Episode 721 features Throwing Muses, Eros, claire rousay, Moin, Zachary Paul, Voice Actor and Squu, Leya, Venediktos Tempelboom, Cybotron, Robin Rimbaud and Michael Wells, Man or Astro-Man?, and Aisha Vaughan.
Episode 722 has James Blackshaw, FACS, Laibach, La Securite, Good Sad Happy Bad, Eramus Hall, Nonconnah, The Rollies, Jabu, Freckle, Evan Chapman, diane barbe, Tuxedomoon, and Mark McGuire.
Wine in Paris photo by Mathieu.
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The first foray into Warren Defever's teenage tape archive (last year's All The Mirrors in the House) was an absolute revelation that actively courted disbelief, but this second installment is a bit more modest in its scope. As a result, Return To Never unavoidably feels a bit underwhelming and insubstantial by comparison, but it is still a likable album that scratches roughly the same itch, as I am very much a fan of Defever's homespun, early lo-fi experiments. While there are still a healthy number of melodic guitar pieces strewn throughout the album, Return to Never is generally a more experimental and abstract affair than the previous volume. Phrases like "analogue murk" and "greyscale industrial drone" are tossed around in the album's description and they are fairly apt: if All The Mirrors captured a teenage Defever accidentally inventing shoegaze, Return to Never captures him accidentally mirroring the sounds of the early '80s noise underground (or at least calls to mind someone playing shoegaze-style guitar over such a tape). The warmer, more "ambient" passages still tend to be the best ones, but if some moments from Return to Never had found their way onto an early Broken Flag tape, I doubt anyone would have blinked or raised an eyebrow.
In Dominic Foster's haunting and beautiful short promotional video for Return to Never, the album is described as the work of a "compulsive 13-year-old with no social life" that has now been "blended together with an adult hand."Such a description could certainly apply to All the Mirrors in the House as well, but it definitely feels quite a bit more believable this time around, as most of these pieces plausibly sound like the cooler excerpts culled from hours and hours of precocious experimentation with effects and field recording.Consequently, I do not at all envy Shelley Salant for being the one who had to listen to all of the indulgent juvenilia that must have surrounded the gems that ultimately wound up on this album.I am quite curious about what the original context was for some of the briefer pieces though.For example, the gorgeously quivering shimmer of "Chords" only lasts about thirty seconds, which makes me wonder what happened to the rest of the piece and how badly it must have derailed to leave behind such a brief snatch of beauty once the editing was complete.I feel similarly about the album's most improbable piece, "From The Night Tape," which feels both fully formed and years ahead of its time: a blown-out bass thrum and out-of-phase, backwards high hats propel a swirling miasma of shoegaze guitars for roughly thirty seconds and then it all vanishes abruptly.Obviously, the perplexing brevity of some of the album's strongest pieces creates some enticing mysteries, yet "Night Tape" goes one step further in making me wonder why such an immediately gratifying and cool aesthetic was not explored further or revisited: there are fourteen other songs on the album, yet none of them flirt with beats or grooves again.My guess is that "Night Tape" was either a newly assembled collage of multiple pieces or that it immediately predated the blossoming of His Name is Alive into a more song-based project.
For the most part, however, Return to Never is devoted to a series of atmospheric vignettes that bounce between dreamlike guitar soundscapes and hiss-soaked field recordings of crashing waves and heavy machinery.Both sides have their merits, of course, but the album's more melodic pieces are definitely the ones that play more to Defever's strengths.The best of the lot is the swooning "To Remember," which takes a woozily lovely, seesawing loop and ravages it with sputtering snarls of static.The shimmering and chiming drift of "Guitar Echo" is quite nice as well (albeit a bit unformed/improvisatory by comparison).There are also a handful of pieces that combine gently swaying soft-focus guitar drones with primitive sound collage, though the inherent hiss and murk of recording on a boombox tends to overpower the nuances of the latter.Still, some are quite good, such as the lovely and meditative title piece, which is slowly eclipsed by crashing waves that segue into the similarly fine "Lake Night."
"My Thoughts to Thee are Drawn" is another sublime treat, as languorous, hazy strings drift over something that sounds like a field recording of a passing train heard from underwater.The album also features a pair of unexpected and abrasive surprises at the end in the form of "White Snake" and "Gone."Neither is particularly substantial, sadly, yet both share an endearing "anything goes" sense of gleeful derangement.In the former, a rock frontman asks a cheering crowd how many of them are going to see Whitesnake that weekend before the piece plunges into a simmering maelstrom of buzzing, pulsing, and crackling noise.That cacophony then segues into a half-gnarled/half-anthemic piece that calls to mind a Jesus and Mary Chain gig in which all of the band’s amplifiers explode as soon as they launch into their first song, leaving only a muscular bass line in a squall of harsh feedback and howling noise.
My only real grievance with Return to Never is that "To Remember" is the only piece that feels like a strong, stand-alone "single."Obviously, that is somewhat unavoidable given the nature of this collection, but All the Mirrors in the House managed to pull off the illusion of being a substantial, deliberate, and thematically focused whole anyway.I imagine that is an incredibly hard trick to repeat though and Defever admittedly does a fine job editing these disparate sketches together into something that flows quite well.In fact, it could be argued that he actually did quite an amazing job of curating and editing these pieces, as this album has distinct "winter" feel that is very different from its more autumnal and sun-dappled predecessor.Maybe this album is every bit as good as Mirrors and I just do not like winter as much as I like fall.Or maybe I am projecting all of this.Anything is possible.Only Defever knows what his intentions were, of course, but Return to Never does feel like its own statement rather than a lesser version of Mirrors.Mike McGonigal is not far from the mark when he claims in the liner notes that all of these pieces would probably be considered "lost classics of modern minimalism" if they could be stretched and expanded to fill a whole side of vinyl.I only take issue with the "all" part of that statement, as I probably would have loved this album if two or three of its best pieces had been stretched out for 10 of 15 minutes each.Alas.Given all of my unanswered questions and unmet aspirations for this album, I am very curious to see what the next (and final) installment of this series will be like, as it will clarify once and for all whether or not Mirrors got the lion's share of teenage Defever's best moments or if he still has a mountain of great unreleased material that he is merely categorizing by mood.In any case, I enjoy Return to Never, but it is not quite on the same level as previous bombshell compilations like King of Sweet or Mirrors, as Defever has set a very high bar for how truly wonderful his vault scraping can be.
Horsey & Sleep Has His House come in the form of expanded DLP and 2CD editions, remastered from the original analogue and digital master tapes, including previously unreleased mixes and versions of classic songs.
David Tibet, writes of both albums:
"Born after the Death of my father, SLEEP HAS HIS HOUSE was a Threnody and a Requiem to him and a series of blinks at the passing of TREE and BIRD. Down by the River, Beside the Water, and none of these run ETERNAL, except the Immortal Bird, as high as sky. Now, in BED with House of Mythology, C93 are OverMoon to SLEEP again."
"My one Leg was in Tokyo, and my other Leg was in London, and I watched in Horror the Horsies rage by and I flew by and the Corn waved and the Trees bowed. This was BaddenedBlackenedTime, as I watched friends spin down and fall and fall—it is hard to keep riding when the structure is sliding. So that’s what I called HorseyTime, and I can still hear their fear. Now, in SADDLE with House of Mythology, C93 are OverMoon to RIDE again with this extended reissue."
Each 2xLP set is released as a limited edition in colored opaque vinyl, as well as a standard edition in a different-colored transparent vinyl, with both editions packaged in a single sleeve with a thicker 5mm spine. There is also an accompanying lyric-insert, as was the case when Sleep Has His House was originally released.
The 2xCD is packaged in a gatefold mini-LP sleeve with deluxe card sleeve, containing a lyric booklet.
To Kiss Earth Goodbye, Teleplasmiste's second full album, sees their sound-vision expanding and deepening, phantasmally and fantastically, opening onto thrilling new vistas of euphoria. The music is informed by a deep awareness and respect for prior esoteric traditions and counterculture currents, but forges a new and fertile synthesis very much its own.
The mesmerizing cover art is by spirit painter and medium Ethel Le Rossignol, whose 1933 book of spiritualist teachings lends its name to the album’s second track: "A Goodly Company." Another composition, "An Unexpected Visit," incorporates a previously unheard trance recording of occultist Alex Sanders (aka the UK's "King of the Witches"), made by Sanders himself in the 1980s.
ALTER presents a remastered edition of Cremation Lily's second album, on vinyl for the first time. Recorded whilst living in Hastings and originally released as a double cassette on his Strange Rules label in 2017, The Processes… forms a trilogy of albums in the CL canon that were influenced by the life and atmospheres within British coastal towns. Composed using a rudimentary set-up of synth, drum machine and two modified walkmans, CL draws upon a broad range of influences from the underground electronic music spectrum. Noise, tape music and ambient techno are all referenced and align to form a cohesive collection of tracks, flowing fluidly in sequence. Melancholic synth pads and deep kick drums intersect with crude field recordings and occasional bursts of feedback, evoking a claustrophobic uncertainty that feels more like being pulled under than carried above.
Features additional piano and violin by Theodore Cale Schafer.
Through A Vulnerable Occur is the result of a dialog between the photographer Sophie Gabrielle and the musician Seabuckthorn, initiated by IIKKI, between June 2019 and February 2020.
The complete project works in two physical imprints: a book and a disc (vinyl/cd)
it should be experienced in different manners : the book watched alone the disc listened to alone the book and the disc watched and listened to together. ___________________________________________________ Seabuckthorn is an alias used for the solo work of English acoustic guitarist & multi-instrumentalist Andy Cartwright since 2009.
He uses finger picking & bowing techniques combined with various open tunings to form a mixture of approaches, often with layered accompaniments. Generally the songs lean towards to the experimental genre, whilst on the edge of the ambient and folk.
Through A Vulnerable Occur is his 9th releases. ____________________________
Sophie Gabrielle is a Melbourne based contemporary photographer and curator working in both analog and digital mediums. Graduating from Photography Studies College, Melbourne in 2015, she has been one of the Lensculture Art Awards finalist in 2018, then Foam Talent winner in 2019. Her work has been exhibited in Australia, Malaysia, New York and the UK. Through her fine art practice, Sophie has channeled her interest in mythology, spiritualism and psychology to create poetic works that reflect our sense of self, place and the ambiguity of memory. Her works are an exploration into the world of the unseen, through optics, chemical interactions and the investigative processes used to photograph something invisible to the naked eye.
Five years on since their last joint outing in Stroboscopic Artefacts Monad series, Speedy J and Lucy team up again as Zeitgeber on Seventeen Zero Four, a new three-tracker descending deep into the filthy, tenebrous outskirts of club music. Torchbearers of techno as a life-affirming vehicle for human expression, as can be experienced through their multi-dimensional back catalogue of solo records and shared extended performances at some of the finest clubs and festivals around the globe, it's safe to say Jochem and Luca share a certain taste for taking things off the beaten path and into new perspectives. True to their bold approach towards production, "Seventeen Zero Four" proudly continues the pair's tradition of chiselled floor-focused shifts and divagations outside the ring-fenced domain of no-nonsense 4/4 mechanics initiated on their self-titled debut album in 2013.
Drawing first blood, the title-track "Seventeen Zero Four" submerges us in a state of amniotic solitude as hell’s all set to break loose around. Sonar bleeps drip and dissolve across invisible plateaux as thunder rumbles and roars in the distance, mirroring and shattering all linearity between the bars. "One Zero Five" then implements a further straightforward groove, sequenced hats and kicks carving out a more familiar scenario for the dancers to appropriate, whilst maintaining that oddball, slightly off kind of minimal, dubbed-out blur. Rounding off the package, "Twenty Zero Two" throws further jazz into the mix, letting its sine curves hula hoop into the upper layers of the outer-audio-space as a shrewdly engineered industrial swing drops the hammer for an epic last stretch.
Following 2018's acclaimed collaboration with Simon Fisher Turner, Care, Swedish sound artist Klara Lewis returns with "Ingrid", her third solo release for Editions Mego.
Ingrid is a departure from Lewis's previous solo outings, drifting from the eerie rhythmic variations of Too and Ett and moving assuredly into long-form experimentation. The piece retains those records' pulsing core and builds on a single cello loop that is steadily enveloped by a surge of distortion. It's almost like a voice or chant, shifting pointedly from a whisper into a scream before singing peacefully into the light.
At times, Ingrid reminds of William Basinski's looping melancholy or Steve Reich's controlled and innovative phase experiments, while at others, it recalls the chaotic Scandinavian physicality of black metal. Yet the entire composition is anchored in Klara Lewis's distinct emotional world. By dissolving familiar and beautiful strings in baths of noise, Lewis allows something violent but tender to grow in its place. In a society struck through by cynicism, Ingrid is a cathartic listening experience and a beacon of hope.
**The eighth installment in Geographic North's long-running Sketch for Winter series, which highlights compositions intentionally crafted for the colder season.**
Unsung heroes of the ambient underground, Aria Rostami and Daniel Blomquist have quietly created some of the most aurally alluring sounds released in the past five years. And although that time has solidified the duo's prowess of production and tenacity of texture, it has also shown its share of disruption and disorder. Having met and recorded all of their past works together in San Francisco, Sketch for Winter VIII:Floating Tone marks the first release made by the pair apart, with Rostami’s recent move to Brooklyn. But rather losing touch or stalling collaboration, the duo’s bond only grew stronger. Rather than perform live improvisations in the same room, Rostami and Blomquist repeatedly passed material back and forth to be altered over time - sometimes involving extensive alterations, and others barely none. The result brings an astoundingly varied mix of melody, texture, and movement.
"The Sloping Tower" seeps into focus in a haze of pristine clatter, celestial chords, and synthetic detritus. Distant disembodied voices appear through rippling waves of melody, leaving only a tapestry of tattered sound. "The Sleeping Floor" meanders with a nocturnal melody that lulls and placates with a deft, delicate touch. A-side closer "The Guessing Hand" cultivates a seething but subtle soirée of nonchalant noir, suggesting some solemn and forgotten subterranean piano bar.
"The Running Glass" wafts in a cloud of blissful warmth, backlit with dimmed glee and neon vibrancy. "The Sinking Tone" turns the focus back to our piano, heaving in a lush and all-consuming storm of shimmering texture and noise. "The Floating Table" closes things out with utter resolve, reflecting on the receding action and dabbling in some amorphous beauty. It's a powerful new chapter in Rostami and Blomquist's journey that solidifies their past and suggests endless opportunities ahead.
**The seventh installment in Geographic North’s long-running Sketch for Winter series, which highlights compositions intentionally crafted for the colder season.**
Louise Bock is the nom de guerre of Taralie Peterson, a venerable veteran of the American avant-garde. Whether solo or together with Ka Baird as Spires that in the Sunset Rise, Peterson has spent nearly two decades exploring the outermost limits of ecstatic, free jazz-influenced improvisation. The sonic range of Peterson's opulent oeuvre is matched only by the variety of instruments she employed, including but not limited to voice, saxophone, clarinet, guitar, banjo, lap harps, mbira, spike fiddle, and so on. Now, under the sobriquet Louise Bock and focusing solely on the cello, Peterson returns with Abyss: For Cello, a profound work of considered minimalism composed during and intended for the dead of winter.
Deciding to focus entirely on the cello, Peterson rid herself of any other self-imposed rules, analysis, and judgment that ultimately unlocked unforeseen revelations. Opener "Horologic" offers a sustained seethe of heaving, serrated textures. "Jute" offers a dynamic run of striated tones that slowly dissolve into a pool of peaceful resolve. "Actinic Ray" brings a kaleidoscopic blur that offsets heaving lurches of chordal sound with almost acrobatic flecks of melody. "Oolite," featuring Kendra Amalie on guitar, is an engrossingly unsettling piece of auditory hysteria, balancing a fascinating and fine line between allure and aversion. Closing track "Prithee" prolongs a potent interplay of deep, dense resonance and exquisitely elegant static.
Through these ruminations, Peterson's cello exposes immense beauty, sorrow, and joy that is altogether deeply hypnotic and discreetly haunting.
As a longtime NWW fan, the prospect of an ambitious, long-gestating triple LP release entitled Trippin’ Musik naturally filled me with glee and anticipation, as I envisioned another Soliloquy For Lilith-level classic. That enthusiasm remained undampened by the jabbering and splattering loop lunacy of Experimente II: Son of Trippin’ Music, as it seemed like that was intended as more of an outtake collection than a teasing glimpse of what was to come. As it turns out, however, it was very much the latter, as Trippin' Musik is often an obsessively loop-driven affair that basically expands upon Experimente II rather than transcending it. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but Trippin’ Musik is occasionally surprising in both its extremity and single-mindedness. This is a bizarre and challenging album even by Nurse With Wound standards.
A strong case could be made that the vinyl version of Trippin’ Musik is the logical culmination of several conceptual threads that have always driven Steven Stapleton's work, as it combines a lavish visual presentation with a playfully twisted and enigmatic "hall of mirrors" approach to the actual music.It is both an art object and a kind of surrealist game of chance: some songs are weirdly beautiful and immersive, while others are grinding, one-dimensional endurance tests.None of the songs or records are numbered or identified, so the album's sequence is dictated entirely by the choices of the listener (and those choices will unavoidably be blind ones at first).The newly issued CD version, on the other hand, offers a significantly altered and enhanced version of the Trippin’ Musik experience, as there are actual song titles and an ostensible sequence.I definitely appreciate the former and I also quite like the digital format, as using the "shuffle" feature enables probability to dictate the sequence rather than my own vague memories of which colored record I liked the most.I also like the clarity of the digital version, as some of the nuance and detail is definitely lost in the omnipresent crackle and hiss of my record player.The differences between the two formats go much deeper than that, however, as the CD version throws in roughly 35 minutes of new material and excises almost half of the material from the pink record (basically 15 minutes of rhythmic metallic scraping that I definitely do not miss).Consequently, the CD version is considerably more melodic and listenable than its harsher predecessor.
Notably, one of the new pieces (the 20-minute "Or") now opens the album, which dramatically transforms its overall feel and trajectory."Or" does contain some elements of the now-deleted piece from the pink record though, as it eventually locks into a similarly heaving and metallic pulse.However, it is considerably more compelling in other ways, as it undergoes significant transformation over the course of its journey, slowly building from simmering tension and hallucinatory feedback drift into a massive, churning mindfuck.It is followed by the brief and delightful "The" (plucked from the pink record), which unfolds as warm and bubbling reverie of shivering and shimmering synth-like loops.In classic Stapleton fashion, however, that pleasant interlude ends abruptly to make way for the album's most relentlessly and obsessively sanity-destroying piece ("Fall"), which mercilessly jabbers in a locked-groove style loop for almost 20 punishing minutes.It basically sounds like a room full of shuddering and puttering old engines, but with an uneasy "squirming" element thrown into the cacophony as well.Naturally, that piece ends in jarring and abrupt fashion as well, but it unexpectedly gives way to the surprisingly understated and composed-sounding "Of," which kind of resembles a German Expressionist Horror twist on jazz. It is a truly inspired and disturbing piece, as it feels like it was once something quite melodic but has since been slowed and stretched into a curdled and reverberant abstraction.It calls to mind an imaginary film noir in which the requisite seductive chanteuse is performing in a smoky nightclub, except that everyone and everything is slowly rotting and melting and all the sounds are smearing queasily together.
The second disk also opens with an entirely new piece ("The") and it is another interesting one, as it feels like a considerably less disturbing extension of the previous "Of."Instead of distending and smearing into a phantasmagoric hellscape, however, its foundation of lurching and stammering slow-motion percussion gradually blossoms into a meditative haze of buzzing string drones and gently pulsing, rippling guitar chords.At times, it almost sounds too sun-dappled and benignly psychedelic to be a Nurse With Wound piece, but it also sometimes sounds like a rehearsal tape of Barn Owl/Calexico-style desert rock being played at the wrong speed.The following "Eye" then makes a triumphant return to the "nightmare jazz" aesthetic of "Of," which is the aesthetic niche where Trippin’ Musik truly shines.In fact, "Eye" is easily one of the strongest pieces on the album, unfolding as a spacious and heady swirl of flickering, time-stretched female voices and flanged metallic swells.It evokes the sensation of being lured into a hallucinatory forest of swaying metal trees by some kind of half-malevolent/half-seductive forest nymph, which is a stylistic niche that certainly warrants further exploration.
The remaining two songs seem to the ones from the green vinyl, albeit in remixed and altered form.Both are among the finest pieces on the album, though they take very different directions.For example, "OF" essentially unfolds like a complex and multilayered 20-minute loop, but it is a remarkably hypnotic and absorbing one, as snatches of vocals warble and flutter inside a mechanized, churning pulse that is slightly out of phase.The closing "Sound," on the other hand, actually sounds like the work of a tight, focused, and unexpectedly melodic band.It is quite a lovely piece and is all the more striking for how nuanced, deftly arranged, and purposeful it feels, as it has an actual groove and a lazily burbling and shifting melodic figure.More importantly, it is allowed to run its entire course without being pulled apart, mangled, and dragged into darker, uglier territory.
I would be curious to know what led Stapleton to make the vinyl and CD versions of this album so different, as it genuinely seems like the latter is a punched-up and improved release rather than just the same album with added material thrown in.When I first listened to the vinyl edition, I actually found myself somewhat mystified that this album had taken so long to make, as the pink record just seemed like two abrasive loops stretched out for 20 minutes each. Given Andrew Liles' extreme work ethic, that seems like something that could have been knocked off in a single afternoon.Now that the whole album has been rearranged, enhanced, and re-edited, however, Trippin’ Musik feels like a considerably more coherent and focused statement.In fact, I think it could have been one of NWW's stronger albums if it had been edited even more aggressively than it was, though I imagine the allure of releasing an attention-grabbing triple LP epic was impossible to resist.I certainly was not immune to the appeal of that approach myself and can find plenty to like about both versions of the album.However, Trippin’ Musik could have easily been an album that I absolutely loved if it had been paired down to just "Of," "Eye," and "OF" (with "Sound" possibly throw in as a chaser).That said, I am about forty years too late if I want to convince Steven Stapleton of the (financially ruinous) merits of being much more selective in what he releases.Embracing imperfection and indulgence is inherently part of being a life-long Nurse With Wound fan, as the occasional rewards are usually worth it.They certainly are in this case, as Trippin’ Musik fitfully shows that Steven Stapleton and his collaborators are just as capable as ever at conjuring up distinctive and radical sound art unlike that of anyone else.
Originally composed by Maggi Payne between 1984-1987 for the performance group Technological Feets. Formed by video artist Ed Tennenbaum in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1981, the group combines dance, live video processing and music.
Ahh-Ahh was first released in 2012 on Root Strata. Composed on an Apple II computer & various early sampling devices, Payne's compositions are a vibrant response to the call from the moving body. Populated with buoyant pulses, graceful analogue swells, dense fog-like drones and cascading rhythms that shift in space, Ahh-Ahh is a vital document of not only these early collaborations, but of computer based music as well. She studied with many greats in the field, including Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley & David Berhman.
Fully immersive electronic music by US composer Maggi Payne, inspired by the arctic winds. Maggi Payne's sound worlds invite the listeners to enter the sound and be carried with it, experiencing it from the inside out in intimate detail. The sounds are almost tactile and visible.
The music is based on location recordings, with each sound carefully selected for its potential—its slow unfolding revealing delicate intricacies—and its inherent spatialization architecting and sculpting the aural space where multiple perspectives and trajectories coexist. With good speakers, some space in your schedule, and a mind-body continuum willing to resonate with Payne’s electroacoustic journey, but then it will take you to places that other music can’t reach.
From the sounds of dry ice, space transmissions, BART trains, and poor plumbing she immerses the listener in a world strangely unfamiliar. Maggi Payne is a composer, video artist, recording engineer, photographer, and flutist and is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music and a faculty member at Mills College, in the San Francisco Bay Area.