07 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

After the release of her sublime, critically acclaimed sophomore solo album Penelope Two, Penelope Trappes and Houndstooth are pleased to announce Redeux; an album of top-drawer reworks of tracks from Penelope Two, which showcase not only the intrinsic brilliance of Penelope's composition and performances, but also her far-reaching and all-encompassing musical influences and significance.

"There were no preconceived notions of how the reworks would work together, just total freedom. I'm absolutely in love with all of these! I never really thought I'd get the chance to collaborate with such an array of creative artists who have inspired me, but at this point, I’ve learned to never say never" explains Penelope.

On Redeux, Penelope Two's themes of life and death and of hope and dismay are still prevalent, being brought to the surface in myriad ways. Scottish post-rock legends Mogwai stretch out "Burn On" into a scorching, warbling drone that flips the original sombre subtlety for grandeur and in-your-face majesty. Factory Floor member Nik Colk Void offers up a wayward, statically charged reworking of "Nite Hive" which reimagines the track's solemn beauty as a heads-down roller and Throbbing Gristle's Cosey Fanni Tutti's dystopian, avant-garde and jazz tinged electronics are deployed alongside her signature Cornet to flip the album single "Carry Me."

Other reworks are proffered by Shelter Press label founder, producer and visual artist Félicia Atkinson, off the back of an incredible 2018 for both her and the label.  Félicia’s rework of "Burn On" digs for the skeletal awe by stripping away many of Penelope's multi-layered effects and pushing the bare vocals to the front with manipulated field recordings.  Houndstooth mainstay Throwing Snow demonstrates his ineffable brilliance, delivering an elastic yet powerful subdued rework of "Farewell." Icelandic multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Jófríður Ákadóttir aka JFDR injects nimble rhythms and guitar into piano ballad "Maeve."

Poppy Ackroyd, composer, violinist and pianist, Hidden Orchestra member and One Little Indian signee transposes "Kismet" onto the piano adding eerie percussive embellishments. Savages producer Jonny Hostile takes "Farewell" and utilizes the space within to add more noise and energy. Oneohtrix Point Never, Ben Frost and Tim Hecker collaborator and Sigur Ros' musical director Paul Corley, delivers a forlorn take on "Nite Hive," whilst Swedish techno duo Aasthma (Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik) - the former of the pair having just finished work on live version for tracks on Fever Ray's "Plunge" world tour - take album single "Connector" to an entirely different realm.  Adding rattling drum patterns and skidding synth leads which overthrow the sober original to a joyous dancefloor slayer.

More information can be found here.

07 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

Performed live on Negativland's "Over The Edge" program on KPFA on 24 August, 2018. Recorded by Wobbly.

Chuck Johnson - pedal steel guitar, synths, organ, treatments

More information can be found here.

06 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

Sound In Silence is happy to announce the addition of øjeRum to its roster of artists, presenting his new album Alting Falder I Samme Rum.

øjeRum is the solo project of musician and collage artist Paw Grabowski, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. For over a decade, he has been producing his sublime music, ranging from atmospheric ambient to experimental folk, having released several albums and EPs on labels such as Fluid Audio, Eilean Rec., Shimmering Moods Records, Champion Version, Unknown Tone Records and many others.

Alting Falder I Samme Rum consists of six new compositions with a total duration of about 45 minutes, captivating the listener with its atmospheric textures and melancholic soundscapes. Grabowski creates one of his best albums to date, built around loops of minimal synth melodies, layers of lush pads and swells of hypnotic drones. Alting Falder I Samme Rum is a gorgeous album with a feeling of nostalgia and meditation, carefully mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave) and highly recommended for devotees of William Basinski, Brian Eno, Harold Budd and Tim Hecker.

More information can be found here.

06 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

Sound In Silence proudly announces the addition of HIN to its roster of artists, presenting their debut Warmer Weather EP.

HIN is the new ambient/electronic project of two school friends, Jerome Alexander (Message To Bears) and Justin Lee Radford (The Kids And The Cosmos), based in London and Los Angeles respectively.
Jerome Alexander is already known for his ambient/folktronica project Message To Bears, having released four highly acclaimed albums, an EP and a split album with The Soul’s Release, either self-released or on Dead Pilot Records.
HIN’s debut is Alexander’s second appearance on Sound In Silence after the, already sold out, Moments EP under his own name J.R Alexander, back in 2012.
Justin Lee Radford has cultivated extensive collaborations with film makers, environmentalists, astronauts, scientists and social activists whilst composing music for film, VR, commercials, art installations and theatre. In late 2018 he released a 2-track single of solo piano pieces under his own name and is currently working on the debut EP of his project The Kids And The Cosmos.
Alexander and Radford, along with their childhood friend Maximilian Fyfe (Paint Splat Faces), also collaborate on the project Human Suits composing original scores for the documentaries of Planetary Collective.

Warmer Weather EP is made up of five captivating tracks, with a total duration of something more than 20 minutes. HIN’s debut deals with feelings of isolation, environmentalism and friendship and is a perfect mix of dreamy electronica, elegant dream-pop and soothing ambient. Utilizing wistful guitars, warm pads, hazy synths, enchanting electric piano melodies, deep bass lines, gentle male and childlike female vocals, intricate beats and glitchy electronics, HIN create an EP full of emotive textures and sublime soundscapes.
Warmer Weather EP is a brilliant release that will appeal to anyone moved by the music of artists such as The Album Leaf, Múm, Epic45 and of course Message To Bears.

More information can be found here.

26 May 2019

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Albums and Singles

Spiral Wave Nomads is the newly formed duo of multi-instrumentalist Eric Hardiman (Rambutan, Century Plants, Burnt Hills) and drummer Michael Kiefer (More Klementines). As a new duo, their first record is surprisingly a fully formed excursion: an excellent balance of structure and improvisation, and a sound that never stands still, but also demonstrates consistency and focus from song to song. The final product is a complex, yet entirely enjoyable suite of enveloping psychedelia that engages without bludgeoning.

Twin Lakes/Feeding Tube

Being familiar with the wide array of Hardiman's other, more experimental projects, Spiral Wave Nomads is comparably more conventional, and overall more laid-back in sound, but by no means dull.The six songs are anything but stagnant, with all having a sense of improvisation pretty prominent throughout, but there is little in the way of unexpected outbursts or unconventional effects to be heard.Right from "Blue Dream" this is apparent in the multitracked guitar performance, with shimmering guitar chords paired with more distorted tones and Kiefer's shuffling rhythms.

The core of "Vanishing Edges" is similar, with the drums subtly punctuating the interwoven layers of distinct guitar tones that all go off in different directions, yet still sound unified together.There is an almost classic country like twang to "Floating on a Distant Haze" but with some vaguely Eastern tones there as well, the final product is entirely unique, with a loose improvised jam feeling throughout.The same can be said for the concluding "Patterns of Forgotten Flight", which features Hardiman again layering distinctly different, yet compatible melodies over Kiefer's spacious, subtle drumming.Even though it is just a duo, the sound is far richer and demonstrates just how well the two can essentially improvise with themselves.

The overall mood of the record may be consistent and at times conventional, but there is clearly room for some experimental flourishes to be heard as well.The fragmented rhythms of "Elysium" immediately set a different mood for the song, as does the heavier guitar treatments feature prominently throughout.It still has a jam vibe to it, but on the whole it is one that is looser and less conventional, dipping more into experimental improve territories. The nearly 12 minute "Wabi Sabi" is another more unconventional work, with Hardiman adding some distinct sitar to the mix, contrasting his more traditional sounding guitar performance quite nicely.The rhythms come across as less structured and more free-form, with the whole performance sounding a bit more sprawling and less contained.

Spiral Wave Nomads may feature Eric Hardiman in a bit more of a conventional role than his work as Rambutan or the blown out jazz trio with Jeff Case and John Olson, but the work is no less innovative or distinct.He and Michael Kiefer have clearly outlined a specific sound for this record, and it is a great one.There are no harsh outbursts, face melting guitar leads, or drum solos, but instead it is a consistent, pleasant bit of psychedelic rock that manages to stay on the enjoyable side of jam band territory.

Samples available here.

26 May 2019

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Albums and Singles

While a series of archival live releases have appeared recently, the self-titled BLOODYMINDED is the first new studio material from the legendary Chicago noise/power electronics project since 2013’s Within the Walls. It also marks the first time that all six permanent members of the international band: Xavier Laradji, Will Lindsay, James Moy, Isidro Reyes, Pieter Schoolwerth, and de facto band leader Mark Solotroff have recorded together at the same location. This was heralded by a live performance just before the few crew entered the studio (released as The Struggle of Togetherness, but live BLOODYMINDED is a very different beast.  On stage they are a writhing mass of black leather, cheap plastic synths, and far more microphones than necessary. The result is the deconstruction of rock show clichés complete with between song banter and dedications, some of which are longer in duration than the song itself, which may be just a five second blast of synth. In the studio, however, the thematic depth and obsessive attention to sonic detail is much more obvious, resulting in the band's best work to date.

BloodLust!

The themes of urban spaces, isolation, and alienation abetted by digital technology on BLOODYMINDED link directly with Solotroff’s solo synth excursions of late, with the addition of The Myth of Community to the series coming just before this album.Listening together, those feel almost like the early fieldwork for this final project, with notable similarities and differences.While those recordings are sparse approximations of the inhuman concrete, glass and steel elements of the city via analog synthesizers, here the sense of isolation brings in the dense populace of an urban area. The first song "Precise Surfaces" is the opposite extreme of the synth work:multiple vocals all over the mix, yelling and screaming from left, right, and center above a traditional power electronics backing of extreme low and high frequencies makes for a very maximialist sound.However, there is the sense the vocals are disconnected from each other and also not necessarily directed at anyone in particular, resulting in a sense that I am just hearing the raging snippets of conversation from passing strangers above a standard urban din.

This is a structural approach that features prominently on "Degrees of Order" as well, and while this vocal style is not necessarily new for the band, it is so conceptually fitting for this album that it functions at an entirely new level.The same feeling is captured on "Rapid Breath," where the staccato synth undulations are blended with layered vocals and screams that make for a wonderfully chaotic pairing to the otherwise rhythmic feel."Flooded Interiors" is also constructed on a rhythmic pulsation of synth, which is also balanced by the harsher, distorted vocals.

As a band, BLOODYMINDED's work has always been anchored by Solotroff's vocals, and that is no different here.However, one of the most unique facets of the band is the fact that the vocals are usually rather clear and up-front, rather than buried under layers of distortion and effects.While often delivered at a manic pace and in multiple layers, they are largely understandable and when not, there is always a lyric sheet to clarify.Most of the lyrics here are couplets or short statements, pairings of buzz words or technical terms that emulate the fragmented information overload of today's social media and click-bait headlines.Shouted phrases like "dehumanizing undercurrents," "subsistence and surplus," "sowing division," and "the iconography of defiance" make the thematic elements of the record even clearer.

Vocals are prominent, but the same meticulous attention to detail goes into the synths as well."Tunneling" features heavy feedback that is nicely mixed with a widely varying sound to the electronics that stay consistent and structured, but clearly not just simplistic loops or noise that is allowed to run untouched."The Self and the Sublime" is slower and more textural, with the noise passages beautifully layered and evolving from beginning to end.There is an almost song-like structure to "The Future State of the Body" within the wet synths, overdriven bass line, and what almost seems to be an actual melody buried deep on "The Pace of Our Development," complete with French vocals by Xavier Laradji.The album closes on the title song which, besides putting the band in the elite club of artists that have both an album and song which are also the name of the band (i.e. Bad Company and Black Sabbath), ties everything together well, with its manic vocals within a hollow, empty mix that feels like rage that no one is around to hear.

Chicago is the perfect place for BLOODYMINDED to have been recorded.As the home of the eponymous Chicago School, significant sociological research has developed from the area that has no doubt informed the underling concepts of this record.Specifically, Robert Park and Ernest Burgess's 1925 theory of urban ecology, and its influence on Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay’s social disorganization theory (1942).A cornerstone of modern criminology, this theory posits how densely populated urban cities lead to an even greater sense of isolation; a seemingly contradictory effect, which in turn leads to anomie, disenfranchisement, and crime, which makes for an interesting sense of circular unity given the band's early work focusing on the true crime genre.A growing body of contemporary research has also demonstrated the magnifying impact digital and social media has had on this phenomena.I can think of no better audio examples of social disorganization than BLOODYMINDED, which makes it a fascinating work that bridges the gap between sound art and sociological theory. Easily a masterpiece of noise and experimental music that not only is the band's greatest work to date, but also among the most fully realized albums of the genre.

Samples available here.

26 May 2019

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Albums and Singles

I have only been familiar with William Ryan Fritch's work for a couple of years, but he became one of my absolute favorite artists almost instantly. In fact, I have such unshakable faith in his vision that I even pounced on this lavish collection of works for film despite my similarly unshakable apathy towards soundtrack albums. My rational was that his first major release in two years had to be something truly special and the handful of pieces released in advance of the album seemed to bear that out. As it happens, the rest of this double album is every bit as wonderful as those teasers: Deceptive Cadence may very well be Fritch’s career-defining masterpiece. It certainly deserves to be, as Fritch approached it as a true labor of love, tirelessly revisiting, reworking, and paring down years of disparate projects until he had a gorgeously bittersweet tour de force of sublime grandeur.

Lost Tribe

The first volume of Deceptive Cadence arguably dates back from 2015, as many of these pieces were modestly released in digital-only format as Music For Film Vol. I.This latest incarnation has undergone quite a dramatic transformation between then and now though, as Fritch "dove back into Volume I, carving away the fat, leaving only the most breathtaking pieces from the original and replacing the rest with assuredly more mature and enduring compositions."Remarkably, that description is actually a bit of an understatement, as I estimate that at least half of that album did not survive Fritch's curatorial bloodbath.As for the remaining pieces, they have been re-edited, re-sequenced, and interspersed with newer works to form a beautifully flowing and coherent whole.That certainly seems like a quixotically labor-intensive endeavor, but I wish more artists would follow suit: for the purposes of this album, it does not matter when a piece was recorded or what film it may have appeared in.None of that information is even provided and that makes perfect sense to me.These pieces have all served their original purpose in the work of others, so now Fritch is free and willing to chop them up to suit a vision that is his alone.In the case of Deceptive Cadence, that vision is a kind of rustic Americana filled with rippling, sun-dappled arpeggios that blossom into boldly churning string melodies.The finest example of that sensibility is probably "A Renewed Sense," as cello and violin themes dance and intertwine en route to a swooning crescendo that verges on the rapturous.The soaring and poignant "Mending What We've Cleft" achieves a similar feat, but nearly every piece embodies the elusive lightness of touch necessary to achieve aching beauty and tenderness without ever erring into melancholy, bombast, or saccharine prettiness.There are easily three or four other pieces in the first volume that qualify as legitimate highlights (and zero pieces that I would skip).It is an absolute feast of lightness, warmth, and memorable melodies.

While Deceptive Cadence's second half seems to be composed entirely of more recent material, the transition between the two albums is very much a seamless one.In fact, the entirety of this collection feels like a hallucinatory director's cut of Westworld with all of the violence and plot excised to leave only a poetic and impressionist swirl of warm memories and majestic scenery.There is definitely more of an undercurrent of darkness with the newer material though, as well as a more varied approach to mood and structure.I would not necessarily say that it is more sophisticated, but it does feel like it has more of a deliberate arc and pace: it would not be completely crazy to characterize Vol. I as a melody-driven singles collection and Vol. II as its more abstract and atmospheric shadow.There are some notably exceptions though.The most striking one is "Ricochet," which begins with a half-thorny/half-twinkling jangle of overlapping mandolins that elegantly and seamlessly transforms into something resembling a Wild West wedding dance.Fritch does not stop there, however, and "Ricochet" continues to organically grow and evolve until it finally explodes into a soaring and vivid heaven of simultaneous ascending and descending melodies.Regrettably, it ends all too soon for my liking, but that is probably for the best as I probably would have died from pure joy if it had gone on any longer than three minutes.Elsewhere, I was struck by the haunting cello melody that rises from the warmly languorous dreamscape of "Gut Level.""Dumbstruck" is a highlight as well, as its early drones blossom into a churning and serpentine dance of darkly lovely strings. In general, however, the second volume feels like a sustained reverie, albeit one regularly punctuated by alternating interludes of brooding melody and shimmering, fluttering radiance.

I enjoy both volumes quite a bit, but it is the first volume that I could probably play in an infinite loop for days without ever growing weary of it.When he is at his best, Fritch's melodies and themes feel like a divine choreography that fluidly and airily swirls, sways, and dances, making it seem like transcending and dissolving conventional structure is the most natural and effortless thing in the world.Fritch is the rarest form of iconoclast: the kind who carves out a truly wonderful and distinctive niche solely by bringing together obvious threads that few others have managed to convincingly combine before (and executing that feat masterfully).

In a way, Deceptive Cadence feels like a glimpse of an alternate timeline in which modern classical music never became mired in increasingly challenging sounds and ambitious concepts.Instead, it devotedly remained in pursuit of pure beauty, but learned a few things along the way from the looseness, simplicity, and soul of Bob Dylan and the starry-eyed romanticism of vintage Hollywood cinema.Fritch is not shy about exploiting his formidable gifts for arrangement or production enhancements, yet he has an uncanny intuition for allowing just the right themes to remain raw enough to make a direct emotional impact.These pieces often sound like the work of tight traditional folk ensemble that has been elevated into something unnaturally lush, layered, and dreamlike by the hands of a great drone artist who has been very careful not to lose their earthy, lyrical essence.Moreover, the bulk of Deceptive Cadence resembles a soundtrack only stylistically, evoking a vivid, living world on its own rather than feeling like one decontextualized aspect of a larger work.This is an ambitious, complete, and extraordinary work all by itself.If anything else comes along in the next six months to unseat Deceptive Cadence as one of my favorite albums of the year, it will have to be one hell of a revelatory release.

Samples can be found here.

26 May 2019

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Albums and Singles

My Cat is an Alien has always been very much an "outsider art" phenomenon, as the Opalio brothers have spent the last two decades tirelessly conjuring and reshaping a hermetic alternate reality replete with its own unique philosophy and cosmology. In the process, they have released some truly original and beguiling auditory dispatches from their remote home in the Alps, but music is just one part of their larger vision and that vision has drawn increasing interest from the art world. For this latest release, the brothers unveil a new collaborative imprint with gallerist and publisher Marco Contini that seeks to bring the various threads of the their artistry together into a focused and harmonious whole. That endeavor is off to an excellent start, as Spiritual Noise is quite an impressive achievement as an art object. It is also an excellent album, as each of the two lengthy pieces unveils a fresh new facet of the duo's deep space trance states.

Antigravitational

The opening "Spiritual Apocalypse" unquestionably earns at least half of its title, as it sounds like a vast, shambling intergalactic entity trudging slowly across space and time.If I were ever to accidentally reawaken one of the Old Ones by foolishly reading a cursed incantation from The Necronomicon aloud, I would definitely expect to hear sounds in a very similar vein right before the sun was blotted out and the screaming began.Uncharacteristically, "Spiritual Apocalypse" is a very percussion-driven piece, as its cumulative power centers around a slow yet relentless rhythm of seismic thuds and their shuddering aftermath.There is a bit more to the piece than just the steady approach of a world-eating juggernaut, however, as bits of structure gradually start to emerge from the miasma of deep throbs and eerily harmonizing layers of warbling, spectral vocals.Some additional entropy creeps into the scene as well, as the aftershocks seem to feed back into each other to create a host of new echoes and reverberations.Those slow and seamless transformations beautifully set the stage for quite a brilliant final act.In the piece's last five minutes, the slow-burning escalation of tension and dread transcendentally blossoms into a darkly lysergic feast of buzzing synth tones, feedback whines, and the gorgeously wounded, warped ripples of some homemade guitar-like instrument.I am tempted to describe it as something like "pure phantasmagoric brilliance," but it is far too broken-sounding and unsettling to be considered "pure" anything.I will grudgingly settle for "impure phantasmagoric brilliance" instead.

While Maurizio and Roberto tone down the cosmic horror quite a bit for the album’s second half, "Noise Deliverance" does share its predecessor's focus on rhythm to some degree.In fact, it sounds weirdly dub-influenced, as the skipping pulse resembles the crackles of vinyl looped and fed through some effects pedals.The other similarity between the two pieces is Roberto's omnipresent haze of ghostly cooing vocals.The mood and trajectory of "Noise Deliverance" are quite a bit different than "Spiritual Apocalypse," however, as it feels like I am slowly becoming submerged into swirling, disorienting, and vividly phantasmal pool of bizarre and ravaged sounds.The unlikely heart of the piece lies in an obsessively see-sawing motif of strangled feedback buzzes.It is both naggingly insistent and uncomfortably dissonant, but I found myself mentally clinging to it like a life-preserver as the only reliably constant feature in a chaotic and unfamiliar landscape of chirping and whooshing space toys.It is the sort of intense and difficult listening experience that few others artists could possibly get away with: the Opalios drop me the middle of a viscerally queasy and harrowing nightmare, but it is such a richly textured and vibrantly alive one that I cannot turn away from it.

After regularly immersing myself in the otherworldly vision of My Cat is an Alien for the last several years, I sometimes forget how incredibly far beyond recognizable, earthbound sounds the Opalios have traveled in their twenty years of recording.Aside from Roberto's spectral signature vocals, Spiritual Noise feels like it could have been crafted almost entirely from haunting and mysterious transmissions picked up by the SETI institute.That said, the Opalios' unique approach to melody and harmony is even more impressive than their unique choice of sounds.They have somehow managed to erase the entire accumulated musical wisdom of human civilization from their minds in order to start fresh with a radically different sensibility all their own.That is an incredible feat in general, but it is even more remarkable that something actually listenable emerged from such a categorical rejection of all things familiar to human ears.There are no recognizable chords, there are no recognizable scales (Western or Eastern), there are no recognizable instruments, and there are absolutely no apparent influences from other artists.Obviously, all of those things are true for quite a lot of MCIAA releases, but that has not stopped Roberto and Maurizio from tirelessly honing and perfecting their vision.That is what makes Spiritual Noise a significant new entry in MCIAA's extensive discography.My favorite albums have always been their massive, reality-dissolving epics like Psycho-System and Abstract Expressionism for the Ears, but this release continues the trend of The Dance of Oneirism towards a more distilled dose that retains roughly the same power.Both of these pieces (especially "Noise Deliverance") are mind-bombs detonated with surgical precision, seemingly firing up long-dormant synapses in hopes of processing the unexpected onslaught of bizarre auditory stimuli and the similarly unfamiliar sensations they trigger.Record store shelves are full of well-meaning bearded men wielding tablas and tamburas, hellbent on prying open my third eye or kicking down my doors of perception.Some of them have made some absolutely wonderful albums, but none have gone as far as My Cat is an Alien.

Samples can be found here.

26 May 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Luke Younger has been increasingly ambitious in reinventing the Helm aesthetic with each fresh release over the last several years, but this latest release still caught me off-guard a bit: the bulk of Chemical Flowers is very different from the killer single ("I Knew You Would Respond") that preceded its release. To some degree, that admittedly fits Younger's pattern, as each of his EPs tends to feature one brilliant centerpiece surrounded by the more expected post-industrial sound collages. Though it is a full-length (and one that features string arrangements from JG Thirlwell), Chemical Flowers more or less replicates that same approach by simply doubling the amount of collages. That is perfectly fine by me, as I tend to enjoy Younger's abstract side almost as much as his beat-driven side and he is in especially fine form here. These collages are quite a bit different than usual though, as it sounds like there are a handful of '70s or '80s New Age/ambient albums lurking at the heart of Flowers that have been scorched, warped, and mangled beyond recognition.

PAN

I can think of few current artists who have pleasantly surprised me more often than Luke Younger in recent years, as the only consistent thread among his last several releases is that he is remarkably gifted at seamlessly pulling divergent influences into an aesthetic that can roughly be described as "post-industrial."He also has an especially excellent ear for sounds and textures, though I never know where those sounds will be coming from or how they will be structured.I thought I had an inkling of the direction this album would take after learning of Thirlwell's involvement and hearing the haunting and lyrical Middle Eastern melodies of "I Knew You Would Respond," but Chemical Flowers turned out to be a strange and shifting mirage that defies simple description.That is by design, of course, as one of the album's stated themes is the fluctuation of "temporal and spatial boundaries."In that regard, the opening "Capital Crisis (New City Loop)" does a fine job of making it clear what I am in for, as the first minute is a mind-melting descent into a cacophony of gibbering electronics, warped gong-like textures, and nightmarishly plunging strings.More glibly put, it sounds like a plane is about to crash-land on a Zoviet France album.After that initial plunge, however, a more structured piece emerges as a miasma of unsettling insectoid textures and strangled horns unfolds over a see-sawing two-chord synth motif.That "ethno-ambient" or "sci-fi tribal" aesthetic resurfaces a few more times over the course of the album and I am quite fond of it.

With "I Knew You Would Respond," however, Younger creeps into the more polished Fourth World territory of Jon Hassell and Richard Horowitz, as Thirlwell's exotic and sensuous strings are combined with a muscular, laid-back groove in an unconventional raga.It would be a stretch to say that Younger has gone pop though, as his uncharacteristically hooky groove is increasingly strafed by skittering and squirming electronic textures.In a weird way, that piece feels like a battleground of sorts and once the dust settles, it is clear that the forces of deconstruction and abstraction have handily vanquished Younger's more structured side.The next few pieces still tenaciously cling to a pulse of sorts, however.In "Body Rushes," a looping string motif provides the backbone for a steadily intensifying storm of sickly synths, backwards loops of jabbering noise, and stuttering percussive throbs."Leave Them All Behind," on the other hand, is a bit more sublime and meditative, as a skipping bass thrum provides a hypnotic backdrop for a gently hallucinatory swirl of water sounds and out-of-focus smears of dissonant synth tones. By the time the album gets to its final third, however, the bottom has definitively dropped out and any semblance of structure or melody is quickly and mercilessly mutilated.The most striking example of that trend is "Lizard in Fear," which sounds a tape player violently chewing up an '80s New Age synth album while I am being assailed by extra-dimensional horrors in a nightmarish swamp.The following "Toxic Racehorse" then replaces the vivid and disturbing textures of that hallucinatory swamp with a droning void populated only by sickly, plunging, and strangled strings hellbent on wresting away my last vestiges of sanity.

Instead of sinking deeper and deeper into that dark place, however, the album ends on an ambiguous upturn with the lysergic, neon-lit synth reverie of the title piece."Chemical Flowers" is unlike anything else on the album, as it has a structured and melodic center, but that center is a very late '70s/early '80s synth motif that perfectly captures bleary, artificial sound that was briefly in vogue for horror and science fiction movie soundtracks.That theme gradually becomes fleshed out with some warmer synth pads and strings, but the fragile beauty is endlessly curdled by passing dissonances and ugly pitch shifts.It calls to mind the opening scenes of a George Romero film in which people are going about their daily lives blissfully unaware that they will soon be enthusiastically devoured by a horde of zombies.That is an apt reference in a broader sense as well, as my overall impression of Chemical Flowers is that it sounds like an album made by someone deep into early and mid-'80s underground culture, but with technology and a breadth of esoteric influences that no one from that era would have had.If Younger could build a time machine and release Chemical Flowers on Staaltape in 1986, it would easily (and deservedly) be one of the defining releases of the era.Until he manages that, he will just have to content himself with being one of the consistently intriguing and restlessly creative artists making abstract electronic music in 2019.Some other recent Helm releases admittedly hit higher highs than this one, but I am hard-pressed to think of any that are as consistently strong or achieve such a focused and evocative vision.

Samples can be found here.

24 May 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

It is with tremendous pleasure that we announce Resonant Field, the brand new full-length album from New York-based sound artist and composer Lea Bertucci. Following up her critically acclaimed 2018 NNA full-length Metal Aether, Lea continues her devotion to the exploration of physical spaces by way of sound, channeled through her alto saxophone. Where her previous work investigated a variety of locations around the globe, Resonant Field narrows her focus to one space in particular - the Marine A Grain Elevator at Silo City in Buffalo, New York. Using her horn, Lea awakens certain resonances within the space which have laid dormant and forgotten for decades. In this sense, Resonant Field is the documentation of a human's profoundly personal interaction with an inanimate space through the medium of sound.

The decommissioned structure at Silo City is a massive, cavernous space filled with large cast concrete cylinders, measuring approximately 18 feet wide and 130 feet tall. A grain silo that was once active, noisy, loud, and filled with kinetic energy now lays dormant as a silent, hulking concrete corpse, as is the case with many industrial sites across the United States. Through playing her saxophone inside this structure, Bertucci's goal was to excite and activate the space by playing certain pitches and extended techniques. By engaging with the acoustics in this manner, particularly the 12 seconds of natural decay, Bertucci is able to reimagine the saxophone as a polyphonic instrument, creating unique effects of microtonality and complex rhythmic phenomena, facilitated by the distinct delay as the sound bounces from one end of the silo to the other. Her microtonal playing moves delicately through the octaves, creating an interactive, responsive dance up and down the frequency scale. These overlapping tones form an extreme density and fills the ears and head with an eternal buzz, while also revealing an array of fluttering psychoacoustic phenomenon to the listener. By using these raw recordings of saxophone as the foundation for more intricate studio compositions, Resonant Field transcends mere documentation and evolves into a focused, comprehensive and total work at the hands of the artist.

Due to the specific architectural and sonic conditions of the Marine A Grain Elevator, Lea has captured new, never-before-heard sounds that truly cannot be duplicated by any other means. Her playing is improvisatory and reactive to the space’s unique acoustics. By allowing imperfections to exist within the recordings, the compositions evoke a distinct rawness and vulnerability. Free of premeditation or calculation, there is an emotional surrender to the bestial, monumental atmosphere and presence of Silo City. This formation of an intimate connection with her surroundings is both scientific and spiritual, putting Lea in a duality of roles as both an archaeologist of sound and as a sonic medium. The fact that these recordings took place during the partial solar eclipse of 2017 further contributes to the ceremonial, ritual quality of the work, making Resonant Field a profound, industrial meditation on beauty, emptiness, and the deep melancholy of forgotten spaces.

More information can be found here.