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Taken from a live performance at the impressive St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh last year, this collaboration sees Colin Potter teaming up with Michael Begg to create everything from a rich, heavy blanket to a delicate spider web of sound. Over the course of the performance, they continually force us to shift our attention as they move across a range of soundscapes. Unnatural vibrations collide with vaguely recognizable field recordings, making a sublime hybrid between the real world and a fantastic alternative to day to day listening.
Omnempathy / ICR
The recording manages to convey the echoing environs of the performance; the reverberation in the cathedral nearly playing as much of a role as either performer. The sounds generated and processed by Potter and Begg are exaggerated by the acoustics of the room and illusions are commonplace. The apparent church organ that appears early on in the performance during "Carnethy" may instead be a disguised guitar (as alluded to by Begg in an interview prior to the performance). These illusory tactics go further than the sounds on the album; the picture on the cover depicting stylish lampshades turns out to be a bunch of men’s vests with light bulbs shoved inside them.
At times, the music accumulates into a thick black rain cloud, promising to unleash an unearthly tempest. On "Braid," the sound of running water and the bass-heavy drones together sounds like a bonfire burning and we are stuck at its center as listeners. Yet, it is not all a foreboding storm as the duo sculpts delicate forms out of the found sounds and instruments at their disposal. The melancholic, deconstructed guitar of "Harper Rig" snakes around itself to produce a twisting and gorgeous mass of sliding notes; sitting somewhere between the soundtrack without a film beauty of Stars of the Lid and the grittier explorations of Begg’s main project Human Greed. The way the duo dance between these disparate moods without breaking the flow of Fragile Pitches is not surprising considering their previous work (both apart and together with Fovea Hex) but it is still impressive.
The limited edition of Fragile Pitches comes with a bonus disc containing the pre-recorded music that was played in the cathedral before and after the live performance. At over an hour long, it is a substantial addition to Fragile Pitches but by no means prolongs the album to the point where it is an endurance test to listen to it all. "Lymphoy: A Precise Flight" lacks the rounded edges of the cathedral’s acoustics but allows a clearer look at Potter and Begg’s compositions. Reminiscent of Nurse With Wound’s The Memory Surface, there is less variation here compared to the actual performance but the focus is now on the microscopic textures that give Fragile Pitches its personality. The gradually evolving and slowly moving waves that underpinned the live performance are given the spotlight and they are as interesting like as they are buried under the various other sounds that the duo used.
Although it is a live album, Fragile Pitches never truly feels like it happened here on earth. It has a wobbly, hazy presence throughout as Potter and Begg straddle the border between here and a place where an M.C. Escher drawing is taken as a blueprint. Each time I finish listening, I feel like I have been on a journey but like a dream dissolves upon wakening, my memories of where I have gone dissipate into the void Potter and Begg have just vacated.
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For their latest full length album, the Ohio trio have nudged the controls of their vessel and changed course for new sonic territories. The character of their music has remained unchanged, they use the same synthesizer and guitar set up, but the form in which they present it is not the familiar waves of cosmic debris that populated albums like Solar Bridge or What Happened. Here they have adopted a more melodic style which has resulted in a more accessible but equally thrilling body of music.
Two things stand out on Does It Look Like I’m Here?: firstly, the trio has opted for many shorter tracks in place of their usual long form approach to writing music. Secondly, whereas before the synths and guitar melded together with only the occasional separation of the instruments, here they occupy their own distinct places in the mix. Together, these alterations to the Emeralds formula have resulted in a distinct shift in style and mood with surprisingly miniscule loss of the group’s musical identity in the process.
The first few minutes of the album are a surprise as, in lieu of the krauty waves of synth, Emeralds instead sound like the music that accompanies the menu of a video game like Final Fantasy VII or the old Zelda games from when I was a child. On "Candy Shoppe" there are simple melodies, clear notes and a bright, cheery mood permeating through the music. This is not the Emeralds I know but I am still drawn in as I have been many times previously. This happier side of Emeralds runs throughout Does It Look Like I’m Here? as pieces like "Double Helix" (which sounds like the ecstatic offspring of Tangerine Dream’s Ricochet and Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygène) and "Now You See Me" explode with colour and joy.
Both John Elliot and Steve Hauschildt’s skills have developed a lot over the last couple of years; the more complex arrangements of the synth elements of the music bring a huge amount of depth to this album. The glistening keyboard shimmer of "Genetic" stands testament to their skill. It is hard not to become hypnotised by these gorgeous tones and just when it feels like it cannot get any better, Mark McGuire’s perfect guitar lines come in to complete a picture that defies the laws of geometry.
When in full swing, Does It Look Like I’m Here? is tremendous and certainly ranks among the trio’s best work (it impresses me how they keep raising the bar with each release). Even the patchier moments pale only in comparison to the rest of the disc, on an older Emeralds album they would fit in better. "Shade" is a case in point, it is fine by itself but does not have the same vigour as most of the other pieces on Does It Look Like I’m Here? Yet despite these occasional missteps, there is little here to find fault with as the group have successfully developed the remit of their music beyond drones and washes of sound.
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It's a good thing for this album that Ellen Allien is in control of what gets released on the Bpitch Control label, had anyone else submitted this snooze-fest as a demo it undoubtedly would be rejected. Were Berlinette not in my personal top five or so faves of electronica albums of the last decade I probably wouldn't be so harsh, but Dust truly is a stinker.
Objectively Dust suffers from an identity crisis. It's an album molded to the pop format: 10 songs that average about 4.5 minutes each, but stylistically it's attempting to be a collection of music for the dancefloor: faithful beats with very little instrumentation and vocals. Subjectively Dust is plagued by compositions that are weak, bland, uninspiring, and forgettable. There's no hooks here: nothing to hold on to, and while that may work with the most minimal melodies, the tunes here are simply amateurish and dull: the album consists entirely of filler.
Preceding Allien's fifth solo full-length album are a couple singles.
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Back before he joined Sonic Youth and became an avant rock elder statesman, Jim O'Rourke played in Illusion of Safety with Dan Burke, who has continued the project since his then-partner went all big time. Here, one of those mid-period releases is reissued and remastered, bringing the 18 year old release on Staalplaat back into the economy, and demonstrating how both artists were on the top of their game compositionally even back then.
A recurring theme throughout these four untitled tracks is a constant shift in dynamics, juxtaposing extremely quiet moments of electronic drift with sharp, caustic blasts of noise, and subtle field recordings.The first piece begins with what sounds like an air conditioner duct drone that eventually shapes into some semblance of rhythm, with sharp sheets of noise and crackles, before immediately transitioning into a massive orchestral blast that is allowed to slowly reverberate off into silence, with only the ghost of a hum far off in the mix.Stuttering pieces of more traditional electronic music and kids talking jovially appear before another orchestral detonation occurs.Finally, towards its closing moments a high register warbling tone becomes more and more obnoxious, eventually dueting with a low frequency thump.This on its own actually wouldn’t be out of place on an early Whitehouse album, but the cut into ostensibly a field recording in a dive bar, complete with Skynyrd's "Simple Man" playing in the background, certainly wouldn’t.
The second, long piece is cut from a similar cloth, opening with almost silence before an explosion of heavy electronics, and then back to quiet drone.The pattern continues, albeit irregularly, bringing in dogs barking, malfunctioning TVs, and vacuum cleaner noises to cut between the extremely quiet electronic menace that continues throughout, eventually putting chiming bells and a droning piano together before ending on a violent, piercing noise outburst.Track three puts jackhammers atop low frequency synth tones, found sound rattling, and analog synth noise, all around a deep pool of silence.
The shorter closing track brings the field recording elements that are sprinkled about into full focus, initially creating a minimal drone from the sounds of passing cars before launching into a traffic jam, replete with angry honking horns and revving engines, but then cuts to a quiet recording of nature, mixing the urban sprawl with the pastoral countryside.But, rather than ending on this overt juxtaposition, the duo instead decide to bring in jabs of industrial drum machine percussion and theme park music to bring things to an end.Considering the previous 18 some minutes of odd combinations and unpredictability, it’s a very fitting conclusion.
Illusion of Safety is clearly Dan Burke's baby, and here he shows his strengths in developing both industrial tinged noise along with collage elements, but O’Rourke's touch isn’t one to be ignored either, showing that the duo worked together to develop this sonic environment in which they both lived.Originally an edition of 500 copies, it's great that the label saw fit to introduce it to a whole new audience, many of who have probably heard of IoS, but never listened.Well, here’s a chance to.
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On his second album, Andreas Brinkert (aka Bipol) is clearly working in a modern industrial context, but one that is somewhere between the experimental abrasion of the "true" genre and the more popularized distortion-and-drum-machine set as well. The outcome is one that is caked in the dirt and muck of noise, but has a definite beat and occasional melody slithering through.
Like many people (I'm assuming), my introduction to this deep, dank world of experimental and noise music began with the likes of Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and other artists that became labeled "industrial" with the passage of time.So, I do feel a twinge of nostalgia when I hear what sounds like a broken 808 clicking alongside the buzzing chaotic noise of "In The Name of the Workers," and the junk metal percussion sounds and almost melodic synths only add to that feeling.The rhythm of "My Challenge" sounds like an '80s synth pop track re-sequenced to a complexity the hardware probably couldn’t have handled 25 years ago, and pulls it under a bed of grimy keyboards and indecipherable voices.The result is a dense, heavy mix of sound that is definitely a lot to take in, but not alienating or overly challenging, just complex.
The air-raid siren melodies and crusty bass drum pulse of "Talk About My Scream" alongside vocals screamed to the point of absurdity do feel more in-line with what the kids these days are doing with their industrial music, but the structural complexity keeps it from being just bland jackhammer noise."Confusion" does the aggro-industrial thing as well, mixing gurgling bass lines, broken voices, and drum beats that sound more like kung fu flick sound effects than anything else.Conversely, "In My Hand"'s rudimentary heavy rhythms and careful use of abstract noise channel the early industrial of Cabaret Voltaire or SPK (before either one went the club-friendly route) to great effect.
While the album never really relents, "It Makes Me Sick" allows for a bit of breathing room, even amongst the metal-tinged percussion and brittle synths.The sparse, but heavy rhythms of "The Menacing Kiss" somehow manage to be both abrasive and ambient:it's a whole bunch of noise, but in such a way that it's not fully dominating the mix.The album's weakest link, in my opinion, is "Contest of Devotion."Beginning strong with obtuse steel drum passages, dramatic synth flourishes, and a bit of glitch texture, the track feels like it never hits its stride, as if it’s ready to break out any time into a great blast of electronic aggression, but it never does.
This definitely is an album that commands full attention, because the amount of shit being thrown out at any given time is occasionally oppressive, but never uncomfortable.While some music can be comfortably be playing whilst reading or writing or conversing, this isn’t one of those discs.Instead, the noise and chaos, but all presented over a complex rhythm and structure, are simply too much to ignore, but is well worth focusing on.
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The debut release from this American noise duo is a pedestrian attempt at creating som unpleasant, hateful and gripping post-industrial noise. However, Thor J. and Waddiah Rabiah Chami never feel like they are connecting with the sound they are generating. It is a shame because Chami's other work as Koufar prepared me for something huge and powerful which Disgust never manages to pull off. This is noise at its most inoffensive despite the supposed intentions of Disgust.
 
The five bursts of power electronics on this 3" CDR fail to capture the force implied by titles like "Disgust" and "Fueled by Self Hate/If I Could." Instead, the various pieces would be better described as ambivalent electronics; I just do not get any cathartic release or emotional response from Time Ruins Everything... beyond despondency. Turning the volume up (which usually brings out the best in even the most mediocre power electronics) does nothing for Disgust, even at dangerously loud levels this still sounds safe.
In the middle of the EP is a piece called "Epiphany" where one of the duo confides into the microphone that "[he doesn’t] know what else to say." This is not so much of a revelation for me; having sat through this a few times now, I would argue that the word "else" is superfluous as Disgust have not said anything yet.
 
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On his latest tape, Anthony Mangicapra again explores the sounds and textures of metals in order to find their hidden beauty. Carefully layered and manipulated, the source materials are transformed into a higher form; divinity wrenched from cold, hard matter. This is a vastly different beast to his other recently cassette Ship of the Desert; this is sound both liberated and liberating from reality.
"A Rain of Iron" consists of a chopped loop of what sounds like it used to be classical music, a high pitched whine and heavily distorted percussive noises. These phase in and out with each other to create a constantly shifting body of sound; somewhere Steve Reich is asleep and his dreams are plagued with horrors. Suddenly the loop is dropped into the body of an old piano whose rusty strings clang, sing and shout in surprising ways before falling silent forever.
On the other side of the tape is another decaying, scraping abyss. On "An Early Fluid State," the sound of heavy metal objects being dragged across a floor provides a backdrop for a celestial mix of keyboard tones and what sounds like a vibraphone. The metallic noise blends into some heavily abused saxophone (or so it appears, this could be all just a by-product of Mangicapra’s audio collage) to create another nightmarish void.
The incongruity and amorphousness of the sounds used here by Mangicapra are like a painting by Francis Bacon. There are clues as to what sort of scene is being described (the rooms that pervade Bacon’s works find parallels in the solid sound sources used by Mangicapra) but with both artists there is a primal, emotive centre that overrides any sense of familiarity. The roar of Mangicapra’s audio work could easily come from the mouths of Bacon’s screaming popes.
 
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02 hmmm
03 grrr
04 oh!
05 kastell
06 sediment
07 featurette
08 saas fairy
09 kastell 4
10 kasko
11 homesick
12 tricot
13 locria
14 nonfiction
15 happyend 2
02 ah! (Disc 1)
03 Shhh (Disc 1)
04 Glossy (Disc 1)
05 stop motion (Disc 1)
06 sky (Disc 1)
07 beige (Disc 1)
08 Brahms Mania (Disc 1)
09 cinematic (Disc 1)
10 cry (Disc 1)
11 Cottage (Disc 1)
12 I heart Musik (Disc 1)
13 Salamanca (Disc 1)
14 Dolo (Disc 1)
15 Dricas (Disc 1)
16 Cyprus (Disc 1)
17 vessel (Disc 1)
18 Dynamo (Disc 1)
19 Finis (Disc 1)
20 Emocor (Disc 1)
21 Citybike (Disc 2)
22 Oslo (Disc 2)
23 ij (Disc 2)
24 Rivo (Disc 2)
25 pomp (Disc 2)
26 Blinky (Disc 2)
27 parallax (Disc 2)
28 Koral (Disc 2)
29 kolor (Disc 2)
30 auto matic (Disc 2)
31 Dream Over (Disc 2)
32 pastell (Disc 2)
33 magnify (Disc 2)
34 drift (Disc 2)
35 allover (Disc 2)
36 Derby (Disc 2)
37 Flax (Disc 2)
38 Bergen Best (Disc 2)
39 Matinee (Disc 2)
40 Kukicha (Disc 2)
41 6 AM (Disc 2)
42 Flamingo (Disc 2)
43 Rivo II (Disc 2)
44 Goodbye (Disc 2)
45 Fontan (Disc 2)
46 Co-Echo (Disc 2)
47 stop motion II (Disc 2)
48 vitesse (Disc 2)
49 September (Disc 2)
18 voila (Disc 2)
51 Vegas top (Disc 2)
52 Expo (Disc 2)
53 lonely (Disc 2)
54 Java (Disc 2)
55 klack (Disc 2)
56 Project Evergreen (Disc 2)
57 rainyday (Disc 2)
58 Big City Nights (Disc 2)
59 Rosammie (Disc 2)
60 Gallo (Disc 2)
61 May Tea (Disc 2)
62 chronograph (Disc 2)
63 Jank (Disc 2)
64 breezy (Disc 2)
65 press (Disc 2)
66 form faktor (Disc 2)
67 terminal (Disc 2)
68 Karo (Disc 2)
69 Swiss Summer (Disc 2)
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This limited edition collection of live recordings sees irr. app. (ext.) stripped down from its usual group configuration for the stage; for these performances Matthew Waldron braved audiences on his own. The end result is a collection of pieces which allow Waldron to extend the live sound of irr. app. (ext.) into new musical plains. There is less clutter in the arrangements, having one pair of hands forces the music to be sparser than before. Yet the core values at the heart of Waldron’s music are preserved and although his audio surrealism has a new face, it still has the same primal capacity to unnerve and enrapture in equal measure.
The music contained on Josephine & Elsewhere is markedly different to the other live recordings of irr. app. (ext.) made available previously on Aspiring to an Empty Gesture. Without a supporting cast, the music follows a more limited scope without sacrificing the ingenuity and enchantment I associate with irr. app. (ext.). "The Four Horsemen of Natural Science (After Aphrodite’s Child)" centres around a stark rhythm and Waldron’s voice, with live processing of samples interspersed as needed.
Throughout the album, Waldron uses a lot of approaches that have been dotted around the irr. app. (ext.) back catalogue but from a different angle in each case. Many of the sounds are kept low in volume and are largely ambient or incidental in character, which gives the music a sinister edge—the clanging metallic guitar and deep drone of "CMBR (Variation 2)" makes for a acutely disconcerting listening experience. However, Waldron does let rip on a couple of tracks; in particular the guitar work on "Haphazard Trajectory II" is superb. Waldron seems to be summoning up the ghost of Snakefinger with his precise but anarchic style of playing. The residue of The Residents is felt elsewhere amongst these solo performances, pieces like "Caniad At Yr Annisgwyl Sbasm" capturing that same free approach to what is acceptable in "serious" music as Meet the Residents.
As an incentive to buy a physical copy of this instead of downloading it off a blog, Waldron includes an original drawing inside each copy. Mine features a strange clump of amoeboid cells emerging from a clam shell which is a strangely fitting image for the equally amoeboid music captured on this Josephine & Elsewhere. As nice as the drawing is, the music of course takes center stage here and although it would not be the best place for a novice to start; those who have been enjoying Waldron’s experiments over the last decade or so will find something unexpected and entrancing amidst these recordings.
samples:
- The Four Horsemen of Natural Science (After Aphrodite's Child)
- Haphazard Trajectory II
- O, Wistfully Cantillating Paraceratherium
 
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I am a sucker for loud, heavy and white hot rock bands and Mugstar hit home on all three scores. From the opening track to the tinnitus after the CD has stopped playing, I am enthralled by their latest album. Mugstar tear the arse out of my stereo with their pounding performance, every piece on this, their second proper full length, is a mini-masterpiece.
"Technical Knowledge as a Weapon" is one hell of an opener; the combined organ and guitar blitzkrieg has all the power of their former labelmates A Place to Bury Strangers but is less late '80s/early '90s shoegaze and more like a long lost kraut band soundtracking a supernova. What impresses me most is that this is only the opening barrage in a sustained war on quiet as ...Sun, Broken... goes up several gears as it progresses. The sinewy tremolo guitar of "Ouroboros" snakes its way around Steve Ashton’s drums, creating a backbone of iron for the piece. The final section of the piece spirals outwards dangerously and the resulting crash is glorious in its noisy, fiery cataclysm.
After a short, relaxed interlude the opening riff of "Today is the Wrong Shape" launches from the stereo like a missile. Channelling the driving force of Neu! through Joy Division’s "No Love Lost," this is the sort of music that I imagine would pour from my fingers if only I had the talent. Thank Mugstar for making it a reality. As the feedback builds and drums pound incessantly, the piece climaxes with some awesome shouted vocals which give the music all the urgency of a ticking time bomb. The album closes with the epic "Furklausundbo" which again appropriates the motorik beat of Klaus Dinger but supplements it with the kind of organ playing I would expect to hear if I was to reach heaven on a sunny day. When the guitars take over, I do not have to imagine this heaven as it is here and it sounds even better than I imagined.
How these guys have remained under the radar for so long has always baffled me but I would be surprised if this disc did not see them gain the sort of momentum they deserve. ...Sun, Broken... is by far and away one of the best examples of psychedelic rock to pass my way recently.
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Recorded live last year in Dublin, the performance captured here on Paul G. Smyth’s latest album sees him pare back his piano improvisations to a crystalline and cool minimum. Limiting his runs across the keys has resulted in a rich but focussed exploration of the tonal capabilities of the piano (which despite its abundance in recorded music never fails to be a constant source of creative inspiration). Smyth is always a pleasure to listen to and this disc is no exception, I am kicking myself for not having made it to the concert in the first place.
Compared to Smyth’s last album—Descenders—Winteriser III is a far more controlled yet intoxicating recording. The first of the two untitled pieces on this new disc initially recalls the quiet and serenity of late Morton Feldman. Smyth gently caresses the music out of the piano, extracting the notes from its body like a magician pulling handkerchiefs from his sleeve. As the piece gains momentum, any relation to Feldman is lost as music patters on the eardrum like a heavy rain shower on a glass roof. The transition away from softness to this turbulence is not jarring; Smyth’s improvisatory style is never heavy handed. Relying not on shock tactics, Smyth blends his attack slowly from almost quiet to a more forceful approach and brings the listener along with him in incremental steps.
On the second piece, Smyth’s playing resembles a startled bird that has accidentally flown into a room and cannot find the window to escape. Out of the piano come fluttering notes, beating against each other like feathers against the air. The piece ends with the hollow sound of Smyth bypassing the keyboard to hit and pluck the inside of the piano directly; the unintentionally captured bird’s tremulous heartbeat thumping its last. The silence after the albums finishes is one filled with the thoughts of what I have just heard as Smyth’s ghostly playing echoes on after the fact.
Smyth’s previous solo albums have all been deep, immersive works (even though some of the recordings are brief). Usually I have to be in the mood for them but enjoy them when I am ready for them. However, with Winteriser III Smyth has made a more accessible version of his piano improvisations yet loses none of his emotional impact. I would in fact argue that this alternative view of his playing has a greater emotional impact than usual. I also have learned an important lesson: next time I will not miss the gig.
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