06 February 2010

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Albums and Singles

This is the first album from Wang Changcun, who is a member of the China Sound Unit, a group dedicated to investigating aural phenomena in various urban centers. Blurring the distinction between noise and the avant-garde, it also marks the first release of a Chinese composer by a Western label with international scope.

Sub Rosa

Of the two tracks on this disc, of more interest is the lengthy opener "Grand Hotel." In this 40-minute composition, Changcun relies on expansive texture to create an ever-shifting landscape. Opening with what could be recycled fragments of broken glass with swelling pitches swimming underneath, before long this gives way to a more mechanical-sounding hum accompanied by rising pitches. After a fade out and then a fade back in, a reptilian undertone fights various effects with whirrs and beeps. More waves of buzzing machinery linger before retreating, and it’s not unlike wandering through a sonic rainstorm, occasionally ducking for cover and at other times making a run for it. Halfway through the piece, a helicopter hovers overhead, yet its motive is unclear. Perhaps it’s a search party looking to rescue wanderers from the storm, or else belonging to some nefarious law enforcement group. Eventually the clouds fade and the sounds drip into puddles. The tranquility is soon shattered when a swarm of insects descends, in turn fed upon by bats that swoop through their repellent mists. Toward the end, the helicopter returns, but this time something is wrong as it groans and stutters, misfires, and for the first time the song comes close to having something like beats. All that’s left at the end is a minimalistic rippling rhythm, with none of the atmospheric noise that permeates the rest of the song. It’s a fine piece, if not terribly different from others like it, but certainly enjoyable.

A little more puzzling is the second song, "King of Image 1995," which is a field recording Changcun taped from a VHS cassette of a man’s funeral attended by singing nuns. As much as I like the music, I’m a little confused as to its inclusion here since Changcun’s manipulations of the source are quite subtle. It might be a little more effective in a different, perhaps documentary, context. Yet as a window into these lives, the track isn’t without its merits.

This album may not be groundbreaking, but it certainly highlights the fact that there is a lot of underground Chinese music yet to be exposed to Western listeners. If Changcun’s work is any indication of its quality, then I’m all ears.

samples:

• Grand Hotel
• King of Image 1995

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06 February 2010

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Albums and Singles

Earth Covers Earth was the first Current 93 album I obsessed over. I acquired it not long after I found a copy of Emblems for $2.89 in a bargain bin at a record store where none of the clerks had ever heard of David Tibet or Current 93. It was a godsend. When I first heard Emblems it was like being drawn towards a black hole, and when I finally sealed my fate by listening to Earth Covers Earth I was pulled beyond the event horizon. One of the things I love about this album is the mixture of Tibet’s own lyrical songwriting, traditional tunes, and the obscure metaphysical poetry set to music. Pervaded by a vitriolic melancholy, I listen to it when I want to evoke the intermingled feelings of sadness, hope, futility, anger, joy and faith.

 

Durtro

World Serpent, now defunct, distributed the disc that I have. Among the 12 songs collected are the six from the original LP release of Earth Covers Earth on United Dairies, as well as an additional version of “The Dilly Song.” The second song on the disc “Hourglass (for Diana)” immediately spoke to me on my first listen, and it still speaks to me today. Seventeenth century poet John Hall speaks through it across the centuries with David Tibet as his living mouthpiece. Simple but elegant guitar tracery forms the perfect propulsive backdrop for the quavering violin, at first just sliding out a slow line, a force that builds in tandem with Tibet’s impassioned recitation. When he sings the words, “how senseless are our wishes / yet how great! / with what toil we pursue them / with what sweat! / yet most times for our hurts / so small we see / like children crying for some mercurie” the song kicks in with the violinist sawing hasty circular notes across the strings, as Tibet continues to spit forth his lyrical invective against the works of mankind.

At the same time the words show compassion and understanding. I had a gut reaction to the paradoxical lyrics for the song, taken from the poem “On An Houre-Glasse” and my obsession led me to look further into the works of John Hall. Many were only available on microfiche in the rare book room at Cincinnati’s downtown library. The song is repeated on the sixth track as “Hourglass (for Rosy Abelisk)” and here it is even more haunting with a lisping child’s voice reading it nearly deadpan. Accompanied by an eerie accordion drone courtesy of Steve Stapleton, and echoing female screams placed low in the mix, it is very disconcerting to hear the young child read lines like “issuing in blood and sorrow from the wombe / crauling in tears of mourning to the tombe.” The same voice also sings the title track, which is beautiful in its simplicity as the piano and guitar meld together striking poignant chords. The lyrics are taken from Henry King and again grapple with mans impermanence and the transience of all his efforts and works, the dominant theme of this collection, and a recurring one throughout all of David’s work. “Time Tryeth Truth” is another setting for the same words. Here the boy, David, and Rose Macdowall sing joined by a pensive flute in the foreground.

While David’s lyrical performance on “Rome (for Douglas P.)” is probably my least favorite on the disc, the song does have a nice murmuring drone coupled with guitar distortion that recurs with the chorus. The theme of Rome as a corrupt spiritual Imperium overlaying this world is characteristic of Tibet’s work. His visionary conception of Rome, while highly personal and idiosyncratic, also puts him in league with other cultural heroes of mine like William Blake, who believed that Roman art was destructive to the natural imagination, and Philip K. Dick who believed that history stopped in the first century A.D. the Roman Empire never having ended. Though less refined on this song, the motif finds its apogee on Black Ships Ate the Sky from 2006 where his conjuration of Caesar as Antichrist reaches tangible perfection.

The disc also brings four songs recorded in Tokyo and originally intended for release on a Japanese album that was never completed. In my opinion the lyrics for “At the Blue Gates of Death” are where David began to tap into his authentic voice as a poet, though the first version of the song is cluttered and suffers from the extra noise. The children singing in the background are interesting but his penchants for using their voices is used to a more satisfying effect on All The Pretty Little Horses. The bass guitar, played backwards, is what muddles up the mix, taking attention away from the words, which are the songs strength. His voice is also less sure of itself than it seems on “At the Blue Gates of Death (Before and Beyond Them).” In the second when he sings along to a simpler accompaniment of guitar and Rose’s vocal harmonies he is at his most vulnerable, and his most durable, which makes it all the more endearing. It is a song that I have returned to again and again over the years. The symbolism and allegory that I’ve come to expect from David are all present, but here he is more accessible because he has let the guard of overly cryptic lyrics down.

The closing “The Dreammoves of the Sleeping King” is a great example of the combined genius arrived at when Steve Stapleton and David work together. Again, the music shares methods of working and common motifs that pop up repeatedly throughout Current 93’s discography. This twenty-minute barrage of somnolent madness is quite similar to that heard on Faust. Both contain the voices of children reading fragmentary bits of the Lord’s Prayer, as if it alone would protect them from the nightmarish and otherworldly forces the sounds invoke. Melted they smear across the audio spectrum in hazy blurs of thickly swathed vibrato. Ever malleable, it contains moments that appeal to both my darker and more whimsical sensibilities. Stapleton and Tibet had this material in mind for a film they wanted to make about the land where dreams go to when they die. The film was never made, and some of the other music for it, as yet unreleased, still remains lurking in their archives.

Pictured on the cover and in the inlay are colorful photographs of a strange cast of characters: Rose Macdowall, Tony Wakeford, Douglas P., Ian Read, John Balance, Tibet, Steve Stapleton, Diana Rogerson, and children. As I started to trace David Tibet’s influences and the various connections making up his musical family tree I was initiated into a whole new world of listening, and of literature. The music on this disc opened me up and in the process I was transformed. In 2005 the Free Porcupine Society reissued the original six tracks in a limited vinyl run. It would be nice to see the 12 songs from the CD reissued, remastered, repackaged and remixed. I’m sure some related material could also be scrounged up for inclusion. David and his friends at Coptic Cat have already done so with a number of other albums from Current 93’s extensive back catalogue. Earth Covers Earth deserves the same lavish treatment.

samples:

• Hour Glass (For Diana)
• At The Blue Gates of Death (Before And Beyond Them)
• The Dreammoves of the Sleeping King

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06 February 2010

Albums and Singles

So, I don't really know how to deal with the total onslaught of Bastard Noise splits I've gotten since November. Some are tried and true BN skull noise as anyone who's been following this band is familiar with. A couple others, including the CD, show the core duo of Nelson and Wood pushing the edges of their well-established sound. On The Red List, like the recent full-length, Rogue Atronaut, a drummer has been added back into the fold and Wood is picking up the bass guitar again, returning right back to where Man Is the Bastard left off.

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05 February 2010

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Albums and Singles

Like great film noir, everypiece of Murcof's puzzle is obviously manufactured and manipulated andcalculated and refined; it so completely captures a tone that I don'tmind that the sets are fake or the lighting is hyper-real.

Leaf
 
I was introduced to Murcof's work with last year's Utopia single and I was hoping that the follow up album to that would be as good as the single promised. With Remembranza,Murcof does not disappoint. It's difficult to say where this musicwould fall in record bins filed by genre, but what matters is thatregardless of the conventions of the particular slice of the musicalspectrum that Murcof is working in, he manages to fill his songs withdepth and atmosphere. Remembranza is full of distant, reverbsoaked pianos, suspensful string arrangements that hang in the air likesmoke in a dark, shady pub, and autoclave-cleaned beats that nearlyfall into minimal techno rhythms, but rarely serve as the impetus fordance. The result plays out like techno noir made for headphones ratherthan dancefloors. This is music for murder mysteries and hardenedgumshoes and crazy dames, but it's all controlled so precisely that itnever evokes a real, urgent sense of dread. People notusually won over by the abstraction and detachment of clicky minimalistelectronica should find that Remembranza supplies enough clicksand pings and muted thumps to stand in for that style, while it alsoprovides the emotional backdrop of a film score or well-orchestratedpop music. I'd love to hear this record with some sultry, bluesy vocalsover it. As is, it's still a wonderful piece of deep listening moodmusic just waiting for a film to be shot to go with it.

samples:

• Recuerdos
• Rios
• Camino

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05 February 2010

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Albums and Singles

Pup is another entry into the highly nuanced, subtle, and delicate world ofminimalism that at one time would have been called “ambient” but nowgoes by titles like “lowercase.”  There’s too much of this sortof thing for me to be able to stay abreast of, but Dan Abrams’ work asFenton is solid and enjoyable.

Plop

Although Fenton creator Dan Abrams is from California, this disc comes all the way from Japan, by way of theJapanese label Plop.  It's a record formorning listening:  every song feels like a beginning of sorts to ajourney that is never exactly spelled out or completed.  The songs arebuilt up from loops of pristine guitar plucking and the artifacts of along, long delay time. While I see music like this played out all thetime by folks with a single guitar and a loop pedal, it’s obvious thatAbrams is not just knocking these tunes out in a matter of minutes andrendering them to tape. There isn’t much to the compositions,but they grow organically, and they are finely balanced and carefully mixedto reward deep listening. A disc like this finds me willing to acceptit differently at different times.

Without the time and solitudenecessary to devote complete attention to Pup, the recordbecomes a pleasant background texture to my day, but something that isultimately not recognizable or distinguished. Given an hour to sit downwith headphones or near field monitors, the record plays altogetherdifferently and the subtle layers of sound never get boring becausethere is almost always something else to explore. At other times, whenI want to concentrate but can’t, I imagine that Pup isthe basis of another record somewhere with drums and voices and a bandusing simple looped guitar as a foundation rather than the focus.

This is the nature of music like this, and why it’s so hard for me withmy schedule to get into it fully. I suspect that the tensionthere is exactly why music like this needs to exist: to give us areason to slow down, zone out, and bathe ourselves in microscopic beadsof sound. I only wish that were possible more often.

samples:

• Bunny
• Gentle Meter
• Wageless

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04 February 2010

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Albums and Singles

Praemedia
I'm quite sure a devilish tailor is making its way through my eardrums every time I put this record on. It's not that there's anything evil about this record; but every instance of sound is a rapidly moving panorama of subconscious and dream-like sounds accelerated through time and set to explode upon aural reception. Blevin Blectum's newest record plays like a billion ping pong balls shot into a room about three inches wide and tall. The result is a barrage of micro-sounds that weave themselves together to make patterns of pseudo-melody and hushed excursions into the clouded heart of glass machines. At times Magic Maple is propelled by a turbine engine bent on choking some kind of rhythm out of the random chaos of sounds assembled into each song and at other times it's a playful cascade of rushing sounds, skipping semi-percussion, time-distorted bits of radio interference, various vocal samples, and unknown instruments bent and snapped into unrecognizable alien keyboards. Blectum's songs never fall into any recognizable format nor do they rely on any one technique; each song plays like a small portion of something greater that, if it could all be heard at once, would reveal some grand, majestic schematic that can only be hinted at when received through typical, human ears. What's more, Blectum's chaos is catchy: at times a xylophone or inter-dimensional steel drum fades in and out of the mix to reveal bits of repeated melody and mutant rhythms that never quite find their own pace. It's an addicting kind of music because it doesn't look to typical song structures to make it enjoyable, but it also doesn't go overboard and exist somewhere on the edge of sonic tolerance and pure experimental recording. It's almost pointless to talk about these songs individually; most of the time I can't tell where one song ends and the next begins. Everything fits together perfectly, but the whole album modulates within itself and never gets boring or frustrating in all its bouncing glory. The end of the album, however, is particularly outstanding and there are moments when just the smallest changes made by Blectum are breathtaking. Of course, these moments don't last long because she just never bothers to sit still.

samples:

• Your Wish Is Taken For Granted
• Pelican Part Four
• Last Track

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04 February 2010

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Albums and Singles

Tesco
Ever since unleashing the amazing one-two punch of But What Ends When the Symbols Shatter? and Rose Clouds of Holocaust, Douglas P. has been creatively floundering. His teaming with Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch yielded two albums that abandoned all of Death in June's usual subtlety and atmosphere in favor of overblown orchestral loops littered with samples from Leni Riefenstahl films and filled with laughable lyrics about Kristallnacht and anal sex. Then came the nadir, 2001's All Pigs Must Die, a prolonged screed against the now-defunct World Serpent Distribution that played like a vicious self-parody. Now comes the new album, a collaboration with fellow fascist sympathizer Boyd Rice. I might have expected them to produce some kind of martial epic extolling the virtues of Bush's imperialist wars, but instead they opt for a more personal album, a return of sorts to the guitars-and-windchimes sound that characterizes classic Death in June. As could be expected, every track is overloaded with excessive echo and reverb, and most are scattered with dialogue snippets from cult films, a familiar DIJ tactic. Unfortunately, Douglas P. has not learned any new chords, recycling the same dull strumming he's been churning out for twenty years. Boyd Rice provides vocals for most of the tracks, in his familiar I-can't-bothered-to-sing monotone. "Sunwheels of My Mind" is almost clever, a solar-centric adaptation of Dusty Springfield's classic "Windmills of My Mind." The album's lyrics deal primarily with the passage of time (punctuated by the Alarm of the title) and a preoccupation with solar imagery. It's the old familiar sun = light = Lucifer = Satan = power equation, a fairly juvenile symbolic conceit coming from a pair of middle-aged men. All that being said, I still liked this much, much better than All Pigs Must Die or the recent Wolf Pact album. It's a big improvement over Nazi tape-loops and boring personal vendettas, but its appeal is largely nostalgic—it reminds me of a time when DIJ were slightly relevant. At this point, I'm not holding out much hope that Douglas P. will ever come up with another truly worthwhile album.

samples:

• Black Sun Rising
• Tears of the Haunted
• You Love the Sun, Don't You?

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04 February 2010

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Albums and Singles

Youth and painfully melodramatic vocals don't spell out "genius" in big, bold letters. While much of the music that this 17 year-old old writes sounds nice (in terms of production), many of his songs are covered in a too-sweet glow that renders all the glorious fuzz and inherent beauty of his guitar work null. Connor Kirby-Long makes music full of good ideas: at times his arrangements hint at a desire to push his own songwriting abilities forward, but all too often this results in a stifling inertia where nothing goes anywhere. There's huge washes of electronic buzz permeating every corner of every song, but this isn't enough to carry the record all by itself.

Type

When Khonnor does decide to lay off all the hiss, his guitars sound plain and relatively flat. "Crapstone" highlights this problem; the keyboards sound like they're being forced out of an old toy that Khonnor must've gotten when he was six and the guitar that is strolling along over it sounds like the work of a disinterested street musician floundering about lazily on his guitar whenever an attractive lady walks by. Other songs show promise, but never reach any kind of satisfying climax. It's Khonnor's age that really shines through this record, not his purported infinite talent. "Kill 2" skips along with an innocent cadence and might sound just fine if it weren't for the dramatic melodies that echo between the keyboards and heavily processed computer-melodies. When he sings it comes out as though he's whispering to someone whom he's in love with, but instead of being sure of himself he tilts back and forth and emphasizes all the wrong aspects of what he has to say. There are a couple of songs ("A Little Secret" comes immediately to mind) where his voice doesn't interrupt anything and all the instruments work very well together. The result are interesting but not enthralling strands of sound. I'm sure there are lots of teenagers in basements across the world that are making lots of music; there's nothing unique or especially outstanding about this one except that he's very obviously ambitious. I can't recommend the CD, however, because there's just not enough material in here to make me want to listen to the record over and over again. Perhaps time and experience will lend Khonnor the songwriting ability he needs to compliment his energetic ideas, but until then his music is all decoration and no substance.

samples:

• Dusty
• A Little Secret
• An Ape Is Loose

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04 February 2010

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Albums and Singles

aRtonal
In an era when so many guitarists have taken to laptop processing in order to coax new life from their thought-tired instruments, it seems only fair that other solo-instrumentalists should join the fun. And while the cello has enjoyed its fair share of fusion within the rock sphere, I've yet to see someone sit alone with this instrument, so engorged with classical and acoustic traditions, and really "plug in." Part of what makes Arnold Haberl's output as Noid so fascinating is the way the Austrian cellist moves beyond a banal, deconstructivist treatment of his playing and into ideas for composition where the computer feels less like a medium guiding the production of a piece and more like a voice within the music, to be engaged and countered, rather than simply played-through. Haberl's pieces branch off of strict minimalist ideas, bypassing crude layering techniques of the analog past and instead favoring tightly-wound, stuttering loop effects, drawn out often to the realm of nauseous formalism. Rarely is any multi-tracking involved in Noid's creations; rather miniature fragments of playing are captured, treated, and allowed to loop out, at times for over ten minutes with no real variation. The cello's woody groan becomes an industrial sander on the opening "melodien," stripped of human presence, even a performer's pause or the negative space of a hand slightly off-beat. It's clear after such a beginning that this will be "process" music, here less about the process of making, which becomes increasingly transparent as the disc progresses, and more about the process of listening, of accepting the music's sensory overload in juxtaposition with virtual lifelessness of the sounds themselves and the possibility of their "performance." Haberl does perform with live sampling and manipulation, and the points on Monodigmen where his cello is left recognizable logically become some of the most mind-numbing. "Vacuum 1" is a 12-minute piece of the cellist in lock-groove mode, struggling around what sounds like the opening strains of "Flight of the Bumblebee." After the question of Haberl actually playing such an infernal half-measure over and over again has been ruled out, listening becomes a tug-of-war between enduring the instrument's stunted flight and the utter detachment resulting from the search for patterns, or anything "material" in the music, and finding nothing. I hesitate to dismiss Noid's music as a purely formal exercise because of the way he continuously engages the elements of poise and human concentration almost inseparable from his chosen instrument, in an ultimate reduction of all that is traditionally expressive about it. There are times when Monodigmen feels like an extension of Cage's efforts to communicate the zen-like void or 'nothing' in musical composition; other times, however, Haberl's creation seems too much of an endurance test to communicate anything worth the time it takes to get there.

samples:

• Melodien
• Vacuum 1
• Instrument

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04 February 2010

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Albums and Singles

After several releases for various labels, this German duo release their first full length for Ant-Zen. The album covers a wide variety of styles and textures in a concise 42 minutes. Over eight tracks they attempt to achieve a balance between melodic and abrasive elements.

ant-zen

The most extreme example of this juxtaposition is "A Difference That's For All To See." While the three preceding tracks are linear in structure and feature vocals set to danceable rhythms, this fourth track is of two halves. The first half consists of slowly shifting, atmospheric loops. At first this sounds like an intro to something chaotic, but after three minutes it seems that the track will remain ambient. 30 seconds later a short burst of feedback announces the track's sudden shift into full-on grindcore, complete with ramshackle drumming and distorted vocals. This is directly followed by "Away," a lush instrumental with a melodic, almost calming feel. Without the clutter of vocals it was easier to enter the space they were trying to create. While musically the album is very successful, vocally it is more problematic. The vocals provide a sharp contrast to the melodic elements, the tension they create in these tracks makes me feel claustrophobic, and they're so loud in the mix that they often overpower the music. This is especially evident on "Gloomy Day", "Push Yourself" and the album-closing "Kill All Lifeforms." It is unclear from what perspective the lyrics to this track have been written. The sentiment, taken at face value, seems extremely negative, with lyrics such as "thoughts of making things better in the future are unnecessary, thank you. You don't have the future for that." Although they have been written in the first person, it is possible that these lyrics are meant as social commentary. Given the current state of the world, promoting violence and negativity seems unnecessary. In contrast, lyrics such as "follow your dreams, with one step forward" and "rediscover yourself, your pride, your dignity, your holiness, force and weakness, love and passion" on "Push Yourself" are much more hopeful, and this contrast suggests that on all tracks the vocalist is referring to someone other than himself. I often prefer when an artist creates an atmosphere which suggests an idea without stating it as obviously as Klangstabil have done on some of these tracks. To their credit, Taking Nothing Seriously is a much more eclectic set than many of their contemporaries attempt. It would have been a more enjoyable listen if it had been balanced a little more toward subtleties.

samples:

• away
• You May Start
• A Difference That's For All to See

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