- Mike Barrett
- Albums and Singles
Wiese has produced a CD of ambient passages that have crossed over to the dark side of the New Age. Nothing on here strikes me as terribly outstanding, though for the most part it attracts too much attention to even be considered background music. A difficult place to put an album of such innocuous style.
Tracks range from ambient passages to more rhythm based songs, like "Deer's Gate," with a down tempo near-trip hop groove, or "Insect Ride," based on a plodding horse trot beat, accompanied with cello, conjures images of Vangelis' "Chariots of Fire" set to the Special Olympics.
The closing track, "Sweet Lemon," a simple, delicate cascade of insectoid sounds, is by far the best on the disc, even though its far too short, too little and too late to redeem the album. Even with its Vidna Obmana-esque closer, "Perfume" is little more than a great way to go stir crazy on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
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Jon Mueller and Martijn Tellinga have started a collaboration to explore the musical dialogue between the instrumentalist and realtime computer-performer. Their mutual interest in the outlining and structuring of improvisation, both in sonic properties and compositional shape, resulted in an ensembled playing that is partly responsive, partly autonomous.
During their residency at the Extrapool studio in Nijmegen, Netherlands December 2005, they experimented with a system that consisted of live-sampling and processing of Jon's playing, on top of a layer of pre-recorded soundmaterials taken from a previous session. Crucial to this system, was that the actual triggering of the samples and processing in the computer during performance was also caused by that same playing; i.e., while Jon was improvising he not only provided new sonic material for recording, but also triggered previously recorded events. The realtime manipulation and transformation of these events was done by Martijn following that same structural order. This experimental system was developed to get to a musical body that can either blend into one (percussion and computer) or exist as two entities that function in an autonomous way (bypassing the triggering and playing the computer as a stand-alone instrument, using the same set of soundmaterials) and perform by listening and responding to each others input. This can be seen as an attempt to get beyond the many electro-instrumental collaborations where the computer-performer seems to function as a huge effect-processor of the instrumental input, and by doing that, reduces the instrumentalist to a soundsource for realtime processing." - from label press release
More info on Martijn Tellinga at: www.martijntellinga.nl
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Anyone familiar with Jahnn's images of (what was then assumed to be) sexual-pathology and the broader themes of his work—such as in the trilogy, Fluss ohne Ufer, which explores the dangers of delving into the secrets of creation—may find Leichtmann's accompanying music surprisingly muted. Perhaps the idea was to create contrasting sadness and quasi-melody as, apart from one horrendously overly-poppy track, there is nothing sounding remotely offensive, repulsive or even mildly irritating. Those of us who approach the record without knowledge of the book or the slides may find that it swells with gradual and affecting motion, successfully balances chill and warm electronics, enjoying a clever ratio of space, tension, rhythm and release.
Opening track "Anfang" is briefly reprised by the final one, "Abspann," for a top-and-tailed effect that is as Elizabethan as it is suggestive of life's circularity or inevitability. I wondered if "Wind" referenced the dusty silent film or meant some cranking motion, before deciding that it really didn't affect my enjoyment one way or the other. Everything progresses in a pleasantly unfussy, lonely and downtempo manner until about 18 seconds into "Elvira" when things veer into an innocuously synthetic cul de sac of horrid blandness, almost threatening the entire introspective journey. A few minutes of silence or dental drilling would have preferable. The record's peak is "Keller" which sounds like a throbbing life-support system encased in ice, a hopeful blip heard through dark space, or a forlorn vessel pushing perilously through fog—a lighthouse winking out of view. Brilliant.
Jahnn also published 17th-century organ music and gained an international reputation as a builder and renovator of organs. The church organ can be the most dogmatic and undemocratic of instruments, so this aspect of his life is of no interest to me. Actually, since there appears to be little happening on this record, it's a slight puzzle as to why I keep playing and mostly enjoying it. Perhaps because, according to listener mood, Nuit Du Plomb is both nothing much at all, and conversely, a splendid aching sigh of a record. Certainly, a desire to both read the book, and see the lecture, has been kindled. Until then, in my slideshow: A cricketer leaves the crease. Tears are wiped away unseen. Icecaps dissolve and fall. A ship is bound for where? Cities decay. Someone gives themself away too easily. Clocks never stop. A man regrets what he did to a friend. Leaves fall and become sodden. Tea goes cold and cakes burn. Machines lose their will to go on, but go on. Ho, and indeed, hum.
samples:
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Sleep England sounded a like Michael Cashmore's version of one of those Wyndham Hill solo guitar records, a style seemingly at odds with his more familiar work in Current 93. Though his compositions for guitar and bass were still shot through with that trademark sense of melancholy beauty, and still consciously drew from the nostalgic wellspring of 1960s British psych-folk, as well as medieval and baroque composition, it was hard not to miss the lush arrangements and guest vocal turns that made Cashmore's 1990s albums as Nature and Organisation so memorable. I can remember first hearing the N&O albums after years of enjoying records by Current 93 and Death in June, and thinking that Cashmore, whether he intended to or not, had assembled the world's first (and only) Apocalyptic Folk "supergroup," tying everything together with his impressive ability to write and arrange such ravishing, evocative music. Though Sleep England was an admirable effort that I quite enjoyed, I secretly held out the hope that Cashmore would return to the style that had informed such classic works as Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude and A Dozen Summers Against the World. And with this EP, my wish comes true.
The Snow Abides forms an abbreviated narrative of sorts, opening with the instrumental "My Eyes Open," which serves as a gentle overture for the songs featuring Antony on vocals. The first track begins with a fragile piano figure, recalling Cashmore's unadorned piano compositions for Current 93's Soft Black Stars. Any fears that this EP might share that album's instrumental minimalism quickly fade, however, as a gorgeous swell of strings joins the piano's melancholic refrain. It is a relatively small arrangement, a scaled-back chamber orchestra of sorts, but it sounds resplendent in comparison to the spartan quality of Sleep England.
The title track follows, with Antony's vocals over Cashmore's impressionistic piano melodies. David Tibet's text is perhaps a bit too dense for Antony's vocal talents, which are often better served with simpler phrases and greater structure, but Antony still does an admirable job with an elaborate and meandering lyric. Antony sings: "Royal black and blue/I am not lost (yet little stars)/In the doorway I catch a sign (shuddering still)/No, there is too much, there is too much," the parenthetical phrases representing moments when the vocal is attenuated and moved to the background, or to one side of the stereo channels. At other times, Antony's voice is multitracked for emphasis. This creates an interesting sense of spatial depth on the EP, though I can't help but feel that the vocals are much too prominent in the mix, often drowning out the music.
Such minor quibbles aside, the songs here are somber elegiac, and thus hard to "enjoy" in a traditional sense. However, a sense of beauty and poetry pervades the EP. It is hard not be touched by "How God Moved at Twilight," an evocation of the simple Christian piety and longing of childhood, which threatens to be eclipsed by intervening years of wandering and disillusionment. Cashmore's arrangements on this track are particularly strong, alternating moments of bare piano melody with bursts of lush symphonic catharsis, including flutes and clarinets. "Your Eyes Close" answers the first track with Antony's final vocal on a particularly emotional lyric by Tibet, using images of sleep and wakefulness as symbols for vivification and mortification: "You close your eyes and I die/Whilst others in sleep follow lambs/I look at my hands and count the sun making another scar across my sky."
The EP's final track, "Snow No Longer," musically figures an emotional thaw, with piano tones left to resonate and echo, emphasizing the distance and loneliness of mankind's estrangement from divinity. Finally, in a brief footnote recalling the most spine-chilling moments of classic Apocalyptic Folk, the song fades out in an atmospheric tangle of decaying sound, punctuating by the pristine chime of a single bell. It is a perfect way to conclude an all-too-brief EP that nonetheless manages to communicate a profound spiritual longing through Cashmore's disarming, plaintive melodies.
samples:
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- Bryan Neil Jones
- Albums and Singles
Wolf Eyes kick things off with the bleating of toads from hell. These bursts of sounds gradually change tone from organic to industrial. Occasional whistles break the monotony and a repeating clicking is the only constant. Utterly non-musical, its like watching random sound objects go by on a conveyer belt.
Failing Lights ups the intensity ante a bit. Loud elongated screeches seesaw back and forth in hurdy-gurdy-like fashion producing something close to, gasp, a melody. The timbres are richer. Factory furnace rumbles join the fray, and slowly all the elements are muffled and strangled away. Screeches become distant moans and so she fades. It is by far my favorite side. Spykes disappoints with a forgettable vacuum hum which gradually gets more high pitched. Organ notes leak through the static and everything cuts out to just lo-fi mic clatter and low freq farts. I yearned for some horns.Nate Young closes the show: metallic banging with demonic voices in the far distance. Shimmering cymbals serge through. Shronky horns appear (so perhaps this is Olsen’s side) while chains and buckets complete the picnic.
Dicking around seems to be the extend of the accomplishment here. I thought Burned Mind was a brilliant song cycle which will some day be used as evidence that noise is, in fact, music. The band has also proved themselves worthy countless times over with numerous horror/shiver/headache inducing noise-bomb-scum-jazz-post-dub-what-the-fuck-ever tapes and CD-Rs. Little of that subversive genius is on display here. I was expecting more from a double LP picture disc.
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- Scott Mckeating
- Albums and Singles
Wander around inside these 30 seconds, the depth of the sound making if seem so much longer, this cassette begins to feel like it’s an hour long piece, not a brief loop. The splutters of synth and tape collage squelch sound like they were hauled through bubbling bath scum before being slapped onto tape. Return of Eternal Void, Fear of Infinite Life feels like its constantly extending, the several split second edits/gaps make it difficult to tell where the loop ends or begins. These points also help to pin down the locked groove aspect of the cassette, building a rhythm from the highs and lows. Maybe this is the final proof I need that my short term memory is utterly shot to shit, or that this piece of heavy tar, extra-terrestrial ousting has a reach far beyond its brief content.
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Günter Müller, "Reframed"
http://cut.fm
Originally a drummer, Günter Müller continues his exploration of the instrument's
inherent resonant properties in five compositions based on processed recordings of
bowed cymbals.
«Reframed» achieves a sense of timelessness, placing the listener deep within
hovering layers of shimmering sound.
Recorded July 2006.
Processed and assembled August–December 2006.
Günter Müller was born in München in 1954, and has lived in Switzerland since 1966.
Müller has been playing a unique drum set with a mobile pick-ups and a microphone
system of his own invention since 1981. The system allows hand generated sounds on
drums and percussion to be modulated electronically. Since 1998 minidiscs, later an
ipod, are included in his electronic set.
He performs solo and has collaborated with a large number of musicians, including
Jim O'Rourke, Christian Marclay, Butch Morris, Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto,
Keith Rowe and Sachiko M.
In 1990, he founded the record label For 4 Ears Records.
http://home.datacomm.ch/g.mueller/mueller.htm
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Jason Kahn, "Fields"
http://cut.fm
Seven compositions for analogue synthesizer, percussion, short wave radio, and
location recordings made in Croatia, Egypt, Japan, Lebanon and Switzerland.
Composed 2005–2006.
Jason Kahn is a sound and visual artist based in Zürich. His work includes drawing,
sound installation, performance and composition. He was born in New York, grew up
in Los Angeles and relocated to Europe in 1990.
Kahn has been exhibiting his sound and visual works since the late 1990's, and has
had solo and group exhibitions internationally, including museums, galleries and arts
spaces in the USA, Canada, France, Croatia, Germany, Argentina, Egypt, Poland,
Switzerland, Denmark, Austria and Spain.
Kahn has performed both solo and in collaboration with numerous other musicians,
including Tetuzi Akiyama, Kim Cascone, Dieb13, Arnold Dreyblatt, Kevin
Drumm, Erik M, John Hudak, Brandon Labelle, Jason Lescalleet, Christian Marclay,
Norbert Möslang, David Moss, Günter Müller, Jon Mueller, Toshimaru Nakamura,
Sachiko M, Sainkho Namtchylak, Evan Parker, Steve Roden, Taku Sugimoto, Otomo
Yoshihide and many others.
http://jasonkahn.net
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The first couple of songs on Marginalia are especially strong, even tantalizing with promises of a bright future. “Green Tea” is brewed with subtle strengths that perk the ears even as it soothes. Under a cascading piano loop hides all kinds of strange distortions, shimmering organs, and low-end oscillations. Because the loop is constant, the song doesn’t change much melodically but there’s so much going on texturally that it hardly matters. There are warbling vocals on this track, but they’re less of a focus here than on other parts of the album. “Capture the Flag” ups the ante by picking up the tempo, adding a beat, and placing distortion more prominently in the mix. Here, too, is perhaps the strongest vocal performance on the album from Fletcher as she harmonizes with herself to capture the essence of emotional longing.
Yet as the vocals become more and more the focus of the songs that follow, they become one of the album’s weaknesses. It’s not that Fletcher’s voice is bad, and there are certainly many good moments to be found, but she exhibits a limited range and such a similar delivery on many of the songs that her voice becomes monotonous after a while. That some of the lyrics rely too heavily on pat rhymes doesn’t help, either. The vocals aren’t the only thing to cause my initial enthusiasm to wane. There are a couple of tracks that are pretty derivative. “In the Dark” could easily be a cutting room floor casualty from the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs, and the booming beat on “Back in Yr Corner” sounds suspiciously like their pals the Liars. Even more disappointing is that the production loses steam after a while, sounding somewhat rote toward the end as if the band’s not quite so inspired as they were at the beginning.
While the album never recaptures its initial high, that first excited buzz still stayed with me long after the album was over.
samples:
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Hapna
The man behind A Taste of Ra, Nicolai Dunger, obviously has some ambitions for A Taste of Ra to be fluid, unrestrained and elemental but he still has not achieved this goal. I think he can do it but I wonder how many albums it will take before he gets there. Maybe in the future I will come back to his work and appreciate something crucial that I have missed but in the meantime I am not particularly enamoured with this album.
The album starts off with "37 Turns 'round You," a formless and uninteresting introduction. It is based around some aimless piano noodling which might have been listenable on its own but Dunger decides to add some haphazardly played tin whistle to the piece. It may be just conditioning from my tin whistle lessons as a child but every track featuring the out of tune nasal noise of Dunger's tin whistle playing is a chore to listen to. I think the feeling that is meant to be elicited by the devil-may-care approach to all the wind instruments on this album is one of freedom from traditional song structures. Unfortunately it just sounds like they do not know how to play these instruments. Only the odd time does the loose approach to song structure come together, such as on the song “Mother” or the album’s closer “Radhe-Shyam in Bliss Land” but by the time I get to these tracks it is too little, too late.
Before I come across as too gloomy about this album, there are some nice points. The guitars that introduce “Indian Love Call (Continues to Call)” are gorgeous. Alas, the tin whistle returns and masks the sound of both them and the vocals. The vocals on most of the album are not bad at all; Dunger’s voice is a comfortable middle ground between Will Oldham’s old man of the mountains and Marc Bolan’s young man of the woods. Occasionally the lyrics are a little corny but for the most part they are enjoyable. The female harmony on the aforementioned “Radhe-Shyam in Bliss Land” combined with a violin make it one of the most beautiful parts of the album, standing head and shoulders above the rest of the disc.
This album is a hodgepodge of instruments and voices thrown together in an attempt to sound free but in the end A Taste of Ra are imprisoned by a lack of clear vision. Many of the songs make it sound like Dunger is trying to be eccentric just for the sake of it; "The Fox and the Frog" being a fitting example of this as a very proper sounding female voice tells a children's story over a wandering folky background. This story should grab my attention but this piece is so easy to ignore. The entire album is easy to ignore, while it is not bad, it is simply not engaging enough.
samples:
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