Diametrically opposite of the other recent Aranos album, Tax, here is a sprawling 65-minute track of studio processing and electronics wizardry. Different by no means inferior, however, and I would characterize this as a more complex work that has many layers to examine.
Give us an hour, we'll give you music to remember. This week we bring you an episode with brand new music from Softcult, Jim Rafferty, karen vogt, Ex-Easter Island Head, Jon Collin, James Devane, Garth Erasmus, Gary Wilson, and K. Freund, plus some music from the archives from Goldblum, Rachel Goswell, Roy Montgomery. Rubber ducks and a live duck photo from Matthew in the UK. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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In 1971, members of UK group Mighty Baby and a few Californian friends made visits to Fez and Meknes that left a profound and lasting impression. Converting to Sufism upon their return to London, they recorded and released an album as The Habibiyya, or the followers of spiritual teacher Muhammad ibn al-Habib. The resulting music disarms expectation with its reverence, beauty, and sincerity.
For Sublime Frequencies' latest musical tour, Geoff Hawryluk and Alan Bishop set their sights on Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. As highlighted in recent new stories about their flooding disaster, Myanmar's government keeps a pretty tight grip on what comes into and leaves the country. With that in mind, I was surprised at how much Western influence is discernible on some of the selections here.
Peter Broderick joins the cast of young contemporary multi-instrumentalists who create evocative classically-tinged minimal music with his debut full-length on Type. Delivered is score music for any day.
Nina Kernicke is not a composer concerned with bombast. Her already developed (and superb) atmospheres and sinuous melodies are joined on her first full-length by a newly acquired sense of patience and interconnectedness. One song at a time, Kernicke assembles a thriller of a record that triumphs because of its unhurried development and thickly amassed tension.
Following last year's interstellar transmissions as part of the collaborative duo Echospace, the venerated American techno producer touches down on Planet Earth, immersing himself in eerily lush soundscapes inspired by cityscapes and punctuated by steady rhythms. Simultaneously expansive and claustrophobic, his latest captures the duality of the modern metropolis and conveys its essence over ten absolutely gorgeous compositions.
Whoever decided not to run a limited reissue of this album on 8-Track should be flogged to death by hot chicks in hot pants using hot fuzzy dice. Jade Stone's 1977 self-release looks like it was born in a bargain bin but sounds well weird. It's hard to decide if it's a minor classic or obnoxious nonsense.
Besides running the prolific Crouton label, Jason Mueller has also been extremely busy working on his own music this year (this is his eighth release on Table of the Elements this year, that says quite a bit!). This collaborative release with Jason Kahn shows both artists heavily affecting their percussion far beyond what it originally sounded like, in addition to a bit of cassette tape and analog synth.
Given that the band has maintained a staunchly absurdist and secretive presence online, matched with the typically useless but nonetheless entertaining blurb on the Load Records website, it's hard to know anything about these guys other than a: they obviously have a sense of humor and b: they also love loud noisy rhythms.
