KTL - 2

Stephen O'Malley, Sunn O)))'s hooded drone-master, teams up again with Peter Rehberg (aka Pita) for another go-around as KTL, tackling material from their initial sessions which produced their (also excellent) first album. 2 contains four long tracks that not so much unfold but expand, each track crafting a uniquely bleak sonic environment that is fully explored. 2 blows through genre boundaries of black metal (O'Malley's descriptor), glitch (or whatever Rehberg's Mego label is being branded as these days), and old-school isolationism into a a new headspace.

2 starts with the barely-there "Snow" -- muted electronics and some deep rumbling. "Theme," the longest track at 27 minutes, sounds like O'Malley doing some fast cross-picking in the upper register, and Rehberg's distortion/enhancement on top of that, but it could very easily be almost any sound chopped up and processed. At a loud volume, the sound they create at the peak of this track (about 25 minutes in) is very disorienting. If a sound could make you lose your balance, this is that sound. "Abbatoir" follows in the footsteps of another Mego artist, Kevin Drumm, more specifically his Sheer Hellish Miasma, with its tightly controlled and sharply wielded noise. Slightly more riff-oriented than "Theme," "Abbatoir" is closer to Sunn O))) in spirit but not in execution. Where Sunn overwhelm the senses, KTL punishes them without pity or mercy. Until the nine-minute mark, where everything drops away, leaving a cavern of reverb, every sound so very distant, Rehberg's laptop aping the sound of a swarm of locusts approaching. At 13 minutes, the locusts arrive and it is the sound of chaos. The track peaks around 19 minutes in, and slowly disassembles itself into silence, leading to the closing track, "Snow 2," a quietly menacing drone/feedback exercise with what could be genuine nature sounds on top.

More exhausting than its predecessor, 2 achieves its aim, which is getting more and more rare these days. Loudly recommended.

Vladislav Delay "Whistleblower"

The Basic Channel / Chain Reaction strain of dub, as filtered through a haze of drugs, was the fulfillment of the promises of ambient house and its offshoots, and also its ultimate subversion. The Orb's massive "Blue Room" on U.F.Orb may have set heads nodding, but was too spacey to inspire dancing. It was perfect for the chill-out room. Ambient dub was born, its mantle to be picked up by artists like Porter Ricks, Monolake, and, most successfully, Vladislav Delay. Mutila, collecting early 12-inchers hinted at what Delay would become: a master of twenty-first century ambient dub, pushing the genre with each release. Later albums Ele, Entain, even Anima, are all epics perfect for the late-night comedown. But the music on Whistleblower inaugurates a new era for VD, one where fights finally break out in the chill-out room.

The Rorschach-blot cover art invites open interpretations, but the title and the sonics within indicate a deep sense of unease, fear, and violence in VD's muse, filtered through the spectrum of current geopolitical events. This is unavoidable at a time of near-complete global unrest, that artists stop internalizing the outside world and reflect it. So make no mistake -- Whistleblower is a violent record, a furious howl into the wind of the dancefloor. This is not VD's break/speed-core record though, it is a logical progression from The Four Quarters, and still in the "prog-space-dub" vein. As such, the familiar broken beats and sublime bass are still there, but overlaid with abrupt, startling noises. Underneath the surface ambience, Blue Velvet-like, lay aggression, unrest, and disorder.

Each track contains so much action that its like getting two albums worth in one sitting. Delay, always a detailed composer, pours himself into his gear, coming out the other side with songs that hit below the belt. The aggressive clanking and buzzing, the rattling chain-gun percussion, and the controlled feedback of "Whistleblower" all add up to an unsteady, stumbling beast of a track, barely-restrained percussive violence around every corner. "Stop Talking" sounds like a bomb ticking down and some lost soul banging on the bars of a jail cell. Sounds whip around the spectrum, sounding like punches landing on warm meat, followed by involuntary exhalations. "Recovery IDea" closes the album out with a frantic, urgent conversation of percussion, babbling over itself, becoming increasingly confusing and aggressive.

Easily the most oppressive album that Sasu Ripatti has conjured yet, Whistleblower succeeds on all levels: the visceral, and the cerebral. In days now gone, a new VD album might be greeted with a cloud of skunky smoke and an hour on the couch. This, though, won't keep you on the couch for long. It is a call to action, and you must answer.

Venetian Snares "Chocolate Wheelchair Album"

Venetian Snares, aka Aaron Funk, continues his successful run on Planet µ with The Chocolate Wheelchair Album, this time around capturing the spirit of ecstatic jazz in an electronic context. John Coltrane probably couldn't conceive of the music that Funk has created here, but 'Trane's last works (Interstellar Space, particularly) mirror the everything-happening-all-the-time atmosphere of this album. The beats seem to ram through at their own pace, sometimes slowing, sometimes speeding, not really adhering to a straight tempo, but constantly around or above 150 bpms. Individual tracks blur together in a chaos of blastbeats and sampled vocals, making this more of a suite than a collection of tracks. Similar in its unpredictability to the rest of Funk's discography, Chocolate Wheelchair distinguishes itself with the tracks featuring vocal samples, like the ridiculous "Einstein-Rosen Bridge," which manages to sound like a rave track from early-'90s Berlin but somehow disco-fied. The Mötley Crüe samples on "Too Young" may be the foundation of today's mash-up scene. The case could be made. But Funk stands outside of the narrowly defined genres of drill'n'bass or hardcore, and laughs infectiously. Besides being intensely danceable, if nothing else, Funk's music is funny as hell. He's the Rashied Ali of sampling and sequencing, and this is his New Directions in Modern Music. This is one of the better albums in the sizable Snares discography.