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.
Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
Jason Molina seems to be getting all the wrong kind of attention. Pegged as a follower and adherent of any number of past songwriters, Molina's distinct voice and his band's broad musical range often goes ignored in favor of unnecessary name dropping and undeserved, negative comparisons.
samples:
samples:
samples:
samples:
samples:
Followers of Michael Gira's storied career might have anticipated his latest work with The Angels of Light as a natural reduction of his emotional approach to songwriting to its most basic form.
After the great digital reissues of Judee Sill's legendary pair of 1970s albums on Rhino Handmade last year, and the superb vinyl facsimile editions on 4 Men With Beards, the Water label puts the icing on the cake with this outstanding double-disc set containing, among other things, Judee's never-before-released third album Dreams Come True.
Low-fidelity versions of these songs—studio recordings that would have comprised Judee's follow-up to 1973's Heart Food—have been floating around for years on bootleg cassettes and file-sharing services. Water went the extra mile, however, recruiting indie superstar and self-professed Judee Sill fanatic Jim O'Rourke to complete the mix on these eight tracks and make them into a proper album. O'Rourke could not have been a better choice for this task, not only because of his obvious love for Sill's music but also because of his production acumen, and that crisp, high-fidelity 1970s rock sheen that characterizes his production work for Sonic Youth, Wilco and others, which perfectly imitates the Laurel Canyon sound of Judee's first two LPs. Comparing these newly mixed versions with the bootlegs, it is clear that O'Rourke has done an excellent job delineating each instrumental track, deftly underscoring Judee's vocals and the soaring church choir backup. Other than bolstering the fidelity of the songs, O'Rourke seems to have pretty much stayed out of sight, showing the proper respect to his idol's work. These eight songs were composed when Sill was convalescing after a series of drastic back operations, and while they are not nearly as strong as the material on her pair of classic LPs, they are still quite impressive. Mystical Christianity is still her main lyrical obsession, and these songs deal with her physical and spiritual pain through uplifting, hopeful lyrics about transcendence, transfiguration and resurrection. A clear emphasis on eschatological themes—songs like "Apocalypse Express" and "The Good Ship Omega"—make this brief, final album very haunting, especially in light of Judee's tragic and untimely death by accidental or intentional heroin overdose. Despite these dark undercurrents, all the indicators on these songs point to hope and spiritual vivacity, especially the opener "That's the Spirit," a rollicking number on piano in which Judee is joined by churchly voices in a resounding hymn to the ascendancy of the soul. "Til Dreams Come True" is another winning song, this time a slower ballad with cryptically beautiful religious symbolism throughout the lyrics: "Assembling a dream/And in each one a manger is seen/Where the dark by the spark is redeemed/While milk through the firmament streams/Over all we do/'Til dreams come true." In addition to demo versions of a few of the songs on the album, this generous package also contains a second disc which collects rare demos, outtakes and home recordings, including a marvelous solo piano performance by Sill ("Oh Boy the Magician"), combining her love for Bach and Mahler with the light jazz and pop idiom that informed the majority of her songwriting. Also included is a 15-minute Quicktime video of Judee performing a live set of her best songs outdoors at a California university in 1973. It's a real treat to have this rare material collected in one place, even despite the understandable technical limitations of much of it. The packaging is also exemplary, containing a massive 68-page booklet filled with insights and interviews with those closest to Judee, as well as extensive biographical information and rare photographs. Dreams Come True is a lovingly rendered tribute to a marginal but extraordinary artist, and it's the one to beat for makers of deluxe reissues and box sets. -
samples:
This is the second collaboration between these two iconoclasts, the first being last year's too-short Tinnitus Vu: the duo's hiss-laden meditation on hearing loss and the dynamics of sound after sound stops.Tocsin works within a similar sound palette, becoming a longer group of compositions that are also more minimal. Tinnitusfeatured conceptually efficient sonic pile-ups: alienating meshes ofcrisp percussive noodling and phantom piano, reorganized digitally byZ'ev to the level of sonic negation, the music itself slipping behind aveneer of white noise emptiness. Tocsin again finds Jackmanbehind the piano and Z'ev operating some resonant steel instrument, butthe playing, even after the individual artist mixes (Z'ev for the firstseven tracks, "-6" through "0," and Jackman for the final "1" and "2"),feels like more of a trade-off: a see-saw between two more distinctvoices. An unhurried atmosphere prevails; the musicians content tomeander through what feels more like an impromptu jam session thananything else: Z'ev winding out steely, gong-like drones as Jackmanlets his chords fall in a determined and mournful slowness. Both thelength of these sessions and their haphazard result strike me as veryatypical of Organum, but it is admittedly pleasing to hear Jackman inan environment where not every second counts. The recording itself alsofeels immediately more intimate than the prior collaboration orJackman's work as a whole. It has been consciously edited with bits ofthe duo chatting amidst a prevailing amount of tape hiss that sounds atfirst like the by-product of poor equipment but which evolves intoprecise and manufactured intervals. Z'ev's tracks especially utilizethe tape sound to flesh out an ironic foreign quality in theinstrumental dialogue, freeing it from a real time perception. Hestretches Jackman's piano into echoed calls and distant moans,entwining along a cascade of scraped, rubbed drones and hollow chorusesof soothing feedback. This is the least abrasive music I've heard fromZ'ev, lacking any percussive punch or even the textural maneuverabilityof Tinnitus. Organum's two private mixes are much less complex,the first almost 15 minutes of barren piano sketches with perfectlydistant gong-like decays matching the piano's desperate march forward.Jackman's second and final track is almost identical, untreated pianoup-front with untreated metal washes this time in slow and gentlecrescendo until both drift into silence. If anything here comes closestto replicating the original performances it is Jackman's section,beautifully recorded and a real pleasure despite its one-dimensionalityand its relative inconsistency with the artist's successes to date.While not a benchmark in the history of either artist, Tocsinallows a view of both moving in slightly different currents than theyare accustomed, and the disc is important despite the lack of a moreconcise collaborative product. It's nice also to see that Die Stadt iscontinuing to press reasonably priced Organum CDs; hopefully this willcontinue. samples:
This concept mini-CD accurately represents its subject, massiveplane/boat hybrids known as ekranoplanes, in sound. Dmitri Della Faille(Szkieve)'s passion for his material is evident on this 22 minutehomage to, and study of, these anomalies of Russian scientifictechnology. The opening "Le Songe de R.E.A." evokes an ominous mood,conjuring up images of the metal beast preparing for take off. Sharp,shrill electronic tones and analog synthesizer miasma cut through thesounds of slowly chiming bells. "Le S.M. 2P" focuses on whirring andchugging sounds that recall those made by an engine working to keep thelarge entity afloat or aflight. The cycling rhythmic patterns andsteady moaning tones of "Le K.M." mimic the steady flight of thevehicle soaring through the air as a plane. "L'Orlyonok" gathers thevarious strands presented in the shorter tracks into a piece that seemsto be a musical response to the other tracks. This is the only trackthat features beats and a melodic theme running through it. "Le Lun"perfectly captures the feeling of a plane that was once steadily flyingat a fixed altitude suddenly dropping as it prepares for landing. Forthe first three of its four and a half minutes the persistent sound ofthe vessel sailing through the sky is realized by the sound of oneloud, all-encompassing drone. As the sound fades out gradually duringthe last minute it reveals layers of engine hum and the pitter patterof various working parts. In creating such a vivid aural description ofhis subject, Della Faille presents a full experience in a short amountof time. Although this is a 3" CD, the tracks don't feel incomplete.Instead, Ekranoplanesis the musical equivalent of a short film, and is successful on severallevels. As a tribute, it forms enough of a picture to be directlyconnected to the subject, yet it allows the listener enough space toplace the story in any setting the imagination can invent.samples:
