21 January 2018

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Albums and Singles

Ever since their cult favorite Half Dead Ganja Music album was reissued back in 2013, I have been fascinated by this deeply unusual "ethno-industrial" duo from France and have done a decent amount of digging to track down the rest of their back catalog. That has proven to be a somewhat convoluted task, leading to lots of dead blog links as well as a few wonderful unofficial compilations. In fact, several of the best songs on this new digital-only collection have appeared on those unofficial releases, while some others appear to have come from an untitled 1988 tape. Curiously, a lot of these experiments spanning 1984 to 1989 are just as good as anything that appeared on Vox Populi's formal albums (in some cases, even better), making this kind of a crucial bit of underground industrial archeology on Emotional Rescue's part. I suppose motivated or frugal listeners can probably find a lot of these songs elsewhere if they put their minds to it, but this is an extremely well-curated collection that provides an excellent introduction to one of the most creative, cool, and underappreciated bands of the '80s cassette underground.

Emotional Rescue

As with all Vox Populi! releases, the songs compiled on Magiques Créations predominantly feature the core duo of multi-instrumentalist Axel Kyrou and vocalist Mithra Khalatbary, but trying to figure out much beyond that is probably a doomed task (the untitled cassette, for example, credited a third member namedFRG MAN and Axel himself appeared as GNOUF TAP).It is probably safe to say several of the usual contributors from this era turned up though, such as Mithra's percussionist brother Arash and Pacific 231's Pierre Jolivet.Additionally, it is similarly hard to tell if this is entirely a studio recording, as several VP releases are mixtures of studio and live work.For the most part, however, Magiques Créations at least feels entirely like a studio creation–it is certainly somewhat lo-fi at times, but there are a lot of subtle and hallucinatory effects swirling around the periphery that probably would have been lost in a live setting.In any case, the loose thread that ostensibly holds these otherwise unconnected pieces together is that they chronicle the band's progression towards 1989's Aither, which Emotion Rescue has previously reissued and regard as a high-water mark of sorts.This collection makes a lot of sense in that context, as there is an increased emphasis on grooves and hooks that was mostly lacking from 1987's murkier, more atmospheric, and ritualistic-sounding Ganja Music.That said, most of these songs still sound a hell of a lot more like Ganja Music than the cleaner and more conventionally poppy Aither.The difference is subtle, but Magiques Créations still sounds like an experimental/industrial project with an unexpected talent for hooks and melody, while Aither sounds like an unusual internationalist pop group with some lingering sharp edges.Also, the palette here is generally still an endearingly primitive one, as the opening "Joue Joue" is just a few wobbly organ chords, a drum machine, a microphone, and some ingenious use of effects and (possibly) tape loops.

I might be imagining this, but I get the strong impression that Kyrou and Khalatbary's home was kind of a popular gathering place for musicians from many disparate backgrounds and that much of their work from this period came out of loosely structured jams that Kyrou later expanded and enhanced.As a result, there is a pervading sketch-like feel to many of these pieces, which generally unfold as propulsive and vibrant vamps on a single theme rather than compositions with distinct sections or a clear beginning and end.The delightful flipside to that approach, however, is that the best pieces sound spontaneous and fluid.Also, their exotic and slow, hazy grooves provide a fertile group for outré experimentation and bold flashes of creativity.That feature is best exemplified by "Ankaboot," in which roaring engine noises and crunching field recordings fitfully subsume a lazily funky bass and drum machine groove.Khalatbary's versatile and melodic vocals provide a similarly effective grounding and gravity, alternately imbuing these experiments with playful sensuousness, tender sincerity, or the feeling of a timeless ritual.In album highlight "Tchi Tchi Vox," for example, Mithra enhances a wonderfully off-kilter and plinking groove with sultry, cooing, and charismatic stream-of-consciousness vocals, yet she sounds like a reverb-swathed traditional Iranian singer in the propulsively throbbing "Jube Man."Elsewhere, as on "Remembering Ancient Flights," she resembles some kind of ancient priestess, while "Be Modar" feels like a warmly dreamlike lullaby.In a way, Vox Populi! strike a perfect balance with this album: Kyrou is the restlessly innovative ethno-industrial mad scientist and Mithra is the heart and soul.Some pieces are certainly weighted more heavily on one side than others, but that essential harmonious coexistence is always present and makes VP's art greater than the sum of its parts.

Magiques Créations has a significant shortcoming, it is merely that it is a grab bag of wonderful ideas that I would have loved to hear explored further.However, consistency and follow-through were not Vox Populi's greatest strengths during this fertile creative period, as they focused instead on tirelessly forging ahead creatively.Consequently, I am delighted that these experiments were documented at all and that someone has taken the time to shine a light on some of the underheard gems that got never got the attention they deserved.Vox Populi has always been an intriguing and unusual project, but this particular era is the one closest to my heart: this is the brief window where they started to become rhythmically inventive and hook-savvy, yet still maintained a primitive and ramshackle DIY charm.Also, while I very much appreciate the spirit and creativity of these obscure recordings, it should also be noted that this is a legitimately and improbably strong batch of varied material (there are saxophone solos!).An occasional song perhaps errs a bit towards filler, but the bulk of these eleven pieces are consistently catchy, inventive, and unusual.If an alternate reality existed in which Dead Can Dance and Bryn Jones teamed up to make a soulful bedroom minimal wave-influenced album in the mid '80s, it would probably sound a lot like this (and I am sure I would like it).I doubt it would be nearly as effortlessly psychedelic, free-wheeling, and loose-limbed as Magiques Créations though.Vox Populi were not self-consciously pulling other cultures into their art, nor were they particularly drawn towards darkness.Instead, they were just distilling what came naturally into something far more lysergic, beautiful, and unreal. When they got it just right, they sounded like no other band on earth.

Samples:

• Tchi Tchi Vox
• Jube Man
• Ankaboot

 

21 January 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

The wonderfully unsettling and playfully creepy The Gag File deservedly got a lot of attention last year, but Aaron Dilloway also quietly released another excellent album on a small Dutch label in the late fall. While less audacious and considerably less intent on evoking some kind of sad, wobbly, and hissing nightmare world, Switches is still a wonderfully bizarre, distinctive, and obsessive-sounding album. In fact, the sickly, frayed, and hypnotic locked groove-style loops of Switches almost feel like a perverse prelude to The Gag File, relentlessly repeating gnarled and disorienting snatches of half-melodies to peel away the last vestiges of sanity to prime me for the malevolent and Ligotti-esque funhouse to come.

Cejero

The opening piece, "Switch 2," sets a very clear tone for the album: for the most part, Switches is a very cryptic, inhuman, and "industrial" affair, resembling the work of a battery of squelching and clanking machines.There is a quite a bit of variety and character to be found in Dilloway's mechanized lunacy, however."Switch 2," for example, sounds like a pile-up of manically repeating tape loops of loudly sputtering belts and pulsing presses.There are a number of layers to Dilloway’s artistry, however, as Switches is far more than some ingeniously collaged field recordings, as tapes have an unwavering tendency to wind up considerably more erratic, jabbering, and ragged-sounding than they did before Aaron got his hands on them.In this case, for example, Dilloway evokes a factory where all the rusted, weary, and struggling machinery unexpectedly wrests itself from its moorings and turns on the workers.The following "Switch 17," however, is considerably less abrasive and hostile, unfolding as an endlessly repeating snatch of echoing backwards melody.That motif certainly has an appealingly eerie beauty, but that is only part of the picture, as Dilloway devotes most of his energies to the textures: it sounds like a skipping record being played through a malfunctioning receiver and blown-out speakers.The first side of the album is closed out with the starker and more percussive "Switch 15," a throbbing and pummeling rhythmic miasma of hollow pulses and visceral, distorted snarls.The overarching theme throughout the entire side is that of tape loop experimentation gone sick and wrong, albeit in a unexpectedly listenable way.I suspect no one picks up an Aaron Dilloway album in search of haunting piano melodies, but they turn up here anyway.

The second half of album keeps the rhythmic momentum going, yet takes it in a more somewhat more playful direction…at first.The lengthy "Switch 11-12" initially opens with a surprisingly light pinging and skipping "locked groove" motif, but it slowly becomes increasingly bolstered with mechanized heft and winds up as a shuddering and crunching juggernaut that moves tirelessly forward like a tank.It is hard to say exactly when "Switch 11" segues into "Switch 12," yet the piece gradually takes on the visceral and vaguely hostile feel of a power electronics performance, as a dense mass of oscillating machine noise takes over and Dilloway occasionally delves into reverberating metal percussion and something resembling distorted vocal howls.That show of force proves to be ephemeral though, as the bulk of the piece is devoted primarily to making subtle shifts in the massive, shuddering industrial rhythm (as well as some not so subtle ones).Basically, Dilloway treats a cacophony of looped machine noise like a techno producer would juggle high-hats and kick drums in a bangin’ new party jam (only Dilloway is not trying to fill a dancefloor so much as he is intend on finding new ways to grind and lurch).The album comes to an uncharacteristically melodic close with the piano-based "Switch 1," which beautifully blurs together a looping harp-like arpeggio with backwards bass tones to weave something weirdly hypnotic and phantasmal.It feels like I am watching a flickering scene from a '50s horror movie (most likely one featuring a haunted castle or a haunted island), yet the projector has gotten stuck and the image is endlessly skipping and starting to burn.By the end, the piece has deteriorated into utter unrecognizability, which is the only appropriate way for this album to end: a slow fade of gnarled, sickly sounding reels played on a dying machine that is increasingly unable to maintain even a semblance of the right speed.

Naturally, any album assembled from distressed and wiggly snatches of tape is destined to have a constrained palette, which is probably the sole caveat here: Dilloway's vision is undeniably driven by his choice of tools.I personally do not consider that a problem at all, as Dilloway has constrained himself quite squarely in my (dis)comfort zone.As far as tape loop-based experimentation is concerned, Dilloway's recent work is easily among the most entertaining and inventive fare that I have heard.Also, obsessively repeated looping patterns are exactly the sort of thing that I am drawn to like a moth.There are a number of folks that have made stellar work in that vein (Jason Lescalleet, William Basinski, The Loop Orchestra, Tape Loop Orchestra, etc.) and they all bring something unique to it.Dilloway's uniqueness lies in his deeply and intuitively deviant sensibility: this is arguably noise, but it is much more absorbing and fun than noise tends to be.An appreciation for the finer points of ugliness, decay, and black humor are such a fundamental part of Dilloway’s character that he can eschew raw power entirely and dwell instead on nuance and atmosphere without losing any bite.Switches is not a threat to unseat The Gag File as Dilloway’s definitive artistic statement of the year, but that is only because its lacks the gleefully macabre thematic hook of its predecessor.Viewed solely on the strength of the material, Switches is almost every bit as essential.

• Switch 17
• Switch 11-12
• Switch 1

 

21 January 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

After a bit of a lengthy hiatus, Jack Dangers has returned with quite a bombshell of a new Meat Beat album. Self-described as resembling "an MC Escher optical illusion that spirals around and around and never seems to end," Impossible Star feels like a deep and hallucinatory plunge into a dance club in a dread-filled, dystopian near-future. Everything I would expect from a new Meat Beat album is certainly present (vocoders, cool samples, infectious grooves, deep bass, vintage synths, etc.), yet Impossible Star feels like a large and unexpected leap forward. While Dangers has historically always been near the vanguard of fresh evolutions in dance and electronic music, this album is perversely backward-looking in a way, seamlessly synthesizing the best of MBM's previous directions into something fresh like a post-industrial magpie. As a result, Impossible Star does not feel like a definitive (and unavoidably ephemeral) representation of electronic music in 2018 so much as it feel like something much more ageless, prophetic, and deliciously warped.

Flexidisc

The brooding and claustrophobic opening piece, "ONE," is not a particularly representative glimpse of what is to come stylistically, yet it is perfect for establishing the disorienting and unnerving mood of the album: eerie synths ripple, shimmer, and dissonantly blur together and a cold, indistinct female voice appears that sounds like a looped intercom message reverberating through an abandoned concrete edifice.It feels like reality itself is evaporating into a deeply alienating and lonely dream.The following "Bass Playa" does not dispel that feeling of inhumanity and isolation much, but the sickly and skittering jazz-inflected groove that kicks in at least signals that the album has begun in earnest.It is not until the next piece ("We Are Surrounded"), however, that it becomes clear that Dangers has some truly inspired new material to share.I hate to compare Dangers to anyone, but "Surrounded" unavoidably calls to mind the thrill of classic Aphex Twin, as it mingles a wonderfully erratic, jabbering, and squiggling synth motif with a propulsive groove and a queasily uncomfortable progression of blurred chords.It instantly became my favorite song on the album, as the sputtering derangement of the synth "melody" is wonderfully unsettling, unpredictable, and visceral.Eventually, the groove collapses into an outro that sounds like a confused and gibbering computer alone in an abandoned control room.That outro illustrates the evocative and unusual sequencing that pervades Impossible Star, as it is strewn with a handful of dazzling and elaborate set pieces separated by interludes of bleak atmosphere (or interrupted by distorted rogue transmissions).

Aside from being one of the album’s best pieces, "Surrounded" also marks the beginning of an extended hot streak that consumes roughly the entire middle section of the album, as what follows is a feast of wonderfully squirming and burbling synths; robotic voice commands; blearily surreal smears of chords; eclectic samples; and relentless forward motion. As much as I love some of the beats and hooks, however, the true brilliance of Impossible Star lies in Dangers' skill as a producer, as he seamlessly juxtaposes textures and motifs to weave something that is both bracingly physical and a bit of an unreal mindfuck.Hallucinatory and disorienting textures and motifs are a bit of an obsession with me, but this album hits a sickly, feverish and vaguely curdled tone that I rarely encounter.Also, that lingering sense of disquiet and wrongness is rarely the focal point, instead existing as an omnipresent background haze to the sharply realized and dynamic grooves and vocoder hooks that consume the foreground.It is a delicate balancing act and Dangers handles it masterfully.

Also, aside from the more nuanced and detailed touches, there are some wonderfully overt feats of visionary sound design to be found as well.Naturally, the vibrantly squelching and jabbering synth hook of "We Are Surrounded" is one such highlight, but there are plenty of others.I especially enjoyed the brutally grinding high-hats that hit during the crescendo of "Unique Boutique," as well as the relentlessly scraping, crunching heaviness of the beat in "Nereus Rov."Also of note is the album’s 15-minute centerpiece, "Lurker," which is a tour de force of something resembling bleary and drugged robot funk.It sounds like a grotesque parody of a motorik groove, like some sort of futurist Neu! pastiche playing at the wrong speed on a distressed tape as I lose consciousness and plow my car into a tree.On the other end of the spectrum lies another aberration in the form of "T.M.I.," a lazily bouncing and rolling "pop song" of sorts.Again, however, something is slightly off, like a phrase that has been translated and re-translated across several languages.Or like a song that has been covered so much that it has lost its connection to the original piece (in fact, it sounds like Wire tried to mimic the sultry and languorous pop of Sade…and then a precocious robot tried to mimic that).

Dangers has appropriately achieved something with Impossible Star that should seemingly not be possible: evoking a paranoid, technological nightmare that is also a great headphone album masquerading as dance music.There is a depth and complexity at play that is quite compelling, yet it does not interfere all that much with the forward momentum of the beats.At its core, Star feels like a very crisp, precise, and expert trip through the last several decades of beat-driven electronic music that is competing with intermittent swells of loud ambient music or sound art happening in a neighboring room.Rather than sounding chaotic or messy, however, it sounds artfully disorienting–like it is meant to be there, but is just out of phase or slightly out of tune.That is not Dangers’ only trick though, as even his more straightforward motifs often have an element of funhouse-like disorientation to them: bass notes linger too long, textures are strangely corroded, and melodies feel too chromatic or random (like a code that got garbled by a virus).And sometimes it feels like the acoustics of Dangers’ studio were designed by a deranged German Expressionist, as motifs sometimes snarl or swim together in unusual ways.As much as I enjoy such details and moments, the larger reward of Impossible Star is only revealed when it is contemplated as a whole, as Dangers has woven quite a rich and evocative world: amidst his technologic dystopia, there are blissful snatches of old film scores alluding to better times, as well is crackling short wave radio transmissions that hint at darker ones to come.As such, Impossible Star is more than a collection of strong new songs: this is Jack Dangers' Blade Runner (or possibly his Neuromancer).

• We Are Surrounded
• Nocebo
• Nereus Rov

 

21 January 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

For their fourth album in a relatively short timespan, the Norwegian group (now a five piece) have produced their first fully improvised work, and it is a strange one. Besides the fact that the concept here is mostly just thematic, compared to the more composition-based ideas they have used on previous albums, the performances are bizarre and impossible to classify, sounding like nothing else they have done, and the record is all the stronger for it.

Nakama

The theme is generations, of course, and the album is broken into five pieces reflecting the classifications of generations that historians have agreed upon.Playing with the idea of generations and how each is defined by its rudeness and perceived lack of respect to the one that preceded it, each subsequent piece here is longer, more commanding, and at times more abrasive.De facto leader Christian Meaas Svendsen’s bass is rarely a rhythmic instrument, Andreas Wildhagen's drums are more of a textural element, Adrian Løseth Waade's violin is usually a source of dissonant string scrapes, and new member Agnes Hvizdalek vocalizes more than sings.Other than the piano of Ayumi Tanaka, much of this album can be summarized as people playing their instruments incorrectly, which is an asset more than it is a liability.

Opening "The Lucky Few" lingers near silence for much of its duration.Indecipherable ambient noise is present, but hushed, and it is not until its closing minutes that the overt percussive knock from Wildhagen or sharp note from Waade, Tanaka, or Svendsen cuts through to make it clear that there are actual instruments being played.Once "Baby Boomers" begins, the noises are somewhat more up front, but still extremely bizarre.Skittering sounds, the occasional thud, chirp, or scraped string comes to the front, but never fully gels.During the few moments where the instrumentation is a bit more obvious, the final product sounds more like a jazz combo doing their take on the short lived glitch/lowercase music scene.

"Gen X" features a bit more conventionally played instrumentation as well, but used to generate low, menacing drones in contrast to anything more traditional sounding.There is more of a jazz feel to the piece, but it is riddled with tension and discomfort.Hvizdalek’s vocal improvisations vacillate from subtle to overt, keeping things quite off-kilter, with the only perceptibly conventional touchstone being Tanaka’s piano."Millienials" is more rhythmic, with Wildhagen leading the way from sputtering, clattering rhythms and eventually some sharp, sustained cymbal passages.Again, only the piano is immediately perceptible, and the quality of the recording is exceptional, capturing sounds that are almost alien despite their normal sources.

The concluding "Plurals" closes the album on an especially high note.Sputtering noises and scrapes are abundant, peppered with the occasional cricket-like chirp or rattling rhythm.Every once in awhile an obvious bit of voice, twanging bass string, or sharp drum hit will forcefully appear in the mix, then otherwise retreat into the weird mess of sound.At times the piece builds to some heavy, wonderfully pounding rhythmic outbursts, but overall it seems to build to a crescendo that never actually occurs.

With talk about how subsequent generations are rude and disrespectful to the ones that preceded them, I can hear Nakama engaging in a bit of playfulness to that end on Worst Generation.Namely, their approach to jazz (and music in general, really) completely abandons notions of tradition or structure, but in doing so they are carving out their own niche, and a strong one at that.Even without beard-stroking conceptual composition tactics, this album shows they can make excellent, if occasionally quite baffling, purely improvised music.

samples:

• Baby Boomers
• Gen X
• Plurals

 

21 January 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Both Joao Da Silva (Luciernaga) and John Lindaman utilize primarily a guitar to create expansive, occasionally difficult passages of abstract sound and noise, so pairing them together on this tape makes perfect sense. What becomes more striking by doing this, however, are their differences. With Luciernaga delivering a single live piece that is about an expansive sense of ambience, and a more free improv suite from Lindaman, both sides excel because of their differences, presenting two very different sides of a tried and true style.

Oxtail Recordings

Da Silva’s half, "Hesitation Blues Revisited," is a performance recorded live in late 2016.The bit of opening pre-performance chatter makes the context in which it was recorded clear, as he begins to weave together simple guitar strums and ebow-like sustained drones together, making for a nice pattern of swells and open spaces.With a more gentle, ambient loop in the background, Da Silva adds in the occasionally harsher outburst or more distorted sound to the mix.As he continues though, he keeps that balance between peaceful space and harsher outbursts exceptionally well executed.

Some more specific sounds do appear, such as the taut string plucks near the bridge of his guitar, and the occasionally chirping bird like effect.Eventually he coaxes out everything from trilling horror film score notes to bent whale song like slides, all the while layering loops atop one another.The performance eventually builds to a droning wall of sound, and after a bit of taped voice, becomes a wonderful dull roar that suddenly ends and concludes the captivating performance.

Lindman’s half the tape is a studio session, split into four distinct songs instead of the lengthy half-hour performance by Luciernaga.The opening moments of "Civil Twilight" are rather conventional at first:clean, distinct guitar sounds and tone.The tone is affected soon by unconventional uses of delay and echo that pull the piece in an entirely different direction.Eventually he builds into layers of feedback and distortion, making for a piece that just straddles the line between music and noise, before drifting away peacefully."Crimson Sphere" follows a similar structure, with Lindaman beginning with traditional sounding guitar before slowly pulling it down into darker, more disturbing worlds.

"Eternal Black Hatred" is a more uncomfortable work.The clipped notes make for an unsettling sound right from the start, but with frequent use of reverb and distortion, it quickly becomes bleaker.Lindaman’s side ends on an especially strong note with "Noise of Palace."Starting from a simple clean note progression, some more low frequency elements are brought in, then the guitar is expanded into more of a shimmering wall of sound.Once all the pieces are in place it becomes a rather pleasant bit of droning effects.

The paring of these two artists is an excellent one, because the differences between the two are stark.Luciernaga's lengthy, public workout of slowly built sounds is nicely balanced by John Lindaman's shorter, more immediate pieces with a bedroom recording-like intimacy.As a combined release it provides excellent examples of just how different two artists doing "experimental ambient guitar" can be from one another, yet both doing exceptionally strong works.

samples:

• Hesitation Blues Revisited (Luciernaga)
• Civil Twilight (John Lindaman)
• Noise of Palace

 

21 January 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Billed as Skelton's most ambitious composition to date, Towards a Frontier is a 66-minute epic that is part of larger multimedia project assembled during three trips to rural East Iceland. Characteristically, this is an album very much shaped by the natural environment that Skelton was immersed in as this piece was gradually conjured into being. More specifically, Towards a Frontier draws its primary inspiration from the changing seasons as experienced from an Icelandic mountain range. While less instantly gratifying than some of Skelton's other recent works, this album has a masterfully paced slow-burning majesty and mesmerizing elemental power that gradually reveals itself with repeated, attentive listens. Notably, nature does not seem particularly benign here, but Skelton keeps the mood intriguingly ambiguous as the piece unfolds, hinting at the primal, cosmic horror of our insignificance while simultaneously evoking something akin to religious ecstasy.

Corbel Stone Press

The epic scope of Towards a Frontier unexpectedly took me some time to get fully acclimated to, as it seems to unfold at a glacial pace more akin to a geological time scale rather a human one.For example, it takes roughly two minutes before the slowly swelling and blurry drones finally cohere into form (in this case, the languorously see-sawing pulse of an endlessly repeating two-chord progression).If listened to casually, it initially feels like Skelton is on autopilot and is simply treading water with his melancholy string swells.If I pay closer attention, however, it become immediately apparent that there is considerably more happening, as the two chords gradually start to bleed into one another and the underlying thrum steadily darkens and grows more menacing.In fact, much of the brilliance of this piece lies in how imperceptibly Skelton changes the mood and amasses increasingly complex and dissonantly oscillating harmonies: the snowballing power builds so subtly that it is impossible to pinpoint the moment where Frontier stops feeling like business as usual and starts feeling transcendently heavy and mesmerizing.What was initially a distinct and constant pulse sneakily becomes something quite different altogether: a distended and slowly churning simmer.Even the crests of the initial chord progression begin to submerge at a certain point, leaving a tense and murky river of mingled drones that gradually births a bleakly elegiac melody of sorts.

That feat of production prestidigitation alone would be enough to make Frontier a compelling and distinctive addition to Skelton’s sprawling discography, but the piece unexpectedly breaks open into a whole new vista around the halfway point, as Skelton's shivering melodic swells begin to overlap and intertwine to cast a spell of quivering, epic melancholy.Soon afterwards, an even more dramatic transformation occurs and the contrast between the various textures intensifies: the droning backdrop takes on a harsh, almost icy tone while the strings become deeply groaning and immediate, like they stopped being a bleak abstraction and suddenly became an actual human somberly bowing a double-bass just a few feet away from me.That is the point where Towards a Frontier makes the leap into something truly magical, as the cold washes of sound begin to swirl together with moaning bass swells and a warm haze of flute-like tones. Once reaching such a lushly immersive heaven of rich textures, complex harmonies, and heavy pulses, Skelton wisely decided to stick around: this section is Frontier's big centerpiece and would be a wonderful place to linger indefinitely.Eventually, however, the piece moves on, revealing that Skelton improbably had yet one more trick remaining up his sleeve.I suspect this begins the "spring" portion of the seasonal voyage, as the piece takes on a somewhat brighter tone, albeit one disrupted by some surprisingly harsh and howling crescendos.

Curiously, there is also a pointillist motif of brass (or woodwind) whimpers and pulses, which takes the piece's final act into quite an unexpected place indeed.In fact, it sounds a lot like one of Philip Glass’s Errol Morris soundtracks (Fog of War?), albeit slowed waaaaay down and torn apart with viscerally grinding snarls (nature, unlike Philip Glass, is not mannered and meticulously ordered).It is different enough to not feel at all derivative, yet similar enough to feel like Skelton has repurposed the modern classical aesthetic into something more primal, physical, and raw.That crescendo is probably the most radical and striking passage in Towards a Frontier, as well as a fascinating convergence of some of Skeltons many guises.In fact, the entire piece feels like a seamless and unhurried trip through much of his recent evolution, touching on deep drones, vibrant bowed acoustic strings, heaving displays of immense elemental power, and soundtrack-like gradual shifts in mood and atmosphere.

If Towards a Frontier has a weakness, it is only that the first third seems deceptively uneventful as Skelton slowly and quietly sets the stage for the piece to blossom into epic and achingly beautiful full bloom.As a result, this album asks a bit more patience and sustained attention from listeners than much of Skelton's other work, but the long, slow build makes the sustained pay-off feel both well-earned and hugely satisfying–this album could have taken no other shape.To my ears, Towards the Frontier is easily one of the more essential releases in Skelton’s oft-stellar canon, as it is both a unique entry compositionally and a wonderfully substantial, powerful, and absorbing tour de force.This feels like the sort of album that an ascetic hermit would obsessively compose (or, more likely, channel) over a frantic, sleepless week after witnessing the face of God in the clouds (presumably dying from exhaustion/rapturous joy seconds after recording the final note).

Samples:

• Excerpt One
• Excerpt Two
• Excerpt Three

 

 

20 January 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"The artist sometimes known as Huerco S. ushers a phase shift of sound to the shoegazing harmonic gauze of Make Me Know You Sweet, his immersive debut proper as Pendant. In this horizontal mode, Brian Leeds relays abstract stories from a headspace beyond the dance, placing his interests in the Romantic landscapes of JMW Turner, Robert Ashley’s avant-garde enigmas, and Indigenous North American philosophy at the service of a more expressive, oneiric sound that sub/consciously avoids the trapfalls of 'chillout' ambient cliché.

Across seven amorphous, texturally detailed tracks he establishes far reaching coordinates for both Pendant and the West Mineral label, which aims to release everything except the commonly accepted, traditional forms of late 20th/early 21st century dance music, while also representing the work of his inner circle of friends, producers, artists. In that that sense there’s a definite feeling of "no place like home" to his new work, but that home appears altered, much in the same way The Caretaker/Leyland Kirby deals with themes of memory and nostalgia.

It’s best described as mid-ground music, as opposed to the putative background purpose of ambient styles, or the upfront physicality of dance music. Rather, the sound billows and unfurls with a paradoxically static chaos, occupying and lurking a space between the eyes and ears in a way that’s not necessarily comforting, and feels to question the nature and relevance of ubiquitous pastoral, new age tropes in the modern era of uncertainty and disingenuity.

The results ponder an impressionistic, romantically ambiguous simulacra of reel life worries and anxiety, feeling at once dense and impending yet without centre. From the keening, 11 minute swell of "VVQ-SSJ" at the album’s prow, to the similar scope of its closer, Pendant presents an absorbing vessel for introspection, modulating the listener’s depth perception and moderating our intimacy with an elemental push and pull between the curdling, bittersweet froth of "BBN-UWZ," the dusky obfuscation of "IBX-BZC" and, in the supremely evocative play of phosphorescing light and seductive darkness in the mottled depths of "KVL-LWQ," which also benefits from additional production by Pontiac Streator.

Make Me Know You Sweet taps into a latent, esoteric vein of American spirituality that’s always been there, yet is only divined by those who remain open-minded to its effect."

–via Boomkat

More cryptic information can be found here.

20 January 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"Why am I afraid of my own thoughts?"

After a severe mental breakdown, Kyle Bates of Portland OR's Drowse was prescribed a plethora of antipsychotic drugs to subdue his paranoia and suicidal ideation. Several unmedicated years later, Bates’ anxiety began to resurface, and he turned to Klonopin and alcohol to blanket the intrusive thoughts. It was during this time that Bates wrote and recorded Drowse's second full-length album, Cold Air. Marked by fanatical self-exploration and expansive detuned instrumentation, Cold Air is the project's first release for The Flenser.

Drowse is a peek inside the mind of Kyle Bates, the band's only full time member. Cold Air was painstakingly recorded over nine months in Bates’ home. The house itself appears several times on the album in the form of field recordings and background occurrences. Although Bates himself is a secular person, his lyrics were influenced by the religious writings of Anne Carson and Karl Ove Knausgaard, whose ruminations on death correlated with his own. Cold Air is an album that frames big picture ideas within intimate, often shame-ridden experiences: a nose broken while blackout drunk, a seizure followed by feverish hallucinations, a father’s stroke, the death of a close friend. Cold Air is the sound of the uncertainty beneath our lives surfacing.

The shimmering dissonance with hints of slowcore, post-punk, ambient and shoegaze that characterizes Cold Air will appeal to fans of Mount Eerie, Planning for Burial, and Have a Nice Life. Many of these songs feature vocals from the band's creative partner Maya Stoner. Drowse is a complex and layered project set apart by its raw ambition.

More information can be found here.

20 January 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

NPVR is moniker taken on board by Pita (Peter Rehberg) and Factory Floor's Nik Void.

Peter and Nik both share formidable reputations in the post-industrial shape-shifting world of sound and form with a vast range of releases and collaborative endeavors over a number of years. Together, they tie together their collective experience into a vast array of sonic devices unleashing an album of pragmatic imbalance and psychedelic orientation. Blurring the lines of techno, ambient, avant garde, noise, etc.

33 33 positions itself in the nebulous realm of contemporary (dis)comfort presenting itself on the border of music and sound, the social and the private.

More information can be found here.

18 January 2018

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Deep Frosty bandleader Steve Ruecker is a legend to some, a much loved participant in the California rock scene who often hosts barnburning jams at his house in Encinitas. Enlisting Ben Flashman from Los Angeles and Utrillo Kushner from Oakland (Noel Von Harmonson and Ben Chasny guest) of Comets on Fire, Blues Band could be 2017's great rock record. Guitar progressions undergo a classic Quicksilver treatment, as Ruecker's sincere, Roky-esque vocals make testament to the plight of the indigenous, the horror of modern times, and the hopeless beauty of heartbreak. The band's pure enthusiasm coupled with a distaste for complacency seeps through like blood on fabric, making Blues Band a raw and rocking joy to hear.

More information can be found here.