07 February 2012

Matthew Amundsen

Albums and Singles

On their latest, George & Caplin use electronics and guitars to create a lush yet unobtrusive album with few hard edges. Alternating between instrumental and vocal tracks, the songs have buoyant moments of familiarity, like fleeting fragments of a dream upon waking.

Beta-lactam Ring

The album is uniformly good even if no songs in particular stand out from the others. The arrangements tend to shy away from vivid distinctions or extremes of any sort. Instead, they share a common hazy space somewhere between longing and regret, floating on drifting memories. The group paints in muted colors, mixing bittersweet melancholy with nostalgia.

Especially on a song like "Bluff Lake Forgotten," the group's songwriting strays from the obvious, concentrating instead on small, delicate melodies rather than big hooks. The result is surprisingly expansive, like a blurry wide-angle portrait of a landscape. Generally, the songs with vocals work a little better, such as "Highway Driveway" and "Nebraska Broadcasters," because the arrangements are a little livelier than those of the instrumentals. The title track in particular is a bit of a disappointment because the charm of its repetitive guitar quickly wears off and the drumbeat is a little dull. Yet perhaps the strongest track is also the closer, "Silhouettes Astray," which best incorporates vocals with the other instruments, ending the album on its highest note.

At just under half an hour, He Really Got Through to Advertising is a concise snapshot. The mood doesn't change too much throughout its course, but it’s presented in a digestible enough portion that that doesn’t detract from its enjoyment.

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07 February 2012

Matthew Amundsen

Albums and Singles

Brazzaville's latest work is an album of immediately accessible pop songs with little or no envelope pushing or edginess. Although they are not particularly groundbreaking, many of these songs are pleasurable just for the simple fact that they're so well done. While the album is a little broad for my taste, I still have to respect the high level of polish and craft at work here.

Vendlus

Most of the tracks are sunny and light pop songs interspersed with occasional forays into sappy and sentimental territory. The best of them are mellow soundtracks to sitting around a pool and drinking margaritas, but a few have a little more bite. My favorite is "Star Called Sun" because of its infectious rhythm, tight arrangement, and subtle keyboard fuzz. A nice arrangement transforms "Jesse James" from a wistful ballad into a punchy rock song. "Mr. Suicide" is also pretty good, this time with otherworldly keyboards providing the melody. "Ugly Babylon" has a similar feel but is driven by a slithering bass line.

Some of the slower songs hinder the album with their gentle longings, sweet talk, and lackadaisical bliss. A couple of the songs in this style, like "Bosphorus" and "Taksim," are decent contrasts to the rest of the material, but after a while they clutter the album. Some, like the title track, "Madelena," and "Lena," are simply momentum killers. Then there are a handful of songs that are merely ordinary. I hesitate to call them generic because most of them are well-written and have nice arrangements even if they’re not terribly memorable.

Because lesser groups have made careers out of worse material, it would be a disservice to Brazzaville to dismiss them out of hand without acknowledging how catchy some of these songs are. I prefer the more energetic songs overall, and it is a shame that there aren’t more of them.

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07 February 2012

Matthew Amundsen

Albums and Singles

Furnished Rooms is an album of elegant chamber pop by a trio who use stringed instruments, an accordion, voices, and subtle electronics to create music that sounds refined yet contemporary. The group’s methodology is fairly uniform throughout, but they use it to their advantage in the creation of a unique sound.

Helmet Room

Main songwriter Julie Davis leads the group with her voice and upright bass, with support from Carrie Beeder's violin and cello and Brigid McAuliffe's accordion. The first few songs encapsulate the album's overall feel, with few changes thereafter. Most of the arrangements are a vague mix between jazz and gypsy folk with vocals sung in a somewhat blasé manner. While the majority of the tracks are originals, they also cover "Summertime" and "Old Man River" and use the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson for lyrics on "Prelude 2" and "Some Things That Fly There Be" respectively. All are more or less effective in asserting the group’s aesthetic on the material.

The album benefits greatly from the pristine recording quality. Although the electronics are apparent, they blend so well in the mix that there isn't an obvious audio difference between them and the acoustic instruments, which is not always an easy feat to pull off. The voices are uniformly strong, and there are obvious distinctions between the other instruments. Everything is well balanced for clarity, yet the minimal instrumentation never sounds bare or sparse.

My only complaint is that so many of the tracks sound alike. I would have preferred more variation of the tempos, arrangements, and vocal delivery because some of the songs start blending together by the time the album finishes. Still, the group does a great job of establishing and maintaining a mood all their own.

 

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07 February 2012

Scott Mckeating

Albums and Singles

Based on percussion sounds, rather than rhythm, Neon Tempal (solo project of Pascal Nichols) uses hefty regions of space and silence to blatantly flout solo percussion clichés.

 

Rayon

Sounding like a Post skunk rehab version of The Skaters, albeit sweated down to one man, "Glandulord" rattles the roof. Refusing to balance on the raw seesaw of sounds used, bowed drones and looped vocals might reveal a few similarities to other underground acts but Neon Tempal aren't easily pigeonholed. "Magnator" covers all the bases with textures, explosions and actual rhythms all generating energy. Some of the bell and metal pieces resemble a kind of urban dawn chorus with the sparks as dew. The aluminium rattle moving between wild eyed battery and a musical swell. 2 features a number of brief musical interludes that are heavy on light bell work and unidentified rustle. In their length they reveal an artist not stuck on the idea of twenty minute jams to get something across to the audience.
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07 February 2012

Scott Mckeating

Albums and Singles

Often an excuse for elongated sessions of masturbatory ecstatica, thee-way distorted guitar jams seldom really work beyond initial listens. Thankfully Basalt Fingers manage to sidestep a seemingly endless stroke session with each of its three participants working an as effective hydra-like, many headed unit. With Ben Chasny (Six Organs), Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers), and Brian Sullivan (Mouthus) each being renowned for their sideways takes on guitar playing, these two tracks get progressively more gorgeous with every listen.

 

Three Lobed Recordings

The first untitled cut opens with a Bjorkian weave of melodies, the chimes and pulped sounds giving the album a Jekyll-and-Hyde vibe: the beauty charred by other half's hazard. Basalt Fingers offer up the soft white underbelly of math rock, slicing and massaging it into tones and optimistic grumbling guitar sounds. Both cuts feel more devotional than their limited Gashound debut, they sound like they were recorded in a church carved out like a wet pumpkin. Sounds can soak into surfaces or come up off them like sparking wires, at times it appears to be straight amp feedback or a snakey organ melody rather than manipulated guitars. Sines spiral up and around like maddening carnival anthems heard through rotted tenement floors.

There is more of a structure to the second track, a mobius melody that festers (but in a good way). Conjecture over who is playing what is short-lived, the three constituent parts matching the styles of the players. The high end out-of-head soloing seems incredibly Chasny-like, the bassy mud very close to Mouthus' trudge and the organ pitches like Ambrogio's hard-to-pin-down playing. All in all, this track is more choppy and sunken than anything they have released so far.

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07 February 2012

Creaig Dunton

Albums and Singles

There is a great deal of experimentation in these short tracks—though only an EP in length, and also available on 10" vinyl—that, unlike a lot of experimental electronic recordings, make it more of a relaxing listen rather than a protracted endurance test or an exercise requiring the full attention and focus of the listener.

 

Type

The tracks are almost pared off in style, with the midpoint being the most different of the bunch.  Opening "Composition B" and ending track "A_" are built around digitally tweaked guitar tones, bass heavy rumbles that could almost be a nod to Earth, and clearer, more pure strums.  Although organic at the core, both tracks have a digital sheen to them in the form of glitchy stutters and fragmented bits of voice.

"P." and "N," on the other hand, are stripped down minimal piano affairs.  In the tradition of folks like John Cage, the tracks are more about the space between the sounds rather than the piano notes themselves:  the notes are allowed to reverberate through space and draw attention to the quiet moments.  The middle piece, "E/R," is digitally synthesized tones and glitches that slowly build, layer upon layer, until it is a thick mix of musical fragmented data that, in spite of its digital nature, has a warmth to it.

Clocking in at barely 20 minutes, S. is an interesting little bit of an EP that isn't the esoteric sort of experimentation that could be expected, but instead is a fascinating selection of tracks that have made me want to dig more into Chauveau's discography.

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06 February 2012

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This was easily one of the most striking and visceral albums that I encountered last year, but it has somehow remained mostly under the radar.  Cold Pin is the end-product of a two-year labor of love, as Keszler leads an excellent ensemble in a very unique collaboration with a huge string installation that he built in a large dome in Boston (the Cyclorama).  It's an amazing and unusual performance, but the installation itself could probably have a very successful career as a solo artist: few things sound better than giant strings being scraped at by small motors in a cavernous room with great acoustics.

Pan

This album consists of two side-long performances, each clocking in at just under 15 minutes.  That may seem brief, but it is actually the perfect length for music as texture-centered as this.  The primary difference between the two pieces is that in "Cold Pin 2," the motors percussively attack metal squares in addition to the strings.  It is nearly impossible to tell which sounds are coming from the squares and which are coming from the Keszler's wild, skittering drumming without actually being there though, as man and machine blur together quite seamlessly.

Of the two pieces, I prefer "Cold Pin 1," simply because the creaking and scraping strings are more prominent and active.Those strings are honestly more than enough to carry the piece on their own, as the deep metallic scraping and humming is extremely engrossing and feels almost tactile.  Both pieces have a rumbling, physical presence that is both massive and mesmerizing.  Notably, the longest string that Keszler used is only 25 feet, which makes me wonder how shudderingly apocalyptic his previous water basin installation in Shreveport was (which used 200 ft. strings) or whether his planned future installation with 2000 ft. strings will cause an earthquake

Aside from creating an extremely cool sound installation that translates quite well into album form (a rare feat indeed), Keszler managed to also impress me as both a drummer and a composer.  His drumming is nearly as prominent as the massive thrumming strings and provides a perfect counterbalance to their slow-motion immensity, as he plays very unconventionally and with a curiously muted ferocity.  I have no idea what the hell he is doing or how he is doing it (I think he has some mechanical help), but he somehow manages to sound like a thousand pencils falling down a metal staircase.  Conversely, the actual composition is about as far from busy or flashy as possible–Keszler uses his talented battery of musicians both sparingly and droningly.  No one ever plays anything remotely conventional or melodic.  Instead, the trumpet, woodwinds, and guitars all seem to wax and wane together like a single undulating organic entity, creating a queasily brooding atmosphere rather than competing for my attention.

I could not be more impressed with this album, as Keszler and his collaborators not only do everything right, but manage to do it right in ways that I could not have anticipated.  Obviously, any piece focused so intently on things like natural reverberation, decay, and the sound of metal scraping metal is going to be a pretty challenging listen, but Cold Pin is heavy and unpredictable enough to be instantly engaging.  This is not austere, concept-heavy sound art: this is a vibrantly buzzing, grinding, and clattering sound world.

Samples:

• Cold Pin 1 (excerpt one)
• Cold Pin 1 (excerpt two)
• Cold Pin 2

 

 

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06 February 2012

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Heralding another spurt of activity, this legendary duo has reissued a pair of two long out of print albums from the late 1990s with two added discs of unreleased material. I’ve always found the two previously released albums, When Pornography is No Longer Enough and The Victim as Beauty, amongst the most unhinged and violent power electronics recordings ever, and they’ve lost none of their De Sadeian intensity since release.

Between Silences

Originally the solo project of Kevin Tomkins in the early 1980s, he first shelved the SJ name after joining Whitehouse, but later returned to it with Paul Taylor in the mid 1990s with the guitar-heavy Death Mask.A few years later When Pornography is No Longer Enough appeared on the short lived Death Factory side-label of Cold Meat Industries.

The core of this box is a pair of concept albums, based around the life and crimes of fictional murderer Hyndo Carney.I've always had my reservations about noise/power electronics and the whole "misogynistic serial killer" theme, but SJ does it so well that it's hard to criticize.It was at this point that the identifiable guitars from Death Mask disappeared, replaced with inconsistent, acidic blasts of noise that sounds like no one else.Coupled with Tomkins' completely unhinged vocals, there is a level of mania that hardly anything can match.

At the same time as this album was recorded, Tomkins and Taylor were also working on the final Bodychoke album, Cold River Songs, which was, ironically, their most accessible work.While the sonic approach between the two albums may have been completely different, some overlap can be heard: "Third Victim: With Control: Message to Your Mother" shares many lyrics with that album's opener "Control", but here amped up to even greater levels of disgusting brutality.Even though most of the album is spastic outbursts of vocals and jarring white noise, the title track instead has a carefully composed structure, building a hellish blast from rudimentary sounds.As a whole the album never relents, save for a dark ambient outro to "Seventh Victim", which still leaves on a painful note.

The second album, The Victim as Beauty, covers similar ground, but is more conceptually structured, mimicking a traditional narrative.While the harsh pieces are in a similar vein to Pornography, there is more of a cinematic atmosphere, with the more violent moments tempered with pensive, ambient passages that give some relief, but the tension never relents.

The harsher noise pieces are very similar to the previous album, but also show that SJ couldn't push this level of intensity any further.For example, Tomkins' "Come on, cunt…show me your fucking titties!" line almost pushes the album into self-parody on opener "Act One: Abduction"

It almost seems as if Tomkins and Taylor figured this out early on, because the album develops an identity of its own afterward.The second "scene," "Act I:Fear and Anticipation," is a repetitive loop of what sounds like organ music allowing only the most subtle of variations, creating a vintage horror flick ambient tension that threatens to attack at any given time. The noise pieces, like "Humiliation"display the same harsh vibes as Pornography, but it comes across as more structured, less manic in comparison.Ending "Cold Aftermath" is a simple expanse of droning synth, with clattering distant percussive outbursts.

Disc three is unreleased material from The Victim as Beauty sessions, different experiments in sound that vary greatly from the harsh moments of that album but also herald some of the more recent SJ output, as well as Tomkins’ solo work."Realisation" and "First Blood," for example, are heavily processed loop-centric works that inhabit that purgatory between noise and ambience, a place that SJ threw themselves into with This Is The Truth.

It's only "White Light Power" that feels like the band's traditional noise, and with its overdriven, but sustained passages of mangled sound, it could almost be an early SJ work that never saw the light of day.Overall the pieces on the disc do reinforce the cinematic concept of The Victim as Beauty, and would probably have strengthened that album even more:the shrill scrapes of "Final Victim" and the cold electronic dissonance of "Post" could easily pass for film score material.

The fourth disc includes the previously released XI 7" single, which has a substantially difference sound than what proceeded it, such as the collaged restraint of "V," even with its noise outbursts, and the old fashioned power electronics squall of "VI."Also included are two tracks that were considered for single release, but abandoned."Drowning in the Glorious Bloody Filth" encroaches surprisingly into musical territory, with overdriven synth loops and Tomkins' actually singing (and sounding very Genesis P-Orridge like).Its counterpart is "Cunt Down (Eyes Please Mother)" with its unrelenting white noise ambience comes across as a precursor to the whole "harsh noise walls" scene.

When Sutcliffe Jugend began to reinvent their sound in the mid 2000s, it was a necessary evolution.The whole harsh noise/power electronics aggression hit a zenith which would be nearly impossible to reach again:sound and music doesn't get more violent than this.Even over a decade since they first appeared, these albums are still unmatched, and the supplemental material included gives a new insight into both these albums and the band.Disturbing, ugly and unpleasant are fair adjectives for this violent material, which is what makes it so brilliant, and a cursory listen shows just how much influence these albums have had:I doubt Prurient would be around had these guys not done their thing first.

samples:

• First Victim: With Knife: Left to Die with Many Cuts
• First Blood
• Drowning in the Glorious Bloody Filth

 

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05 February 2012

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Thiswhole album is relaxing and feels warm through every listen. If theidea of being on an island or on a beach isn't appealing, then imaginesitting on a dock and fishing somewhere with nobody around—only thesound of crickets or the call of different birds all throughout theday—the water would pass slowly by and even the most pressing matterswould slip away with it.

Carpark
 

Paquet Surpriseis a mostly quiet album. Not that I ever had to turn the album up tohear all the sounds, but all the songs bleed a quiet gentleness. Evenwhen a distorted line of garbage interrupts the soft singing on "I AmWaiting (For December)," there's a sense that it belongs in that placejust as naturally as all the other, quieter sounds. Seconds pass bysizzling with Davis' own peculiar warmth, a result of his approach todigital editing and composition I suppose, but also present is Roux'sdelicate touch.

Though Davis' Somnia was melodic in its ownright, there's far more melody present on every song than I wouldexpect from a record Davis might compose on his own. Roux's additionsstrike me as being harmonious with Davis'. I understand theysent their music back and forth and, as such, both their signatures aregoing to be present in the music, but every song is so fully satisfyingand lively that I have to attribute some of its appeal to how wellthese two work together.

The cover of Paquet Surprise depictsall manner of animals and flora being stuffed into a tiny box; theimage is a perfect parallel for the album's distinct flow and generallygentle sound. Fluttering computer talk, instruments, and fieldrecordings all bump into each other, flowering and decomposing as theyintertwine and generate moments of melody, rhythm, and chaos. At timesthe jumble of electronic stuff will get overwhelming, but slowly bereplaced by the shake of a rattle and the ring of a guitar and, beforelong, a "song" in the classical sense of the word will emerge briefly.It's only succumbed by Davis' and Roux's massively low sound, but thosebrief interludes are lovely and only adds to the generally attractivenature of the entire record.

At one point the sounds of the ocean washup over a percolating digital swarm and there's a sense that I might bein paradise somewhere, resting on the beach with a beer in one hand anda book in the other. By the end of the album I've realized that thewhole time Davis and Roux have been building this atmosphere, thiseuphoria of a paradise in my bedroom. The tropical, sunny dispositionof each song is enough to make winter seem unbearable, but at leastthere's this album. Warm waters, sunny beaches, green trails...everything's just been packed up and stuffed inside these songs for theseason. It's enough to want to hear Davis and Roux do somethingtogether again, though I doubt it'll happen.

Davis has been a part ofseveral collaborations this year and with that in mind, it is likelythat he'll just move on and continue to change his sound along with hisconspirators. Sebastien Roux has a record available right now onApestaartje and I imagine, from the merits of his work on thisrecording, that his solo material is worth a listen, too.

samples:

• Sea Grasses and Blue Sea
• Tidal Pool
• To See the Wonderful World

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05 February 2012

Administrator

Albums and Singles

I'mnot sure why it took me so long to discover Múm: the records havealways been available and they've toured through these partsand received rave reviews and comparisons to lots of music that Ilike, so it would seem natural that I'd have picked up a couple of Múmrecords by now, but not so.

Morr Music

I'm happy Morr Music reissued Múm's debut full-length and that I've got a lull in theschedule where I can finally catch up with a group that deserves the attention. Listening to Yesterday Was Dramatic in avacuum of Múm knowledge, and perhaps baggage, it's easy to appreciatewhat the group is doing with a simple design. The songs here are earthyand natural despite being obviously digital in many ways, and when Ithink back to the year (2000) that this album was originally released,I can see how it predicted a lot of the folktronica and bedroom laptopmusic that's come out in the time since. There's a nice bridge herebetween the synthetic and odd-but-real world that makes the songs alittle familiar and a little alien at the same time.

Stylisticdescriptions aside, Múm's first record is perhaps best described as'cute,' an adjective that I don't find myself using very often, but onethat seems completely appropriate for Múm's distinctly childlikeapproach to music. So much of the music that works from this same potof sounds seems drowned in its own melancholy or created as a personaltherapy activity, but Múm is something altogether different. There's achildlike wonder at the magic of music on display in tracks like "Thereis a number of small things" and even the more somber tracks like "Theballad of the broken string" seem almost playful. I imagine the membersof Múm sitting around and asking one another "can you play theaccordian?" "No, can you?" and then just picking the thing up to seewhat it can do. The winding of music boxes, the whistle of toy flutes,and the digital cut up and manipulation of everything adds up to awonderfully experimental bit of exploration.

As breathy vocalstake the stage on "The ballad of the broken birdie records" the recordmomentarily stretches past my patience for cuteness and gets a littletoo precious for my tastes. I've heard that other people have had asimilar reaction to later Múm material, but for this record which isfive years old but new to me, and newly remastered, Múm's work isenchanting.

samples:

• Slow Bicycle
  
• Awake On a Train
  
• There Is A Number of Small Things
  

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