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Initially, I feared that the band was going to be retreading old ground on Exploding Head. The guitar solo on “In Your Heart” bears a striking resemblance to the one on “Missing You” from their first album but my qualms were quickly allayed. The rest of the album represents a big jump in both quality and range for the group. The songs “Lost Feeling” and “Everything Always Goes Wrong” take the dark heart of Joy Division and transplant it into a still living body. Cold, uneasy guitar stabs punctuate stark rhythms as Oliver Ackermann’s fraught lyrics paint a picture of isolation. Of course, all of this is delivered with a generous dose of energy and the performances on this album are nothing short of electric. What stands out most on Exploding Head is the seriously blistering guitar work. With Ackermann’s expertise in effects pedals, it is little surprise that the sounds used here are quite unique. The fuzz that coats each guitar shriek on “Ego Death” feels like it can strip the paint off walls and force the fillings out of my teeth.
Far and away the best thing about this album is the immense closing track, “I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadows of Your Heart.” It combines all the catchiness and intensity that permeates their music and condenses it into the definitive APTBS song. While it begins like any other song of theirs they keep upping their game during its duration. The pummelling beat and jet plane engine guitar brings the album to its climax before dropping the listeners down, exhausted and exhilarated. Even if every other song on this album was awful (they’re not), Exploding Head would still be one of my top albums of the year based on this track alone.
Unlike their earlier recordings, the production on this album fully captures how full and mighty A Place to Bury Strangers are in real life (all that is needed now to recreate the live experience at home is a strobe light and flicking the light switch on and off DOESN’T work). Exploding Head is a huge step up from their debut and leaves little doubt they will reap the benefits of the increased exposure their record on Mute can bring. Judging from these 10 songs, they have the goods and the talent to make the most of these circumstances.
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After the Heat never quite gets going like the previous album that the trio put out. The innocuous—and frankly boring—piano piece “Luftschloss” sits in the middle of some good but not exactly stellar electronic pieces. Granted this could be ambient fatigue from someone experiencing this album 30 years after it was first released but it sounds like they are phoning it in for the first half of the album. The lacklustre pieces have little life to them and feel like unfinished sketches. It is not until “Old Land” that the album begins to work but, as far as what any of these artists are capable of, this piece remains average at best.
Despite this poor start, there are some stunning moments later on in the album such as “Base & Apex,” which, although a little dated sounding, still enthrals. The forward momentum is kept up with “Broken Head” which sees the trio pre-empt industrial and post-punk; a clanking rhythm and vocals that sound like a broken machine that has just become self-aware. “The Belldog,” echoing the style employed on Eno’s album Here Come the Warm Jets with its catchy pop hook sounds more like an Eno solo effort rather than a full collaboration between the himself and Cluster. However, it is still a great track and fits in well here after “Broken Head.”
Overall, After the Heat lacks the magic expected from Eno, Cluster or any combination of the above. Yet taken in part, it is some of the better work done between them. It is possible to hear how in the '80s other artists would take what the larger Krautrock scene and Eno did in the '70s and make it into post punk and as such, After the Heat, represents a moment in time where evolution was occurring at a rapid rate. Yet, like most fossils, it is too two-dimensional to be of any real importance.
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The album begins with its darkest track, "Negative Volumes." Warped, moaning voices and two alternating bass notes provide its foundation, with subtle keyboard sprinklings and more voices arriving to flesh it out. However, the bulk of these additional sounds are simply more of the same. The piano, trumpet, and violin that later enter the mix only reaffirm what the track has already accomplished and don't develop the idea any further. The track doesn't get more or less spooky; it stagnates. That's a fair description of how the other six pieces affected me as well and is what makes Fractal Hair Geometry such a frustrating experience.
Yet the sounds Richter comes up with are compelling. The body of "Orange Record" has a surprisingly emotional quality to it, like a precious but bittersweet epiphany, but merely adding more layers over the track's core serves a decorative rather than a musical function. "M.B. Memorial Building" is a majestic microtonal exploration that creates dynamic tension that unfortunately is only maintained, neither decreased nor heightened. The album's only obvious beat comes on the track "Leigh Bowery," which uses an unaccented 4/4 rhythm to punctuate the static shimmering sounds coming from the keyboards. It's a nice change, yet it still suffers from the same lack of progression as the others.
These tracks aren't bad by any means, if layered somewhat more thickly than necessary, but the problem is that each pieces shows nothing later on that hasn't already been learned or felt within the first 30 seconds. As an album, this gets old quickly, and to my ear makes these tracks better suited for gallery installations or soundtracks.
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The turntable comes through most noticeably as the crackle and sputter found on old records, and sometimes its addition backfires by being distracting or even annoying. On "Engineer," it's used so prominently that it overshadows much of the delicate feedback before low end rumbles, guitar, and cymbals replace it. By the time this happens, however, the crackling has nearly ruined the track. There were some other sounds on the album that irked me, especially in the first few minutes of "Porselein." It begins with the plucking of a fragile melody on acoustic guitar, but unidentified clunks and static make it sound like a live sound check during which someone is fixing something or stumbling in the background. Other things that sound like microphone pops or short circuits in the wiring also give the track unnecessary blemishes. The bright drones and rhythmic clicking that appear later are nice but don't quite salvage the track.
Yet sometimes the incidental sounds work well. "Fonograaf" begins with an angelic motif that's aged by the crackling vinyl noise, as if it's some mysterious record by an unknown and forgotten composer found in a dusty attic. Its ending suggests a dying beauty as the melody fades and the crackle remains constant, broken up by a thunderstorm or a magnified and drawn out sample of the needle being clumsily withdrawn. Also excellent is the title track which begins as a crisp guitar melody but transforms into an eerily moving ghostly chorus by its end.
All of these devices are used in the album's fantastic epic closer "Singel," the basic track of which was recorded live earlier this year. It starts with a quiet hum and slight crackle before introducing minimal guitar pitches, slowly building into a noisier field with more incidental sounds appearing. The track continually grows in presence and power until it slowly fades into a quiet hum and crackle like it started, ending the album's strongest track symmetrically.
While I didn't like everything on Dauw equally, the good far outweighs the bad. Beautiful and sometimes even haunting, the better tracks could be artifacts of a lost time recently rediscovered.
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- Matthew Amundsen
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Titles like "Surfin' U.S.S.R. 2 (Top Marx from the Serf Board!)," "Anyone Who Remembers Vladiwoodstock Wasn't There!," "The Dismantling of the Soviet Onion Made Us Cry," and "One Day, Son, All I Own Will Still Belong to the State" told me right away that this album was a single-minded affair. Unfortunately, the music comes across that way also. The first couple of songs, which include the title track and its sequel, have the most surf influence and are the easiest to listen to because the surf guitar differentiates them from the rest of the album. Too many of the others play up the Bulgarian folk traditions but are instrumentals that rely on the same tempos and rhythms again and again, making the music monotonous in the process.
Only a few songs are of interest, including a cover of Gerry and the Pacemakers' "Ferry Cross the Mersey" in Bulgarian complete with sweeping strings. "Dissident Harmony Sisters Camel Call" has some good female harmonies over a drum. These same singers reappear on the finale "Yagoda" alongside harp and tamboura. For me, they were the highlight of an otherwise forgettable album.
Maybe during the Cold War, this novelty schlock might have worked or at least had a more receptive audience. So far after the fact, however, it simply isn't very clever or captivating.
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- Matthew Spencer
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Madoromi is a Japanese idiom that describes the state between waking and dreaming. It is a perfect description for the album's placid sound and languid pacing. Unfortunately, it's also good description for my response as a listener.
Water has a definite narcotic effect on me. Whether I've just spent an hour swimming, or a day at the coast, I always end up tired. Sawako's music produces a similar side-effect. Like sunlight reflecting off a lake, the sounds on Madoromi are bright but fleeting. They flash, then fade, then reappear in a delicate clockwork motion. In the notes, guitar and vibraphone are listed alongside "found memory" and "sleeping melancholy" as if those abstractions were a sound source too.
Madoromi succeeds in being peaceful and beautiful, but not much else. It lacks the vigor of waking life, but also the free association of dreams. A gravity is missing, as if a wave of the hands would scatter the music. After a few tracks, that beautiful, crystalline sound grows predicable and a little bit bland. A slight melody or shift in timbre would focus the composition, but the loops and samples just repeat, as if Sawako had walked away from her computer and went to bed. The arrangements are meant to be simple and understated, but end up being monotonous instead.
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ATP Recordings
One thing noticeably different with Gala Mill is the length of the songs. Pretty much all the songs are five minutes or greater. The Drones normally stick to more radio friendly times for their songs so this was a surprise. I’m not sure if the longer song is suited to their style, however, as some of the songs on the album seem a little overstretched. The final song, “Sixteen Straws,” a ballad that goes on for close to ten minutes sees lead singer Gareth Liddiard tell a tale of life and death in colonial Australia. The song meanders a little but it is captivating in its quiet elegance, not a phrase I ever expected to use in this review.
With Gala Mill The Drones still haven’t captured the rawness and the power of their live show. It is frustrating listening to their studio output after having experienced them first in the flesh. The fly-on-the-wall interludes of the band talking in the studio (which become terribly annoying) suggest to the uninitiated that this is what The Drones sound like when they just belt out a song but it isn’t. Speakers should be melting when the CD is playing but alas they just get mildly hot. I was hoping that with more success they might have access to a better engineer to mix their music but my hopes have been dashed.
Still, Gala Mill is as good as anything else they’ve released. It’s good honest to God and damned to hell rocking and I like it. Songs like “Jezebel” and “Word from the Executioner to Alexander Pearce” show that they have been honing their songwriting skills. Music and lyrics are well matched on every song. Fiona Kitschen’s angelic backing vocals add an innocent counterfoil to Liddiard’s menacing slur. The only problem is at times they very nearly become a tribute to The Birthday Party or Dirty Three but in the end they always manage to steer clear. I wouldn’t say that The Drones have developed a hugely unique sound but instead I feel they are continuing a tradition of Australian rock that makes up for every time I hear an INXS song. There is the odd song that does step further away from the obvious influences like the aforementioned “Sixteen Straws,” “Are You Leaving for the Country” and “Work for Me.” The latter features Kitschen on lead vocals and it is a far cry from anything else on the CD.
Gala Mill is a solid release with some very strong songs that the band should be proud of but I’m afraid I’m still waiting for The Drones to produce their masterpiece. Each album sees them progressing towards the perfection I hope they achieve. Maybe next time I’ll get my wish.
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On her new album, Carla Bozulich uses her voice, strings, guitars, and well-contained distorted elements to create a rich recording full of dark lyrical imagery that haunts well after its flashes of tenderness have faded.
Bookending the album are two versions of the title track. "Evangelista I" opens ominously with scratchy violins and rattling knocks, forming dense textural layers that nonetheless remain distinct. Bozulich uses her voice in a combination of howling supplications and breathy exhalations, pushing massive quantities of air and growling all over her range. Droning feedback and strings define the space without ever succumbing to chaos.
Quieter and gentler is "Steal Away," a take on a traditional arrangement. Despite the intimacy of her voice and a little guitar, distortion rules "How to Survive Being Hit by Lightning." A simple drum is buried deep within the mix and the melody grows in prominence as the song progresses, pushing the distortion to the background. A skipping guitar ushers in the ending. The cover of Low’s "Pissing" uses organ as the main backing instrument, culminating in a sweltering rush that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. She uses great layering of vocals that are very effective in making this version of the song unique.
A few of the tracks rely a little too heavily on atmosphere and don’t quite fulfil their potential. Most of the songs have such similar compositional elements that the abstractions like "Sleeps Inside" and "Nels’ Box" aren’t so riveting as some of the others. The album closes with "Evangelista II," revisiting similar themes as the opener, but this one’s a more sober, subdued affair, a much-needed relief from some of the white-knuckle flights that come earlier. In all of the mighty peaks to be found here, Bozulich commands attention with the strength and versatility of her voice, assailing the ears with beseeching wails and incantations that inspire dark devotion.
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Warp
Aphex Twin’s two pieces for prepared piano do away with Cage’s original intention of having an entire range of percussion sounds available to a single piano player. Instead of using a number of different items with different sonic properties as tradition dictates, Mr. Twin lashes a chain across all the piano strings. The result is not the dramatic crash and thunder of Cage’s prepared piano pieces but a pair of quieter melodic pieces with a metallic flavour from the chains. The first of these two pieces, “Prepared Piano Piece 1,” (which is actually “Jynweythek” from drukqs) is the better of the two. The second piece is lacklustre and a let down after such a strong start. When Cage’s prepared piano pieces make their appearance later in the album, it is obvious that Cage is still far ahead of the pack. Even when a mediocre player tackles these pieces they still sound impressive and the renditions found here are far from mediocre. Rolf Hind captures the often overlooked playfulness of Cage’s sonatas; his playing here is most enjoyable.
The best pieces found on Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters come from Steve Reich. His “Violin Phase” is simply beautiful; the violins spin off each other and interfere with each others’ sound in a dizzying display of phasing. However the gem in the centre of this album’s crown is Reich’s “Six Marimbas” which is absolutely dazzling. The layered rhythms make it hard to pick out any details in the playing but there is a slow change in texture as the piece progresses. The sound of all the bass notes being played blend into each other to make a constant shimmering hum, it sounds completely electronic but it’s not.
The juxtaposition of these heavyweight composers with the finest Warp has to offer didn’t result in the reaction in me that I imagine those involved wanted. The way the album is presented suggests that Aphex Twin and Squarepusher are the logical continuation of Cage, Reich and Ligeti. By pairing all these artists on the same bill and playing their music through the same medium (that of an orchestra) I noticed that when stripped of all the volume and electronic gizmos, the young turks really haven’t progressed far from where the masters had left off. Maybe if I was an academically trained musician I could understand what makes these Warp artists so much more special than what I feel they are but as a layman I don’t see how they’re in the same league as the composers found here. Granted the music of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher is frequently amazing and they both sound fascinating transferred to a “serious” musical setting but their place is on the stereo or in the club.
As an introduction to 20th century compositions Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters is excellent. The performance given by the London Sinfonietta is exceptional; many renditions of these pieces can be stuffy and overly serious and here that is not the case. The London Sinfonietta tackles the pieces as music and not exercises in academic chin stroking. Surprisingly given the almost light hearted attitude to such heavy music, the Warp parts of the discs leave a little to be desired. These sound somewhat forced as if the Sinfonietta are trying to prove that it’s serious music. One or two of the pieces I’ll return to but I’d be more likely to go back to the original versions of these pieces.
samples:
- Prepared Piano Piece 1 (Aphex Twin)
- Six Marimbas (Reich)
- Chamber Concerto: Calmo, Sostenuto (Ligeti)
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A few blocks from my house, a huge framed drawing of the Chicago skyline by Wesley Willis hangs on the wall of a burger joint that otherwise is inexplicably saturated in Scooby Doo paraphernalia. Although the venue is an unlikely host for this work of art, that it’s there at all speaks to Willis’ appeal to a wider spectrum of the populace than might be expected. Even his music, despite its factory preset accompaniments and its repetitive lyrical content, shows his uncanny ability to engage audiences with entertaining stories, stories that are all the more riveting because they’re usually true.
Willis isn’t alone. The other artists in this collection each have his or her specialty, from Jacques Brodier’s sound-effects wizardry, to the dustbin percussion of André Robillard or the accordion virtuosity of Oscar Haus. That they have little chance of even moderate financial success is unimportant since their music erupts from a wellspring of creativity that they cannot silence, sometimes even sacrificing technical ability in the fever of expression. Rarely is there a prohibitive self-consciousness at play, and what issues forth is sincere and without guile. These artists are unabashedly themselves, and it’s this quality that lends these songs an undeniable authenticity that augments their charm. Nor are these artists directly imitative of others who have gone before them. Instead, they share glimpses of their highly personalized, unique worldviews, of which music is only an extension and not some compartmentalized product for mass consumption. The resulting music is the direct result of artists who follow their muse no matter where it takes them, a philosophy many other musicians would be wise to adopt.
As for the music itself, much of it is enjoyable for its idiosyncrasies outside of its context. There’s the pleasantly quiet guitar and vocals of Anton et Quentin, Marcella Dumeray’s acapella singing, the brief therapies of Reinhilde Tastenoe, and the eerie Electronic Voice Phenomena recorded by Dr. Raudive. One of the highlights is Daniel Johnston’s “Premarital Sex,” which displays his songwriting skill on a shoddy organ. While not all of the artists have equal appeal, what’s included here is still valuable for the insight not only into the artistic process, but also for what it reveals about the artists themselves. On that note, I do wish that the biographies included in the liner notes weren’t so short, and I would have liked the inclusion of more details about the actual recordings. Because this compilation for the most part emphasizes Western artists, particularly Europeans and a disproportionate number of them Belgian, the selection on this disc is not a complete overview of outsider music, but it’s certainly a fantastic place to start.
samples:
- Jacques Brode - Extrait du 'Filtre de Réalité
- Wesley Willis - Trama Hell Ride
- Oscar Haus - Sans Titre
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Red Rhino/Charrm
Due to the shadowy and elusive nature of their releases, it takes some serious effort to acquire a complete understanding of how Zoviet France’s sound evolved over the years. Hearing one ZF album does not necessarily provide a reliable estimate of what another one might sound like, as the band went through a number of significant personnel and stylistic changes over the course of their two active decades. 1988’s Shouting at the Ground, however, has managed to emerge by general consensus as as one of the clear highlights in their sprawling and disorienting discography. The reasons for that are self-evident upon hearing it, but it is also significant for being the most listenable nexus at which ZF’s forays into ambient, harsh tape loop collages, and neo-tribalism converged. This particular vein never got pursued as far as it deserved, sadly, as the remainder of ZF’s career is strewn with live albums, compilation albums, deleted albums, long hiatuses, and one-off experiments (like deconstructing Ry Cooder).
The bulk of Shouting at the Ground is composed of very brief sound experiments that often run under two minutes. Rather than feeling like a bunch of prematurely abandoned song sketches, however, they unfold like series of otherworldly, self-contained miniatures. To say they are eclectic would be a gross understatement, as they range from breathy primitive flutes to Eastern strings to dense, insistently repeating tape loop pile-ups. The only conspicuous unifying features are that they are invariably grittily lo-fi and a little bit ominous. Some of them can get quite harsh (“Dybbuk” makes me feel like I am being attacked by swarm of vampire bats), but most are meditative or at least hypnotically repetitive. One notable aspect about the hallucinatory and unfamiliar menagerie of sounds gathered is that the vast majority of Zoviet France’s material originated from live instrumentation. The semi-anonymous, ever-shifting cabal of contributors amassed quite an array of ethnic and homemade instruments over the years and recorded untold hours of ideas and improvisations with them (the key to ZF’s unusually organic sound). All those tapes were then sifted through, manipulated, and painstakingly shaped into often wildly different form before ultimately appearing on an album. The amount of time that it must have required to edit and tweak that mountain of raw material without a computer seems almost impossibly daunting and makes my brain hurt.
Listening to the album is disconcertingly analogous to a surreal walk down a long, dimly lit hallway: exotic instrumentation and weird, inhuman loops drift in and out of the aural landscape- just fleeting, disconnected snatches of mysterious soundworlds lurking behind closed doors. The reason that this image feels so apt is that the end of the album feels like a destination has been reached: “Shamany Enfluence” and “The Death of Trees” both unfold into epic, immersive, and evolving vistas. To further belabor my inadequate visualization: a pair of doors finally open and unveil their complete and unsettling contents.
The distorted alien chanting of “The Death of Trees” is pretty engaging simply because it sounds creepily and utterly unearthly, but “Shamany Enfluence” is the album’s clear centerpiece (and masterpiece). Describing it as “ethno-ambient” provides a vague idea of how it sounds, but it is a thoroughly simplistic and misleading one. At its best, it sounds more accurately like a decaying transmission of a forgotten tribe’s mourning ceremony (accompanied by a chorus of psychedelic frogs). It is at once eerily beautiful and wholly “other” and would have made the perfect end to the album. Instead, the aforementioned “The Death of Trees” follows for a necessarily anticlimactic conclusion, but I can’t fault the band for its placement: it was too good to leave off and it wouldn’t have fit anywhere else. From start to finish, this is inarguably one of the most strange and visionary albums to emerge from 1980’s England—no small feat, given the competition. Shouting at the Ground is the sound of a band straining their ingenuity and creativity to the limit in hopes of forging something stunning and unique (and succeeding).
(Aside: While I was researching this album, I found an Italian language history of Zoviet France and unsuccessfully attempted to translate it using Babelfish. "Album" translated as "egg white" and I learned that their sound is based primarily upon "monoropes.")
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