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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Neal Campbell continues his strong run of releases as Astral Social Club. This album should satisfy fans of his impressive back catalogue, but the music here is good enough to deserve separate treatment and should not be caged in by references to the past."Tripel Foment" begins similarly to Campbell's other experiments in ambient beatscapes. A bassy, four-on-the-floor techno pluse pushes the track along pleasantly. But the track becomes compelling when he ditches that rhythm and lets his sounds fly untethered. The song keeps its momentum as scraps of sound detritrus float over the mix like luminous insects. At 12 minutes, the pitch bends up sharply as the song hits its crescendo. A looped guitar riff breaks in while a tremeloed static whirls in the foreground, carrying the beat for a few more minutes till a sudden and jolting rest ends the song.
The rest of the album lacks the percussive backbone which holds up "Tripel Foment," but they hold their own unhurried vitality. The title track meanders for more half its length before finding critical mass. Reversed chime swells and subdued guitar picking float lazily into a thicket of resonate beeps and flanged bellowing. The signal processing fights against this dense buildup, diluting the racket until it becomes a limp mass, percolating into gradual silence. "Big Spree" has the same meditative pacing, being built around a cloudy snyth drone peppered with icy, ringing tones that build into a snow storm of radiant sound particulate.
As detailed as each composition on this record is, they are certainly not fast paced. No song here is under 12 minutes, but Campbell is not the kind of musician that mistakes subtlety for monotony. Stale sounds are gently taken away from the mix or processed into something entirely different. The basic components are very simple: a three note guitar figure; pieces of static; some bells and chimes. Isolated from the whole they would sound thin and artificial, but within the tightly wound arrangements of this album they take on a cosmic immensity.
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The noise is as aesthetically pleasing as most noise gets but there is no real substance to the two tracks on this single. Nodolby never hit the mind expanding assault of John Wiese nor is it rhythmic enough to pick up on the "Noise is the new rock" approach of Wolf Eyes. Instead it is too directionless, a mess of sound with no real purpose or feeling beyond an attempt to deafen the listener and failing in the attempt.
"Altered Beast" is the better of the two tracks, occasionally during its brief existence there is a flicker of life and an element of danger but mostly it just spits and growls its way to the end of the groove. Nodolby have the right intentions but do not fare well on this release.
Vogel Musik is the sort of album you prepare for listening to instead of being in the mood for. It is a challenging listen: the entire album, from the dense and dramatic music right down to the elegant sleeve (painted by Christoph Heemann), is an amazing piece of work that is full of wonderful and intriguing sounds.
In conveying the essence of birds, Fuchs is like a cubist painter in that there are elements of the familiar present but arranged in a way that is contrary to "normal" perception or interpretation. With the title of the opening piece, "Das grosse Huhn," the music makes perfect sense as an audio caricature of a big hen. Although, taken on its own it could be anything. This is not a criticism of the piece but rather shows how Fuchs can make such otherworldly music and leave enough clues for the listener to then ground themselves back in reality.
After two feminine and delicate pieces dedicated to hens there comes a bruiser of a piece in honor of the rooster. "Der Hahn" is full of aggressive drums and baritone saxophone, Fuchs and her companion Christoph Reiserer sound cock sure of themselves after the relatively gentle pieces that preceded this one. It is a strange piece (and that is saying something considering how strange all of this album is), while it fits with the rest of the music on Vogel Musik there is also something about it that sets it apart from the other tracks. I am not entirely sure I like it but I want to keep listening to find out.
The album revolves around its longest piece, "Fliegen." Flying is an obvious choice of subject matter for an album about birds but it is an odd concept to put in with music about chickens (not a bird renowned for its aerial distance). It is also a concept that has been interpreted musically for aeons, to the point where few artists can capture the magic of soaring through the air. However, Fuchs approaches it from a different angle to most. Instead of an epic score symbolising the power and freedom of flight, she plums for an isolationist view of flying. The stark nature of this piece conjures up feelings of icy winds to glide on through lonely skies. "Fliegen" further highlights Fuchs' way of taking a familiar idea and turning it on its head.
Vogel Musik may be too theatrical and fussy for some tastes but for those willing to put a little effort into listening, it is worth setting time aside for. It was difficult for the first couple of times I played it but with a little perseverance Vogel Musik revealed itself to be an album rich in texture and detail, I imagine there will always be something new to it every time I put it on.
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My biggest criticism of this duo's first CD for the considerably waning NovaMute sublabel was its lack of cohesion as an album, an all-too common pitfall that techno artists fall into when signed based on their dancefloor prowess. Upon receiving this in my mailbox, I had hoped that Mr. No and Bryan Black would use their second shot on plastic to accomplish something better, to learn from their influences instead of just impersonating them. I should have known better.
On its face, there is nothing wrong with a CD packed with clubby updates of Nitzer Ebb and Front 242. Still, as the electroclash and technowave once touted by DJ Hell's Gigolo label has been completely co-opted by hygiene-deficient hipsters and simultaneously diminished by the boisterous ascent of the far more exciting French wave, electronic body music rehashes like "Drug Punk," the acid washed "20 Volts of Steel," and the previously released "Bleep #1" just don't carry much weight. DJs who still hold tight to the dark machine beats will dig the ghoulish horror house grooves of "Re-Format" and the Daft Punk-foraging title track. Still, there is nothing new here musically when compared to Klunk, their debut released just last year. Perhaps some time away from the studio will give these guys a chance to reevaluate their position, though I think I have learned my lesson enough to pass on whatever might come next from them. To paraphrase our bumbling president, I wont get fooled again.
What makes Unhuman such a bitter pill to swallow is not even Motor's complacency for mere adequacy and emulation, but that Novamute, once among the vanguard of electronic music’s imprints, would continue to nurture such retrograde entertainment. This is the same label that brought Richie Hawtin to international superstardom with several Plastikman albums and three DE9 mixes that raised standards, rewrote rules, and seduced generations. Admittedly, Novamute has put out its share of throwaways, but it is easy to forgive a few missteps when weighing those decisions against classics from Luke Slater, Soul Center, and Speedy J, to name just a few. The latter of these especially had a profound impact on my appreciation for electronic music with A Shocking Hobby, a challenging monolith of a record that shook the foundations with its post-industrial drill n bass and eviscerated techno. Unhuman, another middling collection of Motor's possible singles in lieu of a proper album sullies the legacy of this formerly great sublabel, now more likely to be absorbed into the EMI failure factory and hopefully euthanized out of its misery.
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Creating new compositions by sampling from popular music has been going on longer than I have been alive. Yet, this debut, perhaps one of the most important albums ever to appear on Kompakt, showcases the work of an exceptional musician operating in and redefining this proud yet still controversial tradition.
One could claim that Axel Willner, the producer behind The Field moniker, has taken the most blatant of shortcuts, even worse than those undertaken by liberally plunderphonic mash-up artists. After all, even the reviled-or-revered Girl Talk deserves credit for interweaving so many recognizable hits into each of his seamless, genre-defying tracks. Approaching From Here We Go Sublime on its superficial surface, Willner, however, appears to have simply sliced just a few fatty seconds out of some of his favorite tunes, lazily pasted them into sparsely populated loops, and called it a day. Such shortsighted and close-minded presumption closes people off to these wondrously minimal neo-trance sounds that breezing through their speakers. Many electronic music fans have cringed at this new terminology, still recoiling from the rapid explosion and subsequent crude gluttony that turned euphoric crescendos into prepackaged commodities. Yet like his similarly impressive though methodologically opposite labelmate Kaito, Willner resurrects that inexplicable bliss in which so many of us exulted at permissive nightclubs and sweaty warehouses worldwide.
By restricting his sonic palate in the manner that Willner has as The Field, the journey to discover that inexplicable essence of what fills the soul with jubilance and joy becomes more refined than ever. “The Little Heart Beats So Fast” practically lifts me off my feet every time I hear it, wasting little time to introduce its handy little stolen melody, soon letting acidic bass and indecipherable blossoms of uplifting sound raise the blood pressure and dilate the pupils. The smooth retro snares and gurgling breathy stabs that ignite “Everday” make it extraordinary, but the vocal, appearing roughly three minutes in, brings this already gorgeous track and the album itself to a whole new level of grandeur. Yet not every cut here begins with such instant aural gratification. Upon first hearing the monotonous accordion slump and grind of “Silent”, I never imagined the poppy euphony that would soon come and, to my delight, ultimately dwarf all other elements.
Part of the fun of From Here We Go Sublime comes from trainspotting the source material. In a few of the cases, this is downright elementary, while others are much more subtle and even elusive. The closing title track practically bludgeons listeners with its obvious theft and merciless manipulation of The Flamingos’ ghostly 1959 doo-wop cover of “I Only Have Eyes For You.” In contrast, the dreamily Balearic “A Paw Over My Face” delivers its secret as more of a punchline, waiting for the very end of the track to give away those distinct fragments of Lionel Richie’s chart-topping “Hello”. Though I’m only remotely familiar with her catalog to identify the actual track, I strongly suspect that the ten minute epic “The Deal” has taken its ethereal vocals from none other than new age songstress Enya.
Though constantly criticized by message board trolls and curmudgeons, Kompakt has entered into a renaissance in 2008, with From Here We Go Sublime as its first of many testaments to that. Stitching together familiar strains of pop, techno, and ambient music with such fine threads is a task unto itself, but creating a tapestry greater than the sum of its parts is something different altogether. The Field’s plucky debut marks a crucial moment in the history of electronic music, and, though surely divisive among the faithful, will easily rank among one of the best albums of the year.
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This gorgeous package from the the Leaf Label contains eight songs showcasing a new collaboration between Jeremy and Heather of AHAAH, playing with a group of seasoned Hungarian musicians. Rounding out the cast are a few members of Beirut. What results is a brief but exhilarating extra-geographical jaunt through Hungarian, Serbian, Romanian and klezmer forms, as only AHAAH can produce.At the inception of this project four years ago, one might have been justified to accuse Jeremy Barnes of a cynical kind of musical exoticization, borrowing heavily from Eastern European folk forms as a readymade repository of the surreal and evocative. For a musician who was previously best known for playing on willfully eccentric Neutral Milk Hotel and Bablicon albums, the criticism might have seemed to have some basis in reality. However, four years and several albums down the line, it is becoming much more difficult to level the accusation of audio tourism against A Hawk and a Hacksaw. Barnes, Trost, and co. have so doggedly pursued their particular soundworld that it is now impossible to see their elaboration and exploration of Slavic, Jewish, and Magyar musics as anything other than completely genuine. As the music becomes less about unorthodox cultural hybrids and more focused on faithful, spirited performances of these various cultural strands, it also loses any associations it might have once had with indie dilettantism.
I am noting all of this up front because this EP on the Leaf Label contains some of AHAAH's best recordings yet, and even though it is relatively short, it contains such a wide breadth of musical styles and moods that it might be accused of wanton eclecticism. This is very far from the case, however. Instead, this newly-extended musical collective uses their extensive knowledge of various folk musics to produce a breathlessly exciting and beautiful mini-album that is perfectly sequenced, weaving together original compositions with vigorous performances of traditional melodies. Opening with Heather Trost's composition "Kiraly Siratas," dominated by swoops of violin and the haunting tones of the cymbalom (a Hungarian dulcimer-like instrument), the atmosphere is established: joyfully dramatic, undeniably cinematic, unashamedly romantic.
"Zozobra" is the most energetic track on the EP, a fast-tempo slapstick combination of expertly played cymbalom, accordion and percussion. I've never been a dancer, but I found it difficult to resist the urge to jump out of my chair and manfiest bodily the joyful uptempo polyrhythms. "Serbian Cocek" is an ensemble piece, combining the full compositional abilities of all the musicians. Parallels will no doubt be drawn to the music of Beirut, because of the Mariachi-by-way-of-Budapest trumpets. Even with the big-band setup, the track is emotionally expressive and even impressionistic at times, an effect of the imperfect, slightly off-kilter playing. All of the performances captured here sound like just that: performances. Real human beings playing instruments, rather than clinical, surgically-edited and overdubbed studio creations. "Romanian Hora and Bulgar" is actually a live recording, but the only way that it differs from the rest of the EP is the smattering of audience noise, which merely serves to intensify the energy and drama of the performance. "Ihabibi" elaborates upon a peculiarly Balkan understanding of Arabic music, and is one of the most dynamic and beautifully textured songs on the disc. The EP ends with a trio of traditional songs, an ensemble piece ("Oriental Hora") featuring the trumpet of Zach Condon, sandwiched between two sparser pieces: one a solo on cymbalom ("Vajdaszentivany"), and the other a showcase for the Hungarian bagpipes, expertly played by Bela Agoston.
This generous set also includes a DVD featuring a 20-minute documentary about AHAAH, splicing together clips of the group in the studio and during live performances in Albequerque, in Hungary and all across the European continent. It's a very skillfully assembled set of clips that left me wanting more, but definitely clued me in to the intensity and intimacy of the AHAAH live experience, which previously I had only witnessed via the group's appearance on The Eye nearly two years ago. I have the feeling that the next full-length album from Barnes, Trost and co. is going to be a true masterpiece, if this stunning EP is any indication of the exponential growth-rate of this unique group.
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Espen Sommer Eide and Dag-Are Haugan return as Alog for yet another fantastic album. They further refine their symbiosis of natural and electronic sounds, always sounding at once earthy and cosmic. Never utilizing weird sounds just for the sake of it, the dozen tracks on this CD are all pieces of music that sound more than beautiful. As expected from Alog, this is a remarkable album that reveals more and more with each listen.
What I enjoy most about Amateur (and this applies to pretty much all the other albums put out by Rune Grammofon) is the attention to detail in terms of sounds and sound treatments. Eide and Haugan are not afraid to leave a sound as it is if it has the right character or to tweak it if it needs a little help fitting in with the rest of the sounds. Although I must admit, sometimes it is hard to tell what has been treated in the studio and what is a "real life" sound as there are so many unusual instruments used on and built for the album. Not only that but Alog approach voices from an interesting perspective, the vocal layering of "Write Your Thoughts in Water" sound like a living church organ (and from what I can tell, there no little digital trickery going on here).
Amateur has a dreamy, meandering feel to it. Many of the pieces (especially the aptly named "The Learning Curve") begin with random sounding noises, like the recording has started while the two musicians are trying to figure out what instruments they are playing. However, as if by magic, it all comes together to form a delicate and captivating whole. A good example of this is "The Future of Norwegian Wood," which for the first half of the piece is a cut up of the sound of nails been hammered into wood which makes for interesting listening on its own. When the treated piano comes in over this unusual percussion, the effect is startling and gorgeous.
Most of the album is fairly laid back but Eide and Haugan can bring the music to the boil when they want to, the powerful staccato of "The Beginner" and the middle part of the lengthy "Bedlam Emblem." While Amateur is far from a boring album, it would have been nice to have one or two more livelier pieces on it but that might be entering the realms of greed. As it stands it is a cracker of an album, a logical and fitting continuation of Alog's journey through sound.
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