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As two of the more recent works from the prolific Eric Hardiman (who also performs and records as a member of Century Plants, Twilight of the Century, and a slew of other projects), Remember Me Now and Surface Language are distinctly different facets to the Rambutan project. The former is a diverse collection of instrumentation and sound, from found processed recordings, improvised percussion and guitar. The latter, however, has a more consistent focus, built from repeating motifs and loops fitting a more tautly structured composition. Both, however, capture Hardiman’s penchant for bending objects and instruments into often unexplainable sounds, yet result in nuanced compositions of melody and abstraction.
Remember Me Now is more of an album in its structure and presentation, with 11 pieces of variable lengths that draw from all different facets of the Rambutan sound.Pieces such as the opening "Petrified" and "Sliding Scale Deviance" capture his mostly amelodic, free improvisation work.The former is all crunchy scrapes panned left to right while chiming and gentle glassy sounds are stretched over top.The latter begins with the metallic vibrating of bass guitar strings that could just as easily be vibrating springs, creating anything but a conventional rhythm. "Sliding Scale Deviance" may have Hardiman adding some lighter electronic sounds to the mix later on, but that grinding string scrape is what makes the piece the most memorable.
Guitar acts as the focus on "Kill The Lights," which slowly builds up from complex, intertwining layers of slightly less mangled instrumentation."If I Can’t Be Wrong" features rather untreated guitar playing towards its conclusion, beginning with fluttering alien noises and an overall sense of moving forward and backward, but never standing still.The conventional and unconventional both blend excellently on two of the albums high points.The first, "I Should Be Tired" captures the delirium that can come from extended insomnia brilliantly via odd collaged noises and erratic pitch bends.Hints of melody and bizarre percussion slip through fleetingly, resulting in a piece of disorienting ambiance.Basic piano melodies and found noises are contrasted on "Fourth Day," coming together like a sparse musical composition combined with a piece of purely free improvisation.
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Surface Language, on the other hand, is two 15 minute pieces that stay in a more constant, focused mood rather than the eclecticism of Remember Me Now.Ghostly electronics and strange humming feedback make for the foundation of "The Surface of Language."Hardiman adds and subtracts layers with regularity, maintaining a consistent structure but never letting it pause for long, eventually drifting off into a galaxy of cosmic electronics.The other piece, "The Language of Surface" is built upon echoing loops and hushed rhythms.Again he constructs the piece slowly, with the alternating pitch of chiming percussion bouncing the mood between light and darkness.Slowly he nudges the piece towards a noisier, more chaotic conclusion compared to how it began.
Remember Me Now is the more diverse and wide-ranging of these two releases, but for that reason it jumps all over the map as far as tone and mood.In contrast, Surface Language makes for two more focused and consistent compositions, but also less variation.While they may be different, both are brilliantly executed, and both releases capture Hardiman’s singular, powerful approach to creating music that sounds like no one else.
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Somehow Drew McDowall has managed to be involved with the most interesting fringes of electronic and experimental music for over three decades without ever stepping into the spotlight himself, most notably working with Psychic TV during their ‘80s heyday and teaming up with Coil throughout the '90s.  Lately, he has mostly been quietly focusing on occasional remixes and soundtrack work, though he intermittently records as half of modular synth duo Compound Eye.  Collapse is a bit of modular synth album too, but it sounds almost nothing like Compound Eye.  Instead, it intermittently sounds like a great unfinished Coil album (when it does not instead sound like a collage experiment or a modular synth improv session).
Collapse opens in somewhat counter-intuitive fashion, as three-part "The Chimeric Mesh Withdraws" stretches out for almost 20 minutes and takes quite a while to fully come together: initially, it is just an ominous and amorphous haze of echoing clicks, disjointed piano, and somewhat shrill and nightmarish synth whines.  After about eight minutes, however, McDowall’s floating and seemingly improvisatory hellscape gives way to an eerily buzzing and oscillating synth motif and "Chimeric Mesh" blossoms into a thing of disquieting and alien beauty.  It is also around this time where Coil comparisons become absolutely unavoidable, as the haunting central theme is increasingly buffeted by peripheral electronic flourishes that resemble giant swooping robotic birds of prey.  By the end, it completely makes sense why McDowall wanted to lead off with such a piece, as it is a gloriously sinister, hallucinatory, and weirdly melodic mindfuck.  This is exactly the sort of thing that obsessive Coil fans have unknowingly been waiting for.
The following "Hypnotic Congress" is nearly as stellar, but considerably more condensed, launching immediately into a futuristic and mechanized-sounding pulse that becomes increasingly more textured and substantial.  Around the halfway point, it transforms into something considerably weirder, morphing into a clanging, lurching industrial rhythm beneath a shifting, artificial-sounding vocal sample that sounds like an infernal choir of damned souls.  It is quite a wonderfully menacing and inhuman-sounding piece and a perfect continuation of the momentum started with "Chimeric Mesh."  Unexpectedly, however, the remaining three songs take somewhat diverging paths.
On "Through is Out," McDowall is assisted with some violin from Nicky Mao (Hiro Kone), weaving a considerably warmer and more human-sounding spell.  There is still some mindwarping aberrance to be found though, as McDowall’s synthesizers take on a sickly, strangled sizzle as the piece gradually descends into darker and more melancholy territory.  The brief "Convulse," on the other hand, is basically little more than a collage experiment, as a female voice (or two?) endlessly repeat the phrase "I convulsed" over a wobbly and echo-heavy rhythm.  Later, the closing "Each Surface of Night" takes the album into a considerably more drone-centric direction, largely eschewing anything deviant or nightmarish in favor of a dense, slowly undulating thrum before belatedly perking up into an understated crescendo of twinkling and delay-enhanced minor-key arpeggios.  That makes for an odd and somewhat perverse ending, as the final moments sound like an escalation into a more structured and melodic piece that never comes.
Collapse is a difficult album to form a solid opinion on, as it frequently flirts with greatness while simultaneously highlighting why McDowall has avoided recording a solo album in the past.  The main issue is that Drew seems to be primarily an "idea man," albeit one who has quite an impressive attention to detail and texture (he gets some brilliantly twisted sounds out of his synths).  He is not a particularly great composer though.  Consequently, Collapse is filled with dazzling moments that either never quite make the leap into something more, go on a little too long, or get diluted by somewhat meandering surroundings.  Also, the final three pieces make it feel like McDowall finished a wonderful album, then realized that he needed to find another 15 minutes of material to fill the second half of the record.  They do not exactly feel like filler, but they do feel like experiments or sketches that are not completely in line with the striking, distinctive, and focused one-two punch of "Chimeric Mesh" and "Hypnotic Congress."  I like those two pieces a lot, so I guess that means I like Collapse a lot, as they take up most of the album  And I do like Collapse a lot–it just feels more like a prodigious talent in need of a foil than it does the epic, well-deserved "coming-out party" that it could have been.
 
 
 
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April 27, 2010
US LP/CD Killer Pimp PIMPK015
side a
- Stars Fall
- Never Make You Cry
- Breaking Up
- For Her Smile
- Marianne
side b
- Silhouette
- Don't Leave Me Behind
- Someday - [MP3]
- It's Too Late
- Regret
LP comes with download code to download free MP3s of the album.
CD comes with enhanced content featuring music videos and bonus MP3s.
Ceremony - "Someday" by killerpimp
Paul Baker - vocals, guitar, bass, drum machine
John Fedowitz - vocals, guitar, bass, drum machine
The LP & CD from Ceremony is finally here! 10 brilliant pop songs super charged with amplification and distortion to make an incredible mix. Before A Place To Bury Strangers, there was Skywave, a three piece noise pop band from Fredericksburg, Virgina. When Ollie left to move to NYC, Paul and John remained and reorganized as Ceremony. While there will be undeniable comparisons made to APTBS (they still remain friends and share an affinity for loud guitars), Ceremony employ a songcraft far more focused on making catchy pop tunes than blowing out speakers and eardrums. The LP comes with a special download code to download MP3s of the entire LP while the CD comes with bonus enhanced content of four music videos.
For live dates, videos, and more information see myspace.com/ceremonytheband
"With all the deviation in the shoegaze sound, Virginia's Ceremony is proud to stay firmly grounded in the roots of the genre. After the demise of Skywave, a band considered by many to be responsible for the resurgence of shoegaze in America, bassist Oliver Akerman formed the incredible A Place to Bury Strangers, and remaining members Paul Baker and John Fedowitz formed the equally excellent Ceremony. Picking up directly where Skywave left off, the duo's guitars make a tremendous amount of noise thanks to some serious pedal magic. Blisteringly loud washes of guitars are as piercing as they are soothing, contrasting the lo-fi drum machine rhythms tucked just below the mix. Baker.s vocals add great texture, sounding relaxed and calming amongst the breaking dance beats and all encompassing storm of guitar effects." - Exploding In Sound
"Much like the loudness that pervades such noise rock, Ceremony feature raucous pop hooks and riffs that surmount the loudness. The bond between them and A Place to Bury Strangers is undoubtedly felt but they've captured their own appealing facets. Although there is plenty of drive, it's a noisy explosion that unquestionably delivers a strong jolt that resonates for a long time after it ends." - Bryan Sanchez, Delusions of Adequacy
"thunderously romantic Factory Records guitar/bass interplay, lo-fi drum machinesᾹbut as far as what it sets out to do, it succeeds." — Marc Hogan, Pitchfork, January 15, 2010
"Creating noisy, brilliant shoegaze like APTBS, Ceremony's tunes are a bit more on the indie pop side, making for an interesting and brilliant mix of influences." - Girls Sold Out
"burning frequencies, dark noisy pop, electronic drumming, a bath of guitar gears like phaser, rat, reverb" - Komakino
"some very fine noise-pop" - Built on a Weak Spot
"Ceremony's music is a superb hybrid of dark noisy pop, shoegaze, and electro; the result is a sound both unique and nostalgic." - Superstarcastic
"Utterly exhilarating" - Opus
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April 27, 2010
US LP/CD Killer Pimp PIMPK016
side a
- Mirrors In Your Eyes
- But It's So - [MP3]
- Kite of Love
- Makes No Sense
- Sparkle in the Dark
side b
- I'm So Tired
- That Sunny Day
- Shelter
- Listen
LP comes with download code to download free MP3s of the album.
CD comes with enhanced content featuring music videos and bonus MP3s.
Soundpool - "But It's So" by killerpimp
Kim Field - Vocals, Q-Chord, Omnichord, Keyboard
John Ceparano - Guitar, Bass, Vocals
Mark Robinson - Keyboard
James Renard - Drums
Sanford Santacroce - Bass
Mastered by Jeff Lipton at Peerless Mastering
The explosive third album sees this NY-based 5-piece stepping out onto the dancefloor,... without leaving their guitars and dreamy effects behind! After building a loyal following in the independent shoegaze scene Soundpool have enhanced their palette and, in turn, crafted a pop masterpiece. The nine songs are infectious, overflowing with strong bass hooks, driving beats, shimmering guitars, and Kim Fields' captivating, ethereal voice. The LP comes with a special download code to download MP3s of the entire LP while the CD comes with bonus enhanced content of five music videos.
A 12" EP is planned featuring remixes by Strategy, Colder, Lawrence Chandler (Bowery Electric), and GTO.
For live dates, videos, and more information see soundpoolmusic.com
"One of New York's reigning champions of dream pop are on the verge of releasing their third full-length Mirrors In Your Eyes. But rather than use the same formula all over again that gained their sophomore album Dichotomies+Dreamland success, the five piece took elements of what's moving New York today. Disco and electro-pop has found a new home in the corners of city and it also found its way into Soundpool's new album. This is going to be a mind blowing release for Soundpool. This is going to be an album TO GET which will be released by Killer Pimp April 27, 2010." - Twenty Seven Views
"Soundpool's heavily layered, dreamy tunes conjure up images of a queen soaring on a throne made of clouds, singing while her smiling band mates float beside her. Vocalist Kim Field's pure, angelic voice ranges from sexy, deeper notes to high-pitched melodies that mirror her keyboard playing. Active yet appropriately subtle, drummer James Renard works with the bassist to form a tight rhythm section, creating an urgent, driving groove. The nonstop, ethereal synths compliment the angular, sometimes haunting guitar, which recalls the sounds of 70s psychedelia, 80s pop and 90s shoegaze. Soundpool's supremely pleasing music leaves listeners with a euphoric high that.s only heightened in their dynamic live performances. - Becky Firesheets, The Deli
"thick, dreamy shoegazing guitar jumble, driven by an even thicker disco beat" - Max Sebela, Jezebel Music
"Post-shoegaze ambient dance with a canonball of cosmic sounds" - Kenyon, Advance Copy
"Soundpool would be an awesome Transformers character. Just think of the myriad of possibilities that this robot could transform into! Soundpool could be a gun that emits sonic frequencies consisting of disco, shoegazey and spacey funk." - Ventvox
"The best fucking band in the world!" - Ulrich Schnauss
"Reminiscent of French pop via Air or Stereolab... fine dream pop." - Pitchfork
"Captivating blend of shoegaze, space rock and wonderful soundscapes" - Radiofreedavid.com
"Few new artists match Soundpool's vocal delivery and sonic awareness" - Musicisnotdead
"Slowdive for the new millennium" - David Mansdorf, Losing Today
"When Lush wrote Sweetness and Light at the height of shoegazing, I wonder if they had anticipated Soundpool" - Brett Spaceman, EVILSPONGE
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April 27, 2010
US 7" Killer Pimp PIMPK017
- Leave Alone
- Walk Away
Released on the same day as Rocket Fire however neither appear on the LP.
Ceremony, "Leave Alone" on Killer PimpPaul Baker - vocals, guitar, bass, drum machine
John Fedowitz - vocals, guitar, bass, drum machine
Following the success of the Someday 7" single Killer Pimp will issue a 7" single of two exclusive non-LP Ceremony tracks on April 27th, the date of their full-length release, Rocket Fire.
The 7" is limited to 500 copies and neither song will not be on the LP or CD.
For live dates, videos, and more information see myspace.com/ceremonytheband
"some very fine noise-pop" - Built on a Weak Spot
"Ceremony's music is a superb hybrid of dark noisy pop, shoegaze, and electro; the result is a sound both unique and nostalgic." - Superstarcastic
"Utterly exhilarating" - Opus
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This brilliant and mind-bending solo opus by Natural Snow Buildings' Mehdi Ameziane was originally issued as an LP by Dull Knife in 2009 and sold out within hours. Fortunately, it has now been reissued and remastered and augmented with a massive amount of bonus material for those of us that weren’t fast or well-informed enough to catch it the first time around.
 
There are a lot of unusual things about Natural Snow Buildings, but the most notable (to me anyway) is how utterly detached they seem to be from the mundane and often petty world that the rest of us are stuck living in (both musically and otherwise).Instead, Solange Gularte and Mehdi Ameziane seem to inhabit a darkly magical and Edward Gorey-esque shadow reality. Also, they seem guileless and genuine in a way that is wholly foreign to modern human nature.Those are admittedly odd statements to make about a band, but Solange and Mehdi's recorded output provides excellent corroborating evidence.The duo are prolific, but each new album is released without fanfare, as though they had simply accumulated enough otherwordly material for yet another dispatch from their insular, self-contained universe.More significantly, though the duo tend to put a great deal of effort into beautiful art and packaging, they release everything in such limited quantities that it seems that they have a total indifference to any of the external rewards that might be reaped from producing great work.Or they’ll release a double-album as a free download (through some third party, of course).The simple act of creation seems to be the entire point and whether the rest of the world notices or gets a chance to hear it is largely irrelevant.
Another odd thing is that Mehdi’s vocals are quite feminine- in fact, critics often mistake him for a woman.More specifically, he sounds like a profoundly sad and somewhat ghostly Vashti Bunyan.The actual music, on the other hand, sounds exactly like the sort of album Shirley Collins might have made (but regrettably didn’t) after teaming up with the Current 93 milieu. Some songs, like the simple and sparse acoustic ballad "Bride of the Spirits," sound a lot like traditional Celtic folk (until the "Come to me, my only child- I’ll just eat your flesh" line, anyway).More often, however, the songs seem to come from a much more exotic time and place, such as the pagan drone of "Druids."While this mystique and timelessness is certainly deliberate and well-earned, some of the credit must be given to Mehdi’s exclusive use of instruments that cannot be associated with a fixed point in time, such as flutes, tampura, shruti boxes, and tambourines.
Despite the clear allusions to psych folk, traditional music, and modern drone/noise strewn all over the album, The Hollow Mountain still sounds like something entirely fresh and unique.Ameziane weaves all of his influences together in an unpredictable, ingeniously arranged, and complicated way, but makes it all sound like a seamlessly and organically unfolding dream.This is the kind of music that unicorns would make (if they had good taste): melancholy quasi-medieval ballads warp into field recordings of babbling brooks, clanging cathedral bells, or a chorus of happily chirping birds just as easily as they turn into evil-sounding drones or heavenly psychedelic fugues.The tone is similarly mercurial, as Mehdi’s sweetly melodic songs have a tendency to become menacing, ritualistic, or pastorally beautiful with little warning.It never seems jarring or clumsy either, although Ameziane's vocals can sometimes be oppressively sad when I am in the wrong mood.
I have not heard the original LP version of this album, so I cannot say how much effect Ben Nash’s remastering efforts have had on it.It’s a pretty lo-fi album, but not in a bad way- more in an immediate and raw way, but with a thin patina of hiss and distortion that suggests that it may have been recorded with just a microphone and an 8-track.Amusingly, the "bonus track" included here is almost 45 minutes long, making it essentially a "bonus album."Disorientingly, it is just as good as the main album and could have easily been released separately, but I’m sure Mehdi forgot about it as soon as it was done and moved onto something else.Regardless, more TwinSisterMoon is always a good idea, as Mehdi's artistry is best appreciated as complete immersion.
I haven’t tracked down enough of the voluminous Isengrind/Twinsistermoon/Natural Snow Buildings ouevre to effectively contextualize The Hollow Mountain within a hierarchy of essentialness (they’ve been working in extreme obscurity for 13 years now), but I can conclusively state that it is a beautiful and stunning album and that it is actually still available (a very rare occurrence indeed).Also, despite the fact that it has been retooled slightly for mass consumption, it still retains some of the duo’s characteristically ambitious packaging: the disc is (egolessly) enclosed in a booklet of Solange’s creepily surreal woodcut-inspired art.
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As expected from its development, the sound of Crwth is one that is more treated and distilled than its Chorus predecessor which, thankfully, is included as a free download, along with three additional reworked tracks that wouldn’t fit on the disc. The original material is closer in spirit to the band’s earlier work, though still full of cut and paste phonemes and what must be vocal snippets run through guitar effects pedals. While sounding very unlike their peers, there are still significant traces of a sound influenced by the likes of MBV, just with even less consideration for the conventional structures of pop music.
The new material allows Melissa’s natural voice to shine through at times, but the greater focus is on dismantling the syllables and breaths she provides into a variety of sounds, some which mimic traditional instruments, others which have no discernable origin. The opening "Dzai" leaves her gentle vocals out in the open, with little in the way of processing other than layering, which later surges into a sustained tone, with small phonemes morphing into a rhythmic click while others are processed into cello like low register swells of sound. "Vrhhu" allows the beautiful vocals to appear untreated, resembling a gentle, wordless lullaby as other bits of her voice are done up to sound like strings, providing a soft, gauzy bed for her angelic voice to rest upon. "Rhvr" also chooses to showcase the voice, with only the most subtle of reverberation and processed sonic punctuation to flesh out the sound.
In other cases, the voice is used simply as a starting point, and the outcome resembles something else entirely: "Glnkq" sounds much more like a complex synthesizer or laptop based composition, with its looped low frequency rhythmic pulse and shimmering pseudo-horn passages, and the cold minimalism of "Qlinglo," which channels distant strings and indefinable bassy frequencies. Even with little resemblance to its source material, few things other than the human voice can be capable of rendering such loneliness and despair that is captured on "Shemerr." While the palette that the sound is drawn from isn’t clear, the heavy emotions it conveys are rarely captured by anything other than the human voice.
When I first saw this listed on the upcoming release list from Line, I was a bit shocked. I knew the name sounded familiar, and a quick bit of research confirmed my instinct that Lovesliescrushing was a band associated more with the 1990s ethereal pop/gothic movement than anything else. Hell, they had releases on the Projekt label, definitely not something I would have seen as fitting in with this label’s preference for clinical and installation based compositions. However, the material here does fit in with the Line ethos, it just happens to have more of an organic core than many, such as myself, were expecting. The final product is a simply beautiful set of pieces that is consistent with the explorations in sound motive of electronic artists, but with a natural beauty and grace that few are able to mimic with their laptops and complex software.
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Recorded live in January of 2009, this collaboration is one that is more organic than a lot of what Oren Ambarchi and Jim O’Rourke are known for: no laptops here, the former only provides guitar, the latter piano. Meanwhile, Keiji Haino acts as the focus, providing his idiosyncratic vocals with flute and electronics, with the result sounding like ethnography from another planet, spiritual sounds that simply are extra terrestrial.
 
Sequenced as two long pieces with a short, single track bit of connective tissue, the entire work is a slow and mostly sparse affair:the first and last few minutes of the album are extremely close to pure silence.During the opening minutes of the first piece, only the most subtle of guitar amplifier noise and feedback appear, with the occasional scrape of guitar strings or muted tone to arise.Ambarchi keeps his guitar restrained, allowing it to feedback tentatively as O’Rourke plunks minimally on his piano.Eventually Haino’s voice comes in powerfully, oscillating between heavenly highs and demonic growls, often within the same few seconds.Between the vocals and the organic, but unnatural sounds, it feels like a ritual recording from another dimension, with Haino channeling spirits and demons from who knows where.
The short middle piece is pretty rudimentary in structure compared to the other two, with twinkling, music box piano and buzzing guitar static as Haino’s vocals are up front and commanding, with no restraint given, nor requested.While the surrounding two pieces are a combination of voice and instruments, here it is all about Haino’s distinctive voice.
The final section of the disc is more textural in nature, even with the abrasive electronic drone and flute that will send any nearby dogs running in a panic.The sound is tentative overall, with the found object percussive rattling giving a distinct texture before everything launching headlong into the second half.Haino cranks up a drum machine and Ambarchi gets more aggressive with his guitar.The primitive percussion via machine and higher intensity instrumentation again conjure images of medicine men and animal sacrifices, but with a distinctly alien edge, aided and abetted with Keiji Haino’s pained and processed vocals.Again, like the disc began, it ends near silence, with only the most minimal of piano notes and sparse vocal interjections before fading to nothing.
Taken as a whole, this three way collaboration resembles more of a thought out and deeply composed work more than a live collaboration, but that can be chalked up to the individuals included and their extremely well developed sense of improvisation.It actually sounds far removed from most of their individual work as well, so the entire proceedings are rather unique in their approach, creating a sonic world all its own.
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The vast majority of collaborations, while oft enjoyable, generally seem contaminated by the feeling that the final product is a compromise between the various participants’ visions (or worse, that no one wanted to squander their best material on something that was not exclusively their own). Albums that feature a large number of guest musicians, on the other hand, are an entirely different animal altogether. They seldom stand with an artist’s best material and most frequently are remembered for being uncharacteristically informal, an exploration of an experimental whim, or merely a document of a particularly fun recording session. Petit impressively avoids either of those fates here, however, as Silk-Screened is a clear career highlight and he absolutely could not have made it on his own: the whole is significantly greater than the sum of its parts.
Petit’s strain of jazz is certainly a unique one, as it falls very much in line with his stated “psycho-film-noir ambiance” aesthetic (yet without sounding much anything like his previous album Henry: The Iron Man). Some of album’s tracks sound like they’d fit very comfortably on the soundtrack to a classic old hard-boiled detective film, like the opening “Neon Woman,” which very effectively conjures up images of a trench coated man slipping out of a shadowy alley. Others, like the closing “Beyond The Mist,” betray a modern classical influence that suggests an artier/post-French Wave take on the noir genre.
The inspired re-envisionings that bookend Silk-Screened, however, are not nearly as compelling as more original three-song maelstrom that composes its center. “A Swirling Mix of Dystopia” is the wildest, most hard-hitting piece on the album, quickly escalating from vinyl hiss and a sad trumpet to a roiling squall of dense guitar abuse and electronics. Andy Diagram’s lyrically melancholy trumpeting remains in the foreground throughout the entire 11-minute running time, providing a very musical center for the rest of the song to erupt around. In fact, it even deceptively sounds like an entire horn section jumps in towards the end to supply hooky stabs (before it collapses into a howling free jazz frenzy, anyway).
“Blossoming Krokus” takes a much more pastoral, impressionist tone, as saxophonist Perceval Bellone delivers a lovely solo over a shimmering and haunting bed of strings, vibraphone, hissing, and clinking glass. “A Swirling Mix of Utopia” follows with a dark, disquieting Massey bass clarinet performance over an undulating fog of crackling field recordings, cymbal flourishes, and dissonantly twinkling guitars. It ultimately culminates into another infernal, howling crescendo (much like its similarly named predecessor), but it takes a very long time to get there and the build-up is deliciously tense. Unlike in “Dystopia” though, the apocalyptic outro is kept very low in the mix here, which is a very effective production move. Massey’s clarinet never cedes (or even shares) the foreground, but it becomes increasingly clear that there is some seriously cathartic entropy bubbling beneath it (yet somehow restrained).
Despite the fact that the cast of musicians does not remain at all consistent from song to song, the whole album feels like the work of a single, very talented ensemble. Petit clearly fed off of (and allowed himself to be challenged by) the energy and the ideas of his assembled friends, but it is always quite clear that he is the guiding force and that the raw material is ultimately sculpted into his focused vision. Musically, Philippe’s contributions are simultaneously subtle and massive. Center stage always belongs to the musicians and it is generally quite difficult to tell when a sound is originating from Petit and his turntable. However, once I actually analyzed how few musicians were involved in each song, it became clear that he was responsible for inconspicuously adding quite a staggering amount of layering, density, and power to the performances. The only real flaw with the album is that Petit and Ronan Benoit weren’t very imaginative with the drums, as they are a bit too tethered in traditional rock/post-rock beats and fills to fully befit the unhinged cacophony of “Utopia” and “Dystopia,” but that is a comparatively small quibble for such an inspired and surprising effort.
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The first two Automating compilations stick out as not only being great examples of compilations working as standalone albums but as two of the best releases put out under the Nurse With Wound name. Automating Volume Two was one of my first NWW purchases and it has remained one of my favourites consistently. As such, Automating Volume Three has a lot to live up to and although not as consistent as the earlier volumes, it performs admirably. “Antacid Cocamotive 93” mutates the '60s pop song “The Loco-Motion” into something stranger; the piece is highly reminiscent of The Residents’ Third Reich’n Roll album.
Elsewhere, “Beetle Crawls Across My Back” sees Nurse With Wound in rare melodic form; its eastern sounding strings subtly warped by Stapleton as what sounds like a didgeridoo joins in the jam. The song degenerates into a primal beat as Diana Rogerson delivers some truly unsettling vocals. It anchors the rest of the album around it, a definite centrepiece which is as good as any canonical Nurse With Wound piece. “Ubu Noir” is another version of Stapleton’s rendition of the traditional song “Black is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair” which is quite a departure from the extant versions on She and Me Fall Together in Free Death and Rat Tapes Volume One. Here it sounds like a broken Kraftwerk crawling out of the darkness of a nuclear apocalypse.
Automating Volume Three does fall down a little in places; “Transcribe and Dictate (Heavy Trad)” is a miniature sketch of “Two Shaves and a Shine” and considering there are already so many different versions of “Two Shaves and a Shine” out in the wild, the inclusion of this seems a little superfluous. Especially so considering it’s only half of Stapleton’s contribution to the Four Years in 30 Seconds compilation (the other half being the same piece in reverse). “Nosedive,” a remix of music by the metal band Cadaverous Condition, is an improvement on the source material but ultimately disappointing. A segment from Nurse With Wound’s remix of Sunn O)))’s 00 Void album would have been a better choice.
Given Stapleton’s love of contributing bits and bobs to whatever compilation is passing his way, there are still enough Nurse With Wound tracks out there to make up a fourth volume in this series (even discounting those collected on last years Flawed Existence vinyl box set). There are a few tracks from last year’s download only compilation More Automating that did not end up either on this CD or on Flawed Existence and it would be nice to see these obscurities release in a more satisfying format than MP3s.
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- Albums and Singles
There's little doubt those familiar with Jones as a co-founder of Cul de Sac will appreciate his restrained and subtle playing. He also has serious credibility as the man who brought Robbie Basho's live album Bonn Ist Supreme to our ears last year and who was entrusted with liner notes for several of Fahey's re-releases and for Red Cross, his final album. All well and good, and Jones obviously knows his stuff. Fear not, though, for the clarity of his compositions, his technical range, and his obvious wit, all lift him above dusty acedemia. Barbeque Bob in Fishtown is a recording which communicates skill and research, but never at the expense of joy, imagination and sheer love for music.
That's not to say that I go around humming these intriguing tunes. Well, "Snowdrops (For Robert Walser)" is whistleable, I imagine, and probably the most immeadiately pretty track here. The piece is perfect on so many levels. The title is a marvelous nod to the microscopic beauty of the Swiss author's poems and (very) short stories written on gum wrappers and tiny scraps of paper. I'm grateful for Jones's effective exhumation of this writer (known to Kafka) and will seek out Walser's work. "Snowdrops" probably features less notes and more space than any other on the album and the choice of National Radio-Tone Bendaway resonator guitar for this piece is so right. I also like that the track avoids using any faux-deranged musical passage as reference to Walser's admission into a mental hospital, where he effectively quit writing, saying "I'm not here to write, but to be mad."
That quote comes from the excellent booklet accompanying this release. The explanations of different guitars and tunings are generous and useful. The album is fine without them but the notes added to my enjoyment like excellent informative panels in an art gallery. The photos of (the actual rural blues guitarist) Barbeque Bob, of Robert Walser in a snow fall, of a still from the film Forbidden Games, and of Jones with guitarist Wendy Ritger are lovely. The larger pictures of Jones getting his nails done (got to protect your craft) are truthful and amusing. And those qualities of honesty and humor run in a subtle way throughout Barbeque Bob in Fishtown and lend the release an air of calmness, sincerity and fun. There are some more intense passages, such as his piece of Basho-from-memory "Redwood Ramble Misremembered" and his hearty Basho tribute "1337 Shattuck Avenue, Apartment D" but even there Jones never loses sight of the fact that he is playing this music for someone else to enjoy.
His approach is illustrated by "Keep It A Hundred Years," Jones' first piece for banjo which he says pinches "a snatch of melody" from "Jeux Interdits," the main theme from Forbidden Games (performed there by Narciso Yepes). Jones' "version" is a sweet and simple tune which, after playing it in concert in Europe, he discovered is considered a bit of a cliché there since it's a common piece for classical guitar beginners! Nevertheless, it appears here and is splendid. The track's title is taken from a piece of the film's dialogue.
Glenn Jones is someone I'd like to see play in concert and I will be seeking out his earlier work Against Which The Sea Continually Beats and his contribution to the Robbie Basho tribute disc We Are All One, In The Sun. There are some serious players doing solo guitar: Bishop, Rose, Newman, and others such as Ben Reynolds who put out a good solo guitar record this year: How The Day Earnt It's Night. In any company, Glenn Jones is as safe a pair of hands to which the preservation and exploration of this genre could ever hope to be trusted. I usually listen to music at the computer or through the MP3 player in my car. Doing that with this disc was alright but it was more genuinely transporting and immersing when heard on tiny headphones while I browsed a bookstore for hours yesterday. Curiously, this drew several critical glances from other browsers who I assumed were sociopaths pissed off by my contented reverie, until later realizing I'd missed several cellphone calls.
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