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In the early 80s, Robert Haigh released a handful of recordings under his own name, as well as the monikers Sema, Fote, and Truth Club. His atmospheric piano, guitar and sound arrangements were in a class of their own, but ranked among the quality level of other experimentalists such as Nurse With Wound, Current 93, and The Hafler Trio; coincidentally with whom he also collaborated with. These recordings quickly developed a cult following and even today are scarce, some fetching high prices on the collector’s market.
Haigh departed this work in the 90s, moving into an entirely different sound under the moniker Omni Trio. Signing with the esteemed electronic label Moving Shadow, Haigh became highly regarded as one of the originators of drum and bass music, although his style during this time continued to reflect his use of fluid melody and space.
And now, Crouton is absolutely delighted to present his newest work, Written on Water. Within these songs, listeners will hear nods to the distinct melodicism of his early Valentine Out of Season-era solo piano work, while also referencing like-minded composers such as Eric Satie, Steve Reich, and Harold Budd. Gone are the drum machines of his 90s work, yet this new music is as much about rhythm as it is about melody.
Haigh explains,
“These tracks came out of the attempt to find a balance between two of my major interests: counterpoint and economy of structure.
Most music has some form of counterpoint, how one sound or tone relates to another is the key to evoking possibility; an E note paired with an Eb creates an openness where several potentialities of key and structure are suggested. Using too many tones or sounds can have the opposite effect and limit possibilities by over definition – this is where my second preoccupation; economy of structure, comes in.
Structurally instrumental in this is the use of gradual development and apparent repetition. I say ‘apparent’ because in reality no repetition can be found. Every note, tone, sound, etc. is always in a completely new space, unfolding as uncharted flow in the moment.
This quality of ‘always new’ was the inspiration for the title. Like writing on a surface that leaves no trace with every mark, music is the perfect expression (and metaphor) of how ever-fresh reality is when unmediated by the freeze framing of conceptual thought.”
Written on Water is released in a limited, numbered edition of 500, packaged in a letterpressed case. The physical edition also contains a bonus track not available elsewhere.
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I was about 14 when I first put on a Lustmord cassette, cranked the Walkman up and lay still in a dark room, waiting for something to happen. As it turns out, something did happen—I fell asleep. But something else made that first Lustmord experience memorable. It wasn't falling asleep to drones and dark, cavernous tones that I remembered, it was waking up in a sweaty panic thinking that I had somehow fallen through a long, aching tunnel into hell. There was some loud, banshee squeal that snapped me awake and I immediately turned the cassette off for fear that it was doing irreparable damage to my subconscious.
Now, I sit with Lustmord's latest album, Other, and I realize that what I want out of a Lustmord record couldn't be more simple. In a sense, my relationship with one of these records is fairly one-dimensional. I don't need a lot of dynamics or tunefulness; I don't expect distinct tracks with unique sounds that I can forever pin to a particular part of the record; I don't even want to be surprised by the artist's evolution or technique. I really just want to be scared. I want these records to be the kind of thing that I can put on with the lights off and just get lost in. I don't mean that in a sentimental way, the way one might get lost in a romantic ballad or throbbing trance record. I mean that I literally want to close my eyes, turn up the volume, and forget where I am so that when I am inevitably jarred to attention by a crash or by a nightmare, I have Lustmord to thank for tweaking my brain.
And tweak he does with Other, with the expected mix of drones and tones drenched deep in reverb, far off crashes of thunder or drums (I can't be sure,) and sometimes even recognizable guitar that grinds along to create a rhythm for the madness. Whether it is Lustmord's work in the film industry that has afforded him the ability to create such pristine recordings of darkness, or whether he always had that gift and is just able to exploit it creeping people out in theaters and on video games, I don't know. I do know that Other does not disappoint. It does that one simple thing that I require of a Lustmord record, and it points out that my simple requirement is not itself a simple thing to pull off.
There exists a level of composition present in Lustmord's work that is absent from the efforts of so many of the people he has inspired. There's always a narrative with these songs, and that separates them from run of the mill drone exercises. Of course, Lustmord's impeccable ear for mixing also helps these songs rise to the top of a heap that seems to always be growing with people who are trying to out-do the master of troll-cave ambience. I just don't think it can be done. Other is another grim example of a consummate artist who is working firmly within the parameters that he has laid out for himself over the years. I wouldn't say that much of Other is groundbreaking, but then it absolutely doesn't need to be in order for it to work. It's a fantastically bleak slab of heavy sound that helps me get lost when it's playing. That's the sign of a record to keep.
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Throughout his prolific, but unfortunately short, career, Muslimgauze had a variety of phases that usually stuck as a thematic, per-album feel. There was the more traditional Middle Eastern tracks, some with a dance bent, some with an overly noisy edge, and some of a purely abstract nature. The bulk of the material on here falls into my favorite phase, the lo-fi hip-hop influenced dubby stuff. Jaagheed Zarb, though it is a collection of different tracks, feels like a coherent work that could have been intended as a full length album.
This style of Muslimgauze is based heavily on repetition, but the tracks never go too long to make them boring, but instead stay compelling. There’s only two “long” tracks, seven to eight minutes each, are also the most idiosyncratic among the collection. If I hadn’t known better, I would assume “Vinoo Mankad Option” and “Hafeez Kardar” were double A sides from a previous 12-inch. The former is one of the more conventional works in Jones’ discography, featuring a steady club influenced beat, more obvious Middle Eastern instrumentation and vocal loops, and little of the usual noisy elements that usually pop up. Other than a few shoddy delays, this could be a different artist entirely. The metaphorical flip side is one of the most abstract works he’s done: sputtering, cut up drums run through a rusty old spring reverb unit, cut up tape and lots of noisy elements.
As a sporadic fan during Muslimgauze’s career (I picked up an album here and there, but didn’t have the income to be a real hardcore listener), I never had the Tandoori Dog box set, so this material is mostly new to me. As aforementioned, it follows the general pattern of other works, heavily focused on hip-hop style beats (according to legend Jones would never use samplers or pre-recorded loops, but played everything live). If this is the case, he does a few very good impressions of the old “Funky Drummer” beat on a few of these. The dub elements are also rather pronounced on here, both “Sari of Human Hair” and “Sari of Dog Hair” feature a more low end kick pulse than the others, subtle organ stabs, and a more open, sparse mix that is more in line with a traditional “version” than the other tracks’ denser, noise tinged pieces.
The tracks that were previously on the “MP3 only” Melt EP (back before this was fashionable) were ones I was more familiar with, and hearing the opening beat, I was taken back to some 10 years ago listening to this material, which is, I’m sure, still on a MiniDisc in my closet somewhere. Both “Melt” and “Turn Left For Jabaliya” from this EP show up in alternate forms on the Tandoori Dog tracks, but as a whole the Melt versions are rougher around the edges and show more of a noise bent.
The three unreleased tracks, “Zionist Leather Clad Koran, “Kiss of Deceit,” and “Nadir Bedu” are somewhat different, but still fit in with the overall feel. The first is a short piece of extremely hissy, slow-paced beat material that sounds like it was pulled from an analog cassette that had been baking in the desert sun. “Kiss of Deceit” is the most traditional hip-hop sounding on here: though using traditional Middle Eastern percussion, the beat is a stiff hip-hop breakbeat, and with bass heavy elements to match. Finally, “Nadir Bedu” leans to the noisy analog synth elements: Jones’ love of Luddite technology is apparent, as are the tabla drums.
It’s cliché by now, but I too wonder if Jones were still alive today how his music would be affected by the current socio-political climate regarding the Middle East and Islam. As aggressive as his work was previously, the extra level of anger that could have been implemented in his art would probably be striking in this day and age. Unfortunately, that will never come to be.
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With roots in his native Swiss Dada movement, it is almost expected that Lanz would have an absurd bent to his art, which is a breath of fresh air in a genre that, for the most part, takes itself entirely too seriously. On “Trees Are My Friends” this is beautifully apparent: while the backing track channels classic Neubauten chaotic metal drumming and noisy, rough bass guitar work, Lanz delivers lines like “These dogs are pissing on my tree all the time and I don’t fucking like that!“ in a classic power electronics delivery right out of Whitehouse albums like Buchenwald, but is far more fun and jovial.
Few of the songs on here actually have that “traditional” noise feel. “Deep Cuts” does have its share of unidentifiable processed screams and some pure noise elements, but exercises more restraint and focuses more on textures rather than terror. The massive “Slomono” is similar in its construction of guitar cable noises, ultrasonic high-end tones and feedback. Rather than blasting, it is more content to simply lurk all creepy-like in the darkness.
Other tracks show an obvious influence from other artists, but it is just that, influence. “Boy In A Wheelchair” definitely has traces of classic Throbbing Gristle and especially SPK in its deep bass thump, audible vocals and noisy blasts of static and feedback, but also demonstrates that sense of careful construction that those artists were also known for. “Tandoori Chicken Scooter III” has a structure more in line with the punk influnced bands of today, such as Wolf Eyes, but has a percussion track that sounds like its built from old kung fu movie fight samples and that almost-not-there level of controlled chaos. Others are more than happy to be overtly punk in nature: “Somniphobia” has a traditional, though metal, percussion and traditional bass guitar over looped Middle Eastern elements and the occasional burst of noise. It has a familiar, conventional feel, but is still in its own galaxy entirely.
Finally, a few tracks are just completely “out there” in the most brilliant way: “Bamblood” is built on the most unnatural sounds that can be made with the human mouth, and no, not just the voice. Put over a backward bass guitar track and, though entirely bizarre, retains a rhythmic, captivating feel. “Dies Irae” opts for a different level of weirdness with its almost techno synth sequence, bouncing bass line, and a snare drum coming together as almost a jazz piece. I say “almost” because the white noise outbursts that pop up are decidedly un-jazz, at least in this context. Finally, the “true” album closer, “Zipper Ripper” is exactly what it sounds like: layered recordings of zipper sounds that are mostly untreated in nature, other than the occasional pitch shifting.
What follows are three remixes that, while mostly well done, feel superfluous on an already well conceived, diverse recording. The fact that my copy had a sticker outlining the contributions by Z’EV, Lasse Marhaug, and Thurston Moore leads me to believe their inclusion is more for marketing, rather than artistic, purposes. While I can appreciate the fact that it might make Sudden Infant a more well known name and gain some additional attention for this brilliant album, and the fact the artists included are probably fans of Lanz, it does feel blatant. Z’ev takes Slomono and condenses the 11 minute abstract sprawl into a denser, 4 minute mix that shows Z’EV’s subtle appreciation for atmosphere, and manages to take a track that already had one and put it in a somewhat more tense mood. Marhaug’s take on "Tandoori Chicken Scooter III" strips away the chaos and instead keeps it held back, the noiser bits are filtered and reversed to create a building level of tension that unsurprisingly is released at the end in pure noise orgasmic chaos. Thurston Moore’s take on “Somniphobia” is somewhat disappointing, because rather than utilizing the already odd mix, he instead is happy to just add distortion and noise it up, making it less memorable overall.
By looking at the remixes as simply bonus tracks, it's easier to appreciate the first 11 tracks as the full album with the extras just tacked on at the end. Impossible to pigeonhole, Sudden Infant has created a disc that is the culmination of all of those years of experimenting and perfecting his craft.
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Karl Blau’s collaborations ( D+, Microphones, Mt Eerie, Laura Viers) and his solo work have drawn plenty of praise. This time around he should get stellar press as he’s topped his previous efforts with a consistently fine record that at times appears to be channeling Samuel Becket, Neil Young and Tom Zé. The first few tracks have a lively feel with drums, bass, guitars and spry witticisms to the fore. This sprightly atmosphere contrasts with Blau’s thoughtful lyrical hi-jinks and gives them a measure of profound weight. He manages to sing the line “Heartbeats with accompanying moans” in a way that recognizes that to be alive is to suffer, yet offers encouragement and fun! Similarly he can sing about feeling nothing “betwixt the tomb and the womb” (in a neat counter-clockwise take on Beckett’s “born astride the grave”) but balance that with a distorted Carpenters reference at the end of the first song: “Just like me, they long to be…getting out of Dodge.”
So far so good, but at the halfway point of the album I expected one of three things to happen: the quality of the songs would fade badly, or they would simply repeat what had gone before, with diminishing returns, or attempts at variety would seem forced and would splinter the intensity. However, beginning with “Mockingbird Diet” Blau hits his stride and what follows is absolutely irrepressible. The fluid brilliance and rhythmic nuance we hear on “Of Your Feet, Of Your Place”, “Stream of Ganders” and “That’s the Breaks” might be the record's peak. Consequently, although “2 Becomes 1” is marvelously direct, it feels like a fever has broken. Cleverly, Blau’s voice seems to get deeper throughout Nature’s Got Away as if he were imitating an entire career in a single album. The title of the disc is nicely ambiguous although the Randy California aspect is probably just a figment of my imagination. Hopefully, Karl Blau can maintain the impression of meandering, of going with the flow, even as he carefully plots his upward course.
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In the same way that breakbeat deconstructed dance music and took it to one of its many possible logical conclusions, so Atoui is himself appearing to indulge in some naked deconstruction. In fact, I could posit that here is a double deconstruction, taking apart not only breakbeat itself but also doing the same to the world and society around us. Atoui, literally and metaphorically, attacks it, cuts it up, dissects it, and eventually stitches it all back together in Frankensteinian manner. What results is an abstract sound-painting, composed of many disparate elements drawn together and sewn into a cohesive whole. What’s more, despite its stop-start nature, I found myself quite enjoying its anarchic mix of textures and atmospheres.
Admittedly, it is hard to relate to this on anything other than an intellectual level. Understandably then, combining as it does numerous samples and ideas from all over the place, intellectually the overall themes upon which this seems to be hung, at least for me, are decay and entropy. The idea that inevitably all matter tends towards chaos is a particular aesthetic subtext on this collection of six untitled tracks, and it can be applied on both the macro, galactic level and the micro, social one. My reading of Atoui’s music is that it is a narrative of, and a commentary on, the way things break down and the ongoing processes of disintegration. This is especially pointed in these days of the manifest global village, where cultural identities become diluted and merge into a bland universal homogeneity. By collating all the sound sources that he does, from some hipster lazily intoning the word ‘yeah’ on track two to the caterwauling screech of a singing Japanese lady (just for random examples), one can embrace the totality of modern culture and its gradual devolution within the duration of this album. Moreover, by firmly underpinning all with the scattershot rhythm breaks and barrages, it hauls the whole shebang right up to date, underlining perhaps the urgency of our current global crises.
A phrase kept recurring to me while I was listening to this; collapsing buildings. Or perhaps collapsing edifices would be a more appropriate epithet. Sounds collapse in on themselves, shatter, split apart, collide, concatenate, and reform in constant chaotic motion. Order tries to assert itself in the midst of all this cacophony, managing to poke its head through here and there; and so do quieter moments. Inevitably though perhaps, it’s doomed to failure against the rising and strengthening tide of entropic forces. The pained screaming on the last track, set against a sweeping backdrop of choir-like voices, seems to point to the fated end; despair, anguish, pain, and destruction.
There is no doubt in my mind about the direction that Atoui’s music takes on this album, and what it portends. For me, it locks on to the end-of-times angst that seems to grip modern society, portraying with alarming clarity the not-so-gentle collapse of global civilization with its attendant anarchic aftermath. Inevitably this is a subjective personal interpretation; however, the vibe I get from this production makes me feel that maybe I am not that far off the mark.
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This is not to say, of course, that I find this in the least unappealing—quite the contrary. As anyone who has ever looked at photographs of Arctic landscapes can attest, there is a stark beauty present in such regions. The same can quite clearly be said about the music of Thisquietarmy. Despite superficial impressions of a near-insubstantial fragility about this, there is nevertheless a pervasive frisson of menace and danger lurking within. Therein, I would tout, lies the very source of both its surprisingly radiant beauty and hidden strength, that inherent ability to mesmerise and transfix while simultaneously over-awing and intimidating. It is a delicate balancing act to be sure, but Quach never makes the mistake of letting one element override the other. Each has an important role to play, and it is the careful interplay and co-operation of these elements that ultimately contributes to the final success of the whole.
Unlike a lot of similar guitar-, effects-, and sample-based shoegazing ambient drone music, the music on Unconquered is never allowed to become boring or self-indulgent. No long stretches of static drone here—instead layers of sound ebb and flow, just like ice-floes floating serenely on a gently lapping Arctic sea. Sounds emerge slowly and shyly into the light and eventually supersede, resulting in new textures and colors coming to the fore. However, the feeling of frigid isolation under a vast hemisphere of unblemished azure never leaves. The weight of unbearable loneliness has very rarely been portrayed so accurately in sound.
Quach, aided by the guitar of Aidan Baker, declares his manifesto with the opener “Immobilization.” Drifting in almost gently from left-field to hover above the untrammelled icescape, it eventually becomes a seething blizzard of deadly cold presaging the intensity of that freezing isolationism hinted at above. Horizons bounded by snow and ice can easily be envisaged, the crushing grind of glaciers, and the pinprick sharpness of the unpolluted star-studded night sky. Above all, I get the feeling of substantial weight and physical solidity bearing down, ready to crush and destroy. “The Sun Destroyers” weaves a tapestry of a twilit world of half-seen and fuzzy shapes in an uncertain landscape, reflecting and echoing an uncertainty of whether they represent danger or not. Mid-tempo percussion amid sweeping, swirling fuzztones broadcast shivers to the receiver that was my spine.
This is a deeply meditative, holistic album, giving color, shape, and substance to a world caught in the margin between the light and the darkness. Ranging over a wide spectrum of sonic textures, from pure dronefields to acoustic strumming, and from fuzzed-out harmonic blankets to shimmering hazes augmented by the ethereal vocals of Meryem Yildiz, Unconquered represents a veritable cornucopia of riches. That it is the vision of one man heightens the experience all the more.
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Two of the album’s tracks get reworked on The Bacteria Magnet. The first is “Cruising for a Bruising,” one of the better offerings on Huffin’ Rag Blues whose motorik beat and collage of noise sounds like Faust covering Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” (which would be a very lovely thing if it were to happen). Unfortunately the mix on The Bacteria Magnet is not quite as captivating. It is a bit flaccid here, lacking the oomph of the album version. It is like listening to the same song coming from someone else’s car as they drive frustratingly slow in front of you.
However, this is the only stumble on the 12” and from here on in, things are mightily interesting. The alternative mix of “Thrill of Romance...” works far better than the Huffin’ mix. The twisted spin on MOR jazz is menacing and mesmerising; Freida Abtan’s vocals seem almost dead, the emotion stripped down to a lonely husk. The music moves from being a fairly standard double bass and organ arrangement to a progressively stranger buzzing and whirring swirl of sound.
The two non-album pieces are both of a high quality. “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön” takes the slow, jazzy romance song and turns it on its head. The pulsing noise (out of time with the vocals) and the shimmering Lilith-esque drones make for quite an unsettling experience. “The Bottom Feeder” is more like old school Nurse than any of the other pieces here. It is a chaotic mess of sound, switching between destroyed rhythms and aural abstractions that make Nurse With Wound the constantly rewarding beast that it is.
The old time rock’n roll and surf influences along with the sheer strangeness of Stapleton’s arrangements bring to mind David Lynch’s appropriation and warping of '50s and '60s American pop music in his movies to make the surreal situations seem more familiar than they should be (such as the prostitutes dancing to “The Locomotion” in Inland Empire or the jitterbug scene at the start of Mullholland Dr.). Maybe because Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti have done this sort of thing so well for so long that Nurse With Wound’s move in this direction does not sound so fresh. I know Stapleton has tried something similar before with Sylvie and Babs but to my mind, this is a Lynchian approach to those rock’n roll and lounge standards. The Bacteria Magnet and Huffin’ Rag Blues are a great experiment but I wonder if this is a temporary digression by Stapleton or whether he will be working with similar sources for a long time (and if so, does this style have the longevity to warrant another album)?
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Hercules & Love Affair, "Hercules and Love Affair"
DFA/Mute
I've written about Andy Butler's classicist disco/house project in this feature previously (catch up here), but recently the full-length self-titled album dropped on DFA/Mute. As promising as Butler's early singles were, in the world of dance music, good singles are rarely any guarantee of a solid long-player. For better or worse, dance music is a genre driven almost exclusively by singles, and I can count on one hand the number of full-length dance albums that could be considered great. Also, DFA hasn't been maintaining a very good track record lately, with questionable signings like Prinzhorn Dance School and Shocking Pinks. Given these low expectations, I was blindsided by Hercules & Love Affair's debut, chock full of gorgeous dancefloor excursions for nearly its entire length, with very few tracks that fall below the bar set by Butler's early singles. It's also incredibly cohesive for a dance album, with a narratively sequenced suite of songs that travels from lush romanticism, to dark introspection and finally to ecstatic celebration. More than half of the tracks feature Antony Hegarty on lead or backup vocals, a role for which, it must be said, Antony was born. Moonlighting as a House Diva, Antony's campy, melodramatic vacillations are the perfect counterpoint for Butler's modernist take on disco and house. Most the tracks also feature live instrumentation—a full horn section, strings, acoustic and bass guitar. This makes the album stand out against an overpopulated field of laptop-centric "blog house" albums being released on indie labels. I haven't been this excited about the possibilities of live, organic dance music since the first !!! album was released. Almost every track here is a winner, but standouts include "You Belong," a stunning house track with soulful lead vocals by Nomi that recall classic cuts by Inner City, and "Iris," a haunting slow-burner with Kim Ann Fox doing lead vocals against uncannily good rhythm programming and horn sections. "Hercules' Theme" extensively mines pure 1970s mirrorball territory, complete with swooping strings and horn fanfares. As such, it's a consciously retro as the album gets; though Butler often looks to the past for inspiration, his compositions are always forward looking, and there's no question that this album is a product of the '00s. The album hits its creepiest moment with the dark, atmospheric (and un-danceable) "Easy" and the deceptively upbeat "Raise Me Up," on which Antony's lyric is truly frightening, relating a harrowing tale of rape: "They put you down/They pushed your face down/They fucked you over and around/You kissed the ground." Things end on a bright, transcendent note with "True False, Fake Real," which manages to synthesize all of Butler's various approaches, ending with a joyous overture that seems to reprise all of the album's themes.
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Syclops, "I've Got My Eye On You"
DFA
Back when I reviewed Syclops' first single for DFA ("Where's Jason's K"/"Monkey Puss"), I claimed that Syclops was a new moniker for the great Maurice Fulton AKA Dr. Scratch. Allow me to apologize, as it appears this was at least partly mistaken. Though Fulton does take on production duties for the singles and album, and does seem to be a key part of the group, Syclops also counts among its members a trio of musicians from Finland. Press releases from DFA have been very mysterious and tight-lipped about who and what exactly Syclops is, perhaps as a way of increasing the mystique around this most idiosyncratic and original of albums. The music made by Syclops is a study in dynamic tension and oddball juxtaposition. Most of the tracks combine live playing with cannily sequenced rhythms and synths, moving between outré, whimsical experimentation and outright dancefloor groove. It's a very tricky balancing act, and I fully expected one of Syclops' tendencies to dominate the other, but amazingly, they remain perfectly balanced throughout. Or more accurately, they remain perfectly imbalanced throughout, turning lopsidedness into a virtue. The opener, "Nr17," combines wonky analog synths with a driving technoid beatscape including hand-played congos, making frequent drops into dubby space echo. Structurally, these tracks are all over the place, creating appealingly shapeless, amorphous compositions in which it is never clear where the track is going. Syclops are often almost too innovative for their own good; it might be to their advantage to occasionally just "give up the goods," as it were, rather than continuing to tease the groove by making it take a back seat to unorthodox, goopy strangeness. However, giving up the goods isn't what Syclops are about; they are about creating a new mutant hybrid of free-form experimentalism and precise techno, two seemingly irreconcilable extremes that nonetheless meet and erotically palpate each other's tentacles across the void. Just listen to a track like "Nelson's Void," which starts in Nurse With Wound territory—weird alien chirps, organ drones and loads of delay—before suddenly transforming into an off-kilter Underground Resistance-style groove, complete with farty analog synth bass, live drums, understated keyboard arpeggiations, complex jazz breaks and dubstep-style resonation. For every track like that one, there is one like "5 Out," which sticks more closely to the techno formula, but is no less audacious and experimental in its breathtaking dynamism and surrealistic juxtapositions. Syclops is the work of four supremely talented musicians who are fearlessly blowing open the doors of techno and creating a style that is absolutely without peer.
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Girl Talk, "Feed the Animals"
Illegal Art
Girl Talk's new album, his follow-up to the perennial favorite Night Ripper, is the newest in a line of high-profile releases being distributed online as a choose-what-you-pay download. For an artist whose music is almost entirely composed of unlicensed samples from other artists' work—most of those artists major label HipHop acts and ubiquitous mainstream top 40 music—this move may have been more strategic than anything else, a way of heading off the inevitable lawsuit. Whatever the reasons, I was quite happy to be able to download a lossless version of the album for only $5.00 US. Much like Night Ripper, Feed the Animals is formulated to be no-holds-barred, balls-out party music: only the hooks from a host of familiar radio jams all smashed together into a dizzying sequence of seamless mashups, prankish bastard pop and crowd-pleasing cut-ups. It's collage as pop art, and no one does this better than Girl Talk. Somehow, Gregg Gillis is able to keep the beat moving while he cycles through a completely mind-boggling array of mismatched pop music samples. The first track alone ("Play Your Part Pt. 1") samples over 25 distinct songs, all the way from UGK to Roy Orbison, from Lil Wayne to Twisted Sister, from Ludacris to Sinead O'Connor. Half the fun of a Girl Talk album is track-spotting, the pedestrian pleasures of familiarity and recognition, which quickly give way to delighted laughter over the audaciousness of the weird or unexpected musical cross-breeds engineered by Gillis. An album like this is not for the anhedonic music connosieurs who make a point of scrupulously avoiding the vulgar pleasures of MTV pop. This shit takes shamelessness to a whole new, frenetic, short-attention-span level. Some favorite moments of mine include the mashup of Procul Harum and Kanye West on "Still Here," the breathless sequence of the Jackson 5, Queen and Rihanna at the end of "What It's All About," and the completely ridiculous segue from Prodigy's "Firestarter" into Chris Brown rapping over Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl." This and many more WTF moments make Feed the Animals worth a repeat listen beyond the initial novelty. Throw this on at a party and only the hardened snobs will complain.
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Ladytron, "Velocifero"
Nettwerk
And then there was Ladytron. They rose to prominence about the same time that the so-called electroclash sound hit the big time, and because of some superficial similarities, got unfairly lumped into the whole sassy punk electronic scene. The association was a poor fit for Ladytron, because they were aiming at something a lot more demure and artsy, or so it seemed. There were plenty of self-conscious retroisms, to be sure, but their cold, clinical vocals and indie rock posturing seemed to position them as a new millennial, poppy version of Young Marble Giants as reimagined by Travelogue-era Human League. However, with each successive album after their initial one-two punch of 604 and Light & Magic, Ladytron have worn out any good will that casual listeners might have been willing to extend. Seemingly content to just repeat a formula ad nauseum, rather than actually writing memorable songs, Ladytron have been treading water in a sea of effortless hipster cool. However, as the years have moved on, Ladytron's audience have shifted from hipsters to goths, ravers, and other forms of club trash. This may explain their new home on Nettwerk, which is where music goes to die. This new album tries to reignite the flame but still play to their base, so mixed in with Witching Hour-style dense synthpop are some attempts at 1960s Girls in the Garage-style rock. The problem is that Ladytron are too self-conscious and polished to pull off anything resembling the joyous looseness of garage rock, and thus a track such as "Black Car" goes seriously off the rails, trying to be both goth-tinged new wave, Stereolab-esque backward-looking nostalgic rock, and ultra-modern angular haircut synthpop. It's a hybrid that doesn't work for most of Velocifero, mostly because the songs are underwritten and lack memorable hooks. On a few tracks, the group attempts to bury the synths in favor of loud rock with a huge wall of swirling guitar feedback a la Ride or My Bloody Valentine. The attempt is risible, merely another self-consciously "cool" musical reference point for Ladytron to exploit, as if merely having good taste will obscure the fact that the band is now officially irrelevant. I anxiously await the inevitable spate of 12" singles with remixes by various dance producers, as this material could only improve by being completely re-tooled. Yeah, it's that bad.
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Heavy bass and drums pound the songs into submission while ear-shattering cymbals crash over pained howls. Apparently there are lyrics to go along with this mess, but the screaming is so indecipherable that it's impossible to discern what is being said. Bits of sampled dialogue pop up from time to time and the group deftly incorporates them without relying on them to make their point. The electronics, nothing too overt, gives their sound a unique quality, or at least successfully differentiates them from their peers.
The means and effect of each song are so similar that it's sometimes difficult to tell these tracks apart, but maybe that's not really important anyway. Even so, I find them most compelling when they stray from their template, like the ending of "Ice Myself in Eye" that has a purely textural passage joined by a boiler room rhythm, or the gong-like ending of "Cumstab Patients." These little touches go a long way toward keeping their songs lively.
Their obnoxious sense of humor is a big part of why this album works. While the music is excessively savage, tongue-in-cheek song titles like "Micehandthrowpiss," "Goudah and Evil," "Fondleeza Mice," and "Miceshitjizm" prove that the band's not overly serious. That they apparently perform live while wearing mouse head masks only cements that fact. A bonus track is appended to the last song, a hilarious cover of "Helter Skelter" that receives the full White Mice treatment and manages to encapsulate the aesthetic as well.
Brutal and way over the top, White Mice stay consistent every step of the way. Far more than I had expected, Excreamantraintraveinanus is an enthrallingly grotesque album of head-fuckery.
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