26 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

...are piano pieces recorded over the period of two years. The tracks are a collection of many hours of rehearsing and improvising alone in front of the piano. These sessions were recorded using a field recorder and then later processed and re-worked in the studio. It´s based largely around deceptively repetitive piano movements. Some of the tracks are very stripped down to their essential elements while others have been given a re-brush, adding new sounds beneath, such as cello and different instruments where it seemed fit. The use of various filters and pedals have been used occasionally to manipulate certain parts of the melodies. The idea behind the album was to let go of all kinds of emotions and just try to create an open minded album that could be both warm and melancholic but at the same time dramatic and dark. The album consists of 14 tracks.

Available now on Oak Editions.

26 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a collection of new compositions from New York City-based sound artist, performer, and composer Lea Bertucci. As a performer, Bertucci has worked primarily with amplified woodwind instruments, creating enigmatic electro-acoustic interventions of the bass clarinet and saxophone in conjunction with tape collage and electronics. Her latest release on NNA, however, explores her work as a composer, which investigates extended acoustic resonance on classical instruments and their potential to powerfully occupy physical space. The two sides of this cassette contain two different pieces that exist around a common concept – the live performance of extended technique on stringed instruments, and the otherworldly way that the resulting sound exists in the space in which it is created.

Out now on NNA Tapes.

26 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Composed and recorded over a year between his home in New York City, and on residency in Stockholm, Tangier and Venice. Jeff Burch’s followup to 2015’s S/T, summons a once familiar spirit; one caught inside the single note and the endless reverberations of the Fluxus streets. He sounds out endless violin and cello wail and draws long interstellar synthesizer vowels, pushing them up against a clangor of bells, dizzying organ-fed Leslie, glassy bows of cymbal and gong. With the push of the capitalist hour, it is a series of works which unfurls against the weight and sound of our nefarious empires and the toil and sweat of our vast cities… one made with an ear pointed sharply toward the east.

In four parts; for electronics, organ, percussion, strings and woodwind. Cover artwork by Carol Bove, mastered by Chris Griffin (Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, La Monte Young).

"The vestigial spirits of Tony Conrad and Alice Coltrane seem to ooze from the music’s percolating pores. Gong-like reverberations punctuate an endlessly roiling cauldron of strings, electronics, and percussion… a fine follow-up to his debut.”  – Textura

Available now on The Spring Press.

26 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

This is the debut release from the duo of Loscil's Scott Morgan and classically trained cellist Mark Bridges.  The pair met while at a residency in Alberta, then convened for two weeks of winter recording in renovated schoolhouse in Wyoming.  Consequently, High Plains is quite an apt name for this project, succinctly capturing both the windswept isolation of the region and the project's deeply melancholy aesthetic.  Being unfamiliar with Bridges, I expected High Plains to be a rather Loscil-esque endeavor, but the only truly significant similarity is that this album continues the bleak trajectory of Monument Builders: Cinderland mostly feels like a neo-classical soundtrack to an art film or perhaps like a stark and drone-damaged homage to Dirty Three.

Kranky

Notably, Cinderland is not the first time Bridges and Morgan recorded together, as Bridges was featured on Loscil's adventurously experimental Adrift release, which was a 2015 app that offered "endless" ambient pieces inspired by ghost ships.  This time around, however, Bridges gets equal billing and deservedly so–in fact, he often seems like the guiding force behind Cinderland, though that is probably just because he is the one playing all of the actual melodies.  Scott Morgan's contributions are a bit more subtle and abstract, though no less important.  While the more Loscil-esque elements are unwaveringly relegated to a background role, Morgan's somber piano arpeggios and swelling synth chords very much set the prevailing mood.  Also, Cinderland proceeds at a glacially Loscil-esque pace and additionally features Morgan's distinctively dub-informed production style.  "The Blood That Ran the Rapids" is a representative example of the High Plains aesthetic at its best, as a hollow percussion groove slowly carries an elegiac chord progression besieged by washed of tape hiss and eruptions of echoing and gnarled studio flourishes.  The meat of the piece, however, is an achingly beautiful and ghostly cello melody embellished with all kinds of bleary after-images.  Bridges has an impressive knack for conjuring up strong and haunting melodies.  Curiously, however, there are not many other pieces on the album that stand out, as Cinderland primarily feels like a series of brief atmospheric vignettes of forlorn brooding and vague dread.  Bridges and Morgan certainly do a fine job at that and the pieces are mostly short enough to avoid overstaying their welcome, but the monochromatic mood and lack of more substantial fare make this a difficult album to get enthusiastic about.

There is one wonderful exception to that trend, however:  "A White Truck."  Built upon a darkly unfolding, slow-motion two-chord progression and some lovely guitar shimmer, the piece is elevated above the rest of the album by Bridges' prolonged and sinister-sounding upward slides.  Then the piece unexpected explodes into a harsh crescendo of snarling, distorted chords that completely rips the gloomy reverie of the previous pieces apart.  Much like "Blood," however, it feels like it is over all too soon. Thankfully, the strong closer "Song for a Last Night" is a bit longer, standing as another (albeit more subtle) highlight.  While Bridges' emotionally resonant and languorous cello melody is as melancholy as always, Morgan's backdrop of a single wobbly and repeating chord lets in a bit more light than usual, as does the evocative layer of field recordings of birds and flowing water.  As a composition, it is not necessarily stronger than the rest of the album, but the slight shift in mood makes a huge difference.  The addition of field recordings is especially significant, as Cinderland is an album that feels extremely tied to a specific time and place.  Most of the time, that time and place feels like the claustrophobic interior of a remote cabin, so stepping out of that simmering discomfort feels both dramatic and liberating.  It makes me wish the duo had used a lot more field recordings, but I suspect they deliberately saved them for "Last Night" to end with a poignant and striking finale.

Sadly, the few wonderful pieces on Cinderland have the unintended side effect of calling attention to how much better the album could have been.  Part of my lukewarm reception is due to my highly subjective and unshakable personal apathy towards anything that resembles a decontextualized soundtrack, but the monochromatic gloom of Cinderland is still objectively a tough sell, as is the incidental/vignette-like nature of most of these pieces.  This album has the tense and restless feel of two people going slowly mad from cabin fever (but never actually snapping, which probably would have made for a far more intriguing affair).  That said, Bridges and Morgan seem to have a real chemistry, even if it is colored heavily by their surroundings.  I hope that this is not a one-off endeavor and that the two can someday work together in a less bleak and isolated setting, as there is a lot of potential here that I would like to hear realized in more accessible form.  Grumbling aside, Cinderland does seem to have succeeded at exactly what High Plains set out to do, so it is not the execution that I have a problem with so much as the fundamental vision: this album sounds exactly like a landscape reduced to cinders.  While I am not personally in the market for such a feast of stark melancholy, those of a different disposition will find plenty of that to embrace here.

Samples:

• The Blood That Ran The Rapids
• A White Truck
• Hypoxia

 

 

26 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Room40's excavation campaign of Norman Westberg’s wonderfully hypnotic and self-released solo guitar work continues with this 2014 tribute to the Westberg family dog. Notably, this release was already reissued once before (as an extremely limited vinyl edition by Hallow Ground), but this new incarnation is both remastered and expanded.  More notable still, Jasper Sits Out was the first of Westberg's homemade releases that Lawrence English ever heard, making it the album that inadvertently dragged this quietly beautiful facet of his artistry into the light.  As such, I half-expected Jasper to be a towering culmination of the entire reissue campaign, but it is more or less on the same level as all the consistently fine preceding releases (aside from one truly dazzling piece).

Room40

The original version of Jasper was comprised of two epic 20-minute compositions, the title piece and "Homeset Trunc."  The opening "Jasper" is very much textbook Westberg, beginning as kind of a warm and insistently pulsing haze before cleaner tones appear to weave a shifting, jangling, and ringing melodic foreground.  The magic of the piece lies in how seamlessly and organically Westberg plays with that central motif, building an undulating pointillist fog with calmly insistent forward momentum.  In doing so, he achieves two desirable feats at once: creating a dreamlike and hypnotic throb while ceaselessly crafting an unpredictable and complex web of evolving harmonies and micro-rhythms.  It is amusing and perverse that someone associated with the crushing juggernaut of Swans may be even more gifted in the arts of nuance, restraint, and patience.  Yet another trait that separates Westberg from like-minded solo guitarists is that his laser-focused control even extends to the compositional arc of his pieces.  When an artist is performing alone with just some looping pedals, the tendency is almost always to keep all the plates spinning until all of the necessary elements are in place for the crescendo, then elegantly fade away.  "Jasper" admirably bucks that trend by resolving into a final repeating chord.  It may not be electrifying or dramatic, but it is undeniably effective and satisfying.

The atypically industrial "Homeset Trunc" is quite a bit different, boasting a steadily throbbing and churning machine-like rhythm.  Naturally, Westberg exploits that strong percussive undercurrent as an opportunity to plunge deeper into abstraction than usual.  At first, he keeps things rather subdued and modest, but after several minutes the bottom drops out and the piece grows dramatically more hallucinatory.  As the deeper tones plunge and warp, Westberg weaves a rippling web of arpeggios that gradually becomes a dense and swirling cloud of twinkling, pulsing, and undulating layers.  Needless to say it is quite beautiful, but the best part is that the heavenly ocean of shimmer is periodically disrupted by surges of ugly vibrato and pitch-shifts to add a welcome element of menace and fragility.  I can honestly say that I never heard anything quite like it from another guitarist and I cannot even begin to unravel the mechanics of how it was assembled or performed: it is truly a tour de force.  Although it takes a while to catch fire, the pay-off is mesmerizing enough to make it a solid candidate for my favorite Westberg piece to date.  Given that, the newly added "A Particular Tuesday" has quite a tough act to follow, but it proves to be a fine coda despite my unreasonably high expectations.  It is admittedly a bit less distinctive and more overtly improvisatory than the rest of the album, but it compensates by being more melodic and instantly gratifying.  It kind of sounds like a languorous and glimmering ten-minute interlude during a Slowdive live set designed to give the rhythm section a break, but it gradually fades away rather than erupting into a song.

Aside from noting that the bonus track is not quite on the same level as the original album, the only real critiques than can be leveled at Jasper Sits Out are about what it is not rather than what it is.  Given that Westberg performed the entire album himself with a guitar, there are some very fundamental dynamic, textural, and compositional limitations: for the most part, Jasper Sits Out unavoidably sounds like a solo guitar album.  That is perfectly fine by me, of course–when Westberg is in his usual form, as he is on the title piece, he is easily one of the most beguiling and distinctive solo guitarists active today.  At his best, however, he transcends the self-imposed constraints of his craft to plunge into sublime and rarefied territory all his own.  He is at that level with "Homeset Trunc," reaffirming yet again my belief that Westberg is secretly one of the strongest minimalist composers of his generation.

• Jasper Sits Out
• Homeset Trunc
• A Particular Tuesday

 

17 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

And Right Lines Limit and Close All Bodies is Richard Skelton's third full album as The Inward Circles, following 2015's Belated Movements and 2013's. And Right Lines continues his exploration of the materiality of sound and the natural processes of weathering, attrition and decay. The source material for these recordings remains largely the same as his Sustain-Release albums of a decade ago - small stringed instruments, found objects, field recordings - but the compositional process itself couldn't be more different. Whereas the recordings under his own name, or as A Broken Consort, were largely concerned with preserving the clarity of acoustic sound, his work as The Inward Circles is devoted to burial, obfuscation and mythologisation. There is a desire to obliterate, to destroy, and to discover anew. Each sonic artefact is subject to repeated distortions of pitch and timbre, and, as a result, is transformed beyond recognition. Any traces of acoustic sound that remain are little more than ghosts, as the whole recording is suffused with electricity, a kind of telluric current, an overwhelming chthonic energy.

Out in April 2017 on Corbel Stone Press.

17 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Forget was recorded during a period of epic productivity for Xiu Xiu. While writing Forget, they released the lauded Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, collaborated with Mitski on a song for an upcoming John Cameron Mitchell film, composed music for art installations by Danh Vo, recorded an album with Merzbow and scored an experimental reworking of the Mozart opera, "The Magic Flute." All of this frantic, external activity lead to a softly damaged dreaminess and broadened intent that has not been heard before in other Xiu Xiu works.

The album was produced by John Congleton (Blondie, Sigur Ros), Greg Saunier of Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu's own Angela Seo. It features guest appearances by fabled minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine, LA Banjee Ball superstar commentator Enyce Smith, Swans guitar virtuoso Kristof Hahn and legendary drag artist and personal hero of Xiu Xiu, Vaginal Davis.

Standout track, "Wondering" is one of the catchiest boogie pop gems in the Xiu Xiu catalog, but like much of Forget, it still bears an underlying tension that manifests differently in each piece. From the haunted guitar duet of "Petite," the hilariously fraught lyrics of "Get Up," the advanced industrial boxing match of "Jenny GoGo," or the experimental goth explosion of "Faith, Torn Apart," all the songs in their own way build to a roiling boil of a fate in vanishing.

The calligraphy on the cover translates literally to "we forget." It bows to the universality of everything and everyone's inevitable decline and foggy disappearance. Regarding the album title, Xiu Xiu singer Jamie Stewart said, "To forget uncontrollably embraces the duality of human frailty. It is a rebirth in blanked out renewal but it also drowns and mutilates our attempt to hold on to what is dear." Forget is both the palliative fade out of a traumatic past but also the trampling pain of a beautiful one's decay.

Out now on Polyvinyl.

17 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Actress, real name Darren Jordan Cunningham, known to friends as DAZ, returns with a new album, now on Ninja Tune and a new music system called "AZD" (pronounced "Azid"), a chrome aspect journey into a parallel world. An artist who has always preferred to make music than to talk about it, in “AZD” he has achieved another remarkable landmark, one which is as resistant to interpretation as it is demanding of it. Following on from his previous albums, R.I.P, Splazsh and Hazyville, an epilogue poem attached to the press release for Ghettoville was construed by media, commentators and spectators that Cunningham had retired. This led him to conceptualise this mass of conclusion as the key to ‘Giving power back to identity.’

So a few pointers, or possible ways to think about AZD. The album is themed around chrome – both as a reflective surface to see the self in, and as something that carves luminous voids out of any colour and fine focuses white and black representing the perfect metaphor for the bleakness of life in the Metropolis as suggested by Anish Kapoors Cloud Gate.

Another way to approach would be through the art of James Hampton and Rammellzee (who inspired "CYN," which Cunningham also sees as a vision of New York in reverse…) – both of whom, though of different generations of the African-American slave diaspora, created art through “Sourcing castaway materials from their environment and reinterprating them into absolute majesty given from the fourth dimension.” There is also the career-long influence of the Detroit techno pioneers, something which becomes clear on this album "there is a contrast in the type of glow or reflection."

Alternatively, you could write your PhD thesis on Jung’s Shadow Theory and AZD: "Lots of ideas come from dreams, this isn’t new, but sometimes the conscious mind starts to meld into the universal consciousness through constellation tunnelling.” If that sounds too taxing then you could always fall back on Star Wars and, in particular, the Death Star: “It has a dark dystopian backdrop, with highly sophisticated technology, but it is fading into the ether, still holding on and emitting a powerful energy. The music remaking the embers, binding them together and pulling them apart again."

Alternatively, just listen. That "glow" Cunningham talks about makes this in some ways more immediate than previous Actress releases. Take lead single, "X22RME" (pronounced “Extreme”) which elegantly plays between the lines of Oriental classic rave and Balinese warehouse Techno machined in a Rotherhithe lock up welding the grooves into a seamless cracked joint.

At the other end of the spectrum is "Faure in Chrome," a byproduct or development from his collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra, in which he “repatterns” aspect of Faure's Requiem into a piece which sounds like the very institution of classical music being encased in electronic ice and scanned through a high frequency bandwidth. In between are gems like "Runner," a personal re-soundtracking of Blade Runner "its from the deleted Fade Runner scene where AZD in a Peckham Cafe realises his barber has over the years etched a faded scroll into his head using early 80s African synthpop as a vexing serum“, or "Falling Rizlas," an alienated music-box ballad. It's a remarkable piece of work, that harks back both to Actress’ previous productions and to earlier iterations of the (broadly conceived) "techno" project without being beholden to anything but Cunningham’s forward-facing, individual and disembodied vision.

The simplest you could say about AZD is that it’s art – the unique creation of a unique mind. There will be few more distinctive, brilliant or visionary suites of music released in 2017. Call him what you will, this is the year that Darren ‘Daz’ Cunningham - aka Actress, aka AZD – asserts more clearly than ever before his complete independence.

Out April 14, 2017 on Ninja Tune.

12 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Elden M's recent resurgence as Allegory Chapel Ltd. has nary taken a pause since reappearing three years ago following an 18 year silence. What might be the most surprising fact, however, is that Without Tears: Noise in Theory & Practice is actually his first full length vinyl release since the project's inception in 1986, amidst a varied array of tapes and CDs. This fact obviously has not been lost on him though, because this album is a comprehensive and cohesive work that covers the full gamut of the ACL sound, from the past to the present, presenting a singular and unique artist and his diverse, complex output.

Throne Heap

My first exposure to ACL coincided with my first real experience with noise as music, which was the 1995 Japanese/American Noise Treaty compilation.With those limited early days of the internet (and my lack of financial resources as a high school student), I did not have as much of a chance to explore many of these artists beyond that compilation, but the ACL song "Martial Mega-Medley" stuck with me, and I managed to find a used copy of When Angels Fall a few years later.ACL's work had a different edge to it, one that did not fully eschew rhythm or space, but also a wonderfully uncomfortable mood, and I was happy to hear when he resumed activity.

Pieces such as "Sedona Walkabout" sit most specifically with his earlier works.There is a pulsating, almost rhythmic underbelly to the buzzing electronics (which seems to be sourced from a guitar cable, given the tell-tale hum).Random voice samples appear throughout, processed and cut up into disturbingly unclear bits to make their source rather disquieting.Flanged electronics and delayed effects result in a constantly shifting, dynamic piece of sound that ends in a nice industrial expanse."Marin Headlands" is another of the noisier pieces, though starting with a brilliant fake-out:what at first sounds to be a blast of harsh noise wall soon reveals itself to be an ocean side field recording of crashing waves and birds before subtle processing leads to a somewhat less natural.

Immediately before Elden M. reappeared as ACL, he released some work as Avellan Cross, a more EBM influenced project, which has clearly bled over into his "main" moniker.In fact, the lengthy "Distributed Organs, Flesh Feedback" could almost be an AC piece, with its thumping 808-like beat and swirling electronics.Guest vocalist Marfisia Bel delivers a spoken word piece over a vaguely house bassline.It is not really a noisy work per se, but the ACL approach to abstract construction still shines through clearly.

Hints of this conventional electronic music also appear at other moments throughout the record too:"Journey Into Noise" is overall pretty dissonant, but there is an underlying loop that sounds like a destroyed orchestra hit sample that makes for a strange bit of rhythm within an otherwise psychedelic burst of noise.The "Live @ Mata" medley consists of four recent pieces blended together, shifting from engine noise and out of focus shortwave passages into snappy drum machine and back to blasting distortion.He does an exemplary job blending these two extremes of to his sound together, which is all the more impressive coming out of a live setting.

By description alone it almost sounds like Elden M. tries to do a bit too much at once on Without Tears, but in truth it is anything but.Instead, the clashing of rhythm and chaos is an exceptionally compelling one, with these occasionally disparate elements managing to gel together perfectly.There is an exceptional blend of the familiar and the unknown to be heard throughout, but presented in a way that comes across as memorable crafted songs rather than just formless experiments or unstructured excursions.

samples:

• Journey Into Noise
• Sedona Walkabout
• Distributed Organs, Flesh Feedback

 

12 March 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Iranian born, Austin raised artist Shawhin Izaddoost’s new release as VVV may, at least superficially, follow the hip-hop derived model of the mix tape as a collection of ideas and unfinished work, but that is not entirely accurate. Why El Paso Sky feels mostly like a fully polished and realized release. A combination of rich, complex ambient moments, vintage synth sequences, and strong beats are exceptionally well done on here, with a mix that captures both cerebral production and avant garde sounds with straight ahead physical rhythms and melodies.

Holodeck

Izaddoost's sound draws elements from vintage electro and techno, but it is solely a product of the modern era.Sure, a song such as "Metcalfe" sticks to a clean mix of unspoiled beats and dramatic synth leads, but the filtering and arrangement is far more complex than a simple nostalgia trip would produce.For "Limestone," he works from a distinctly old school sounding pulsating synth and some traditional house-like vocal samples, but the cold, distant processing results in something entirely different, as is the lush static bath in which the piece ends.

Why El Paso Sky has a darkness to it as well, however.The subway ambience and massive reverb that darkens "No Left Hand Turns" gives the throwback drum and bass sounds a more sinister sheen.On the other hand, the mass of beats and samples of "Isfahan" seem to be not at all intended for dancing, and the big leads are obscured by what sounds like guns cocking and glass breaking, making for an exceptional sense of tension.Crackling space defines "Black Fences" and what sounds like a field recording of walking gets molded into some odd rhythmic loop that is brilliantly abstract.

Additionally, one of the album’s strengths is simply the complex and intricate production throughout.On "Why El Paso Sky," Izaddoost starts from a looped new age-y piano and adds expansive passages of electronics to make for a murky, heavy ambient sound.From this relatively basic sounding framework, the depth is astounding, and the full piece has some oddly three dimensional, almost physical quality to the sound.The heavy beats and subtle arrangements throughout "Gauss Patterns" are largely minimalist in structure, but the effects and processing add a much more significant depth to be deconstructed.

The only notable weaknesses to Why El Paso Sky are that it is essentially a teaser for a forthcoming album, and because of that, some of the pieces are painfully short.For example, the heavy leads and lush programmed textures of "Fly Paper" are amazing, but drift away at less than two minutes.This is more than made up for by the more fully-fledged pieces, however.Closer "Hide The Lightening" is all clanging industrial beats, noise, and plucked strings, but even with its deconstructed style, the memorable slinky bassline ties it together perfectly.

As a mixtape, however, VVV's latest release serves its purpose exceptionally well.It stands on its own, even if there are a few moments that seem frustratingly unfinished and incomplete, but also heralds the forthcoming release as something all the more tantalizing.Izaddoost’s work is exceptionally modern and compelling.The abstraction and beat-less pieces are engrossing, but when paired with the more rhythm-centric works, the final product is a strong release that stands independently, but also makes for a nice teaser for what is to come.

samples:

• Gauss Patterns
• Isfahan
• Why El Paso Sky