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Having been in the field of abstract and noise art for some 19 years now, Joke Lanz is definitely not a neophyte. This album makes that readily apparent in its highly structured, controlled noise elements, but is also willing to step outside of the boundaries of what is expected from him and instead is happy to toss in elements of punk, traditional industrial, and something that is often lacking in this genre: humor.
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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In the past Karl Blau has been inspired by A.A. Milne. On Nature’s Got Away he conjures up a fabulous landscape somewhere between dreams and wakefulness. This unfussy yet 3D music seems almost theatrical in an era where 1.5 dimensions are too often the norm.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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Tarek Atoui is a young Lebanese-born musician who went to study at the French National Conservatoire in Rheims in 1998. He now seemingly divides his time between France, Lebanon, the Middle East, and Amsterdam (where he is the co-artistic director of the Steims studio), performing and giving workshops. His Mort Aux Vaches release is composed of breakbeat-anchored cut-ups, samples, sound collages, noise, and unabashed experimentalism.
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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Thisquietarmy's Eric Quach (Destroyalldreamers) hails from Montréal. Paradoxically though, it appears the frozen landscape of the far north of the country has seeped into every crack and pore of his music. However, it is not just physical cold that inspires these eight tracks of ambient dronescape. Running through them is an equally icy glaciality redolent of a sense of utter despair and unalloyed distance and loneliness. Quach's world is one of constant twilight, illuminated solely by the light of stars and aurorae reflecting off a thickly snow-blanketed land.
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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In a situation that is not entirely unexpected, the latest album from Steven Stapleton has caused much controversy amongst fans with opinions ranging from it being one of his best to it being one of his biggest turds. Even here on Brainwashed, opinions were mixed with the review here concluding that "disappointment" sums up the album to my own view that it is pretty damn good. This 12" will probably not change many people's views of the album, it is an aside that those who are enjoying Huffin’ Rag Blues will dig but I am not so sure about those who found it hard to stomach.
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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Our somewhat semi-regular feature covering the newest dance singles goes full-length this week, reviewing new albums by Hercules and Love Affair, Syclops, Girl Talk and Ladytron.
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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This noise rock trio from Providence, Rhode Island, uses massive amounts of distortion over meaty bass, bruising drums, guttural screams, and squealing electronics to make sludgy music fit for exorcisms. Vicious slabs of aggression make this a visceral yet surprisingly enjoyable album.
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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David Berman and company's latest album retains the witty lyrics and tongue-in-cheek humor from previous efforts and continues the slow gravitation toward sunnier themes. While it doesn't have the immediate impact of its predecessor Tanglewood Numbers, its subtle charms ultimately bring it near that album's achievements.
Tanglewood's warm reception and the Jews' lauded first foray into live performance and touring must certainly have been a balm to Berman's much-publicized bouts with depression and addiction, if Lookout's opener "What Is Not But Could Be If" is any indication. The lyrics point to focusing on new beginnings rather than dwelling on the errors of the past, yet the stilted wording and Berman's melancholic delivery don't make a very convincing case. It's a weak song and not a great choice to begin the album, no matter how thematically desirable it may seem. The stronger "Strange Victory, Strange Defeat" with its purposeful ambiguity would have been better.
The poor start does this album a disservice, because immediately afterwards follows its strongest stretch of material, beginning with the fiery "Aloysius, Bluegrass Drummer." Berman's wife, Cassie, has taken on a more prominent role on this and the last album, and here she gets the chorus on the album's strongest track, "Suffering Jukebox." Her voice is a nice complement to Berman's both here and when it is a hazy background element on the Maher Shalal Hash Baz cover "Open Field." "My Pillow Is the Threshold" is one of the album's more serious, darker tracks, ending with eerie clouds of ambient feedback. "We Could Be Looking for the Same Thing" is a fairly conventional but nonetheless effectively sweet song that should send pangs of jealousy throughout the group's Nashville peers.
The only section other than the opener that isn't so great is a sequence toward the end. "San Francisco B.C." has an enjoyable energy, funny lyrics, and good music, but "Candy Jail," coming right on its heels, seems like a jokey novelty in comparison with its "peppermint bars, peanut brittle bunk beds, and marshmallow walls." It's as insubstantial as, well, cotton candy, and the subsequent "Party Barge," complete with watery engine sounds, seagulls, and foghorn, doesn't fare much better. With so many humorous songs in a row, the effect is too light and too easy to dismiss.
The layers of guitars and voices, especially Cassie's, are particularly well done on this album, and for the most part, the writing is as strong as ever. Apart from a weak track and an unfortunate string of fluff, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea has strong moments that rival the best of Berman's work.
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Bomb the Bass is back, but put away that smiley face: this is no nostalgia trip. With Future Chaos, Tim Simenon revamps his long-running project to produce a record that's fresher than anyone might have expected from an outfit that got its start in the '80s. Tickling tweeters and pushing the limits of low-end, the album hovers confidently on the cusp between futurism and vintage, boasting the sort of confident songwriting that's a rarity anywhere, much less in electronic music.
Simenon calls it "electronic music with soul," but that barely begins to describe it. At once lush and chilly, intimate and alien, Future Chaos is a synth-rich album boasting guest vocals from Jon Spencer, Mark Lanegan, Fujiya & Miyagi's David Best, Toob and Paul Conboy.
BOMB THE BASS FUTURE CHAOS !K7
Out September 30th 2008 -
cover in September / October / November issues
File Under: POP
Additionally the following singles will be released
August 26th - DIGITAL ONLY - "So Special feat Paul Conby" with remixes by Michael Fakesch & Toob
October 28th - "Butterfingers feat Fujiya and Miyagi with remixes by Adam Sky & others
Note: the initial copies of the CD will be a limited edition double disc with a bonus disc of remixes -
tracklist:
disc a
- Smog (feat Paul Conboy)
- Butterfingers (feat Fujiya and Miyagi)
- Old John (feat Paul Conboy)
- Burn the Bunker (feat Toob)
- So Special (feat Paul Conboy)
- No Bones (feat Paul Conboy)
- Black River (feat Mark Lanegan)
- Hold Me Up (feat Paul Conboy)
- Fuzzbox (feat Jon Spencer) - [FREE MP3 download]
disc b
- Butterfingers (Adam Sky Ravebummer Mix)
- Butterfingers (Dan Aykroyd Mix by Various)
- Old John (Future Funk Squad's 'Jonboy' Remix)
- Burn the Bunker (Toob's WHATGOESONINHEMSBYSTAYSINHEMSBY Mix)
- So Special (Specialized by Michael Fakesch)
- So Special (Toob's Special Special Mix)
- Black River (Gui Borrato Remix)
- Star (exclusive bonus edition track)
It's been 21 years since Bomb the Bass' "Beat Dis" helped usher in the era of sampling, acid house and DJ culture. It's easy to forget how monumental the single was. Going straight to number two in the UK charts, the song's success quickly propelled Simenon from underground DJ to in-demand knobsman. Long before Marc Ronson or Timbaland, he was the go-to guy for the Midas Touch. In those early years, he co-produced Neneh Cherry's stone classic "Buffalo Stance" and Seal's "Crazy"—not a bad run for an upstart fresh out of sound engineering school.
Throughout the '90s, Bomb the Bass continued to blaze trails with the UK hip-hop classic Bug Powder Dust, the trip-hop blueprint Winter In July and the dubby Clear. All the while, Simenon racked up production and remix credits for acts like Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Curve, Björk and Massive Attack. Just as important were his many collaborations with a surprising range of artists: J. Saul Kane, Jah Wobble, Sinéad O'Connor, Hector Zazou, On-U Sound—even actress Minnie Driver turned up in the mix.
On Future Chaos, Simenon's guest vocalists are as inspired as ever. David Best, of Brighton Krautrockers Fujiya & Miyagi, spreads his trademark free-association whispers all over "Butter Fingers." Toob, the duo of Jakeone (Jake Williams) and Red Snapper's Richard Thair, lend a nervous, sultry touch to "Burn the Bunker." Jon Spencer—yes, he of Blues Explosion fame—infuses "Fuzzbox" with the distant purr of robot phone sex. Paul Conboy, of A.P.E. and Corker/Conboy, sings and shares writing credits on five more songs, with a lush-yet-understated touch that recalls Thom Yorke in his mellower moments. But the most striking appearance here might be Mark Lanegan's. Formerly of the Screaming Trees, a onetime member of Queens of the Stone Age and collaborator with PJ Harvey, Lanegan has a voice like no other; on "Black River," his smokes-and-whiskey drawl proves the perfect complement to Bomb the Bass' rich sonics.
The sonics are the other thing that quickly distinguish Future Chaos. Simenon may have made his name as a savvy cutter of samples, but this time out he's gone back to basics—to the grace of analog sound design and the finesse of a well-turned musical phrase.
"A lot of the stuff I was originally working on, it got to a point where I was feeling really frustrated," says Simenon of the long process of assembling the album. "So it was time to strip everything back, just bring it back down to its core parts: drums, bass, some tones and some voices."
A vintage piece of kit helped him find his focus. "Rediscovering the Minimoog really was the turning point for getting into Future Chaos," he says. "Simplicity, you know. As clichéd as it sounds, it was like throwing the book away, but that’s what I had to do. We’d just set up in Paul [Conboy']s kitchen. It was basically us without loads of gear—just the Minimoog, a laptop, and a mic set up. That was it. There's so much that goes around producing records; doing things this way and that. But this was us saying, Fuck it, let’s just record some tunes, you know."
The results don't sound like a "fuck it" kind of album, but there's certainly a rare degree of freedom here, from the range of tempos to the way that Simenon and his collaborators stretch out and explore every range of the spectrum. The more you listen, the more you hear—ghostly tones, stealthy modulations, diamond-like harmonics that dissolve upon impact. That's immediately clear with "So Special," the album's first single—a melancholy disco lullaby with harmonies downy enough to rest your weary head upon.
An electronic album that isn't bound by genre; a pop album that's not afraid to stretch out or space out. Future Chaos is these things and more, and it's here now. If this is the shape of chaos, maybe we don't have so much to worry about.
BOMB THE BASS - WEB LINKS
http://www.future-chaos.com (up from August 22nd)
http://www.bombthebass.com
http://www.myspace.com/bombthebass
BOMB THE BASS WILL BE TOURING
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- Albums and Singles
Artist: Boyd Rice & Z'EV
Title: Untitled
Catalogue No: CSR105EP
Barcode: 8 2356644882 2
Format: 12" in B&W sleeve
Genre: Industrial
Buy 12" | Download EP 21st August
This stunning 12" brings together two long-time San Francisco friends and legends of the Industrial music scene, both active since the late 70s!
Boyd Rice is well-known for his project NON and for his collaborations with Death In June, Rose McDowall, Coil and Tony Wakeford to name but a few.
Z'EV is a prolific composer and conceptual artist, who utilises metal percussion and electronics to create mystical rhythmajik - and who is also known for his collaborations with hard-hitters such as Stephen O'Malley, Oren Ambarchi, Psychic TV, KK Null, Organum and many more.
These two exclusive tracks are a precursor to the forthcoming album for Mute. Ltd x 1000 copies on heavyweight vinyl and shrinkwrapped.
Tracks: A1. Untitled (8:01) | B1. Untitled (16:01)
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- Albums and Singles
Artist: The Triple Tree
Title: Ghosts
Catalogue No: CSR96CD
Barcode: (CD) 8 2356644852 5�
Format: CD in digipak with booklet
Genre: Folk Noir / Experimental
Buy CD | Download Album 21st August
The Triple Tree consists of Tony Wakeford (Sol Invictus) and Andrew King aided and abetted by M, Autumn Greeve, Kris Force (Amber Asylum), Guy Harries, Renee Rosen and John Murphy (Death In June, SPK, KnifeLadder etc), and is an extended homage to the supernatural fiction of M. R. James (with a certain nod to his notable studies in the New Testament Apocrypha) the greatest ghost story writer in the English language, and the finest medievalist of his generation.
Join Dr Wakeford and the Rev. King as they search for the Three Crowns, attempt to Cast the Runes, purchase The Mezzotint, follow Mr Abney’s "remarkable enlightenment" in Lost Hearts, and join Count Magnus on the "Black Crusade"! Winter evenings will never be the same again…�
CD Tracks: 1. Ghosts - Prologue | 2. Three Crowns | 3. The Stalls | 4. The Mezzotint | 5. Mrs. Mothersole | 6. The Ash Tree
7. The Malice of Inanimate Objects | 8. There Was A Man Dwelt By A Churchyard | 9. Lost Hearts
10. Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You | 11. Black Crusade | 12. Casting The Runes | 13. The Ghosts Of England�
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