Plenty of new music to be had this week from Laetitia Sadier and Storefront Church, Six Organs of Admittance, Able Noise, Yui Onodera, SML, Clinic Stars, Austyn Wohlers, Build Buildings, Zelienople, and Lea Thomas, plus some older tunes by Farah, Guy Blakeslee, Jessica Bailiff, and Richard H. Kirk.
Lake in Girdwood, Alaska by Johnny.
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Considering the lyrics on the No Religion7", I was surprised by some of the music and the packaging on thelatest full-length from Ireland's most whimsical gypsy. The musicsounds and feels entirely religious through the first four tracks and,to a great degree, recalls the gothic architecture and monolithic scopeof the more astounding and awe-inspiring cathedrals of the world. Pieros Thealbum was, in part, recorded live in St. Augustine Church, Galway andthe cover art reflects the religious content, not just with the angelon the cover, but in the slip the package is housed in. It immediatelyreminded me of many of the Virgin Mary shrines I've seen and it made mewonder: what is Aranos up to? The first four tracks have all thebeautiful echo and warmth a cathedral can possibly provide, but for themost part these songs are composed of drums, bass, organs, and violinplayed at very subdued levels. When "Yevka Sings" hits, it's quite ashock because the choral chanting is so utterly sublime and powerfulabove the instrumentation that its emotional and physical impact canonly be compared to being smacked gently by a massive diesel engine.The music caught me so off guard that I felt my stomach drop and Iimmediately began the song over just so I could prepare myself for itand feel the vocal bliss about to come. I'm not sure if this quartet ofreligiously soaked music is supposed to share or counterpoint anyfeelings raised by No Religion (though "Breath of Unknowing" comes awfully close to sharing a name with the mystical text The Could of Unknowing),but what is obvious is that Aranos is capable of bringing out the moreomni benevolent emotions tied with good mystical or "religious" music.The final six tracks employ varied methods of making music to create acarnival-like atmosphere, a whirlwind of musical ideas that, as far asI can tell, share little to no relation with the first part of thealbum. The atmosphere is almost always soft and careful, as though itwere made to procure images of prowlers or ghosts shifting through thetrees and tall grass at night, but in other places Aranos comes rightout of hiding to paint slightly more vivid sound pictures housed inspastic movements and rock n' roll attitude. "Crab Life" sounds exactlylike its title; small sounds jumping and skipping about, recalling theshuffled steps of crab on the ocean floor. "Silver Goat," on the otherhand, is fronted by Aranos' unmistakable and piercing voice, the musica galloping mix of staccato violins and racing rhythms propelled by afinal, violent movement. This is perhaps Aranos' most varied album, butalso one of his most consistently enjoyable. Other albums by him mayonly be appropriate for certain moods, but I keep coming back to thisalbum and finding that it adheres to almost any of my capriciouslistening needs.
The last few solo albums by Edward Ka-Spel have clearly shown that theLegendary Pink Dots' cofounder and frontman isn't afraid to steer hismusic in new and ever more idiosyncratic directions, but O Darkness! O Darkness!takes things several steps further out. Beta-Lactam Ring This handsomely packaged slabof vinyl contains nearly 40 minutes of enticingly obscure, cinematicear candy, and is as experimental an album as EKS has ever recorded,with the possible exception of Textures of Illumina.Simultaneously harking back to the earliest of early LPD and EKScassette experiments, and looking forward towards new and tantalizinglyesoteric future trajectories, this LP moves through a sequence ofnightmarish sound dramas with a puzzling but eerily familiardream-logic that sounds like the product of pure Surrealist automatism.The album's black-and-white, Max Ernst-style sleeve graphic depicts acraggy tree populated with unblinking human eyes instead of leaves,with three eye-shaped diecuts revealing three bluegreen eyes peekingout from the inner sleeve. Just as in symbolist paintings, the ocularimagery here seem to instruct the listener to look within, and to thinkof the sounds within as primarily visual rather than strictly auralphenomena. Everywhere on O Darkness, EKS seems to be takingupon himself the misery of the world, evoking current events in hismorbid, pessimistic opening monologue: "When the bell tolls at twelve,my thoughts will go towards those who were simply at the wrong place atthe wrong time. I will concentrate, focus, mourn in my own peculiarway. And I honestly think I can keep it up." With this simultaneouslyfunny and depressing soliloquy, EKS kicks off the record's first side("The Rim of the Pit"), which introduces a vivid urban soundscapebustling with noisy streetcars, the distant tinkling of soft piano jazzfrom an open apartment window, hurried footsteps accompanied by aseries of booming bass throbs that seem to prophesy a vague and gloomyfuture full of dread and anxiety. It's hard to tell if ole Ed hasgathered these sounds from period films or radio broadcasts or if theseare field recordings he has gathered and spliced together; it's equallydifficult to discern if the incidental, maudlin Hollywood soundtrackmusic heard throughout the album is sampled or created in the studio byEKS and Silverman. Either way, it's a real head-trip, palpably real andhauntingly nostalgic, vintage sounds that Boards of Canada would givetheir two left testicles to be able to make. One of the movementsinvolves a fractured, programmed beat assembled from cut-up femalevoices, resonant church bells ringing, a lonesome foghorn, afascinatingly unorthodox use of sequencers that recalls Nurse WithWound's "Yagga Blues," among other things. EKS continues his paranoidinterior monologues over a series of shrill, jarring car alarm bleats:"I was stuck between the 15th and 16th floors when it happened. Itsounded bad out there. Whatever the damn thing was it behavedmethodically. One room at a time." The last time I'd heard such aterrifying horror story masquerading as experimental music was Current93 and Thomas Ligotti's I Have a Special Plan For This World.Side two ("Wings Trapped in Amber") involves a further descent into themaelstrom, with anonymous passengers boarding a train to who knowswhere, varispeed bouncing ball rhythms juxtaposed with ocean sounds,laughing children, a street musician and encroaching drones that giveAlan Splet's subterranean Eraserhead sound environments a runfor their money. Unexpectedly out of the din comes a clattery,ramshackle group tribal improvisation placed amidst a jungle full ofsquawking birds. By the end of this tangibly real dream-space, it tookme some time to touch down and reconnect with my "real" time and place.O Darkness! O Darkness! is a conduit into EKS' nightmares, which depending on your sensibilities, could be either a gift or a curse.
Unlike most of the "digital" dub that continues to flood the market,the latest release from T. Raumschmiere's eclectic (read: incrediblyspotty) Shitkatapult imprint is actually surprising with its apparentlysincere recognition of the real, although commonly overlooked,historical connection between dub reggae and techno. Shitkatapult With anoverwhelming anglo-dominance in the techno scene, it is perhaps all-tooeasy to be ignorant or forget that even the genre's most obvious rootsare black in origin and, I assume, Lars Fenin is hoping to somewhatrectify that injustice. Though not at the level of Rhythm & Sound'snear-impeccable, devotional aesthetic, Fenin's debut album evokes arespect for this heritage and lineage with an accessible aural lessonwhere the barriers between the two genres are regularly crossed withouthesitation or explanation. Deep dancy cuts like "Aware" and the bassheavy "Konstrukt" may seem like familiar territory (or even old hat) toinformed clubgoers and home listeners who have embraced these types ofsounds, but they will likely be impressed by the heavier portions ofmore traditional reggae thrust into the mix on the opening title track,moreso particularly with its unabashed reverence to the stickiest ofthe icky. Here, vocalist Gorbi, who contributes his rootsyWailers-inspired voice to the album's finest tracks, adds a truly vitaledge to Fenin's work that sets it apart from many of his peers."Thrills," the album's lead single, bounces with a bumping downtempobeat, springy synth bass, and just enough vocal to make this apotential breakout summer jam. In that same vein, "No C.I.A." recallsthe political and social passion of the finest Jamaican toasters, withGorbi riffing fantastically over Fenin's sparse three note melody andclicky percussion. The fusion of the genre's fits together rather wellon the dub-tech groover "None Of Them," where Gorbi drops in on thefirst hard 4/4 kick and rarely ceases for most of its duration. Groundedcloses out with the subtler shuffling rhythm of "South," where thestudio aceticism of masters like King Tubby and Lee Perry is paidwell-deserved homage, making for a fiiting end to this reverent debutfrom a producer I hope to hear much more from in the future.
With Black Sheep Boy,Okkervil River offer their first consistently brilliant albumresounding with themes and cascading with conceits. Neutral Milk Hotelseem to be an oft-repeated and more often misapplied referencepresently, but the structure of Okkervil's latest album unmistakablymimics In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Jagjaguwar This is not to say thatit is a facsimile. Rather, it is a flirtation with the structures andtropes put forth by Jeff Mangum and company. Consider the evidence: thequiescent initial invocations of each band's protagonist (for NMH, theTwo-Headed Boy; for Okkervil, the Black Sheep Boy) occur in the firstsong and then roar grandiosely into attention-grabbing second songs.The protagonists both rear their (abhorrent) heads throughout the songson their respective albums, causing listeners to shudder and rejoice atthe same time. Songs are all similarly connected by common threads andthemes, be they musical or lyrical. The communion between NMH andOkkervil goes beyond simply the brash employment of brass instrumentsin certain songs, such as in the waltz-like "A King and a Queen." Songson both albums gracefully flow into one another, perhaps takingOkkervil's aquatic moniker too literally on one side. Okkervil River'smeditation for this album is the Black Sheep Boy's (it's unclearwhether it is a proper name and should be capitalized, or rather anarchetype and thus lower-case; excuse my presumption but I am goingwith the proper name and upper-case solution) modern-day ostracism andrejection. He seems to be some modern hybrid of the ancient figures ofAnubis, Dionysus, and the Cretan Minotaur. If the artwork on the albumis any indication, he is a grotesque abomination yet is as undeniablyfascinating as a savage automobile accident. The album begins with theeponymous "Black Sheep Boy," a proper intro of one minute and eighteenseconds which elegiacally introduces the main character with a lightcollection of guitars, strings, keyboards, and brushed percussion. Theintro seamlessly elides into the first real track, the name of whichfittingly is "For Real." Even at a first cursory listen, the song willtransfix you. It enters methodically with repetitive and monotonepluckings only to have the guitars and drums crash in unexpectedly andunannounced without breaking stride. Will Sheff's voice is occasionallystrained to its upper reaches, on the precipice of cracking for themore sonorous parts of the song. The effect is startling without beinggrating or abrasive. By the end of the song, Sheff's vocals areshattering delicately all over the place and the raw energy released bythis is pleasing and welcome. The song's energy then decays into thedulcet lethargy of "In a Radio Song" which meditates wistfully for overfive minutes. It is the gentle eddies of placid waters to the class 5rapids of "For Real." Lyrically, Okkervil River are formidablestorytellers. Their narratives sing of imperfect lives, unrequitedloves, and the darkness of forced hermitage. The ponderous "A Stone"decries the injustice of a girl who chooses to love the callous andunadoring rather than the dedicated and true. Towards the end, there isa remarkable moment when the instruments drop into the background andthe vocals emerge to narrate this allegorical and modernized fairy taleabout stones and queens and flowers. Sheff starts to insert more andmore syllables into each line (more than would normally be seemly) inorder to economize and fit the story into just one or two verses. Theresult is a two-tiered narrative which weaves itself elegantly into thestructure of the song's large ensemble/instrumentation. Like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,there is a satisfying alternation of rockers with ballads. Energy isexpended and recouped throughout the album and requires intercedingsongs of quietude to buffer the harsher numbers. "So Come Back, I amWaiting," the penultimate song, captures both of these loud and softextremes in its pure majesty and does a fine job of condensing andsummarizing the themes from the album. In past efforts, Okkervil Riverhave hit on a mixture of successes and, well, non-successes on theiralbums. Black Sheep Boy is the full realization of the band'ssuccess into a musical suite of eleven well-formed songs, bearing noneof the ugly horns or murderous tendencies of the album's titlecharacter.
Esmerine are an outfit for the end of the world: their songs arepowerful meditations on loss, pain, and dread. At their core are BeckieFoon (A Silver Mt. Zion) and Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You Black Emperor!and Set Fire to Flames). Their second album, Aurora,is the black smoke that arises from the rubble. Here, bleak orchestralmovements slowly build to breathtaking conclusions, such as on theopener "Quelques Mots Pleins D'Ombre," where pulsating cellos gatherforce and speed, culminating in a few brief moments of controlled furyon top of a barrage of drums, bass, and piano. madrona records The nearly 17 minute"Histories Repeating as One Thousand Hearts Mend" marches along slowlyto a steady swell of hubcaps, marimba, and cello. "Why She SwallowsBullets and Stones" is a beautiful piano piece that breaks up the darkovertones of the previous three pieces and provides much neededbreathing room from the often dark and melancholic tone that aboundshere. This is perhaps Esmerine's greatest liability. While they aremasterful in their ability to evoke a nefarious atmosphere from theirsongs, all the melancholy and anxiety can become a little suffocating,but I give credit where credit is due. Esmerine are capable of inducinga range of clear, striking images: barren landscapes, war-torn cities,and quiet desperation. As the final bent notes on "Le Rire de L'Ange"fade away, I can almost see the mushroom cloud from my bedroom window.
Perhaps overwork has made Mathieu's Macintosh unhappy. He is consciousof the computer's painting-out on this release more than ever, The Sad Macbecoming a symbol of the plateau at which digital reconstruction has tobe re-suggested. Headz This isn't the first time Mathieu has taken up therecordings of others for his own revision, but it feels now like atotal revisioning, something with legs. What might seem like a fairlystraight-up digital drone recording up front reveals later to be acavernous amalgam of disparate sources and foreign intents feeding twosoftwares' insatiable and somehow melancholy blanket constructions bydeep and luscious weaves of histrionic and celestial noise. Theartist's own intent is either invisible or secondary to a giganticprimary. After a long list of Matheiu's sound-sourcing "collaborators"on the back of another beautiful Headz package job, each track featuresthe artist's poetic descriptions and instruments used. Three of thelonger tracks are Mathieu's commissioned sound portion for a German daVinci exhibit. Another is a dance piece soundtrack featuring violadrones run through "the Death Chimes of a Macintosh Classic IIcomputer." The digitally homogenized strains of a classical vocalquartet, stewing with hammered dulcimer, harpsichord, and Handel sonatafragments precedes a fascinating track where the sounds of Mathieu'sdaughter "cooking sticks-and-stones soup" combine with Derek Holzer'sStarfield Recordings for a Latvian Spacelab project. On "Smile,"Mathieu's pump organ, "playing a motor's endless drone" finds the sadpassing of time in an Italian waiter reciting Luigi Pulci. Wheneverything is not a quaking, sumptuous mess of drone, the artist backsup to let the machine assert more than its own making. Track one,"Anakrousis," styled as an ancient Greek overture, is all log-insquelches and the humming click of start-up. Later appeals to the AppleIIe and a primitive digitizing of a 1909 phonograph recording point toMathieu's interest in engaging his computer with a huge history ofrecorded and un-recorded sound-making. The great, droning melancholyalive in all of these tracks takes the artist's gesture far from commonironic or self-referential goals. His title exploits the mystery ofnow-commonplace items and methods being filtered through time andassigned personality, while at the same time introducingnon-intellectual music perfect for sleepy drift-off. My best comparisonis the work of Akira Rabelais (whose software Mathieu uses), whose Benediction, Draw was a favorite laptop release in past years as The Sad Mac could be this year.
Kemialliset Ystavat is the most consistently rewarding artist currentlygrouped under the "Finnish Underground" free-folk banner. KemiallisetYstavat ("Chemical Friends") is primarily the work of Jan Anderzen, whoshares with his fellow compatriots (Es, Avarus and Islaja, amongothers) a taste for loose, deconstructed acid folk, turning deceptivelysimple acoustic arrangements into fractured, kaleidescopic miniaturesymphonies that are richly evocative of the psychic geography ofFinland's subarctic forests. Beta-Lactam Ring Kellari Juniversumiwas originally issued on a Fonal CD back in 1999, but in light of theFinnish scene's newfound notoriety, it has been re-released in a vinylcollector's edition on Beta-Lactam Ring Records, who also include abonus 7" Saija with every mailorder purchase. Recently, on efforts such as Alkuharka,almost as a reaction to being pidgeonholed by the "freak-folk" happymusic press, Anderzen has increased the presence of samples andelectronics in the music. On Kellari, however, any electronicelements are purely analog, and are hidden so as to be almost entirelyunnoticeable. This lends the album an organic, improvisatory looseness,the multilayered composting of amateurishly played percussion, strings,horns, toy piano, ghostly vocal choruses and undercurrents ofatmospheric drone. Some of the songs sound as if they were recorded inand among Finland's flora and fauna, as the sounds of birds chirpingand twigs snapping can clearly be heard. It is tempting to file awayKY's music as light, pastoral, hippie fare, but deep listening evokesmany a chill wind, Anderzen revealing dark, anxious atmospheresrecalling Comus' First Utterance or the Incredible String Band's Be Gladsoundtrack. Perhaps it is merely the suggestive power of themandala-like folk-art sleeve, but the music also seems to operate onthe level of pagan invocation, as the tribalistic, ritualized groupimprovisations seem to play upon a hidden timbre of forest magic.Because of the multiple-tracking method that Anderzen applies torecording, the various instrumental elements of each song oftenthreaten to derail from each other and create a senseless cacophony,but there is a consistent method to the madness. The more you listen toKellari Juniversumi, the more complex it seems, the more thedisparate elements align and realign into coherent compositionalpatterns that may be intentional, or a product of synchronicity, itdoesn't matter which. Songs generally don't last longer than a fewminutes, as Anderzen prefers to build up his songs vertically, ratherthan horizontally. The music on the bonus 7" is a more recentincarnation of KY, with a decidedly noisier, lower-fidelity atmospheremarked by an almost accidental convocation of percussive elements,metallic scrapes and tortured samples. The sleeve for the bonus singleshows a patchwork of Spare-like sigils, with the back cover aphotography of a man's bare back covered with red welts perfectlyaligned to form the Qabalistic tree of life. This willful esotericismis somewhat pricklier and less beguiling than Kellari Juniversumi, but no less fascinating. - Jonathan Dean
Oneida's gaze is fixed firmly on the 1970s, but rather then being allawash in overblown solos and misguided mythology, theirs is anall-encompassing view, surveying both the well known and the obscure."Lavender," with its insistent kick-drum and anthemic guitar heroics,is Oneida's call to arms with Kid Millions spouting off nonsense aboutlavender on winter days and braiding pubic hairs. Jagjaguwar Elsewhere, the slowrumbling of "Spirits," "The Heavenly Choir," and "The Beginning isNigh" engulf the listener gradually, ebbing and flowing on theiratmospheric guitar playing and throbbing percussion. While Oneida spenda good deal of time exploring the bong-water stained terrain ofpsychedelic hard rock on The Wedding,they devote just as much time to genteel folk on songs like "Know" and"Run Through My Hair," the latter of which features delicate fingerpicking interspersed with stabs of acid-drenched electric guitar.Elsewhere, songs like "Charlemagne" and "You're Drifting" sound likeearly slices of electronic pop. That Oneida are often lumped aspsych-rock fetishists is a shame, as The Wedding proves thatalthough they make good use of the sounds and ideas of this style, itis hardly a crutch. In fact, when they want to, Oneida are just ascapable of writing a concise pop song as a lengthy stoner anthem, suchas on "High Life," the best synth-pop song I've heard in a long time. Afew songs here sound like stylistic reaches, most notably "Leaves," butin truth it is hard to fault Oneida, as The Wedding is consistently excellent.
The Friday Group play meta-country and western music, mapping out thosedusty, hard-bitten spaces in the American West that only persist in theabstract world of forms. Theirs is an existential sound awash withharsh, unrelenting sunlight and parched desert aridness. Beta-Lactam Ring
They are thepale riders and frontier opportunists of a vast dream of untamedexpanses, deserted gold rush towns that coughed their last dying breathyears ago, unincorporated areas of land not under the jurisdiction ofany government, and thus subject to the brutal justice of itinerantlawmen and unscrupulous gangs. This sort of thing shouldn't surpriseanyone familiar with Tom Carter from his long-time membership in Texasunderground mainstays Charalambides, long reliable purveyors of aparticularly unique evocation of revenant country and blues spirits,but Friday Group takes things to a new level of purity, intensity andhypnotic perfection. The only possible reference points for thisfantastic debut would be Bruce Langhorne's psychedelic soundtrack forPeter Fonda's minimalist B-Western The Hired Hand, Neil Young's Dead Mansoundtrack, or Zoviet France's "Something Spooked the Horses." TomCarter and a group of improvisers that also includes Shawn McMillan,B.C. Smith and Blake Carlisle hit a chord that is long and lonesome,and succeed in making one of the most richly suggestive works ofpost-Americana that I've yet heard from the extended Wholly Otherfamily. The LP is packaged in a plain, "none more black" sleeve, butit's hard to work out if this is The Friday Group's idea or a designstrategy by Beta-Lactam Ring, as this LP is the first volume in theirnew Records Are Not For Baking subscriber series. Those whosubscribe to all six volumes (other artists include irr.app.(ext.), LaSTPO, Nurse With Wound and Aranos), receive all six LPs as well as sixbonus picture disc 12"s by each artist. I'm not sure that The FridayGroup's bonus 12" could be considered a "picture disc" in any sense,unless you consider a few sleeve notes and the color gray to be a"picture." I find the packaging of these two records bland anduninspiring, but it's the only thing that's bland about The FridayGroup, whose music is filled with dense textures and hypnoticatmospheres that belie the drab artwork. The LP is made up of twosidelong tracks of solid improvisation, Carter playing the holy fuckout of his beloved lap steel guitar, pulling out beautifully bending,curling wisps of opium smoke or gritty, sunbaked electric deathrattles, sending up a spray of clay dust or a spattering of saliva witheach sudden turn of his wrist. Filling out the sound are the thick,pregnant drones of McMillan's harmonium, and the vintage organs andelectronic guitar runoff of Smith and Carlisle, with the odd smatteringof windchimes and tumbleweed. The group doesn't meander long beforelocating a blasted-out, sunbleached skeletal blues in the midst oftheir stunningly evocative improvs, with the group carving out plentyof space for Carter's possessed solos. The LP is definitely where it'sat, but the shorter bonus pieces on the bonus disc, which highlight thegroup's gift for complex, shifting harmonic drone, aren't too shabbyeither.
I Thought I Was Over That not only comes off the heels of a successful LP and tour, but the tracks included are of a varied enough nature to please devoted fans who missed a single here or there and curious newbies alike.
After a string of critically acclaimed full-lengths, Lali Puna mark 2005 with their very first compilation release, which raises the question: what makes a compilation worthwhile, if not essential? Some artists use these kind of releases as throwaways, to keep an audience's appetite whetted during studio time, or simply loaded up with filler and other fluff to move units in times of need. Not so with Valerie Trebeljahr & Co.: I Thought I Was Over That not only comes off the heels of a successful LP and tour, but the tracks included are of a varied enough nature to please devoted fans who missed a single here or there and curious newbies alike. First of all, there's a ton of material: nearly 80 minutes is enough to fill two pieces of vinyl. Secondly, it's of a varied enough nature—remixes of Lali standards, remixes of other artists' work by Lali, duos, throwaways and a jam (if that's the term in electro-pop) or two—to truly merit the release as more than a convenient collection for those who couldn't track down all the singles. Happily, the remixes are worthwhile, too—rather than superficial changes, they truly add something new to the source material—like putting an addition onto the house rather than just a new coat of paint, or in some cases, like going from a duplex to a lighthouse. Some of Trebeljahr's choices for remixes will turn some heads, too. They're able to "poppify" a track from left-field hip hop outfit Boom Bap, ably adding a verse-chorus-verse setup to an otherwise freewheeling instrumental; Lali Puna even takes a stab at a Giorgio Moroder (he of synthesizers and Scarface fame) composition. The collection is by no means flawless: the Dntl version of "Faking the Books" loses most of the subtle majesty of the original, and some of the new work will be too glitch-pop for the established audience. It's also a little heavy on later material: nearly half the tracks come from 2002 and later. And remixed or no, some of the instrumental tracks seem to wander, and suffer greatly in comparison to those graced by Trebeljahr's simply lovely singing voice. Alternately haunting, soothing and even salacious, any remix or rarity, no matter how adroit or precious, is vying for second place without the presence of her pipes. Not a hackneyed retrospective or throwaway "greatest hits" collection by any means, I Thought I Was Over That seems tailor-made for Lali Puna's loyal listeners: they'll get to see whole new sides of the group's lyrical and compositional abilities (especially if they missed the 2004 Mirconomic EP), and get to be spared the bother of tracking down all the singles. New listeners, though, won't be nearly as rewarded, and would be best advised to pick up Faking the Books or Scary World Theory before moving on to this smorgasbord.
Elliott Sharp may be a very unlikely collaborator for Merzbow's MasamiAkita, but that's part of this CD's interest... and ultimately itsfailure, though the meeting is intriguing, even when it falls on itsface. Tranz is structured in a way similar to many of Merzbow'sother collaborative albums: two tracks are composed by Merzbow usingSharp's sounds as source material, and two by Sharp using Merzbow'ssounds. Caminate
The tracks alternate, though the package design is so obscurethat the only way to tell which tracks appear in which order is tomatch the times of each to a title and time listed on one of fourdifferent cards inserted in the front pocket of the digipack. The firstpiece is terrific: Merzbow's "Esrma 1" is based on a pattern ofalternating notes which twist subtly as layers of grainy synth-likesounds are added one at a time. It's a very linear and musical piece,with a straightforward upward spiral abruptly ending with what mustbe... a guitar through a flanger. (Uh-oh.) Here's where Tranzstarts to falter. Even without the knowledge of specific guitareffects' sounds, an obvious sound is recognizable, and Elliott Sharpseems incapable of providing much more than off-the-shelf guitar andeffect sounds for the remaining 3/4 of this album. Sharp's first turnat the wheel, "Mares 1," begins with a burbling, flatly-tensebackground bed of grainy noise, but gracelessly throws in suchchestnuts as: the outer-space phaser sound!; The guitar-shopfinger-tapping shred solo (these are cringe-inducing without David LeeRoth in the vicinity)!; The twisting the delay-knob up and down sound!;and so on,.... Sharp marches so blithely over the pleasingly crunchybackdrop that I tried to listen to his piece as if I was hearing tworadio stations at once, absorbing one while information from anotherwas irritatingly bleeding through. On track 3, Merzbow tries again, buthe does not match the focus he started out with, and the final track islittle more than a Max/MSP effect doing its thing uneventfully for afew minutes. If a person was involved in its composition, he appears tohave removed himself before the disc went to press. The asaforementioned intriguing appeal is rather like rubbernecking: peoplewere maimed in this car crash, but it's tough not to keep looking atthem. I have returned to this album four times since I first heard it.It's maybe a good textbook about how two very disparate artists mightforce themselves to work together across styles and methods. It mighteven have worked, had the artists not both phoned in their music. Ifthey'd arrived at a solid idea and explored it, maybe this could havebeen surprising music instead of merely an exercise. Still: ever hearda Merzbow album with finger-tapping on it? Read More