08 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

White Hills are proponents of psychedelia as transformation. The music made by Dave W. and Ego Sensation is risky and cutting edge, rooted in dystopian futurism and hyper-conscious of society’s constant desire for a new and better drug. That progressive aesthetic is at the heart of White Hills’ newest album Walks For Motorists, a radically stripped-down record that emphasizes rhythm and groove. The album bursts forth with a new kind of intensity, one born out of laser-focused precision and detail-oriented songwriting. Possibly surprising to fans familiar with the Hawkwindian guitar squall of earlier albums, the songs on Walks For Motorists began as a keyboard melody or bass line, and several songs on the album don't even feature guitar at all. This is propulsive, open music, surreal to its core but made to inspire people to get out of their seats and move.

Walks For Motorists was recorded with David Wrench (Caribou, Bear in Heaven, FKA Twigs, Owen Pallet) at Bryn Derwen Recording Studio in Bethesda, Wales which borders the Snowdonia National Forest.  The band had 24-hour access to the studio, which allowed them to work whenever inspiration struck. Wrench's expertise producing and mixing electronic music was an essential asset when perfecting the crisp tones heard throughout the record. This is the first album the band has recorded outside of New York City, and the vast, rolling Welsh landscape that surrounded the studio influenced the album’s uncluttered sound. Walks For Motorists is also White Hills’ most diverse album to date. Fuzzed-out rockers sit comfortably next to kraut-infused grooves, and there are more vocal contributions from Ego than ever before.

More information can be found here.

08 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

This Brooklyn trio’s fourth full-length almost did not happen, as the band was plagued by a host of tensions, false-starts, and creative second-guessing before everything eventually came together.  Ostensibly, Transfixiation is an attempt to translate Strangers' live intensity into their studio work in hopes of creating something more dangerous and unhinged, but their intensity has never exactly been in question for me: narrowness of focus might be a bit of problem, but lack of bad-assness definitely is not.  Transfixiation sounds more or less exactly like I would expect a new APTBS album to sound (like a darker, more pissed-off Jesus and Mary Chain), which is perfectly fine by me–they are what they are and they are very good at it.  All I hoped for was a few more great songs and Transfixiation did not fail me at all.

Dead Oceans

A Place To Bury Strangers have a well-deserved reputation for excess due to their ear-melting live volume and vocalist/guitarist Oliver Ackerman's impressive array of self-designed effects pedals (he runs Death By Audio).  However, not many people seem to notice that the trio have a similar gift for restraint as well, which is one of my favorite aspects of their sound.  On the opening "Supermaster," for example, the entire song is driven by Dion Lunadon's muscular, propulsive bass line and drummer Robi Gonzalez barely even touches his cymbals.  As far as I am concerned, it is a perfectly constructed piece: there is a great groove, excellent dynamic variation, masterful use of space, some killer bursts of warped guitar and it is all over in about 3 minutes.  Everything that is supposed to make an impact does exactly that, as there is literally nothing unnecessary that could have been carved away.

When they stick with that lean and hooky formula, as they do with the even better "Now It's Over," APTBS are a great band.  When they stray from that formula, however, things get a bit more complex.  Obviously, if they released an album with 9 largely interchangeable variations on a single theme, it would get tired very quickly.  Unfortunately, the divergences from that comfort zone can be a mixed bag.  A few of them work quite well, like the barreling, full-on garage rock chaos of "I'm So Clean" or the warped, woozy, and treble-heavy "Love High."  I also enjoyed the masterfully fucked and wrong-sounding pop of "What We Don't See" quite a bit.  The darker, more menacing "Deeper" is something of another stand-out, gradually escalating from deep subterranean bass drops and threatening pronouncements into some kind of post-industrial sex jam with guest vocals from Emilie Lium Vordal.

The enjoyment of the rest of the album, however, hinges mostly upon how much a given listener loves blown-out and mangled shoegaze guitars.  I myself like them quite a bit, but vastly prefer them when they are employed in the service of a great song.  "We've Come So Far," unfortunately, is basically just an excuse for a howling guitar blow-out, while the closing "I Will Die" is so fried and in-the-red that it is probably more treble sizzle than actual content.  That said, it is crazy to fault APTBS for failing to churn out a start-to-finish masterpiece given how brutally constrictive their chosen niche is: for a band four albums deep into their career, I would say that they have wrung a surprising amount of variety and excitement from a formula of deadpan, range-less vocals coupled with wild guitar eruptions.  Granted, it probably is not enough variety and excitement to actually carry an entire album, but I have always viewed APTBS as more of a singles band anyway and I cannot think of anyone else who is doing a better job at mining this particular territory.  Given that arguably half of Transfixiation consists of strong singles, it seems like as fine an album as any sane person could reasonably hope for.

• Supermaster
• Deeper
• Now It's Over

 

 

07 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

Simon Crab was one of the founding members of Bourbonese Qualk, who were easily one of the most strange and compelling bands to emerge from the ‘80s underground.  They were also sometimes one of the best, but they never quite achieved the stature in the post-industrial canon that they deserved.  A good part of that is probably due to their constantly shifting and eclectic style, though they seemed to perfect their singular mélange of electronic music, mutant funk, gamelan, and experimentalism by 2001's On Uncertainty (their final album).  With After America, Crab essentially picks up right where his band left off (though sans funk), offering up a distinctively kaleidoscopic and uncategorizable fantasia on the evergreen theme of America's decline.

Fathom

I was not quite sure what to expect from Crab after what was essentially a decade-long hiatus, but I am very happy to report that After America seamlessly embodies the very same "anything and everything is fair game" aesthetic that made late-period Qualk so great.  What Crab does is very different from self-conscious genre-hopping though: there is no "look what I just did!" showiness or attempt to blow my mind with how adroitly he can juggle seemingly disparate threads, nor is there any clumsy appropriation of "ethnic" music to heighten the exotic or psychedelic aspects of these pieces.  Instead, Crab just sounds like an artist with very wide-reaching and unusual tastes coupled with the ability to skillfully assimilate those elements into something all his own. That is a truly rare combination.

Curiously, there truly is no common factor that unites After America's best moments: sometimes Crab's bizarre synthesis works brilliantly, sometimes it just works well.  My personal favorite piece is probably "Saccades" which sounds like a blearily soft-focus, slowed-down hip-hop anthem.  The following "Wintex-Cimex 83" is another stand-out, combining an ominous, mechanized crawl with wild live drums and a languorous flute melody.  I suspect that both Discogs and I may have those two song titles reversed, however, as there is a 20-minute piece called "Saccades" that Crab released in 2013 that includes part of the alleged "Wintex-Cimex" above.  In any case, they are still both great.  Yet another highlight comes much later on the album in the form of the woozy guitar and organ reverie of "Pareidolia."

Elsewhere, Crab successfully delves into a noirish strain of dub ("Useful Idiots"), sublimely hallucinatory and submerged-sounding ambiance ("Foreign Objects"), ominously robotic sound art ("Stammheim"), and gently burbling electronic grooves ("For Jian-an").  In other places, such as "A Whole Distant World," Simon and long-time collaborator Andy Wilson weave something that resembles an achingly beautiful film soundtrack augmented with field recordings.  There are also a few instances that recall Crab's work with Bourbonese Qualk, such as the sinuous groove and druggy haze of "Kropotkin."  In still other pieces, After America sounds like an ambitious evolution upon that past work, a feat perhaps best exemplified by "Lullabye," which sounds like a dub techno piece that has been shattered and stretched into skittering otherworldliness.

With very few exceptions, Simon excels at just about everything he tries with After America.  While there are a few pieces that seem weaker or less inspired than others, the album’s only real shortcoming is a highly subjective one: Crab rarely allows any of the individual pieces much time to grow and evolve; rather, the album is a collection of short vignettes that explore just one theme for a few minutes until a new vignette appears.  However, it is abundantly clear that that was a deliberate artistic decision rather than a compositional failing, so it is not particularly fair to critique After America for what it is not (a collection of songs).  Crab seems to have achieved exactly what he set out to do with this album, composing a complex, unusual, dynamic, perfectly sequenced and occasionally moving suite that adds up to a very rewarding whole.  I would have been happy just to have Crab back to making albums again, but he unexpectedly seems to have returned at the height of his powers.

• Saccades
• Wintex-Cimex 83
• Pareidolia

 

06 March 2015

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Albums and Singles

28 February 2015

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Albums and Singles

Sarah Davachi is a young Vancouver-based artist who shares that passion for old analog synthesizers that is so rampant these days.  Stylistically, however, she is an old-style composer that shares much more common ground with minimalist drone royalty like Eliane Radigue and Phill Niblock than she does with the current pack of squiggling, blurting, and entropy-minded synth revivalists.  Also, she seems to have a fine intuitive grasp on the limits of such gear and ingeniously employs strings, flutes, and a harmonium to elevate her pieces into something better and more distinctly her own.  More importantly, this is exactly the sort of drone that I love and Davachi manages to do it better than just about anybody.  This is already a lock for one of my favorite albums of 2015.

Students of Decay

I never expected to turn into someone who has strong opinions and passions regarding minimal drone, but it seems as though I somehow wound up that way despite my best efforts.  While there are plenty drone albums that I enjoy, there are only a handful that absolutely delight me.  Barons Court happily falls into that rare latter category, though it is difficult to articulate quite why, as extremely minimal music succeeds or fails almost entirely in its execution.  Literally anyone can let a single note gently oscillate for ten minutes, but it takes a particular strain of genius (as well as superhuman patience and near-surgical attention to detail) to transform that into something mesmerizing.  For most of Barons Court, Davachi does just that.

Notably, Sarah is not quite as "pure" or aggressively minimal as some of her kindred spirits: while these pieces are certainly built upon the expected bed of quavering analog synthesizer, Davachi often allows her drones to gradually cohere into a lush, warm, and languorously undulating chord.  In fact, that is essentially all that happens in the 8-minute "Wood Green" and it is wonderful.  In the other pieces, however, she twists that formula in a variety of compelling ways.  "Tiergarten," for example, follows roughly a similar trajectory, but darkens the waters with subtly dissonant harmonies and uneasy oscillations.  The opening "Heliotrope," on the other hand, is dissonant right out of the gate with a churning, uncomfortable swirl of bowed cello harmonies.  Then, around the halfway point, Davachi transforms that subtle menace into deeply uneasy and unearthly beauty with the addition of some very ghostly flutes that recall Natural Snow Buildings at their best.  The album's centerpiece, the 13-minute "Guildford," achieves a similarly haunting majesty, replacing those demonic flutes with spectral, floating synth swells and hypnotic harmonium drones.  Then gradually, the darkness ebbs away a bit to make way for a more enigmatic mood of timeless, ritualistic-sounding beauty.  It is an absolutely stellar piece, as is "Heliotrope."

The final piece, "Ruislip," is arguably something of a wobble that stands in the way of my proclaiming Barons Court to be an absolutely perfect album.  However, if it is a misstep, it is admittedly a very subjective one: in most respects, it is a lot like everything great that preceded it, but the timbre of the synthesizer just has that annoying, artificial "’70s science documentary" edge to it that I cannot stand.  Eventually that edge becomes dulled enough to enjoy though, as the piece gradually coheres into a masterfully warped and hallucinatory crescendo.  I guess I remain somewhat on the fence about that one, though I will note that I vastly prefer the dubious gamble of "Ruislip" to the edgeless, blissed-out drone soup that most artists churn out these days. As far as everything else is concerned, however, Barons Court is an absolute monster of a debut: Davachi is a strong composer, an excellent stylist, and a remarkably assured and inventive new artist.  I love this.

• Guildford
• Heliotrope
• Wood Green

 

28 February 2015

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Albums and Singles

I have always been a rather casual Six Organs fan, generally enjoying whatever it is that Ben Chasny is up to at a given time, but not exactly salivating over the prospect of a new album.  Something about Drag City's cryptic description of Hexadic piqued my interest though and rightly so: this is strange and fascinating album.  The most notable aspect, certainly, is that Chasny used a self-created system of playing cards based upon the wisdom of a 14th century monk to compose a "rock" album.  That certainly does not happen every day.  Aside from that, Hexadic boasts an absolutely incendiary psych-guitar tour de force called "Wax Chance" that easily stands with anything by Les Rallizes Denudes or Mainliner.  I definitely did not expect that either.

Drag City

Hexadic takes its name from Chasny's card-based open system, which is largely rooted in the number six.  The system itself is going to be explained in detail later in a book, but the gist is that Ben synthesized the ideas of Gaston Bachelard, Frances Yeats, Morton Feldman, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, and (most significantly) Ramon Llull into an algorithm that provides a loose compositional blueprint that points toward a specific key, scale, and time signature.  How a given song actually takes shape afterwards is largely dependent on the artist, of course, but the hexadic system works by pushing the composer out of what is comfortable and routine.  That is at least the general idea, anyway.  Hexadic certainly still sounds a hell of a lot like a Six Organs album to me, but it definitely feels like one that Chasny was very enthusiastic about and is different enough to stand out from the rest of his discography in several ways.  It is more of skewed, unpredictable version of the familiar than a complete reinvention.

I have always had a hard time defining "the Ben Chasny sound," as he has covered a lot of stylistic ground over the years between Six Organs, Rangda, Comets on Fire, and other projects.  In general, however, I associate him with Eastern/raga-tinged acoustic guitars and guitar-solo heavy psych-rock.  Pieces from both of those admittedly vague directions turn up with regularity on Hexadic with varying degrees of success, but the pieces that I find most interesting are the ones that do not quite fit either category.  That said, Hexadic’s 9 pieces do lean quite heavily towards loud, wild psych-rock, which makes sense, given that Ben's backing band contains members (or former members) of bands like Comets on Fire, Deerhoof, and Sic Alps.  The rock in question is much more unhinged than I would have expected though, particularly on the face-melting, bulldozing "Maximum Hexadic," which is essentially 2 minutes of gnarled, free-form, and brain-melting guitar-spew over a driving bass-and-drum groove.  Elsewhere, "Sphere Path Code C" sounds like a guitar solo plucked from the midst of longer piece by a wildly indulgent guitar visionary like Keiji Haino or Kawabata Makoto: there is not really any "song" to speak of, just a cacophony of howling guitars, amp sizzle, and collapsing grooves.  "Hollow River" is quite similar, but alters the formula by slowing down to a doom crawl and offering some hints of correspondingly doomy riffage amidst all the noise and sizzle.

Most of the other "songs" are in a cleaner, more subdued vein, which is both somewhat disorienting and somewhat refreshing.  "The Ram," for example, sounds like a languorous surf instrumental that has been slowed down to such a degree that the drummer cannot even find the stumbling beat anymore.  "Future Verbs" sounds like a quiet interlude from the same imaginary doom album as "Hollow River," unraveling overlapping, woozy, descending melodies over a menacing sludge-slow bass progression.  Stranger still is "Hesitant Grand Light," which combines shimmering washes of hazy electric guitar over tremolo-picked acoustic noodling and yet another broken non-beat.  The weirdest part for me is that the scale used for the acoustic parts sounds like a weird cross between the pentatonic scale and some Eastern mode, tonally approximating some non-existent Indian rockabilly sub-genre.

Of the remaining, harder-to-define pieces, all three are quite wonderful.  The first, "Vestige," is an abstract drone piece featuring a surprisingly dissonant bed of squirming, oscillating, and nightmarish guitars that sound wonderfully sick and wrong.  "Wax Chance," on the other hand, sounds wonderfully sick and right.  In a lot of respects, it is every bit as harsh and indulgent as the rest of the noisy rock songs on the album, but in this case the drums and bass lock into a kind of sultry blues shuffle.  Also, Chasny's white-hot, overdriven guitar occasionally finds its way into an unexpectedly coherent and bad-ass riff.  That little bit of structure makes all the difference, as Ben's brilliantly outre free-form soloing desperately needs some kind of solid foundation to be truly effective (which "Wax Chance" definitely is).  The album's final piece, "Guild," initially seems like yet another sizzling flurry of overdriven guitar squall over a too-slow beat, but it gets gradually better.  Though it probably goes on for way too long, it has a weirdly appropriate valedictory feel to it and Ben's solo seems to at least hint at fragments of melody.  It also benefits from some unexpected transitions and a beautifully restrained and bittersweet coda.

Ultimately, I would describe Hexadic as an uneven experiment with a few flashes of brilliance rather than as a clear success or failure.  While its flaws are probably primarily due to its fundamental mathematic constraints, they also tend to be both glaring and recurring: the idea of slow-motion, electric guitar free-jazz is not at all appealing to me.  As much as I enjoyed Ben’s go-for-broke guitar squall, a little of that truly goes a long way and Hexadic is an album direly in need of more hooks and better grooves to balance its more indulgent aspects.  When Ben has both a riff and groove to work from, as with "Wax Chance," I am happy to let him go as far out as possible.  When he has neither, he just sounds like a guy pointlessly shredding in some weird scale until he gets tired of it.  More devoted fans might appreciate that freedom and intensity much more than I do and it might even work live, but it can be very tedious on an album when it is not couched within anything more rewarding.  On a more positive note, however, Hexadic at least strives for something surprising and different, which I heartily appreciate.  Also, it does not sound conspicuously chance-based, which is an impressive feat as well.  More significantly, three of its nine songs are quite good.  While I doubt I will ever listen to the rest of the album again, I am now considerably more interested in Ben's future work than I was before, which I suppose makes Hexadic a moral and intellectual triumph at least (just not quite a musical one).

• The Ram
• Vestige
• Wax¬†Chance

 

28 February 2015

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Albums and Singles

Jasmine Guffond’s reinvention under her given name appeared a few months ago amidst a surprising amount of buzz and favorable comparisons to artists like Grouper and early Julia Holter, which is somewhat surprising for an artist who is already this deep into her career.  I suppose those Grouper comparisons will certainly grab people's attention and I accept that Liz Harris is a decent reference point in some respects, but Jasmine's not-quite fully formed aesthetic sounds like it is mostly her own to me (or is at least amorphous enough to make her influences largely irrelevant).  At its core, Yellow Bell is very much a warm and lush drone album, but its appeal lies in how tender, human, and unconventional Guffond can be within those confines.  While not quite a start-to-finish triumph, the bulk of Yellow Bell is indeed quite good or even sublimely beautiful.  The buzz was not misplaced.

Sonic Pieces

Guffond, an Australian currently living in Berlin, has been making unusual music for roughly two decades, which makes me puzzled as to how I have avoided encountering her work until now.  I went back and investigated her previous Minit and Jasmina Maschina projects and enjoyed them, so maybe the lesson here is that I need to pay closer attention to what Staubgold is releasing in the future.  In any case, Yellow Bell is a stylistic break from all that preceded it, which explains the new label and the name change.  The amusing irony here is that Guffond is actually stepping away from vocals and guitars, yet now she gets pegged with the Grouper comparisons.  In a general sense, Yellow Bell certainly has a Harris-esque mood of bleary mystery at times, but it mostly just seems like an atypically inventive drone album to me.  The catch is just that the album’s single most memorable moment is the crescendo in "Elephant" where Guffond’s achingly melancholy, reverb-swathed vocals unexpectedly emerge to supremely Grouper-esque effect.

Most of Yellow Bell’s other high points, however, come from either Guffond's unusual aesthetic choices or her use of field recordings.  In the aforementioned "Elephant," for example, Jasmine’s distant, wordless Siren-esque vocals emerge from a warmly quivering synth bed beset by layers of crackling found sounds,  soon disappearing entirely to be replaced by a heavy metallic shimmer and subterranean throbs.Although the vocals eventually return for the haunting refrain, the bulk of the piece’s 10-minute trajectory works so well primarily because of Jasmine’s intuitive and nuanced talent for dynamics, textures, and melody.  Jasmine's ability to manipulate density and seamlessly chain together disparate passages is extremely impressive.  It is hard not to think of liquid when listening to Yellow Bell, as its defining characteristic is most definitely its fluidity and ability to ebb and flow from one motif into another.

Another highlight is the shuddering, pulsing, and dreamy "Core Notions," which is kind of a production tour de force: not much changes structurally or melodically over the course of its six minutes, but Guffond juggles the various layers so masterfully that it feels like the piece is gradually being torn apart to reveal a harsher, more menacing interloper.  "Useful Knowledge" begins in similarly blissed-out and hallucinatory fashion, but then a sultry, shuffling pulse transforms it into something that would be right at home in a creepy seduction scene in Twin Peaks...before it seamlessly winds up in a very different place altogether.  Another piece, the double-entendre-friendly "Lisa’s Opening," is even more unusual, gradually shifting from something resembling sci-fi chamber music into a bittersweet reverie amidst ambient chatter (presumably from an art opening) before ultimately resolving into a ghostly, barely-there song.

Yellow Bell concludes with another epic, the complexly layered 10-minute "RR Variations," which explores another new direction that lies somewhere between analog synth drone and Reich-ian obsessive repetition.  It is probably the most ambitious, unusual, and labor-intensive piece on the album, as it sounds like there is an entire orchestra being chopped and sped-up by the end, yet it lacks the vulnerability and humanity that make the rest of Yellow Bell so great.  I suppose that gets at what is so unique and fascinating about this album: its flaws and its triumphs are nearly impossible to come to a firm opinion on.  When Yellow Bell seems derivative, it usually comes about in a fresh and memorable way; when it plunges into more abstract, comparatively untraveled territory, it sacrifices some of its character and ability to connect.  The reason it all works, of course, is because Guffond is able to so organically drift between those poles and always sounds great doing it.  That places Jasmine in a curious no-man’s-land, as I am very hard-pressed to nail down Yellow Bell’s aesthetic, but I was certainly very happy to drift around to wherever she decided to go.

• Elephant
• Useful Knowledge
• Lisa's Opening

 

28 February 2015

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Albums and Singles

Paul Thomsen Kirk’s output as Akatombo has always leaned more into the harsher side of danceable beats and electronics, but on his fourth album, he has pushed that envelope even further. Huge bass-heavy beats, weird lo-fi sample loops and random sounds abound, and the result is an album that is reminiscent of a more westernized Muslimgauze or the best moments of late-period Techno Animal.

Hand-Held Recordings

Other than contributing to Graham Lewis’ recent All Over record, Kirk has been largely silent since 2012's False Positives.Sometime, Never feels like the logical follow-up to that record, but with a decidedly rawer edge.Kirk's use of intense bass and distortion is even more prevalent on here than it was previously, giving Sometime, Never a more sinister, angry vibe compared to the other albums.This may be the result of serious health concerns that Kirk has faced since the release of False Positives, resulting in a more aggressive, but cathartic record.

His use of big, but ragged lo-fi drum loops on songs such as "Snark und Troll" and "Vincere vel Mori" are where I felt the greatest parallels with Bryn Jones' work.While lacking the use of tabla and other Middle Eastern percussion, his weaving together of dramatic, noisy drum loops and distorted found sounds has that same oppressive, yet memorable harshness while retaining a catchy beat.

Other songs harken back more towards the aggressive tail end of the ambient dub scene, which burned out aggressively via the early 2000s output of Scorn and Techno Animal.The foundation shaking heavy dub bass of "Stasiland" has the same low frequency pummeling intensity of Mick Harris' work, but within a denser, less minimalist framework.The forceful ambience and heavily processed vintage drum machine sounds, blended with explosive outbursts and excessive distortion on "Click/bate" balances that complexity and chaos as Techno Animal did on their run of brilliant Position Chrome singles in the late 1990s.

Kirk's work may have similarities to the other artists I mentioned, but never does it sound like a direct copy or emulation.He also dials back the intensity here and there, such as on the more hip-hop paced "Matching Muzzles," which seems to be a blend of random voice samples with extremely angry dot matrix printers.He attempts a more conventional techno rhythm on "Mission Creep," but it is pushed into the red and brilliantly distorted.For "Scans & Needles," he drops the rhythms entirely, instead making for a brilliantly disturbing slice of cinematic music fitting the frightening title.

On the latter half of the disc, he even introduces some guitar to push the overall sound in another direction entirely."Convict A45522" has hints of sampled guitar amidst the big, bleepy industrial beats, while "Cold Call" goes balls out into an industrial metal guitar chug.Rife with overdrive and programmed rhythms, it is one of the rare instances where an industrial metal techno hybrid works extremely well.

Kirk’s darker, more aggressive mood may have been brought on by the darker moments in his recent years, but channeling it into Sometime, Never has resulted in a gripping, powerful album that never relents.Maybe it is just the greater amount of darkness or aggression that I am latching on to, but as of now this is a high water mark in his already impressive discography.

samples:

• Snark und Troll
• Click/Bate
• Cold Call

 

23 February 2015

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Albums and Singles

Mike Shiflet might be most well known for his work as a noise artist, but a significant portion of his work features him utilizing guitar. Here, in collaboration with High Aura'd (John Kolodij), the two coax a wide variety of sounds out of their respective six stringed instruments, resulting in an album that is as much noise as it is music.

Type

Recent work from Shiflet has demonstrated less of a debt to the harsh noise scene from where he began, and more of an idiosyncratic take on composition and melody.That balance between order and chaos is a defining feature as well:"Demon Haunted World" hard pans separate guitar parts into the left and right channels, both being conventionally played in improvisation, while the right channel slowly unravels into harsh dissonance.

Kolodij and Shiflet also do an exceptional job blending light and dark on "Still Life With Wound."Initially a dark shimmering expanse of guitar noise, lighter moments shine through into the dark abyss, mixing the deep noise with magnificent drones.Alternating between full dissonance and glorious tone, it is a dichotomy that works brilliantly.

That same sort of balance from the two is prevalent on opener "Parlour Games," which begins with an inviting passage of guitar feedback and noise, like the most dissonant moments of shoegaze isolated and amplified.The piece slowly drifts into darker, bass heavy rumbling at its conclusion and as a result a very different atmosphere.On a piece such as "Stare Skyward," the emphasis is on the noisier end of the spectrum, with the duo casting dark waves and outbursts of guitar sound over an expanse of churning cavernous distortion.

The double climax of "Covered Bridge" and "A Wake" conclude the album on dramatic, intense notes.The former has a more inviting feel throughout:chirping birds and gentle guitar are offset by heavier drones.Even though there is a clear weight and density to the noisier elements of the song, the piece as a whole is anything but oppressive."A Wake" also is underscored by field recordings, but organ-sounding guitar drones and feedback scrape across deep, bassy undercurrents.Even with all its dissonance, the piece is as a whole more of a glorious, powerful drone that rises up forcefully, only to come to a calm and introspective conclusion.

Awake is one of those rare albums that manage to fit both in the world of noise, as well as conventional music.There is dissonance a plenty to be heard here, but rather than an attempt to blow out speakers, Shiflet and Kolodij shape and mold it into something abstract, yet beautiful.Structure and chaos, light and dark, all of these dichotomies can be heard here, and as they are presented here together, they are wonderful.

samples:

• Demon Haunted World
• Still Life With Wound
• A Wake

 

23 February 2015

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Albums and Singles

A prolific DJ with a number of singles out, the descriptively titled A Tape is German artist Helena Hauff's first full length release. A combination of stripped down minimal techno, house beats, and industrial dissonance, it is a gripping tape of heavy percussion, noisy synth, and extremely memorable rhythms.

Handmade Beats

The songs I found myself coming back to most are the ones where Hauff turns the volume up and adds in a hint of distortion and noise.A piece like "c45p" is heavily built upon deep stuttering drum machine (from the sound I would guess the house music standby TR-707 is in there somewhere) and deep, sinister analog synth sequences."ff297-3" sits on the other side of the tape as its more menacing counterpart.She utilizes a similar heavy bassline and drum program, but pushed into the red for a nice overdriven sound.Both pieces have a sort of classic electro vibe to them, but with a more menacing edge.

Not all of the pieces on here are as oppressive, however."!#+#!" has Hauff using a pulsing synth and 808 cowbell to excellent effect, with the song coming together with a slightly sunnier atmosphere."hdowed" has the same lighter mood about it, with a more spacy edge that works in heavily flanged beats and an organ synth lead.The organ also features heavily in "split scission," amidst tight synth arpeggios and heavy thumping drum machine.

Both halves of the cassette end with Hauff stepping outside of the intentionally stiff, robotic rhythms and taut sequences and instead showing her adeptness at creating less conventional electronic sounds."for I am dead" is immediately a more distorted endeavor, with bitcrushed melodies and fuzzy electronics dueling it out before a bit of heavy bass drum appears at the end."$§"$43" is all dark, sweeping synth pads with the occasional blip or pulse.There is a mystery and darkness about it that would work excellently in a film score setting, but stands strongly on its own.

With a noticeable uptick in the amount of artists in this minimalist techno field, Hauff stands out strongly with her ability to weave together sharp drum programming with memorable synth patterns.Her work retains enough of the static nature of electronic music, but she is also an expert at slowly building and disassembling the music, resulting in an album that is entirely danceable, but is compelling to listen to intently on its own.

samples:

• c45p
• for i am dead
• ff297-3