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Young God Records
If "Red Thread," the bitter argument song built around what must be the most sweetly sung expletive in the history of recorded music were the only thing worth paying attention to on In the Maybe World, the record would still be worth picking up at full price. The fact that the album is loaded with other gems that are odd but impeccably pretty makes it a steal at any price.
This is a great record to escape into. It's filled with vague stories that sound somehow familiar and it's produced with familiar instruments that sound somehow foreign. I love that kind of reversal of expectations, and Germano's unique approach takes songs that could have easily been rendered as background noise and makes them something that demands focus.
The only time she loses me is when the rhymes get too obvious, or the lyrical content steps too far into the abstract world of fairies and dreams. Germano's best songs here are dark even though they sound hopeful, and a little creepy even as her voice seems so polite and innocent.
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While avant garde audiophiles oohed and aahed over that 2005 release as well as his "big band" excursion two years prior, many of us were instead eagerly awaiting a proper follow-up to the critically acclaimed and dancefloor endorsed Bodily Functions. From the opening squelches and four-to-the-floor thump of "Something Isn't Right," it becomes abundantly clear that Herbert has at last returned to us, his personal politics remaining on display. However, Scale is hardly as memorable or classic as Bodily Functions, despite the welcome presence of chanteuse Dani Siciliano on nearly every single track. Though there are a number of moments where Herbert's deft programming and sample construction shines, this album never quite gets back to heights once achieved.
On more than a few occasions here, Herbert seems to be mining kitsch for kitsch's sake, and however lovingly, that trick seems intellectually tiresome much like Uwe Schmidt's now quite overdone electro-latino wankery as Señor Coconut. Take "Moving Like A Train," for instance, whose gratuitous tooted horns and sampled strings sound like some ridiculous television program's opening theme. I'd like to believe that most listeners have grown bored with this tongue-in-cheek, winking eye approach to a saccharine retro sound that was never really all that great to begin with. If they haven't yet, they probably should.
I fully grasp Herbert's attempt at a clever fusion of socially conscious and political content with syrupy soundtracks, though it's hardly the most original concept in these days of excessive hipster irony. "Birds Of A Feather" actually pulls its off fairly well, where animal rights takes centerstage while a modern syncopated rhythm supports the light albeit urgent musical mix.
A victim of my own expectations, I wanted to like this album a lot more than I ultimately did. I had half hoped that Herbert would have given us more funky cool house and less loungey jazz clutter, thinking perhaps naively that he might have gotten it out of his system on the interim albums. Instead, Scale presents us with a patchwork of smirks and pokes, nudges and judgements, rarely offering up something other than derivative schmaltz.
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Ankstmusik
Electric Deckchair is best described as two albums and not a double album as the two discs are intended to be listened to as separate entities. Both would fit on a single CD but Ectogram decided not to cram it all onto one disc. This was a good call on their part as the music on both discs is quite dense and a lot to digest in one sitting. Splitting the material into two albums makes a lot more sense and allows for an easier listening experience.
Sing Something Complex starts off with “Daisy Rind,” which sounds like two bands rehearsing at the same time in the same room. One guitar and the drums work together to drive the song and another guitar plays slow, trebly notes that don’t fit with the song at all. It makes for an uneasy listen but at nearly ten minutes in length, it worked its way into my head and it was satisfying when it clicked into place. Apart from the 24 minute “Ptarmigan,” the rest of Sing Something Complex is a lot more accessible. “Small Things Crawling” is the best part of the disc; Ann Mathews’ difficult vocals work best here and the music is spot on (metallic, brittle guitars pierce through the mix beautifully). The aforementioned “Ptarmigan” is a little disorientating as for most of its length it feels more like a jam session rather than a finished song. However, after a few listens it becomes less intimidating and more enjoyable.
The second disc, Sing Something Sibilant contains more relatively straightforward rockers and as such it is easier to get into than the other. “Overstopped” sees the band on full throttle; there is a cracking feedback-laden guitar “solo” that reminds me of Lou Reed’s freakouts on White Light/White Heat if they were covered by Thurston Moore. The last track, “3 Fort in Asia,” is my favourite song from either disc. It’s another long song (verging on 20 minutes) and slowly builds up from a dreamy and laid back piece to something more fiery and potent. Unlike “Ptarmigan,” it is more focused which gives it more backbone.
Electric Deckchair is a great set of albums that requires a little work to get into but once I made that commitment, it was worth the effort. Although I must admit, the front cover brought back horrible memories of some awful prog albums that I have been subjected to in the past. I could have done without that!
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With nine tracks running to almost 80 minutes, the band has plenty of time to explore. The opener, “Uber-Wizards of the 88th Meridian” could be a blueprint for the rest of the material. Here the group finds a groove from the beginning and the rhythm section holds down the fort throughout the nearly fourteen minute track while effects-laden guitars and throwback effects swim through the mix. This space jam has some moments of impact and prepared me for the songs that follow.
Unusually, the best sequence is in the middle of the album, the traditional dead spot of many other recordings. Electronics take the foreground for a nice change on “Surgical Procedures on the Ship,” an unexpectedly great hip hop beat dominates “Using Enemy Weapons,” and the group does their best exotic impersonation with “No Pepsi in Kabul.” I really like the rhythm section overall, especially the Teutonic pulse in “Hit the Kill Switch, Eugene,” which is important for this type of extended music. Although there are occasional moments in which the group relaxes its focus, they ultimately don't stray from their mission to discover new planets.
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Phil Blankenship’s harsh noise project remains one of the most intense I’ve had the (dis?)pleasure of hearing. 2004 saw the release of three 3" compact discs from The Cherry Point, each on a different label. Blankenship has been kind enough to round all three up into one package and it’s a good thing he did, too. The Cherry Point sound more intimidating than intense on this collection, the use of open space serves the project well.
Troniks/PACrec
Each track is over 15 minutes in length, each apparently revolves around a theme of witchcraft or "witchery" as portrayed by countless movies, and each sounds more dreadful than what I expected The Cherry Point to be capable of producing. Not that I felt Blankenship’s music was without subtly, but the last time around it really was: his noise is without a doubt punishing, a blunt instrument if I’ve ever heard one. That bluntness was impressive, but the work that appears on Black Witchery is doubly so.
The noise is still assaulting and relentless, but it is also tempered by a diversity that Night of the Bloody Tapes was missing entirely. Amidst all the gurgling, chainsaw-ripping-through-flesh tones are moments of high pitched squeals, metallic machineguns with rhythm, uneasy shivers, and cavernous bellows: Blankenship has stepped up the gore and fright factor by letting the mind have room enough to imagine the terrible. There isn’t so much noise here that it is impossible to think about anything else.
Making this racket more appealing is the fact that each track is massively different from the other. "Virgin Witch" gets my vote for "most likely to deafen small children and the elderly." It’s attack is more constant than what the other pieces produce, despite the fact that there are three or four distinct layers of very different noise providing its current. Plenty of noise gets its intensity from blending plenty of sound into one big rumble, but The Cherry Point succeeds in being powerful without the use of that tactic. I don’t think it could cause the spontaneous combustion of small animals, but it is a vicious piece of work.
"Devil’s Witch" and "Season of the Witch," on the other hand, sound like the nightmares of abduction victims as filtered through the eyes and ears of a witness on massive amounts of hallucinogens. Their quality is more comparable to a found sound or environmental piece than it is to a pure noise track. At several points during both of these I got the distinct feeling I was listening to some kind of snuff recording. It’s a welcome change for me, in the end. I liked hearing The Cherry Point annihilate the known universe, but listening to the way the world looks just before the final apocalyptic moment is far more disturbing.
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While the songs are short, the album is no mere collection of riffs. Instead, Bishop touches upon a variety of styles and moods. Some have a definite folk vibe, such as "70 Mile House," "Blue West," "Deputy Piano-Wired," and "Mr. Lonely," and others like "Mystery Altitude," "Mesarchuleta," and "Incident in Your Hair" could be ethnic songs from cultures that don't exist. Most, though, don't really pull to a genre of any sort. There are a few tracks that stick out for other reasons. "Phantom Green Light" is unusual in that its source tape warbles noticeably, if not purposefully, while "Bleak" features Bishop's rare harmonica accompaniment that hearkens back to a more nostalgic folk tradition. One of the more furious pieces is the percussive attack of "Wreckage the Julip," though the closet Bishop gets to a rock song is "Bloody Whiteshirt Handshake."
Inevitably, some of the tracks come across as incomplete sketches, but none of the time ever feels wasted. On the other hand, there are many complete songs that deserve to be longer, like "Bad Moves of Distinction" or "Mouth Pacific." Bishop proves that he can harvest numerous ideas from a single instrument and the whirlwind tour he gives of them on this album leaves me breathless. All I can do to alleviate the symptom is to play the CD over and over and hope to catch more of its elusive beauty with each subsequent spin.
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“June 22,” the first of the two half hour tracks, begins with the by-now familiar greeting of Utvaer’s most beloved Deadhead, echoed by his perky sidekick. As they vanish, something sinister appears in their place. The image most prominent in my mind is of a furnace possessed by spirits best left unidentified, swelling into aggressive bursts of volume in increasing lengths as the track progresses, with a particularly bone-rattling eruption occurring just after the twenty minute mark. Frequently the sound hovers like thick, humid air, as if waiting for an unnamed menace to slither forth from the darkness. A subdued alarm bell appears out of the fog from time to time, commingling with faint metallic overtones on the fringe of perception while revenant gasps hiss in the mist. Even listening to the this track in the daylight, I have to say that I found it to be one of the more viscerally thrilling and frightening Nurse With Wound experiences I’ve had in a while, much like the gut feeling I used to get just before the initial drop on a roller coaster.
As the last track in the Shipwreck series, “July 13” is quite the headcleaner. After the initial greetings, loops of the phrase “Welcome to Shipwreck Radio” are subjected to repeated unsettling voice manipulations that become a rippling landscape of their own, stretching syllables into unnatural technological groans. Each time the phrase returns, it is slower and contains more glitch material, eventually obfuscating the source completely. As the length of the recurring phrase increases, so too does the silence between the repetitions. The slower the voice gets, the more it sounds like broken zeros and ones, high-pitched tones with little musical value. Because of this, the track feels more like an algorithmic exercise than a creative one. I can’t imagine what was going through the minds of the Norwegians tuning in to this particular broadcast, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they smacked their radios a few times thinking something was broken. In some ways, the predictable pattern of “July 13” is the antithesis of the previous track’s ability to surprise, and it’s one I probably won’t return to frequently. Even so, the force of “June 22” alone is enough to make this release an invigorating addition to the group’s catalog.
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Killer Pimp
Ken Ueno’s vocals are incredible. He goes from deep, booming growls to high pitched squeals, the kind that I would normally associate with a boiling kettle or Blixa Bargeld. Using circular breathing techniques Ueno keeps his vocals going continuously for large stretches of time (growling on the exhalation, squealing on the inhalation). As well as being physically impressive, it goes well with Whitney and Worster’s rhythms and noise. Ueno is ever present but sometimes gets overwhelmed by the other two. It’s not like he’s just lost in the mix, he still colors the sound at these moments. On “Delillo” he is particularly remarkable, his rumbling snarls sound like something from Lovecraft calling from the abyss.
The opening drone to “Following Thunder” is one of those drones that just capture your attention. It swells and pulses throughout the piece; it sounds primal and infinite like a good drone should. Ueno again is on top form here with some amazing throat and overtone singing. It is unbelievable how huge his range of vocals is, especially the buzzing sound he emits. The piece is the most hypnotic of the five on Axis of Blood, I had it on repeat for about an hour and it was easy to get lost in it.
The last piece, “Jet,” finishes off the album beautifully. The drum machine is set to a deep bass drum sound with a low BPM; it is reminiscent of Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady” and much like the TG track it is full of dread. It completely dissipates the warm feelings that “Following Thunder” previously generated. This is cold, hard and unsettling. It feels about twice as long as it is (and it’s over twenty minutes long to begin with); it’s not that it’s tedious and I was waiting for it to end but that it’s monotonous and crushing. The noise surrounding the beats change slowly; there is a constant feeling that something is nearby and it’s not pleasant. As the song reaches its climax, the drum machine changes to a heartbeat rhythm and it is terrifying to listen to. If The Terminator was ever remade as an extreme Japanese horror movie then “Jet” would be the appropriate soundtrack.
Also included on the CD are two videos of Blood Money performing live. One is a complete concert that although it sounds good I found it hard to look at as when it's blown up to full screen it is too blurry and it's too small to watch comfortably when the picture is clear. The other video is a shorter extract from a live performance in much higher quality that was much more enjoyable. The material played live isn't a carbon copy of the studio recordings. There is a lot of improvisation and variation; the Blood Money live experience looks to be as good as they are on disc but the quality of the videos is quite low as they needed to be squashed onto the disc. As a bonus feature, it is a nice gesture. However I must admit that I rarely watch videos on CD Extra discs as I hate sitting at my computer watching a tiny screen with tinny sound. I'll be most likely sticking with the audio on Axis of Blood.
I found no fault with this album (barring my aversion to videos on CDs). A cynical reader would think “Of course he wouldn’t find a fault” considering Brainwashed’s Jon Whitney is on it. I must point out that even though he sends me some lovely CDs to review, he also sends me some absolutely horrid ones so there’s no chance of critical nepotism here. Axis of Blood is an excellent release, anyone with half an interest in challenging music performed deftly should be making a beeline for the samples below.
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From a seed of a gentle warm up drone this single untitled track becomes a wrenching guttural live thing that just won’t settle. With all this spiky movement the track doesn’t have an overall feel to it; it’s more like a smeared splurge of sound across the disc. It works but it’s not giving anything away.
In its early stages a heavy languor rolls through the air as chimes of tin and steel slowly rattle around its core. These free percussion rolls come forwards in rushes as cymbals pick out glints of light. As this metal icing slides up and down, there’s a fierce choleric underlying hum that pervades much of the eighteen minutes.
This feedback rends through the arbitrary structures emblazoning it with almost comprehensible rock sourced sound. There are stretches of busted balled trio wrecking performance in here, but its lack of overall tone means it comes over as a little unsure of its destination or even its purpose. Still its punchy and thick enough at times to keep me engaged even if its isn’t giving any easy paths/atmospheres to follow.
The artwork is an outstandingly smart accompaniment, a black and white Vertigo / Damien Hirst crossover. It’s a vast improvement on the label’s second release art, which was a yellow wallpaper sample.
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The jazz-inflected opener “Inside (The Corrections)” finds Seltmann singing in the role of a child while Lekman answers as the adult, overshadowing her with his confidence and pleasant voice. The inequality is more evenly balanced when she accompanies him, but he clearly steals the show on this one. Likewise, Broken Social Scene’s remix of “I’ve Got You and You’ve Got Me” is the highlight of the EP. After initially turning her voice robotic, the song becomes a surprisingly delicate, dreamy pop tune that transcends the original, which itself has the dubious distinction of appearing in a television commercial. Seltmann’s other version of this song also included here has a likeably weird intro and the music’s performed on distorted guitar, a genuinely different take that slowly disintegrates as the melody gets lost in the feedback. The other three songs are all respectable, if not terribly memorable.
The prettiest of these, “Trigger,” is an adaptation of a song by Rae Howell, who also plays the mellophone on this track. “The Beginning of the End” finds Seltmann strumming a guitar in her most chanteuse-like moment, singing what’s very nearly a lullaby. Although slightly marred by a few awkward phrases, the song’s redeemed by her earnest sincerity. On the other hand, the chamber pop of “Stay Here While You’re Gone” feels somewhat too earnest and goes on longer than necessary to get the point across. Seltmann’s child-like voice and light arrangements may not have won me over completely, but there are enough fine moments on this EP to keep me interested.
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- Inside (The Corrections)
- I’ve Got You and You’ve Got Me (Broken Social Scene Remix)
- Stay Here While You’re Gone
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