22 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

Alison Chesley, a classically trained cellist, is one of those performers whose collaborations are many and varied, spanning across genres and decades in her long career. Her credits include contributions to over 100 albums¹, with styles ranging from post-rock, to metal, to college rock, to new music, to film score. Solo project Helen Money is the culmination of these influences, with cello the principal actor in her experiments with chamber rock, subtle effects to round sharp corners, and heavy riffs to chop the serenity back up again.

Thrill Jockey

The opening track of Atomic, Helen Money’s 6th release, is aptly called "Midnight," establishing the mood of the entire album squarely inside the witching hour, with all the moodiness of an underground Chicago haunt thick with smoke and regret. Cello is voiced clearly in the forefront in many-layered blossoming daubs. The more sedate of her ideas are reminiscent of her collaboration with The For Carnation, Louisville post-rockers closely associated with Slint. Touching on chamber music but returning time and again to a rock framework, she creates lovely and eerie instrumentals for strings, keys, drums and guitar. The more ferocious tracks are more reminiscent of the blistering hiss and chug of ISIS, with none of the vocals but all of the heaviness of a turpentine bath. Somehow, despite weaving in and out of these heavy and tender modes, she maintains a through line that unifies the album—a connecting presentation that is both sensual and gothic, leavened with bursts of jagged peaks.

Alison Chesley has been making music for longer than I have been alive, but her substantial output is new to me, and it is a quite welcome discovery. Some of the bands she’s performed with—Broken Social Scene, Rachel’s, The Sea & Cake—are my musical love affairs. This release, "Atomic," swept me off my feet during the first 10 seconds, and carried that standard of beauty throughout. It’s post-rock without falling into the trap of being too derivative, owning its own distinct personality and sound, and drawing you into its cradle and bow. It’s a record that haunts, at times naked and beseeching, at others flared and screeching. It lingers with the listener like an old hurt, the tangled cello lines echoing into the stillness of your night.

This album is coming at a time when the artist‚Äôs vision is a much needed balm for the anxieties of a world gone topsy turvy. In her own words, "I‚Äôve been thinking a lot about how the earth is our home; the universe; and how fragile this world is and how connected we all are to everything."² Even as we adjust to the new reality of physical social distancing, our nobelist instincts as human beings suffering a collective crisis do come forward‚Äîto spend time reconnecting virtually with family and friends, to support our fellow community members in need if we can, and to redouble our efforts to see that the music industry we love survives and thrives.

Samples available here.

22 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

This latest release from Student of Decay’s eclectic and unpredictable sister label is an unexpectedly melodic and accessible one, though it still fits comfortably within Soda Gong's ethos of exploring the more playful and trend-averse fringes of experimental music. While this is technically only Malkin's second solo album under his own name, he has been a prolific and ubiquitous figure in the LA scene for quite some time, surfacing in a number of different guises and collaborations. In fact, I just belatedly discovered that he played on one of my favorite songs from the Not Not Fun milieu (LA Vampires/Maria Minerva's "A Lover & A Friend"). Given that pedigree, it is not surprising that A Typical Night in the Pit has a very "LA" feel to it, but it is an endearingly vaporous and neon-lit one, evoking a kind of dreamlike and hazy strain of jazz. It maybe errs a bit too much on the side of atmosphere to feel like a truly substantial statement, but Malkin has both style for days and an impressively unerring instinct for manipulating light, space, and texture. If I saw a film with this as the soundtrack, I would definitely stick around to the end to find out who the hell managed to make smoky, noirish jazz sound so fresh and endearingly skewed.

Soda Gong

Like a lot of obsessive music fans, I went through a fairly deep "classic jazz" phase at one point and a lot of those albums definitely left a significant impression on me.However, some iconic albums did not resonate with me at all and many of the ones that most underwhelmed me could loosely be described as "cool jazz."I bring this up because Malkin and his collaborators explore roughly that same stylistic territory with A Typical Night in the Pit, but manage to do it in a way that highlights all of the best qualities (slow, sultry grooves and languorous, soulful soloing) while avoiding all of the worst ones (soporific pacing, indulgent solos in boring scales, general blandness).That welcome innovation is best illustrated by a piece like the brief "Some KJAZZ Eternity," as a smoldering saxophone solo unfurls over a slow, sexy groove rendered vaguely hallucinatory by lingering smears of electric piano chords.Rather than sounding like a bunch of white dudes in embarrassing hats trading solos, it instead evokes the shadowy, neon-lit interior of a strip club in a futurist noir, Blade Runner-esque version of Los Angeles.Also of note: both "Some KJAZZ Eternity" and the similarly wonderful "Secondhand Identity" clock in at around two minutes, as Malkin seems to have little patience for meandering or lingering on a theme longer than necessary.On one hand, it is a little exasperating that some of the best pieces on A Typical Night in the Pit are so damn brief, but I can also appreciate Malkin's "all killer, no filler" approach.While he may not always fully capitalize on his strongest ideas, Malkin is rarely guilty of allowing a theme to overstay its welcome at all.

Although A Typical Night is largely defined by its prominent jazz influence, jazz is far from the only influence that is evident on the album: Malkin is more of an eclectic and chameleonic experimentalist than anything resembling an aspiring traditional jazzman.In fact, the album's jazzier inspirations seem to come primarily by way of Malkin's love of '70s & '80s Robert Altman and Alan Rudolph films and their scores.For the most part, Malkin's experimental tendencies are limited to hazy production touches and a very fluid approach to genre boundaries with these nine songs, but some more overt weirdness does surface near the end of the album.For example, the impressionistic "Perfect Terminal" blends together rippling piano ambiance, shuffling and echoing percussion flourishes, a stuttering digitized voice, and an elegantly blurred saxophone solo, while the blurting and disjointed "Estacionamiento Privado" resembles the kind of mutant, deconstructed funk that might have come out of the late '70s Sheffield industrial scene.Elsewhere, Malkin takes a lighter and more playful approach with "Sixth Street Conversation," channeling his jazzier impulses in endearingly plinking, herky-jerky fashion.My favorite piece on the album, however, is probably "Through a Rain-Streaked Window," which enhances Malkin's "noir jazz" aesthetic with some nice vaporwave/Not Not Fun-style pop touches in the form of a structured progression of warm synth chords.It still feels a bit too artfully disjointed and deconstructed to fully resemble a "pop song," but it comes close enough to feel like a half-remembered fever dream homage to synth-driven '80s hookiness.

My sole real critique of this A Typical Night in the Pit is merely that only a few pieces stick around long enough to feel fully formed, which makes the album feel like a teasing glimpse of greatness rather than a completely satisfying effort.Pointing that out feels a little wrong and unfair though, as I am otherwise thoroughly impressed and delighted by this album as an artistic statement (and its elusive, dreamlike character is almost certainly by design).Malkin has conjured up quite a wonderful and unique stylistic niche for himself and his execution is damn near flawless, as I absolutely love how everything sounds (particularly the stand-up bass and the saxophones).I also enjoy all the subtly hallucinatory touches in the periphery, as voices and field recordings unpredictably and enigmatically drift in and out as the album unfolds.From a production and arrangement standpoint, A Typical Night is an absolute master class.Moreover, Malkin wisely keeps the entire album grounded in a solid melodic structure, so there are very few passages that feel unmemorable or weightlessly ethereal.Consequently, I sincerely hope Malkin decides to explore this direction further in the future, as A Typical Night in the Pit is an inventive, understated, and eminently listenable gem that feels like the potential precursor to an absolutely brilliant follow-up.For now, however, this release is quite possibly the strongest album to date from either Malkin or Soda Gong.

Samples can be found here.

22 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

For the most part, I can always be relied upon to enthusiastically support any talented artist who leaves their comfort zone behind to explore increasingly weird and uncharted territory. I do have my weaknesses, however, and one of the major ones is my undying love for classic Mille Plateaux/Chain Reaction-style dub techno. Consequently, I am hopelessly fixated on early Vladislav Delay albums like Entain and the newly reissued Multila. That is a damn shame, as Sasu Ripatti has made quite a lot of wonderful and forward-thinking music since and I have definitely not dug into his later work nearly as much as I should. This latest album, the first new Vladislav full-length in roughly five years, is a particularly effective and timely reminder that I am an absolute chump for sleeping on many of Ripatti's major statements over the years. Rakka is quite an ambitiously intense and inventive affair, seamlessly blurring together elements of Tim Hecker-style blown-out ambiance, power electronics, techno deconstruction, and production mastery into an explosive tour de force.

Cosmo Rhythmatic

Given the number of varying guises that Sasu Ripatti has recorded under over the years, it is hopeless to try to define his aesthetic with any degree of accuracy.Hell, even this one project has undergone a constant and significant series of evolutions since it first began.That said, I still feel fairly comfortable in stating that Rakka is quite unlike anything that Ripatti has recorded previously.Much like some of Richard Skelton's stronger works, Rakka's creative leap forward was triggered by an unusual and unmusical inspiration, as Ripatti's muse was essentially the arctic tundra.He spent some time in the wilderness there and was understandably struck by the elemental power and brutality of the environment.In an abstract sense, Rakka is his attempt to replicate that experience to some degree.Obviously, pure sound has its limitations, so Ripatti's live sets are enhanced by an intense visual component crafted by his wife (Antye Greie-Ripatti/AGF), yet the album nevertheless feels quite heavy and fully formed on its own.In fact, it feels a hell of a lot like a rave being ripped apart by a howling blizzard.

Unsurprisingly, very little survives from that imaginary rave in recognizable form, but the deconstructed fragments of beats and chords still seem to form the album's backbone, albeit in ephemeral, corroded, and stuttering form.The title piece is an especially strong example of that aesthetic, as a pulsing chord struggles to be heard beneath a cacophony of skittering, distorted drums and a churning host of other strangled and static-ravaged sounds.All of the individual components of techno are present, yet they exist in a radically reworked context that sounds nothing like techno.Instead, it feels like a roiling, intense, and impressively hostile miasma of colliding sounds.  

While Ripatti’s stated intention was to strip away the "meaninglessness of hooks and melodies" and subvert conventional rhythms, he proves himself to be remarkably skilled and inventive in imbuing each of Rakka's seven pieces with its own distinctive character.Naturally, raw power does a lot of the heavy lifting that beats and hooks might have done, but there are still enough buried traces of songcraft to transcend anything resembling a noise album.Instead, Rakka is more like a series of meticulously crafted song fragments undergoing violent paroxysms.

I suppose roughly half of the album can be said to resemble variations of the title piece, though the variations are significant ones. For example, "Raataja" mingles its seething, pulsing drones with spasmodic eruptions of jackhammering kick drums, while "Raajat" resembles a steadily intensifying and enveloping roar disrupted by rhythmic loops of heavy machinery. Elsewhere, "Rakkine" ventures quite close to straight-up power electronics, as a half-pummeling/half-stammering rhythm is ravaged by bursts of extremely distorted vocals and harsh noise.Some of the other detours, like the more ambient "Raakile" and the near-blast beat crescendo of "Rampa" work a bit less well as individual pieces, but prove themselves to be very effective elements in enhancing the album's overall dynamic arc.Notably, the album’s finest piece, "Rasite," comes at the end of that arc, calling to mind a vintage Tim Hecker or Fennesz gem that has been enhanced with submerged dub-style sub bass, then completely decimated by strafing machine gun fire, an earthquake, and a volcano.   

If there is a caveat with Rakka, it is only that it falls more squarely on the "art" side of the "art versus entertainment" spectrum than most (or all) of Ripatti’s previous releases: it is not so much a fresh batch of songs as it is a sustained and intense experience.That is just fine by me, however, as Rakka is every bit as tightly edited and exactingly produced as the more accessible Vladislav Delay fare.In fact, I am legitimately amazed at how masterfully Ripatti was able to balance brute force and exquisite craftsmanship with this release, even while most nuance and subtlety is unavoidably eclipsed by its gales of noise and punishing flurries of percussion.Ripatti has always been a forward-thinking artist that played a significant role in shaping the direction of electronic music, but this album twists and breaks the form to such a degree that it will be quite a tall order for anyone else to follow him down this path.In fact, it is kind of a radical inversion of Ren Schofield's relentless and punishing Container project: Schofield is a noise artist who has made violence danceable, while Ripatti is a techno artist who has driven dance music completely off its rails, yet still somehow remains in total control of where that flaming and screeching metaphorical trainwreck is headed.

Samples can be found here.

21 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

First vinyl release of Ak'chamel after a prolific cassette discography, The Totemist marks a new direction for the mysterious group. Equipped with studio quality recordings and a (somewhat) lighter tone, as opposed to the oppressively lo-fi sound the group is known for.

This is a deep psychedelic-folk album with hints of mysticism, some of which was written and recorded in a ghost-town in the Chihuahuan Desert in far West Texas - a place where the dead outnumber the living. Various overdubs and field recordings were captured in the historic Terlingua cemetery : an ancient burial ground filled with small grottoes and graves made of sticks and stones. This being the final resting place for miners who succumbed from illnesses derived from the toxic rare-earth element known as mercury.

More information can be found here.

21 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

A harrowing layered work of solo saxophone and electronics, Descension is at once beautifully elegiac and unflinchingly primal. Patrick Shiroishi is one of the key artists to emerge from the current L.A. free improvisation avant-underground; his first vinyl release is a spiritual journey that reveals his deeply reflective and unique musical vision. Descension is a sonic meditation on the legacy of a dark history and its echoing relevance in the present era.

More information can be found here.

18 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

Sound In Silence is proud to welcome Endless Melancholy to its family, presenting his new album A Perception Of Everything.

Endless Melancholy is the self-descriptive music act of Oleksiy Sakevych, based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Since 2011 he has released six albums, a remix album, a compilation and many singles and EPs on labels such as Preserved Sound, Twice Removed, AZH Music, 1631 Recordings, p*dis, Dronarivm, Thesis, Past Inside The Present and his own Hidden Vibes. He has worked on collaboration/split releases with artists such as Desolate Horizons, Lights Dim and Hotel Neon, is also member of the post-rock band Sleeping Bear and has released music under the aliases of Moonshine Blues and bc_ranger.

A Perception Of Everything is the seventh full-length album by Endless Melancholy and his first for Sound In Silence. It is an album, inspired by traveling and visiting new places. It is made of field recordings made using a microcassette tape recorder, tape loops and synth pads. It is an album about the constant attempts to live in harmony with yourself and searching for your inner peace. About trying to shape your own perception of everything in this fragile and ever-changing world.
A Perception Of Everything is a sublime album of wonderful soundscapes, carefully mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave) and highly recommended for devotees of ambient pioneers such as Brian Eno, Harold Budd and Steve Roach.

More information can be found here.

18 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

Sound In Silence is happy to announce the addition of Halftribe to its roster of artists, presenting his new album Archipelago.

Halftribe is the solo project of Ryan Bissett, an ambient/electronic music producer and DJ, born in Northern Ireland, residing in Manchester, UK. Influenced by other artists’ music, modern art, minimal photography, moods and emotions, since 2014 he has been producing his sublime music having released four albums and four EPs on labels such as Archives, Dronarivm, Vent Sounds, Dewtone Recordings and Silk Sofa Music.

Archipelago, Halftribe’s fifth full-length album and first for Sound In Silence, features eleven new compositions with a total duration of something less than 45 minutes. Bissett creates one of his best albums to date, skillfully blending together airy synths, soothing pads, hazy drones, delicate chimes, processed vocal samples, lo-fi plucked guitars, overlapping tones, looped crackles and calm field recordings.
Expertly mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave), Archipelago is a beautiful aural journey of blissful ambience, subtle textures, twinkling melodies and dreamy soundscapes which appeals to all fans of artists such as Fennesz, bvdub and The Green Kingdom.

More information can be found here.

15 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

With a flurry of recent activity, including the Herbstsonne album also under his own name and Electric as Organum, David Jackman has been rather prolific in the past year. While I admittedly cannot say I know for sure what separates a David Jackman record from an Organum one (or why this one is credited to just his surname), Silence in that Time clearly shares some kinship with last year's Herbstsonne. Both feature his use of wide-open spaces, symmetrical song structures, and punctuations of massive piano chords, but the other details are where the difference lies.

Die Stadt

Like Herbstsonne, Silence is a single, long form piece (42 minutes) that features an intentionally reductionist palette of sounds.Jackman uses piano, a sustained organ/synthesizer bit, far off bells, and field recordings of birds.Again, it is not so much the variety of sounds that he is working with, but his placement of them, and the careful, considered production that surrounds them.

Big, booming piano chords stomp into the lengthy passages of silence, and then resonate slowly, giving an almost harmonium type quality to it.From this a bed of synth occasionally fills in the gaps, but Jackman has no qualms about letting silence take hold.From the distance the occasional tolling bell can be heard and the infrequent recording of birds sprinkled throughout that give an organic component to the otherwise empty space.

The specific sounds he works with on this record cast a bleaker feel than the otherwise more beautiful Herbstsonne.With the jarring piano outbursts and the far off bells, there is a sense of emptiness and isolation throughout.With the addition of birds, it is hard to not feel an overwhelming sense of dystopian desolation, and the distant tolling convey a malignant presence lurking just somewhere out of view.Intentional or not, I certainly appreciate this added dimension to the disc.

Being a fan of minimalism in general, Jackman’s work always encapsulates the best elements of that.Sounds are allowed to expand and sustain nearly indefinitely, allowing each deliberate component to become the focus before drifting away to be replaced with another.This deliberate sparseness also makes for an even more significant impact when volumes change or dynamics shift.Which is exactly why his work as himself and as Organum is always captivating.Silence in that Time has some consistent elements with the previous album, but never do the two feel interchangeable.Like that disc, there may not be a whole lot going on on the surface, but the attention it demands results in a consistently a fascinating experience.

samples:

• Excerpt 1
• Excerpt 2
• Excerpt 3

 

12 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

Creating what Iggy Pop described to Jim Jarmusch as "symphonies for people that don't have a lot of time," Sarah Lipstate has emerged as an innovative and defining voice in the world of music under the name Noveller. Wielding a guitar as her main instrument, Lipstate has pioneered a transcendent approach to composition through her mastery and integration of effects pedals and technology. Forming unexpected sonic routes, her songs are vivid and cinematic, telling intricate tales with each tone and swell.

Raised on a strict piano technique, the discovery of the guitar late in her teens allowed for an escape from formalism and unlocked the hidden realms of her creativity. Taking an anti-theoretical approach, suddenly music was no longer a series of notes, rests, and time signatures, but a means of intuitive expression. Her deepened interest in experimental music, fueled by the discovery of the bold noise of Sonic Youth, the epic scope of Glenn Branca, the delicate formularies of Brian Eno and the no wave discordance of Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, only furthered to inspire.

A yearning to explore and feed that creativity took her from Louisiana to Austin, then Brooklyn to LA. Arrow is her first album since the move to the edge of the canyons of Los Angeles, and you can hear the destabilizing effect this had on her in the music. Out of her comfort zone in a new city, with a rolling expanse in front of her and an urban sprawl over her shoulder, Lipstate built her new album as she contemplated this change in her life.

The resulting record feels as if it is filled with dreamscapes and contemplation intersecting with tension and drama, a journey that plays out over its dynamic sequence. Tracks like "Effektology" open up like a vivid view of the night sky, before the darkness settles in and envelopes you, finally quieting your racing mind and bringing about much needed slumber. "Canyons" pings about and stings at the mountainside with its syncopated melodic echoes. "Pre-fabled" walks you straight into the crashing ocean waves like a desperate cleansing. A mournful "Remainder" closes the proceedings, steadying itself for what the future might hold.

With her ability to add such unique sounds and textures, Lipstate has been sought out as a frequent collaborator, recently writing songs with Iggy Pop and performing as a member of his band on his worldwide tour. Past partners in crime have ranged from JG Thirlwell to Lee Ranaldo and she has performed as part of Rhys Chatham's Guitar Army, Nick Zinner's "41 Strings," Ben Frost's "Music for 6 Guitars," and Glenn Branca;s 100 guitar ensemble. She has also toured in support of big fans in St. Vincent, Wire, U.S. Girls, The Jesus Lizard and Helium.

Those prized abilities have also led her to her being a leader in the conversation around the gear that has unlocked the full range of her abilities. As she began posting videos of her explorations to social media, a dedicated and inquisitive audience emerged and continues to grow, as she appeared in magazines and documentaries. With Arrow, Lipstate has emerged with an album that is sure to delight and challenge all of her followers, as that fanbase widens further.

More information can be found here.

08 March 2020

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Albums and Singles

Before his untimely passing in 2017, Matt Shoemaker had a number of releases completed and ready to be released, including Mercurial Horizon. Recorded at various times between 2008 and 2012, during one of his most prolific phases, the album was completed five years ago, but just now being released. Split into two half hour pieces, it almost seems built for cassette, but thankfully presented as a gorgeous CD by the Elevator Bath label that does wonders to capture the depth and nuance of his work. Beautiful, unsettling, and bleak, it makes for an amazing disc that was worth the wait.

Elevator Bath

Shoemaker’s trademark use of field recordings and electronics appear throughout, but never being deployed in any easily identified form.Matt opens the first piece with a wet canyon of sound:a shimmering expanse covered in sticky reverb.Complex layers of sound define the piece, with a slew of weird, indistinct sounds and electronic pulses appearing throughout.A mysterious clanging and buzzing, serrated noises give a sense of menace that will soon take over, with a subtle, drifting melody that offsets the darkness.

It is an extremely dynamic work, but that sinister feel becomes even more notable when grinding noises and unnatural sounding bells toll away.Bubbling, organic textures and strange grinding layers keep the malicious sensibility in place, and a far off heartbeat like thud conjures some notable "strange thing in the darkness" moods.Coupled with the murky, jungle-like field recordings (not unlike his work with Indonesian field recordings as Fosil Sangiran), it ends on an extremely unsettling note.

This carries directly over to the second piece, which is comparably more open but no less dark.The mix is wide open at the onset, with processed animalistic noises rising up as sinister outbursts throughout.He retains this pattern for a while:passages of near silence interrupted by creepy noises and a faster rate, with additional electronics coming in to maintain that feel of looming menace.That oppressive jungle feel comes back with some excellent crunchy textures, punctuating that alien, unnatural feel.

As the piece progresses, modular electronics do an impressive imitation of a helicopter signal a transition to different, but no less unsettling environment.The mix collapses, leaving only a frigid tinnitus drone, which fits his photographs of ice that adorn the digipak perfectly.There is a distant shimmer of light in the horizon, but the isolation is strong and cold.A strange clanking noise appears and the mix becomes even denser, again capturing that feel of something that is out of sight closing in, and he retains that sense of danger all the way to the end.

It is quite sad that Mercurial Horizon was not released before Matt Shoemaker's passing, because the depth and fully realized nature of this work would surely have garnered him some well-deserved accolades.Every one of his works that I have had the pleasure of hearing have been amazing, but everything seems to mesh beautifully here.His field recording treatments, unique electronic experimentation, and ability to conjure a heavy, cinematic mood throughout make this disc especially unique.While I hope this is not necessarily the last of his completed works that we will hear, if it is, it is a brilliant postscript to a tragically short career.

Samples Available Here.