23 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

Aaron Turner was pushing the boundaries of what was "metal" during his time in Isis, and his side project work, such as Greymachine and House of Low Culture, has done this in an even more dramatic fashion. After a slew of split and collaborative releases, many with Mamiffer (a project spearheaded by Turner's wife Faith Coloccia, who also plays here), Poisoned Soil is perhaps his first true "album" as HOLC in nearly a decade. That period of collaborating with others has paid off, as the album is a complex one that showcases Turner’s strengths within a tight, focused approach.

Sub Rosa/Taiga Records

Across three long pieces, Turner blends together disembodied electronic blasts, obvious and obscured guitar, and a careful, effective use of vocals."Spoiled Fruits of the Kingdom" initially lays out a shrill test tone and what sounds like glacial strings in a slow, drifting drone.Subtle buzzes and reverberations entwine with what may be guitar, and eventually chanted, ceremonial vocals appear, giving a healthy dose of drama to the work.Turner's use of loud/quiet dynamics is quite effective, with dramatic swells paired with uneasy spaciousness.The latter moments blending guitar and piano notes definitely feels like a nod to Mamiffer, but HOLC is its own beast entirely.

"The Ladder that Leads to Nowhere" picks up where the previous left off, paring echoing passages with nuanced textural layers, mixing hellish, roaring feedback blasts and disquieting vocals hiding in the background.Eventually the piece launches into full on harsh noise before pulling back, leaving just the shards of guitar and piano before coming to an end.

The longer, final "Inappropriate Body" begins with layered, wooden percussion that entwines in a blackened roar, made even more sinister by what sounds like a distant, inhuman breathing off in the distance.Layers of squealing noise become the focus, with ghostly vocal chants giving it an even darker color.As the monolithic piece comes to a close, the combination of actual chugging guitar riffs and pounding drums almost seems to signify a rock-oriented blast occurring, but never happens.

Poisoned Soil bears the bleak, yet innovative and experimental touch Aaron Turner brings to all of his work, but here it is given free reign to expand out and engulf all that is around it.While each of the three tracks bear that overarching sense of darkness, the variations and drastic evolutions of each piece keep it from being simplistic or predictable.

samples:

• Spoiled Fruits of the Kingdom
• The Ladder that Leads to Nowhere
• Inappropriate Body

 

23 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

It took me an embarrassingly long time to finally grasp exactly what was so special about Nathan Amundson's work, as it is very easy to lump Rivulets in with '90s slowcore bands like Codeine after a casual listen.  That "casual" part was my mistake, as work like this demands complete attention to reveal its true depth. We're Fucked took five years to fully gestate and it sounds like it, as Amundson painstakingly distilled his songs to their very essence, leaving only naked honesty and restrained, but unflinching intensity.  The best moments are quietly devastating in a way that would be impossible if the songs were any less stark and glacial, as Nathan makes damn sure I don't miss a single word.

Important

On a fundamental level, many songs on We're Fucked almost have more in common with haiku than they do with contemporary indie rock music.  For one, Amundson's lyrics are very minimal and poetic in both approach and structure, especially shorter pieces like "Interstate" and "I Am."  That similarity goes much deeper than just lyrics though, as Nathan does not constrain himself to expected songwriting conventions: there is rarely an effort to craft distinct, repeating verses or choruses and songs generally end whenever Nathan is done delivering the lyrics.  Many times that means that a song is over in less than two minutes.  For many artists, that would be a bad move, but Amundson is sufficiently gripping and melodic to make it seem entirely appropriate.  I guess that works because many of these songs would be just as powerful as a capella pieces: the music is good, but it serves more as a backdrop rather than as the focus (at least in most cases).

Nathan's perfectionism and extreme self-awareness serve him well here, as hushed poetic musings such as these could easily fall prey to melodrama or tiresome navel-gazing, but they don't.  There is not a false note to be found anywhere.  While there is an undeniable darkness and sensitivity in these pieces ("I'm a sheep among all you fucking wolves"), Amundson's world-weariness feels very honest, earned, and matter-of-fact. Of course, it also helps that Rivulets can unleash a simmering fury when they put their mind to it, as the trio does in "No Talking."  However, the heaviest song on the album–the previously referenced "Sheep Among Wolves"– doesn't need anything more than Nathan's voice and a lazily strummed acoustic guitar to rip my heart out.

It is a bit surprising that this album chronologically follows 2006's more conventionally musical and filled-out You Are My Home.  We're Fucked actually seems far more like a logical progression from 2003's darker Debridement, which suits me just fine: that was an excellent album.  This one is too, as there are a few songs here that easily rank among the best that Amundson has ever written.  Also, it takes some serious guts to write songs this naked, spare, and minimalistic.

Samples:

• No Talking
• Sheep Among Wolves
• Everybody's On The Run

 

23 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

This companion release to this year's stellar Ravedeath, 1972 draws back the curtain to unveil what Tim Hecker compositions sound like before they are properly ravaged, carved up, and reassembled.  As it turns out, they still sound remarkably good: some depth and power is understandably lost, but the increased clarity and intimacy makes that seem like a perfectly acceptable sacrifice.  Naturally, the target audience for Dropped Pianos is primarily those who already know and love Hecker's work, but these stripped-down piano sketches are strong enough to transcend their skeletal status and stand on their own.

Kranky

I don't know quite what I expected from this album, but I can honestly say that it never occurred to me that Tim Hecker had already composed a number of sublime piano compositions before he and Ben Frost ever set foot in that Reykjavik cathedral to start recording.  I am well aware that Tim Hecker albums feature actual instruments and that they have to originate somewhere, but he is just not the sort of artist that I ever pictured frowning in front of a piano, struggling to find the right chord.  I was also struck by the amount of assurance, drive, and destruction that must have been required to make Ravedeath.  While some of these sketches can be recognized in drastically altered form on the finished album (like "Sketch 2" in "Piano Drop," I think), quite a few cannot.  It seems so alien to me that someone can create a shimmeringly beautiful piano miniature like "Sketch Three," then cheerfully tear it apart, bury it, or opt not to use it all.  Most people would have stopped at that stage and been very happy, but Hecker just saw it as a mere starting point.  I'm glad he knew what he was doing.

Once I was done obsessing about Hecker's creative process, however, I still found quite a bit to like.  It wouldn't be far from the mark to say that Dropped Pianos sounds like Harold Budd covering a Tim Hecker album, as these pieces are very minimal, slow-moving, and slathered with reverb (there is still conspicuous processing here, just not anywhere near as much as usual).  Such a glib statement would be a bit a disservice though, as this still sounds distinctly Hecker-esque: it just happens to be a fragile, pure, and almost sacred-sounding side of his art that has previously been well-hidden by his brilliance as a producer.  In fact, those restless urges to ruin, obscure, and texturize everything actually resurface in the swelling and lurching final sketch, as the piano is increasingly enveloped by distortion and sizzle as it progresses.  The added processing doesn't necessarily make it any stronger than the other pieces, but it brings some welcome variety and unpredictability to the album and reminds me exactly who I am listening to.

I'm pretty thrilled that Hecker decided to make these recordings available, as these pieces are too quietly beautiful to only be heard in corroded and mangled form.  This is a very likable album and I suspect I'll be listening to it again many times in the future.  Also, I think it definitely deepened my appreciation for what Hecker does and how he goes about doing it.  That said, I readily concede that Tim's original instincts regarding this material were correct: Dropped Pianos is a pleasant and elucidating diversion, but it is nowhere near as satisfying as his more complex finished work.

Samples can be found here.

23 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

Amid a string of releases from Kompakt this fall—including Total 12 and albums from Gui Boratto and Walls—comes the label's crown jewel of 2011, Axel Willner's third full-length as the Field. Looping State of Mind holds up to Willner's impressive back catalog, and features several of his most fully realized songs to date.

Kompakt

Like many Kompakt fans riding the minimal techno label's wave of hype in the mid 2000s, I was a bit burned out by 2007. Kompakt hadn't put out a record I'd truly clung to since Superpitcher's moody mix CD, Today, in summer 2005. Total 6 passed by my ears without fanfare. It was a welcome wake-up call, then, to stumble into Axel Willner's debut as the Field in spring 2007, a slow-burning compilation of previously-released singles alongside a handful of new tracks. From Here We Go Sublime was full of trance-inducing rhythms, nodding toward house and techno as much as ambient; samples of Kate Bush, Lionel Richie and the Flamingos that were recognizable but highly reconfigured; and a rhythmic pulse that didn’t cater to the dance floor so much as the human heart.

Four years later, now on his third album, Willner's music remains as distinctive as when he made appearances on Total 6 and Pop Ambient 2007. Looping State of Mind brings Willner's sound into a state of further refinement, recalling his past work while gently pushing into new territory. For instance, "Is This Power" opens with a skipping sample that soon falls into place with the song's rhythm, which is augmented by a bouncy bass line reminiscent of New Order and imperfect, live drums. (Willner plays live with a full band, so it's refreshing to hear that incorporated into his studio work on occasion.) The album's title is a reflection of Willner's working method: Looping State of Mind is built on—you guessed it—loops, and my enjoyment of each track often lives or dies by the loop at hand, especially when each borders on 10 minutes of repetition. One track ("Then It's White") falls flat under its heavy-handed piano chords, while the rest are effortlessly listenable—not a bad batting average.

Looping State of Mind builds to its twin peaks with "Arpeggiated Love" and the title track. The former radiates with slow-building beauty as Willner patiently weaves layers of sound together: chimes, twinkles, echoing voices, and hazy drone over a relentlessly thumping beat. Not to be outdone, "Looping State of Mind" leans toward vintage shoegaze as much as techno or trance, evolving into a massive slice of blurry, smeared dance music that plays like a sedated cousin of the Chemical Brothers' "Swoon," from 2010's secretly excellent Further. These two tracks are on par with the Field's best work over the years—the angel-sigh vocals of "Kappsta," the high-BPM oscillations of "Everday" and "Over the Ice," the propulsive ecstasy of "Leave It." Listened to in full, Looping State of Mind is Kompakt's best release this year, and a fine addition to Willner's body of work.

Samples:

• It's Up There
• Arpeggiated Love
• Looping State of Mind

22 October 2011

Administrator

Albums and Singles

TG VINYL RERELEASES

The Second Annual Report vinyl / CD - 31st Oct
D.O.A - Vinyl / CD - 7th Nov
20 Jazz Funk Greats- Vinyl / CD - 14th Nov
Heathen Earth - Vinyl / CD - 21st Nov
TG's Greatest Hits - Vinyl / CD - 28th Nov

Each album will be an edition of 2000 copies.
Chris Carter has remastered the audio and the LP's come packaged with an 8 page full colour booklet featuring some previously unpublished photos, press reviews from the time, and other visual ephemera from the Industrial Records archive.

(Please note that any recent coloured vinyl versions of the same albums are 'bootleg' copies of VASTLY inferior quality. These records were cynically made available to exploit Peter's death, and are NOT authorised by TG or Industrial Records Ltd. Be assured we are actively tracking down the culprits.)

TG DIGITAL DOWNLOADS

These albums have been remastered by Chris Carter and come with their original IR LP artworks and six page PDF booklets.

TG CD RERELEASES

Each title has been remastered by Chris Carter and comes packaged for the first time in the digi-pak format to better represent their original IR LP artwork. Each release in this 'Time Capsule' series, comes with an additional disc of selected TG live performances culled from our TG24 archive recordings. They are selected to represent TG live performances specific to the original release year of each album.

More info here.

21 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

Artist: Loren Connors
Title: Red Mars
Format: CD/Digital
Order info: here
Label: Family Vineyard

Loren Connors has long been heralded as one of the country's most inimitable guitar voices. Like kindred spirit John Fahey, Connors' legacy began by quietly self-releasing a series of raw and embryonic LPs. Since the late 1970s, Connors' use of haunted Delta Blues, minimalism and compositional underpinnings have become an avant-garde style synonymous to him. Along the way, musicians diverse as Chan Marshall, Keiji Haino, Darin Gray, Jim O'Rourke, Jandek, and Alan Licht have sought Connors as a musical partner on record and stage.

Red Mars is the first CD of new solo music by the New York City guitarist since 2004's The Deaparting of a Dream Vol III: Juliet. Since that time, Connors' unmistakable electric blues style presented on album has changed somewhat -- from multilayer tape-recorded pieces to spontaneous live performances. The five pieces here, a suite to the Red Planet, are filled of the cinematic pacing, lyricism and a palette of phantom tones that hoist Connors to a stunning new peak. Portuguese bassist Margarida Garcia joins Connors on the opening journey, introducing a dialogue unique in its ambiance as its entwined mystery and melodies. Features cover artwork by Connors.

www.family-vineyard.com

19 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

It has been 15 years since Helge Sten's iconic Deathprod project last surfaced with proper new material (aside from a teasing collaboration with Biosphere back in 2015) and he has been missed. Unsurprisingly, that long hiatus did not result in Sten's characteristically grim vision brightening at all. In fact, it has only grown darker, as the bulk of Occulting Disk is bleak void of seismic drones and nerve-jangling insectoid dissonance that Sten describes as an "anti-fascist ritual." I am not particularly optimistic about this album's chances in eradicating fascism any time soon, but the album definitely delivers on the ritualistic part, as this seems like a hell of a great soundtrack for summoning demons. While I am still on the fence about whether I love the stark, crushing blackness of Occulting Disk quite as much as the slightly wider emotional palette of earlier Deathprod, this album is undeniably an impressively visceral and monolithic artistic statement. That is more than enough to reaffirm Sten's status as one of the reigning kings of heavy drone, but the album builds towards an explosive climax that ensures that Occulting Disk feels like an exciting new chapter as well.

Smalltown Supersound

I have historically not been a big fan of the dark ambient genre, as a lot of uninspired dreck has been released over the years and gloomy drones and rattling chains hold zero appeal for me.That is a real shame, as some of the artists who initially shaped that milieu are on such a completely different plane than their imitators that it seems cruel and unfair that are lumped together in the same stylistic niche.In fact, Deathprod gets bonus points from me for taking such a long vacation from that dour scene, though I am delighted that Sten eventually came back with something new to say.Much like Richard Skelton's The Inward Circles project, Sten's Deathprod work strikes a rare and perfect union of ambitious scope and sound design mastery that can be legitimately awe-inspiring.At its most extreme, Occulting Disk sounds like the universe is being slowly pulled apart as it gets sucked into a vast black hole.The more modest moments, on the other hand, merely sound like the earth is shaking and crumbling as hell opens up.

Most of this album falls into the latter category, though Sten varies the mood a bit by also evoking the anticipatory dread and the scorched aftermath on either side of that infernal apocalypse.On pieces like the opening "Disappearance/Reappearance," however, Sten takes a curiously minimal approach and seems content to just conjure a series of frayed and sizzling synth pulses.That is admittedly something he is quite good at and he gives those deep, shuddering throbs plenty of space to roil and decay.However, the stronger pieces tend to be those where Sten strives to be a bit more than a blackened and gnarled force of nature.For example, "Occultation 1" resembles a slow-motion rain of shooting stars that has been rendered sickly and hallucinatory by the distended warping of time and space.Of those two pieces, that latter definitely achieves the more impressive feat.In those moments of transcendence, Deathprod seems less like a one-man earthquake and more like something supernatural that is blissfully unhindered by the usual limitations of sound and physics.

For the most part, the seven other numbered "Occultations" feel like different heads of the same hydra: each lays out a menacing and dissonant theme and allows it to squirm and smolder for several minutes before it fades away to politely make room for the next horror.Despite their similar forms, however, the eight "Occultations" delve into an impressive variety of uncomfortable, dread-soaked moods.For example, "Occultation 2" is a miasma of grinding, buzzing noise, while "Occultation 3" is a ghostly swirl of swooping and sliding feedback-like tones. I am especially fond of the latter, as I am of the following "Occultation 4," which essentially repeats the same trick in more corporeal form to leave an uneasy wake of ugly oscillations behind its plunging tones.The sixth "Occultation" is quite heavy as well, as thick drones morph and phase-shift in a way that feels like an especially foreboding scene in a noirish, sci-fi dystopia.Following a woozily cosmic interlude of suspended (if comet-streaked) animation, however, the album is finally ripped wide open with the crushing and churning centerpiece "Black Transit of Jupiter's Third Satellite."As soon as it explodes from the speakers in a snarling, heavy, and impossible dense living mass, it is clear that everything beforehand was just a mere prelude to the real show.It feels like I am watching a vast and viscous black cloud blot out and smother the sun in nightmarish slow motion.

The album ends with an eerie coda that feels like quavering, phantasmagoric streaks of light shooting across a completely ruined and desolate landscape, which I suppose is the perfect way for a Deathprod album to end: all life is extinguished in a great cataclysm and an indifferent universe continues on as if nothing had changed at all.It is hard to complain about an album that has such an apocalyptic and world-shaking final act, but it is notable that Occulting Disk feels like a series of vignettes building up to a single dazzling catharsis rather than a collection of fully formed compositions.As such, I can only point to "Black Transit" as a complete and perfect piece.The arc works nicely if the album is viewed as a whole, however, and it can even be viewed as an escalating series of occult rituals designed to open a portal to a malevolent new dimension.Moreover, I love some of the sounds that Sten conjures up in his "Occultations"–it would be a reach to describe this album as dark ambient or really any existing genre at all, as its closest kindred spirit is often the squirming, lysergic lunacy of Rashad Becker’s Traditional Music of Notional Species.As far as my personal sensibility is concerned, that is one of the higher compliments that I can pay an artist.As such, the Deathprod of Occulting Disk is a significantly different animal than the Deathprod of Morals and Dogma or Treetop Drive, but this new incarnation is every bit as great as the old one.

Samples can be found here.

19 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

Mark Nelson's Pan•American project has been very quiet over the last several years, as he has been focusing instead on his Anjou collaboration with former Labradford bandmate Robert Donne. With A Son, however, Nelson returns to his solo work in bold and unexpected fashion (by his own quiet and understated standards, at least). In fact, there is very little that stylistically recalls Nelson's post-rock or smoky ambient-dub past at all here, though his aesthetic generally remains a very moody and slow-moving one. At the heart of A Son lies a handful of hushed vocal pieces that capture Nelson's vision at its most stripped-down, direct, and intimate. Those pieces are occasionally quite wonderful, making this release a fitful creative breakthrough of sorts. The rest of the album is not quite as striking, but the blend of songs, sleepily lovely ambient work, and hammered dulcimer pieces add up to pleasantly gentle and dreamlike whole.

Kranky

I am definitely a person who is very prone to remaining in semi-comfortable patterns forever, so I have a deep admiration for Nelson's decision to pare the Pan•American palette down to little more than guitar and voice (especially since the previous formula was quite a winning one).Aside from the conspicuous lack of percussion, electronics, and any nods to a jazz or dub influence, however, A Son is actually not a huge leap from some of the understated, slow-motion reveries that Nelson has recorded in the past.The key difference lies primarily in what Nelson set out to do and how he went about making it happen, as he struggled with questions like "What does music do?","Where does music start?","How simple can it be?"and "How honest can it be?".

Only Nelson himself knows how close he came to actually answering those rhetorical challenges, but he definitely took the simplicity and honesty parts very seriously.In practical terms, that means that the album is much less lush and "produced" than previous Pan•American albums.Instead, the heavy lifting is now shared by languorous guitar melodies and Nelson's quiet, laconic vocals.More importantly, Nelson did not cast away his protective artifice solely in pursuit of greater simplicity, as there is a very real sense that he was straining to make a deeper and more meaningful connection than a flawlessly crafted marriage of lush chords, slow grooves, and heady atmospheres could possibly convey.That said, some strong emotions can be quite ineffable, so the closing elegy for Heather Heyer is a shimmering and winding instrumental built from the traditional song "Shenandoah."It is an absolutely gorgeous piece, but it is not the only one, as some of Nelson's own melodies are every bit as beautiful as those culled from timeless folk songs.

For me, the true heart of the album is the achingly lovely and sublime "Memphis Helena," which initially feels like a classic country song slowed down to a gently hallucinatory crawl.That may very well be intentional, as Nelson has mentioned that The Carter Family were a major influence for this album (as were Jimmy Reed, Suicide, and June Tabor).Though they are unquestionably minimalist heroes, Suicide is the stylistic outlier in that lot, as A Son is a very organic, acoustic, and Americana-inspired affair.Nelson is impressively inventive in how he channels those disparate artists, however, and "Memphis Helena" is an especially great example of his transformative vision.At its core, it is a beautifully crafted and hook-y song with an anthemic-sounding guitar motif, but it is sleepily blurred into a near-hypnagogic state.In lesser hands, that would make the song maddeningly boring and bloodless, but Nelson uses that as the foundation for a slow-burning masterpiece that blossoms into an extremely cool outro of intertwining and harmonizing guitar melodies.

Nelson never quite hits that perfect balance of songcraft and ambient haze again, but he has some success on both sides of that window elsewhere.For example, "Brewthru" comes quite close to being a likably straightforward country/folk song, but it also sounds vaguely ghostly and nocturnal. Elsewhere, Nelson dials down the intensity to such a low simmer on pieces like "Drunk Father" and "Muriel Spark" that their structures dissolve into something almost impressionistic.In both cases, however, the pieces cohere into a lovely crescendo of quiet intensity: "Drunk Father" becomes a languorous swirl of blurred and quavering guitars, while "Muriel Spark" slowly becomes consumed by lingering clouds of distorted chords.A Son shines brightest when Nelson casts a sleepy spell, then sneakily builds towards an elegantly controlled emotional punch.

The remaining pieces could best be described as instrumental interludes that bridge the more substantial songs together, though they do a fine job at sustaining the album's fragile state of slow-moving, soft-focus warmth.A couple of those instrumentals, like the opener and "Kept Quiet," pleasantly highlight Nelson's newfound dulcimer prowess, but the others head in some interesting and divergent directions.I was most surprised by the stark "Sleepwalk Guitars," which calls to mind Dean McPhee at his most meditative and subdued, but the twinkling and gently swaying reverie of "Dark Birds Empty Fields" is the only piece that comes close to rivaling the magic of the vocal pieces.Still, the album flows together quite beautifully and Nelson never allows his lesser ideas to linger around long enough to overstay their welcome.

That amounts to quite a lovely album that feels like contentedly lingering half-asleep under a warm blanket on a crisp fall day. However, that is both a strength and a caveat: A Son is not an album that smacked me in the face with its brilliance immediately, but it became increasingly entrancing once I listened enough to become fully immersed in its nuances and time-stretched languor.Unfortunately, I suspect not everyone will have the patience to get that far, so A Son may be doomed to narrower appeal than its predecessors.For some listeners, however, this more naked and direct incarnation of Pan•American will likely strike a much deeper chord than usual.That makes it good art, but the line between art and entertainment is now a much blurrier one for this project.To me, A Son mostly feels like an admirable and solid transitional album with an occasional flash of brilliance ("Memphis Helena" is an instant classic).While I like the direction this project is headed, Nelson still has a bit further to go before his "man alone in a room with a guitar" side is as unambiguously great as some of the beautifully arranged and meticulously polished work from previous albums.Nelson does not lack for vision, talent, or ambition, but he has chosen quite a challenging path for himself.

Samples can be found here.

18 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

Beast is the latest guise of Mountains' Koen Holtkamp, initially created as a solo project that was performance-based and centered around his experiments with 3D laser projections.  For Beast's Thrill Jockey debut, however, Holtkamp was very much NOT in performance mode, as Ens was recorded around the birth of his first child and is far more shaped by that event and the resultant lack of sleep than it is by his fascination with light. Unsurprisingly, the resulting album is a strange and fragmented one, shifting from tender, pastoral reveries to eruptions of euphoria to dazzling and sublime displays of compositional prowess on a song-by-song basis. While a few pieces are a bit too straightforwardly pretty for my curmudgeonly ears, Holtkamp has long been one of the most intriguing synth composers in the game and that has not changed. His revelatory flashes of inspiration may be intermittent here, but there are definitely impressive when they happen. The opening "Paprika Shorts" is easily one of the best pieces Holtcamp has recorded to date.

Thrill Jockey

Ens (Latin for "being") opens in extremely strong fashion with the aforementioned "Paprika Shorts," which steadily builds from a burbling synth arpeggio into an intricate tapestry of overlapping and intertwining patterns and melodies.Holtkamp has always been quite a brilliant architect at assembling vibrant cascades of colorful and effervescent synth tones and he outdoes himself here, unleashing a shimmering spray of twinkling notes as he slowly locks into an infectiously lurching and evolving groove."Paprika Shorts" is more than just a great hook executed beautifully though, as it seamlessly and unexpectedly transforms into a deeper and darker final act of glimmering minor key arpeggios and gurgling snatches of vocoder-esque speech fragments.Holtkamp achieves a similar degree of success with the other bookend, "For Otto."It is considerably more understated, gentle, and swaying than "Paprika," languorously bubbling, sputtering, and plinking with a warm central melody.Again, however, Holtkamp elegantly steers the piece towards something greater, first adding a shimmering layer of steel drum-like ripples, then allowing the piece to blossom into a coda of warm, rich chords and twinkling streaks of synth tones that feel like a sky full of falling stars.If "Paprika" and "Otto" were representative of the entire album, Ens would be quite an unambiguous triumph.Instead, however, the mid-section of the album explores a number of alternate paths with varying degrees of success.

Of the remaining five pieces, the lengthier ones tend to be the most effective.In the piano-based "Color Feel," for example, Holtkamp augments his slow and simple chord progression with a tumbling and lively torrent of shifting and overlapping patterns that takes a page from the great minimalist composers, yet adapts that aesthetic to fit his own genius for intricate layering.While it admittedly errs a bit too much on the side of radiantly cheery for my taste, it is nonetheless a thing of beauty as far as craftsmanship is concerned. Holtkamp keeps a lot of metaphorical plates spinning and each of them plays an integral role in shaping the arc and cumulative power of the whole.Elsewhere, "Staren" heads in a similarly beatific direction, unfolding as a rolling cascade of marimba-like arpeggios.Holtkamp throws some inventive textural and rhythmic curveballs into the mix though, creating a endearingly off-kilter pulse with pointillist, exhalation-like synths and an erratically stuttering and panning synth throb plopped right in the middle of it all.Again, I am not in love with the tone of the piece, yet Holtkamp departs from the straightforward enough to win me over.The few other pieces on the album feel a bit more insubstantial and incidental though, like they are just pleasantly burbling interludes that merely serve as bridges between the more significant fare.The sole exception is "Edb," which feels like a slow-motion and darkly lysergic companion to "Staren," transforming into a minor key marimba motif that seethes with panning and undulating synth swells.It would be a contender for one of the stronger moments on the album if it had more of an arc, but it is essentially just a brief vamp that presents a cool theme, then fades away rather than evolving.

It is hard to tell how much my opinion of Ens is colored by subjectivity, as my own preferences are a bigger factor than usual when it comes to Holtkamp's work.On the one hand, his work is often informed by a New Age/Kosmische influence that is not my cup of tea at all, and I am deeply weary of the glut of synthesizer albums that have flooded the scene in recent years.Yet despite all that, I still tend to enjoy a lot of his work, so he is clearly doing something very right.With pieces like "Paprika Shorts," Holtkamp transcends his milieu to be a great composer who just happens to use synthesizers.During his less transcendent moments, he merely reaffirms that he is among the top tier of contemporary synth artists, which is not a bad place to be either.Also, while being a great arranger and editor is not exactly sexy or attention-grabbing, those talents are rare to warm my heart when I encounter them.I just wish the actual content of Ens was consistently on the same level as Holtkamp's craftsmanship.Alas.Ultimately, Ens is an enjoyable if uneven album rather than a great one, but I certainly admire Holtkamp's ability to remain a distinctive and compelling voice even while expanding his aesthetic beyond the bounds of my personal taste.More importantly, the few times when the album catches fire are a legitimate delight.More highlights would have been welcome, but I certainly dig the ones that are here.

17 October 2011

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Albums and Singles

A few months past its sell-by date for Valentine's Day, Skullflower's latest excursion into brutal, uncompromising noise-rock is not to be missed by those who'd rather skip the flowers, dinner and dancing, and get straight to the, uh... consummation.

Cold Spring

Fucked on a Pile of Corpses storms out of the gate with three quick-and-dirty tracks that sound almost too brief by Skullflower standards. Album opener "Hanged Man's Seed" barely has enough time to sink in its teeth, much less outstay its welcome. By length alone, Fucked is the polar opposite of last year's monolithic, double-disc Strange Keys to Untune Gods' Firmament, which didn't boast a single piece under the 7-minute mark. Instead, Matthew Bower opens with a trio of rapid-fire, structured pieces before the album's second half descends into hellish noise, somewhat in the vein of his 2006 effort, Tribulation.

"Hanged Man's Seed" kicks off the album with big bursts of trebly, shattered-glass static, backed by rumbling low-end oscillations. It's a compelling piece, but far too fleeting; this could've been a highlight on its own, had it been stretched out onto side-length vinyl. Instead, it quickly segues into "Viper's Fang," which boasts one of Bower's catchiest riffs under his Skullflower alias: a lo-fi guitar-and-drum motif buried in mounds of reverb and static. Strip away the trebly noise, crank up the subwoofers, add a vocalist of some variety, and "Viper's Fang" might as well be doom metal, or Mogwai-esque instrumental rock, or—you name it.

After a few quick jabs, Fucked on a Pile of Corpses descends track-by-track into Bower's comfort zone: thick mounds of hookless, joyless noise. Perhaps my favorite aspect of Bower's work (as compared to the purely digital racket of today's less creative knob-twiddlers) is the organic feel—derived from human instruments, if not always from human impulses. Accents like the howling, black metal-esque vocals of "Anubis Station," alongside the distinct, guitar-based feedback hovering over the album like a slow-passing thunderstorm, link Skullflower's would-be alien sounds back to humanity.

The most difficult piece is "Tantrik Ass Rape," which lacks the hummable hook of "Viper's Fang," the earthquaking rumble of "Hanged Man's Seed," and the shoegazy smear of "Sleipnir," which closes the album. Instead, "Tantrik Ass Rape" is more akin to Bower's raw, long-form composition on Strange Keys: deep listening for drone connoisseurs, brimming over with physical, unrefined noise.

Samples:

• Hanged Man's Seed
• Viper's Fang
• Tantrik Ass Rape