Being thankful for an earful.
Brand new music by Marie Davidson, Niecy Blues (feat. Joy Guidry), CEL, Marisa Anderson and Luke Schneider, Stina Stjern, Carmen Villain, Murcof, A Lily, and Far Golden Pavilions, with music from the vaults by Tomaga, Ozzobia, Jan Jelinek.
Sushi photo by Lindsay.
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Johannes Vester and Ludwig Papenburg, along with with Ludwig's brotherUlrich, formed the group Sand, whose sole album (1974's Golem) is aKrautrock classic, famous for its haunting sparseness as well as the"Artifical Head" stereo mixing method pioneered by producer KlausSchulze.
The album was not successful, and though today amint-condition original pressing can run into the thousands of dollarsat auction, at the time its failure meant that there would be no secondalbum for Sand, and the group disbanded. Johannes and Ludwig remainedfriends, however, and in 1980, they formed the cold-wave electro groupAlu, who in their four-year lifespan released a single, a pair of LPsand a few cassettes. Autismenschen represents an additionalalbum that was recorded in 1981 but was never released until now. I'vestruggled to find the right words to describe Alu, as I have very mixedfeelings about the project. I am a great fan of Vester and Papenburg'swork as Sand, which I first discovered (as I suspect many others did)when it was expanded and reissued on CD by Steven Stapleton and DavidTibet, who released the handsomely packaged Ultrasonic Seraphimon their United Durtro label in 1996. It should be noted that asidefrom some very labored comparisons that David Tibet attempts to drawbetween Sand and Alu in his liner notes for Autismenschen,there is absolutely no similarity between these two projects. Sand'sGolem is spacious and surreal, a visionary folk album which carved outa unique hallucinatory space that has never been repeated before orsince. Alu is very typical of the cold-wave electro sound, typified bymetronomic rhythms, jagged synths, chugging sequencers and barkedvocals awash with paranoia, claustrophobia and technological angst.It's not that Alu are in any way incompetent, but whereas their work asSand was notable for its uniqueness in the Krautrock canon, the work ofAlu is all but indistinguishable from its German new-wave and post-punkcontemporaries. The whole project reeks of a very deliberate bandwagonjump, as evidenced by comparing band photos in the booklet for the Sandand Alu reissues. When they were in Sand, Vester and Papenburg sportedbeards and long hair, and photographed themselves looking wide-eyed andbeatific, heads full of hash and acid, on park benches and inplaygrounds. When they made the transition to Alu, suddenly the beardsand manes were gone, and instead they are photographed in the typicalTuxedomoon uniform of suit and black tie, surrounded by banks ofelectronic gadgets, making tense, worried facial expressions. The lookseems contrived, and so does the music, unfortunately. This is not tosay that there is not much about Alu that will please those who adorethis period of music, but there is nothing about Alu specifically thattakes the music beyond the level of a mildly interesting footnote inthe history of this period. The overlapping chirps, squelches andstaccato rhythms do create a fair amount of intrigue on a track like"Sie Kriegt Alles Was Sie Will," but I can't help but feel but feelthat Alu represents a rather cynical attempt by two talented musiciansto appeal to a younger generation, and it rubs me the wrong way. In thewords of James Murphy of LCD Soundsytem: "I hear you're buying asynthesizer and an arpeggiator and throwing your computer out thewindow because you want to make something real/I hear that you and yourband have sold your guitars and bought turntables/I hear that you andyour band have sold your turntables and bought guitars."
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I wish there was a nicer way to say this, but Aidan Baker's newestrelease just isn't very good. It's disappointing because I trulyenjoyed a live set I caught of his in Toronto last year, and his recordwith Mnemosyne as part of last year's Piehead series was pretty solid.Here Baker is tripped up by all of the pitfalls that come from makingsad, psych-tinged guitar tunes. The vocals throughout are the kind ofmonotonous abstract poetry droning that might seem deep in a highschool-notebook kind of way, but fail to be as evocative as they shouldbe. Words like these just blur into the background and make the wholeact of singing superfluous to the music the words are riding on.Unfortunately, even the instrumental passages here don't spark withmuch imagination. Arrangements of drums, bass, and guitar get muddyquickly. While the lo-fi aesthetic can be charming, here it just feelslike some of the instruments are poorly recorded and mixed. When themix includes string tembres, the arrangement just seems too predictableand maudlin to maintain any interest. Baker has infused the tracks witha pervasive backdrop of fuzz and noise and loops that might soundinteresting on their own, but just tend to muck up the relatively cleanand straight-forward melodies. Drums are occassionally sloppy, the bassseems oversaturated, and Baker's slippery post-something guitar playingwanders off a little closer to Pink Floyd territory than Spacemen 3territory for my liking. The trouble here is that I know Baker can dosomething better and richer than this because I've heard it, so witheach successive listen I try to find the moments that I like and I keepcoming up short. By the end of "Flowerskin," a joyless dirge ofnoodling with lines like "I trample flowers into the pores of yourskin / and you slowly change colour and I love you," I'm crossing myfingers for next time.
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This is the new site for Brainwashed.com. There's a lot of new things here. Now, people can submit news, reviews, links, and other things. We've got a forum and a photo gallery for people to contribute to. Reviews will be posted when they're available as well as site news and offsite news. Sign up for an account if you want to contribute to the site. Registration is quick and painless. If you're interested in volunteering, we REALLY need the help. Read more for that!
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I only had to read a few of the song titles from Icelandicsinger-songwriter Blindfold to know I was in for music that would putme to sleep.
Titles like “Sleepless Nights,” “Daze,” and “Nightfall”were dead giveaways to songs that would feature slow moving tempos,ambient electronic structure, and echoed guitar, all swirling into ahazy paste of long winters and short days. After a period of time withBlindfold, I can say my original assessment wasn’t far off. I’velistened to Blindfold’s eponymous debut at least six times in two days,each time remembering less and less of what I’ve heard. And that’s thebasic problem plaguing Blindfold here - nothing stands out. A typicaltrack here will start out with an ambient sound-scape, followed by somemelodic figure played through an echo pedal. On a few of the songs,there are vocals, which makes things slightly more interesting. “Daze”features a genuinely interesting guitar riff, plodding drums, and thelow, nearly mumbled vocals of Birgir Hilmarsson. Blindfold seems tomake the mistake of placing to much emphasis on texture rather thendynamics. While texture is good, it makes for pretty unremarkablesound-scapes here. There aren’t many flat out bad moments on Blindfold,but at the same time it remains a fairly unremarkable experience. Ihope that in the future, Hilmarsson can take the rough ideas sketchedhere and perhaps apply them to a larger, more encompassing canvas.Until then he seems content to just steal a few ideas from hispost-rock heroes and gently lull me to sleep.
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Stan Ridgway's solo albums have been getting more relaxed over the years. Whereas his early post-Wall Of Voodoowork sounded heavily structured and painstakingly produced, his recentwork has become looser...the edges are getting rougher, his lyrics andmusic are getting both darker AND sillier (often during the samesong).samples:
Opening their latest album with "Hot Stenographer" communicates a clear message: this Seattle quartet is bent on blowing up stereo speakers and washing their musical style with a new approach.
Maybe Kinski does rely on the loud/soft dynamic quite a lot in their compositions and, frankly, their last album seemed too bent on switching between churning, piston-driven rock and more electronic affairs that simply hummed and drifted away within the record. It was a distracting feature on an otherwise fine album; all that's changed with Alpine Static. The blasted, wailing guitars and metronomic drum performances are still present, but the compositions have more depth to them. Tracks like "The Party Which You Know Will Be Heavy" and "Passed Out On Your Lawn" pass between thumping, heavy sections and subdued portions that are equally exotic and familiar. The use of atmospheric movements within some of the pieces works much better than previously due to the inclusion of far more organic sounds. When the strings freak out and begin to convulse like a dying animal there's no sense of forced drama or pause, the album flows together as one continuous piece of music. It's pretty amazing feat considering the range of sounds to be found and the fact that a couple of these tracks have been floating around for a little while now in one form or another. Both "Hiding Drugs in the Temple (Part 2)" and "Passed Out On Your Lawn" have appeared before in some form or another and with different names. Also refreshing is the dynamic of darker and lighter songs on Alpine Static. My experience with Kinski is that they tend to pick a mood and stick to it, but between different songs and, sometimes, within a given song Kinski switch up the atmosphere and spirit easily and seamlessly. There's no shortage of very serious rocking, but the best parts of the album are when they manage to build a real tension and then release it perfectly with a wave of drumming fury and infinitely stretched guitar tones that each something like pure noise feedback. They control it just enough to give it a melodic edge that makes it captivating. Alpine Static is a huge improvement on their past albums, mainly because I want to listen to the entire record instead of skipping around and looking for the aggressive, propulsive songs on the album and leaving the rest to sit as filler. Every portion of the album is used more economically and satisfyingly, making it a more enjoyable listen and a more well-rounded piece of music all the way around.
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Autonomous Addicts seems set up in every way to be yet anotherdisposable compilation of computer dance music that pads discographies,but it winds up being something much more interesting and essential.
The Designed Disorder
Everything about the introductory release from The Designed Disorder isset up to annoy me. The title makes no sense and seems to have norelation to the music; the artwork is nice but predictably absent ofpersonality; there's a hidden track listed on the track listing (thusmaking any effor to hide it moot;) and the whole thing looks and feelslike a release set up for marketing a new label rather than jumpingright in with vital new material. All of this should annoy me, but somehow the music contained on Autonomous Addictsmanages to elevate beyond any of those petty grievances. It is, afterall, the music that really matters here, and in that department thisnew label is showing promise. Collected on the disc are some of thenoteable and familiar names from the US "dance music that no oneactually dances to" scene. Richard Devine, Eight Frozen Modules,L'usine, and Twerk give the record some cachet and will likely servethe purpose for which the disc was produced: namely introducing peopleto new works by lesser-known artists like Anon, RD, and Edit. All ofthe artists working here pull from a similar kind of post-urban,post-digital milieu which gives the record a cohesive tone, even if itmeans that individual efforts sometimes blur together. The stark, crispbeats from Deru and Eight Frozen Modules are mostly interchangeablewith those from Tipper and Anon, but they are all good. The nice thingis that everything on the record is clean and well-produced and finelydetailed. When the bass drops, it's synthetic but satisfying, and whenthe beats get schizophrenic, they never outpace the songs they areserving. Hologram turns in the record's best and most melodic track,demonstrating in the process that composition counts for as much if notmore than sound design, even on a record like this one. RichardDevine's track is nice and uncharacteristically subdued, but his"hidden track" is an acid throwaway from a decade ago that doesn't addanything more than novelty. Logreybeam's track is a real find here too.The song's sampled drum sounds replace the predominantly syntheticdrums from the previous tracks to help mix things up a bit. Now ifpeople could just learn to write a melody without an FM synth tine...
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