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Intr_version
Here is another album from Intr_version that perfectly conforms to my expectations. I first heard The Beans on the label's excellent Saturday Morning Empires compilation, where their "May 6th Expires" served as the closing track, a gentle, rain-saturated drift-off that managed to sound both out-of-place among label's dominant electronic artists and also very apt, as a summary of the melancholic mood-building available throughout everything I've heard from the label yet. With this, their fifth proper release, the group has made a record whose spectral, narcotic beauty I feel instantly like I've heard many times before, but will never grow tired. The Beans are from Canada, and it's hard not to align their music, however slightly, with fellow countrymen Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Bassplayer is four long "rock" instrumentals driven by the same kind of simple, sad, two-chord meditations that Godspeed layers high with the swooning textures and the odd cryptic political snippets to create their signature effect. The Beans approach the same medium with fewer musicians, a looser stylistic palette, and much less bombast. Their slow, low-rising pieces seem—like Godspeed's—to touch on very familiar, almost basic melodic components, but without as much heart-stringing, making them better open to interpretation—if not quite subversive or challenging content-wise. Nothing is particularly new about the group's style or methods; however these songs speak for themselves, as "May 6th Expires" did as the finale of Intr_version's sampler. Included here as the first track in longer form, the song saturates from the first second, an almost note-less, reverb-expanded bassline brimming and coating each lazy, jazzy slide of the guitars, hooked into each other as if guarding against a very real threat of disintegration, a feeling notably lacking from the work of Godspeed and other post-rock groups where the studied, forced character of songs often ruins their potential for dramatic intensity. Bassplayer benefits from production that retains a live feel, emphasizing the endurance and conviction of the players while making the layered crescendos of the music all the more impressive. My first thought when hearing The Beans was actually a similarity to Australia improvisers The Necks, not so much in direct tonal relationship or even in the music's structural intent, but The Necks work within a similar slow-enfolding, immersive environment in which a song's parts reveal themselves as dependent without a sense of hierarchy. And though The Beans' discography does include three film scores, they refuse the visual dependencies of most things termed "cinematic." While much of this music captures a certain melancholic urgency that could serve the right film very well, it's hard to tell if this is not simply a part of the familiarity, the comfort I find in the music. Bassplayer is special in that it takes comfortable, almost predictable associations and offers the opportunity of living inside them for a short time, a kinetic edge usually denied music of such lateral calm and tender restraint.
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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.
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Karaoke Kalk
In an attempt to Google up some information about this new project from Jens Massel (previously known for his work as Kandis & Senking) and Michael Cramm, I learned that the original Poto & Cabengo were a pair of identical twin girls—real names Grace & Virginia Kennedy—who spoke to each other in their own secret language for the first decade of their lives. What this has to do with this record is a mystery to me, but it's an interesting bit of trivia nonetheless. Interesting is a good word to describe this album which Massel & Cramm describe as their tribute to the sounds of country & folk music. While the idea of European electronic artists being influenced by American roots music may seem strange, there are precedents such as O Yuki Conjugate and Dead Hollywood Stars. Unlike those earlier examples, Poto & Cabengo tend to stick a little closer to the traditions of the genres, with plenty of pluckin' and singin' sitting alongside the pretty electronic melodies. It's an approach that works more often than not, although the latter part of the record is marred by the bizarre "Suevian Rhapsody," which features a nonsensical combination of croaked spoken vocals and a variety of dialogue samples from movies and television. This is a unique and fun release, and at a compact 36 minutes in length, it wraps up before the concept gets beaten to death.
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Karaoke Kalk
Also on the short side—but decidedly not as fun—is the third album from French musician, vocalist and poet Toog. The record is intended to be a modern variation on Poems For Lou, a book written during World War I by poet and soldier Guillaume Apollinaire who was inspired by a woman named Lou that he loved and lost in Nice before the war. In Toog's version, the role of the muse is played by actress Asia Argento, and WWI is replaced by the war and terrorism of the post-9/11 world. It's impossible for me to verify if Toog's words truly reflect these themes, as aside from two pieces that are sultrily spoken by Argento, all of the readings are in French, a language that I remember very little of from my lessons of many years ago. At least the music, which is produced by French sound artist Digiki, is generally quite nice, mixing together elements of downtempo electro & ambient with low-key pop & hip-hop, and even some hints of industrial, classical and cabaret. Given the strong poetic theme of the work, however, it's quite obvious that without some understanding of the words, listeners just won't get the full message that Toog is trying to convey in the 10 tracks on 'Lou Etendue'.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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PALESTINE is one of the cornerstones of YANN TIERSEN's next album DUST LANE. Ici,d'ailleurs asked some members of collective This Immortal Coil (DEADVERSE [Dälek], CHAPELIER FOU, THE THIRD EYE FOUNDATION [Matt Elliott] and Yann Tiersen himself) to deliver their own reading of this emblematic track for a EP to be released in vinyl only.
PALESTINE, an original track and 6 interpretations by 6 strong-tempered personalities...
Cornerstone of YANN TIERSEN's next album DUST LANE, PALESTINE stands at the crossroads of the artist's multiple talents. It is the expression of an itinerary without fail where the toy piano harmonises altogether with the electronic instruments, Dave Collingwood's implacable drums and Matt Elliott's characteristic voice. An invitation to travel, in an undoubtedly troubled time, but, above all, a humanistic hymn beyond boundaries, reflecting unfailing hope.
Ici,d'ailleurs asked some members of collective This Immortal Coil (of which Yann Tiersen himself) to deliver their own reading of this emblematic track.
DEADVERSE (Dälek) gives the opening shot with a version worthy of an armoured division ready to blast away all genres and walls; heavy hip hop with industrial rhythms, both insistent and devastating, for modern dancefloors.
CHAPELIER FOU, with a complex rhythmical cartography - in the vein of his début album to also be released in March - cleverly de-constructs the boundaries of PALESTINE in a sequenced slow motion crumbling, like a deeply moving continuous shot where sound gives life to images.
MATT ELLIOTT brings his project The Third Eye Foundation back to life for a totally unbridled comeback and blows minds away with his unique dark shadowy dub to once more prove the obvious universality of his language.
YANN TIERSEN, in trans-genre-hobo way, brings peace to his track by opening its own boundaries to the spectres of serial composers, of German precursors of the digital age as well as the post-Timothy Leary of the years 2000, to deliver a yet unknown face of the artist.
The PALESTINE EP will be release in march 2010 in 12" vinyl with a download coupon (the digital version includes a 20 mn bonus version from ORKA )
The limited colored vinyl edition (500 red / 500 green) will only be available by mail order or during the concerts.
Preorder now & choose your color
The 18 first copies of each series (except black) will be signed by Yann Tiersen.
Orders will be sent on mid-march.
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While comparisons to Cold Cave are going to be somewhat inevitable in this day and age, this four track EP from Clockcleaner vocalist/guitarist John Sharkey III embraces the new wave nostalgia to some extent, but the result is closer to early '80s death rock than the more synth heavy projects, owing far more to the likes of Christian Death than New Order.
The four tracks that comprise this 12" follow a similar recipe, but never feel overly redundant or repetitive. The opening "Not My Idea" joins a fuzzed out bassline to a monotone drum beat. The funeral march is fleshed out with some very 1980s analog synth parts and deep, monotone death rock vocals. "Torture" mines similar territory, with slow pounding echoed drums and morose vocals, all of which plods along depressingly.
"Let’s Make Friends" has a bit more "rock" sound to it, the synths and drums are a lot sharper and there’s a more traditional verse/chorus/verse structure to it, but still with the same dour and angry sound to it. The shorter "This Is Murder" immediately calls to mind something off The Cure’s Faith, but with all of the production and reverb stripped away to near nothingness.
The embracing of 1980s synth sounds on here will surely put it next to the likes of Cold Cave, but the results are quite different. There is a more stripped down organic feel here, with most of the tracks being only bass, synth, drums and vocals in various configurations, without a lot of post-production or effects. The sound is nature and sounds a lot more like it was recorded to a 4 track instead of a Macbook. It also carries over a good amount of the sleaze from Clockcleaner, but focusing much more on the goth sounds of them than the scuzz-rock of that band. The vocals occasionally start to go a bit too far into rock territory, contrasting with a genre that’s normally more restrained in its approach, but the shift isn’t too strong as to kill the vibe of the material.
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Having been stalwarts in the Japanese electroacoustic microsound scene for over a decade now, the quartet has always focused on unifying the usually disparate worlds of laptop based programming and improvised organic music. For their second release on the 12k label, they have done exactly that, marrying acoustic guitar with software patches, all presented in a warm, post-rock influenced analog audio bath.
The opening of "Elementary Domain" matches beeping tones and distant noises with the untreated pure sound of guitar strings and bells. The structure is definitely one of a more abstract and laptop-composed nature, but the parts used are definitely warm ambient pop, weaving together a complex piece that is far more natural and inviting than expected. "Help Ourselves" has a similar feeling to it, but employs a great deal of warm piano, shimmering analog strings, and all so subtle laptop noises.
Surprisingly enough, the remainder of the songs are, for the most part, actually more "natural" sounding. "When Unwelt Melts" is a slow building piece that begins with the gentle chimes of a music box, with a bit of acoustic guitar above. As it continues, the addition of analog and digital instrumentation fleshes out the song, leading through a natural evolution that delicate and beautiful. "Helical Scenery" also joins acoustic guitar and shaker percussion with soft synth textures. As the track is given room to grow and change, lush accordion-like tones and more pronounced guitar intermingle above the subtle keyboards.
Towards the latter half of the disc the music becomes slightly more forceful and obtuse, but never out of control. "Be Born" mixes lush, infinite harmonium and harmonica passages with abstract organ noodling, and by the time the massive, crashing percussion shows up at the end, the track rivals some of the best krautrock out there. The long piece, "First Breathing At Last," again uses the digital elements as instruments alongside synths and guitar to create a structured, yet rhythmically disjointed piece that definitely has structure to it, but a very abstract and esoteric one. The track allows the heavier synths and electronics to rise up at the end, creating a heavy, but not oppressive sensation.
One thing that separates them from so many other laptop artists is the fact that Minamo is a band. They play together, mostly working with live recordings, and use laptops and other digital based technology as instruments, not as a crutch. The music they create has that organic, "live" feel to it, even though the instrumentation is at times anything but traditional. Like label mates Small Color, there is a warmth and soul here, proving that digital music does not need to be abrasive and inhuman.
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