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The latest album to feature Chris Watson shows a different side to his art, harking back to his roots in Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio while staying true to his current role as a field recorder. The two pieces (one a collaboration with Marcus Davidson and the other a solo work) are both designed as performance pieces utilising Watson’s recordings of nature as the source. However, trickery and aesthetics play a role here that has been absent from his body of work for a long, long time. It sounds like you are there but "there" is not as it seems.
The two long tracks here follow very different paths. The first, "Midnight at the Oasis," is a classic solo Watson field recording and it is exactly what I would expect from such a title: Watson ventured out into Kalahari at night to record the nocturnal desert soundscape. While I expected plenty of night life in such a place (as the unrelenting heat of the day means that most desert creatures are nocturnal rather than diurnal) but I was completely unprepared for the sheer noise of the scene. The insects put most noise musicians to shame and what sounds like mammalian and avian species add a color to the chirping and droning of the invertebrates. It is only when I investigate the liner notes that I see that this is not a 28 minute excerpt during the night but an audio compression of sunset to sunrise (I suppose something akin to time-lapse photography).
On the subject of droning invertebrates, "The Bee Symphony" makes up the rest of Cross-Pollination. Here, Davidson combines Watson’s recordings of honeybees with similar documentation by Mike Harding before arranging a choral accompaniment to the apoidean sounds. The Bee Choir gives a human countenance to the bees’ buzz, their vocalizations following the swells and undulations of the high-frequency beating of the tiny wings. It is a fascinating experience and although the sounds of animals have always interested me, hearing human voices mimic the bees makes me listen to the bees here and in my garden in a more focused way. This has always seemed to be Watson’s goal on his previous solo recordings and Davidson has hammered this point home with firm precision on "The Bee Symphony."
While I think I prefer Watson’s regular recordings, unadorned moments in time caught on tape, I do feel that Cross-Pollination is a successful experiment. It would be nice to hear the bee recordings on their own but equally it would be interesting to hear more of Watson’s recordings integrated into other works. Davidson has done a wonderful job here; the balance between the choir and original recordings is perfect. Equally, Watson’s way of playing with time on "Midnight at the Oasis" could be employed in a number of different environments with, I imagine, interesting results.
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Recorded and rebuilt over half a decade ago, this odd little collaboration between Wastell, a cellist who for this album plays only a tam-tam gong, and everyone's favorite Norwegian noise master on processing and composition, finally sees the light of day on this single track album. Over the course of 40 minutes, the single instrument source is bent and reshaped so much that it bears little to no resemblance to its untreated counterpart, and that’s why this work succeeds.
There almost feels like two distinct movements combined into one single piece.The first half opens initially with almost pure silence, broken up only by some static interference and slow, moaning passages of sounds.The static echoes and bounce around like nuisance insects over the lugubrious sounds.Eventually a big, ringing sound that truly resembles a gong can be heard, but pulled and stretched into an unnaturally long passage.
The different processed layers of sound entwine together, creating completely different textures that bear no resemblance to a metallic percussion instrument.At one point it actually sounds like a fly trapped in amplified bagpipes, in a futile attempt to escape but it never happens.More than a bit abrasive, to say the least.
Just as it becomes almost obnoxious, everything drops back to silence.Comparatively, this second half feels like the digital counterpart to the more organic part that preceded it.The bulk of sound is made of up tiny little digital delays, clustered together into microscopic outbursts that eventually become denser and louder, briefly building to a harsh roar that Marhaug’s fans have come to expect before retreating back to mostly untreated gong sounds.
It’s hard to comment on Wastell's tam tam playing, since the resulting recordings are so heavily treated and manipulated, but Marhaug's ear for composition is definitely a strong facet of this disc.Rather than going for the traditional electronic noise he’s known for, he keeps things rather restrained and structured, occasionally veering into abrasive territory, but never fully succumbing to the temptation to blow everything up sonically.Instead the results are careful and deliberate, making for one of the more unique items in his discography.
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With a lengthy discography of albums on labels such as Kranky and Ghostly International, it's no surprise that Scott Morgan's newest album is a piece of majestic ambient beauty. The cover art is also a perfect image for the disc, a vista that is gorgeous yet frigid, just like the sound contained within.
Across six tracks Morgan cultivates a pretty consistent sound, meshing sparse, pure droning passages with varying dynamics and compositional structures.The opening "Black Tusk," for example, is heavily focused on deep, spacious tones that seemingly stretch out forever. The slow changes and undulations are balanced by subtle sheets of static that continue throughout, like cold winds kicking up snow and blowing it about.
Instead of static, recordings of rushing water are paired with thick tones on "Fromme," mixing the heavy, monolithic textures with purely natural sounds before both cease, allowing in a tremolo-laden passage of sound and deep heavy sub-bass pulses that shake everything around.
The remaining pieces focus more on the textural passages and dense tones and less on the noisier elements heard on "Black Tusk."The constantly shifting structure of "Stave Peak"is initially a series of swelling tones, almost like trumpets producing the outbursts.As the track goes on, the loud parts get louder and heavier, and the quiet parts no longer become as quiet, slowly building into a thick roar.
"Névé" and "Brohm Ridge" feature prominent bell-like tones, stretched out to become soaring passages of echoes and reverberations.The former conjures images of a winter's night, cold and becoming colder, the layers becoming more pronounced and forceful into almost a menacing intensity.The latter carefully ebbs and flows, shifting from sparse tones to dramatic outbursts with a cinematic flair, consistently balancing big flourishes with delicate moments.
Each composition on Coast/Range/Arc has its own distinctive presence, but all fit nicely together in an icy, yet compelling work.While there isn't a lot of warmth to be had here, the spacious drones and massive, heavy layers of sound still make it quite an inviting work.
Samples can be found here.
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Sarah Lipstate has been quite a prolific and ubiquitous figure for the last few years, appearing at seemingly every important festival, touring with Emeralds and Xiu Xiu, and working with an endless parade of intriguing folks like Cold Cave, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, and Carla Bozulich.  On this appropriately cool and crystalline effort, it is abundantly clear why her services are in such demand: she is simply one of most compelling experimental guitarists around.
Lipstate covers a lot of stylistic and textural ground for someone armed with only an electric guitar and some pedals, but she maintains a compositional and textural aesthetic on Glacial Glow that is distinct from most other contemporary avant guitarists.  For one, Sarah seems quite comfortable allowing her guitar to sound exactly like a guitar when it suits her.  She also has no clear aversion to straightforward chords and melodies, though that egalitarian stance noticeably misfires with her bluesy noodling in "Alone Star."  That is her sole miscalculation though: in general, her chiming arpeggios and delicately tremolo-picked shadings serve these pieces perfectly.  More significantly, Lipstate's vision is a very simple, clear, and uncluttered one.  The beauty and power of these pieces lies in the languorous flow of individual notes and the spaces between them rather in escalating density or the creation of a pleasant drone.  That is both a blessing and a curse: very little on Glacial Glow is complicated or lengthy enough to completely envelop me, but Sarah's work attains a uniquely fragile beauty and immediacy when it hits the mark and it hits the mark several times.
The album's inarguable highlight is the mesmerizing "Glacial Wave," which weaves mysterious cooing, blossoming swells, and delay-heavy cascading melodies to create something that feels a lot like gazing up at a stunning sky full of stars on a cold and lonely night.  Vestiges of that feeling hang with me to a degree throughout the entire album, which is where Glacial Glow's true power manifests itself: Lipstate maintains a constantly shifting, dreamlike reverie for the full duration of the album despite her multifarious methods and textures.  Rather than shatter the spell, pieces like the insistently throbbing "Blue" and the twinkling and laptop-fractured "Waxwing" instead serve as new chapters in an advancing narrative.  Obviously, making an otherworldly, dreamlike album is nothing new at all, but 1.) it is pretty damn rare for someone to pull it off as a solo guitarist (aside from Area C), and 2.) not all dreams are the same and I have yet to experience one with the desolate and coldly beautiful mood that Noveller evokes here.  Not everything on Glacial Glow is amazing, but the best moments certainly are and the whole thing makes for a very satisfying, thoughtful, and dynamically varied whole.
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Marielle Jakobsons' trajectory since her stunning solo debut as Darwinbitch in 2009 has been devoted to rather curious and specific stylistic detours, dabbling in both Indian classical music (with Date Palms) and Eastern European traditional music (on Myrmyr's The Amber Sea).  This time around, however, Marielle and Agnes Szelag eschew any overtly global/traditional nods and play things comparatively straight, delivering an alternately enchanting and disturbing suite of classical-damaged drone pieces.
The secret to a great deal of Myrmyr's beauty and uniqueness lies in their instrumentation, as Szelag (a cellist) and Jakobsons (a violinist) are both gifted multi-instrumentalists with a fondness for organic, acoustic textures.  They certainly employ electronics and processing, but the music on Fire Star very recognizably originates from strings, harps, bells, and other natural sources.  Szelag's cello is my favorite single aspect of the album, as the scrape of the bow across the strings has a gritty physicality to it that is especially powerful in the lower registers.  That said, Myrmyr's greatest gifts lie in their thoughtful arrangements and the deft interplay between textures.  The wonderful and striking opening piece, "Hot Snow Part I," is a perfect example: it begins with a pleasantly chiming and delicately plucked harp motif, but descends into darker and more emotionally resonant territory when the heavy cello drones swell into the picture.  As the piece unfolds, the melodic figure remains very crisp and distinct, while the Szelag seizes the foreground and dictates the pace and heaviness with her low-end bowing.  The right instruments are playing exactly the right parts.
The second and third parts of "Hot Snow" maintain that great momentum, delving into both beautifully layered violin-based chamber drone and something that sounds like the Yo Yo Ma songs from the Wisconsin Death Trip soundtrack being reinterpreted by The Hope Blister.  I definitely did not expect melancholy strings and clapping to complement each other so perfectly.  In fact, "Hot Snow Part III" is among my favorite songs that I have heard this year, evoking a perfectly bittersweet and autumnal sort of warmth.  That feeling does not stick around for the whole album though, a situation that would normally be disappointing, given how successful Agnes and Marielle were at nailing that particular mood.  Improbably, however, Myrmyr's late album plunge into the much darker waters of heavy, pagan-sounding psychedelic drone could not be more welcome.  I've been waiting for two long years for Jakobsons to be blackened and scary again and I could not wish for a more spectacular return to form than the swirling and groaning "Golden Ashes."
I enjoyed Myrmyr's previous album, but I viewed it more as a likable side-project than the beginning of something exciting and substantial.  Fire Star is on a completely different level in almost every respect though.  I can officially say that I am no longer pining away for another Darwinsbitch album, as it is clear that Agnes and Marielle are meant to be working together.  This is great from start to finish.
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With his latest album as Asva, G. Stuart Dahlquist (Sunn O))), Burning Witch, Goatsnake) leaves metal behind and sets out on his own distinct path. Recent interviews tell me that he has spent the last three years investigating Josef Albers' color theory, losing musical weight on the Arvo Pärt diet, and studying the way sounds mutate and dazzle us when set in different contexts. As a result, his music has become less extroverted, more sonically inclusive, and equally more profound. Presences of Absences impresses with its density of sound and a fantastic vocal performance from Kayo Dot's Toby Driver, but its simple and patient manner is what makes it exceptional.
Out of all the lessons Josef Albers taught about color, one of the easiest to understand and observe is relativity. Colors interact with each other, so that, for instance, the same shade of green can appear to be diverse when set against two differing background colors. The opposite is also possible. Set two different shades of green against the correct backgrounds and they can be made to look as one. Context, Albers observed, changes everything. G. Stuart Dahlquist has taken that lesson and applied it to his music.
Book-ending the title track to Asva's third album are two unexpected a capella samples. The opening one is of a Creek Indian lullaby sung by a woman known only as Margaret. The other is an anonymous performance of "Shortnin' Bread," which was first written down by James Whitcomb Riley, but probably originated as a plantation song. Like Dahlquist's compositions this time around, they're composed of simple and memorable elements, but they're also full of depth: I wonder who is singing them, why they're singing, and most importantly for this review, what they're doing on an album full of bellowing organs and chanted vocals. As with Albers' theory, Margaret's simple melody takes on a grave character when situated next to the sprawling textures of the title track, and the darting rhythms of "Shortnin' Bread" sound weightier when they come at the end of 22 minute song full of shifting tonality and thumping drums. It's also true that Dahlquist's songs take on new qualities when held up in the light of these samples, and what "Shortnin' Bread" does to change the way I see "A Bomb in that Suitcase" is a mystery I'm still pondering.
Both are simple in their own way, and simplicity is probably the most important virtue Presences of Absences has. It can be found in either the compositions or in the instrumentation, and to some degree, the latter influences the former. The usual rock 'n' roll drums-and-guitars combo is altered and accompanied by three different kinds of organ—Hammond and Allen in addition to the Estey—and the organs are shored up by trumpet, flugelhorn, and the voice of Toby Driver. Throughout the record, Dahlquist blends his organs and bass guitar together, using them to create heavily textured melodies that span minutes rather than seconds. At points, the organs even sound like sine waves, and their interaction assumes an electric vibe. The melodies emphasize that ambiguity, too, partly because they're so peculiarly austere. If I had to guess, I'd say Dahlquist is playing with key signatures throughout the album; his music is never totally dissonant, but it emphasizes small frequency changes and unordinary melodies over clean harmonies. Long stretches of time pass where only a few notes are played, and overtones are often emphasized over melodic development.
Consequently, Presences of Absences is full of space, which leaves listeners with plenty of room and time to stretch out, get comfortable, and feel at home. Rather than inundate the ears and pressure the head with distortion, melody, rhythm, and noise, Asva opens up and trusts its audience to keep still and attentive enough to appreciate all the little details populating the mix, of which there are many. There are still some guitar crescendos and rhythms that descend from heavy metal, but even they transform in Dahlquist's capable hands, and percussionist Greg Gilmore does superb work finding rhythms suitable for the proceedings.
Contributing to that aggregate of boiling waves is the voice of Toby Driver, who sounds more at home on this record than he does on certain Kayo Dot records. He has abandoned the growl and shriek of heavy metal entirely for this release, preferring the melodious ring of David Bowie's higher registers. His falsetto reaches for religious heights and finds them on songs like "Birds" and "Presences of Absences," but he also dishes out the same kind of worldly exotica Bowie served up on Low's second side. When he isn't singing lyrics, he's vocalizing wordlessly, pushing his voice up against the organs and guitars so that they all fluctuate and warp together. Along with the masterful handling of space and instrumentation, Driver's voice is an essential ingredient in Dahlquist's recipe, and it may be the most obviously attractive thing on the whole record.
All of this brings me back to Josef Albers, though. Looking at his paintings, many of which are little more than concentric squares of varying color, I notice that the way I see changes according to the way he composes. I wonder if the colors I'm experiencing are the true colors on the canvas, or whether that particular shock of yellow would be so lovely in different surroundings. Albers concentrates on the basics, but he forces the viewer to find the complexity inherent in them. Asva accomplishes a similar feat with sound, turning Spartan figures into magnetic fields of patterns and crisscrossing sonorities. Inside the hum of their music time slows down a little, small details emerge, and a Creek Indian lullaby tells me something about music being made years later. Presences of Absences highlights the importance of context—as well as time and patience—and, using that as a basis, teases out the intricacy hidden in even the most elemental of music's building blocks. The outcome is a sensational album, and easily the best thing Dahlquist has recorded with any group.
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Ghostly International is pleased to announce the release of Work (work, work), the new LP from HTRK out September 06, 2011 in North America. After the slow burning ‘pop’ effort Marry Me Tonight from 2009, HTRK are back with Work (work, work), a similarly flat-lined study of desire and submission, this time complicated with elements of sentimentality and dysphoria. The gritty electronic sound design and simple beauty of these 10 new songs belie the sheer psychic weight to be found on this record; HTRK finished production whilst grieving the sudden loss of founding member and bassist Sean Stewart to suicide in March ‘10. Written from 2006-10 in Berlin and London, Work (work, work) has been carefully designed to offer a subtle transformative experience to those of us who seek beauty in melancholy. On Work (work, work), HTRK craft a stark soundscape: achingly slow 808 beats, eerie synth arpeggios, vaporous guitar noise, and Jonnine Standish’s androgynous, detached vocals, dripping with reverb. And yet it’s the careful way the pair combine those elements—organizing and juxtaposing them with a minimalist’s attention to detail—that makes their music so emotionally devastating. For all of Work (work, work)’s more abrasive elements, its sense of bleakness and mourning, one finds a surprisingly romantic core. A sense of doomed melancholy, a heavy heart, lives below the layers of a murky and heavy space. HTRK’s remaining members, Jonnine Standish and guitarist Nigel Yang, sweeten their heavier sonic reference points (Pan Sonic, Suicide, et al) into songs of love and lust, creating an imaginary party record for the end of time. NOTE: Mistletoe will release the album in Australia while Blast First Petite will release the album elsewhere the same week. Work (work, work) track list: 01. Ice Eyes Eis 02. Slo Glo 03. Eat Yr Heart 04. Bendin’ 05. Skinny 06. Syntheik 07. Poison 08. Work That Body 09. Love Triangle 10. Body Double
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For her fifth album, Marissa Nadler has started to let the light into her music. The reverb pedal has been left aside and her words have been put into stark relief by new instrumentation that gives her music a more country feel. This change in style has not diluted her vision; the move feels natural and sounds like it was meant to happen at some point in her career.
On her first few albums, Nadler created stunning American gothic works that were as indebted to literary touchstones like Edgar Allen Poe and Shirley Jackson as they were to North American songwriters like Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. Her music had the same features of old silver halide photographs; the limited tonal range of her guitar and voice like the blacks and greys of the image and the reverb combined with her lyrics analogous to the blurs and grain of the final photographs.
Here, she retains her unique character but continues along the trajectory change she started with Little Hells to form bigger, more intricate arrangements for her songs. This is the leap from glass plates to full color film. It is this move that makes me think back to my reference to Leonard Cohen, particularly how he went from being a talented folk singer to an unmistakable force of nature. Based on the evidence here, the same might be said of Nadler. There is a vibrancy to these new songs which sound like a new world compared to her early albums.
Such a sea change could spell disaster for such an artist with such a strong aesthetic but Nadler is confident and talented enough to make it work. The pedal steel guitar and piano on "The Sun Always Reminds Me of You" brings the heat of a Nashville summer into the music. The bittersweet lyrics place Nadler closer to the likes of Josh Pearson than to the likes of Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart where she is usually classed. This is true of the rest of the album as Nadler takes on a more mature, classic songwriting style without sacrificing any of her bite. Elsewhere, a whining synthesizer on "Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning" pushes the music again away from any sort of "safe" country that these arrangements might stray towards.
Lyrically, Nadler has not strayed too far from what I have come to expect from her, which is a good thing indeed. Mixing folklore with myth, myth with romance and romance with existential woe, there is a lot going on even within one song. Lines like "With my phantom limbs and eerie hymns/There are two of us here that I know" show that her turn of phrase still revolves around the dusty romanticism of the kind of Americana that exists only in poetry, music and film.
While I think her Songs III: Bird on the Water remains her definitive album, Nadler is setting on a path which will result in some exceptionally rewarding music. This album is great but the potential to be even greater is not only there but blooming. In later years, Little Hells and Marissa Nadler will probably be viewed as a transitional period for Nadler but in the present, this is another exceptional album that begs attention
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For her fifth album, Marissa Nadler has started to let the light into her music. The reverb pedal has been left aside and her words have been put into stark relief by new instrumentation that gives her music a more country feel. This change in style has not diluted her vision; the move feels natural and sounds like it was meant to happen at some point in her career.
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For their fourth album, Michael Begg and Deryk Thomas continue the development they began on 2009’s Black Hill album; deeply nocturnal, mournful and staggeringly beautiful music which takes in everything from the slow decay of time to post-colonial regret. This is undoubtedly their most superbly made and personal album to date.
The album begins with a black, velvet envelope of treated piano. Melancholy but not maudlin, the music is powerfully nostalgic as Begg and Thomas try to get into the mind of a sleeping pharaoh in the British Museum who is longing for his lost resting place. Lulled into a relaxed, thoughtful repose, I nearly jumped out of my skin when the slow, steady percussion of "Fortress Longing" breaks through the music like that feeling of falling in your sleep breaks through a dream. There are shades of Bohren & Der Club of Gore’s experiments in mood in the slinky bass motif but Human Greed have become so utterly dreamlike that the comparison is only superficial.
Voices emerge through the deep, gorgeous webs of sound as men, women and children intone: "Where is my blanket of sand?" Each time, the poignancy of these thoughts comes through strong. Plucked from their tombs by European and American archaeologists, what was meant to be an eternal rest became an eternal sideshow in museums far from home. On a more immediate level, here are priceless pieces of history taken from the people whose history these ancients were part of. One such piece of history, a gold pendant of two bees made by the Minoans on display in Heraklion, Crete. The Minoans were one of the first to domesticate bees for honey and, in Egypt, bees were symbolic of the nation and the pharaoh. Capturing this complex mixture of feelings, Begg’s colleague from Fovea Hex, Laura Sheeran, orchestrates a sublime vocal interlude on "Weeping Bees of Heraklion" which has the same lilting buzz of what I imagine these sad Minoan bees to sound like.
The limited edition of Fortress Longing comes with a bonus disc containing Colin Potter’s reconstruction of the raw materials. Like Potter’s work with Fovea Hex’s recent album, he demonstrates an insightful and unexpected perspective on the music and creates "Deshret" which equals the work Begg and Thomas put into the "rea" album. Long and elaborate tones, just about recognisable from Begg and Thomas’ originals, make up the bulk of the piece before resolving into Julia Kent’s cello playing.
I cannot help but be taken aback by how carefully composed and charged Fortress Longing is. Begg and Thomas have definitely gone beyond their previous benchmarks to create one of the albums of the year. This is a deep, multifaceted recording that comes together far better and far stronger than even their best work before this (and I admire the first three albums a lot). It is not simply a soundtrack to the sense of loss of history to shelves and storage cupboards but also a reflection on our own time on earth and what will become of us after death. The final message of Fortress Longing is to make a mark now and let it make its way into the eternity you cannot achieve.
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Recorded live on a boat in 2008, this CD documents the first performance of Comus in over 30 years. Evidently whatever pact they made to make First Utterance had a retirement clause in it as the band sounds remarkably potent here. Had this been an archive recording from their creative zenith, I would have been impressed but bearing in mind this is the first time they had taken a stage together in over 30 years, this is phenomenal.
