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This CD/DVD is the first proper release by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson's post-Coil audiovisual project. The music on Form Grows Rampant is a logical continuation of Sleazy's contributions to late-period Coil and the reformed Throbbing Gristle, a suite of dense digital environments that combine shuddering electronics with sampled vocals. In the process, The Threshold HouseBoys Choir create a brand new genre that might be described as Post-Industrial Exotica.
The DVD is the main attraction here, containing a slightly lengthier version of the program that premiered at last year's Brainwaves festival. The DVD contains five videos captured at the GinJae Vegetarian Festival held in Krabi Town in the south of Thailand. Because the recently expatriated Christopherson's has made Thailand his new home, and because of the prurience suggested by his longtime nickname "Sleazy," there is a distinctly perverse undercurrent to the name "HouseBoys" and to the five-part video program included on the DVD. Fear not: there is nothing here which could be construed as boy-porn by any but the most censorious fundamentalists. However, these videos do not shy away from depicting young, willowy Thai boys in the rapturous malaise of ritual religious ecstasy, and there is a distinctly erotic component to the proceedings that must be acknowledged.
The boys whip themselves into a furious trance, heads shaking back and forth, eyes rolling back into their heads. A crowd of people stare as they eagerly volunteer to have their eyebrows and cheeks and lips pierced with long skewers and giant sharpened metal poles. Christopherson slows down the video footage as a way of depicting the peculiar beauty and savagery of the GinJae Festival, adding subtle time-stretching effects so that it seems as if one can actually witness the moving of the spirit in these zealous young acolytes of the "Khatoey" Holy Men. As an ethnographic documentary, this doesn't work very well at all, as it is far from a complete picture of the cultural context which surrounds this important festival. However, as a highly aestheticized way of gazing upon these seductively erotic-religious rituals, the videos are a resounding success.
Contributing to this success is Sleazy's soundtrack, which represents his first major musical project since the death of John Balance and the subsequent demise of Coil. Many people, I assume, will be interested to know how this music compares to Coil. The answer to this question is complex. Certainly, there are many features of the music that will be very familiar to those who have followed the work of Coil, especially during their last decade of existence: shuddering electronics, dense atmospherics, eerie digitalia, twisted and mutated vocals and sinister undercurrents hinting at a gleaming heart of darkness. These features give the music of THBC a superficial veneer that is unmistakably Coil-esque, but on the whole it is a very different animal. Here, Sleazy leaves behind the elements of chance, chaos and asymmetry that characterized late-period Coil. Perhaps because he is working almost exclusively with computer software now, instead of the variety of analog synthesizers and organic elements favored by Coil, the music feels more hermetic and inorganic. Even though human voices and other elements are sampled, they are mutated to the point where they synthesize with the rest of the digital library of loops and effects. This is not necessarily a criticism of THBC, but rather a proviso to those who were expecting the second coming of Coil.
The tracks are lengthy and contain layers of digital ambience. Melodies are present, but are sometimes buried, or are so child-simple that they become almost subliminal. Some of these tracks have appeared before in compilations in a much more nascent form. "As Doors Open Into Space" was previously known as "Mahil Athal Nadrach" when it appeared on the It Just Is... compilation last year. Here, it is expanded and reworked, with new elements added, until it becomes a rich, post-ethnic piece of electronica with a joyful melodic progression that sounds positively triumphant coming at the end of the disc. Critics such as David Toop have criticized the Anglo-American-Continental tendency to co-opt the musical features of third world cultures as a texture for their music, and certainly THBC could be accused of this kind of ethnic colonization. However, Sleazy's pieces are so hypnotic and beautiful, and so vague as to be impossible to pinpoint which specific world musics are being invoked, that they come across as a sort of 21st-century exotica: space-age bachelor pad music for the sexual tourists of tomorrow. Lovely pieces such as "Intimations of Spring," alive with electrified spirit voices smearing out behind a resonant sequence of xylophone tones, quickly negate any inherent problematics. All that is left is a stunningly well-conceived collection of audiovisual art that, though it is quite different, is undoubtedly the worthy successor of the legendary group to which Sleazy once belonged.
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- Lucas Schleicher
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The Glow-Worm's Resistance reaches for a synthesis between pop sensibilities, romance, and the often mantra-less sizzle of electronic composition and in the process manages to detail the difficulty of accomplishing such a goal. Yturriaga paints his record with broad and impressionistic strokes, gathering together the lazy strumming of slow-core rock 'n' roll with the busy explosions of programmed drums, sampled speech, and computer generated instrumentation. He does so, however, haphazardly. The result is a collection of ten songs that sound familiar in some ways because they utilize techniques and song structures proven to be effective by other bands, but that also sound confused, as though they're falling apart trying to hold together two very different and incompatible sensibilities. The opening song, "Perfect," is an excellent example of this problem. Yturriaga's vocal delivery aches to croon, his heart set on ushering forward all the vigor and drama of a romance at the very precipice of exhaustion. Behind him is the dry bump of electronic effects pretending to be percussion and an all-too-straightforward and repetitive guitar. I can almost feel what Yturriaga desires to accomplish in this contrast, but the result is little more than a dry and somewhat confused song.
This can be contrasted with a piece like "The Wait." It opens ominously, determined, and with a clear goal. Integrated into the hum and warble of a distorted orchestra Yturriaga inserts recorded and manipulated speech, introducing the track with an air of mystery. The song quickly solidifies with the inclusion of a tasteful synthetic beat and simple organ part. His vocals come as a surprise, but they blend perfectly with the song in terms of both delivery and tenor. As new instruments are added to the mix the song fleshes itself out naturally, culminating in an organic and unified whole that makes sense from beginning to end. If Yturriaga wants to improve his song-writing ability he needs to pay attention to this piece in particular. He balances all of his influences quite well on "The Wait" and does so without sacrificing any of the attractive elements inherent in them individually.
Unfortunately this delicate balance only appears briefly throughout the rest of the disc ("Poema de la Resistencia" is fabulous throughout, but far too brief), rendering the project uneven and unsatisfying on the whole. Yturriaga is clearly talented and obviously has plenty of ambition, but he'll have to temper his approach in order to make good on that ambition.
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I would be a criminal if I called Robert Lowe anything but a master of his craft. Allusions to divine sources of inspiration and eastern meditative practices might help convey some intimation of what Omns feels like, but such a description would completely overlook how lyrical and detailed the entire record is. Included on this CD and DVD combo is the work of an artist with all of his facilities functioning on the highest level possible.
Kranky
The Psychic Nature of Being came as a surprise to me. Kranky has managed to release nothing but good to phenomenal records in the last few years, so I wasn't surprised when I found that I was enjoying the record as I listened to it. What caught me off guard was just how vivid it was. Here was a guitarist painting elaborate pictures with only the barest strumming involved and with a kind of overwhelming minimalism. Despite the asceticism of his arrangements, the music Lichens produces is loud and powerful, demanding attention and personal involvement. None of this has changed on Omns, though it sounds as though Lowe has tempered his improvisational approach more on this record and for the better.
This tempering benefits Lichens' music in two ways: it expands the range of sounds used on any one track and it provides a unifying theme to the record that was absent on The Psychic Nature of Being. Without uttering a word, Omns outlines a narrative through Lowe's superb guitar performance, vocal utterances, and sound effects. This is the heart of the album: the fact that Lowe has learned to express himself flawlessly with the instruments he employs. It's no wonder thoughts of Buddhism, spirituality, or transcendentalism come to the mind's of writers when attempting to probe Lichens' music and explain the effect it has: Lowe puts himself in his music, transforms his spirit into rumbling, distorted guitars and crying tongues, and has the skill necessary to tie it all together in a meaningful way. All the while, through his ascetically informed approach, he builds a recognizable, but distinct aesthetic. The language of his music becomes immediately available to whoever is listening and his vocabulary is simultaneously accessible and richly poetic. Lowe walks the very fine line between highly artistic, difficult expression and immediately powerful and familiar dialect.
Omns passes quickly: it is a scant five tracks and 43 minutes long. After the phased and warped ring of "Sighns" concludes, it is tempting to begin the record all over again and mine the record for all it is worth. This is worth doing, but Kranky also includes a DVD with this album that is worth paying attention to as well. Featured on the DVD is a live performance at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, Illinois, a space I am quite familiar with. The performance is outstanding, even if some of the supplementary images are unnecessary. What is astounding is how quiet the audience is on the DVD. The Empty Bottle is not some unheard of venue in Chicago and has been host to a number of very popular bands. Every show I saw there was caked in crowd noise, people chattering incessantly over the music in order to be heard and increasing the volume of their voices as the music became louder. Not so during this Lichens performance. Lowe commands this audience, silences them and draws their attention squarely on his barely moving frame. Even when his guitar playing sinks to near inaudible levels and his attention shifts from his instrument of choice to various pedals, microphones, and machines, the audience keeps quiet, giving Lowe the space he needs to create his art. The performance is completely distinct from much of what appears on the record and has increased my appetite to see Lowe play in the flesh. The album alone is superb, but the DVD pushes this package over the edge and fixes it in my mind as astonishing.
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Imagine there is a machine moving through space without any discernible origin, its shape and size are thoroughly alien to the human mind, and it is transmitting a series of communications as it ploughs through our solar system and back into deep space. Orange would be the recording of those communications.
Thisquietarmy
I can't think of a project Aidan Baker has been involved in that is more spacious and alien than this. His work under the Nadja guise reminds me of metal, doom, and gloom more than anything else and my familiarity with his other projects brings to mind inner-space more than outer-space. He has always blurred the edges between conventional heaviness and the density of drone music, but on Orange Baker and Eric Quach allow their compositions to disseminate endlessly. There's a levity in these four songs that I don't often find associated with Baker and I have to assume that this is due to Quach's contributions, at least in part. The compositions are still chock full of textures and perpetually distorted instruments, but on Orange that approach to writing music is utilized to destroy consciousness, not cement it in layers of mud, earth, and steel.
With titles like "Agent" or "Clockwork," these tracks might be expected to exhibit some degree of violence, both being potential references to one form of brutality or another. Instead both hiss and moan by, glowing in phased and warped bits of synthesizer and majestically elongated guitar performances. I'm tempted to say that solos exist on some of these tracks, but I only mean to imply that there is some amount of conscious structuring happening alongside the seemingly improvised bits of formlessness that drift throughout each song. It is, in fact, easy to let some of these songs fade into the background. As they pulse along, they become mesmerizing and begin to seep into the walls and floors of the space in which they're manifested. Inevitably some rogue element will strive to be louder or more distinct than all the other parts at play; when that happens it's as though I'm being snapped out of a dream and I have to gather myself before continuing to listen to the record. Christy Romanick's photography is the perfect accompaniment to this phenomenon: her work is bold, but abstract enough to be seductive and hazy. Her photography suits this kind of music perfectly, highlighting the way the music can be both subliminal and overtly powerful.
This isn't ambience, though. It's too uncomfortable to be ambient. There are elements of terror on Orange, especially as the closing track, "Blood," comes to an end. I'm reminded of immense voids in its closing moments and some primal terror takes a seat in that memory; I can imagine looking around for some anchor, some point of sensibility and seeing nothing but blackness all around me as the song plays. When it ends in a snap that picture of the void doesn't go with it, but stays firm in my mind. So, despite working subconsciously at some points, Orange leaves a lasting impression. It will not win Baker any new fans over to his particular style of music, but it may leave current fans clamoring for a further collaboration between these two musicians. They have both clearly learned how to play with the minds of their audience.
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- Scott Mckeating
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The pop culture splatter of this square cut lathe's cover isn't a good indicator of the contents. Like riding the brain cortex on a crank-handle railroad cart, Jazzfinger's lo-fidelity routes are gorgeously gritty trails in electric drone. Even though it moves slightly left from their recent release of improvised melancholia, these two cuts create an idyll from structures and melodies that aren’t really there.
Their penchant for sustained tones is joined here with a rhythmic and cage-rattled bobbing. The mellifluous piano slough of "Orange Sauce" is evidence that they can counter drone with percussive celerity. A stem of jungle bird calls slowly reveals itself to be rattling metallic percussion, and not the slightest bit jungle related, but the air is still thick enough to be their dankest number to date.
Coming from the batch stamped 'lo-fi' in their vaults, the flipside, "Peace Factor Fashion," is a scratch of stretching bone and muscle. It might contain a moan of a melody but it is still very obviously a melody. If this was played on a horn the noise-jazz set would be on their knees in worship. A burr throated growl of a black pulse, steady as the room around it slowly crumbles, coaxes misfortune from the falling piano notes. With a bedaubing of this track and its veiled elements in something oily and dirty, this has the duo still sitting years deeper in the fog than the everyday drone hoi polloi.
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"Obedience Training" kick-starts the set with an almighty apocalyptic assault on the senses. Chasney's guitar is pushed to the limits with intense feedback and powerful noise. Somewhere between Keiji Haino and Skullflower with its mixture of at times unpleasant ultra high frequencies and sheer walls of hypnotic drone. "Sabre, Yours in Black" is a blacker than black doom laden piece where NVH's playing in particular is almost recognizable although this is indeed more extreme than anything I've heard from either of them in the past.
It's Wednesday morning and the sun is shining and the birds are singing so I flip the LP over, grab a cup of tea and put the needle onto "The Emasculator." This surely is as close as imaginable to the blistering sound of the fires of hell. "Yours In Black" closes the LP with an almost Wolf Eyes style nightmare electronics vibe. Deep sub low frequencies rumble with layers of intense freaked guitar wail and echo.
It's a truly terrifying guitar/electronics collaboration which effectively blurs the lines between both mediums. It's perfect for those like me who may have been left slightly disappointed by the recent KTL output. Limited to a satanic edition of 666 copies, this reassuringly expensive package, recorded winter 2005 is certainly not for the faint hearted.
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It has been more than three years since the release of múm's last album "Summer Make Good", and a lot of water has passed under the bridge. And now, finally, a string of European festival appearances heralds their long-awaited new album, strangely entitled "Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy, Let Your Crooked Hands Be Holy", due out September 25.
A colorful, twitching, playful work of art, full of life-affirming energy, the album will be preceded on August 28th by the single "They Made Frogs Smoke 'Til They Exploded". A chirpy song about animal cruelty, it's backed with The Amateur Show, described by the band as a wonky insect-circus instrumental.
With the departure of Kristín Valtýsdóttir at the beginning of the creative process, the core of múm is again down to the original duo of founding members Gunnar and Örvar, but the band itself is now larger than ever, counting in all seven people. The album was recorded at a variety of locations, including the music school in the small fishing town of Ísafjörur in the west fjords of Iceland, where the band made use of the school's various instruments. The songs on this multifarious album were conceived over a long period in many a different fashion, with one song even dating back to the period of "Yesterday Was Dramatic - Today Is OK".
The strange, almost eerie artwork for "Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy...", and "They Made Frogs Smoke..." is by Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir, who also animated the video for the single.
Confirmed summer festival dates follow, as well as fall appearances in New York and Los Angeles. More tour date announcements are imminent:
02 Jun - ATP stage - Primavera Festival, Barcelona, Spain
09 Jun - Villette Sonique Festival, Paris, France
17 Jul - La Mer De Musicas Festival, Murcia, Spain
24 Jul - Sync Festival, Athens, Greece
28 Jul - Afisha Festival, Moscow, Russia
24 Oct - Los Angeles CA, Orpheum Theatre
9 Nov - New York NY, Wordless Music Series at St. Paul the Apostle
10 Nov - New York NY, Wordless Music Series at Society for Ethical Culture
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Fridge are one of those bands that defy any categorization. Largely instrumental, they take elements of conventional alternative rock, krautrock, and electronica and work out something that can only be described as Fridge. The Sun is their first new material since 2001's Happiness, a six year break that allowed the trio to integrate new sounds and elements into their already diverse repertoire.
The opening title track sets the mood for the entire album: we're immediately hit with huge, banging, downright funky live drums and chimes mixed in, along with a tiny bit of synths here and there. The percussion gets more krautrock-y on "Clocks," where the irregular click of an analog clock is augmented by shifting drum patterns, and some seriously harsh guitar string abuse. The dissonant opening eventually yields to a much more mellow, conventional middle, mixing conventional art rock guitar with subtle electronic noises.
Not all of the tracks are so focused on the drums, as the 808 pulse of "Comets" takes us back to the 1980s with its synth and piano melodies. "Eyelids," however, is another rocker that with its ramshackle guitar and electronic bleeps calls to mind some of the recent output from The Fall, sans Mark E. Smith's alcohol-induced slurring. Another artist parallel can be felt on "Oram," where after its music box and snare freakout drums, the chaos settles into a distinct jazz influenced groove that feels like a lusher take on some of Squarepusher's work.
Drawing comparisons to other bands is a bit facetious in this case, as Fridge's work stands on its own. While it can be assumed they do reflect some influence from other bands, they are singular in their sound. For all the electronic nuances and technological manipulation, the vibe of a garage band comes through, and the disc just feels like a trio of old schoolmates getting together for fun, and luckily they remembered to turn the DAT on.
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The first full length collaboration between these two internationally known electronic composers lives up to the hype, showing both artists demonstrating their considerable strengths, and the sum is even greater than its parts.
An international collaboration of the most literal sort, Japanese (by way of NYC) composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and Austrian laptop/guitar maestro Christian Fennesz come together here, following their earlier collaborative EP Sala Santa Cecilia, in this case manage to work together while never actually being in the same place at the same time. The tracks were composed between 2004 and 2006, with each artist initiating a piece. This early work was then sent to the other for reworking, and then returned until the track was complete. Sakamoto and Fennesz did meet for live shows, but the recording continued to be separate endeavors. This distinctly modern working style had no adverse effect on the proceedings, as the tracks make for a cohesive, consistent feeling throughout.
For the purposes of Cendre, both artists used laptops as an instrument, while Sakamoto contributed piano, and Fennesz his requisite guitar. For the most part, Sakamoto's piano playing remains a clear and distinct element, sometimes clear and gentle ("Oto," "Haru") other times dissonant and oblique ("Trace," "Abyss"). This is in stark contrast to Fennesz's guitar work, which is often tweaked and processed into something barely recognizable. Exceptions come in the form of "Kokoro," where, though noisy, guitar is distinctly heard along with low bit rate samples and subtle piano, and on "Glow," where clean acoustic guitar playing is heard above the submerged aquatic tones and otherwordly digital effects.
The stringed instruments are not the overwhelming element of any of the tracks, as neither composer's digital contributions should go unspoken. "Mono" features electronics that, percussively, best represent bubbles coming up from a thick, mucky mud, while the title track mixes drone and piano with what sounds like cell phone interference recorded and then manipulated. "Abyss" ends the disc with tons of reverb, calm melodies, and what sounds like wind blowing out of the titular darkness.
While these two artists represent different points on the continuum of electronic music's evolution, their combined effort makes for a intergenerational collaboration that meets its lofty expectations.
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Deupree has been at the forefront of an electronic subgenre of music that revels in its own esotericness, challenging listeners with often unmusical sequences of tones and textures generated by computer programs that are just as difficult and unintuitive. For this release, there is none of that ivory tower sort of composition or oblique Max/MSP patch-generated sounds, but instead a very warm, albeit minimal, set of three tracks that of course feature the digital bleeps and microsounds, but also much more conventional textures which add greatly to the lushness and warmth of the EP.
For all its austere minimalist packaging, this EP is an extremely warm, organic, and inviting collection of pieces. The gentle tones and music box sounds of the title track make it instantly known that this is not going to be some cold, sterile work that should have never left an art installation. The computer generated tones are there in the background as well, sometimes coming to the forefront as bells, chimes, or even a Mellotron. Most shockingly, sometimes there's even a bit of (gasp) acoustic guitar.
"Seep" is more about the sustained glacier tones: the Powerbook as harmonium which sustains infinitely before a gentle guitar strum comes in and centers everything yet again. The final, short piece, "Field," closes the mini album in the most minimal way: there's no guitars, just gentle digital tones that end way too quickly.
Landing is an all too short 20 minute excursion into warm electronic experimentation that almost everyone can enjoy. As this is apparently a limited edition of 500 created for an Australian tour, copies can't last too long.
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Like its predecessor, 2 is based on elements that Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O)))) and Peter Rehberg (Pita) created as a score to the Kindertotenlieder theater piece by Gisele Vienne and Dennis Cooper, but stands on its own as a coherent work. The disc does not represent a new piece as much as a companion piece to the first, based on the same recording sessions from 2006-2007.
O'Malley and Rehberg have created another installment of genre crossing experimentation that definitely meets the requirement of "dark." The material shows its pedigree well, with neither artist dominating the other sound-wise: O'Malley's slow motion riffing is augmented nicely with Rehberg's laptop electronics. Opener "Game" and ending piece "Snow 2" bookend the work well, the former being a heavy low-end drone that begins near inaudible and builds greatly in volume and dynamics by the end, while the latter sounds like extremely lo-fi guitar parts recorded deep within a dungeon, mingling with the electronics that end up closing the disc with a film score flair. The sprawling middle tracks differ more widely from each other.
"Theme" begins with a slow, simple kick drum pulse, slathered in reverb as synth tones and loops of what sound like harpsichord begin to build in volume until it dominates the mix like a swarm of angry insects that create the most violent organ tones this side of "Sister Ray." It makes for a dark, bleak, evil variant of psychedelia that's not too distant from the acid influenced electronics of C.C.C.C. "Abattoir," on the other hand, is built more like a Sunn O))) track with all sustained monolith riffs, but in this context it sounds like it is being blasted from a loudspeaker in a deep, dark forest.
Stephen O'Malley has been quoted as saying that the KTL project represents a new form of black metal, and it's a pretty accurate depiction. The material does feature that dark, evil atmosphere, but thankfully without the trappings of cookie monster vocals, corpse paint and battle axes. However, it may be closer, both in sonics and spirit, to the mid 1990s ambient offshoot isolationism, helmed by the likes of Lull, Final, and especially the (sub)genre defining Heresy by Lustmord. 2 is not a work with major crossover appeal, but fans of the black metal scene as well as the experimental electronics scene will enjoy this.
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