25 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Etelin is the newest project from Students of Decay label head Alex Cobb, marking quite a radical break from the ambient drone of his previous oeuvre. That transformation stems largely from Cobb's frustration with the current experimental music scene, which has calcified into various genres and trends in recent years, losing much of the playfulness and actual experimentation that made the milieu so initially compelling. Obviously, Cobb is not alone in that feeling, as there are several outliers currently making groundbreaking and unique work (Cam Deas and Rashad Becker spring immediately to mind), yet Hui Terra is very much an unusual album that pointedly and willfully turns its back on the zeitgeist. At its best, the album hits some sustained passages of dreamlike beauty, but the bulk of Hui Terra is a bit more modest in its ambitions, unfolding like a more fragmented and hallucinatory re-envisioning of classic GRM fare.

Soda Gong

Aside from being the birth of a new solo project, Hui Terra is also the inaugural release of a sister label to Students of Decay (Soda Gong) that will focus on work with "a sense of playfulness and a sort of willful naivety."Though it pains me to be driven to such a glib segue, I have to note that this album was partially inspired by another birth as well: that of Cobb's son.Much like Koen Holtkamp's new album recorded under similar circumstances, sleep-deprivation and being awake at odd hours were a major factor in the shaping the Etelin aesthetic.To his credit, Cobb took that disruption of his established patterns and ran with it, selling off much of his usual gear and starting anew with a digital synth and a sampler.Similarly, he made a concerted effort to approach music with fresh ears, using his son as kind of a sounding board for new ideas after noting that he responded most strongly to the textures and dynamics on albums by Bernard Parmegiani, Luc Ferrari, and Nuno Canavarro.While none of these pieces are conspicuously derivative of those artists, Cobb is definitely fond of "early electronic music" sounds, as the foundation of Hui Terra is generally smeared, woozy synth tones and textures that sound like a lysergic vibraphone.

The most compelling passages on the album are the ones that transcend that aesthetic, however, and Cobb explores a variety of divergent ways to achieve that.Notably, the single most beautiful piece on the entire album, "Been Really Good Today," barely feels like a composition at all.Instead, it sounds like the deep, languorous chiming of large wind chimes subtly augmented with an occasional snatch of buried speech and field recordings.It feels like a wonderfully egoless window into a warm and sleepily lovely domestic scene, yet Cobb's production handiwork is apparent in the way that the deep tones leave a lingering and quavering haze in their wake.Cobb displays a truly impressive lightness of touch and intuitive grasp of when to avoid intrusiveness.That approach is the exception rather than the rule, however, as the rest of Hui Terra tends to be more conspicuously crafted and self-consciously experimental.For example, the outré "Little Rig" culls many of its sounds from Cobb's son, unfolding as a disorienting miasma of splattering, squelching, gurgling, and cooing textures before cohering into a lilting and dreamlike coda of blurred melody.Elsewhere, "Hour Here Hour There" feels like a limpid lost private press New Age piece before unexpectedly blossoming into a gently hallucinatory chorus of psychedelically tweaked frog recordings."We Don’t Have to Eat Our Hands" has some great moments as well, as the wobbly, buzzing and fragmented opening theme gives way to a lovely lattice of gently swaying and scraping strings.Sadly, that motif does not stick around long, but it is wonderful while it lasts and I appreciate the compositional sleight of hand.

Given that the whole point of Etelin and Soda Gong is the freedom to celebrate willful naiveté and do things "wrong," focusing on Hui Terra's occasional flaws and unevenness would be to miss the point entirely.The beauty of this album lies in watching how Cobb gamely tries different paths to elude convention and existing patterns.As such, these pieces are akin to The Legendary Pink Dots' "Chemical Playschool" series or Ben Chasny's recent hexadic experiments: an intriguing and fitfully revelatory series of outliers rather than a great, coherent album.That said, Hui Terra is still an unexpectedly strong album for an artist stepping entirely outside their established comfort zone ("Little Rig" sometimes sounds like a deranged clown strangling balloon animals, which is about as far from shimmering guitar drone as you can get).I very much appreciate Cobb's desire to avoid repeating himself or anyone else, as that is quite a frustrating and lonely road to take and few succeed.To my ears, only "Been Really Good Today" manages to be a complete and fully formed triumph here, but Cobb is just getting started and Hui Terra contains enough flashes of inspiration and unpredictability to make me very eager to hear where Soda Gong leads next.

25 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

I was completely unaware of this Italian sound artist's work until only recently, but he seems to be having quite a big year, as his duo with Roberto P. Siguera (Luton) released their bleakly lovely debut on Lost Tribe Sound and now there is this leftfield gem of a solo album. While I am sure comparing one underheard artist to another is quite a quixotic endeavor, there have to be some people out there who remember Talvihorros's Descent into Delta album and Novellino does something similar here: A Conscious Effort feels like a sustained and immersive plunge into the mysteries of the mind. In keeping with the ambition of its apparent conceptual inspirations, the music is a shape-shifting and kaleidoscopic fantasia that seamlessly blurs together roiling drones, viscerally snarling feedback, skipping loop experimentation, and even an occasional eruption of pummeling, slow-motion doom metal. Naturally, I prefer some threads more than others, but the entire album flows together beautifully and evocatively.

Midira

The opening "Conceptual Experience of the Body" slowly creeps into being like a mysterious fog, as murky drones, shuddering strings, and running water glacially and unexpectedly cohere into a warm cello theme courtesy of guest Alex Vatagin.It is an intriguing and deceptive entry point, blossoming into nakedly lovely chord swells that suggest the start of something epic and Romantic.Instead, the album immediately plunges down a buzzing and roiling rabbit hole of hallucinatory darkness with "False Self Cage" and only sinks deeper into that dark spell from there."Cage" is one of the more viscerally striking pieces on the album, as its strangled and squealing strings blossom into a heaving and seething sea of stuttering loops, hiss, and shimmering noise.Even at this early point in the album, however, it is quite clear that the boundaries delineating individual pieces are largely irrelevant, as A Conscious Effort unfolds like a single, unbroken nightmare that gradually becomes more dense and more real.Each new "song" seamlessly segues into the next and the overall effect is like sinking deeper and deeper into an immersive dreamscape that seethes with vague menace and vibrantly kinetic textures.While there are plenty of striking passages throughout the album, they feel like they either blossom forth from a roiling morass or unexpectedly snap into focus from churning entropy.

Part of the beauty of A Conscious Effort lies in how seamlessly Novellino and his bevy of collaborators are able to transform their aesthetic time and time again, like some kind of fluidly shifting and phantasmagoric hydra.It is often easy to spot Novellino's influences, but it is impossible not to be impressed with how masterfully he channels each of them and integrates them all into a coherent whole.In "Boundless Hope, Boundless Illusion," for example, the stuttering warm chords of early Tim Hecker transform into a lush, widescreen crescendo in the vein of Popul Vuh's Aguirre soundtrack.That piece is then followed by a grinding, swirling, and throbbing eruption of guitar noise that would make Kevin Shields smile ("The Anatomy of Envy").Later, Novellino's love of noisy guitars surfaces again in the insistently pulsing "Satan is Always Happy," which marries the roaring unison notes of Sonic Youth or Glenn Branca with obsessively stuttering loops à la classic Oval.The last highlight, "Perceptual Experience of the Body," is a full band effort that does not recall anyone in particular, yet dives wholeheartedly into doom territory as a squall of snarling feedback and grinding noise rolls over the top of clattering tribal toms and sludgy, blown-out bass tones.It is admittedly a bit disorienting to encounter such varied tour of underground subgenres on one album, yet somehow it all works and cumulatively snowballs into a very coherent and satisfying arc.

The album ends on an eerily lovely note, as a simple, blearily wobbling piano melody slowly becomes consumed by a passing cloud of distortion, then re-emerges for a tender and unadorned final coda.Notably, I was initially somewhat exasperated by how little I was able to find out about this album or Novellino in general, as the arc and shifting mood of A Conscious Effort feels like it must mirror something like The Inferno or some found diaries from a Victorian mental hospital: this album feels very much like an abstract interpretation of a novel or a Bosch retrospective.In hindsight, however, the matter-of-fact and modest statement "Attilio Novellino is a multi-instrumentalist with a very detailed view of soundscapes" is quite apt in conveying what he does, even if it undersells it quite a bit.The details and the craftsmanship are what elevate this album into something special.Novellino is considerably more than a talented chameleon: there is a larger and deeper vision at work here and Novellino executes it all masterfully, crafting a richly textured, thoroughly absorbing, and strikingly vivid sound world that becomes steadily more compelling as I am drawn further and further into it.Viewed a single piece of music, this album is a legitimate tour de force.If A Conscious Effort can be said to have any flaw, it is only that Novellino succeeds a bit too well in creating a dream state, as the shifting and elusive nature of the piece prevents it from leaving a deep mark on my consciousness after the last note fades.It is a hell of a beguiling spell while it lasts though.

Samples can be found here.

22 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Two decades ago the Annual Readers Poll began. The old version of the first annual readers poll can still be viewed online here, but we wanted to re-examine 1998 in the new system and get a broader picture of the music of that year. Perhaps these are truly the releases that have withstood 20 years of listening or the readership demographics have changed in 20 years. Either way, thanks to all who participated. Look for a 1997 recount nomination round coming soon and the 2018 Annual Readers Poll to follow.

Album of the Year

1. Coil, ""Time Machines"" (Eskaton)
2. Tortoise, ""TNT"" (Thrill Jockey)
3. Current 93, ""Soft Black Stars"" (Durtro)
4. Boards Of Canada, ""Music Has The Right To Children"" (Warp)
5. Autechre, ""LP5"" (Warp)
6. The Legendary Pink Dots, ""Nemesis Online"" (Soleilmoon)
7. Edward Ka-Spel, ""The Blue Room"" (Soleilmoon)
8. Meat Beat Manifesto, ""Actual Sounds + Voices"" (Play It Again Sam)
9. Pan•American, ""Pan•American"" (Kranky)
10. Windy & Carl, ""Depths"" (Kranky)
11. Dirty Three, ""Ocean Songs"" (Touch and Go)
12. Gastr Del Sol, ""Camoufleur"" (Drag City)
13. Mouse On Mars, ""Glam"" (Thrill Jockey)
14. Chris Watson, ""Outside The Circle Of Fire"" (Touch)
15. Jim O'Rourke, ""Bad Timing"" (Drag City)
16. Pole, ""1"" (Kiff SM)
17. Gas, ""Königsforst"" (Mille Plateaux)
18. Matmos, ""Quasi-Objects"" (Vague Terrain)
19. Irr. App. (Ext.), ""An Uncertain Animal, Ruptured; Tissue Expanding In Conversation"" (Errata In Excelsis)
20. Bedhead, ""Transaction De Novo"" (Trance Syndicate)
21. Vainio Väisänen Vega, ""Endless"" (Blast First)
22. Al Jabr (Richard H. Kirk), ""One Million And Three"" (Alphaphone)
23. The Body Lovers, ""Number One of Three"" (Young God)
24. Belle and Sebastian, ""The Boy With The Arab Strap"" (Jeepster)
25. Trans Am, ""The Surveillance"" (Thrill Jockey)
26. Richard H. Kirk, ""Knowledge Through Science"" (Blast First)
27. Jessica Bailiff, ""Even In Silence"" (kranky)
28. Co–Ω, ""Enter Tinnitus"" (Rastermusic)
29. Cyclobe, ""Luminous Darkness"" (Phantom Code)
30. Lisa Germano, ""Slide"" (4AD)
31. Dead Voices On Air, ""Piss Frond"" (Invisible)
32. Stars of the Lid w/Craig McCafferty, ""Per Aspera Ad Astra"" (Kranky)
33. Amp, ""Stenorette"" (Kranky)
34. Cat Power, ""Moon Pix"" (Matador)
35. Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, ""Horsie"" (M Records)
36. Mojave 3, ""Out of Tune"" (4AD)
37. Jessamine, ""Don't Stay Too Long"" (Kranky)
38. Plastikman, ""Consumed"" (NovaMute)
39. Sigur Rós, ""Von Brigði"" (Smekkleysa)
40. Barry Adamson, ""As Above So Below"" (Mute)
41. Scala, ""Compass Heart"" (Touch)
42. Scala, ""To You in Alpha"" (Too Pure)
43. Nature & Organisation, ""Death In A Snow Leopard Winter"" (Snow Leopard)
44. Ryoji Ikeda, ""0°C"" (Touch)
45. Main, ""Firmament IV"" (Beggars Banquet)
46. Hood, ""Rustic Houses Forlorn Valleys"" (Domino)
47. Sandoz In Dub (Richard H. Kirk), ""Chant To Jah"" (Touch)
48. Flying Saucer Attack, ""New Lands"" (Drag City)
49. Main, ""Firmament III"" (Beggars Banquet)
50. Spiritualized, ""Royal Albert Hall"" (Dedicated)
51. The Notwist, ""Shrink"" (Duophonic)
52. Kristin Hersh, ""Murder, Misery And Then Goodnight"" (4AD)
53. Tarwater, ""Silur"" (Kitty-Yo)
54. The Body Haters, ""34:13:00"" (Young God)
55. Aranos, ""Every Bright Body Gleams Green"" (Noise Museum)
56. Rhythm & Sound, ""Showcase (with Tikiman)"" (Burial Mix)
57. Diamanda Gal√°s, ""Malediction and Prayer"" (Mute)
58. Squarepusher, ""Music is Rotted One Note"" (Warp)
59. Boris, ""Amplifier Worship"" (Mangrove)
60. Mark Eitzel, ""Caught In A Trap And I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby"" (Matador)
61. IBM, ""The Oval Recording"" (Mego)
62. Kristin Hersh, ""Strange Angels"" (4AD)
63. Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, ""Dub Plate Selection"" (M Records)
64. Amon Tobin, ""Permutation"" (Ninja Tune)
65. Arab Strap, ""Philophobia"" (Chemikal Underground)
66. Kid606, ""Don't Sweat The Technics"" (Vinyl Communications)
67. David Grubbs, ""The Thicket"" (Drag City)
68. Pullman, ""Turnstyles & Junkpiles"" (Thrill Jockey)
69. Merzbow, ""Aqua Necromancer"" (Alien8 Recordings)
70. Pram, ""North Pole Radio Station"" (Domino)
71. I Am Spoonbender, ""Sender-Receiver"" (Gold Standard Laboratories)
72. Trafficante (Richard H. Kirk), ""Is This Now?"" (Alphaphone)
73. Pizzicato Five, ""The International Playboy & Playgirl Record"" (Matador)
74. The Residents, ""Wormwood (Curious Stories of the Bible)"" (Ralph)
75. Andrew Chalk, Ralph Wehowsky, Eric Lanzillotta, ""Yang-Tul"" (Anomalous)
76. Neotropic, ""Mr. Brubaker's Strawberry Alarm Clock"" (Ninja Tune)
77. Shellac, ""Terraform"" (Touch and Go)
78. Signs of Chaos, ""Departure"" (Roadrunner)
79. Six Organs of Admittance, ""Six Organs of Admittance"" (Pavillion)
80. Allinson/Brown, ""AV1"" (Resurgence)
81. Boxhead Ensemble, ""The Last Place to Go"" (Atavistic)
82. Add N to (X), ""On the Wires of Our Nerves"" (Mute)
83. Lull, ""Moments"" (Release)
84. ISAN, ""Beautronics"" (Tugboat)
85. A Minor Forest, ""Inindependence"" (Thrill Jockey)
86. Supersilent, ""4"" (Rune Grammofon)
87. Esplendor Geométrico, ""EN-CO-D-eSPLENDOR"" (Gift)
88. L'Orchestre Noir, ""11"" (Tursa)
89. Saint Etienne, ""Good Humor"" (Creation)
90. Ryoji Ikeda, ""Mort Aux Vaches"" (Mort Aux Vaches)
91. Blonde Redhead, ""In An Expression of the Inexpressible"" (Touch and Go)
92. Piano Magic, ""Bliss Out V. 13 - A Trick of the Sea"" (Darla)
93. Macha, ""Macha"" (Jetset)
94. Neutral Milk Hotel, ""In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"" (Merge)
95. Mogwai, ""Kicking a Dead Pig"" (Jetset)
96. Fridge, ""Semaphore"" (Output)
97. Mark Van Hoen, ""Playing With Time"" (Apollo)
98. The Silverman, ""Silvermandalas"" (Soleilmoon)
99. Stock, Hausen & Walkman, ""Oh My BAG!"" (Hot Air)
100. Richard Youngs, ""Sapphie"" (Oblique)

Single of the Year

1. Coil, ""Autumn Equinox"" (Eskaton)
2. Coil, ""Summer Solstice"" (Eskaton)
3. Coil, ""Spring Equinox"" (Eskaton)
4. The Legendary Pink Dots, ""The Pre-Millennial Single"" (Soleilmoon)
5. Current 93, ""A Gothic Love Song"" (Durtro)
6. Low, ""Joan of Arc"" (Tugboat)
7. Mogwai, ""Mogwai Fear Satan"" (Jetset)
8. Meat Beat Manifesto, ""Acid Again"" (Play It Again Sam)
9. Nurse With Wound / Current 93, ""Scrambled Egg Rebellion In The Smegma Dept / Time Stands Still"" (Augenblick)
10. Fennesz, ""Plays"" (Mego)
11. Low/Transient Waves/Piano Magic, ""Sleep at the Bottom / Green Acres"" (Rocket Girl)
12. Add N to (X), ""Little Black Rocks in the Sun"" (Mute)
13. Ryoji Ikeda, ""Time and Space"" (Staalplaat)
14. Mogwai, ""No Education = No Future (Fuck the Curfew)"" (Chemikal Underground)
15. Meat Beat Manifesto, ""Prime Audio Soup"" (Play It Again Sam)
16. Belle and Sebastian, ""This is Just a Modern Rock Song"" (Jeepster)
17. Tortoise, ""Autechre"" (Thrill Jockey)
18. Dälek, ""Negro Necro Nekros"" (Gern Balndsten)
19. Stereolab, ""Refractions in the Plastic Pulse"" (Duophonic)
20. Stars of the Lid, ""Maneuvering The Nocturnal Hum (E.P.)+"" (Earworm)
21. Spiritualized, ""The Abbey Road EP"" (Dedicated)
22. Stereolab, ""ABC / Freestyle Dumping"" (Duophonic)
23. Bedhead, ""Lepidoptera"" (Trance Syndicate)
24. Tortoise, ""Madison Ave/Madison Area"" (Thrill Jockey)
25. Stars of the Lid / Windsor for the Derby, ""Julie Delpy / WNYU Radio"" (33 Degrees)
26. Windy & Carl / Amp, ""Near And Far / Reminiscence"" (Blue Flea)
27. Aerial M, ""October"" (Domino)
28. Stereolab / Monade, ""Caliméro / Cache Cache"" (Duophonic)
29. The Clientele, ""What Goes Up/Five Day Morning"" (Pointy)
30. Ida, ""Losing True"" (Bingo)
31. Uilab, ""Fires"" (Duophonic)
32. Aerial M, ""Vivea"" (Domino)
33. Piano Magic, ""There's No Need for Us to Be Alone / The Canadian Brought Us Snow"" (Rocket Girl)
34. Piano Magic / Matmos, ""Music For Rolex/The Soldering Social"" (Lissy's Records)
35. Songs: Ohia, ""Our Golden Ratio"" (Acuarela)
36. ISAN, ""Betty's Lament/Uim"" (Bad Jazz)
37. Hood, ""(The) Weight"" (555 Recordings)
38. Sonic Youth w/Jim O'Rourke, ""Musical Perspectives 3: Invito Al Cielo"" (Sonic Youth Records)
39. Godspeed You Black Emperor! / Fly Pan Am, ""Sunshine + Gasoline / L'espace Au Sol Est Redessiné Par D'immenses Panneaux Bleus"" (aMAZEzine!)
40. Tren Brothers, ""EP"" (Drag City)
41. Tortoise, ""Derrick Carter"" (City Slang)
42. The Beta Band, ""Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos"" (Regal)
43. Stereolab / Soi-Disant, ""Symbolic Logic Of Now! / Glitterati (Cruise(r))"" (Luke Warm Music)
44. Saint Etienne, ""Sylvie"" (Creation)
45. Ad Vanz vs Gescom / Foehn, ""Split Series #2"" (FatCat)
46. Hood, ""Filmed Initiative"" (Happy Go Lucky)
47. Pram, ""Sleepy Sweet"" (Domino)
48. Locust, ""All Your Own Way"" (Apollo)
49. The Magnetic Fields, ""I Don't Believe You"" (Merge)
50. ISAN, ""Titled, Not Tithed/Island Magic"" (Bad Jazz)

 

Vault/Reissue of the Year

1. Godspeed You Black Emperor!, ""F# A# ‚àû"" (Kranky)
2. Nurse With Wound, ""Second Pirate Session"" (United Dairies)
3. Swans, ""Swans Are Dead"" (Young God)
4. The Legendary Pink Dots, ""Chemical Playschool Volumes 3 & 4"" (Terminal Kaleidescope)
5. David Tibet & Steven Stapleton, ""Octopus"" (Durtro)
6. Cabaret Voltaire, ""Radiation: The BBC Recordings"" (New Millennium)
7. Stereolab, ""Aluminum Tunes"" (Duophonic)
8. Low, ""One More Reason to Forget"" (BlueSanct Muzak)
9. Marc Almond and Foetus, ""Slut"" (Thirsty Ear)
10. This Heat, ""Repeat"" (These)
11. Edward Ka-Spel, ""Down in the City of Heartbreak and Needles 2"" (Soleilmoon)
12. Tortoise, ""Remixed"" (Thrill Jockey)
13. Chris & Cosey, ""Exotica & Take Five Remastered"" (Conspiracy International)
14. Chapterhouse, ""Pentamerous Metamorphosis (Blood Music reinterpreted by Global Communication)"" (Dedicated)
15. Techno Animal, ""Radio Hades"" (Position Chrome)
16. Fridge, ""Sevens and Twelves"" (Output)
17. Bruce Gilbert / Ron West, ""Frequency Variation"" (Sähkö Recordings)
18. Sugar Plant, ""Happy/Trance Mellow"" (World Domination)
19. Burger / Ink, ""Las Vegas"" (Matador)
20. Current 93 presents The Ven. Chimed Rigzin Lama, Rinpoche, ""Tantric Nyingma Chant Of Tibet"" (Durtro)
21. Dntel, ""Early Works For Me If It Works For You"" (Phthalo)
22. The Residents, ""Residue Deux"" (East Side Digital)
23. Gary Numan, ""Living Ornaments '81"" (Beggars Banquet)
24. Hermann Nitsch, ""Musik Der 66 Aktion"" (Alga Marghen)
25. P'o, ""Whilst Climbing Thieves Vie for Attention"" (WMO)

Various Artist Compilation of the Year

1. ""Coil and Friends: Foxtrot"" (Chalice)
2. ""A Homage To Neu!"" (Cleopatra)
3. ""Interiors"" (Invisible)
4. ""Sounds of the Geographically Challenged"" (Temporary Residence)
5. ""A Tribute To Spacemen 3"" (Rocket Girl)
6. ""Sonics Everywhere"" (Invisible)
7. ""The Wire Tapper 1"" (The Wire)
8. ""We Are Reasonable People"" (Warp)
9. ""The Wire Tapper 2"" (The Wire)
10. ""The K&D Sessions‚Ñ¢"" (Studio !K7)
11. ""Adrian Sherwood Presents The Master Recordings"" (On-U Sound)
12. ""Anakin"" (4AD)
13. ""Suck It And See"" (Pussyfoot)
14. ""Chinese Whispers"" (Sprawl)
15. ""Modulation & Transformation 3"" (Mille Plateaux)
16. ""Chill Out"" (Sabotage)
17. ""Stuffing"" (V/Vm Test Records)
18. ""Turkey"" (V/Vm Test Records)
19. ""Wild Planet - A Subconscious Compilation"" (Subconscious)
20. ""Attention: Cats"" (Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge)
21. ""RGB [An Audio Spectrum]"" (Source Research)
22. ""Badaboom Gramophone #3"" (BaDaBing!)
23. ""The Ida Retsin Family Volume One"" (Muss My Hair)
24. ""Invisible Soundtracks (Macro 2)"" (Leaf)

Boxed Set of the Year

1. Painkiller, ""Collected Works"" (Tzadik)
2. The Legendary Pink Dots, ""Lullabies for the New Dark Ages"" (Soleilmoon)
3. [V/A], ""Trojan Dub Box Set"" (Trojan)
4. [V/A], ""Trojan DJ Box Set"" (Trojan)
5. William S. Burroughs, ""The Best of"" (Giorno Poetry Systems)
6. Muslimgauze, ""Tandoor Dog"" (Staalplaat)
7. [V/A], ""Trojan Rocksteady Box Set"" (Trojan)
8. Les Joyaux De La Princesse, ""Exposition Internationale - Arts Et Techniques - Paris 1937"" (Les Joyaux De La Princesse)
9. [V/A], ""Trojan Ska Box Set"" (Trojan)
10. Hermann Nitsch, ""Island: Eine Sinfonie In 10 Sätzen"" (Cortical Foundation)
11. Derrick May, ""Innovator"" (R&S)
12. Faust, ""Faust Wakes Nosferatu"" (Klangbad)
13. Gary Numan, ""The Numa Years"" (Eagle)
14. Origami Galaktika, ""Eesti Lilled Silmad Süda"" (Speeding Across My Hemisphere)
15. Yahowa, ""God and Hair"" (Captain Trip)

 

Artist of the Year

Coil

Label of the Year

1. Kranky
2. Eskaton
3. Thrill Jockey
4. Soleilmoon
5. Warp
6. 4AD
7. Durtro
8. Drag City
9. Duophonic
10. Domino

 

Worst Album of the Year

1. Pigface, ""Below the Belt"" (Invisible)
2. Praxis, ""Mold"" (Yikes)
3. Rx, ""Bedside Toxicology"" (Invisible)
4. Damon & Naomi, ""Playback Singers"" (Sub Pop)
5. Thurston Moore, ""Root"" (Lo)
6. Ui, ""Lifelike"" (Southern)
7. Love and Rockets, ""Lift"" (Red Ant)
8. Backworld, ""Isles of the Blest"" (Harbinger House)
9. Exhaust, ""Exhaust"" (Constellation)
10. Curse Of The Golden Vampire, ""The Curse Of The Golden Vampire"" (Digital Hardcore)

18 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Barn Owl was always an intriguingly fluid and evolving project and that creative restlessness has certainly continuing on into the solo work of Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras. For this latest release, Porras takes his conceptual inspiration from Indian musician Gita Sarabhai, who once mentioned in a conversation with John Cage that art exists to "sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences." As such, the tone of Voice of the Air is largely a meditative and drone-based one, but Porras also had some new revelations about composition along the way, diving into John Chowning's frequency modulation (FM) synthesis ideas and exploring how to use them as a structural basis for his own work. The results of that experimentation are often quite wonderful, as Voice of the Air is an album filled with strong, simple themes that vibrantly squirm, shiver, and oscillate with shifting textures.

Ba Da Bing

Few things make my eyes glaze over faster than hearing about which synthesizer someone used to record an album, yet the fact that Porras used a Yamaha DX7 for this album is a noteworthy one for a few reasons.For one, Yamaha licensed Chowning's FM synthesis techniques for that specific model, so the perfect tools were readily available and Porras just needed to figure out how to properly harness them.Secondly, it is a remarkably affordable and easy to acquire bit of gear, which very much runs counter to the current trend of fetishizing the rarest and most fabled modular synths.I definitely understand the appeal of having an unpredictable electronic collaborator and being able to easily tweak and manipulate all aspects of texture, but the trade-off is that the gear itself often plays a significant role in dictating the structure and direction of the work.The traditional route of first having some strong and coherent ideas, then finding the right instrument to realize them is often an underappreciated one these days.That approach likely has a lot to do with why Voice of the Air does not sound like a synth album, nor does it quite cover any of the same aesthetic territory that anyone else has staked out in the drone world.There are certainly recognizable synth sounds and textures, but they are organically pulsing, sizzling, and shuddering in a sea of heady, psychotropic drones, and the mood is a unique one.If androids do not dream exclusively of electric sheep, I suspect their dreams would resemble the corroded and crackling beauty of Porras's soundscapes.

I am not sure if the strongest moments necessarily come at the beginning of the album, but those are the ones I tend to remember, as the album's seven pieces feel like they drift, twist, and curl like a long tendril of smoke.As a result, the boundaries between them become irrelevant almost immediately and the parts are stand out are merely those that occur before I am fully drawn into the album’s languorous and gently billowing spell.In any case, the early "Colors Passing Through Us" is certainly representative of where Porras excels on this album, as the piece is centered on just a slowly flanging pulse that buzzes and throbs its way through a warmly beautiful, soft-focus landscape of woozy chords before being enveloped in a shuddering, rumbling squall of static.Even during the piece's most gnarled moments, however, Porras still manages to maintain a masterful lightness of touch, allowing dreamy glimpses of organ-like chords to faintly pierce through the snarling distortion.Elsewhere, "Peach Fire" repeats similar themes in more inventive and sublimely gorgeous fashion, as the elusive, heavenly chords creep a bit more into the foreground and the pulsing backbone at the center erratically changes the rhythm of its cycling to weave a disorientingly precarious sense of time and place.

Sadly, Voice of the Air is quite a brief album, barely squeaking past thirty minutes, but it is a quiet minor masterpiece of understated psychedelia all the same.In a way, Porras's chameleonic career is like some kind of supernatural space virus from a horror-tinged science fiction film (albeit in a good way), as he seems to move from subgenre to subgenre (host to host), leaving something noticeably transformed and enhanced in his wake.Obviously, a few of Barn Owl's guitar albums are hard to top as far as carving out a small but distinctive niche in an existing scene, but Voice of the Air definitely manages to sidestep a lot of tired drone tropes in remarkably nimble and thoughtful fashion.  For one, these pieces are anything but static, as every single layer seems to be constantly shifting and undulating like a living entity.Moreover, Porras does not overtly appropriate many Eastern musical touches, but instead internalizes a foundational philosophy and applies it to something all his own.I was also struck by the occasional appearances of more prominent and rhythmically pulsing synth motifs that add an unusual neon-lit cityscape element to these flickering dreamlike reveries.Porras is doing something much deeper and more creatively adventurous than trying to evoke ritualistic drone traditions from other cultures or merely adding his voice to the chorus of contemporary drone masters, as Voice of the Air feels like a very contemporary and sincere attempt to create an immersive and hallucinatory soundtrack rooted in the here and now.This is an excellent and inspired album.

Samples can be found here.

18 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Sean McCann celebrates the 50th release of his endlessly evolving Recital Program imprint with a major new work of his own, combining his dual love of literature and music into a unique album/book pairing. Of the two halves of the work, the book takes more of a supporting role, providing personal insights about the birth of each piece as well as the accompanying texts that appear throughout the album in often unrecognizably abstract or altered form. The album itself is kind of a compilation of sorts, bringing together four thematically similar pieces that are a mixture of live and studio performances and new and previously released work. The two new longform pieces that elegantly blend together speech and orchestral composition are the true heart of the album, however, and they are what make Saccharine Scores a landmark release in McCann’s discography. Glibly put, this is the album that places McCann quite firmly into "Robert Ashley" territory rather than "Andrew Chalk" territory, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that his voice as a writer is every bit as distinctive as his talents as a composer.

Recital Program

Given McCann's longtime working method of crafting, processing, and layering loops, the opening "Portraits of Friars" is something of a long gestating creative breakthrough and the culmination of a life's work.The piece, performed at the Third Edition Festival in Sweden earlier this year, was composed for an ensemble of ten and begins with most of the musicians reading evocative texts at a pace of their choosing.The texts are alternately strangely beautiful or eerily grotesque in an impressionistic way, unfolding as an enigmatic flow of colors, textures, sounds, and images that elude graspable meaning ("flies brown to green split jets of blood"), yet follow a sort of a dream logic.Notably, this is where the book plays a crucial role in the overall work, as the overlapping voices in the piece blur together into a largely incomprehensible swirl and the underlying poetry of McCann's writing is completely obscured.One by one, however, each of the musicians stops speaking and begins playing their instrument, weaving an elegantly bittersweet and dreamlike spell as languorous strings and angelic voices swell around the remaining voices.As it unfolds further, McCann adds another layer of hissing and garbled texture with tapes.It is all quite beautiful and also quite interesting to deconstruct, as McCann has essentially taken his loop-based aesthetic and extended the individual components until they no longer feel like loops, then injected a healthy degree of unpredictability and chance into the mix.There was no way for him to know when any of the musicians would stop speaking and start playing, so the way that the individual motifs intertwine and rub against one another was determined spontaneously and organically.

The other swooningly gorgeous epic on Saccharine Scores is "Pistons," a piece that began to take shape when McCann spent a few weeks in London in 2017.Much like "Friars," "Pistons" is a floating heaven of female voices, gently cascading piano melodies, and fluttering strings, but is a bit more hallucinatory and densely layered.That makes sense, as it is a studio creation, so McCann had plenty of time to perfect it even if he did not have the talent pool he had in Sweden.The other twist is that it more deeply explores McCann’s interest in unusual juxtapositions, which manifests itself in "Pistons" as a blurring together of the romantic and the mundane (the whole piece is built from an indecipherably murmured and sibilant recording of McCann recounting his various London meals).It is similarly impossible to tell what Celia Eydeland is sensuously singing in the foreground, but it apparently features recontextualized snatches of Baudelaire. In lesser hands, such a collision would feel like Dada-esque bit of indulgence, but McCann's intuitive sense of balance is unerring: the recitation of various foods is mutated and processed into a surprisingly effective textural foundation.Moreoever, once I learned of its actual content, it provided kind of an endearing window into McCann's headspace as well as a strong sense of place and time. It is an achingly beautiful and absorbing piece, easily ranking among McCann's finest work.

The remaining two pieces are also quite good, but they take very divergent paths from "Friars" and "Pistons."The first is 2014's "Victorian Wind," which was apparently McCann's first completely scored composition.It previously surfaced on the A Castle Popping LP, but its inclusion makes sense here, as it is a structural precursor to "Friars": the musicians were all given 10 motifs to play and were encouraged to choose the tempo and the number of repetitions for each.Unsurprisingly, it is a characteristically lovely web of tenderly intertwining motifs, but the lack of any vocal or text-based element makes it a bit less distinctive than the other pieces on the album.The bizarre closing piece "Passing-Ships," on the other hand, has no such problem, as a computerized female voice intones a numbered series of non sequiturs ("the lady opposes garlic on top of the dried calculator") over a gently rippling piano motif.It is arguably the least strong piece on the album, as it does not noticeably evolve at all, but it is a memorably surreal note to end the album on.It lies somewhere between fragile, warm bliss and lysergic magnetic poetry, which is not an oft-explored niche at all.

I wish I could remember who said it, but I remember once reading that a lot of bands get steadily less interesting as they become increasingly skilled at resembling the influences that they were trying to sound like all along: the most unique work tends to happen when an artist is still fumbling around and exploring.There are admittedly countless counter-examples of folks who have eluded that fate, but McCann seemed to be on a worrisomely slippery slope as his work became increasingly composed and orchestral: it is always disheartening to watch an artist I love start to sand away the rough edges that give their work its distinct character, even if the quality itself is improving.Happily, Saccharine Scores is a delightful surprise that dissipates all of my concerns, as McCann's recent neo-classical bent has fully blossomed into a fresh new chapter of singular and innovative work.This is quite a wonderfully strong and playfully experimental album from start to finish, easily standing as one of the best releases to date in McCann's voluminous discography.Beyond that, however, this is unique release for modern composition as a whole, inventively blurring together poetry, melody, spontaneity, and chance into something that is both novel and unconventionally personal.

• Portraits of Friars
• Pistons
• Passing-Ship

 

17 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"Sixteen hours of peerless, important works by Eliane Radigue relating to her work with the ARP 2500 synthesiser between 1971-2000. Prior to this period, Eliane worked exclusively with feedback on tape and oscillators, but her work from the '70s onward is defined by an uniquely meditative and transcendent grasp of microtonal minimalism which has latterly come to place her among the 20th century’s most esteemed and truly inimitable composers. Bearing in mind that Eliane realized this fathomless body of work in her Paris apartment away from professional recording studios, only makes it resonate more strongly with the idea that Eliane was a genuine outlier whose uniquely sober work divined an unquantifiable yet ultimately human nature in electronic music.

Eliane Radigue was born in Paris. She studied musique concrète techniques at the Studio d’Essai of the RTF under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (1956-57). She was married to the painter and sculptor Arman and devoted ten years to their three children. She then worked with Pierre Henry, as his assistant at the Studio APSOME (1967-68). She was in residence at the New York University School of Arts (1970-71), the University of Iowa and the California Institute of the Arts (1973) and Mills College (1998). She has created sound environments using looped tapes of various durations, gradually desynchronising.

Her works have been featured in numerous galleries and museums since the late 60s and from 1970, she has been associated to the ARP 2500 Synthesizer and tape through many compositions from "Chry-ptus" (1970) up to "L’Île resonante" (2000). These include: "Biogenesis," "Arthesis," "Ψ 847," "Adnos I, II and III" ('70s), "Les Chants de Milarepa" and "Jetsun Mila" ('80s) and the three pieces constituting the Trilogie de la Mort (1988-91-93). Since 2002, she has been composing mostly acoustic works for performers and instruments. Her music has been featured in major international festivals. Her extremely sober, almost ascetic concerts, are made of a continuous, ever-changing yet extremely slow stream of sound, whose transformation occurs within the sonic material itself.

Radigue found her musical voice through the decisive encounter with musique concrète and its founding fathers. With Pierre Schaeffer, first, and then Pierre Henry, with whom she learned and perfected the art of tape recorders. She then developed a unique style by herself, freely continuing the exploration of electronic sounds, progressing with tenacity through her musical quest, without worrying about current trends or fashions, paying no attention to creeds or dogmas. An isolated course, out with fashions and institutions, such a singular and intense music, so remote from everything..."

-via Boomkat

10 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"Joachim Nordwall marks 20 years of his iDEAL label with The Black Book, a blinding sweep of original material from JASSS, Stephen O'Malley, Ramleh, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Carlos Giffoni & Prurient, Ectoplasm Girls, JH1.FS3, JS Aurelius, Autumns, John Duncan, and many more.

The story of iDEAL starts out in London 1998, when Nordwall was living the hardscrabble life: working in an underwear shop near Liverpool Street station; living in a filthy Bayswater apartment; scoring industrial records from the Music and Video Exchange; getting drunk in cheap pubs, and dreaming of starting a new record label and platform. He called it iDEAL, and 180 releases, 20 years later, it has become an invaluable node for non-standard, wayward expressions of modern electronic noise in all its mutable variation.

iDEAL's success and longevity may well be down to the way that Nordwall treated it as a social and artistic home, offering a place where mutually exclusive styles could bed down away from the mainstream or the genre police, and feed into a much larger, work-in-progress definition of fringe music. The Black Book extends, in the spirit of the label, an idealized compilation of disparate possibilities connected by a sense of musical mystery and chaotic energy.

To focus on just a few highlights, the ever unpredictable JASSS makes a notable inclusion with the serene vignette of LP opener, "Parental Youth," while Jim O'Rourke unfurls 17 minutes of gloaming post-industrial drone with "In Regards." Label friend Jonathan Uliel Saldanha contributes the tense, searching horns of "Siren Frontier," and Ectoplasm Girls cook up the grim, thrumming electronics of "Neuropean." John Duncan parses the airwaves to find the curdling organism of "Shortwave6," and Frederikke Hoffmeier (Puce Mary) and Jesse Sanes seduce with the narcotic drone-pop of "At The Bottom Of The Night" as JH1.FS3, alongside a powerful rhythmic oddity from Stephen O'Malley, a stark death rattle from Trepaneringsritualen as Týr × Reið × Vend with "nd þau né átto, óð þau né hfðo," and Norn Iron's Autumns "Lose It" on a mucky acid 'floor swill."

-via Forced Exposure

09 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

For over three decades now, the Fossil Aerosol Mining Project has patiently sifted through the damaged remains and bygone refuse from the late 20th century pop culture of America. Mining the snippets of audio found from abandoned drive-in theaters, mangled VHS tapes, and discarded cassettes, Fossil Aerosol studiously pieces together empathic, haunted abstractions of their original source material. their cryptic sound collages address the continued ramifications of the inherent paranoia from the cold war dissonance of stark morality and nuclear apocalypse.

The Recounting of Night Time begins and ends with the scratchy melodies from a well-worn violin. echoes and their amplifications from this instrument gradually subsume the original amidst cascades of tape manipulations and time-delay techniques. This motif repeats through the album with profound emotional torpor through Fossil Aerosol's hypnotic cycles of foggy ambience and back-masked rhythmic events that intertwine with varispeed-pitched dilations of melancholy melody. It makes for a beautifully corroded smear of sound, recalling the works of William Basinski and Fossil Aerosol's occasional collaborators :zoviet*france:

Fossil Aerosol addresses the album this way:

The Recounting of Night Time was composed and mixed in October of 2014. The source material focuses principally on a certain piece of German gothic cinema made during the late 1970s. This material was culled from both VHS audio tracks, as well a "field recording" made at a poorly-attended screening of the film in a decaying theater in St. Louis, Missouri sometime during the mid-1980s. Evidence of video control track glitches are present, while the scent of the acutely mildewed theater is recollected and implied."

A special edition of the CD, limited to only 18 copies, will also be available via Helen Scarsdale, and also from Afterdays Media. This edition consists of shrink-wrapped CDs overpainted in chalkboard resurfacing paint, erased chalk, acrylic, and a hand-lettered Bandcamp download code for an additional 18+ minute track.

More information can be found here.

08 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Black To Comm is the solo project of German sound artist Marc Richter. Through his output both as an artist and through his eclectic Dekorder label, Richter has established himself as a singular voice of new music. Operating at the fringes of drone and ambient genres, his music is darkly magical and deeply atmospheric, underpinned by a signature surrealism. A relentless sonic explorer, Richter approaches the studio as his instrument, using sampling, analogue production and digital manipulation to offer an almost infinite choice of tones and textures. Audio fragments are liberated from their original context and sculpted into surprising new shapes, creating work that transcends time or genre. Seven Horses For Seven Kings sees Richter reaching out again into the limitless field of sound, summoning forth his darkest and most visceral work to date.

Seven Horses For Seven Kings was completed during a particularly prolific period for Richter. Working on a broad range of commissions since his last album - from writing for film and theatre works to composing for art installations, apps and sleep music - generated a flurry of new ideas and influences. Site-specific residencies in particular let Richter shift his focus from melody and song architecture to more abstract sound art. Extensive touring would equally come to inform a key shift in Richter's music, simulating the raw, unpredictable energy of live performances on record. Rather than ironing out mistakes in samples or his own playing, he exploits or even forces such imperfections. While rhythm has been largely absent from previous Black To Comm releases, here the music seems totally bound to it, from the fractured techno breaks of "Fly on You," to the pounding war drums of "Rameses II" and pulsing Mellotron sounds of “Angel Investor." The album's breath-taking pace drives Richter's music to new levels of intensity.

Richter's creative practice is informed as much by careful, attentive listening as it is studio experimentation. Pieces often begin life as a single sound that catches his ear, be it a record from his extensive collection, or something in the natural environment. Samples and instrumentation are sometimes presented authentically, a deliberate reference to an era, place or player, and at other times are twisted beyond recognition. Samples from contemporary artists like Nils Frahm are bent and compounded with fragments of early recorded music and medieval song. Richter blurs the lines between organic instrumentation and digital production to the extent that the two become inseparable. Being able to separate sound from context gives Richter complete command of the emotional impact of his music, imbuing pieces with meaning or stripping it back as he sees fit.

While Richter questions whether instrumental music needs to have deeper meaning beyond its sonic qualities, he accepts that the wider world inevitably bleeds into his art.  Reflecting the violence and unreality of modern life, Seven Horses For Seven Kings is unashamedly dark, undeniably angry. But rather than be consumed by such emotions, Richter employs them as ecstatic release. Through his mastery of sound, he achieves transcendence through noise, beauty through intensity.

More information can be found here.

08 November 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore’s collective work—as solo artists, band members, and collaborators—could fill a small record collection. Despite this productivity, these two long-time friends have never recorded an entire album focused exclusively on their unique talents. Ghost Forests mysteriously, thrillingly fills that void.

Independently, Baird and Lattimore have each cultivated highly individual and idiosyncratic tools of expression. Baird's timeless and soaring voice, guitar, and drums have underpinned pastoral and folk rock explorations as a soloist and in band settings with Espers and Heron Oblivion. Lattimore's albums of enigmatic, spectral experimental harp sounds move and unfold like films and nature itself. The list of artists that have called upon their voices, talents, and visions to enrich their own work is expansive—a virtual pocket encyclopedia of contemporary indie and experimental musicians.

Over the course of Ghost Forests' six collaborative compositions we hear deeply sympathetic conversations between the two artists. With access to a deep pool of shared influences, these two friends assembled a collection of sounds conjured from harp, guitar (both acoustic and electric), synths, the human voice, and a shared poetic language. Baird and Lattimore's subjects range from the sound of light on water, seismic geopolitical anxiety, the smog-exploded sunsets of Don Dudley's paintings, and vertigo from their respective relocations to San Francisco and Los Angeles from their once-shared home in Philadelphia.

The synthesis of their vision welcomes listeners who might have been familiar with only one of the performers' solo oeuvres. It also speaks to long-time fans both artists who have long wondered what this dream collaboration might yield.

Steve Gunn has long known Baird and Lattimore and worked with both on his own albums. He says "Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore are two musicians that I greatly admire. Ghost Forests is an ace meld of their abilities; Meg's guitar and voice, and Mary's harp lead each other (and us) into further regions of the strata. With each song you can hear this remarkable kinship. I'm thankful for this soundtrack."

Ghost Forests' musical conversations are intimate, fluid, effortless and spontaneous. They're filled with the euphoria of creation and, at times, they articulate hard truths and tangled emotions with an ease only trusted friends can manage. The songs alternate between extended ethereal instrumental excursions, gauzy and dreamy pop, blown-out "Bull of the Woods" heavy haze, and modern reimaginations of epic traditional balladry—all while touching on the strange and otherworldly places between these stations.

With Ghost Forests, Baird and Lattimore have given us all a timeless gift that generously rewards immersion and deep investigation. It is our collective good fortune as listeners that we are able to eavesdrop on their conversation through these songs. It is also a wonder to hear two unique artists interact to such beautifully original ends.

More information can be found here.