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On their second album as a duo, Marco Marzuoli and Alessandro Sergente lay out a reticulated blanket of pulsing guitar tones and modulated electronic pitches dedicated to the moon. Luna’s three programmatic tracks do a remarkably good job evoking their subject. Each one sounds like it has been washed in silver light and painted onto a blue-black canvas. Their shapes are uncertain, as much shadow as form, and they radiate with uneasy energy like they know they hide more than they reveal. Appropriately, the album's every sound hovers uneasily in place, shifting the air and color around it in long undulating waves both oceanic and astronomical.
Titles like "From the Village to the Country Under the Moonlight" and "Midnight: Song of Crickets on the Green Hill" bring to mind Luc Ferrari and Presque rien No. 1, less for their titles and more for their intent. Instead of grabbing a few microphones and setting out to capture an audio portrait of a moonlit landscape, Mazuoli and Sergente grabbed a guitar, some pedals, and a fistful of tape and set out to paint an abstract narrative—they call it a triptych—inspired by the quotidian and simultaneously magical passage of the moon through the night’s sky. The titles provide context where Ferrari’s sounds would normally do that job, only Luna doesn’t need much help. If the aforementioned songs fail to inspire images of villages or crickets, they evoke the sharp glow of the lunar surface and the curved shape of the Earth and its satellite with just a few carefully layered tones.
Timbre is the biggest contributor to that success. The guitars are glassy, lightweight, striking, almost uniformly smooth and still restless. It’s an optical illusion for the ears: pay attention to the pattern of the waves from peak to peak and the music will seem stationary. Focus on the descent and ascent of the wave and suddenly it’s an animated affair filled with trembling lines and nervous energy.
The careful application of interference helps too. Minor tones and a faint electrical texture, like the washed-out hue of an old television screen, complete the picture. There are rolling hills somewhere in these sounds, maybe crickets too, but more noticeable are the landscapes, the trees jutting up into the blackness of the sky, haloed by their own internal light, blurred shadows, white stone, and a grey presence that almost slips into daylight near the end. The details of a nocturnal stroll are lost in these wider strokes, but the mood of a place, and the mood of a kind of seeing, are captured with supernatural clarity.
samples:
- From the Village to the Country Under the Moonlight
- Midnight: Song of Crickets on the Green Hill
- Night Climb to the Mount Analogue
 
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Matt Elliott’s first release under the Third Eye Foundation moniker now sits at a full two decades ago. What is most striking is the fact that, considering how deeply rooted in the era drum 'n' bass/jungle music sounds now, Semtex is largely still as fresh sounding today as it was then. Because of less reliance on the overused "Amen" and "Funky Drummer" loops (though they appear), Elliott produced a work with significantly more depth and nuance, which is why it seems much more timeless than its contemporaries. Reissued here with a bonus disc of demos from the same era, and a lengthy selection of downloadable extra material, it is a nearly four and a half hour revisiting of one of the seminal albums of the mid 1990s.
Semtex was one of the first attempts to transfer the distinct sound of a genre heavily associated with dance clubs and the last antecedents of rave culture into a distinctly different, colder and more diverse one.While many associated with the ambient dub/illbient access made similar attempts (a notable amount of Justin Broadrick and Mick Harris related side projects come to mind), Semtex was one of the first fully realized attempts.
Part of what helped Elliott cultivate the Third Eye Foundation guise was his barebones approach to recording.In an era where synths were becoming extremely complex and computer recording and processing were becoming a reality, Semtex was recorded on a venerable old four track cassette recorder, using mostly a guitar, effects, and rudimentary sampling.By avoiding technological clichés and focusing on the overall composition, rather than the gimmicks, the album is all the more richer 20 years later.
Right from the opening of "Sleep" the style is set:bent guitar melodies and distortion paired with extremely hard-hitting percussion that blends together wonderfully, rather than being all about the beats.That is not to say that the high BPM chaotic rhythms of the drum ‘n bass scene are insignificant, however:"Still-Life" is wonderfully underscored by a chaotic cut up rhythm section, but that it is not the sole focus.An up front passage of guitar, low vocals, and a broken AM radio breakdown in the middle of the song keep it from being anything close to predictable or stagnant."Next of Kin" keeps the sputtering rhythms, but they are buried in a ton of reverb, with ghostly vocals appearing distant in the mix.
The second disc's bonus tracks sound exactly as I expected them to:rough and at times more like experiments than actual songs, but still of a strong enough quality to not be simply there for historical value."Alarm Song," for example, showcases Elliott's early flirtation with crunchy drum loops, but with an erratic and unpredictable tempo and an overall more open mix."Sleeping" features stiffer drum machine like beats with watery crackles and droning organ sounds, so similar to what was finally released but not fully formed.The same can be said about the nest of swirling melodies and processed voices on "Shard" that are consistent with the main album’s sound, just missing the rhythmic structure and thus not sounding quite complete.
The additional download-only material is even rawer, both in its composition and presentation.Culled from cassette demos dating back to 1991, many of the pieces (some nearing a half-hour in length) seem to draw from both the growing isolationist variation of ambience, but also the harsher noise world, such as the feedback loops and echoing churn of "A Cry for Help" that at times seems like a nod to the Broken Flag axis of artists.For what they are, they are extremely well done, but it also makes sense to place them as downloadable ancillary material, rather than using the limited physical space.
So much of the beat driven music of this era has not aged well:I know to this day any time I hear one of the overused rapid fire drum loops my brain immediately thinks "this sounds so late 1990s", but Semtex is one of the exceptions.While yes, the drum 'n' bass elements do channel a specific era, it is the remainder of Matt Elliott's approach to composition, drawing from a variety of different sounds and styles and culminating in a lo-fi, but perfectly fitting aesthetic that makes this album so strong.Even 20 years after it first appeared, Semtex sounds like the work of no one else, and with the significant amount of additional content included, it makes for a perfect excuse to revisit one of the classic albums of the 1990s.
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My first experience with Svendsen's work was his W/M debut split release with guitarist Christian Winther. Even though it was their first official release, both were well-established Norwegian artists who approached their respective instruments in ways that generated strange and unexpected sounds from them. Svendsen's newest work expands upon that, with four performances using only double bass, but played with a physicality and performance that blurs the lines between Svendsen himself and the instrument he plays.
The centerpiece of Forms & Poses happens to be the first song on the album, "Vita."At just shy of 20 minutes, this single composition comprises nearly half of the album.Looking at the title’s two possible interpretation:one being Latin for "life" and the other shorthand for an artist's collected works and experience, both apply perfectly.Beginning with deep, clean string sounds, Svendsen builds from a simple, yet rhythmic basis.The repeating bass rhythm he plays is expanded upon, emphasizing both the individual notes and the hard, percussive playing.
It is from this template of percussive bass (that sounds extremely similar to a full rhythm section) that he continues to work from.His rapid, repetitive playing builds tension, with variations on his approach creating sounds that resemble bass guitar, drums, and even synthesizers, though the only effects that seem to be here is a small amount of reverb.The piece hits a peak of intensity and then he begins to draw it back in.The performance never relents, but the sound becomes lighter and more melodic, transitioning to a subtle conclusion that makes for a perfect encapsulation of Svendsen's virtuoso playing and ear for strong compositions.
The three shorter pieces that follow feature him going in other directions with his playing, further demonstrating his ability and proficiency."Aria Prefix M-" is largely built upon plucked, muted bass strings.At first the volume is rather light and the overall feel spacious, but he slowly increases the volume and intensity to the dynamics.By the end he is bending notes left and right, but still within the confines of a clear compositional structure.
"Forms & Poses" stands out distinctly with its overall more experimental and collage-sounding approach.The piece erratically stops and starts throughout, with bits of voice sneaking through.His playing is all over the place:the song was compiled from recordings of him playing with his hands, feet, body, and a more conventional bow, and so there is an intentionally jumpy feel to the piece.It finally closes in a wonderful rhythmic/melodic progression that is sadly too short.The concluding "Chidori" features Svendsen in a different approach:here his playing stays largely in the higher registers at first, with abrasive scrapes that almost mimic a violin.The varying pitches and playing do not sound too significantly removed from a modular synthesizer piece, oddly enough.Eventually he brings the pitch down to a more conventional bass range, resulting a wonderful combination of low end drone and rapid fire weirdness before concluding the piece on a fitting chaotic note.
Forms & Poses may feature only a single instrument and a basic amount of processing and editing, but the most captivating moments are clearly the result of Svendsen's playing.The physicality he brings to the performance is where the album especially shines, and very few can manage to make a single instrument sound like such a diverse and varied ensemble.While I feel the slow burning, tension building moments of "Vita" are the definite standout, the remaining pieces as well are just as exceptional in showing the distinctly different styles in which he can play and perform, peerless in his composing and instrumental ability.
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ANOHNI has collaborated with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke on the artist's latest work Hopelessness.
Late last year, ANOHNI, the lead singer from Antony and the Johnsons, released "4 Degrees," a bombastic dance track celebrating global boiling and collapsing biodiversity. Rather than taking refuge in good intentions, ANOHNI gives voice to the attitude sublimated within her behavior as she continues to consume in a fossil fuel-based economy. ANOHNI released "4 Degrees," the first single from her upcoming album Hopelessness, to support the Paris climate conference this past December.
The song emerged earlier last year in live performances. As discussed by ANOHNI: "I have grown tired of grieving for humanity, and I also thought I was not being entirely honest by pretending that I am not a part of the problem," she said. "'4 Degrees" is kind of a brutal attempt to hold myself accountable, not just valorize my intentions, but also reflect on the true impact of my behaviors."
The album, Hopelessness, to be released world wide on May 6th 2016, is a dance record with soulful vocals and lyrics addressing surveillance, drone warfare, and ecocide. A radical departure from the singer's symphonic collaborations, the album seeks to disrupt assumptions about popular music through the collision of electronic sound and highly politicized lyrics. ANOHNI will present select concerts in Europe, Australia and the US in support of Hopelessness this Summer.
"Hopelessness is the genius of Anohni and her masterful songwriting. The long low sexy beats, the skittering colorful and playful rhythms surround her voice, which is the silky center. Anohni has replaced the stories of abandonment, pain and desire with the biggest issues of our time. This revolutionary move is truly astounding. She understands the disasters of war, climate collapse and totalitarianism in its many new forms. She understands media and she understands groove. Hopelessness is an entirely new mix of love and power, sex and despair delivered with her heavenly voice and incantatory melodies." -- Laurie Anderson, NYC 2016
More information can be found here.
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Much-celebrated Kompakt staple The Field returns to the spotlight with new album The Follower, his fifth full-length offering after From Here We Go Sublime, Yesterday And Today, Looping State Of Mind and Cupid's Head. Swedish soundsmith Axel Willner is well-known for his mastery when it comes to the allusive layering of loops, but it was with his last album Cupid's Head that a newly-found, somewhat pressing snappishness started to replace the soft-hued sonics of his ambient-infused techno, imbued with a darker mood and stronger footing than before. A carefully gauged balance of stoic motorik and gloomy drones was key here - just as it is for The Follower which goes even further in blurring the lines between concrete experimentation, body music and precisely laid-out arrangement, leading to one of the most rhythmically and texturally engaging listening experiences in Willner's catalogue.
"As always when starting a new album, I wanted to do something that sounds fresh, but doesn't stray too far from what I have so far done as THE FIELD - and that's always the tricky part", says Willner, adding that "the whole album came around through experimenting with a lot of new recording equipment and gear". That source of inspiration seems to have worked rather well, with title track "The Follower" opening on a surprisingly muscular groove and setting the tone for what could be considered The Field's most floor-attuned work yet - a raw bounce dripping with foggy acid and marching percussion catches long-standing fans off-guard while providing a perfect entry point for curious newcomers. Pulling no punches, Willner's knack for entwined drones and mutating loops is very much in place, but finds powerful support in an excitingly sturdy bassline and guitar-like screeches. It's been a few years since The Field's band dissolved, which led to more club-oriented live gigs - an experience that definitely informed The Follower's sound without interrupting this very personal continuum of expressive means. This is ambient techno on steroids, with a dose of metal machine music for good measure.
Follow-up cut "Pink Sun" quickly finds its pace with one of these perpetually rotating hooks Willner is known for, while "Monte Veritá" specializes in tunefully glitched vocal samples with accompanying bass workout - a powerful and propelling album build-up that finds its first moment of introspection with the mountainous "Soft Streams," an exciting synth journey that emits both ethereal and kinetic propensities. "Raise the Dead" presents The Field's focused sonic storytelling at its minimalist best, gyrating around a basic motive for a while before joining an earthy beat and opening up the sunshine roof. It's a winding, hypnotic track that also works particularly well as transition to the album's remarkable closing chapter: the slow-paced "Reflecting Lights" shows Willner at his most refined, evoking his often-quoted appreciation of Wolfgang Voigt's ambient project GAS as well as an obvious fondness for kraut synthesists and their trance-inducing exploits. "The Follower is about old myths, finding utopia and how mankind repeatedly makes the same mistakes over and over", explains Willner, but he remains an artist who prefers keeping things uncommented and the mistery intact - his latest full-length certainly doesn't need more introductions: it evidently shows a maturity and consistent evolution of The Field's trademark style of creation, but may very well be considered one of his most vibrant and visceral outings yet.
More information can be found here.
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Room40 is proud to continue the publication of a series of editions from American guitarist and composer Norman Westberg.
Best known for his work with the seminal outfit SWANS, Westberg’s output beyond that group is sprawling and restless. His name recurs and ripples through many interconnected micro-histories surrounding New York City’s music and art scenes. From appearances in film works associated with the Cinema Of Transgression, through to his participation in bands such as The Heroine Sheiks and Five Dollar Priest, Westberg’s name is woven deeply into the fabric of New York over the past three decades.
MRI is the result of Westberg’s encounters with the heavy medical scanning technology following his recognising diminished hearing. ”I started to notice a loss of hearing in my right ear,” Westberg explains, “and decided that it was high time that I had it checked out by a professional. The audiologist confirmed the uneven hearing loss and recommended an MRI. The purpose of the MRI was to make sure that there was not something other than my own aural misadventures causing the uneven loss.” This record is a coda to this experience. Recorded in 2012, it is a collection of reductive rolling guitar pieces that are embedded strongly in the American Minimalism tradition.
The newly mastered and post-produced edition also features a brand new piece, "Lost Mine," recorded in 2015 as an echo of the processes that led to the original recordings. It follows the reissue of 13 in late 2015.
From Lawrence English:
“Norman Westberg’s guitar playing with SWANS has influenced a generation of musicians across genres. I can personally attest to how his particular approaches to that instrument, in creating both harmony and brute force, have challenged and ultimately influenced my own sonic preoccupations.
What Norman has created with his solo works is an echoing universe of deep texture and harmonic intensity. His solo compositions generate an affecting quality that drives the listener towards reductive transcendence.”
More information can be found here.
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SN Variations is proud to announce the release of a new EP curated around the primordial and enigmatic music of Giacinto Scelsi.
Alongside a new recording of his intimate "Duo for Violin and Cello," the EP features a new work by Chris Watson inspired by Scelsi’s explorations of "pure sound" and a breathtaking shakuhachi honkyoku performance by Joe Browning.
Born into an aristocratic family in Italy in 1905, Scelsi's creative peak arrived in the 1960s after years of research into Buddhist chant and other aspects of Eastern spirituality. His work languished in obscurity for most of his long career, but its pioneering investigations of microtonality and pure sound have exerted a deep influence on contemporary composers and electronic artists including Mica Levi, Richard Skelton and Fennesz. Against the crowded polyphonies of much post-war academic modernism, Scelsi powerfully advocated for the primordial and the esoteric, for the acoustic interplay of pure frequencies.
"The Duo for Violin and Cello" dates from Scelsi’s most fertile period and was composed at the same time as seminal works such as "Anahit" and "Elegia per Ty." Despite a modest combination of just two instruments, the innovative use of double stopping and extended playing techniques creates a huge, vibrating microtonal form. In this new recording, Aisha Orazbayeva and Lucy Railton execute a meticulous performance of this complex score.
Chris Watson responded to the piece with sculpted field recordings of insects made originally on a boardwalk in the middle of the Borneo jungle. "Invertebrate Harmonics" imaginatively links the pure sound world of Scelsi to pure sound worlds found in nature. This piece is from a larger installation work "Notes from a Forest Floor," which was played first at the ICA last June as part of the event ‘MusICA –Exploring Sound and Authorship’.
Finally Chris records a traditional shakuhachi honkyoku piece - "Honshirabe" - one of the pieces forming the historic repertoire of the wandering Zen Buddhist monks known as the Komuso. This performance by Joe Browning is one of exquisite subtleties, resonating with Scelsi's mature work while pointing to its widespread historical antecedents.
More information can be found here.
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The Legendary Pink Dots are delighted to announce the forthcoming release
of their new album Pages Of Aquarius on Metropolis Records.
They promised us so much…
Naked hippies and soma fountains and patchouli rain from candy floss clouds and flowers and the summer that would never end. The Age of Aquarius.
The Age of Harmony and understanding and tolerance. Say it softly, like an Aquarian, The Age of ….Love. The Age of Love and HAIR.
Page One Aquarius. How does it look out there?
Bad hair, no hair. Covered up. Walls. And God is everywhere, splashed in red across those walls, And the fountains are dry, the ocean is full and they're dragging the lost from the depths of the sea and tying them up with wire.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Are we in for 2,160 years of this?
I’m an Aquarian. I believe in this crazy stuff and I visualise big old Pisces lying there, dying there. Huge, wounded, angry because no-one helps and every hot feverish cry brings a new storm, and every kick shakes the planet to it’s core. Big old Pisces. Huge but invisible so no-one sees him except the irritating baby that tickles his nose with an oily feather.
Page 2,000 Pisces, the end of the cycle and it hurts.
It can’t last.
Page One Aquarius.
The World is Beautiful. Blessed be. EK
Out April 22nd.
A teaser is available here.
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Box Records is proud to present the third full length album from Newcastle, UK noise-psych power trio Haikai No Ku.
Temporary Infinity continues the nightmarish bad trips that previous albums Sick On My Journey (Burning World Records) and Ultra High Dimensionality (Box Records) conjured. The patented Mike Vest (Bong, 11Paranoias, Blown Out) wall of gargantuan mild-altering damaged feedback is again present with the no- nonsense power of Sam Booth (Foot Hair) and Jerome Smith (Female Borstal, Charles Dexter Ward).
Haikai No Ku take no prisoners and show no remorse with their latest offering. Temporary Infinity is near 40 minutes of warped and disturbed hallucinogenic punishment. Their sound is not for the faint-hearted, but one that has seen them develop a cult following among those who enjoy their music twisted.
More information is available here.
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There are very few people around making better compilations than Analog Africa’s Samy Ben Redjeb.  For this latest treasure trove of newly unearthed obscurities, Samy teamed up with Teranga Beat's Adamantios Kafetzis, who tracked down Senegalese sound engineer Moussa Diallo back in 2009 and digitized his large archive of tape reels.  Remarkably, only five songs from that big score made it onto the album, so the duo must have made some very hard decisions in narrowing down Senegal 70 to its lean and consistently excellent 13-song song incarnation.  Happily, one of the songs that made the cut is a previously unreleased piece by the incomparable and woefully underdocumented Amara Touré.  Also present is the long-running and internationally successful Orchestra Baobab, but many of the lesser known artists shine just as brightly (if not more so), making this one of Analog Africa's stronger compilations to date.
As is so often the case with regions warranting a Soundway or Analog Africa compilation, Senegal's musical explosion was rooted in the good fortune of having a popular port (in this case, Dakar).  Unlike those in countries further from the coast, forward-thinking Senegalese musicians were treated to plenty of contemporary American and Cuban sounds in the '50s and '60s courtesy of some very hip sailors.  The first major band to successfully incorporate jazz, soul, and Cuban Son Montuno into the Senegalese aesthetic was Star Band de Dakar, which was formed in 1960.  Star Band is not included in this collection, however, as Redjeb and Kafetzis have chosen to focus instead upon all the great bands that formed in their wake.  Since I am lamentably not an ethnomusicologist, I cannot comprehensively pick apart where each influence bleeds into another (nor would I particularly want to).  In general, however, the formula seems to be a combination of driving Latin percussion; funky soul bass lines; and wonderfully spidery, clean guitar lines.
More important than the individual components, however, is the elegantly laid-back and sultry vibe that so many of these songs share.  There is also a recurring trend towards simplicity and hypnotic repetition that has aged quite well and matches my personal sensibility nicely.  There is also a very appealing feeling of casual professionalism pervading this collection, as so many songs manage to feel relaxed and loose while effortlessly keeping the grooves tight and the hooks strong.  It is like the exact opposite of garage rock, but in the best way possible: instead of striving amateurs, Senegal 70 is filled with stone-cold killers just kicking back and riding some excellent grooves.  That said, however, Gestu de Dakar’s stand-out "Ndiourel" definitely sounds like it could have been recorded in a garage or basement, though I don’t know how common either are in Dakar (I do not get out there much).
Of course, the one song that stands out the most flies in the face of all that sinuous, understated soulfulness, as King N'Gom and his band ham it up beautifully on the very fun and ridiculous "Viva Marvillas."  Aside from veering dangerously close to novelty song territory, "Viva Marvillas" is unique in that it basically sounds like two very different songs smashed together, as it becomes very serious and very musical for its second half.  Definitely an odd choice, but I bet King N’Gom would not have made it onto this compilation if "Marvillas" did not ultimately transform into something considerably more sensual and soulful.  In all other cases, the songs on Senegal 70 tend to take the more linear and sensible approach of starting good and staying good.  Admittedly, they also tend to blur together a bit, but that is because they are all so uniformly excellent for exactly the same reason (a great groove).  A few pieces do stand out for other reasons, however.  For example, Fangool’s "Mariama" easily boasts the most rich and charismatic vocals on the entire album.  Elsewhere, La Souruba De Louga improve upon an already spectacular groove with wild percussion fills and a surprisingly dissonant guitar solo.  Orchestre G.M.I.'s "Africa" succeeds similarly, gradually building up to some great trade-off solos from their horn section.
The only arguable downside to Senegal 70 is just that it lacks a single real bombshell that sends me scurrying to long-abandoned music blogs to track down whatever I can by some brilliant new-to-me artist.  That has definitely happened in the past with folks like K. Frimpong, Ebo Taylor, and Amare Touré.  However, my not being blown away by anything probably has a lot more to do with my current level of immersion in African music than it does with Redjeb’s curatorial skills: major revelations come rather easily and frequently when you are new to a particular milieu.  Also, labels like Soundway, Strut, and Analog Africa have likely already unearthed all of the major works to be found and have settled into the much deeper, harder work of digging up all the other great songs that slipped through the cracks. Which, of course, is exactly what Redjeb achieved here: Senegal 70 is a tight, beautifully assembled collection of tight, beautifully assembled songs (many of which have never been previously heard by Western ears, aside from perhaps the aforementioned hip sailors).  Diablos Del Ritmo still maintains its supremacy as my favorite Analog Africa compilation (with Angola Soundtrack a close second), but Senegal 70 probably comes closest to a highly coveted "all killer, no filler" summation than any other collection that Analog Africa has released to date.
 
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In his liner notes for The New Attractive, Yu Wakao writes, "In a sense, there is no need for individuality in noise music—ultimately, noise can only be hindered by the individual." Taste, he concludes, is far more important. It’s what separates this noise from that noise, the sound of traffic outside your car window from whatever is on the stereo. It’s a provocative claim because Takuji Naka and Tim Olive’s music on The New Attractive both affirms and refutes it, and because the distinction between taste and individuality is ambiguous. How are we to separate the two? Which one determines the instrument that the artist brings to their art? Which influences their preference for color, duration, and texture? What about volume? Naka and Olive certainly seem present in their work—the use of magnetic pickups and mechanical turbulence is familiar enough, as are the congealed puffs of electronic haze. The brevity of these five untitled tracks, their loose atmospheric structures, and the quiet, almost casual quality of the duo’s interactions all sound deliberate, the product of individuals with distinct tastes. Those qualities rise up and disperse across a wider plateau, however, propelling the music and musicians toward a nebulous border where specifics fall apart.
Recorded near Kyoto, Japan in 2013, The New Attractive is named for pamphlet written by Robert Norman, a 16th-century English navigator who discovered and described magnetic dip using a compass that moved vertically rather than horizontally. Besides being an effect airplane pilots watch for when navigating by compass, it’s an obscure nod to the technology that makes this music possible: namely magnetic tape and electricity. Some semblance of both appears in the music, whether it’s through the warped signal of manipulated tape, the metallic clang of spring reverb, or the even rise and fall of synthesized tones. Whatever Naka and Olive do with their equipment, the rawness of the noise and the fragility of the field recordings that briefly flicker in and out of it serve to emphasize the medium itself, and that includes the electromagnet as much as the ferric-oxide.
That emphasis speaks to Wakao’s claim about individuality in noise music. The stress is on the noise and the means necessary for making it, not the people behind it. And while it’s easy enough to associate certain music-making strategies with certain musicians, it’s not so easy to determine who is responsible for which sounds. In the section of Derek Bailey’s Improvisation devoted to objections against the practice of improvised music, Gavin Bryars singles out this zone of interference as an obstacle to pursuing new conceptual ideas. "One of the main reasons I am against improvisation now," he writes, "is that in any improvising position the person creating the music is identified with the music. The two things are seen to be synonymous. The creator is there making the music and is identified with the music and the music with the person. It’s like standing a painter next to his picture so that every time you see the painting you see the painter as well and you can’t see it without him."
Only in the case of Naka and Olive improvisation and anonymity co-mingle. Their names are scrawled across the album art and liner notes, yet they are practically invisible, or may as well be referred to as a unit, identifiable by inference because of the preferences they bring to the field.
Large sections of The New Attractive are aeriform, dispersed to the point that the co-existence of their parts feels like an accident. Some might call it ambient music and choose to focus on the way the different elements harmonize, and that’s a legitimate way of listening to this music. Naka and Olive mine the pleasures of synchronicity by allowing their materials to speak for themselves. But it’s perfectly natural to wonder what else is at play on an album like this one. Are the artists speaking through the music? Or is something being channelled through the artists, either despite them or because of their willingness? If it is as Yu Wakao argues, the artists are giving us a glimpse of a much bigger picture, not because they’re creating sounds, but because they’re carefully, sometimes passionately, selecting them.
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