The large majority of Brooklyn based Zs' output consists of their work as a sextet—a varied body of work focused around rhythmic intensity and textures based on duality. To reexamine the group's early recordings is to make a sonic map of the changing attitudes of New York new music and how the talent in the area learned to hybridize their surroundings and their musical skills. In that sense, Zs are the New York avant-garde personified; their role as a bridge between loft bands and chamber musicians, lo-fi and "high art" represents a lot of the essential artistic ideologies in 21st century New York.
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After a terrific debut EP in 2010, Bell Gardens finally return with a full album of mostly new music. As usual, the musical arrangements are lush and saturated with beauty as Brian McBride and Kenneth James Gibson try to recreate the moods and sounds of the golden era of pop studio recordings without using the typical computer-based short cuts and technological workarounds that have become de rigour for modern studio work. The end result is a triumph of song writing, musicianship and integrity, highlighting just how good humble songs can be without the need for following trends or to be striving to be the next big thing.
Despite the deliberate avoidance of software and samples, Bell Gardens manage to begin the album with a very modern sounding take on the classic pop song. Following some gorgeous slide guitar on "Clinging to the Almost," there is a sudden move into the sort of chord progressions that I would associate with Stars of the Lid or McBride’s solo work. Though Stars of the Lid never sounded like this; the movement and the atmospheres are social, joyous and bright unlike the introspective, contemplative twilight textures of Stars of the Lid. I thought they had nailed it on Hangups Need Company but they have upped their game considerably on Full Sundown Assembly.
The first couple of times I listened to "Differently Tonight" I felt that the lyrics, though performed perfectly, were a bit clumsy. Now, after becoming more comfortable with the album as a whole, I admit I feel differently. The lyrics are so simple that they seemed too obvious but I realize now that is what makes the song work so well. This deceptive simplicity runs throughout the rest of Full Sundown Assembly with songs like "Bobby" and "Nowhere" sounding like the best bits never recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young or Brian Wilson.
The highlight of the album is "Through the Rain," which also featured on the duo’s Hangups Need Company EP from 2010. Here is the closest they come to sounding like The Beach Boys, the vocal harmonies are rich, layered but as light as they air they are made from. In fact, this is probably the best-crafted song I have heard in a long time as absolutely everything about it is balanced, tasteful and moving. It is a sheer delight to listen to and even though it has already been released, I will not argue with its inclusion here.
In recent years, Bon Ivor and Fleet Foxes have tried to capture this sort of vibe in their respective careers but Bell Gardens truly school them in how it should be done. McBride and Gibson have created stunning bursts of warm, joyous harmonies that, while indebted to great artists such as Phil Spector and Jack Nitzsche, burst with a life beyond retro pastiche. This is masterfully played pop music that references but expands on this nostalgia, much like Tindersticks did in the ‘90s with their take on Nancy and Lee, John Barry and Serge Gainsbourg (though Bell Gardens give the ‘sticks a run for their money on "South"). With Full Sundown Assembly, McBride and Gibson have created masterfully played pop music which is a much needed ray of sunshine on these dark autumn mornings.
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After a terrific debut EP in 2010, Bell Gardens finally return with a full album of mostly new music. As usual, the musical arrangements are lush and saturated with beauty as Brian McBride and Kenneth James Gibson try to recreate the moods and sounds of the golden era of pop studio recordings without using the typical computer-based short cuts and technological workarounds that have become de rigour for modern studio work. The end result is a triumph of song writing, musicianship and integrity, highlighting just how good humble songs can be without the need for following trends or to be striving to be the next big thing.
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My opinion of Edward Ka-Spel has undergone a dramatic overhaul over the last few years, as the last several albums that I have heard have all floored me with at least one song (often more).  While he has been admirably devoted to making weird, uncompromising psychedelia for more than 30 years, he seems to be making some of the best and most disturbing music of his career right now (as evidenced here).  That is not to say that he has become dramatically less indulgent or difficult (unlikely to ever occur), but the high points of Ghost Logik are truly mesmerizing, haunting, and unique.
The more I listen to Ka-Spel's work, the more i seem to fall in love with his voice.  While it can certainly be shrill and maniacal-sounding sometimes (he has sounded like a crazed elf in the past), both his deep, resonant speaking voice and his lazily lilting singing voice can be enormously evocative and affecting.  The latter effect is most evident on Ghost Logik's most conventional song, "Throwing Things," where Ka-Spel makes otherwise mundane lyrics feel imbued with cryptic menace.
His vocals have an almost sing-song, nursery rhyme tone to them, which contrasts creepily and surreally with the shimmering and skittering melancholia of the music.  Of course, Ka-Spel is even more powerful when his words are as disturbing as his delivery, as they are on the album's highlight, "The Voyeur."  The accompanying music is little more than some minimal droning and crackling, but Edward's monologue is unwaveringly gripping and spine-chilling–except when it is darkly hilarious ("you...really...need..to..get...out...more.").
Most of the other songs occupy a similar "uneasy soundscape and spoken word" aesthetic territory, but the balance between storytelling and atmosphere varies quite a bit from piece to piece.  The disquieting tug-of-war between childlike simplicity and macabre sophistication persists in varying manifestations throughout the entire album, creating a unifying theme of sorts.  The feeling of entering someone else's already-unfolding nightmare is yet another (even stronger) theme.  In fact, that may be where Ka-Spel's true genius lies, as he is at his best when he drops into an enigmatic and vaguely sinister scenario, patiently and masterfully escalates the tension and dread, then ends it all with a darkly funny or ominously ambiguous turn of phrase.
It is remarkable that that "formula" works as often as it does, but Edward has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of such bizarre situations and unravels his tales with perfect timing and pacing.  No one else could make these songs work, as their success is irrevocably intertwined with the gravity of Ka-Spel's voice and his knack for pregnant pauses and hesitations.
The catch–there's always a catch–is that Edward's inexhaustible supply of dreamlike vignettes is not quite able to keep up with his prolific output.  Consequently, Ghost Logik is a somewhat insubstantial album (albeit very a cohesive one).  While "Throwing Things" and "The Voyeur" are both mesmerizing and perfectly realized, the remaining six songs are comparatively a mixed bag.  Two are only about a minute long, and several of the remaining four blunt their more inspired passages with some significant bloat.  They still definitely have their share of striking or chilling moments though, particularly "So What?" and "Brighton Line."  Also, they are surprisingly listenable, as only the 13-minute "Brighton Line" manages to grate on me with an extended jazz/quasi-beat poetry section.  It would be great if Edward could slow down long enough to make an entirely brilliant album rather than a partially brilliant one, but I am more than happy to settle for two amazing songs and a handful of very good soundscapes.
(Note- there are actually three versions of this album.  The "limited box" includes a second disc (Spectrescapes) featuring more abstract/longform ambient pieces, while the "deluxe limited box" also includes a third disc and a short film.)
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The worlds of dance and experimental guitar music rarely intersect (for good reason, probably), but the artistic director of Australia's Chunky Move company had a wild enough imagination to bring Ambarchi and abstract electronics maniac Robin Fox together to compose this soundtrack.  In many ways, that gamble paid off handsomely, as Connected is surprisingly inventive, challenging, and divergent (and no doubt inspired some very unusual choreography).  As a purely audio experience, however, it is pretty tame and comparatively characterless by either artist's normal standards.
The five pieces that compromise this album are dramatically different stylistically and subverted my expectations at every turn.  That may sound great, but my expectations included thoughts like "this will sound kind of like Oren Ambarchi" and "this will not be puzzlingly schizophrenic."  Consequently, my first impression of Connected was not favorable.  That impression gradually changed to "grudging admiration" with future listens, but I still have a hard time accepting how much the distinctive aesthetics of Fox and Ambarchi are either watered-down or presented with no clear evidence of collaborative influence.
That said, the kinetic opening piece, "Standing Mandala," is arguably the album's clear highlight and the most fully-realized melding of the duo's guitars and electronics.  Over an insistently throbbing and burbling electronic pulse, Ambarchi gradually escalates in intensity from rhythmic clicking and a pedal tone to well-placed snarls of feedback and guitar noise.  It ultimately culminates in a crescendo of insectoid hiss and chittering from Fox before ending abruptly at around nine minutes.  Aside from the sudden ending, it is a pretty masterful display of how to slowly and enticingly build tension.
Unfortunately, that momentum is killed instantly by "Game of Two," a piece that I still have very mixed feelings about.  If I am in a mood where I can listen intently and appreciate nuance and subtlety, I can definitely hear some beauty in the way that Ambarchi's lazily strummed chords dissipate into feedback and creaking strings.  When I am not in that mood, it basically sounds like someone playing an uninteresting chord progression extremely slowly for eight interminable minutes.  I am more frequently in the latter mood.
"Connected" follows in similarly frustrating fashion, only this time it is Fox's turn to take center stage.  Again, the music is relatively static, consisting almost entirely of sustained hums, whines, and sub-bass tones.  In the foreground, there are occasionally sounds that resemble quavering, electronically processed bells.  In the context of a dance performance, I imagine its near-silence could be quite intriguing. Sonically, however, it is the album's nadir, as there is nothing compelling about it for me at all.
The proceedings liven up quite a bit as the album draws near the end though, as the comparatively brief "Trios" sounds like traditional clicking-and-blurting Robin Fox-style electronic chaos with some buried gnarled guitar noise thrown in.  Hopefully, there is footage of the performance somewhere, as I  cannot even begin to imagine what the associated dancing would look like.  I suspect it was epic.
That howling climax is then followed by the droning, discordant coda of "Invigilation," which combines dense layers of oscillating synths into a queasily, heavy thrum.  It's a pretty likeable slab of drone, certainly, but it is pretty hard to see anything distinctively Fox- or Ambarchi-esque about it.  That, essentially, is Connected's biggest problem: generally, pieces either sound like passable Fox, sub-par Ambarchi, or neither.  Only "Standing Mandala" comes close to blending their two distinct personalities together.
Critiquing an album like this one feels a bit frustrating and pointless, as the music has been completely decontextualized from its intended purpose–this is merely one element of a complete work.  Based upon the bizarre moods and willful absence of traditional rhythm here, I suspect Chunky Move's performance was a strange and memorable one, but I do not understand the purpose of a disembodied soundtrack album.  Artistically, Fox and Ambarchi managed to provide a dance company with something quite unique and inspiring while intermittently finding a fertile creative common ground for their disparate styles.  As a musical document, however, Connected is too restrained and compromised to rank very highly in either artist's oeuvre.
 
 
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Despite knowing Ulrich Krieger from a number of recordings, this is the first time I have heard one of his own compositions. Based on his work with Phill Niblock, Steve Reich and Zeitkratzer, I am not surprised by the form of Fathom (long tones, deliberate use of dynamics and a geological approach to timing) but I am surprised at how he has managed to take all his previous experience and influences and craft a truly original piece of music.
Fathom was commissioned by Sub Rosa for their new Framework series of albums. Each of the releases in this series feature a geometric pattern on the back of the sleeve and in Fathom’s case, the pattern has a Rorschach inkblot quality to it. This is fitting as Krieger’s piece has a lot in common with Rorschach’s open-ended visual stimuli. The role of the inkblots in therapy is to facilitate the patient’s dialogue with the therapist by giving them a starting point to begin describing their own thought processes. Abstract art has acted in a similar, if less directed way, and sound art too has this open, interpretive aspect to it. Fathom certainly leaves much to the imagination, depending on my mood the sounds range from being warm, womb-like and relaxing to being sinister, dangerous and arousing, much in the same way that a Rorschach inkblot could be both a demon and a flower depending on the inclination of the viewer.
Krieger’s composition also has an inkblot quality in its symmetrical structure. Two electric guitars (played by Krieger’s companions in the group Text of Light, Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht) initially form the focus of the piece, gently strummed harmonics shining bright in the middle of the darkness (represented by Krieger’s long, slow blows on the saxophone). Tim Barnes’ atmospheric percussion completes the picture, filling it out to the edges. Yet halfway through, this suddenly and almost subconsciously switches around with Barnes becoming the central point of the music, striking more bell-like instruments while Ranaldo and Licht move to a more vague and impressionistic mode of playing.
The line "Like flying through liquid space" adorns the back of the album and I honestly cannot beat that description when it comes to this music. It does feel like I am being pulled through some other, previously imperceptible dimension of reality for as long as the music is playing.
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Press release:
Unique mix of ambient, industrial, experimental trip hop, jazz and electronica: Formed in a dingy Melbourne warehouse at the turn of the century, TERMINAL SOUND SYSTEM began as a vehicle for Skye Klein, half of Relapse Records cult doom/noise duo HALO, to explore his interest in experimental electronic music and Dub. Eight albums later, TSS has expanded to include live instrumentation and synchronious video projection, merging epic doom, post-rock and jazz with electronica, drum'n'bass and heavy dub into a style wholly unique. Ostensibly a studio project, Terminal Sound System takes on new life as a live entity, infusing hyperprecise digital audio with the energy of rock& metal, all presented before synchronised video projection.
TERMINAL SOUND SYSTEM's ninth album - the first for Germany's Denovali Records - called HEAVY WEATHER kicks the doomy shoegazing headphase into top gear, draping layers of detuned drone& dissonance over beds of swampy synths and meticulous rhythms. Created over a period of a year using everything from custom-programmed software instruments to a miced-up room full of feeding back amplifiers, HEAVY WEATHER represents the ultimate realisation thus far of Klein's mission with TSS: complete and uncompromising immersion.
Release date: May 13, 2011
Stream: www.denovali.com/terminalsoundsystem
Band page: www.terminalsoundsystem.com
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Minneapolis' favorite sons (and daughters), mostly led by Emil Hagstrom and Matt Bacon, have been cranking out releases since the mid 1990s. While they've shared releases with sleaze noise kings Macronympha and Japan's master of sterile sound art Aube, they've never shied away from a healthy dose of absurdity and insanity, and on this messy, sprawling 99 track album, they allow it to fully devour them and revel in it. As much parody as heartfelt tribute to their influences, this is an unabashedly fun album.
SunShip/Little Mafia/Breathmint
Taking the title literally, this album is a loving parody of the experimental/avant garde/noise world, a collective of artists and works that aren't known for showcasing a sense of humor.With over 100 pieces in less than 40 minutes, the sound is all over the place by definition, united mostly by outbursts of harsh noise and a joyful disregard of formality and pretentiousness.
For instance, "Annette's Got the Tits/We've Got a Glitter Problem Now" is like a class of five year olds trying to play hardcore punk, and almost pulling it off, while "Muslim-Gay/Second Anal Report" throws pseudo Middle Eastern beats with a droning soundscape, and "Right to be Silly" is a spot on parody of the infamous Whitehouse track.
In many ways it is reminiscent of the spastic genre hopping of Naked City's Torture Garden, though focusing more on the realms of noise, metal and artsy avant garde, and with a sense of fun and joy that John Zorn's project lacked.For all its hyperkinetic, ADHD motives, the 11 thematically linked segments feel somehow unified beyond all reasonable logic.
While the audio portion of the disc is solid on its own, I must confess that I took the same sophomoric joy in reading the track list that I always felt from Anal Cunt's albums, but the results are only a bit less offensive.In comparison, however the actual music is far more diverse than the grindcore blast AC is known for, though it often comes back to the harsh walls of noise I'd expect.
With "categories" such as "What’s THIS Lube For…!" and "My Dick is on Your iPod", we're not talking subtlety here, nor should we be.With individual pieces such as "Acid 2 Mouth/Wake Me Up Before You Guru Guru" (in the krautrock segment) and "Hanatarasha Montana" and "Lady Gerogerigagaga/Ornette Coleminer's Daughter" towards the end, it's not high brow, but for any noise fan who enjoys a good laugh, and I know there are some others like me out there, it’s a brilliant work.
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While many (including myself) associate the Prurient moniker with Dominick Fernow's abuse of distortion and feedback, the project has been shifting more and more into some hard to define realm that has slowly engulfed more "traditional" musical elements. Here that has taken hold even more, putting less of a focus on the harshness and bringing out a different beast of equal darkness.
Opening with a scream and a blast of noise that hearkens back to some of the earliest Prurient material, "Many Jewels Surround the Crown (The District)" at first is entirely familiar.However, much of the harshness pulls away in the first minute, leaving behind a rudimentary, but functional synth melody that develops and expands, offset by sheets of white noise and Fernow’s spoken word delivery.The keyboard based sound is something that’s appeared in previous Prurient works, such as And Still, Wanting and the Cocaine Death compilation, but here it’s more fully fleshed out and structured, even soaring to dramatic, grandiose passages to close the track.
The "instrumental" version is far more different than simply removing the vocals.Instead, the synth melody is recast as pure black metal guitar and surges of noise.Hollow drums and more synths fill out the piece, but it’s far closer to metal than most of the Prurient stuff I’ve heard, even if it’s a bit too off kilter to be embraced in that genre.
It almost seems like two of Fernow's multitude of side projects, namely Cold Cave and Ash Pool, inspired the altering versions of this track.Between the synth heavy "The District" version, which wouldn’t have been entirely out of place on Cold Cave's Cremations, and the instrumental side channeling the "kvlt" end of Ash Pool's metallic leanings, it definitely feels like there's some influence here.Regardless though, it still sounds more like Prurient more than anything else.Even if the lack of pure unadulterated harsh noise may alienate some fans, the drama and ambience created are its greatest strength.
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This is the first ever release for the new Editions Mego imprint curated by Emeralds' John Elliott and it is an extremely auspicious start.  Fabric is the guise of Chicago's Matthew Mullane and this is his first major release under that moniker, though he has previously surfaced on a number of limited releases as both Fabric and his own name. He describes himself primarily as a guitarist and "computerist," however A Form of Radiance is a wonderfully spacey, endlessly pulsing bedroom synth epic...that may or may not have been created using actual synthesizers.  Mullane's methods are inscrutable.
I think it might be impossible to describe this album without using words like "futuristic" (or better yet, "retro-futurist"), as this is the sort of music that sounds like it belongs in the worlds depicted in films like Blade Runner or Terminator.  It doesn't sound like it belongs in the actual films though, nor does it resemble either existing soundtrack.  It's more like an imaginary soundtrack to an altogether artier, more melancholy, and subtly psychedelic work.  Mullane has clearly been influenced by the warm pads, thick throbs, and sequencer-heavy arpeggios of '80s synth music and Kosmische titans like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, but A Sort of Radiance has a density, complexity, and experimental streak that is very contemporary.  In fact, Fabric fits very nicely into the pantheon of newer synthesizer luminaries like Emeralds, though his work is a bit more understated and meditative.  It is also pretty brilliantly executed: while all of the pieces are essentially built upon lush swells of slowly unfolding chord progressions, there is an enormous amount of vibrant activity surrounding them.  Pieces like "High Ceilings" and "Light Float" burble, quaver, swoop, and shimmer to a transfixing degree.
The entire album is surprisingly varied and imaginative, especially given that all nine songs have very similar textures and timbres.  Also, it is pretty short, as four of the songs are under two minutes.  The briefer pieces aren't filler though, as "Controls" is actually one of my favorite pieces on the album.  Mullane displays an impressive intuitive understanding of exactly how long an idea can unfold before wearing out its welcome: if a piece like "Light Float" is hypnotic and immersive enough to unfold for 8 minutes, it does.  Conversely, if a fragile interlude like "Containers" says everything it needs to say in a minute, it ends there.  Matthew also has an impressive talent for mood and subtlety, allowing just enough melody to give the songs color and personality, but never being blunt enough to disrupt the lazily warm and hallucinatory flow of the album.
I did not expect to like this nearly as much as I do, as I generally find albums this unapologetically synthesizer-heavy to be very limited and often quite masturbatory.  A Sort of Radiance is, quite happily, neither of those things.  This is a thoroughly impressive and mesmerizing debut.
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