Plenty of new music to be had this week from Laetitia Sadier and Storefront Church, Six Organs of Admittance, Able Noise, Yui Onodera, SML, Clinic Stars, Austyn Wohlers, Build Buildings, Zelienople, and Lea Thomas, plus some older tunes by Farah, Guy Blakeslee, Jessica Bailiff, and Richard H. Kirk.
Lake in Girdwood, Alaska by Johnny.
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MAINS DE GIVRE is a violin-centered soundscaping project involving self-taught experimentalist Eric Quach and classically trained musician Émilie Livernois-Desroches, both of whom call Montreal home. Quach is widely known for the experimental ambient work he's produced under his thisquietarmy alias and also is the founder of the instrumental-shoegazer band Destroyalldreamers. Livernois-Desroches has played violin since she was seven years old and been teaching since 2003. She has been a part of various chamber music and symphonic orchestras, and performs with a wide variety of bands in styles ranging from pop to medieval to metal. While her previous best-known project was the melodic folk-black metal band Blackguard (formerly known as Profugus Mortis), Mains de Givre is her most experimental project to date.
Quach and Livernois-Desroches first crossed paths in 2003 while playing with their respective bands Destroyalldreamers and Sugarshack as part of the emerging post-rock scene in Montreal. Following each other's musical achievements over the years, their mutual respect for each other grew until they found themselves six years later embarking on a studio collaboration initially intended to be part of a thisquietarmy release. As their personal and musical chemistry grew, their newfound closeness turned the collaboration into an official long-term project they christened Mains de Givre (frost hands) after a nickname that had been given to Émilie (émilie-aux-mains-de-givre) by her bandmates.
Mains de Givre's debut album, Esther Marie, originates from material recorded at the duo's first jam session in the spring of 2009. The recording opens with the very first notes the two played together, notes that evoke an eerie sadness that permeates the album and characterizes the mood of their collaboration. With the violin as the lead instrument, Quach's guitar playing is restrained yet also tense, as he generates dark, slowly evolving drone atmospheres alongside subtle, looped-based patterns that swirl within the lower end of the sound spectrum.
CQBL004 | The Second Family Band | Veiled Gallery | c42 [Limited edition 20 Green on Lime | 80 Green on Black] Humming and wheezing through 40+ minutes of electro-acoustic tension and release, with the usual mood swings from good vibes to hysteria, the Second Family Band is the still-raging avatar of our lonely local folkspirit. Second Family Band folks are everyone from the recent University of Wisconsin dropouts to aging remnants of the anarcho/folkish/mage/squatter tradition of Madison, featuring members of Davenport Family, Pan to Scratch, Zodiac Mountain, Drunjus, Hintergedanken, Burial Hex, Jex Thoth, Zola Jesus, Kinit Her, Crystal Dragon, and many other local units. This cassette contains six choice excerpts from two sessions given near the end of summer, 2009. The first session was a huge family gathering at the newly installed Harvest Abbey in Madison. The second session was a beautiful performance by a trio of elders within St Mary's of the Oaks, a 154 year-old Marian altar built on a hilltop in the forest around Indian Lake. If you have heard Second Family before, than you know a little bit of what to expect: loads of percussion, singing, plucking, pounding, tapping, dropping, alien choirs, bass grooves, naked ladies, strange fidelities, chanting, praying, drinking, strumming, smoking, ringing, clapping, bowing, pulsing, losing, forgetting, and finding everything in every type of mood from the sinister to the blissful. Yet, one local cynic described the music on this tape as sounding "too good for Second Family Band". Whatever the case may be, Brave Mysteries is proud to release this document of a momentary glance into the native spirit and biodynamic soundscape of central Wisconsin, in hopes to keep these gentle old family flames burning for yet another season.
All cassettes are professionally duplicated and imprinted on high-bias chrome tapes and are delivered individually shrink-wrapped. Colored tapes are shipped first come first serve only. PPD $7-USA | $8-CAN | $10-WORLD PayPal bravemysteries[at]gmail.com
CQBL002 | Kinit Her | Divine Names | c30 [Limited edition 20 Silver on Blue | 80 Silver on Black] New full length album from our beloved Janus-headed ur-folk brethren of thee Midwest, Kinit Her have been releasing dense and gorgeous music for the last three years and these new compositions have the most developed, deep and intimate sounds of any Kinit Her releases. Founded as a trio in 2007, one of their founding members has recently retired from music to enjoy family life out in the country, sadly leaving only two close brothers still huddled around the cauldron. In the absence of their musical kin, Kinit Her journeys on, gathering what they find along the path, filling their hearts and sounds with an ever-deepening sorrow gained from their search for real meaning through the tainted veils of the modern world, a sorrow diluted only by the dim glimmering of hope offered by occult insights into what lies behind those veils. The music presented here includes an epic working that covers all of side A, progressing from a ritual howling at the edge of Ain Soph to a pensive woodland march, winding it's way to devastation and madness. Side B follows with some their most unique yet accessible songcraft to date, a stunning set of new songs, showing the careful influence of Neoclassical and Early musics. Sounding organic tone-mantras from shofar horns, bending sweetened notes on beaten twelve-string guitars, intoning a harmonized enumeration of spells and dreams, backed by weeping string and brass arrangements with lush acoustic ephemera twinkling on the peripherals of everything, twisting arcane runes into the cyber sigils of tomorrow, with their smoldering mysticism filling the spaces in between each sound, this soft duo have become hard, turning the world upside down and following the lessons of modernity to find their birthrights in the spirit of the god-fearing troubadours of old.
All cassettes are professionally duplicated and imprinted on high-bias chrome tapes and are delivered individually shrink-wrapped. Colored tapes are shipped first come first serve only. PPD $7-USA | $8-CAN | $10-WORLD PayPal bravemysteries[at]gmail.com
[Limited edition 20 Gold on Gold | 80 Gold on Black] Pipe organ sonata by Clay Ruby featuring liturgical medleys and elaborate funerary improvisations with accompanying electronic atmospheres by Giovanni Donadini, Nico Vascellari and Riccardo Mazza. This performance was given on the mid-eighteenth century pipe organ at Chiesa di San Nicolò di Perarolo di Cadore and recorded December 23rd, 2009 at the inauguration performance of Nico Vascellari's exhibition at Perarolo, as currated by Daniela Zangrando. A crowd from all over Italy traveled north to join the curious villagers, all huddled together in their warmest winter clothes to witness this performance, which involved a 3 hour funeral procession and memorial within the massive, candlelit, unheated church that is the center of tiny village lost high in the frozen Dolomites of northern Italy. Two elderly natives furiously pulling ropes to pump the bellows of the ancient organ while Clay Ruby conjures decayed hymns, modal improvisations, spiraling tone clusters and utterly supernatural voices out of its sputtering pipes. This tape captures a 18+ minute excerpt of the lengthy proceedings, documenting the howling organ, the cryptic electronics and the frozen spirits singing in the pulsing and surreal environment of the centuries-old church.
Now available from BRAVEMYSTERIES.COM
All cassettes are professionally duplicated and imprinted on high-bias chrome tapes and are delivered individually shrink-wrapped. Colored tapes are shipped first come first serve only. PPD $7-USA | $8-CAN | $10-WORLD PayPal bravemysteries[at]gmail.com
This vinyl only release from the Kindertotenlieder pair explores even gloomier realms than before. It is an impressive and intimidating but unfortunately brief collection of rather upsetting sounds and images. The duo focus more on dynamics on this EP with shades of the quiet loudness of Khanate echoing through the two pieces.
Initially I was disappointed that this third release from Stephen O'Malley and Peter Rehberg was only a one-sided vinyl. The two previous albums were both proper heavy headfucks and I wanted more and more. However, the two pieces on KTL3 manage to invoke an even more unsettling atmosphere than I was expecting. "Loud Game" features some classic O'Malley riffing before breaking down into a hacking mess of noise. "Sunday" is a quieter and more menacing affair: a treacly bass rhythm throbs in the background while squeals, scrapes and clangs ring out like an infernal blacksmith creating a torture machine.
Visually, this is the most impressive KTL release. The sleeve features a creepy photograph of a life size doll (which I believe is connected to the theatre piece that O'Malley and Rehberg teamed up to soundtrack) which sets the mood immediately. Once you take out the inner sleeve and cut through the seal, an etching of a horned beast on the flipside of the vinyl greets you. All of this combines with the music to create a nightmarish cocktail. The sounds here are a bit of break away from the wintry blasts of tinny noise on the first two albums which indicates that KTL have more in them than a single soundtrack work. There is no word from O'Malley and Rehberg if this project is to continue but based on the darker pastures of KTL3, pushing any deeper into the night might prove too much for mortal ears.
Volume III in a series of UK / European / US and Japanese artists’ tributes to the pioneering UK Noise group The New Blockaders
release date: July 27, 2010 catalog#: IMPREC262 format:DOUBLE CD
Including exclusive tracks by: Z’EV, The Haters, Controlled Bleeding, Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke, Wolf Eyes, Macronympha, Emil Beaulieau, AMK, Idea Fire Company, John Wiese, Daniel Menche, Damion Romero, Aaron Dilloway, Lockweld, Prurient, Richard Ramirez, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Jason Kahn, mnortham, Carlos Giffoni, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, etc.
Disc One:
Z'EV "Chips Off The New Block" Keith Fullerton Whitman "September 27th, 1960" Alan Courtis "Happy Blockaders Time" Controlled Bleeding "The Latest Hole In My Head" Plethora "Last Night I Dremt Of Anti-Fest... This Morning I Woke Up Deaf" Macronympha "Riding Down Lost Highway" The Haters "Mantra To Rot" Emil Beaulieau "Anti-Vartan" Lockweld "Catharsis Bomb" Daniel Menche "Smoldered Blockaders" John Wiese "Annul" Broken Penis Orchestra "The Kill Lump" Jason Kahn "Rille"
Disc Two:
Idea Fire Company "Les Heros De La Barricade Finale" mnortham "Plotting Course On The Field Of Nothingness" Thurston Moore "Corion Sound for TNB" Jim O'Rourke "407 Seconds Over" Damion Romero "Broken Block" Prurient "Majdanek Slaughterhouse" Richard Ramirez "Cultural Blockade" Blue Sabbath Black Cheer "Untitled" Carlos Giffoni "Richard Walks Into The Sea" AMK "Phlegm Angst" Aaron Dilloway "Machine Rape (Blitzkrieg)" Wolf Eyes "Fisted Gadgets"
On the third album from A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Jeremy Barnes has held to his word and touring member Heather Trost now joins him in the studio to make a superb collection of new tunes. It is not a break away from the previous releases but it is a continuation of a high quality back catalogue. The Way the Wind Blows hangs together better and feels more complete, especially with the addition of more odd instruments and even stronger arrangements.
“In the River” opens the proceedings in style; it is reminiscent of last year’s Darkness at Noon album with its equal helpings of Ennio Morricone infused spaghetti western pomp and eastern European melancholy. Barnes’ vocals are pushed into the background which both obscures them and makes them sound like they are being beamed in from some far off place that is only read about in dusty books of travellers’ memoirs. One of those far off places turns out to be a remote village in Romania called Zece Prajini where Barnes and Trost relocated to in order to record The Way the Wind Blows (despite the distance from a proper recording studio the music has been captured with crystal clarity). The other far off place where they ventured isn’t even on the map. The same can be said of A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s music. You can narrow it down to a rough region of musical space but in the end it is an idiosyncrasy that cannot be pinned down. It’s not folk music in the traditional sense but like an amalgamation of feelings expressed through a handful of different musical dialects. The important point is that not only is it unique but it’s beautiful, especially on this album.
The Way the Wind Blows doesn’t see A Hawk and a Hacksaw changing their now cemented style but it does see them refining and expanding it. It is little details and additions that really add so much to their music. On “God Bless the Ottoman Empire” there is a Turkish wind instrument (unfortunately I’m unable to identify it) used with heaps of skill and to great effect. Trost’s violin is used far more sparingly than expected but when it is present it is invariable beautiful such as on the brief “Oporto.” Another notable thing about this album is less use of vocals. There are vocals but most of the time they are short phrases used to augment the music. I wouldn’t have minded more songs as the pieces I like most by A Hawk and a Hacksaw tend to be the songs. Barnes has a great voice and his lyrics are generally splendid as evidenced by the line (delivered in the most pacifistic tone possible): "You cannot govern the world, fuck off."
I hope they follow up this release promptly as with each album they are becoming more and more solid. The music sounds even more intuitive than before, nothing sounds like it was written but snatched from the air, the results depending on “The Way the Wind Blows.” Judging from the CD I’m listening to now, the wind blew in the right direction.
With an impressive cast of characters including 2Mex, Saul Williams, and Mia Doi Todd, Thavius Beck's newest record charts a few different paths but manages to carve out a unique path for the LA-based producer. I was a fan of Thavius Beck's last record for Mush, but Thru is even stronger and stranger.
Beck's choice of collaborators is telling about his approach to music. Nocando's rhyme on "98" is hard to listen to, deeply personal and honest, but it's the kind of track that I wish more people would try to make within the context of a hip hop record. Mia Doi Todd's voice loops and blends with samples over a beautiful but broken downtempo number while Saul Williams adds more gravitas to an album that's already aiming to be a seriously considered journey rather than a collection of pop songs.
Even the instrumental tracks here sing with a resonantly personal touch. Beck swings back and forth between sample hungry hip hop tracks and songs that exist outside of any tightly constrained vision of a genre. Music like this almost always tends to be a reflection of someone creating out of a need to express rather than a need to move units at the local shop. Of course that means that records like Thru often have a difficult time connecting with the people whose jobs are to market, sell, promote, and distribute music, but paradoxically these same records are usually the ones that connect the deepest with individual listeners who feel what an artist is trying to say.
Thru is a pretty dark journey, but not one that dwells on or ever feels weighted down by its own themes. This could easily be the kind of record that gets people who typically dismiss hip hop and electronic music as glossy, vacant, or superficial to rethink that position.
On the third album from A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Jeremy Barnes has held to his word and touring member Heather Trost now joins him in the studio to make a superb collection of new tunes. It is not a break away from the previous releases but it is a continuation of a high quality back catalogue. The Way the Wind Blows hangs together better and feels more complete, especially with the addition of more odd instruments and even stronger arrangements.
All cassettes are professionally duplicated and imprinted on high-bias chrome tapes and are delivered individually shrink-wrapped. Colored tapes are shipped first come first serve only.
[Limited edition 20 Gold on Gold | 80 Gold on Black]
Pipe organ sonata by Clay Ruby featuring liturgical medleys and elaborate funerary improvisations with accompanying electronic atmospheres by Giovanni Donadini, Nico Vascellari and Riccardo Mazza. This performance was given on the mid-eighteenth century pipe organ at Chiesa di San Nicolò di Perarolo di Cadore and recorded December 23rd, 2009 at the inauguration performance of Nico Vascellari's exhibition at Perarolo, as currated by Daniela Zangrando. A crowd from all over Italy traveled north to join the curious villagers, all huddled together in their warmest winter clothes to witness this performance, which involved a 3 hour funeral procession and memorial within the massive, candlelit, unheated church that is the center of tiny village lost high in the frozen Dolomites of northern Italy. Two elderly natives furiously pulling ropes to pump the bellows of the ancient organ while Clay Ruby conjures decayed hymns, modal improvisations, spiraling tone clusters and utterly supernatural voices out of its sputtering pipes. This tape captures a 18+ minute excerpt of the lengthy proceedings, documenting the howling organ, the cryptic electronics and the frozen spirits singing in the pulsing and surreal environment of the centuries-old church.
CQBL002 | Kinit Her | Divine Names | c30
[Limited edition 20 Silver on Blue | 80 Silver on Black]
New full length album from our beloved Janus-headed ur-folk brethren of thee Midwest, Kinit Her have been releasing dense and gorgeous music for the last three years and these new compositions have the most developed, deep and intimate sounds of any Kinit Her releases. Founded as a trio in 2007, one of their founding members has recently retired from music to enjoy family life out in the country, sadly leaving only two close brothers still huddled around the cauldron. In the absence of their musical kin, Kinit Her journeys on, gathering what they find along the path, filling their hearts and sounds with an ever-deepening sorrow gaine d from their search for real meaning through the tainted veils of the modern world, a sorrow diluted only by the dim glimmering of hope offered by occult insights into what lies behind those veils. The music presented here includes an epic working that covers all of side A, progressing from a ritual howling at the edge of Ain Soph to a pensive woodland march, winding it's way to devastation and madness. Side B follows with some their most unique yet accessible songcraft to date, a stunning set of new songs, showing the careful influence of Neoclassical and Early musics. Sounding organic tone-mantras from shofar horns, bending sweetened notes on beaten twelve-string guitars, intoning a harmonized enumeration of spells and dreams, backed by weeping string and brass arrangements with lush acoustic ephemera twinkling on the peripherals of everything, twisting arcane runes into the cyber sigils of tomorrow, with their smoldering mysticism filling the spaces in between each sound, this soft duo have become hard, turning the world upside down and following the lessons of modernity to find their birthrights in the spirit of the god-fearing troubadours of old.
CQBL003 | Body Collector | New Eden | c30
Limited edition 20 Red on Grey | 80 Red on Black]
From beyond the other side of great lake Michigan transmits Khristopher Reinshagen; aka Scorpio & Glass aka Khurst aka Nurse Etiquette aka Nuhrst. It has been rumored that this may be the final BC release ever, and if so, this project ends with just as much unsettling fury and disgust as when it began. Using bleak themes and imagery to drive the manipulation of industrial elements into the accumulation of brooding noise walls and filthy tape grime, Body Collector has released twenty or more focused and intense installments of sonic nausea over the last three years of his short life. This cassette sets you off into another strange aryan-voodoo nightmare dimension, haunted by an always tense, menacing presence, calling out through the hiss and hum of the threshold between our dimension and the New Eden. Broken tape systems consume every sound, encrusting them with analog waste. Metal vomit gushes between each gasp of sickly feedback. Every motion of sound seems like it is trying to force it's way past the other sounds and flop out of the speakers, onto the floor, to hemorrhage and die right there before you. Despite the generous mutations of all the machinery, you can always hear Khurst himself underneath it all, conducting the steel, slowly churning and mashing his ritual tools of scrap metal and material decay. A formidable requiem to such a morbid project, if ever there was one.
CQBL004 | The Second Family Band | Veiled Gallery | c42
[Limited edition 20 Green on Lime | 80 Green on Black]
Humming and wheezing through 40+ minutes of electro-acoustic tension and release, with the usual mood swings from good vibes to hysteria, the Second Family Band is the still-raging avatar of our lonely local folkspirit. Second Family Band folks are everyone from the recent University of Wisconsin dropouts to aging remnants of the anarcho/folkish/mage/squatter tradition of Madison, featuring members of Davenport Family, Pan to Scratch, Zodiac Mountain, Drunjus, Hintergedanken, Burial Hex, Jex Thoth, Zola Jesus, Kinit Her, Crystal Dragon, and many other local units. This cassette contains six choice excerpts from two sessions given near the end of summer, 2009. The first session was a huge family gathering at the newly installed Harvest Abbey in Madison. The second session was a beautiful performance by a trio of elders within St Mary's of the Oaks, a 154 year-old Marian altar built on a hilltop in the forest around Indian Lake. If you have heard Second Family before, than you know a little bit of what to expect: loads of percussion, singing, plucking, pounding, tapping, dropping, alien choirs, bass grooves, naked ladies, strange fidelities, chanting, praying, drinking, strumming, smoking, ringing, clapping, bowing, pulsing, losing, forgetting, and finding everything in every type of mood from the sinister to the blissful. Yet, one local cynic described the music on this tape as sounding "too good for Second Family Band". Whatever the case may be, Brave Mysteries is proud to release this document of a momentary glance into the native spirit and biodynamic soundscape of central Wisconsin, in hopes to keep these gentle old family flames burning for yet another season.
Cassettes are PPD $7-USA | $8-CAN | $10-WORLD
PayPal bravemysteries[at]gmail.com
Future cabal transmissions from: MV&EE, Bong, Lens, Corpoparassita, The Mumber Toes, Ignatz, Magic Kingdom, Zodiac Mountain, Wedding, Pan To Scratch, Domo, Circulation of Light, Urna, Grupo de Musica Sin Nombre, Wormsblood, Sylvester Anfang II, and many more.
This is the product of a collaboration between Italian Gianluigi Di Costanzoand American Brian Salter that wants to come off as a timeless work ofelectronic pop music, but only makes it half-way there. What BochumWelt learns the hard way is that the middle of the road is a dangerousplace to be.
Elan does have some lovely sounds and crystalclear production, and it avoids dating itself by staying away fromparticularly trendy aesthetic choices. In fact, in that respect, thealbum works very well, but it’s not enough for a record to bedislocated from time. It also needs to be moving in some direction, andthat isn’t happening here.
Although it’s well produced,the album ultimately lacks the soul or energy of some of Bochum Welt’scontemporaries who are working from a similar mold. The tracks on Elansound almost entirely synthesized and that’s not a bad thing until theybegin to sound like perfunctory studio exercises rather thancompositions motivated by any feeling or experience. The melodies arealways pleasant, but not sweeping; the songs are mildly evocative butnot breathtaking or immersive; the rhythms are polite accompaniment,but rarely provide a spark. At every step it feels like Bochum Welt isplaying it safe and taking the path most traveled.
Vocals provided bythe Italian crooner Garbo on “Blue” come off awkwardly and they addlittle to the otherwise pretty but unremarkable track. The Italianastrophysicist and my high school aged-self’s nerd-music crush Dr.Fiorella Terenzi contributes something along the way, but whatever itis it fails to elevate the record to being memorable. There’s nodiscernable style here and at points it sounds as though the albumcould be the temp soundtrack to a car commercial or cheesy Europeanfilm—it hits the right cues but it seems to miss the point.
After a fewspins, everything on the record begins to sound like a keyboard preset,and the lack of any original sound design leaves the compositions tofend for themselves. When there is nothing left in the songs upon whichBochum Welt can prop up an idea or an emotional state, the whole thing collapses like a beautiful straw house.