- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
With his custom guitar and unconventional playing techniques, Fongaard is one of the unrecognized innovators of prepared guitar, even in his native Norway. Here, three discs of his work, and a DVD, are lavishly presented to hopefully increase the recognition of this artist. There is a lot of material to digest but it is well worth the effort and presents a distinct missing link in the world of experimental guitar.
Fongaard was a self-taught composer who spent much of his studies focusing on the sciences and mathematics in addition to music, often working to combine the different disciplines in various new configurations, as well as spending a significant amount of time playing traditional guitar as a studio musician and in theater productions, working with the likes of little known directors such as Ingmar Bergman. All of this lead to a conceptual interest in expanding the traditional 12 tone scale into a 24 scale, and eventually an infinite scale, with microscopic tonal variations utilized and recognized.It’s not hard to see how this concept is very much complementary to the early electronic composers and today’s noise/experimental scene.
To further this, Fongaard had a custom built guitar to work within this 24 tone scale, doubling the number of frets that can be played.In addition, he used various innovative playing techniques, such as using violin bows, percussive techniques, and various tools and objects to mute and bend strings.Coupled with a motivation to avoid the techniques of the contemporary electro-acoustic artists of his day, Fongaard’s work was mostly based upon live recordings, using only occasional effects and manipulating tape speeds to achieve his desired effect.
The results are something quite akin to what the world was hearing from artists such as Pierre Henry and Luc Ferrari in feeling, but sounding like nothing else at the same time.On some of the pieces presented here, the guitar playing is quite obvious, but unique due to its construction:"Evolution (5 Movements)" from 1965 and "Electrofonia No. 2," from 1969 focus on the taut, plucked guitar strings and short, sharp notes that sound somewhere between guitar and violin in color.
Other pieces take on a darker feeling, such as the reverb soaked "Galaxe (For 3 Quarter-Tone Guitars) Opus 46," which meshes the chirping guitar with heavy reverb initially, then pained guitar and banshee-like shrieks of sound, all topped off with percussive, clattering guitar strings to close the piece.This is one of only three pieces included here that had ever been commercially released in the past, to put the material here into perspective.
The long "14 Aforismer for Mikrointervall-Gitar, Opus 63" uses other techniques, such as erratically pitch-bent notes and droning space that sounds purely electronic, but is more likely drawn out passages of guitar that give a warm ambient feel to everything."Elektrofonia No. 1" introduces some subtle, but recognizable flanging to the reverbed guitar notes, sometimes held out into near silent open space, and other times allowed to develop into cautiously restrained feedback.The "Sinfonia Microtonalis" tracks that mostly constitute the third disc also include a greater selection of effects, such as the chilling scraped strings that close the first part and the delayed, almost fuzzed out sounds of the third part differ from one another greatly, yet work well together.
The set also includes a DVD capturing a few television performances of his music."Dimensjoner" and "Relieff" are both dances, the former mixing abstract images with a single dancer in muted gray tones, while the latter is more dynamic, with a larger group of performers and lots of bright, bold colors.It definitely is a product of the 1970s, but is definitely unique as well."Stjernetaker" is a piece for television that mixes processed images with natural ones, creating a pseudo documentary that is quite hypnotizing.The most fascinating piece here though is "Komponist Med Gitar," which is a television interview with Fongaard from 1971.While the discussion is in Norweigan and not subtitled, Fongaard’s demonstration of his guitar techniques and style need no explanation, and offers a rare opportunity for observing how these unique sounds are made.
While he was relatively unknown even in his own country, Fongaard has had a quiet, but discernable influence on avant garde guitar composition that becomes much more obvious once one listens to this set.Sadly, only about a fifth of his compositions were performed while he was still living, so he never even managed to hear the bulk of his work.Lovingly curated by Lasse Marhaug, this set shows the same attention to detail and consideration that has been demonstrated on his Pica Disk box sets in recent years, and is obviously a work of extreme care and thoughtfulness.
samples:
- Galaxe (For 3 Quarter-Tone Guitars), Opus 46
- Elektrofonia No. 1, For Orchestra Microtonalis, Opus 78
- Sinfonia Microtonalis No. 1, Opus 79
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
After the dissolution of his criminally underrated Band of Susans project, Robert Poss continued his obsession with the various noises of the electric guitar, no longer restrained by the constraints of "rock" music (though he pushed those boundaries pretty hard with BoS). Settings is a collection of music recorded for various purposes, but follows the concepts established on his 2002 album Distortion is Truth, reveling in the dissonant and not so dissonant tones of both guitar and analog synthesizer technologies.
Although it is a compilation album, there is a definite sense of consistency and quality that unifies the pieces. Even though they may have been written and recorded for disparate purposes, Poss' overall approach keeps them nicely tied together. The two opening pieces, originally composed for choreographer Alexandra Beller, are unified through the use of resonating bells. The first piece focuses on the sound of bells and quiet underlying electronic textures, the sharp bell rings initially disturb the calm, but their natural decay then strengthens the subtlety. By the second piece, a series of treated, repetitive guitar notes appear, creating an odd combination of erratic bells, rhythmic guitar, and sustained electronic ambience that somehow works perfectly together.
Other pieces further focus on drawing together almost opposing sounds and instruments to create idiosyncratic, yet compelling works. "Feed Forward" (also for Beller) pairs shrill guitar feedback with sparse synths and warbling electronic sounds to great effect, and the clash of melody and abrasive electronic buzz on "Inverness" seem greatly influenced by Poss collaborator and former Wire guitarist Bruce Gilbert’s solo outings.
Two of the three Gerald Casel commissioned pieces combine this concept with a distinct marching sound: "Border Crossing March" uses marching band percussion, dour industrial textures and bleeping modular synths to create a piece that is reminiscent of some of Cabaret Voltaire's earliest experiments, but with a stronger focus on composition and structure rather than pure experimentation. "Border Piano Walk" follows a similar rhythmic path, but instead uses piano as its sole source material. With sharp tunings and clanging reverberation, it takes on a very tense, metallic motif throughout.
Regardless of the setting, Poss seems to be unable to avoid allowing some traditional music/rock structures into the mix, in a good way. "With Music No. 2 (Excerpt)" has a looped riff that’s used throughout, mixed with more open, drifting guitar and a natural feeling bass line. While it takes a drastic turn towards improvised percussion at the end, there is still a rock feel to it. "Concordance" also utilizes mostly untreated guitar, chiming and layered with only the most subtle effects to create a warm and inviting piece. The one that made me smile, and probably will have the same effect on other Band of Susans' fans, is the closing "Robert Palmer Tribute Coda (Live Excerpt)," which is a wonderful, but painfully short blast of lo-fi guitar noise and squall that simply ends too quick.
Robert Poss' solo work has definitely shown the influence of his collaborators, which includes such luminaries as Bruce Gilbert and Phill Niblock. However, he is definitely following his own path, combining modular synths and guitars in ways that others haven't. Not a collection of songs, this feels more like a diverse and strong album, and is one not to be missed. I just hope he never forgets his love of raw, guitar noise, because he still does it like no other.
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Over the course of their incredible 27-year career, Sun City Girls seemed to make a point of doing everything as triumphantly and aggressively wrong as possible, precluding any possibility of widespread acceptance. While they certainly recorded their share of awesome psychedelic jams and inspired ethnic music appropriations over the years, their anarchic sense of humor and love of absurdist theatrics resulted in an accompanying avalanche of baffling and wildly self-indulgent work as well. Of course, that eccentric unpredictability and willingness to try literally anything was central to their charm. Consequently, Funeral Mariachi makes the most fitting of swan-songs, as they’ve finally done the most unexpected thing of all: made an album of very listenable, melodic songs.
Sun City Girls effectively ceased being an entity on February 19th, 2007, when long-time drummer Charles Gocher died from cancer.Although he was present for the recording of Funeral Mariachi, it seems like he may have passed away before the album fully took shape (which goes a long way towards explaining why it took another three years for it to be finished).While the percussion is certainly quite spare and understated throughout, the more telling indicator is that this album is quite languid and melancholy.There is a deep sadness to Funeral Mariachi that feels more like an elegy to a dying or departed friend than anything resembling a "normal" session by three of the most willfully obtuse guys around.Besides, Gocher always seemed more aggressively bizarre than the Bishop brothers–it is difficult to imagine him not sabotaging the album's more sublime or muted moments with surreal stream-of-consciousness beat poetry or a Japanese theater interlude or something if he'd seen the project through to completion.
I bet Gocher had quite a bit of influence on the opening piece though, as "Ben's Radio" begins and ends with crazy cut-up sounding falsetto vocals in a real or imagined foreign language.After that though, and some periodically shrill warbling, most of the Girls' more inaccessible quirks disappear completely.Even so, the album is still deeply aberrant (how could it be otherwise?), but the weirdness is confined largely to chants, foreign language vocals, unusual influences, and eclectic instrumentation in the service of fairly coherent, flowing, and melodic songs.The Girls definitely borrow from a very wide palette stylistically, effortlessly tossing out allusions to traditional Arabic music, spaghetti western themes, flamenco, and Indonesian pop, yet it rarely feels forced or clumsy.Of course, it probably helps that Gocher and the Bishops enlisted some very talented guests to help them out– it is difficult to imagine the ghostly "Black Orchid" working nearly as well without Jessika Kenney's ethno-vocal pyrotechnics or "Funeral Mariachi" without David Carter's smoldering trumpet.
Uncharacteristically, it is very difficult to point to a clear highlight on this album, as there is pretty much nothing half-baked here.I am hard-pressed to think of another Sun City Girls album that is this focused and uniformly good.Notably, however, there is one song that could almost be a successful single of sorts, as "This Is My Name" has a pleasant English-language melody, an excellent laid-back groove, and some awesome raga-influenced riffing from Richard Bishop.In fact, Richard is in dazzling form throughout the whole album, tackling No Wave skronking ("Ben's Radio"), finger-twisting Eastern modes, sublime shimmering, Satie-esque piano miniatures, and Ennio Morricone twang with equal deftness and tact.
It's pretty hard to imagine anyone being disappointed by this album, though longtime fans may be surprised at how sane, sincere, and non-ragged it all sounds.Sun City Girls have made a comparatively accessible album, sure, but the only real difference is that band decided to apply their freewheeling kitchen-sink eclecticism to songs with strong melodies rather than allowing that strangeness to be an end unto itself.Their individuality remains quite firmly intact, but they've made it a bit easier for the rest of the world understand what all the fuss was about.Funeral Mariachi is the sound of a singular band riding off into the sunset with an unexpected amount of grace and emotional resonance–a clichéd metaphor for sure, but one that is warranted by the album's very conspicuous Morricone influence, I'm afraid.This is definitely one of the best things Sun City Girls have ever recorded.
Samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
ESP Disk's most recent re-issue of the now well-known and loved Heliocentric Worlds series is haphazard and sloppy, offering only the most minimal improvements over their last re-issue from 2005. Fledgling Ra listeners will be happy to find all three volumes together in one package (this time on three distinct discs), but everyone else will likely be disappointed by the lackluster bonus material, mediocre packaging, and poorly edited liner notes. Anyone who owns all three albums already can safely ignore this release, the rest of us can bemoan its poor presentation.
Each of the three Heliocentric volumes were performed and recorded in the span of less than a year, between April and November of 1965. Ra was accompanied by the same 12 musicians for both dates, among them multi-instrumentalist Marshall Allen (probably most famous for his sax playing), bassist Ronnie Boykins, and baritone sax player Pat Patrick (Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's father). Roughly 19 instruments find their way onto the record, including tuned tympani, bass clarinet and bass trombone, the clavioline, tuned bongos, bass marimba, and an electronic celesta. Band size, instrumental choices, excellent performances, unclassifiable sounds, and the improvisational structure of all three volumes have earned these records an important place in the history of free jazz, as well as a legendary status. They were performed and released before John Coltrane's Ascension, broke strongly with the turbulent and wilder styling of Ornette Coleman's double quartet, and showcased an altogether different sound for the Arkestra, which had just released a string of excellent, but more readily digestible records, including Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy. Along with The Magic City, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra most strongly define Ra's New York period sound and represent some of his most enduring ideas as a composer and band leader. Whether or not they can be classified as free jazz is another question entirely.
Listening to Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, I focused immediately on their fragmented, frequently clumsy ensemble and solo passages. Boykins, percussionists Jimhmi Johnson, Pat Patrick, and Roger Blank, and the rest of the Arkestra spend much of their time stumbling over (and sometimes through) their instruments, producing atonal passages of a childish quality with seemingly little attention paid to structure, melody, or rhythm. Nothing I'd heard or read before could help me get inside the tympani and bass duets of "Heliocentric" or the drunken clavioline and piano fights on "Nebulae." The best I could muster was a feeble comparison to early Nurse with Wound records, because Ra's sudden tempo changes and unusual instrumentation produced effects and contrasting textures that reminded me of the tape collages Stapleton produced. After listening more closely and reading some helpful articles, I was clued into the structure hiding behind the chaos, and subsequently into the beauty and originality of the Arkestra's sound.
Ra would conduct his large group by pairing instruments together and providing them loose rules. For instance, Boykins would be instructed to bow his bass, or trombonist Teddy Nance would be told to play long, whole notes against a contrasting rapidly moving flute solo, and both would be paired with seemingly unrelated percussion solos, wood blocks, or bass marimba. Each group of musicians would solo together, but only as Ra conducted them to do so and only according to a mood or idea Ra was exploring. So in one instant trombone and sax are playing together, and then the wood block and bass, and at any moment the whole band could erupt in a fit of excitement and noise, each with a wave of Ra's hand. The results are bizarre or surreal duets, trios, or ensemble movements with instruments that either contrast each other strongly or blend in awkward and glaring ways. My favorite example is when Ra pairs Robert Cummings' woodblocks and his own bass marimba with Boykins' already prominent acoustic bass. These two or three instruments fuse almost completely and very nearly produce the illusion of a single instrument, but their distinct timbres and colors keep them from having an entirely happy marriage.
I originally thought Sun Ra was seeking to create or highlight diversity and disparity in his music. The failure of his instruments to blend completely emphasized that, but so did the clumsy melodic phrases and tottering rhythms. Time, greater familiarity with Ra's music, and a little studying have changed my mind, and I now think the opposite is true. Boykins' bass playing on "The Sun Myth" is like nothing I've heard in jazz; it resembles the bowing of a bass in a classical orchestra more strongly than anything in jazz. And the loud percussion passages sound like a child's first drum lesson, but the Arkestra manages to force these two unlikely partners into a striking, if coarse, unity. Elsewhere, Ra pits shrieking saxophones against a background of swirling cymbals and buzzing electronic tones. Convention suggests these elements can't or shouldn't be paired, but the Arkestra miraculously draws them together. Their success depends both on Ra's guidance and on each musician's finely honed abilities; such abstract and spontaneous playing is neither easy nor natural. The resulting moods are sometimes tense, other times meditative, and frequently humorous or playful. Only rarely can the Arkestra be said to play as a band in any traditional sense. Parts of the third volume, as well as "Cosmic Chaos" and "Of Heavenly Things," feature a tighter logic and more coherent sense of counterpoint, so those songs make a more immediate kind of sense. But, for much of the record, we listeners are required to explore the depths of their expectations and interpretive skills in order to encounter the Arkestra's power and philosophy fully.
That's one of several reasons these records have taken such a hold on me. Their fluid character is another. Written and performed in the middle of New York City during the 1960s, Ra was automatically placed among the free jazz moguls of the time, but very few of these songs sound like jazz compositions at all, free or otherwise. I do hear fragments of jazz's past, but classical music, noise, tape collage, and other early electronic phrasings and expressions are present, too . I can't offer a better categorization, but I tend to agree with the theory that these records were filed under free jazz because nobody knew what else to call them.
Unfortunately, ESP Disk has done little to support the wonder and depth of Ra's music. This three disc set promises a lot and pretends to make good on them with an attractive outer sleeve and smartly distributed index of songs. Each of the three volumes gets its own disc, meaning none of them are muddled by bonus songs and none of them flow into each other unnaturally. When a disc ends, the album ends, too, and I applaud ESP's decision to keep each record distinct in that way. The original artwork for each album is also represented, although they're all tucked away beneath transparent CD trays. Still, unfolding the box set reveals a neat and simple layout. It's not the most attractive presentation in the world, but it functions well and I'm not sure how I would change it to make it any better. However, there's no booklet included with this set, and that's the first big problem I have with it. Extensive liner notes are nowhere to be found and only the most meager information about these records is provided on the back panel. Considering Sun Ra's ever-increasing popularity and the scope of the Arkestra's history, I'm surprised there wasn't more information provided up front. Things continue to deteriorate as I scan what little information is provided. Sun Ra's electronic keyboard, the "clavioline," is misspelled "clavoline" and the song "Of Heavenly Things" is misprinted as "Oh Heavenly Things." Additionally, "piccolo" is spelled as "picolo" on the back cover. These are small complaints, but they make the package feel cheaper and more hastily assembled than it should.
An impressive lineup of bonus features could make up for these mistakes, but calling any of the extras a bonus would be stretching it a bit.The first disc contains a roughly 16-minute "documentary" titled Spaceways. It's less a documentary film and more a piece of propaganda for Sun Ra's philosophy and ideas. If any of the bonuses are going to appeal to a Sun Ra fan, this is the one, but much of what Ra has to say can be found in books about him or in articles easily found on the Internet. Furthermore, the quality of the audio and video is low, probably because it was pulled from the original film without any effort given to improving its sometimes murky dialog and overall grainy picture. The second disc contains a "Sun Ra Photo Archive" that is little more than 12 JPEG files. A few of those files are images of the album covers, which are widely available everywhere and featured prominently in the set's artwork already. The other images may have their own value, but hardly constitute an archive. The critical writings "archive" on the third disc is a collection of Acrobat files containing reviews from publications large and small, including a Rolling Stone interview, a couple of brief mentions in The New York Times, and liner notes for all three volumes. Two of the reviews are very well written, reproduced clearly, and provide helpful information about the Heliocentric recordings. The remainder are poor scans of newspaper articles. The Rolling Stone feature could be a good read, but features tiny text and fuzzy image quality, which makes reading it tedious. Worse yet, the liner notes for each record, which should have been printed in a separate booklet (or at least somewhere in the box set itself), are included as part of this "archive." This isn't just cheap, it's insulting. ESP are basically lying to their audience about the content of their bonus material by including basic and necessary information for any good box set as a "bonus" feature. That's a lot like giving a giant middle finger to the consumer.
Having some of Sun Ra's best music made more readily available is truly exciting and a blessing. So much of his music is rarer than it should be. But the artwork, details, and presentation of that music should be treated with as much reverence and care as the music itself is.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Join the Allied Brainwashed Street Team
This is a chance for you to do something in your community for Brainwashed and some of its partners like Important Records, Killer Pimp, and other labels and bands hosted and associated with Brainwashed.com
You may be given music, stickers, posters, or other things to spread around your towns, leave at colleges, coffee shops, book stores, record stores, or whatever.
Notifications will be sent out and you'll never be asked to give money, but to be trusted to help spread the word however you can. Unfortunately we will not most likely be sending much stuff overseas due to cost and customs issues but it doesn't hurt to sign up.
Sign up now:
See the list of Artists and Archives or Recording Companies to get a general sense of who might at some point call upon you to help out.
Thanks
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Brainwashed Email Announcement List
Don't miss out on announcements on limited releases, tours, festival specials, and other tidbits! We don't send out a lot of email and we will NEVER sell the list to anyone.
Sign up for our email announcement list:
Visit Brainwashed Commerce to see what we have now.
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
This three disc set sees the reissue of Charlemagne Palestine’s masterpiece for the piano along with two previously unreleased versions of the piece for harpsichord and string ensemble. "Strumming for Bösendorfer Piano" is a landmark of modern composition, a return to first principles typical of that generation of minimalist composers. Eschewing complex forms and technique, Palestine instead chases the pure sound lurking within the piano and uses the instrument in a way that was revolutionary then and remains just as stunning now.
The piano has long been a tyrant on composed music, the entire orchestra a slave to its discrete and immutable tuning. This is not necessarily a bad thing. To be honest, the world would be a far poorer place without the countless masterpieces that have used the piano and its tuning as their cornerstone. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, it was easy to see how composers were beginning to wonder where they could go based on the confines of the orchestra and, at its heart, the piano. Erik Satie's Vexations took an absurd idea of playing a short piano figure hundreds of times, stretching the patience of the audience and the pianist to its limits. Later John Cage silenced the black beast with 4'33" which, although not exclusively composed for piano, opened up a new direction for composers to move in. Morton Feldman's various piano works focused on playing softly over long durations, creating an intimacy lost in the showy compositions of earlier composers. Altogether, they usurped the role of the piano and gave it the chance to sing in a way which it never knew it could do.
These works laid the foundations for two great piano pieces of the late 20th century. The first is La Monte Young's dazzling long-form piece The Well Tuned Piano, which dispensed with the traditional piano tuning in favor of intonation. The result was a piece of piano music which was colored in a way that had rarely been heard before. The second piece, which actually preceded Young’s piece, Palestine's Strumming Music, managed to wrestle such unearthly tones out of the piano as Young’s without resorting to completely retuning the instrument. Charlemagne instead devised a piece which took advantage of the piano’s natural ability to resonate, creating a human-instrument feedback engine. Beginning with pulsing E and B notes, Palestine would keep the sustain pedal down and start listening for the resonances in the instrument and play other notes to accentuate and articulate these vibrations. Before long, it is hard to determine which notes are being played by hitting the keys and which are the ghosts of the keys previously played. By the end of the piece, the normally predictable piano is acting in a way most unlike its usual staid self. Palestine does more in one sitting at the piano than hundreds of composers have done in the history of the instrument.
The liner notes describe the genesis and evolution of the piece, initially Palestine was quite specific that only the Bösendorfer piano would suffice as other pianos lacked its own unique resonant profile but as will be discussed below, he later adapted the piece for harpsichord and string ensemble. Additionally, although this piano recording lasts just under an hour, there are references to Palestine's intentions for a four hour rendition which would have preempted and rivaled Young’s own epic piece.
The two "new" recordings (both remaining unreleased since the '70s until now) lack the dazzle and the ingenuity of the original but both are intriguing in their own way. Betsy Freeman’s playing of "Strumming Music for Harpsichord" highlights just why Palestine insisted on using the Bösendorfer piano alone for the piece. Granted the harpsichord is not renowned for its resonance but the brittle sounding notes sound unusually harsh after the lush timbres of the original. The blurring effect of the resonance is lost as each key played is startlingly clear throughout the piece but the repetition and sustained attack gives this version a charm of its own. The version for string ensemble takes the piece on a third path, Palestine conducting the ensemble and directing them like he directed his own playing at the Bösendorfer. The shortest of the three recordings (only around 25 minutes), it is again reminiscent of Young’s works; listening to "Strumming for Strings" brings about the same meditative mood as Young’s The Second Dream of the High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from the Four Dreams of China. However, mood is the main link between the two, Palestine’s stamp is all over this piece and, honestly, this triple CD set is worth the money for this recording alone.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Jack Dangers has been bitten by the dubstep bug and there are no two ways about it. Answers Come in Dreams finds the long time innovator giving in to (or perhaps trying out) the style du jour for a strange distillation of his own sound.
This happened once before when Meat Beat Manifesto released a new version of "Helter Skelter" with a jungle tinge and then turned in a remix of Nine Inch Nails' "Perfect Drug" that proved that Dangers could tap into the reigning dance culture when he wasn't busy creating it.But Answers Come in Dreams is a different story.At a time when dubstep has bubbled over the rim of the underground to become the inevitable hotness for a while, the purpose of a new record from Meat Beat Manifesto that plays by the dubstep rules is a little hard to understand.
Meat Beat Manifesto is, after all, one of the progenitors of dubstep.Tracks like "Lucid Dream" from Subliminal Sandwich or pieces of Storm the Studio from all the way back in 1989 anticipate the slowed-down, dub-infused spacious stomp of contemporary dubstep.There's no doubt in my mind that Dangers' music played a role in paving a way for the wobble, so the inevitable question that Answers Come in Dreams keeps raising is "why does this record sound so little like Meat Beat Manifesto?"
Answers Come in Dreams features plenty of Meat Beat trademarks and sample callbacks, to be sure.A beat from "Spinning Round Dub" (off of 2004's RUOK in Dub) surfaces on "M Y C;" the wonderful "let me have silence" spoken piece shows up in "Token Words;" "Melt" recycles a bit of the "Radio Baylon" bassline; and the analog filtered percussion and squelchy synths on "# Zero" and "010130" sound familiar.But the album features many more tracks like the opener "Luminol" or the lfo-addled "Let Me Set" that are almost completely void of Dangers' usual charm.
Throughout, the record contains dreamy whispers of the Meat Beat sound that float deep in the background like lost radio transmissions.An occasional synth note or bubbly ambiance or waterphone drone will remind me that Dangers is in there somewhere, perhaps lost and even trying to escape from dubstep's droll plodding.But those moments are so fleeting and washed out that the whole thing feels like a dubstep remix of a Meat Beat record that could have been produced by someone else.Gone is almost all of the humor and playfulness that has been a stable of Meat Beat records since, well, always.
If all of that sounds like I'm very down on the album, I'm not.It is on its own terms a fantastic subwoofer workout and a near-perfect distillation of Meat Beat into bass and space. There are enough distorted drum breaks, spooky sonic backdrops, and waves of wobbly and overdriven low end to keep me more than happy.Jack trades in his bass guitar (for the most part) in favor of deep 808 blasts and heavy synth rumble that will not make sense at all if you aren't listening with a decent sub, and I love all of that.The beats are stripped down and the patterns in everything are simplified to give the bass room to breathe.While that takes away most of the beautiful rhythmic complexity that Meat Beat is known for, the approach is still effective here in eliciting a head nod.In fact, I tire of most dubstep so quickly that it's nice to have something that gives the low frequencies a bashing while still injecting tiny, fleeting fragments of the familiar.
V/VM (recording as The Caretaker) released a six CD box set a few years back that was inspired by the scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson is wandering around in the old hotel ballroom and he hears the faint, ghostly melodies of a party that has long-since ended.Answers Come in Dreams feels like that to the rest of the Meat Beat catalog.It's full of half-remembered dreams and barely-recognizable fragments of Meat Beat carried on the wind and blown through empty hallways, that have somehow drifted into a dubstep party that is taking place in that empty ballroom.It's less of Dangers coming back to show the young kids how it's done and more of a seasoned pioneer playing in someone else's playground for a spell.I don't know if the dubstep die hards are going to take to a record that doesn't feel quite as up-to-the-minute as that scene requires: new sub-styles seem to come and go every fortnight.Still, Answers Come in Dreams is a dark and bass-heavy grind that benefits from Dangers' impressive ability to wring depth out of space.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Although only active for around six years, this Shanghai based noise project already has a sprawling discography that rivals many of the long-standing artists that inspired them, with a multitude of limited cassette and CD-R releases. However, I think this may constitute the band’s first solo, mass produced outing. And with this opportunity, the band does exactly as they should: a 73 minute single track of grating, painful dynamic noise.
Torturing Nurse, and many of their peers in the burgeoning Chinese electronic music scene, have been in a unique position with the evolution of their sound.While the Japanese artists who inspired them evolved their approach over many years (see Hijokaidan’s early brain damaged jazz and Merzbow's tape loop experiments compared to their latter output), the Chinese sound has almost sprung up immediately as a condensed microcosm of what everyone else had done.The cultural barricade against outside influence that was brought down by the establishment of the Internet and its immediate access to music led to a rapid influx of new sounds, all of which were quickly absorbed and digested by the artists active now.
Following the template of classic Hijokaidan albums such as Romance and Modern, this disc is actually one uninterrupted piece of constantly undulating, churning harsh noise.While it mimics the structure, the approach differs somewhat.The mix is somewhat thinner than the other artists in the genre, letting fragments of voice or guitar squealingor whatever to be audible, creating an almost melodic, musical counterpoint to the rushing rapids of white noise atop.
"Relenting" isn’t something that is going to happen here, though:there isn’t any semblance of ambience or quiet reflection, but the single piece retains a dynamic propulsion throughout that never drags nor becomes boring.The opening shrieks and screams give way to deep, over-driven buzzes and pulses, with feedback that is shaped crudely into almost musical elements appearing later.
The vocals reappear later, but so does slew of other noise textures and approaches, such as the filtered, nasal blasts about half way through the album, and the CCCC-like psychedelic flanging that coats the mix at various times, closing the album with a heady blast reminiscent of Astro or other solo works from Hiroshi Hasagawa.
As a whole, it does feel like Torturing Nurse’s sound, at least on this album, is the culmination of the 20-odd year period that has defined modern "Japanoise" to the masses.Influences from everyone involved, including the Incapacitants, MSBR, Masonna, and the other previously mentioned artists can all be heard on this album.However, the result is not simply the aping of known projects, but the full culmination of their sound, that is much more about influence than copying.It’s obvious what and who inspired this band, but they still combine these influences in a way that makes the result clearly their own work, which is what separates the good from the crap when it comes to noise.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
While often pigeonholed as a "shoegaze" band, the duo of Lovesliescrushing is something entirely different. Ostensibly doing similar things: Scott Cortez's heavily treated and layered guitar noise and abstracted, mostly unintelligible female vocals from Melissa Arpin-Duimstra, LLC took these and pushed them to the furthest reaches, making little to no concessions for traditional musical style or structure. Here, a selection of pieces between 1990 and 2000 are presented, some for the first time, reworked and shaped into even more abstract forms of glorious noise.
The tracks cover a wide range of dynamic approaches and structures.In some cases, they are soft, delicate pastiches of beauty:"Seahorse" places thin, reversed guitar notes with a soft, warm bed of sustained sound to create a song that is alien, yet inviting in its style."Kittenmother" is a piece of pure ambient beauty, with a somewhat melancholy, mournful quality to it."Winglike" takes this even further, with Arpin-Duimstra's distant voice and echoed guitar over a dense hum giving everything a very sad feel.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are a significant number of songs here that are all about the orgasmic ecstasy of over-driven guitar noise and feedback."Spidery Velvet," though melodically a restrained piece is presented with an accompaniment of maxed out guitar feedback from Cortez to the point of pure distortion:the 4 track it was recorded on couldn’t even come close to keeping up with the volume."Elephai" is similar, meshing delicate lullaby vocals with massive guitar noise that becomes the core of the song.
"Feathermouth" even drops the focus on melody, immediately launching into a torrent of feedback and effects that is undeniably harsh, but somehow manages to retain a hint of musicality, which becomesmagnified by its slow sonic decay as the song ends, ripping away the raw sounds slowly.The closing "Goldenfur" takes the best of both worlds, opening with the delicate, shimmering guitar textures and breathy female vocals, slowly building into heavier and denser layers before reaching a climax of roaring guitar noise that retreats, leaving only the remnants of feedback to end the album.
One of the most striking aspects of these recordings iis how they foretold the sound of many current and prolific artists.During the harshest moments of over-driven feedback and squeal, I instantly was reminded of some of Jesu and Nadja's best moments: the simple love and indulgence of noise, but harboring a melodic sense that keeps it within the loosest sense of form and structure.Following the deconstructed sounds released on CRWTH earlier this year, this makes for the perfect compliment in its physical and emotional content.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
It has only been three years since Sublime Frequencies released the inaugural entry in their Guitars From Agadez series, but so much has happened since then that it is a near miracle that Group Inerane even managed another album. The biggest event: second guitarist Adi Mohamed was killed in the uprisings that followed the coup d’état that ousted Niger’s president. Thankfully, frontman Bibi Ahmed narrowly avoided the same fate and recruited Taureg guitar legend Koudede to fill the void. Unsurprisingly, the new Group Inerane are a darker and noticeably different band.
I can't think of any other band that can quite top Group Inerane for sheer outlaw cool.For one, the Tauregs are a historically nomadic culture living in the Sahara desert, a culture that has been sporadically clashing violently with both the Mali and Niger governments for decades.In fact, the whole Taureg Guitar movement originated in rebel camps in the 1980s.Then, of course, there is the fact that famine, unstable government, and corruption plague the entire country.New member Koudede improbably adds still more to the band's near-mythic bad-assitude, as he grew up in a uranium mining town, never went to school, and learned how to play guitar in Libyan and Algerian rebel camps.It is definitely not the ideal milieu for a rock band to set up shop in, especially when band members are getting gunned down in firefights with a military junta, yet Ahmed has nevertheless managed to survive and even thrive in that environment.
Anyone who has heard Sublime Frequencies' other Group Inerane album will probably be a little surprised by the band's change in direction.Guitars From Agadez Volume One sounded like a raucous party, filled with handclaps and exuberant, oft-ululating female backing vocalists.This album is considerably more restrained and hypnotic, sounding less like an out-of-control African wedding reception than a blues-damaged Neu!As it turns out, an Africanized Neu! is extremely cool.On the new-style tracks, such as "Ikabkaban," the rhythm section of Abdulai Sidi Mohamed and Mohamed Atchinguel lock into a simple, mesmerizing groove, providing a propulsive foundation for the guitars' bluesy ringing arpeggios.The whole effect is very trancelike, as everything thumps and throbs along insistently, but the deft improvisations of Bibi and Koudede manage to still make it feel like an unpredictable and vibrant affair.
The group hasn't totally abandoned their past though, as most of the elements present on their first album are still present to some degree–they just seem much more toned down.Probably some of that is due to this album's dodgier sound quality, but Group Inerane are definitely more laid back.The biggest difference is that the group feels much smaller now, though it is hard to tell if that is true since the album only credits the four core members.Even if it isn't true, there is no conspicuous evidence of exotic instrumentation and traditional percussion now.Also, the band's female backing singers seem very diminished in both number and presence.Group Inerane have also largely stopped using distortion, an odd choice considering their newly "rock" line-up and instrumentation.I am not a big fan of exotic rock appropriations in general (and I don’t particularly care for the more standard-issue rock of "Tamidit In Aicha"), but the rest of the album's quasi-motorik direction is quite satisfying and unique.Of course, I enjoyed their previous sound too, but the only thing I truly miss is the rampant ululation.
Unfortunately, I am a bit conflicted on the sound quality of this release, even though I am well-accustomed to the expected Sublime Frequencies rawness.These nine songs appear to have been recorded live by Hisham Mayet in Niamey, Niger earlier this year and the quality is only slightly better than what might've been achieved with a boombox.This definitely sounds more like a field recording than a concert recording.That said, it is certainly admirable to present Group Inerane in as raw and unhomogenized a way as possible, but this album does not sound like a total in-the-red rock frenzy–it sounds like a barely adequate live recording with somewhat buried vocals.Given the difficult circumstances in Agadez, that may have been the best that Mayet could get.In fact, Hisham was probably lucky to get anything at all.That does not make it any less frustrating though.The music is certainly inspired and impressive, but Guitars From Agadez Volume 3 is mere documentation that something awesome is happening ("the now sound of the Taureg Guitar revolution!") rather than an awesome album in its own right.
Samples:
Read More