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This album is hailed as boasting the most energetic and concise songs of White Hills' career, which seems like a very ill-advised direction for the band to take, given that they are not a band known for great songcraft.  I look to them solely for drugged-out, guitar-worship excess—trying to be direct and hard-hitting does not suit them at all.  Fortunately, they still balance their punchier songs with several prolonged, space-y freakouts.  When those avoid sinking into self-parodying extremes, they can be absolutely brilliant.  I just wish that there were fewer uneven, underwhelming, and frustrating moments between them.
The album kicks off with one of the aforementioned short, hard-hitting songs, "Pads of Light."  Notably, I almost put the word "songs" in ironic quotes in this case, because this particular piece is extremely illustrative of why that direction is such a very bad idea.  Stylistically, "Pads" recalls Hawkwind's more metal leanings, but there is almost zero content: bassist Ego Sensation and drummer Nick Name whip up some rumbling, visceral power, but the song is essentially just Dave W. raspily howling "(something unintelligible)...on pads of light!" over some very dull and grindingly repetitive power chords.  Near the end, Dave thankfully erupts into a pretty cool guitar solo, but the rest of the song is just basically a wait for that to happen.  The whole thing sounds like it could have easily been made up on the spot.  "You Dream You See" later follows a similar template, but does so much more successfully, locking into a snarl-heavy, head-bobbing groove and culminating in a pretty unhinged guitar and synth freak-out.
Unfortunately, the album hits another spectacular low point in the opposite direction with "Song of Everything."  I want to scream every time I hear it, as it comes so close to being an absolutely classic White Hills song: it has a heavy riff, a propulsive groove, wild drumming, some neat psychedelic textures and flourishes, a lengthy wah-wah and spoken word interlude–pretty much everything I could possibly hope for.  Unfortunately, it also has some of the worst, most cliched lyrics in recent memory.  Initially, it seemed like the repeated howled "spread your wings and fly!" part was as bad as it could get, but then the languid and echo-heavy midsection sounded exactly like being trapped at a party by a college freshman that has just discovered acid ("open your miiiind!").  Once Dave dropped that philosophy on me, it became impossible to take the song at all seriously, no matter how fiercely they roared back.
Thankfully, the rest of the album mostly manages to avoid the dual pitfalls of attempted songcraft and overly earnest lysergic exhortations to free my mind and surrender to the cosmos.  White Hills are at their best when Dave just lets his guitar do his communicating for him and doesn't worry about trying to craft any catchy hooks.  As a result, the two lengthiest and most structurally simplistic pieces ("Robot Stomp"
and "I Write A Thousand Letters") are probably the best.  "Letters" is the sort of piece that probably shouldn't work at all, as the whole thing basically sounds a 14-minute-long outro with no substantial development of any kind.  Rhythmically and melodically, it almost sounds like a locked groove, which unexpectedly turns out to be a mesmerizing enough foundation to suck me deeply into all the tripped-out synth noises and heavily processed guitar pyrotechnics that unfold throughout.  The 12-minute "Robot Stomp" is even better still, holding down a throbbing motorik groove beneath a hazy of strange sounds and chattering voices and allowing far more dynamic variation and passing dissonance. In fact, the longer it goes on the crazier and more far out it goes–it may be the best single piece that White Hills have ever recorded.
I think that the problem with White Hills might be that they don't realize quite what it is that they do brilliantly (muscular, deranged, long-form psychedelic instrumentals).  That seems to be the only explanation for why something as weird, wonderful, and chaotic as "Robot Stomp" could possibly wind up on the same album as the lead-footed, reheated Hawkwind of "Pads of Light."  The latter might be accessible enough to lure in some more fans, yet it seems so bland, heavy-handed, and regressive when contrasted with the album's highlights.  Frying on this Rock is not exactly a misstep, as Dave W. and company have eliminated some of the bloat that characterized H-p1 and unveiled a couple of pieces that show a dramatic, inspired evolution, but they continue to be a bit too schizophrenic, inconsistent, and prone to wince-inducing lyrics for me to fully embrace.
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Tomkins is of course more well known for his power electronics work as Sutcliffe Jugend, he (as well as SJ partner Paul Taylor) have been using their own label, Between Silences, to release a multitude of experiments and improvisations. Here, Tomkins goes into a more experimental electronic direction, including seven full discs of material inspired by Japanese pachinko halls.
Like the 17 disc Weave (which was all autoharp-based material), Pachinko Noise is an obsessive exploration of a single topic.Inspired by the electronic and metallic chaos of pachinko halls during a 2011 visit to Japan, Tomkins used only a Korg Kaossilator to create the material spread across seven CDRs, each clocking in around 40 minutes.
There comes to be certain commonalities between pieces:tracks like "Pachinko Silverhalls" and "Pachinko Pachino," throw together stuttering outbursts and noise-laden blasts on top of a buried, but perceptible concession to melody, juxtaposing the noise and the music.On "Pachinko Rush," it goes even more into musical territory, vaguely mimicking techno, albeit in an apocalyptic manner.
In some cases, there may be little sense of melody, but a rhythmic undercurrent can still be heard.On pieces like "Pachinko Stretch," the rapid-fire percussive bits come together in a manner not all that dissimilar from latter day Autechre (think "Gantz Graf") but still retaining a unique feel."Pachinko Perversion" even goes farther, almost embracing late 1990s drum and bass.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Tomkins release without pushing the noise envelope somewhat, and "Pachinko Duel" and "Pachinko Habitat" are great examples of this, coming out as pure, harsh electronic noise that is as violent as any Merzbow record."Pachinko Sound" is another chaotic piece, but with its hollow rattling and siren-like swells, it sounds like it could be a pachinko hall field recording.
Across seven discs, there is quite a lot to take in here, and I think if this were to be a more traditional, commercially based release, some editing and pairing down of the material would make for a stronger release.However, as a piece of intentional, obsessive sonic indulging, it definitely works.
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Short Electronic Pieces is drawn from a similar place sonically, but has a more distinct, varied sound to it, feeling more like a compilation of singular pieces rather than a complete album."Slyver" and "Light Funk", for example, are all microscopic digitally delayed notes that cross into the technoid-realms of Pachinko Noise.
However, the digital plucked strings and pitch-bent voices of "Walks" have a more significant musical sheen about it, making it stand out on its own."Quaid Series 1" just goes for it and brings a steady, metronomic rhythm, albeit hollow, into a skeletal techno track."Thiswas" cuts the beats back toclicks and pops, but remains in the realm of minimal electro.
Then again, there are the experimental, unstructured pieces like "Slointed" that have a wet, pulsing sound that feels more in-line with the earliest electronic music recordings."Vuldy Ewn" throws radio interference with Morse code like layers of sound, resulting in a piece that straddles ambience and noise.Finally, with the closing "Strins," Tomkins delivers pure, symphonic synth passages that feel like a powerful piece of film-score work.
For both of these releases, there is a sense of overkill, but never in a way that actually hurts them.I don't think that, even if paired down to shorter, more unified albums, they would really benefit significantly.I went into listening to both of these works expecting them to be sprawling, obsessive collections of material, and that’s exactly what I got.In both cases it can be a lot to take in during a single sitting, but given the right amount of time and space when listening, both come across quite well as captivating electronic works.
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A posthumous release from this composer, with help from Will Guthrie (percussion) and Elisabeth Gmeiner (violin), there is a significant use of space and ambience from this otherwise noise-centric artist. With its unconventional instrumentation and coda/remix by Schäfer’s collaborator and friend Zbigniew Karkowski, it is a fitting tribute.
The main piece, "Thought Provoking III," is built from two rehearsal performances and the final, public performance, with all three seamlessly woven together to sound like a single uninterrupted work.Opening with subtle processing and scraped violin, it becomes more and more abrasive, as if the strings were being slowly scraped across broken glass and dull knives.Behind this there’s deep, resonating percussion that rumbles malignantly in the distance.
Amid these acidic scrapes and room-shaking pulses, organ pipes (played with hair dryers) resonate like foghorns, aggressively and dominantly atop everything else.With these three major elements, Schäfer weaves together a uniform composition, using subtle processing and effects to transform the various noises.
In the latter half of the piece, the violin is stretched to inhuman guttural screams, the percussion becomes a cacophony of jarring, erratic thuds and bangs to create an overwhelming, uncomfortable chaos that eventually relents, leaving tiny fragments of noise and bellowing pipes off in the distance.
The shorter second piece, a remix of the first by Zbigniew Karkowski, embraces the harsher, rawer elements and turns them up to 11.The percussion is melded into thin, brittle sounds that resemble an overamplifed sheet of tin foil in a tornado.Sounds are sped up, creating a tense, hyperactive feeling that overshadows the discomfort from the former piece, before finally ending everything on a pure white-noise blast.Easy listening it is not, but is a compelling abstraction of Schäfer’s work.
While Guthrie mentions in the liner notes that no one "did" much during these performances, but that the sound was allowed to flow naturally, I think that gives the wrong impression.Even if the results are more a matter of nature taking its course, the composition and structure established by Schäfer in preparation for this work is what causes the magic to happen.
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Collecting a number of cassette only releases from the '80s, this CD box set charts Colin Potter’s development over the course of about ten years. While the styles he employed are drastically different to his current mode of working, this collection covers everything from Kosmische soundscapes to quirky BBC Radiophonic Workshop style tunes. However, it is possible to hear the embryonic forms of what he is now doing; this may be ancient history but it is a narrative with some meaning today.
The first disc covers the A-Gain cassette where Potter is found traversing some of the same sort of sounds that Kraftwerk were doing not too long before him. However, this is music for cups of tea in the grey and green of northern England rather than themes for radioactivity and motorways. Potter ties his music to the landscape around him with pieces like "Rooftops" and "On Entering York Minster," evoking his hometown of York. The latter is a magisterial piece, deceptively simple but overwhelming in its overall effect (even if Potter laments in the liner notes that it does not do the cathedral it is named after justice). A bonus track is included in the form of "Forest of Galtres," another piece of music related to Potter’s surroundings at the time. Compared to the grandeur and brightness of the rest of this disc, "Forest of Galtres" is a dark, claustrophobic work.
My favorite material features on the second disc, originally released as Two Nights. This is the closest work to Potter’s later sound worlds: a pair of sprawling solo jams that constantly change and evolve as Potter introduces and removes various elements live in the studio. Both pieces were recorded on similar set ups one night after the other but despite a common ground between them, they expand out in vastly different directions. Supplementing the original Two Nights material is "One Million Blades of Grass," which follows a similar structure to the other two pieces and is just as engaging.
The third and fourth discs are given over to the two volumes of Recent History. These recordings are less thematically coherent than the first two discs in Ancient History but they represent a period of experimentation and exploration in Potter’s methodology. The best pieces are amongst the finest works in the box. "Nine Months" (dedicated to Potter’s daughters) is a tremendous piece, reminiscent of the type of works included on the first disc but here Potter sounds more confident and adventurous than he did on those earlier recordings. "Sunderland" brims with warmth, bringing to mind Cluster at their most tender moments.
The final disc (only available in the limited edition version) is a compilation of largely unreleased material and compilation tracks from the mid ‘80s through to the ‘90s. It is a bit of a mixed bag (some of the pieces are exercises with new equipment) but there are some gems here. "Drone for JC" (Jonathan Coleclough rather than the Messiah) is particularly effective, an intense wall of guitars and didgeridoo which ticks all the boxes for me. "Shark Music" finishes off the disc, leaving me with a sense of dread (the idea of sharks is usually enough to send a shiver down my spine…). Potter does something that John Williams could never do: create a suspenseful, apt piece of music without ripping off Stravinsky.
While this box set covers a huge amount of material, there are still a few of Colin Potter’s older releases that could do with reissuing. Some parts of the older cassettes are included in 2006’s vinyl only compilation A Skeleton/Cupboard Situation but it would be nice to see a companion CD set for Ancient History.
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Robert Henke has long been an influential elder statesman in the worlds of electronic music and sound design (he's partially responsible for the ubiquity of MacBooks), but Ghosts seems to indicate that it is a role that he is not entirely comfortable with.  Much of the album is every bit as sparsely futuristic, cerebral, and ominous as I have grown to expect from Monolake, but there are also some uncharacteristically blunt nods to some of dance music's more aggressive strains.  The success of that aesthetic experiment is certainly questionable, but Henke has otherwise completed yet another minor masterpiece of razor-sharp focus and clarity.
I have a very complicated relationship with electronic dance music's avant-garde, as it is responsible for so much fascinating and innovative music, but almost all of it is innately doomed to rapid obsolescence.  Each groundbreaking new release ultimately just winds up being inspiration for the next generation of groundbreaking new releases in an endless cycle.  Also, many contemporary dance artists embrace a quasi-inhuman sensibility that clashes strongly with my own aesthetic preferences.  Ghosts is very much an embodiment of that machine-music vision: it is not exactly an extreme album, but in typical Henke fashion, it largely eschews any traces of warmth, imperfection, soul, or melody.  In theory, such a willfully faceless and beat-driven aesthetic should make Monolake largely indistinguishable from many other current artists, yet that is not the case at all.  Henke is, quite simply, one of the finest and most exacting producers in the world and he has a very distinct vision.  It is often a stark and alienating vision, certainly, but it sometimes achieves a cold, crystalline beauty as well.
The most obviously striking elements of Ghosts are the incorporation of industrial and dubstep textures and tropes in a few songs, like the wobbly sub-bass and the recurring robot-voiced "you do not exist" in the title piece.  "Ghosts" isn't quite a total misfire, but it does sound instantly dated and it's bizarrely straightforward for Henke–it sounds like he is either trying to pay loving homage to early '90s Haujobb, awkwardly connect with youth culture, or audition for a first-person shooter videogame soundtrack.  That is unfortunate, as he is much more inventive and abstract elsewhere, but "Ghosts" assumes disproportionate importance by being the opening song (and for being the only song with an attempt at a hook).  For me, the truly compelling aspects of the album are what isn't there: while Ghosts is a very beat-driven album, the beats are essentially supporting little more than an array of processed non-musical sounds and a whole lot of uncluttered space.
It takes close scrutiny to appreciate the full magnitude of Henke's talents, as he is neither a brilliant beatsmith or composer, yet he seems to ingeniously find ways to make those skills seem irrelevant to his work.  Or maybe he consciously trying to move beyond such concerns–it's especially hard to say with his beats, as they aren't particularly dance-friendly, visionary, or overtly complex, but they are unpredictable, shifting, and vibrant enough to stay compelling anyway.  Robert is an amazing sound processor though and he has a pretty unerring ear for how to make something wonderful out of seemingly very simple and unpromising materials.  In fact, part of the fun with this album is trying to figure out what exactly I am hearing, as "Foreign Object" sounds like racquetball game and "Taku" mostly sounds like it could have originated from just a glass of water and a marble.  I also enjoy Henke's talents as a merciless sound sculptor, as there are few other people in music so intent on perfect, undiluted clarity.  The bulk of Ghosts is kind of a high-wire act in which all musical safety nets and ropes have been removed, leaving only the songs' essence in sharp focus.
As impressive an accomplishment as Henke's hyper-simplicity and crystalline futurism is, it makes Ghosts pretty hard to connect with on any sort of deep level and creates a definite void of sorts.  Robert generally does an amazing job distracting me from all that with his unusual textures and insistent, constantly evolving beats, but occasional glimpses of something less bleakly inhuman highlight the fact that a vacuum certainly does exist.  Even something like a woman's voice dispassionately reciting a list of numbers ("Hitting the Surface") is enough to make my ears perk up, given the alienating contrast of the surrounding sounds.  In fact, "Aligning the Daemon" is probably my favorite piece on the album simply because it briefly features an organ chord: that small splash of color and musicality has enormous impact after experiencing nearly an hour of music with neither.  I have no idea if that was entirely by design (perhaps Henke was only teasing to amuse himself), but I definitely would've liked this album far more than I did if there had been other fleeting flashes of life and color amidst the clinking and clanking mechanized ominousness (I am sure he wouldn't care though).  Nevertheless, Ghosts is still an excellent album, albeit more in the "musicians and music critics will find much to admire here" sense than in the traditional one.
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I can't remember the last time that I was this wrong-footed and bewildered by an album.  Ostensibly, this is a soundtrack for a silent Ho Tzu Nyen film, but it is difficult to imagine music this jarring accompanying anything.  It's also quite difficult to process that this is even a Black to Comm album, as it sounds mostly like being terrorized in a nightmare by Scott Walker or an undead Jamie Stewart.  I am not sure that is necessarily a good thing (a bit nerve-jangling, actually), but Marc Richter has definitely convinced me that he is capable of making some very bold, unique, and uncompromising music.
There are probably a lot of factors that resulted in Earth being as bizarre and otherworldly as it is, but tellingly, it seems like the least significant of them is that Marc Richter wrote most of the music while on heavy painkillers due to a broken leg.  It is hard to gauge how much that altered state impacted his creativity, aesthetic, or judgment, as it sounds like there is probably still something resembling a Black to Comm album lurking here.  It's often quite hard to notice that though, as Earth prominently features David Aird of Vindicatrix and his haunted, quavering, and theatrical vocals invariably become the focus of attention every time they appear (which is quite often).  Also, it should be noted that film itself is pretty goddamn bizarre: De Stijl describes it as "a post-apocalyptic collage based on paintings by classical European painters (Caravaggio, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Géricault)" and that is probably as dead-on a description as possible.
Rather than delivering coloration, subtle background, and atmosphere like a typical composer, Richter (perhaps emboldened by his painkillers) opted to engage Ho Tzu Nyen's visuals in an apocalyptic, avant-garde game of chicken.  I'm not sure who won, but I am certain that seeing the film with this accompaniment is certain to be cathartic, exhausting, and alienating sensory overload in the best possible way—it's very easy to imagine a flood of people stumbling out of the theater in a state of semi-shock afterward.  Most of Earth's disturbing and haunting power is due to Aird, of course, as he invariably sounds quite creepy, intense, and possessed.  Richter also adds some unexpectedly dark and unsettling touches of his own though, like the Lynchian chorus of backwards children's voices in "Stickstoff II" or the broken-sounding, discordant acoustic guitar in "Water."  There are also many more subtle bits of uneasiness scattered about: Marc explicitly set out to convey decay and accomplishes that by using creaking, crackling static, and strangled strings to make it sound like the very fabric of the songs is unraveling.  "Thrones," in particular, pulls off the extremely neat trick of making some of Aird's vocals sound like they are emanating from a malfunctioning Victrola.
Still, there are several moments of Richter's characteristic warm, dream-like beauty amidst all the ruin and portentousness, such as the fragile, shimmering piano in "Thrones."  Also, the closing "Mirror" sounds suspiciously (and pleasantly) like a carved-up loop of John Cale's "Hanky Panky Nohow."  However, it is very hard to fully appreciate Rutger Zuydervelt's singing bowls or Christopher Kline's singing saw when it sounds like a corpse has just clawed its way out of the earth to gurgle, croak, moan, and caterwaul cryptic dystopian pronouncements.  Aird is simultaneously the best and worst thing about this album, as the sheer otherness and force of his contribution make Earth seem like something very different than a Black to Comm album (though it doesn't exactly sound like a Vindicatrix album either).  That, coupled with the intensely uncomfortable mood, ensure that this is likely to be the absolute last album I will reach for when I need a Black to Comm fix.  Nevertheless, I still respect Earth enormously as a remarkably ego-less and perversely brilliant accomplishment for Richter and his collaborators: repeat listenability could not help but be collateral damage with such a daring, expectation-defying plunge into strikingly original sound art.
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Robert Haigh’s latest piano-based album is his first for US-based label Unseen Worlds. It has a finely crafted pace with such richness and delicate variety that even the most languid and pristine tracks avoid the doldrums of melancholy.
Creatures of the Deep begins with "Portrait with Shadow," a mesmerizing solo piano piece. With little apparent effort it plunges immediately into a sublime atmosphere which affected me long after its two minute duration. "Secret Life of Waves" and "Sunken Pavilions" have an eerie inevitability and something of the liquidity in the vast landscapes of Yves Tanguy—who was in the merchant navy and the son of a sea captain before becoming an abstract painter.
The whole record is a masterful construction, but here and there the music hits peaks of a soft yet intense ecstasy. "Birds of Cadence" sways back and forth as if notes were held aloft on winged messengers between Earth and Heaven. The track "Autumn Fool" recalls bits of Virginia Astley’s classic pastoral record "From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.""I Remember Phaedra" had me straining to hear any echoes of the Tangerine Dream record of a similar name. Perhaps that is why, on first listen, I was absorbed in the dark tones and completely missed that it includes the tune of the traditional English folk song "Scarborough Fair."
After listening to this new work, I plunged more into Robert Haigh’s back catalog. His approach to modern classical music has definite echoes of his jungle, drum and bass, dark ambient, and experimental work as—or with—Omni Trio, Sema, and Nurse With Wound. Picture a steam train running on a track parallel to an electric train. Beyond the differences in tempo and softness, there are similar stylistic loops, moods, and rhythms. As such, Creatures of The Deep is melodious and tuneful but the reflections and signals from his earlier work keeps it from being dull or mellow.
Haigh has said that composing at the piano imposes a discipline on the process which makes one "an instant minimalist" and that he is interested in exploring "the interface between the tonal and atonal." I know that the aforementioned "Portrait With Shadow" made me an instant fan and by the end of this album I was scurrying for more of his music. Comparisons are not necessary, but this record inhabits a place outside time—a quiet cave where Erik Satie once scratched marks on the stone, or Harold Budd left a footprint in the soil. Perhaps it is a deserted snow-covered train station where no one is checking tickets, or simply any place where a slight deviation in sound can be stunningly beautiful.
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Date Palms’ Gregg Kowalsky has been atypically quiet over the last several years, as his last solo full-length was 2009's inspired and fitfully mesmerizing Tape Chants. I am a huge fan of tape loops, so it would have absolutely delighted me if Kowalsky had spent most of the last decade secretly deepening and perfecting that side of his art. It is certainly possible that he has been, but L'Orange, L'Orange is not Tape Chants II. Instead, Kowalsky consciously set out to make an album that "felt like a human made it." He certainly succeeded at that, as L'Orange, L'Orange is a warm, drone-based twist on Date Palms' sun-dappled psychedelia. Aesthetically, it also shares some common ground with a lot of the Cluster-loving analog synth fare so much in vogue these days, yet the best moments achieve a lushly enveloping, meditative bliss that is uniquely Kowalsky-ian.
I suppose it would be somewhat reductive and misleading to describe L'Orange, L'Orange as Kowalsky's "California album," as he is a Mills College alum that has been a Californian for quite a while.The California of his current home of Los Angeles is quite a different place than the Bay Area, however, and this album is a very deliberate reflection of Southern California's clear blue skies, endless sun, and perfect coast (it is no coincidence that Malibu is directly referenced in one of the track titles).Kowalsky's surroundings are not the only thing that has transformed over the ensuing years, however, as L'Orange marks a significant change in philosophy as well.Aside from the aforementioned move towards warmth and humanity, Kowalsky has also embraced quiet simplicity, eschewing anything resembling his cassette-based installation work for twinkling and serene synth drones.In some ways, that transformation is a hard sell for me, as I am most drawn to tormented iconoclasts obsessively working in seclusion and Kowalsky now seems like the exact opposite of that: L'Orange is almost beatifically calm and radiant.There are almost no sharp edges or dark undercurrents roiling beneath the surface of these seven pieces–just dreamy, drifting contentment.The only real exception is "Ritual Del Croix," which casts some shadows across its tranquil idyll with some frayed textures and ominous swooping synth tones.Fortunately, the execution elsewhere can be quite wonderful as well, as Kowalsky has a strong intuition for textural variation, effective layering, and small-scale dynamic transformation.When he hits the mark, the results can be quite sublime.
He does not always hit the mark.However, L'Orange is an assured and consistent album with no real missteps (though the opening "L'Ambiance, L'Orange" ends a bit too abruptly for my taste).To choose a metaphor that Kowalsky himself might appreciate, this album is a placid bay on a warm summer day as a light breeze gently rustles the surrounding palm trees.It is certainly a enjoyable and calming place to be, yet it is more of an ambient pleasure than something that commands attention.Much like, say, Malibu, however, there are some achingly beautiful vistas that offer quite a bit more than that.One such vista on L'Orange is the absolutely sublime "Pattern Haze," a wonderfully hissing and gently pulsing bit of drone heaven.Elsewhere, "Maliblue Dream Sequence" is similarly lovely, beautifully balancing a swirl of warm, hazy harmonies with the heft of deep, melodic bass tones.There are also a couple of enjoyable (if less substantial) piano pieces.The better of the two is "Tonal Bath For Bubbles," which marries rippling, cascading piano runs to a slowly flanging, hallucinatory haze and some gently burbling synth pulses."Blind Contour Drawing for Piano" has its own appeal though, resembling a tender Harold Budd piece filtered through a healthy amount of tape decay.
It is somewhat amusing that L'Orange, L'Orange was released on the eclectic Mexican Summer label, as it is very much a quintessential Kranky album by a quintessential Kranky artist: understated and quietly beautiful ambient drone music of the highest caliber.As such, L'Orange should have no trouble finding an audience, but it is more like a familiar old friend or comfort food rather than an exciting breakthrough.I would personally prefer a more adventurous Kowalsky to a reliable one, but a good album is a good album: covering well-traveled territory is hardly problematic if it is done well.Kowalsky does it well.Obviously, there are some exasperating glimpses of a possible superior album in highlights like the absolutely wonderful "Pattern Haze," but that could be said of almost every album ever released: few artists ever release albums featuring wall-to-wall classics.Most albums do not have any at all, in fact.L'Orange, on the other hand, features a couple of real gems.The rest is just fine by me, as this is a solid and thematically coherent suite of songs–I am glad to have another Gregg Kowalsky album in the world.I may not be exactly the target demographic for this particular release, but I definitely appreciate the nuance, craftsmanship, and uncluttered simplicity that he brings to the form.
 
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As a devout fan of drone's weirder fringes, I was casually aware of Razen before this album, but I had never taken the time to dive particularly deeply into their bizarre sonic sorcery: Brecht Ameel & Kim Delcour have historically erred a bit too much on the side of shrillness for my taste. I certainly admired their frayed, idiosyncratic, and somewhat unhinged approach to the genre, but it still made for a somewhat rough listen. This latest release, their first for Three:Four, falls quite squarely in my comfort zone though. For one, there are no bagpipes or modular synths to be found, just an organ and a curious array of traditional acoustic instruments spanning several cultures. More importantly, the band believes that "a presence" surfaced in the church where they recorded these improvisations and that the resulting tapes were supernaturally altered in some way. I am not a big believer in the spirit world, but whatever transpired certainly led to a uniquely compelling album, as the best pieces on The Xvoto Reels take ritualistic acoustic drone to a wonderfully hallucinatory and haunting place.
The original recordings for this album were made back in August of 2015 at St. Martin's Church in Asse, Belgium.The church has quite an interesting history, as no one quite knows when it was built.In theory, it is at least a thousand years old, but it was apparently destroyed and rebuilt several times as various wars swept through the region.I suppose that makes it as fertile a location for a good haunting as practically anywhere, but the particular spirit that Razen (here expanded to a five-piece) encountered was far more subtle than your usual phantasm, manifesting its presence solely in unusual dynamic transformations and bizarre acoustic phenomena.According to the band, the resultant recordings were perplexingly unrecognizable documents of the actual performances that occurred, as the usual Razen elements of "randomness, unexpectedness and irrationality" were all dramatically heightened.It was certainly kind of the apparition to be so sympathetic to Razen's established aesthetic, as a less sensitive ghost my have tried to add beats or something.In any case, there are definitely some strange harmonies and overtones swirling above these languorous ragas, so there is no denying that the church had an unusual and distinctive acoustic character that played a significant role.There are also some more obvious dub-like fluorishes to be found as well, as erratic shifts or disruptions in tape speed occasionally appear throughout Xvoto.I suppose that is a cool touch to some degree, yet the eerily beautiful music itself is far more compelling than trying to spot the handiwork of any sonic phantoms that may have been fluttering around the rafters.Also, on pieces like "Ash Reversal," Razen's swirling haze of dissonant recorder and organ harmonies is legitimately spine-chilling without any extra occult intervention being needed.
As much as I enjoy those darker moments, the true beauty of The Xvoto Reels lies in its more transcendent and ritualistic pieces, as pieces like "Dunes Spell Runes on the Edge of Town" feel like they could be impossible field recordings of ancient pagan ceremonies.Razen also have a real genius for balancing the sublime with the ragged and gnarled, a mesmerizing tightrope act best illustrated by "Rover Fortunes," as the higher notes sometimes dissolve into distorted sizzle and Pieter Lenaerts's churning and moaning upright bass sounds absolutely feral.That particular piece is probably where Razen cross the line into absolute goddamn genius, as it is essentially a wonderful drone piece that unpredictably shudders and undulates like a living entity…while individual notes unexpectedly transform into howls of anguish…and a roiling and snarling undercurrent threatens to tear the whole thing apart.It is truly epic.The closing "Death Reel" is another stunner, albeit a more understated one.It kind of sounds like Razen somehow isolated just the eerie harmonics from Tuvan throat-singing, resulting in a ghostly whine that drifts through a warmly melancholic bed of tape hiss, droning strings, tender recorder melodies, and clattering tablas.It is exactly the kind of dreamlike, hypnotic Eastern-influenced drone that I could easily listen to in an infinite loop, but the entity lurking in St. Martin's apparently had other plans: as the title cryptically alludes to, the tape grows increasingly garbled and then abruptly falls completely silent around the ten-minute mark.It is certainly an abrupt end, but ten minutes of sustained drone nirvana is still ten minutes of sustained drone nirvana.
Interestingly, Ameel and Delcour considered not releasing this album, as they felt it was "too personal, intimate and obscure to let out into the world…the sound of a deeply private dream, a message from the subconscious."It is hard to imagine any other band recording their masterpiece, then debating about whether it is morally acceptable to allow others to hear it, but Razen are quite a unique duo and I believe them.Skepticism towards the supernatural aside, something special undeniably did happen on that day.I have no idea if Razen channeled the divine (with some additional help from the surrounding architecture and a malfunctioning tape), yet the confluence of chance, mysterious variables, and genuine inspiration resulted an album that is on a whole different plane than anything else I have heard from them.This is as soulful and transcendent as drone gets.Of course, an album like The Xvoto Reels could not have happened if Razen had not set the stage for it, as it feels like Ameel and Delcour have been shuffling around strange and mismatched puzzle pieces for a while and finally got them to all fit together by casting aside all traces of the modern, finding some like-minded collaborators, and diving deep into a half-real/half-imagined ancient past.As a result, this album would have probably been a huge breakthrough even if it were recorded under completely mundane circumstances.Instead, Razen have somehow managed to achieve something even better still: a visionary record that sounds like the secret ecstatic recordings of a long-forgotten religious sect.
 
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Few people have played as crucial a role in shaping the experimental music landscape as Terry Riley, yet his impact and historical significance have not necessarily translated into a discography of timeless classics ("Poppy Nogood" excepted). This particular reissue, originally released on Shandar back in 1972, still sounds remarkably fresh and contemporary though. Part of that is pure luck, as we are currently in the midst of an aesthetically similar analog synthesizer renaissance, yet these two improvised performances would probably seem immortal and transcendently consciousness-altering in almost any cultural context. Though the two pieces take somewhat different paths and evoke different moods, the overall experience is like being present at an organ mass that slowly transforms into a mass hallucination where all the notes bleed and swirl together in a lysergic haze of otherworldly harmony.
I am quite perplexed about where the "surgery" bit of this album's curious title originated, but Riley was much less cryptic in paying tribute to both Persia and dervishes, as this "composition" grew from his lasting fascinations with Rumi, ancient Middle Eastern culture, and Sufi devotional music.Surgery-wise, I suppose Riley may have been excising both conventional composition and standard tuning from his life, as well as normal consciousness from his listeners.If that is the case, I suppose the operation was a successful one on all fronts.While I cannot say I personally achieved any sort of ecstatic rapture over the course of this sprawling and somewhat overwhelming double-album, it definitely evokes a kind of trance-like and hallucinatory delirium (much like one of My Cat is An Alien's recent massive opuses).Part of that achievement is due to Riley’s odd yet minimal arsenal of gear: a modified electric organ (tuned to just intonation) and a reel-to-reel tape delay.The rest is due to the nature of the piece itself, as both versions combine a drone-like undercurrent with rapid flurries of blurry notes (not unlike John Coltrane’s "sheets of sound," albeit much more hazy and disorienting).The combined effect of the unusual tuning, "pipe organ" sound, obsessive repetition, and smeared textures is quite a singular one.Both pieces have a ritualistic, mesmerizing pulse at their foundation, but the foreground is a consciousness-eroding blizzard of whirling, swirling, and bleary notes that unpredictably see-saws between pattern and entropy.
Both performances are roughly 45 minutes long and ostensibly spring from the same motif (a repeating minor key arpeggio pattern).In the case of the first piece, recorded in Los Angeles in 1971, that motif has a rather slow, deep, and elegiac feel.For the Paris performance, recorded a year later, Riley presents a brighter and livelier version of the pattern.That change makes quite a significant difference in the feel initially, as the Los Angeles version packs the dark gravitas of a requiem, while the more listenable Paris version feels like an extended psych freak-out by a formidable prog rock band. As Riley's ecstatic improvisations build momentum, however, the differences between the pieces start to blur and disappear (though I do love the oddly see-sawing throb that coheres for a while in the Paris version).Obviously, the primary appeal of both pieces today lies in the strange harmonies and the mantric, Eastern-informed drone pulse.There have certainly been many better drone albums since Dervishes was released, but the just intonation still sounds somewhat radical and alien to my contemporary ears.Also, this remains a deep and sustained mindfuck by any standard.One thing that absolutely no one else has been able to replicate or build upon, however, is the virtuosically varied and free-wheeling breadth of Riley's improvisations.While it certainly verges on indulgent at times, Riley's blithe genre fluidity is arguably also his greatest strength, as Dervishes seamlessly dances through classical minimalism, the blues, psychedelia, Eastern drone, and hymn-like organ reveries with vibrant spontaneity.That deft unpredictability is compelling in its own right, but it also serves an essential purpose, as Riley's periodic eruptions into melodic riffing act as a necessary tension release from his swarming crescendos of rapidly hammered notes.Without them, Dervishes would be a numbing experience.With them, Riley is able to sneakily ratchet up the intensity and psychic vertigo without losing my attention.
Persian Surgery Dervishes is a pointed reminder that the most striking and important albums are not always the most perfect ones, nor are they always the ones with the most focused vision.This album is undeniably messy, imperfect, and indulgent at times (and perhaps also overlong as well), yet it remains a dazzling and inspired tour de force.There is something quite beautiful, intimate, and almost heroic about these performances.It is almost as if Riley were certain that if he found the right combination of notes and maintained the necessary intensity, he could dissolve the boundaries between dimensions and lead his audience to a higher plane of existence.Obviously, these two performances would not even have been possible if Riley had not already spent decades performing, composing, thinking deeply, studying traditional Eastern music, and revolutionizing minimalism, yet the very essence of Dervishes is simply that of a lone man with an electric organ trying to whip up a spontaneous and unique performance so wild and transformative that it would blow the minds of some of the world’s most sophisticated concertgoers.If my own experience listening to a mere recording four decades later is any indication, I would say he probably succeeded: this feels more like an enthralling document of a mass religious epiphany than a mere album.
 
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23five is delighted to announce the release of our two latest publications -- Areal from the intrepid New York intermedia artist Richard Garet, and a posthumous release from Helmut Schaefer, featuring Will Guthrie, Elisabeth Gmeiner, and Zbigniew Karkowski.
On Areal, Garet continues his ongoing research with electromagnetic disturbances through radio. Garet treats the radio process of transmission and reception as a routing system for the audio signal, all the while deliberately agitating and distressing the nodes that direct the course of that signal. For example, an electrical motor might be situated near a radio's antenna disrupting its ability to properly receive a transmission that Garet is broadcasting from nearby. Through the controlled use of electro-acoustic techniques (some rough and volatile, some refined and delicate), he organizes the signal distortion, the crackling static, and the ever-present tendencies for feedback into swarms of chiming resonance, electrically sourced harmonics, tactile bricolage, and impressionist din. As much as Garet's process pushes the interaction of sound and electricity to the brink of self-immolation, Areal balances his crunched textures with extended passages of radiant blooms of blurry noise and drone, finding common ground between the glassine density from Rhys Chatham and the splintered excursions of Kevin Drumm.
Schäfer posited Thought Provoking as a radical shift from his brutalist electronic engineering to a spatialized, open-ended composition based on the muffled tones from an ad hoc instrument he built from salvaged church organ pipes and hair dryers. The first presentation of this work took place in his home town of Graz, Austria in 2003; the second was a collaboration with violinist Elisabeth Gmeiner in Vienna two years later; and the third & final performance occurred in 2006 with percussionist Will Guthrie and Gmiener at the St. Andre Church where he first presented it in Graz. After Schäfer's death, Guthrie reconstituted the rehearsal takes from that performance for this recording of Thought Provoking III, attempting to re-imagine the controlled energy of those sessions with Schäfer's aesthetic framework at the forefront. The bellowing hums from Schäfer's organ pipe and hair dryer contraction ebb and flow amidst intermittent percussive flourishes, subtle gong overtones, sustained violin trills, and fizzling electronic mark-making. On the second track of this disc, long-time friend Zbigniew Karkowski presents a smoldering electro-acoustic remix of Thought Provoking III as a fitting tribute to Schäfer.
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