27 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

You can’t accuse Supersilent of keeping the noise down. Ever since 1997, when Norway’s finest free music oufit came together for the first time, their unpredictable noises and rapturous textures have been heard all around the world – and maybe somewhere outside the stratosphere too.

Mostly taped in an Oslo studio at the end of 2014, the band record everything on 13 live, while blasting their sound through a PA system, so that they can feel the physical air moving as if they were on stage. Tracks 1 and 5 date from 2009, immediately after their drummer’s exit. “They were tryout sessions to see how we should proceed,” says Helge. “It was a kind of research for the band to feel how it is to be three, not four, and to blow off some steam.”

All of Supersilent’s music is entirely unplanned, with all three experienced musical adventurers throwing themselves into the moment and riding the emerging maelstrom. They always manage to surprise you, whether it’s the Indonesian ritual music heard from a Scandinavian mountaintop on the opening track “13.1” or the compressed digital labyrinths of “13.9.”

The trio swap instruments with abandon: percussion, trumpet and woodwind, electronics and Storløkken’s collectable assortment of vintage keyboards. In this technologize environment, sounds are passed around, distorted and spat out again in tantalizing splurges. “It takes time to shape a band from the beginning,” says Helge, “but for us now the trio is working really well.” With Supersilent’s lucky 13, now you can be the judge of that. 

More information can be found here.

27 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

Hubris continues the exploration of relentless, driving rhythms heard on Ambarchi’s Sagittarian Domain (2012) and Quixotism (2014). Where those records looked to Krautrock and techno for their starting points, the sidelong opening track here begins from the perhaps unlikely inspirations of disco and new wave, drawing particularly from Ambarchi’s love of Wang Chung’s soundtrack to William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. Leaving behind the song-forms of these reference points, Ambarchi weaves a sustained and pulsating web of layered palm-muted guitars from which individual voices rise up and recede, eventually setting the stage for some lush guitar synth from Jim O’Rourke. Arnold Dreyblatt collaborator Konrad Sprenger contributes overtone-rich motorized guitar, pushing the piece into a satisfying intersection of shimmering minimalism and rhythmic drive that smoothly builds up until the entrance of Mark Fell’s electronic percussion in its final section.

After a short second part, in which Ambarchi, O’Rourke and Crys Cole pay tribute to the skewed harmonic sense of Albert Marcoeur with a track built from layered bass guitar figures and abstracted speech, the long final piece pushes the concept of the first side into darker and denser areas. Joined by electronic rhythms from Ricardo Villalobos and the twin drums of Joe Talia and Will Guthrie, the layered guitars of the first piece are transformed into a raw and tumbling fusion-funk groove that calls to mind early Weather Report or even the first Golden Palominos LP. As this stellar rhythm section rides a single repeated chord change into oblivion, a series of spectacular events emerge in the foreground: first, aleatoric synthesizer burbles from Keith Fullerton Whitman, then slashing skronk guitar from Arto Lindsay, until finally Ambarchi’s own fuzzed-out guitar harmonics take center stage as the piece builds to an ecstatic frenzy. Few artists could hope to include such an incredible variety of collaborators on one record and still hope for it to have a unique identity, but Ambarchi manages to do just that, crafting three pieces that emerge directly out of his previous work while also pushing ahead into new dimensions.

More information can be found here.

27 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

Utterly riveting modernist composition by NWW’s Andrew Liles, twisting influence from original ‘50s and ‘60s avant garde pioneers into a conceptual suite concerned with “the impotence of the masses living in the shadow of military, economic and political institutions”, and suitably sleeved in pictures of Tony and Cherie Blair before make-up (or after the mob gets ‘em).

Using a range of sonic signifiers for power, oppression and gloom such as church bells, blackened minor key baroque themes and deflated, limpid choral discord, each diffused and smeared across the stern field in a toxic miasma, Liles conjures a feeling of deep, pensive unease that strongly resonates with his conceptual intent in The Power Elite.

In typical NWW or Liles fashion, the suite proceeds seamlessly thru the gloom with scarcely any handrails to guide the way, and the ones that do appear tend to dissolve with warning, leaving his spectrally diaphanous, morphing projections as the only source of light to cling onto.

With discomfiting effect, he queasily emulates a state of submission and helplessness, allowing sounds to wash over the listener in a stilted, curdling flow of disjointed information, perhaps requiring the listener to act as non-passive impedance or resistance in order to properly process his aesthetic as rhetoric.

-via Boomkat

More information about Andrew Liles can be found here.

27 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

5th LP of mind expansion and electric truth from Stephen O'Malley (Sunn0))), KTL), Daniel O'Sullivan (Ulver, This is Not This Heat, Grumbling Fur, etc), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver), Steve Noble (Brotzmann Trio, N.E.W.).

Hazel is the 5th record from this group of eclectic travelers, who bring their considerable pedigrees together in unexpected and original ways. Looking at the people involved, it would be reasonable to expect a massive blowout of sound, but everyone plays with remarkable and effective restraint. The music is atmospheric and layered, with bits and pieces of identifiable rock moves peeking out from under a thick blanket of hard-to-identify drift. Based on live recordings made on a lengthy tour of Italy in 2010, the recordings have been extensively edited and supplemented, but without losing the elemental sound of a group playing live together. While there’s plenty of weird ambient sound to be heard, this isn’t a sound-effects/”pedalboard” record. Like the preceding En Form for Blaalbum, Noble’s drums anchor the music. The drumming is spare and considered, sometimes lashing out with abstract punctuation, and other times laying out a Can-like groove. O’Malley’s guitar is also restrained, providing a bed for O'Sullivan's constantly morphing Rhodes, synths and electronic effects. Kristoffer Rygg contributes a rousing vocal incantation to “Ermanna” and peppers the mix with ghostly modular details. Like their other records, this is not really like anything else out there right now.

More information can be found here.

21 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

Considering Rasengan! is a documentation of the first performance this pan-European free jazz quartet ever had together, the balance of unity and chaos here is exceptionally well done. The two pieces that make up this 36 minute performance drift between what sounds like perfect synergy between the players to some all out messes of sound, both of which I have always felt is essential for this style of music. Which, of course, means this is a very impressive record.

Barefoot Records

The four performers on this record come from all parts of Europe:Portuguese trumpet player Susana Santos Silva (Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos and Coreto Porta-Jazz), French pianist Christine Wodrascka works in a multitude of styles and projects, bassist Christan Meaas Svendsen hails from Norway and collaborates with a multitude of performers (and is a member of Large Unit), and finally percussionist Håkon Berre now resides in Denmark and has collaborated with the likes of Peter Brötzmann.

Rasengan! is a performance comprised of two lengthy pieces, the lengthy "Sweatshirt" and the slightly more succinct (and more bizarre) "Death by Candiru".Of the two, "Sweatshirt" is the more conventional, but that is only relatively speaking.Immediately Meaas Svendsen and Berre create an odd rhythmic foundation via bent strings and clacking sticks, neither of which sounds obviously like the instruments the two are actually playing.Soon Santos Silva's horn and Wodrascka's piano skitter in, initially loose and chaotic.The two take turns becoming the focus, either in the form of overt, tense piano or pained, raw trumpet.A bit less than half way through the piece's 25 minute duration a bit of calm appears, with just the piano leaving a lingering tension.The sound eventually builds back up, the horn and piano sprawling all over in ebbs and floes of chaos and calm.The performance finally builds to an appropriately dramatic, loud conclusion.

While "Sweatshirt" may not sound like the most conventional work at first, it is the more dissonant turn that the quartet take on the jovially titled "Death by Candiru" that make it seem like the lighter work.At first subtle, eventually the rhythm section of bass and drum construct a slow, uncomfortable rhythm complete with weird animalistic scratching noises with piano peppered throughout.Bits of what sound like compressed air and non-instrument like noises appear, making for a more bizarre yet extremely cinematic feel.As before, the trumpet and piano trade off taking the focus, but here in a more chaotic and off-kilter form.In a great contrast to the conclusion of "Sweatshirt", here the performance seems to fall apart in a brilliant way, rather than coming to an epic, bombastic close.

There is a definite looseness throughout Rasengan! that may be fully intentional or a function of the four performers improvising together for the first time ever, but that adds to the record, rather than detracts from it.They clearly work well together and play off of each other wonderfully, but those moments where the sound becomes a bit disjointed and chaotic are some of the best parts of the record.I usually prefer jazz-based music when things get weird and dissonant, and this band does that extremely well.

samples:

• Sweatshirt (Excerpt 1)
• Sweatshirt (Excerpt 2)
• Death by Candiru

 

21 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

Following their recent split release with legends Controlled Bleeding, this newest work from Sparkle in Grey retains the band’s improvisational flexibility, but lightens the mood somewhat. Brahim Izdag takes a lot of directions, from complex post-rock excursions to traditional folk sounds and much in between, but somehow the band still manages to make it sound like a cohesive and unified, if somewhat sprawling record.

Old Bicycle/Grey Sparkle/Moving Records

The three songs that lead off Brahim Izdag do an exceptional job of encapsulating the feel of the record as a whole."Samba Lombarda" is at first late night field recordings, complete with crickets, barking dogs, and what may even be gunfire courtesy of Matteo Uggeri's electronics, but soon transitions into rattling cymbals and distorted guitar from Simone Riva and Alberto Carozzi (respectively).The guitar and bass (by Cristiano Lupo) combination takes on an anxious, but funky sound reminiscent of the late 70s post punk scene.However on the following "Iurop is a Madness (Attempts)", the band shifts into spoken word from Zacaharia Diatta and a weird, unique reggae sound.

Then, "Iurop is a Madness (Refuse)" is all sputtering percussion samples and Eastern European pop viola by Franz Krostopovic, making for an odd balance of the peculiar and the familiar.Sparkle mix these elements throughout the album, such as melding dubby bass, Middle Eastern percussion, and noisy guitar on "Gobbastan Pt 2 (Unwelcome)", which again makes sense even with all these contrasting elements being used."Grey Riot" reprises the European strings, but placed with cheap Casio synth beats, and eventually transitioning into what sounds like a thrashed up traditional folk song at the end (and still barely resembles the Clash song it is constructed from, partially because it is sung in Chinese).

While these border-crossing excursions are all excellent, the more experimental and abstract songs were the ones that stuck with me most."Gobbastan (Pt 1) (Arrival)" utilizes processed found sounds, synthetic percussion, and noisy guitar coming together as some sort of prog rock outburst, but never fully settling down into a specific groove.The longer "Song for Clair Patterson" ends up a mish-mash of horns and metallic tinged percussion along side field recordings.Somehow even with this unconventional arrangement the overall composition is very cohesive, and subtly jazzy and funky without being trite."Brahim Izdag (Pt 2) (Fall and Rise)" also features the band creating some open, relaxed sounds but via a more traditional arrangement of synths and guitars.The instrumentation may be traditional, but the sound overall is entirely unique.

One of the biggest strengths of Brahim Izdag is how well Sparkle in Grey manage to jump from style to style, from deconstructed musique concrete compositions into traditional European folk music, but still make the pieces make sense when placed alongside each other.It is a quirky and fun record that may not take itself too seriously, but the band themselves are consummate professionals as far as their performance and production is concerned.

samples:

• Samba Lombarda
• Grey Riot
• Brahim Izdag

 

21 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

For better or worse, Marielle Jakobsons’ first solo album for Thrill Jockey continues her evolution away from her darker and heavier early work into more mellow, gently psychedelic territory more in line with her Date Palms project.  On the one hand, that makes sense, as Date Palms is probably the most popular of Jakobsons' many endeavors and quasi-New Age revivalism is still more or less in vogue.  On the other hand, I tend to loathe just about anything that resembles toothless pastoral burbling, regardless of who is making it.  Consequently, this direction is not for me much of the time.  While there are admittedly a few faint traces of the Jakobsons’ more distinctive and compelling past scattered throughout Star Core, this album is mostly significant for continuing the ambitious expansion of her palette and for being the first time that Marielle sings on record (as far as I know, anyway).  Also, the album's closing two pieces are sublimely mesmerizing.

Thrill Jockey

The opening "White Sparks" begins quite deceptively with some ominously dissonant low drones that set my heart a-flutter, but both the piece and the entire album quickly settle into a languorous, radiant, and twinkling haze. Curiously, Jakobsons' violin is reduced to a mere droning shimmer or an occasional swell of color here, as she seems quite intent on becoming a one-woman psych rock band, albeit one with no guitars or percussion.  Instead, Jakobsons lays down a stoned and sleepy bassline, some pleasantly chiming and rippling synth melodies, and takes the mic for some vaporous, reverb-swathed vocals.  Closely scrutinized, "White Sparks" is actually a complexly layered and harmonically rich piece, but that is undercut by the fact that the piece is so drifting and hazy that it barely feels like a song.  It almost seems like Jakobsons' intent was to leave as little an impression as possible, a feat she seems to replicate repeatedly throughout Star Core.  Unfortunately, ego death is a much better goal in spirituality than it is in music.  Occasionally, however, there are some prominent and forceful motifs, such as the vaguely Eastern "desert rock" violin melody on the title piece, but mostly Jakobsons is content to just allow her synthesizers to amiably drone and twinkle.  Also, it is perplexing how little Marielle's decision to finally sing actually matters, as her vocals are little more than a bleary haze or a repeating wordless chant.  She might be singing, but she is very much fading into the background rather than stepping forward.

Thankfully, there are parts of Star Core that depart a bit from the otherwise pervasive "lounging on a hammock under the palm trees at a commune" vibe. The first time my ears perked up was "The Beginning is the End," which is built upon a beautiful and vaguely mysterious flute melody.  While there are certainly plenty of analog synth tones to be found, they remain mostly understated and the flutes do a fine job of cutting through the artificiality to make the piece feel comparatively earthy and real.  It is a perverse irony that such an event can seem surprising, given how visceral and unrepentantly organic much of Jakobsons'work has been on previous albums like Fire Star, Ore, and Improvisations for Strings and Electronics.  Elsewhere, "Undone" stands as the best example of Jakobsons' "slow-motion psychedelia" aesthetic, as her diffuse and drifting groove is enhanced with heavy buzzing and throbbing synths, some hallucinatory flanging that resembles Tuvan throat singing, an effective dynamic arc, and some thick minor key flutes.  To my ears, "Undone" is Star Core's unquestionable zenith, exchanging benevolent serenity for an unexpectedly sultry and smeared foray into deep stoner rock. The closing "The Sinking of the Sky," however, attempts to make lightning strike twice and arguably succeeds, despite being even more glacial and bleary than "Undone."  Thankfully, it boasts some impressively haunting and emotionally resonant flute and violin themes to compensate for its extended length and Quaalude pace.  In fact, I probably would not have minded if it had been twice as long, as Jakobsons hits upon a gorgeous sort of slow-motion trance nirvana.  That aesthetic seems to be the way forward and I hope Jakobsons sticks with it.  Weirdly, Star Core seems to be at its heaviest and most compelling only when Jakobsons picks up her flute, though her talents as a sound designer seem to play as much a role in that as her talents as a flautist, as the texture and layering seems more evocative than the actual melodies.

Interestingly, the critical response to this album elsewhere has been hugely favorable, which makes me wonder if I am either deaf, stupid, or terminally cranky, as I only liked about half of it.  I suspect part of my problem is my personal expectations, as I am coming at this album as a huge Marielle Jakobsons fan.  In one sense, that certainly makes me predisposed to love her work, but the more significant bias is that it makes me hugely exasperated to hear a once-formidable artist become gradually less and less distinctive and more and more serene.  The fact that Star Core is "cosmic" or that it calls to mind Terry Riley is not a selling point for me at all: there is already one Terry Riley, so I would much rather have a Marielle Jakobsons who sounds like only Marielle Jakobsons can sound.  When Star Core does not work, it is not necessarily bad so much as puzzling and forgettable–like a cross between 1.) a Liz Harris that found God, bought a synth, and became a yoga instructor, and 2.) Led Zeppelin’s "Kashmir" on a near-lethal dose of horse tranquilizers (I promise that imaginary combination is not nearly as compelling as it might sound).  I am tempted to say that I hope Marielle throws her synthesizer in a lake, but that is not fair: the synths work just fine when relegated to a textural role.  It is mostly just a question of finding a suitable balance between shimmering serenity and something a bit more substantial and forward-thinking.  On the final two pieces at least, Jakobsons nails it.  I suspect that Date Palms fans will probably love the entire album though, as will anyone enamored of the softer side of Kranky.

• The Beginning is the End
• Undone
• The Sinking of the Sky

 

21 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

This duo’s latest collaboration is a score composed to accompany Philippe Garrel’s haunting 1968 silent film Le Révélateur, which Lattimore and Zeigler have been intermittently been performing across the US since its debut at Ballroom Marfa’s 2013 silent film festival.  Naturally, Lattimore's harp is the most prominent element, imbuing these pieces with an eerily dream-like and rippling "music box" feel.  However, Zeigler’s presence is much more conspicuous here than it was on their previous Slant of Light (2014), balancing the delicate harp motifs with a bevy of synths, processed guitars, and lovely accordion-like melodies.  In general, I am not enthusiastic about soundtracks disembodied from their visual component, but this is an atypically good one, finding the perfect understated balance between whimsy, melancholy, menace, and surreality.

Thrill Jockey

Few instruments can lend themselves nearly as well to evoking a mysterious unreal world of flickering and shadows as the harp.  Of course, the downside to the harp is that its singular sound and lack of versatility makes it very hard for an aspiring harpist to carve out their own niche without at least offering something else as well (it is unlikely that anyone would be familiar with Joanna Newsom if she had not started singing, for example).  Against the odds, Mary Lattimore has done a remarkably impressive job of making her mark as a pure harpist, though she admittedly embellishes her work with plenty of effects and studio techniques, which is precisely why her partnership with Jeff Zeigler is such a fruitful one.  Zeigler thrives primarily as a behind-the-scenes guy, working as a producer and engineer for artists such as Nothing and Kurt Vile.  In short, he offers that "something else," ensuring that this album is as gorgeous, lush, and hallucinatory as possible and crafting inspired arrangements that alternately smolder, dissolve, and plunge into deeply lysergic psychedelia.  In addition to all those things, Zeigler and Lattimore also do a passable job of sounding vaguely French and vaguely fairy tale-like.  Much like Yann Tiersen’s Amélie score, Le Révélateur sounds like something that could have been recorded inside a snowglobe, though the two take very different tones, as this album is understated, melancholy, and darkly hallucinatory rather than pretty, kinetic, and Romantic.

As much as I enjoy the more experimental bits through the album, they are best appreciated as a counterbalance to the more conventional beauty of Lattimore's tender and elegant melodic themes.  The duo shines brightest with "A Tunnel," though similar motifs recur again throughout the album.  The composition itself is not particularly complex, as it is just a lovely minor key progression of harp arpeggios, but it is gorgeously enhanced by Zeigler’s melancholy and ghostly swells of faux accordion.  Also, as the piece progresses, Lattimore increasingly dances around her central melody to create unexpected harmonies.  The contrast between the piece's various textures is quite masterful as well, as the shadowy and spectral atmospherics complement the crisp lightness of the harp wonderfully.  Elsewhere, "Laurent and Bernadette" presents the reverse, as Lattimore weaves an undulating backdrop of rippling chords beneath a languorous and lovelorn "accordion" theme.  Trying to choose a favorite piece is a fundamentally doomed endeavor, however, as all of the pieces seamlessly drift into one another in a deliciously disorienting flow.  None of Le Révélateur's stronger themes are meant to hold together for long, as the score weaves a spell of endless fragility and creeping shadows: anything beautiful is fated to evaporate into an unsettling miasma of wildly panning and pointillist harpistry, ominous reverberations, warped electronics, and hallucinatory echoes.  Conversely, no matter how skittering, abstract, ugly, and unhinged a piece like "Running Chased" may get, there is always a piece like the shimmering and celestial "Stanislas" ready to emerge from the wreckage.

Lamentably, I have not yet seen Garrel's Le Révélateur in its glorious entirety, but it definitely seems like Lattimore and Zeigler have captured the mood of its more strange and iconic scenes: the film has absolutely no shortage of mysterious subterranean tunnels, looming shadows and ominous staircases.  It is also quite prone to viewing the world through a child’s eyes and toying with the precarious and porous boundary between reality and artifice.  Though capturing all of that in a score is unquestionably a tall order, Lattimore and Zeigler have done an admirable job indeed.  As with all soundtracks, Le Révélateur's magic would presumably be greatly enhanced if I was hearing it in its intended context, but the flickering dream-like spell this soundtrack casts is an appealing one nonetheless.  It can certainly stand alone, even if that is not the ideal.  Of course, given that the whole idea of a soundtrack is to lurk in the periphery rather than grabbing my attention, this is not the place to go for Lattimore's strongest work, though it definitely highlights her talents as a composer and serves as an illuminating companion piece to her recent At the Dam.  More importantly, it is a unique and quietly beautiful minor gem that was clearly a labor of love.

• A¬†Tunnel
• Hidden in a Cabinet
• Laurent and Bernadette

 

20 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

Tom Carter and Loren Connors are a pairing so obvious, it’s a mystery how it took this long to happen. Each has traversed the American underground on their own unique path. Carter co-founded acid-folk improvisers Charalambides in 1991 and Connors has been redefining his singular vision of the blues since the late 1970s.

On this debut non-titled LP, these guitar masters conjure a stunning, and at times labyrinthine, six-string tableau. Carter’s high-contrast spiral melodies sear through Connors’ expanding canvas of blacks and molten reds. It’s a startling and new language of psychedelic and avant blues that is a next step in Carter and Connor’s ongoing exploration of the guitar.

More information can be found here.

20 August 2016

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Albums and Singles

Art Sex Music is the autobiography of a musician who, as a founding member of the avant-garde group Throbbing Gristle and electronic pioneers Chris & Cosey, has consistently challenged the boundaries of music over the past four decades.

It is the account of an artist who, as part of COUM Transmissions, represented Britain at the IXth Biennale de Paris, whose "Prostitution" show at the ICA in 1976 caused the Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn to declare her, COUM and Throbbing Gristle "Wreckers of Civilization"… shortly before he was arrested for indecent exposure, and whose work continues to be held at the vanguard of contemporary art, some of which resides as part of the Tate permanent collection.

And it is the story of her work as a pornographic model and striptease artiste which challenged assumptions about morality, pornography and art.

Art Sex Music is the wise, shocking and elegant autobiography of Cosey Fanni Tutti.

Art Sex Music will be published by Faber & Faber on April 7th, 2017.

More information can be found here.