05 July 2020

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Albums and Singles

Martial artist, philosopher and actor Bruce Lee famously stated "Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." Lee’s words were not merely pretty poetry, he lived them. Tengger are pan-Asian duo Itta and Marqido with their young son RAAI, and like Lee, Tengger craft their music in the same way they live their lives: with intention. They have built their principals—and fan following—after many years touring and living on the road, recording their music surrounded by unfamiliar cultures and environments. Self-described as EPT (Electronic Psychedelic Traveller) music, their name translates to "borderless sky beyond description" in Mongolian, and their music paints landscapes in the mind. Nomad is no exception to this rule, and their latest brings their philosophy, their music, and their moniker to a majestic head, offering an album of journey and movement that encourages flowing around the claustrophobia and confinement of 2020.

Beyond Beyond is Beyond

Tengger interweaves drone, ambient, psychedelia, the Krautrock influences of Kraftwerk, Cluster and Steve Reich, and new age music painted with environmental sounds. They craft their music with Itta’s harmonium, divine vocals, and toy instruments, along with analog synthesizer from Marqido. Based on this description, it is easy to confine them to Tangerine Dream ambient meanderings, but Tengger reject this notion, explaining their music as "landscape poetry". Known as Shansui in Japanese, this concept is worth exploring for this album.

Shanshui poetry refers to the movement in poetry influenced by the ancient Chinese "shan shui" (landscape) painting style of repeating mountains and water images. The art’s purpose serves not to create perfect replications as seen by the eye, but for opening windows to the viewer’s mind, breaking artistic conventions of "proper" color, light, shadow and brush strokes. Three basic components are in Shan shui paintings: Paths, the Threshold, and the Heart. Paths are never straight and always meander to help deeper the landscape through which it travels, mimicking the patterns created by nature. This path leads to a Threshold, a place that provides welcome, whether it is the mountain itself or the shadow cast by it. All natural lines should flow inward to the heart, serving as the focal point.

The gorgeous waterfall seen on the album cover is the first hint at this philosophy. Opener "Achime" (translating to "morning" in Korean) uses bird songs and other field sounds, with lyrics that translate to "the heart to greet this morning that will never be again." Tengger has explained the song is about travel: both the water’s travel, and our own inner travel, our nomadic wanderings in a search for life’s meaning. Song titles "Bliss," "Water," and "Flow" add further brushstrokes to the sound landscape. The individual sounds by themselves lend atmosphere, but when brought into relationship with each other, the songs offer rustic terra firma.

Bliss is all over this album, with a calm and compassionate vibe through the six songs that feels like a warm embrace. I have only one complaint; with the entire EP clocking in at just over half an hour, the time constraints don’t offer the songs room to expand, and sometimes seem like excerpts of broader experiments that, in other contexts, could work their magic over hours instead of minutes. The ten-minute closing track "Flow" showcases this: angelic vocals make their entry and move in and out, floating over an underlying layer of synths. Layers of sound build in waves, while the sound of flowing water appears, fades and reappears as the focal point with natural movement through the music.

This is music that offers exploration of sound, environment, and self. Lee also said "Life is an ever-flowing process and somewhere on the path some unpleasant things will pop up: it might leave a scar, but then life is flowing, and like running water, when it stops it grows stale. Go bravely on, my friend, because each experience teaches us a lesson." Just as Lee’s words serve as a hopeful reminder today, Nomad thankfully exists in the brutality of 2020, an oasis of calm in the storms.

Samples available here.

05 July 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Luminary Pauline Oliveros passed away in 2016, her career spanned fifty years of boundary-dissolving music making. This previously unreleased concert recorded in 2009 has been unearthed for release on Spleencoffin in 2020. Here she plays her accordion and her expanded instrument system along with collaborator Alan Courtis on unstringed guitar and fx.

Spleencoffin

This concert is an eruption of controlled cacophony. The pieces are improvised, messy, powerfully loud, and in your face. Most sounds are as if made by a mad scientist, with "traditional" musical ideas few and far between. Dissonance wins the day, with many insistent chord clusters of mishmashed notes bleated insistently and at high volume. While I believe this sound emanates from accordion, it sounds like the scraping of metal on metal. The accompaniment shudders voluminously as the sounds of an amplified muffler fill the space of the room.

Telematic Concert leaves me feeling shocked by the sheer assault of it all, but also open to the deeper listening that Oliveros would’ve wanted; a careful hearing and re-hearing that allows me to acquaint myself with the strange contours of this alien and startling music, until listening again yields to familiarity and appreciation.

samples available here

05 July 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"I am very happy to let you know that my next album, Cantus, Descant, has been announced today! Cantus, Descant is a double LP spanning 17 tracks and over 80 minutes of new works for pipe organ, reed organ, and electric organ. It will be released on September 18 via Late Music.

This is an album about welcoming and reconciling impermanence and endings, about suspending the private within the collective, about states and moments of being. I spent a little over two and a half years making it, working with a special group of organs in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Chicago, Vancouver, Copenhagen, and in my home studio. For the first time, I am even offering two songs! This is a very personal record that has occupied a deep part of my world for some time and it means a lot to be able to finally share it. As always, thank you so much for listening, it means the world to me."

-Sarah Davachi, 7/2/20

More information can be found here.

05 July 2020

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Albums and Singles

Released July 3, 2020

Created and Produced by Justin K Broadrick
at Avalanche, U.K 2009-2020
Published by Mute Song Ltd

AREC048. AVALANCHE RECORDINGS 2020.

More information can be found here.

05 July 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Lucrecia Dalt presents No era sólida, an introspective path to unworldly surroundings where self becomes sound, and a compass for the searchers of musical possession.

For her follow-up full-length to 2018's Anticlines, Dalt relinquishes control of the corporeal to reach imagination's outer realm. Where Anticlines framed the physical processes of matter changing state, No era sólida observes a transition in Dalt herself through the emergence of Lia: an apparition, or second self, of the artist as pure gesture and mimetic transgression.

In spectral suspension, Dalt becomes the medium between herself and Lia. No era sólida is a meeting place between these phenomenal and noumenal worlds: a diverse if not complicated landscape, but without a single solid form in sight. Swelling with cosmic oscillations and rhythmic tremors, the album’s sound materializes through new experiments with harmonic distortion in tape delay and Dalt's continued abstraction of percussion and pulse.

This atmosphere of auditory illusion is lush for vocal experimentation. In a mood stirred by griot singer Fanta Damba, Dalt produces wordless vocalizations guided by Lia's unconscious impulses. These ethereal murmurs channel a Surrealist’s automatism as Dalt dissolves language into an evocative collection of glossolalia. Her voice, possessed and processed, weaves through moments of No era sólida like a duplicitous organism playing hide and seek.

Each song identifies a different state experienced by Lia, opening with "Disuelta" ("dissolved") and transforming through pieces such as "Seca" ("dry"), "Ser boca" ("to be mouth"), and "Espesa" ("thick"). As the record progresses, Lia seems to emerge from primal, sensory states to the sentient and active conditions of "Revuelta" ("revolt") and "Endiendo" ("to understand"). These transitions signal a process of becoming, as Dalt conjures, and nurtures, a dormant being into life.

When No era sólida reaches its final title track, the spell of spoken tongue is broken and Lia can talk. Returning to the musings familiar to listeners of Anticlines, Dalt voices in her native Spanish a question posed to her by Lia: "Can paralysis transform a person into a thing?" The forbidden being fumbles lyrically through the nuances of her existence and newly-discovered senses, and wades through melodies of crystalline breathing and clicks of static like dust on a cylinder.

Lia's poetic reflections on the panspermia echo her origins, having come from some other ether. As a lifeform seeded through sound, the very essence of Lia is embodied in the exploratory instincts of her creator Lucrecia Dalt, an artist whose innate sonar system traces the far reaches of musical experimentation.

Lucrecia Dalt's No era sólida is available September 11, 2020 on vinyl and digital formats. As with Anticlines, a limited artist edition, designed by Will Work For Good, will accompany the vinyl release. Once again, a portion of proceeds from No era sólida will benefit Tierra Digna, an organization dedicated to the defense of Colombian communities affected by economic policies that violate human rights and devastate the environment.

More information can be found here.

05 July 2020

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Albums and Singles

Low-key synth & keyboard studio album by Swedish all-rounder Gustaf Dicksson. Limited edition of 300 copies with insert.

From the early days of the found-sounds recordings (like the downright scary Unga Röster album and the hilarious Mandys Bil 7"), the homespun kitchen recordings/tape collages of the still-going Idiotmusik series to the more carefully elaborated and precise Leendet Från Helvetet and Knutna Nävar albums, the massive Livets Ord dropped like a bomb when it originally surfaced as a self-released cassette in 2018.

Heavily based on synths and keyboards and clocking in on no less than close 70 minutes over 4 LP-sides, this is arguably THE epic album from the cluster around the Förlag För Fri Musik empire. Gustaf Dickssons' fascination for christianity/religious assemblies shines through once again, the title Livets Ord ("The word of life") derived from the Swedish free church/sect with the same name that was based in Uppsala between 1983-2013 and casting a pastoral shadow over the ambient music of the album. While dabbling with a long tradition of kosmische musik and private-pressed new age wonders, Blod's now patented sound of a Björn Isfält-gone-sour still lingers throughout the entire recording. A cornerstone in contemporary Gothenburg underground music. Featuring guest appearances by Emelie Thulin and Jerker Jarold.

More information can be found here.

05 July 2020

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Albums and Singles

The Oystercatcher is the first collaborative LP from Cucina Povera (Maria Rossi) and ELS (Edward Simpson)
Recorded in London over two days, hours of improvisations have been edited down to form these six tracks.
A fragile interplay is at work between Maria's drifting vocals and the ominous churn of Edward's modular synth. Each sonic element takes a turn at leading the way.

The opening track "Mantle" is formed from sparse, monolithic electronics, woven gently with a thread of vocals. In the closing track "Eon," Maria's voice shepherds spontaneous bursts of sounds, almost rave-like if order were imposed, through 15 minutes of turmoil and resplendent until the end.

Maria's vocals make their own trails amongst the noise, bringing to mind the the exploratory language from Ursula K. Le Guin's album Music and Poetry from the Kesh, recalling the same understated mystery.

The overall effect of this collaboration is a completely unique creation albeit within a recognizable lineage of predecessors.
The artwork reflects the vision of these two artists, collaged together. Both images are from a trip to Helsinki. Edward's photograph of tulips caught after dark are revealed by a flash. Maria's seemingly abstract drawing is a graphite rubbing taken from a granite slab of a pavement somewhere in Kallio. Together the two images represent two different methods for capturing a city's haptic landscape.

The album moves with a feeling of transience, which is no surprise given that the idea to collaborate was formed in Helsinki, realized in London and edited together in Rotterdam.

The Oystercatcher tells a fragile tale, one that spins out into the unknown. A cold union of voice and machine, still tentative and probing, learning to co-exist. A kind of fundamental shift whereby shared moments have been turned to sound.

The oystercatcher is a bird that can freely travel between the earth, sea and sky. The motif is taken from a Tove Jansson short story. A dead bird washes ashore, two different versions of events are presented to how the bird came to die. The album feels like two different stories being presented on top of one another but ultimately coming to the same tragic conclusion.

More information can be found here.

05 July 2020

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Albums and Singles

I have been a Severed Heads fan for more than twenty years now, yet I somehow never got around to investigating this early album until it was reissued earlier this year. I would like to blame poor distribution, as this album has essentially only been self-released up until now, but I definitely snapped up several other rare albums when Tom Ellard started reissuing them as self-released CD-Rs in the early 2000s. I suspect I was just insufficiently skeptical of the widespread belief that Ellard's golden age began with 1983's Since the Accident. I should have known better, as Clean was the last album to involve founding member Richard Fielding at all (Fielding later went on to found the similarly wonderful The Loop Orchestra). For the most part, however, Clean was almost entirely Ellard's show and it illustrates that he was already in his prime as a gleefully mischievous and eccentric loop-mangler as far back as 1980 or 1981. Admittedly, Ellard did not start indulging his poppier instincts in earnest for a few more years, but Clean is playful, fun, and idiosyncratic enough to hold up just fine without them.

Dark Entries

I suppose just about any long-running project goes through a series of distinct eras as the artist (or artists) evolve, learn new skills, and assimilate new influences, yet Severed Heads has always felt like a uniquely bizarre entity due to the vast gulf separating the two sides of Tom Ellard's artistry.The skewed synthpop of Ellard’s late '80s Nettwerk albums came as quite a surprise to me after my early exposure to Since The Accident and City Slab Horror, as it sounded like the work of a completely different band (which is especially amusing given that Fielding had already declared the band "too rock 'n roll" in the era documented here).While I am fitfully quite fond of both poles of the Sevs' aesthetic (1991's Cuisine remains an eternal favorite), it is Ellard's more primitive and experimental early work that has always been closest to my heart.The difference between a polished pop single like 1985's "Petrol" and an album like Clean is mostly one of balance though: there are certainly some hooks and melodic synth motifs strewn throughout this album, but the weirder, artier aspects tend to be front and center.On later albums, those hooks merely became the focus while the noisier, more eccentric touches were relegated to the periphery.Obviously, Ellard has hit that precarious balance better on some albums than others, but the misses simply tend to be more uniformly fascinating on Severed Heads' more rough and eclectic early work.As far as more catchy fare is concerned, Clean’s only real stabs at "pop" are: 1.) the opening "Food City," which combines a bouncy Kraftwerk-esque groove with buried tape loops, gnarled guitar squall, and a very low-in-the-mix vocal melody, and 2.) the insistently burbling "Charivari."

My favorite moments on Clean, however, tend to be the ones where Ellard takes a strong melodic or rhythmic theme and gleefully deconstructs, destroys, or mutates it into something surreal, broken, and unfamiliar.The closing "Violins and Moonlight" is probably the strongest example of this, as it opens with an obsessively looping vocal snippet, densely sputtering synth bass, and a delicate minor key arpeggio, then coalesces into a pulsing, skeletal, and mumbled approximation of hypnagogic pop that moves relentlessly forward through a cacophony of disjointed movie and TV dialogue samples.Elsewhere, "Nightsong" strips away everything except for a stomping beat, then ravages it with a dissonant repeating guitar figure and a flanging, heaving mass of churning sludge."Tiny Fingers" twists the formula yet again, resembling two completely different pieces awkwardly mashed together.It is a tactic that should not work, but the second half turns a looping radio snippet and some gurgling, distorted vocals into something weirdly hypnotic and haunting. If I had to guess, I would say the radio snippet is from a jingle for an electronics store and that is a perfect illustration of why I am so drawn to Ellard's early work: he had a real genius for recontextualizing seemingly random snatches of cultural detritus into poignant or subversive art.Obviously, there is an element of mischief and willful absurdity to the eclectic selection of samples that find their way into his work, but it would be a reductive mistake to view his aesthetic as "taking the piss" or even "transforming trash into treasure."Instead, it would be more apt to say that Ellard simply found soul and beauty in unlikely places and did his best to bring out those traits (while also amusing himself in the process, of course).

While I am understandably still annoyed with myself for sleeping on this album for so long, there is nevertheless a silver lining to waiting until now to finally hear it: a strong case can be made that this latest reissue is the definitive version.As with all Severed Heads albums from the '80s, Clean has seen several different incarnations over the years and a bunch of them omitted "Food City."Happily, that perplexing wrong has now been righted.Of course, the presence or absence of that particular piece is not exactly a deal-breaker on its own (though it is a good song), yet this latest version has also been remastered and expanded to include thirteen additional rare and unreleased songs.Some were culled from the Side Three cassette (previously included on the Adenoids compilation), but the rest are demo and live recordings that have thus far remained unheard.Historically, I have not been an enthusiastic advocate of diluting already solid and complete albums with vault scrapings. Clean, however, is a notable exception to that viewpoint, as a number of the new songs are remarkably fine tape loop collages ("You Will," "Floopness," "Somehow Pain," and the lengthy "Clean Loops" are all standouts).In fact, I prefer several of them to the songs that made it onto the original album.Granted, all of best loop-based pieces lack Ellard's vocal or synth contributions, so I suppose they represent an earlier vision of the project (and a very non-rock ‘n roll one at that), but there are also some less abstract "songs" included in the extra material and I like them too.It is crazy that it took forty years for all that material to finally surface.Naturally, my initial thought was that Ellard was responsible for some of the most warped, adventurous, and original electronic music on earth in the early '80s and that humanity should have paid far more attention to him.However, the bigger surprise is probably how well much of this material still holds up in 2020 though: Clean might not be well-produced, sophisticated, or pretty by current standards, but it remains an endearingly rough-edged, playful, and satisfying outlier: the ensuring four decades have done nothing to diminish its charm and character.While Ellard himself eventually moved on to catchier territory, no one else has yet emerged who could better early Severed Heads at their own game and it is likely that no one ever will.

Samples can be found here.

05 July 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Inventions is the project of Eluvium's Matthew Robert Cooper and Explosions in the Sky's Mark T. Smith, however these instrumentals on Continuous Portrait are less dramatic than either project. This is music that would be appropriate filling a sun kissed atrium, like Grand Central Station at dawn. It ticks along at a brisk pace, with some structure borrowed from rock music, and embellishments of vocal and bird samples, strings, reeds, xylophone, and the pleasantly unidentifiable.

 

Temporary Residence

The album opens with a jam in "Hints and Omens," with a melody running up and down the keyboard while the other instrument sections hammer out the underlying progression. Together, Cooper and Smith incorporate synth, piano, horns, strings, ambiance, percussion, and various adorning samples while constructing a makeshift orchestra to take turns spinning light, floating melodies over all these sounds.

The large hall filter is what makes the music sound large and expansive. The bright, ebullient character is why it sounds like daybreak. It feels as if all of the songs are similar pieces of the same story, with a seamless hand-off between each song for a contiguous album experience. There isn't always a clear melody, but it still rollicks along with regular chord changes and a rhythm section to keep it pinioned in rock, or rather, post-rock territory, with atypical instrumentation.

While Continuous Portrait is not quite what I would call dense, it does shuffle along with many small parts combining together to make a balanced whole. Some samples are a perfect example of radio segue music, which is not to say that it is boring in the least. There's a playfulness here that is both fun and captivating, with an emotional lift to it.

Continuous Portrait is a simple pleasure to listen to: immaculately constructed finger snapping songs, with beautiful instrumentation and a clear idea conveyed by each one.

samples available here

05 July 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

I wish I was more familiar with Tom James Scott's work, as he is an artist that has an uncanny knack for unexpectedly turning up in my life again and again. I believe I first encountered him during Bo'Weavil's heyday and then again as an erstwhile member of Liberez, but I know him best as a semi-regular Andrew Chalk collaborator. And—much like Chalk—Scott tends to keep a very low profile, quietly releasing his last several solo albums on his own Skire imprint. Consequently, this latest release is a noteworthy event, as it marks his stateside debut on Students of Decay. Given both SOD's aesthetic and Scott's past, it is no surprise that Mine is the Heron hews very close to Chalk's own understated minimalism (they do have a shared vision, after all). Nevertheless, Scott's solo aesthetic is still quite a distinctive one, as Heron is a gorgeous and melodic suite of elegant piano miniatures and blurrily sublime meditations. It is also a very intimate and diaristic-sounding album, as it feels like a collection of spontaneously improvised flashes of inspiration edited by someone with absolutely unerring instincts for capturing simple, fleeting moments of beauty.

Students of Decay

Notably, this album borrows its title from a poetic line in Virginia Woolf's Waves, but it feels could just as easily be Scott's response to someone asking him about his spirit animal (a theory that is certainly bolstered by the cover art).Herons, of course, are famous for silently standing motionless in or around bodies of water as they await their prey.I suspect Scott departs from his carnivorous ornithological inspiration in the latter regard, yet Heron definitely sounds like an album made by someone who has spent significant time quietly contemplating nature.Herons are also known for being quite graceful, which is something that Scott seems to have internalized as well.While the instrumentation varies a bit from song to song, the overarching aesthetic is an extremely consistent one, as Scott has crafted fourteen simple and elegant vignettes of gently rippling, meditative beauty.In lesser hands, such a vision would almost certainly creep dangerously close to toothlessly pastoral New Age territory, but Scott proves to be eerily adept at translating the serene play of light across a gently lapping pond into something poignant, thoughtful, and dream-like.I am especially struck by the degree of minimalism that Scott adheres to on most of these pieces, as he largely eschews additional layers of drones or chords to keep the focus squarely on his melodic themes and his nuanced textural manipulations.Given that approach, most pieces on Heron are fairly brief, yet they all tend to feel like complete statements rather than mere promising fragments that were never given the chance to expand or evolve.Grasping exactly when and how a simple, unadorned melody should organically end is a truly underappreciated skill and Scott has clearly mastered it.   

Scott does allow himself to expand into somewhat longform territory once, however, as "Redwoods" unfolds for nearly eight minutes as a shifting fog of bleary and smeared feedback-like tones.If I had to guess, I would say it was composed on an electric piano, but both the attack and the actual notes being played are largely subsumed by the lazily oscillating and shimmering vapor trail that they leave in their wake.It is a lovely piece, but most of Heron's highlights are significantly more concise and melodic.I am tempted to say that the other pieces are less experimental as well, but it would be more accurate to say that the nature of Scott's experimentation varies significantly from piece to piece.On "In Tangled Water," for example, delicate piano arpeggios lazily cascade with an appealingly erratic tempo as repeating single notes ring out and a soft-focus swirl of hazy ascending tones unfolds in the periphery.Naturally, the central piano motif is the heart of the piece, but closer listening reveals an incredible degree of intricacy and nuance, as all the various parts seem to move together and intertwine like a single living entity (and I also loved how sneakily the quivering higher pitched tones slipped into the scene).Later, on extremely brief "The Trail Curls," Scott pulls off the inversion of that feat, as its tender, unadorned piano melody leaves so much space between notes that the attack and decay become every bit as important as the notes themselves.Elsewhere, "Hapax" revisits the languorously tumbling melodies of "In Tangled Water" on an acoustic guitar, resulting in one of the album's warmest and most rhythmically fluid pieces. 

Given the slow-moving and piano-centric aesthetic of Heron, it is very easy to forget that Scott is a classically trained guitarist, but the casual virtuosity on display in "Hapax" makes for quite an impressive reminder.For the most part, however, Scott's technical prowess is more of a behind-the-scenes asset on this album, primarily manifesting itself in his effortlessly organic approach to rhythm.While he certainly has a talent for crafting strong melodies, his greater gift unquestionably lies in how he makes those melodies dance, tumble, and hesitate in a way that feels completely liberated from rigid time signatures.Aside from that, Scott exhibits a deep appreciation for the more nuanced aspects of sound and wields that sensitivity in varied and effective ways, endlessly experimenting with backwards melodies, blurring techniques, effects, decay times, and overtones.In fact, I am legitimately amazed at what Scott is able to achieve with such a constrained palette and minimum of augmentation.Given how understated and quietly tender these pieces are, Heron was not an album that immediately blindsided me with its brilliance, yet its unusual intimacy and spare beauty stealthily burrowed deeper and deeper into my consciousness with each fresh listen and I am now fully convinced that it is a near-perfect album.If Scott has a stronger album than Heron lurking in his discography, I certainly have not heard it.

Samples can be found here.