27 November 2011

Daniel McKernan

Albums and Singles

I first met Othon Mataragas in Austria at Donaufestival '07 (curated by David Tibet) where he was performing with Current 93. Since then, he has been on the soundtrack to the Bruce LaBruce film Otto; or Up With Dead People and then part of a live accompaniment to the Derek Jarman film The Angelic Conversation, orchestrated by Peter Christopherson. I've seen Othon contribute his pianist skills to Ron Athey's automatic writing performance in London (Gifts of the Spirits), and he is currently working on an collaboration with artist Franko B (Because of Love). His debut album, Digital Angel, focused on childhood nightmares of corporations taking over our identities and features a lovely rendition of Coil's "The Dreamer is Still Asleep," sung by David Tibet. His second album, Impermanence, is provocative, filled with torment that is presented in a profound yet light-hearted way. Othon's arrangements are gorgeous and timeless.

Strike Force

The opening title track starts out with an exalting, classical instrumental track by Othon alone at the piano.He is credited in the liner notes as contributing piano and celeste to the album: quite a stunning start, demanding full attention as if whispering for us to pay attention.The lyrics of "The Fall," written by poet Ernesto Sarezale, lend themselves to showcase Tomasini's four-octave vocal range and tell a morbid love story of nurturing a wounded stranger who is represented metaphorically by a fallen angel."Mystery Star Dance" is the second instrumental on the album, a striking and epic piece filled with sorrow and intensity, featuring Othon's exquisite piano paired with cello by Jacob Shirley.Othon's only vocal contribution to the album, "All Is Too Soon," is warm and touching as he recalls memories of a childhood friend lost; his Greek accent is endearing in this tragic tale."A Little Dream" has a hint of David Tibet vocal style in Tomasini's whispering apocalyptic tones.The second instance of the title track-- "Impermanence +" features the lovely sullen voice of Marc Almond.This track seems to be inviting us into another world.The lyrics are melancholy and dark, as is the delivery: "cold is the sun / black shines the moon / and birds have sharp teeth / the flies killing eyes."

The single of the album, "Last Night I Paid To Close My Eyes" is sung by Marc Almond on the album version.The single version and the music video both feature Tomasini in Marc's place.Both feature a choir of backing vocalists including Beverly Crone (The Cesarians).Ernesto's appearance in the music video is all at once striking, ostentatious, and enigmatic-- an element of whimsy to go with the theatrics of it all.

The final track of the album, also titled "Impermanence" is sung by Tomasini entirely in falsetto with a soprano register—delivered with a dramatic, cinematic effect.It is accompanied by magic organ from this track's producer, Troy Banarzi.Something wicked has become of something once sacred—an end is near, and his final words of the album resonate so strongly you'll likely be inclined to give the album another listen and momentarily deny the message they propose: "gone are the ships / lost is all hope / but I deny to believe / I deny to accept / the impermanence of it all."

As stated in an interview, Othon is often laughing inside during even his most painful performances.There is madness here, and it is meant to make us feel both terrified and giddy at the same time. Othon mentioned that the slogan of the album is "everything withers & everything dies," and it celebrates both the pain of life and the joy of dying.When we die, the chemical DMT is released into our brains as we leave our bodies, arguably the last earthly mindset we experience before moving from this existence to the next.Therefore, we should be at peace with ourselves upon death, or we may end up in a perpetual bad trip: perhaps the definition of Hell?Illustrated on the album's gorgeous cover artwork by the wonderful Hector de Gregorio, this is a motif which Othon toys with great success—that of agony meeting ecstasy and the hallucinatory, quirky shades of life that come from everything in between.

Samples:

• Mystery Star Dance
• Last Night I Paid to Close My Eyes
• Impermanence

27 November 2011

Albums and Singles

please delete

27 November 2011

Administrator

Albums and Singles

As a collaboration between two artists who are almost impossible to pin down by genre conventions, A Throne Without A King is at times a difficult album, often not resembling anything from either artist, but a different beast entirely. It may be difficult, but its worth the effort to fully absorb what’s there to be heard.

Hydra Head

While the bulk of this album is the four part title track, each of the two artists contribute their own solo pieces (on the 7" if it's the vinyl version).Pyramids' "Phaedra's Love" is full of jarring transitions, often paring lush, gorgeous melodic textures with caustic industrial pounding and erratic, rapid-fire drum machine beats.The balance of beauty and ugly is carefully struck, and it makes for an unsettling song.

Jenks Miller's Horseback provides "Thee Cult of Henry Flynt" which, other than the occasional guttural vocal outburst, isn't as metal as I've come to expect: in some ways the melodic work feels like a throwback to Impale Golden Horn.While that album was more about mood, here the rather pleasant guitar playing is layered and pushed along by a rapid beat.However, the second half sounds like the first being pulled apart, with fragments of voices and disembodied guitar melodies drifting through space.

The four part "A Throne Without A King" strips away the more musical elements of both artists to create a textural 45+ minute composition that focuses less on melody and more on odd, unrecognizable sounds.The first piece is mostly backward chimes and glitchy outbursts, with a bit of concession to gentle melody in its latter moments, but broken up by weirdly processed voices.

Into the second piece there are a lot of static-laden layers of sound that become thicker and denser as it goes on.It never becomes full on noise or overly harsh, but it definitely makes its presence known.The dissonance retreats to allow in oddly treated vocals, but then launches into full on Merzbow mode to close the track.

The penultimate segment begins with the noise from before, but slowly reins it in, leaving the focus on buried droning tones that are ever so slightly melodic, but not in any conventional sense.It comes to a close (and leads into the final track) with abstract, clattering percussion that sets up the conclusion.The final piece is a fitting conclusion, mixing textural static with bleak, reverberating tones and bizarre percussive crashes.

For some reason I can't fully articulate, the collaboration reminded me of a further abstraction of the more "out there" jazz, along the lines of Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman (circa Free Jazz), but without any traditional instrumentation.It has that same inertia to it, a sense of disciplined propulsion that underlies the chaos, making sense of the madness, but only after careful absorption and decoding.While I probably favored each artist’s solo contributions for regular listening, the collaboration is a dense, puzzling work that takes a few spins to fully unravel its secrets.

samples:

• Thee Cult of Henry Flynt
• A Throne Without A King (Part 2)
• A Throne Without A King (Part 4)

 

21 November 2011

Administrator

Albums and Singles

I reviewed the first four installments of this now-completed 12 volume series a few months back, and now that it has come to its conclusion, the final product is even more impressive, documenting Szczepanik's evolving and developing compositional skills.  With each piece having its own voice, yet feeling somehow connected to one another, it's a perfectly encapsulated suite of recordings.

self-released

The two "Forgotten Dreams" pieces, for example, take diverging approaches to the same loose concept.  The first piece is akin to the earlier works in the series, with its sparse, slow reverberating tones that resonate like a massive organ, casting a ghostly shadow over all.  The second piece is a more complex variation, focusing on the same powerful tones but boosting the richness to near-symphonic levels, but also casting them under layers of whistling winds and icy swells.

While the former piece had a more disembodied, floating quality to it, this is more tactile and concrete.
My favorite works are the ones that integrate a greater sense of rawness to the otherwise somber and pure tones.  It first becomes evident in "Blue," which is initially a world of church-like reverberations that are reminiscent of Organum's recent "holy" trilogy.  However, as it continues there is a significant amount of variation in structure and development, and a hint of dissonance and distortion clouds the ending moments.

"Era Una Mañana Gris" also encompasses all of the pure, tonal drama of the other pieces, but it has a rough-hewn edge to it, giving just a slight hint of grime to the otherwise pristine beauty.  "The Embossed Map of Your Essence" goes all out, opening with layers of what sounds like overdriven distortion, leading out more harshly than the rest.  However, half-way through the noisier passages fall away, bringing the somewhat obscured melodies to the surface.

Although it's tough to choose favorites, the two pieces that struck me in this batch the most were the most different from each other.  "With Dusk Detained" is more textural, layering static and buzzing electronics with bell-like tones and droning bass.  Szczepanik usually works with a sense of purity and asceticism, so the multiple diverse layers and crackling electronics are somewhat out of character for him, but work so well here.

The other one I come back to most is "Only a Speck of What it Attempts to Represent (for Elizabeth Wilson)," which utilizes dense, emotionally laden tones that are slow and meditative, almost overwhelmingly moving in their dense richness.  In this regard it's along the lines of Please Stop Loving Me, from earlier this year, and just as captivating.  As a stand alone piece, it's brilliant, but within the variation of this series, its diverse strengths shine through even more.

In a world that is becoming more and more focused on digital distribution and intangible "cloud based" formats, the 3" CD is the utter antithesis.  It is impractical, offers limited storage, and is incompatible with many players.  Yet, it also seems to be the best suited for this kind of artistic endeavor.  I'm always a staunch believer that packaging and presentation are a huge component of a good release, and here that comes through perfectly.  Each of these discs are uniquely hand-packaged within intricately folded paper, with inclusions of poetry and photos.  It all has a personal, intimate quality to it that digital distribution will never have.  Szczepanik and collaborator Elim Hernandez (who designed much of the packaging) have created something that is intimate and personal, both sonically and aesthetically.

While it was seemingly a testing-ground for a variety of new ideas and approaches to composition, this series never felt like "experiments" but always well developed, nuanced compositions that displays Szcepanik's skill.  While it was sad to see this series come to its conclusion, it has whet my appetite even more to hear his future endeavors, since here it’s obvious he can try nearly anything and have it come out wonderfully.

samples:

• Blue
• With Dusk Detained
• Only a Speck of What it Attempts to Represent (for Elizabeth Wilson)

21 November 2011

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Der Blutharsch's sudden transition from militaristic industrial project to perverse psychedelic rock band was jarring and abrupt, and always a bit baffling. The albums since Time is Thee Enemy! have moved more and more into that direction, but often laden with a sense of identity confusion: the pieces never seemed to come together quite right for me. In this collaboration with Aluk Todolo, however, both embrace their hallucinogenic tendencies in unison, resulting in a brilliantly cohesive album that is equal parts krautrock, psychedelia, and dark experimentalism.

WKN

This collaboration emphasizes the best elements of both artists, with Albin Julius and friends' use of stereotypically psych rock sounds, such as organ and distorted guitar, but as an extra piece to the dark textural soup that characterizes Aluk Todolo's sound.It makes sense for the two to collaborate, since both artists have been moving in similar directions sonically.

Across the four untitled tracks, each around ten minutes, the rock guitars, organs, and big live drums are balanced out by vintage analog sounds and unidentifiable passages. The opener starts with a classic old school drum machine loop and distorted bass before the "rock" comes in, leading it down a path that mixes the organic with the alien.It definitely leans into unabashed rock territory, but there is always an undercurrent of subtlety to be heard.

The closing piece is cut from a similar cloth, opening with stiff beats and electronic loops before the guitar/bass/drums get piled on.In comparison to the first track, there’s a greater sense of rhythmic variation, with a constant evolution in sound from beginning to end; it just never sits still.

Sandwiched in the middle are two tracks that owe more to the early 1970s krautrock scene instead of the LSD and 'shroom drenched psychedelia that dominates most of Der Blutharsch's recent output.The second song opens with echoed drums, organ and bass that's quite reminiscent of Tago Mago era Can, including the inclusion of vocals that are subtle and work well as an instrument rather than the overall focus, a la Damo Suzuki's contributions.

The subsequent song's breakbeat opening lends a decidedly Germanic sense of funk as a backbone, rapid and taut with a stainless steel precision.While it is probably the most repetitive of all here from a structural perspective, the lack of rhythmic variation is the perfect underpinning with the addition of electronic elements and organ improvisations.

While I have had mixed opinions on Der Blutharsch's more recent direction, where some of the tracks have been brilliant while others fell flat for me, here the entire album is a winner.I don't know if it's simply Julius and crew settling in to their new voice, or the helping hand of Aluk Todolo, but the result is a great combination of psych rock and dark ambiences that sound like no one else, in the best possible way.

samples:

• Untitled 1
• Untitled 2
• Untitled 3

 

20 November 2011

Duncan Edwards

Albums and Singles

Long-time musical partners Anna Domino and Michael Delory take ten songs from the public domain and recreate them in their own image: the cool detachment of Domino's voice and non-traditional arrangements contrasting with narratives of treachery and murder. As they previously did in 1999 with their much-heralded album Songs from My Funeral.

 

Fledg’ling Records

The mid-1980s saw the significant, but still under-appreciated, Les Disques du Crepuscule label sprouting out of Brussels. The city was a magnet for artists such as Cabaret Voltaire, Tuxedomoon, Michael Nyman, Wim Mertens, Billy MacKenzie, The Durutti Column, and Paul Haig*. This Belgian landscape also included Anna Domino whose 1984 mini-album East and West contained "Land of My Dreams," a distinctive version of an Aretha Franklin song and a good starting point for describing Snakefarm. The melancholy intensity in "Land of My Dreams" comes from the dreamy, repetitive, musical backdrop in combination with Domino’s hypnotic, non-emotive, singing. Somehow these two (apparently effortless) aspects combined to create a sad remnant of passion and yearning. I believe the marvelous Virginia Astley may have contributed piano and backing vocals to the record, too.

As Les Disques du Crepuscule slowly faded away, Delory and Domino relocated to Arizona and eventually re-emerged as Snakefarm. I haven’t heard the 1999 recording but its success means that My Halo at Half-Light will be both much anticipated and also cast in a shadow of expectation. This album is more textured than the Anna Domino of the Brussels period and solo releases, yet a pervading aura of nothingness remains intact. In a sense, these new versions of old folk songs have a strong sensibility of North America, reflecting the other-worldly landscapes out in the mythical West, the feeling of vastness and absence, and the hollow familiarity of the same retail outposts studding the lonely highways. The music doesn’t all work for me, as I find the rhythms of "Darlin’ Corey," for instance, irritating (almost a pastiche of the word "tasteful") and prefer the hypnotic repetitive aspects to those where the pace is varied and the singing rather more "normal."

In those sections, as with "Land of My Dreams," the seemingly dispassionate playing and singing allows the songs to breathe and for feelings about the bloody, deceitful, tragic narratives to remain open to interpretation. The clarity of production ensures every word is audible and that some odd realizations and connections can emerge; not least that Staggerlee may be viewed as less a heroic legend and more a complete bastard capable of shooting another person despite them pleading not to widow their wife and render their children fatherless. The worthless John Lewis is also laid bare in "Omie Wise," drowning his pregnant girlfriend while her defences, and possibly her knickers, are down. "The Lady O" manages to sound airy and splendedly terse but also like an imaginary discarded sketch for early OMD and Roger McGuinn’s 12-string to collaborate on the theme tune for spoof television cooking show Posh Nosh.

A cynic might remark that the only thing America loves more than vastness and violence is the thought of assured redemption. If so, the album closer "Michael" (as in "Michael rowed the boat ashore. Alleluia") is an apt ending. At first sounding like a hilarious nod to the oft-quoted debt owed to Anna Domino by Portishead, this sparse piece is a strange, slight, yet satisfying version of an old gospel song (long ago rendered virtually unbearable and meaningless by the kumbaya crowd).

Several Les Disques du Crepuscule recordings have been reissued by LTM.
* As noted by Anat Pack for the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies.

20 November 2011

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Matt Waldron has obviously had little to do lately judging by the landslide of irr. app. (ext.) releases that have recently come available. Ranging from very old archival material to more recent compositions (including collaborations with Nurse With Wound and Diana Rogerson), Waldron has unleashed a Pandora’s box of sonic delights on the world. Widely available as downloads from his own site and as limited edition CD-Rs elsewhere, these releases build on an already impressive but far too limited back catalogue.

 

Errata In Excelsis

Not quite another Blue Sabbath Black Cheer collaboration but close enough to count, Concrete Mixes sees Waldron using Dried Up Corpse’s Musique Concrète single (an unplayable 7" made out of concrete) as source material for his own work. Taking up the challenge of this anti-record having no real musical worth, Waldron hits it, scrapes it and attempts to play it on an old record player in order to form a dense mass of hardcore heavy rock (with no actual relation to the genres of hardcore or heavy rock).

samples:

• Musique Concr√®te [Dance Mix]
• Rock N' Roll [Extended Dub Mix]

Waldron’s limited foray into being a vocalist is documented on Bracktul Thleecher. Two versions of "Black Teeth" (Waldron’s party piece at Nurse With Wound shows) highlight the humor at the heart of irr. app. (ext.). The first version was Waldron’s first performance of the piece in California in 2006 where he stomps through the song using a range of vocals and solo percussion. Not a huge amount has changed with the 2011 studio version also included here but hearing this very simple but perfectly captured take is a treat. The other song included here is "Lurcher" which was written for Nurse With Wound but not used in the end. Again there are two versions, one live and one studio, but the song does not have the same magnetism of "Black Teeth." "Lurcher" is not bad but when paired with such a strong song, it has to fight hard to get a look in.

samples:

• Black Teeth [Original Performance]
• Lurcher (2008 Demo)
• Black Teeth (2011 Strip)

On the subject of Nurse With Wound, 4 Orphans features the finished parts of an abandoned collaboration between Waldron and Steve Stapleton from 2001. While both since have appeared on Nurse With Wound and irr. app. (ext.) albums respectively, none of the collaborations come close to the sounds or approach of 4 Orphans. "Form in Fasciation" is a percussion-heavy work where haunting drones and ambiences emerge like spirits during a primitive religious invocation. On "Pitches of Suchness," the pair develop a piece that brings to mind Luc Ferrari’s Presque Rien except instead of a sleepy fishing village waking up to a sunny morning, night has fallen and something queer is afoot. Out of all these releases, this is the one I keep coming back to. It is too bad this album was never finished because this certainly had the potential of being a masterpiece.

samples:

• Form in Fasciation
• Pitches of Suchness
• Rat-Size with Conical Headdress

Another collaboration included in these recent releases is a reissue of The Famine Road, Waldron’s work with Diana Rogerson which was originally included as a bonus CD-R with her Fistfuck live LP in 2008. The original version from the bonus disc is included along with two newer versions of the piece. The 2011 edition is as engaging and askew as the 2008 version and the "Easy Listening" version removes all the sharp edges of the original to make a mournful, textured ambience which is more in line with the idea of a famine road; roads built during the Irish famine in the 1840s from nowhere to nowhere as part of the government's attempt to employ the countless starving people who had found themselves without a means of feeding themselves. This is bleak music for a bleak period of history.

samples:

• The Famine Road (2008 Version)
• The Famine Road (2011 Version)
• The Famine Road (Easy Listening Version)

 

20 November 2011

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Roughly ten years ago, BBC's Radio 4 sent Chris Watson to Mexico to record one of the final continuous cross-country trips for Mexico's passenger rail system.  The resultant album is a narrative collage that uses those recordings to aurally recreate that unique and memorable journey.  I'd definitely say he succeeded quite impressively at that specific technical objective, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a great album.

Touch

El Tren Fantasma ("The Ghost Train") borrows its title from a 1927 Mexican silent film, but it explicitly draws its primary inspiration from Pierre Schaeffer, whose train-based 1948 piece "Étude aux Chemins de Fer" was one of the first ever musique concrète compositions (unknowingly predated by only Halim El-Dabh's "The Expression of Zaar").  A dedication to Schaeffer makes perfect sense here, as El Tren Fantasma is essentially an extension of what Pierre did in 1948, but with the benefit of modern recording and editing equipment.  Sixty years of technological advances make an enormous difference though: Schaeffer was able to create a 3-minute rhythmic collage of train sounds, but Watson has condensed the sounds of an entire month-long journey into a single evocative and vibrant hour that doesn't miss a single detail.

Obviously, the focus is very much on railroad sounds, but Watson also captures the ambiance of the various lonely stops along the way (right down to the insects and the breeze).  Those touches are often among the album's highlights, as Chris has a long history of expertly capturing the subtle sounds of the natural world.  That said, Watson's most impressive recording and editing feats are reserved for the train itself, especially the way the rumbling and clacking changes as the train goes over a bridge or plunges into a tunnel.  Even when the nothing unusual is happening, however, the normal rumble and squeal of the train can be a striking and almost physical experience–especially with headphones.

Unfortunately, one of the album's greatest assets is also perversely its greatest handicap: its vibrancy and immediacy.  Watson has always created enveloping and amazingly life-like soundworlds, but none of his albums have been as bluntly attention-grabbing as this one: they just pleasantly and exotically changed my aural surroundings.  El Tren Fantasma, on the other hand, demanded my complete focus, but once it had me, it never went as far or as deep as I wanted it to go.

That unexpected problem unexpectedly surfaced for me due to "El Divisidero," a piece in which Chris unexpectedly moves from pure vérité into music by building a rhythm from heavily-processed clacking and weaving together something that sounds like a warm bed of droning synth.  It isn't spectacular or anything, but it made me wonder why Watson was willing to take those liberties, but didn't go further and turn the trip into something increasingly strange and phantasmagoric.  That would certainly make the album's title seem more apt (though I understand that sounds disconnected from their source could also be perceived as "ghosts").

Once I had that realization, it became very difficult to be content with an uneventful trip from station to station, no matter how perfectly rendered it was.  Also, there is no denying the fact that a long train ride through Mexico cannot be movingly recreated without some sort of visual component.  No one takes a train through Copper Canyon because they are eager to hear how it will sound.

While it is certainly relevant and necessary, it nevertheless feels a bit unfair to critique El Tren Fantasmo for the limitations of sound or for what I think it could've been.  Chris Watson set out to do two very specific things: document the last days of one of the world's most singular train rides and pay homage to one of electronic music's greatest visionaries.  He succeeded in both objectives beautifully.  El Tren Fantasmo may not be a triumph of composition, but it is an unqualified masterpiece in the realms of both recording and sound editing.  It is difficult to imagine a sharper and more instantly gratifying collage of field recordings than this one.

Samples:

• La Anunciante
• El Divisadero
• Los Mochis

 

 

20 November 2011

Administrator

Albums and Singles

While they have never been especially prolific, Esplendor Geométrico's discography is still a surprisingly daunting and disorienting thing to navigate, due to their many compilations, reissues, disappearing record labels, and stylistic shifts.  Sheikh Aljama, now reissued for the first time since 1994, was originally recorded between 1987 and 1988 and was one of the final albums of the band's crunchy and noisy early era.  It is also unique for incorporating Arabic influences.  I'd be remiss if I didn't say that that particular assimilation was not especially skillful or seamless (especially when compared to Muslimgauze), but the album's hypnotically bludgeoning beats make such flaws seem totally irrelevant.  This is one of Esplendor Geométrico's finest efforts.

Daft/Apocalyptic Vision/Geometrik

Embracing Arabic sounds and images seems like a very odd choice for a Spanish post-industrial band named after a Futurist text, but it is not quite as wildly anachronistic as it initially seems.  The title and the dedication to Abu al-Hazm ben Jahwar both refer to the Republic of Córdoba, which was located in modern day Spain.  More specifically, they relate to a tumultuous transitional period where the chaos and civil war following the fall of the Caliphate was finally ended by the institution of an Arab Muslim dynasty.  All that historical turmoil is curiously analogous to this album's place in Esplendor Geométrico's discography, though I am sure it was not intentional: Sheikh Aljama was the bridge between the band's noisy and uglier early years and the cleaner, more complexly rhythmic entity they ultimately became.  There was even a corresponding personnel change, as founding member Gabriel Riaza left and Most Significant Beat's Saverio Evangelista joined the fold.

Regardless of where they draw their inspiration, sole mainstay Arturo Lanz and his varying cohorts have always been very single-minded in their focus: huge, visceral, and relentlessly repeating rhythms.  Everything else is beside the point: the only real variable is whether the beats will be fluid or crunching.  Sheikh Aljama is no exception to that template and the emphasis is quite firmly on distortion and crunch.  The accompaniment, for the most part, is limited to low-end throbbing and burbling and periodic intrusions of static and sizzle.  Occasionally some appropriated Arabic sounds are allowed to take the foreground, like the chanting in "Baraca," but usually it just sounds like some random TV or radio broadcast is allowed to drift in and out of the dense rhythmic onslaught.  Despite their seeming randomness, however, such snippets prove to be surprisingly effective at providing atmosphere, mystery, and contrast to the pummeling percussive attack.  There are probably a number of other things that could have filled that role equally well, but in this case it happens to be disjointed Arabic broadcast snippets and it works just fine.

Isolating the difference between a successful song and weak song on Sheikh Aljama (amusingly misspelled "Shelikh" on my reissue) is nearly impossible: they either suck me into their obsessively repeating pulse or they don't.  Usually, it is the denser, more layered pieces that absorb me, like "Medinati," but the cleaner, more minimal "Anima Triz" and its weirdly throbbing sub-bass are also quite mesmerizing, so any solid generalizations are impossible.  There are definitely many more hits than misses here though–I was listening to this album while driving on a highway at night a few weeks ago and had the abrupt realization that I had absolutely no idea where I was anymore because I had been too entranced by its immense, endlessly repeating rhythms to notice signs or even the passing of time.  I can't think of many other albums that have had such an effect on me.

Samples:

• Medinati
• Min Dahul
• Sinaya

 

18 November 2011

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This latest slice of heaven from Ian William Craig has quite a curious provenance, as it was assembled from orphaned pieces dating all the way back to 2014's landmark A Turn of Breath. As such, it is not exactly the proper follow-up to Centres, yet it is every bit as great as I would expect such an album to be. Notably, Thresholder is far from a collection of disconnected outtakes and middling material, as the pieces are all roughly tied to a commission work relating to quantum physics and space. As befits such an inspiration, Thresholder very much focuses on Craig's more experimental and abstract side, unfolding as a hallucinatory and dreamlike collage of woozily swooning angelic vocals in a crackling sea of distressed tape loops and hiss. If Centres is the album where Craig's gift for songcraft came into full bloom, this is the companion piece that illustrates the full depth of his textural and production brilliance.

130701

The opening "Elided" is a quietly simmering and lovely statement of intent, as Craig's beautiful voice wordlessly floats across a faintly hissing and shimmering void, leaving a spectral, fluttering, and shivering afterimage in its wake.Much like the other ten pieces on Thresholder, it does not quite fall into ambient or drone territory.Instead, it is something else entirely, as the ghost of a structured song remains at the piece's core despite the textural ravaging that it has undergone.That ingenious approach to abstract/experimental music is central to why Thresholder manages to be such a coherent and gorgeous album, despite being fragmented and partially dictated by the unpredictable whims of scratchy and wobbling tapes.I am sure Craig did not actually destroy any fully formed songs for this release, but there are enough corroded hooks and recurring themes burbling out of the hissing fantasia to evoke the illusion of a heavenly "pop" album straining to penetrate the pleasant fog of half-sleep.Unsurprisingly, the most memorable moments are those in which the melodies penetrate that fog the deepest.As such, the album's centerpiece is "Some Absolute Means," which builds to a glorious crescendo of rich organ chords, insistently repeating tape loops, and intertwining vocal harmonies that feels like a kindred spirit to A Turn of Breath's "A Slight Grip, A Gentle Hold" suite.Later, "And Therefore The Moonlight" feels like a languorous and understated coda to that piece, sneakily providing one of the album’s most striking passages, as a fragile and warbling loop of Craig's voice is left behind in the song's wake as everything else disappears.It then impressively segues into still another great piece, the lush, sacred-sounding chorale "The Last Westbrook Lament."

While those are the pieces that stand out as obvious highlights, the true beauty of Thresholder lies in how all of the individual pieces bleed into one another to form a sublime and mesmerizing whole.There is nothing weak or indulgent to be found on this album, as Craig was every bit as rigorous with his editing as he would have been with an album of actual songs.The only real difference between the obvious gems and the less obvious ones is where Craig puts his focus: with pieces like "The Last Westbrook Lament," there is an immediately gratifying melody, while a piece like the closing "More Words for Mistake" takes a bit more time to appreciate (a ghostly, melancholy melody slowly creeps out of a skipping, popping, and gasping squall of tape noise).A piece like "TC-377 Poem," on the other hand, strikes a perfect balance between conventional beauty and experimentation, as snatches of fragmented vocal melody pile up on one another and fall apart amidst a gnarled and stuttering roar of ravaged tapes.At other points, Craig explores some non-tape avenues of achieving his smudged and obscured dreamlike beauty.The most significant such divergences are the very different halves of the two-part "Idea for Contradiction."In the first part, Craig sang a simple and lovely melody in an underground cistern in Gothenburg and let the cavernous natural reverb works its magic.On "Idea for Contradiction 2," however, Craig goes the opposite route and gradually engulfs and corrodes his vocals with a roiling sea of distortion.

I cannot say that I did not expect Thresholder to be an excellent album, as all of Craig's recent major releases have been stellar, but I was a bit surprised by how it feels like an inspired throwback to his early work.Instead of a regression from his more vocal-centric fare, this album feels like Craig decided to revisit and perfect his earlier aesthetic with benefit of being considerably more evolved in every single aspect of his artistry.Given that I quite enjoy much of Craig's comparatively uneven early output, that move absolutely delights me, as Thresholder feels like the definitive statement of Craig's gorgeously warm and seething soundscape side.In fact, this album lies somewhere between a more intimate and human incarnation of Cloudmarks and a version of A Turn of Breath that passed through additional layers of tape decay until it was just the ghostly essence of its former self.Given Thresholder's more pronounced experimental tendencies, it likely will not find as wide an audience as Centres or Breath, but it should, as it is every bit on the same level as those classics.At this point in his career, references to similar artists like William Basinski no longer have a place in any discussion of Craig's work, as there no longer are any similar artists: the beauty that Craig creates with his voice and his tapes is very much a singular one.