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It was inevitable that my quest for truly outlandish music would lead me to the deranged audio landscapes of Caroliner. Where my quest will lead me after exploring the many records in their unhinged ouvre I do not know. As for now I content myself with the warped cognitive dissonance they provide.
Nuf Sed
On the round LP sticker it says “please read enclosed lyrics, they are intrinsic to the music,” yet following along with the lyric sheet is a nearly impossible task. The music itself is so disconcerting that I have to read it in a quiet room after the record is played. Here and there a recognizable word is perceived, allowing me to figure out which song is which. It is clear that there are different songs but no blank spaces have been left between them. Lurking beneath the squall of autistic drums is the near constant hum of a disconcerting organ, bleating like a sheep who knows it is about to be sacrificed. Over top of it all are shrill vocals that sound like they were mixed from a warbling tape, alternately sped up and slowed down.
One of the high points on the album is “The Worst of Toys.” It begins with aggressive belching, a thick squeal, and continues into what sounds like the drunken rant of a hillbilly who is about to dish out a beating. It is a song emblematic of their aesthetic. Another is “Salt Lump” with its noisy electronics bursting out of their angry mangled bluegrass. The rhythms are all played in disjointed time signatures. Fiddles and guitars vie and struggle against each other in a battle for supremacy of volume. The mad lyricist shouts his pitch bent derangements over the inebriated squalor. The cacophonic drumming and weird swirls of flange and vibrato form the glue that binds the proceedings together. The album ends by spiraling into a locked groove of an unintelligible phrase to further the audio nausea.
Outside the sheer audacity and unpredictability of their music, what I find so intriguing about the legendary San Francisco group is the sense of mystery and mythology they weave about them. Revolving around the story of a singing bull from the 1800’s who bequeathed them their entire repertoire they have made a virtue out of their inscrutability. The disturbed cartoons on the packaging of the record, peculiar lyrics, and brash songs all work together to create a numinous cohesion that has the logic of dreams, which is part of its appeal.
This vinyl only album was released in 1993.
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Aranos has always been reliably unpredictable and this strange, disorienting, and difficult new album will do nothing to dispel that perception. It begins as a cerebral drone work, but Surrounded by Hermits gradually escalates (degenerates?) into Dadaist cabaret, absurdist noise, and mischievous buffoonery with characteristic anarchic glee.
There are a number of pretty unique things about Surrounded by Hermits (aside from, of course, Aranos himself). For one, it is packaged in a handmade wood and burlap case. Secondly, it contains some rather unusual instrumentation, even for the experimental music genre. For example, the droning opening segment (“Yaoowaah”) is played on a bowed gong filtered through a wah-wah pedal. Aranos’s beautifully sad violin playing, on the other hand, appears quite seldom. That was a bit disappointing for me, but it is an admittedly pretty ballsy move for him to avoid relying on his greatest strength and instead attempt to carry the melodic weight of an album with seashells and gongs. Also, of course, it should be noted that this album follows a singularly warped and confounding trajectory. Aranos did not take the easy road anywhere on this album.
Surrounded by Hermits is essentially one very long piece split into 16 separate tracks that uninterruptedly segue into one another. Many of the segments are quite brief and very few constitute distinct songs, so the transitions are generally quite seamless. The first half of the album takes quite a subdued and somewhat meditative tone, as the opening gong piece is followed by a series of interludes populated with somber pianos, mournful conch shell moans, chittering insectoid noises, queasy microtonally shifting drones, discordant flugelhorns, and beds of whooshing and whirring electronics. This early eccentric ambience does little to hint at some of the material that appears later in the album.
As alluded to above, of course, things gradually take a turn towards the very weird (even by avant-garde standards). I suppose the bottom officially begins to drop out with the commencement of the eighth segment, “Some Feeling.” While it marks the first appearance of both relatively conventional musicality and Aranos’s gypsy-tinged violin playing, it is also frequently disrupted by loud sighs and recordings of a Shakespeare rehearsal overlapped to the point of incomprehensibility. Things return to deceptive tameness for a little while afterwards though. In fact, the lurching strings of “Wwroomah” are actually somewhat beautiful before they are electronically splintered and enveloped in rumbling. However, that piece transitions into the lunatic cabaret of “Mekanik Mik,” which is followed by more disjointed Shakespearean chaos, then the absolutely ridiculous, improbable, and crazy drum machine funk of “Tudumtudam.”
It is surprising that the album continues after that frenzied, noisy, genre mash-up, but it does somehow. In fact, Surrounded by Hermits' brief denouement actually yields one of its clear highlights, the fiery violin showcase of “Ooaahh/Loadooda,” before drawing to a hushed close with the lengthy piano dirge of “Plinkplonk.”
Hermits is certainly a worthy addition to Aranos’s already rather aberrant and uncompromising back catalog, but it probably is not a good starting place for those new to his work. This is definitely an unabashedly self-indulgent and deranged album, but it is also quite a wild and fiercely iconoclastic one.
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This collaboration between the English double bassist and one of my favorite drummers is superb. While Corsano rarely disappoints, when he is matched by a player who is equally as inventive and fluid then things heat up nicely. Edwards puts his immense experience to full use during this album, the two players sparking off each other to create music with enormous clout. Tsktsking is repeatedly brilliant, all four pieces showing that these two musicians are at the top of their respective games.
“Razed Then Raised Again” begins like a storm in the distance; a rumbling power looming over the horizon. After a few minutes, the storm finally hits and Corsano’s beautiful and erratic drumming feels like hailstones being blown around. Edwards’ bass is the gale, forcing the drums around corners and down side streets; this is truly elemental music. By the end of the piece, it actually sounds like the duo are trying to push their way into the microphones and out of my speakers to bring this music directly to me. The title track continues this commanding style of performance and the duo sound like Albert Ayler’s backing band at their most free (throughout this piece I can imagine the ghost of Ayler jamming along, unheard but his presence felt).
The second side of the LP has Edwards and Corsano shift the focus of their music completely. The slow burning “The Master without Hammer” carries a threatening undertone to it. Eventually avalanching into a freefalling and dangerous tumult of percussion and double bass, “The Master without Hammer” is the monster at the heart of Tsktsking, it is absolutely stunning. Amazingly, Edwards and Corsano have not peaked yet and save the best for last with the thrilling, cathartic voyage through the rhythm section that is “To the Nines.” Again, they summon up the spirits of free jazz past and set out to exorcise and exercise them, running at breakneck speeds across their respective instruments.
As usual for Dancing Wayang, Tsktsking is beautifully packaged in a screenprinted sleeve that looks like it came from some classic '60s jazz label’s design studio. Also included are a set of liner notes by Evan Parker where he gives an entertaining account of how these two guys met. Taken altogether, this is a terrific album lovingly presented in a way that reflects the quality of the music found between the grooves. I cannot get enough of Tsktsking, both Edwards and Corsano show that improvisation is as potent as ever in its power to pull new and exciting music from the ether.
This release is currently vinyl only so unfortunately no sound samples at this point in time, apologies!
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Important Records describes this seventh(!) solo album by Grails/Om drummer Emil Amos as “going toe to toe with Roger Waters in the race to become the most bitter songwriter in the world”, but I don’t quite see it (too bad, as I love bitterness). Instead, it seems like an exuberant and odd (though sometimes surprisingly successful) collision between existentialist introversion and the virile extroversion of the best classic rock.
Criminal’s Return is cleverly frontloaded with the extremely impressive “From Now On,” which boasts elegantly melancholy piano and a heavy, majestic organ crescendo that any ‘70s prog band would’ve been thrilled to have on their album. The rest of the album never quite hits that level again, but that opening proved very effective at sucking me into the album in hopes of hearing more such gems. That is not to say the rest of the album is a disappointment; far from it, in fact. Nearly every song contains at least one cool idea or memorable part, but all the elements never quite cohere as perfectly again.
Amos is a surprisingly adept multi-instrumentalist, given his day job as a percussionist. While the drumming here is quite good, it is not especially flashy (though Amos locks into some excellent swaggering, laidback grooves). Instead, Amos saves the pyrotechnics for his guitar playing, peppering the album with cool dual-guitar harmonizing and dramatic arena rock-worthy riffs (the instrumental “Arranged Release” is especially packed with six-string heroics, though the slide guitar in “Thorns” is also pretty inspired). He’s also quite an impressive songwriter and arranger, as most of the songs are uncluttered, hook-y, and unfold in a coherent and dynamically satisfying fashion.
There are some weak spots, however: Emil’s downcast, understated vocals and the album’s lack of stylistic focus. Amos’ vocals are definitely not bad by any means, but they are too deadpan to effectively carry the strong songs beneath them (as vocals inevitably become the focal point whenever they appear). It’s pretty frustrating actually, because his vocal melodies are usually quite good and he even pulls off some America-esque multipart harmonies in places. As for the album’s focus, Criminal’s Return is a bit too varied and overt in displaying its influences. While a lot of the album is steeped in classic/prog rock, there are also some clear nods to Will Oldham, Elliot Smith, post-rock, Sebadoh, and analog synth space music (as in “Criminal’s Return Pt. II”).
Of course, part of that schizophrenia might be due to the fact that there are recordings from 2005-2009 included here (though Amos has a history of confounding disparities, such as including a Daniel Johnston/Jad Fair cover on an album named after an Oswald Spengler book). Unexpectedly, the three songs from 2005 are probably the album’s best (and they notably feature the last violin recordings of vanished Grails member Timothy Horner to boot). I’m certainly curious as to why it took Amos three albums to get around to releasing them. Criminal's Return seems like it may be intended as some sort of (very) loose "revenge fantasy" concept album, so maybe this is just the first time they fit somewhere thematically. It seems doubtful though.
Despite its relatively minor flaws, Criminal’s Return shows that Holy Sons is as serious a project as anything else Amos has been involved with. It may be lo-fi and a bit unfocused, but it is also teeming with great ideas and good songs that would not quite fit on Om or Grails albums. There are some guitar parts on this album that are awesome and iconic in an unselfconscious and unironic way that is rarely, if ever, found in indie rock circles (perhaps Doug Martsch needs to start watching his back). Unless Om ends up swallowing all of his time, Amos seems well on course for recording a monster of album someday. Of course, perhaps he secretly already has.
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The only full-length album from this London based trio has been high on my needs-a-CD-reissue list for years. Originally released in 1988 on the Mute subsidiary Product Inc., this abrasive and unapologetic stew of noise rock, punk, and reggae is a vibrant and flawless classic that sounds as peerless now as it did 21 years ago.
WorldDom/Free Love Records
Dubbed "psychobilly concrete" by Simon Reynolds in 1987 after witnessing what he claimed was "the most exciting show ever seen," World Domination Enterprises matched a tight rhythm section with the sound of guitars damaged and distorted almost beyond recognition and the angry vocals of Keith Dobson. They wasted no time: the original 14-song LP doesn't even amount to 40 minutes.
After various incarnations of Dobson's band The 012, Keith, along with Steve Jameson on bass and Digger Metters on drums renamed themselves World Domination Enterprises and in 1985 recorded the single "Asbestos Lead Asbestos." It won praise from John Peel and, subsequently, the band hooked up with Product Inc. for a couple more singles: "Catalogue Clothes" (1986) and "Hotsy Girl" (1987). Lets Play Domination didn't surface until 1988 and although it contains two of the previously released singles and three cover tunes it holds together damn well.
I'll admit I didn't track down the album until after Meat Beat Manifesto covered "Asbestos Lead Asbestos" in 1996. It was one of those slow burners that became more rewarding as time went on. At first, I didn't appreciate the album very much, but over the following few years, as bands like Neptune and Sightings started to surface, Lets Play Domination started sounding better and better.
Side one opens with the thud of what could be a speaker blowing, and then the pulsing bass of "Message For You People" begins, almost immediately joined by drums and blistering guitar noise. Neither the context nor the content can be called pretty. The term "ghetto punk" gets tossed around with respect to WDE and it's no shocker considering songs like "Ghetto Queen" and "Blu Money," where Dobson sings the refrain of "I blew money that I coulda bought drugs with." Also on side one is their sneery hit "Hotsy Town" and their beat boxy cover of LL Cool J's "I Can't Live Without My Radio." Side two is more downtempo, opening with the groovy, classic "happy fun tune" of "Asbestos Lead Asbestos." It also features their brilliant cover of U-Roy's "Jah Jah Call You." "The Bullit Man" and "The Stack Blew Jack" are placed next to each other, possibly intentionally, as they follow the same exact start/stop blueprint and melody scheme. The LP closes with their bouncy, shouty, and brief version of Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown."
Shortly after Let's Play Domination came out, Mute dissolved Product Inc. (which also had releases by Swans, Pussy Galore, and the Bambi Slam) claiming that they would no longer deal with "guitar bands." It's ironic that in the same year WDE finally self-issues Lets Play Domination on CD, Mute releases A Place To Bury Strangers. World Domination Enterprises continued for only another couple of singles and EPs before dissolving in 1990, when Digger Metters quit the music business to pursue a religious path.
On this CD edition, bonus tracks from singles are added. The A side "Catalog Clothes" appears with "Hotsy Girl" and "I Can't Live Without My Radio" (both of which appear in different forms earlier on the disc) along with "The Company News" and the previously unreleased "Do Do Go Go." Including them on this disc was a poor decision as it doesn't make for a great listen. This release would have been much better served by a 2xCD set with the full original album on disc one and a second disc for A sides coupled with their B-sides, collected with the remixes and live recordings which appeared on the EP Love from Lead City.
I have a major problem with the remastering job on the disc, too. Either my original LP doesn't sound right or the EQ here has been severely tampered with, resulting in a disorienting high end cut. It is rectified however when I turn treble all the way up to the max during playback. But, for those with computers and portable devices that can't control such factors, the sound simply won't be the same.
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This large box of vinyl collects up tons of odds and ends from the Nurse With Wound archive years and it is a considerably good collection of Steven Stapleton’s earliest sonic explorations. The hours of material included here cover all the tape collections, compilation tracks and live recordings that have been out of print for years (decades in most cases). It goes without saying that this is a treasure trove for anyone like me who looks at those rare recordings for sale online, looks in their wallet and sighs with resignation that those recordings will go to someone else. With superb sound quality and a decadent presentation (well, red velour), it is an absolute goldmine of classic recordings and I simply cannot get enough of it.
The first two LPs in this box set compiles all the Nurse With Wound tracks from the Scrag, Mi-Mort and Nylon Coverin’ Body Smotherin’ cassettes. These recordings provide a fantastic alternative history of Nurse With Wound as Stapleton included works in progress and alternative versions of tracks that would make up his classic albums on these albums. Some of the pieces appear here more or less as they would end up, such as “Nylon Coverin’ Body Smotherin’” which would end up becoming “Brained by Falling Masonry.” However, other pieces like “Someone Others Aquarium” which would end up as “Phenomenon of Aquarium and Bearded Lady” on Gyllensköld, Geijerstam and I at Rydberg's demonstrate how much Stapleton tinkered with his creations in order to get to the finished work (although considering how much he recycles his source sounds, when is a work considered finished down Cooloorta way?).
Miscellaneous compilation tracks are collected on the third LP and these provide a further insight into how the early Nurse With Wound albums came to be. Another version of “Phenomenon of Aquarium and Bearded Lady” makes an appearance and a couple of Chrystal Belle Scrodd tracks are also included (but both of these are easily available on the Belle de Jour CD reissue). The real items of interest on this part of the compilation are the pieces that never made it beyond the compilation tape. “Smooching with the Sacred Cow of Om” and “Mystery Track No. 2” both show very different sides to Stapleton’s approach to music compared to the other early recordings included on Flawed Existence. Both of these tracks are from the tail end of the 80s and show that Stapleton was moving towards the more varied (and more musical) sound that defined Nurse With Wound in the 90s much earlier than I thought.
The fourth LP is given over to recordings from Nurse With Wound’s short foray into live performances in 1984. The Current 93/Nurse With Wound split release NL-Centrum Amsterdam was originally released on tape in 1985 but quickly deleted due to both David Tibet and Stapleton not being happy with the final product. It has been one of those releases that has evaded me for years so I am delighted to finally hear it. Violent and dangerous sounding, Diana Rogerson dominates the performance and her vocals have rarely sounded this unhinged. The chaotic sounds emanating from the speakers are much busier and more frenetic than those Nurse With Wound unleash in the studio. The sensation of not knowing what is going on (and the feeling that the band don’t either) runs through the live recordings, capturing the same creative germ that gave the world Chance Meeting....
The other side of the LP contains the original version of Live at Bar Maldoror including the untitled piece that never made it onto the CD reissue. Less boisterous than NL-Centrum Amsterdam, it sounds more like the Nurse With Wound found in the studio. The performance is more tempered, there is less going on and a greater emphasis is placed on atmosphere. The music has a creeping dread underlying it that gets under my skin. It puts me in the same unsettling place that Insect and Individual Silenced does and, like that album, I cannot understand why both these live recordings have remained out of print for so long (Stapleton’s bad memories of the whole experience aside).
The item of most interest to Nurse With Wound collectors is the 10” which contains two unreleased pieces called the Destroyed Piano suite. Recorded in 1983, these two pieces are quite unlike Stapleton’s other works from that time; they do not rely on studio trickery at all. Instead, the scraping sounds (of a piano I am guessing) seem to be recorded as they were. The different sound textures are captured so vividly and seem so much larger than life that it is possible to imagine Stapleton inside a giant piano, scraping strings and rubbing the great wooden walls with various objects.
Most of the LPs have far more than the expected amount of music packed onto each side, the average being about half an hour. Therefore I was apprehensive as to how Flawed Existence would sound. However, at no point was there undue distortion or noticeable degradation in sound quality. In fact, all of Flawed Existence sounds great and it is a vast improvement on the original releases (even though most, if not all, the music was mastered from the cassettes). For convenience, I would have gone for a CD collection of this material but overall, it is impossible to fault this box set for its completeness and quality.
This release is currently vinyl only so unfortunately no sound samples at this point in time, apologies!
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Emily Jane White’s melancholy and dusty Americana is an unexpected surprise on a label that is better known for being home to acts like Merzbow and Acid Mothers Temple, but it was easy to see why Important Records wanted to put this out once I heard it. Dark Undercoat is an often powerful and mesmerizing debut.
This album has actually been out for a while, but was just reissued several months ago (with a bonus track). It is hard to see how I managed to miss it the first time around: this is one of those rare underground albums that has such immediate, broad appeal that even Spin and Rolling Stone liked it, yet White seamlessly appeared alongside Current 93 and Six Organs of Admittance on Cam Archer’s Wild Tigers I have Known soundtrack. As such, Dark Undercoat went out of print remarkably fast. I’m glad it is back.
It is hard to avoid mentioning Cat Power when discussing White’s music, as that is the most obvious touchstone and seems to wind up in every review (PJ Harvey and Hope Sandoval make occasional appearances as well). I suspect it is laregely due to the fact that White is both husky-voiced and quite melancholy, but it nevertheless alludes to her primary flaw, which is the fact that she does not yet have her own completely distinctive voice. However, I am not an especially big Cat Power fan, yet I like this. I think that might be because Emily seems to channel a heavy influence from Southern Gothic literature by folks like Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers as well. Dark Undercoat evokes lonely country roads, decaying Americana, crumbling houses, and heartbreak in a way that is uniquely her own, despite any superficial similarities with other singer-songwriters.
There is a lot of material on this album that, while competent, doesn’t move me at all (particularly the piano songs). However, the handful of songs that I do like are all rather achingly beautiful. The bittersweet and languorous “Dagger” accompanies White's world-weary vocals with hauntingly chiming arpeggios, while the heartbroken resignation of title track is darkly captivating. Notably, aside from the aforementioned “Dagger,” White and her backing band wisely avoid using much electric instrumentation, giving the songs a timeless and understated feel that nicely accentuates her powerful vocals and literate lyrics. The album’s original closer (“Two Shots to the Head”) is a particularly stunning track that displays this nicely, as the sparse instrumentation places the focus squarely the slow-burning intensity of White’s throaty, downcast narrative.
Actually, on a related note, I suppose I have one other minor grievance, which is that Dark Undercoat is pretty uniformly bleak in tone. Obviously, White is damn good at bleakness, but a few more lively moments like “Hole in the Middle” or the bluesy shuffle of “Bessie Smith” would have been welcome breaks in the unrelenting darkness (comparatively, anyway- they are still far from cheery). That said, this album shows an enormous amount of promise and Emily is already a better songwriter than some of her influences. Dark Undercoat’s follow-up (Victorian America) is already out in Europe and I am looking forward to hearing how she has evolved in the last year or so. Based on the title, I don’t think I need to worry about any change in her aesthetic.
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On the surface, it seems odd that this album would be put out by Taylor Deupree’s 12k label, one that is known for its challenging, often esoteric, output of heady clinical electronic sounds. Small Color is a band that leans far more into the realms of pop than expected from the label. However, by putting this album in the context of the label’s discography, it both shows that 12k does not want to be pigeonholed and that there is far more going on with this band than only pop sounds: there’s a world of complexity that fits right in on the roster.
Perhaps it’s not that absurd of a proposition, given that the short lived Happy sublabel channeled Deupree’s love of Japanese pop music, but the more organic (and vocal based) material here is a bit different than I’m used to hearing from the collective. Now, different is good, and I must say that while normally this may not be my cup of tea, it is so well done that there’s few complaints I could have.
Songs like “Daisy” combine the two worlds of acoustic and electronic music seamlessly, with ethereal, breathy female vocals from Rie Yoshihara delicately floating alongside swirling keyboards and stripped down beat boxes. “Hikari No Hana” is similar in approach, but the it shifts from acoustic pop to electronic ambience very subtly, when it fully locks into one extreme it begins to change its spots again.
Other songs stay more directly in the acoustic realm: “Hideaway” is a melancholy track that features chiming guitar and some extremely sad accordion playing that is lightyears away from the squawking polka sounds that is usually associated with the instrument. “Amaoto” takes a different feel, with Spanish guitar melodies and melodica working together, with almost no digital technology in sight.
“Life,” however, is squarely in the realms of electronic pop, with keyboards and drum machines becoming almost dance friendly, but staying extremely restrained, allowing the sparse textures to be heard. “Lemmy” (doubtfully referring to Mr. Kilmister) also focuses more on the world of technology, using skittering electronic tones and rudimentary synthesizers with warm Wurlitzer and accordion, a combination that, in this track, constantly changes and varies while sounding cohesive.
While it has elements from both complex electronica and delicate chamber pop, it never fully commits to any genre, which is an asset in Small Color's case. Far away from the world of so-called “J-pop,” In Light is a beautiful little album that is perfect for a rainy day or any relaxed, intimate setting.
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Fjordne’s fourth album is a warm and evocative plunge into glitchy, immersive ambiance that is (very) loosely inspired by Dazai Osamu’s novel of the same name. While certainly reminiscent of artists like Chihei Hatakeyama in tone, the density, invention, and experimentation on display here make The Setting Sun rather a unique and beguiling entity.
Fjordne is the solo project of Tokyo’s Shinichiro Fujimoto, who is also a member of Starke. While still quite young (he is under 30), he has taken his music to some rather avant-garde places with The Setting Sun. He remains little known outside of Europe and Asia, but his previous three releases contained some rather impressive and well-regarded forays into dreamy electronic ambiance. His early work betrayed little hint of the neo-classical leanings to come, however. I suspect he has been listening to some Phill Niblock, Charlemagne Palestine, or LaMonte Young as of late, but there is no indication of any direct or clumsy imitation.
While Fujimoto certainly has not abandoned his love of reverb, he has shifted his vision into much more organic territory. The primary instruments on The Setting Sun are pianos, strings, and acoustic guitars (though they are often heavily treated). More importantly, however, is what Fjordne does with them: most of the material on this album constitutes a prolonged and gutsy high-wire act in which Shinichiro manages to completely avoid any melodic movement or progression while still maintaining enough vibrancy to keep listeners mesmerized. The are a few instances where lazily repeating chord progressions appear, such as on “Trees See All,” but they merely cycle endlessly and gently and avoid any escalation. Most of the time, sounds inventively quiver, burble, skip, drift, and harmonize around a single central chord (the opening “Collide” is an especially excellent example of this).
Of course, none of that ambition would matter if this album wasn’t good, and it happens to be stunningly beautiful. Fujimoto’s floating, fractured haze of skipping loops, backwards pianos, and guest vocalist Fuyu’s wordless atmospherics evokes a bittersweet and sun-dappled heaven. Also, the gentleness and subtlety with which he weaves the innumerable tracks together is quite deft and entrancing. It is difficult to find fault with anything on the album, but the strongest pieces seem to be those in which some sounds are sharp enough to cut through the blissed-out, amorphous fog and rouse me from the pleasantly narcotizing effects of the reverb (such as the field recordings of birds in “After You” or the acoustic guitars and lazy, shuffling beats in “Torn Out” and “Last Sun”).
I imagine listening to The Setting Sun while driving would probably cause me to plow into a truck or something, due to its hypnotically static and edgeless nature, but it is the perfect soundtrack for late year hibernation. Notably, Kitchen’s packaging of this album is nearly as impressive as the music itself, as the CD is housed in a six-fold accordion photo album featuring mysterious, nostalgia-soaked art by label-mate aspidistrafly’s April Lee.
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It is difficult to avoid being moved by the four years of hard work, love, and tireless enthusiasm that Stéphane Grégoire has poured into assembling this globe-spanning homage to the music of Coil, but I have to admit that it completely subverted my expectations in many ways. The Dark Age of Love is a deeply curious and oft-excellent album, but it is also a surprisingly tame one (given its inherently aberrant inspiration).
The drolly amusing title of this project gives a rather unsubtle hint at Grégoire’s aesthetic inspiration: This Immortal Coil, like Ivo Watts-Russell’s This Mortal Coil before it, is a shifting and eclectic assemblage of underground luminaries united for the purpose of covering a bunch of obscure songs. Of course, Ivo had the unique good fortune of being able to call in folks like Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins to lay down some tracks, whereas things were probably a bit harder for this small French label. I guess they weren’t quite hard enough though, as Stephane further complicated his task by deliberately seeking out artists who were previously unfamiliar with Coil in order to capture the thrill of discovery. Luckily, there were some pretty talented musicians around who that description quite nicely.
The most immediately odd thing about an album of Coil covers is that John Balance and Peter Christopherson are not primarily known for their songwriting. While generally quite weird and wonderful, they were most certainly stylists: Coil songs were generally good because Coil was playing them. Despite recording together for almost a quarter of century, the bulk of their extremely varied output was (quite obviously) wordless ambiance and sound experiments, so there are not many “songs” to choose from. That being the case, The Dark Age of Love skews quite heavily towards the band's early days (particularly 1991’s classic Love’s Secret Domain). In fact, Matt Elliott (Third Eye Foundation) and renowned soundtrack composer Yann Tiersen (Amélie) actually tackle the title track of that album twice here (one as an ambitious, roiling misfire and the other as an excellent, albeit somewhat skeletal, marimba-based piece). That killer duo is also responsible for one of the album’s highlights in the epic and creepy “Red Queen.”
The other striking aspect about The Dark Age of Love is the level of musicianship, which is frankly disorienting. Much of the instrumentation is dominated by Belgium’s DAUU, who have a rather perverse and accordion-heavy tendency to make everything sound very traditionally French. I certainly appreciate how organic and intricate and downright musical they make everything, but it can be weird and distracting at times (like hearing industrial music reenvisioned by a particularly talented group of Parisian buskers). On a similar note, Matt Elliott transforms “Teenage Lightning” into a bizarrely Spanish-tinged approximation of David Byrne’s solo work. Israeli pop songstress Yaël Naim, on the other hand, turns “The Dark Age of Love” and “Tattooed Man” into smoky cabaret jazz, which is a neat trick. Some of the other feats of transformation aren’t so impressive though, as Sylvain Chauveau and Nicolas Jorio turn “Amber Rain” into fairly dour and straightforward singer-songwriter fare.
Despite my minor grousing about the rampant and perplexing professionalism on display, the gang does occasionally get a bit wild. In fact, when the balance between musicianship and exuberance is just right, the results are stunning. In “Ostia” for example, DAAU’s strings and snaking clarinet provide the perfect foundation for Christine Ott’s haunting ondes Martenot and Will Oldham’s harrowing, strained vocals (they sound like the world’s most unhinged, acid-damaged chamber music ensemble). DAAU’s expert musical backing succeeds again in the absolutely mesmerizing “Blood From The Air,” in which Dälek’s Oktopuss whips up a mind-melting cacophony around the menacing accordion backdrop that actually rivals the original.
The Dark Age of Love is definitely a fascinating listen and worth checking out, but several songs yield rapidly diminishing returns after the initial surprise wears off. Coil’s blasphemous, twisted songs bristle a bit at being interpreted in such a restrained and reverent way, but the stronger material is some of the more inventive and intense music that I have heard this year. No Coil tribute album could hope to please everyone, of course, and I think Stéphane has every reason to be quite proud of this odd and idiosyncratic project.
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Pure wildness is a difficult aesthetic to grasp. In rock, attempts to evoke it often devolve into tribal kitsch. On their sixth album, OOIOO negotiates that subtle distinction with skill and integrity. Despite some lapses into tedium, the band remains impressive, both in natural musicianship and in the complete absurdity of their art. Armonico Hewa satisfies and frustrates in equal measure and ends up succeeding by blurring the difference.
 
Superficially, OOIOO is not a particularly difficult band.Yet their music is enough to drive many listeners away, even fans of the band’s parent group, Boredoms. Perhaps the answer lies in the perverse way the band forms their songs. Most often they’re built on extreme repetition. Groups from Neu! to Stereolab to Boredoms themselves use the same method but OOIOO differs because their riffs aren’t meant to sooth. Listening to them is a kind of anti-hypnosis.In "Uda Ha," a shrieking tone emerges mid-song, goading it forward, as if a fire alarm had gone off in-studio.Yet the band will not move on, working the effect until all novelty is bled from it, and not stopping a moment sooner.As they stack chords on top of chords, the song becomes charged with a precarious tension. Each new repetition threatens to spoil the it, but that never quite happens. When change finally arrives, it bursts forth like air from a slashed tire.
Sometimes repetition is more a burden than an asset, especially with the band’s vocals.Armonico Hewa is saturated with sub-lingual chatter.The band gasps, chants, and babbles, throughout the entire album.Sustained over the course of a six-minute song, it can be exhausting.In "Irorun," they prolong a series of hoots and gurgles until it becomes torturous.Relief seemly comes when the song ends, but that it is short-lived, and the band reprises the vocal pattern in the following song, "Konjo."Either OOIOO must delight in tormenting their audience, or sheer endurance must be its own reward for them. Both tropes cease to be novel very quickly. Coordination and stamina should be lauded, but more restraint is needed to really show-off the band’s talents.
But what OOIOO lacks in restraint, they easily recoup in adventurousness. In Armonico Hewa, it’s possible to hear everything from Acid Jazz to Balinese monkey chants. Even the title is eclectic, the phrase being a Spanish-Swahili hybrid meaning "harmonious air." Those who stew themselves in culture theory might find this influence raiding questionable, but OOIOO has a refreshing lack of obvious method. In other words, they defy easy analysis. Multiple influences are plausible for any given song. They could take as much from Taiko drumming as they could from Afro-beat, but ultimately the music might come from none of those sources. OOIOO easily evade being boxed in with their influences. Modern rock is saturated with artists who aggressively proclaim their influences. At this level, appreciation for "world music" tends devolve into collegiate irony or backpacker mysticism. Thankfully, OOIOO create such a singular racket that it renders concerns about appropriation purely academic.
Despite their flexibility, OOIOO seem caught between two audiences. On one hand, their virtuosity and bright, colorful sound falls somewhere within rock music. On the other, their awkward rhythms, nonsense vocals, and excessive minimalism nudge the band towards the avant-garde. They present a radical compromise that provokes both crowds. This is a good thing. Too many bands aim to incite audiences by affecting some insular aesthetic. OOIOO incite because they are bold and vibrant, which is infinitely more charming.
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