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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Early Day Miners have this odd quality of meticulously recalling a veryspecific mid-90s, Midwestern emo/indie sound, though slowing it to anear halt. It's as though the Miners spelunked their way to somefossilized sound from the Polyvinyl/Tree/Caulfield label nexus of 1996and successfully unearthed it, thawed it, and unleashed it, albeit at aslower tempo (perhaps the lethargy can be attributed to a neardecade-long hibernation).Secretly Canadian Bands like Giants Chair, Cap'n Jazz, AmericanFootball, Compound Red, Boys Life, and Braid are reference points forthe sound with which the Miners flirt. In fact, vocalist Dan Burton'sbaritone sounds similar to Braid's Bob Nanna. Both have a stony andprimitive sound, unmolested by the effects of any formal training. It'shard to tell if Burton's voice (or Nanna's, for that matter) ispleasant or not, but it does give shape and substance to what wouldotherwise be music pretty enough to be heard, but not forceful enoughto be compelling. The more perspicacious listener will realize that theband is actually from the Midwest (Bloomington, Indiana: home of theHoosiers and the town which kindly lent itself to the simple beautiesof "Breaking Away") and that Burton was once in Ativin, a cohort in thelegion which made the initial assault for the prenominate mid-90s,Midwestern sound. So the appropriation of the sound is less fromappreciation than actual practice. "Errance" has an archetypalMidwestern sound trope: at the inception of the chorus, the tempo slowsand the instrumentation falls away and evaporates, leaving only thelightly brushed snare drum, the softly enunciated vocals, and thesparingly plucked guitar. The guitar is almost an afterthought. Thesong's title is curious since the Miners are anything but errant. Theguitars hover and swirl in orbits which revolve around each other,attracted by some musical centripetal force and never shooting off inan unforeseen exit velocity. They might meander, but they never getlost. Speaking of guitars, they are what the band does best. The Minerswrite intricate, delicate, and lovely guitar parts which fit togetherseamlessly. The band is expert at crafting catchy six-stringedmelodies, almost overshadowing or overpowering the rhythm section. Itcertainly doesn't help that the rhythm section is never seriouslychallenged by any of the songs. Actually, "Comfort/Guilt" approachessomething close to rhythmic complexity. Playful drumming mixes withcascading guitars which teeter off the edges of notes, threatening tofall into a cavernous abyss. "Precious Blood" also percolatespromisingly for a few short-lived instrumental minutes but soon enoughrecedes into the next track, "We Know In Part," a more typical slowdrawl from the Miners' canon. Transitions such as this show that theMiners are content to pick-axe their way along quite deliberately,remaining in shafts where it is dark, where everything moves a littleslower, and where the threat of black lung is everywhere. When theMiners do poke their heads above ground, the sunlight is blinding andthey quickly duck down again, comfortable in their Midwestern andmidterranean realm.
Brian Williams has been operating as Lustmord for more than 20 yearsnow, churning out an impressive number of albums, all of which havebeen classified, for want of a better term, "dark ambient." Not thatit's an inappropriate term for what Williams does, creating rhythm-freesoundscapes that evoke an oppressive atmosphere of loneliness,desolation and dread.Soleilmoon Though his work is understandably lumped in withhis industrial cohorts SPK and Scorn, it actually has a lot more incommon with the spacescapes of Tangerine Dream or the pioneeringambient work of Popol Vuh. Brian Williams is a consummate engineer andproducer as well, and throughout his career has taken advantage of thelatest technology to increase the presence and richness of his uniquelytextural audio environments. 1990's Heresywas a definite high point in a career of high points for Lustmord, andSoleilmoon has just reissued the album in a nice digipack with a newre-master overseen by Williams himself. Heresy is an hour-longmind trip into massive, cavernous expanses of subterranean rock, intodark recesses filled with a sense of slow, abiding dread. Broken intosix pieces each more consuming than the next, Heresy has anarrative arc from beginning to end, as Williams penetrates deeper anddeeper chambers of bedrock, coming closer to the bubbling magma andfrozen expanses of wasteland at the center of a dying star. Buriedbeneath the yawning industrial maw of these turgid reverberations andtime-stretched, strangled screams are disquieting audio details: aconvocation of monstrous Lovecraftian entities devouring the flesh of acorpse and releasing ancient, foul belches into the cold, stagnant air;the deep, bellowing laugh of a murderous tyrant standing victoriousover the bones of his enemies; a muffled cry of terror from the centerof an immense electrical storm. Williams wields his electronics with anear towards audio environments that envelop the listener, slowly butsurely canceling all thought and focusing the attention on thisimmersive dronescape. Lustmord albums appeal to the same part of mybrain that finds inexhaustible enjoyment in the darkest of heavy metal,from Black Sabbath and Judas Priest to Slayer, Mayhem, Burzum and SunnO))). Like any of the aforementioned artists, Lustmord's penchant forthe shadow side of reality always runs the danger of digressing intounconscious self-parody, but if listened to in the right frame of mind,Heresy is powerful stuff.
Käthe Kruse, Wolfgang Müller, and Nikolaus Utermöhlen formed somethinglike a band in 1980 and began producing all kinds of awkward soundcollages, pounding rhythmic pieces, and just plain silly exhibitions.Whether or not they can truly be considered a band is hazy, butPsychedelic Pig's release of Nursery Rhymes for True Fools of the Grailcontains twenty pieces of audio that were either ridiculously rare("Schöne Musik" appeared in an edition of twenty copies on cassette) ornever released at all.Psychedelic Pig A majority of the tracks are live performancesfeaturing outlandish clarinet solos, haphazard and drunken blurts ofbrass-noise, and a good deal of shouting. After listening to the albumbeginning to end, and without repeating certain tracks of particularbeauty, this document of an obscure and somehow mesmerizing band hascompletely won my heart. It is true that some information about theband makes some of the tracks more amusing (for instance, The DeadlyDoris hired a three strangers on a couple of occasions to fill in forthem live; during the concert cards were handed out that informed theaudience that The Deadly Doris were "being seen on stage in a foreignbody"), but many of these songs stand up on their own. "M..Rökk:Rhythmus im Blut" and "Der Tod ist ein Skandal" are incredibly viciousand nearly catchy pieces of metal destruction set around the openingscenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey while other tracks, like"Naturkatastrophenkonzert," seem to be on the disc merely forhistorical reasons. Of interest to some might be the appearance ofBlixa Bargeld on one track and a concert recording from a double billwith SPK. Whether or not SPK actually performs on the track is anyone'sguess. So much of this could easily be dismissed as pure noise wankery,but there's an atypical beauty in a lot of these pieces; somethingabout the raw and unfinished feel of the whole album makes it a hundredtimes more enjoyable than a lot of the studio work I've heard comingfrom contemporary noise-mongers. "Der Letzte Walzer," primarily a noisecollage, features a trio of easy-listening musicians playing in thebackground. The meshing of these two styles of music, oddly enough,sticks out in my mind. It's just that sort of surrealist approach tothe music that makes this record so enjoyable.
This 17 minute EP belongs to a rare breed of musical projects: theconcept project that is not overblown or pretentious. Perhaps thebrevity helps this cause, as Hawaii 5.0is the perfect length to visit the islands without feeling trappedthere. Each of the five tracks represents a different aspect of theHawaiian experience, as filtered through Ache label owner Andy Dixon'ssense of composition.Ache "The Drink" begins with samples of folks slurpingdown beverages undoubtedly served with little umbrellas included. Onthis track Dixon ingeniously incorporates the rhythmic sounds of icecubes clinking around in drinking glasses into the bouncy beat.Throughout the EP he captures the feeling of being far from everydayworries, as if during the course of the program one is traveling aroundthis popular vacation destination. The sound of birds weaving in andout of the rhythms on "The Beach" similates the experience of suchcreatures circling overhead while one is at a beach. The rapid cut-upsnippets heard during opener "The Culture," such as vocal fragments("mahalo"), steel drum patterns, and Hawaiian style guitar playing,attempt to provide an overview of Hawaiian culture while acting as awarped aural welcoming mat. Musically the tracks consist of many tinybits of found sound, tied together by intricately programmed 4/4 beats.The rhythms are multi-layered and sometimes fall into brief repetitivesections that allow for melodies to sneak in. These melodic sectionsare highly effective since they are used so sparingly, especially theinfectious staccato keyboard melody that is introduced halfway into"The Drink." The Hawaiian theme has rarely been used outside theexotica music genre that it's refreshing to hear it updated socleverly.
The late Bryn Jones was rightly notorious for his extreme prolificacy:a characteristic that incredibly, does not seem to have slowed down atall since his demise in 1999. In addition to the mountains of new musicthat has been dusted off and released in the past five years, therehave also been many reissues of previously limited edition releases, ofwhich Syrinjiais one.Soleilmoon This is the third edition of the album, initially released as alimited 12" (containing only the first nine tracks), subsequentlyreleased as a limited double CD in a silk bag, and now released as adouble CD in a regular jewel case. Typical of a Muslimgauze release,the album is adorned with photos from the Middle East that Bryn Jonesnever actually visited, even though the region's history, culture andpolitics obsessed him for his entire career. Even though Jones changedmusical directions several times throughout his career, from abstractnoise and ambient compositions through to densely layered worldbeat anddance music, there is no absolutely mistaking the Muslimgauze sound:those crisp, powdery beats and ragged, sudden edits; the layers ofburied samples from Arabic music; the extreme, trance-inducingrepetition. Syrinjia is distinguishable from other 'Gauzereleases of this period only because of its unwavering fixation on dubreggae. Jones was, of course, one of the first to draw a straight linebetween Kingston dub production and Middle Eastern breaks, long beforeDJ/Rupture started releasing albums. Muslimgauze's dub is a tenser,more violent beast than the average Augustus Pablo or King Tubby side,coming closer to the type of dancehall dub typified by Rootsman or TheBug's Pressure. Fiercely synthetic machine beats built fromJones' usual sound palette are joined by occasional dancehallshoutdowns, weaving Arabic female vocals and random plunges into theecho chamber. There are several standout tracks here, notable for theirrelative absence of dissonance and aggression, including the thrilling"Detrimental" and "Holy Man." The extra tracks also contain someworthwhile tracks, including the minimal dubwise techno of "Taliban"and "Zindag." Those insane enough to be Muslimgauze completists havedoubtless already tracked this album down, but for the casual Gauzelistener, Syrinjia would still be a worthy purchase.
After tooling around with their sound on recent releases in search ofthemselves, Pinback have finally crafted what may be the best slice ofindie pop ever created. They've certainly always had the elementsright: hook-driven melodies, a playful sensibility, the right effectsfor the right moments, and a perfect mixture of instruments to choosefrom track after track. Touch and Go This album is the full realization of theconcept and it shows—as track after track is stronger than the last,building to a climax that settles in like a lamb more than a lion,drawing absolutely no complaints. Abaddon being the abyss or place ofthe dead, it's not expected that songs on the record will approach anyform of positivity, but they do on occasion, and either way it's adelight coming through the speakers even when they're at their mostmellow. The only thing that gets in the way is the sometimes obtusenature of the lyrics that reach for highfalutin concepts without anyreal merit. "I missed your monotube" and "Acute angles divide my paththat I had lost" may sound cool, but ultimately they are a little muchon the simple structures that surround them, and therefore they soundlike reaching. The repitition is also a bit trying, but forgiven if thesong actually hits the right marks eventually. "Syracuse," forinstance, repeats the same two lines until they're almost meaningless,but the driving energy of the song and the many layers that itrepresents make this null and void. This is almost math rock, as thereseems to be some greater formula at play that mere humans can'tcomprehend. The duo that make up Pinback on record shift styles andtempos with sly skill, all in the name of making pleasant sounds andhummable melodies, even if it sounds more complicated than it is.Whether there is more artifice than art is inconsequential.
Lab Waste, the nom de collaboration of Los Angeleans Thavius Beck andSubtitle, have mated the rap set with the digital age on their oddlytitled full length debut, Zwarte Achtegrond("Black Background" in Dutch). Appropriately modern, to make theirmusic they eschew two turntables and a microphone for two Apple G3s anda veritable shopping list of samplers, mixers and gadgets that would bethe drooling envy of any A/V club.Temporary Whatever The resultant electronic influenceis so heavy that the instrumentation is barely categorizable as "hiphop"—rapid fire hi hats slogging through dense but pedestrian soundslast heard on the Doom soundtrack alternating with somethingKraftwerk might have done on the Euro club scene had they worked 30years later (maybe the title is relevant, or deliberatelymisconceiving?). The lyrics are at their core well done. Intelligentenough, as complex couplets ("to the detriment of many a derelict/ wecome to inject a bit of intellectual impulse/ set to a beat to offsetthe inimical complaints of the ignorant"), and cerebral syllogisms flyby the ears at a frenetic pace. Being bombarded by heavily distortedvoices waxing futuristic over the fate of humanity provies a bit ofironic relief too. But the combination of heavy effects and light-speedpace make the lyrics, a key component of any rap record, all butindecipherable. The instrumentation makes Zwarte Achtegrond toogratingly artificial for a hip hop aficionado, and the dizzinglydifficult rapping will distract all but the most dedicated electronichead, potentially alienating both sides of the would-be crossover. Theformula clicks just once, with "Get the Signal," a fast paced energeticthumper most notable for its simplicity. On the whole Lab Waste seemsto have forgotten an essential ingredient in any hip-hop album,unforgivable if they do portend to have a "Zwarte Achtegrond":there's no soul. Put together with double clicks, and without a singleturntable, the album lacks nearly all vestiges of human involvement, avital element of the hip hop aesthetic. The feel is cold anddisconnected, which is probably the point. As a bleak concept albumbemoaning the future, then, Zwarte Achtegrond might succeed onsome level, but it's not enough to save it from being a tedious genreexperiment, mired in confused mediocrity.
On his latest collection as The Soft Pink Truth, Drew Daniel attemptsto answer the famous question posed by The Minutemen while negotiatinga postmodern marriage of heaven and hell.Tigerbeat 6 A record comprised of tencover songs, nine of which revisit some of Daniel's favorite moments inthe annals of English punk rock and American hardcore, transformingtwo-minute angry screeds into sleazy, hedonistic electro-disco. Whileit's fairly obvious that Daniel has retained much of his affection forthis music from his youth spent in the Louisville, Kentucky hardcorepunk scene, it's equally obvious that Daniel is aware that he isessentially negating the substance of punk and hardcore protest bygrafting the lyrics onto hyper-sexualized, druggy dance music. MinorThreat's "Out Of Step" remains a classically explicit statement ofpurpose for the straight edge DC hardcore movement, but SPT's versioncompletely castrates the original's ascetic stance, adding layers ofsampled sex moans and laughable snippets from a "Stop Smoking in 30Days" LP. The central question posed by Do You Want New Waveappears to be this: Can these fiercely political songs be takenseriously when they can be so easily stripped of meaning?Anti-capitalism and anarchism abound on the album, with People Like Us'Vicki Bennett providing vocals for a version of Crass' "Do They Us aLiving?" from the epochal Feeding of the 5000 that sounds likeits being covered by The Normal. But the famously confrontationaljeremiad, juxtaposed with digitized whipcracks and squelching synths,ends up in the realm of the absurd, a series of hopelessly radicalizedleft-wing rants that seem downright quaint in the age of prosperity andTony Blair. It seems clear that Drew Daniel's intention is to have thelistener question the political substance of these songs, as he slylydisarms them of their power by transforming them into slick dance clubfodder for a generation that can't be bothered to think. In fact, itmay have been SPT's plan all along to force us to think about thesedecades-old blasts of political aggression, and by removing the loud,primitive noise guitar and chaotic pummeling, the listener receives noassistance and must take the lyrics on their own terms. This isespecially effective on more obscure cuts like the mashup ofRudimentary Peni's "Media Person" (which Daniel mistakenly renames"Media Friend") and "V.S.B.," transforming RP's savagely desolategoth-punk into a relentlessly hypnotic MDMA groove that matches JeremyScott's vocal delivery perfectly. The deliciously blasphemous "Poet'sConfession" from electro-punks Nervous Gender ("Jesus was a cocksuckingJew from Galilee/Jesus was just like me/A homosexual nymphomaniac") isturned into a dark, queasy acid rave-up worthy of LSD-era Coil,serving only to intensify the song's already terrifying nihilism.Daniel has a good time turning The Angry Samoans' miniature homophobicdiatribe "Homo-sexual" into a high-velocity rip-roaring sing-along forrivetheads, making it even more difficult to figure whether or not theoriginal's intolerant hate-mongering was meant to be satire. Like anygood punk album, SPT's Do You Want New Wave clocks in at a slim35 minutes, but it doesn't waste a second, turning what should havebeen a patently ridiculous concept into an incredibly, infectiouslyentertaining album.
Sun City Girls are heroes of the Attention Defecit Disorder generation.This 57 minute collage, prepared for broadcast on WFPK in Louisville,Kentucky, presents everything from found dialogue to snippets offamiliar songs to live playing to absurd skits in rapid-firesuccession.Abduction With 37 short tracks, this 13th installment in the ongoing Carnival Folklore Resurrectionseries has a much more cut-up feel than the two disc set, also createdfor radio, which preceded it. As a critique of the onslaught of quicklychanging imagery that defines America 2004, this program succeeds inpointing out the depths of absurdity to which said culture has sunk.This is best exemplified by "Only In America inc.," which consists of ahilarious answering machine message left by a young entrepreneur for"Mr. Rockefeller." The young go-getter asks if Rockefeller will providehalf a million dollars to help him start up a company whose solefunction is to send phony bills to corporations, on the assumption thatsome of them will pay these "bills" without researching their validity.Alan Bishop's charming/fearsome "Uncle Jim" character makes severalappearances during this set. His free associated ranting is highlyenjoyable, as his interjections are transmitted in several shortbursts. This is an improvement on the previous volume, which devotedthree ten minute tracks to his verbal antics. Here his demeanor is likethat of a radio announcer, except he interrupts the program to presentfacts about cannibalism and make wise-crackin' boasts that oddly oftenreference baseball ("I'll crack yer skull with a greazy spitter/walkthe pitcher/strike out the lead-off hitter"). There is also muchworthwhile music hidden among the skits, radio collages and monologues."Very Middle East" sees the group in pseudo-ethnic mode, theirguitar-bass-drums lineup appropriating melodies discovered whiletravelling in Far East Asia. "Anvils Keep Fallin'" is exactly theparody of the BJ Thomas classic that one would hope it is upon readingthe title. "Bangalore Porch Lights" sounds like a recording of a banjoplayer searching for a melody he heard in a dream. "EvasivePrescription" and "Dark Eyes" are fine examples of the kind of mangledjazz/rock hybrid Sun City Girls are known for delivering live. During"Evasive Prescription" in particular they astound with their talent forcollectively stopping on a dime during sections of free improvisation.Although it has been suggested that they release too much material thatnever should have left the practice room, Sun City Girls should beapplauded for the sheer range of material they produce. I'd rather hearthe failed experiments among their gems than the perfected output ofcountless less daring outfits. -
While maintaining the typical uncompromising method to creating music,which is after all much of what makes Waits what he is, he perhaps goesa bit too far. For the first time in his career, he abandons keyboardinstruments. Instead, he is accompanied by a drove of weird noises,from bells, whistles, hisses and what sounds like banging on pots andpans to industrial clanging and leaky pipes hizzing, to humanbeatboxing, which Waits performed and recorded on a cheap tape deck inhis bathroom.Anti Turntablism courtesy of his son Casey is alsoincorporated, and while far short of anything DJ Shadow would put hisname on, it is the final nudge that pushes Real Gone'ssound from the eccentric to the borderline insane. Such tomfoolery attimes threatens to derail the album, but Waits and his trademark gravelthroat keeps Real Gone if not grounded at least focused.Sometimes a mere croak, Waits's war-weary pipes conjure up images oflate nights, hard drink and one carton of Marlboro Reds too many, whilesubtly revealing the true star of Real Gone, and indeed the keyto Waits's longevity: his skill as a songwriter. When mated to theyarns Waits is able to spin in the span of three to five minutes, themanic music becomes sublime. Waits matches tribal drumming andprimitive chanting to make an anti-jingoism anthem: "The sun is up theworld is flat/ Damn good address for a rat/ The smell of blood/ TheDrone of flies/ You know what to do if/ The baby cries/ HOIST THATRAG!" Waits's longstanding to downtrodden has not wavered at all, fromthe unlucky lover with "Green Grass" ("Lay your head where my heartused to be/ Hold the earth above me/ Lay down in the green grass/Remember when you loved me") to the unfortunate accessory on "Don't Gointo that Barn." His ability to create characters and tell compellingstories has not lost any of its uncanny power, as is evident on "How'sIt Gonna End": "There's a killer and he's coming/ Thru the rye/ Butmaybe he's the Father/ Of that lost little girl/ It's hard to tell inthis light." Waits does overdo things at times:- "Sins of the Father"is an egregious overindulgence, boring, preachy and tortuously long atnearly eleven minutes. The opening track, "Top of the Hill," is littlemore than a vehicle for Waits's newfound instrumentation choices, asthe lyrics are nothing more than a string of non sequitirs, madetolerable only by the fun Waits has with the turntables and beatboxing.On "Clang Boom Steam," Waits felt the need to imitate orally what couldbe either a steel foundry or a busy railway yard, with, just as thetitle suggests, clangs, booms, and hisses from his mouth, a pointlessmeandering that is wildly out of step with the rest of the album. Butit doesn't matter, as Waits does as he pleases, and whether it'sthrough luck, ability or something more sinister ("I'm not able, I'mjust Cain") he releases one of 2004's most compelling albums. -
And then there was Tussle, the latest in a succession of bands honingin on the resurgence of interest in bands like Liquid Liquid, Pigbagand 23 Skidoo.Troubleman Unlimited This San Francisco group released a pretty nifty EP lastyear called Don't Stop,which not only introduced their particular brand of dub-influencedpostpunk instrumentalism, but also featured an ace remix by The SoftPink Truth. "Don't Stop" became a minor underground sensation becauseof its rubbery, melodic basslines and dense layers of digitallyprocessed percussion. They came on sort of like a low-rent PiL withless noise and more dub. It was nothing earth shattering, to be sure,but it was eminently listenable, and seemed to suggest that the bandmight be capable of some grand things in the future. Their debutfull-length Kling Klang, shows that there was a lot more where"Don't Stop" came from. And that's the problem, really. They repeat theformula of "Don't Stop" with almost zero variation across 11 tracks.Though the album is only about 40 minutes long, it feels four hourslong. Kling Klang achieves a kind of bland uniformity of soundthat evidences a band unwilling to take risks or experiment with theformula that has garnered them critical praise. In the end, it comesdown to four white guys making passable instrumental dub with DFA-styledance rhythms and the odd echoplexed shout. Tussle obviously wantcritics to think they are influenced by krautrock, by creatinginterminably repetitive grooves and naming their album in tribute toKraftwerk. However, their connection to krautrock is all style and nosubstance, and other reviewers would be advised to steer clear of suchlazy associations. I have a feeling their live show might come off alittle better, as it reportedly features trippy video projections, butthis album is tedious. It's hard to even pick one song and talk aboutits relative merits, because all the tracks seem to meld into oneanother and form one giant, shapeless mass. Perhaps I'm being unfair,as Tussle are certainly a talented group of guys, and they are quitegood at doing what they do. The problem is that they aim a little toolow. If you turned this album on at a party, it would quickly fade intoa non-threatening white noise background, which could either be a goodthing or a bad thing, depending on your tastes. For myself, I prefermusic that engages me a bit more intensely.