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Of course with a cast like this it is tough to go wrong, and this meeting feels far less like a collaboration between Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Dieter Moebius and Brian Eno than it does a logical meeting of minds that could well have lasted far beyond the two albums the trio would release together. Often touted as the first German ambient album, the release reads far more like an instrumental soundtrack whose purpose is not so much to drift into the background as it is to elevate the occurences happening around it.
This is apparent from the first track alone, the classic "Ho Renomo," which features Can bassist and conceptual rocker Holger Czukay's bobbing repetitions fueling the effervescent electronic and piano drift surrounding it. Each member's contribution can be clearly deciphered, a remarklable synthesis of sounds and styles that feels like all of them without sounding entirely like any of them.
The album's strong point is how effortlessly it moves from piece to piece, careening into outer bounds on the following "Schone Hande," whose clear melody line feels as fragile as the cloud-like atmospherics and hydrolic drops surrounding it. Like everything here, the work seems in a kind of shifting stasis, hovering above the floor without ever rising too high. The sorrowful "Steinsame" has more than its share of Eno's recognizable footprints, as does the following "Wehrmut," but the feel is lighter and slightly more compositional, with a subtle momentum where Eno would often let the piece stand. Elsewhere, "Mit Simaen" and "Die Bunge" read like true Cluster tracks, while the rhythmic chord progression and thudded bongos of "Selange" sound like neither.
Whereas much of the album uses its broad instrumental palette quite subtley, the sitar of Okko Bekker on "One," which also features electronic groundbreaker Asmus Tietchens, is a raga tune for the elctric age, the sitar subtly maneuvering the synthesizer dips and thumb piano pulses. It is a fitting and comparably rowdy setup for the plan closer "Fur Luise," whose piano opening invites a sensitive and melancholy drawing that perfectly suits the album's overall mood, ending it with just the question mark necessary.
After all these years a lot of these now archaic electronic tactics should sound outdated but in the hands of authentic musicians such as these—whose senses of color, invention, and discriminate choice guide the proceedings with such care—the results are far from outdated. It seems instead that these pieces, though not necessarilly directly influential toward any specific genre, have become so engrained in the way that music is conceived today that these works make as much sense now as they ever have. It has become second nature.
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The opening piece sounds like a ropey tenth generation of a particularly loud Les Rallizes Dénudés bootleg, there is a guitar that is somewhat identifiable but everything is buried under the sound of the microphone breaking apart. The oversaturated recording is monstrous in its power and this inescapable but beguiling atmosphere persists for the length of the album. This immersion in sonic psychedelica reaches boiling point on the second piece, the duo reaching an intensity that should be an overload to the senses but the sensation of swimming through sound only increases.
As euphoric as the rest of the CD is, the final piece sees Swanson and Saloman pushing the music further out into the stratosphere. This last track is a rapturous 20 minute journey through space, slowly picking up speed and power until the earth is left far behind. On the surface, it is more of the same sheet metal guitar and murky electronics but there is a hidden force running beneath the music that makes it qualitatively different to the previous three pieces. It feels like Swanson and Saloman are putting their whole bodies and souls into the music, should anything go wrong there is a danger that they will be lost forever to us.
Psychic dangers aside, the biggest danger concerning this release is the CD destroying your stereo equipment. Granted, the packaging is another brilliant piece of work from Staalplaat; thick card with 3D graphics that look like they came straight from one of those sturdy picture books for toddlers. Unfortunately, the CD label is made from the same thick card and as such it will not play in most of the CD players I tried it in. I would not risk trying it in a slot-loading drive for fear that it would never come out and it was so tightly wedged in my laptop drive that it would not spin at all so caveat emptor.
Unfortunately this CD will not work in my PC so there are no sound samples, apologies!
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Treeg Salaam follows on from where Group Doueh’s previous LP on Sublime Frequencies left off; “Min Binat Omum” features joyous call and response vocals driven by a persistent tbal beat and Baamar’s liquid guitar playing. Across the album, his hypnotic and The recording quality on most of the tracks are of a higher level than on Guitar Music from the Western Sahara, although a couple of them do sound like they were recorded at a party (for that definitive Sublime Frequencies sound). The ecstatic vibe of the music is infectious, the groove might be unusual but it is not hard before I am bopping along to the songs.
After such an electric ride, the 20 minute jam that takes up all of the second side is a completely different experience. At first I found “Tazit Kalifa” to be fairly dull after the frenzied power of the first side but after multiple listens, this is one monster of a track. The smoky atmosphere combined with the guitar, organ and percussion make Group Doueh into some kind of African Can (but no amount of world music scavenging could make Can sound this exotic). The music slowly weaves around the intermittent vocals, making me wish I could decipher the lyrics (although perhaps the mystery is better). By the time the needle lifts off the vinyl, I am so lost in the waves of sinuous rhythms that it feels like hours have passed.
Bearing in mind that all of the material is from 1996 and earlier, this is an incredibly fresh sounding record. With bands like Sun City Girls, Grails, and the aforementioned Can bringing in so many “foreign” influences into their music, it is great to hear the influences of western mainstream rock like Jimi Hendrix going the other way and being used in an interesting manner. Doueh’s playing is unmistakably African but hearing those shadows of the kind of guitar playing that I grew up listening to coming through such alien arrangements is electrifying.
This album is currently vinyl only so unfortunately no sound samples at this point in time, apologies!
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The opening "Monochrome #01" drifts glacially on gentle reverberated string tones. The tones are offset by some lower frequency bass pulses and what sounds like the occasional slow, quiet cracks in an arctic ice floe. There are the occasional moments of denser layered sound, but it stays mostly soft and melodic throughout. The change and variation is present, but it’s not a dramatic shift at all, and it has a consistent feel from beginning to end.
"Monochrome #02" is even more stripped down then the first, a buried ambient melody far, far in the distance that slowly comes into focus, but never dominates or becomes forceful. Instead, the swirling notes are content to haunt in the background under a gauzy layer of sound, like a thick fog around the entire piece. "Monochrome #03" is the shortest piece, clocking in at just over seven minutes. Unlike the prior two, it is a bit more forceful in its opening, with overt organ like notes swelling and then retreating like waves on a beach. There is less of a sense of sprawl here, as it feels more concise and rhythmic in its structure.
The closing "Monochrome #04" is nearly half of the album at almost 30 minutes. Dynamically, it follows the first two pieces more than the third, opening with almost pure silence, only the most miniscule tones lurk far off in the distance. The long, quiet opening resembles Bernhard Gunter’s hyper-minimalistic compositions, but constructed with more melody and musicality rather than digital glitch fragments. Through the slow build, bass textures and reverberated space enter, the former like thunder far in the distance, but never really become loud. The sound begins to peel away about 2/3rds through the track, fading away into a glassy silence.
There are some very beautiful sounds here, but Tu M' seem almost intentionally set on keeping them in the distant background rather than being a captivating force. Perhaps that is the intention all along, given that this is music intended for gallery installations. It is extremely difficult to listen to this while devoting full attention to the music. However, in the background while doing other activities, the frigid ambience seeps in subtly, but is not easily ignored.
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"The Beginning of the End" opens with high pitched shrieks and rattling percussion, which alternates between quiet passages and spastic turntable scrapes and drums that sound like they’re being thrown down a flight of stairs. The violin appears here and there, mostly in the form of strings being aggressively plucked and pulled. The mix has moments where it slows down and allows some breathing room before turning up the junkyard orchestra again. The dynamics closely mirror what is generally known as free jazz, with its restrained and wide open bits and contrasting blasts of pure chaos. It goes from harsh to absurd pretty quickly, with the turntable spitting out hyperspeed cartoon voices and electronic burbles. When the closing moments arrive, the violin and drums become disturbingly conventional, leaving me expecting another outburst at any time.
The second half of the album is "The End of the Beginning," and it isn’t far out of league from what was heard earlier. Opening with excessive violin torture and percussion like a bouncing rubber ball, there eventually arises a basic tom-tom drum beat that mimics the tension of the Jaws theme, with chaotic outbursts always around the corner. The contrasting random sound outbursts give it more a cartoon like quality though, rather than the pure darkness that could otherwise be there.
The middle maintains the jazz elements that were on the first piece, contrasting the calmer moments with machine gun beats and fragments of music that somehow manage to slip through the explosions. The jazz drumming and overdriven noise continues all the way through the end, where the electronic stuff crosses over into dead on harsh territory, and percussion blasts continue into the final moments.
This disc is definitely rooted in the free jazz tradition structurally, but the traditional horns and strings of the genre are supplanted by the everything–including-the-kitchen-sink instrumentation. At times its almost tiring though, and unlike a harsh noise record, the dynamics here vary so much that the transitions can be almost too jarring. With a tempo and dynamic that could be the audio equivalent of crystal meth, it probably shouldn’t be listened to before bedtime.
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The 12 tracks that make up this album are almost evenly distributed between more melancholy songs with vocals by Larry Cassidy, and the other half featuring Beth Cassidy, daughter of the late Section 25 vocalist Jenny Cassidy. For this reason, the band retains its signature sound throughout, and does feel like the natural follow up to their previous 2006 album.
Bookended by two short tracks of gated reverbed drums and stiff sequenced keyboards, the nostalgia factor is pretty overt immediately upon hitting play. This segues nicely into "Singularity," which is propelled by extremely low restrained rhythms, staccato guitars and dramatic synth flourishes. The vocals are kept pretty much in the foreground, and the 1980s make an appearance via stiff bass sequences. "L’arte Du Math" has a similar structure, but with its dry vocals and bass melodies it starts to resemble some more of the later period New Order material. "One Way Or Another" is the most forceful track on here, and Larry Cassidy’s vocals are a bit more acerbic, and the guitars are more riff rather than note based. By no means is it an aggressive or angry track, but it does contrast the otherwise more restrained stuff.
The songs with Beth Cassidy on vocals take a much more electronic and dance quality, acting like the Hacienda days to the other track’s earlier works. "Remembrance" features her delicate voice with untreated guitar, 4/4 thump drums, and a bit of acid squelch synths. While there is a darker overcast here, "Attachment" comes from a similar palette, but is more upbeat and pop in nature, the tight sequences push it almost uncomfortably close to cliché 1990s dance music. "Mirror" also comes from a techno pop background, but a bit more sparse in the mix, with Beth Cassidy doing spoken word over a simple 808 beat and ambient synths. The sound is still definitely "pop," though the sonic textures are more adventurous here in comparison.
To my ear, the sounds here lean a bit too much on the '90s era of the Factory legacy, and end up a bit too focused on electronic pop, which lacks the timeless quality that the post-punk era stuff has managed to retain. Some of the tracks start to feel too much like the faceless dance music that clogged the era. There are good moments to be found here, but unfortunately it’s not as consistent of an album as it could be.
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The vast bulk of Kath Bloom’s work was recorded in New Haven, CT with experimental guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors between 1978 and 1984. While both artists have achieved some degree of counter-cultural renown in the ensuing decades, their partnership was decidedly not a lucrative one at the time: Connors was working as a janitor at Yale, Bloom was a gardener at a cemetery, and nearly all of their releases were put out in very limited editions on Connors’ own Daggett and Saint Joan labels. Two decades later, those largely ignored original releases are highly sought-after and exorbitantly expensive, possibly because Connors is rumored to have thrown out his unsold stock in the mid-'80s (after marriages and relocations forced the duo to go their separate ways).
Both Bloom and Connors stopped recording music for quite some time after their creative dissolution, though Bloom’s creative hiatus lasted considerably longer than Connors’. However, tapes continued to circulate and a post-mortem fanbase steadily grew through word-of-mouth. One of those fans was Richard Linklater, who prominently featured “Come Here” in Before Sunrise, inspiring Bloom to begin releasing new material again in the late ‘90s. Time, thankfully, has only enhanced Bloom’s singing and songwriting and she is belatedly edging towards deservedly achieving the reputation of similarly rediscovered folkies like Karen Dalton and Vashti Bunyan.
Loving Takes This Course originated from a conversation Bloom had several years ago with her filmmaker friend Caveh Zahedi in which she mentioned that she’d like to hear other people record her songs. Zahedi was very enthusiastic about the idea and contacted Chapter Records head Guy Blackman. Together, they spent the next two years contacting all of their musician friends and slowly assembling a full album of material.
The artists appearing on the tribute album are a rather eclectic assemblage both geographically and fame-wise, but most fall squarely in the Americana/indie rock realm stylistically. Several of the better tracks come from artists that I am unfamiliar with, such as Meg Baird’s raw and minimal rendition of “There Was A Boy” or Peggy Frew’s swaying, jazzy take on “Window” (accompanied by The Dirty Three’s Mick Turner). There are also a number of enjoyable interpretations by artists that I did not expect much from, such as Sweden’s The Concretes, Scout Niblett, and Mia Doi Todd. The album’s clear highlight, however, is Devendra Banhart’s raucous Motown-meets-The Velvet Underground version of “Forget About Him”. The only disappointment was Mark Kozelek’s unexceptional re-envisioning of “Finally,” as I am usually rabidly enthusiastic about nearly everything he does. That said, the tribute album is merely pleasant, not spectacular or essential. Aside from Banhart and Baird, this is a relatively tame and quietly reverent affair.
The Kath Bloom disc, however, is great. There are at least three songs here that I will probably still be listening to ten years from now (“Come Here”, “Forget About Him”, and “I Wanna Love”). Notably, two of those are from Bloom’s post-Sunrise return and all three were written by Bloom herself, which is noteworthy because she was not originally a serious musician: her earliest collaborations with Connors were odd spoken-word performance art pieces. Speaking of Connors, he is not as heavily represented here as I would’ve expected, as only seven of the fifteen songs originated from their collaborations. Then again, this is Bloom’s show, so it makes sense that this collection would skew heavily towards her recent, better produced, and more accessible material. While her experimentally tinged lo-fi work was certainly important and unique, her songwriting noticably progressed with age, so much of her strongest and most timeless material dates from her creative resurrection. That said, there is still some excellent early work here, such as “Window” and the tender “The Breeze/My Baby Cries,” but experimentalism is largely absent (aside from Connors’ subtle wordless moaning).
When Bloom is at her best, her vulnerable, quivering voice imbues her heartbreaking songs with an irresistible power and humanity. That, of course, is largely the reason that a tribute album is somewhat inherently doomed: Bloom has written some absolutely sublime songs, but no one will ever be able to perform them as strikingly as Bloom herself. Nevertheless, this collection is fine introduction to a singular artist and any widely available Bloom release is cause for excitement. The retrospective disc has not left my CD player since it arrived.
samples
- Kath Bloom - Come Here
- Kath Bloom - I Wanna Love
- Devendra Banhart - Forget About Him
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“Megaton for Wm. Burroughs” opens with a searing blast, a long overdriven tone that gradually builds in intensity, the hot white heat of a nuclear decimation, than fades like smoke from a mushroom cloud. The sounds of laser ray guns emerge from the ruins, a chirping crossfire of blips and squeaks. Strangled strings and other oddments are played ONCE group, whose members included Robert Ashley, as accompaniment to Mumma’s tape composition. As the piece progresses the bleeps are elongated into psychoactive slurs, trailing electric glissandos, the white fuzz of a burned out television set. For awhile no clear reception is present, but then voices come in: different military men giving orders and reports in each speaker, along with the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns. The song ends with the steady hi-hat taps of simple jazz percussion. I can see why this song was written for William Burroughs: it is very evocative of the apocalyptic interzone he inhabited.
Three out of the four songs collected here were used originally as accompaniment for actors in various stage productions. While all were able to stand on their own, apart from attendant theatrics, sometimes it seemed that I would have been able to get more out of them if I had been present to see what was going on. “Conspiracy 8,” co-written with Stephen Smoliar, is a case in point. It consists mainly of atonal feedback in varying degrees of amplitude, strange rustlings, and the occasional ding of a clerk bell. Laughter from the audience is heard at various points throughout, though I don’t hear in the music what it is that might be funny. It is still enjoyable, but since I can’t see what is going on, I won’t be joining with the laughter. “Cirqualz” by contrast, is far funnier. Starting with the opening bars from Beethoven’s Third Symphony, and a voice that says “those two whiplashes of sound that shattered the elegant formality o the eighteenth century”, before moving into a series of brief, but disarranged, sections of circus, marching, and romantic music. Sounds of fireworks filter in, exploding above the symphonic fanfare that is now slightly drowned out by synthesizer gurgles. It all ends rather abruptly with a screech of brakes and a cinematic car crash.
“Cybersonic Cantilevers” is a gem, and for me the highlight of the album. For this piece Mumma invited public participants to join him in supplying sounds of their own choice into microphones and cassette decks, which he then processed in real time with his cybersonic equipment during a day long sound installation. The 19 minutes here are a condensation of the last hour of the performance, assembled from what he was able to capture with a portable recorder. It begins with a hyper rock and roll snippets juxtaposed with the gravelly voices of detective radio dramas. The stops, starts, and fast switches between these sound sources, all accompanied by weird effects, creates a brilliant off-kilter rhythm, before dissolving into a beautifully mesmerizing drone for the second half of the song.
The works presented here span the years from 1964 to 1980. This is an important document from an important American composer, and the perfect addition to the library of anyone collecting early electronic music.
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My Cat Is An Alien’s story has an improbably fairy-tale-esque origin: in 1997, Maurizio and Roberto Opalio released their debut CD-R (limited to 30 copies) and sent one to Thurston Moore. Within two months, they were making their live debut as the opening act for Sonic Youth’s Italian tour. Since then, the duo have released an ungodly number of limited edition records and CD-Rs on their own Opax label, and made split albums with underground luminaries ranging from Loren Mazzacane Connors to Mats Gustafson to Jim O’Rourke. Notably, the Opax releases are generally housed in very arty handmade packaging, often featuring paintings by Roberto. With that historical precedent, it is difficult to process why this release looks like a gimmicky ‘80s baseball card and features a cartoon cat turning into an alien.
The exceedingly cryptic packaging gives no information about the music contained within, but Mort Aux Vaches consists of three lengthy works. The opening piece fades in with crackling vinyl, twinkling bells, and a slowly intensifying drone of gently shimmering guitars. Soon, some subtly burbling and spacey synthesizers begin to float pleasantly above the mix. However, that idyll is violently shattered by the harsh, almost animal wail of a treated guitar and the previously restrained spacey electronics increase in intensity before being ultimately engulfed in a rising surge of roaring static.
The second song is nearly half an hour long and effectively dominates the album. It begins with an incredibly dense maelstrom of chittering and oscillating sci-fi electronics augmented by cymbal flourishes and buried guitar moans. Slowly, the quivering chaos intensifies, the cymbals become more spirited, and deep tribal drums creep into the mix. Gradually the drums steal the focus, as a very insistent crash cymbal joins the pounding toms. Around the eight-minute mark, however, the propulsive tribalism disappears and the swirling electronic chaos asserts its supremacy once more. However, it is soon enhanced by some incredibly cathartic swooping guitar noises that sound like a family of dying elephants. Eventually, it all ebbs and a haunting ambient interlude of bells and a swelling, phase-shifting synthesizer wash emerges from the twittering, rippling electronic wreckage. That spooky foundation is maintained for an extremely long-time, but never becomes any less compelling, as an ever-shifting cloud of frothing improvised noise weirdness colors it. Shortly before the song ends, however, a mournful menagerie of strangled guitars appears and breaks the hypnotic spell.
Not unlike the first piece, the third song opens with pleasantly glistening guitar ambiance and a loop of spacey laser noises (the Opalio brothers are quite fond of incorporating toys into their work). The ambiance subtly throbs and wavers and increases in intensity until it is joined by a deep, rumbling percussion loop and feedback-heavy squalls of agonized guitar and gurgling, lurching electronics. It all coheres into a roaring, howling crescendo, then slowly fades away, leaving only a lonely ride cymbal in its wake.
There is nothing accidental or sloppy about these songs: Roberto and Mauricio make it abundantly clear that they know exactly what they are doing at all times and have recorded a decidedly complex, visceral, and textured set. I have not delved too deeply into MCIAA’s back catalog (being an MCIAA completist would result in my instant financial ruin), but it seems like this would be an excellent first album to get for anyone unfamiliar with their work. This is devastating and deliberate work- it is exceedingly rare for improvised music to work at such a gut-level.
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Wong has already developed a singular style despite not being a veteran guitarist. Whether it’s heard in the primitivistic stadium-rock of his main band, Ponytail or in long-form minimalist compositions through his former membership in Ecstatic Sunshine, his playing is distinctive. Both bands are linked by Wong’s preference for jazzy chords and sudden bursts of rapid-fire strumming. Not limited to the guitar, he plays a multitude of instruments on Seasons while keeping to the same joyous, anarchic style.
Seasons is divided into four long suites; named (appropriately enough) after the seasons. These suites are nothing but collections of song fragments which bear little immediate similarity to each other. A fragment will consist of a simple riff or chord sequence repeated with little variation. Then at some arbitrary point, Wong will stop the piece, as if he’d forgotten an errand, and abruptly start another. Yet what we hear is not sloppiness, but the organic division of one idea and the next. And having so many ideas, Wong needs to quickly move along. He covers a vast amount of musical territory in that fashion. A swirling mass of looped synthesizers will follow a chiming instrumental on an acoustic guitar. A cloud of delayed autoharp will condense into the stiff ticking of a drum machine. First time listeners cannot guess what they will hear, only that it will be engaging. In Seasons, nothing sounds inevitable but everything sounds natural.
Like his bandmates in Ponytail, Wong cultivates a naïve, childlike style. On his own, he doesn’t practice the kind of grating babble-lyrics that accompany his band, but there is a mildly regressive quality to his solo-project. Some of that can be attributed to the unhinged shredding that he occasionally breaks into. These technical passages thankfully aren't irritating because they are brief and exuberant, not plodding and pretentious. Wong isn’t trying to impress but to entertain.
The other part in Wong’s naïve style comes from the album’s bright, drifting keyboard instrumentals; their lilting arpeggios recall the gentle cloud-world soundtracks of Super Mario Bros 3. Like the composers for Nintendo, Wong transcends the expressive limitations of primitive digital keyboards through melodic complexity. His tinny synthesizer tones sway in counterpoint like images in a cybernetic daydream. In both instances, the cuteness in Wong’s music seems genuinely idiosyncratic. Unlike the slick, well socialized aesthetes of contemporary indie-pop, he does seem like a dork and comes off the better for it.
It may appear piecemeal but Seasons reveals its merit when heard in its entirety. Wong’s distinctiveness as a musician remains intact through the album’s wild variations of mood and style. Unlike most practitioners of modern rock, he doesn’t need a predetermined mode to compensate for a lack of skill or individuality (as opposed to individualism). The unity of Seasons is like the unity of a person: various but still recognizable. Time softens the discord of its assorted parts and eventually a clear picture of the artist’s mind will emerge.
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