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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Out of my latest order of three releases from Faraway Press, the current CD from this infrequent Mirror collaborator and often overlooked co-conspirator of Faraway Press (alongside Andrew Chalk) has been by far the most rewarding. On this, her second solo release, she has consciously let go of the single-piece-per-side mold and created a decidedly not-drone album.
Chalk, Mirror, and Heemann fans are loyal because they're assured of the quality of the releases and in that respect, this is no exception. Like the Faraway Press catalogue, Whispering Pages is calm, reflective, and the packaging is top quality both aesthetically and practically. Unlike the other releases, it consists of nine distinct songs and Jackman's main instrument is the piano, but the variety of pieces makes for an exceptionally well-rounded album.
She opens surprisingly with a song filled with subtle electric pulses and hums underscoring her atmospheric and echoed playing. Tonality is key on "The Snow Queen" as certain notes are chosen to resonate more than others, creating a gorgeous all-encompassing sound bath. "Empty Rooms" sounds exactly like that: Vikki playing solo in a room on a still summer evening accompanied only by the sound of her shifting on the piano bench and what could possibly be some wind chimes hanging in a doorway off to the side, the hiss of the slow moving air adding to the atmospherics. "The Softest Blue," my favorite piece (and one which I featured on last week's Podcast) is a drastic contrast: multilayered with low-end synthetic string swells that any Stars of the Lid fan would immediately latch on to, yet it's accented with backwards echoes and a plucking of high strings on top that sets it far apart enough from the duo. Swelling backwards-like echoes make the tones on "Nightingales" reminiscent of Nurse With Wound's "Funeral Music for Perez Prado," closing what would be side 1 of this disc, had it been a record.
Jackman once again reintroduces electronic pulses and inhuman frequencies on the opener of the second half, "Never a Wave," and maintains the feel through the Chain Reaction school of dub influence on "Two Clear Eyes," as now there are low end bass lines underneath the Hammond organ-esque echoes. The music returns to the serene with "Dreams" and "A Summer Interlude," both with Vikki's piano front and center bathed in the sounds of the outdoors: birds, wind, an occasional train passing by. Whispering Pages concludes with a two distinct (and not cross-faded) pieces sharing a singular track index: "Sleep in the Woods" reprises the sound of "Nightingales" while "Reprise" is reminiscent of "Empty Rooms." I don't consider this a mis-step but I think more attention could have been played to actually closing the song (and thus the album) with a finite cadence.
With Whispering Pages, Vikki Jackman has established her own identity apart from Faraway Press and Andrew Chalk and has done it with an exceptionally good album. While more famous publications will probably not catch on to her for a few more years, I would hope that offerings from other recording companies might boost her profile. Although she may not be seeking that, I personally think more music listeners deserve to hear something this great.
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It angers me that Some Bizzare Stevø has treated one of the best releases of the 1980s with such utter negligence, issuing versions like this with embarassing mistakes on tracklisting, indexing errors, chintzy packaging, and dreadful artwork recreation. I encourage nobody to buy this shitty reissue and I hearby challenge Stevø to recall these copies at once and put out a fucking proper release of this classic once and for all.
Some Bizzare
The music on Force the Hand of Chance is flawless. In a scale of 1-10 it rates a perfect 10. This album was completed a year after the termination of Throbbing Gristle as Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson joined forces with Alternative TV's Alex Fergusson (who appeared on the Industrial Records 7" release of Dorothy) and recruited Andrew Poppy for string arrangements, Marc Almond for guest vocals, and engineer Ken Thomas (23 Skidoo, Non, Lemon Kittens, Wire, and later on Sigur Rós). Eight songs (and two short interludes) run the gamut from the lush string and acoustic guitar dominated opener "Just Drifting" and its reprise "Caresse;" to the magnum epic Coil-esque precursors "Terminus" and "Guiltless;" the guitar and fx interplay of "No Go Go;" through the concluding "Message from the Temple," almost a blueprint for the Horse Rotorvator piece "The Golden Section." Accompanying the original LP release was a bonus LP, Psychic TV Themes, an awesome entirely instrumental work in eight parts with piano, Tibetan thigh bone, cowbells, and various other noisemakers.
In the years since this original release, Themes was the first to appear on CD, first as Cold Dark Matter, both individually and in the amazing Splinter Test box 1, then eventually on a limited release by Cleopatra. Force the Hand of Chance was issued on CD by some forgettable label called Tempus, re-named Force Thee Hands ov Chants and mastered from an LP with a faulty left channel for side 1. They tacked on bonus tracks from the Just Drifting 12" single and bonus 12" that came with PTV's second full-length album, Dreams Less Sweet, along with a completely random advertisement for Skinny Puppy's album The Process. It was paired with a second CD of live material. Then Cleopatra reissued that version (containing those irrelevant bonus tracks). In the late '90s, Some Bizzare reissued Force, coupled with some video excerpts of "Terminus" and "Message from the Temple" but the CD audio tracking was off: "Terminus" cut early, erroneously shoving its epilogue onto "Stolen Kisses;" the video quality was about as good as video quality was for Quicktime circa 1998 (ie: pretty crappy to today's standards); packaging was cheap; and Themes was absent. The only worthwhile reissue was the Japanese CD from Waner Bros., whose artwork was perfect, lyrics were included, the track indexing precise, and the sound fantastic. The second disc was Themes and to my ears sounded like it was mastered from the original tapes and not an LP (which I can somewhat sense from the Cold Dark Matter issue). With this year's reissue, even titled Force The Hand of Chance with Themes, my hopes were high, but in reality this is a disaster.
Starting with the title itself: disc 2 isn't even Themes! It's those irrelevant bonus tracks from the Tempus CD (which belong more with Dreams Less Sweet) and includes that stupid Skinny Puppy advertisement for their album The Process. On the disc itself, "The Mad Organist" is coupled with "Catalan" on the same track and thus unlisted. The package itself is a shoddy double digipack with a blown up cover, while the artwork on the back is clearly a photocopy of photocopy of a photocopy (as it still contains the painful typo of the 1998 Some Bizzare CD: Alex Gergusson), and there's no lyrics to be found anywhere. It claims to have been remastered in 2007, but sounds no better than the 1998 UK edition and the poor quality videos from the Some Bizzare UK edition are contained again (along with deprecated software).
I call shenanegans on you, Stevø, as you've delivered the same version you did 10 years ago (but with unrelated nonsense). Recall this and I'll be delighted to assist in a proper release of it myself. This album deserves far better than you have delivered.
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Although his reputation as the “screaming philosopher” precedes him, this vastly insufficient nickname does nothing to convey the power and skill of Tomokawa’s singing and songwriting. While the gasping, almost convulsive delivery of some of his lines does of course lend credence to this moniker, everyone seems to overlook his earthy, troubadour voice that carries most of the songs. Backed by a band who seem comfortable playing in a traditional Spanish style (with an Eastern European twist), this album shows Tomokawa at an ever higher peak than usual.
Tomokawa is no stranger to vastly moving songwriting (even if only partially appreciated through written translations) but Blue Water, Red Water is a whirlwind of stirring music and passionately sung lyrics. The tone is set from the instant the album starts with “Once I Stared Afar;” the dense metaphysical lyrics (thankfully translated by the ubiquitous Alan Cummings) are allowed to soar on delicately compassionate music. Taro Kanai’s returning role as guitarist for Tomokawa is most welcome, his almost flamenco style reinforcing Tomokawa’s image as the troubadour of the east.
Ayumi Matsui’s sweet violin and Cinorama’s Hiromichi Sakamoto’s delicate cello add an even more melancholic edge to Tomokawa’s already moody compositions. The strings on “Kara Bran” swing back and forth across a lilting piano and tuba motif and Tomokawa’s vocals are at their most ragged. The song climaxes with an exquisite flourish of violin and cello that pull the listener in like a whirlpool. This song is worth the purchase of Blue Water, Red Water alone (but thankfully the rest of the album compares favourably to it).
Few and far between are songwriters who, in their fourth decade of writing and performing, are as resonant now as they have ever been and it is needless to say that Tomokawa is one such artist. Unfortunately, few and far between are affordable Tomokawa releases on these shores so to find this available at a normal price is most welcome. Add to the fact that this is one of the strongest albums of his I have encountered (and indeed a possible contender for album of the year in my book) and I am a very happy bunny.
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Charlie Looker has issued every rock band in existence a very serious challenge: write music as inventive and natural as the stuff on Secular Works or get the hell off the stage. I'm certain that this album spells the end for nearly every math-rock band in existence.
Planaria
Secular Works has so much going for it that picking a place to begin talking about it is pretty difficult. The vocalist and lead-man, Charlie Looker, often enjoys singing in a style that's inspired by plainchant and the band is accomplished enough to oscillate between concussive, heavy metal assaults and delicate, nearly meditative clouds of psychedelia. These contrasts are often forced together on the record, which might at first sound like a disconcerting thing. Plenty of bands enjoy contrasting styles; they bang dissimilar objects together and play in the ensuing explosion with a kind of childish, perhaps immature glee. Destruction is fun and tearing genres apart might be intellectually stimulating, but real talent requires an architect capable of putting all the pieces back together in a pleasing way. Extra Life does just that; with all their various influences and technical abilities the band uses unusual and difficult music to make something that rides the line between the alien and the familiar.
Take for an example the opening song, "Blackmail Blues;" it begins with a strange, almost arhythmic strumming of the electric guitar, which is accented and made perhaps more unstable by an absolutely thunderous assault of percussion. The play of rhythms and melodies in the first two minutes of the song are intense, layered, and complex all by themselves. But, then Looker begins to sing, enunciating the same syllables over multiple notes, utilizing his strangely monolithic voice to rise above the music, and refusing to sing anything that sounds like what a modern rock band or metal band might employ. There's no screaming, no whining, and absolutely no mumbling. I imagine countless bands wish they had the dynamic range exhibited on this song alone, but what keeps the song interesting over its nearly nine-minute duration isn't all the unique, little parts or the way they contrast against each other. No, the real pull of "Blackmail Blues" is how well all these various parts come together and form an intriguing whole. The rhythmic abnormalities and incredibly difficult shifts in tempo and time signature all work for the good of the song, not for themselves. At the end there's an amazing section where the drummer seems to read Looker's mind and he manages to imitate Looker's percussive style of singing note for note over a nearly unpredictable spattering of sixteenth notes from hell. If I were the drummer in that band I'd probably have smacked Looker for even suggesting such a ridiculous and difficult task, but Extra Life pulls it out of their hat with such fluidity and class that it manages to lend an explosive end to an already fiery song.
From there things become more intense, despite becoming generally quieter. "I Don't Feel That Way" is another musical and technical accomplishment that'll make anyone interested in rhythmic tension twitch with frustration. Go ahead, try counting out the bass-heavy convulsions and snare snaps that seem to spill out of nowhere at a moment's notice: I'm convinced some form of arcane magic is responsible for keeping this band in time because no natural explanation is satisfactory. Two, ten-minute epics dominate the record, however, and their stark beauty is their best feature. Both "I'll Burn" and "This Time" radiate with an uncomfortable aura that shines as much as it blackens and confuses. The latter is aglow with barely-there violins, wooden blocks, gently snapped strings, and uneasy lyrics that speak of some long-planned and slow-boiling violence. The noir-ish qualities of these two songs provide much-needed relief from the vigorous and sometimes noisy elements that are featured on the rest of the record.
Secular Life is the kind of record that will catch a lot of people off guard; it has to seep into the skin over the long run, but the impressive punches and immediate gratification is also supplies should be enough to draw most people into its gravity. Technically, it's the most accomplished record I've heard this year. On the whole, it's one of the most impressively adventurous and satisfying records in my collection; one of those rare blends of experimentation and quality song-writing that succeeds on every conceivable level.
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Techno godfather Juan Atkins' finest productions lie more than a decade behind him, his post-millennial output utterly unmemorable by contrast. When Timbaland and Missy Elliott appropriated wholesale and slightly repurposed Cybotron's "Clear" a few years back for the "Lose Control" single, the succeeding and lingering stench of musical necrophilia made the Detroit legend's faded glory all the more uncomfortably evident. Moderately diverse and unsurprisingly enjoyable given the contributors, this remix collection dusts off yet another Atkins oldie for another nine rounds.
Issued first in 1995 under the Model 500 moniker, "Starlight" was packaged with a Moritz von Oswald version on the flipside, making it a sought-after gem today for Basic Channel obsessives. Revived and reproduced here, it serves as the starting point for a series of mixes—most of which previously released on vinyl—that generally exploit the assets of the originals. Fortunately, this rediscovery effort was spearheaded by the Echospace Detroit imprint, one of the hottest outlets of deep techno thanks largely to the amazing in-house duo of Rod Modell and Stephen Hitchell who incestuously pervade this compilation with a handful of solo and shared aliases. As DeepChord, Modell presents a characteristically spacey and lengthy mix adorned with blissed-out patches and warm pads cluttered by bits of aural detritus. Collaborating with Hitchell, he features on two Echospace versions, the first of these primed for the dancefloor. Scaling back some of Modell’s abstractions to make way for some real Detroit soul and Berlinesque dub, the previously unreleased track finds its mojo via a robust bassline and some wondrous melodies. The second Echospace mix is half as long and entirely beatless, a drifting reprise that recalls moments from The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld in a way that Kompakt’s long-running Pop Ambient series has yet to achieve. On his own, Hitchell greedily appears with three separate aliases, his Soultek mix bringing both old-school electro funk and AFX flair. Simmering with white noise and tension, his Intrusion dub version closes out the disc.
Magnanimously, Modell and Hitchell allow a few others to share in the fun of reviving a classic. Detroit native and Matrix Records founder Sean Deason garnishes his jacking mix with a little Sheffield bleep that bounces around the funky fluttering hats and crashes, while Mike Huckaby delivers some proper dub techno for the fetishists and fanatics. Convextion, a rising star in the scene who has previously recorded for Matrix and Echospace Detroit, takes an unexpected path on his turn, programming an urgent melodic mishmash draped around a schaffel beat that seems further removed from Atkins’ original than anything else here. It’s a respectful reworking like all the others here, though one obvious omission stands out: where is Atkins himself in all this? Surely he’s given his blessing to this project and pocketed some kind of fee or royalty, though I can’t think of a better opportunity for the man to remind us all of his talents than by trying his hand at a remix of his own.
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The brainchild of Uppsala, Sweden's M. Zetterberg, exemplifies the typical expansiveness, vastness of scale, and sheer coldness of most Scandinavian dark ambient/industrial output. Zetterberg, although in many ways staying within the somewhat narrow confines of the genre, also strays out of it occasionally, sometimes springing a surprise or two along the way. While Core won’t win any marks for originality, it is at the very least above average and steps outside of convention on one or two occasions to make it untypical of many entries in the field.
The tried and the tested prevails for the most part here, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Deep rasping electronic bass drones, clean ringing tones, whistlings, howling winds, scratchings, and ‘cold’ shivering iciness each play their part, combining with treated instrumentation—such as zither and theremin—to create a distinctly menacing subterranean ambience. Its depiction of cold, freezing, and weighty isolation and despair is absolutely spot-on, even if it follows a species of prescription. Tracks such as “Core III,” for instance, descend into the freezingly cold and hellishly glacial depths, bringing to mind images of subterranean caverns of cyclopean proportions. Deep, sustained drones and eldritch winds crash and reverberate endlessly, superseded by sweetly crystalline tones and harmonies singing out from the darkness while crackliness spits, pops, and punctuates icily. Unfamiliar shapes, both real and imagined, loom out from the stifling gloom in vaguely discerned silhouette against an even darker background, threatening to overwhelm the nerves. Further fine-tuning the unsettling atmosphere are strange disembodied scratchings and scrapings, their cause unseen in the light-engulfing Stygian darkness.
Indeed the alarm spreads through the follow-on track, “Core IV,” with its strident bell-like klaxon warning tone keeping the nerves on edge, in anticipation perhaps of some catastrophe. Hugely tectonic clashings bear down from above, an avalanche of sound just waiting to bury beneath tons of ice and rock, snuffing out air and life. The weight is palpably oppressive, crushing in its potential to overwhelm. “Core V” continues that stifling bleakness, cold howling qlippothic winds barrelling through underground tunnels, tunnels denizened by the strange warbling of the troglodytic and chthonic.
So far, so conventional, one would suppose (and quite rightly so from my description thus far). However, to think along those lines though would be to do Manifesto a disservice. Principally what sets this apart is Zetterberg’s inclusion of a distinctly un-dark ambient instrument: the trumpet. On “Core I” South African trumpeter Alex van Heerden lends an utterly haunting bizarreness to a track that relies just as much on its sparseness as on the sounds themselves. The track is punctuated with stretches of deep silence in between rasping bass drones and the peals of high-pitched ringing and shimmering tones, and amidst this comes the mournful sound of the trumpet. On paper at least it would seem to be a non-starter, and it shouldn’t work; the fact that it does is both a surprise and a testament to van Heerden’s sympathetic interpretation. Furthermore it adds an intangibly eerie dimension to the track, and elevates it to the above average. Van Heerden also adds very subtle hints to “Core III,” much less noticeable perhaps, but its presence is just enough to introduce more of that indefinable otherworldly element.
Like intimated above, this won’t set the world alight; but in some ways that’s not what dark ambient as a genre is about. It’s about mood and feeling, and on that score this album succeeds admirably. It also accrues kudos simply because of bringing in a new element in the form of the trumpet, a hitherto unknown player in the oeuvre of dark ambient instrumentation, unless one counts Jon Hassell’s Fourth World material. I certainly enjoyed what Manifesto had to offer and it also offered a glimpse of what might be possible if dark ambient artists stepped out of genre boundaries once in a while.
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They do a great job of maintaining a melancholic air throughout the album, but unfortunately some of the songs lose their distinction in the process. While the similar tempo on each song is partly to blame, Munck's vocals also glaze these tracks with a recurring familiarity. Her voice is good, but her frail, slightly trembling delivery doesn't vary enough in its emotional intent. As a result, the first few songs come across as one long track with the vocals becoming less noticeable and less important over time.
What comes to the fore instead is the subdued background electronics, which are subtle but quite effective. An inventive, varied approach makes them the album's true draw, even if it takes attentive listening to pick out what's going on. Despite this, the album's instrumentals fall into the same pitfall as the other songs, going on for far too long with little development. The saxophone on "Ttreea #7" combats this well, and it's a strategy that could have been exploited effectively elsewhere on the album.
Still, much of #3 is pretty and peaceful. It may not have a wide range of expression, but it does a great job of sustaining a singular mood.
Song titles like "Fear," "Corpse Paint," "Faces of Death," and "Ghost Blues" point to a preoccupation with death and darkness, expressed with a profound weariness. This is coupled with a sense of angry yearning that erupts at climactic moments throughout the album, but the same approach song after song eventually devalues the cathartic value and lessens the effectiveness. Not helping matters is that each song follows this same formula, starting with slow and sparse sections that erupt in impassioned outbursts.
Another problem is that the band is going for an epic feel but doesn't always have enough to say to make it work. "Fear" is a good song, but they don't capitalize on its strengths. Rather than solidifying the hooks, they draw it out by expanding the slower sections of lesser interest. Likewise, "Ghost Blues" builds to a powerful, screaming finale. Instead of concluding after its peak, however, they drag it out for almost four more minutes, which only detracts from its overall effect when the music peters out rather than ends with a roar.
Some of the better songs are "I Don't Always Know What You're Saying," "S.T.H.D.," and "Corpse Paint." Too bad, then, that so many of the others come across as imitative filler, making Shots a solid but unexceptional effort.
