Albums and Singles

02 April 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Artist: Machinefabriek
Title: Daas
Catalogue No: CSR128CD
Barcode: 8 2356648982 5
Format: CD in digipak
Genre: Drone / Ghost Ambience
Shipping: 19th April

Pre-Order CD

The tracks on Daas have been carefully picked to form a provoking, haunting journey. What the tracks have in comon is a sense of nostalgic graininess. As with the music of Philip Jeck, The Caretaker or William Basinski, these tracks are full of degrading melodies and dusty ambience.

'Daas' is the previously unreleased opening track of the album, and feautures contributions by the great Richard Skelton. This track was made as a reaction to the piece 'Koploop'. 'Flotter', 'Koploop' and 'Grom' were previously available on small run self released 3" CDRs. Sold out for some time now, these tracks deserved a wider audience. These three long tracks also seem to come from the same galaxy, making perfect sense when put together. 'Onkruid' was a track previously released on 'A Room Forever', as an expensive and extremely limited 12" boxset, now brought to a wider audience.

Presented in a matt-laminate digipak.

Tracks: 1. Daas (7:42) | 2. Flotter (18:40) | 3. Onkruid (11:24) | 4. Koploop (19:46) | 5. Grom (18:02)

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28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This is one of the cases where the artists’ environment clearly comes across in their recorded output. Hailing from Norway, the duo of Pjusk weave digital soundscapes that are cold and icy, yet have an inviting warmth to them, like a fireplace heated cabin amongst the frozen tundra. Their second album is a gloriously minimal piece of subtle melody and texture that reveals more the closer it is listened to.

12k

Immediately upon its opening, "Valldal" tosses sheets of torrential rain in before pulling back, leaving just the most barest of ambient pastiches intermingling with low bit rate percussive crunches, soft static, and electronics pulsing away. While it has a sparse, frigid quality to it, it is still compelling and inviting. Weather makes its way into the short track "Juv," with its lo-fi ambience, static, and icy winds, and "Vidde," where it is heavily panned and has a metallic, almost industrial quality to the sound.

My personal favorite moments come with the more textural studies of sound, like the warm, campfire like crackles of "Skygge" that glow amongst digital buzzing that’s panned around, acting like a bit of chaos next to the relative calm. Similarly, there is some great rhythmic textures at the end of "Glimt," which proceed a wide variety of sounds, resembling massive church organs, chimes, bowed cymbals, and even a bit of lonely guitar that shines through. "Demring" also has a slight rhythm, but it is obscured by thick clouds of sound, echoed rattles intertwining with what sounds like a Hammond organ.

While it never reaches any level that it could be danced to, some of the tracks do show tinges of conventional electronica. The clicks that resemble horse gallops on “Sus” develop in complexity but are wrapped in gauzy ambience and lush melodic passages. Melody also dominates "Skodde" and "Skumring," with the latter underpinned by deep percussive pulses, static-y distortion, and lonely piano notes. On "Dis," soft and gentle female vocals appear alongside piano and swelling oscillators, creating a spaciousness that is sparse, but at the same time captivating.

Like a warm refuge in an arctic winter, Pjusk creates inviting digital ambient music with a shimmering natural glow. Even when the sounds of the cold Norwegian environs appear, they never take on a dark or unfriendly character. The result is a beautiful combination of subtle melody and texture study that is a very diverse, yet coherent work on its own. Now that spring is rearing its head in the northeast US, it’s a fitting soundtrack, but I know I’ll keep this one near when the days begin to get shorter again.

samples:

28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Hz was initially a series of six EPs, released monthly, then compiled into a six disc box set, and later a two disc compilation. In my opinion, the then-duo of Robert Hampson and Scott Dawson reached the highest peak in their quest to take the sound of the electric guitar as far as it could go. Evenly split between astronomical ambient abstraction and a nascent take on post rock, this set was the final one where the duo’s history as Loop was still shining through. The result is two hours of the best experimental rock and ambient drone in my own personal collection.

Beggars Banquet

First, a bit of history. My first exposure to Main was an impulse purchase of the Motion Pool album at a mall record store on my 16th birthday. Looking back now, the idea of music like that being found at a mall (and at a mall in the crappiest reaches of Central Florida, no less), is hard to fathom, but it did happen. I bought it because I knew of Hampson’s connection to Godflesh (who I was a big fan of at that time), and I was also beginning my journey into that post-industrial metal scene of Scorn and God, along with the short lived Isolationist movement. Buying it, I didn’t know what to expect, but I did like what I heard. That album (arguably the most traditional "record" the band ever made) followed a similar blueprint as Hz: approximately half of the tracks featured booming dub bass, heavily treated circular guitar riffs, and Hampson’s voice echoing from far off in the distance. The other half were spacious tonal drones that splintered the sounds of the electric guitar as finely as possible, only to rebuild them into organic, breathing pieces of music that were as alien as they were tangible.

A friend of mine at the time was over while I was spinning that disc, and somewhat angrily remarked how "boring" it was, but I was undeterred. Within a few months I’d tracked down their backcatalog to that point: the much more "rock" oriented Hydra-Calm and Dry Stone Feed EP (both of which featured drum machines, which were dropped afterward to focus even more on the guitars), and the first two installments of the Firmament quadrillogy. The former two were my favorites, because I always loved that alien rock sound that was pioneered there. Finally, once the Hz box set arrived, I eagerly ripped open the shrinkwrap and threw in the first disc.

In its original six disc configuration, each disc is a distinct piece, broken into separate parts for convenience, but clocking in at around 20 minutes and standing on its own. Like their body of work up to this point, the discs are divided thematically: "Corona," "Maser," and "Neper" are the extremely abstract takes on "rock" music, mostly just in the form of hidden vocals and dubby bass, while "Terminus," "Haloform," and "Kaon" opt for total astral abstraction. Each stands on their own quite well, but in the context of all six pieces, feel more unified.

The two track "Corona" begins with shimmering sustained processed guitar before heading into a repetitive bass/riff motif. The riff may be heavily processed saxophone, or that might be used elsewhere. Nearly 15 years after the fact, I’m still not entirely sure. Hampson’s heavily effected voice echoes in the distance, constituting more of another instrument than actual vocals. The more pronounced elements retreat about half way through the first part, leaving percussive rattles and wide open ambience. The second part brings on even more unidentifiable sweeps of sound and rumbles, never resembling the electric guitar they were sourced from, before launching back into post-rock territory.

"Maser" also follows this blueprint, mixing Hampson’s distant vocals with layer upon layer of multifaceted guitar noise and the requisite bass loop. There isn’t as much resembling "riffs" on this one, compared to "Corona" and the tracks on Motion Pool, but it is still extremely dynamic, with percussive elements deep within, heavy ambience and squeaky loops towards the end. "Neper" is the final piece of the "rock" Main, both in this set and in their career. Opening with scattered guitar notes and what sounds like fragments of radar sweeps, eventually the bass and vocals appear, alongside metallic space and what sounds like a treated, unamplified electric guitar, before falling apart like the last sounds of a spaceship that’s gone too far to be recovered.

The other three pieces are more focused on the ambient and minimalist side of Main. "Terminus" begins with surging waves of sound, almost like comets trailing across the sky, leaving vague notions of guitar in their trails of stardust. Over hollow metallic drones, layers of rhythmic static and maybe bass guitar can be heard far in the distance, crafting a track that is as unconventionally rhythmic as possible. "Haloform" continues this with crunchy percussive elements, and what is likely guitar playing right at the bridge, building to a collage of sound that somehow manages to retain its organic guitar sound while being torn apart. The latter part stretches out into swelling waves of ambience, with sustained and layered passages creating more of a pretty, rather than isolating sound.

Perhaps the most revealing of this set is the five track "Kaon." Recorded live to two track, it is unsurprisingly the barest sounding recording here, but it never feels TOO sparse. Instead the duo uses the simpler mix to create sparse and expansive space, punctuating it with anemic buzzes and distant echoes and the occasional melodic element. The latter moments open to near silence, with only the most subtle pings and pulses there to be heard.

During his time in Loop, Hampson made no bones about his love and appreciation for the films of Stanley Kubrick, which really manifested itself in the work of Main. Through the use of samples or track titles, Hampson and Dawson created sonic landscapes that were alien and isolating, a la 2001 or The Shining, yet left small amounts of humanity to lurk around, such as vocals or traditional instrumentation. The result is harrowing, but fascinating. After this release, Hampson and Dawson parted ways and Main continued in the ambient/abstract direction, with the more "rock" elements never to reappear. Recently Hampson has abandoned the instrument as a raison d’être: his recent Vectors album on Touch is sourced from other material, yet his penchant for architectural sound is still prominent. Main did many other great works after this, and the Vectors album is evidence that he is still pushing sound into the farthest reaches of cosmic space, but Hz is one of those works I still keep coming back to.

samples:

28 March 2010

Lucas Schleicher

Albums and Singles

An obvious choice for a single, "Keep Slipping Away" is one of A Place to Bury Stranger's most immediate and gratifying songs. Live, it provides a little relief from the Strangers' onslaught, but keeps things upbeat and, maybe more importantly, provides an easily remembered hook. On 7" it's the A-Side to "Hit the Ground," a killer punk-rock/surf-rock hybrid that probably deserved a place on Exploding Head.

Mute

As far as immediate, red-hot rock songs go, A Place to Bury Strangers is among the best bands out there. Hell, Exploding Head could have been a punk record if it weren't for their shoegaze affiliations and songs like "I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart." But, songs like "Hit the Ground" are good evidence that Oliver Ackermann still has a little hardcore in his heart, as it drives forward with stacatto eighth note rhythms and a pounding chorus that stomps the floor more than anything else. The lead melody reminds me a little bit of Dick Dale, but when Ackermann lets his guitar go nuts and the bass line takes over melodic duties I'm reminded just a little bit of Hüsker Dü, though not because of any similarity in their songwriting. "Hit the Ground" just sounds like a big, beautiful mess, much in the same way most of New Day Rising does. Sloppy, completely electrified songs with a lot of forward movement, big rhythms, and no small amount of testosterone are among my favorite things, so this song hits the spot. I'd like to see this thing pop up on a collection of B-Sides somewhere down the line as I could easily wear this 7" out from overplaying it.

28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Miguel De Pedro continues to find ways to make his already motley discography more diverse and unpredictable. After manipulating and distorting the sounds of Mille minimal techno, glitch, techno, rave, and having an almost intimate encounter with ambient something-or-other, Kid606 is now taking a stab at analog noise. Without his signature beats and usual goofiness to aid him, Miguel sounds a little lost. But, even with its numerous lulls and head-scratching moments, Songs About Fucking Steve Albini is one of the better things the Kid has released in the last few years.

Important

Nothing about the music on De Pedro's latest record suggest that this is even a Kid606 album. The album and song titles and the fact that Kid606 is printed on the cover in big pink letters is all anyone has connecting this noise to that person. The closest Miguel has ever come to textured noise like this is on his Mille Plateaux releases, which featured at least some beats and remnants of the characteristic 606 sound assault. There's none of that happening here, unless some fractured glitch noise and fuzzy static are to be counted as the sole property of Miguel De Pedro. On Songs About Fucking Steve Albini I hear the clear influence of guys like Markus Popp, Pan Sonic, Jan St. Werner, and even a little Terry Riley. I guess somebody could argue these musicians have always been an influence on Kid606, but they've never been as clear as they are on this album. If they were all hiding under Miguel's bed in the past, now they're outside running around, playing keep away from Kid606 with his laptops.

Cyclical melodies and chopped up fragments of already fragmented sound make up about 99% of the Kid's arsenal this time around, which means that there are long passages of repetitive junk audio and seemingly aimless noise tangents to be found everywhere. Some are pretty annoying (see "Die Rumpled Ego"), but others are delicate and surprisingly beautiful (check out "Periled Emu God"). I figure without recourse to even a single break, Miguel just loosened the reins, choosing to let the audio lead him instead of the other way around. For the most part this actually works to his advantage, but in the places where Miguel gives up on any and all order, the album falls apart and quickly loses my interest. Thankfully, the Kid sticks to producing lovely slabs of interlocking glacial noise and melody for most of the record. Sometimes single samples churn and buzz away in cardiac-like rhythms and sometimes layers and layers of strange oscillations work together to form an indistinguishable mass of throbbing electrical meat. It's hard not to think of Harmonia or Cluster during the first few songs. That same simple, child-like approach to melody and loops is present from the beginning and survives until very near the end, where it's finally mangled beyond recognition. When Miguel checks himself and builds concise, metered music he simultaneously produces his best, most alluring work. When he loses control and ends up churning out electrical farts and headache-inducing buzz, I'm nearly always tempted to reach for the stop button. Had he saved his prankster audio tendencies for an album where it would fit more convincingly, I'd probably be gushing a little more about Miguel's Albini fucking ways.

Still, how any of this relates to Steve Albini is completely up in the air. Maybe Miguel's use of a bunch of analog equipment is sufficient reason for referencing the king of analog tapes, but I was half-expecting static-filled remixes of Big Black when I first heard the title and saw the cover art. If not that, then I was hoping for at least a little vitriol. After getting over the fact that there wasn't even one consistent beat or a single Big Black sample anywhere on any of the songs, I was able to sit back and appreciate the record for what it is. In the time between I was left wondering why Miguel would choose this album title instead of 606 Diskont or maybe Miguel De Pedro and the Phantom Band Play Mika Vainio's Pool Party. Reproducing the artwork for Songs About Fucking is cute, but it works against Kid606: the music is already odd and unexpected enough, it doesn't really need a misleading title to make things more difficult. Besides, naming songs after broken up anagrams of your own name is pretty lazy. The Important website tells me that Miguel spent a lot of time recording and putting this music together (many years, apparently). I wish he would have spent more time personalizing the project, because the music definitely deserves something more unique.

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28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

cover image Scorn's third album was a groundbreaking and seminal release, as Napalm Death‚Äôs former rhythm section finally shook loose the last vestiges of their metal past to attain the sinister strain of dub that they came to be known for. Unfortunately, it was also one of the last times that things went well for the project, as Mick Harris would soon be hit by the mercurial Nick Bullen's departure, creative differences with Earache, and a precipitous decline in the popularity of the isolationism genre.

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Earache

It is uncanny how much influence Napalm Death has had on both my musical evolution and that of the underground in general (both directly and indirectly).No one could have anticipated that the anarcho-punk-loving trio of Mick Harris, Justin Broadrick, and Nick Bullen who recorded Scum in 1986 (an album that holds only passing interest for me) would eventually split into such disparate and pioneering entities as Scorn, Godflesh, Jesu, and Lull.I remember both Evanescence and Godflesh‚Äôs Streetcleaner both making such a splash upon their release that they even managed to appear in publications that were mainstream enough to reach me in the cultural backwaters of central New York (this being before widespread Internet use, of course).As such, they were both gateways to a whole world of unpopular musics (dub, dark ambient, noise, etc.) that I may not have discovered otherwise.

Listening to Evanescence 16 years later, I am surprised by how well much of it holds up.The heavy shuffling beat and deep bass groove of the opening track ("Silver Rain Fell") still explodes out of the speakers and elicits involuntary head-bobbing.Nick Bullen's vocals are still as confounding as ever though: they are incomprehensible, amelodic, and buried very low in the mix.In retrospect, they seem very unnecessary and like they were a grudging afterthought, but I suspect that being a "band" with a "singer" and "songs" was probably an important factor in Scorn's relative popularity in those days.That said, Bullen's bass playing is awesome.Even though later Scorn releases like Gyral are arguably better than Evanescence, I definitely miss his presence.Apparently he is a baker now.I suspect that I will eventually hear about him again in association with some sort of extreme and genre-smashing type of new bread that stuns the bourgeoisie.

Of course, "Silver Rain Fell" is not a fluke.In fact, "Falling" is even more propulsive and substantially more psychedelic (and probably the best song on the album).Bullen's vocals are almost nonexistent on it, relegated to just a heavily processed background sound, yielding the foreground to the incredible and complex beat and a swirling barrage of disorienting synthesizers and samples.This was a good move."Days Passed" is also a pretty brilliant track, as it sounds like Harris and Bullen decided to take PIL's Second Edition sound and tweak it by making it heavier and removing the obnoxious vocals (I think Keith Levene and Jah Wobble would be very impressed).Also, Harris's atmospheric sampling collages are particularly inspired and surreal here.The thumping, didgeridoo-inflected "Exodus" (featuring Bullen's most melodic vocals) and the warped and shuddering ambient closer "Slumber" are also quite excellent.

That said, Scorn is a band that is best taken in song-sized doses.Mick Harris is extremely good at what he does, but what he does is very narrow.The Scorn sound can basically be summarized as "a cool groove with some trippy stuff happening over it."In a 5-minute dose, that can sound amazing, but it yields diminishing returns over the course of an hour.Also, some songs don't age well, like the bombastic "Automata," which sounds like it could have been an out-take from The Mind Is a Terrible Thing To Taste-era Ministry.The horror movie piano of "Silver Rain Fell" and "Night Tide" also sounds a bit heavy-handed with the passage of time.Despite its flaws, however, Evanescence is an album that was very, very much ahead of its time.While dubstep and artists like Burial enjoy quite a bit of popularity and influence today, making dark and noise-damaged dub music in 1994 was decidedly not the cool thing to be doing.

(Note- Earache has recently reissued Evanescance as a double-album with Ellipsis)

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28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Bill Fay says David Tibet is probably the only person who would have released this 2CD set. The first disc covers demos and live material from 1970-1971 with Fay’s singing, piano, guitar, bass, and drums combining at times to astonishing effect. The second, lighter disc, recorded at home in 2008, begins with Fay's vocals added to a Michael Cashmore instrumental from The Snow Abides and ends with a song written by his brother, John Fay.

Coptic Cat

Several of Fay’s songs on the Piano, Guitar, Bass & Drums 1970-71 disc were either on his lushly orchestrated debut Bill Fay, or the more stripped down follow up Time of The Last Persecution. The album is made up of tapes found in various locations and approved for release by musicians who obviously had a tight bond. That trust in each other enabled them to keep the music simple. So the sweet, ticking drums, the scattered piano notes, and unfussy bass all make for a perfect unhurried atmosphere in which Fay’s unusual voice flourishes. Additionally, Ray Russell’s wildly brilliant guitar playing adds a barnstorming edge to some of these lovely and deeply personal songs.

At some point Bill Fay must have acquired some conviction that life on Earth would eventually be interrupted by the intervention of a higher spiritual power; an intervention prophesied to fix the folly and misguided actions of humans that had wrought widespread war, false idols and misery. His images interpret the book of Revelation yet he conveys a gentle vulnerability and humanity which make apocalypse and salvation all sound rather comforting. That he also sings of not kneeling in "dead cathedrals" and complains of a spire "that blocks out the sky" is rather appealing. The versions of “Plan D” and “Pictures of Adolph Again” are love songs to the joy of existence albeit with a backdrop of horror and delusion. I hate to compare Fay to anyone else, but the warmth generated by his voice and Russell’s guitar on “I Hear You Calling” put me in mind of the late Ronnie Lane at his most soulful. Fay’s genuinely touching love of nature, his appreciation of his landscape of origin, and his love for his family both balances and compliments his other concerns. His honesty is unmistakable since he obviously sings about his own back yard. I also can’t think of another songwriter who mentions trees quite as often and treats the minutiae of everyday life—door keys, dustbins, your team losing, old school friends who have passed away—with such a matter-of-fact reverence.

I have never heard anyone sing or tell stories quite like Bill Fay. His phrasing and dialect are, if not unique, then certainly unusual, and his lyrics are disarmingly direct. It’s as if a character from Adam Thorpe’s odd rural epic Ulverton has come to life and is regaling us with history, observations of nature, and heavy portent. There is a consistently humble quality to Fay’s voice and yet it manages to be mesmerizing. I say humble, but when he speaks the words to “I Will Find My Own Way Home” he seems to be acknowledging failings (perhaps a crisis of faith) but sounds as determined and cocksure as if he were auditioning for the role of Brian Clough in The Damned United.

The second disc, Still Some Light, is lighter and several of the tracks seem a bit over-sentimental at first. Maybe they are, but what emerges is Fay’s loyalty to his natural mode of expression. For example, “Hello Old Tree” is enveloped in the feeling of returning again and again for reverie to a favorite spot in his landscape. That song makes me think of John Cooper Powys’ notion that all of creation, including trees and stones, has a soul. Equally, the song “Diamond Studied Days” revels unashamedly in a strong feeling of grateful nostalgia that mirrors its topic: the love Fay’s parents gave him as a child. He merges several of his main themes, nature, peace and spiritual redemption, on the hymn-like track "There Is A Valley". His singing (of his own words) on “My Eyes Open” defies the truth that they were written quite separately for Michael Cashmore's originally unrelated music, so good is the match. Like most of the second disc, the piece is quiet and lush. By contrast, “I Wonder,” the final track written by John Fay, has a pleasantly rough production and a ragged acoustic edge that some might associate with Syd Barrett.

Fay's brother did the cover and booklet paintings and there are some completely natural looking photographs of Bill Fay and his close family in which he seems happy and contented and his hair looks like it hasn't been combed maybe since his mother tried to do it when he was a schoolboy! In the booklet he writes one of the longest thank you letters I've ever read. With almost forty years betwen these recordings the over-riding feeling is that there's no pretense and, depite some of the grand concerns, no preaching. I find some of the songs less successful than others but mainly enjoy the lovely imperfections of these marvelous demos and home recordings. This is the sound of someone recognizing danger and fears, but hoping and trusting for the best. Bill Fay’s proceeds from this album will go to “the major charities active in the poorest places of the world.” Including, I believe, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières.

samples disc 1:

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28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Mark Kozelek has recorded several brilliant albums over the last two decades, but this 1993 collection of odds and ends left over from the Red House Painters' first eponymous album is generally not considered one of them. Nevertheless, it remains of his most strangely compelling releases to date and features some of the most achingly perfect distillations of everything that made his early work so unique and powerful.

4AD

Red House Painters (I) has been one of my favorite albums for ages, but it is by no means a flawless work—far from it, in fact. It can be overly melodramatic and solipsistic at times and has a sprawling and somewhat overwhelming running time. It doesn’t matter though, as Mark Kozelek’s appeal lies in his warmth, honesty, and humanity. He is inconsistent, but when he connects, he does it on a deep and meaningful personal level. He connects quite often on this modest affair—in fact, much more so than on his next couple of “serious” albums. This release certainly lacks coherence and polish, but it has an uncharacteristically unfussed-over intimacy and rawness to it that Mark had a hard-time recapturing. Also, this is a rare chance to hear the band indulge in some of their more outré impulses (they don’t usually work so well, but they are often intriguing to hear).

From the very beginning of “Evil,” it is immediately clear why these songs were orphaned—they don’t sound quite like other Red House Painters’ songs. Although it unexpectedly begins with Kozelek good-naturedly chuckling, “Evil” takes the already slow and melancholic RHP formula and pushes it into a darker, more skeletal, and still slower place. Despite initially centering solely upon Kozelek’s resonant vocals and some delicately picked acoustic arpeggios, it is instantly a very heavy song. The dark tone and the way that Mark slowly and deliberately draws out every single word imbues even somewhat innocuous phrases like “Mom and Dad, is it a boy or a girl?” with an uncomfortable menace. The lengthy spaces between notes and beats create a vacuum that makes every single nuance of the song seem important and fraught with mystery. Then, oddly, the second half of the song shifts gears into an experimental coda of wordlessly repeating and somewhat dissonant falsetto vocals. The next track, “Bubble,” is similarly sparse and glacial, but completely inverts the tone into a lushly melodic and bittersweetly autumnal love song that is one of the best things that Kozelek has ever penned. I love the impossibly slow drumming and beautiful, sleepily unfolding chord progression- the music is the perfect foil for Mark’s lovelorn lyrics, like falling leaves or snow.

It isn’t until the third song, a decent cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock,” that things become a bit more conventionally “rock”: chords are strummed, the drummer starts to play like he has emerged from the somnambulant trance of the first two songs, and there is a relatively normal pace and structure. After that, there is a brief return to extreme slow-motion (“Helicopter”) before the band picks up the pace again for two back-to-back classics. “New Jersey” reprises one of Red House Painters I’s best songs with the added inclusion of some unexpectedly enthusiastic drumming, resulting in one of the most warm, immediately gratifying, and catchy songs in RHP’s oeuvre. The deeply confessional and hauntingly powerful “Uncle Joe” follows it.

“Uncle Joe” is one of the most lyrically dark and overtly autobiographical works of Mark’s career, as it is peppered with phrases like “I’m looking at the ceiling with an awful feeling of loss and loneliness” and “the after late-night television pain…I’m running out of strength again.” Even so, it has an extremely strong melody and some subtle flashes of light and humor (“it was unintentional when I spit in your beer. I am over-influenced by movies”) that prevent Kozelek’s unfiltered catharsis from becoming oppressive or overly mopey. It is simply a great song: existential anguish is rarely this poppy and pop is rarely this dark.

Of course, being an out-takes collection of sorts, Red House Painters II can’t help but miss the mark a few times. Kozelek thoughtfully saves the failures for the end of the album though, so they’re easy to avoid. “Blindfold” is initially another pleasantly slumberous piece in the vein of “Helicopter,” but takes that song’s lengthy jamming outro and amplifies it into something quite awful. It goes on for over eight minutes and features some singularly bad primal metal howling for the final stretch (not something this band is generally associated with). The album then limps to an anticlimactic conclusion with a very brief, but very ill-conceived cover of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Still, the handful of great songs on this album is well-worth investigating. Kozelek certainly went on to release some wonderful and essential late-period albums (like Old Ramon and Ghosts of the Great Highway), but this is the most stripped-down and spacious representation of his darker, more bluntly emotional early period.

Samples:

28 March 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

From the joyous opening song to the last note of the final track I am captivated by the fierce instrumentation and solemn warmth of Slow Six. Serious yet playful they remind me that I don't need to jump out of an airplane or ski down the alps to experience the rush of exhilaration; all I have to do is turn on my stereo and put on this beautiful record.

Western Vinyl

Owing perhaps to their classical training, the album unfolds like a symphony. They really know how to wield tension: building it up and releasing it in bursts; soaring high and then laying fallow—but not utterly inactive—as the various strains of their playing resolve themselves. “The Night You Left New York” is their opening sonata. With a devastating pulse whipped out on the drum kit, a crunchy and melodic guitar hook courtesy of Stephen Griesgraber I am pulled right in. The two violins swirling around each other lift me off the ground and carry me upwards like dry leaves in the autumn wind. Colorful electronic treatments of the instruments become apparent towards the end.

“Cloud Cover” in two parts is a slow movement. Here they explore one of my favorite features in music for the last sixty or so years: the use of a radio as an instrument in and of itself. Scanning the airwaves for signs of life, bits of static and atmospheric scree merge with the lulling violin and organic electronics. What is most impressive about the electronic aspect of this group is the fact that Christopher Tignor, who is the lead violinist and songwriter, writes his own software used for the live processing of the other instruments. It doesn't take a genius to go out and buy or download a music program for the computer and get it to cough up some weird sounding garbage, but it does take serious dedication to write programs from scratch and coax them into producing the desired sounds. In this respect Slow Six are part of a tradition that stretches back to the academic composers who first explored the possibilities in music opened up by computers. There is however nothing dry, dusty, or doddering about what they do. The radio voices, now manipulated so as to be wondrously unintelligible, bleed into the next track, “Because Together We Resonate,” which steps the pace up a notch again. From here on out they don't let up. The tension aforementioned is again held in perfect balance, escalating and descending, only the ingress and regress happen swiftly now. The guitar and violins dance around each other, moving expertly as clockwork without sounding at all mechanical.

“These Rivers Between Us” executes the album flawlessly with a smooth, but upbeat, and heartfelt finish. It is an inspired anthem building and elaborating upon the themes first heard in the albums opener. Theo Metz again shows his mastery of the drums by laying down a spell-binding foundation, joined by the low toned melody Rob Collins plunks down on the rhodes. Over top of this the guitarist and two violinists ascend to heavenly heights. In just under an hour they have unraveled the yarn of their musical structures and not only weaved it back together again, but have layered in new designs. Tommorrow Becomes You is definite an early choice for what will be on my best of year list for 2010.

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27 March 2010

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Albums and Singles

Robert Lowe seems to be the busiest man in music, as well as his own Lichens project he is popping in up in so many different bands: The Cairo Gang, Om and Twilight (the metal band, not the film) to name a few. On this second collaboration with Rose Lazar, Lowe again contributes the music and the duo worked together on the artwork. Musically, it is a far cry from the Robert Lowe I already know; soft synthesiser rhythms and melodies are the order of the day. It is entrancing, comforting and magnificent all in one go.

Thrill Jockey

The music has a lot in common with German synthesiser music from the '70s. Ghosts of Cluster and Kraftwerk pass through the compositions, eerily beautiful. “Suno Vidis” could easily have come from the recording sessions of Cluster’s Zuckerzeit, the dancing melodies and childlike wonder are satisfying to listen to. Lowe again and again captures the very essence of pure, simple and gorgeous music although in a different way from his work as Lichens (which for me always has a very open and investigative feeling to it).

However, it is not all about simple melodies: there are some amazing textures and sounds being created throughout Eclipses. The ending of “Crayon Gym” features some wonderful sounds where the music is being manipulated slowly, ending up somewhere between a cracking voice and the throb of a mighty machine. Elsewhere, computerised beeps and opaque sounds wash over the listener such as on the sublime “Ŭyndham-a Horloĝo.” Here Lowe conjures up the kind of music that would accompany science documentaries in the '60s and '70s, the frenetic electronic blips representing everything from evolution to cloud formation.

As for the actual collaborative part of the album, the LP’s sleeve folds out into a large double sided poster to show off Lowe and Lazar’s handiwork. I am not an art critic but I like the imagery which is a mixture of abstract shapes, rainbows and weather (the use of prisms, light and weather going well with my mental images of “Ŭyndham-a Horloĝo” described above). The youthful style of drawing matches up quite well with the music on the record.

Although Eclipses is currently only available on vinyl, it does come with a download voucher for MP3s which is always appreciated for those who must sometimes leave their turntable behind. However, the experience of listening to Eclipses on my iPod was far less satisfying than putting the LP on the turntable and unfolding the artwork to gaze at while I listened. Plus this is music that sounds best coming out of speakers rather than headphones, the rich sounds filling the room in a way that is lost when listening to it in your ears alone. Finally, it sounds great at either speed which is harder to replicate on my iPod.

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