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Oneiromantical War blasts in and swells with a classic black metal feel and a groove that barely punctures the surface of the wall of sound that is to last a majority of the next forty minutes. Free form scream and growl vocalizations emerge from the mix depending on where attention is at any given time. About a minute in I realize there will be more than enough to distract me on this dismal and desperate journey. “Silent Command” continues with a synth-choir aah preset interlude which is quickly plowed over by a drunken and stuttering metal core breakdown. The entire arrangement of the song mathematically flexes and breathes with itself. For more than a few moments I'm left alone with the static, reeling.
The centerpiece of this record is the 20 minute epic “War,” which begins with low detuned acoustic plucking. The music takes on a very woozy and narcotic feeling and relaxes the listener just enough to effectively stomp into another broken black metal groove. Half way through “War” turns ambient and expressive, showcasing undeinable ability at tying tracks together with simultaneiously soft and disturbing interludes. The ambience on this release is far more than accents that serve well their purpose. Without fail, the tune slowly regains its metal vigour over the remainder of the track.
Oneiromantical War is terribly impressive because of its ability to be totally brutal but retain a certain psychedelicism throughout. To say the ebb and flow of any of one its songs is stirring would be and understatement. “Breath of Doors” is both as stoned, sludgy and triumphant as the album gets at the start. Quickly enough the battle-cry stutters and releases; it then patiently builds to critical mass along a straight head-banging groove.
“Grave Gown” caps the record off with a suicidal black metal wash that is deceptively intricate. As with most of my favorite music, different and particularly deep buried layers become more and less apparent depending on where and what I was listening to the record on. FSS has released this digitally and on vinyl. That this entire record has this intricate and easily effected quality makes it unfortunate I was not able to contrast the sound of the digital release to its vinyl counterpart.
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CD is 58 minutes 36 seconds long, comes in individually hand made cover.
price is €12.- including postage.
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Nothing on London Zoo matches the sheer ferocity doled out on Martin's releases for Shockout, Klein, Tigerbeat6, and Rephlex, which include a double-disc collection of his Razor X material (in collaboration with The Rootsman) and an EP featuring fresh work with the feisty Warrior Queen bookending retooled versions of previously available tunes. Gone are mixes overdriven into the red and spearheaded by some of the baddest badmen on vocals. Obviously Martin hasn’t abandoned a passion for bassbin abuse, but clearly his appreciation for the austerity of the dubstep scene and a desire for authenticity among Jamaican producers softened his touch, in essence domesticating this once-poisonous insect into one fit to reside in a child’s ant farm.
Or so it would seem. Martin’s songcraft and radical messages remain undeniably intact and evident throughout this suspiciously quieter affair. Toning down the fuzz for London Zoo has not eroded the atmospheric menace of productions like “Warning” nor the ascetic instrumental “Freak Freak,” but rather has the effect of wrapping his bundles of post-millenial tension and anti-establishment angst in natty clothes just a few shades darker than indie pop successes M.I.A. or Santogold. Compared to the recent work from those two, Warrior Queen’s astute politicized verses on album highlights “Insane” and “Poison Dart” trump the former’s glamorized terrorist chic and the latter’s forced faux-hipster irreverence. Only Martin could bring out the bestial best from Spaceape, whose pseudo-intellectual dub poetry work with Kode9 on the decent Memories Of The Future sorely lacks the ardent insurgent soul he exudes here on “Fuckaz.”
While not as dithyrambic as dancehall veteran Daddy Freddy, who made the strongest appearances on Pressure, his peers Tippa Irie and Ricky Ranking show up and show strong some of the youngsters featured on later tracks. “Angry,” an opening salvo that rails against everything from global climate change to the American response to Hurricane Katrina, features a frustrated Tippa over a sparse riddim. Ricky Ranking laments the state of things further on “Murder We,” reminding us all that lines like “war is not the answer” are more than mere platitudes for weekend revolutionaries. Ultimately, so long as it remains a zealous project serving as a means to a noble end, The Bug can never be squashed, not even by a dramatic shift in creative direction.
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Khanate did pioneer that slow motion, long sustaining chords mixed with drum outbursts and inhuman shrieks at fractional BPM rates. However, under the nuanced eyes of James Plotkin and Stephen O’Malley, there was enough postproduction tweaking and filtering to give the admittedly simplistic sound a greater, more captivating depth. Trees, however, sound more like a live take on this kind of music, stripping away the studio wizardry and just leaving the conventional elements.
The problem with this is, stripped down the basics are only interesting for so long. Even Sunn O))) finally realized they had to do more than just let power chords sustain for an hour to make an interesting record. Here, there are two side-long tracks of that basic formula, which does retain some of the qualities of Khanate, but the music is more barren, the vocals feel more theatrical metal as opposed to Alan Dubin’s unearthly cries, and the entire proceedings feel like a pure imitation or cover band that nails the major points, but doesn’t pick up the subtleties that are necessary to transition from a spectacle to an actual enjoyable listening experience.
Hell, even the “big boys” in this genre can honestly be hard to sit through in the long term. It’s the type of music I need to be in a specific mood to enjoy, and thus never makes my frequent rotation playlist. I’m sure those who are more devoted to this genre could tear me apart on what the differences are, but for the average listener, those differences are too minute to worry about.
Trees have made a competent drone/sludge/doom album for sure, but there is just too little to cause it to stick out among the other similar projects on the map. People who are more than happy to just hear more of the slow motion head banging and black metal screams will definitely appreciate this, but for the rest of us, it’s just not that notable.
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Recorded in a room supposedly used by a psychic medium, the sessions were specifically recorded via environmental microphones, with the volumes set to the max. Undoubtedly this is what gives the record its raw distortion that, due to its dynamic noise quality that simply cannot be created via digital technology. While this sheen of noise covers almost every track, it doesn’t fully obscure the underlying performance and instrumentation. The opening track, "Static Charge," features a clatter that could be a metal shop, but is more likely a guitar track that has been amplified to the point of full distortion. It has a rhythmic sense to it (something many projects this close to the noise spectrum seem to forget), but is obviously due to playing, not looping. As the track wears on the gain is turned up to the point that full clipping is achieved, as sound starts getting cut out from the mix.
In some situations the noise is the dominant theme: “Thought Loops” starts out a bit less aggressive, but by the middle what sounds like a buzzsaw cuts into the mix and demands attention, and the track only becomes more harsh and chaotic from there. The closing “Chrome Gulls” also follows on this path to harsh noise-dom, with its unadulterated feedback and metallic high end ringing, which even though it has a more tense vibe than any other piece on here, eventually gives way to some treated, vast ambience at the end.
Others are less apt to focus on the noise and more on the underlying melodies that are obfuscated amongst the grime. “Northumberland” opens on a more melodic note and some melody is immediately apparent, even if the sound is that of a string quartet playing in the deepest depths of hell. “Tidal Bandwidth” is another track that is based around oversaturated tape recordings, but there’s a deeper, almost synth like pulse that gives a more melodic propensity.
A difficult album to pin down, because it does feature elements of dissonance, but those are equally met by subtle melodic parts that could be easily ignored. For all its harshness, it is a complex album that is worth exploring the layers of.
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The name Methadrone has been lurking around the periphery of my awareness for quite some while now, but this is the first time I have encountered their music. Being naturally attracted to the darker, dronier, ambient end of the spectrum, this shoehorns itself quite easily into that category, and appeals to me on so many levels. The music is anything but sterile. For starters, there’s the inherent simplicity: it’s not complex music when broken down into its constituent parts, but in combination equals something deep and shiver-inducing. Indeed, I would even go so far as to characterize this as symphonic, and like any good symphony, has an innate power to move. In addition, this symphonic character transcends the usual stereotypical cod-classical that pervades the doom metal regions and displays a maturity, emotionally and musically, that elevates it above that norm. The use of acoustic guitar, along with the vocals of David Galas on two tracks and Pillard’s own voice on track six, paints a picture of an exotic creature, startling yet dangerously beautiful.
Album opener and title track “Sterility” is a perfect exemplar of how Pillard creates that distinctive ambience. Essentially composed of just a few layers, a drone backing running beneath a synthetic choir weaving its voice around a weft of alternating bass and bright treble guitar chords, the dense sedimentary nature of the piece nevertheless amplifies the power inherent in each layer. This signature can also be found in “Cominium of Desire” and “Horizone.” The former is probably the nearest this album offers to a conventional song, with darkwave singer David Galas’ treated voice lending a plaintive unearthly dimension. “Horizone,” aside from being my favorite track, transfixes the heaviest elements of slow-doom and melancholic romanticism into a tapestry depicting the twilight of the gods. A downtempo eight-minute epic mixing those ubiquitous acoustic chords, electronic voices, bass percussion and Pillard’s wordless voicings, this has elements of Robin Guthrie’s work for Cocteau Twins threading its influences around the entire piece. It’s a slow-dying heartbeat, waiting for the darkness to finally overwhelm the consciousness.
The one track that seems to be slightly out of place, at least for me, is the 16-minute closer. This departs from the normal run of things, and comes perilously close to being a true instrumental in the way most would recognise it. Simultaneously it’s undeniably a Methadrone track for all its difference of approach. Electric guitar takes centre-stage on this one, with some discernible riffage readily apparent from the very start. Slow-beat drums pin everything into place, while some high-flying guitar soars stratospherically above the dense drone background. However, as different in its way as it is from the rest of the album, it is still an inseparable part of the constitution of Sterility.
It's hard for me not to wax enthusiastic about this one. For me, this has all the elements necessary to appeal on every level, and to elevate it above the everyday. It is exquisite, expansive, erudite, and just stunningly beautiful. For me that’s all I need.
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It is a very simple formula—powerhouse drums pounding along forcefully, anchoring the sound firmly, backed up by driving bass lines with a chainsaw guitar cutting through equally forcefully. It all adds up to a gargantuan entity rampaging under its own not inconsiderable steam. There’s no recourse to finesse here—it is straight-forward no-nonsense pile-driving grunge. For all that though, it would be fair to say that in many ways (and bearing in mind this was recorded in the late '80s) it paved the way for many bands that followed. Certainly the filthy gutter-bred sound, so familiar now, would have been quite innovative at the time.
To take a typical example of what is on offer here, “Loaded,” is probably wholly representative of the behemoth that is Gore. Immediately cutting to the chase, a feedback-ridden power-chord introduces the song before an adrenaline-pumping bass-drum kicks in, kick-starting the six-string chainsaw buzz into action. The bass performs its task admirably, keeping pace and providing a solid vehicle for the twin-engines of the guitar and drums. The sandpaper abrasiveness of De Sury’s guitar commands attention from the get-go, igniting the furnace and sending sparks everywhere. The relentless heat is constantly fed by the pulsing percussion, turbo-charging it ever onwards without let or hindrance. The two ensuing pieces, “Meat Machine” and “Out for Sex,” continue the frenetic headlong dash into nuclear oblivion.
To be entirely fair though, this absolute disregard for any kind of sonic restraint typifies this album. From the very outset, Gore stake out their claim to the very heart of a particular slice of territory in the musical landscape. Moreover, they have no intentions of ever giving any ground, at least not without a fight, obviously subscribing to the philosophy that just by sheer overwhelming force of personality they can stop all opposition in their tracks. However, what is more important, in my view, is the fact that Gore here created a template for others to follow. Without their example adding to music’s gene-pool, it may be that many would never have been inspired to tread the same path.
On the downside, if indeed there is one, I admit that in some respects there’s a slight datedness to this. Despite that proviso, overall I would say that even so it points the way to the origins of this particular genre. Even though it could be said that it is most certainly of its time, it is absolutely no less listenable because of that. In fact, I would even would wager that there are one or two bands who will be able to mine it for inspiration even today.
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At the risk of sounding like a preview for the any of Harrison Ford’s ill-judged cinematic attempts to justify US foreign policy, Phil Rollins and Matt Resignola are The Gubernatorial Candidates. Their 2007 debut album (also self-released) showed them shaping songs through a shedding and donning of influences. That process continues with impressive results and head-scratching frustration on No Remainder.
First the annoyance: “Pyongyang” is far too short. Resignola wrests plenty of interest from a few hard edged acoustic guitar notes and a little processing but the overall impression is of a brief postcard from a Deep South equivalent of the Penguin Café. It's not a bad place to be, come to think of it. Except the track gives the impression we have arrived just as they are closing.
“Coffin (version)” is the latest of Rollins’ attempts to manufacture a vaguely African pulse into an effective pop-serialism; and he may ask himself, well, how did I get here? The single guitar riff, looped and repeated with a harmonic middle section is intriguing but ultimately it seems like a watercolor Reich-by-numbers with far too few numbers. It's worth remembering that Reich’s apparent simplicity is based on a rigid theoretical complexity and an astute sense of what to discard and what to explore. While the actual notes on "Coffin" do sound good, the piece doesn't bear repeated listens and ultimately amounts to the equivalent of a miniscule piece of rejected tape from the My Life in the Bush Of Ghosts sessions, at best. Plaudits for having the taste to try, but...
All is forgiven with “No Remainder” itself. This is a shimmering gem of which David Sylvian or Paul Buchanan might not be ashamed. All the better that, unless it gets scooped for a movie soundtrack, it will remain a largely unheard treasure. It needn't be that way, as sometimes the mainstream and the obscure can intersect: I recall the pre-mega Madonna listing The Book of Laughter and Forgetting as her favorite so perhaps she can tell Guy to get this onboard for his next project. Either that or maybe the hapless Ford will mistake it for a pro-Nationalism thumbs-up. Stranger things have happened. Along the way, Rollins’ voice gets glitched by Resignola's nifty autotuning and the latter also slowly builds the dynamic with a rather fantastic wall of fuzzy guitar. The voice is good enough to stand alone but the glitching adds a sense of humans as machinery and of a relationship or system that is broken. The oblique song sounds part death knell part defiant celebration with clever lyrics which raise more questions on the unintended dehumanizing consequences of love and politics than Milan Kundera has answered in all of his novels. In the unlikely event, this will be my inauguration soundtrack.
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The feelings that arise during 9 Before 9 are those of emptiness, solitariness and space. It is the sound of the hum that makes up the background radiation of space somehow picked up on a normal stereo. At low volumes, 9 Before 9 has very little going on but once the volume is pushed up the bass-heavy rumble fills the room. It is an underlying noise, like the sound of plane when you become accustomed to it during a flight, easy to ignore but fascinating once it is given some attention.
The album is split into three untitled 18 minute parts. The first part sounds the most like the in flight jet engine sound described above. As the piece creeps to a close, pops and crackles appear which add an occasional textural change to the piece. Near the end, the sound becomes unsettling, less like an everyday background noise and more like the beast lurking on the other side of reality. This other side becomes more evident with the second part, the low drone changes to a shifting buzz sounding like the world’s biggest and most pissed off bees. Buried in the mix is the sound of wind and rain but the drips of rain sounds more like a wet chewing sound in this context than drops of water.
The third and final part of 9 Before 9 takes things down a notch, bass pulses again become the predominant feature of the music. Metallic rasping covers the piece like dust in an old room and below the floorboards of this room come sounds that are either a radio being played in a room below (muffled and incomprehensible) or the sound of something unnatural moving about. The uneasiness that Karkowski and Romero pull from what sounds like very few sources is remarkable; compared to the sheer force needed by other artists to cause a similar amount of unease Karkowski and Romero make it seem simple.
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Jazz is obviously a big part of the group's aesthetic, but sequencers are no contest for live musicians, especially when they're programmed in such a traditional fashion. The songwriting sounds too constricted and lacks the spontaneity inherent in quality jazz. The live trumpet sprinkled throughout the album sounds great, but without any suitable counterpart, its efforts are somewhat muted. There are some moments of electronic exploration, like on "Marges," but they're so few and far between that they can't save the album's lack of momentum.
Because these songs are so easy on the ear, many of them are better suited for the background than attentive listening. As an album of mostly instrumentals, it's hard to say what the group is trying to express other than a mellow vibe, which isn't saying much. Vocalese appears toward the end of the album, which enhances the songs but doesn't quite provide the direction they're lacking. The album's best songs are "Yup 1" and "The Return." The former most fully realizes the potential in crossing jazz and electronics while the latter provides the album's only real excitement.
The most frustrating thing about BFF is that it's not bad, merely boring. Sub-ID plays it safe with their debut at the expense of any true innovation.
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Anakrid gets the most out of stereo, creating a dynamic sense of movement and dynamism between the channels. In fact, there are so many different sounds between left and right that sometimes the tracks seem governed by schizophrenia. This is especially apparent on "The Examinatione," which is almost like two separate mono songs added together to create stereo. Yet they're not entirely dissimilar, their abstract qualities complementing each other for mesmeric effect.
While the album's tracks don't bear a whole lot of relation to each other, they do have some things in common. Metallic overtones form the backdrop of several songs, while beats appear with some regularity, especially on the latter half of the album on tracks like "The Guttenberg Galaxy" and "Cinder Your Eye." If anything, it's the group's aesthetic sense that gives the album its coherence.
Although humor isn't a huge part of this album, glimmers of it come through the juxtaposition of unlikely and unrelated sound sources. It's hard not to smile when the imploding industrial rhythms of "Limited Liability Processing Plant" give way to the soft melody of "Lies on a Tranquil Brow" or when the disruptive squeaks and blurts on "The Many Voices of Reason" lead into the pulsing bass throb of "The Outer Beings."
Far from a hazy collage, there's a sense that everything on Banishment Rituals comes from a high level of purposeful articulation and control. With songs ranging from a minute and a half to nearly seven minutes, there's no room for filler here. With little space between tracks, the album moves in a breezy manner, giving the misconception that all this hard work was natural and effortless.
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