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03 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

I would like to claim that the central rift of opinion on the solo career of Scott Walker falls between those who think that the aging crooner's music has become ridiculously pretentious, and those who think he's a genius. Actually, though, this would be inaccurate, as even those who love Scott Walker and think him a genius are also likely to find him pretentious. The only difference between admirers and detractors is that admirers can look past Walker's many pretensions, and the detractors either refuse to or can't.

4AD

This reception is not likely to change with the release of The Drift on 4AD, the long-awaited follow up to Scott Walker's previous solo effort, 1995's Tilt, a masterpiece of utterly unclassifiable and counterintuitive songwriting; the over-emoting existentialist MOR lounge pop of Walker's late-'60s output abstracted and stretched into a brutal suite of operatic and disturbing ambient sound sculptures. The Drift clearly demonstrates that Walker isn't planning on retreating into familiar territory anytime soon; no Jacques Brel covers or maudlin reflections on Bergman films to be found here. Instead, Walker presents nine songs, each more hallucinatory, skeletal and cryptic than the last, each articulating a different trauma, fearlessly collapsing the line that usually divides personal anguish and public catharsis. Walker's painfully enunciated vocals tackle traumas as diverse as 9/11, the evils of mass culture, the Slobodan Milosevic regime and the execution of Mussolini, but in uneasy ways that don't let listeners off the hook, not even for a second. There is a sense in which living through the six-and-a-half minutes of Walker's 9/11 meditation "Jesse" more than once could be thought of as a more traumatic experience than living through the terrorist attacks themselves.

Walker's vocals are just as arch and constipated as they have always been, dripping slow like moldy treacle through the crepuscular recesses of each song's tortuous anatomy. Apologies to those who think that Walker's voice is beautiful, expressive and operatic; on the contrary, I have always likened Walker's voice to that of Arcesia, the acid-damaged big-band leader who recorded the harrowing and hilarious 1968 LP Reachin'. Walker's painfully affected vocals invite derision, especially the older and more willfully obscure he gets. Like them or hate them, you've got to admit that no one else's voice would work nearly as well on a Scott Walker album. When he breaks into a malevolent impression of Donald Duck on "The Escape," all one can do is admire the artist's fearless audacity.

Similarly, Walker's lyrics are just as esoteric and purposely befuddling as they've always been. Advance press for the album revealed that many of the lyrical couplets in the album's opening track "Cossacks Are" were stolen from snatches of news articles and TV soundbites, and that "Jesse" is a dream-condensation combining anecdotes about Elvis' deceased twin brother Jesse with the attack on the twin towers. It would be useless for me to comment on whether or not these poetic conceits are successful, since their "meaning" has only been gleaned from secondary sources. Suffice it to say that I think Walker's lyrics are precisely as powerful as they are opaque; their opacity serves to abstract the signifying function of language from Walker's text, leaving only the tactile, gestural countours of each painfully emoted phoneme in place of meaning. This is confirmed in "A Lover Loves," when Walker subverts what has the potential to be the most lovely and melodic track on the album by simply blowing and hissing into the microphone.

Though one may occasionally encounter a lush orchestral swell or a long passage retaining basic melodic progression and rhythmic sense, the overwhelming shape of the album remains structure-less and palpitating, shifting blocks of sound aghast at finding themselves in one another's presence. Much has been made of the percussive use of raw slabs of bacon on "Clara," but in contrast to the object-sampling strategies of a group like Matmos, Walker is only interested in the potential of objects to produce jarring, industrial noise that will dissolve the borders of the listener's comfort zone. Sprinklings of acoustic guitar, smatterings of electronic chatter, subtle tonal irritations and hypnotic undercurrents of subaquatic drone are all utilized by Walker for essentially the same multi-pronged purpose: to background and foreground the drama of his anguished utterances; to undermine the listener's expectations, bringing them dangerously close to that frightening realm of painfully exhilarating enjoyment, the traumatic core of the real place before language. Antonin Artaud would have approved.

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03 May 2006

Albums and Singles

If Jesu is any indication, putting Godflesh in the grave was the best thing that Justin Broadrick could have done with his lumbering behemoth of a legacy. Jesu's latest is a return to the slow grinding despair of Godflesh's Merciless EP, something that Broadrick does better than most.

03 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

By my count this is the third version released of this 'infamous' Belgian Magik Markers show. The interest in this particular May 9th 2005 show stems from the fact that it ended with Elisa Ambrogio impersonating Carrie at her bloodiest after a bass in the face. This may not be the definitive release, but with Prurient editing and remastering the gig for, and I‚Äôm quoting here, "maximum dog shit sound" it‚Äôs the heaviest.

Hospital Productions

Ripped from the Undead in Belgium CD-R, this version of events is an overloaded, deconstructed and wordlessly violent witness statement. It's a combination of muffled purposeful neglect on the vocals / percussion and convulsing feedback of some smoking lighter fuel stinking snake charmer. There‚Äôs a glint sometimes from the jagged edge of the meat-punching drums that sound more like glass showered pummelled fat.

The smoke of uprooted municipal buildings hides Elisa‚Äôs harridan marching orders as they are rammed back in the mix. This mishmash of Gysin splinters, customer complaints and broken minded rant infrequently comes into focus as if carried by a random wind.

The near constant beat of some amphetamine metronome is driven though the floor like utterly derailed hardcore. This single song ploughs though steel tracks, gravel, grass, dirt and homesteads before ending smoking in a twisted heap. Prurient (aka Dominik Fernow) has also made the correct move to edit out the show‚Äôs "Louie Louie" finale. Without this song the set is removed from the oft-discussed musical (from garage to punk to hardcore to free) and cultural (American abroads) context and sits them outside and alone in Belgium. The word ‚Äòugly‚Äô gets thrown around a little too often in reference to sound and atmosphere; this needs to be one of the new benchmarks.

Inverted Belgium

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03 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

It was about a year ago when I first stumbled upon the Numero Group, and finally after months of begging to get the true insides on them, they've finally answered my emails and come around to getting some of their stuff to us. Numero 001 is the first part of an indefinite Eccentric Soul series. It's a series of out of print soul music criminally ignored or lost for years in vaults and basements, and part one is a representation of Columbus Ohio's Capsoul label and their releases from the early 1970s.

Numero Group

At the radio station I DJ at, somebody had managed to get a hold of three of the first four Numero releases. I'm a sucker for series releases and the spines and cases stacked together was the first noticable thing. They looked like they belonged together on the shelf. Opening them up, the deluxe booklets were arresting: the clean layout and calculated attention to detail was incredible, featuring stories, biographies, scans of the records, and photographs of some of the people involved. Somebody obviously has paid a lot of attention to this release and the least it deserved was my ears.

The restoration efforts don't end with the packaging. The Numero Group enlisted the very important "fifth Beatle" of Jeff Lipton, the man who truly deserves the title of "master," as mastering these recordings from records is no quick and easy feat. (Jeff Lipton's resume includes a ton of remastering work for Rykodisc and ArchEnemy labels along with acts like Flaming Lips, Magnetic Fields, 27, Empty House Cooperative, and Sebadoh.) The music is vibrant, alive, with full, warm bass sounds and crisp and clean cymbals; and, despite a few vinyl pops here and there, probably sounds better than these old records did on old record players back then.

So the Capsoul label wasn't a great success, perhaps overshadowed by the soul from Detroit and Chicago, but probably more challenged by the lack of money and distribution available to small labels back then. Label founder Bill Moss was notorious for selling records out of his trunk. He was a popular DJ back when DJ actually meant something: he had a great ear, and the music is every bit as powerful and sincere as the heavy hitters of the labels like Stax and Motown.

For a label with a small number of releases, Capsoul captured a substantial spectrum of contemporary soul. "You're All I Need to Make It" is pure heaven, launching the collection with the sugary sweet, but powerful crooning from the group Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr. It's infectious in the mere first seconds and doesn't falter one bit. Marion Black, another fantastic singer, who's represented on this collection by two cuts gives the bluesier side of soul with the more upbeat "Who Knows" and heart-tugging gospel-tinged "Go On Fool." Kool Blues kicks up the pace with the bouncy, infectious "I'm Gonna Keep On Loving You" (no relation to REO Speedwagon), but take things down to the slow dance with their ballad "Can We Try Love Again." Songs like "Sock It To 'Em Soul Brother" by Bill Moss and "Hot Grits" (inspired by Al Green's scalding incident in the south) are firey singalongs that would have been great to see live, at least to read about them in the accompanying booklet would be nice however. Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr return near the end with the grand mid-tempo ballad "A World Without You," which, with its strings and even harpsichord could have even given "Mercy Mercy Me" a run for its money. It's easy to tell that Bill Moss and crew went all out in production and, rightfully so, had some fantastic material to do it with, but at the time hits were regional, and while some of these songs were big in the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Cleveland areas, the important trend-setting music hubs of New York and Chicago simply couldn't be cracked.

In fact, of all the 19 songs on here (including two "bonus cuts"), just about any these songs could have become bigger hits. The talents are undeniable, the songwrtiting was wonderful, and there was clearly a lot invested into the original recording sessions, and, as the story goes, after only a dozen singles and one LP, the label was forced to close, the masters destroyed by a flood, and a box of the remaining stock dumped. The efforts of the Numero Group remind me that the best reason to start a record label isn't "because I want a record label" but "because I have these excellent recordings that more people have GOT to hear." As a person who's had a longtime interest in audio preservation and restoration, it's exciting to see a small operation like the Numero Group put so much time, passion, and attention to these great causes. We have the easy job of simply being able to listen.

samples:

The Four Mints - Row My Boat
Ronnie Taylor - Without Love
Elijah & the Ebonites - Hot Grits!!!

03 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

Hydra Head

For my money, Merciless was the high water mark for Broadrick's previous rock band, and it's a sound I had always hoped he'd return to. Instead, Godflesh's last gasps were sputtered out over experiments with breakbeats and dub remixes that were often brutally straight-forward, leaving little of the suspense and weight of the band's earlier material. Jesu fixes all of that, calmly picking up where Broadrick left off before the excursions into proto-jungle metal hybrids, something that given Broadrick's skill as a drum n bass producer always seemed less exciting than they should.

Silver is a return to the long, morose, damaged songs to which Broadrick simply owns the trademark. His signature guitar sound and wall of drone and noise is all over this EP, along with the long delaying echoes of tortured moaning that he uses for singing in this mode. What's noticeably absent and what keeps this from sounding fully like a Godflesh project with another name is the clacky rumble of Ben Green's bass. Blasphemous though it may sound, I don't miss that on Silver. Without the bass mixed to the front of each song, the layers and textures have more room to breath and develop, giving the songs something closer to a meditative feel. If I had to explain this quickly, I'd say that Jesu is a bit like the Godflesh take on the Kranky sound, and when I think of it like that, it's no wonder that Jesu is responsible for some of my favorite records in the last year.

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02 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

The second album by Pateras and Fox finds them raiding the human body for sounds and reorganizing them in convulsive detail. Their improvisations logically find the duo favoring texture over form, yet after a while the constantly shifting dynamics becomes a form of motionlessness in itself and at times I found my mind wandering.

Editions Mego

The natural sources of the material surface only fleetingly before drowning in a tide of processed electronics. "Olfactophobia" uses flapping cheeks, heavy breathing, mouth pops, gasps, and kissing sounds in the creation of bubbles and percolations that sound surprisingly organic, while "Throat in Three Parts" sounds more like amplified molecules moving through the bloodstream and colliding with each other than it does specific throat noises. "Flux and Belch," consisting of processed belches and throat eruptions, is a fitting end to a feast of bodily transformation. The sounds they come up with are frequently entertaining, but often it seems that Pateras and Fox are running through a catalog of possibilities for these sources rather than arriving at a destination. Not every track has an obvious connection to the body, and a couple of them that don‚Äôt are among the better tracks on the album. "Freckle Cream" initially sounds like ruptured speakers crackling before beeps, twonks, and rips intrude, culminating in a rhythmic interplay of white noise that ends just as the song heads into exciting territory. "$2.18," conceivably named after the amount of currency involved, uses dropped coins as percussion to feed metallic clatters and droning overtones that, because of the brevity of the piece, never feel distracting. The juxtapositions Pateras and Fox concoct along their fantastic voyage are enjoyable enough, but I felt many of these tracks are intellectual exercises as much as musical ones, which kept me from fully enjoying them as a visceral experience.

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02 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

This release, the second in a seven inch trilogy, sees a further distillation of the band‚Äôs gorgeous organically structured songwriting. These two pieces are instantly noticeable as more electronic sounding than the first instalment, even though some of the strongest melody lines here are analogue in origin.

Distraction

"Dear John" (a dedication to the late John Peel) manages to expertly fine-tune an unhurried channel of electro into a hard shelled spindly projectile. Starting off sounding displaced from its dance floor / lino roots the rhythmic skeleton is progressively built up from intricate increments of bone to a digital cartilage tempo. Through brief radar bleeps heard via dusty filters and a swirl of amalgamated atmospheres, it begins to steadily find it feet. The jigsaw of static chops, smothered circuits and buzzing limbs hit the structure head on, molding the song into a whole. An oriental aura coats the piece‚Äôs sharp points, leaving a kind of brief smoldering afterburn in their wake.

The more immediate "Pick me up" is a very distant cousin (mainly in its use of guitar) to their "Come to Light." The song instantly settles into a melody supported by a delicate clockwork factory beat, system default bleeps unwind and restart on a rolling 3-D loop between the hits. These electronics mesh into and out of the rougher de-emphasized patches of metalwork percussion. Gentle helixes of picked guitar move, sliding into a whirl as harsh early acidic squelchy synths fizz. The production places a real importance on the building and removal of different elements to the fore while other parts morph away happily into the background; the process sounds more organic than mere fader manipulation. Hopefully all this seven inch action is building up to an LP release.

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02 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

This is the second album from Denmark’s Jens Berents Christiansen as Rumpistol. Mere Rum is a listenable but boring album. Each of the eight tracks are forgettable. They work as background music they're but definitely not anything I could sit down and listen to properly again.

Rump

Mere Rum is on one hand a laid back electronica album, not unlike the thousands churned out every year by every schmuck with a laptop but on the other hand it also other elements peppered through the album to add a little spice. I hesitate to use the term “experimental” but there are leanings towards using unconventional sounds and structures. Granted these days that odd meters, washes of noise (such as the water-like sounds on “Tape Swamp” and “Vintertog”) and glitches are about as 'experimental' as eating hot food but it's enjoyable when they are used well. On “Plus3dub,” Christiansen uses a lot of these techniques tastefully and in less than usual contexts, the drum programming wouldn’t be out of place on an Autechre or Aphex Twin release but here the BPM is turned way down and combined with a melody, unlike the epileptic assault of the other two. Alas, he may be using these techniques well but he doesn’t show any innovation of his own.

However, at no point during the album do I feel this is ever more than a bedroom project made for himself alone. Nothing ever makes it past slightly interesting mediocrity. Attempts to bring some excitement to the music by using traditional instruments along with the electronics make it sound even duller. Glockenspiels, saxophones and electronics are a tired combination. Very occasionally there was a nice little bit of guitar, such as on “Overtone.” Apart from that, there is little in the way of originality.

Mere Rum is destined for that bottom shelf of the CD rack reserved for the releases I have no particular urge to listen to again.

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02 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

As Jesu, Justin Broderick along with Diarmuid Dalton have teetered somewhere between metal, pop, thrash, and shoegaze. Last year's self-titled album ranks amongst my favorites of 2005, perhaps because at points it makes me watery-eyed for the early 1990s days of Bowery Electric, Slowdive, Curve, and Loop. Silver is sort of a stopgap, a four song extended play single with songs that aren't bad, but just not as thematically connected as the eponyous LP.

Hydra Head

Their combination of elements sound fantastic together: simply played yet loud guitars and aggressively struck drums slowly march through gorgeous melodies, paired with the echoing, unobtrusive, and polite vocals that makes Jesu not just tolerable, but enjoyable. (I know my friend Andrew will have a word with me about this one, but I find Jesu far more enjoyable than any Godflesh I've ever heard!) The uttmost attention to sound detail is evident in every second of every song I've heard from them (still looking for that first EP, by the way). What is hard to describe, however, is their knack for writing great tunes. Jesu uses original and marginally unpredictable melodies but Justin Broderick constructs them well enough to make listening fun. Indeed, it's no impossibility: any band can theoretically combine these elements but if you don't write great tunes, then you're nothing.

The opening track "Silver" is probably the closest thing Jesu will get to a pop tune, and while I like it, I'm frightened as how close it comes to a sports theme. Its anthemic qualities rank on par with the best songs from last year's album. A different approach is tried with the second song, "Star," as a hurried, thrashy rhythm launches the piece but soon the signature sound overcomes it and nearly swallows up that beat with guitars and vocals going half the speed. "Wolves," once again, tries something new, as melody provided by something that sounds like a distorted synth takes the instrumental lead. While it doesn't sound out of place, tried at different volumes it becomes clear how Jesu's music is not experienced properly when played quiet. The last song, "Dead Eyes" also charts new territory for the duo, opening with some backwards strung beauty accompanying a fat low-end synth and vocals strung through a vocoder. Even though elements shift past the mid-point, shifting the focus from the heavy foundation to more jagged guitar playing, the song is still as sexy as it began. When it ends I'm immediately wanting more, but that's actually a good thing.

Clocking in at just under 30 minutes, this EP is more than enough to wet my appetite for the next mega album. With any luck the duo will finally play on this side of the pond, as I'm eager to see Jesu live, to feel the low rumbles vibrating my rib cage, my armhairs standing on edge, and the warm feeling of happiness this music gives me.

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01 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

The latest instrumental offering from Robin Guthrie is a beautiful example of his evocative songwriting and production skills, and a testament to why his work has been the creamy center of the dream pop world for years. It's also a reminder of how much better his work is with the right vocalist.

Darla

I was never a fan of Violet Indiana, the post-Cocteau project that pitted Guthrie with Siobhan De Mare (that may be coming back if Guthrie's blog is to be believed). In a sense, anything that Guthrie does with a voice is going to be saddled with the heavy burden of outpacing the work of his legendary band that people are still just discovering now. It makes sense that Guthrie would work on instrumental music then, because his signature sound is in many ways inextricably tied to Elizabeth Fraser's voice, and making music without voices might be the only way to keep things going.

When I listen to Continental, I can't help but think that these were meant to be Cocteau Twins songs as the instrumentation, arrangement, and style is unmistakable. With its reverb-soaked pianos, crescendos of guitar, subtle backdrops of synth and understated drums, the album sounds more than merely familiar. It sounds inevitable, which is disappointing in a way because the songs seem only half-finished. For Guthrie to climb out of that shadow, he needs to reinvent himself and his approach, which is something scores of devoted Cocteau fans have gone and done in making the next generation of dreamy pop and shoegaze records.

When I concern myself with what is part of Continental rather than what the record could be, I have to admit that Guthrie still makes some of the most perfect, blissful chill out music to be found anywhere. There are journeys in these songs that tell little four-minute stories, and I love that. In a few places, Guthrie even kicks on the distortion box to roar to an almost heavy haze of fuzzy swirl that's just short of pyschedelic. Through the layers and layers of guitars, bass, feedback, and droning keys, everything still has its place, and that's the kind of careful construction that Guthrie's emulators almost always miss.

I'm glad to have Continental to provide some richly emotional background music for those times when I want something more structured than a collage of drones, but something less tangible than pop music with vocals. If I'd never heard a Cocteau Twins record, this would probably be one of my favorite instrumental rock records, but the reality makes Continental more bittersweet. Despite the quality and passion in this record, I think most people will hear it and conclude that Guthrie needs to chart a new direction, find another muse, or make up with the last one for his music to keep moving forward.

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01 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

Using motors and various pieces of metal, the sculptures of New Zealand artist Len Lye not only move but also emit strange sounds. Lye choreographs twisted sheets of metal and whirring surgical steel into compositional forms that belie their apparent randomness. No mere dusty museum pieces, the sounds his kinetic works produce are every bit as unearthly and unsettling as anything created electronically.

Atoll

These recordings were made with a simple yet appropriate stereo miking technique that mimics the human ears and to me is the next best thing to experiencing these pieces firsthand. Although they weren’t originally intended to be heard independently of the sculptures, that there exist visual counterparts to these alien soundscapes only whets my imagination. A six foot tall section of shimmering metal hits upon a cork ball in “Blade,” inducing a sense of danger in me as the oscillations vary dramatically in speed and volume. The variation of this piece, “(Big) Blade,” has a similar effect, while the swirling crashes of “Flip and Two Sisters (Trilogy)” made me even more apprehensive, though enjoyably so. At the other end of the dynamic spectrum, “Grass” soothes with strands of flexible steel brushing against each other as the base of the sculpture tilts back and forth. “Fountain” achieves a similar effect, albeit by different means.

It’s easy for an album like this to rest upon the laurels of historical significance, but in this instance the aural pleasure it gives far exceeds such considerations.

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