Kranky
If Playthroughs was a meditation on the blurred landscapes of sleep, Antithesiscomes as a particularization: a focus on the sounds happeningin-between. Things are evidently different the moment "Twin GuitarRhodes Viola Drone (for LaMonte Young)" begins. Though steeped in themystique and subtle caress of electric moans, "Twin Guitar Rhodes..."is blessed with the pure and unaltered sound of piano melodies, choralecho, and unmistakable guitar rhythms. It's incorrect to say that KeithFullerton Whitman's sound is evolving, all of these tracks wererecorded between 1994 and 2002. Whitman is showing us another sidethough: "Obelisk (for Kurt Schwitters)" plays through a labyrinth ofeerie howls, altered vibrations, and percussive rattles. The shaking ofmetal and the rolling of low drums establishes a whole new world ofsounds I've not heard from Whitman before and it sounds fantastic.While the first two tracks had me excited, it's side B that sounds mostawe-inspiring. "Rhodes Viola Multiple" begins with an oddly phrasedmelody that tiptoes over the rest of the song; it produces the image inmy mind of a small girl dancing in the summer. The background is filledwith sound of spaceships launching into space and cars buzzing by underthe sun - the music begins to hum as a unified whole eventually and thesound drifts off into a haze of bird calls and interdimensional timewarps. "Schnee" comes as the biggest and most welcome surprise. Thetrack begins with the melodic plucking of a guitar underscored by thetribal rhythm of tomtom drums and heavy cymbals. Slowly the buzz andform of an electric guitar climbs over the mass of rhythm and ushersforth smoke and shadowy figures, feeling like, at times, the soul of asnake-charmer. The electric and acoustic guitar struggle with eachother, each establishing a new melody over the last, and all the whiledrum solos trace out the pulse of the struggle. Everything about thisEP is gorgeous. The music is a an excellent treat from Whitman - thesongs reveal a side of his compositional skills I've never heard beforeand they're nothing short of magical.
If Playthroughs was a meditation on the blurred landscapes of sleep, Antithesiscomes as a particularization: a focus on the sounds happeningin-between. Things are evidently different the moment "Twin GuitarRhodes Viola Drone (for LaMonte Young)" begins. Though steeped in themystique and subtle caress of electric moans, "Twin Guitar Rhodes..."is blessed with the pure and unaltered sound of piano melodies, choralecho, and unmistakable guitar rhythms. It's incorrect to say that KeithFullerton Whitman's sound is evolving, all of these tracks wererecorded between 1994 and 2002. Whitman is showing us another sidethough: "Obelisk (for Kurt Schwitters)" plays through a labyrinth ofeerie howls, altered vibrations, and percussive rattles. The shaking ofmetal and the rolling of low drums establishes a whole new world ofsounds I've not heard from Whitman before and it sounds fantastic.While the first two tracks had me excited, it's side B that sounds mostawe-inspiring. "Rhodes Viola Multiple" begins with an oddly phrasedmelody that tiptoes over the rest of the song; it produces the image inmy mind of a small girl dancing in the summer. The background is filledwith sound of spaceships launching into space and cars buzzing by underthe sun - the music begins to hum as a unified whole eventually and thesound drifts off into a haze of bird calls and interdimensional timewarps. "Schnee" comes as the biggest and most welcome surprise. Thetrack begins with the melodic plucking of a guitar underscored by thetribal rhythm of tomtom drums and heavy cymbals. Slowly the buzz andform of an electric guitar climbs over the mass of rhythm and ushersforth smoke and shadowy figures, feeling like, at times, the soul of asnake-charmer. The electric and acoustic guitar struggle with eachother, each establishing a new melody over the last, and all the whiledrum solos trace out the pulse of the struggle. Everything about thisEP is gorgeous. The music is a an excellent treat from Whitman - thesongs reveal a side of his compositional skills I've never heard beforeand they're nothing short of magical. 
Following the Finnish-born duo's most intense live journey, the groupreleases their most ambitious recording to date. In the three yearssince Aaltopiiri,live opportunities have taken them to the most remote corners of theworld including Europe, Spain, the Americas and Easter Island, this isall following that now famous ad in The Wire magazine asking people in interesting places to put them up and pay them a small amount. Kestois four CDs of all new material, recorded over the last year in Berlin,but with sources and inspiriations from the group's extensive travels.Pan Sonic fans know that while the group's instrumentation remainssomewhat constant, their styles bounce back and forth betweenear-bleeding beats to quiet drones or heady field recordings. Unlike onAaltopiiri, where everything was sort of all mixed in together, on Kesto,things are separated. The first two discs are the fucking sexiestthings I've heard all year: pounding with an unparallelled abrasivebeauty, the beats that mark many of their most receptive live rock 'nroll (or at least as close as Pan Sonic can come to rock) performances.On these discs are 140 minutes of vicious assaults and trademark PanSonic sounds, where the group even pays homage to a number of theirinfluences like Bruce Gilbert, Keiji Haino, Suicide, and ThrobbingGristle, mimicking sounds they've done in almost reinterpretive pieces.Disc three begins the quiet half of the set, with songs that arefrequently filled with the unfilling sounds of silence. It opens with atoilet bowl flush and continues for the rest of the tracks mostly fromprocessed sounds of non-musical sources. While discs one and two areperfect blasting music for a night on the town, disc three isdefinitely something that is best at home, as the silences in oddenvironments trigger the "is this thing still playing?" reaction overand over again. The set ends with the CD-long track "Säteily,"(translation: "Radiation") which is a chilly 61:16 minute drone. Itwould easily make any fan of Time Machines purr like a kitten.It's perfect for lulling any beast (party animal or other) to sleepafter a multi-disc set which could be best described as an endurancetest! While this is undoubtedly the best multi-disc set of new materialreleased by anybody this year, I do have one minor issue with theflimsy packaging, which came unglued only on the second day, so bewarned on that account, but don't be afraid of the aural treasuresinside.
Evangelical Christianity continues to exert an inestimably important
influence on a large percentage of the world population. To the largely
secular world of modern art and media, academia and philosophy,
Christianity became a functional nonentity the day Nietzsche declared
the death of God. However, millions of people, many in prominent
positions of power and influence, continue to confound adversity with
their faith in and insistence on the importance of the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus the Christ. A recent film that I don't need to
mention by name has once again placed the issue of faith versus
secularism at the forefront of international dialogue. There is a
tendency among the majority of postmodernist thinkers, one which I seem
unable to shake, of regarding the New Testament and the evolution of
faith in Christ with a clinical distance, something to consider with
suspicion and detachment. Having grown up in a strictly atheist family
of intellectuals, and from a very young age having become interested in
a variety of divergent religious and transgressive occult beliefs, I
have had my brain blown open and wiped clean of the possibility of
investing fully in the kind of senseless wide-eyed faith, piety and
exclusivity demanded by the born-again movement. However, whether
reading the profoundly inspiring works of Kierkegaard or Pascal, or
hearing the revenant gospel of Blind Willie Johnson or the Gnostic
poetry cycles of Current 93, I cannot help but feel a strange
gravitational pull towards the faith of Paul, and George Ratliff's
documentary Hell House
is a perfect encapsulation of the enticing beauty of modern
Christianity. Ratliff trains his camera on Trinity Church, a large
Midwestern Pentacostal community that has devised a unique method of
convincing new members to join the faith. Each year at Halloween, they
erect an enormous haunted house, a series of rooms through which
visitors are ushered, each room vividly exhibiting a different
temptation of the modern world and its disastrous effect on the
spiritual life of its victims. Truly frightening one-act plays about
such taboo subjects as abortion, homosexuality, family violence, drug
addiction and occultism are enacted by a spirited group of young
born-agains. A variety of high-tech audio effects, pyrotechnics and
even live gunfire are utilized to make each vignette as confrontational
and frightening as possible, culminating in a nightmarish vision of
hell complete with the souls of the eternally damned writhing in
plexiglass cages, screaming penances on the deaf ears of grinning
devils. At the end of each Hell House tour, the audience members are
given the chance to redeem themselves and become born-again, signing
promissory contracts and praying to have their sins absolved in the
blood of Christ. The Hell House attracts tens of thousands of visitors
each year, and a staggeringly large percentage of the visitors are
convinced to take the vow of faith. The passion and work ethic applied
to the planning and implementation of the Hell House is the chief
subject of the film, and it provides fascinating insight. Ratliff's
non-judgmental lens is startlingly objective in its view of
middle-American Christians young and old, providing a view of modern
religious faith that avoids the "Jesus Freak" cliches I'd become
accustomed to. There are dozens of haunting scenes that have etched
themselves into my memory, chief among them a sequence showing a
typical church gathering, where the Pentacostals speak to God in their
"love language" — a string of nonsensical tongues and glossolalia that
serves to transcend reason and appeal directly to the spirit. An
appropriately ghostly musical score is provided by Matt and Bubba
Kadane. Hell House is beautifully and respectfully rendered
portrait of a silent majority; the triumphs of modern Christianity have
never been so vividly depicted.
Though Steven Stapleton is inevitably characterized as a something of a"lone wolf" — a vaguely psychotic outsider, compulsively andprolifically pumping out mysterious and inscrutable musical esotericafrom some dilapidated shack deep in the Irish countryside — he has, infact, remained a thoroughly collaborative artist throughout his longcareer. It took 1999's compilation The Swinging Reflective: Favourite Moments of Mutual Ecstasyto finally demonstrate the impressive array of artists that Stapletonhas worked with over the years: from contemporaries like Foetus, TonyWakeford and The Legendary Pink Dots to artists like Stereolab, who aresituated well outside of NWW's post-industrial milieu. It is this sameintensely collaborative spirit that manifests on Angry Eelectric Finger (Spitch'Cock One),a newly-issued prologue to an upcoming triple-album set featuringcollaborations with Cyclobe, irr.app.(ext.), Jim O'Rourke and XholCaravan. These were long-distance reciprocations, with Stapletonsending raw materials to each of the artists, who were free torecontextualize and mutate the sounds as they saw fit. These longformremixes were sent back to Stapleton, who added some finishingproduction touches and let them stand. This unique process has yieldeda series of tracks in which the personalities of Stapleton's musicalaccomplices come through very strongly, even as they each reverentlypay homage to the work of Nurse With Wound. The disc opens with a piececredited only to NWW, a classic 11-minute brain-twister that utilizesbending, distorted bass guitar strings to disorienting effect. Eachmetallic pluck swoops and dithers around a senseless insectoid rhythm,the piece eventually expanding into a blasted Cold War furnace factorydominated by an ancient, wheezing iron lung. Erudite Nurse-o-phileswill recognize these sounds from An Akward Pause and the Current 93 collaboration Bright Yellow Moon,Stapleton clearly enforcing the "recycled sound" aesthetic from theoutset. Next up is Cyclobe's "Paraparaparallelogrammatica," certainlythe most gorgeous track on the album, a stately science-fiction mindexcursion of the kind that dominated Simon and Stephen's immeasurablywonderful The Visitors. It's a texturally rich space fanfare ofthe kind not heard since Atem-era Tangerine Dream, and perhaps not eventhen. Its indulgent cinematic sensuality bears little similarity toStapleton's cod surrealism, save for the narrative unfolding andnuanced, lysergic vibrations that dominate the track. It's one of thebest things I've heard from Cyclobe, and regardless of whether or notit bears any resemblance to the original NWW source material, I'mcertain that this would have appeared on the infamous NWW InfluenceList had it been released on some obscure German prog label in theearly 1970s. Matt Waldron's irr.app.(ext.) project has been responsiblefor some of the most intensely rendered audio phenomena outside of theNWW camp, and their match-up — tellingly entitled "Mute Bell ExtinctionProcess" — again reflects primarily the interests of the remixer,rather than the remixed. While eerily recalling such creepy NWWclassics as "Fashioned to a Device Behind a Tree," irr.app.(ext.) onceagain shows a unique talent for thought cancellation, creating aninsistently clandestine, industrial trance-scape that uses repetitionto progressively wipe clean all thoughts and prepare the listener forthe loss of physical cohesion. The last track is Jim O'Rourke's "TapeMonkey Mooch," a laptop-concrete take on the history and mystery ofNurse With Wound. In its own unique way, O'Rourke's contribution isprobably the oddest on this record. Strange to think this was createdby a current member of art-punk darlings Sonic Youth and the creator ofan endless barrage of John Fahey-influenced indie-pop; not so strange,however, to anyone who has ever witnessed one of O'Rourke's freeformlaptop collage performances, which often reference the 80'spost-industrial tape-music underground of Roger Doyle and HNAS.O'Rourke sound collage creates an abstract web of richly-detailedsounds, compounding details that give way to form and structure, whichmelt into abstraction and back into structure. It's a gloriouslybaffling riddle, and if its quality is at all indicative of thematerial on the forthcoming three-album set, I can hardly wait.
Nurse With Wound's famous Influence List included in the sleeve notes for their debut LP Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table...has created endless frustration in my life, leading me to spend far toomuch trolling used record sites and online auctions looking to completemy NWW List collection. My goal is to own at least one record from eachof the artists listed, which has frequently seemed an unattainablegoal, the list jam-packed with hopelessly arcane one-offs released intiny editions on small European labels throughout the 60's and 70's.Approaching the task scientifically, I began at the alphabeticalbeginning of the list. No problem there, I was easily able to trackdown Spalax CD reissues of the first few Agitation Free albums; but thesecond artist on the list, Pekka Airaksinen, had me stumped for years.There was nothing I could do but move on to Airway and pretend that Ididn't care about this Finnish avant-garde obscurity. I later found outthat Airaksinen was the main artistic force behind The Sperm — thecreators of the fabulously rare Shh! LP — who also appear lateron the list. As if to answer my insane record-collector prayers,Finland's Love Records have issued this double-disc compilation Madam, I'm Adamto serve as the first widely-available introduction to PekkaAiraksinen's long and fruitful career as one of Finland's most prolificavant-garde electronic artists. Disc one compiles various highlightsstretching from 1968 to 2002 under various guises including The Sperm,Gandhi-Freud and Ajraxin. For disc two, a group of artists from Europeand the UK were invited to contribute reinterpretations of Airaksinen'smusic, the tracklist mirroring that of the first disc. The Sperm'suniquely architectural noise-rock presages industrial music, and attimes - as on the beautifully oppressive "Korvapoliklinikka Hesperia" —shows similarities to future envelope-pushers Dead C and Sunn O))). AsAiraksinen progressed into his 70's period, heavy distortion andimprovised passages of shambling, distorted chaos were soon replaced bya new emphasis on electronic instrumentation and rhythms.Gandhi-Freud's "Molybdene" utilizes synthesizers to create a grainystructure of lopsided arpeggiations. From this point forward,Airaksinen seems to be interested in the myriad possible manifestationsof electronic music, from the odd, I Ching-derived mathematical timesignatures of his early 80's work on the Roland 808, to his currentexploration of techno and ambient musics, all impregnated with hisrabidly uncommercial aesthetic and rigorous application of conceptualstructure. The remixes on the second disc attempt to find contemporaryapplications for Airaksinen's ideas, from the hallucinogenic,post-Timbaland rhythmic interpolations of Nurse With Wound, to theobnoxiously uninteresting digital hardcore of Philipp Quehenberger.Mira Calix contributes a remix of The Sperm that inexplicably buriesthe track under a poorly-executed synthesized orchestral. Along theway, Simon Wickham-Smith and Airaksinen himself turn in mildlyinteresting hijackings of the original works. Most appallingly for arare-music addict, the liner notes directed me towards Pekka's ownwebsite for his 
The cover is the first hint that I'm not meant to be comfortablelistening to this record. The second hint comes in the shape of slowlyfulgurating tones coating the room in a fine myst. Brent Gutzeit hascreated a horrifying record by placing motors on the strings of pianosand then manipulating them into tools of the devil (surely that's allthis sound can be). "Piano Motor Skills #2" begins with the slowchugging of some machine, perhaps underground, restlessly performingits task. The bells of far off places resonate over a cloud-coveredcity and somewhere in the alleys lurks a beast ready to feast on somefoolish visitor who has wandered astray. The effect of the long dronesand the carefully mixed rhythms is an atmosphere that sparks andtwitches with tension; the second half of this first track feels like aslow camera pan over this frozen city in my mind, like something out ofa Stanley Kubrick film... only more alien, more remote, and moremonumental. While much of this album is minimalistic, there's anenormity in its soul that breathes through every second. "RidingHorses" creeps along ominously and carefully but feels gigantic as ifit were a sonic photo of some Lovecraftian landscape filled withmonsters unknown to humankind. It slowly fades away into "400 Blows," apiece haunted by warmer and less intimidating tones. As it progresses,the mood becomes increasingly relaxed, as though the horrors of theprevious movements were being massaged out of my shoulders. Gutzeit'saddition of a monastic relief-zone at the end of this record adds adimension to this record that increases its listenability. "400 Blows"would be a great happy ending for Drug Money,but I was faked into believing the ending could ever be happy. Anuntitled and unlisted track closes the album on a very sickly note. Itbegins with bird calls and natural sounds, but ends with a creepingsickness manifested in the sound of overwhelming and powerful bellsroaring in from some place unknown. I'd like to listen to this recordjust after watching a very scary movie. Perhaps with a single candle,the curtains drawn, and a mind for seeing things that may or may not bethere.
The Italian label continues its valuable new series of archival releases with this 1998 collaboration between two of France's most active contemporary concret-ists and the old-guard explorer to whom they are most indebted. Chion's sprawling tape collages are the obvious precedents for much of Marchetti's and Noetinger's solo work, and his influence is certainly felt on this live performance from the Festival Musique Action, an event that catches the younger musicians still very taken with their elder's drifting compositional technique.
Boston's 27 is one of my favorite local groups. It's not simply because their music is a warm welcome against the typical local average rock scene, but Ayal and Maria are two of the nicest people I think I know. Local radio colleague Tracy alerted me to their new release and I had to stop by their show at the Middle East one Friday night to see if it was true or available (well, and to say hi of course). Luckily they had some pre-release limited version that I was able to get fresh out of the box. Unfortunately, I had to be at work at 3:30 the following morning and couldn't stay for their set. Otherwise, I'd film them for The Eye (I plan on doing this eventually).
"The finest of the fine things"... that's what MF Doom promises youabout six minutes into this album, and you'll be forgiven if the firstthing you think of is asshole partiers at some mansion-warming affair,puking on the rug and having sex in the pool. Instead, though, theSupervillain and Madlib throw open the doors to their very own bistro,sweeping the promise of crappy fried finger-food out into the gutterand offering up a satisfying handful of a sandwich instead. That's afair description of what follows, too: at just a hair over 46 minuteslong, Madvillainyisn't dragged down by the twenty-six guest MCs and nine-piece elephantorchestras that clog up your average MTV-flogged double album. There'san economy to the tracks (which average about two minutes apiece) thatI haven't heard since Naked City or Morgan Fisher's Miniaturescompilations, mainly because there aren't any choruses anywhere in, er,sight. Deprived of the chance for easy repetition, Madlib's muffledpianos and sunny-cafe accordions amble into the mix, do their thing,and depart just as quickly as the verses do. And those verses arepriceless: just like Gift of Gab does with his innumerable verbs, Doomstacks absurdity on top of absurdity until he finally has to take abreath... and then he moves on. With ideas coming and going so quickly,the results should sound haphazard or cluttered, but the individualtracks and elements all flow together without a hitch, forming acoherent comic book universe all their own; for once, theordinarily-also-ran addition of a CD-ROM video complements the musicreally well, too, adding an extra hit of Jack Kirby lunacy and rip-offSea Monkeys ads to an album that just about conjures those images onits own. Surrounded by that kind of silliness, the palpable anger of"Strange Ways" sticks out something fierce: it's a clear-headedbackhand at the warmongers of the world, and it connects that muchharder for the contrast. There's not much else going on in thestorytelling department, but the dominant scissor-swinging-potheadcollage atmosphere suits me just fine. Bring Twinkies.
Various artist compilations are a hard sell to stores and distributors,however, I don't think I know of any authentic music fan who doesn'tlove them. Thank Youis Temporary Residence's 50th catalogue number (however itchronologically is about the 60-somethingth release) and honors boththe bands and the fans by collecting a small number of great tracksfrom the best that TRL has to offer -AND- uses only fan-contributedartwork solicited from the web site. Like any great compilation, it hasbeen years in the making. (I think I remember hearing word about thisback in 2001.) For Fridge fans who didn't want to spend over $30 for aJapanese import with pesky bonus tracks, the band completes theircollection by donating the 9+ minute "Five Combs," which, along with"Surface Noise," (offered as a free MP3 from their website) makes upthe two tracks left off the non-Japanese versions. The collectioncontinues with various familiar faces and loads of blissfulinstrumental rock tunes like the acoustic fingerpicked "Jignauseum" byKilowatthours, the hypnotic 8+ minute "Bell Jar" by Tarentel, andclosing number (approporiately titled "The Closer") by Sonna. A jaggedrock number from Rumah Sakhit and trippy post-nothing contribution fromKammerflimmer Kollektief, along with the only vocal track (by HalifaxPier), give the collection a little more seasoning. Label superstarsExplosions in the Sky give up a rare track while Xian Hawkins, now 4ADartist, gives perhaps one of his most compelling Sybarite tracks todate, utilizing guitars and electronic processing reminding me howsurprised I am that he doesn't have more snotty European musicpressmongers' heads spinning. For something that's been anticipated solong and a label with as many friends as Jeremy De Vine has, 11 songsseems at first kinda slim, but clearly representative of TemporaryResidence, which has always been about quality, not quantity. It does,however represent more of the past of Temporary Residence and doesn'tserve as a good showcase of some of the newer groups on the roster,like Lazarus, Eluvium, Icarus, The Anomoanon, the faboo Nice Nice,Nightfist, or even Evergreen. With any luck there won't be 49 morereleases until the next compilation.
