03 July 2016

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Albums and Singles

Melissa Guion is MJ Guider. She lives and works in New Orleans and previously released the Green Plastic extended play cassette in early 2014 on the Constellation Tatsu label. Using heavy washes of bass and a deft touch in mixing, she provokes stark contrasts to construct a semi-surreal environment. The result are songs that exist in a wholly contained sound environment, minimal yet lush, spare yet saturated, and most importantly, entirely compelling.

Precious Systems is inspired and influenced by the landscape in and around New Orleans, particularly the juxtaposition of the natural with industrial and commercial constructs as they reflect life here. The songs on the album attempt to create contrasts of their own as a means of inducing unreality or altering perspectives.

The sounds come from a variety of sources, but are anchored by several aging, outmoded machines. A beloved Rickenbacker 3000 in combination with a Roland R-8 drum machine and RE-501 tape echo set the tone of "technology-in-subsidence."

Having recently expanded to a trio, the group will be making select live appearances following Precious Systems release.

More information can be found here.

20 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

Continuing his concept of "sound recycling", Sebastian Banaszczyk’s latest work is the studio recording of a piece first performed in 2014. As part of the Festiwal Dekonstrukcji Slowa in Poland, he performed this work (translated as "The Old Writer") as a tribute to William S. Burroughs on his 100th birthday. Consistent with his work to this point, it is a brilliant deconstruction of sounds that bear little resemblance to their source, but perhaps what is most surprising is the amount of conventional music he chose to employ, giving an added layer of depth to an already complex record.

Oniron

These musical elements take the form of snippets of recordings of traditional Moroccan music.Befitting the subject matter, Banaszczyk chose not to recontextualize them as drastically as he tends to do with his source material, and instead lets some of the traditional rhythms and melodies shine through.This is perhaps the most pronounced on "Agent Lee" and "Tangier".The former features him blending painfully sharp stabs of noise with hints of distortion with low fidelity rhythmic loops, while the latter is also built upon Middle Eastern stringed instruments, with a tasteful amount of processing done to give them an otherworldly quality, while retaining their traditional sound as well.

Comparisons to Muslimgauze are inescapable at this point, because Banaszczyk is working with similar material, and is also treating said material electronically.However, the comparison is a loose one, because here the sounds are less harsh, conjuring more of a pensive mood than the aggressive style Bryn Jones would often employ."Memories of Tangier", which closes the album, functions as a distillation of the aforementioned composition, heavily featuring percussion loops and some distinctly raw moments that also appear.

The pieces in which rhythms are not as prevalent are, unsurprisingly, more reminiscent of Banaszczyk’s previous work, but again exemplifying the strides he has made as a composer."The Mayan Caper", for example, is an excellent collection of weird textures and dissonant buzzes, leaving no obvious clues as to where the material was sourced from.The lengthier "The Western Lands" is more of an exercise in subtlety, building from a quiet opening into haunting passages of sound.At times the sound peaks into more sci-fi tinged spacy moments that are not unlike some of Robert Hampson's best work, but still sounds entirely like Bionulor.

Sebastian Banaszczyk has been using his Bionulor guise in a growing array of contexts, expanding both his compositional methodology as well as working in a greater multimedia context, such as his previous recordings for dramatic performances.Like those, however, Stary Pisarz works as a record completely divorced from its conceptual roots.I especially enjoyed his concessions to rhythm and melody, which gave those pieces an even more compelling quality.But even without these new developments in his sound, the record excels on the strengths of its unique tones and textures as well.

samples:

• Agent Lee
• The Western Lands
• Memories of Tangier

 

19 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

Hypnopazūzu is the duo of none other than the legendary gentlemen Youth (Killing Joke and 1008 other worlds) and David Tibet (Current 93 and 93 other worlds). They both first skipped together on Current 93's debut album Nature Unveiled in 1983. Create Christ, Sailor Boy is their new album, and their first as Hypnopazūzu. 93 years in the making, this elaborately-packaged 3-sided LP (it will have a laser etching on Side 4) contains ten songs and brings together spheres and planets for the Ultimate Hallucinatory PickNick.

This album will come with two different front covers – one by David Tibet, the other by Youth. We will make a bundle option for both, for ye die-hards.

Out Summer 2016.

More information will soon be available here.

19 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

To his everlasting credit, Rhys Chatham has remained a restlessly evolving and adventurous composer well into his 60s, as well as quite an endearing perverse and unpredictable one.  Case in point: roughly a decade after composing his monumental A Crimson Grail for 400 guitars, Chatham is now is now experimenting with ways to perform his harmonically complex compositions all by himself in real-time.  Also, he has picked up the flute again (his original instrument, which was summarily abandoned for electric guitars after Chatham first experienced the Ramones).  As if that were not enough divergence from the norm, Chatham also employs a special Pythagorean/just-intonation tuning system for his guitar.  Despite all of those innovations, Pythagorean Dream is first and foremost an impressive performance rather than a bold new artistic statement.  I suppose that makes it a fairly minor release within Chatham’s oft-influential and frequently large-scale oeuvre, but it is still surprisingly effective for a one-man guitar/trumpet/flute tour de force and certainly sounds like absolutely no one else.

Foom

To say that the first half of Pythagorean Dream opens with a trumpet solo would be very deceptive and misleading, but that is indeed exactly how it starts.  The twist is that Chatham does not play a single clear note, opting to instead to create a sputtering, breath-like sound not unlike a deflating balloon.  The guitar playing that soon follows is similarly eccentric and wrong-footing, as Chatham fingerpicks unfamiliar arpeggios and layers them using feedback loops of differing lengths.  While his prickly and pointillist fingerpickings are offset by an occasional strum or deep pedal tone, the increasingly complex and overlapping fingerpicked motifs are the real meat of the piece, resembling nothing less than a harmonic swarm (a destination quite far from its stated Fahey inspirations).  While the overall aesthetic is undeniably very much Chatham's own, it will probably seem a bit familiar to anyone who has been following his work at all closely.  Aside from the tremolo-picked low-end that is a favorite recurring Chatham theme, the whole fingerpicked section sounds extremely similar to some sections of his recent Charlemagne Palestine collaboration.  In fact, it is either a variation of that exact same piece or Rhys has been very much fixated on a exploring and perfecting that one idea for a while.  That said, I like it and I also quite like the comparatively brief interlude of shifting EBow harmonies that appears around the first part’s midpoint.  Sadly, that EBow segment does not stick around long enough, which highlights a fundamental flaw with the piece: Chatham's rigorous adherence to the purity of his process prevents him from fully capitalizing on the piece's strengths.  Those shifting EBow tones would have complemented the thorny arpeggios nicely and likely yielded a compelling cloud of overtones, but Chatham is just one man and he can only do one thing at a time.

At first glance, the second half of the piece does not seem to have much in common at all with what preceded it, though it opens with the first half's fading guitars.  Once they fully dissipate, however, the piece evolves into a warm and gently undulating bed of flute drones.  In a broader sense, however, the two halves of Pythagorean Dream are very much explorations of similar terrain: the way layers of loops can bleed together to yield a rich web of self-perpetuating harmonies, overtones, and oscillations.  Gradually, however, Chatham’s flute starts to emerge from its haze with a series of increasingly wild trills and flutters.  On one level, it sounds like a particularly languorous strain of free-jazz, but the overarching idea remains the same as ever: flurries and clusters of notes blurring together.  It does not stick around long enough to get very complex, lamentably, as the flutes gradually fade away to be replaced by the return of jangling and dissonant fingerpicked theme as it all winds to a close.

As an album, Pythagorean Dream is a mixed success, as it is not so much flawed as it is greatly limited by its process.  It is unquestionably a fine and inventive performance though, as Chatham successfully pulled off quite a juggling act with his three instruments.  That is not quite the same as a great composition, however, as Dream's flow and trajectory suffer a bit from its "one-man band" premise.  While the piece admittedly follows a logical course and comes full circle, there is never a sense that is ever building into something more substantial.  That said, Chatham remains a distinctive and inventive voice despite his radical downsizing and shift in direction.  Not many composers remain this vital four decades into their career.  Chatham also did quite an impressive job of showing what just one person can do if they put enough thought into their set-up, as parts of Dream certainly sound like the work of a small guitar orchestra.  This is probably not the first Rhys Chatham album that I would recommend to someone curious about his work, but it is definitely a welcome return that shows that Chatham is still tirelessly forging his own unique path (even if that path has detoured a bit to find some fresh ground to break).

• Part One
• Part Two (excerpt one)
• Part Two (excerpt two)

 

19 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

The Legendary Pink Dots have been in the midst of a creative renaissance for years now, fitfully releasing some of the finest work of their career amidst the unending and distracting tide of solo projects, reissues, live albums, and archival discoveries.  The lion's share of Edward Ka-Spel's best ideas, however, have definitely been winding up in LPD's more abstract and experimental work.  I am personally perfectly fine with that, as that is the side of the Dots that I have always preferred anyway.  I suspect that most longtime fans were initially drawn to the band by their songs though and they have presumably been suffering through quite a long dry spell in that regard.  Pages of Aquarius is an album for them, as it is a solid, concise, and hook-heavy collection of industrial-tinged songs that harken back to the Dots of earlier times.  In fact, if I did not know better, I would have guessed that this album was recorded in the early '90s.  I am not sure if that is necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, but there are a definitely a handful of instant classics here regardless.

Metropolis

For better or worse, the opening "Mirror, Mirror" is a near-perfect song that sets an almost impossibly high bar for the rest of the album.  While the distorted power chords definitely feel like a retro-throwback of sorts, the band is nevertheless at the height of their talents, as Edward Ka-Spel's lyrics are wry and biting; his melodies are strong; the clattering drum programming is unconventional and dynamic; and the more psychedelic touches build the song to a crescendo rather than derailing its momentum.  As far as hookiness is concerned, "Mirror" is Aquarius's pop zenith and sets the template that most of the following songs try to follow.  They may not always succeed, but they all at least fulfill some role in unfolding whatever cryptic narrative arc Ka-Spel has in mind and offer some scattered delights along the way.  While the album's lyrical content seems to have a loose and somewhat inscrutable astrological/techno-dystopian theme, the overall thread linking these eight pieces together musically is quite a bit clearer, as there is a definite formula of propulsive drum programming, buzzing synthesizers, memorable hooks, and comparatively tight songcraft running throughout Aquarius…at least for a while, anyway.  Things definitely get quite a bit more abstract near the album’s end.  The star of the show is largely the drum programming though, which simultaneously calls to mind the poppier strains of '90s industrial while still being lively and unusual enough to elevate the surrounding material.  The rolling sex groove of "D-Train" is admittedly a bit much (and certainly does not benefit from an interlude of proggy bombast), but the vaguely Latin rhythm in "The Greatest Story Ever Told" is great and the deeply wrong-sounding lounge groove of "Touching the Forelock" is even more striking.

Of course, the problem is that there are initially not many occasions besides "Mirror, Mirror" in which everything is going well at once.  For example, a few songs are derailed by maddeningly insistent sing-song melodies that resemble nursery rhymes ("The Greatest Story" is heavily indebted to "The Alphabet Song").  Elsewhere, Ka-Spel errs on the side of shrillness or the band lets their more indulgent psychedelic impulses overstay their welcome a bit.  Nevertheless, Aquarius is ultimately a very listenable and enjoyable album due to its strong rhythmic component, even if it does not scale particularly impressive heights at times.  There are a handful of notable exceptions though, particularly the understated and slow-burning ballad "Prodigal," which boasts a great vocal melody, elegantly minimal synth accompaniment, and a dub-wise percussion backdrop of quietly escalating intensity.  I am not certain that it needed to stretch out for almost 9 minutes, but it never stops being great, so the extended duration is not a problem at all.  The extended three-part closer "Don't Go There/Page Aquarian/Jacob’s Ladder" is yet another highlight, weaving a simmering and complex groove of burbling percussion; buzzes and beeps; and fake brass before taking a deep and prolonged plunge into far more lysergic territory.  Again, all of it is great, but the fact that it sprawls out for over 17 minutes might make it a tough sell for those not fully indoctrinated into LPD’s fluid understanding of time.  To my ears, it is a journey well-worth taking, as Ka-Spel and company build to quite a wonderful crescendo of mind-warping abstraction mingled with interludes of haunting melody.  It is absolutely the perfect way to end the album, but the digital and 2xLP versions toss in yet another kaleidoscopic descent into the rabbit hole of Ka-Spel’s mind in form of the 20-minute "Weight of Water." Most fans will not want to miss that bonus track, as it is probably substantial enough to have warranted its own EP.

The only real flaw with Pages of Aquarius is just that there is just too damn much of it and that not all of it is wonderful.  The presents a problem when all of the best material occurs at the beginning and the end: Aquarius could have been an absolutely perfect album if all of the breezier pieces in the middle had been culled.  While almost every song in that lull boasts at least a few things I can appreciate, the cumulative effect is that it is kind of a slog to get to the part of the album where things start to truly catch fire.  There are certainly far worse problems to have than a massive surplus of fully formed ideas, however, so it would be a shame to dwell on that.  Rather, the important thing is that Pages of Aquarius boasts at least three absolutely stellar songs.  In fact, I would even say that it is easily one of the Dots’ finest albums, as they are certainly at the peak of both their songwriting and hallucinatory powers.  Granted, this absolutely wonderful single album has the editing misfortune of being buried within the format of an exasperatingly overstuffed double album, but that is nothing that an ambitious listener with access to iTunes cannot easily fix.

• Mirror, Mirror
• Prodigal
• Don't Go There

 

19 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

This intriguing and wildly divergent pair of unreleased performances provides a fascinating window into the curious evolution of Hennix's singular artistry.  The newer and more listenable of the two is credited to her current Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage project and enlists a trio of vocalists to weave a mantric, quasi-devotional Eastern drone reverie for 80 minutes.  Far more intriguing, however, is the remarkably heavy and nerve-jangling 1976 performance from her earlier just-intonation ensemble, The Deontic Miracle.  In retrospect, it now makes perfect sense to me why it took so long for Catherine Christer Hennix's work to be fully appreciated, as there is absolutely no way that the world was ready for such radically dissonant drones forty years ago.

Important

Live at Issue Project Room documents a 2014 live performance of a recent piece entitled "Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis." Characteristically, the piece is based upon just-intonation tuning, yet it curiously does not sound nearly as distinctive and revelatory as some of her other work.  The reason for that is quite simple: this is definitely not one of Hennix's more adventurous compositions.  Instead, it feels like a straight-up homage to the work of her former mentor, the late Hindustani vocalist/hugely influential supernova Pandit Pran Nath.  Stylistically, it will probably be almost indistinguishable from classical raga for most casual listeners, which understandably makes it a less than essential release, akin to watching a favorite punk band launch into a spirited set of Ramones' covers: it certainly has its pleasures, but it is not quite what drew me here.  In any case, the stars of this set are unquestionably vocalists Imam Ahmet Muhsin Tüzer, Amir Elsaffan and Amirtha Kidambi, who weave an impassioned spell of soulful chants and wails over a bed of buzzing tambura drones and brass swells for well over an hour.

It would be unfair and reductionist to say that this piece is entirely traditional, however, as Hennix and her ensemble definitely tweak the raga formula in a number of subtle and inventive ways.  The most immediately obvious is the addition of the aforementioned sustained brass tones, but attentive ears will also note the use of electronics to create hazy afterimages and layered vocal drones.  Also, in a compositional sense, the piece features a few surging undercurrents of menace that are not at all native to raga.  Equally impressive and unexpected are the occasional massed brass reveries and the passage where it all fleetingly dissipates into quivering feedback.  Judged solely on its own merits, this is certainly an impressively nuanced, sustained, and mesmerizing performance by a reverent ensemble that has clearly mastered the form and shaped it to meet their own deep drone impulses.  In the context of Hennix's larger oeuvre, however, it is merely a likeable minor release.  An album like The Electric Harpsichord sounds like nothing else on earth, whereas this just sounds like a particularly skilled channeling of an aesthetic with a long and storied lineage.  Granted, I probably would have been floored if I had witnessed the actual concert, but without the forced focus of a live performance, the lulls between the rare crescendos feel like legitimate lulls rather than the simmering potential that they are meant to be.

• Live at Issue Project Room (excerpt #1)
• Live at Issue Project Room (excerpt #2)
• Live at Issue Project Room (excerpt #3)

Conversely, the considerably smaller and more minimalist Deontic Miracle managed to sound like a sickly, quivering, and slow-burning nightmare with just a couple of Renaissance oboes (shawms?), a sheng (a Chinese pipe instrument), and some sine wave generators.  As anyone who has heard The Electric Harpsichord can attest, just-intonation lends itself remarkably well to tense, sinister-sounding dissonance and there is plenty of that here.  I can almost hear Werner Herzog in my head ranting about how the mathematical patterns found in nature are inherently corrupt and infernal and that humanity transformed entropy to harmonious order with the invention of Western tunings.  In any case, the titular central palace sounds like quite a singularly disquieting place.  Occasionally, a trilling melody will strike a tone that feels both ancient and regal, but the effect is invariably curdled by the dissonant harmonies that shift and swell beneath it.  Rather than being the central motif, the rare instances of exotic fluttering melody merely serve as fleeting oases in an unending, slow-motion tide of eerie discomfort.

Samples:

• Central Palace Music (excerpt #1)
• Central Palace Music (excerpt #2)
• Central Palace Music (excerpt #3)

 

 

19 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

Swans' guitarist Norman Westberg’s second solo release for the increasingly essential Hallow Ground label continues the temporally disorienting 2016 hot streak begun with MRI (which was recorded at least four years ago).  Though there is a fairly wide gulf separating the two recordings time-wise, they both stand apart from some of Westberg’s other solo work by effectively balancing his warm and dreamlike guitar-drone tendencies with the added heft and menace of well-placed dissonance.  In short, this is yet another wonderful album.

Hallow Ground

Like most recent Westberg releases, The All Most Quiet consists of two long-form pieces of similar lengths.  The first side of the record is devoted to the title piece, which opens with a stark and ominous thrum.  As the piece progresses, however, ripples of obsessively repeating loops begin to percolate though the foundational drone.  The most immediately obvious impact is textural and dynamic, as the loops take over the foreground and weave an elegantly blurred and gently pulsing tapestry.  The piece gets quite a bit more compelling, however, once Westberg begins to play with harmony, as unexpected dissonances slowly blossom and dissipate.  Listened to casually, "The All Most Quiet" definitely works as a very likeable foray into shimmering ambient drone with some passing dark clouds, but its true depth does not reveal itself without some serious attention to detail: Westberg's unique genius as a solo artist is very much an understated and deeply nuanced phenomenon.  While he works within fairly familiar stylistic terrain in a larger sense, much of Westberg’s most impressive artistry tends to lie either in the periphery or just under the surface.  In this case, my favorite moments are almost exclusively small-scale touches like the way loops slowly fall out of phase with one another or the way he uses delay to leave hazy afterimages that mass together.

The second side’s "Sound 2" is considerably less subtle with its dissonance, opening with a very insistent and somewhat shrill alarm-like loop that Westberg gradually transforms with the addition of vibrato and a churning undercurrent.  That "alarm" motif turns out to be the piece’s primary foundation throughout, but Westberg takes it in a number of unexpected and ambitious directions, as it sounds completely disembodied from its surroundings at one point, then is later enveloped by a gorgeously rich and sinister web of ugly, pulsing harmonies.  The overall mood is surprisingly fluid as well, as "Sound 2" dips its toes into quasi-industrial territory, menacingly gnarled harmonies, and hallucinatory otherworldliness before resolving into a complexly layered and lushly oceanic interlude of rippling piano-like tones.  Naturally, there is a lot going on at the microcosmic level, but "Sound 2" offers considerably more overt appeal than its more static predecessor, as its many transformations are all effective and intriguing.  Also, it gets remarkably heavy at times.  That said, however, the best parts still tend to lie in the details, particularly in how Westberg makes notes cohere into a sickly swarm of horror, then allows the dissonance to almost invisibly dissipate until there is no trace of darkness to be found at all.  I was also impressed at how "Sound 2" feels so epic, yet is so beautifully condensed.  In lesser hands, it would take an entire album to get from the opening to the closing of this piece, but Westberg does not waste a single second or allow any single movement to overstay its welcome.  That is an impressive achievement on its own, but the fact that he makes it all feel so natural and unhurried makes it doubly so.

Amusingly, I was taken aback by how wonderful MRI was when it when it was reissued by Room40 earlier this year and I am now taken aback yet again by the greatness of The All Most Quiet.  While both albums scale very similar heights, this latest release is the more uniformly strong of the two.  There is not a misstep or lull anywhere to be found here.  Also, at the risk of sounding like a broken record (or a loop-based solo guitar performance), The All Most Quiet reaffirms everything that I have already observed about Westberg's relation to the modern classical/minimalist tradition.  Granted, Westberg is just a guy alone in his room with a guitar and a bunch of pedals and I suspect a lot of what he does is improvised and intuitive, which is certainly very different than composing for an orchestra.  The differing paths do not make the end result any less impressive though.  In a broader sense, Westberg’s grasp of harmony and dynamics places his work at a level far beyond that of just about anyone else working in the drone and guitar improv spheres: Norman Westberg is basically the Morton Feldman of solo guitarists (albeit considerably more accessible than that intended compliment would imply).

• The All Most Quiet
• Sound 2 (excerpt one)
• Sound 2 (excerpt two)

 

12 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

2016 version. Pressed using the original New Backwards plates approved by Peter Christopherson.

Scheduled to ready in July.

The New Backwards, created in 2007, was originally included in the Ape Of Naples box set released on Important in 2008 and was constructed by Peter Christopherson using material from the Backwards sessions, recorded in the early 90's for a planned release on Trent Reznor's Nothing Records label. The New Backwards, like Ape Of Naples, is an intense fan favorite and an essential part of of the Coil catalog.

More information can be found here.

12 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

2016 version. Pressed using the original Ape Of Naples plates approved by Peter Christopherson.

Mailorder color copies are transparent red - the same color Peter Christopherson chose for the original Ape box set.

Scheduled to ready in July.

The Ape Of Naples is Coil's highly celebrated final album completed by Peter Christopherson following the tragic death of Jhonn Balance in 2004. Often noted for being a fan favorite, The Ape Of Naples uses Balance's final recordings and material recorded at Trent Reznor's studio in New Orleans to create a deep, heavy masterpiece.

This first printing of 2000 copies is packaged in a heavy duty case wrapped, tip-on style jacket with Ian Johnstone's original artwork coated in a custom spot gloss. Each LP is house in a printed inner sleeve and side D contains all three original etchings. Ape's lyrics are spread across the gatefold.

CD version is packaged in a heavy duty digipack with additional spot gloss printing to match the LP edition.

More information can be found here.

12 June 2016

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Albums and Singles

Eight of the densest ambient and meditative music pieces since the dawn of music!! Sounds both extremely of this time, and of no time whatsoever. Monolithic and stark but extremely warm, intensely personal, and for every one in every which way. We are very happy to present to you “For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have),” an album by Huerco S.

More information can be found here.