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The album opens with backward vocals that glide over a childish playroom guitar ditty. At less than two minutes, as an opener, it seemed extraneous. Called “Matricarian Descent,” it truly is a low point on a disc that has many exalting moments. “Pirin Planina” more than makes up for the weak beginning, however, as thick swathes of cello, bowed by Helena Espvall (who has worked with the likes of Espers, Vashti Bunyan, and Pauline Oliveros), make for a solid foundation, giving structure to the languorous vocals. Casio drones add to the heady mix and when the flute joins in I feel the ripple of gooseflesh popping up across my skin.
“Myrrah” repeats the tactic of the first track, with more reversed sounding voices. At the beginning of it I hear the blurredly sung title melting, one of those rare occasions when I can understand what is being said. Kalimba like plucking is randomly placed over the top. This deviation was an unnecessary interlude for me, like an ornamental balustrade on a building already beautiful. Nevertheless, while going to sleep one night, I found my mind replaying these baleful melodies, wondering at their power to stick in my head when I find them so superfluous.
The nomadic desert percussion of Tara Burke, founder of Fursaxa, is showcased on “Moi Kissen.” Here, blended voices range between the cat like and guttural to the high pitched waver of a warbling Theremin. Brisk as the desert air, this is the kind of tribal bric-a-brac improvisation I think we’ll all be making and listening to in a powered down future; post-apocalyptic folk for a time when the angels of electricity are no longer functional. The danger in recording this type of intuitive music is that the brilliant moments appear before and after the not so brilliant, as happens on this song.
Luckily there are polished gems to be found as well. “Velvet Shoon” is one of them. As the last track, it’s pleasant to taste, a good clean finish that cleanses the palette. Cello, banjo, and soft vocals are the central votives here. At the best moments their voices approach the devotional as if they are singing hymns to Anahita herself, the Iranian Goddess of water and fertility. In a broken Middle-Eastern landscape desperate for rain, this is the prayer song that delivers it.
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The third release between drummer Thomas Stronen (Food) and keyboardist Stale Storlokken (Supersilent) earns the distinction of being the first live album that I have ever heard that does not sound live. Also, it makes a compelling argument that Norway is one of the few places on earth where jazz is still thriving and evolving (and ingeniously incorporating outside influences like Tortoise and Squarepusher). It does not, however, make a compelling argument for vintage synth sounds or ambient-jazz. Aside from the conspicuous absence of clapping and crowd noise, Rest At Worlds End is also unusual among live jazz recordings for being made up entirely of new material and for sounding meticulously planned (at least during the more groove-based tracks). This music appears to exist in a grey area between songs and spontaneous free-form improvisation.
Stronen's drumming is largely exceptional throughout. His free-form playing is absolutely staggering whenever it occurs (such as on "Creak" and "Bullfight"). Even when he locks into a groove (such as on "Steam" and the jungle-influenced "Hit"), he still manages to sound like an octopus on meth- his rhythms are always startlingly complex and constantly shifting. As for Storlokken, he is extremely creative with his keyboard sound and it varies enormously from song to song. Often it sounds entirely unlike a keyboard. Certainly unlike anything heard on a jazz album. On "Stream" for example, it sounds like it is badly malfunctioning and short-circuiting. Storlokken's frantic playing initially yields only static-damaged notes, distorted blurts, and abrupt squonks before finally expanding into a thick fuzzed-out bass line and what sounds like water dripping in a cave. It is absolutely face-melting and sounds like nothing I have previously heard from a live band. Unfortunately, his liberal tonal palette is often a mixed bag. Some of the sounds he employs are rightfully avoided by his peers and skim perilously close to Jean Michel Jarre territory.
This album, lamentably, has two cavernous flaws. The first is that Storlokken has an unhealthy obsession with tones and textures from early electronic and space music. While that might be laudable under some circumstances, in the context of this particular album they frequently sound intrusive and somewhat absurd. Secondly, Rune Grammofon claims that the album features "atmospheric moods" and is "meanderingly contemplative." That is dead-on. The ambient pieces on album (and there are many) seem to go nowhere and often consist primarily of languid, Moog-y, atonal, impressionistic noodlings. The title track is probably the best of these excursions: the New Age-y treated-flute sounds get it off to a pretty dodgy start, but they are thankfully disrupted by wild drum fills. Eventually, the piece coheres into a warm and elegant chord progression that would not be out of place on an early Aphex Twin album. The others, unfortunately, never quite cohere.
I really wish I liked this more. These guys possess a staggering amount of technical skill and a clear willingness to break new ground. This album, regrettably, does not consistently deliver on that promise, but does feature some sustained flashes of brilliance. However, given how actively these two have been collaborating and performing within the Norwegian jazz scene, it seems possible that Humcrush may consciously exist solely as an outlet for Storlokken 's more outre whims and indulgent excursions that would not fit elsewhere. Regardless of his objective, he appears to have found in Stronen the ideal foil for these experiments.
(the vinyl double-LP version of this album comes with an extra seven tracks)
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LTM's Boutique Label has found a new project in dusting off and reissuing the discography of the largely forgotten cult artsy post-punk label Object Music, which operated for a scant two years. The Noyes Brothers' obscure double-album Sheep From Goats is one of the label's more notable releases, an inscrutable, eclectic and often brilliant collaboration between Steve Miro and label founder Steve Solamar.
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Johann Johannson’s preceding recording was devoted to the IBM 1401, the ‘Model T’ of computers. His father was chief maintenance engineer on the first such machine imported into Iceland so the theme is personal as well as intellectual. Furthermore, the album’s starting point was music which his father developed on the 1401. Related fact: Kubrick chose the three letters immediately preceding IBM as the onboard computer, HAL, in 2001.
Not that you need to know any of this to enjoy Johannsson’s music at a level of pure sound. At times it appears that he has managed to isolate the gene allowing for audio stimulus to trigger euphoria, life-affirmation, and weeping. So while Fordlandia expands upon his earliest work, in terms of composition and instrumentation, the capacity to engage the emotions remains intact. From the opening title track it is clear that the simple power first evidenced on the brief “Odi et Amo,” from Englaborn has not been lost. And thankfully, the blissful "Fordlandia" is more than thirteen minutes long. On this track, as always, Johannsson keeps things simple, despite having progressed from strings and vocoder to full orchestra with electronics, and he claims “the ending is a five minute long continous ritardando, quite possibly the longest one ever on record, should anyone care…”
Fordlandia was Henry Ford’s attempt to construct a model town for the indigenous workers at his rubber production plant in Brazil. Workers were supplied with ID badges, made to eat American-style hamburgers and Ford banned drinking and smoking anywhere within the town limits, even in workers own houses. The response to such “bunk” was the rapid growth of a settlement nearby complete with bars, nightclubs and brothels. Eventually the development of synthetic rubber erased the need for the natural product, Fordlandia was abandoned, and the land sold at a loss of 20 million dollars.
The second theme of rocketry, takes in two other stories. The first is of John Whiteside Parsons, by day a scientist and by night a disciple of Aleister Crowley. In the 1930s Parsons developed the first stable rocket fuel. Johannsson imagines him chanting Crowley’s “Ode to Pan” during test launches. Bizarrely, the scientist died after an explosion in his Californian garage. Another strand to this theme emerges on the piece “Guidelines for a Space Propulsion Device based on Heim's Quantum Theory." Apparently, German physicist Burkhard Hein proposed faster-than-light space travel and spent years trying to developing it. In WWII Hein was seriously injured in an explosion, left without hands and almost deaf and blind. Nevertheless, he spent the rest of his life searching for a unified theory of everything. No small task, I imagine.
A poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is sung on the lament “The Great God Pan Is Dead” and (after a considerable time without them) the human vocals are a superbly effective foil for all the instruments and machine made sounds we have heard. On this album, Jóhannsson illustrates the attempt to obliterate the forest God Pan and Paganism that preceded the rise of industrial capitalists such as Henry Ford and their dehumanizing mass production methods. Still, what goes up must come down. Pagan symbols such as the Christmas tree are still with us and, for his part, Jóhannsson more than hints at the forest slowly reclaiming Fordlandia. There's plenty of theory and concept around Fordlandia then, but the funereal atmospheres, studied pace, and gorgeous swells in the work all allow for wide interpretation. I find Johannsson's music to be equal part requiem and alarm call. Forget the triumphal music that strokes the pleasure glands of the wealthy and puffs their delusions of manifest destiny. In this year of Our Ford here is the sound of inevitable decay, destruction, folly, and rebirth.
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Consisting of two side-long tracks, the first half begins calm and restrained, near silence but allowing a subtle bed of chiming guitar to slowly but surely increase in volume and makes its presence known. The guitar begins to shriek and howl in ways Leo Fender and Les Paul never intended as more frightening electronic elements begin to creep into the mix. From such humble beginnings it becomes a complex intertwining mix of sinister sounds and ends rhythmically with a locked groove. I must admit, my first listen to this while I was doing other things caused me to be stuck on that locked groove for a good five minutes or so before I realized it was time for Side B. The sound was diverse enough that I listened for that long without realizing it was just literal repetition.
The flip side starts where the other left off: a harsh mix of guitar abuse and ventilator white noise keeping the ambience dark before eventually allowing a rhythmic bass element to underpin the increasingly violent guitar. While the first half exercised restraint, the second half is much more chaotic with low frequency siren tones, feedback solos, and looped guitar elements vying to be the center of attention before all retreats and the track ends in a slow disintegration to silence.
As a whole Greyfield Shrines holds my interest as there are definite elements of drone and noise, with both trading off as being the prevailing motif, but the actual sounds set it apart from similar artists. I'm happy to hear actual guitar tones in drone rather than just overdriven A minor chords, and also in noise without the battery of effects layered over it to render it unidentifiable.
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It is more "traditional" by both artists standards because the three long tracks that comprise the album are a multitude of magnetic scrapes and crashes filtered through tons of reverb and other studio effects that, while giving some hint of the source sounds, remain transformed into a different beast entirely.
The opening "Glory Sorrow" is perhaps the most explicit example of this. There is the sound of metal clattering far off in the distance and church bells (a nod to Jackman’s more recent work), all heavily reverberated into the purist sense of drone. Percussive elements that resemble engine rattles and knocks shift in and out of focus as the other atmospheric elements continue to flow on like a tumultuous river.
"Eagle" follows a similar blueprint, opening with processed violent metal scrapes and snippets of choral elements that are eventually met with harsh shrieking metal noises and organ tones that could have been from Amen, but more heavily treated and reverberated. It opens in a much more active and dynamic way, but by the end of the track it has been stripped down to allow a vast, cavernous sound that is distinctly cold and metallic.
The ending "Thunder" begins in a similar fashion, a wide-open spacious mix of erratic distant noise, which could be field recordings of an airport, before being met with sweeping waves of noise and high pitched feedback that brings an end to the spaciousness. Eventually sounds that resemble unintelligible alien voices appear briefly, giving an entirely different feel to the track before being supplanted by far away crashes and sheets of electronic noise. The battle between open space and tumbling noise finally finishes with an ending of careful, peaceful silence.
Compared to the recent Organum "holy" trilogy, this is by for more chaotic, raw, and violent. Z'EV's contributions allow the drone elements from those releases to remain, but in the context of a clattering wall of chaos that, while not the careful study of sonic miniatures that the other releases are, are no less fascinating.
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Black Hill occupies a realm that is somewhere between the gorgeous drones of Stars of the Lid and the haunting and solemn “Symphony No. 3” by Henryk Górecki. However, unlike the aforementioned artists, listening to Black Hill is like listening to a radio that cannot stay on one frequency for more than a few minutes before drifting into some other equally compelling broadcast from who knows where. No piece ends distinctly, the various tracks all fade into each other but change enough for it to be obvious when a new piece has begun. This bleeding of music into itself forces the listener to commit the album as a whole. This is something that has been lacking in this “I’ll just grab a couple of tracks from the net and see what I think” age.
That being said, there are segments of Black Hill that stick out above the rest as being especially moving. The organ-like dirge of “Portrait of God with Broken Toys” seems to erupt from the speakers with a huge amount of force. It is an overpowering feeling like being stuck in a massive cathedral that is shaking itself apart during a performance of a particularly moving requiem. Elsewhere, the music has a gentler quality; “Dalkeith Night” has a light, airy feel to the piano while David Tibet recites a few words. He is one of a few special guests on the album: Julia Kent plays cello, Fabrizio Palumbo from Larsen is credited with treatments and vocals and Begg’s compatriot in Fovea Hex, Clodagh Simonds, lends her voice and piano playing to the album.
Thomas’ paintings must be mentioned. As well as being half of Human Greed, Thomas has also painted the iconic bunnies on Swans’ White Light from the Mouth of Infinity album and more recently the cover of The Angels of Light’s We Are Him. His apocalyptic nursery rhyme style painting that graces the cover of Black Hill continues the theme of those previous great album sleeves. Kittens, skeletons and catastrophic ruin provide a warning to all who listen to the album; this is not music to chill out to after a night on the tiles.
This is powerful stuff and takes a while to fully digest it. The oily darkness that the music conjures up gets deeper and deeper with every listen, a resonant and otherworldly tremor that is at once human and sublime.
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Compared to the pomp, fanfare, and inflated buzz surrounding the repackaged commemorative Nah Und Fern boxes, Studio 1 comes practically under the radar in its unpretentious jewelcase with packaging that all but buries the origins of the material itself. (Notably, track names are not spelled out in the packaging, but Internet searches or visual cues reveal options. I've opted for the former in this case.) It is a simple, straightforward reissue looking to capitalize at least somewhat on Voigt's higher profile in the wake of both the aforementioned set and the perhaps more coveted Gas book+CD on Raster-Noton.
In these tough economic times, many of Voigt's older fans already familiar with his work under the Studio 1 (Studio Eins) moniker have little reason to spend their money on this, given the notable lack of bonus tracks. Still, such collector's sentiments become irrelevant once the music starts to play. Tracks like "Rosa 1" and the peppy "Lila 3" tinker with dub in a manner unlike the Chain Reaction crew, obdurately resistant to the temptations of long lush echoes that define the "pop ambient" Gas. Instead, Voigt plays ascetic under the guise of Studio 1, designing for austerity with delicate, precise rhythmic foundations. He makes it easy to share his appreciation for the delightful contrast of abrupt, punchy kicks against delicate synthesized hi-hats and snares. On "Neu 3," the bass subtly gurgles underneath that crisp mix while two tinny stabs play every four beats. This is precisely what drew me to the clicks-and-cuts scene in the mid-to-late '90s; moreso than the glitch, I was enamored with the trance-inducing hypnotic combination of minimalism and repetition in a dance music context.
Just about all of Studio 1 could easily pass as new material, which says more about the subgenre's arrested development than any visionary futurism on Voigt's part. Sure, Richie Hawtin and his M_nus crew have done a fine job of mining the darker forbidding corners, but—with few exceptions—producers since Voigt haven't done much to advance beyond the sound he undeniably helped establish in his more productive heyday.
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When I heard Fire on Fire's "Amnesia" (from their EP), I was won over by the psychedelic madness that boiled beneath the song's tuneful hook and bizarre lyrics. The band manifested a crazed energy within the confines of their nuanced songwriting and constantly teetered on the brink of chaos. The Orchard sees the band relaxing and focusing their energy on softer tunes and strengthening their songwriting core. With nothing but acoustic instruments at their disposal, the group recalls the spirit of America's early musical tradition by emphasizing strong lyrical topics and melody-heavy songs. Drunken and haphazard frills decorate the record and keep many of the songs from sinking into pure genre worship. This is not slick, romantic Appalachia; Fire on Fire are rugged and lively musicians who emphasize lurching movements and uneven steps.
The album begins with "Sirocco," perhaps the most rock-like song of the 12 featured on the album. The name comes from the high velocity winds that blow out of the Sahara and pelt France, Italy, and Greece across the Mediterranean. This hurricane-strength wind can disable machinery and invade homes as it blows north and dissipates. "Sirocco" takes its namesake seriously and functions as the album's vital genesis; it is far and away the most energetic song on the album and it propels the record forward with a haphazard bang. Reveling in fragility and decay, the band boldly announce their purpose: "If we tear this kingdom down / Tear it down / Let it be with a deserving and joyous sound." To this end, Fire on Fire employ rambling banjos, scruffy yelps, soothing harmonies, and the familiar sounds of the strummed guitar. They add quirky lyrics, unexpected twists, and exotic nuances to facilitate a hallucinatory sound. Some songs play out in prismatic shifts with uneasy contrasts and others resemble traditional American folk songs as imagined by The Byrds, but at no point does the group allow their songs to fall into an easily definable space. One of the album's highlights, "Toknight," is an almost-believable country/pop hybrid from the late '60s or early '70s. The song's heavy down-beat, plodding rhythm, huge chorus, and subject matter are all drawn from country and rock roots, but I doubt anyone would confuse Fire on Fire with Gram Parsons. Gypsy music seems an equal part of the band's formula, though that may only be an effect of the accordion's prominent position in many of the songs. The band's approach to performance is grounded in a familiar and well-established tradition, but their vision of American music isn't purely historical nor is it purely American.
In fact, an other-worldly quality permeates The Orchard from top to bottom. Collenen Kinsella's voice is a particularly sharp and effective part of the band's sound; her unusual abilities add an absolutely invaluable dimension to the band's timbre and provides some of the stranger songs their strangest edges. It is the use of unusual vocal harmonies and textures that gives many of these songs their unusual character. The vocal performances bare a tribal and spontaneous quality that alters the nature of the music being played and ultimately forms the heart of the record. In any case, Fire on Fire's music is an inventive take on old music; they've adhered to a simple premise and thankfully managed to strike new ground without venturing too far into "freak folk" territory. This is undeniably American music, but with Fire on Fire's distinct and eccentric signature.
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Superficially, The Die Is Cast sounds like the work of a completely different band: Genevieve has completely taken over vocal duties; the pace has slowed from blast-beat intensity to a martial crawl; and all of the shrillness and shrieking have been replaced with somber melodicism. Fundamentally, however, the sound remains quite dark and Menace Ruine’s talent for compelling dark ambient has been amplified. While this album is much more accessible than its predecessor, it doesn’t seem like the band has deliberately softened their sound (the title track ends with some extreme, otherworldly dissonance). More likely, they just wondered what it would be like to be "crushing" rather than "frenzied".
I had read that the intention of this album was to pay tribute to the neo-folk of bands like Death In June, which filled me with apprehension, as I expected an album of dour acoustic dirges. Thankfully, while the foundation of the album is somewhat in that vein, it is often buried beneath layers and layers of buzzing, shimmering feedback that would not be out of place on a Fennesz or Tim Hecker album. As a whole, The Die Is Cast sounds far more like Lisa Gerrard fronting Sunn o))) than anything else. Which is no small achievement, as dabbling in medieval music can easily make a band sound like a bunch of hobbit-obsessed Renaissance Faire creeps.
The opening track ("One Too Many") is an absolute monster. Waves of dark feedback drone and glisten under Genevieve’s coldly beautiful vocals, while distant horns (that are not lame) and an insistent slow-motion thump give the track a very majestic feel. The lengthy drone piece that closes the album ("The Bosom of the Earth") is also a stunner: a haunting wall of feedback and overdriven, sustained guitars builds epicly amidst flourishes of cymbals and distant thundering toms for sixteen amazing minutes. However, the tracks in between (while quite good) mine very similar territory to one another. Once in a while, a welcome departure occurs (such as the eerie bagpipe interlude in the title track), but I am left wondering how staggering this album could have been with a little more work. As it stands, The Die Is Cast frustratingly avoids being a masterpiece.
Sadly, I will probably never get my wish to hear more work like this, as Menace Ruine have vowed to return to their signature scorching mechanized black metal for the next album. They also have an upcoming collaboration in the works with Merzbow, so I expect they will get some deserved wide-spread recognition in 2009. I will certainly be following them closely- if they continue to evolve at this rate, a uniformly brilliant album can’t be far off.
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