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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This blacker than black collaboration between Stephen O’Malley and Peter Rehberg is a great piece of mood music. KTL is more subdued than the main output from both of these artists, yet together they instil a palpable sense of tension into the music to give it a captivatingly creepy result.
Editions Mego
O’Malley and Rehberg paired up to form KTL in order to soundtrack a theatrical work by Gisèle Vienne and Dennis Cooper. The work is called Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), after Gustav Mahler’s musical adaptations of Friedrich Rückert’s poetry. Judging from pictures on the web, Vienne and Cooper’s work is heavily influenced by the Knecht Ruprecht and Krampus traditions of Germanic Europe, as well as using strange dummies of young girls dressed in black metal shirts and hoodies. The music here is not the actual soundtrack for the theatrical work but it is related to the soundtrack according to the sleeve notes. Along with the notes in the booklet come images of anonymous long haired figures and robed beings ascending a staircase, perhaps a nod to the classic cinematic tension in a horror film before the inevitable terror.
The disc's mood is set with the 25-minute long opener, "Estranged," where the feeling of impending doom seeps like blood through a mattress. It is a musical purgatory acting as a prelude into the depths of hell. Hell in this case appears to be a forest as the next four tracks, "Forestfloor 1-4," are inhospitable and startling. Rehberg's contribution becomes more pronounced as shards of noise and sound rip through the mix like glass from a cannon. For the first two parts, O’Malley goes for fast tremolo picking instead of his usual play a chord and holding it for a couple of days approach. The end result is a cold blast reminiscent of some of the winds knifing through the northern hemisphere the last few weeks. The third and fourth parts of "Forestfloor" see O'Malley return to the slow dirge that he is famous for, at the same time Rehberg's equipment sounds like it is on its last legs.
The album finishes with "Snow," which, despite its pretty name, continues the dread that has permeated KTL from the very beginning. The uneasy quietness is deeply unsettling following the chaos of "Forestfloor," only reverb-drenched ambience and a distant high pitched squeal break the silence. It sounds like the unnatural stillness of the aftermath of something violent and bloody. It closes off the album perfectly; there is no real sense of closure per se but instead a feeling of a lucky escape. Next time whatever creature is stalking through the forest might just win.
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The One Ensemble of Daniel Padden released two fantastic records before Live at VPRO Radio upped the ante immeasurably. The comical and the sublime tendencies of Padden's previous work were married effortlessly in those recordings. Wayward the Fourth is a continuation of the musical environment showcased in those songs: a small step forward from a nearly perfect performance and a chance to hear more songs in that style.
Secret Eye
The One Ensemble's music comes in waves: smokey ones that dance and weave in and out of audible frequencies until they fabricate a space all their own with rules that don't exist for other compositions and definitions that betray the very term. The exotic brew of the east and Padden's own Volcanic whimsy allow the music on Wayward the Fourth to go any direction it pleases and often the instruments and voices employed take sudden turns and execute acrobatic maneuvers that'd make the most talented contortionist wonder about their constitution.
The opening "Joker Burlesque" announces itself quietly, floating into existence on a wave of buzzing strings and odd hums. With the addition of sharply plucked guitars and unmistakably One-ish vocal calls, the album begins to take off, stepping deftly about the room like some hypnotic dancer with seductive intent. As the song washes through the remainder of its nine minute duration, a strange and unsettling calm begins to settle in and Wayward the Fourth sounds as though it might come to an early and quiet end, harkening back to the Ensemble's debut release. "Neither One Thing" quickly erases that notion with a quirky chorus of high-pitched voices, a walking acoustic guitar, and the simple flourishes of other stringed instruments. There's something truly child-like about the music and as "Shapes Disguised as Sizes" begins to stomp about it becomes difficult not to imagine this as the soundtrack to some very imaginative child's mind. Being carried away by all the sensuous arrangements, off-kilter voices, and dance-inducing rhythms is easy and imagining a world of strange creatures inhabiting the world this music exists in is even easier.
"Smok," for instance, brings to life a world of sailors weary from the sea and drunk on the docks, celebrating the chance to relieve themselves from work for one night. The music rotates and swings to and fro before engaging a cinematic aura and developing an entire story about the history of the sailors and their voyage. The second-longest piece on the record, "Resonant Kings," sounds precisely as it is named: it swells and whispers gently underneath the steady playing of a circular acoustic melody highlighted by dramatic and urgent strings literally propelling the song along. The sharp rhythmic dynamics and brisk cadence thrust this song to the center of the album and give it a heavy weight. This is less a reverie and more an intense moment replayed over and over again, with the consequences always held just out of view. Padden and company do a superb job and switching between these moods and between various modes of expression, whether playful or serious. This easily matches the performance on Live at VPRO radio as a whole and presents a whole range of ideas that sit extremely well next to each other. It's proof that the genius heard there was no mere fluke and that Padden and his band still have a lot of music left in them.
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Pulled from the nowhereland of the out-of-print CDR graveyard, this 10" re-release of Burning Star Core's 2003 Amelia EP is probably the only decent chance that we the latecomers will get to grab these three tracks. This, the first of six vinyl BxC releases in 2007 from the No-Fi label, will hopefully help to shine a little more much overdue light on Spencer C. Yeh's project. Music this good shouldn’t be left to fall prey to disc rot.
Two of these cuts might have already been made available on the Mes Soldats Stupides 96-04 compilation CD, but that still left the middle track "Homing Pigeon" lost in the wilderness. Relying more on electronics and almost imperceptible melodies than his violin / vocal techniques, this is amongst his finest material to date.
Opening the first side like a woozy Tangerine Dream outtake, "I Wanna Make a Supersonic Woman of You" is a lopsided siren synth piece that's quickly decaying at the fringes into fading tatters. There’s a great rise and fall through the song that brings to mind some huge empty landscape, an ambitious widescreen melancholy. Great swabs of lump in throat melody float like great blue glaciers as it grows and shrinks. "Homing Pigeon" sits in the peculiar space between frantic scrabble and intricately precise work as pencil lead glitches drop like an opened barrel of nails through the track. A databank of trapped percussion is accidentally half-formed into structures upon collision then scatters across the track. Through the clashes of construction and sounds a warm melody comes up and through the ice like a faint pink glow. The sense of organic warmth is what these tracks tick, and well worthy of re-release.
The lengthy flipside, "The Point of Departure is not to Return," concentrates on livelier electronics, keeping the devil in the detail. The quickly circling quieter patterns seem to spin dizzyingly fast when focused upon, as the bigger picture settles as a crystal mess of notes. Burning Star Core haven't stopped moving yet, but taking the time out to catch up isn't always this rewarding.
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Apart from some tracks like "Over and Over," "(Just Like We) Breakdown," or "And I Was a Boy From School," much of the album is typical dance music with an affectation of self-importance. When the band tries their hand at ballads, such as "Look After Me," the results are even worse. Their macho taunts on the title track are just silly, especially since the rest of the music doesn’t reflect their tongue-in-cheek intentions. There isn't a whole lot going on here to distinguish Hot Chip from a dozen other groups making music like this. Yet the album isn’t a complete write-off. The best tracks deserve to be compiled alongside their peers, and perhaps clever remixes will grant them a longer shelf life. As a complete work, however, The Warning didn't hold my attention.
Alex Cobb's Taiga Remains project has always catapulted aural sparks into the foreground, but this 3" CDR pretty much destroys all competition. Burning huge sunspot holes into the hear-and-now this packs more heat than Schwarzenegger used to before he went political/uber-fascistic, and without the aggression.
Saturating sound of images of some huge bizarre and charred Blakeian monstrosity, this single 11 minute track spills heat like a wrecked oven. With everything here generated from the manipulation of acoustic guitar and delay, the focused intensity is surprisingly powerful. The sitar-like buzzing sounds like cat gut strings burned chokingly taut by sunlight. But instead of careering incontinently into white-out there are creeping burnt edges, melting slowly into gold instead of blackening and curling. Shimmering single drones delicately waver like a choir of "om"ers that sidle up to the shake of forty tambourine shaking priestesses. Even the can't-be-human sounding groaning drones underneath can’t make this release sound it’ll do anything other than boil your eyes.
Ocean's demos are not earth-shattering examples of metal but they are genuinely great shards of doom. The two songs here should have been included (even as a bonus disc) with the debut album, Here Where Nothing Grows. While it's great they're now available, this limited vinyl-only pressing means that they will not get the deserved coverage.
Although these two songs didn't fit in to the band's debut, the formula is the same: tune everything way down, chug and slowly swim through tar until the song ends. As formulaic as they are, it works well.
“Monument,” is a nice example of doom being played without pretensions. The vocals owe more to Norway’s finest black metallers than to St. Vitus but they work well within the frame of the song. The thump of the drums is invigoratingly clear. With all the sludge being pushed around by the guitars and bass the drumming cuts through like a beacon. On the flip side, "Fork Lashing Eye" sees the black metal influence creep out of the vocals and into the music. It is less adventurous than their smelting of black and doom metal on Here Where Nothing Grows but I found this a lot more exciting to listen to.
As much as I liked their album, it did lumber along a bit, adding length to the pieces for the sake of it. Here the songs are just the right length (and at about 15 minutes they are quite generous) for what they are which is old fashioned, no frills doom. A tendency towards adding an “avant metal” edge (i.e. The Wire-friendly) to the songs on the album worked against them while here, the purer and harder hitting style employed by the band works in their favor.
The only minor issue that holds these two songs back is the quality of the recordings, specifically the vocals and how the songs are mixed. Most of the music sounds fine but the vocals are lost on both songs. Also, the drums seem pushed too far forward in the mix on “Fork Lashing Eye.” While these things are noticable, they don't impact my enjoyment of the record in any way.
This is only available on LP so no mp3 samples, apologies!
More analogous to the filthy, funky Ed Banger and Gigolo labels than meathead pop-trance jingles, this album certainly wont revolutionize electronic music, though it will compel clubgoers worldwide to shake their asses and rock to the beat. It's abundantly clear that DJ Splank, also known as John Starlight, can't run fast enough away from his past.
Back in 1999 when Zombie Nation was a duo, it delivered "Kernkraft 400," a catchy little electrowave track that ultimately spun out of control and, thanks in part to some obnoxious remixing, became one of the most well-known and overplayed dance tracks ever. While I sincerely hope that Splank continues to receive deserved financial compensation for what is now known as a sports stadium anthem catchy enough to threaten Gary Glitter's foothold, I find it relieving that Black Toys doesn't try to recreate that commercial success.
Today's Zombie Nation produces hedonistic techno thankfully devoid of Detroit's futurist philosophizing or Berlin's clinical abstraction. Packed with squelchy, dirty grooves salvaged from the smoldering husk of electroclash, Black Toys succeeds where many artist albums so excruciatingly fail in this predominantly single-based culture. "Booster," also released as a 12" single, kicks things off with a restrained mix of quirky rhythmic minimalism and melodious lo-fi synthwork. Similarly, and perhaps to greater effect, "All Or Nothing" updates the bliss of Sheffield techno visionaries Sweet Exorcist and LFO with the bleepy bassy stabs and a rolling 4/4 groove. "Slomo" not only drops the tempo, but brings a whimsical flair to the cripplingly serious dubstep genre its beat so closely resembles. It takes nearly two minutes before the secret disco funk plot begins to hatch on "Peace And Greed," a killer cut that both wondrously references and progressively revamps the lost French sound of the tragically defunct Roulé and Crydamoure imprints. Zombie Nation looks to the past like some of us reach for a telephone, though his dependence on retro styles actually supports his own individuality as opposed to hindering it.
A ten minute long bonus remix of the riff-heavy title track proves to be an unnecessary and deficient end to an otherwise generally likeable album. Still, this final indiscretion can be overlooked after so many memorable and feel-good tunes.
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With yet another Satie collection, LTM is doing great justice to the composer who is oft overlooked but is as important to modern music as any of the trendy experimental composers that get all the limelight. By today's standards much of Satie's work is far from revolutionary, in fact, much of it has fallen into the realm of cheesy but like any art, the original still packs a punch. This collection is the first to cover his Dada-related works.
LTM
Some of these pieces are new to me, some aren’t new but they are far from familiar. At first, Trois Morceaux en Forme de Poire sounds like it is going to be a dull cabaret piece but Satie quickly throws in some curve balls. Almost like the collage technique associated with Dada, Satie seamlessly changes the form of the piece whenever he feels the need. There are slight snippets that are almost recognisable from other pieces, cut out and pasted in like pieces of newspaper in a traditional collage. Despite being broken up into movements, there is that much chopping and changing that it may as well be all one piece. The most interesting thing to note about this piece is that it predates the Dada movement by about 16 years! However, it was performed at a Tristan Tzara soirée in 1923 as Satie felt that these pieces were in Dada’s spirit.
Relâche is divided in two by an entr’acte (between act interval) entitled Cinema (the one piece I have heard before). Relâche was the score for a ballet by Francis Picabia and Cinéma was the soundtrack for a film shown in between the two acts of the ballet. Although only the arrangement for piano is utilized on this recording, the score was originally intended for an orchestra. It would be nice if LTM would consider releasing an orchestral version of these pieces. Not to say that the piano here is anything but great. Pianist Bojan Gorisek is no stranger to Satie and it is possible to hear his enthusiasm for Satie with each note. He plays with a light heartedness and gusto that suits the pieces down to the ground. His performance on the “Chasseur; et début de l’enterrement” episode of Cinéma captures the poignancy of the piece; a death march augmented by Satie in what would prove to be his last composition.
While these were all utilised in Dada activities, it is hard to pigeonhole Satie in as another Dadaist. He was a surreal Dadaist and a Dadaesque Surrealist and he was neither at the same time. This collection captures his spirit more than the Dada spirit (and Gorisek channels Satie's spirit well). It is one of the better entries in LTM's ongoing Satie review, as well as being musically rich, the sleeve notes are also worthy of mention. They include a lot of useful information and pictures although, inexplicably, Man Ray's “Gift” is thrown in amongst the pictures of Satie, posters for his events and photos of the stage layouts for Relâche (though I suppose that it is a Dada statement on the designer's part). Dada Works & Entr’actes is a great piece of Satie and as a fine commentary on Dada from the Satie perspective.
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There's no denying that Ghost was the highlight of 2006's Terrastock festival. While the Japanese ensemble might never make a dent in the minds of the young and hip, amongst the most trustworthy music crowds, they are living legends. This is a group who wants it all—to make fantastic psychedelic pop songs, powerful cinematic anthems, and patient yet intoxicating jazz-rock masterpieces—and there's no reason to deny them.
Ghost introduces a 28 minute epic from the start of In Stormy Nights (track 2 on the CD edition but side A of the 2xLP edition). While Ghost tackle different styles in different songs, their ability to compose great arrangements remains constant: although "Hemicyclic Anthelion" is packed full with multi-talented multi-instrumentalists, never does it feel like they're stomping on each other's feet. The patient evolution and virtuoso instrumentation (double-bass, percussion, loops and effects) echoes other Japanese improvisational jazz-rock legends Taj Mahal Travelers while the use of piano, vibes, and chimes is something fans of Psychic TV's Themes I will gravitate towards. It would be difficult to talk about Ghost without mention of the guitar work of Michio Kurihara, and songs like "Hemicyclic Anthelion" showcase his ability both to rip out some bleeding riffs and to exercise restraint during others moments.
The vocals of acoustic guitarist Masaki Batoh can be heard prominently on songs that unsurprisingly have a strong acoustic guitar presence: the album's opener, "Motherly Bluster," is a captivating double-guitar piece from a fantasy world with flute, malleted drums, and lush strings; while "Water Door Yellow Gate" becomes forceful with the march-like percussion and matching piano and acoustic guitar strums, the evil whine of a blistering guitar, and retro electronic choral synth sample sounds (see old OMD).
Ghost waste no time launching into the faster, more powerful drive of "Gareki No Toshi," where percussionists not only lay down the driving backbone with ballsy tympani-esque drums and piano, but take center stage with another layer of angry drumming. This isn't a passive song to be listened to quietly: it screams to be released at full volume through the speakers. Squelchy vocals, squealing guitar, and buzzing effects color the rest of the tune, which reaches an apex with massive gongs: they break the motion but not the intensity. "Caledonia," an MP3 released early from Drag City, is easily the album's biggest "hit single," or whatever the hit single equivalent is in the world of 2007 independent music where labels give out an MP3 online instead of press 45s to issue to radio and retail. For those who don't believe that the power of this massive undertaking is something to believe in, just get the entire MP3 from Drag City for proof. "Caledonia" is the song where everything comes together: flutes and other wind instruments play pied piper with a band that is perfectly in sync with itself, charging forward with the force of a fleet of medieval battleships making their way through a rough sea without any sign of weakness.
Things calm back down for the beautiful string, acoustic, and vocal ending of "Grisaille," and LP customers get a bonus treat of another version (the Sing Together mix) of "Caledonia." Three years ago I was championing Hypnotic Underworld as the year's first masterpiece and I can safely stand by that claim for In Stormy Nights. As the group gets better I feel in terms of ability and arrangements, I'm sad to face the possibility that their live days might actually be numbered. While I look forward to a day where I can witness Ghost live again, from the way their performance at Terrastock was billed, it isn't like that such an event will happen. At least there's no visible end in sight for the great music they continue to issue.
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Listening to this latest Joe+N release it seems like he's nonchalantly clawing himself one step closer to creating a definitive slice of starveling musicality. The production sound and improvised song structures on this CDR have all the hallmarks of effortless one-takes that couldn't be faked without a bank of bespectacled major label engineers.
This a.k.a. for Carbon Records head Joe Tunis sees him building an open-minded nonchalance of meat stripped bones music over these five tracks. Opening with a fumbling static buzz and a vocal refrain that sounds like it is blown through a card tube or broken horn, there’s a sense of dub production styled lost and found in the disappearing sounds. Hopefully there’s an elongated take somewhere in the First Person vaults, as this feels a little too much like a clipped short intro when placed up against the other tracks relative structures.
The following song, a lo-fidelity zero-rent piece of malnourished one man and his guitar work, manages to spread its wings despite the self-hammered clubbed feet. The mostly steady playing supports a fumbling vocal, but as it devolves further it only gets better. The third untitled piece sees more of what could possibly be quite unhygienic vocal machinations coated in spoken word mucus and jerky chimes. Further songs see things come a little more into focus with a distant kismet ruined guitar slugging it out with a sine-melted vocal line. The dissimilar elements of the bass and treble ends continue to bleed steadily all over the song's middle, pushing it further than the average jam. Even with this CDR's fumbles and very real air of confused improvised emptiness there is a musical core to all the pieces.
