So Much Music So Little Time

Rewound 15

2010-01-04T14:24:00.002-05:00

This post appeared on Igloomag.com in January 2010.

Okay; so I've been more than a little lax recently - hey, life intrudes sometimes on the life of a critic. But I'm here to make good, so what follows is a wrap-up of all of the records that have been sent to me in this last year that I just haven't had time to get around to yet. This blog-style synopsis took place in the span of two days and covers the following releases:

Rusuden :: Death By Din Sync (Soho Six)

V/A :: NOW Remixed (Underscan)

Lackluster :: Proof of Concept (Yuki Yaki)

Randomform :: carv.ec and Ono (Patpong)

Patron And Patron :: Gen (Nonine)

Tzii :: Rotten Friendship (V-atak)

Sqaramouche :: First Raw (Nonine)

Pepper and Bones :: One (Nonine)

Mobthrow :: Mutant Dubstep Vol. 3 (Spectraliquid)

Langer & Raabenstein :: Sourpuss (Nonine)

Datacrashrobot, 7appera7, Probes, and Wired (s/r)

:papercutz :: Lylac (Apegenine)

Fujako :: Landforms (Wordsound Digital)

10-20 :: 10-20 (Highpoint Lowlife)

Alec Empire :: Shivers (Eat Your Heart Out)

A Hawk and a Hacksaw :: D�livrance (Leaf)

Slowcream :: and (Nonine)

V/A :: XVI: Reflections on Classical Music (Nonine)

Belladonnakillz :: Sorry, Try Again (Dross:tik)

Nancy Elizabeth :: Wrought Iron (Leaf)

Halogen :: Baked (Maternity)

John Kameel Farah :: Unfolding (Dross:tik)

[7:47 am, December 29, 2009] First up - Rusuden's Death By Din Sync (Soho Six). This is a nice start to the day. Opening track "DMO" has a driving acid bassline that is perfect for starting the day with -- upbeat and slamming. I haven't paid much attention to acid artists in the last couple of years, thinking that maybe the acid sound had played itself out. Rusuden happily don't prove me wrong. And while this is retro in the extreme, it doesn't make it any less enjoyable. Using mostly vintage Roland gear, Rusuden understands the acid playbook.

[7:56 am] I have a bit of constructive criticism for Rusuden. Trim your track lengths. When working with a limited sonic palette (which acid certainly is), concise is better than sprawling. And many of the tracks on this record stretch way beyond when they should stop. Sometimes less is more; this is doubly true here.

[8:00 am] "Acid Abyss," track 3, reminds me of Clock DVA. The relentless beat with the acid handclaps, the darksynth bass loop, and the simple-simple-simple melody get my head nodding like Adi Newton's masterpiece Man-Amplified. All that's missing is the sample of someone discussing technology. Well done. This is the track I want playing in my head the next time I dream about a car chase.

[8:09 am] - "Tailpo," track 5. Here's the album's best track, and I think it's because it's under 3 minutes 30. Just enough to get me moving, get the head nodding, get the shoulders bouncing, and then out, over, done. Perfect. I think I've got the Rusuden m.o. down. And I like it. This isn't going to send me to the acid section of the record store to buy more, but I'm digging the old-school feel of Death By Din Sync. As anyone with experience with the genre will tell you, acid gets a little samey quite quickly, but for those minutes where it sounds new again, I suggest checking out this guy.

[8:16 am] Moving on to a collection of remixes called NOW Remixed and it's a collection of remixes (obviously) of artists on the Underscan label. I'm not familiar with the label. Googling ensues...

[8:23 am] Okay; so this album is a complete remix of an earlier label sampler. It's going to be hard to make some calls as far as artists go on this one, not having access to the original compilation. That being said, so far, Tammetoru's remix of Pytlik's "Atmachb" is pretty tasty - lush synthetics, interesting drum loops, vaguely psychedelic atmosphere. Based simply on this song, I know I'll check out both Pytlik and Tammetoru.

[8:29 am] The Bovaflux remix of Fibla's "International" is nice as well. There's nothing more to this track than a simple and compelling melody and a nice beat. Kind of like the minimalism of Tycho. Ooooh Tycho, I love you. Fibla's on the to-be-checked-out-later list as well. I'm digging this compilation so far.

[8:31 am] I've been jarred out of my reverie by the destructo-beats of the Scanner remix by Estonji. Typical Scanner melody is ruined by post-autechre/post-math digicrunch-beats. Not liking this at all, but only because I've heard so much of it before. I'm not saying that this sound is dead, there probably is room for innovation still, but stuff like this is tired.

[8:36 am] Slemper bring the funk! Or maybe Hungryghost put it in Slemper's framework. Hard to tell. "Dusdatikaf" (why not just call it "blmpfrzlstj" or "afgrchjzc"? Why not just bang on the keyboard for a track title? Come on people, "Untitled" works just fine. Track titles like this are getting to me as I get older) is a simple slab of 4/4 sex. My toe is tapping, my head is swaying, I'm typing in time to the beat, all at the same time. I'm feelin' it. Nice dub effects on top of the bass and drums, very psyched-out. Again, Slemper and Hungryghost go on the tbcol list.

[8:46 am] This too-short disc ends with Hecq taking on Frank Bretschneider's "Polaris". Excellent track, best on the disc - nice dark ambient intro, then a Brad Fidel-esque buildup straight from the soundtrack to The Terminator. Loving it.

[8:50 am] I'll say this about NOW Remixed. It makes me want to hear NOW right now.

[8:53 am] Smoke break. Back in a flash folks. It's way too cold outside to be out there for long.

[9:00 am] It's time for Lackluster's Proof of Concept (Yuki Yaki). I was a fan of Esa Ruoho's work back in the day, but I confess I've let him fall off my radar. At the time (early aughts), I put LL alongside Brothomstates and Funkstorung - the first wave of the post-Tri-Repetae diaspora. What a rich time for music back then - the doors were blown off the hinges and artists were streaming through.

[9:04 am] Lackluster have matured since then and Proof of Concept shows a newfound nimbleness in the programming, with a lot of different yet complimentary melodies competing for dominance. And it's kind of funky. Nice stuff so far. Opener "Montajoo" is great as well, a should-be anthem for someone, somewhere. Maybe me.

[9:12 am] Had to let the dogs out. Came back to the last minute of track 3, "rworbit," a nice piece of mid-90s IDM, my favourite. Pretty good so far, this EP.

[9:21 am] The twelve-minute epic "Meyouit" is consistently engaging, a lush piece with symphonic structure, a tasteful and lush accretion of details that sound like a house track slowed way down, or something that was once house music wrestled into an ambient house form. Excellent EP from LL, I'd definitely like to hear his next full-length. Recommended.

[9:30 am] That past me, back to something I hope is a bit more in-line with my tastes, two EP's from Randomform, carv.ec and Ono (Patpong).

[9:35 am] This does do too much for me. Randomform operate in a (I hate to keep using this term but it aptly applies) post-Autechre glitchbeat format, with atonal synth washes on top. Just not compelling anymore. I used to love stuff like this, really, but I'm past it and I wish the rest of the world would be too. I know I'm not describing this too well, but there are literally hundreds of Myspace artists doing stuff that sounds exactly like this. It isn't that they're not good at what they do, they're perfectly competent arrangers, but it is difficult to find new inspiration/innovation with Randomform.

[9:55 am] Patron and Patron's Gen (Nonine) starts.

[10:15 am] Got a phone call, so I took a break to make some coffee and talk. Opener "We Are Not Alone" isn't too promising, a glitch/ambient piece similar to "Rettic AC" on Chiastic Slide. It's thankfully short. Second track is better, a minimal groove, lots of small sounds making a nice little groove. It doesn't do much over the course of it's five minutes, but it's pleasant enough. We're off to a good start.

[10:25 am] P&P sound like what I wish the Kruder & Dorfmeister record will sound like if/when they get around to it. P&P keep things downtempo, blunted grooves and hazy atmospheres. There used to be a bar in Detroit that I was a big fan of, The Buddha Lounge (it isn't there anymore). There were these two DJ's, Erichinchman.com and Mr. Pickles that spun every Wednesday. And a small group of us would go there every week to hear them and drink ginger martinis. The two DJ's would occasionally spin sets of the classic downtempo stuff from the late 90's and early aughts. Anything I've heard so far would fit in with one of their sets. P&P so far have showed influence from K&D, Groove Armada, Fila Brazilia. Remember Quango records? This would be great on one of those early triphop compilations that they used to put out in the early 90's. No big surprises yet, not that I'm expecting a 90-degree turn or anything, just noting that the mood here is consistently smoky, something to paint the clouds in your headspace.

[10:45 am] Not much more to say about these guys, except that I'm really digging Gen. There are some nice surprises hidden in these tracks, and they bear close listening. I'll be searching out more from these guys.

[10:47 am] Changing up to Tzii's Rotten Friendship on V-atak. Interesting play on words there, as this is a remix record. And like NOW Remixed above, I don't have access to the originals so it's going to be hard to quantify who is contributing what. At the start, Planetadol's remix of "Teras Logos" is dark ambient in the vein of Paul Schutze's New Maps of Hell or Lustmord. This is apparently part of a package that includes a DVD of videos for each track. And while I don't have the DVD, I think it's great that the state of the CD-buying landscape has changed enough to now almost require something beyond just the music on a CD. Those little extras that you can't get by downloading the mp3s or the flacs. I sometimes feel gypped when I buy a CD and find minimal artwork, little to no information, etc. It is disappointing. So I applaud Tzii for going the extra step and including something more than just music.

[10:54 am] I think it's fair to say that Tzii isn't into happy hardcore. Umkra's remix of "The Pole" is straight up dark electro, menacing in the very best way. Add some solid metallic percussion and you're firmly in late-80's Wax Trax company, which is a fantastic place to be. As a sidenote, I've listened to a whole bunch of early WaxTrax stuff this year, and I find a lot of it is still fresh.

[11:04 am] A little dark ambient goes a long way. After two indistinguishable remixes of "Swamp Ritual," I'm ready for something new. The gutteral moans over dungeon-percussion just doesn't do it for me much anymore. Maybe there's some magic hidden later in the disc. I'm going to skip around a bit.

[11:10 am] I'm not finding too much here. Hop Frog's remix of "Go East" is kind of neat, in that it is based on east-asian instrumentation with some nice dub effects thrown in. As a result, the track wobbles on its way. On headphones, it's kind of disorienting in a good way. At least it's not dark ambient.

[11:17 am] Okay, enough. I like the record in parts, mainly the opening two tracks and "Go East." The rest seem to blend together, with little to distinguish themselves from each other. The two openers stand above because they're first, simply. I'd like to hear some of the original Tzii tracks just to see what they sound like unaltered. Interest peaked.

[11:19 am] Sqaramouche's First Raw (Nonine). For starters, I'm not a fan of the name, which is too clever by a quarter.

[11:23 am] Please make it stop. Stop sampling soul singers and putting them over half-baked and over-busy percussion. "Cincinatti Phoenix", you're guilty.

[11:29 am] Can't say I'm to impressed yet. Granted, it's only been 10 minutes, but with so much music out there, if you're not going to like it in 10 minutes, should you move on? Part of me says yes and part no. It's a personal decision, I guess. I myself don't have the time much anymore for music I'm not going crazy about, so my instinct is to move on. But I'm going to skip through and see if something catches my ear. So far, it's been mild to say the least, with half-formed hip-hop beats and inchoate melodies.

[11:31 am] Here come to vocals. Whoever it is on "Suck the Monkey" needs to learn how to either stay on the beat, or get off the beat skillfully. And if you're going to say something, actually say something. The lyrics here are a collection of standard rap tropes, nothing new.

[11:39 am] I'm still hanging with this record. There's something about the second half of it that reminds me of some of those early Global Communication 12-inchers. "Clean the Pipe" is really fetching, with a smeared little melody over some skittering early dnb drums, and it totally works. Feet are tapping, head and shoulders are swaying, and I'm back to typing to the beat again. And at 4:29, it's not long enough. Damn.

[11:46 am] The rest of this record is shaping up to be much better than the first. Melodies are more mature, beats are still simple but effective. The vocals kill any track that they appear on, but the instrumentals are kind of nice.

[11:48 am] Smoke break, then on to Pepper and Bones' One (Nonine).

[12:01 pm] This is cool. Slow tempo's so far, hazy atmospheres, all the keystones of trip-hop. "Marivin" has someone on vocals that perfectly apes the smoky throat of Serge Gainsbourg. Pepper and Bones aren't afraid to use acoustic textures as well, with piano and some very pretty guitar lines put to good use.

[12:07 pm] Hammond organ. Nice touch.

[12:15 pm] "Ginger" commits the crime of using the MacTalk voice as vocals. Inexcusable.

[12:20 pm] One is pleasant enough as background music, but it's not keeping my attention. If I had to call this anything, it's isolationist trip-hop in places, a slight bit poppier in others.

[12:42 pm] Lunch break.

[1:10 pm] And we're back. Mutant Dubstep Vol. 3 by Mobthrow (Spectraliquid). I'm not the biggest fan of dubstep, to be honest. Yeah, I get it, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. The Burial albums are okay, but how often do you listen to them for pleasure? Not much in my home. So this little five song taster might fit the bill.

[1:19 pm] Mobthrow are good, they sound like Scorn. Hey, I like Scorn. Ergo, I like this. Simple mathematics, actually. With a vicious atmosphere and slashing beats, this is decidedly more upbeat than the dubstep I've heard in the past. And far more interesting. The second track ("Breakstar") has a couple of different beat patterns going on and it's pretty constructive.

[1:23 pm] The press release calls this darkstep, and I guess that's as apt as any genre tag. Industrial in atmosphere, Mobthrow sound like they should do the backing tracks for the next Dalek record. Heavy bass (obviously) and cut up drum breaks are in abundance. And with a running time around 30 minutes, it doesn't get old. Well done!

[1:31 pm] Hey, that's a remix of Future Sound of London's "My Kingdom"! Nice!

[1:34 pm] We're up to Langer & Raabenstein's Sourpuss (Nonine). Hilarious opener, "Smack" with its samples of what could be an animal or some dude just screaming his head off... or it's a trumpet... perhaps all three? Follow-up "66 Angel Field" has the sound of a trumpet farting. Just blatting away. Hilarious to a point. Then some real trumpet kicks in and it's awesome. Acid Jazz to the max. Haven't heard anything like this in some time. Kind of like Ben Neill fronting Portishead. Nice change of pace.

[1:45 pm] Well again, the vocals kill it. It never fails. "Feud and Far Between" tells the tale of Glenda who stitched dicks on her pants. Dear sweet God, why? Who thought this was a good idea? The track itself is a nice little jazzer in the vein of MC 900 Ft. Jesus and it's got a great horn groove to it (the whole album does, so far), but damn if I'll ever play this track again because of those vocals. It's a shame.

[1:50 pm] Maybe I'm getting restless or have had too much coffee (three cups in 3 hours? your call), but what started out as being an interesting and different acid jazz record has become just another acid jazz record, and a reminder of why I don't listen to much acid jazz anymore. Not that I ever listened to that much to begin with, mind you, but still. Next.

[1:53 pm] Three EP's from Datacrashrobot, 7appera7, Probes, and Wired. Immediate reaction - minimal Funkstorung. That's not a bad thing.

[2:00 pm] Two tracks into 7appera7, and I'm really digging it. There's funk in these 1s and 0s.

[2:06 pm] I'll say this - Datacrashrobot is good at what he does. This is really nice, like groovy Autechre, crisp beats, a whole ton of layers actually, just really well put together. Incunabula is a major touchstone here. And I know I mention that record in almost every column, but the thing holds up and still sounds fresh, despite the leagues of wanna-be's. Some are better than others, Datacrashrobot certainly falls into that small group. Really aces so far.

[2:17 pm] Probes is great too - much more psychedelic than the above EP. Lots of echo effects, more of the same advanced rhythm programming and minor key melodics. Industrial house? The case could be made for that being an accurate genre tag.

[2:26 pm] Probes is really great. Fresh to the ears. Not a bad track on it. Touches of electro on "Signal Probe," and what headspace. This is made to be listened to on headphones.

[2:34 pm] Wired is much more industrial. So for a trilogy of EP's, this is great - lots of different styles that still have a singular, distinctive sound. So rare these days, to have an artist be able to do this so well. Industro-psyche-glitch? IPG? There's your shoebox to horn them into. Recommended.

[2:42 pm] :papercutz's Lylac (Apegenine). Firmly glitch-pop, gentle melodies and low-fi bedroom beats. Totally enjoyable. The singer sounds like Lisa Gerrard a little bit. Definitely a Liz Frazier/Cocteau Twins thing going on. Pop music from another century crossed with the most modern production techniques. Even the deliberately off-kilter "Caught in a Halo" is charming in its own way. The title track is all bells, really nice production, reminiscent of Oval's masterpiece Dok, but not as glitched out.

[3:00 pm] I'm enjoying this quite a bit, but it is starting to get a little samey at the halfway point. Not wanting to spoil my current like for these guys, I'm going to move on and keep the second half for another time. But recommended for fans of laptop pop with angelic vocals.

[3:03 pm] Fujako's Landforms (Wordsound Digital). Avant-garde hip-hop. Industrial soundscape on "Queda de Regoufe," sounds like what Muslimgauze was turning into near the end; or Dalek. Not a fan of the vocals, which waver between straight up rap and a poor crooning. I think they're shooting for something like a rap version of Sun Ra's Arkestra. I'm not so sure it's working. Kind of sounds, in places, like Kevin Martin's God project, with multiple horns blatting away on top of each other.

[3:06 pm] There's nothing about this record that ingratiates itself. It's deliberately repellent. And that's fine, I love some deliberately repellent records (hello, Sheer Hellish Miasma by Kevin Drumm). But this doesn't work as noise-hop, doesn't work as avant-hop, doesn't work in french ("Irradies").

[3:07 pm] 10-20's self-tltled debut (Highpoint Lowlife)

[3:15 pm] I'm hypnotized by this record. Lots of detail, very trance-inducing. Pulsing throbs of electro on "Nei" make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. And in what seems to be a theme of this column, the artists that are the most interesting are also the most industrial sounding. Which is strange because I haven't been listening to much industrial lately, and haven't followed the genre closely since Ministry started doing GWB concept albums and Skinny Puppy lost the plot. But this is pushing my industrial buttons, even though it's not in any way classicly "industrial" sounding - more of an industrial vibe. An attitude toward sounds used, if you will.

[3:27pm] I have one quibble with this album, and it's not about this music. It's the nonsense song titles. "jjuvxszla," "milvus," or the worst offender, "wdtrhjvelgrad." I mean come on. When you're making music for a relatively small audience, you're not going to get a lot of radio play with track titles like that. Global Communication did fine with making the track lengths the song titles on 76:14. It's not hard, people, to come up with song titles that aren't a bitch to type and impossible to say. That's just a middle-finger to people who listen to your records.

[3:30 pm] Rant over. Aside from that though, this album is pretty meaty - lots of great bass, exemplary production, good sense of atmosphere, etc. etc. Recommended for anyone with an ear for such.

[3:32 pm] Alec Empire's Shivers (Eat Your Heart Out).

[3:34 pm] Well, he's slowed down. The breakbeat hardcore that Empire made his name on isn't present here. Apprantly renouncing the sound in 2008, Empire now calls his stuff "The Sound of New Berlin." Whatever. It sounds to me like warmed-over rave-dustrial. And it works in some places, mostly when Empire keeps his mouth shut. Screaming "control drug" over and over and dropping f-bombs doesn't make you angry, it makes me angry. At you. But the beats are pleasingly slamming and full of energy.

[3:37 pm] Ooh, he's singing on "Shivers." That's unexpected, and it's pleasant in an Adi Newton/Ralf Hutter kind of way, half spoken half whispered. Easily the most mellow track I've heard from Empire ever. And I've been a fan of his early work (collected on the consistently excellent The Geist of Alec Empire) for at least a decade. A total change of pace and really cool. Never thought I'd say that about Alec Empire.

[3:45 pm] More strident vocals over kraft-rave synths. Empire's agit-prop was kind of interesting when he was in Atart Teenage Riot, but that was their thing. Splatter beats and hardcore guitars with preaching-to-the-choir screams. Now that he's moved on from that style of vocal delivery, his words sound almost completely ridiculous. Which is a shame because I don't think he's trying to parody himself (as much as that's possible) with his lyrics, but this is grade-school anti-establishment scribbling.

[3:47 pm] Spoken word vocal albums are kind of like comedy albums - they're only good for a couple of spins, not matter how great the laughs. Shivers is beginning to sound like that. There's only so much negativity that a person can reasonably take, and with things like they are now, is it worth it to just hector people for the sake of hectoring them? I'm not into it anymore.

[6:05 pm] I had to reboot the Mac and got locked out. Blech. I'm back in now, but my flow is interrupted. I'm calling it a day for now, more to come.

[December 31, 2009]

[9:11 am] Last day of the year, last day of this cursed decade. I'm so glad to see it go. I think there's a good soundtrack to the day today. Let's see what we have.

[9:12 am] A Hawk and a Hacksaw's D�livrance. This is a nice change of pace.

[9:27 am] Playing traditional folk instruments (accordion, bouzouki) at top speed, sounding like a cross between a greek wedding and A Fiddler on the Roof. Recorded in Budapest, the eastern European traditional influence is very prominent in the songwriting. Slow, almost funereal vocals float over a hyperactive fiddle and string section. And darn if it doesn't make me want to get up and dance in a circle with 20 people who speak a different language. Some of the parties I went to with my Polish ex-wife had bands like this and while it isn't my normal cup of tea (or igloomag's, for that matter), they were always great musicians and the crowds always went wild.

[9:31 am] I have to believe that shows from these guys are fantastic. There's a whole lot of energy in these performances, and a spirit of joy that comes through in each track.

[9:35 am] There are a couple of traditional songs here alongside some new compositions, and they blend together very well. Kind of like how Dead Can Dance would write in a madrigal style and do something that sounds completely authentic. A Hawk and a Hacksaw can do this in spades.

[9:44 am] I'm reminded of The Ukranians, and their EP of Smiths covers. Same kind of vibe here. Really great and unexpected.

[10:11 am] I've moved on to Slowcream's and (Nonine). Temtative orchestrations start the first track, "Pressure," and it sounds like a collection of cues that Michael Giacchino would do for Lost; very atmospheric and sinister like Univers Zero.

[10:13 am] Turns out Slowcream is an alias for Nonine recording artist Me Raabenstein (see below).

[10:23 am] Not a lot of electronics on this record, it sounds like. No problem. Modern composition is by turns invigorating and exasperating, usually the the oeuvre of each artist (take Xenakis, for example). Slowcream sound like they're doing the cliched "soundtrack for imaginary film," which usually means interesting fragments of songs, but no songs. Not the case here. Slowcream understand song form and are merely using classical instruments to achieve their sound.

[10:30 am] Each of these tracks is kind of long! And ultimately they're kind of samey over the 40 minutes of their duration. Not in a bad way, I just wish that this music had some kind of horror film or crime thriller to be used in, because this music would be better with visuals. Moving on to Me Raabenstein's Raabenstein_esk.

[10:42 am] So I'm trying to come up with some kind of identifying genre tag for Me Raabenstein, and I'm not coming up with anything. Parts of this album are very chill, others very IDM, some modern composition, kind of a mixed bag, really. And here, that's totally cool. I don't know much if anything about this artist and they keep surprising me with each track. "Island Patois" are these great Tom Middleton vibraphone lines, but underneath is a funky bubbling synth-cussion track that burbles along throughout, with this fantastically detailed echospace around it; very nice.

[10:56 am] One minor quibble with this record - again, the vocals. The spoken-word thing just isn't working. Nothing wrong with the tone of the voice or anything like that, it just spouts relative nonsense, and when the instrumental tracks are so compelling as they are here, they're just unnecessary.

[1:30 pm] Back from a break for lunch and year-end book selling. There's a nice diversity of style on this record, far more range than shown on the Slowcream disc. This is definitely more electronic, but also encompasses ambient, funk, and some glitch. It's a nice mix; Raabenstein knows what he's doing. The vocals, however, kill this record.

[1:38 pm] A compilation from Nonine, called XVI: Reflections on Classical Music. Pretty nice compilation from the looks of it with some mighty voices in the modern classical realm: Ryuicho Sakamoto, Gavin Bryars, Akira Rabelais, and Gas, among others. And the comp delivers just what it promises in its title. Some new takes on old-fashioned song structure, new expressions of tonality.

[1:43 pm] The Gas track, "Zauerburg iv" is a standout, as it must be. The project was so groundbreaking in bringing classical into electronica, that its inclusion was a foregone conclusion. What is unexpected, though, is the inclusion of the chamber pop of Final Fantasy, the track "He Poos Clouds" (nice imagery). It has all the trappings of an "art song," string arrangements and restrained vocals spouting goofy lyrics; it's a nice change of pace, and coming at about the halfway point of the album, re-engages your attention.

[1:46 pm] Philip Glass is also on here, an excerpt from his "Heroes" Symphony based on the David Bowie album. It's a fun listen, but kind of out of place here. I personally would have gone with something older from PG, like Einstein on the Beach or Music in Twelve Parts. But that's just me and this isn't my compilation.

[1:48 pm] Max Richter also has a beautiful track on here, "Arboretum." I can't recommend Richter's stuff high enough - he's a favourite as far as modern composition goes. His track here is not the best introduction to his work (that remains The Blue Notebooks), but it's good enough, with its changing moods and ghostly samba break in the middle.

[1:57 pm] Sorry, Try Again by Belladonnakillz (Dross:tik). This is a nice slab of electro-pop on the Dross:tik label. Infectious choruses, simple and memorable melodies, cool beats, nice vocal effects, it's great. Music like this is just fun. With the dour mood, grey skies, and general malaise over the city of Detroit, this is a refreshing diversion for me, and something that I'd like to hear in the new year, which holds much promise to be better than the last ten. This is a perfect soundtrack for that kind of hopefulness.

[2:07 pm] Track "B In Love" is really smooth, a simple two-note piano figure bounces along as Bella happily sings about (I assume) a girl. It's pop music of the highest order, and should be huge if there's any justice in this world.

[2:15 pm] So the obvious comparison for electronic pop music is The Postal Service, but BDK keep their grooves a little dirtier, a little more abrasive than Jimmy Tamborello did with Ben Gibbard. When "A OK" slips in a little hardcore drumbreak action, it totally fits into the melange of styles BDK appropriates in each track. This one reminds me of ABC, with DJ Surgeon doing all of the music. Or, if you'd like, what Venetian Snares might sound like on downers and with a singer. I'd check that out, and deep in your heart, you know that you would too. Sorry, Try Again is as close as we're going to get to that for now. And that's cool, because this is a great place to stop over for a while and recharge.

[2:23 pm] I'm going to put this record on tonight. Great upbeat party kind of vibe, and from beginning to end, it kind of sounds, if you're not paying close attention, like a great mixtape and not just a single artist. Well done.

[2:24 pm] Nancy Elizabeth's Wrought Iron (Leaf).

[2:28 pm] Nancy's got a nice voice, and her gentle arrangements of acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, and others is kind of captivating. Harmonies to rival the Beach Boys, and it sounds like it's just her, but multitracked.

[2:30 pm] Not a lot of variation on this record. Nancy sounds at times like Stina Nordenstam, at others kind of like Jewel or Tori Amos. I guess this is a folk record, albeit a lush and unique one. While it might not end up being something I reach for often, I know I'll be happy when I'm in the right mood to listen to this record. It's for sunny days.

[2:32 pm] Halogen's Baked (Maternity) begins with the sound of someone lighting up, a not-so-subtle clue as to where our heads are expected to be when we listen to this.

[2:44 pm] So far this is a nice piece of ambient-prog, kind of FSOL, kind of early Orb. Reminds me Skylab's #1 in that both are largely very ambient with song interludes. Same kind of vibe, early trip-hop lounge, major dub influence. It's good in the background or the front of your attention.

[2:51 pm] "Etik" is suitably psychedelic, its gentle Rhodes and tinfoil beat are mellow in the kindest way.

[3:04 pm] I've been letting this just play while doing some quick catching-up with the latest issue of Rolling Stone, and my attention keeps getting drawn back to this record. Halogen deals in the details, the tiny production bits that most people take for granted or bypass altogether, are here used so wonderfully. I say so in that Baked prompts a feeling of childlike wonder (the best kind) when listening to this record. Recommended. One of the tops for 2009.

[3:06 pm] John Kameel Farah's Unfolding (Dross:tik). This opens with a classical/avant-garde piano piece, and then rips deep into Acid Jazz territory, Farah's nimble piano style over some splattered drum'n bass... and then left curve back into some modern classical. This is all over the map.

[3:16 pm] Super wicked hardcore breakbeats in "Uprising," sounds like Miles Davis' fusion band with Dave Lombardo on drums. Excellent.

[3:25 pm] Farah has done something really intriguing to me, not being much of an Acid Jazz head. With his gorgeous and fluid piano playing as the base, he lets all number of sound effects and offkilter percussion run rampant through his compositions, giving it a feel not unlike, if you can imagine, Mr. Bungle as a jazz band. Just when I think I've got a track figured out there's a total change up to something even more amusing. Moments like this are very prevalent.

And that's it for this Rewound, for now.

The Orb - Baghdad Batteries (Orbsessions Vol. III)

2010-01-04T14:23:00.003-05:00

This post appeared on Igloomag.com in January 2010.

I was very excited to hear about this - I'm a rabid Orb fan. I realize they made some mis-steps here and there, but lately there's been a return to the fun of the old Orb in the new Orb. I'm happy to say that this record completes their trip back to their roots that began on The Dream. Main Orbert Alex Patterson and Berliner Thomas Fehlmann have helmed the Orb's last decade at least, and they were starting to lose the plot. 2004's lazy Bicycles and Tricycles and the follow-up, the ill-advised dip into schaffel, Okie Dokie Its The Orb on Kompakt committed the crime of being flat out boring. This was unheard of for Paterson & co, they had, to this point, always been at least worth a listen (excepting maybe a couple of the badorb.com releases).

The Dream was something else. Jumpy and dubby with a gleeful sense of the old humour, The Dream was a return to form, to high points in Patterson's oeuvre like Orblivion and Live '93. It was the pop side of the Orb, the sunny afternoon on E. Baghdad Batteries completes the picture, being entirely instrumental and aimed directly into outer inner-space. Back are the spacescapes of Pomme Fritz and Orbus Terrarum. Back is the dancehall dub of U.F. Orb. This is more like a greatest hits album with all new tracks, each track echoing an earlier but not necessarily better corresponding track. Baghdad shows the other side of Orb, the hazy chill, a relaxed paranoia, if you will. Taken together, the two albums are a full update on all aspects of the Orb's muse.

Perhaps the best way to come to Baghdad Batteries is to start at the beginning. Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld comes out and, along with Chill Out by the KLF, invents ambient house. Full of grab-bag samples and minimal actual "music," Adventures contains everything the Orb would become in its two compact discs. U.F. Orb takes the kosmiche out of the equation and replaces it with Jamaican Dub. Smokers rejoice. Pommes Fritz shakes off the nigel hipsters who hopped on the bandwagon with its deliberately avant garde and "difficult" sound. Orbus Terrarum injected some emotion, and the Orb were at their peak. 1997's Oblvion and to a lesser extent 2001's Cydonia keep the spaceman/freak flag flying. But then they lost the plot a little, stopped innovating and chased the new sounds of the times instead of forging ahead like they had in the past. It was a critical time for them, because the musicians they influenced were past snapping at their heels and had moved into Orb's place in the pop consciousness.

I think that Patterson knew what was happening. I'm glad he found his muse again. The old, familiar atmosphere is everywhere. Consistently solid, The Orb are building on their previous album's successes. I raise my glass and my hopes that this new year, with all its promise, will bring another brilliant Orb record. Until then, this is just as good.

Baghdad Batteries (Orbsessions Volume III) is out now on Malicious Damage.

2009-12-17T09:15:00.002-05:00

Vladislav Delay - Tummaa

Well, I'm confounded. I don't know what to make of this record. I've been a Delay fan almost since the start, in all of his guises (Luomo, Uusitalo, Conoco, Sistol, The Dolls, AGF/Delay, etc.) and this one is a totally different beast than anything else he's done. Attempting to move away from the sound the Vladislav Delay brand has come to signify, Tummaa focuses more on acoustic sounds, abandoning the glacial space-landscapes of Mutilla, Anima and even Whistleblower. But is this a good thing?

I'm thinking no. For an artist so pseudonym-friendly, and with each of his various guises being a specific sound, to put this album out under the Delay guise is a left curve. Luomo is known for the prog-house stuff, The Dolls are a downtempo/jazzy trio, Uusitalo is more of an electro sound. The pieces on Tummaa bear no resemblance to what has come before, and for that reason I wish that Sasu Ripatti had either put this out under his own name or under a new alias, but not as Vladislav Delay. Which brings up a point I'd like to get into - how much responsibility does an artist have to keep making records that sound like previous records?

As a fan, the expectation usually is that an artist, when releasing a new album, will do something similar to what they've done before, maybe with some progression, maybe a little change, but not a wholesale rethink. When I think of Vladislav Delay records, I want long tracks like the material on Entain, or The Four Quarters. That's what I expect. And while the Delay project has been moving into shorter forms (Demo(n)Tracks, Whistleblower), the sound was akin to what had come before. Now maybe Ripatti felt he had taken the project as far as it could go (Anima certainly seems like it, with its 60+ minute piece), and wanted to switch things up. But, I'll say it again, the instrumentation and compositional left curves of Tummaa are so far away from what this project has been that it almost feels like a betrayal of some sort.

I'm not against change-ups, don't get me wrong. When Orb dropped their dub sound on Pomme Fritz, I was right there with them. When Aphex moved into drill 'n bass territory on Hangable Auto Bulb, I drank the kool aid. When Ripatti wanted to do house music, I went along with it - that first Luomo record is amazing (although subsequent albums have been illustrations of the Law of Diminishing Returns). The acoustic textures here (sampled from live drumming from Ripatti, clarinet and saxophone from Lucio Capece, and piano from Craig Armstrong) are far removed from the out-there dub landscapes from previous albums, and it feels wrong.

Now as an artist, I think there should be free reign to explore one's muse, try new things, etc. I'm not against experimentation. So what I've been trying to deal with on this record is the question of whether or not I'd like this album more if it wasn't credited to Vladislav Delay? And I go back and forth on this. When Radiohead put out Kid A, and the indie press fell over themselves praising its daring electronic textures and "avant-garde" songwriting, my reaction was a slightly bemused "so what?" A thousand records that sound like that come out every year on tiny electronic labels, but no one hears them and therefore Kid A is "innovative" because it is Radiohead. Radiohead was known for a sound, and they switched it up and now apparently they're the best band ever or something. I'm not against the risks that they took in writing that record, but I was against it being called "new" because, for people paying attention, it clearly wasn't. When an artist is taking the risk of failure its usually at least worth listening to, even when it fails (hello, Bjork's Medulla).

So is this record a failure? Probably not, in the long run. While it is a total change in compositional techniques and sound sourcing, it kind of works some of the time (as on the title track). But Tummaa is merely adequate - not great, not terrible. It can be argued that an album that produces an indifferent reaction is a failure, at least on some level, and I can't disagree, but I'm haunted by the question of whether or not I'd like this record better had it been put out under a different alias.

Nurse With Wound - Soliloquy For Lilith

2009-09-10T19:51:00.001-04:00

Where did this come from? An ambient album from Nurse with Wound in 1988 was an invigorating shock to the system. Soliloquy for Lilith was a complete turnaround from the kosmiche/noise that Steven Stapleton and crew had been coming up with. Six tracks, each roughly 20 minutes, one track per side of a triple-vinyl box set, each piece subtly different from the others, all with a quiet power to completely dominate the environment of wherever it is played. The mystery of the album lay in its unique sound source -- Stapleton merely looped a collection of effects pedals together and then found that by gesturing in the air around them, as if playing a Theremin, he could manipulate the tone generated by the electricity itself. What a wonderful discovery, and put to complete use here, as the possibilities in the setup are fully exploited over the course of two hours. Slow pulses in the lower register, similar to what Alan Lamb came up with in his high-tension wire recordings, complete with annular buzzes and high-end controlled feedback. It isn't far-fetched to see the roots of this album in the drone experiments of La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, or Tangerine Dream's epic Zeit. Occupying a completely separate corner of the massive Nurse with Wound catalog, Soliloquy stands outside of genre, and in the right frame of mind, outside of time. An absolute classic.

Nurse With Wound / Current 93 - Nylon' Coverin' Body Smotherin'

2009-09-10T19:50:00.000-04:00

This split release with Current 93 shows a newer side of Nurse with Wound, the side that involves vocals. Embracing people singing words and not just screaming or howling, head Nurse Steven Stapleton brings Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell into the fold to sing on the title track. Thirlwell, for his part, sounds like a rabid attack dog, spitting his words, sounding a lot like he does on earlier Foetus records. Lyrically, he's just above unintelligible, but as part of one of the most straightforward NWW tracks, with its pulsing organ and various noises punctuating the "groove," Thirlwell's contribution is immensely exciting. Incongruously, the Current 93 track "The Great in the Small" follows, a slow build-up of sparse hammering, chanting, and David Tibet saying and eventually screaming "Antichrist." It's a bit silly. "Chicken in Drag" rounds out the first half, credited as "a token Sylvie and Babs Ditty," a reference to a group of collaborators known as the Murray Fontana Orchestra that Stapleton would head up on The Sylvie and Babs High-Thigh Companion. The track here is based around samples from the theme to television's Dragnet, sped up and slowed down -- not that interesting. The remaining three tracks, all NWW, cover familiar ground in the early NWW catalog, suitably noisy and surreal, but not all that great, making this a somewhat minor footnote in the Nurse canon.

Nurse With Wound - Insect and Individual Silenced

2009-09-10T19:49:00.000-04:00

Notorious in the vast Nurse with Wound catalog, Insect & Individual Silenced was so hated by its creator, Steven Stapleton, that the album went out of print and the master tapes were burned. Copies on auction sites went for beau coup dollars. Thankfully his mind was changed and the album finally made its digital debut in 2007 on Raash. Easily the most playful of early Nurse with Wound, Stapleton is joined by merry prankster Jim Thirlwell from Foetus and Trevor Reidy, who would go on to work with Danielle Dax and the Monochrome Set. Reidy plays drums, adding bizarre accents when and where he can, given the musical terrain, while Thirlwell's contribution consists of "playing" his amplifier by manipulating the jack-plugs and leads, generating unearthly buzzes and drones. As expected, Stapleton brings to the table many unidentifiable noisemakers, drones, bits of old records, and a playful sense of the psychedelic. Like many of the early NWW releases, Insect is more of an audio collage than an album of songs, each piece appearing improvised with a disregard for any type of song form. And that's not a criticism, it's what makes Stapleton's early work so unique, and in this case, fun. Reidy's loose and inventive kit-work on "Absent Old Queen Underfoot" consists of merely a snare and brushes, surrounded by a pastiche of kosmiche and John Cage from Stapleton. "Mutiles de Guerre," at a brief seven minutes, is like the early NWW efforts in a nutshell -- completely disorienting pitch-shifted screams mix with bizarre horn squalls, and howling feedback that eventually give way to a banjo and choir version of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." More than other albums in the discography, it's hard to predict just what's going to come out of the speakers next, even after repeated listens. Recommended.

Nurse With Wound - Drunk With The Old Man of the Mountains

2009-09-10T19:48:00.000-04:00

This release fills in some holes in the vast Nurse with Wound catalog, gathering up five stray tracks from the mid-'80s into a nice package for the collector. Some of the tracks have appeared on compact disc reissues (for example "Mourning Smile" appears on the CD reissue of Spiral Insana, but was not on the original release) that were all out of print at the time this was released. So that makes this a nice piece for the rabid collector, and also a good starting place for the inquisitive. As an album, the tracks work surprisingly well with each other and present a rounded, if difficult, view of what Nurse with Wound was capable of at the time. "Mourning Smile" is a relatively brief (just over five minutes) distillation of Steven Stapleton's unique ability to mix disparate elements (ghostly drone with ragtime piano and pipe organ) into a disorienting collage that keeps a close listener on his toes. "Swamp Rat" is a long exploration of drones working over a Neu! Motorik beat. "Sheela-Na-Gig" recalls some of the Penderecki music that was used as the score to The Shining. Broadly cinematic and avante-garde, Drunk with the Old Man of the Mountains resists easy categorization except as a NWW release. It couldn't have been made by anyone else.

Nurse With Wound - Ostranenie 1913

2009-09-10T19:47:00.002-04:00

This release houses two slightly different versions of tracks from previous Nurse with Wound releases, "Ostranenie" from To the Quiet Men from a Tiny Girl, and "Dada" from Merzbild Schwet. Originally released on vinyl only, this has yet to make it to compact disc, and that's a real oversight, as this record brims with the kitchen-sink excitement of main Nurse Steven Stapleton's earliest, most exciting pieces. Collaborating with Current 93's David Tibet as well as John Fothergill and Jacques Berrocal, "Ostranenie" (the song) leans towards the isolationist ambient music that NWW pioneered in the early and mid-'80s. Eschewing any sense of melody or song structure, this 24-minute version aims for the heart of the void, with spectral whistles, found-sound recordings, context-less spoken word samples, and an impending sense of doom. It is nearly impossible to guess at the instrumentation used to create this kosmiche/psychedelic collage, in a good way. One of NWW's goals in the early days was disorientation, a shattering of preconceived notions, and on "Dada," they have certainly achieved it. Those not familiar with avant-garde or Dadaist music may have trouble even classifying this as music, but repeated deep listening reveals hidden connections between the disparate compositional elements Stapleton and company use to construct this soundworld. Unexpected silences abound among clattering metal, spoken word French from Crass member Eve Libertine, and primitive electronics. While hardly the place for beginners, Ostranenie 1913 is worth tracking down for those curious enough to have explored the NWW catalog and are intrigued by what they hear.

Autumn's Grey Solace - Over the Ocean

2009-09-10T19:46:00.001-04:00

The duo of Erin Welton (vocals) and Scott Ferrell (everything else) avoids the "second album syndrome" with Over the Ocean, a sometimes excellent collection of ethereal dream pop that shows the band was right to sign with Projekt. As with most Projekt bands, Autumn's Grey Solace know how to make lush soundscapes that fully engage a listener's attention. Ferrell, with a dexterity rare for so-called shoegaze guitarists, layers his guitar sounds with an ear for detail and not just fuzz. Each track sounds like there are several guitars playing at the same time. And over Ferrell's workmanlike basslines and drums, Welton's airy voice soars and swoops, mingling the techniques of Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser and Cranes' Alison Shaw. The lyrics aren't always understandable, but their sound doesn't necessarily reflect the words, and the emotion comes out anyway. Welton is a very expressive singer, mixed at just the right level above the music, which never overpowers her voice, but complements her vocal strengths at every step. Very well done and recommended for any fan of shoegaze or dream pop.

The Notwist - Nook

2009-09-10T19:45:00.005-04:00

The second album from the Notwist shows little evolution from the hard rock sound of their debut album, still sounding little like what they would transform into several years later with Shrink. Mixing songwriting similar to Swervedriver with the guitar angling of Dinosaur Jr., Notwist make an honest effort to stand out, but ultimately fail in light of the records they would start making after this one. Viewed this way, Nook is an enjoyable record, if not a fully successful one. For fans of Neon Golden, this sounds like an entirely different band. No electronics here, strictly drums and wires employed in as muscular a way as possible, as on the Helmet-sounding "Unsaid, Undone." With meatier production than their debut, the Notwist pummel their guitars and drums in search of majestic riffs and are mostly successful. There are a couple of tracks that miss their mark, but its probably around a 70/30 split in terms of success. If nothing else, Nook is as good an example of early-'90s alternative rock as any other, if a fairly generic one. Not recommended for fans of the band's later works, but probably one for the die-hard completist.

The Notwist - The Notwist

2009-09-10T19:45:00.002-04:00

First things first -- while this is essentially the same band that made Neon Golden, the Notwist were, at their beginning, a hard rock/metal band. Very little of their later, more popular sound is present on this, their first album. So for fans who are working their way through the back catalog, be forewarned that this bears no resemblance to the band you like. Despite this, The Notwist stands on its own as a thrashy and punky record with flailing drums, fun singalongs, and screaming guitar solos. Opener "Is It Fear?" is the highlight, a throwback to the raw punk scree of the Ruts, with a chunky start-stop riff, barely intelligible singing, and straight-up muscle. "Bored" ups the ante by upping the tempo and adding some scream-along vocals. Overall, it's a fun record, if fairly generic. The bulk of the album passes with a few memorable hooks, but nothing that would make it stand out from other hard rock records that were being made in 1989. Recommended only for the super-hardcore Notwist fans.

Cipher - No Ordinary Man

2009-09-10T19:42:00.000-04:00

Cipher are Theo Travis (soprano sax, alto flute, piano) and Dave Sturt (fretless bass, loop programming). No Ordinary Man, their second album, echoes Brian Eno's Ambient 4: On Land with its gentle ambient soundscapes and a slightly melancholic jazz feel. Sampling through various moods that evoke ideas of contemplation or meditation, the duo is joined at various times by Richard Barbieri and Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree. The atmospheres are mostly wordless throughout, with the notable exception of "Desert Song," a noir-ish phantasm featuring the gorgeous vocals of Rabbi Gaddy Zerbib. Travis expertly produces beguiling textures on his wind instruments, and Sturt provides subtle and moving foundations beneath. Best for quiet times, No Ordinary Man is an excellent starting point for this project, especially for people who come to Theo Travis via his Thread album with Robert Fripp.

Creamy Water Quiz :: Flojo, Loco y Enigmatico

2009-07-31T18:53:00.001-04:00

I got passed a demo from this Michigan duo a couple of years ago and was quietly blown away by it. 70 minutes of nearly formless electronic improvisation done with live instruments (not laptops), mixed almost haphazardly and bursting with lo-fidelity, DIY, "just do it" spirit. Now, in 2009, comes the debut album, and it is a wonderful continuation of that same ethos.

For 53 minutes, Creamy Water Quiz (CWQ) push the envelopes of composition, appearing at times carefully structured and at others completely free-form. Mostly melodic but not in a memorable sense, the whole album works as a long suite, with individual pieces alternately flowing into one another and cutting into one another. What makes this album so fun though is the fearless sense of adventure it has. It sounds like the duo laid down some basic improv tracks (maybe keys or bass guitar), and then went nuts over them with whatever was at hand. Really fearless, this. Skipping across genres, CWQ touches on idm, electro-acoustic improv, music-concrete, dub, etc. Imagining what the sessions for this record were like brings to mind a brainstorming session where no idea was thrown out, but all of the ideas were good. Their motto, according to the label website, is "we make sounds until the tape runs out." How lovely, that they recorded this on tape.

This is easily on my top 10 for 2009.

Retic :: Somnolent Massive

2009-07-31T18:52:00.000-04:00

Back in 2007, I praised Retic for their debut album, Saturn Day Trajectory for its tricky interleaving of keen beats and sly sine-wave bass with crackerjack melodies, and Somnolent Massive is more of the same wonderfulness.

Still evoking Boards of Canada but mixing in with some classic Rephlex / Braindance sounds ("Flippit"), Retic pushes his sound a tad further than before, coming back with a further distillation of his influences. Overall the album has a nice pastoral-IDM mood, but with a couple of detours (the 80s-Detroit sounding "Represent," the dnb drive of "Pushing Buttons") that keep the album fresh all the way through.

Equally focused on rhythm and melody, Somnolent Massive is a well-rounded "album" in the classic sense, not something that one would pick a couple of tracks to download. The whole thing is worth your time.

Seriously recommended.

SubtractiveLAD, Plastik Joy and Last Days

2009-07-31T18:50:00.001-04:00

This latest crop of releases from n5md puts them near the top of my favorite indie labels. With a strong catalog featuring Lights Out Asia, Proem and Another Electronic Musician, they've been on their game since they started. But the label is really coming into its own now.

SubtraciveLAD's Where the Land Meets the Sky is an excellent nu-gaze record; a double-disc set of warm, fuzzy laptop melodies that bear the hallmarks of classic shoegaze (particularly Slowdive) but with better production than the average distorto-laptop musician (not naming names here). The record smoothly transitions from pastoral, late-period Flying Saucer Attack-style haze ("Away From Brightness") to blissed-out ambient pop ("The Slender Stem") that evokes Mark Van Hoen's solo work, all the while maintaining a warm, enveloping sound. Disc two of the set is given over to two long-form tracks, each over 20 minutes, that explore a rich seam of ambient not unlike Stars of the Lid - drumless soundscapes that evolve slowly and compellingly, with a forward motion revealed through intense, rewarding listening. Overall, its an embarrassment of riches, a fully-loaded album of excellence. More please.

Plastik Joy travels in the same direction as SubtractiveLAD, but pulls back on the fuzzy nu-gaze for a more minimalistic effect. Slipping an acoustic guitar into the mix is a nice touch, avoiding the folk-y tendencies of other artists who try the same. They're not afraid to mix the acoustic sounds with some glitch textures, and in "Hands," they find a nice combination of the two, a rare success to my ears. I thought for years that glitch was dead, but on this track Plastik Joy create a hybrid between .snd and Cranes, something that I've never heard before. Plastik Joy also have a keen ear for collaborators, using Sara K. Hellstrom and S. Kawasaki as expressive vocalists, their young-girl style adding another layer of nostalgia and warmth to the music. The other thing to mention about 3:03 is its playfulness. While their illbient-folk is as serious as can be in concept, it is readily apparent that the Icelandic/Italian duo don't take themselves too seriously. To wit, they have a song called "True Norwegian Black Metal" which is of course nothing like that, but makes for a chuckle or two. Much like SubtractiveLAD, more from Plastik Joy is most welcome.

Last Days' The Safety of the North is much more meditative than the other two in this batch, wearing their Godspeed You Black Emperor and Twine influences of their sleeves. Also evoking early Piano Magic, The Safety of the North sounds glacial and majestic, each track drowning in duende. Perfect for late night come-downs from evenings full of emotional turmoil. It sounds like a soundtrack to the months after your most devastating breakup, where time moves slow and little around you moves. That's a recommendation - this is music for when you need music the most - as something to mirror an emotional state, allowing you to recognize yourself in it. And that's rare, which makes a project like Last Days all the more valuable now.

All releases are out now on n5MD.

Harmonic 313 - When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence

2009-04-12T08:49:00.001-04:00

Global Communications' resident wizard Mark Pritchard (Tom Middleton is GC's resident sorcerer) returns to us with a new album from a new alias (a shout out to Detroit and a play on one of the man's many aliases, Harmonic 33). The H33 project started as a lounge/exotica electronic project (and put out a couple of excellent EPs on Alphabet Zoo), morphed into a disappointing turn towards music concrete for one record on Warp (Music For Film, Television, and Radio), and now, with a slight number change, brings some serious funk to the decks. Only one problem -- he's forgotten his roots, and in the attempt to forge ahead, Pritchard has left behind his superb melodic sensibilities, or at least let his love of hip hop subsume them.

When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence finds Pritchard exploring Detroit-style hiphop, a genre I am largely ignorant of, on purpose. While Detroit may be the revered "home" of techno, the best electronic music is largely produced elsewhere. And if there is a hip hop scene in Detroit beyond Eminem, I don't have anywhere near the desire to earn the bona fides to speak about it with any authority. As such, the only approach that can be made to WHEMI is that of an outsider.

But I am armed with a knowledge of Mark Pritchard's previous work, work that I hold near and dear. I'm a Global Communications fanatic. I am one of those people that really does buy anything that has either Pritchard or Middleton's name on it. And I love 95% of it. This is the 5%. But why? What is it about this record that just does not resonate with me? I've been wrestling with this question for quite a while and still don't really have an answer beyond the idea that it just doesn't move me. The lush symphonics of GC (even their late-period house material), the dnb of Chaos & Julia Set, the blasted ambience of Pulusha, the Chicago-style house of Cosmos all get me going. Harmonic 313 though seems to sacrifice the melody for the funk, and it makes me tune out. But I can't give up on this record, because there are some real gems in the rough. There is almost too much chaff that needs to be cut through to get to the wheat that I can't be enthusiastic about this project.

I won't do a track-by-track breakdown (boring), but here's what I'm talking about. Opener "Dirtbox" consists of an 8-bit descending bassline with no groove to it all, video game noises placed counterpoint to the "melody" and some sparse raga toasting. That's it. At 4:29, it is too long. Maybe on a system with huge subs this would rock the place, but from where I sit, it just sounds like poorly mastered rumbling. "Cyclotron" follows with a hip-hop-by-numbers 4/4 beat and the laziest of basslines, with a modicum of fat synths on top. Maybe this would be better with an MC over it. I'm reminded, listening to it again, of the Dr. Octogon instrumental record from 1996: kind of neat, but incomplete. And Pritchard stretches this "track" again to the 4:30 mark, outstaying its welcome by at least half. "No Way Out" follows in the same vein. It's almost like Pritchard wanted to create an album of DJ tools, specifically for anonymous Myspace MCs to use as sample fodder. And if that was the intent, then he succeeded.

The more I write about this record the less I like it. The more I think about this record the less I like writing about it. Mark Pritchard is one of my heroes, who until this record, had really not done any wrong. But this album just seems unfinished and not up to the standards that he set for the first 16 years of his career. Sorry to say this, but Harmonic 313 is failing like the town it seems to honor.

When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence is out now on Warp.

Rewound Vol. 9 (Liveblog Style)

2009-04-12T08:41:00.001-04:00

OK, so first things first -- the non-traditional formatting for this column is based on the absolutely STUPID decision to have a text file on my desktop called "Untitled," which contained long reviews of almost all of the records that are covered below. This file, again stupidly named "Untitled," was over-written by mistake, and the entirety of the column was lost. What you read below is a last-ditch attempt to get these records reviewed. I'm listening to all of this column's records one more time, blogging as I go.

[6:34 am, February 4, 2009] Starting Fun Is Near by Artifact Shore. "2 In 24" starts. Nice metallic, electro-punk vibe. Vocals come in around 1:00 and they're a deal-breaker. Not liking them at all. Kind of off-key, which can be cool if that's the point, but I don't get that feeling here. The bed is awesome, with grinding guitars and a relentless bass. Nice breakdown just before 2:00 mark. I'm tempted to pause the track to go get some breakfast from downstairs, but its WAY too early in this experiment to take a break. Facebook gets checked at the four minute mark, as the track fades.

[6:39 am] The title track, "Fun Is Near." Paradoxically, the vocals are way too low in the mix for my tastes on this track, which evokes mid period Flying Saucer Attack minus the deafening fuzz. Hard to pin a genre on this disc so far. No idea what is being sung about, as I'm not able to make out any of the words. The live drums are a nice touch. 2:30 into the track there's a double-speed bridge which is grabs my attention, but it doesn't last long enough for me to get enthusiastic about it. The double-speed bit appears around the four-minute mark to take the track home, and this time it makes a real impression. Very cool change-up, taking an almost pastoral ballad and thrashing it to pieces. Nice.

[6:44 am] Pausing to get a bowl of cereal.

[6:48 am] Okay, got my bowl of whatever with bran, and ready to proceed. Pressing play. "Insight and Action" is the track, and its probably my favorite on this EP. Sounds like an outtake from the Twin Peaks: Season Two soundtrack, with what sounds like an acoustic bass and twinkling piano. Really nice, smoky vibe on this one. Vocals come in shortly after the two-minute mark, and while they're way too far in the background again, this time it works. The bass picks up to match the vocal cadence and the drums and piano play catch up. Really cool. And just when it gets good, it ends. At four minutes, this track is too short! Twelve-inch extended remix, please!

[6:52 am] "Stupid Coma" doesn't lend itself to saying too much about it, except that the buried vocals continue, and this time they irritate. The lyrics that I can make out sound like they're an homage to Joy Division's "The Atrocity Exhibition." Weird. Whatever.

[6:55 am] "On the Banks of Black." Itunes shows the track title as "On the Banks or Black" which is incorrect. As this EP winds down, I'm taken with the idea that this CD wouldn't be out of place on Ghostly, and Artifact Shore wouldn't be out of place opening for a band like Midwest Product, if they were to tour. I think in that kind of context this record might take on a new resonance. As it stands, its an interesting but flawed mini-album. Problems seem to stem to the mixing of the record, not because of any of the music contained here-in. I'd rate this as a try-before-you-buy, but if you have an open ear, I think you'll end up buying.

[7:00 am] New record! Mandrake by Dif:Use. Somewhere I read that these are the guys from Funkstorung? Googling to confirm. Nope, it's the guys from Funckarma. Easy to mix up, I guess. This is their ambient project, according to their Myspace. Opening track, "Backsheesh" sounds like the first couple of minutes from a FSOL live broadcast back in the mid 90s, i.e., semi-random sounds coming together, melding into coherence, like an orchestra tuning up, kind of. First track is mixed into the next, "Felon."

[7:05 am] Yeah, this Dif:Use is really reminding me of FSOL, in a good way. Not "Papua New Guinea" FSOL (although that's fine), but the later, post Dead Cities FSOL where they kind of lost the plot a little but were still making really exciting electronic collages of sounds -- not music per se, but collisions of sounds. The emphasis here seems to be on the ambience -- a droning synth dominates "Felon," with plenty of attending squiggles and synth washes going on in the left and right channels. I'm liking it enough to do a quick google to see if they have other records.

[7:09 am] They do! I'm buying it. Thank you Discogs marketplace.

[7:13 am] Meanwhile, "Kaddish" has been playing in the background. I've kind of tuned it out while I was shopping there, but now that I'm paying full attention again, it scares me in a way that is hard to describe, but evokes the feeling of being three or four years old and totally convinced that something was moving under your bed. Actually, the track sounds like whatever is moving under the bed. There are a number of musical elements in this track that are operating against the others, and it makes this reviewer feel a little uneasy. And that's fine, I like being unsettled, but for enjoyment, this track ain't working. Skipping ahead at the 4:22 mark.

[7:16 am] The title track, "Mandrake." This isn't a disc to really break down track by track, as there aren't songs, but rather movements in a larger piece. I'm enjoying this one quite a bit - not to harp on a comparison, but this album really brings back those seat-of-the-pants feeling of those early FSOL broadcasts, or their ISDN album. You may not like every track, but you probably like the whole album. It's an important distinction. 4:28 into the track sounds like a Skinny Puppy sample, but damn if I can name the track.

[7:23 am] Just tried the headphones, and they are magic with this one. Really really nice. Headphone albums seem to be on the outs lately, for whatever reason, but Dif:Use have made a good one, and the ten-minute title track is great. In headphones it just swirls all around.

[7:30 am] Okay, I admit that the more abstract this album gets, the less I'm paying active attention. "Nectopod" is a very ambient track, and I'm wandering away from my duties here. This record, in my listening, gets played when I'm reading. And it is great for background to another task like that -- it's not an intrusive record by any means. It does get a little abrasive in this track, but I'm not complaining. Overall this is a nice little illbient record that evokes the futuristic atmospheres of FSOL and the drugged-out spaces of Skylab. I'm going to move on to the next record.

[7:39 am] Lowest Moments, a mixed compilation of tracks on the Low Res label, mixed by C64. This is a mash-up of 26 tracks from the excellent Low Res in Detroit, mixing sounds of hardcore breakbeat, industrial, and speed-glitch, touching most of the major releases from the label's first ten years in operation.

[7:46 am] In the first four tracks on this, C64 has brought together label head Adjust, Venetian Snares, Bombardier, and I:Gor, all easily identifiable as Low Res artists and all classics in their own rights. A record like Lowest Moments makes me want to immediately purchase the entire back catalog. I'm going to resist this time, but so far this album has been all gravy.

[7:49 am] The punishing breaks at the end of I:Gor's "Happy Mechanical Unit" lead directly to the vacuum cleaner-bass tone and overdriven snare of Kamphetamine's "Exorcism Threshold," and early classic from Low Res sub-label Division 13. This goes into the mighty "Forsaken" from underground power-star Abelcain, one of my personal favourite Low Res artists.

[7:58 am] Starting to feel a little fatigued, like maybe I should have slept a little bit later into the morning. C'est la vie. C64 is on the decks and I'm getting jolted out of my stupor with this disc. Really digging how C64 manages the mood and tempo in his track selections and mixing. Like all good DJ's, he knows when to take it down a notch or two and when to crash the faders all the way up and blow everything out. Really expert control of the vinyl here. Currently on the Adjust remix of Delien's "Aon." Delien always reminded me of what Skinny Puppy should have turned into after Last Rights, instead of what they became on The Process. They should have kept it digital. Adjust remixes their track sympathetical to that. And C64 takes it to the next level by seamlessly mixing it with Tarmvred's "Oskulden." Not 10 tracks into this CD and we're hitting all the right high notes in the Low Res catalog. Other artists included in this mix are Davros, Theeq, Ubergang, Cdatakill, and Kero. All excellent on their own (Davros, especially), here they become the ultimate hardcore DJ party. This disc could be 12 hours long and it would keep me moving.

[8:22 am] Really not much more to say about this album that wouldn't be repetitive, but C64 is in top form using the Low Res catalog as building blocks for Lowest Moments. There is a superb mastery of mood and tempo that wouldn't be as effective should the same tracks be used in the same fashion for another mix by another mixer. Low Res is one of the best underground labels going, and a true shining star for the city of Detroit - an innovative underdog that takes what the city gives and spins it into genius.

[8:27 am] Moving on, to Podington Bear's The End. I had some choice words and a rant in the original column about PB, and while I'm not going to try to recreate it here, I'll say that this whole PB project just rubs me the wrong way. The idea was for PB to put out three tracks a week for a year. And he mostly made it, but at the expense of quality over quantity.

[8:32 am] Okay, so I haven't created 156 tracks in one year, far far from it. But I know what's good and what isn't (or more accurately what I like and what I don't like), and this isn't good. The End is filled with stock sounds and lazy beats, maintaining a mid-tempo "whimsicality" throughout. Maybe its just me, or maybe its this economy, but I'd rather get 12 excellent tracks than 156 okay ones. But The End, being the final CD in the PB box set (which captures 10 of the 13 albums released in 2007) just sounds like there was writer's block going on and this was the attempt to fight through it. The days of putting out what you do as soon as you do it should be coming to an end. NOW.

[8:36 am] Now, we're cooking with gasoline. Next up is tKatKa's self-titled debut, and its a real corker. I've been listening to this record for a long time and I'm really into it. This is a duo from London who apparently really vibed off of classic ambient electronica (early to mid 90s variant) like Orb, FSOL, early Autechre, etc.

[8:46 am] I just realized I'm listening to this record on shuffle. Damn, it works anyway. I love the Orb-like vibe of seemingly random sounds against a firm synth, with some nice drums and breaks interspersed. This record really hits all of my musical pleasure centers. There's a playful atmosphere on some of these tracks that juxtaposes with a creeping sense of dread in each track. It really keeps me off balance and therefore focuses my attention on it. Early single and opening track "LazersLab" is a great example of what I'm talking about.

[8:51 am] My energy is starting to flag. Need some protein. Nothing like some vegetable juice and a hardboiled egg. "E.L.D.A.C." provides a great soundtrack to peeling the eggshell. Its got a great headnodding bass, bouncy synths and a filter-swept synth to die for. If every record I review could be this great the music industry would not be in the sorry state it is. I sincerely hope that tKatKa makes huge bank off this record.

[9:07 am] Had to take an unplanned break to investigate a noise from the kitchen (nothing serious), but I'm back with "Storm Proof Weather," the most FSOL-esque track on the record. It sounds like a rainstorm with keyboard accompaniment, and at roughly four minutes, its way too short. "(It's Just a) Molecule," the follow-up track, is also just too short at 4 minutes. It's hard to put into words just what it is about these guys that makes me flip out over this record and want moremoremore of it, but they have that thing, that spark that inspired Alex Patterson, Sean Booth, Darren Emerson, Phil Hartnoll, and Garry Cobain. If you're a fan of any of those people, you'll find plenty to love from tKatKa.

[9:16 am] Moving on, I'm tackling the double disc from Yaporigami, Saryu Sarva. I've had a lot of trouble with this album this past year, perhaps not because of the music it contains, but because there's so much of it. The second disc in this set is a track-for-track remix, and its completely useless. But I'll get to that.

[9:18 am] Opener "thirteen" sounds like an outtake from Drukqs, with toybox melodies and drill 'n bass drums. Bleh. This style of music is over. Nothing new. Aphex killed it years ago. "Ame" is more like it, but still this is incredibly derivative stuff, this time aping Tri Repetae-era Autechre. And that's cool, I've gone on and on above about how records sound like other records, but Yaporigami is missing more than hitting here.

[9:23 am] "Nomad," track three, might be my favourite track of the set. There's a really nice minor key melody that keeps getting pushed to the next level by this deep, surging bass tone that gets right to the edge of sounding like a synthfart but pulls back at the last moment. I don't think you could dance to this track, but its a nice uptempo piece that makes me think that maybe if this mammoth set had been cut down to an EP, it would be totally killer with no filler.

[9:29 am] I miss Merck records. Yaporigami makes me think of Merck records.

[9:41 am] Halfway through this record and I'm tired of listening to it. There's too much here, too much in each track, and the totality of the 30 tracks on this double disc set makes me whimper in despair. I can't get through this disc. Suffice to say that the remixers are mostly anonymous to me (exceptions being TRS-80, COH, Jimmy Edgar, and Machinedrum), and all keep the same basic template that Yapo sets forth. If you're one of those holdouts that still clutches your Hangable Auto Bulb 2 to your chest, this is probably right up your alley. The downtempo tracks on this record are pretty good, but the faster, drill-type stuff really grates on me. I think this kind of music has reached its end and artists still doing it are spinning their wheels.

[9:44 am] One final note about the Yaporigami record. The label, Symbolic Interaction, has put out some fantastic stuff and its a label I keep my eye on. I don't want to slag the label for this record, but don't let this one put you off other entries in the SI catalog. They're one of Japan's finest indie/underground labels.

[9:45 am] Break. Gotta rest the ears for a bit. It's been 3 hours since I started writing this.

[10:04 am] Ready for the final stretch. We start with Erdem Helvacioglu's Altered Realities. This whole record was recorded real-time with an acoustic guitar and "live electronics." "Bridge to Horizon" starts things off nicely, establishing an ambient/post-rock vibe that continues through the entire album. Hard to tell what sounds on this track aren't manipulated, but aside from what is obviously an acoustic guitar plucking an engaging melody, whatever else is making the various drones in the background is up for grabs. I can't tell. And I LOVE that I can't tell. Sourceless sounds are fantastic. As a side note, there's a record called Nothing by System Error, where all of the sounds are sourced from a no-input mixer. And it's nowhere near as glitchy as you'd think it would be. Check it out.

[10:10 am] Because of the very nature of this record, it starts to sound a little samey way too soon for my tastes. Second track "Sliding on a Glacier" again has an acoustic guitar playing an engaging melody, over which is laid some electronic soundtrickery. The liner notes say that Erdem used Audiomulch. I'm not familiar with the software, but if I was a drone artist, I'd use it. There's some seriously messed up sounds on this record, sounds that I can't recall hearing before.

[10:16 am] Okay, "Sliding on a Glacier" makes me feel like I'm falling over, even though I'm sitting down.

[10:22 am] "Frozen Resophonic" is ending and I'm starting to weary of this record. Using the same tonal palate throughout doesn't work for me -- I need a little variation. Sorry, Erdem, you're not making the cut. You'd make a nice EP, but an entire album of this stuff just doesn't work, even as background music.

1765 image 7 [10:24 am] Okay, the final entry in this experiment, TerrorKnowledgeAction from tKatKa. I split this record off from the debut because there was a significant amount of time that had passed between when I received the debut and when I received this, and I didn't want to combine them, because they sound like they're from different groups. Terror has tKatKa using (overusing) electric guitar, the instrument that ruined industrial music and made Boards of Canada boring. tKatKa were great on their first record and not that great on this one. Opener "Global Fascist State" grabs the attention with the looped guitar and a pulsing bass, but it doesn't go anywhere except around and around for an interminable 4:15 that seems easily twice as long.

[10:30 am] "Grief Hijackers - Tom Hickox Vs. tKatKa" is up next and if I could un-hear this track I would. There are vocals on this track, and vocals are fine, but in this case, whoever is singing just makes me want to listen to Underworld, they sound so similar to Karl Hyde. Some bands are able to ape another and make it their own, and some aren't. Why listen to a band that sounds like Underworld, when you could be listening to Underworld?

[10:42 am] Midway through the record and "Lullabize" is failing to make much of an impression over the course of its three minutes, with the exception that the white noise sound they layer over the whole track makes me want to turn it off. Which I'll do right now. I'm grateful for the skip button. "Kamikaze" follows with 1990 rave-synths and torpid beats. What happened to the band that made the first record? That one was fantastic, but this one is just derivative and boring. Whereas their self-titled was able to transcend its influences, this one is not. Sorry fellas, go back to what you were doing before, because this just isn't working.

[10:48 am] This isn't working for me at all. TerrorKnowledgeAction is making me think that tKatKa has lost the plot, and will unfortunately be resigned to that pile of artists that made only one great album. I sincerely hope not, but they need to make a change against what they've done here. Using guitar is one thing, but its ruined more bands than its saved. Singing is cool too, but develop a style that isn't the monotone chant that Karl Hyde does so well with Underworld. The one thing an album should never do is make me think that I'd be better off listening to another record, and TKA does that every second. I'll take their first one over this one any day.

[10:53 am] That's it for this Rewound. I promise to not do it like this again.

David Foster Wallace RIP

2008-09-23T17:54:00.001-04:00

I never met David Foster Wallace, and I won't presume to say that I felt that I knew the man through his writing, but he sure seemed to know me. The wry observations of life and the people that live it in the late '90s and early '00s, their foibles and petty triumphs, all were immediately recognizable in both myself and in the people around me. Wallace's gift was that he was able to pick out the minutiae in people's mannerisms and extrapolate them to a larger, more common condition that we all, knowingly and unknowingly, labor under. I'm thinking here of his discussion of being a tourist in his essay "Consider the Lobster," or what it was like to feel slightly alienated from people feeling much stronger emotions than myself on 9/11 in "The View From Mrs. Thompson's."

I was very taken with the controlled rage he displayed in "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart." The piece starts as a dissection of the sports memoir, but then moves into what it means to be able to verbally articulate one's talent. The sense of disgust with the genre is palpable throughout the essay, but the conclusion he reaches, that the very inability to intellectualize about one's talent is the very essence of that talent, opened a whole new method of thinking for me. As did his commencement speech at Kenyon College, which, for me, boiled down to a simple plea for people to treat each other as people and not be so quick to judge based on our preconceptions of them.

David Foster Wallace tempered his cynicism and his irony with a sincere humanity that is largely lost in popular fiction. That's what I related to when I read his words, and what I admired most. The courage that it takes to stand up and say "I don't like this aspect of how our culture has progressed, and I don't know what to do about it, but maybe acknowledging that this exists in myself may somehow make it better or easier for all of us." I will truly miss that.

Almost Time

2008-08-27T21:25:00.000-04:00

Time is coming when what has happened before will happen again. This blog will be more active soon. The urge is returning. Longer articles is the goal.

Hammock - Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow

2008-05-04T22:03:00.000-04:00

In August of 2007, Hammock was invited to play their first ever live gig at an art show after-party to be attended by Sigur Ros' Jonsi Birgisson, a big influence on the band. Challenged with reproducing their lush and complex recorded sound live, the duo chose to go minimal, and find out if what really comprised the Hammock magic was as simple as just the guitars in their hands and the pedals at their feet. They found that it is. This album then, is a studio recording of that "start-of-Act-II" set, enhanced with a supportive cello from Sixpence None the Richer's Matt Slocum. Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow is Hammock reduced to its deepest essence, a still and stunning beauty. Dropping the vocals, dropping beats, Marc Byrd and and Andrew Thompson find the core of their dream-ambient muse. Gone are the Boards of Canada mannerisms of Kenotic, gone are the sometimes bluesy guitars of Raising Your Voice...Trying To Stop An Echo, gone are the yearning, aching vocals. And what remains is a sound both simple and unaffected. Byrd and Thompson shed any emotional armor they wore, and appear here as unafraid to express their fragility or vulnerability, as people who know that there is nothing to be afraid of, who know that it is okay to express their pain, their joy, their overarching hopefulness. Maybe operates outside of genre, far beyond the now-obvious limitations of the dream-pop/shoegaze scene Hammock cut their teeth in. This is something new, something needed, a balm for the battered souls that surround us.

Rewound VIII

2007-12-28T08:19:00.000-05:00

There's going to be one more of these columns and then I'm going on hiatus. Enjoy.

REWOUND :: Volume 8 By Jericho Maxim

(12.27.07) This review column by Jericho Maxim focuses on the emergence of new releases from around the globe (current, past or present) in almost any electronic genre. Rewound Volume 8 features reviews for Misha, Serengeti & Polyphonic, Retconned, Blue States, Fateless Flows Vol.3, Metamatics/Norken, Supersilent, Uusitalo, and Telephone Jim Jesus.

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# Misha :: Teardrop Sweetheart (Tomlab, CD)

Chicago film critic Roger Ebert has said, although I don't have the reference handy, that he rates films based on whether or not they achieve what he perceives their aim to be. If a film aims to be an over-the-top, blow-stuff-up, kill-bad-guys thriller and there is unnecessary, wanton destruction until the villain gets his comeuppance, Ebert seems to rate it higher than a cheesy action film that has pretenses to the art-house. He also, famously, rated films on his television show with a thumbs-up or -down. I'm going to use the same system for Misha, the New York-based duo of Ashley Yao and John Chao, whose album, Teardrop Sweetheart, feels overlong even at a relatively brief 39 minutes, perhaps due to its complete lack of both a memorable hook and sense of conviction in both composition and vocal delivery. Granted, Misha's songs are brittle, fragile constructs, updating the lounge sounds of The High Llamas covering a St. Etienne ballad. And while that combination sounds promising, Sarah Cracknell and Sean O'Hagen never dropped stillborn lyrics like on "Anaconda:" "Anaconda, sittin' in her Honda, feeding in the parking lot. I had a heart, but she flayed me and took me apart." Um, second grade called, it would like its poetry back. Musically, Teardrop.. is very same-y from track to track: Casio keyboards, gentle guitar, electronic beats, and damn near the same bpm every time. It seems like Misha are trying to take the classic Burt Bacharach/Hal David pop-songwriting school and tug it into 2007, but where Burt and Hal could make lemonade out of salt, Misha make an empty margarita glass, and the bar is closing. Did Misha achieve their aim? Not in anything resembling a compelling way. For a pop album created in the bedroom, Teardrop.. sounds under-produced and under-performed. And in the cruelest irony, the final track, "Trying," ends with John Chao singing over and over "I'm still trying too hard." Irony is such a cruel mistress, even when applied intentionally. [Purchase]

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Serengeti & Polyphonic :: Don't Give Up (Audio8, CD)

I'm not the person to review this. See, I don't really like hip-hop. I try. There's a couple Public Enemy tracks I really like. I like Dalek in small doses. Maybe some early Wu-Tang. But that's about it. I think a lot of potentially cool d'n'b tracks from the early- to mid-90s were ruined by rapping. I saw 808 State in 1994 or '95, and they had an MC that was so awful I walked out after 10 minutes. Who, in 1995, wanted to hear anyone rap over the brilliance of "Cubik"? If you answered "me," then I don't want to know you, because you are so far away from my musical sensibilities that we would have nothing to discuss, but a lot to argue about. Personally, a lot of music being made now is being ruined by narcoleptic, solipsistic MCs, and Don't Give Up is a fine example. But let me further qualify, before I go further, that hip-hop is not my thing at all. Doesn't pump my nads, doesn't instill a sense of amazement through deft wordsmithing, and is second on my list of musical genres from which I derive little to no pleasure, right after country. Current evidence on the table is the latest collaboration from Serengeti & Polyphonic the Verbose. And this isn't going to change my opinion too drastically. Tracks where the texture overtakes the vocals, as on the mid-eastern glitch environment of "Praha" catch my ear, but each avant-garde moment like the pitch-shifted screams of that track, is countered by the generic flow of tepid wordplay as on "2 Times 2." The idea of a solo album from Polyphonic (who, despite the rest of his name, is responsible for the music on this album) is exciting - hell, a karaoke version of this record excites me, for most of the music on this album is placed second to the lackluster lyrics and vocal stylee of Serengeti. There are some exceptions, and these exceptions take this collaboration into the neighborhood that Dalek inhabits, but for the most part, despite its tiptoes into the avant-garde, Don't Give Up is nothing for me to get too excited about. But hip-hop isn't my thing at all.

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# Retconned :: Unhappenings (Army of Bad Luck, CD)

I have been putting writing this review off for a very long time, for the simple reason that I have not been able to artfully state my opinion without falling to ad hominem attacks. Perhaps it is fate that this album has come to me, and that, via some Richard Kelly-derived wormhole, my opinion of this stinker of a record may save lives. That's my hope. Because I really really do not like this record. This record seems to have been made with the desire that no one like it. And where deliberately provocative electronic records have been made for years (see Suicide, Throbbing Gristle, and Whitehouse), the best of those records have failed at being unenjoyable, as there is a fan-base for each of those bands, and rabid fan-bases at that. So perhaps Retconned has finally achieved where others have failed and created an album that has absolutely nothing to recommend it, one that provides no pleasure, provokes nothing besides an urge to turn it off and stifles the intellectual curiosity that would keep playing it after everyone has not only left the room where this is playing, they've left the party. Musically, Unhappenings sounds like fourth-graders trying to remake the first Suicide record, with the schoolyard bully sneering, in the most dated Billy Idol sneer imaginable, ridiculously banal lyrics, things that Ogre would have written in sixth grade and then burned out of shame. I hope my point is getting through, but if it isn't, here's the bottom line: Unhappenings = no good for anything except clearing a room so thoroughly that you leave it too. [Purchase]

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Blue States :: First Steps Into (Memphis Industries, CD)

Siding with the progressive states with their name, Blue States (aka Andy Dragazis, producer for The Pipettes) eschew a progressive feel in their music, but still evoke a sense of future possibilities with First Steps Into, but into what? Sounding at times like Vangelis, late-80s Tangerine Dream, and a college-town funk band, Blue States serves up a platter of tasty treats for the feet. Mixing live drums with strings and electronics is hardly innovative, but here they sound fresh, or at least, pivotally alive. Stilted this is not. "The Electric Compliment," which buoys the album's first half as track number four, expertly moves from a sub-Sigur Ros string-laden piece to a jaunty piano-led piece with happy handclaps, enough to put a smile on your face and give the feet a good excuse to jump around. It's not high art, but what is anymore these days? This is a fine little platter for when you just want to bob your head or move your feet to a gentle yet insistent beat. [Purchase]

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V/A :: Undergrounded Vol. 3 (Fateless Flows, CD)

This collection aims to spotlight a series of California producers, each with something a little differ to offer than the other, but as a whole, that come out sounding like most other "crew comps" out there. Meaning, that there are some excellent tracks, but there is some dead weight as well. The comp opens with Reed Rothchild, aka Jess Stroup, whose track, "Mid-Air" wouldn't sound out of place on a Royksopp album. Settling in for some down-tempo trip-hop, Surface 10 is next, featuring the heart-tugging violin of Laura Escude, who gets her own track next. "Noncommital," easily the most exciting track on the disc, with Escude working solo, her violin really nailing an emotional high over crunchy idm-beats and some laptop synth. Really really super nice track. My understanding is that she makes her living from doing commercial spots in the auto industry, and sundry other commercial work. Laura, if you're reading this, please take a hiatus and do a full-length album. Further in, Sequenox drop "Ice Field," a track best described as Boards of Canada in winter, fully capturing the BOC sense of innocence in a slinky downtempo groove. Other highlights on this comp include R_Garcia's "ATL Stompin'," which brings a little bit of that early '90s-acid feel back, and freshens it up with some surprisingly enjoyable 8-bit fx. Late into the disc, Constant Flux drops the great missing braindance track, "Digital Donkey" which should totally be a white-label 12" from Rephlex. People would go nuts over this track like they did for Astrobotnia before it was revealed to be Ovuca. On the downside, there's some less than stellar material here, notably the umpteenth sampling of Timothy Leary by Tripform on "Multiple Realities." Can we all just agree that for a little while, no one is going to sample Leary? It was never innovative or daring, and his damaged ramblings have ruined more lives than they've saved. So let's just let him rest in piece, ok? Agreed? Thanks. Vic Hennegan's "Linger" has some potential to be a great one, but the sub-Goldfrapp diva wailing from guest vocalist "Becca Fuchs" make the track sound like something off the terrible final Orbital album. And Cavestar apparently believes there's still some life in the isolationist ambient genre. He's wrong, but here he tries to unsettle with "Fod," an amalgamation of watered-down Lustmord and Paul Schutze. Blah. So, to sum up. Ultimately, Undergrounded is 1/3 good, 1/3 not bad, and 1/3 bad. But when you're batting .333, you're doing ok. And like most comps these days, you can cherry-pick the best tracks from Itunes.

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Metamatics/Norken :: My Favourite Kind of Irrelevance 1997-2007 (Hydrogen Dukebox, CD)

Aaah, finally. All of your favourite Lee Norris tracks in once place. My Favourite Kind of Irreverence contains tracks from all stages of Norris' career (especially if you can get your hands on the 2 CD version, which contains a ton of his ambient work under the Nacht Plank alias, along with other more ambient tracks under Metamatics and Tone Language). The ingenious cover of "Personal Jesus" starts things out and mixes effortlessly into my personal favourite Metamatics track, "Here To Go (Days Are Gone)" which appears here in a rare 7-inch mix. And from there its all gravy, with Norken's blippy dance-bient "Southern Soul" and then the gonzo collaboration with Ultravox's John Foxx on "Free Robot," a tasty Metamatics remix of A1 People's "Do It" and another 45 minutes of some beautiful blissful techno. There isn't a bum track here, not a one. And what really makes this compilation special is that the sound of this music, the vibe, the juice, it just doesn't exist in what's coming out these days. I don't want to get all "it was better back in the day" but Irreverence.. just hammers home a point I've been trying to make for a long time, that while there is far more music being made today than there was even several years ago, very very little of it has that tangible magic that makes it special. Norris has it in spades. []

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Supersilent :: 8 (Rune Grammofon, CD)

Supersilent emerge from a five-year studio-album hiatus to engage the world as a lumbering beast, Cthulhu risen from the depths of R'lyeh to lay complete waste to the world. For 8 is mean and nasty, an angry punch to the chest, a complete change from the late-Miles fusion sounds of 5 or 6. Impossible to describe by track, 8 covers a lot of sonic territory, sludge-metal (sans guitars), music-concrete, Krautrock (sort-of), modern classical, and a form of jazz that hasn't really been explored much yet outside of this group. Supersilent's music is very intuitive, its members only ever getting together to improvise together, never to discuss their music together, only play it. And in the 10 years they've been together, they've progressed from hardcore-jazz freakouts like on 1-3, near-ambient on 6, to this unique amalgam of so many disparate genres. Recorded over five days, 8 was pared down from five hours of music by long-time producer and member Deathprod, and I'm guessing that the tape-splicing of Teo Macero was a big influence here. Much like Bitches Brew or On the Corner, Macero's splicing of longer jams resulting in some seminal jazz pieces that sound like they were in some way composed, or at least scripted out. Same thing here. This group continues to amaze in every way. Also, one caveat - there is a LOT of low-end on this record. Not enough to damage speakers, but make sure you have something with a decent bass response on it to get the full effect. [Purchase]

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Uusitalo :: Karhunainen (Huume, CD)

Good old Sasu Ripatti, as dependable as anything, thankfully prolific under a number of aliases. Here he dusts off Uusitalo, not seen since 2006's Tulenkantaja, Bearing marked similarities with that record, Karhunainen still evokes the icy atmospheres of Finland, its minimal grooves pulsing with danceably insistent basslines in the classic Ripatti style. If you've heard previous Uusitalo albums, you know what to expect here. The album as a whole does not represent an innovation in the Uusitalo sound, but further refines it, honing its chilly atmospheres in smaller chunks (see older Delay material for longer-form versions), wielding the studio as a surgical scalpel, maxing out the dub effects in all manner of compelling ways. Its hard to guess where Uusitalo can go from here, as this seems like the end of the road for this style. Luomo has hit a dead-end, Sistol is dead in the water. Delay's Whistleblower was a breath of fresh air, and this is as well, don't get me wrong, but there really isn't much further that this project can be taken without betraying its roots and going handbag or something gonzo like that. And maybe that's what should happen - just completely mix things up, say WTF, and drop a record under this alias that sounds like U96. Someone would probably call it innovative. But not this reviewer. As much as I like this record, and I do really like it, it is starting to sound like more of the same, and that I can't truck with for too long. [Purchase]

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Telephone Jim Jesus :: Anywhere Out of the Everything (Anticon, CD)

I don't know. I'm just not getting what is so special about the Anticon collective. Granted, hip-hop is not my thing (see Serengeti & Polyphonic review above), and instrumental hip-hop even less so. I remember getting burned on the Dr. Octagon instrumental album back in like '97, finding its supposedly innovative beats soporific, narcissistic, and ultimately useless. 10 years on, I'm reminded of that record by this one, another vain and futile attempt at mixing hip-hop beats with electronic atmospheres, So Telephone Jim Jesus (what's this name supposed to mean, anyway?) tries and fails at making compelling music, or music that demands replaying, but at least he tried and in that attempt lies redemption. Adding more music to the landscape of electronic music lowers its signal-to-noise ratio, but there's always that chance, a one-in-a-thousand chance that a producer will hit the right buttons, program the right beats, sequence the best melody, and nail it, even if for one track. Jim Jesus comes close on a couple, "Featherfall," opener "Did You Hear?," but misses the mark more often. And hey, that's fine, at least he tried, which is more than I can say for myself. [Purchase]

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Rewound 7

2007-10-30T08:03:00.000-04:00

The October 2007 installment of my Rewound column from igloomag.com

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Helios :: Ayres (Type, CD)

Something is seriously wrong with the state of music when even the chill-out room becomes a bummer. Perhaps I'm dating myself here (do they even have chill-out rooms anymore?), but it was the one place where everything would be calm, no matter how oppressive or sweaty things were in the dance room. Hence the name of the refuge, the sound of a new genre, the classic (and still damn fine) KLF record. With Unomia and Eingya, the two previous works released by Keith Kenniff (aka Helios and the more classically-oriented Goldmund), it seemed like downtempo, chill-out electronic music was getting a much needed melodic shot in the arm, a new soundtrack. Anticipation, for this writer at least, was high when Ayres was announced. And the result? Total betrayal. This is a lazy attempt at writing songs when Kenniff's strengths were always in crafting tracks. And yes there is a serious difference. Each of the six tracks here "features" Kenniff's voice, an instrument best left silent, its fey whispering coo more suited to local bands covering early Belle and Sebastian songs than the tepid "beats" and hazy electronics of "A Rising Wind" or "Woods and Gives Away." "Soft Collared Neck," the track most reminiscent of Kenniff's work as Goldmund, would have worked as a Goldmund track, with a lilting piano line (but aren't all Goldmund piano lines "lilting" ?). Here though, a whispered monologue with a tiny hint of melody complains about something indistinct, probably a break-up, just ruins what would have been a nice piano and reverb track. And in perhaps the most egregious example of lame cover material, Kenniff picks that hoary chestnut "In Heaven" from Eraserhead. Even goths stopped covering this years ago. In a way, Ayres is interesting, in that over its 27 minutes, a once-promising artist completely self-destructs and ruins any goodwill built up in an audience. And while I'm all for a nice little schadenfreude every now and then, this one hurts. There is no pleasure to be gained even in tearing this record apart, there were so many bad decisions made and wrong directions taken here.

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Starchaser Network :: s/t (Tarot Productions, CD)

Something isn't right here. Actually a lot isn't right with Starchaser Network. First, the vocals, which trys to match the staccato delivery of Gary Numan with the raunch and sex of Thrill Kill Kult's Frankie Nardiello. Hear this disaster on "Patricia Whackers." Not working. Second, the look, which approximates Megadeth's Dave Mustaine and Suicide's Alan Vega's love child. There's three versions of this idea on the inside flap of the album. Nope, not working. Third, the music, Kraftwerk and Nitzer Ebb with guitars. Sorry fellas, it just does not work when you do it. Others might be more successful with any of these formulas, but Starchaser chooses to emphasize exactly the wrong elements each and every time. On "New York U Know," a passable slab of pulsing dancefloor EBM, vocalist Proscriptor (an alias?) channels Clock DVA's Adi Newton (this is a good thing), but only to chant "breakdown" and spout BS like "the skyline is so high" and, nonsensically, "state of mind." See, it makes no sense. Nothing on this album makes any sense, none of it sounds complete, and none of it sounds like anyone who would provide an honest opinion of the music within was given a chance to listen to this album before it was released. Press materials for this album describe it as "the perfect soundtrack to a pornographic movie or a NASA documentary." That really doesn't leave much else to say, except to point out just how stupid that sounds, even for press-release gibberish. This is the low point of 2007.

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Doofgoblin / A Drop In Silence :: Split EP (s/r, CD)

I really used to love glitch. I mean totally. I bought into the idea that the future of music lay in microscopic sound, and Oval's compact disc manipulations. Around the time of Clicks and Cuts 3, I realized that glitch is a dead-end genre, its ultimate conclusion being found in the silence of absolute noise. If we draw glitch's arc as beginning in isolationist ambient and ending with Autechre's Untilted, we see the problem. It is "boring." It communicates displeasure both with itself and with the listener. I mean seriously. Does anyone really enjoy listening to glitch besides for their own intellectual fulfillment? This is not a genre designed to give pleasure. If no-fun is your thing, then more power to you, my head isn't in that place anymore and glitch isn't my thing anymore.

Doofgoblin, aka John Gulino, has been praised on this site for previous efforts, and to other ears, his contributions to this split cd may be considered groundbreaking. But for me, the fractured minor-key Autechre-isms of "Stoop", "Starling", and especially "Keeer" simply do not pass muster anymore. Pick any track from LP5. That's what Doofgoblin sounds like. And again, for some, that's fantastic. I recognize the work that went into creating these tracks, and I appreciate the difficult path chosen by Gulino's muse for him to follow. But I've grown out of glitch, and don't need to spend my time with yet another second-rate Booth & Brown disciple. A Drop In Silence mine similar territory with their half of this cd, pushing the Booth/Brown preset button a whole bunch of times, but with better results. ADIS are a little more up-tempo, a little more conventional, more Tri Repetae than Draft 7:30. The playful melodics and nimble percussives of "Fuzzy Thought" would make that track a fine contribution to tracks that should have come out on Warp in 1997. "Gristle Edge" updates the classic industrial dance of 1988 Chicago, with machine-gun blastbeats and an atmosphere of intense malaise. "Stop Down", the closer, interrogates the IDM sound from the turn of the millennium with skittering beats and KAOSS-pad synth manipulations. The four ADOS tracks that close this split are the better part of the pairing. Would that they had done a full-length instead.

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Robert Vincs :: Devic Kingdom (Extreme, CD)

Saxophone and Fairlight Synthesizer proponent Robert Vincs expands on the fourth-world ambient music pioneered by Brian Eno and Jon Hassell with "Devic Kingdom". Recorded at various sacred sites in Australia's Victorian Highlands in one take, Vincs captures a sense of meditation and transcendence in each track. Just where Vincs fits in the saxophone hierarchy I'm not really sure (who knows where anyone really fits, post-Coltrane, anyway?), but his fluid technique could easily bridge the gap between classic Film Noir soundtracks and world music. "Avatar" expresses this genre mashup perfectly, with a lively sax improvisation over what sounds like mutated didgeridoos and circular-breathing chants. "Avatar" creates a mood that is simultaneously quite exciting and truly strange. This holds true for most of the record, this strangely exciting mood. Devic Kingdom isn't made up of songs, per se, more improvisatory mood pieces that, when taken in together, evoke a time and place almost completely alien to modern, everyday existence.

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Rolan Vega :: Documentary (Community Library, CD)

They say that an artist has their entire life to create their first album. Documentary is Vega's first album, and from the sound of it, he's had some very diverse experiences from which to draw inspiration. The fifteen tracks collected here apparently were live scores for short films, some of which were his own Super-8 productions. And normally the tag of soundtrack music in the electronic scene is the kiss of death, but here Vega crosses enough genre boundaries to avoid being tagged. "Documentary" mixes short tracks with longer ones, pieces evoking Brian Eno and mid-70s Tangerine Dream. Vega appears to have done his homework, at least with electronic music history -- he sounds like he was influenced by the classics (Eno, T. Dream, Moroder, Biosphere, etc.), and refreshingly, does not sound in any way like he was influenced by Autechre (Its good to know that Booth and Brown haven't infected everyone yet). At times embracing the minimal 80s synths and ambient-motorik of Cluster ("Playlite"), or the industrial electronics of Brad Fidel ("4 Autiim"), Vega creating moods more than writes songs, and succeeds by keeping his pieces at the right length, mostly succinct, but stretching out to around five minutes when the music calls for it. Its a nice, balanced record that works both as background ambient and detailed listening. Recommended.

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Maps :: We Can Create (Mute, CD)

I tried, I really did. I thought We Can Create would be right up my alley. Neo-shoegazer James Chapman, working in his midlands-England bedroom on a 16-track, diligently built his legend through a series of singles and EPs, holding off on releasing an album until the hype got too loud to ignore. Create is the full length result, a not-quite-successful mishmash of fuzzy guitars and lazy songwriting. And it starts with promise, the anthem-that-will-never-be "So Low, So High," with a sweeping melody and sing-along chorus. But then Create falls flat on its fuzzed-out face, with "You Don't Know Her Name," which sounds like something MBV would have tossed off in an afternoon and thrown away in 1988. The rest of the eleven tracks act as further examples of these two extremes -- one great, one terrible. Overall, We Can Create comes off as a bland middle ground between awesome and atrocious. And the lack of any tonal variety on the album makes it grate after a while. I like the first track quite a bit, but didn't want to hear it ten more times with slightly different music and lyrics. Mix it up, Maps, and next time I'll plot out a route to check you out further.

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Drifting In Silence :: Fallto (Labile, CD)

Um, wow. I love getting blown away by an album or a band that I've never heard of before. It doesn't happen that much anymore, and with more music being released every year than the year before, the signal-to-noise ratio gets lower and finding awesome bands or albums gets harder. Fallto by Drifting In Silence (aka Derrick Stembridge) makes sorting through the dreck worthwhile, with a sound wavering between industrial ("Chameleon" and its two remixes) epic, cinematic ambient dance ("Pretend," "Meaning of Life"), and grand cathedrals of sound ("Closure"). Embracing Autechre, Tangerine Dream and lesser bands on the Wax Trax! label (Borghesia or Pankow, maybe?) as influences, Stembridge blends their respective aesthetics together and spits back a stone classic. We're getting close to the end of the year, and I know this one will be near the top of my list. The only problem with Fallto is that its too short! Cutting the two remixes (which are mostly extraneous, although the "Drev Remix" is a real EBM stomper) at the end, this runs only 40 minutes. And while that's enough to whet my whistle, I wish there was more. Excellence like this doesn't come along that often.

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Rewound 6

2007-10-29T10:35:00.000-04:00

Here's the August 2007 edition of my rewound column.

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Apparat :: Walls (Shitkatapult, CD)

I've listened to this album at least 20 times over the last few weeks and I'll be damned if I can form a strong opinion about it. I put it on, it plays, I listen to it, I forget about it when it stops playing. Then I play it again, which must account for something. If it was really bad, I'd just write a scathing review and be done. But something about Walls keeps drawing me back to it. Maybe it is just my melancholic nature, but Walls oozes vibrations of ineffable sadness right from the beginning with the sad, Warren Ellis-esque violin of "Not a Number." RazOhara's vocals, especially on "Hailin From The Edge" sound emotionally tired, as if there was too much sadness in the world for his spirits to ever be lifted. Not that this is in any way bad, mind you. Walls pulses and shuffles throughout its nearly 60 minutes and 13 tracks, staying down-tempo for most of the time. At times Walls sounds lush, the auditory equivalent to Corinthian leather, as on "Useless Information" or the near-house of "Limelight," but for the most part, Apparat keeps things more minimal, making this good for the come-down part of the night. There's enough here to keep you going, but nothing that will demand you get up and dance. Maybe, ultimately, Walls is the best example of the idea that the more familiar something is, the better it seems. Because I've listened to this a couple more times, and things are starting to stick. Perhaps, for me, a dive into the back catalog is in order.

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Decomposure :: Vertical Lines A (Blank Squirrel, CD/DVD)

First things first -- this is an album in the truest sense, incorporating as it does both an excellent full-length album of post-Postal Service electronic pop, and a DVD with 15 or so hours of extras, including the original source material, instrumental mixes, interviews, a 79-page pdf sketchbook, and more pictures than can easily be digested. There's a lot here to be sure, and it appears quite overwhelming. It is quite rare that an artist has allowed such a penetrating view into their creative process: there are isolated beat mixes, "process recordings," and the 11 hour-long recordings that comprise the base matter for the album. Very nice. The end result, VLA, is eleven tracks of break-the-mold electronic pop music that hurdles over genre lines from hiphop to glitch, idm, and piano-driven rockers in the Ben Folds vein. Caleb Mueller, Decomposure's beatician, is at the peak of his power, wielding surgically precise drum programming with unexpectedly melodic vocals. Mueller spews forth a frothy mix of popart imagery with his lyrics, delivered alternately in a Ben Gibbard-like croon or in an Ice-T-esque spoken word monotone, or both at once at lightning speed. At times the vocals are mixed under the drums (most noticeably on "Hour 10," a highlight), a nice change-up that shows just how much care Mueller pours into each track. Academically, this is serious music for people who love to pick apart percussion tracks. If there was a college course in electronic composition, this album should be one of the textbooks. If you stop trying to pick tracks apart and let the album flow, you'll find that its a groovy 57 minutes of refreshing synthpop, a breath of fresh air and an exhilarating rush of adrenaline.

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The Green Kingdom :: The Green Kingdom (SEM, CD)

Hailing from the unfolding disaster that is Detroit, Michael Cottone ignores the post-industrial malaise of his hometown and indulges in some airy laptop ambience on his debut album. Crossing field recordings with electro-acoustic touchstones and heavily manipulated guitar, Cottoneblahblahblah- there's any number of ways to describe this album, but all of them sound like hoary old cliches, ubiquitous enough to now be virtually meaningless. But they all apply here: "soundtrack to nonexistent movie," "movie for your ears," etc., etc. But where I'm unsuccessful in finding apt words to describe this piece of art, Cottone succeeds in making an eminently listenable album of, for lack of a better genre-mashup, pastoral-glitch, maybe. But that's not entirely an accurate assessment. Here's four associations I made when listening to this album for three continuous hours: Imagine BOC signed to Kranky. Tortoise abandoning stringed instruments. Harold Budd with only a guitar and Nobukazu Takemura producing. Fennesz without the puritanical rigidity. There are a thousand more (not literally) of these, and Green Kingdom is both all and none of them. Labeling a piece of art reduces it, makes it more identifiable, and therefore less mysterious. As such, I'll refrain from making a definitive name for the sounds of Green Kingdom, because that's not fair to you. I received this with virtually no leading information as to what it would sound like, and it is a pleasant surprise that first time. I wouldn't want to ruin it.

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Lights Out Asia :: Tanks and Recognizers (n5MD, CD)

First of all, a big shout out to all the Tron fans out there who catch the reference in the title. Hell yeah. Tron blew the back of my nine year old head off when I saw it in the theatre. I went on to lie, beg, borrow, and sneak my way in to see it five more times. And while I'll never make my own Tron suit, I'll always defend it to the haters. Thanks to Lights Out Asia for bringing one more reminder of the awesomeness of Tron to light. Unexpectedly, the album itself if not a Wendy/Walter Carlos synth-fest, not at all. Matter of fact, that's about as far away as one could get from what Tanks and Recognizers is -- perhaps the most satisfying neo-shoegaze record ever. No qualms about it, I'm saying ever. Stripping away the excesses of My Bloody Valentine, and dumping it next to the aggression of Ride, Lights Out Asia marry the bliss of early Chapterhouse to the fragile structures of Slowdive, and end up sounding like Wayne Coyne fronting Flying Saucer Attack, with Mark Van Hoen producing. Hyperbole? Perhaps. I don't think so, but I have to concede, that may be a little over the top. But only because this record is so solid from beginning to end. LOA masterfully match a floating kosmiche vibe with soaring vocals on "March Against The Savages," and chiming guitars to Florian Fricke-washes of atmosphere on "Art Divided By Science." And these are just two of nine fully-realized songs. It's about time shoegaze came back, and Lights Out Asia is right out front.

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Po :: The Sound of Summer Silence (Dynamophone, CD)

Dynamophone, Po's label, is declaring this album's sound to be 'screengaze,' but offer no further explanation. I'll extrapolate that that is supposed to be an amalgamation of the early 90s' shoegaze fuzz and electronically manipulated sounds. 18-year-old Daniel Porcelli has much more in mind than just making loud buzzing noises with stringed instruments. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, heavens no, where would we be without Loveless or Just For a Day?) Po aims for serene beauty, which on ...Summer Silence, lay in its abundant simplicity. For this is not complicated-sounding music. Mostly ambient with some scattered beats ("Seconds"), Po uses cello, bells, acoustic guitar, and vocals to extremely subtle lengths. In the same spirit of Eno's original ambient thesis, that ambient music can work at either loud or soft volume, ...Summer Silence acts as both something to focus attention on and as background soundtrack, and is equally compelling in either setting. If nothing else, this may be the most soothing album to be released in 2007, being an excellent soundtrack to a rainy afternoon, the sunshine in its grooves sure to drive the clouds away.

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Ryan Rapsys :: The-Novus-Arcadia (Erratik Productions, CD)

Duluth? Really? City on the western shores of Lake Superior? Stuff this great comes out of Duluth? "All the time," you Minnesotans may say. Who knew? More please, if Ryan Rapsys is any sort of indicator of the quality of music coming from that fine fine city. For The-Novus-Arcadia is a mighty beast, an hour-long exploration of beat and melody, fourth-world ambience and dance. Rapsys is a classically trained composer, and it shows. Each track is a rich vein of that classic IDM feel, updated for an impatient age, welded together into a symphony that no orchestra would be brave enough to tackle. Well, maybe the London Sinfonetta. Novus is, if nothing else, an urgent record, filled with a sublime, anxious expectation and a rewarding, glorious release in each track. Building up tension through clever drum programming and a heightened sense of atmosphere, each track ups the ante for the album as a whole, while being complete in and of themselves. This is no small feat. Even the two beatless interludes, "Intermezzo-i" and "-ii" shy away from the nice side of ambient and bring out an almost isolationist-ambient aggression, making the tracks they lead into all the more explosive. I had never really considered Duluth at all, really, no more so than the very probably state of Idaho, and now I find I have been remiss. This is fantastic stuff. What else have you got there?

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Actualize Industrial Collapse

2007-07-31T20:13:00.000-04:00

Rewound V

2007-07-13T15:42:00.000-04:00

Rewound V

(07.13.07) This review column by Jericho Maxim focuses on the emergence of new releases from around the globe (current, past or present) in almost any electronic genre. Rewound Volume 5 features reviews from Experimedia, Boltfish, Mute Rebellion, Lopside, DesTone, Tomlab and Audio Dregs.

Jeremy Bible :: I Am Very Uncomfortable Most of the Time (Experimedia, CD/MP3)
Is there a record that inspired more laptop electronica than Incunabula? Sometimes it doesn't seem that there is. Fourteen years on from its initial release, its influence continues to spread. Autechre's classic first album impresses with its longevity. With Myspace and other sites littered with Ae clones, only the most dedicated fan can separate the wheat from the chaff and find that rare musician that builds on Incunabula instead of mimeographs it. Jeremy Bible is one of those rare musicians. At first glance, I Am Very Uncomfortable... seems to be an album that would fall into the chaff pile -- song titles like "grestwrd," "fihsis7." "scho11" are early warning signs. But there is more than meets the eye. Few albums have artwork that is more important than the music (Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, anyone?), obviously. The ears make the judgement. If it doesn't sound good, it's not going to be played much. What a relief that opener "Oscarkestra" cannonballs into your head, setting the tone for the next hour as truly epic. IAVUMOTT is continuously mixed, moving from one mood on to another, gentle, forboding, druggy, but again with a firm grasp of how cinematic music can be. Not cinematic in terms of the cliched "soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist," but cinematic in terms of 70 millimeter, wide open vistas where every detail is clear. Apparently compiled over three years, these tracks sound labored over, but not in a stifling way, they sound like they needed that amount of time to come out right. Hearkening back to the glory days of IDM (the Artificial Intelligence comps, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, Bytes), Jeremy Bible's work whets the appetite for more of a classic yet innovative sound. This is found all over the album, but most on the courageous closer, "gravel." For sixteen mind-blowing minutes, Bible warps both beats and melody, seeming to slow them down and drown them in bleeping synths only to let them break free and slowly go insane. This happens over and over and over through the course of this excellent album. And Mr. Bible, while you may very well be uncomfortable, your music does not engender that feeling. I love it.

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Mise En Scene :: Neo~Ylo (Boltfish, CDr-mini)

This limited little (3") gem lasts only eighteen or so minutes, but those minutes are packed to the rafters with little sonic details that demand repeated listening. Israel's Shay Nassi is a relative newcomer, having done some remix work for label-mate Preston, and sharing an aluminum platter with dooQ. Nassi plants his flag firmly in the rich soil of IDM, staking a claim on the more melodic side of the genre, branching into ambient realms (bookends "fog:water" and "water") and hitting the dance floor ("d:great") as well. Nassi also appears to have worshipped at the shrine of (dare we say) Autechre, but his work bears the imprimatur of TriRepetae, i.e., complex beat structures, minor-key synth work, etc. Neo~Ylo doesn't transcend its influences, nor does it merely ape them. Should Nassi get a full-length under his belt, or a couple more of these tasty appetizers, he may be able to shake the Booth/Brown shackles (for that is what they really are) and fly. Checking the Boltfish website, this appears to be sold out, which is a shame. Have more faith in the size of your audience, dear Boltfish, and repress this. In time, this may be recognized as the beginning of something wonderful.

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Retic :: Saturn Day Trajectory (Mute Rebellion)

Some albums just feel warm, comforting, like a winter afternoon under a familiar blanket with loved ones. The early Boards of Canada records achieve this feeling (seemingly) effortlessly. Retic aims at the same mark, and hits more than he misses on this tasty platter. Saturn's focus is on the details, the tricky interleaving of keen beats and sly sine-wave bass with crackerjack melodies. Overall though this record feels like home. Not made-in-bedroom home, but that complex mix of stimuli that combine to evoke the simple gestalt of home, however one defines it. At times Retic turns to a pastoral, near-ambient vibe with "The Successful Begin Sleepwalking," following it up by mashing that vibe with industrial percussion on "Trunk Junk." Retic is quite skillful at mixing the two, adept enough to bring in elements of classic IDM on "Lose My Gain" and soundscapes as well. The mashup, finally playing itself out in the culture at large, finds here new life simply by returning to its roots -- mixing disparate moods, not disparate artists. At times approaching alchemy, Saturn Day Trajectory continues to surprise and evolve over repeated plays, especially on headphones.

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Lopside :: When You're Finally Through Being Responsible (Self Released, CD)
I wish there was more like this -- shoegazing post-electronica -- there must be a better name, or a formalized genre title -- something to fulfill the broken promises of m83. I've not come across much of anything lately that sounds remotely like the epic delights of this record. Mixing a post-rock sensibility with digital composing technique, Lopside isn't afraid to let his music stretch out and explore. Indeed, of the six tracks here, two are longer than 15 minutes, others running from seven and a half to just under ten. Each one of them contains several melodic ideas, one evolving from what had some before. Each track runs together, making this, in theory if not in index, one long song, a masterful manipulation of mood and tempos over extreme duration. Lopside is using guitars on this record, albeit heavily effected in places, evoking the organic along with the synthetic - yin and yang if you will, harmoniously joined in a single purpose. "Being," the uptempo highlight uses a distorted guitar loop as a maypole, around which dance beats, wordless vocals, throbbing synths, and lysergic six-strings. When takes a lot of chances, and makes the grade through sheer tenacity and ingenuity. Someone please sign this guy. Stuck in the ghetto of Myspace's musician pages, Lopside could easily get passed over, which would be a crime. But with proper distribution and promotion, Lopside could inure itself into some discerning ears, and maybe make enough money to keep making music like this.

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Bogenschutzer :: Simple City (DesTone, CD)

Reaching into the grab bag of CD's that Pietro (Managing Editor) has arranged for me, my hands bring out a delightful looking disc, its cover appearing to be the Lego city my six-year-old self never quite got around to creating. Against a sky of gray with white clouds (that's a winter sky, I'll say), the colourful spires of childhood ambition reach as high as they can, looking as much like a city as the works of Sean Kenny can. Opening the cover to see the full piece, the cityscape tapers off into green hills and a pale blue river, evoking both the urban and the pastoral. Placing the CD gently into the tray (for we must treat any reminder of our innocent childhoods as sacred), Simple City starts up and charms the pants off me (not literally) from note one. Over twelve tracks, Melbourne's Matt Archer, using acoustic and electronic elements, arranges simple (but not simplistic) songs, each one a joy of melody and percussion. You can sway to it sitting in a chair. You can write code to it. You could maybe dance to it, if your dance style is that weird shake that Edie Brickell did in the 90s. And maybe, if you sit still and let it flow over you, you can hear what music sounded like when you were very young. Wonderful.

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Khan :: Who Never Rests (Tomlab, CD)

So let's accept the proposition for the next minute or so that art is artifice, in every sense of the word. In the context of Who Never Rests, let's take artifice to mean "chicanery" and "fraud." This is not to impugn the character of Khan, or of the man behind the moniker, Can Oral. But this album sounds faked. Insincere. Mining territory well-explored by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and The Electric Hellfire Club, Khan wallows in a muck of electro-industo-disco-blues, and never rises above it. Never quite convinces. The bass is appropriately throbbing, great for the dancefloor. The synths squiggle and bleep in the right places. Oral's vocals imply an evening of frenzied sex, drugs, and hedonism, with breathy come-ons that sound like Andrew Eldritch of Sisters of Mercy. But this collection just does not work. When it is trying to sound fun, it comes off as stilted, robotic when it should be flowing. "Take It Out On Me" should be a stomping good time, with what sounds like a Rhodes accenting a slamming beat and groovy bass, sounding like the track that everyone just knows Prince has stashed away somewhere and will never release. It should be a great track, but it just does not convince. It never sounds like Oral's heart is in what he's doing here. Under our proposition above, none of this should matter, because we've accepted that art is about the lie, about the image, not the substance. Now discard that proposition, and consider that art should reflect the truth of the artist.

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Copy :: Hair Guitar (Audio Dregs, CD)

Not too much to say about Copy, as it kind of speaks for itself. Throw a dart at the tracklisting (take the disc out first), play that track. If you like it, you'll like the rest of Hair Guitar. For as bouncy and happy and fun as this album is, each of its 10 tracks are really just a variation on a theme. This is low-fi electro of the most danceable sort, apparently with key-tar supplying the main melodies, making this Hair Guitar more human sounding than most electro artists want to get. Unlike Adult. or Soviet, Copy keeps things light and airy, dancy but not dirty, sexy but not slutty. If this sounds like if might be your bag, then please dive right in. If you're not sure, dip that toe into the pool, the temperature might be just right.

Rewound IV

2007-06-11T18:18:00.000-04:00

This is my new column at igloomag.com, where I review a batch of releases all at once.

Halfadder :: Robots Will Love Religion EP (Experimedia, CD/MP3)

Jason Henry, aka Halfadder, hails from Canton, Ohio. Not really a hot-spot on the techno circuit, but Robots Will Love Religion may change that. Blending field recordings, Commodore 64 patches, and vintage PC games, Henry wraps the concoction in a flour tortilla of mid-80's electro and serves it up hot to the dancefloor. Robots... starts a little unconvincingly with "alice demerrye," an unexciting yet eminently danceable 4/4 that bleeps in the right places and bounces along on its simple bassline. "My Communist Cat" ups the ante with some glitch accents and tasty synths bass over some seriously driving beats. And before it outstays its welcome, Robots... closes with the simply stomping "Seytinpyook (mos6581 remix)," with a phat (sorry, that really is the most appropriate descriptor) bass tone that commands bodies to move.

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V/A :: The Silence Was Warm (Symbolic Interaction, CD)

Symbolic Interaction, a new label out of Japan, sends out their first compilation, The Silence Was Warm. First label compilations are very important -- first impressions, and all. Some labels have rigorous aesthetics and don't stray too far from them (think Detroit's LowRes), while others have none at all, releasing music across genre boundaries (think Warp). Symbolic Interaction introduces itself as a label given over to the acoustic/classical side of electronic, shunning the confines of the dancefloor. An early high point of the album is Oba Masahiro's cinematic "Colomo," easily the most intriguing opening-credit-sequence soundtrack never used; it incorporates field recordings, classical piano, gentle strings, and smooth beats not heard since Robert Leiner's Visions of the Past. "There Are Devices," by Weave, is another peak, its nimble bassline jauntily bouncing over jazzy smears of percussion. Welcome to the world, Symbolic Interaction, I'm sure you'll find your way.

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Polska :: Skeptic (Make:Shift, CD)

Polska are extremely successful at marrying the dreamlike atmosphere of classic trip-hop to a jazzier version of the drum sounds that Squarepusher dropped all over Hard Normal Daddy and Music Is Rotten One Note. The best example of their technique is "Stu Tt Er," with its gorgeous vocal sample and drifting, hazy ambience. But this is a disc so loaded with greatness that there are no real highlights - it's all excellent. The title track is the next step in ambient-d'n'b - d'n'b tempos but completely chilled out. I don't know what they're putting in the water in Ireland, but I like that Polska is drinking it. Big thanks to Toronto's Makeshift Records for bringing this stateside. This is an early contender for album of the year.

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Cast :: Are Teek L (Lagunamuch Community, CD)

Are Teek L is ultimately slightly disappointing because Cast (aka Denis Kaznacheev) is not able to transcend a very pronounced Autechre influence, but he mimics their sound extremely well. Are Teek L is ultimately a Russian version of Tri Repetae. And that's fine, a bunch of groups started out ripping Sean Booth and Rob Brown off (see Funkstörung, Arovane, et al). My hopes for Cast is that he has gotten the Ae-bug out of his system and will create something both beautiful and innovative. He has an excellent ear for both minor-key melodies and sweeping majestic space, and needs only to move beyond the cut-up/glitch beats that are holding him back. If aping early Autechre is the goal, then this has succeeded. But isn't there more to life than just sounding like someone else?

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Square Wail (was Capital Steps):: I'm Not Listening (Gomidnight, CD)

Square Wail is straight up 8-bit Gameboy electro, and if that is your thing, then rock yourselves out with this. For the rest of us, I'm Not Listening is another entry in an overcrowded genre of simple electronic music. Thankfully clocking in at just under 40 minutes, INL overstays its welcome as it fails to progress from its starting points. The repetitive nature of the sounds on this album becomes depressing about halfway through, and then true despair begins to take root. Tracks lose any sort of individuality and blend together into a plodding, low-fi mess. If ever an album was titled more appropriately, I'm not aware of it. So, Square Wail, I'll take the advice in your album title and pay no further attention to you (for the time being).

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V/A:: Natural Selection (BlackBridge/Pangea Organics, CD)

This was a real treat, a compilation from an organic skincare company that isn't just warmed over MOR-technopop or watered-down new age. This Natural Selection focuses on the downtempo pop that Zero 7 have perfected and that Groove Armada gave up on. That the collection is so consistent, credit goes to a shadowy outfit called Black Bridge, and its two operators, Benjamin Bussard and Josh Ivy. I'll admit to having never heard of any of the artists on this collection, but there are some that will definitely get a closer look. DJ Harry opens with "Thesaurus," a simple and beguiling throbber with some sultry, come-hither female vocals. Bassnectar brings the classic, early 90s-Orb ambient-pop sound back with "Dubuasca," featuring Michael Kang from String Cheese Incident. This is a refreshing release with no sub-par tracks, its focus on the head-nodding chill-out instead of the dancefloor makes this one worth just putting on repeat and kicking back to. Well done, and more please!

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DJ Mayonnaise :: Still Alive (Anticon, CD)

1You're looking at a map, see, and on it is the name of every genre you can think of, sub-genres, etc. Some of the areas of the map are bigger than others because they have more artists in them. Others are way off near the edge. There's a couple that are on the backside, even. But step back for a moment. Someone spilled something all over it, and the lines that separate each area are blurred. Thanks, DJ Mayonnaise. Still Alive, Mayo's first album in 8 years is truly all over the map, and in a fantastic way. Hip-hop beats mash against clarinets in a way that acid-jazz could never touch and trip-hop couldn't conceive of. Guitars ring out against abstracted basslines, turntables warp anything that comes under the needle. And somewhere in there, answering machine messages about something indistinct but vaguely menacing. It would be cliche to say that Still Alive is a journey, but see, there's this map... [Purchase]

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KTL - 2

2007-05-30T12:38:00.000-04:00

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"

2007-05-15T08:06:00.000-04:00

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"

2007-05-02T19:53:00.000-04:00

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.

Qua "Forgetabout" / "Painting Monsters On Clouds"

2007-04-17T08:28:00.000-04:00

Qua's promo one-sheet claims that the music on these two albums is "not easily categorized," they "[draw] on elements of world music, folk, and rock with a seamless grace." It compares Qua to "Mouse On Mars...Ennio Morricone , and... Architecture In Helsinki." That is just publicity pap. Truth be told, Qua sounds like Tortoise with a little of The Dylan Group thrown in. If those bands are to be called post-rock, then Qua is the very definition of post-laptop. Mixing strictly synthesized sounds with unarguably live instrumentation, Qua leans more to the organic, acoustic sounds on Forgetabout, and more on the laptop on Painting Monsters On Cloud (both releases, of which, were originally released on Surgery Records in 2002 and 2004 respectively).

Similar in spirit to the territory staked out by Ultramarine on New Kingdoms, Qua is at turns pastoral, such as on Painting Monsters' "Watercolour." At others angular, "HappyDomestika ," never really excelling at either but not altogether failing. There is something to the music, something compelling beyond reason, hitting you in the heart more than in the head. Not that this is simple music, it isn't. If you're one to meticulously map out the percussion patters in your head or try to visualize what the Logic session would look like while listening to music, this will keep you occupied for a bit, to be sure. But the real impact is beyond the critical, it is emotional, counter-intuitively so.

This sounds like I'm waffling, and I admit it. Yes, parts of both records are beautiful, and parts are tedious. Each positive has a negative, and this equilibrium is consistent across both albums --which makes these hard to recommend. But I like to think ofQua's material like this: if you accept, as some have, that the film The Core is the most completely mediocre film ever made, then you can compare any other film as being either better or worse than it. The Core is neither good nor bad, it merely exists as the middle ground. Qua isn't great but isn't terrible either. Both albums have something to recommend as much as they have something to not recommend. This shouldn't be read as being negative, because it isn't, but it isn't positive either. I'm on the fence, Qua is too.

Liz Larin "Wake Up, Start Dreaming"

2007-04-14T09:06:00.000-04:00

Detroit's rock goddess has won an eye-popping 15 Detroit Music Awards through her long and varied career, and hearing her latest its easy to understand why. Simply, Liz rocks. Cliche, perhaps, but listen to her challenge the spirit of Janis Joplin on "Taste of Fate" -- growling hasn't sounded this sexy in decades. And speaking of sexy, check out the purring come-ons in "We Are Not Strangers Anymore." Liz's domination fantasies play out over a pulsing electro-bass and a pounding dance-floor beat.

But back on point, Larin knows how to get righteous and tear shit up! "Frequency" starts as a nice bar band rocker, with an excellent vocal melody. Two minutes in though, Larin and band rip into this beautiful bridge that Pete Townshend wishes he could write. Fucking awesome.

Larin can bring it down as well. "Alive (Conversation With An Angel)" is a fantastic chill-out track, a slowly simmering gravy, under down-to-earth philosophical lyrics. Her cover of Zeppelin's "Going To California" finds the gentle grooves that Page & Co.'s delivery was lacking.

Wake Up, Start Dreaming richly deserves the accolades heaped upon it. Articles currently circulating indicate that Larin is reaching out of the rock milieu into electronics and "Americana." With this album she's laid a solid foundation towards those endeavors.

Lurker of Chalice

2007-04-01T13:35:00.000-04:00

Leviathan's mastermind, Wrest, appears solo here under the somewhat non-sensical moniker Lurker of Chalice. Sounding at times gothic, at others grindcore, Lurker pushes the boundaries of black metal, even incorporating (heresy!) acoustic guitars and symphonic interludes. An overall oppressive mood seems to be more the order of the day than orthodox black metal. "Spectre as Valkerie Is" provides the best example with the chugging riffs and growling vocals giving way to a hypnotic, ambient-psychedelic trance-inducing groove (indeed!) that delights as much as it surprises. As does the My Bloody Valentine-meets-Burzum guitar drone of "Paramnesia," which fades into a moaning male choir, then a hip-hop beat, over which spirits from hell wail and wail and wail. The album as a whole sounds more like his sometime"drone-aborators" Sunn 0))) than his more well-known (and blacker) alter-ego. That Wrest is able to pull off the change from fast to slow, noise to silence, all by his lonesome makes the results all the more amazing. Lurker of Chalice is going to scare a good percentage of unsuspecting listeners and possibly offend a few genre purists, but this album holds buried secrets that are worth unearthing with repeated listenings, preferably on headphones.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed - PCP Torpedo / ANbRX

2007-04-01T13:33:00.000-04:00

PCP Torpedo clocks in at six-and-a-half minutes, though it seems twice as long. Agoraphobic Nosebleed are known for their pummeling blastbeat grindcore, and nowhere in their extensive back catalog is it better illustrated than here. Over before you know it, the ten tracks blur by in a chaos of impossibly fast drums and a simply oppressive wall of guitars, with vocals buried deep underneath, and barely understandable. The lyrics sheet, though thankfully provided, is of little help. Even with visual prompting, the vocals are indiscernible. Not that it matters, as the emphasis is on the grinding guitars and not the lyrics. On the second disc, ANbRX, some of the usual remix suspects appear, such as James Plotkin, Justin Broadrick, and Merzbow, all turning in typically excellent, if not necessarily remarkable mixes. Surprises abound, though, as opener Vidna Obmana's remix amazes with a dark ambient/dub take on the source material. The Drokz & Tails take also stands out, taming down the guitars in favor of a dancefloor-friendly hardcore 2-step beat. Together, the two discs are an excellent statement of purpose going forward for ANb, and an excellent door-opener for both the band and the genre.

The Dolls

2007-04-01T13:31:00.000-04:00

Bringing together Craig Armstrong's jazzy piano, Vladislav Delay's dub bass-scapes and Antye Greie's abstruse lyrical musings seems like such an inspired idea that it is surprising it hasn't happened earlier. With the AGF/Delay collaboration Explode Baby as the launching point, Delay and Greie create a constantly shifting percussive landscape for Armstrong to majestify. Which he does. His fluid work here is on par with the best of his solo works. And Delay is also at the top of his game, finding new ideas in shorter songs (topping out here at no longer than six-and-a-half minutes), succeeding where an earlier solo album of shorter pieces, Demo(n) Tracks, failed. But it is Greie, who finally, actually sings in her charming, slightly accented English, who steals the show. Leaving behind the glitched-out cut-up vocal style she unfortunately pioneered on Head Slash Bauch, she reveals herself as a stylistically interesting singer, finding eroticism in the breathy readings of her mundane lyrics. The trio play off (so to speak) each other so well that this album should not just be a one-off. Highly recommended.

Tetsu Inoue - "World Receiver" (Reissue)

2007-03-19T07:40:00.000-04:00

This is such a classic that to review it now, 11 years on, seems completely unnecessary. Not widely acclaimed on its initial release in 1996, and unfortunately out of print for quite some time, Infraction is thankfully bringing this back to market. World Receiver ranks very near the top of best ambient albums lists, up with Eno's On Land, KLF's Chill Out, and Global Communication's 76:14.

Inoue was ahead of his time with this record, incorporating field recordings seamlessly with his own analog synthesizers. Field recordings had been used for years by the time this came out, to be sure. The perfect nature of how the music plays off the recordings and the reverse on this record still possesses the capacity to amaze. The location recordings are never too location-specific, sounding like they could be anywhere on the globe. Which they might very well be, as Inoue travelled Japan, Thailand, Pakistan, Germany, and the United States, gathering his sounds. Point being that the integration sounds so completely organic, composed around each other, on a level unparalleled upon initial release.

World Receiver deserves the accolades heaped upon it since 1996. There weren't many ambient releases that sounded like it at the time, and 10 years on, there still aren't that many. Even Inoue himself has moved on from this sound. There is nothing like this being released today. If you don't have it, what are you waiting for?

The Mighty Laibach

2007-03-18T14:12:00.001-04:00

Igor Krutogolov - "White"

2007-03-18T14:07:00.000-04:00

This one for igloomag.com, "touched up" by Pietro.

Here's an album that doesn't give you much to go on. No track titles, a booklet of blank white pages, and little else. It even starts nondescript, with a reverbed keyboard loop and environmental sounds that slowly, ever so slowly, find each other. Track 2 brings in strings, flute, and some operatic vocals. Track 3 invites an irritating, directionless clicking noise to the mix, along with some far-off wailing. What begins as strangely relaxing becomes quite annoying. And that is the really frustrating thing about White --for every really pleasing ingredient, there's something totally annoying going on at the same time --and it is impossible to ignore anything annoying. So White ends up being kind of a mixed bag, an evolving ambient soundscape that pleases while it detracts.

After the triumphant, majestic climax that is track 6, the track 7 denouement has that misplaced flute again, and then 30 minutes of unpleasant silence.

Luomo - "Paper Tigers"

2007-02-11T18:30:00.001-05:00

Sasu Ripatti makes pushing boundaries sound so simple. Always has, going back to his earliest work under his first nom-de-guerre Vladislav Delay, and later under the guise of Luomo. The Delay material, best described as glacial dubscapes, expanded the boundaries of epic techno beyond the ten-minute barrier to the limits of a compact disc. Keeping forward motion in mind, Delay tweaks his beats, expanding and contracting them seemingly at will, but always on time, most effectively on his later material, Anima and The Four Quarters. Under the Luomo guise, Ripatti literally blew the doors off of house music with Vocalcity, incorporating the clicks-n-cuts aesthetic which was so prevalent around the turn of the millennium into the soul of Chicago house. A revolution was born. Follow up The Present Lover took a 45-degree turn to Vocalcity by pushing vocals to the fore.

Paper Tigers, the latest from the Finnish master, cements Luomo's place at the front of the house vanguard, refining his approach of combining glitch with the almighty pulsing beat. Johanna Iivanainen's vocals soar in places, get dubbed out and cut up in others, but remain the unifying element of the entire album. The lyrics are completely banal, but like most of the genre, they are not meant to be particularly meaningful, and therefore get a pass. "Really Don't Mind," the single, is indicative of the album - sounding like Ripatti wrote a straight up house track and then tore it all the way down, rebuilding it with only the most compelling elements. Somehow it retains a house feel while also feeling strangely alien, disorienting. "Wanna Tell," the second-half highlight, builds a driving rhythm slowly over its nearly eight minutes, only to hit an oil slick halfway through as the beats hang a right hand turn to the tempo and the melody chases after it. Iivanainen's vocals can't twist with it either and the facade of traditional house music that this album claims as its foundation is revealed to be a malevolent doppelganger. If this track is spun in a club, watch for some serious stumbling on the dancefloor. Hilarity will ensue.

Does this get played in clubs? I can imagine an idealized, adventurous DJ spinning tracks like these, but I don't think that it is too common. Which is too bad. The Luomo catalogue should work wonders on the dancefloor, but it doesn't have the easy, anthemic quality of most house blockbusters. This is a good thing. The best music challenges the times, encourages innovation in its wake. Ripatti did his share, the onus is on you.

Monolake - "Plumbicon Versions"

2007-02-11T18:28:00.000-05:00

Plumbicon Verions contains five remixes of a track from Polygon_Cities, four of them previously released on vinyl. The original version does not appear here and as such, this reviewer has no reference to it and is therefore unable to compare these remixes to the original.

The "Live in Osaka" mix contains minimal bleeping and blooping over Blade Runner string stabs and Chain Reaction dubby keyboards over a relentless Hawtin-esque beat. Henke remixes his own material here to great effect. Not having heard the original, this track sounds pretty solid on its own. Sleeparchive's remix ("Sleeparchive Interpretation") is a straight up Berlin house track that probably sounds fine in a club. At home, it is an endurance test. Lacking a hook but featuring bleeping and pinging sine waves, plus a voice repeating "mono," the track is so stripped down and minimal that there is very little to latch on to over nine grueling minutes. If hyper-minimal house is your bag, this will fit comfortably in it. If not, no amount of repetition is going to make this sound any better. The "Rebreather Mix" takes an entirely different tack, aiming for the emotional response, a more intellectual than physical response, and hits every mark. Evoking Portishead, the string and gentle piano arrangement couples with a dubbed-out beat and sounds like the opening credits to the most amazing sci-fi/cop-western/love story ever filmed. Deadbeat's version fills in the gaps of the other versions, filling things out nicely with nimbly cut-up beats and lush keyboards. Probably the most "classic" sounding track, the most inline with IDM jack-booted lock-steppers. "Plumbicon Epiqlogue," the closer, clocks in at over 10 minutes and reminds you that while engaging remixers is nice and all, some things are better when the original artist works on his own material. Slowed down and menacing, Henke and T++ push themselves closer to the edges and find the beauty and subtlety in the groove.

Lacunae - "Collapse" (on igloomag.com)

2007-02-10T17:13:00.000-05:00

Normally, this reviewer is unmoved by the spoken-word-over-idm genre, finding that the two principal elements never match up evenly. Either the spoken word material is glitched out to the point of incomprehensibility, or the music simply overpowers the words. For reference points of both extremes, see Laub's Filesharing and Vladislav Delay's project The Dolls. Lacunae unfortunately are also unable to find the balance, perhaps due to their unconventional and gimmicky work ethic. The members of Lacunae have never meet in person. Tracks originate with Kasten Searles, who creates basic vocals and ambience, then sends the tapes to Arson Bright, who creates arrangements for Kasten's tracks. From there, the tapes are sent to A. Paluso, who tweaks and mixes the recordings into a cohesive whole.
Such is the process which produced Collapse, their second full-length effort. Overall the electronics are somewhat muted, trip-hoppy in places, evoking the lazy and hazy atmospherics of Massive Attack on "Rebuild in Black," crashed into the twitchy skittering beats of Arovane or Funkstörung. "Eight Zero One," placed firmly in the middle of the album, is the stand-out track. A Gary Numan-esque synth bass pulses underneath simple Adult. beats and grooves so effortlessly that the rest of the album can only be a letdown. Which unfortunately it is.

If Collapse is anything, it is too long, even at 43 minutes. There's too much filler, such as the 53-second long tracks "Giving Up," "Arms of an Ideal," and "An Image of Itself." Even the opener, "Your Surface" wallows in unintelligible vocals and sub-Richard James textures. While generally well produced and sonically interesting, the tracks do very little to differentiate themselves and as a result become more than a little numbing. Kasten's vocals rarely graduate from whispering or speaking into singing. The music never transcends its influences. The band never rise to their potential. While not a great album, there are moments of greatness on Collapse, such as the aforementioned "Eight Zero One" or in the gentle reverbed piano on "From Dust." There are not enough moments like that to really recommend this album. Maybe next time.

Hammock - "Raising Your Voice...Trying To Stop An Echo"

2007-02-10T15:35:00.000-05:00

Hammock continue to amaze. Building on the ambient soundscape experiments of Sleep-Over, Vol. 1 and their already-excellent melodic songwriting skills, Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop an Echo expands Hammock's artistic reach with its anthemic shoegaze (the title track), and with soothing instrumentals ("When the Sky Pours Down Like a Fountain"). Hammock's music is serene, blissed-out, and introspective at the same time. The bluesy guitar licks and brushed drums that introduce "Losing You to You" set a somber tone, but the fuzzed-out guitar drones and what sounds like steel guitar take the track to unimagined heights of orgasmic joy. Many of the newer shoegazers take their music only so far, releasing entire albums of amps buzzing (see Sunn 0)))), but Hammock take a different approach by tapping into their melodic sensibilities, and thereby perform on a higher level than many of their contemporaries. With Raising Your Voice, Hammock leave behind the dream pop scene from whence they came, and become a band creating truly unique music -- transcendent shoegaze. Evidence for this claim? See "Floating Away in Every Direction," with its sweeping melody soaring over a charming plucked motif, or the gentle elegy that is "Take a Drink from My Hands." Hammock are at the top of their game, and musing on the question of where they can take their music from here is very exciting.

Legendary Pink Dots - "A Perfect Mystery"

2007-02-10T15:32:00.000-05:00

Firmly in their psychedelic- goth period, A Perfect Mystery is one of the more conventional and enjoyable releases in Legendary Pink Dots' extensive discography. The album settles into a pattern where songs begin with a slow, atmospheric start and then increase instrumentation, which turns up the musical tension and explodes in a trippy fury of mad, whirling, musical dervishes, with Edward Ka-Spel's foreboding lyrics wavering over everything. It all comes together perfectly on "Pain Bubbles," where the Silver Man's swirling keyboards and Niels Van Hoorn's sax dance around each other over a pulsating beat. A gentle exception to the pattern, and a standout track, is the gentle groover "Blue," a spacey guitar-and-drums ballad that mutates into ambient dub that evokes drummer Ryan Moore's side project, Twilight Circus Dub Sound System. "When I'm with You" shows the rockier side of the group, a slow groover that intensifies and peaks majestically with an outstanding sax solo. The only misstep is the apocalyptic Appalachian chant "Skeltzer Speltzer." a psychedelic hoedown that sounds like Malcolm Mooney-era Can, but at one-quarter speed. Overall an excellent introduction to the band. Those not afraid of mildly challenging material should dive in enthusiastically. Note that the vinyl version of this album contains different mixes than the compact disc, and also includes an additional track.

sunn 0))) - Live White

2006-07-12T20:51:00.000-04:00

Live White presents Sunn 0))) as perhaps the most primitive and heaviest power trio in history. Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson are here joined only by Rex Ritter, who honed his drone with neo-shoegazers Jessamine. Live White covers the basics in the Sunn 0))) discography, containing five tracks of material that appear on White1 under different names, one from Flight of the Behemoth, one from 00 Void, an early version of a track that would appear on Black One ("Caveman Salad" here, "Orthodox Caveman" on the studio album), and some otherwise unreleased tracks ( "Funeralmarch (To the Grave)," "Funeraldrone") on the second disc. The set ranges from the early, Earth-worshipping droning of "NN O)))," through the avant-doom of "B-Alien Skeleton" to the chugging Melvins homage of "Funeralmarch." Needless to say, the album sounds absolutely fantastic the louder that it is played, as the hidden dynamics in the harmonic overtones do not appear at lower volumes. White1's liner notes state "Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results" and the same is true here. This is true power ambient music, meant to be felt as well as heard. A highlight in Sunn 0)))'s catalog, and also the one that is hardest to get, unfortunately. This was severely limited by the label, with no more than 500 copies produced. But it is worth the search.

sunn 0))) - Cro-Monolithic Remixes for an Iron Age

2006-07-12T20:49:00.000-04:00

Cro-Monolithic Remixes for an Iron Age contains Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley's epic remix of (their idols) Earth's "Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine" and a remix of Merzbow's "Catch 22 (Surrender or Die)." For "Rule the Divine," Sunn 0))) opens up Dylan Carlson's original, so much so that large stretches of the track are heavily reverbed guitar scraping, mere hints of melody. Clocking in at over 15 minutes, the track seems to stop somewhere in the middle, as if time itself had stopped and the last sound heard echoes into infinity, before slamming back near the end with Carlson's trademarked guitar drone. This track also appears, in apparently the same form, on Earth's Legacy of Dissolution remix album. Sunn 0)))'s remix of Merzbow, on the B-side is almost exactly what you'd expect. Masami Akita's violent digital squeals are enveloped in the Anderson/O'Malley drone and, while not rendered impotent, are less abrasive as they would be on their own. This is a different, longer version of the remix that appears on the Merzbow album Frog Remixed and Revisited, and which makes this one of the more sought-after items in the Sunn 0))) catalog, and because of its limited nature (500 only), is not designed for newcomers.

Sunn 0))) - Veils It White

2006-07-12T20:47:00.000-04:00

On Veils It White, James Plotkin (who plays with Sunn 0)))'s Stephen O'Malley in Khanate) remixes various track elements from the Flight of the Behemoth album, and in the process, creates a fantastic introduction for newcomers. Using the familiar low-end guitar rumblings as a canvas, Plotkin paints an elaborate soundscape, using a haunting piano and some digital glitches. Rooted deep in the isolationist-ambient genre, the controlled feedback and glistening drones from O'Malley and Greg Anderson would be trance-inducing, if not for Plotkin, ever the prankster, who inserts tiny details of sound, needles that prick at the inner ear, and makes it certain that wherever this long track is going, it isn't where it's expected to go. Its 17 minutes contain sections that trace Sunn 0)))'s progression from an Earth tribute band, to the avant-metallers that they would become on White2. Anyone interested in Sunn 0)))'s music is encouraged to start here, if a copy can be located. This release was limited to 700 copies.

Sunn 0))) - The Libations of Samhain

2006-07-12T20:45:00.000-04:00

Sunn 0)))'s music has been described as "power ambient" or "ambient metal," and while both are apt, they can't fully contain the visceral feeling that the music evokes at loud volume. Indeed, White1's sleeve notes contain the axiom "Maximum volume yields maximum results." And while there might be a few enthusiasts with the stereo system to fully exploit this, the only real chance to experience this music as it is intended is in a live setting, hearing the band with the entire body, not just the ears. Does the live Sunn 0))) experience translate to album? On the sister release Live White, it does. That recording has no distortion and is well-mixed. Libations of Samhain, however, suffers from a lack of fidelity, sounding better than the average bootleg, but not professional grade. And that's a shame, because the performance is exceptional, evoking a massive, churning beast, like the Toxic Avenger amped up on both Dilaudid and Jagermeister, lumbering through the LaBrea Tar Pits. Sunn 0))) regulars Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley are joined here by Jessamine's Rex Ritter on "ProtoHarmonics," Dawn Smithson on "Ampeg" (bass guitar), and Mayhem's Attila Csihar on vocals. Ritter and Smithson's contributions are almost lost in the sludgy six-string riffing of O'Malley and Anderson, but Csihar's "vokills" add a layer of atmospheric menace to the gestalt, with his alternately wailing and growling whispers. Although it is one long, 40-minute track, Libations of Samhain seems to contain a number of themes that have appeared on other album tracks, making this a live "best-of," in a way. As such, it is a decent introduction to the band, but suffers in comparison to Live White and the studio albums because of its sub-par fidelity.

Throbbing Gristle - 24

2006-07-12T20:41:00.000-04:00

The lavish box set 24 Hours of Throbbing Gristle presents the bulk of Throbbing Gristle's live concerts, from their first gig at the Air Gallery in London on July 6, 1976 to March 13, 1980 at London's Goldsmith's College. Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, and Peter Christopherson here raise a holy racket, a churning mass of metal-on-metal percussion, droning bass, and swirling, stabbing, unidentifiable noises. The set lists appear largely improvised (the lack of any sort of track listing for each disc does not help). Tracks which seem to reappear in new versions over the course of the set include the classic "Discipline," "Persuasion," and "single" "Hamburger Lady." The gigs were recorded live to cassette, and are presented here with little cleanup. So what we have here are bootleg quality recordings of improvised industrial noise. More accurately, what we have here is the audio equivalent of mud, with no discernible instruments and "singer" P-Orridge's screeching-cat "singing." Some recordings sound better than others, but for the most part, these are aggressively lo-fi recordings. So the questions is, is that okay? For the die-hard fans who will purchase this set, it probably is. The age of the original tapes and the attendant degradation in sound quality is audible and adds to the overall gestalt. Very few bands from this era have made the entirety of their live recordings available for sale, and even fewer so-called industrial bands. So as documentation of a scene, this set is important. For the casual listener, this is prohibitively expensive, and a daunting set to approach. There's 24 hours of music here! For the truly dedicated, the remaining ten live concerts are released in a follow-up set, TG+.

Thomas Newmann - "Meet Joe Black Soundtrack"

2006-05-13T15:31:00.000-04:00

As modern soundtrack scores go, the quality can be hit or miss, but Thomas Newman's work is almost always something to get excited about, as evidenced in the Oscar-nominated The Shawshank Redemption, Road to Perdition, and the title theme for Six Feet Under. His score for Meet Joe Black contains the seeds of beauty that would fully flower on his score for American Beauty, the next film he scored and a high point of his career. "Whisper of a Thrill," the soaring romantic theme, is a perfect distillation of the film's emotional plot, its yearning melody shadowing Joe Black's (Brad Pitt) love for the beautiful Susan (played by Claire Forlani) and its ultimate futility. As romantic themes go, Newman's ranks as a recent classic that captures both the initial rush of love and also the devastating crush of its leaving. Newman skillfully weaves this theme into the rest of the score, and its sweeping sentimentality is flexible enough to be incorporated into other melodic themes, such as the denouement of "Someone Else." For the most part, gentle strings and woodwinds dominate, with gentle piano work reserved for special, heart-tugging moments. But the score is also quite playful, as on "Peanut Butter Man," where a flute meanders over bouncing strings, and also in the quick, percussive staccato of the middle-eight. This is an excellent score, an achievement from any composer, and something that ranks up near the top of Thomas Newman's work.

Growing - "Color Wheel"

2006-05-13T15:25:00.000-04:00

Wow. This band only gets better. Initially on drone/indie label Kranky, Growing have moved over to Troubleman Unlimited's sub-label Megablade, and with that move their sound has left behind the wall-of-noise blissouts of The Sky's Run Into The Sea for a lighter, textured ambient drone that at times approaches both metal and progressive rock. Growing have (excuse me here) "grown" from their earlier stun-volume buzzing into subtler vibrations that are almost pastoral, but interspersed with some metallic aggression.

Opening track "Fancy Period" fades in with some faint guitar sprinkles and swirling synths, sounding like it could turn into a hip cover of Yes' "Close to the Edge." But the ecstatic drone is soon subsumed by a stuttering, staccato fuzz that, over the song's ten minutes, begins to dominate. The battle between these two opposing forces (pastoral drone versus metallic blur) characterize the entire album. To see which one wins, listen to the final two minutes of closer "Green Pasture," where way-too-loud buzz saw guitars completely obliterate the blissed-out smear of guitars that preceded it. For those two minutes , this album drops the happy droning and gets truly scary. Played loud, Growing's Kevin Doria and Joe DeNardo's instruments meld into one majestic tone that devolves from Sunn O)))-inspired metallic hum to Oren Ambarchi-esque ambient carpeting.

Much like previous efforts, Color Wheel sounds fantastic at top volume. Like other bands with similar aesthetics (like perhaps Hammock, with their new Sleep-over series), when given three simple things: space, time, and volume, Growing make their guitar and synthesizer setup sound like an orchestra.

Klaus Schulze - "Body Love II"

2006-05-13T15:23:00.000-04:00

Recorded in 1976 and released the next year, Body Love, Vol. 2 was intended as a soundtrack for a pornographic film. Nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but it is hard to imagine that Schulze's trance-inducing electronic improvisations would be considered an appropriate soundtrack for sex. "Nowhere -- Now Here" has a basic beat and spacy synths, but after 18 minutes, when the harpsichord solo starts, the simple prog rock absurdity of it shows that Schulze isn't taking his assignment too seriously. The dubbed-out introduction to "Stardancer II" shows a different side of Schulze's muse, but as it gets interesting, the regular synths start up and things return to normal. "Moogetique" is an atmospheric closer, 12 minutes of slowly undulating synths and ambient echoes. Body Love, Vol. 2 does not differ greatly from the rest of Schulze's body of work from around this time, similar to contemporary albums Moondawn and X. This album is as recommended as any other of his albums from this phase of his career.

Scott Walker - "Any Day Now"

2006-04-22T07:14:00.000-04:00

On Any Day Now, Scott Walker tackles some real garbage material and spins what little gold he can from overwrought arrangements of sub-standard cover material. Really, what possessed the man who wrote "Plastic Palace People" to cover Bread's saccharine "If"? Or how about how the orchestration almost completely overpowers him at the end of Paul Anka's "Do I Love You?" Or his affecting a Caribbean patois to match with the tepid pseudo-reggae rhythms of "Maria Bethania"? There is not one original composition on display on Any Day Now, and for an artist who is responsible for absolute masterpieces like Scott 2 and Scott 4 to turn in an album of material this lackluster shows both the cruel machinations of the record industry and true contempt for one's fans. For when you come down to it, this album practically screams "contractual obligation." This is lazy music that aims to satisfy only the lowest common denominator. At the same time though, Walker possesses one of the few truly great voices, and there are flashes of genius in his singing here. "When You Get Right Down to It" showcases his voice especially well, his soaring tenor transcending the banality of the lyrics and creating a performance to rival any of his '60s material. His tough-guy affectations on "Ain't No Sunshine" sound like an influence on Johnny Mathis' lunatic-disco cover of "Night and Day." This album remains, however, best suited to the hardcore fan, and can be safely passed by for everyone else.

Painkiller - "Collected Works"

2006-04-22T07:12:00.000-04:00

John Zorn teams up with Bill Laswell and Scorn's Mick Harris to form Painkiller, who take Naked City's jazz-thrash template as a launching point, and then leap into the outer reaches of dub and improvised free jazz. This set, as advertised, contains the early EPs, Guts of a Virgin and Buried Secrets, their sole full-length, the double-disc Execution Ground, and a live concert recorded in Osaka in 1994 and featuring Boredoms vocalist Yamatsuka Eye on several tracks. Disc one is a curious exploration of the disparate strands of music that the trio would spin into improvisatory gold on Execution Ground. The hardcore blast jazz of Guts and Buried Secrets are interspersed with longer improvisations that span from ambient to dub, all anchored by Laswell's solid bass. "Purgatory of Fiery Vulvas" is a highlight of this type of material, being one of few studio tracks featuring the unique vocals of Eye. Its brief 24 seconds contain the fury of Midwestern hardcore and the avant-garde sensibilities of SoHo jazz, but completely, recklessly out of control. Disc two contains longer-form improvisations, covering all of the bases that were laid down on the earlier EPs but extending the ideas out, exploring them, even jamming at some points. Disc three is just two tracks, ambient remixes of two tracks from Burial Ground, "Pashupatinath" and "Parish of Tama." Similar in tone and execution to Laswell's work as Divination or Harris' work as Lull, the ambient dirges on disc three fit safely and uncomfortably in the isolationist genre. "Parish of Tama (Ambient)" is reminiscent of Laswell's collaboration with Pete Namlook, Psychonavigation, stretching the original track, taking it into ambient dub territory, eschewing the ebb-and-flow of the original. The live disc is the only exclusive material to the set, and makes the entire set worth a go for fans who purchased the albums as they came out. On opener "Gandhamadana," Mick Harris' nimble drum work, traversing from his hardcore roots over to subtle jazz and back again, coupled with Laswell's signature bass triplets, form a fluid and sometimes grooving base for Zorn's patented squeal/skronk sax. "Bodkyithangga" sounds somewhat like Slayer covering John Coltrane's Interstellar Space, with Eye growling and chattering utter gibberish over the top. The encore, "Black Bile/Yellow Bile/Blue Bile/Crimson Bile/Ivory Bile" is a hilarious duet with Zorn and Eye that brings to mind the sound effects from Bugs Bunny cartoons scored by Carl Stalling.

AFX - "Chosen Lords"

2006-04-20T06:29:00.000-04:00

Chosen Lords presents itself as an artist-collected précis of the entire 10-volume Analord series. Everyone who's heard all 40 tracks (and apparently there's over 10,000, according to the press release) would undoubtedly pick different tracks to include, but there are some that everyone should be able to agree on. To wit, "Boxing Day" is a highlight, sounding very much like it would have been a b-side to On, with its subtle percussion and cyclic melody. Opener "Fenix Funk 5" recalls the splattered beats of Drukqs' opener, "Jynweythek."

With over forty tracks in the original series to choose from, one would assume that there would be absolutely no filler on this record. Alas, there is. "Crying In Your Face" sounds like classic AFX, chilled beats, vocodered vocals, gentle synth washes. But it is just so un-compelling. Silence is just as memorable as this track. Same with "Klopjob," with its warped synth line and squiggling 303. Elements of classic AFX, right? On paper, yes. It has worked for him in the past (see Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1 for evidence), but fails to impress here.

This is both the problem with this record, and with the material that RDJ has released in this century. As bloated as Drukqs was, with almost half of the double-album being filler material, there was some decent material, if one looked for it hard enough. Same thing with Lords. The trouble though, is that some of the best tracks remain trapped on vinyl and are not included here. An example would be "I'm Self Employed," from Analord 6. Certainly there are others. Volumes 1, 2, and 9 are not represented.

Ultimately, Chosen Lords is hard to recommend because it feels incomplete. All the elements of greatness are present, but come together only sparingly, unlike RDJ's previous work. No new ground is broken here, and perhaps that was not the intent. But for an artist who so consistently raised the bar in the 1990s, to hear him merely resting on his laurels is simultaneously disheartening and maddening. Chosen Lords is neither the complete version of the series, nor is it a best-of collection. It is neither great nor awful, genius or asinine.

National Wrecking Co - "The Sound of Music" (for igloomag)

2006-03-07T20:16:00.000-05:00

Chicago is the home of many genres of music, but arguably its influence over industrial and electronic music holds the greatest sway. Well, maybe not. But remind yourself that Chicago was once the physical and is now the spiritual home of Wax Trax! Records, the beating heart of Industrial Dance in the eighties and early nineties. Look at the influence of the label – home to Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Meat Beat Manifesto, KMFDM, Thrill Kill Kult and countless others. These bands were the genesis of the current EBM/IDM scene. And their production and composition techniques form the staple elements of the genre: tough beats, samples (both musical and spoken), electronic atmospheres. Where would countless bedroom laptop twiddlers be without the influential sounds of Front 242’s “Endless Riddance” or the spaghetti western electro of Acid Horse’s “No Name No Slogan”? Well, honestly, they’d probably still be doing their thing, but it would sound very different. Chicago’s National Wrecking Company answers the question definitively.

National Wrecking Company has, after nearly a decade-long gestation period, released The Sound of Music, and the album lives up to the ambitions inherent in the name. Like a Zen koan, what is the sound of music? It is noise and silence, melody and atonality, rhythm and ambient. NWC tackle all types of sounds and do it with élan. “The Sound of Music” is split into three distinct parts, dispersed over the course of the album’s 57 minutes, and is presented out of order. Part II starts the album off with an electronic squeal, a drop-bass, and a haunting piano motif that loops, topped off with biting electronic percussive stabs and other melodic embellishments, both acoustic and electronic. It’s a nice taster for the rest of the album. Track three, “What Is The Colour Of your Kindness?” really shows the Chicago roots of the NWC. This is hard dance in the WaxTrax/Jack Dangers mode, with pounding drums, relentless bass, and those lovely 808 handclaps that were the hallmark of the genre for so long. Sounding like a forgotten Meat Beat b-side circa God O.D., it’s the highlight of the album.

“Thank You For Asking” is next, a collage of soothing, vaguely eastern melodies and abrasive, distorted sheets of noise that segues into the neo-ambient of “Dear Mr. Echo,” another highlight. Bringing to mind “O.O.B.E.” from The Orb’s “Blue Room” album, the track’s gentle synth washes slowly and subtly give way to a pulsing melody that rises and falls like waves crashing. Metallic percussion establishes itself, insinuating itself into the gestalt of the music, integrating with the melody in a manner so seamless as to appear both effortless and completely obsessed over.

And perhaps this is the ultimate summation of The Sound of Music. It appears so fully realized and satisfying that it both sounds like the ProTools windows were pored over for endless weeks and that it could have all come out in a single jam session. Truly interesting and utterly compelling, one would hope that National Wrecking Company is spearheading some kind of revival that would bring Chicago’s electronic glory back.

Lead Into Gold - "Chicks and Speed: Futurism"

2006-03-07T20:08:00.000-05:00

This was submitted to allmusic.com, but for some unknown reason has not appeared there yet.

Paul Barker took some time for himself between 1988 and 1990 to work apart from his long-time Ministry cohort, Al Jourgenson, in Lead Into Gold, a more restrained and reflective unit than his regular gig. Eschewing the heavy metal guitars that would become Ministry’s signature sound, Barker here relies more on keyboards, programmed drums, and, for better or worse, his own voice. Chicks & Speed consists of his initial solo efforts, two twelve-inch singles, Faster Than Light and Idiot. ”Faster Than Light”, the opening track, remains a dance floor favorite, with its shout-along chorus (“Faster than light and harder!”) and anthemic power chords. “Idiot” is the highlight of the record, an industrial disco classic, with sampled horn-stabs, pounding drums and relentless keyboards. And while there are a few tracks that probably should not have made it out of the studio (such as ”Blackened Heart”, brought down by Barker’s whiny vocals), the remaining tracks are fairly executed pieces of down-tempo industrial, unlike anything else in the expansive discography of Ministry’s side projects. Barker would go on to more fully explore his muse on the full-length Age of Reason.

Lead Into Gold - "Age of Reason"

2006-03-07T20:04:00.000-05:00

Note: This was submitted to allmusic.com, but for some unknown reason it has yet to appear there.

Produced during Ministry’s most fertile period (1988-1991), Lead Into Gold is the one side project that showcased Paul Barker’s compositions. His initial forays into solo work, the Faster Than Light and Idiot EPs had their moments of excellence but were weighted down by lazy songwriting. Age of Reason, Barker’s follow-up full length album, has the same problem. For every slice of greatness like “Faster Than Light” (which appears here in a differnet mix than on the EP), there is throwaway material like “13”, a go-nowhere pastiche of electro drums, samples of children laughing, and Moog keyboards. Throughout the album, all of the staples of the industrial genre are on display (clanging percussion, martial rhythms, harsh keyboards, etc.), but the material never rises above the sum of its parts. It is not known if these tracks were submitted as Ministry material and rejected, but “A Giant On Earth” (co-written with Al Jourgenson) sounds like an embryonic version of “Scarecrow”, which appeared on Ministry’s breakthrough album. Psalm 69. Barker handles all the instrumentation with the exception of guitar, provided by Stuart Bang Zechman, who would later join Stabbing Westward for a brief time, then Filter. Barker would work solo again, with similar results, as Pink Anvil.

Clock DVA - "Transitional Voices"

2006-03-07T20:02:00.001-05:00

Transitional Voices is a quickie live album from Adi Newton's Clock DVA project. How much of the material is truly live is up for grabs with heavily sequenced music like this, but there are enough flourishes and frills that the essence of a live performance is almost assured. So then why a live album from Clock DVA, as the music they produce is so reliant on sequencing. Had Transitional Voices been released in a timely fashion after being recorded in May 1990, it could have provided a teaser of material that would surface on Man-Amplified and Buried Dreams. But with it being released after both of those albums had hit shelves, the value comes from the variations between these poorly recorded live versions and their completed, fully produced studio equivalents. "Sound Mirror" appears here in a nascent version of what would appear on Buried Dreams, with a vastly different bass line and different bridge to the final studio version. Others for the most part are very similar, especially the icy filter sweeps and unremitting electro-bass pulse of "N.Y.C. Overload". Probably the last release from Clock DVA to pick up, because the low fidelity of the recording at times masks the stunning electronic programming that this group is known for.

Hammock - "Stranded Under Endless Sky"

2006-03-07T20:00:00.000-05:00

Clocking in at a mere twenty-five minutes, Stranded Under Endless Sky is a great introduction to the duo of Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson and a perfect teaser of the next album for the fans. Consisting of just four tracks (three of which are five minutes or more), Hammock pack enough emotion and provocative instrumental storytelling to fully engage and satisfy even the most jaded listener. All that is required is patience, as these beautiful, shimmering homages to the Cocteau Twins and Bola unfold at their own pace, in their own time, revealing secrets upon repeated listening. Recalling the less ambient moments of Robert Fripp's soundscapes work and the gentler moments of Mirror-era Flying Saucer Attack, "An Empty Field", the closer, slowly gathers a sense of tension around itself using pastoral, fuzzed-out blurs of guitar noise set against a glistening ambient drone. Much like their previous work, Stranded Under Endless Sky is an excellent mini album from Hammock, who continue their ascent to godhead status among the drone-rock underground.

Hammock - "Kenotic"

2006-03-07T19:59:00.000-05:00

Hammock's debut, Kenotic, is in every way a contender for classic status in the shoegazing genre. Expertly merging ambient guitar drone (think Bowery Electric), electronic beats (think Boards of Canada), and live instrumentation (the violin on "Blankets of Night"). Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson craft a seventy-minute sound sculpture, a paean to the beauty inherent in the drone. By turns smooth and expansive, then chiming and circular, Kenotic has excellent sequencing, with moods of tension and relaxation blending together into a perfect evocation of an afternoon drifting in a vast ocean, looking skyward. The music flows in a manner evoking a slow-moving river on a winter day. A notable exception to this is the up-tempo (for Hammock) "Wish", falling at the mid-point of the album, which focuses your attention and re-energizes it. The album art and song titles, ("Overcast/Sorrow", "Stars in the Rearview Mirror", "The Silence"), along with the mood of the music suggest isolation in nature, but their message is not one of sadness, but timeless, serene joy. The few people that will find this record will cherish it as something special, similar to One Mile North's Glass Wars.

Ephel Duath - "Pain Necessary To Know"

2006-03-07T19:55:00.000-05:00

Take the interesting parts of The Dillenger Escape Plan and cross them with the prog ambitions of The Mars Volta, then remove anything compelling or listenable, and you have this album from Ephel Duath. Pain Necessary to Know is a bland attempt at jazz-metal, containing no discernable songs in its thirty-eight minutes, but a grand number of distinct musical sections that are intended as songs, but don't cohere to one another in any discernibly meaningful fashion. Thrashing start/stop rhythms and quiet/loud dynamics characterize every piece, along with generic, indecipherable cookie-monster vocals. The three-part "Vector" (presented out of order) is a succinct example of the problems this record has as a whole. Mildly interesting melodic sections jut heads with dissonant jazz-thrash, sounding almost exactly like an emasculated Mr. Bungle or a toothless and drunk Naked City. Yes, its all intended to be a grand artistic statement, concept album or what have you, but Pain Necessary to Know most assuredly is not necessary in any way, except for perhaps the masochists who enjoyed System of a Down's Hypnotize.

Flying Saucer Attack / Main / White Winged Moth - "Mort Aux Vaches"

2006-03-07T19:52:00.000-05:00

This edition of Mort Aux Vaches focuses on isolationist ambient/drone, collecting some shorter performances from like-minded artists Flying Saucer Attack, Main, and White Winged Moth. Running roughly fifteen minutes each, the three artists toe the musical equivalent of the Maginot Line, but never surpass the weighty expectations that their previous achievements bring to mind. Of the three, FSA's Dave Pearce comes the closest. At the time this was recorded (September 25th, 1997), FSA was recently returned from hiatus, entering what Pearce called its second phase. This was characterized by a greatly decreased focus on the distortion that FSA built their house on, and a greater emphasis on the neo-folk acoustica that blossomed on New Lands. Over four tracks, Pearce's pastoral guitar struggles for primacy over fuzzed-out musique-concrete backgrounds, evoking if nothing else a cloudy afternoon just after a thunderstorm. Main presents a soundscape that seems largely improvised (on a laptop?), with found sounds and other concrete elements such as droning bells, malfunctioning mixers, and other cliches of the genre. White Winged Moth, the solo project of Thela's Dean Roberts sounds similar to Main's track. Utilizing only electric guitars, Roberts scrapes and abuses his guitar in a manner similar in places to Derek Bailey's Aida, sounding like a person discovering that a guitar can make noises in ways that do not necessarily involve plucking or strumming. Roberts contributions are, on the whole, uncompelling. Special note should be made of the excellent packaging. A three panel cardboard foldout that forms a board game that appears to be similar to Battleship but with a Star Trek aesthetic. And of course, like all of the entries in the Mort Aux Vaches series, this one is limited to 1000 hand-numbered copies.

Coil - "Black Antlers"

2006-03-07T19:51:00.000-05:00

Available only on dates of Coil's "Even An Evil Fatigue" tour in 2004, Black Antlers is a stopgap release that consists of early studio and live versions of songs that were being worked on for the next official studio album. Due to Jhonn Balance's accidental death, most of the tracks on Black Antlers would become final, yet unpolished versions. Sounding particularly unfinished is the opener, "The Gimp (Sometimes)", a ballad that never quite comes together over its eleven minutes, failing to mesh the dark ambient instrumentation with Balance's beautiful and haunting vocals. The second track, however, "Sex With Sun Ra (Part One: Saturnalia)" is a classic late-period Coil track. Balance intones a fictional tale of a conversation between himself and the free jazz legend over a pulsating backing track punctuated by bell tones and sparse industrial percussion. "Wraiths and Strays (from Montreal)" is the highlight of the album, a twisting, slithering, pulsating beast of a track that interleaves Thighpaulsandra's keyboards with Balance's cut-up vocals to hallucinatory effect. As the tempo of the piece increases, the percussion becomes more frenetic and varied, the background squiggles become more aggressive, and the song sounds like it is chasing the listener down a dark alley. It is worth noting for the budget-minded fan that Black Antlers shares all of its tracklisting with another Coil release, Selvaggina Go Back Into the Woods, and the live versions on that album are for the most part the superior. While there are some excellent songs on this album, on the whole, Black Antlers doesn't make and appropriate introduction for the uninitiated. For the faithful though, this is a near-great effort from the sorely missed group of alchemists that called themselves Coil. Note: Once the initial and second pressings of this album sold out, it was made available for digital download through the band's website, www.thresholdhouse.com.

Coil - "...And the Ambulance Died In His Arms"

2006-03-07T19:50:00.000-05:00

And the Ambulance Died in His Arms is a live recording of Coil performing at the 2003 All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Camber Sands. On this date, Coil were Jhonn Balance on vocals, Peter Christopherson on sequencers, Thighpaulsandra on keyboards and Tom Edwards on marimba. This combination of musicians appeared on Live Two, recorded two years earlier. Where that set was abrasive and loud, this one is largely subdued, very different from the other recordings of Coil that appeared over the course of the Live series. Balance takes the mic to explain the subdued nature of the material, "We're doing a quiet set today. We've had too much shouting over the past year." Of the five lengthy tracks, four are completely new and one is a radical reworking of "The Dreamer Is Still Asleep" from Musick to Play In The Dark Volume One. Most of the set appears to be improvised, especially the glossolalic "Snow Falls On Military Temples' and "Triple Sons and the Ones You Bury", where Balance appears to be channeling his lyrics from another plane, suggesting phrases and then settling in on one which gets repeated and morphed into something totally new. Most of the song titles on this album are generated from those very phrases. Of all the live Coil albums that have been released, and there are a lot of them, And the Ambulance is one of the more satisfying. It is an excellent document of Coil's improvisatory nature, a side that was not displayed on their studio albums much, if at all.

Coil - "Selvaggina, Go Back Into The Woods"

2006-03-07T19:13:00.000-05:00

Selvaggina is a limited edition live album, recorded on June 11th, 2004 in Jesi, Italy. This appears to be the full set of the concert, and contains a new version of every track from previous studio effort Black Antlers. As such, the question of which has more value to the listener is to be considered. Selvaggina is well recorded and excellently performed, and some of the kinks of Antler versions of the tracks have been ironed out. For example, opener "The Gimp (Sometimes)" is here a more vibrant and shorter version than its counterpart, but retains its aura of goofy menace. "Sex With Sun Ra" retains the vibe of the Antlers version, but with more urgent vocalizations from Jhonn Balance, and animated work from Tom Edwards on the marimba. There's a telling bit of stage banter from Balance about this concert: "We're truncating, we're making shorter the things tonight because we haven't got enough time unfortunately to do the long versions we wanted to do, so apologies for that, but maybe you're being saved from our indulgences, I don't know." The editing that the band does on the songs here is very noticeable, sounding refined and worked-on, improving on the studio versions in every way. Of all of the live albums that Coil released in the last few years of its existence, this is the best, hands-down. This may be one of the harder pieces of the Coil catalogue to track down (this was limited to a mere 230 copies), and it is undoubtedly one of the best. How perverse of them, to do that to their fans.

Growing - "Live"

2006-03-07T19:10:00.000-05:00

This limited edition live album from drone duo Growing contains two complete sets from the band, one live in a club, the other live in a studio. The live set, recorded at NorthSix in Brooklyn, New York in July 2004, is the more sedate of the two. The set starts with a ringing guitar sounding hesitant tones before being joined by a magnificent organ drone that frees the guitarist (either Doria or Denardo -- the liner notes are maddeningly terse) to explore a musical trance-like state similar to what Spacemen 3 discovered on their Dreamweapon album. This segues into a similar but louder piece that ends abruptly by cutting the power to the instruments, and the resulting silence seems louder than the music that preceded it. Such is the power of the drone, and the heart of Growing's aesthetic -- the replacement of silence with an all-encompassing aural environment of beatific noise. The studio set, from January 2004, was recorded in the tiny confines of Free 103.9, also in Brooklyn. The claustrophobic nature of the studio is here reflected in a more aggressive (read: louder) set, running about fifty minutes. As in previous releases like The Sky's Run Into The Sea and The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light, Growing focus more on setting a mood than performing a song, and each piece here seems to end almost arbitrarily, when they could go on indefinitely. Having been signed to the Kranky label, and toured with the likes of Khanate, one would assume that Growing has thrown their chips in with the neo-noiseniks and their ilk, but this is not entirely accurate. Whereas groups like Khanate or Sunn O))) explore the space between the sounds they make with their instruments, Growing sounds more interested in the sounds their instruments make without too much involvement from humans, almost answering the Zen koan question of what air sounds like. It sounds beautiful.

Harmonic 33 - "Extraordinary People"

2006-02-04T18:40:00.000-05:00

Extraordinary People is a very welcome cd compilation of tracks that were released on two twelve-inch singles, Extraordinary People and Kaleidoscopic Sounds, and resequenced into a full-length album. Harmonic 33 rejoins Global Communications Mark Pritchard with his co-conspirator in the drum and bass unit Use of Weapons, Dave Brinkworth. Their previous collaboration was deep-rooted in drum n bass, but here they meld hip-hop beats with the trappings of easy-listening exotic lounge. "The Rain Song" and "The Holy Track" are the highlights of the album, featuring choral vocals, tinkling pianos and groovy percussion. "The Woodblock" showcases more of the hip-hop side of the pairing, with some furious vinyl scratching and sampled cut-up rap vocals. Chanteuse Kirsty Hawkshaw also makes an appearance, adding wordless yet moving vocals to the lounge-tronica "Underwater Lady". Very different from the library music that the two collaborators would go on to produce on Music For Film, Television, and Radio Volume One, Extraordinary People is a feather in the cap of Mark Pritchard's towering discography, comparable to Troubleman's excellent Time Out of Mind.

4 stars

Bohren Und Der Club of Gore - "Sunset Mission"

2006-02-04T18:39:00.000-05:00

The music that Bohren makes has fallen under the heavy metal/doom rubric, but this is both inaccurate and unfair to the band and its music. While the former members of hardcore legends 7 Inch Boots, Chronical Diarrhea, and Macabre Farmhouse may have once played fast and heavy, on Sunset Mission they completely drop the metal overtones that appeared on Gore Motel and stand resolutely in the late-night jazz-noir camp. The cover of the album shows night descending on the wet streets of a residential/industrial landscape. The music included within is for a couple of hours later, when there is only darkness and the breath of a saxophone to keep you company. Reminiscent of Trevor Jones (Angel Heart) or Angelo Badalamenti's soundtrack work (especially for Mulholland Drive), BUDCOG relies on understated Fender Rhodes, piano, double bass, gentle brushwork on drums and a lilting tenor saxophone. Sounding like a long suite collectively improvised and not a collection of individually composed songs, Sunset Mission showcases the contributions of each member equally. Morten Gass stunning keyboard work is balanced by Christoph Closer's emotional tenor sax. Underlining each track are Thorsten Benning's subtle kit work and the slow-motion groove of Robin Rodenberg's double bass. And while it is easy to fall into hyperbole when describing Bohren's music, they themselves are masters of the restraint necessary for this type of jazz to work and be compelling. This is slow, dark, and especially lush jazz, perfect for a booth at the back of a narcoleptic lounge, with a cigarette slowly burning down past the filter, watching secret lies being passed between one-night lovers.

3.5 stars

Ether Aura - "Crash"

2006-02-04T18:37:00.000-05:00

From the ashes of Detroit gothic rockers Caelum Bliss and the electro-tinged Deathgirl.com comes Ether Aura. Crash, their debut, is a stunning piece of neo-shoegaze dream-pop, an invigorating if slightly derivative mixture of Curve and Cocteau Twins. Opener "All Doves Grey" sets the table for the feast to come: Tony Hamera's soaring, fuzz-drenched guitar couples with Bret Haupt s equally distorted bass, William King's nimble kit work underlines and punctuates the vibe, and Kate Hinote's emotion-drenched vocals top everything off, evoking the blissed-out sound of early-period Lush. Over the course of eleven tracks, this would get perhaps a little tiring, but Ether Aura mix it up enough to keep the listener on their toes. "6 Days Yesterday" is a straight-up pop song that would have been huge if My Bloody Valentine had kept making records and paved the way for bands like this to become popular. "Falling" sounds like what Cocteau Twins should sound like, had they continued their sound past Milk and Kisses. Fans of the bands mentioned as comparators here will be pleased. This is well-executed shoegaze, and there s not much of that going around anymore.

3 stars

Jandek - "Blue Corpse"

2006-01-21T09:42:00.000-05:00

Here it is: The Way In. Blue Corpse is the most accessible Jandek record, the "easiest" to absorb, the most conventional, the most "melodic" and "rhythmic". Those words are in quotes because this is Jandek, where all standards of measure and comparison are next to worthless. Jandek is here joined by an anonymous man who sings on four tracks on the album, most notably on one of the most personal and emotional songs in Jandek's songbook, "I Passed By The Building". It sounds as if the man sings while Jandek plays acoustic guitar, and then for the rest of the tracks they switch. Which is to say that of the twelve tracks here, eight of them sound "normal", i.e. not like songs from previous records. There's a cover, of sorts, of the traditional "House of the Rising Son", but bearing virtually no resemblance to any version of the song previously and subsequently recorded. The acoustic guitar is the main instrument on this album, joined on a couple of tracks by a harmonica (except on "Harmonica", where it dominates for 4 atonal minutes and is then joined by a guitar and pained, wordless vocals) and drums, albeit briefly. "Your Other Man" and magnum opus "Only Lover" sound like they re different parts of the same song, featuring similar melodic (yes!) folk/blues patterns and rhythms. The two tracks also feature some of Jandek's most opaquely funny lyrics. Just what he is getting at remains oblique, like everything else in his discography: "Well you wouldn't believe it tastes like candy / gimmie a fork, yeah gimmie a fork / eat some potato" from "Your Other Man" or "You're a teenage runt with a lot of cream, Sparky" from "Only Lover". It is hard to say this about any other record from Jandek, but this record is fun, in its own peculiar way. Listen to his deconstruction of the blues on "Down at the Ball Park" and it is hard not to crack a smile. He knows what he's doing. The mistaken assumption that people make is that Jandek is not aware that the music he makes is so outside of any tradition. But careful listening shows that he is keenly aware and is trying to make music that can stand completely alone. He succeeds.

4 stars

Infinite Number of Sounds - "Time Wants a Skeleton"

2006-01-21T09:37:00.000-05:00

Cleveland's genre-hopping Infinite Number of Sounds is a treat. Never content to settle into a single sound or vibe, they mark their own territory in the post-rock terrain with their debut album, Time Wants a Skeleton. Never deciding if they want to be a live rock band or laptop experimentalists, they meld the two approaches into an enjoyable, if slightly derivative musical experience. INS can be compared most easily to a more aggressive version of Chicago's Tortoise, most explicitly on "Exorcise w/o Air", which sounds more like a cover of that band's oeuvre than it does an original composition. But then there are tracks like "Tiny Spiders In My Hair", which mates a piano line reminiscent of John Carpenter's film scores to industrial percussion, dub guitar, and screaming metal vocals. It's a bit schizophrenic for just one track, and it is indicative of the entire record. There's just too much of a good thing on display here, which stops the record from being truly great. And that is disappointing, because this is a good record and with its unexpected twists that impart an anxious "what am I going to hear next" vibe, it is fun to listen to. Fans of the post-rock genre will get a couple of thrills out of this record.

3 stars

Asva - Futurist's Against The Ocean

2006-01-21T09:34:00.000-05:00

For those that are paying attention to the doom metal scene, this release sells itself without one note being heard. Just look at who is involved and their pedigree: G. Stuart Dahlquist from Sunn O))) on bass, B.R.A.D. from Burning Witch on drums and vocals, and Trey Spruance from Mr. Bungle on guitar, piano and tubular bells. Rounding out the line up is John Schuller from Master Musicians of Bukkake on guitar, Jessika Kenney from Gamelan Pacifica on vocals, and Troy Swanson on organ. If that was not enough to get the salivary glands pumping, Billy Anderson is behind the producer's desk like he was for High On Fire, Sleep, and Melvins. For those familiar with the names, Asva's sound should come as no surprise. But where other avant-metal supergroups (Fantomas, for example, or Tomahawk) don't deliver on their promise, Asva makes a glorious heavy racket, removed from the regular tropes of the doom scene enough to make both this group and this album something really special. The opening track,"Kill The Dog, Tie Them Up, Then Take The Money" is the most conventional track, moving at a glacial pace, with guitars inching from one note to the next, almost as if the metallic drone of the amps were playing through the guitars, and not the other way around. But by track three, "Fortune", the ambience has taken over, and the metal melts away. Droning organ, loping bass, and spiders-on-the-fretboard guitar scrapings set the scene for Kenney's vocals. More operatic (think Diamandia Galas) than tortured (like Khanate's Alan Dubin), Kenney's pure tones are easier on the ear than the scene-standard barked whisper/growling. This leads right into the epic closer, "By The Well of Living and Seeing", which melds the ambience of "Fortune" and the droning assault of "Kill The Dog" to Kenney's multi-tracked chanting vocals and a guitar straight out of an Ennio Morricone score. It is a perfect summation of the album, and Asva's sound in general: operatic ambient western doom metal, to pin words on it. Recommended heartily for those interested in the avant-metal scene.

Shat - "The Best of Shat: The Cunt Chronicles"

2006-01-21T09:29:00.000-05:00

There are bands that make funny music, and there are bands that try to but fail. Shat fails. Musically, Shat is a competent punk band, similar at times to System of a Down, early Black Flag, or Germs, to name a few. However, Shat's secret weapon is singer Jeff Wood. He is one of the most single-minded lyricists in recent memory, focusing his muse on bodily functions, sex, pornography, and sexually transmitted diseases. As a result, Shat is offensive in every possible way, from the album artwork (showing Wood with an assortment of blow-up dolls in various positions) to the song titles and lyrics. Over the course of its 65 tracks and 70 minutes, the album's relentless misogyny and fourth-grade locker room humor wear thin. Heard in small doses, Shat is mildly amusing. But the experience of actually listening to the album in its entirety is an endurance exercise. The joke gets stale, the repetitive lyrics begin to grate (most tracks are only the title of the song repeated ad nauseum, one in Spanish), and the guilty pleasure wears off, leaving only the guilt that time spent listening to this album could have been better spent doing almost anything else. Reading the track listing, it is hard to believe that someone would take the time to produce something this infantile, and then put their face on it and sell it. But at the same time, for those who bathroom humor appeals to, track titles like "Grandpa s Playing With His Penis", "The Whoremons", "Look At Those Breasts" or "Sex With Your Pets" amuse to no end. A great album if you're a twelve year-old boy who looks up dirty words in the dictionary, but not for anyone else. Interestingly, this may be one of the few albums that get held in higher esteem without hearing it.

1 star

Coil - "The Ape of Naples"

2006-01-07T19:06:00.000-05:00

Listening to The Ape of Naples is a bittersweet experience. As the last album recorded during Jhonn Balance's lifetime, it serves as a final statement and summation of the band's multi-faceted career. Naples is much more of a "classic" sounding Coil album (in the vein of Love's Secret Domain and Music To Play In the Dark Vol. One) than more recent outings (such as ANS, Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil, or Astral Disaster). Ape is made up of recording sessions that date back to the mid-nineties, recordings done for Trent Reznor's nothing label, and more recent works that were still getting worked out in a live environment ("Triple Sun," "Tattooed Man"). Balance and Peter Christopherson are joined by the likes of Danny Hyde, Thighpaulsandra, Ossian Brown, Cliff Stapleton, and Mike Yorke, depending on the track. Which would lead one to the assumption that the album would sound dis-jointed, with a rotating cast of characters involved. The magic of Coil is that the album flows as smoothly as it does, not as if it was pieced together over the years and with different collaborators. The focus of the album seems to be (perhaps consciously, perhaps not) on Jhonn's beautiful and expressive voice. All tracks feature his vocals, notably the industro-goth of "Heaven's Blade," the twisted circus atmospheres of "Tattooed Man," and quite possibly the saddest song Coil ever recorded, a cover of BBC favorite Are You Being Served's theme song, "Going Up." This last is a highlight in the Coil catalog with Balance duetting with Francois Testroy, telling the listener that "it just is." The painful acceptance of this line encapsulates the experience of the album -- Jhonn is gone, we must move on and continue. The Ape of Naples is one of Coil's best albums and one of the best albums of 2005.

4.5 stars

Julian Cope - "Dark Orgasm"

2006-01-07T19:05:00.000-05:00

In a way, you should be thankful. After what seemed ages, Julian Cope finally returned to releasing song-based albums, and two in one year, at that. But whereas Citizen Cain'd sounded under-produced but rocked harder than anything else in his catalog, Dark Orgasm barely ups the production, and falls flat on its face in the rock & roll department. Things that are most endearing to long-time Cope fans (for example, a sense for melodic pop, or his unique and beautiful voice) are A.W.O.L. on this album. There's nothing even close to a pop song present. Cope sings in a '70s-metal sneer (think Thin Lizzy or the Guess Who), which may be the type of singing that his voice is most unsuited for. An evocative instrument becomes here an annoying whinny. "Nothing to Lose Except My Mind" is indicative of the problems with this record. For unexplained reasons, crowd noise (massive, at that) is grafted onto the track. Guitars are turned very low in the mix, the bass is muddied, and the vocals are barely understandable. If the intent was to match the fidelity on mid-career Led Zeppelin, then it achieves its goal. Artistic intent or not, once the novelty has worn off, its just not a good song. Perhaps, with more work and an outside producer, it could have been turned into something great. Because there are seeds of a great song here. But no. These opportunities are missed at every infuriating turn. It's not all bad, though. Like any of Cope's solo albums, there are usually some diamonds hidden among the tracks. Dark Orgasm's great track is "I've Found a New Way to Love Her," which manages to harness a lo-fi production urge and contain classic Cope melodies. The Mellotron samples that appear in this song at loud volume continue to bring a smile to the face after repeated listening. And then there's "The Death and Resurrection Show," which occupies the entirety of the completely unnecessary second disc in the set. For 21 minutes, Cope and band embrace their prog rock tendencies and bash through a multi-part suite that sounds as if Spinal Tap's "Jazz Odyssey" had lyrics. How you process this will determine your enjoyment of the album.

2 stars

One Mile North - "Glass Wars"

2006-01-07T19:04:00.000-05:00

John Hills and Mark Bajuk weave a gossamer web of melodic guitars and synthesizers on One Mile North's debut album Glass Wars. Like a minimalist Godspeed You Black Emperor! (admittedly their easiest comparison), the duo create gorgeous, meditative textures using very simple arrangements with very little production effects. Using simple reverb, Hills' guitars tell evocative musical tales of sadness, desolation, and devastation, augmented by Bajuk's restrained synth work. The duo mines a musical vein that can't be called post-rock (too simple), can't be called rock (it doesn't), and can't be called indie (its not hip enough). What Glass Wars is, though, is brilliant, beautiful, and moving. "Parents Arrive" could stand as indicative of the group -- a somber guitar line establishes itself, a Möbius strip of melodic ideas, adding and subtracting elements as it progresses, turning in over itself, buttressed by a droning synth pulse. With only the title to go on for context, the track evokes feelings of both the end of fun when the parents do arrive, and also the comforting feel of one's elders returning home. "Insides" appears in the second half of the album, and somewhat anomalously it contains the closest thing to percussion on the album. Again, Hills gentle fretwork is out front, but a glitchy something (looped vinyl scratching, maybe?) provides the forward momentum, like a lost B-side from Piano Magic. Something as simple-sounding as this album can't really be categorized; it stands outside of genre pigeonholing. Put it in the category of simply amazing. A quiet masterpiece in the tradition of the Durutti Column's best work, best suited for late nights and contemplation.

3.5 stars

Kohei Mihara - "Cocolotica"

2006-01-07T19:03:00.000-05:00

Tokyo's own Kohe Mihara spins things up a bit in the trip-hop scene with this, his debut album, Cocolotica. "Cocolo" translates roughly as "heart, mind, soul, and spirit," which is an apt description of what Mihara puts into the grooves of this record. Cocolotica swings from start to finish, without a bum track anywhere to be found, and across an amazing variety of beats, vibes, and textures. "Imitatrix," the second track, sets up a shuffling beat with a jazzy keyboard vamp over it. Mihara takes this template and injects some booty-moving percussion into the track, but keeps the beat blunted, as it were, for maximum head-nodding. Matter of fact, this album is a serious contender for the title of best head-nodding album ever made. It sounds great in headphones, and the beats are uniformly and uniquely interesting, constantly changing, never just looping. There's a hazy/smoky vibe in the air, evoking the ideal college dorm room. Cocolotica's standout track, though, is "Agalychnis Callidryas," a beautiful tune that merges Boards of Canada's sense of melody with Ulrich Schnauss' skill with beats. It is almost unfair to single out only a couple of the album's tracks, because each track, while perhaps structurally similar to the others, is so unique and compelling in its execution. This is one of 2005's better releases, and hopefully the start of something great from Kohe Mihara.

4 stars

Phil Western - "The Escapist"

2006-01-07T19:02:00.000-05:00

Escapist, Phil Western's first solo work, does not, on the surface, sound like it was produced by the same person who was responsible for parts of Hilt and Download. It's too "normal" in comparison. But Western (aka DJ Philth), stripped of his more out-there collaborators (like Skinny Puppy's CEvin Key) and working here mostly by himself (with several guests on various tracks) sounds completely within his element. "I No Really" shows Western's industrial roots, with its clattering, metallic percussion, deep house bass, and samples of a woman undergoing some sort of surgery. Several tracks later, deep into the second half of the album, he kicks out "Full Moon," a 12-minute homage to Krautrock/house. Most of the album sounds entirely electronic, but violins (from Dan Handrabur and Michael Louw) appear, as do submerged vocals from Barb Kennedy. "Pleasures Gained" features droning vocals from Western's over dark-ambient/shoegaze soundscapes, and ends up encapsulating the psychedelic/anything-goes vibe of the whole album. Ethnic percussion, effected guitars, treated vocals -- everything including the kitchen sink. Recommended for anyone lucky enough to find a copy, Escapist will age well and remain a surprising experience upon repeated listening.

3.5 stars

Alex Skolnick Trio - "Transformation"

2006-01-07T19:01:00.001-05:00

Alex Skolnick made his name as a six-string guitar slinger in the Bay Area thrash legends Testament. Apparently fed up with metal, he quit the band, went to music school, and hooked up with a couple of jazzers (Nathan Peck on double bass and Matt Zebroski on drums), with the idea of doing exploratory fusion-jazz, using the heavy metal songbook for standards (and inspiration) and not the "regular" (or, it could be argued, "over-covered") classic jazz songbook. This, their second album, features radically reworked versions of Judas Priest, Pink Floyd, Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, and Ronnie James Dio, evenly balanced with some original compositions. And while this album is very well played, with excellent performances from all involved (especially Zebroski's work on "IMV/The Trooper" and Skolnick's guitar on "Money"), the album as a whole comes off much like works by the Bad Plus, that is, a well-executed gimmick. That may turn some listeners off, but how many dyed-in-the-wool metal fans are going to tolerate even one minute of what Spinal Tap termed a "jazz odyssey"? And how many dyed-in-the-wool jazz fans are going to seek out the original version of Priest's "Electric Eye" to do a comparison with the version here? Probably not too many. If you're somehow either one of these two extremes, this album will probably work for you, both in the background and on the headphones.

3.5 stars

Rhythm Buddies - "Thunderbird Suite"

2006-01-07T19:01:00.000-05:00

King Crimson's rhythm section, Trey Gunn (Warr guitar) and Pat Mastelotto (electronic drums) pair up for 45 minutes of fearless prog rock improvisation on Thunderbird Suite. Split into three sections for easy indexing, the suite is billed on the back of the CD as "no overdubs! No edits! No bs!" and appears to have been recorded somewhere around 2002, a fertile time for the Crimson boys, who were working on The Power to Believe at the time. Mastelotto sets up numerous drum loops with one hand while embellishing them with the other, as Gunn works his way through his pedals and processors, playing both bass and lead parts on his Warr guitar. Changing moods as it progresses, Suite covers the full range of sound, from near-ambient textures to full-on jazz fusion, to what could be classified as intelligent dance music. The happy interplay between them rewards active listening and multiple replays with its many layers of percussion and overlapping melodies. One hundred percent necessary for fans of King Crimson and highly recommended for everyone else, Thunderbird Suite is an excellent release from a pair of highly skilled musicians who also work under the banner of TU.

4 stars

The Detroit Escalator Co. - "Black Buildings"

2006-01-07T18:59:00.001-05:00

Neil Ollivierra takes a more clinical approach to Detroit techno on Black Buildings, but don't take that as a negative. Whereas Soundtrack (313) was based on field recordings of the city, this album exists outside of any specific geographic location, breaking free of the limitations inherent in the "Detroit techno" genre. Black Buildings is a subtle and simply fantastic slice of late-'90s ambient techno. Simple keyboard lines establish and then interweave, gentle bass and beats rumble around in the low end, and the generally blissful ambience of the album slowly permeates the room it is played in over 70 minutes. "Gathering Light" is a highlight, with a gentle but insistent melody line repeating over a soft, luxurious bed of synth pads. This is an excellent release from an artist who really should release more material.

3.5 stars

Acid Mothers Temple SWR

2006-01-07T18:59:00.000-05:00

Acid Mothers Temple SWR ("Stone! Woman! Record!," according to the artwork) is a different beast than the regular Melting Paraiso ensemble. Makoto Kawabata joins Tsuyama Atsushi, on bass and vocals, and Yoshida Tatsuya, who brings a jazz feel to the drums. The liner notes state that this was recorded in a single ten-hour-long session, but the record does not feel like something that was jammed out onto tape. Although 13 titles are listed on the back cover, the tracks segue into each other almost seamlessly, as if they were movements in a single piece, similar in structure to one side of Faust's Tapes. To wit, the post-math rock guitar soloing on "Good Buddha" blends into the slinky bass drone/groove of "Mecochin of Love." Atsushi's chanting on that track meets a solo flute (uncredited as to who is playing it) and morphs into the stomping tribal space music of "Bad Buddha." And so on, for exactly 60 minutes. First it's acid rock, then it's Beefheart in Japan, then freak-folk, then a head-shaking feedback assault. And of course, it's all great. The SWR lineup appears to be a one-off, but one would hope that they would record again, as this record is one of the most diverse and accessible offerings that exists in the extensive Acid Mothers canon. As such, it is highly recommended for newcomers as an easy in.

3.5 stars

Acid Mothers Temple - "Last Concert In Tokyo"

2006-01-07T18:58:00.000-05:00

Bye-bye hi-fi. High fidelity, that is. For this, the umpteenth live release from Acid Mothers Temple, exists not as a less-than-perfect document of a raucous live show, but as the audio equivalent of the sludge that gets squeegeed from the floor after a raucous live show. Drums blur into static, the bass is occasionally audible, but the guitar is lost. The most prominent instruments on this recording appear to be Cotton Casino and Higashi Hiroshi's synthesizers. Pushing the tolerance of even the hardcore collector, Last Concert in Tokyo sounds like Merzbow, in that every "melody" is subsumed by complete noise and overdriven microphones. And that's a shame, because when Acid Mothers are on, they're on, and this sounds like a show where they were really feeling it. But it is absolutely no pleasure to listen to, for the low-quality mono recording and the annoyance of having four tracks listed on the back cover, but all are indexed as one long track. Avoid.

1 star

Acid Mothers Temple - "Minstrel In The Galaxy"

2006-01-07T18:57:00.000-05:00

Minstrel in the Galaxy exists in another universe from the rest of the AMT catalog, being one of their most restrained and spacy releases. Joined by Oni and Pikachu, the two vixens from Afrirampo, on vocals, usual suspects Tsuyama Atsushi (on bass, vocals, and acoustic guitar), Higashi Hiroshi (on synths and guitar), Koizumi Hajime (drummer extraordinaire), and Kawabata Makoto (on guitar, bouzouki, sarangi, and tamoura) keep things very quiet. Sounding as if Scorn covered Pink Floyd's "Echoes," this record documents a rare exercise for the band. And a well-executed exercise, as well. Building over the course of its near 40-minute running time, the title track starts off in a cold, distant part of the galaxy, but slowly heats up, first with Hiroshi's keys, then Atsushi's Krautrock-groove bass, joined by Hajime's steadily more frenzied skins work and Makoto schooling the doubters with acid-drenched guitar soloing. And then, while you're not paying attention, the skies open and the band is in full freak-out mode that aligns itself with the sound AMT is famous for, before grooving back to Planet Earth. The record closes with a fantastic acoustic folk number, "St. Bel Canta," that again showcases a new face for the group, like interstellar psychedelic troubadours, in a way. A unique highlight in the extensive Acid Mothers catalog, Minstrel is recommended highly.

4 stars

Acid Mothers Temple - "Hypnotic Liquid Machine from the Golden Utopia"

2006-01-07T18:55:00.000-05:00

Acid Mothers Temple aim for the title of Most Prolific Band Ever with this "single," yet another limited edition (1,000) and available only on tour. And "single" is in quotes because while consisting of only two tracks, this is AMT after all, so it tops out at an album-length 44 minutes of trademarked nutso-freakazoid psychedelia. Mainstays Kawabata Makoto, Tsuyama Atsushi, Higashi Hiroshi, and Koizumi Hajime are joined by second drummer Maruichi and Magic Aum Jiji, who is credited with Jew's harp and "erotic underground." The title track is a barely controllable beast, with two drummers fighting for rhythmic supremacy while everyone else solos at the same time. It is a totally raging, cacophonous freak-out noise until the middle section, where everything drops away except Jiji's bouncing-yet-droning Jew's harp, run through massive amounts of reverb and echo. And when the blood pressure has calmed and the sweat has started to dry off your mind, they all kick in again with Makoto just ripping his guitar strings to shreds, taking the Hendrixian guitar solo blueprint and burning it forever. Track two is a little more special, being a live jam/cover of Frank Zappa's "Willie the Pimp." For what it is worth, Makoto solidly apes Zappa's guitar tone and style, and whoever is on vocals does a serviceable Beefheart imitation. The track does suffer from low fidelity, but it only enhances the experience, lending it a bootleg ambience. For both music and wrestling geeks, this song is credited to Captain Bret Heart and Terry Funk Zappa. An excellent release, but it will probably be hard to find as time goes by.

4 stars

Clock DVA - "Sign"

2006-01-07T18:54:00.000-05:00

Clock DVA is best appreciated in the context of Kraftwerk, such that the band takes the man-machine aesthetic of Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider and pushes it into a less romanticized, more clinical computer age. Through albums like Advantage, Buried Dreams, and Man-Amplified, Clock DVA evolved from an industrial-soul band into the true inheritors of the Kraftwerkian machines-make-music mantle. Sign appears to be their final and hence definitive statement, and it shows the evolution of the cyber-ideas that Adi Newton has espoused throughout his career. Man-Amplified sounded very cold and sterile; Digital Soundtracks less so. Sign, however, introduces a warmth and feeling into the sound, proving that machines are truly complete when they can feel emotion. "Signal" brings everything to the table, warm synthesizer tones and samples of NASA astronauts talking about the overwhelming emotions they felt on various Apollo missions. "Re-Entry" brings a guitar into the mix, further humanizing Clock's electronics through human hands. "Return to Blue" is the most human-sounding track on the album, perhaps in the band's oeuvre, with a melancholy vocal track and piano line. Sometimes it is forgotten that "techno" is short for "technology," but Clock always keeps that idea in the foreground. "Voice Recognition Test" and "Eternity" hark back to the Man-Amplified sound that Clock is most known for, with arpeggiating synths and an incessant beat. Casual fans of industrial and electronic music will want to pick this up, and it is essential for the discriminating techno-geek.

3.5 stars

Julian Cope - "Citizen Cain'd"

2006-01-07T18:52:00.000-05:00

Well, it's not pop music, for those expecting such. Interpreter was the last pop-oriented album from Liverpool's psychedelic genius Julian Cope, in 1996. In the intervening nine years, it seemed like he'd turned his attentions away from music almost completely, especially after the release of his book The Modern Antiquarian. After that, it was year after interminable year of hearing only that a new book was on the way, or an ambient album (Odin) or some less-than-great Krautrock/glam-freakage (An Audience With the Cope) would appear, frequently to disappoint. Which, in some perverse way, is okay, because it makes the excellent Citizen Cain'd even better. This is shamanic pop music of the highest, most lysergic order, existing in a universe where the Stooges conquered the Top Ten and new wave never happened. Embracing lo-fi production methods, Cope and band summon the spirit that infused the first MC5 record -- a live, first-takes-only mentality. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the second track, "I Can't Hardly Stand It," which solidifies Julian's garage rock credibility, with a punky garage rocker that pays homage to Cope's heroes the Monks, who incessantly recorded with all the meters firmly in the red. "Dying to Meet You" is also a great rocker, with some invigorating guitar leads and a barely controlled Julian on vocals. "Feels Like a Crying Shame" opens the second half of the album with almost 12 minutes of pure rock groove, with nimble drums keeping time as the acoustic and electric guitars move in and around each other, building and building over the length of the track. This is rock-as-trance music. All in all, an excellent return to song-based songwriting from the Drude, a good entry point for people new to the man, or to those who may have (briefly) lost the faith. [This album was released on two CDs, running under a total 72 minutes. The reason given at the time from Julian was that the album was too psychically exhausting as one piece, and split it up. And while one can appreciate the artist's experience of listening to his or her own work, it's kind of inconvenient to try to listen to in its entirety.]

4 stars

Robert Fripp - "November Suite: 1996 Soundscapes - Live at Green Park Station"

2006-01-07T18:51:00.000-05:00

When Robert Fripp is away from King Crimson, truly magical things come from his guitar. In a solo context, Fripp presents Soundscapes, built on the tradition of Frippertronics, a mode of musical expression he pioneered with Brian Eno over the course of two albums in the 1970s, No Pussyfooting and Evening Star. Those early albums relied on actual physical loops of tape, adding new elements with each repetition. Such limitations no longer exist. Working here in the realm of one guitar, and many, many effects processors, Fripp produces tones and textures that one would not assume are coming from a guitar at all. In 1996, Fripp was invited to play in a converted railway station in Bath, England. For three hours he graced passers-by with his most easily classified as contemporary space music (such as is heard on the Hearts of Space radio show), deprecatingly described by Fripp as "bleeping and droning." In fact, its in the middle of these. A very gentle, almost ambient atmosphere slowly takes over any room that the album is playing in. Closer listening is rewarded -- there is a lot happening on a very slow schedule, similar to Eno's Thursday Afternoon album. This is a precis of the entire three-hour program that was presented, edited to include every note played, but not every repetition of the note, much like the early-'90s version of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach. This is definitely a release for fans of the guitarist, and for fans of space music in general.

4 stars

Thomas Fehlmann - "Good Fridge. Flowing: NineZeroNineEight"

2006-01-07T18:50:00.000-05:00

Thomas Fehlmann is the Johnny Appleseed of the '90s electronic music scene. Through working with the Orb's Alex Patterson and Basic Channel's Moritz Von Oswald and producing Sun Electric and Eddie Flashin' Fowlkes, Fehlmann's signature can be found in a large amount of music at the end of that decade. Good Fridge is the summing-up of his activities in the decade of techno, crossing and cross-pollinating genres over the course of its 20 tracks. Straight-up dancefloor, dub, schaffel, ambient house; all are to be found here. And all are uniformly excellent, with a track-to-track mix that efficiently blends disparate tracks together into a seamless whole. Highlights include opener "Superfruhstuck," a bouncy dub-house track, the ambient bliss of "Hermosa," and "Schizophrenia," a collaboration with Von Oswald. Overall an excellent listening experience for fans of electronic music, and a decent introduction for new ears.

4 stars

Coil - "Stolen and Contaminated Songs"

2006-01-07T18:49:00.000-05:00

Truly one of the highlights in an excellent catalog of work, Stolen and Contaminated Songs isn't even a proper "album," but a collection of outtakes from the Love's Secret Domain sessions. And what sessions they were to have such a wealth of superb material that was leftover. Showcasing Coil's diversity, the album veers from the orchestrated classicisms of "Original Chaostrophy" and "Corybantic Ennui" to the slow, mutant lounge shuffle of "Omlagus Garfungiloops" and the utter despair of "Who'll Fall?" The last track there is a highlight, a detuned guitar and phone line noises underscore a harrowing answering machine message from someone who's friend has just committed suicide. Haunting in its execution and utterly compelling. The peak of the album, and one of the band's best songs, "NASA-Arab," is placed in the middle of the album, and like the main pole in a circus tent, supports everything around it. Multiple swirling keyboard lines cross paths with a groovy bassline and the strangest syncopated drums on this planet. Close listening will bring about a trance-like state in the listener. This is a great album for people new to the magic of Coil, easier than Time Machines and better produced than Horse Rotorvator.

4.5 stars

Coil - "Unnatural History III"

2006-01-07T18:47:00.000-05:00

The Unnatural History series attempts, much like Stereolab's Switched On series, to collect scattered EP and compilation tracks from throughout Coil's career. This one covers mostly early-'90s material, centering on songs recorded around Love's Secret Domain, but it also includes some rare tracks dating back to the mid-'80s. "First Dark Ride" and "Baby Food" are excellent long-form explorations into sound sculpture, not resembling "songs" per se, but atmospheres and textures. These are followed by the intriguing "Music for Commercials," 11 bits of incidental music used in adverts for products like natural gas, accident insurance, perfume, and analgesics. Peter Christopherson's background in commercial video production and album design probably played a hand in getting the work. Coil transcend any accusations of "selling out" by creating music that still has their imprimatur on it, but work in a commercial setting. Very unique and unlike anything else in the Coil catalog. Also included is "Feeder," collaboration with Chris & Cosey. One of the more creepy songs on the album, a solo piano and cello begin the piece but are buried under a wall of noisy dub effects and John Balance's unearthly vocals, only to re-appear playing a twisted slow waltz. In Coil's extensive discography, this is a standout, but probably not the best place for neophytes, who would be better served by Love's Secret Domain or Stolen and Contaminated Songs.

4 stars

Coil - "Live One"

2006-01-07T18:46:00.000-05:00

In 2000, Coil shocked their fans by announcing a live concert at the Royal Albert Hall. This was to be, essentially, their first live performance, having had some abortive live shows in the very early 1980s. And so it was that on April 2 of that year, John Balance, Peter Christopherson, Ossian Brown, and Thighpaulsandra took the stage. What came forth was 50-or-so minutes of slowly undulating electronic drone, subtly shifting oscillating synthesizers and tapes of Thighpaulsandra's mother, opera singer Dorothy Lewis. Titled "The Industrial Use of Semen Will Revolutionise the Human Race," the concert is broken into three pieces, two of which, "Everything Keeps Dissolving" and "Chasms" make their debut appearance. "Chasms" evokes the spirit of early Tangerine Dream, with a melody and ambience that could appear as an outtake of Electronic Meditation. This set is not song-oriented at all, leaning towards the Time Machines album for source material and inspiration. It would be the first of a handful of times that Coil would appear so ambient. As such, Balance does not sing during this concert. The second disc documents a performance just two months later at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona, featuring the same three tracks but appending three new ones (two of which, "The Universe Is a Haunted House" and "Elves" make their debut here). Coil also adds William Breeze on viola to the group. His contribution is showcased on an ambient version of "Amethyst Deceivers" (which appears, incidentally, in four different versions over the course of the Live series), which is markedly different from its studio version. And whereas the first disc of the set is impeccably recorded, the second show suffers from a non-soundboard bootleg source tape. At times, conversations in the audience are audible, and there is some distortion as well. It should be noted that the first disc of this set was released previously, as a bonus CD for fans who mail-ordered Musick to Play in the Dark Volume 2. While probably not the first live Coil album to buy, this is a useful documentation of the beginning of this extremely short-lived phase.

3.5 stars

Coil - "Live Two"

2006-01-07T18:34:00.000-05:00

Live Two, recorded September 15, 2001 focuses on Coil's more challenging, dissonant, and aggressive material they were producing at the time on albums such as Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil and the "Restitution of Decayed Intelligence" EP. Coil are at this point John Balance, Peter Christopherson, Thighpaulsandra, and Tom Edwards. Balance takes the spotlight as vocalist this time, appearing on all tracks. This is as opposed to Live One, where vocals were almost non-existent. The set features only one otherwise-unreleased track, the brutal electronic workout "What Kind of Animal Are You?." Balance rants and raves through this, at one point proclaiming himself a salamander, at others a dog. Make of it what you will, but it is compelling stuff. Coil resurrect "Blood From the Air," which dates back to Horse Rotorvator, in a new, almost lounge version. The set closes with the incredibly intense power electronics of "Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil," sixteen minutes of circulating drone and tortured vocals. This is unforgiving music, not for the timid, but rewarding for Coil fans and fans of experimental music.

3.5 stars

Coil - "Live Three"

2006-01-07T18:33:00.000-05:00

Coil's Live Three is a show from Bologna, in 2002. At the time, Thighpaulsandra was on leave from Coil, touring with Spiritualized. In his place, John Balance, Peter Christopherson and Ossian Brown brought in Mike York and Cliff Stapleton. York's Hurdy Gurdy and Stapleton's Breton Pipes bring a wonderful new element to Coil's sound, a subtle feeling that everything is slightly unstable or askew. This time, three otherwise unavailable tracks appear, making this album essential for fans. "Anarcadia: All Horned Animals" is a ritual invocation to the muse, a dark-ambient beginning to the show, similar to the "Zwolf" EP by Coil's alter-ego ELpH. "Sick Mirrors (Version)" is a tribal percussion piece with Middle Eastern melodies and Balance's signature spoken-sung vocals. "Backwards, " the title track to the lost album that was to appear on Trent Reznor's nothing label, is a great groover, with a bouncing bassline and an absolutely ranting Balance in full-command of the stage. Of the unreleased tracks on all four live tracks, this is the best. Definitely worth picking up for both casual and hardcore fans.

4 stars

Projekct Four (King Crimson) - "West Coast Live"

2006-01-07T18:32:00.000-05:00

ProjeKct Four, the final "fractalization" (but, enigmatically, the third to be performed publicly) of King Crimson, is mainstay Robert Fripp, Trey Gunn, Pat Mastelotto, and Tony Levin. Where ProjeKct One (subtract Mastelotto, add Bill Bruford on drums) ventured deep into space-jazz territory, and ProjeKct Three (again, subtract Mastelotto from the ensemble, but this time add no one) explored the improvisatory possibilities of the power trio; ProjeKct Four is a full-out stomping, raging beast of a band. The bulk of the album is one long track, "Ghost," split into eight distinct sections, four of each acting as bookends of the album. Obviously improvised, the collective falter occasionally, but for the most part skip across genres with nimble acuity. Gunn and Fripp trade solos, Mastelotto creates percussion loops on the fly with one hand while playing around a beat with the other, and Levin holds everything together with one of the fattest bass tones he's ever recorded. "Deception of the Thrush" appears as well, and it's a fantastic rendition, easily outstripping Crimson's version on the "Level Five" EP. Fripp's solo on this track, which is beautiful on other renditions of the song, is truly breath-taking here. Add Levin's groovy bass and Mastelotto's slow pounding to the mix, and this easily becomes of the best tracks produced by any of the Projekcts. While the accusation of "noodling" could be leveled at any of the Projekcts (One, especially), ProjeKct Four is probably the least noodly of them all. For Crimson fans, this is an essential purchase, for everyone else, you could do a lot worse. This is excellent stuff.

4 stars

Projekct Three (King Crimson) - "Masque"

2006-01-07T18:29:00.001-05:00

For the uninitiated, here's the story again: Robert Fripp decides to break up the six-man, "double-trio" configuration of King Crimson into smaller units to improvise in a live setting around the country in various permutations of membership. ProjeKct Three, which existed for a one-week tour of Austin Texas in 1999, included Fripp on guitar, Trey Gunn on touch guitar and talker, and Pat Mastelotto on "electronic traps & buttons," i.e., electronic percussion and loops. As represented on Masque, they were quite a beast to behold. Combining the space of ProjeKct One and the full-on rage of ProjeKct Four (both featuring Tony Levin, natch), Masque starts out with the skronk of "One" and then navigates through 12 more untitled but numbered tracks, through the furthest reaches of improvised rock music. Truly, these three individuals, working as a unit, produced some of the most revelatory live rock & roll being produced in the late 1990s. Incorporating Fripp's patented soundscapes and gentle, searching bass from Gunn, "Two" is a subtle groover with an excellent solo from Fripp. While the aim of the ProjeKct was to research new material for Crimson to use when it reunited (as it did, in 2000 for ConstruKction of Light), Three does not appear to contain much that turned up on that album, except for "Nine," which is an embryonic version of "The World's My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum." Compared with the final live show of ProjeKct Three that was released as part of the King Crimson Collector's Club series, this CD must fall a little short, but only for the reason that Mastelotto edited together aspects of different performances to create new tracks. As such, the album is not a true representation of what the band sounded like live, but is still excellent.

3.5 stars

The KLF - "Waiting For The Rites of Mu"

2006-01-07T18:29:00.000-05:00

This disc comprises the soundtracks to two short films created by Jimi Cauty and Bill Drummond, aka the KLF. First is "Waiting," a 42-minute "ambient video" where not much happens. Not much happens on the soundtrack, either. Snatches of KLF/Justified Ancients of Mu Mu material, Jimi Hendrix, church choirs, and much more all appear in the mix. But, divorced from the visuals of the film, there appears to be no coherence, no reason for the sounds that appear to appear when they do. When compared against the ambient house classic Chill Out, this is the red-headed step-child, unwanted and unloved. The second track is the soundtrack to The Rites of Mu, and appears to be narrated by Martin Sheen, doing his best to ape his narration from Apocalypse Now. Again, elements from previous KLF / JAMMS tracks appear in the mix, but in a more musical fashion than "Waiting." Ominous synths and a woman's choir underscore a tale spun by the narrator of a journalist traveling to the Isle of Jura to act as participant in the mysterious "Rites of Mu," which resemble something taken from The Wicker Man. Not for casual fans of the KLF, and probably not for fans who haven't seen the films these are the soundtracks for; this album remains a small disappointment when compared with the rest of the brilliant catalog that Cauty and Drummond have created, both together and apart.

2.5 stars

"Monsters Robots and Bug Men"

2006-01-07T18:28:00.000-05:00

Post-rock was still somewhat young when Monsters, Robots and Bug Men came along, and this compilation, subtitled "A User's Guide to the Rock Hinterland," is a real peach, showcasing bands from all over the musical map that somehow magically fall under the "post-rock" umbrella, from the shoegazing of Bowery Electric, Bardo Pond, and Jessamine to the mutant-dub of God and Godflesh, to the ambient drift of Flying Saucer Attack and Labradford. And while continuously mixed, the track order is mildly schizophrenic. But that's the point. In a post-rock world, the sunny psychedelic pop of Mercury Rev's "Everlasting Arm" can meld seamlessly into Flying Saucer Attack's dark-ambient "Feedback Song." Stereolab's motorik mantra "Les Yper-Yper Sound" can slide into Cul de Sac's Can homage, "Doldrums" and no one bats an eye. Nor should they. Attempting to condense a genre that encompasses everything into 155 minutes is a thankless task, but this album acquits itself admirably. While the compilation suffers from the fact that all of its tracks are readily available elsewhere, this is a great introduction to the genre.

3.5 stars

Tony Fink - "Mayowulf"

2006-01-07T18:27:00.000-05:00

Detroiter Tony Fink, shedding his grunge-band past, makes a major leap into the singer/songwriter mainstream with Mayowulf, his first solo effort. He is joined by a host of Detroit scenesters such as Jamie Monger and Scott McClintock from the Great Lakes Myth Society and Adam Walker from the Twilight Babies. Fink's accomplished acoustic guitar work is enhanced with guests on harmonica, bass, drums, synthesizers, bowed handsaw, and a 1970 Volvo for percussion. Showing maturity both in its music and in its lyrics, this is an album that speaks of an aging sensibility, an awareness of the passage of time and its broken hearts, hopes, and loves. "Becoming Petrified" brings the theme to light, with its opening stanza, "I am the light in the rain/I am no stranger than pain/I am a startling whisper/I am a cold blooded shiver." Fink's mournful vocals soar over a delicately plucked acoustic guitar and Nate Bynum's bass. "Strung-Over, Hung Out" is another track with a similar theme. It's a song of regret about binging on alcohol, and the ramifications of one's actions. "I know its getting bad when I can't make it to work til eleven/I don't even think I crashed until quarter to seven." But the tone of the album is not a sad marking of the passage of time, there's a definite charm in the grooves. "Skankz Need Jesus" tells the story of a man who had his heart broken by a less-than-perfect woman who needed some religious counseling. Of course, in Fink's vernacular, its much funnier. "The Rest You Want" begins with a mile-a-minute rap about waiting tables before changing into a driving guitar, bass and drum jam, reminiscent of Julian Cope's "Kolly Kibber's Birthday," topped off with a Spanish trumpet line from Ryan Nolan that kicks the track into the upper reaches of godhead. "Estelle," which follows, begins with Fink summing up the previous track with a spoken "that was great" before plucking a simple acoustic melody that is picked up by Bynum's banjo and percussion created by hitting various parts of Fink's car. Yes, it's a love song to a car, and with the subtle word play, becomes one of the highlights of the album. Mayowulf is an excellent example of a songwriter having found his feet and heading out for a long walk to use them.

4.5 stars

A Silver Mt. Zion - "This is Our Punk Rock Thee Rusted Satellites Gather + Sing"

2006-01-07T18:26:00.000-05:00

Things just keep getting bigger with A Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra. This album, their third, sees another incremental change in the band name, and a bump in membership. Though still the core septet from their previous effort, they are joined this time by a 22-member choir. So, with the change in the makeup of the band comes a change in their sound. And on This Is Our Punk-Rock Thee Rusted Satellites Gather + Sing, A Silver Mt. Zion have finally gotten huge. Opening track "Sow Some Lonesome Corner So Many Flowers Bloom" moves the group out of the shadow of Godspeed You Black Emperor! and into their own. The choir take the front of the stage, singing simple "fa-la-la" lyrics in a dramatic melodic progression, expressing a purpose in ways that Godspeed has only hinted at. Halfway through the choir stops and are replaced by a guitar and violin duet that swims in the melancholy waters of the first album, before erupting into a majestic climax with a full band. Whereas in the past the band has refrained from really delivering on a build-up, here all caution is thrown to the wind and it is comparable to the highest peaks of the GYBE! discography. The remaining tracks all feature Efrim on vocals, his cracked voice recalling Will Oldham's Palace, with an Appalachian folk vibe running throughout. Granted, this would be folk music of the saddest sort, but paired with a Quebecois' hopefulness in place of American despair. This Is Our Punk-Rock is the most satisfying and rewarding album that A Silver Mt. Zion have delivered.

Mark Van Hoen - "Playing With Time"

2006-01-07T18:25:00.000-05:00

One of the more underappreciated artists in the British electronica scene, Mark Van Hoen states his case for the defense of the genre with Playing With Time. Firmly in the late-'90s lush-ambient sound (that he helped establish through his work with Seefeel, Scala, and Locust), the album is a collection of generally short tracks (all but two under five minutes), each with a distinct mood. Perfectly sequenced, the album begins with "Real Love," featuring the heavily processed vocals of Holli Ashton (who appeared on Locust's Morning Light album) over a sparse dark ambient background, highly reminiscent of early Seefeel. While not continuously mixed, the tracks have distinct ebb and flow between them, carrying one over to another while simultaneously having distinct beginnings and endings. An ambient piece will be followed by a more beat-oriented track, and then something in between. The album closes with a majestic trilogy, "When Tomorrow Comes," "Love Is All" and an unnamed track. "Tomorrow" is a majestic keyboard / faux-orchestral piece, and fades seamlessly into "Love Is All," the other track on the record with vocals, this time from Lisa Millet. Van Hoen treats the vocal with heavy echo, delay, and other DSP effects to weave a tapestry of true subtle, shimmering beauty. The untitled closing track places the listener in ambient territory staked out decades previous by Brian Eno. Composed of several simple piano loops and a simple electronic bassline, the track is set in motion and allows the loops to play off and against each other over the course of its 30 minutes. This is a good album for newcomers to electronic music, as it is melodic, danceable, and chilled out, all in the space of 78 minutes.

4 stars