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The final part of the X-TG story is แฝดนรก (Faet Narok), a bonus "dark" version of Desertshore that comes as a download with the special edition of Desertshore/The Final Report. It is quite different from Desertshore even though it follows the same layout as the main album. The bonus album’s title roughly translates from Thai into "double hell," but the music is far from hellish, indeed it may be darker but it is nicely soporific and ambient. The vocals are treated and pushed into the music, becoming part of the sound rather than becoming background detail. Antony’s voice becomes a plaintive call from behind the veil, Bargeld’s a polyglot babble of madness. Even Grey and Noé sound much better here as disembodied forms than they do in the "proper" versions.
The pieces that feature Cosey come out best in this way, "Faet Norak Five" (the reworking of "All That Is My Own") is especially good. The lyrics are still barely audible and the music moves at a slow, almost subconscious pace; together it feels like the song has slipped from my normal perception into some dream-like state. "Faet Norak Eight" (a version of "My Only Child") sounds like a hymn, albeit one that has drifted in via Tangerine Dream rather than a church. It reminds me of the sort of vibes that Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio got out of his remixes for Fovea Hex a few years ago; stretched sounds and remarkable reverberation coalescing in the air around me.
While Faet Norak is a nice addition to this final collection, it seems strange to tag it on only as a download. It would have made more sense to me to include it and Desertshore together as a proper release and give The Final Report its own individual release. However, having it at all is better than nothing so beggars cannot be choosers.
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Released alongside Desertshore is the one and only original album by X-TG, The Final Report. Its title is obviously a nod to the various reports (final or otherwise) released by Throbbing Gristle in their lifetime and it is hard not to consider X-TG except as a continuation of Throbbing Gristle. As such, it is no shock that The Final Report is not a million miles away from the music explored on Part Two: The Endless Not nor The Third Mind Movements. The latter album in particular is a fitting reference point for two reasons: firstly, it was mainly the work of Chris, Cosey and Sleazy (i.e. X-TG) and secondly, it was made using the original Throbbing Gristle recordings for Desertshore as its source material. Much like The Third Mind Movements, The Final Report feels more alive and vibrant than Part Two did. The jams flow naturally and it sounds like a group enjoying each other’s company. Whether it redefines the musical landscape like The Second Annual Report or D.O.A. is another matter entirely but it certainly is a great album to listen to.
Musically, it covers a lot of the same ground as the bootleg recording of X-TG in Porto from 2010 though here the group sound more confident, striding through the pieces with purpose. Some of the issues I have with Desertshore in that it is too restricted by its source material or in getting as many participants involved as possible are null and void here. There is not a single unnecessary note or moment on The Final Report. While tracks like "Stasis" pump along with energy and force, others like "Breach" and "Trope" have that slinking menace that runs through Throbbing Gristle’s recorded output. The music on these pieces has an uneasy atmosphere which is both enticing and worrying as X-TG lure me in, lull me into stupor and then pull the chair out from under me. However, there is also some exciting (dare I say it) happy music that is not far from Sleazy’s work as The Threshold HouseBoys Choir or in SoiSong; "Um Dum Dom" sounds like it could have fit in with either project as opposed to X-TG and "What He Said" likewise occupies that same strange, wonderful space.
What is most remarkable about The Final Report is that it sounds like a live session with no added frills or extras but was in fact cobbled together from multiple sources. Sleazy had forwarded on parts to Chris and Cosey, the three had made some exploratory recordings shortly before Sleazy returned to Thailand for the last time and the album was finished by Chris and Cosey while they were working on Desertshore. It strikes me from the sheer power that lurks within The Final Report is that while Desertshore had to be done in order to gain some closure on Throbbing Gristle, The Final Report needed to be done because of its own will to exist.
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Beginning life as a Throbbing Gristle album back in 2007, this cover album of Nico’s Desertshore has had a tumultuous life. Its four parents went through a divorce when Genesis P-Orridge left the group in 2010 before unexpectedly losing Peter Christopherson a month later. Desertshore was Sleazy’s baby but Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have done their best to foster it and give it the chance it deserved. The end results are unsurprisingly mixed, the range of guest vocalists that have replaced P-Orridge are varied in background and skill which has not served the source material well but taken as a whole with its sister albums, The Final Report and แฝดนรก (Faet Narok), this is as good an ending to Throbbing Gristle/X-TG as possible as well as being a fitting tribute to Sleazy and his work.
X-TG’s version of Desertshore starts strongly with Antony Hegarty’s rendition of "Janitor of Lunacy." Antony gets deep into the role of Nico, capturing the haunted beauty of her words in his own unmistakable way. The music is a amorphous swell of cornet, organ, and that heavy bass throb which betrays the origins of this group. Followed by Blixa Bargeld’s first (of two) outstanding performances, "Abschied," I am thinking that this is going to be one hell of an album. Bargeld brings a completely different emphasis to the piece and makes the words his own. Combined with X-TG’s fine interpretation of the music, retaining the melody but completely redesigning the mood, this is a standout track on Desertshore. Furthermore, they prove that this is not a fluke on his version of "Mütterlein," where Bargeld’s voice and the abrasive backing track come very close to the best moments of TG Mk.II, indeed there is even a flash of the same energy and excitement that runs back to even Throbbing Gristle’s "Discipline."
Yet, Desertshore takes a significant turn for the worse with Sasha Grey’s appearance on "Afraid." Nico’s original is a masterpiece of poised tenderness but Grey manages to deliver it in such a morose, deadpan way as to destroy the power of the song completely. Grey’s voice is too dreary even for a Nico song! Similar Gaspar Noé’s "Le Petit Chevalier" seems superfluous, especially considering his voice is buried under a lot of processing. While I understand the appeal of using non-musicians who are like-minded in terms of their approaches in other media as it has worked well for them in the past (such as Throbbing Gristle’s use of appropriated recordings and Coil’s collaborations with Judy Dench and the anonymous person on "Who’ll Fall"). However, Noé seems to be lost here and Grey confirms for me that music is not her forté.
These disappointing moments are balanced by the other performances. In particular, Marc Almond’s attempt at "The Falconer" is superb. It does not hurt that "The Falconer" features the best version of Nico’s music by Chris, Cosey and (possibly?) Sleazy. Out of all the guests, he and Antony plunge furthest into Nico’s psyche without aping her vocal style; though occasionally Almond sounds like he is channelling Nico through his own vocal chords. This eerie effect is enhanced by a double-tracked harmony with himself, reminiscent of P-Orridge’s singing along to a guide of Nico’s original vocals during The Desertshore Installation recordings.
Cosey also gets close to the spirit of Nico on "All That Is My Own" and "My Only Child," without sounding like she is just copying the original recordings. These two tracks sound closest to Chris and Cosey/Carter Tutti and are propelled by their distinctive rhythms, the former has a sharp edge to it whereas "My Only Child" has a light, warm glow at the centre of it. Both pieces are good but unfortunately do not reach the same dizzying heights as the originals or the better tracks on this album.
The album closes with a new song by X-TG, "Desertshores," which is more of a redux of Nico’s album than an entirely original work. Multiple voices ask for us to meet them on the desert shore, reinforcing the idea of a desert shore being more than a geographical idea but the interface between this life and the next. While the preceding tracks feel like the completion of unfinished business, "Desertshores" is instead a direct farewell to and from Sleazy (whose voice is also included in the work). The other voices are all friends of Sleazy, all wishing to meet him again.
While I am glad to finally hear Desertshore it is not the album it could have been. Between Sleazy’s death, Genesis P-Orridge’s departure, the variance of the guest vocals and the amount of time that has passed between the early sessions and its release, it was always going to be difficult to fully deliver on Desertshore. Especially when it will be compared to not only a perfect album by Nico but the epic Throbbing Gristle box set of The Desertshore Installation. Though, such is life, and Chris and Cosey have done a tremendous job on completing what must have been a tough, emotional work for them. If Sleazy was here, I am sure he would have been pleased.
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The final part of the X-TG story is แฝดนรก (Faet Narok), a bonus "dark" version of Desertshore that comes as a download with the special edition of Desertshore/The Final Report. It is quite different from Desertshore even though it follows the same layout as the main album. The bonus album's title roughly translates from Thai into "double hell," but the music is far from hellish, indeed it may be darker but it is nicely soporific and ambient. The vocals are treated and pushed into the music, becoming part of the sound rather than becoming background detail. Antony's voice becomes a plaintive call from behind the veil, Bargeld's a polyglot babble of madness. Even Grey and Noé sound much better here as disembodied forms than they do in the "proper" versions.
Released alongside Desertshore is the one and only original album by X-TG, The Final Report. Its title is obviously a nod to the various reports (final or otherwise) released by Throbbing Gristle in their lifetime and it is hard not to consider X-TG except as a continuation of Throbbing Gristle. As such, it is no shock that The Final Report is not a million miles away from the music explored on Part Two: The Endless Not nor The Third Mind Movements. The latter album in particular is a fitting reference point for two reasons: firstly, it was mainly the work of Chris, Cosey and Sleazy (i.e. X-TG) and secondly, it was made using the original Throbbing Gristle recordings for Desertshore as its source material. Much like The Third Mind Movements, The Final Report feels more alive and vibrant than Part Two did. The jams flow naturally and it sounds like a group enjoying each other's company. Whether it redefines the musical landscape like The Second Annual Report or D.O.A. is another matter entirely but it certainly is a great album to listen to.
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Although this record is a compilation of 12" singles and unreleased tracks, that should do little to dissuade anyone from conceiving of it as an album. Released on Kieran Hebden's own Text imprint (which has seen little activity until recently), Pink carries with it the indelible stamp of a Hebden release, with all the affects and nuance that name suggests. That it was culled from entirely different releases but still fits together is a testament to Four Tet's unique musical identity.
Pink opens with "Locked," one of its strongest moments and a connective song between Kieran's old work and his current dancefloor friendly material. While every Four Tet album is different in some way, a track like this emphasizes the similarities which define his sound: expressive clattering percussion, string harmonics, deep processed bass, and a calculated use of empty space. From there, Pink moves to more specialized territory.
"Lion" is clipped, drony, full of staccato beats and minor homages to minimal and classic house. "Jupiters" is subtractive, an arpeggiated melody and circular polyrhythms playing respective solos before overlapping in the song's conclusion with help from a sampled voice. "128 Harps" also uses a clipped voice sample, whose presence demands constant attention while the wavering bass and descending harp notes carry on around it. "Peace For Earth" is probably one of Four Tet's more indulgent moments, Pink's longest song and a snareless amalgamation of skittering melodic loops similar to something you would get out of those "Tone Matrix" programs available online. It is the only song that is not explicitly dancy, but it serves as a nice counterpoint in context. Formerly unreleased, its inclusion can't help but seem like a deliberate move to flesh out Pink as an album, with sequencing and forethought.
The album is not without its weak moments—the song "Pyramid" in particular seems like a lesser summation of all the other songs' best elements—but it remains true to Hebden's signature style throughout, which means everything here retains the pastoral and emotional significance present on past records like There Is Love In You and Rounds. It's not as strong an effort as either of those, and it is less of a statement due to its omission of interludes and the lack of a unifying concept. But everything here works better on an album than as singles. Even when the songs head uncertainly for genre imitation or rote exercises, Kieran's ear for songcraft saves them from cliché.
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By cultivating a garden of ambient vignettes, Andrew Chalk brings his usually sprawling soundscapes into precise focus, never allowing anything to repeat itself too deliberately. Forty-Nine Views is a wistful record of fractured memories; brief glimpses into a surreal world triggered by a collection of electronic melodies and effects, each song distinct in small degrees.
When a large percentage of your output consists of unkempt album-length suites, a move as simple as conservation can throw some people off. Forty-Nine Views might accurately be compared to former Chalk records like "Violin At Night," where Andrew's discretion on song lengths began to call for truncated, separate pieces. This record just follows that line of thought to its logical extreme.
Forty-Nine Views is Chalk in a studiously selective mood, editing his tracks down to one minute or less, refusing to allow any ideas to flourish, instead letting each one out just long enough to make an impression. I found myself hoping at least one song would have evolved into a fully realized centerpiece, but to no avail. The procedural limits on Andrew's work here requires that everything be quick enough to pass by if you were not paying attention. As a result, there is a bewildering level of nuance on display that might go unappreciated.
There are no "favorite songs" on Forty-Nine Views. There are a few timbral anomalies which distinguish themselves among the record: the pinging echoes of "Silver Winds" and "Obelisk," the hollow whirls of "Jewels In The Sand," and the sudden peaks and valleys in songs like "Sleeping Stillness" or "Waves In Plumes." But these are as likely to impress as the rest of the album, which is without any missteps.
Songs pass in and out in seconds, moving between crystalline synth sounds, faint field recordings, and subtle filters with demonstrative impatience. Each one seems like a bite sized sample, offering themselves up for individual consumption. But for having so many songs to pick from, this record works best as a singular effort. Playing this start to finish, with the transitional silences serving as thematic bridges, has a perfect serenity to it I can't explain. It's a medley of poetic aural miniatures.
Andrew Chalk's work is ceaselessly beautiful, and pastoral, and his packaging is always an essential part to that equation. As with past albums, Forty-Nine Views has the recurring motifs of romantic and illustrative artwork, minimalist handmade sleeves, and Japanese characters for liner notes. A fantastic level of care went into this release.
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It has been several years since the last Windy & Carl album, but thankfully they are back and just as reliably excellent as ever.  Maybe even more so, as several of these songs easily stand with the duo's finest work.  Some long-term fans may be a little disappointed that they don't indulge their song-like or epic-length tendencies much this time around, but I doubt it: We Will Always Be largely sticks to what they do best  (beautifully glacial and glistening guitar) and does it warmly and purposefully.
This album has quite an endearing and unusual origin story–it was never originally intended to be publicly released.  The story begins back in 2008, when Windy Weber released her first solo album, the uncharacteristically dark, caustic, and brooding I Hate People.  Urged on by their friends, Carl Hultgren decided to start work on his own solo effort, which he worked on for a year and a half, then presented to Windy as a gift for her alone.  When she told him that he should release it, he suggested that they make it a collaboration instead.  Consequently, We Will Always Be is essentially Carl's solo album enhanced by occasional cryptic and quiet, oft-whispered vocals from Windy.  Weber also contributes guitar to one (undisclosed) song, but her most significant contribution is as muse: Carl has rarely seemed more inspired and the blissed-out shimmer of these pieces serves as the perfect counterbalance to I Hate People.  Carl clearly loves people (at least one, anyway).  Equilibrium is restored.
The opening "For Rosa," however, is a notable departure from the rest of the album, as Windy languidly sings over an unprocessed, strummed acoustic guitar and some buried amplifier sizzle.  It is difficult to imagine a Windy-less version existing, but the remaining seven pieces are all very much devoted to Carl's shimmering, multilayered guitar heaven.  Obviously, that is pretty expected territory for Weber and Hultgren and they've covered it many times before (and quite beautifully).  Nevertheless, there are some subtle and less expected touches that elevate this album into something quite special.  For one, this sounds like ambient music, but it doesn't feel like it: these songs have a presence and restrained intensity to them that prevents them from fading into the background.  Secondly, there is a very rewarding and distinct arc to the sequencing.  The relatively brief early pieces are somewhat muted and static, but the songs grow steadily longer, better, more varied, and more intense as the album unfolds.  The final three pieces, in particular, are all absolutely mesmerizing and essential (albeit in Windy & Carl's characteristically understated way).
That propensity for understatement and subtlety serves the album well, as it makes the late album rough edges seem quietly devastating.  Those edges get their roughest on the closing 18-minute epic "Fainting in the Presence of the Lord," which is the unquestionable jewel of the album (and possibly their career).  I am not sure quite how the sounds are being made or who is making them, but it initially resembles a static-ravaged cat singing over a slowly intensifying bed of sacred-sounding organs.  Then  a slow-motion wave of gnarled, distorted guitar noise gradually envelops everything and it is wonderful.  I have rarely heard guitars used in a more poignant, heartbreaking manner: Hultgren evokes mingled feelings of anguish and ecstasy that words could not possibly hope to convey.  Such a spectacular crescendo necessarily makes the rest of the album seem a bit pale in comparison, but the less-intense "Nature of Memory" is another huge highlight.  Without those two pieces, We Will Always Be would already be a very good Windy & Carl album.  With them, it is easily among their best.
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It seems like most (if not all) of the better ambient artists have moved onto other things in recent years, but Auburn Lull guitarist Jason Kolb and Danish producer Jonas Monk (Manual) have done their best to pick up the torch left behind by bands like Stars of the Lid.  Then again, perhaps this is just sort of an inadvertent time capsule of an earlier era, as Monk and Kolb's trans-Atlantic collaboration has been painstakingly unfolding since 2005.  In any case, the duo have done a fine job filling that languorous void (even if I was not terribly concerned about that particular void remaining open).
I generally think that entirely too much emphasis is placed on process in abstract music, but these 15 pieces originated in a somewhat unusual way, as Jason and Jonas set out to create imagined soundscapes for places they had never been (ie- Jonas would describe some place in Denmark and Jason would attempt to compose something that captured its essence).  Also, most of the music here was originally performed on only a guitar with some effects pedals, which is noteworthy only because it is recognizable as such only rarely.  I recognize that the whole album could have been recorded on a goddamn kazoo if Monk had an infinite amount of time to shape and process it with his software, but that origin gives the album a bit more of an organic flow than is common with ambient of the "I bought a synthesizer!" variety.
That said, Monk was much too overzealous in his processing for my taste, as many of these pieces are too edgeless and pastoral to offer anything particularly distinctive.  It is clear that the duo purposely set out to make an album of endless warm and shimmering swells, however, and they definitely succeeded at it, so it may be a bit unfair to critique them for not transcending their chosen genre.
Unfortunately, the handful of occasions where Billow Observatory allow themselves a bit of crackle and grit ("Helsinki Radio," for instance) stand out as obvious highlights and offer glimpses of what could have been a better album.  As it stands, it is merely a good one: anyone looking for slow-moving, dreamy ambiance will be quite happy with this effort (there is quite a lot of it), but I was hoping for a bit more.
 
 
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I had a very hard time understanding the disproportionate amount of excitement surrounding last year's Pass Me By and We Stay Together EPs, but I have since come around a bit: there are definitely a couple of areas in which Stott truly excels.  In many respects, Luxury Problems essentially picks up exactly where those releases left off, but there is one massive curve-ball: the addition of vocalist Alison Skidmore.  That particular innovation turns out to be a mixed success, but overall the highlights are both more impressive and more frequent this time around.
My favorite element of Stott's work has always been his talent for heavy and hypnotic locked-groove-style rhythms, which he executed most beautifully on "New Ground" from Pass Me By. He recaptures that magic at least twice here, first with the bludgeoning, machine-like pulse of "Numb," and again with the deep metallic throb and break-beat combination in "Sleepless."  The title piece achieves equal success with a slight variation, as a relentless and obsessive down-tempo groove burrows sensually through a cloud of murk and angelic cooing.
In a broad sense, the decision to add a female vocalist was a very good one, as Alison's breathy vocals add some welcome humanity and sexuality to Stott's eerie, slow-moving post-industrial dub techno.  They work best, however, when Andy aggressively chops and loops them, as he does on the aforementioned "Numb."  They also work nicely when they are weirdly floating and disembodied, as they are on "Luxury Problems."
Unfortunately, the balance between Stott's deep, ominous atmospheres and Skidmore's ethereal vocals skews a bit too far towards the latter in a few cases.  For example, if it were not for some grinding metallic textures and wobbly dubstep bass, "Hatch the Plan" would sound uncomfortably like a fairly commercial house single. The closer, "Leaving," also lands a bit far from the mark for me, as Alison's layered, reverb-heavy, and blissed-out vocals share little common ground with the material that precedes them, aside from yet again showcasing Andy's sharp editing and mixing skills.
That curious stylistic schizophrenia rears its head again with the jungle/drum n' bass throwback "Up the Box," which makes it arguably the album's biggest shortcoming: Stott seems to be having some difficulty maintaining a distinctive aesthetic while expanding his sound.  My other primary issue is that Stott's prodigious textural, rhythmic, and editing talents only work when they are in service of strong ideas, which is not always the case–Andy sometimes seems to be trying to force barren motifs into songhood through sheer production wizardry alone.  However, even with those inconsistencies and miscalculations, Luxury Problems has defininitively claimed its spot as my favorite Andy Stott release, as the three songs I like are absolutely killer and Skidmore's human warmth and melodicism have made Stott's vision considerably more dynamic and listenable.
 
 
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