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Spread across two discs, the three compositions here were all conceived and recorded between 2007 and 2008, realized with a slew of different players. "Stosspeng," which comprises the entirely of the first disc, features Band of Susans founders Susan Stenger and Robert Poss working together on both guitar and ebow’d bass. Each were recorded in a specific channel and limited to specific pitch groups, Poss with E, Stenger with F#, and both shared F. The result is, unsurprisingly, a slow drift of guitar tone that is far more sparse or subtle than most guitar based minimalist compositions.
The piece continues to be a serpentine composition between Stenger’s higher register tones and Poss’ lower frequency approach. The two become locked a constant struggle between the lighter and darker tones, pushing the sound between ambient, spacey shimmers and more sinister, rumbling swells. The composition premiered at a show that also featured KTL and Throbbing Gristle, so the mood is fitting to be among those artists, though the sound is far more pure and meditative than would be expected from the aforementioned artists.
Disc two opens with "Poure," the 23 minute piece for cello (played by Arne Deforce). Rather than a single session, the track is the total of 32 different layers of playing, all in the notes of A and D, but of varying octaves, and just slightly off on tuning. With only subtle adjustments via Protools, a world of instrumentation can be heard just from the harmonics produced from the layering of tracks. Sounds of trumpets, bagpipes, and church organ all appear from the strings of the cello.
The final piece, "One Large Rose," expands the instrumental repertoire to include piano, violin, and acoustic bass guitar, to weave a more complex and multifaceted, yet consistently minimalist composition. The performers of this track, the Nelly Boyd Ensemble, played 4 takes of 46 minutes each, the results of which were layered together, but otherwise unedited.
Again, more sounds than are actually present can be heard in this wall of drone, resembling didgeridoo and other strings that as a whole feels similar to "Poure," but with a heavier sonic palette. The most obvious addition is the lower register piano, but the piece overall has a more sinister quality to it, introducing dark, gutteral passages and bassy flatulent sounds to the otherwise gliding strings. As "Stosspeng" recalled a struggle between light and dark, "One Large Rose" is a contrast between chaos and order, oscillating between drifts of sound that are relatively peaceful, and hellish choruses of unadulterated noise.
Touch Strings is an excellent example for anyone who thinks "drone" is simply repetition. While conceptually there are intentional limitations put both on the performers and the composition, the interplay of the instruments produces sounds that rival the most complex pieces out there.
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As soon as the needle drops, Persevere begins its steady but insistent evolution. Side A, “The Dawn Chorus of Kina,” gushes forth in a churning stew of wobbly bass tones and distorted strumming. It sloshes around for a minute or two then disintegrates into a series of stuttering, atonal guitar chords. Neville shifts the mood yet again, ending the piece with muted tom-tom thuds and clean-toned picking.
Neville mellows out on the flip-side. The two songs are covers, the first from folk-singer Michael Hurley, the other from the NZ punk band The Axmen. Both are built around a spindly acoustic guitar and Neville’s sonorous voice. He sings slowly and without much inflection, as if he was just awakened from an all-night cough syrup binge. The songs accommodate his style well. The closer, “Pacific Ocean” exudes beach-town ennui but still ends the record in a vibrant mood. As the song burns away, resonant organs and multi-tracked vocals merge into a final burst of dynamism.
What is most striking is how little movement is apparent in these songs. Neville’s shambolic style masks their internal progression. Only when they end is it obvious that change has actually happened. Preserve sneaks into the brain. It is easy to mistake it for a batch of run-of-the-mill bedroom recordings, but there is plenty to mull over beneath its blasé exterior.
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Spirit of Orr (CDR) / Streamline (LP)
The mark of a true artist, whatever genre they are working in, musical or otherwise, is whether or not their creativity blossoms within the boundaries they have set for themselves. It is easy to be limited by the trappings of any given style, and yet a trope can also be twisted and made gnarly, giving its fans the pleasure of hearing a new take on it. Pisani uses his acoustic guitar, his submerged and warbling voice, deeply buried in the mix, along with other elements of the newly weird as a focal point for crafting his song meditations. No fly by night kind of guy, it was an album he took his time with, ensuring the highest quality, recording these songs between 1996 and 2003. Listening, I get the feeling that he played with these recordings a lot, tweaking, listening, and readjusting, rerecording. I can see him in my imagination: in a bedroom or a basement, with a handful of cassettes and a four-track trying to get the sound just right. (I have no clue as to his actual recording methods, but I do find the image of a lone musician with a four-track a romantic one.) The final result is more than the sum of its parts.
There is not a bad song on the album. This is as it should be considering the amount of time spent on making it. “Green Hill Beach” is one of the high points. Starting off with a field recording of the ocean surf, it moves from gentle picking and humming into more deranged territory with a vibrato laden and reverb saturated electric guitar that sounds like a birds death cry, before fading out with blissfully plucked chords full of warm tremolo. “Flight,” which follows, is also a favorite. Here the full-bodied keyboard and airy flute takes precedence while the stocattoed-guitar adds the accent marks. Pisani is not averse to using samples and found elements either, as he does halfway through “Agrippina”, seamlessly blending in a national anthem or marching band tune to great effect.
Red Favorite’s debut is a very solid effort, and hopefully not his last. The limited run of 300 CDs from Spirit of Orr in 2007 is now out of stock but Streamline via Drag City released the album as an LP in 2008, the form for which Pisani originally conceived the album.
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Spilling over with trembling strings and thunderous crescendos, "Coward" foreshadows the electric energy that is to be found throughout Vic Chesnutt's newest record. With members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Silver Mt. Zion, and Fugazi once again contributing, At the Cut is populated by giant melodies, quiet meditations, and intense studies on mortality and memory. But, for all its bombast, At the Cut is probably most notable for Chesnutt's unwavering honesty and cathartic power. Because of these qualities it has quickly become one of my favorite and most played records this year.
 
Reviews and presss releases of At the Cut like to concentrate on the various references Chesnutt makes throughout the record. There are, admittedly, a lot of them and on the cover of the album Vic himself appears resigned among numerous paintings, as though he were an exhibit at a museum. Some writers have been quick to point out that he references no less than W.H. Auden, Frank Norris, Philip Guston, Victor Hugo, Franz Kafka, and William Shakespeare, and that's in just one or two songs. Impressive as that may be, Vic's literary and artistic interests aren't what make his record great. In fact, with the exception of Auden, his songwriting and lyrics are unlike anything produced by any one of those artists. If the album cover suggests anything about the music at all, it's that Chesnutt's personal life is the subject of this record, not the influences that might've helped foster it.
The places where At the Cut is most unadorned are the places where it is most powerful and affecting. Whether blithely describing his history with death ("Flirted With You All My Life") or an encounter with his grandmother in the kitchen ("Granny"), Chesnutt impresses the most when he lets mundane images and ideas into his music. Those are the images that have stuck with me the most and they remind me how talented someone must be to sing about them without sounding either trite or banal. The final lines of the album could've been delivered in so many shrill and unappealing ways, but when Vic sings, "She said / 'You are the light of my life / and the beat of my heart,'" there isn't a doubt in my mind that he feels those words as deeply as anyone can. And he wants his listeners to feel them, too, without cringing or second-guessing the motives.
But, Chesnutt writes in myriad ways, so for every mention of dentures and friendship there are at least one or two psycho-analytic lines of poetry and an equal number of vague symbols or potentially mystifying scenes. In response, Vic's band dances their way through various styles of music, matching his twists and turns with jazz-like funeral dirges, the kind of rock 'n' roll expected from Bob Dylan in the mid '60s, and orchestrated blues. On first listen, Chesnutt's electric songs are the real show-stealers. Both "Chinaberry Tree" and "Philip Guston," along with the opening "Coward," put the electric guitar in the spotlight. In "Chinaberry Tree" the guitar rips across Chesnutt’s vocals like a lightning strike, and in "Philip Guston" it chugs and totters like it belongs in an Einstürzende Neubauten song. But, the more quietly intense songs like "Chain" and "We Hovered with Short Wings" have their own gravity, which is concocted with a combination of atmosphere and patient development. Although not as immediate, repeat listens reveal them to be of equal potency. Vic and company weave their way through these approaches with an even hand, favoring neither, but obviously seeking to inject every one of them with intensity and cathartic energy.
That cathartic energy plays a role equal with to Chesnutt's narrative and lyrical honesty. I cannot listen to At the Cut and passively digest it; the record forces us to feel the record along with Vic, so that when he sings about his mother dying or about deseperation and rejecting empty ritual, associated memories, emotions, and ideas simultaneously emerge without anyone having to mention them. There are a few musicians that aim for and achieve this effect. It is among the greatest and highest accomplishments any songwriter and lyricist can achieve in popular music. Vic Chesnutt reaches such heights on At the Cut and he does it almost effortlessly, as if that was what he was born to do. This is easily one of Vic Chesnutt's best records, and a standout album in a year filled with superb music.
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A few years ago when indie hip hop was getting attention from indie rock labels, there was a somewhat disturbing trend where labels would release instrumental versions of albums that were recorded with vocals. Sometimes if I just didn't like a particular MC, I would pick up the instrumental disc so that I could at least appreciate the production, and that worked for me. But the whole thing seemed to reek of a way to sell hip hop records to folks who thought it was cool to listen to hip hop but who couldn't be bothered with all of those rappers. With Pelican's newest record, their first full length for Southern Lord, the notion of the instrumental album makes a little more sense to me.
Unlike most of the bands making heavy, instrumental rock records, Pelican aren't out to write epics. The songs on What We All Come To Need are never longer than about seven minutes and they are always designed with verses and choruses and bridges and hooks—the standard trappings of rock music. Pelican stands out in this respect, because these songs could very easily be written around a voice, but thankfully they are not. Every time I put this record on, I'm reminded of how it could so easily be spoiled by dumb lyrics or a voice that draws every ounce of attention to itself. I'm also reminded that I don't listen to a lot of heavy rock music precisely because so much of it is rendered useless by singers that don't do anything for me.
What We All Come To Need is full of driving rhythms and logical changes. It doesn't veer into noodly prog territory but it doesn't take a single chord and just make it louder for 12 minutes either. There's enough in each of these songs to pay attention to, enough moments for the players to shine and for the songwriting to take center stage. The songs don't wallow or whine—they are meaty and aggressive when they need to be, but the band isn't afraid to air things out either. In doing so, they create some magical moments where the tension of all of that grinding testosterone is released by wide open chords and beautiful beds of fuzzy guitar tones.
The album closes with a song that swims against the instrumental grain by including a voice. After demonstrating the virtues of instrumental rock, I was afraid that the band would blow it at the end with a singer but Pelican have wisely chosen a voice that kind of drones and melts into the music perfectly. I love this record because it fills a void. This is quality heavy music that isn't overly maudlin or fixated on embarrassing themes. It doesn't meander or take itself deadly seriously—it's just a great rock record by a band who clearly know what they are doing.
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The blues are very much an influence on these tracks, showing up in things like the staunch staccato verses of Bismarck's "Shotgun Express," on the lead in Ginger Ale's "Get Off My Life Woman" or in the swagger of the Tenderfoot Kids' "Man in Black." A couple of the songs sound eerily similar to songs by Led Zeppelin, like the "Whole Lotta Love"-aping intro to Carriage in Company's "In Your Room" or Silence's equivalent of "Communication Breakdown" called "Devil Woman." Still, there are few straight rock songs to be found. The forward-pounding "Old Songs New Songs" by Big Wheel breaks up the action with a slowed, harmony-heavy, organ-drenched chorus. CWT's "Widow Woman" has a reggae rhythm, horns, and a proto-metal riff. Even on something a little more typical, like Kingdom's "All I Need," the attacking guitar and ferocious drums are blanketed in abnormally monstrous reverb.
For many of these tracks, there's no escaping the time period in which they were created. Lyrics like those from The Tower's "In Your Life" emphasize this: "Looking back through a crystal of colors/at the good things gone by in your life." There is a similar line on Distant Jim's title track: "I taste vision/I see sound/I like trees in the ground." Although these are cringe-inducing lines with dated New Age aspirations, many of the lyrics in these songs aren't quite so bad. What makes even the blemished songs so enjoyable is that there's always some other redeeming quality, and the musicianship is of a high quality. With this many tracks, that there aren't any duds to be found is a testament to Saloman's ear for this material.
Cosmarama's pleasurable mix of the foreign and familiar makes for a heady aural concoction. It's unlikely that this compilation will recruit new fans to this type of music, but for existing fans, it's an ear-opening thrill.
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Themes of flight from things both geographic and psychic occur throughout Dream Logik Part Two, starting with the lyrics about running and fleeing on "As a Bird/A Missing Piece." The use of screeching tires, horns honking, and passing trains on "Going My Way?" and Ka-Spel's line, "Don't talk about me when I'm gone" from "My Wandering Star/As a Bird (Part 2)" add to this theme. There's even a sense of Kafka-esque escape throughout the first-person narration of "The Modest Ambitions of Cedric the Centipede." On "Darkness O" he hints that this desire to flee comes in part from a fear of the future when he says, "Nothing can be forecast/nothing is clear except the water we tread/and our endless capacity for fear of what comes next." He also hints at a sense of disillusionment with himself when he says, "I am the accident waiting to happen" on "Going My Way?"
Yet, not everything on Part Two is so bleak. "As a Bird/A Missing Piece" opens with the sound of deep-sleep breathing that's interrupted by whimsical jazz and a tapping at the window, perhaps by one of the many Alices who appear lost in the reflecting corridors of Ka-Spel's own dream wonderland. The album's centerpiece, "Cedric the Centipede," uses simple, playful synth melodies to illustrate the story. Later, this mood is reinforced with the repetition of a child-like chorus. Things end on a gentle note with the aquatic sounds, light chants, and bird-like electronic chirps of "My Wandering Star/As a Bird (Part 2)."
The lack of anything so bold as "Harvester" from Part One and an increased reliance on collage techniques makes Part Two a somewhat lackadaisical affair, and this patient pacing combined with such dark lyrics give it an intensity that's more emotional than musical. Even so, Ka-Spel's nightmarish visions make it a successfully fascinating and, at times, chilling successor.
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Molina's songs have always been a congregation of electronic and acoustic sounds that bounce off one another in messy and sensuous ways. Ever since hearing Segundo, I've been captivated by the way her instruments interact to synthesize environments of sound. Although her music is always bound by strong melodies and persistent rhythms, Molina's arrangements create a sense of unity that emphasizes a totality rather than a particular part. On Un Dia, Molina has taken that approach further into the abstract and sewn together an album that thrives on connectivity and harmony.
The opening and title track begins everything with the roar of Molina's voice. With the trumpeting of her throat, a parade of rhythmic vocal dubs flow from the speakers and a wave of various instruments follow suit. In the past, Molina's voice has sometimes been a soft and airy addition to her music, but on "Un Dia" it is the focus. Even as hordes of percussive and harmonic additions work their way into the mix, it is Molina's persistent voice that takes center stage. Throughout much of the album her voice is the entity holding everything together and she imitates her utterances across a myriad of tones and timbres, finding parallels in rumbling pianos, buzzing electronics, and kitchen-sink percussion. The result are songs with recognizable hooks and distinct parts that nonetheless solidify into an organic mass. The whole is greater than its parts, but Molina's voice is the conductor.
Nothing that follows "Un Dia" is quite as bombastic. "Vive Solo" begins with a softly plucked guitar and Molina's reverb-thick voice. It sucks up and employs tribal rhythms and atmospherics over time, gradually increasing in intensity as additional elements begin to surface. Yet, it never reaches a fevered pitch. Molina takes joy in finding a place for new textures and approaches in every song; she's capable of writing an entire record's worth of ideas into one five minute space without sacrificing continuity. Dissonance, chaos, organization, ugliness, and beauty sit side by side on songs like "Los Hongos de Marosa" and "Dar (Qué Difícil)." Without flinching, Molina blends snappy, dance-like rhythms with detuned guitars, haunting moans, half-muffled electronic bass, and disheveled effects. The final product is not, amazingly, a muddy soup of sound, but a lush stream of music.
It seems there's no end to what Molina is willing to toss into the mix. It is as though someone threw her into a room filled with musical toys and she found a way to use every last one of them on her record. Her songs have always been full of random noise and her music has always been a synthesis of musical approaches. What makes Un Dia stand out in her catalog is the depth of her production and the quality of her writing. On past albums some of her chaotic playfulness could be a bit distracting, but here it is an essential element. Every single bit of sound is necessary for the success of the whole. This album is filled to the brim with exotic sounds and unexpected twists, some of which fly by the first few times because of the album's dynamic character. Molina has outdone herself with Un Dia and expanded upon her song-writing formula. She is still firmly writing within the realm of pop music, but she's stretching its conventions to their extremes.
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The album is pleasant enough but its consistently mellow tempo and similar arrangements don't do enough to stimulate the imagination. The band plays a lot of atmospheric jams using soaring guitars, lyric-less vocals, electronics, and a rhythm section to keep them grounded. A hazy smoke screen is used on almost every track, giving the album moments of bland uniformity. Similarly, the bass line from "Hallucinations" doesn't sound too different from the one on "Trem Fantasma," and the bass is a tad generic and forgettable on "Labyrinths." Yet the latter track is perhaps the album's finest, not only because it's one of the few that has a hint of emotion, but also because it features a saxophone that takes up the theme in a satisfyingly cathartic manner. The album does have a couple of other exceptions, like the brief, Terry Riley-inspired sax delay of "Pink Light" or the eerily droning "Echoes," but the other songs are fairly conventional, even when they add decorative textures to the introductions or endings.
Because it doesn't really end up saying much, III is a slight album that ambles about prettily without elevating itself to any remarkable or gorgeous heights. However, all the songs are mostly above average and perhaps best used as background soundtracks to more intriguing action.
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This album is overflowing with garden variety house music, the kind found in garish, overpriced nightclubs and played ad nauseum at ear-splitting levels. These standard beats do nothing to stir up any excitement, let alone thoughts of dancing, and could be unnoticeably interchanged among themselves from song to song. Even the attempts at humor on this album fall flat, like the lame "Public Announcement Skit" in which Darth Vader claims that he likes touching himself in public or the equally stupid fake public service announcement about safe sex, "Black Fu Condom-mints Skit." The album's only true funk song, "Rollin' Paper & Bush," is actually decent, or at least more palatable than the rest of the album. More songs like this one would have been a drastic improvement. On the other hand, "Earth Hoes," which follows, is a forgettable, obnoxious track that seems inspired by too many ill-advised late-night viewings of Earth Girls Are Easy.
A joyless disappointment, Nuttin' Butt Funk has very few moments of interest and is best forgotten as quickly as possible.
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Lauded often as the zenith of their career, this album manages to be richer and more unified by actually being more disjointed: rather than the nine distinct pieces that made up Information Overload Unit, Leichenschrei is 14 shorter tracks that bleed over into one another, often invisibly. Taken as a whole there is a certain thematic linkage that pulls the album together into one of darkest, bleakest ones in existence, one that loses none of its power nearly 30 years since its release.
Thermidor/Side Effects/Mute
The most obvious differentiating factor between this and the previous Information Overload Unit is less of a reliance on raw, harsh noise strategies.While dissonance is still the norm here, it is placed within a more structured, rhythmic framework that feels more focused overall.While there is little hint of the more conventional, commercial tone their work would take afterwards, there is more form here for sure.
Rhythms—acoustic, electronic, and metallic—drive most of these songs, along with a more open use of analog synthesizers and sequencers.Rather than burying them in layer upon layer of distortion and effects, they're allowed to sound as they were intended in most circumstances.While it bears only the slightest hints of the synth pop rhythms that dominated their later work, there are some memorable patterns to be heard, much different than Information Overload Unit.
Another distinct feature are that the vocals, rather than being either harshly barked in German or obscured in effects, are instead more of a spoken word type, often rather clear and performed by either Graeme Revell, the late Neil Hill, or Sinan Leong (Revell's wife, who I think made Machine Age Voodoo worse than it could have been, but here is an acceptable presence), and are thematically either related to autopsies or sex.Very few albums feature lines as memorable as "…he tried to give me syphilis by wiping his cock on my sandwich," but it's here on "Post-Mortem."
Looking at the album in its original vinyl arrangement, the second half features more "songs" in my opinion: longer pieces that feel more fleshed out and structured, while the first half are shorter sketches that are more experimental overall."Despair" is the most conventional song here. It works with a repetitive bass guitar/junk percussion rhythm section, focused synthesizer work, and Revell ALMOST singing the lyrics.In a way, it almost heralds the transition of "industrial" from its early, experimental days when this album was recorded to the aggressive, synth driven dance music "industrial" became.
"Day of Pigs" comes in a close second for musical structure, with noisy electronics and muted vocals, propelled by bass guitar and a beautifully stiff analog drum machine.Structurally it adheres to traditional song conventions rather well, stopping and starting in all the right places.The repetitive synth sequence and erratic rhythms of "Wars of Islam" carry some additional early proto-techno/electro sensibilities to it:while sinister and messy, it’s not hard to hear how it structurally fits into both of those genres quite well with its tight sequences and repetitive rhythms and melodic synth lead towards the end.
One exception to the song orientation on this side is "The Agony of the Plasma," which pairs spoken word and muted musical elements with repeated loops of a woman’s scream and breaking glass, only feeling less like a sonic collage and more like an actual "song" in its closing minute.Its skeletal structure makes it perhaps the most formless piece on the album, and while it lacks in cohesion, it makes up for it in mood.
There are precious few albums that can present this level of violence and menace without coming across as cliché or forced, and I honestly can’t think of one that does it as well as Leichenschrei.Oozing with pure malice, it is also a timeless album that, if released today, would be considered just as brilliant as it was in 1982.I've personally owned this for over a decade and listening to it again for purposes of this review, it still felt fresh, with nuances I never noticed before being apparent.I suppose it was inevitable that SPK took such a nosedive in their career afterward, because I don’t think it would have been possible to top this album or create something even similar.It's a beautifully disturbing album that sounds or feels like nothing else.
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