Fromthe box of freebies often comes the most interesting and challengingsurprises. This one is particularly enigmatic: no artist info, no titleand no track titles (some e-sleuthing revealed three: 'Juunigatsu','Koutetsukan', 'Makugine'). Just a four track, 16 minute CD-R with b/winsert photo of a rocky stream. Ah, but the music is far from tranquil.It's more befitting of an industrial wasteland. Molten masses ofoverdriven sound are forged to cantankerous rhythmic clangor andglitches. It's blistering and menacing alright but also near melodicand even ambient at times. Hitohana has meticulously placed and shapedthe debris into noisy songs. The third track offers the first and lastrespite by abruptly flipping the on/off switch on the din, deceivingthough as discharges continue to erupt and the noise ultimately returnsfor its revenge. Powerful stuff.
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Following the "12 Times You" 7", on which Colin Newman remixed liverecordings of Wire playing that little old number "12XU" infast'n'furious cut'n'paste fashion, our swimmers found the stroke fortheir third length. This six song EP marks the first fruits of a newkind of R'n'B, but joking aside Wire sound like they're splitting theirsides over the "Everybody Loves a History" idea, smashing their historyto bits and glueing it back together in new shapes. Or maybe theyreally had to hark right back to the simplest forms because they'dalmost forgotten how to play guitars and so here and there it soundslike they're reincarnating their debut album 'Pink Flag' in a precisecomputer studio cut up frenzy. Imagine various cuts from 'Pink Flag'given the manic makeover the way they gave "Our Swimmer" a "SecondLength" and you'll begin to make out the shapes emerging here.Lyrically a lot of this could be read as Wire commenting on their musicand existation, especially the superbly titled opening salvo "In theArt of Stopping" which could be seen as a manifesto of sorts, after allWire have stopped a couple of times before. After a snare tap Colinslurs the verse, "Trust me, believe me" (which could hail from any oldpiece of pappy pop - but hang on, maybe he's actually singing "Tryspeed") and then rises to a stop as he hollers, "It's all in the art ofstopping" (you'd be hard pushed to find any other band with a lyriclike that). His delivery is vaguely reminiscent of "Once is Enough" butseems sillier, especially when he starts braying like a disgruntledmule, and the track also appropriatelt recalls the jabbering "CheekingTongues." Meanwhile spindley Gilbert guitars spit harsh circles andsome comical morphed backing vocals really lift the track off thetracks. The whole thing gets crunched down into an infinitessimalshrunken hard chip blurt before the whole caboodle rushes back, poweredalong by the relentless mono rhythmic crack of Robert's reawakenedsnare that went to bed. Rock bluster is dissolved into techno tricks,and even tiny shards of glitch have been worked so subtley into the mixyou hardly notice at first. The incredibly uplifting rush of energyfrom "Germ Ship" is even more exciting. It sounds like a bastardisationof "Pink Flag" and "The Commercial" but given a high octane refueling,and the guitars ignite. This tune was debuted at their Edinburgh gigthat saw off the twentieth century, with Newman and Lewis bothobstreperously hollering their fatal attractions, but here Lewis hasgone quiet and Colin is hushed to a whisper until the end when heshouts out the title to end it in 21st century digipunk style. Thesetwo tracks have ensured constant rotation. Whilst the rest of the EP isgood fun musically, I'm not so convinced that it's going to add up tomuch more than good fun, but its early days and Wire recordings veryoften reveal hidden depths with later plays. The "Surgeon's Girl"ending for "1st Fast," the "Comet" chorus about the chorus going "Ba baba bang," and that track's very retro 'Pink Flag' album feel seemedalmost smugly self referential at first, but the detail and humour havewon out in the end. Maybe the most mashed future-past meltdown is "IDon't Understand" which reinvents "Ally In Exile" with "An Advantage inHeight" via two chord "Lowdown" funk with the great opening couplet"Over the edge / Under an illusion." Lewis steps up to the mic for thelast track "Agfers of Kodack" and sounds as if he's just swum all theway from Sweden to sing it, or maybe he's been torching the sand in hisjoints. It sounds oddly as if it could be a drastic reworking orforerunner of "In The Art of Stopping," and is probably as close toheavy metal as Wire have ever stepped. With this EP Wire have in asense cast aside progression in favour of temporal corruption. Like theFall and Sonic Youth, they seem to be moving outside of linear time andzapping back and forth throughout their own universe. Perhaps whenprogressive rock bands amass a certain musical critical mass theycollapse like suns into black holes that turn time into space. If soWire are creating intense gravitational pull and inspiring their mostpretentious reviews yet. - 
It's hard to know what to make of these two CDs. Both individuallybejewel-cased CDs have the same name and track titles. The cover art isalso identical except that one is the photographic negative of theother. Let's call the one + and the other -. I came to this releasewith no prior experience of V/Vm except for the curiously dismal littleAphex Twin CDs last year. I gave it my best positivist shot, avoidinginterpretation to see where it takes me. Not very far, as it turnedout. + is collection of lo-fi, vaguely dreamy soundscapes. It's almostlike an exercise in the various styles of early 90s ambient electronica-- drones, soft looping techno bleepery, some airy beats, plenty ofswooshes, all with a slathering of reverb and echo. But the variety isonly from track to track -- each piece is a static presentation of oneidea, which would be fine if it were a good one. None of them reallyhave anything to enjoy. The effect when listing through the album isthat ones hopes rise as each new track begins, perhaps because a changeis as good as a break, but then fall again, ever deeper, as you realizethat each one of them is a dreary, unimaginative regurgitation ofalready over-worked ideas, neither taking the respective genre forwardsnor a competent stylistic statement. Soon the pattern becomes apparentand one learns to temper the little lifts that each new track brings.The other disk, -, is in fact exactly the same in every respect exceptgenre. - is an exercise in 90s electronic noise. Noise is about sonicdiscovery and confrontation and demands entirely different skills fromthe electronica of +. The lift in hope as a track starts a bit biggerthan on +, and is occasionally even exciting for a moment but this iscompensated by a much faster decline. The overall trajectory as the CDprogresses is severe. The paucity of imagination is blatant. Is thatthe point? I wonder. I decided finally to allow interpretation ofintent into the equation; the packaging, after all, seems to demand it.V/Vm's Queen Mother tribute announcement shown on the Brain recentlyprovided a handy reference point. It seems that V/Vm is a bit of aprankster but everything I found shows the same lack of imagination,skill or entertainment value as the music. I developed the impressionthat what we have here is a no-talent faker embittered with resentmentof the achievements of others trying to work up an ultra-pomo mythologyto shroud the bad art. I went back to the CDs and, yes, that fits too.A one word summary? Wank. 
Music should never be judged purely. It should be judged on how 'wrong'or how 'right' it feels in the ears of them who listen. This may not bea reason why V/Vm have taken the trouble to simultaneously release twovery different selections of 'good things' which they claim areactually the same. Both discs have twelve tracks with the same titles.Previous plunderous releases enabled by the VVMCPS laws such as 'SickLove' might be aptly described as corny, but make no mistake it's wheaton the cover of these two. This is pure germ of V/Vm - remember theearliest V/Vm 12" releases or the Fat Cat split with Third EyeFoundation and that'll give you some idea of what to expect from the CDwith the regular yellow wheat. If I wanted to be cheeky I could tellyou that this is what it would sound like if V/Vm helped Aphex Twinwithout doing any hacking, but I know Jim's sickly traumatised by thedeath of the racist granny robot so I'll try not to mention AFX and hisinfluence again. Whatever, this is the sound of V/Vm distilled to pureessence of wheat beer hoedown direct from the mythical school thatplays records with wooden styli. The inverted blue wheat disc is likethe imagined brick bashing your head the next day in hangover city. Myguess was that it's the same tracks but crunched up through distortionand ring modulation and all that fun stuff, but someone in the knowsays this is not so, and the two CD's are not exactly the same lengtheither. In fact there's so much of that digital processing on the blueone that even though its massive robot noise approaches all consumingnuclear meltdown the sound seems to run a bit thin at times. Obviouslythe blue one is the one for noise heads to hear, just don't mentionMerzbow. A lot of it actually sounds like it could be mashed uprecordings of explosions. "The View Below Me Was Always the Same" isthe deceptively titled intro to each CD. Yellow is Caretaker type organswells. Blue is a discordant ring modulator sweep punctuated byexplosions. "The Truth is Dead" is the conclusion they reach before theunderwater Aphex beat excursion "Some Things Look Better Baby." Sorry Iforgot I said I wouldn't mention that Twin again. This far into theblue disc and it's deafening machine grind all the way until completelyfucked relentless deaf disco splatters brains. The idea is probablythat the yellow one is right in that its more conventionally tuneful,but wrong in that this kind of thing is not expected of V/Vm; blue iswrong in that it's a big noise but right in that it confirms V/Vm'sreputation for making big cacophony. But how did it make me feel? Theblue one made me feel like a daffodil in a rainstorm but the yellow onemade me feel like a witch in beat. With all this hack lack and wheatygoodness V/Vm will be claiming they're serious artists next. But ofcourse they always were? 
It really seems like every other week Bob Pollard has a new record out,doesn't it? He has a myriad of bands to play with, he was an anxiouslabel in Rockathon, ready to release whatever he graces them with, andhe's on the cover of Magnet every other week, so Mr. Pollard does havea fan base to keep up with, it would seem. With a new Guided By Voicesrecord coming in June - the band are back on Matador this go around -Bob tides the fans over with this, his second effort with formerbandmate Tobin Sprout. Is is time to for Mr. Pollard to throw in thetowel with these side collaborations? Almost, by my estimation. Thistime around, Airport 5 are darker, grittier, and more lo-fi thanbefore. Bob seems intent on providing as many vocal tracks as possible,and that means double-tracking, doing his own background vocals, andbasically monopolizing the mike. Sprout's instrumentation is, asalways, acceptable and worthy of the treatment. But, again, this typeof collaboration seems to suffer by the lack of face-to-facecollaboration. Some of the vocal tracks are so rough, it'sembarrassing, but only given GBV's recent love of real recordingequipment - the vocals would be right at home on earlier releases bythe band. The lyrics are quirky, and, for the most part, Pollard doesnot over exert himself in order to hit notes he shouldn't. And thealbum is not without highlights, or, in this case, moments that work.'Yellow Wife No. 5' and 'I Can't Freeze Anymore' are among the bestsongs Pollard and Sprout have EVER recorded. But the album as a wholeis close to forgettable. And short. In short, if you're a GBV fan, thiswill serve to tide you over. If you're not, you won't be wowed orpushed away. (Is this what was meant by the rumor that Matador askedPollard to pair down the projects he worked on because they thoughthe'd clutter the marketplace with work that was not as polished as GBV,and buyers would have a problem knowing just what to buy?) - 
Austinite Michael "Thor" Harris is practically a modern day renaissance man: multi-instrumentalist, painter, art and bicycle repair instructor and environmentally conscious DIY home builder. He has appeared on many others albums and performed live locally and nation-wide, but he's probably best known outside Austin city limits as percussionist for Michael Gira's The Angels of Light.
Kenseth Thibideau and Marty Anderson are Howard Hello, and on this,their debut on Temporary Residence, the announce themselves far moreeffectively than the name might imply. Given that Thibideau's previouswork was with Tarentel, you could expect that the record would havesome similar elements, and that it would be a strong, gorgeous release.That it is. The soundscape is mainly familiar-sounding melodies thathave been recorded, then edited, jumbled, and extrapolated to make newcompositions on top of the old structure. There are guitar melodies,organs, keyboards: instruments of all types are used. The compositionsthat are created are very ambient, full, and spellbinding. And MartyAnderson's voice is purely haunting, adding a fantastic element to theproceedings. The ambient vocals by Wendy Allen are also stunning, and,at times, the vocals are the only part you can clearly follow, as theyare the main element, saved from being cut-up and reproduced. Theamazing thing is, even though elements are repeated - Anderson's vocalon 'Revolution,' melodies - the music never sounds repetitive or stale.It gets into your head, burrowing way down deep. This is a dynamicsound, with elements being added as the song progresses, allowing it togrow, swell, climax, and then fade away, leaving you with the scars.And there will be after you've heard this, believe me. An excellentdebut, well deserving of your hard-earned cash. Your ears have beenwaiting for something like this again. 
Hot on the heels of the Deep Space double live album "Largely Live InHartlepool & Manchester", Jah Wobble has already assembled a newunit, toured and recorded another live album. Solaris is Wobble onclean bass, longtime collaborator Bill Laswell on distorted bass,composer Harold Budd on piano and keyboards, Graham Haynes on cornetand electronics and Jaki Leibezeit of Can on drums. It's almost a caseof too much talent for one group but, as you'd expect from improvisersof this caliber, each and every member knows their place and they sharethe limelight admirably. The starting point is Budd's modal scales onpiano, then Wobble's relentlessly repetitious (yet infectious) basspatterns, then Leibezeit's metronomic snare-centric beat. Haynes,Laswell and Budd then texture wrap the groove with ambient backdropsand kinda sorta solos. The group gels, ebbs, flows and orgasms in equaldoses, their sound more jazzy than Deep Space's worldliness. With threeof the four tracks in the 19 to 25 minute range, it's all about gettinginto the comfort zone of the groove. The two part 'The Mystery ofTwilight', 45 minutes total, is most engaging as overdriven riffs burnalongside a heavy duty rhythmic propulsion. Another winner from Wobbleand friends. 
