced back to 1997's Harmony of the Spheres, an essential document of '90s psychedelia, which aligned the Bardos with a handful of like-minded explorers, including Carter's primary musical outlet, Charalambides. A few years down the line, Carter—who was then living in Austin, Texas, but in the midst of a string of Philadelphia shows—stopped by the Bardos' studio space, the Lemur House, where he and the band proceeded to grind out an album's worth of improvisational psych-rock, released as 4/23/03 the following year.

Recorded two days after the Lemur House studio sessions (hence the title), 4/25/03 is just now seeing the light of day. While not a 100% essential purchase for casual fans of either Bardo Pond or Carter's work with Charalambides, this disc functions as a fine supplement to its elder cousin. Carter's chemistry with the five-piece band is apparent; in fact, he gels so perfectly that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish his playing from that of the Bardos' guitarists, John and Michael Gibbons—both a compliment and a curse. The closest parallel in the Bardos' discography is their mid-'90s collaborative work with Roy Montgomery, which resulted in two albums under the name Hash Jar Tempo. Which lineup you prefer is most likely a matter of whether you enjoy Carter or Montgomery's guitar style more. (Really, though, there's no need to take sides—I'll enjoy both, thanks.)

4/25/03 was recorded live by psych/drone/metal connoisseur Scott Slimm at Philadelphia's Tritone Bar. Both pieces—the main set, and the encore performance—are untitled. The first stretches well over 40 minutes, and takes its time finding a groove. This is by no means a bad thing, as both the Bardos and Tom Carter are adept at pacing in their improvised work, allowing the music to ebb and flow, evolving slowly without rushed changes in mood. With Carter present, the mix is a lot thicker with guitars than the marvelous Bardo live document 4.3.06, put to tape by Slimm three years later for his now-defunct (and sorely missed) Archive label.

The main set begins with Carter's sparse guitar lines, then carefully folds in two more guitars as well as bass, electronics, and drums, building to a miniature crescendo by 12 minutes. Then, just as naturally, the layers of noise peel away, and the heady jam devolves into drone and muted feedback by its halfway point. Bardo vocalist Isobel Sollenberger's wispy, stoned vocals make an appearance as the music subsides; when she begins her flute incantations at the 30-minute mark, the band takes it as a cue to pick up steam (and volume). Carter's guitar stylings blur into a mess of swirling, frenzied strumming, with the band around him locked in a rhythmic groove, blanketed with distortion. After a few minutes in top gear, the musicians downshift and allow the music to fade back again. As the volume drops, a couple premature shouts and cheers sneak out from the crowd—"WOO!"—their enthusiasm palpable.

The encore performance is distinctly more laid-back and peaceful, forgoing the monstrous peaks and valleys of its predecessor. It also clocks in at a more manageable 20 minutes. This is a smart combination of mood and length—an effective chaser to the roller-coaster the crowd just endured, which sounds exhilarating, but was likely a bit exhausting in a live setting. For the encore, the Bardos and Carter maintain a steady, relaxed tempo and allow Sollenberger's flute séance to take center stage, weaving through the empty spaces like a snake in the grass. The tonal variety between the two pieces is distinct, and accentuates one of the great things about Bardo Pond and Tom Carter: their masterful range of sounds, both apart and together, is among the widest in modern psychedelic music.

Samples:

• Part 1 (Excerpt 1)
• Part 1 (Excerpt 2)
• Part 2

20 January 2012

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Albums and Singles

NURSE WITH WOUND • GRAHAM BOWERS: Rupture

DPROMCD93

This CD is the first collaboration of Steven Stapleton's Nurse With Wound and composer/sculptor Graham Bowers. It is, without doubt, one of the best things we have ever released. It's an extremely unnerving, but also hauntingly moving listening experience.

The work is an attempt to create a musical illustration of the "goings-on" in the brain during the last hour and three minutes of a life after suffering a major stroke. It is multi-layered and is primarily concerned with the internal chaos caused by the loss of control of thought processes, responses and consequential actions, with all types of incoherent disjointed memories and present real time events - as well as moments of lucidity, panic and fear - clashing, merging and evolving.

It's essentially one long piece, but is presented in three parts:

1. "...a life as it now is,

2. ...is not what it was,

3. . ...and will never be again"

It arrives packaged in a beautiful 6 panel gloss laminated digipak, featuring artwork from both Babs Santini and Graham Bowers. The edition is limited to just 1000 copies in this format.

More information here.

19 January 2012

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Albums and Singles

Earlier this year, Lovely Music reissued Robert Ashley’s 1978 landmark Private Parts album and now along comes its follow-up: 1979's similarly groundbreaking and idiosyncratic Automatic Writing. On its surface, this album remains a haunting and uneasily dreamlike affair, as it anticipated both ASMR and the evolution of ambient music by several decades and still sounds improbably contemporary today (or perhaps just too singular to feel like it belongs to any era at all). Beneath the surface, however, lies something far more fascinating and deeply conceptual than mere ambient music (or most late 20th century modern composition, for that matter): Automatic Writing is the culmination of Ashley's experiments in using his mild form of Tourette's Syndrome as a compositional tool. Unsurprisingly, making such a quixotic endeavor work proved to be quite a challenging and oft-exasperating undertaking, but Ashley's five years of trial and error ultimately resulted in one hell of a strange and memorable album.

Lovely Music

This reissue restores Automatic Writing to its original vinyl form, excising the two additional pieces that were added for 1996's CD reissue.Part of me is a bit disappointed by that, as I quite like both of those shorter works, but vinyl can only hold so much and something had to go.Aside from that practical reason, however, "Automatic Writing" benefits greatly from being presented as a stand-alone piece, as it is a deliberately meandering and understated mélange of mumbles, whispers, and barely-there organ melodies.As such, the spell it casts is a very delicate and precarious one, making it extremely susceptible to being overpowered by any more focused and intense accompanying material (a category that definitely applies to previous bonus track "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon").

Obviously, there is a lot of music in the world that can reasonably be categorized as "dreamlike," but almost none of it takes that challenge quite as literally as Ashley did with "Automatic Writing."It is not an exaggeration to say that this album evokes the uneasily intimate feeling of eavesdropping on Ashley as he talks in his sleep, but there is also a bit more to the experience as well.For example, there is also a whispering French woman in the room.Notably, that woman (Mimi Johnson) was Ashley's real-life wife and, moreover, her words are a newly sensuous translation of Ashley’s own murmured stream-of-subconsciousness.Also of note: Ashley viewed the piece as a wildly unconventional opera of sorts with a cast of four characters (the other two "characters" being a wandering church organ melody and "Moog synthesizer articulations" that resemble tin cans being scraped in a way that loosely mimics speech).A curious fifth element exists as well, as a buried rock groove lazily wanders in and out of the piece, mimicking the intrusion of distant party sounds from a neighboring apartment.

The piece never evolves into anything more than that, but it does not need to, as it is a pleasantly absorbing and enigmatic listening experience as long as it lasts.For those looking for a deeper meaning, however, there is an accompanying lyric sheet that arguably provides a Rosetta Stone for Ashley's mostly unintelligible murmurings.For the most part, it is a fragmented and impressionistic flow of words that approaches poetry at times and makes repeated references to sadness, falling, sensory overload, drowning, floating, and varispeed (a recording feature used to manipulate time and pitch).In his original liner notes, Ashley notes that he was in a deep depression at the time due to the world's indifference to his work and that mental state certainly seems to tenaciously bleed into his unconscious monologue again and again.In hindsight, some of Ashley's woes as a young composer are grimly funny ones, as his attempts to replicate involuntary speech in his live performances were apparently met with legal actions from promoters accusing him of drunkenness.It sounds like Ashley was also alienated from his peers though, which must have been quite hard–he makes references to "rumors" and ruefully describes himself as "the person you would cross the street to avoid."That feeling is what ultimately drove Ashley to present his involuntary speech as the core of this "opera," as wanted to portray such a person as one who deserves sympathy.Whoever transcribed that speech deserves sympathy as well, as the involuntary speech on Automatic Writing is the real deal rather than an imitation (Ashley finally managed to capture some authentic recordings of that state over a summer break in a Mills College recording studio).

I am relieved and heartened that Automatic Writing ultimately found an audience and that Ashley went on to be a deservedly influential figure, as he went through absolute hell to make this album and got quite a dose of the crushing loneliness that comes with being too far ahead of one's time (see Julius Eastman's career for an example of a considerably darker ending).As much as I like Automatic Writing, however, it is not nearly as strong as Private Parts (though I do prefer it to all of the more polished work that followed).Taken as a pure listening experience, "Automatic Writing" is appealingly immersive and unique, but it is primarily the backstory and the process that make it so compelling.Aside from straining to plumb the depths of his subconscious mind to harness its creative power, Ashley also made very inventive and radical use of both electronics and language, employing "reactive computer circuitry" and purposely modulating his voice into incomprehensibility.His hypothesis was that "rhythm and inflection could convey meaning" even if the words themselves did not make sense.He was probably right about that, but the finished piece would not work nearly as well if he had not had the additional stroke of genius to mirror his inscrutable murmurs with a woman's voice breathily echoing him in articulate French.Moreover, when all of Ashley's bold decisions are added together, it is not hyperbole to say that he willfully abandoned almost the entire accumulated wisdom of the Western musical tradition: he made muddled human speech his focus and boldly relegated melody, structure, and rhythm to distracted supporting players that wander in and out of the scene without consequence.Even if this album were not successful, I would very much admire Ashley's iconoclastic vision.Fortunately, the experiment went remarkably well.While Ashley's extreme constraints prevent this album from quite reaching the same heights as Private Parts, he undeniably transcended his self-imposed hurdles far more impressively than anyone could have ever predicted.

Sample:

• Automatic Writing

15 January 2012

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Albums and Singles

Natural Snow Buildings seem to be currently locked in a rhythm in which they release one truly monster album each year and Solange Gularte's latest solo effort seems to have possibly secured that honor for 2012 right out of the gate.  More remarkable than the album's quality, however, is how restless and adventurous Solange has been in tweaking her sound.  This sounds almost nothing at all like her last album (2010's Modlitewnik) and makes some bold and somewhat surprising changes to her expected aesthetic.

Blackest Rainbow

In the past, I have mentioned how Natural Snow Buildings' lengthy "dream-drone" pieces were beginning to yield diminishing returns for me due to the sheer volume of them that I have absorbed over the last few years.Perhaps Solange was experiencing a similar effect herself, as she limits herself to just a few such pieces here and two of them are absolutely amazing.  "Lost Girls" and "Spine of the Night" essentially bookend the album (there is a brief coda following the latter) and they easily rank among the best drone pieces that Gularte has composed.

"Spine of the Night" is the more mesmerizing of the two, as it is a billowing, shimmering, hallucinatory cloud of bliss with just enough metallic buzz, clatter, buried snarl, and unpredictability to imbue it with serious heft and depth.  Also, it undulates and changes so constantly and so organically that it feels almost alive.  "Lost Girls,"on the other hand, is a bit more dark, earthbound, and intimate due to Solange's hazy vocals and steadily strummed acoustic guitar, but either piece alone is enough to make the entire album essential.

Nevertheless, it is the pieces in the middle of the album that make Night of Raining Fire such a unique and fascinating album in Gularte's discography.  On a basic, immediately obvious level, the disquietingly ritualistic/pagan atmosphere of Modlitewnik has been largely replaced by a more medieval feel...or, in some cases, a surreal fairy tale one.  The fragile, discordant plucking of "Horselberg," for example, sounds like the perfect soundtrack for nightmare that takes place in a snow globe.  Most of the other pieces are less dissonant and unsettling though.  The bulk of them sound like instrumental medieval ballads warped into something dreamlike and otherworldly by buzzing Indian instrumentation and forlorn, slightly-off flutes and whistles.

Despite all the buzzing and subtle dissonance, there is considerably more warmth and light here than there has ever been on previous albums.  Gularte certainly isn't softening (one glance at the album artwork should prove that), but has instead found a way to effectively assimilate a broader spectrum of emotion into her work.  That makes a lot of sense within the context of her body of work, as Solange's aesthetic trajectory has always seemed based in a fascination with ancient cultures and the more primal aspects of humanity.  Sadness, horror, and pain have always been balanced with joy, ecstasy, and other positive emotions (probably much more so before the grinding mundanity, isolation, and pervasive detachment of the modern world set in).  In fact, the presence of more heavenly and hopeful pieces like "Ascending" makes this feel unusually affecting and "human" for an Isengrind record (as well as perversely "complete").  Also, the occasional shafts of light bring welcome contrast and heighten the impact of the album's darker moments, which Solange still does extremely well.

There is some deeper and less instantly apparent evolution at work here as well.  The big changes are that Solange seems to be stepping away from density and working towards making specific textures seem more alive and meaningful.  As a result, Night of Raining Fire is filled with a dynamic array of well-placed moans, plinks, buzzes and dissonant metallic shimmers that crisply cut through the drugged, dreamy haze.  Also, she continues to get better and better at subtly shifting the emphasis from one motif to another as a piece unfolds.

I probably sound like a locked-groove because I have loved just about every recent album that Solange and Mehdi have made, but, hell–they keep making great albums.  This is simply a very vibrant, imaginative, and unique batch of songs without a single misfire to speak of.  There are certainly other Natural Snow Buildings-related releases that are more staggering, visceral, enveloping, and/or disturbing than this one, but such a comparative divergence in mood and structure from their (massive) existing body of work is quite a welcome one for me (especially when it is pulled off so beautifully).  Solange has absolutely nothing to prove at this stage in her career, so it is enormously heartening to hear that she is still tirelessly straining to increase the depth and scope of her work.

Samples:

• Lost Girls
• Lit By The Rain
• Still Voyager

 

15 January 2012

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Albums and Singles

I basically enjoyed Williams' acclaimed 2009 dark ambient opus Perdition Hill Radio, but did not find it especially revelatory or unique.  This follow-up is an entirely different story though: The Resurrections Unseen marks a huge compositional leap forward.  As expected, the mood is similarly blackened and ominous, but this effort is significantly more focused, artfully structured, visceral, and slow-burning than its predecessor: this is a rumbling, album-length plunge into the void rather than a mere series of crackling and brooding soundscapes. Fowler Collins has delivered an instant genre classic.

Type

Trying to pin down the difference between "good" and "bad" dark/black ambient has always been a very difficult task, as pretty much anybody with a good laptop can throw together a passable soundscape of cold, deep drones and distantly echoing crackles and scrapes.  The tricky part is making the leap from an endless, forlorn-sounding cavernous throb into something a bit deeper and more chilling.

Fowler Collins seems to have figured out the mysterious variables necessary for that evolution and employs his new-found wisdom to great success here.  I'm especially fond of his tactic of combining a deep and gradually intensify rumble with grinding, subtly pitch-shifting dissonance, which he does with "Premonitions at Dusk."  The album's best moments, however, come when William weaves layered soundscapes of blurry, ghostly-sounding synthesizers that queasily undulate and clash with each other.  The closing "Ghost Choir" is probably the most impressive and unsettling example of this, but "Warm Transport" is pretty spectacular as well.

The Resurrections Unseen wouldn't work nearly as well as it does, however, if Fowler Collins hadn't paid such close attention to the big picture: this is a beautifully coherent, thoughtfully paced, and well-sequenced album.  A few pieces, like "The Light In The Barn," and sections of the two-part "Embracing Our Annihilation" contain lengthy lulls that could be dull or momentum-killing in the wrong context.  Here, however, they are uneasy oases in a masterful album-length ebb and flow of tension and disquiet.  No passage ever overstays its welcome and William is careful to vary his dynamic attack to make each new section seem meaningful and fresh.  That emphasis on shifting dynamics is particularly effective near the end of the album, as the second half of "Embracing Our Annihilation" jacks up the low frequencies to a speaker-shuddering crescendo before giving way to the haunting, album-closing shimmer of "Ghost Choir."

Fowler Collins never makes a false, clumsy, or unnecessary move for The Resurrections Unseen's entire duration and the cumulative power of its simmering build-up is pretty amazing.  This is about as perfect, absorbing, and immersive as an ambient drone album can be.  Efforts like this and Xela's The Sublime make a strong case that an unlikely second golden age of dark ambient may be upon us.

Samples:

• Premonition at Dusk
• Warm Transport
• Ghost Choir

 

15 January 2012

Albums and Singles

I basically enjoyed Williams' acclaimed 2009 dark ambient opus Perdition Hill Radio, but did not find it especially revelatory or unique.  This follow-up is an entirely different story though: The Resurrections Unseen marks a huge compositional leap forward.  As expected, the mood is similarly blackened and ominous, but this effort is significantly more focused, artfully structured, visceral, and slow-burning than its predecessor: this is a rumbling, album-length plunge into the void rather than a mere series of crackling and brooding soundscapes. Fowler Collins has delivered an instant genre classic.

Read more …

15 January 2012

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Albums and Singles

Ben Chasny, the sole creative force behind the scorched-earth folk music of Six Organs of Admittance, and Elisa Ambrogio, the snarling frontwoman of Magik Markers, have come together to form 200 Years. Their debut record is ten songs of hushed, pretty, and occasionally lackluster voice and acoustic guitar.

Drag City

Chasny and Ambrogio's first collaborative project was Basalt Fingers, a trio that also included Brian Sullivan of anti-rockers Mouthus. Their lone album, 2007's Basalt Fingers, skewed closest to the raw aesthetic of Sullivan's band, stirring up a vicious amount of slow-building, abstract noise on its two, side-long pieces. The same year, Ambrogio contributed vocals to three tracks on Six Organs' majestic Shelter from the Ash. In 2008, Chasny co-produced, and contributed to, Magik Markers' Gucci Rapidshare Download, a cut-and-paste album built out of recontextualized pieces of Markers CD-R material and live recordings. While I acknowledge the versatility of these projects, there was nothing much to suggest that Chasny and Ambrogio, who have also toured together a few times, would record an album of back-porch, singer-songwriter tunes a few years down the road.

Still, when I spoke with Chasny back in February last year, he insisted 200 Years was his and Ambrogio's most subtle work to date: "200 Years is really quiet. It's the quietest thing I've ever done, and pretty sure it's the quietest thing Elisa's ever done, too [...] super structured, super quiet. Most of it's just her singing with acoustic guitar, really structured acoustic guitar." To his credit, Chasny was on point: this is a stripped-down, intimately recorded album where Ambrogio sings, Chasny plays acoustic guitar, and—well, honestly, that's about it. The production hides nothing, with Ambrogio sounding like she's singing from arm's length away with a Sunday morning hangover, no reverb or studio trickery within earshot. Meanwhile, Chasny's fingers squeak across his guitar strings imperfectly, like on Six Organs' lower-key recordings.

This sort of two-dimensional aesthetic is occasionally a weakness: Chasny limiting himself to all-acoustic doesn't necessarily mean he needs to set aside the psychedelic and Middle Eastern influences in his guitar playing (see 2011's excellent Asleep on the Floodplain), but on 200 Years, he does just that. His playing is gentle, often soothing, but also at its least distinctive in recent memory. There are a few subtle touches in post-production, like the wobbly guitar squeal that opens "City Streets" and sneaks into the mix between Ambrogio's verses. More notably, "Thread" adds a subtle, warm background hum of guitar feedback and occasional soft drum rolls to the album's lone abstract piece. Two thirds into the album, it's a relief to hear Chasny and Ambrogio set aside the monochromatic, singer-songwriter structure of the album for a moody, extended drone piece that nonchalantly buries Ambrogio's lyrics—not a strong selling point for 200 Years, by the way.

As for those songs following the verse-chorus blueprint, the best of the bunch is "West Hartford," which pairs the album's most memorable chorus melody with Chasny's background vocals complimenting Ambrogio's singing. It's a potent combination, warm and sunny, that makes me wish Chasny would sing more frequently on 200 Years, if only to accent Ambrogio's tuneful, but otherwise indistinctive, vocals. And while "West Hartford" is pleasant enough while it's playing, it never comes close to the transcendence of, say, Six Organs of Admittance's "Strangled Road" (from 2007's Shelter from the Ash), which stands as Ambrogio and Chasny's best duet to date. If 200 Years is a 18-18 collaborative effort, then perhaps it's time for Chasny and Ambrogio to buckle into their respective driver's seats in Six Organs and Magik Markers, where the magic truly happens.

Samples:

• West Hartford
• City Streets
• Thread

14 January 2012

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Albums and Singles

No one will ever accuse the Opalio brothers of lacking ambition.  Their previous release, 2013's Psycho-System, was a hallucinatory drone epic that spanned six discs and clocked in at over three hours.  Now they are back with a triple-album in a very different vein.  Though similar in its staggering scope, Abstract Expressionism for the Ears is often considerably more accessible and organic-sounding than its more insular and deeply warped predecessor.  Part of that credit certainly goes to Stevens, who proves himself to be a very sympathetic collaborator, but the primary difference is the focus on unconventionally employed (and melodic) piano strings, which often makes Abstract Expressionism resemble classic Laraaji plunged into an otherworldly rabbit hole.  Most other times, of course, there is no earthbound point of reference to be found at all.

Opax/Elliptical Noise

The unpredictable tug-of-war between genius, excess, and impenetrability is one of MCIAA's most endearing traits: they might make some of the most brilliantly strange and beautiful music around, yet they always do it on their own terms, and those terms can be somewhat prickly.  Abstract Expressionism is a perfect example of that phenomenon, as it could have easily been a near-perfect single album made up of just "Tasting the New Ether" and "When the Sun Goes Down There is Nothing Left to Tune."  Instead, the Opalios opted to expand their triumph into a complex and challenging tour de force three times as long.  Whether that was a good idea or not is difficult to say.  On the one hand, it spreads the trio's best moments a bit thinner than would be ideal, but it compensates by turning Abstract Expressionism into an event rather than a mere album and lures listeners into some darker, stranger waters that that they might not have normally entered.

In any case, the opening "Tasting the New Ether" easily stands as one of the finest moments in the Opalio’s entire discography.  Built upon a gently rippling motif presumably played on Roberto's vertical piano, it weaves a dreamy, hallucinatory spell that is gradually threatened by stumbling, overlapping notes and an arsenal of chirps, snarls, and swells from Maurizio and Cédric.  I could have easily listened to "Ether" endlessly ebb and flow around its simmering miasma of feedback for another hour and it would have been great.  Instead, however, the piece gradually collapses into a black hole and it is gloriously heavy and wonderful.  "When the Sun Goes Down There’s Nothing Left to Tune" performs a similarly impressive balancing act between stuttering piano loops, rattling strings, and an increasingly roiling swell of abstract noise and electronics.  It succeeds just as beautifully.

The remaining two epic pieces, however, differ considerably.My pick of the two is "Intersection of Shadows," which sounds like a howling, gnarled transmission from deep space that eventually dissolves into a bizarre soup of flanging noise and something that resembles the garbled, digitized sounds of an alien rainforest. The 25-minute "Shifting at Zero Gravity," on the other hand, is a floating oasis of languorous calm, gently rattling strings, and echoing electronic chirps.  Gradually, however, it begins to evoke the cold enormity of space as Roberto's wordless vocals create an eerie, subtly dissonant undercurrent and the intruding rumbles, hisses, and distant howls become increasingly hard to ignore.

The album winds down with two comparatively shorter pieces, the 15-minute "The Ineffable Call of Tomorrow" and the 4-minute "Just a Tone of White Over Blue."  "The Ineffable Call" retains the mood of drifting interstellar isolation mingled with menace, but revisits the theme in a more grindingly metallic fashion that elsewhere.  "Tone" closes the album with a brief coda-like return to the zither-esque piano strings from earlier, but embeds them in a hallucinatory mélange of reversed noises and blearily dissonant wordless vocals.  While neither piece is a reasonable contender for an album highlight, both are strong enough to avoid seeming like filler and provide a welcome gradual transition back to normal conscious after such a prolonged and deep break with reality.

• Tasting the New Ether
• Intersection of Shadows
• When the Sun Goes Down There's Nothing Left To Tune

 

13 January 2012

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Albums and Singles

While Richard Skelton has long been one of my favorite artists, he has not released anything new in a while that has captivated me quite like he did the first time that I heard him.  That is not to say that he has experienced any sort of creative decline or anything, but he is definitely an artist who tends do one specific thing brilliantly, which regrettably tends to yield diminishing returns with increased familiarity.  With this follow-up to their Wolf Notes collaboration, however, Skelton and Autumn Richardson alchemically transform some of their previous recordings into something quite new and unexpected.

Corbel Stone Press

2011's Wolf Notes, Richard and Autumn's first album together, was a bit of a complicated album for me to process.  I certainly liked it when it came out (and still do today), but it felt like a bit of a lateral move for Skelton rather than a clear step forward.  On one hand, Autumn's vocals made Richard's music seem much more warm, human, and accessible.  On the other hand, the presence of a vocalist (by necessity) deflected focus from Skelton's heaving swells and creaks of bowed strings and their vibrant harmonic wake.  The reason that I bring all that up is quite simple: Succession is culled from the exact same recordings as Wolf Notes.  In fact, the opening title track sounds like it is essentially a reprise of Wolf Notes' closing "Return."

The reason for that is a bit convoluted and wordy, as there is a lot of backstory and conceptual artistry going on behind the scenes.  The short version is this: in late 2011, Richard and Autumn returned to the place (Ulpha) where they had recorded the raw material for Wolf Notes in 2009. In contemplating how the Cumbrian landscape had changed and how the differences in accumulated layers of sediment maintain a natural record of a place's history, the duo were inspired to view their own music like the place that spawned it.

Consequently, Succession returns to a very similar place musically: a place in which some things are the same and some are different, but the raw material is the same as ever.  The actual songs are just the tip of the iceberg though, as Skelton and Richardson's immersion into their surroundings went much deeper than mere philosophical grist for another album: the physical copy of Succession included two related art/poetry pamphlets about the landscape, as well as the self-explanatory A List of Probable Flora.  While my interest in both poetry and botany is minimal at best, I have to admire the depth and scope of *AR's dedication to their themes.

As for the music itself, Succession is mostly just Wolf Notes Redux, only better and more long-form in nature.  Aside from the angelic vocal swells of "Succession," which are very Richardson-centric, most of the album focuses very squarely on Skelton's shimmering, churning strings.  In general, the mood is a melancholy/bittersweet one (particularly on "Wolfshou") and the structure is very loop-like and drone-inspired: *AR are quite content to allow a single motif to slowly fade in, then slowly fade out 15 or 20 minutes later with only the most subtle enhancements made along the way.  That said, the motifs in question are inevitably quite rich, singular, and visceral, which means that they never get boring or too mired in brooding.  Skelton is a genius at assembling texturally dynamic loops that feel simultaneously organic, physical, and mesmerizingly vibrant–a primal, undulating thicket of prickly harmonics and grinding strings will never, ever seem like navel-gazing mopery.

Nowhere does Skelton highlight that singular talent better than on the closing "Relics," which is an absolute masterpiece and like nothing else I have heard from him to date.  Structurally, it is not wildly different from the rest of the album, but it somehow feels much more like a locked-groove than usual (albeit a simultaneously warm, grinding, and achingly beautiful one).  It is not entirely a "locked-groove" though: as it progresses, it seems to get slower and deeper while a quivering nimbus of harmonics forms above the groaning, see-sawing strings...and then it all just gradually fades away.  Quite simply, it is a perfect, endlessly absorbing piece of music–I could listen to it forever.

I would say that the presence of "Relics" alone makes Succession absolutely essential, but Richardson and Skelton have also released a companion album (Echoless) that features an extended, unabridged version of the same piece (as well as a similarly lengthened version of "Succession").  I have no idea which is better, but I would err on the side of saying that more "Relics" is better than less "Relics."  In that sense, the nod goes to Echoless.  Otherwise, Succession (and Echoless as well, I suppose) is yet another fine Skelton/*AR release, but nothing that eclipses or departs dramatically from Richard's equally fine back catalog.  So, in essence, the most withering critique that I can muster here is "Richard Skelton is as characteristically great as ever, but he only surprised me with one song."  I think I can live with that.

Samples:

• Wolfhou
• Seed Memory
• Relics