19 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Ba Da Bing Records has a history of releasing Natural Snow Buildings records of epic length. The Snowbringer Cult is a two-and-a-half hour album we reissued. Night Coercion Into The Company Of Witches is a three-hour album we reissued. Daughter of Darkness is an eight-hour album we reissued. And now, we present the most epic of all Natural Snow Buildings releases, the new album Terror’s Horns which almost reaches an astounding 45 minutes in length! Yes, in the world of NSB, the length of Terror’s Horns makes it arguably a single, but here is an album which encompasses all that makes this band great in doses that won’t cause you to fear you’re being hypnotized or in need of hydration.

It would be a stretch to call this Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte's pop record, for Terror's Horns continues in the duo's tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still pride themselves on a slow development, and the album's progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers that you will never unsee once experienced.

You can pre-order the album now, along with a special bonus, courtesy of the band. For those who mailorder and choose the Special Edition, you will additionally get a completely different record entitled The Ladder which, in classic Natural Snow Buildings form, is limited to fifty handmade/drawn/constructed CDs. These are gorgeous editions with stunning artwork. Also, the first 32 of you that order will get a limited print by Solange Gularte made especially for this edition.

19 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

I am not particularly familiar with any of the four artists involved in this unexpectedly audacious and unique album, but Celadon is definitely a kindred spirit to Important's previous iconoclastic, raga-influenced drone epics by Catherine Christer Hennix.  Charlemagne Palestine is yet another artist that unavoidably springs to mind, but favorably so: while this album is anything but derivative, Maja Ratkje and her collaborators share his willingness to take drone music into some very dissonant, uncategorizable, and cathartic territory.  Put more bluntly: Celadon is probably not for the average drone fan, as Ratkje's vocals gradually build to an almost demonic, window-rattling intensity, but it is nevertheless a bold, striking, and deceptively ferocious artistic statement that is like absolutely nothing else that I have heard.

Important

There are a number of curious elements to Celadon and not all of them have ready explanations.  For one, I have no idea how these four musicians are interconnected or how they all wound up together recording an album in this vein this amidst the fabled acoustics of Norway's Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum.  Yet another idiosyncrasy is the unusual choice of instrumentation, particularly Camille Norment's glass armonica, which I do not think I have ever heard so prominently on an album before (if ever).  Consisting of a series of glass bowls or goblets played with finger friction, Norment's armonica provides a haunting, hazy, and eerie backdrop throughout Celadon.  In fact, the opening "Beneath the Bough" largely feels like a stark duet between just the bleary shimmer of rubbed glass and Ratkje's chant-like, quasi-ritualistic vocals.  Wesseltoft and Galåen admittedly contribute some gently buzzing textures via harmonium and zither, but their presence does not truly come to the fore until the following "The Green Flood."

Initially, the lengthier "The Green Flood" just feels like more of the same, but as it progresses, it becomes clear that the album is slowly building into something considerably more daring and ambitious than its opening suggested.  The transformation is far from forced though: Celadon is primarily a languorously swaying reverie for much of its duration, keeping the music extremely minimal and spacious and allowing its darker underbelly to only surface slowly and organically through subtly massing islands of dissonance. By its halfway point, however, it is clear that "Flood" has sneakily become quite heavy, cohering into a dense miasma of uneasily harmonizing harmonium drones while Ratkje’s previously sedate vocals occasionally break into clear, banshee-like wails.  Initially, her trips into the upper registers maintain an operatic level of control and force, adding a welcome power and unpredictability to the piece.  On the final piece, however, the remaining thin veneer of mannered artifice is gutsily torn down, transforming those same soaring and angelic vocal crescendos into something positively feral-sounding.

"Afterglow" is initially quite similar to its predecessors, however, despite being a bit darker and more ominous right out of the gate.  That said, no amount of uneasily harmonizing drone thrum could have possibly prepared me for Maja’s blood-chilling howl that occurs around the six-minute mark.  From that point on, Celadon has far transcended its somewhat subdued and humble origins for good and we are in uncharted territory to stay.  Wisely, the vocals pyrotechnics do not continue unbroken, but any sense of calm is decisively shattered: while the quartet intermittently fade back into a smoldering equilibrium, there is always the threat that Ratkje will again erupt into something resembling a shrieking exorcism or menacingly low-register Tuvan throat-singing.  Such a performance would probably give me an instant headache in most other hands, but it does not here: the visceral explosiveness of Ratkje's vocals is certainly startling, extreme, and intense, but it feels more like a tour de force performance by an insanely gifted performer rather than a more modest talent pushing herself beyond her capabilities with reckless abandon.  Also, it not only fits the surrounding music, it elevates it into something rather amazing and otherworldly.

If Celadon has any flaws, they are definitely minor ones–mainly that it gets off to a fairly slow start and takes a long time to distinguish itself as a radical departure from more traditional drone.  Those somewhat meandering, improvisatory traits ultimately work in its favor though, making the explosive crescendo that much more stunning and satisfying.  Obviously, Maja Ratkj'’s almost-supernatural performance deserves a huge amount of credit for making this such a wonderful album, but the entire ensemble worked beautifully together.  While I was personally most enamored of Norment's glass armonica, all four musicians seamlessly cohered to form an egoless and dynamically simmering backdrop without a single misstep or false-move.   This is a genuinely prodigious achievement. I have absolutely no idea what I would even call this genre (Outsider drone? Pandit Pran Nath-damaged minimalism?), but I am certain that Celadon has decisively earned a place within its pantheon of classics.

Samples:

• Beneath The Bough
• The Green Flood
• Afterglow

 

18 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Sunn O)))’s Stephen O'Malley delivers an incredible solo work for Demdike Stare’s DDS imprint, recorded together with French 35-piece improv orchestra ONCEIM.

The dark interpreter, Stephen O'Malley ov Sunn 0))), presents his towering debut orchestral composition Gruidés; commissioned by French 35-piece improv orchestra ONCEIM - l'Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisation Musicales - and released thru Demdike Stare's DDS label.

In early 2014 O'Malley was approached by pianist and composer Frédéric Blondy to write a work for the orchestra, comprised of exceptional musicians from the fields of contemporary, jazz, experimental, improvisation and classical. Understandably intimidated by the prospect, but encouraged to "just be punk rock about it," the preternaturally gifted composer has conceived a technically demanding - for the players at least - and richly rewarding longform drone piece intently focused on harmonic experimentation and overtone study. During its 35-minute lifespan, Gruidés requires the musicians to sustain pitches for several minutes (which is difficult enough for strings, and a real feat of endurance for woodwind), yielding a gloaming spectra of eliding dissonance rent in sliding tone clusters and lucent geometries punctuated by a similar whipcrack percussion as used in his Scott 0))) collaboration. It makes great use of the acoustic qualities of Saint Merry church, central Paris, as captured in the recording of IRCAM's Augustin Muller and mastered by Matt Colton with a detached spaciousness evocatively distilled in the cover art by Jean-Luc Verna. It’s an incredibly immersive piece that comes highly recommended if you’re into the work of Phill Niblock, Alvin Lucier, Ellen Fullman, Harley Gaber and, indeed, Sunn 0))).

Via Boomkat.

12 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

The New Crimes is a dense, imposing boxed set in the way that legendary noise collections such as Ramleh's Awake and Sutcliffe Jugend's We Spit on Their Graves are. Previously released in 1995 in an edition of 10, this material obviously did not receive significant exposure. Murder Corporation might not be amongst the most well known of Italian noise artists, which is a shame given the diversity contained on these eight discs. However, the brown and murky, analog heavy lo-fi sound is one that can at times be impenetrable and oppressive. Though daunting, the varying approaches Moreno Daldosso uses in composition result in a diverse, yet still bleak and violent piece of art.

Menstrual Productions

MC's Moreno Daldosso has produced a body of work that fits in the dour, brown and grey morass that Atrax Morgue and Mauthausen Orchestra are known for, as is the scene's still active innovator Maurizio Bianchi.Murder Corporation stands out though, because while his work has the same bleak depressive sounds and fascination with death, there is more of a sense of anger in his work.This aggression and the related imagery give off a distinct parallel with gory slasher films, in the sense that there is enough self-awareness to not completely come across as the work of someone who is truly mentally disturbed.This violent sound does not feature throughout all eight hours of this set, but the detailed explosions of "Cannibal House" are less depressive and more aggressive.At the same time, "Abrasive Collective" has him emphasizing piercing, ringing type noises that resemble the most violent moments of a giallo soundtrack looped for four unrelenting minutes.

That is not to say that Daldosso creates purely violent sounds, however."Mutilated Corpse" immediately leads off with nauseous, pitch wobbling electronics and a rushing water like passage of noise that resembles some of Atrax Morgue's sickest work."Bleeding Face" has him employing more synthesizer like sounds, and with the punctuated moments of silence it is a bit less intense.His work, however, also strays into fields that would be more fitting for an experimental avant garde electronic album."Strangulated" focuses on distorted, yet wet sounding electronics are harsh yet more complex and distinct in nature, rather than a monochromatic blast."Rotary Pt. 1" is similar:it is clearly overdriven electronics but again drenched in its own unnatural sounding reverb to give an overall more idiosyncratic sound.

Vocals and rhythms also make a few, though successful appearances throughout this box set.On "Deathtime" they take the form of a human voice loop, pitch shifted and layered throughout the piece’s duration.By the end it is a crushing, intense wall of noise that sounds nothing like it began.On "Sucker" Daldosso employs more traditionally shouted vocals, but like his Italian contemporaries, they are so extremely distorted and processed to be anything but intelligible."Detention" and "Electrosex" both have him utilizing what sounds like a drum machine or sampler to generate crunchy, noise-laden rhythms that bounce between standard drum sounds and massive passages of distortion.

It is not at all surprising that an artist named Murder Corporation would have created such a desolate and depressing work, but the variation and depth belies the seemingly monochromatic subject matter.The New Crimes is a surprisingly diverse, yet harsh electronic collection that may be predictable in its approach, but the actual music covers the gamut of styles to keep it engaging.All eight discs in a row may be a bit too much, but Daldosso keeps the sound fresh and dynamic even over long stretches of the material.

samples:

• Mutilated Corpse
• Strangulated
• Electrosex

 

12 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

In a perfect world, an artist of Amara Touré’s caliber would need no introduction at all, but the real world is weird and mysterious enough to definitely warrant one in this case, so here it is: Touré’s innovative, sensuous, and sexy Cuban-influenced grooves basically ruled the nightlife in Cameroon and Senegal for roughly two decades, but he only recorded a handful of songs and then disappeared without a trace around 1980.  This collection compiles all of his known singles as well as his sole album and it is all great.  To my ears, this is a lock for the most crucial reissue of the year.

Analog Africa

The album kicks off with the only piece that most listeners are likely to have heard before: the smoky and slinky "N'Niyo," which surfaced on Honest Jon’s 2009 Africa Boogaloo collection.  Its original release date appears to be unknown, but it was recorded with The Black and White Ensemble in Cameroon sometime between 1973 and 1976.  Despite being one of his earliest releases, it is nonetheless a strong contender for Touré’s finest song.  If not, it still certainly exhibits all of characteristics that make Amara's work such a singular pleasure: a slow, lazily sexy Latin groove; smoky saxophone; spidery guitars; punchy horn stabs; strong hooks; and his own distinctively passionate and sadness-tinged vocals.  Notably, Touré was a vocalist/percussionist, so I would expect those to be the strongest aspects of his work, but the details that I actually like the most are the intricate, clean guitars and the wounded, lovesick-sounding horns.  Those details work, however, precisely because Touré had such a brilliantly intuitive grasp of mood and pace as a bandleader, avoiding all of the usual pitfalls of the era in favor of a stylish, understated, and deeply sensual aesthetic.

The rest of Touré’s work with The Black and White Ensemble (they recorded a total of three singles together) basically sticks to the same vein of smoldering, Latin-tinged sex music with a similarly consistent degree of success.  There are, however, some shades of mood that differentiate the six pieces.  "Temedy," for example, is a bit more funky and driving, while "Fatou" is a bit more breezy and tropical-feeling.  The only truly significant divergence is "N'ga Digne M’be," which sounds deeply indebted to America soul ballads of the era, which arguably makes it the weakest piece on the album.  I still like it, but it is primarily a vocal showcase, completely eschewing the Latin-influence and propulsive grooves that characterize Touré's best work.  The remaining pieces, however, ably fill that void (particularly "Lamento Cubano").

The final four songs are all culled from Touré's sole album, released in 1980 with Gabon's Orchestre Massako as his backing band.  Unsurprisingly, they are all wonderful as well, but they are a bit more muscular, adventurous, and urgent than Amara's earlier work.  They are also a lot more raw, sound-quality-wise, which I actually like (these pieces feel more "live" and immediate).  The best of the bunch by a landslide is "Salamouti," which boasts a wonderfully staccato and stumbling descending melody.  "Tela" is yet another stand-out due to its thick, lazily lagging bass line, but it is the closing "Africa" that is most attention-grabbing, as Orchestre Massako embellishes their funky, sinuous grooves with unexpectedly flanged and spacy guitars.

Overall, "Salamouti" is probably Amara's finest single moment, but I otherwise prefer his more sensuous and distinctive early singles to his full-length.  That said, Touré's voice and songwriting remained as strong as ever until the very end–I just happen to prefer my classic African music to be more Cuban-influenced and laid-back.  In any case, Analog Africa did a characteristically amazing job with this release, which is no small feat since the artist in question has not been seen in over 30 years and no one knows whether he is alive or dead.  To his credit, Samy Ben Redjeb found several associated musicians to interview and compiled a fairly comprehensive biography of a genuine enigma.  I wish that there had been more recordings to find: Touré's entire 10-year run with Le Star Band de Dakar as Senegal’s hottest nightclub musician (1958-1968) is entirely undocumented (recording studios were a tragic rarity in Africa back then).  Still, I will happily take what I can get: this is an essential release for anyone interested in African music and one of the true jewels of Analog Africa’s discography (alongside Diablos Del Ritmo, of course).

• Tela
• Salamouti
• N'Ga Digne M'Be

 

12 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Turn off the mechanical, logic-soaked part of your brain and sympathetic resonance sounds like a magic trick, and looks like one too. It’s the phenomenon that explains why opera singers can shatter glass from across the room with nothing but their voice. Whether bright or ominous, the spontaneous ring (or explosion) of an untouched body or an unplayed string is provocative. It is a sign of sound’s invisible inner life, the one that has nothing to do with intentions or compositions, the one that John Cage implied when he suggested that writing music was a means of "waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord." That is the sort of life Mike Majkowski is after on Neighbouring Objects, his latest cassette on Astral Spirits. The title suggests sympathetic resonance abstractly, but it also describes Majkowski’s instrumentation, which for the first time includes bass guitar, accordion, piano, and percussion alongside the core of his double bass. Magical though it may seem, Majkowski uses these tools to emphasize both the affective and the measurable, more physical properties of sound.

Astral Spirits

Even before it begins, "Chandelier/Gondola/Echoing Stars" makes the curious suggestion that a decorative light fixture, a Venetian mode of transportation, and several distant balls of plasma might have something in common, or might be, in some way, neighbors. Finding precise musical analogues for these objects is beside the point, but the piece is arranged into three parts, and those parts echo one another. The first one is populated by a tremulous drone that hums like an industrial saw in an empty warehouse. The sound is acoustic and fricative, filled with fluctuations and disturbances that highlight the space the sound is resonating in almost more than the sound itself. Taken together the source and the space produce a rough harmony that flashes and wanes like a candle.

The second section contains a higher pitched noise generated by a bow and strings, the grind and scrape of horsehair replacing the whir of the buzzsaw. The bowing is quick and sharp and, again, distinct from the accompanying tones that float around it. Here the relationship between the two components is more clearly established. As Majkowski moves up and down the neck of his concert bass, the ringing tones follow suit. This resolves suddenly into the final section, which combines elements from the first two with a melody played on electric bass and chimes. Those chimes twinkle like stars against the darker pulse of the drones and signal the completion of the song’s upward trajectory. Whatever the status of the objects in the title, all of Majkowski’s instruments finally line up, from the lowest register to the highest, in a kind of harmonic syzygy.

On the second side, "Carnival of Decay" utilizes similar techniques to render a more dramatic effect. Majkowski begins by interlacing his double bass and bass guitar. They swell and recede alternately, then merge into a single throbbing tone as a piano, an accordion, and a set of rattles enter the mix. After the accordion wheezes its last wheeze, the sound of Majkowski’s bow also disappears, leaving only a hollow murmur. A single note, which matches that murmur perfectly, is played on the piano over and over while a small host of squeaky toys chirp away like laughter. Sympathetic resonance anchors this piece too, but this time, instead of holding the different instruments together, the anchor drags the music down into the depths, where something sinister is apparently waiting. If the inner life of the instruments is the subject of side A, then side B showcases the inner life of the attentive mind, which resonates sympathetically with both the dreariest and most luminous of musical phenomena.

samples:

• Chandelier/Gondola/Echoing Stars
• Carnival of Decay (excerpt 1)
• Carnival of Decay (excerpt 2)

 

11 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

Also, ex-VTB member Nick Mott has a great new CD released on Lumberton Trading Company. The album is called 'Here Begins The Great Destroyer'.

11 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

After a string of Natural Snow Buildings reissues, each more elaborate (um, longer) then the last, Ba Da Bing presents our first ever release of NEW material from the band. For a group known for its use of horror imagery and lyricism, perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that this album clocks in at just under 45 minutes. If there ever was an album that served as the proper entry point for Natural Snow Buildings, Terror's Horns is it.

It would be a stretch to call this Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte's pop record, for Terror's Horns continues in the duo's tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still pride themselves on a slow development, and the album's progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers that you will never unsee once experienced. Featuring new artwork by Gularte which pays tribute to the backwoods horror of massacres involving chainsaws.

More information can be found here.

11 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

The end of 2013 saw the reformation of one of the most revered and respected late '80s UK alternative bands, LOOP.  The group, founded by Robert Hampson, hadn't played together since the early '90s, but got together to curate a night at the legendary All Tomorrow's Parties at Camber Sands. US dates followed in 2014 and they then got back in the studio to start recording.  The result is three brand new releases coming over the next year which see the band return to their hugely unique and era-defining sound whilst sounding fresh and exciting.

The first release is Array 1, four tracks and 32 mins of haunting, aggressive, beautiful noise.  "Precession," "Aphelion," "Coma" and "Radial" are the first songs to be heard from their recording session done in Sub Station Studios in Rosyth in Scotland with the current line-up of Robert Hampson (vocals/guitar), Hugo Morgan (bass), Wayne Maskell (drums) and Dan Boyd (guitar).  With only an early version of "Precession" having had any previous outing (at a show at the Garage in London at the end of 2014), this is the very first new music from the band since their third album, 1990’s lost classic A Gilded Eternity.

The next tracks will be released in the autumn in keeping with Loop's previous habit of putting out music in batches: Hampson describes it as "one project, with the same concept, delivered in bulletins."

More information can be found here.

11 July 2015

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Albums and Singles

England's Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground

by David Keenan

Revised & expanded edition

336 pages, hardback/paperback, 210mm x 148mm

Fully illustrated in colour.

* Full colour throughout

* Two new chapters and a significant number of new images

* Cover by Mark Titchner

Hardcover edition also includes:

FURFUR:

120-page A5 zine with all new, exclusive interviews and imagery from more provocateurs of the EHR universe: including Alex Binnie, Antal Nemeth, Chris Carter, Colin Potter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Drew McDowall, Ivan Pavlov, Jill Westwood, Jordi Valls, Matthew Levi Stevens, Paul Hurst and Christine Glover of Produktion, Robin Rimbaud and more TBC.

More information can be found here.