27 has quietly become one of my favorite bands over the last few years and their latest album is the perfect explanation for why that is. I'm an unashamed fan of pop music, and I am thankful that there is a band like 27 that continues to offer a reason to love hooks, lyrics, and songs.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Taking for the name of her band the title of her previous album, Carla Bozulich's latest broadcast is as unsettling as it is beautiful. Crushing No Wave-style rhythms sit beside milder, contemplative songs; the contrasts making for an album that in lesser hands could end up sounding disjointed and fragmented but, thanks to Bozulich's vision and the stellar cast of musicians accompanying her, Hello, Voyager is more than a collection of songs on a CD. It is a call to arms against all that is wrong with the world.
Italy's Alessandro Tedeschi (the man behind both the ambient Netherworld outfit and Glacial Movements) seems to be waging a one-man campaign through his label to make us aware of the fragility of the icy snowbound environments situated at both poles of our planet. This release, by fellow Italian ambient artist Oöphoi (Gianluigi Gasparetti), is the label's fourth foray and steadfastly continues the tradition set by the previous three in bringing extended and hauntingly crystalline sound explorations of these threatened environments.
The three names emblazoned on the simple and stark cover of this CD should be familiar to most people here–Duncan, von Hausswolff, Koner, and Tietchens have been around for many, many years, establishing themselves as elder statesmen of the scene. The present disc features three extended explorations recorded live, committed to tape in San Francisco, Montreal, and London, and represent a summation perhaps of the combined artistry and talent that these people have shown us all these years.
It is safe to say that noise as a genre has officially achieved crossover status. There were hints at this before, such as Wolf Eyes landing on Sub Pop and delivering rhythmic, yet still brutal punk influenced noise and Prurient becoming a Pitchfork pin-up boy for the genre. Fuck Buttons (my early winner for subtle band name of the year award) have adopted some of the harsher elements of noise, but framed it with melody and other musical elements that somehow works.
It doesn’t take a psychic to figure that two members of the Boredoms and one from Reynols getting together for live improvisations are probably not going to be creating smooth jazz or g-funk era R&B. Across the four tracks and all possible permutations of the trio (the first three tracks feature each working as duos before the final full trio lineup), there’s enough psychedelic tomfoolery to satisfy even the most jaded of adventurous listeners.
Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio remixes Popol Vuh's "Nachts: Schnee" from the 1987 soundtrack Cobra Verde, and crafts a piece that balances craving and anguish. Haswell & Hecker undertake the impossible: "Aguirre I" from the 1972 soundtrack Aguirre - The Wrath Of God.
Austere delivery makes Dagonite everything it is. Aside from the obvious references to H.P. Lovecraft there are few if any embellishments on this record. That fact calls attention to Brown Jenkins' greatest strengths (raw simplicity and a strong sense of purpose) and weaknesses (raw simplicity).
These two releases from the enigmatic Anthony Mangicapra's ever-changing Hoor-Paar-Kraat project could have been from two completely different artists. The first, an LP reissue of two older pieces, is a heavy and superb release and the second, a CD-R of new material, is equally wonderful but is cut from a completely different cloth. Both releases are from that same spectrum of musical surrealism as Nurse With Wound and Irr. App. (Ext.) but never apes these obvious influences. Unfortunately, like the rest of the Hoor-Paar-Kraat catalogue, these two albums are quite limited so are unlikely to be easy to find for long.
