After two weekends away, the backlog has become immense, so we present a whopping FOUR new episodes for the spooky season!
Episode 717 features Medicine, Fennesz, Papa M, Earthen Sea, Nero, memotone, Karate, ØKSE, Otis Gayle, more eaze, Jon Mueller, and Lauren Auder + Wendy & Lisa.
Episode 718 has The Legendary Pink Dots, Throbbing Gristle, Von Spar / Eiko Ishibashi / Joe Talia / Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Ladytron, Cate Brooks, Bill Callahan, Jill Fraser, Angelo Harmsworth, Laibach, and Mike Cooper.
Episode 719 music by Angel Bat Dawid, Philip Jeck, A.M. Blue, KMRU, Songs: Ohia, Craven Faults, tashi dorji, Black Rain, The Ghostwriters, Windy & Carl.
Episode 720 brings you tunes from Lewis Spybey, Jules Reidy, Mogwai, Surya Botofasina, Patrick Cowley, Anthony Moore, Innocence Mission, Matt Elliott, Rodan, and Sorrow.
Photo of a Halloween scene in Ogunquit by DJ Jon.
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As part of Important Records' quadruple-vinyl issue of Coil's swansong The Ape of Naples, an album of new material has been included, finally making good on the long-scheduled-but- interminably-delayed Backwards album. For The New Backwards, Sleazy and Danny Hyde have returned to the storied Nothing Records session tapes and created a suite of six songs that engage in an oddly ambivalent conversation between Coil's distant past and its posthumous present.
Coil first announced their intention to record an album for Nothing Records back in the mid-1990s, using the working title of Backwards which soon became International Dark Skies, later changed to God Please Fuck My Mind For Good and then The World Ended A Long Time Ago. Had it been released shortly after being announced, the album would have been the proper follow-up to Love's Secret Domain. Although Coil apparently recorded some material at Trent Reznor's studio in New Orleans around this time, nothing surfaced for years other than a low-quality bootleg cassette of tentative instrumental sketches recorded for Torso in the early 1990s, which have since become an essential part of Coil's discography, despite their unofficial nature. Over the years, the NIN/Coil connection bore fruit in the form of some uncredited production and remix work, but eventually the relationship seemed to fizzle out. Even though Reznor clearly maintained his Coil fanboy status throughout the '90s and '00s, Coil were uninterested in dealing with Universal and Interscope lawyers, and never delivered the album. Coil's Songs of the Week offered some tantalizing glimpses of what might have been, and tracks such as "A Cold Cell" and "AYOR" popped up on various compilation albums, always with the understanding that these tracks were originally destined for inclusion on Backwards.
As Coil moved in ever more esoteric directions, with copious side projects and pseudonyms, eventually creating the late-period sound that characterized the Musick to Play in the Dark diptych—spectral, haunted atmospheres and cryptic, semi-improvised, open-ended songs—the hope that they would return to the Backwards sessions became more and more remote. Coil rarely looked backwards, and seemed bent on pursuing their future evolution, rather than forensically exhuming their past. The obsessive persistance of fans on message boards and e-mail lists fetishized Coil's never-finished album to point that it had become the post-industrial answer to SMiLE. Coil's sole concession in their final days was a live version of the (supposed) title track "Backwards" performed at live shows in 2002, which merely seemed to rekindle the possibility that the album would eventually see the light of release. Following John Balance's untimely passing, the release of The Ape of Naples seemed to at least partially address these hopes, containing a version of "Cold Cell," "AYOR" and a track called "Heaven's Blade" (which, it must be said, bears little resemblance to the Backwards demo version, which sounds like Sun Ra trying to cover "20 Jazz Funk Greats"). Still, Ape was not quite what everyone had been waiting for.
Now, finally, there is something tangible that promises to make good on all of the empty promises made for the last 15 years. However, much like Brian Wilson's 2004 version of SMiLE, The New Backwards is not really Backwards, and those expecting to hear the missing-link connecting LSD-era Coil to its later incarnation will be bitterly disappointed. Those desiring cleaned-up versions of the multiply-dubbed Backwards bootlegs will also be disappointed. What we get here cannot even properly be called a new Coil album. Instead of a necrophilic return to past iterations, or a wholly new and progressive interpretation of older material, what we get on The New Backwards is a fascinating and complex dialogue between Coil as it was in the mid-1990s, and Coil as it stands now as a posthumous project involving ex-members Sleazy and Danny Hyde. It's a fascinating and rewarding album, and without hesitation I can say that it is the best post-Coil release yet, easily bettering the majority of The Ape of Naples and the subsequent projects of Coil alumni.
Aside from "Princess Margaret's Man in the D'Jamalfina," which is a reworking of the bootleg track often labeled "Egyptian Basses," none of this material seems to bear any sort of direct relationship to the Backwards demo tracks. We can only presume that at least half of these songs were conceived by the original line-up, as three of them contain full vocal contributions by Balance himself, but beyond that we have no real clue as to the origin of many of these tracks. Other than the barest hint of the demo track "Elves" (and also comp track "The Test"), the opener, "Careful What You Wish For," seems like an entirely new creation. It is trademark Coil through-and-through, shuddering beats band and discrete blocks of noise coalescing into a cyclical rhythmic framework, decorated by haunted bits of stray voltage and barely-reigned-in electricity. The sole vocal is a heavily-filtered chant of the familiar slogan: "God please fuck my mind for good!" This could be Balance, but it really could be anyone, including a cleverly programmed voice synthesizer. Captain Beefheart's tossed-off line of profane lyricism is turned into a brutal mantra, a hedonistic call for a radical submission to powerful forces that takes on a tragically appropriate irony following Balance's death. Of course, it's tempting to read the title of the track as Sleazy's sad retort to Balance's self-destructive incantation.
"Nature Is A Language" steals a particularly cheesy couplet from The Smiths' "Ask" ("Nature is a language/Can't you read?") Balance locating new levels of paganistic profundity in Morrissey's presumably sarcastic lyric, delivering one of his more possessed vocal takes. (In JB's defense, he apparently encountered these lyrics scrawled on a bathroom wall, out of context.) Sleazy and Hyde take pleasure in deconstructing Balance's vocals and putting them through an exhausting obstacle course of lysergic mutations. The song's shuffling rhythms and organic multitracked vocals make for a fascinating composition, but I'm not sure the song ever quite gets over its goofy vocal refrain, and at eight-plus minutes, the lyric "It's a test" unfortunately becomes literalized. However, from my perspective, this is only misstep on the LP, which is otherwise brilliant. "Algerian Basses" oddly seems to have little or nothing in common with "Egyptian Basses," but instead seems to recall past moments when Coil engaged in experiments with their own brand of neo-exotica, mismatching instruments and musical modes to produce weirdly dislocated Interzone music (think "Babylero" or moments of The Remote Viewer). This is something of a theme on TNB, with this track, "Princess Margaret," and "Careful" all containing hints of Orientalist musical fantasia. This shouldn't be a surprise given the fact that Sleazy's new projects—Threshold HouseBoys Choir and Soisong—both seem to draw liberally from the musical soundworlds of an English expatriate in Southeast Asia.
I've gone on record as being none too fond of Danny Hyde's solo work as Aural Rage, but aside from the perhaps overdone vocal mutations on "Nature Is A Language," there is very little indication here of the hyperactiveness and overproduced quality that marred his solo work. His skills as a producer and composer are kept on task throughout the album, and his contributions are subordinated to the collaboration. This brings us to "Copacabbala (The Most Accomplished Surgeon)," which will be many people's favorite track on the album, as it contains a brilliantly twisted lyric by Balance, and sounds like the second track in the EBM record that Coil never made (the first being "Heaven's Blade"). A deliciously resonant, infectious beat construction (partly recycled from "Wir-Click-Wir" on the Backwards tapes) sets the tone for Balance's bent intonations: "I am the most accomplished surgeon of moral deformities/I am professor of energy, Napoleonic electrifier of souls/Your glorious palaces are hospitals set amid cemetaries." Sure, it reads like Coil Mad Libs, but there is something magickal about the way it all comes together. Tracks like this prove that despite how bizarre and esoteric they could be at times, Coil didn't have to be as obscure as they were, and perhaps "Copacabbala" is a wormhole into an alternate universe in which they pursued a career in more mainstream, palatable dark pop music.
"Paint Me As a Dead Soul" is the LP's most experimental track, a Nurse With Wound-like concoction of wandering piano and harpsichord melodies, creaks, sputters, hiccups, and Balance reading a dream monlogue suggested by Aleister Crowley's anecdote in his Confessions. It's a haunting and effective track, and a nice respite from the rest of the album, all of which heavily utilizes loops, rhythms and low-end sounds. It doesn't seem to take anything recognizable from the Backwards sessions, but "Princess Margaret's Man in the D'Jamalfina" is a near exact recreation of "Egyptian Basses," with perhaps a little hint of the strings in "Crumb Time" thrown in for good measure. As such, it is simulateously one of the most familiar and uncanny tracks on the album. Familiar because it follows the structure of those earlier sketches closely, and uncanny because it sounds so much more vibrant and new than the old demos, whose muddy, muted sounds I had gotten quite accustomed to. Either way, it's a brilliant track, occupying that weird liminal region that Coil mapped out so well: cryptic jazz, haunted melodies, idiosyncratic sampling and weird, druggy textures. At one point two-thirds of the way through the song, we hear a distorted voice saying "Okay, yeah." Who or what this is, we may never know, but it's little details like this that push The New Backwards over the top for me.
If you haven't dropped the $80.00 US to get the vinyl box set on which this is included, do not despair. It is a forgone conclusion that this will be released on CD, probably sooner than later, and a little bird tells me that when it is released digitally it will contain three more tracks in the same vein. The New Backwards is essential for Coil fans new and old, but more than that, it is a fascinating study in how to look backwards without becoming stagnant, how to move forward without forgetting the past. If there were a musical way to prove the existentialist assertion that the past and future are woven into every present moment, this would be it.
Listeners of No-Wave in any of its shriveled, misanthropic personas will have something familiar to latch onto in Allergic to Heat. Nightwounds rides in on Winter's last legs with a blast of cold, dense punk rock.
Steve Albini's shadow looms large over the proceedings, especially in the vocalist's pinched nose shouting and the metal on metal grind of the guitar. Warbling sax and the occasional melodic passage add some much needed touches of color. The chorus to "ex best friend" soars drunkenly until the song stutters into a halting thud. Late in the CD, the band stretches their compositions out, giving the end a basement improv feel.
For his first proper full-length album in nearly a decade, Douglas P. sets the time machine back to the early 1990s, returning to the guitars-and-windchimes sound that characterized classic Death in June albums such as Rose Clouds of Holocaust and But What Ends When the Symbols Shatter? The only problem is, you can never really go home again, and this album proves it.
For more years than I'd like to count, I was in the unenviable position of having to defend Death in June. First, I had to defend DIJ against accusations that singer/songwriter Douglas Pearce was a card-carrying Nazi sympathizer, and that all of his music is a barely concealed celebration of fascist politics and aesthetics. Then, I had to defend DIJ against accusations that the music itself was awful and derivative: gloomy posturing, miserablist lyrics full of trite symbolism familiar from high school goth poetry, utterly amateur guitar strumming and a massive abuse of reverb to cover over the shortcomings of the music. I knew that all of these criticisms had a germ of truth in them, but I defended DIJ because, very simply, I adored the music.
Albums such as Nada, But What Ends When the Symbols Shatter, and Rose Clouds of Holocaust meant a lot to me during a very formative period of my consciousness. Although all of the elements of the DIJ puzzle might seem risible in isolation, the whole was greater than its parts, and the music had a powerful, haunting effect. DIJ lyrics hinted at archetypal myths, terrifying moments in human history, universal aspects of the human condition, and perhaps most importantly to a young, sexually-confused person, to a kind of masculinity in which homosexuality was not destructive, but an essential part. DIJ's literary references—to Nietzsche, Mirbeau, Bataille, Genet, Mishima—read like a litany of my favorite authors and ideas. His evocation of a mythical idealized Europe in decline, his wintry atmospherics, hints of Norse myth and runic magic were tantalizing. His troubling fetishization of Nazi/fascist aesthetics did not seem to me problematic, as I had experienced similar troubling fantasies myself, and was relieved to find myself not alone. Also, DIJ was associated with a grouping of underground artists that I was utterly obsessed with at the time. However, even at a time when I was listening to Current 93, Coil, Nurse With Wound, Sol Invictus and others, DIJ spoke to me in a way both more profound and more simple than his colleagues. There is a reason that Death in June continues to be one of the most successful cult artists within his underground milieu, and it isn't because all of his fans are Nazi zealots or clueless goths.
However, as the years have progressed, and DIJ have become less relevant—the "apocalyptic folk" sound he helped create along with David Tibet and others has become de rigeur in underground goth scenes—and has gotten stuck in some very alienating tangents (tepid collaborations with Boyd Rice, Albin Julius and others), I have found myself moving closer and closer to the position that I used to defend against. Looking back, the cynics were right to point out that Douglas P. only knows a few chords on the guitar, which he uses repeatedly to mind-numbing effect. They were right to point out that his lyrical symbolism is endlessly recycled. They were correct when they noted that the use of reverb and other studio effects disguised the weaknesses of the compositions themselves. Even though I still say that none of these facts preclude something from having artistic merit, the criticisms have begun to wear me down. It's especially difficult to defend DIJ in the absence of good new music, and the last few non-reissue releases—All Pigs Must Die, the Wolf Pact album, Alarm Agents—have all been mediocre-to-awful. Say what you want about the outrageous Nazi loops of albums like Take Care and Control and Operation Hummingbird (which were heavily criticized at the time of their release), at least they can still be listened to and enjoyed.
This whole overlong preamble is just a way of setting the stage for the long-awaited new DIJ full-length album, The Rule of Thirds. On this album, Douglas P. returns to the sound of the early-to-mid 1990s period, characterized by acoustic guitar strumming, heavy reverb, sparse percussion, dialogue samples and psychedelic production touches. It is a welcome return, but a bittersweet one as well, because if this album achieves any artistic success at all, it is in reminding us of earlier triumphs. Unfortunately, it creates nothing of its own, and even its lyrics seem like they were produced using a random computer algorithm remixing snatches of lyrics from across DIJ's discography. Also, the production isn't quite as strong as that on the 1990s albums, so the low-end is nonexistent, the guitar and vocals have no "presence," and the keyboards and horn fanfares that enriched classic DIJ songs are now absent, and sorely missed. Douglas P. has still not bothered to learn any new guitar chords (or how to fingerpick rather than strum), placing the shortcomings of his guitar skills into bold relief. Many of the guitar parts for these songs are utterly indistinguishable from earlier songs and from each other, and the nasty accusation of self-plagiarism begins to rear its ugly head once again.
All of this might be forgiven if the album weren't also such a laborious, trying listen. The lack of variety in melody and instrumentation begins to wear thin a few songs in, and no relief comes. For an album that is titled after an artistic/photographic principle having to do with aesthetic balance in composition, it strangely lacks any sense of aesthetic balance or proportion itself. Most surprisingly, Douglas P. has consciously moved away from his perennial themes: melancholy, power dynamics, purity, the aestheticization of politics, and veiled homoeroticism. Instead, what we get is a suite of songs that are unmistakably more positive in their outlook, even if they still evoke a winter frost and a sense of desolation. Some of these songs appear to be nothing more than simple love songs addressed to a steady lover, which sound a little incongruous coming out of Douglas P.'s mouth. On "Idolatry," he sings: "You're the emptiness that was meant to be/The missing piece of the puzzle of me...You're the sun and the moon and the stars combined/You'll always be the universe to me." Is he fucking serious with this shit? I'm all for sincere singer/songwriters, but Douglas P.'s newfound, unguarded sincerity seems to come along with an awful lot of schmaltz. I guess there's nothing wrong with schmaltz, but it sounds positively absurd set amid these dark folk surroundings. I honestly don't know what to make of it.
I'm not going to provide a blow-by-blow description of the songs on this album, because none of them warrant the time it would take. Aside from "My Rhine Atrocity," which weaves in some cool dialogue samples, no other tracks stand out to me, even after three listens. On The Rule of Thirds, DIJ commits the cardinal sin of being boring, predictable and nostalgic in an unproductive way. To my mind, this is a worse sin than all the goth posturing and Nazi-adoration one could possibly muster.
One-off partnerships can be a dubious proposition: often they are an excuse for the musicians to showboat or goof off. The personal dynamics of collaboration may be interesting to players but are irrelevant if the music can't be appreciated outside that context. Mark Manning and Yann Novak avoid indulgence by making spacious, echoing pieces of ambient moan and murk. Dream Theater this is not.
Both Manning and Novak have similar playing styles despite their different instruments and approaches. Novak's contributions are subtle and often restricted to simply processing Manning's voice and guitar. He does take the foreground in first two compositions, holding down resonant, metallic drones while Manning's wordless vocals float over top. Visions alien monoliths and cryogenic storage would not be inappropriate.
The rest of the album is less alien and foreboding. Manning plays more melodically while Novak throws the music slightly off kilter with oscillating delay. Both heap generous amounts of reverb on their concoctions, making the whole CD sound like it was recorded in a basketball court.
Rather than coming off as a recorded jam session, Parings sounds like the work of group experienced with each other's playing. Manning and Novak are obviously operating on each other's wavelength.
One-off partnerships can be a dubious proposition. Often they’re just an excuse for the musicians to showboat or goof off. The personal dynamics of collaboration may be interesting to players, but are irrelevant if the music can’t be appreciated outside that context. Mark Manning and Yann Novak avoid indulgence by making spacious, echoing pieces of ambient moan and murk. Dream Theater this is not.
Both Manning and Novak have similar playing styles despite their different instruments and approaches. Novak’s contributions are subtle and often restricted to just processing Manning’s voice and guitar. He does take the foreground in first two compositions, holding down resonant, metallic drones while Manning’s wordless vocals float over top. Visions alien monoliths and cryogenic storage would not be inappropriate.
The rest of the album is less alien and foreboding. Manning plays more melodically, while Novak throws the music slightly off kilter with oscillating delay. Both heap generous amounts of reverb on their concoctions, making the whole CD sound like it was recorded in a basketball court.
Rather than coming off as a recorded jam session, Parings sounds like the work of group experienced with each other’s playing. Manning and Novak are obviously operating on each other’s wavelength.
One-off partnerships can be a dubious proposition. Often they’re just an excuse for the musicians to showboat or goof off. The personal dynamics of collaboration may be interesting to players, but are irrelevant if the music can’t be appreciated outside that context. Mark Manning and Yann Novak avoid indulgence by making spacious, echoing pieces of ambient moan and murk. Dream Theater this is not.
SOOL, Ellen Allien's fourth solo album, will be released by BPitch Control on May 27th, 2008.
Produced by AGF, SOOL is subtle, mysterious and minimal. Ellen Allien will be playing select dates in the U.S. and Canada in support of this new full-length album and the release of Boogy Bytes Vol. 4 mixed by Ellen Allien, out March 31st on BPitch Control.
"Created in winter 2007/2008 in Berlin, intended to be a valve, a loophole. Winters always have been a very creative time for me; in particular, after this past hot and crazy summer and autumn 2007 in Berlin. I do not have any gigs, I never stay at one place for such a long period of time. Instead, I push buttons in the studio, and sing.
Yeah! Minimal – what does minimal mean for me? Minimal is just there. Permuting that, shaping this kind of immediacy with my own hands – that was close to my heart. A whiff of positive, but nevertheless abysmal energy creates room for the ears. For yours and mine.
What is SOOL? How is SOOL? SOOL is everything, everyone and none – SOOL is a phantasm, a creation, which reflects the album's atmosphere, and also my person. I am me; but I am also what you made me for, what you do with me and what I do with you. And, SOOL is curiosity, room, and architecture. Sketches; drawing; adhering." -- Ellen Allien
In addition to the new album, Ellen Allien has designed a special "SOOL" fashion line. Images will be available shortly.
Tracklist: 01. Einsteigen 02. Caress 03. Bim 04. Sprung 05. Elphine 06. Zauber 07. Its 08. Ondu 09. Frieda 10. MM 11. Out
Tour Dates: Thu. May 1 Seattle, WA @ Chop Suey w/ Sascha Funke Fri. May 2 San Francisco, CA @ Mighty w/ Sascha Funke Sat. May 3 Hollywood, CA @ AValon w/ Sascha Funke Sun. May 4 Portland, OR @ Holocene w/ Sascha Funke Wed. May 7 Toronto, ON @ The Mod Club w/ Sascha Funke Thu. May 8 Montreal, PQ @ Club Parking w/ Sascha Funke, Mini Fri. May 9 Quebec, QC @ Le Cercle w/ Sascha Funke Sat. May 10 Brooklyn, NY @ Studio B w/ Sascha Funke
Artist: Sutcliffe Jügend Title: Pigdaddy Catalogue No: CSR92CD Barcode: 8 2356644812 9 Format: CD in jewelcase Genre: Power Electronics / Experimental Shipping: 21 April Download from Cold Spring: 11 April
The Sutcliffe Jügend filthy dirt-mess of an album that is Pigdaddy is now available on Cold Spring. Six stories of mind-f**king depravity. Pigdaddy contains some of the most fucked up, histrionic and downright bizarre vocals ever recorded. The music is created using the most basic sound sources. The overwhelming sense of moral decay makes this Sutcliffe Jügend's most original album yet. Pigdaddy is Beyond Perverse. Sexual transgression never sounded so dirty. Hear Pigdaddy and you will never feel clean again. Cover painting by Kevin Tomkins.
Pansonic DVD By Edward Quist "KUVAPUTKI" (Cathode Ray Tube) blastfirstpetite PTYT 009 Release Date : March 31st, 2008
The first ever Pansonic DVD release by Edward Quist, American digital visual artist. A live performance, close filmed. A redux digital film based around a Pansonic performance from their New York stop of their adventerous 1999 Round The World Tour.
The film is a hyper-real abstract reflection of the duo, in the final year of the last century. Whilst the documentary core remains, the footage is twisted and shaped by Quist into a new form in conjunction with Pansonic's improvised set.
Vaino & Vaisanen are immersed in the imagery of the cathode which seems to live and infect their physicality over the course of the three parallel films until they merge with their own sound and Quist's mesmerising visuals.
Sonar Electronic Festival described the film as "A beautiful and unique film capturing the very essence of a Pansonic live performance…. which really is quite an achievement" SxSW Music Festival calls it "An embodiment. Probably the most perfect electronic music film yet" ICA Film London "Suprisingly watchable. Forty minutes of unswervingly moderne, super intense sound & visuals" Duration 38.05 miins
Both of the artists working on this piece are known for stretching the boundaries of music: Mueller heads up the Crouton label, one of the most active and prestigious recent electro-acoustic labels, while Jerman has been working for years to redefine percussion, using such things as cacti as instruments. Here the two take their love of sound to a full on audio-visual level that gives the listener a rare glimpse into the creation of such work.
The DVD comes packaged in a beautifully simple oversized letterpress package, numbered and with a 7"x7" print of artwork and credits. On the DVD there is both a 37 minute video that shows the actual process of capturing the sound, as well as a MP3 file of the same material for causal listening on the go. Intentionally, I listened to only the mp3 file at first, which I would also recommend that the reader does as well. It is more fascinating to hear the result of such unconventional techniques before actually seeing them at work, and letting ones own creativity go to work.
As expected from two drummers, albeit unconventional ones, the sounds are heavily focused in percussion. The track opens with a chaotic jumble of rattles and bangs, before stripping away to more conventional, but subtle, metallic percussion clangs. Other sounds that are present could well be the sound of metal bouncing around in an iron pot of boiling water, amplifier feedback, rocks clattering, engine hums, etc.
The most accurate description of this work is that it functions as an ethnography of sound, the nuanced experimentation with everyday objects that are rarely examined in their sonic properties. Again, listening to the audio portion of the work is a good starting point I believe, because when watching the video material reveals the proverbial man behind the curtain, it is all the more interesting.
The video portion is based on a combination of scenes showing the more esoteric percussive techniques, such as the use of bones and seashells, interspersed with subtly changing nature footage that makes for a perfect companion to the sound. Just as in the audio portion, it a studied examination of nuances that surround us in the world that go unexamined.
Granted, this is a somewhat difficult work, but for anyone who has an interest in the obsessive study of sound and the music that is around at any given time, it is a compelling document that allows for a look inside the creation of this type of material.
As an artist whose work often crosses the boundaries into the visual as well as the audio, it is interesting to hear a music only work from Monterio. His dedication to working with singular sound sources through an album's worth of material may call to mind other artists such as Akifumi Nakajima (Aube) in approach, but the results are in a world of their own. Here, using only the sound of his voice, the artist creates a frightening soundscape that still maintains a conventional, almost musical feel to it.
Previous recordings involving paper and accordions as source material makes it clear that Monteiro is adventurous to say the least. But here, using only his voice and processing, he creates a tense, violent world of sound that hangs with the best of "extreme" musicians without feeling like a rip-off or a poser. Instead, subtle shifting walls of drone electronic sounds are met by outbursts of pure modulated anger, screams cutting through the thick tense air. At other times the drone is layered with sinister organic elements, what could be guttural groans or the sound of breath that sound like something threatening just over the horizon where it cannot be seen, but its presence clearly felt.
I mentioned a sense of musicality in the introduction to this review, and it does clearly manifest itself in the structure of the work. Rather than feeling like a slipshod collection of sounds slapped together, it instead feels composed and tactfully planned out, from quiet interludes into harsh, noise outbursts that wouldn't be out of place on a Merzbow record, back to more pensive passages that cause the listener to more closely contemplate the darkness.
My previous reference to Aube was not a simple point of comparison, because both artists have that same raison d'etre when it comes to obsessively using and manipulating a rudimentary sound source as a basis of composition, but structurally is where they depart. Perhaps due to his prolificness, Nakajima often relied on the same overreaching framework on his tracks that made them somewhat tedious. Monteiro, on the other hand, has a much more dynamic flow that causes the listener to be genuinely surprised when the sound shifts from subtle to brutal. I know I caught myself being jarred on more than one occasion with the forceful transition.
The fact that this is all sourced from the human voice makes it even more interesting, knowing that such dark and tense sounds lurk within everyone, just needing to be coaxed out and given a tiny bit of electronic treatment. Perhaps the metaphor can be made that the work represents the dark, disturbed element that lies just beneath the surface of everyone, but regardless of how it is interpreted, it's a great listen.
As part of Important Records' quadruple-vinyl issue of Coil's swansong The Ape of Naples, an album of new material has been included, finally making good on the long-scheduled-but- interminably-delayed Backwards album. For The New Backwards, Sleazy and Danny Hyde have returned to the storied Nothing Records session tapes and created a suite of six songs that engage in an oddly ambivalent conversation between Coil's distant past and its posthumous present.
For his first proper full-length album in nearly a decade, Douglas P. sets the time machine back to the early 1990s, returning to the guitars-and-windchimes sound that characterized classic Death in June albums such as Rose Clouds of Holocaust and But What Ends When the Symbols Shatter? The only problem is, you can never really go home again, and this album proves it.
Both of the artists working on this piece are known for stretching the boundaries of music: Mueller heads up the Crouton label, one of the most active and prestigious recent electro-acoustic labels, while Jerman has been working for years to redefine percussion, using such things as cacti as instruments. Here the two take their love of sound to a full on audio-visual level that gives the listener a rare glimpse into the creation of such work.
As an artist whose work often crosses the boundaries into the visual as well as the audio, it is interesting to hear a music only work from Monterio. His dedication to working with singular sound sources through an album's worth of material may call to mind other artists such as Akifumi Nakajima (Aube) in approach, but the results are in a world of their own. Here, using only the sound of his voice, the artist creates a frightening soundscape that still maintains a conventional, almost musical feel to it.
