27 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Over the last several years, Marc Richter's Black to Comm project has swelled considerably in ambition and scope, blossoming into a shape-shifting and idiosyncratic force with a strong propensity for the epic. With this latest album, his first for Thrill Jockey, Richter reaches a darkly hallucinatory new plateau with his art. It is difficult to say whether Seven Horses For Seven Kings is Richter's masterpiece, as there is stiff competition from a couple of his other recent albums, but it is unquestionably his heaviest and most vividly absorbing opus to date, unfolding as a disorienting and harrowing nightmare that increasingly stretches and strains towards transcendence.

Thrill Jockey

Marc Richter certainly has a gift for properly setting the stage for a uniquely phantasmagoric experience, as "Asphodel Mansions" slurs and oozes into being as a squirming mass of sickly, deflated, and uncomfortably discordant horns.In fact, the early pieces on all evoke the feeling that I have just been drugged or fatally poisoned and that I used my last burst of strength to stumble into a cabaret before fading out of consciousness.As my life ebbs away, I can hear all of the expected sounds of a small jazz band, but they all take on a menacingly disjointed, distended, and hellish texture as the neon-lit room spins around me.Even the drums in "A Miracle No-Mother Child At Your Breast" are not safe from the infernal transformation, as they feel like they are happening at an extremely slowed time-scale in which a lively fill is reduced to a deep, hollow, and echoing caricature of itself.Richter also seems to draw inspiration from fundamentally uncomfortable and unpleasant sounds during that first phase of the album, as the crescendos are rife with artfully blurred and transformed homages to alarm clocks and car alarms.It is not until the third piece, "Lethe," that the veil of dissonant and undulating grotesquerie starts to dissipate, allowing the first hints of a more structured and deeper album to creep into the frame.At first, the shift towards more warm and melodic fare takes the shape of a smoky and serpentine saxophone over a hissing and throbbing backdrop of drones, but glimpses of considerably more detailed and harmonically rich vistas increasingly emerge as the album reaches its midpoint.In that regard, "Ten Tons of Rain in a Plastic Cup" feels like the doorway that frees me from the claustrophobic cacophony...and opens into somewhat more expansive and varied hellscape, as its swirling dissonance is gradually eclipsed by an ascending and darkly radiant progression of synth chords (albeit one gnawed by inhuman howls).

The following "Licking The Fig Tree" is the first unambiguously beautiful piece on the album, as a passionate eruption of free-jazz saxophone howls and squirms its way across a warm and lush landscape of deep organ chords. After that reverie, however, the bottom drops out and Seven Horses hits its lysergic, fragmented, and fitfully visceral crescendo.On the album's single (of sorts) "Fly On You," masses of shivering drones and strangled horns collide with booming and clattering percussion that sounds like massive, clanking machinery trying to replicate the sounds of a ping-pong game."If Not, Not" is even more unhinged, as it feels like a thunderous taiko drumming ensemble drifts in and out of phase beneath a chaos of guitar noise and dissonant synth tones…then gets joined by the cabaret chanteuse who was enigmatically absent from the album's first third.Normally, the appearance of a recognizable human voice would soften such a roiling miasma, but not this time, as the vocalist's phases grotesquely smear, warp, and intertwine into sinister incomprehensibility.The anachronistic Japanese war drums recur a few more times, most notably in "Semirechye" (courtesy of guest Jon Mueller), but the album's final stretch is primarily significant for featuring its most most gorgeous and swooningly hallucinatory pieces.The first of those is "Angel Investor," which is essentially just an immensely dense and oversaturated two-chord organ motif embellished with a vibrant nimbus of alternately howling and angelically warbling tones.In characteristic Richter fashion, however, the piece undergoes a brief rocky spell in which it violently warps like a collapsing star.Even heaven itself is precarious in the context of this album.

The ominously titled final piece ("The Courtesan Jigokudayū Sees Herself as a Skeleton in the Mirror of Hell") is the most lovely of all though, as its squirming and ghostlike loops recall Richter’s Jemh Circs project (repurposed YouTube samples) at its most achingly sublime.That title also sheds some light on one of Richter's probable inspirations for the album, as it references a hauntingly macabre Yoshitoshi woodblock print, which itself references the much older Japanese/Buddhist tale of "The Hell Courtesan."Though it has taken several different forms and tones since it first appeared, it is ultimately a tale of enlightenment and redemption, themes that Richter seems to have a deep interest in (samples of evangelists are a recent recurring theme in his work and "The Deseret Alphabet" references the Mormons' doomed attempt to create a new alphabet).I would hesitate to call Black to Comm "religious" though, even if if it occasionally approaches the ecstatic.It seems more accurate to say that Richter is fascinated and inspired by the myriad ways in which people wrestle with meaning and the condition of being human.That said, it would not surprise me at all if Seven Horses was intended as a deeply abstract reenvisioning of Jigokudayū’s story, as it definitely feels like an album that valiantly strains to pour a lifetime of anguish, lust, doubt, and transfiguration into two slabs of vinyl.I am not sure such a quixotic feat is entirely possible, but Richter's efforts certainly make a powerful impression regardless of his intentions or inspirations.While both Black to Comm and Alphabet 1968 have their share of compositional wonders that rival Seven Horses’ strongest moments, this album is nevertheless on a plane all its own in terms of distinctiveness, execution, and boldness of vision.

27 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

I have mixed feelings about vinyl-only reissues, but there is no denying that they are an extremely effective way to rekindle interest in a long-neglected album that should not be languishing in obscurity. This album is an excellent example of that phenomenon, as Geelriandre/Arthesis has been fairly easy to track down digitally for a while and few were clamoring for it. Now that it is getting a formal physical resurrection, however, it is deservedly back in the public consciousness. As far as Radigue albums go, it is a somewhat unique one, occupying a grey area between the more divergent Alga Marghen albums and her more universally revered drone epics. It shares much more common ground with the latter, but it sometimes feels like an embryonic version that is still partially indebted to the avant-garde zeitgeist of the era. Nevertheless, it is quite a fascinating album, taking an alternate and almost sci-fi-damaged path quite unlike the pure and focused vision of Radigue's later recordings.

Important

Eliane Radigue's discography is quite a uniquely confounding chronological mess, as it took an unforgivably long time for the world to recognize her as one of the twentieth century's most singular and gifted composers.That is admittedly true of many other female composers as well, but Radigue has been more prolific than many of her peers.To give an especially damning example, her landmark Adnos trilogy was completed in the early '80s, yet only managed to get released in 2002.While it is not quite on the same level as that opus, Geelriandre/Arthesis also languished unheard for decades, as these two pieces date from the early '70s and only surfaced in 2003 on the Italian Fringes label (it was then reissued roughly a decade later on another Italian label, Senufo).Amusingly, it also just got released again as part of INA-GRM's Electronic Works boxed set, but this reissue is still its first physical release in the US.Interestingly, the earlier of the two pieces ("Geelriandre," recorded in 1972) was composed for the Arp 2500 synthesizer, which soon became Radigue's signature instrument.Apparently, not immediately though, as 1973's "Arthesis" was composed for a Moog synth at the University of Iowa.I would not have expected a visionary Parisian electronic music composer to turn up in Iowa in the early 1970s.I may need to completely reevaluate that state.

I was a bit surprised to discover that "Geelriandre" predates Radigue's deep, lifelong devotion to Buddhism, as its lingering, bell-like tones imbue the piece with a very ritualistic and "Eastern" feel.Or possibly a feel more like a lonely buoy, hollowly chiming in a windswept bay in the dead of night.In either case, it is quite an evocative sound and I am curious about its source, as it has a distinctly "metallic" timbre, and there is no mention of bells or gongs being involved in the performance.Notably, however, "Geelriandre" is a rare duet for Radigue, as it was composed for Gérard Frémy, who accompanies her on prepared piano (likely the source of the bell tones, though they seem improbably deep and sustained at times).The beauty of the composition primarily lies in the fact that it does not feel like a composition at all. Rather it feels like a field recording of a strange and dreamlike ceremony where ancient gongs reverberate in a quietly oscillating, machine-like hum, evoking a time-stretched recording of a Buddhist mass on an abandoned space station. The following "Arthesis" further deepens that sense of haunted otherworldliness, as the pulsating and ghostly minimalist thrum of Radigue's drones partially hides a host of ominous-sounding subterranean groans and scrapes.Again, an empty space station feels like an incredibly apt comparison, but now it feels like there is some massive, unknown creature slowly making its way through the air ducts, announcing its terrifying progress with sounds of distantly shuddering and warping metal.

Despite being a fairly devout fan of Radigue's work, I was a bit slow to fully appreciate this unique and quietly wonderful pair of structurally and temporally ambiguous drone works.I suspect my initial lukewarm reaction was because Geelriandre/Arthesis conspicuously lacks much of what I love about Radigue's major works: elegant, perfect simplicity and gradual, sublime transformation.Both traits are admittedly present on this album to some degree, but they are not the focus, and neither piece feels like it has a deliberate arc or evolution.As a result, I mistook Geelriandre/Arthesis for a primitive version of Radigue's later work until it slowly dawned on me that it was instead a highly evolved version of something else altogether.That is what makes this an important album, as it captures a rare moment when Radigue turned her formidable talents towards texture and mood, as if she was masterfully portraying a single scene in great detail rather than embarking on a transcendent abstract journey.Also, it helps that the two scenes Radigue paints are so alien and weirdly beautiful, as if she was trying to capture the elusive and fragmented dreams of an android.That certainly is not the expected territory for an Eliane Radigue album and partially explains why these recordings languished unheard for so long: these two strange visions were presumably both too far ahead of their time and radically outside of time to be fully appreciated in their own era.

26 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

As audacious as the sleeve it comes housed in, the UK’s most eccentric audio malefactor returns with his eighth studio album, Practical Electronics.  Unique in the Thighpaulsandra oeuvre, this one eschews the usual group-based recordings, consisting of electronics and vocals only.

Hovering between haunted narratives and extended instrumental sequences, Practical Electronics is an eccentric excursion into playful pop and fearless electronic experimentation.  Simultaneously intimidating and accessible, the energy of this untamed mind unleashes an artefact where high art unfolds as an oblique electronic cabaret.

Having cut is teeth amongst such legendary outfits such as Coil and Spiritualized, Thighpaulsandra has constantly catapulted himself further and further into a musical landscape utterly of his own devising.  Practical Electronics is the latest exemplary installment of a voice that is uncompromising as it is outlandish.

More information can be found here.

26 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"Imagine Richard Youngs as the junior member of a cabal of prolific and puritanical English musician-mystics, including The Fall's Mark E Smith, Van der Graaf Generator's Peter Hammill, Martin Carthy and The Clangers composer Vernon Elliot, and still his nature will elude you."

-Stewart Lee, Sunday Times.

Dissident is a hallucination of a legendary lost Samizdat-style recording of the legendary lost Richard Youngs Band. It's not clear to me that it is against anything in particular, and as such it is not literally dissident. In fact, I'm a little lost how or why it is dissident, save for being informed by the imagined provisional recordings of pre-Glasnost protest. Perhaps the wordless scratch vocals are voicing dissent, but I remember having fun. So much so, I couldn’t stop myself from fleshing out the rough nylon guitar songs to a full band arrangement, recorded in multiple spaces.  Which is as far from the Samizdat spirit as you could care to go.

More information can be found here.

26 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio, Dome took the ethic of "using the studio as a compositional tool" and recorded and released three Dome albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: Dome (July 1980), Dome 2 (October 1980) and Dome 3 (October 1981).  A final fourth album, Will You Speak This Word: Dome IV was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in May 1983.

These albums represent some of the most beautifuly stark and above all timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early 1980s alternative music scene.

Previously issued in the out-of-print Dome 1-4+5 boxed set in 2011.  Now available as standalone LP with download card.

More information can be found here.

26 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Martina Lussi's second album fuses together disparate sound sources with a disorienting quality that reflects the modern climate of dispersion and distraction. The Lucerne, Switzerland-based sound artist released her debut album Selected Ambient on Hallow Ground in 2017, and now comes to Latency with a bold new set of themes and processes.

The range of tools at her disposal spans field recordings, processed instrumentation, synthesized elements and snatches of human expression.  The guitar is a recurring figure, subjected to a variety of treatments from heavy, sustained distortion to clean, pealing notes. Elsewhere the sound of sports crowds and choral singing merge, and patient beds of drones and noise melt into the sounds of industry and mechanics.  The track titles manifest as a compositional game of deception complete with innuendos, empty phrases and claims – flirtations with perfume names and ironic assertions.

From the volatile geopolitical climate to the changing nature of music consumption in the face of streaming and digital access, Diffusion is a Force is a reflection on fractured times where familiar modes and models change their meaning with the ever-quickening pace of communication.

More information can be found here.

26 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

On Epitaph things are different - Jay's voice croons crystalline over goth futurism for the first time on record (if you haven't heard of Ku….) - he sings one of the oldest Greek songs ever written and has spent the last year doing impromptu vocal covers of Tricky tracks in Cambridge pubs. And did you notice the tracks don't have dub in the title any more?

This his first proper proper solo LP from Jay Glass Dubs - a widescreen vision of 4AD nightmares, ballads for River Styx crossings and echoes that never end. It's This Mortal Coil if they knew about dungeon synth and Metalheadz and still thought dub techno was boring as fuck.

Epitaph follows his 2LP retrospective of Dubs on Not Waving's Ecstatic Recordings; and his 12” mini-LP with Leslie Winer on Bokeh early in 2018.  It's his 5th and no way final release for Bokeh (do you remember BKV 002, the slowest dancehall mixtape ever made?).  Realized with help of Greek vocalist and performing artist Yorgia Karidi and a special saxophone guest spot from Ben Vince (Curl, Where To Now, Hessle Audio).  Bokeh graphic visionary Patrick Savile's sensually airbrushed and peeled lemon closes this funeral casket of all the things you thought you knew about Jay Glass Dubs.

More information can be found here.

26 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"Heart-rending shoegaze entries from the master of rose-tinted but thorny ambient pop hymns, landing smart on the heels of his nostalgic pangs collected in the recent Songs of Remembrance / Songs of Forgiveness LP reissues. The struggle is beautiful.

Accompanied by the languorous basslines of Drew Piraino on the record's broadest and most affective pieces, Jefre's chiming guitars and muffled drums form hymns to rare feels, with the distancing effect of distortion connoting the effect of age, as serene moments appear move ever farther out of reach.

That effect is felt most strongly in the transition of "Love’s Refrain" from something like a crumpled tape recording of shimmering yacht rock thru to its coruscating, noisy finale, and the dense weight of humid air and featherlight chirrups in "Little Dear Isle," while the other side pushes off from the sore synth chorale of "In Summer" and into the slackened drums of "Blue Nudes (I-IV)," again underlined by Drew Piraino’s murmuring bassline, with Jefre pushing the upper registers into the red, before collapsing into the tape noise and lone piano refrain of his "Prelude.""

-via Boomkat

More information can be found here.

20 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Alhough I lamentably cannot claim to have been a fan since the beginning, I have been aware of Ectoplasm Girls' intermittently surfacing bouts of outsider genius long enough to feel like a fool for sleeping on this latest solo album from Nadine Byrne (released last spring). In my defense, it was billed as a soundtrack and I am generally averse to such things, but Dreaming Remembering is quite unlike anything resembling a conventional soundtrack that I have heard. Instead, this album feels like a collection of B-sides from a great synth pop/minimal wave artist, stretching and reshaping their hook-heavy hits into something considerably weirder, more abstract, and subtly hallucinatory. Some pieces are certainly more substantial than others, but the best moments bring an extremely appealing pop sensibility to the synth and experimental music milieu.

iDEAL

This is Byrne’s second solo release under her own name, following 2014’s maddeningly out-of-print A Different Gesture (also a soundtrack of sorts).She has also surfaced as The Magic State on a similarly elusive release, but Dreaming Remembering uncharacteristically got a digital release, making it likely to be Byrne's widest reaching solo work to date.It is certainly a solid pick for that honor.Unsurprisingly, the film being soundtracked here is one of Nadine's own, as music is just one facet of an oeuvre that also stretches into video art, textiles, sculpture, photography, and probably several other additional disciplines that I have missed.The album is a bit more substantial than the film itself, which feels like a looping video installation or an interrelated series of music videos (there are three different vignettes set to five of these songs).According to Byrne, both the album and the 19-minute film are intended to "exist in the borderland between memory and dream, drawing their inspiration from that threshold of consciousness where one cannot tell one from the other."In that regard, the album succeeds quite admirably, as the unusual approach to vocals gives these pieces an elusive and fragmented mystery.It is not unlike voyeuristically getting a glimpse of someone's deepest secrets in their diary, but lacking the necessary context to unlock their actual meaning.

Notably, Ectoplasm Girls' earliest work was characterized by an eclectic and computer-averse "anything goes" approach that incorporated samples pregnant with childhood memories, yet Dreaming Remembering feels like the work of a gifted synthesizer artist with sharply honed production skills and a clear vision.While she handles all of the instrumentation herself, Byrne curiously enlisted a guest vocalist (Sarah Kim) for four pieces; primarily the ones that are most heavily based on lyrics/poetry.Neither Kim nor Byrne actually sing at any point on the album, however, as their voices are either devoted to confessional-sounding spoken-word monologues or loops that act like an additional layer of instrumentation.Admittedly, the former probably gives the album its most substantial content and depth (at least conceptually), but Byrne is able to wield something as outwardly vapid as a repeating loop of "Um hmm, ok" to great effect in "Okay."The lion's share of the album's appeal lies primarily in the hypnotically buzzing and throbbing synth loops that Byrne assembles, so the vocals essentially just need to be there to imbue these burbling post-industrial soundscapes with a glimmer of soul and human warmth.The sole exception to that is the album's centerpiece "Mothers and Daughters and Sisters," in which a variation of the title phrase becomes kind of an intensifying and cathartic mantra that eclipses the surrounding music.Aside from the brief and insistently throbbing "Nothing Is Opposite to Forever," the remainder of the album’s highlights delve into much more vaporous and dreamlike territory, such the warmly ripping reverie of "ATDN."

While "Mothers and Daughters and Sisters" is the album's unquestionable zenith, it is another piece "But You Don't" that best highlights Byrne's endearingly unique and off-kilter sensibilities, favorably reminding me of the obsessive and deranged collages of early Severed Heads without ever crossing the line into feeling derivative. I would have already been delighted by the piece if it were just an endless loop of the syllable "Ehh" over an energetically lurching and clap-based drum machine groove, yet Byrne ingeniously builds on that playfully maniacal foundation with further loops that sound like sped up tapes, as well as a slowed-down snatch of sassy trash-talking.The overall effect is both wonderfully disorienting and gleefully, infectiously ridiculous. To my ears, that direction is where Byrne's true genius lies: making experimental music that feels genuinely experimental, yet deftly evading self-serious artiness with a healthy appreciation for hooks and a strong intuition for wryly mischievous juxtapositions.I wish Byrne had explored her lunatic dance party side more, but this is ostensibly a soundtrack for an art film, so it is a welcome and unexpected treat that such a piece even turned up here at all.As it stands, Dreaming Remembering is a mostly excellent album diluted by a few weaker pieces, but its impressive highlights and the elusiveness of Nadine's other releases combine to make that it the ideal entry point to the work of a wonderfully talented and idiosyncratic artist.

20 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Alive in Dark Rooms is the third live release from Joao Da Silva’s Luciernaga project, following two equally limited, handmade CDs from 2015 and 2017. Compiling four full performances between 2017 and 2018 it functions not only as a snapshot of how the Luciernaga project translates to a live setting, but also is a brilliant overview of the different styles and approaches Da Silva has been working with these past years. At times meditative and beautiful, and at other turns dark and harsh, it is a superb document of his recent work.

Self-Release

In a live setting, the Luciernaga sound is not one that is drastically different from his studio releases, with the only obvious point being their longer durations and structure.Much of the non-live work Da Silva has released previously is likely improvisations captured in the studio and then edited down/cleaned up as needed. So in these live performances, the only difference is their long-form nature, the fact they are recorded with just a portable recorder in the room, but also the presence of an audience.Given the fact Da Silva prefers to play small spaces with largely groups of friends and fellow artists, I can imagine that their presence is a positive force, at least in the case of these shows.

The first performance, "Dirge" (Ridgewood NY, 2018) captures more of the lighter, ambient side of Luciernaga.Da Silva slowly weaves together various loops, building them up but keeping them spacious in sound, making for a rich yet subtle mix.Soon more overt guitar droning and what almost sounds like a sustained chanting voice are mixed in, bringing a stoic, almost sacred minimalism feel to the piece.As the 20 minute performance continues, Da Silva places more emphasis on the melodic sounds in the mix, eventually taking the focus in an icy, shimmering, powerful, yet mournful tone to conclude the performance.

"Untitled" (Charlottesville, VA, 2017) has a dirge-like quality to it, but on the whole follows the previous performance in a more melodic, tonal approach.There is a slowness to his playing, but one that is pleasantly spacious.Again Da Silva takes his time before introducing slightly more conventional guitar sounds to the composition.Here the sound is less effected in comparison, focusing more on the traditional tone of the instrument, but elongated with ebow-like sustain.On the whole it is largely a light, drifting piece with some more commanding guitar performances, making for a nice balance between two extremes.However, with the murder of Heather Heyer just a couple of weeks later in the same city, I imagine Da Silva’s performance would have been drastically different had it been a bit later on.

The other pair of performances on Alive in Dark Rooms capture the bleaker, more grim side of Luciernaga.The short (just a bit under 10 minutes) performance of "Raga for LMC" (also recorded in Ridgewood NY, in 2017) immediately opens with a darker, vaguely sinister midrange hum.The swells in volume are a bit more intense here, and while Da Silva's guitar work is a bit more musically melodic, the effects and overall feel of the piece have a profound depressing quality when compared to the previous two shows.Finally, "Untitled" (Maspeth NY, 2017) begins with an immediate sense of bleakness.Various sounds expand into a frigid, open space that, while beautiful, is anything but inviting.Soaring guitar sounds cut through the cold, empty mix with a distinctly beautiful quality to them, but the dreariness never subsides.Eventually what beauty remains in the piece is stripped away, becoming more ugly and almost violent in the closing minutes of the performance.

Sitting alongside his studio works perfectly, Alive in Dark Rooms is an exemplary release that brings the more spontaneous elements of Joao Da Silva’s work as Luciernaga to the forefront.It may be a subtle impact, but I feel that part of the variation, besides the inherent long form structure to the performances, would be the presence of an audience.It is never an obvious thing:only rarely on these four performances do you even hear any clear evidence of other people present for recording and then it is only a bit of dialogue at the very onset.However, it surely impacted Da Silva’s playing, and whatever the influence was, makes for four complex, multifaceted compositions that stand just as strongly as any of his studio material.

Samples available here.