The most popular electronic French duo since Air have finally had their internationally acclaimed album issued in North America through Mute. Unfortunately, hearing this after the extended period of hype, I was expecting something more. Rather than hearing the masterpiece as so many have exploded about, my ears tell me this could easily be the most overrated album I can recall in a long, long time.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Despite his efforts to write a melodic album distanced from thebeat-driven erraticism and pop culture plunderphonics that have definedmuch of his work to date, Aaron Funk's eleventh album as VenetianSnares sounds like something Richard D. James saved to diskette andthrew in a corner. In all honesty if I had received this CD without anyartwork or indication of artist name, I would have written it off asanother Aphex Twin/Autechre/Mu-Ziq wannabe and thrown it in the pile tobe forgotten. The greatest fault of Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding lies in its lack of the mix of eccentric charms and sinister overtones found on previous releases like Horse and Goat, Find Candace, and the now-classic Doll Doll Doll.The sameness of the material makes the majority of the songspractically indistinguishable from eachother, making it difficult tolatch on to any one in particular. Gurgling MOS6581 sound chip melodiesand spastic percussion litter tracks like "Bonivital," "Coke Ajax," and"Nineteen1319" with little variation to speak of. "Keek" employs SpeakN Math equation gibberish to accent its tinny atmospheres while "Vida"fuses together Commodore 64 tones and glitchy hip hop with spottyresults. OK, Aaron, we get it. You like oldschool video game sounds.Thanks for clarifying. From reading my descriptions here, some readersmight be confused as to why I have such a negative view of thisrelease. To them I would say that good intentions and seemingly cleverideas are often far less enjoyable when implemented musically, as isthe case here. To be clear, Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfoldingis not an unlistenable affair, and without a doubt stands as Funk'smost accessible release to date. Still, after making a name for himselfwith music that is equally challenging and entertaining, thisderivative release ranks as an unmemorable entry in his relativelystrong catalog.
M.V. Carbon and J. Gräf make noise that is slow, consumptive, andjello-thick and their method of ear-shattering is unique enough to makethem stand out among a sea of amateur feedback wankers. Keyboardsstretch and rattle like whale blubber waving in the wind and sonicwhines break the sound barrier in an attempt to reach light and breakit, too, but through all the chaos and unchecked sludge is that hint ofintention and arrangement that helps everything make sense. Metaluxmight have one foot in the out-of-control world of schizophrenic soundconstruction, but the other is firmly planted in the calm and coolrealm of careful preparation. After turning up their aggression theyconsider the variety they've presented, look it over like some hellishFrankenstein made from the bones of destroyed drum kits and nuclearguitars, and they craft it into rolling lines of synthetic bubbles andpurring sex kittens. Carbon and Gräf open up noise and reveal under itthe comedy of failing sounds; there are bloody llamas and pliantanimals to be found on this record. There's always a strange kind ofbeauty here that reminds me of why noise can be so great. Take theoverdriven guitar of "Splinter and Shimmer" for example: distortion,super-indulgence, and complete disregard for listener health has neversounded so lovely. The witch-like moan and screech of the vocals onthis track slip around the pure fucking animalistic drive of the guitarand the painful screech of electronics so perfectly, it's a surprisethat more individuals haven't tried this approach (it seems ripe fortheft and overuse). Metalux let it carry on for just long enough anddon't bother using it again—it's an addictive piece of songwriting thatonly increases with each listen. In other places the record is almostdanceable as drum machines pound away steady rhythms, alternatingbetween bass hits and persistent snare crunching. The noise that movesover it and the sometimes fascist ramblings of the vocalist create thekind of fear that only an epileptic thrust suddenly into a disco bashcould feel. "Airplane" and "Flexi-Armadillo" fit this bill well, butthere aren't just a few styles on this album. Nearly every song isunique and still Waiting for Armadillosticks together more cohesively than rock opera. "Rode West" soundslike it belongs in some world filled with secretly perverted clowns and"Mexico" might as well be put in every raver's CD player as a means ofterminally destroying their ability to dance and think. Both ofthem sound as though they were crafted from the same twisted brain andboth serve the greater purpose of lifting Waiting for Armadillo far above the usual onslaught of pummeling sound and into another dimension occupied only by itself. 
The true test of the heavily layered, over-produced combo pop song is usually whether it can be played out in a solo performance, say at the ubiquitous open stage café or around the campfire, and still be strongly maintained. The singer/songwriter performance augmented with one or two other instrumentalists, preferably none of whom are playing the same instrument, usually has a raw and unique group charm, especially when performance is more the focus than production.
The electrified gong that radiates through the beginning moments of "Makruna" and continues through its 38 minute duration marks a phantom presence that galvanizes the whole of these recordings. The track "Minya" was originally recorded as a solo live performance in 1999, but it used elements of sound that had been previously recorded by both Colin Potter and Andrew Chalk. Only 111 copies of this performance were made, but now a reworked version—along with two new tracks—has been released in an edition of 500 copies.
Conceived as a response to the worldwide media coverage of the first Gulf War in 1991, Switch On Warwas Charles Hayward's attempt to create a harsh, anti-musical statementthat would serve as an antidote to the barrage of media distortion anddisturbingly hypocrisies being promulgated by the government andmilitary. Binaurally recorded live in a deserted London morgue, Haywardnever expected the album to last longer than a year, as it was intendedto reflect the anger and sadness over those then-current events.Paradoxically, some 13 years on, this music seems more topical thanever, with George W. Bush's bloodier sequel to the Gulf War stillraging on and the media ever more complacent and contradictory. Switch On War is subtitled Music for the Ongoing Theatre of War,a name that seems like it could have been lifted directly from thepolitically charged, anti-government lyrical screeds of This Heat, theseminal post-punk experimental group that Charles Hayward co-founded in1978. Hayward uses pretty much the same arsenal here as he did withThis Heat (and Gong, Quiet Sun, Camberwell Now and Coil); live andsynthetic percussion, augmented by layers of distortion and harsh tapeloops. The sound is immediately reminiscent of the industrialagitations of Throbbing Gristle, SPK and Einstürzende Neubauten,guaranteeing that it will be an extremely trying listen for most.Sheets of unpleasant distortion and ear-canal vibrating drones shiftsubtly along with Hayward's mechanical rhythms, scrupulously avoidingmelody in favor of abstract dot-matrix patterns that emerge overextended periods of time. At the start of "Crying Shame," Haywardshrieks a series of razor-sharp provocations: "Drive a sadmaninsane/Need a badman to blame/Oceans of flame/Reign of terror/Bone-dryterrain." His harshly synthetic soundworld evokes the arid dessert asseen through ultramodern infrared night-vision cameras, the landscapereduced to muddled electron midnight-greens and blues. Sudden swoops ofreverberating mechanical rhythms and ear-ringing treble tones signalthe dropping of bombs from aircraft, with fiber-optic cameras on theend of missiles tracing their descent down through the night sky andinto aspirin factories and impoverished public housing buildings.Hayward frequently utilizes the electronic bleeptones and repetitive,simplistic melodies reminiscent of video arcade games, drawing aparallel between spotty teenagers playing out shoot-'em-up fantasieswith their joysticks, and post-pubescent soldiers destroying the worldwith their high-tech gadgets and weaponry. Switch On War is a powerful aesthetic statement of brutally urgent relevance. 
Radian's third full-length album is an unexpected (and excellent) surprise, appearing only months after the releases of Ballroom by Trapist (Martin Brandlmayr with Martin Siewert and Joe Williamson) and Die Instabilität der Symmetrie (the collaboration of Brandlmayr and Siewert with Werner Dafeldecker and Stefan Németh) and mere months before Jealousy and Diamond, the Kranky debut of the band Autistic Daughters (Brandlmayr and Dafeldecker with Dean Roberts). Juxtapositionis a seemingly appropriate name for the album as the recordings werecompleted in a process which is nearly backwards to what would seemmost logical: beginning with the synths and electronics (in Vienna) andcompleted with the recording of live drums and bass guitar (by JohnMcEntire in Chicago). Unsurprisingly with two drummers (Brandlmayer andMcEntire) having so much influence on the album, it's a veryrhythmically charged record. "Shift" opens the album with an aggressivetune of driving percussion over chopped up electronics. Even here onthe first track, the brushes of cymbals and thud of the real bassguitar combined with the forward melodic motion are sounds I've wantedto hear come out of this scene for years. These are the elements thatmake the perfect use of the last ten years of laptopery. Sure, thoseMego and Raster-Noton acts had good sound patches but the picture wasalways incomplete without good composition and variety. Juxtapositionis more of a pop record than the other releases in this blossomingscene, as it's comprised of nine approximately five-minute songsinstead of four-five 10-20 minute long pieces like some of theaforementioned records. The instrumentation remains a consistentwell-balanced interplay between the three musical elements (drums, bassguitar, and electronics) while the variants from song to song are oftempo and structure. While the sounds themselves aren't completelynatural, it's not an alien pop concept to have an upbeat tune (like"Transistor") followed by the downbeat song ("Helix") and a subsequentdroning bit ("Ontario") before launching into another upbeat jam("Tester"). I'm now even more eager to hear the upcoming AutisticDaughters release and am increasingly anxious to see some of thesepeople live but whether or not this blossoming scene has caught on wellenough to bring them over is yet to be seen. 
While it's hard to speculate about the influence that this reissue willhave on even the smallest of fringe interest groups, without soundinglike a geeky sound-art fetishist or conspiracy nut myself, I will admitat least that after three years delay, The Conet Project repress has me more excited than any record to receive reissue treatment in 2004. This is notto say that I have really enjoyed listening to most of theserecordings, at least not for any extended period, the reason being thatthe four-disc set is absolutely the most intense piece of media I'veencountered since its initial release in 1998. "Numbers stations," forthose who ignored this colossus the first time around, are short-waveradio broadcasts appearing (still) around the clock, transmitting avariety of encoded messages, next to impossible to source, decode, ortrace to a recipient. The messages come via human voices readingnumbers and phonetic letters, series of Morse-coded letters andnumbers, or longer "noise" transmissions, producing different strainsof noise and occasionally snippets of music. This collection (the firstever) is not intense within conventional or, in these days, fashionable"noise" definitions. Rather, the effect must be traced deeper, beyondany surface appeal and into the unrelenting atmosphere these recordingsproduce. Better yet, in a contradictory reading that would support theparanoid "sourceless-ness" that is certainly a theme here, theintensity in the mood of The Conet Project might also be linked to the sounds' unique existence at the surface only,as purely utilitarian noises of unknown, or at least inconceivablecontext. Recently, numbers stations entered the popular mind via asample (from disc 1) that became the haunting invocation"Yankee...Hotel...Foxtrot" in a song from the Wilco album of the samename. The fact that the band selected such a bizarre find for bothprominent placement within one their most powerful songs, and for thetitle of an album epic in its look at emotional isolationism, should beevidence of the captivating power latent in many of these recordings,regardless of their association with the government intelligence groupsand espionage agents that are their most likely sources. While it canbe thrilling to sit and imagine the global impact of one particularseries of stuttered, Slavic letters or static-laden Sousa loop, thesediscs become most effective when the frequencies are allowed to slowlypopulate the airspace, to become, in this archival format, like theghostly remnants of human activity twice removed, a census of blackshadows against the sky's gray analog. The warped, muddied sound of thebroadcasts grants each a discomforting distance, less paranoia-inducingthan simply numbing. To listen is to confront a vast field of inhumanbabble, coated in the noisy resonances of antique equipment,long-distance signaling, and extra-mechanical production. These aremarginally human transmissions, meant to appear timeless, to miss yourears, transmissions largely forgotten, or remembered only in thelog-books of an anonymous conglomerate. This is the true cyber-punksound, "music" which predicts a future of annihilation, replacement,and empty language. It is especially apt that The Conet Projectis being marketed to the experimental electronic crowd, as the moodhere seems a virtual compendium of the accomplishments of labels likeRaster-Noton, 12k, Fällt et al. These labels' pursuit of a reduction ora microscoping of musical forms through delineated digital languageoften threatens the same blank stare that I receive from Conet,intended or not. Here is proof that our music has evolved and left usbehind, in futile struggle to decode it, to connect its makers withourselves, to reach inside it and come up with something other thanevidence of our own growing insignificance. 
The first full length album of all new Mouse On Mars music in threeyears is easily one of the most fun records of the year. Andi and Janare once again joined in the studio by vocalist Dodo Nkishi and, alongwith female vocalist Niobe, for the first time, the entire Mouse OnMars record is covered with vocals. The strong points are very strong:the undeniably most bombastic jam of the year is "Blood Comes," which,along with tracks like the opener "Mine Is Yours," and "Wipe ThatSound," are excellent homages to bottom-heavy retro-funk put through adigital mindwarp that Mouse On Mars excel at. "Blood Comes" plays in myhead to images of urban roller skaters in San Francisco, speeding downthe hills backwards with a ghetto blaster on one shoulder. It's aperfect balance of punchy beats, hot riffs, and noise. "Mine Is Yours"is a brilliant opener with guitars adding more human colors andtextures to the music, which is historically quite alien. However, I'mnot quite sure if I'm ready for the vocals from Niobe, as the songs"The End," "Send Me Shivers," and "Evoke an Object" are somewhat tepidattempts at a kind of generic easily digestible coffee house techno.While they do work as good resting points between the relentless energyof the other songs, they're rather underdeveloped and lacking inexcellent hooks. It almost doesn't matter, though, as the memories ofthe high points are good enough to leave the important lastingimpressions and warrant repeated listens.
This compilation neatly fills in some gaps for collectors of the longand varied career of Mayo Thomspon and his mercurial,on-again/off-again rock outfit The Red Krayola. Comprising 21 tracksdrawn from twelve 7", 12" and CD singles released from 1970 to 2002,most songs are credited to the various lineups of The Red Krayola, witha couple bearing the name of Mayo Thompson solo, the short-lived sidegroup Saddlesore, and a few sharing credit with conceptual art groupArt & Language. Anyone versed in the career of The Red Krayolaunderstands that the primary watchword is eclecticism. From theirbeginnings in Texas garage psychedelia, Thompson has taken his projectthrough avant-garde Residents-style insanity, country-rock, punk-disco,No Wave and post-rock. Along the way, Thompson has remained the onlyanchor of the band, which at various times has included hundreds ofothers, including members of Pere Ubu, X-Ray Spex, Essential Logic,Raincoats and Swell Maps, as well as contemporary indie mainstays JimO'Rourke, David Grubbs and John McEntire. If one thing has stayed thesame throughout the 36 years of the band's existence, it is theadventurousness and intelligence with which Thompson and companyapproach these myriad styles, and their continuing, nervous dialoguewith pop music and other commercially viable forms. Though the singleis, by its nature, the most commercial face of music, The Red Krayolahave used this carrier as a way to keep in touch with the pop world,even as they held it at an arm's length, with their deconstructions andcommentaries on rock. It's hard to detect this stance in the album'sfirst three tracks, dating from 1970, which utilize country-influencedpsych-rock to capable but ultimately head-scratching effect. Fromthere, a 1976 single "Wives in Orbit/Yik Yak" demonstrated Thompson'sgrowing interest in the stripped-down aesthetic of punk rock, with apair of cleverly rendered art-punk songs that rival the best of theoriginal punk singles era. Tracks 6-13 represent my favorite period ofRed Krayola's manifestation: his flirtations with No Wave, working witha band that included members of the aforementioned post-punk groups."Micro-chips and Fish" is an idiosyncratic reggae-punk song featuringthe saxophone blasts of Lora "Oh Bondage, Up Yours" Logic. Successivetracks tackle the atonal skronk of No Wave, with Thompson's lyricsdealing with abstruse linguistic philosophy, or narratives about Muslimswordfighters operating as allegories for the destructive power ofreligion. The "Rattenmensch" single, released on an obscure Germanlabel in 1981, features a musical take on Freud's famous "rat man" casestudy, using German lyrics taken from Freud's writings, incorporatedinto an angular New Wave framework. The rest of the singles collectedon the disc document Thompson's 1993-2002 work released on Drag City,his most experimental period, characterized by highly idiosyncraticcompositions combining unorthodox rhythms with jagged guitarimprovisations, unexpected samples, synthesizers and surrealisticlyrical routines. "Come on Down" is a good example of the artsierKrayola, originally a bonus single included with the first pressing ofthe FingerpaintingLP, is an oddly dislocated ballad that bounces along with a galaxy ofstunted electronics and sudden tangents into free-form noise. Takentogether, these 21 songs construct a stunning collage-portrait of anartist in constant flux, never failing through four decades to find newmethods of expression and the transmission of new ideas.
