Being thankful for an earful.
Brand new music by Marie Davidson, Niecy Blues (feat. Joy Guidry), CEL, Marisa Anderson and Luke Schneider, Stina Stjern, Carmen Villain, Murcof, A Lily, and Far Golden Pavilions, with music from the vaults by Tomaga, Ozzobia, Jan Jelinek.
Sushi photo by Lindsay.
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23five came into the public eye as the label vehicle for soundartist-types, peddling the kind of stuff I'd see in the MoMA gift shopand pass by thinking it just wouldn't be the same outside an austeregallery space. Now only 6 releases into stride, the label has proved mewrong several times over. One needs only to hear Furudate &Zbigniew's World As Will II to see why. The opening minutes ofCoelacanth's sophomore release, however, left me with second, or ratherthird, thoughts. The Glass Sponge begins with a sparse scraping,thumping, and clanging that seems on the brink the ever-arty black holeof inaccessibility. After a few minutes, droning bell tones andtempered feedback ease their way in, making the piece more substantialbefore, as quickly as it began, the music fades into silence. Thoseopening bits were merely a prelude to the real meat of track, a sort ofsecond act comprised of layered static and an enriched texture oflulling feedback and prolonged bell tones. Stuttering vocal utteringsrise from drone and static layers that sound truly oceanic. Song titleslike "The Leaden Sea" and "The Violet Shell and Its Raft" lend a marinetheme to The Glass Sponge that feels apt in relation to the music. (Thename Coelacanth, also, refers to a prehistoric fish recently discoveredto still exist). All four tracks exhibit an approach to drone musicthat is both texturally rich and emotionally resonant. Tracks rangefrom gentle, inviting trips across static that gurgles and glimmerslike actual liquid to eerie passages where hollow drones and squealingfeedback rise from the depths. The Glass Sponge is host to a multitudeof bizarre, untraceable sounds as well. Various throbbings, tinkerings,and knockings find comfortable home in Coelacanth's sound world, givenoverture in the album's first moments, making it increasingly hard tobelieve that any of this was gathered from public performance as thenotes describe. This is beautiful, thoroughly engaging, and uniquemusic, no doubt more appropriate headphone music for pretending yourbed is a liferaft than for strolling the museum floor. samples:
Jim Haynes is a San Francisco-based musician who has made a name for himself through work in the duo Coelacanth and in his travels as a solo sound-artist. The rich SF scene has no doubt provided Haynes with many opportunities to expand his listener-ship, and recently he has ventured eastward with an installation called Magnetic North appearing in Nashville and San Jose. This disc, the first release from The Helen Scarsdale Agency and limited to 300 copies, contains the audio portion of the installation, culled from performances of the last two years. The most striking quality of the music herein can inadequately be described as its organic nature.
Haynes has produced four lengthy tracks, each composed entirely of beautiful drones, but drones with a distinctly homespun feel. Contained bell tones and gentle, metallic overtones leak into otherwise hollow, spacious drones that recall the oceanic spaces of Coelacanth's music. At times the listener feels outside, or underground, in a large breathing space, or in the same land that produced Walter Marchetti's cavernous recordings. Haynes has a way, however, of bringing his listener back to reality, back to the tool shed so to speak, as he introduces subtle incidental sounds into the mix. Evocative, even representative of everyday things that clatter, scrape, and squeak, the sound sources remain obscured, the sounds themselves never harsh or even disorienting. Not having seen the Magnetic North installation, I can only guess that it deals with issues of space and the unique transparencies between large and small environments. Haynes' music is accessible in a way that suggests his installation provides a womb-like atmosphere, comfortably merged with wider, harrowing spaces in an examination of the consistencies between the two. His music has neither the stoicism of Marchetti nor the bombast of drone guru Phil Niblock, but feels just right for Haynes' purposes. Though his work with Coelacanth may see him drifting to the outer limits, here Haynes keeps the windswept barrens just outside the door.
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Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs of Admittance, has been crafting his brand of acoustic rock for the past five years, winning some over with his psychedelic ruminations and earthy tones. For his latest release, the pop song structure is on full display, as Chasny keeps it short and sweet for the most part, and lays on the space rock undertone with a very thin brush. As always, Chasny plays pretty much everything himself, with Ethan Miller adding the most influential contributions. There seems to be a more Indian influence on these songs than there ever was before, from the opening track to the sitar on "Somewhere Between," though Chasny's guitar work is everywhere and as impressive as always. Six Organs' infamous lack of production values are also on every track, with the whole album possessing a muted, dirty, and quirky quality, where tempos speed up and slow down here and there, and sounds swell in and out. Chasny's multi-tracked vocals have a spooky effect, like a ghost choir with little to live for, and as each track progresses, he takes greater chances and reaches to new highs and lows with his voice. Altogether this means it's more of the same from Chasny for the most part, with nothing really shocking or new to speak of. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as the songs are among the best he's written, including the "reworked and finalized" version of "Somewhere Between;" but it still leaves me with that overwhelming feeling of "What if he...?" Someday, maybe Six Organs will branch out into new territory. Until then, there's still a lot to appreciate, as acoustic psychedelia doesn't get much better than this. samples:
Henrik Rylander (Drums // Electronics), Joachim Nordwall (Guitar // Vocals // Analog Synths), Jean-Louis Huhta (Percussion // Effects // Electronics), Daniel Fagerstroem (Guitar // Vocals // Electronics), and Daniel Higgs (Vocals // Various Instruments).
Artist: Machinefabriek
Title: Vloed
Catalogue No: CSR138CD
Barcode: 8 2356649932 9
Format: Digipak
Genre: Drone / Guitar Ambient
Shipping: 29th November
'Vloed' is a collection of (slightly edited) live performances, recorded between 2006 and 2008 in Amsterdam and Den Haag.
"All performances find Machinefabriek in fine form, offering up thick billows of warm guitar shimmer, fluttery staticky ambience, and at one point some uncharacteristically heavy super distorted metallic guitar, but here, it's not so much metal as simply a mighty drone, thick and throbbing and super intense. There are long stretches of near silence and super minimal high end drone, glimmering slow building crescendos, squalls of distorted choral buzz, warm whirring metallic reverberations, shimmery and dense black dronemusik, all the stuff we love about Machinefabriek" (Aquarius).
Beautifully remastered with a 20-minute bonus track, 'Vloed' captures the immersive live experience of a Machinefabriek concert.
Presented in a stunning matt digipak with modified artwork.
Tracks: 1. Allengskens (18:03) | 2. Drifjgzand (13:16) | 3. Vrijhaven (21:12) | 4. Vloed (22:08)
Artist: Various Artists
Title: We Bring You A King With A Head Of Gold
Catalogue No: CSR100CD
Barcode: 8 2356649942 8
Format: Jewelcase
Genre: Traditional Folk, Dark Folk, Ballads
Shipping: 29th November
The follow-up to our award winning Folk compilation "John Barleycorn Reborn" from 2007. 34 tracks and 146 minutes of music from the best of current British Folk artists.
The raw green of spring is burnished through midsummer into the baked golden crust of August, the headlong vigour of new growth slowing, ripening into a sagging, fecund fullness. Crows wheel low over a cornfield, inkblots spilt on the wide blue sky, their ragged cries cracking the drowsy haze of high summer. Cornstalks rustle and whisper secretively, heads nodding sagely in the light breeze, spread resplendent over the land like the bushy sun-bleached beard of Barleycorn himself, basking in the afternoon heat. The image fades, dispersing into the ripples of Mimir’s black mirror, and now the harvest appears as the radiant blonde braids of gentle Sif, Norse goddess of the corn, ever-faithful wife of Thor, patroness of fidelity, of promises kept. Again the mirror ripples, and now the corn forms the mane of a magnificent horse, surging over the earth, alive with energy, bearing the memory of innumerable harvests past and the promise of harvests yet to come, past and future radiating out in all directions from this perfect, poised moment of completion. It’s time to reap. (Simon Collins)
Tracks: Disc 1: 1. Barron Brady - 'Earthen Key' | 2. Laienda - 'Little Drummer Boy / Anvil' | 3. The Rowen Amber Mill - 'Blood And Bones (Ciderdelica Mix)' | 4. Tony Wakeford - 'The Devil' | 5. Kate Harrison - 'England' | 6. Drohne - 'The Hooden Horse / An-Dro' | 7. Corncrow - 'The Cutty Wren' | 8. Sproatly Smith - 'I Shall Leave You There' | 9. Tinkerscuss - 'Black Sarah' | 10. Cerunnos Rising - 'Hear It With My Heart' | 11. Mama - 'The Fool Of Spring' | 12. Magicfolk - 'Green Man' | 13. Wyrdstone - 'Lost At Ty Canol' | 14. Emil Brynge - 'Devon Dream' | 15. Kim Thompsett - 'Lords And Ladies' | 16. Dragon Spirit - 'Always Be Ours' | 17. Philip Butler And Natasha Tranter - 'Jack The Mommet' | 18. Touch The Earth - 'Ancient Landscapes'
Disc 2: 1. Relig Oran - 'Ye Mariners All' | 2. Autumn Grieve - 'Within Hollows' | 3. Ian McKone - 'Searching For Lambs' | 4. John Parker - 'Manningham Blues' | 5. Rattlebag - 'The Tyburn Sisters' | 6. The Fates - 'The Song Of The Fates' | 7. The Hare And The Moon - 'The Three Ravens' | 8. The Kittiwakes - 'Lynx' | 9. Venereum Arvum - 'Robin Sick And Weary' | 10. Telling The Bees - 'Fithfath' | 11. Richard Masters - 'The Wind Knows' | 12. Demdyke - 'Mother Carey's Chicks' | 13. Beneath The Oak - 'Oh Earthly Man' | 14. Sedayne : Sundog - 'A Wee Brown Cow' | 15. Ruby Throat - 'Swan And The Minotaur (Troubled Man)' | 16. Jennifer Crook - 'Ribbons Of Green / The Dream Waltz (Live)'
On this single track album, Tommi Keränen, who is also one half of the infamous Norwegian noise duo Testicle Hazard, throws down a bit over a half hour of heavily dynamic electronic noise that destroys speakers with the best of them, but with a level of complexity and variation that many other noise artists seem to ignore.
Immediately the track launches into heavy, raw buzzsaw tones and layers of phased sound constructed atop of it.While it starts out loud and messy, it continues to build even further until the foundation can barely sustain all of the noise that it supports.There are brilliant balances struck throughout:piercing, pure sine waves with short blips of unidentifiable sonic trash; monolithic concrete slabs of noise with rapidly undulating and changing passages.
While the static noise tends to be a dominant feature throughout, it never becomes overbearing, with a constantly cycling crowd of hyperkinetic squelches, overdriven crunches and buzzing passages to balance out the pure feedback.There’s also a healthy selection of bent and mangled pure tones in there to counterbalance the mess.
The biggest change is apparently about 13 minutes in, where the track is pulled apart into some sporadic tones that sound like spastic techno breakdown moments, along with spots of ultra high frequency high pitched frequencies that are reminiscent of the interstitial bits between songs on those extremely early Whitehouse albums.This is only a brief respite, if you could even call it that, before it goes full bore into rising and falling noise tones for the remainder of the album.
Keränen has succeeded in crafting an album that retains the best qualities of the harsh noise scene (and its many subcategories) without really demonstrating any of the annoyances.There isn’t a sense that the recording is extremely loud in order to just be "extreme," but it retains the cojones one would expect from a noise album.The dynamic selection of sounds and changes in structure keep it varied, and there’s enough variation in here to possibly even pique the interest of non harsh noise fans.Those who covet their Alchemy Records collections and Macronympha tapes will still be all over this too though, so it has hardcore cred as well.
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With its hushed synthesis of traditional instrumentation and lightly processed field recordings, Monocoastal follows along recent trends of Seaworthy & Matt Rösner and Taylor Deupree's works on the 12k label. They're carving out a niche that is alien, but familiar, and is as complex as it is sparse, weaving the recognizable with the unknown.
From the carefully treated textures on the disc to the washed out Polaroid photo on the cover, this album is one of taking the familiar and using it to build something entirely new.A recurring motif of the disc is one of water and the coast, unsurprising given that it was Fischer’s movements up and down the west coast of the USA that inspired it."Wave Atlas" marries water droplets that echo forever with hazy, warm melodies."Monocoastal (Part 1)" is all weathered, gentle tones that seem to come from every direction, mixed with subtle birdsongs.The sound becomes more complex when what resembles a shimmering layer of accordion and glassy ringing bells are added, but it stays fully restrained.
"Wind and Wake" has an underlying bed of sound that constantly rises and falls like the undulations of the sea, with a looming melody that enshrouds like a fog, surrounding the entire song with a delicate digital accompaniment."Cascadia Obscura" also mixes some seemingly recognizable sounds with unknown ones, where wind chimes and vibrating tension lines set the stage, only to have the piece closed with sharp strummed guitar notes or the scraping of scissors.
That obscurity when it comes to the sources of a sound is what makes this album so captivating.Fischer's careful use of found sounds and field recordings coupled with a very light touch when it comes to processing goes a long way.The sounds are left pure enough to seem natural, but twisted in such a way as to resemble something entirely different, but never to a point of pure abstraction. This, coupled with a careful use of low fidelity elements give a rustic, yet alien quality to the sound.
In the latter moments of the album the tone begins to change, with "Shape To Shore" adding lower register, almost bass guitar like notes that lean more towards the melancholy side of emotion, and the stuttering, glitchy elements of "Between Narrow and Small" add a bit of discord and chaos, while still retaining the haunting beauty of the rest of the tracks.
Like other recent works on the label, Marcus Fischer is showing an extreme skill in creating sounds that seem to have their source in the natural world, but ones that are nearly impossible to identify.The delicate, decaying beauty of these textures and tones should not be missed.
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Chicago's Locrian have actually been a bit less prolific this year, really only releasing two brilliantly cohesive albums, Territories from earlier this year (originally on LP, now available on CD), and the upcoming double disc The Crystal World. Other than those, they've been relatively quiet, even with the addition of full time percussionist Steven Hess. On this split with New York's Century Plants, they continue their emphasis on abstracting the concept of "metal", with each band taking different approaches, but achieving a common goal.
Century Plant's two pieces veer more towards the psychedelic, while retaining a darkness that fits well with the Locrian material on the other side."Fading Out" pairs string bending guitar improvisations with distant, cavernous clattering and a smattering of random found sounds.While the opening is sparse, the latter segments layer on a mass of ambient textures and more overt guitar work.
"Delirium" has a lighter feel to it, with soaring tones that feel more ebullient than anything else on the album with tape echoed outbursts occasionally snaking through.A darker industrial squall guitar sound eventually becomes the focus, sucking the light from the piece slowly but surely.Straddling the line somewhere between black metal and noise, the track takes on a sound all its own.
The Locrian half of the LP feels more in-line with their work from a few years ago as opposed to their recent output of more song-like pieces.This is especially notable with "On A Calcified Shore," with its high pitched, sharp tone and droning bass lingering in the background.As it builds, it becomes a hazy realm of echoing, reverberated guitar tones with the occasional shrill passage jumping out.It’s definitely more droney than their recent work, but it is a great slasher flick soundtrack.
"Omega Vapors" has the same tense, nightmarish sensation going for it, but instead of echo and feedback it's more of simple synth melodies and repetitive, two note guitar sequences that lead the way, creating an almost carnival like atmosphere, but a very evil one, with menacing guitar feedback and layers of synth rising up from the muck to eventually swallow the entire track.
I’m not sure if all copies feature it, or only ones direct from the label, but there was also a CDR included with the LP of all four tracks remixed by Rambutan (one of Century guitarist Eric Hardiman's side projects).The tracks essentially are pulled into a more electronic, experimental based field as opposed the more guitar heavy originals.The balance between original and new is nicely struck, and the four pieces are a different take on the original works.
With both bands working in similar, but different ways on the deconstruction of heavy metal guitar sounds, the two halves of this LP compliment each other nicely.Even though it is a split release, rather than a collaboration, there is a strong sense of unity between them.Between the more spacey Century Plants side and the sinister Locrian half, it’s a wonderful album of variations on a theme.
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As enjoyable as Robert Haigh's albums have been, they never seemed to capture that same aching beauty of his classic albums from the '80s (both under his own name and as Sema). This latest album changes all that. The delicate touch and fragile melodies, which defined his best work, are both present. Sombre without being dour, reflective without being depressing, this represents Haigh's finest work in years.
The album begins sombrely with the title track; slow and nocturnal it sets the pace and the mood for the album. Like most of Anonymous Lights, this initial piece is short (only this and one other piece last longer than three minutes). Each tune is a vignette full of moonlight and dead calm. The influence of Erik Satie and Claude Debussy is obvious throughout but Haigh's unmistakable compositions could not be confused with scores from either composer. The likes of "Fugitive Moonlight" gently dances like light rain, as hypnotic as the natural sound but full of a supernatural magic and evoking the melodic powers of Satie and Debussy without aping their respective styles.
Elsewhere, "Berlin Kino" shows Haigh's superb ear for melody as he crafts a stunning constellation of notes over the pitch black of a repeating rhythm on the lower keys. The album's title and the starry quality of the notes both here and on pretty much every other piece on Anonymous Lights give the impression of being an observer, either a traveller gazing at a distant city or an astronomer casting their sight down the body of a telescope into the infinite heavens. This idea comes through strongest during "Moon Blue Crooks" which also incorporates the sound of a wind gusting through the music giving the feeling of in an old house, ear against the wall listening to a haunting (or haunted) piano as the weather beats the outside of the building.
At the end of Anonymous Lights is a lengthy piece, "Book of Fixed Stars," which evokes the same ghostly feelings as were present in the grooves of those old Sema records. Over the course of the piece, Haigh takes simple building blocks of melodic clusters and puts them together in cryptic, beautiful ways. The already slow pace of the album freezes and almost reaches a stop as Haigh lets each note form fully and ring; the reverberation blurring into the next note and creating a transfixing audio painting.
To call this music beautiful is an understatement. Blixa Bargeld once said that "arms would not be able to stretch as far as necessary
to form an adequate gesture for beauty." I like to think that Haigh has managed to form that gesture through his playing, stretching his arms along an infinite piano keyboard to create a true artistic representation of beauty at its purest.
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CONTENTS :
'Artuad, Aktionkunst, Abreaction and Eb.er' : texts by Alice Kemp, accompanied by new drawings from Rudolf Eb.er, and a detailed 'Aktiongraphy'.
An extensive indepth interview with Gary Mundy, covering the career of Ramleh, the complete output of his legendary Broken Flag record label, and also featuring new interviews with the artists responsible for those releases, including: Maurizio Bianchi, Unkommuniti, Mauthausen Orchestra, Satori, Controlled Bleeding, Irritant, JFK, Mauro Teho Teardo ( M.T.T.), Con-Dom Sigillum S, Agog, Giancarlo Toniutti, Vortex Campaign, Le Syndicat, Krang and many more, plus unseen artwork and photographs.
Festival curator Carlos Giffoni talk about the New York festival's past, present and future, and covers his work with the No Fun Productions label.
The Rita's Sam McKinlay talks about the obsessive nature of the harsh-head. Includes a list of Sam's essential Wall Noise picks spanning the past two decades. An excellent introduction to wall-riding.
G.X. Jupitter - Larsen provides a personal history, as well as a delineation of his ideas, methods, and tricks accrued over three decades. The inside story from the man who has made entropy his life's work.
An interview with Mark Durgan, covering his twenty years in the UK's wilderness, from Birthbiter's heyday to the present-day. Includes reminiscences from Andy Bolus about their infamous duo project, Olympic Shit Man !
Sweden's loudest, Dan Johansson talks about his music, ideas, art and running a tape label. Interview by Mikko Aspa of Grunt.
An album -by- album look at the discography of this retired French noise legend, including brief commentary from Mr Zone Nord himself, Jean-Luc Angles.
An interview with Patrick Barber, the man behind the label. Covers the output of this legendary label who released Blowhole, Prick Decay, Small Cruel Party and others in the early 90's.
An interview with London sound-sculpter and all-'round sonic chameleon Phil Julian.
An interview with this Milwaukee-based Power Electronics lecher, including an album-by-album analysis.
A study of the non-careers of two early eighties UK outfits that were very much connected. Includes input from some of the key players, plus lots of vintage artwork.
A look at this influential UK fanzine from the mid-80s, plus an interview with its creator, John Smith.
G. X. Jupitter - Larsen tells us about his first memories in Vancouver of this volatile bunch.
An overview of the primary output of this American tape label, and an interview with its owner, Nicole Chambers.
A regular feature dedicated to both indepth analysis and memories of overlooked but not forgotten gems from yesteryear. Issue #1 features articles on The Lemon Kittens ( We Buy A Hammer For Daddy ), XX Committee ( Network ) and RJF ( Greater Success In Apprehensions & Convictions ). A collection of thoughts and interviews, including an exclusive interview with ex- XX front-man, Scott Foust.
A regular feature from a rotating pool of participatory players with the music they ponder. Includes John Olson ( Wolf Eyes ), Andy Ortmann ( Panicsville ), Mikko Aspa ( Grunt ), Steve Underwood ( Harbinger Sound ), Hicham Chadly ( Nashazphone ), Jonas Kellagher ( Segerhuva ), C. Spencer Yeh ( Burning Star Core ) and Mark Wharton ( Idwal Fisher ) amongst others. Covering artists including Masonna, Vomir, and The Black Phelgm, and ranging from Bizarre Uproar all the way to Christian bluegrass music !
Covering output from Ahlzagailzeguh, Angel of Decay, Astro, Bizarre Uproar, Blod, BT.HN, C.C.C.C, Cloama, Craniopagus, Jason Crumer, D.D.A.A, Dieter Muh, Thomas Dimuzio, Emaciator, Fckn' Bstrds, Dino Felipe, FFH, Fire in the Head, Carlos Giffoni, Griefer, Haemorrhaging Fetus, Hair Police, Hair Stylistics, Halthan, Russell Haswell, Haters, Hum of the Druid, Idea Fire Company, Illusion of Safety, Irgun Z'wai Leumi, IRM, Jazkamer, Jazzfinger, G.X. Jupitter - Larsen, K2, Zbigniew Karkowski, KILT, Koeff, Graham Lambkin, Lazy Magnet, Mammal, Mania, Daniel Menche, Menstruation Sisters, MNEM, M.O, Mutant Ape, Nerve Net Noise, The New Blockaders, Nihilist Assault Group, nmperign, Oscillating Innards, Prurient, Putrefier, Raglani, Richard Ramirez, Redglaer, The Rita, RJF, Damion Romero, Romance, Secret Abuse, Shift, Sissy Spacek, Spine Scavenger, Sharpwaist, Sickness, Skeletons Out, Howard Stelzer, Sudden Infant, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Third Door From The Left, Asmus Tietchens, Treriksroset, Tunnel Canary, Whorebutcher, John Weise, Wilt, Wolf Eyes, XX Committee, C. Spencer Yeh, Jason Zeh and many more.
