05 April 2020

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Albums and Singles

Spirit Fest is a supergroup built around acclaimed Japanese duo Tenniscoats, featuring members of Notwist, Jam Money, and Joasihno. If an album could be adorkable, this fits the bill. Mirage Mirage is an album for flower picking and bubble blowing, and it charmed me from the first listen.

 

Morr Music

Spirit Fest use a treasure trove of odd instrumentation and percussion to assemble their beguiling avant pop songs. The experiment works brilliantly and yields finished pieces that are sweet and pleasant to hear. The whole double disc album is a brisk walk through a studio filled with toy-like instrumentation, including harmonica, kazoo, idly grazed piano, trumpet, recorder or some kind of folk flute, harmonium, triangle, accordion, brushed drum, and a panoply of quirky percussion. To top it all off, most songs include solo or duet vocal tracks exhaled in a puff of smoke, sung in a mix of English and Japanese.

The title song "Mirage" is a standout. The cuckoo whistle and insistent beat makes it sound like a zany clock that never tells the right time. Plucked strings tick the seconds while folky guitars and vocals tell a story of heartbreak. The refrain of "Mirage, Mirage" encircles the cacophony like the spectre of a lost lover.

"Amadoi," my favorite song, sounds like a fawn delicately stepping into the meadow, while the sunlight shimmers its invitation. It consists of the plink-plonk of piano and guitar footsteps, and a warm bed of stately female vocals. "Hi Ma Wa Ri" is a more low key and contemplative, moderately paced song with a touch of swing to it—finger snaps and singing along are welcome. Finally with "Saigo Song" the album concludes with a repeated motif. It feels like a nursery rhyme sung in the round with all the joy of group singing.

I haven't heard a folk pop document so warm, gentle, and playful since another supergroup I love, International Airport. Spirit Fest's clever and exploratory compositions present as polished, easily digestible folky pop, with an innocence and levity that evokes a sense of nostalgia for simpler times.

samples available here

05 April 2020

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Albums and Singles

I know very little about Nicole Oberle and I suspect that suits her just fine, as she self-describes as a "digital recluse." What I do know is that she is based in Texas and that she has recorded quite a prolific stream of self-released material over the last year or so. One of those releases was last fall's Skin EP, which has since been picked up and reissued in expanded form by Whited Sepulchre. That is great news for a couple of reasons, as I would not have encountered her work otherwise and this new incarnation of Skin is a significantly more substantial and compelling release than its predecessor. In fact, the newly added songs are some of my favorite ones on the album. As such, I suspect this incarnation of Skin will rightfully go a long way towards expanding Oberle's fanbase, as there are appealing shades of both Grouper and erstwhile labelmate Midwife lurking among these eleven songs. The most fascinating parts of the album, however, are the ones where those influences collide with Oberle's divergent interests in ghostly, downtempo R&B grooves and unsettling, diaristic sound collages.

Whited Sepulchre

The album opens in supremely creepy fashion, as the murky, brooding ambiance of "Shipyards" resembles a grainy and enigmatic video tape that that a serial killer might send to taunt the detectives on his trail.Granted, evil-sounding dark ambient drones are far from my favorite thing, but such an opening is extremely effective in setting a dread-soaked and nightmarish tone for the album.Also, Oberle does quite an effective job of further deepening the sinister atmosphere with distorted and mostly indecipherable bursts of speech.That said, I was both relieved and surprised when that oppressively dark and claustrophobic mood opened up into the warm and undulating dreamscape of "Self-Speak."Oberle's aesthetic is quite a varied, unpredictable, and evocative one, as all of the songs on Skin feel like they occupy the same shadowy, twilight state of hallucinatory semi-reality, yet they all seem to evoke very different scenes within that unsettling and hypnagogic world.In the following "Unnamed," for example, a lovely progression of piano arpeggios unfolds in a heavenly haze of chopped vocal fragments, cinematic string swells, and buried snatches of warbling psychedelia."Cold Metals," on the other hand, feels like a ghostly and deconstructed bit of gloomy pop that makes extremely effective use of a blurred vocal hook.That piece also highlights Oberle's unusual and intuitive feel for dynamics, as it unexpectedly gives way to a brief breakdown of ringing, subtly dissonant chords before the beat kicks back in for the final act.The final song from the original EP ("A Knot in Twos") is yet another spectral pop foray, calling to mind an instrumental outtake from Slowdive's Souvlaki before blossoming into a brief spoken word interlude that feels like a cryptic fragment of an overheard phone call.

The second half of the album, which is composed of entirely new material, opens with another teasing instrumental approximation of melancholy pop ("Cigarette Burns"), then segues into a surprisingly strong and seductive dive into spectral, soft-focus R&B ("Stay With Me").At only two minutes, "Stay With Me" is woefully brief, but it is the closest thing that the album has to a great single, as it calls to mind Tri-Angle's brief run of killer witch house acts like Holy Other.That piece is followed by a hazy, beat-driven interlude ("Tired of This") that abruptly cuts out to give way to the album's most sustained passage of poignant, eerie beauty: the one-two punch of "Nobody Knows" and "I'm Just Stuck."The two pieces segue together into what is essentially a single sound collage, but the character of the underlying music differentiates them, as the more melancholy first half transforms into something akin to heavenly (if fatalistic) beauty.The music mostly just provides coloration though, as the truly haunting heart of that diptych is the spoken word recording that runs across the two pieces, as it feels like the final voicemail left by a woman who is about to vanish forever.In fact, it is easily one of the most heartbreaking and unsettling passages that I have heard on any album this year.I cannot think of much that could follow such an emotional wallop and Oberle wisely does not try, opting instead to close the album with just a floating, bittersweet coda ("Separation"), granting me a few comparatively peaceful moments to process what I just heard before abruptly breaking the spell with the final click of a tape machine.

If Skin has a weakness, it is only that several pieces feel more like sketch-like vignettes than actual songs, but that may very well be intentional, as the album has the uncomfortably voyeuristic feel of flipping through the journal of a troubled friend.Or, put more poetically, it feels like a supernatural fog that occasionally parts enough to reveal fleeting, decontextualized glimpses of various eerie, mysterious, and disturbing scenes.Another notable aspect of Skin is that Oberle seems like she is being pulled in a number of different stylistic directions at once, which would normally be a real issue for me.However, she has an uncanny talent for weaving together seemingly disparate threads into an arc that feels organic and unforced.Very few artists can pull off such a feat.Aside from that, Oberle shows a real knack for small, unexpectedly poignant touches that give the album a beautifully raw and intimate feel, as Skin is filled with great textures and details like exhalations, lighter clicks, distressed and warbly voice recordings, and the audible starts and stops of a tape machine.All of those fragments combine into quite an impressively absorbing and emotionally resonant whole that is quietly heavy in a way that few other albums can match.I am not sure if this quite counts as a formal debut (Oberle has previously released a few physical tapes on her own), but it will be an incredibly strong contender for the best debut of the year if it does.

Samples can be found here.

05 April 2020

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Albums and Singles

International sound art label Flaming Pines has collected 24 singles in the Tiny Portraits series to form this pay what you want compilation of music dedicated to overlooked places. Each artist was asked to examine a physical space or location, and create a portrait of that space using whatever mode of creative inquiry they have in their toolbox. As an album, the music veers through manifestations of sound, with peaks and contours that are mostly peaceful in character. The result is an evocative, varied collection, with each piece a startlingly unique contribution to the whole, to be enjoyed as part of a journey through physical reality.

Flaming Pines

The elements of composition used are primarily field recordings, soundscapes, ambient effects, and embellishments from acoustic instruments and noise makers. The field recordings include found sounds, human, animal, and insect activity, birdsong, heavy machinery, radio, and the chatter and clatter of life in a modern city. Some of these pieces are abstract, evoking moods and emotions without the rigidity of structure. Others have a strong narrative arc to the piece, tracing the story from start to finish with more explicit musical elements.

Some of my favorites are "My Childhood Is My Only Home," a lounge ambient song with saxophone, keys, and meandering thoughts in jazz; "Andrejosta. Rudens Vilcieni (October sketches 2015)," a dark, slinky mishmash of upright bass and field samples, like the banging of grocery carts and emptying delivery trucks in a big box parking lot; "The Same Sun," field recordings from the streets of Cairo interrupted with chanting in unison, perhaps in prayer; and "Dean Clough C2," a beautiful flute and running water piece that calls to mind the compositions of Oliver Messiaen.

Tiny Portraits includes the work of composers from across the globe, as far as Australia, Canada, Latvia, Ukraine, Egypt, the UK, and more. While it bears the name of a complete compilation, it shares no overlap with the Tiny Portraits collection that Flaming Pines issued on CDR in 2013. These pieces have surfaced over the years since but all have been inspired by the same conceptual prompt. It's a wonderful way to experience some of these remote locations in this difficult point in time when travel is limited.

available here

05 April 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Creating memorable music is not always about throwing musical spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks; like any recipe, there are common ingredients to music’s magic—tempo, chorus and yes, a certain predictability—and the best dishes come from the extrapolation of the cook’s own prime ingredients into their own musical concoctions. Having a formula is no more dangerous to "real" music as a recipe is to a "real" chef; the best music in the hands of masters balances an adherence to these rules with free-flowing creativity, while those less experienced either know nothing about the recipe, or follow the recipe too strictly. Boston based trio E comprises all masters: guitarist Thalia Zedek (Come, Uzi, Live Skull), guitarist and inventor Jason Sidney Sanford (Neptune) and drummer Gavin McCarthy (Karate). Their third release doesn’t create any new formulas, but rather expounds on the tasty blend of the prior two releases, honing the skills of three masters into an even finer dish of practiced and precise dark energy.

Silver Rocket

"Caught" initiates the recipe and the group bands together to deliver their formula of lots of crunchy chord structure right from the start; tight guitar interplay between Zedek and Sanford is marshaled by McCarthy’s furious rhythms. There is no bassist here, but it isn’t missed at all with Sanford’s handmade instruments filling in the gaps. Zedek, a legend in the alternative indie scene since the eighties, makes her weary and impassioned vocals present in the rallying cry "don't be silent, don't go quietly without a fight, there's no alibis - I wanna hear you." And there are plenty of reasons to fight here; ingredients include less than savory bacteria and virii, the flavor only salvaged by the promise of hope and a new future. "Acid Mantle" mockingly appeals to better living through science, asking the listener to "Anoint me with oils, inject me, complete me." "In the back of a lab, we engineer the germs, witness diagnosis man, I can confirm: it's contagious, spread it around" eerily echo current events in "Contagion Model," a model which seems to "synthesize, terrorize, dehumanize, normalize."

Like any good recipe, the resulting concoction will be rejected if not edible, and viral ingredients are offset by the sweet flavor of hope in "Sunrise" as Zedek urges the listener to "regenerate yourself again, start from the end and begin." In the midst of poisonous "Miasma," we are reminded that an open window, an analogy for pressure release, can work wonders: "Open a window, vapors are rising, miasma retreating, the patient reviving." Even "Gelding," the title referring to a castrated horse, can have a positive outcome in what some may view as a vicious act. In the act of castration, hormonally driven behavior is eliminated, allowing the animal to be more gentle, thereby experiencing "freedom at last in the absence of need." The fight is not unrecognized, and there’s inspiration to continue fighting. "Like a Leaf" addresses the struggle of feeling like you just want to let go, but encourages "take your time and you can set the tempo, if you fall into a heap." Yeah, they get it, the chorus knowingly reminding us that "sometimes along the way we break down, yeah...we all break down."

There is a saying that too many cooks spoil the broth, but for this recipe, each member takes equal turns, never overpowering each other and creating a balance of noise and warmth. No song is over four and a half minutes, allowing for a concise and masterful blend of loose aggression and technical skill. It is a recipe that has held true for two prior albums, full of melodic guitar lines, Zedek’s unique voice, McCarthy’s powerhouse drumming and Sanford’s musical ingenuity. The album is a powerhouse of honesty, a trait Zedek has been skillfully practicing for years, and she lets us in on her humanity in the closer "Apiaries Near Me" via the lyrics "I'm just trying to hold the tide, to draw the line."

I hear you. We hear you.

samples available here

04 April 2020

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Albums and Singles

Hot on the heels of our crucial Deep Listening double LP is another essential reissue enjoying its vinyl debut on Important Records. This is the first in a 3 part series of vinyl releases for Tod Dockstader's Aerial 1-3. Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work and this first volume is available in a double LP edition of 500 copies with 100 copies on clear vinyl exclusively for Imprec mailorder customers.

15 years in the making, Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life-long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere.

Opening with airwave drones, Dockstader gradually allows elements to slowly come and go, summoning an ominous atmosphere of ethereal cloud clouds. Malignant placidity continues, giving the feeling of eavesdropping upon late-night audio activity not unlike discovering number stations while sweeping the dials. These sounds pull you in as their density and rhythms come and go.
Backward voices, deep echoing choruses of conversations flowing under the surface, ocean sounds, pulsing electro-rhythms, all seem to be created via the collaging of many hours of source recordings. A masterwork of collage and juxtaposition by an overlooked pioneer of American electronic music.

Artwork by John Brien (Imprec) is inspired by the propagation of shortwave radio signals throughout the earth's atmosphere.

More information can be found here.

04 April 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

There is that instance, when you are passing over a threshold, where the before and after fall away and it is only the threshold itself that you are existing within - that neutral space of the in-between, of the transition, that becomes the actual lived-in moment. It is through fully occupying and being present in that transitional space that we are able to access new perspectives that allow for a reassessment of things previously thought understood. The five tracks that make up Everything Evaporate feel like a sustained moment of focus during a period of transition; a longer breath taken in that actual lived-in moment.

You find in the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler, when two colors meet, a bleed that washes out the boarder; a porousness that feels like a fleeting but significant transitory event. The idea of a "crossing" comes to mind - the willingness to extend oneself from one place out towards another. For Atkinson this willingness manifests through language and through the inventing of new stories as a method of reaching across and creating the possibilities for connection.

Spectral drones, gongs, bells, pianos and marimbas accompany Atkinson’'s voice, but now we also find laconic pitch-shifted conversationalists and digitally harmonized chanteuses joining in. As mesmerizing as the narrators voice is at the center of these tracks, it is the addition of other voices that produces the heteroglossic complexities. These are the voices that most often morph into pure sonic materiality; they exist just under the surface of the music creating texture and rhythm while occasionally pushing their way into the foreground with abstracted extrapolations. And it is through the summing of these many voices that a fractal image emerges, at once both singular and plural.

Everything Evaporate was produced after a year of travel and shows. It is, in a sense, a reassessed document of public performance with improvised studio interventions acting to break the linear stream of the live-on-stage temporality. There is a resonance between these in-studio improvisations of Atkinson's and Frankenthaler's paint pores: Before executing the performative action materials are considers, processes are devised and then, with fluid gesture, the event happens. In Everything Evaporate it is through a trust in materials, process and gesture that new melodies and language become available and new narratives pool and find form.

There are many moments within these piece that hint at the sensation of falling asleep while reading a novel - the stories, images and characters follow you into your unconscious but also wait for you on the page; you walk a liminal edge and wander that threshold of consciousness where the book and your imagination become intertwined. As this threshold is crossed your understanding of what has been given to you and what you have created for yourself is obscured, a new space opens up and new stories are revealed.

More information can be found here.

30 March 2020

Albums and Singles

On the eighth solo album from the French-based British musician behind Third Eye Foundation, it's impossible to not compare Elliott's delivery to late bard Leonard Cohen. Elliott's accomplished Spanish guitar craft further add to the resemblance, particularly if followed by Cohen's final album "Thanks for the Dance." Working as a solo artist since 2003, Elliott has achieved a new aural mastery on his latest work. At the start of the new decade, we face anticipatory grief, a collective loss of safety, and ultimately have been forced to bid "Farewell to All We Know." Many artists use songwriting as a way of making sense of a bewildering world, and Elliott has crafted a perfectly timed accompaniment to grief, offering resignation and renewal with his heartfelt message "Maybe the storm has passed and devastated everything, now we just have to rebuild and live again."

Read more …

30 March 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

On the eighth solo album from the French-based British musician behind Third Eye Foundation, it is impossible to not compare Elliott's delivery to late bard Leonard Cohen. Elliott's accomplished Spanish guitar craft further add to the resemblance, particularly if followed by Cohen's final album Thanks for the Dance. Working as a solo artist since 2003, Elliott has achieved a new aural mastery on his latest work. At the start of the new decade, we face anticipatory grief, a collective loss of safety, and ultimately have been forced to bid Farewell to All We Know. Many artists use songwriting as a way of making sense of a bewildering world, and Elliott has crafted a perfectly timed accompaniment to grief, offering resignation and renewal with his heartfelt message "Maybe the storm has passed and devastated everything, now we just have to rebuild and live again."

Ici d'Ailleurs

This is bleak but warm folk, embellished with gorgeous classical arrangements of composer David Chalmin, Katia Labèque's minimalist piano, Gaspar Claus' cello, and bass of Jeff Hallam. The album works its way through different stages of grief, presenting first the opening instrumental "What Once Was Hope" before segueing into the title track. In it, Elliott offers "...cheers to all that we had and to all that's now gone, say goodbye and so long as we dance on," as we collectively experience anticipatory grief of an uncertain future, but press on, finding power in acceptance. And there is acceptance in "The Day After That" as Elliott professes "...I'll seek to grow, although, although, right now I'm really low, so tomorrow, or perhaps, the day after that." Acknowledging and embracing grief empowers Elliott and he resolutely declares that "From this day on until they come to take me, life won't break me or crack me down."

One mechanism experts suggest to manage grief is to let go of what can't be controlled. "Guidance is Internal'' seems to have been inspired from the phrase uttered by Jack King during the launch of Apollo 11. Prior to launch, a spaceship must make a transition from navigating based on the fixed point on earth to space-guided navigation; this "letting go" of the fixed point of earth is known as Guidance Reference Release (GRR). When Jack King said, "Guidance is internal," he was announcing that GRR had occurred, and it was at this point Saturn V transitioned from an earth-bound device to being a space vehicle. With nothing but acoustic guitar broken by staccato viola, the group's wordless unearthly wailing seeks to unearth the listener and encourage a switch to an internal guidance system. "Bye Now" feels the pull of gravity and acknowledges "reality is sinking deep." When things get really rough, it's easy to want to get out of the game. Elliott accepts this in "Hating the Player, Hating the Game," offering "Just look at where we're coming from, and where we seem to be heading toward." Nobody knows what the future will hold, and our sense of safety has been destroyed. "Those lights, what are they, flames? Or are they lights sent to guide away? No way of knowing until we get to them. But when we then arrive, perhaps we will burn or perhaps bathe in light." He swoops in for a lyrical kill by informing us that the game ends when we "take our place amongst the graves like good little slaves, no longer play, no longer a game."

There are many poignant moments here that describe the human condition. We want to rewind, to bypass the present moment, but alas, we "Can't Find Undo." "Aboulia," defined as a lack of will or initiative, can be a symptom of depression or dementia, and Elliott wants the listener to know he has been there, asking "Is this what it's like to crash, emotional whiplash? I know that you've crashed too. I know your pain and I feel you, and those who're just like you." "Crisis Apparition" draws us into a dream, where the dream is entranced by the eyes of a beautiful dancer, before waking to realizing the room is on fire. Like his home, his heart has been "reduced to ashes and [my] soul reduced to tears" but cautiously advises "Do not fear your death my friend, fear the pain that's yet to come." But ultimately, there is a realization all things must pass as the chorus of voices chant "perhaps the worst is over, over now, over forever" in the closing track "The Worst is Over."

With so much collective grief in the air, many of us will seek to push away these feelings because we fear that if we let one feeling in, a rush of other feelings will invade and it will never go away, but by acknowledging and letting the feelings move through, we can feel the grief and move forward. Artists use music and poetry to connect and inspire, and I encourage listeners to let this music flow through them. In moments of despair, the mind can conjure foreboding possibilities, but it can also dream up creative solutions and inspire great art. It's absurd to think we shouldn't feel grief right now.

And keep going.

Sound samples can be found here.

29 March 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Saturnalia was recorded live at 9am during the closing moments of Saturnalia festival in Macao, Milan. Also on the bill was Teresa Winter.

Saxophone samples courtesy of Karl D'Silva. String samples originally recorded by JG Thirlwell at 30 Below, NYC.

Oregon Crisis was recorded live at Holocene in Portland, Oregon whilst on tour with Blanck Mass and Steve Hauschildt.

Saxophone samples courtesy of Karl D'Silva. String samples originally recorded by JG Thirlwell at 30 Below, NYC.

More information can be found here.

29 March 2020

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Tyyni is the third album by Finnish-born sound artist and musician Cucina Povera aka Maria Rossi. The second album recorded using a more studio-based scenario – as opposed to last year's Zoom, a collection of in-situ, spontaneous recordings– Tyyni feels like a slowly unfurling mediation on the clash between nature and mechanical living, a rumination on the complexities of modern life that begin to unveil more about the inner landscape of the artist as it progresses.

A Finnish word referring to still, serene weather, the title belies a new note of turmoil in Cucina Povera's soundworld. Tyyni represents a more detailed focus on the sculpting of sounds that curl around Rossi's hymnal vocal performances. It's a more adventurous work than Rossi's previous output that goes further into noise elements and vocal abstraction while maintaining the balance and ecclesiastical ecstasy of her debut Hilja.

While tension at the core of Cucina Povera is always prevalent, previously it was organic sounds that were used to counterpoint Rossi's singing but on Tyyni these are often replaced with aggressive synths and distortion, profane clashes with the seemingly sacred hymns. Whether close mic'd and intoning in a loop or in full flight, Maria Rossi's voice remains in the foreground, set here against a more synthetic backdrop. This development builds new worlds for Cucina Povera, a digital environment which brings in a sense of the alien for Rossi's vocal to duel.

For an artist with such a singularly unique musical language, Cucina Povera is continually teasing new strands and emotive tones from an evolving palette. Most importantly, Tyyni appears to be pulling back the veil to uncover an artist finding a synergy between her own emotional inner world and practice. As such, on her third album, Maria Rossi has found a third way between abstraction and extraneous emotion, personal experience turned inside out to reveal more about the listener.

More information can be found here.