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The music is complex and ornate. Frequently the four ladies seem to be playing four different but complementary songs, such as “Sheye” which is hypnotic and primal. At times it threatens to fall apart but the intensity of the piece keeps it together. This breaks into the far more sedate but equally intense “Sort Sands.” Here the eastern influences come to the fore and the music brings to mind images of a desolate and beautiful desert. The vocals are scorching hot and sexy. It reminds me of Dead Can Dance if Dead Can Dance were actually any good. There is also sometimes an almost queasy quality to the music like on “Born in a Room,” it is disorientating and not something I can listen to with a couple of drinks on me.
The first couple of times I listened to Four Winds the Walker I found some of the vocals tough going. At times the ladies (they take turns with singing) sound bored disinterested, such as on “Serum,” the definite low point of the album. Other times the vocals were grating on the ears but once I accepted their vocal styles and realised it wasn’t just bad singing, it clicked with the music nicely. “Imaginary Skin” contains some fantastic surreal lyrics: “So will she go beyond the minds with all their mazes?/ Mazes that lead through finds with all their faces?” Doesn’t look as great on paper granted but believe me, it’s wonderful on disc.
I was recommended to listen to Four Winds the Walker by a friend and next time I see him I owe him a pint. It is an absolute corker of an album. It definitely improves every time I listen to it, there is so much intricacy in the playing and vocals that every time there is a new element revealed or an audio path to follow through the album. It is an album rich in detail that I could immerse myself in for days on end.
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Their tightly produced beats and futuristically urban atmospheres are marred by an unfortunate selection of mostly lackluster emcees like Rqm and Maxx, whose respective flows recall everything I hate about "indie" hip hop. Exceptions to this rule are Ras T-Weed's sublime and subdued delivery on the jagged "Blessed" and "Corridors of Power," the latter featuring Neonman doing his best Shaun Ryder impression over a funktastic bassline and speaker rumbling beat. Rider Shafique's notable input on "Rising Tides" nearly distracts from the aforementioned Rqm's unimpressive contribution to this otherwise well executed darkly dubby dancehall cut. I would've probably enjoyed this album far more had Tolcha taken the Jamaican ascetic aesthetic to heart and rinsed most if not all of the vocals from the mix. Perhaps an instrumental version is in order.
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The production quality is impeccable, yet this gives the music a glassy sheen that keeps it from becoming intimate. For me, songs like "Jisatsu" and "A Few Words Failed" are too cold and clinical to be used for meditative purposes, and too unsettling to be relegated to the background. Things do warm up a bit with the chanting that appears on "East of Now," accompanying instruments that finally reveal their organic origin, but this track almost seems at cross-purposes to what transpires previously. The end of "Our Angels Orbit Future Places" contains a forlorn piano and children's voices that bring out a humanity previously absent, something the group could have explored further.
Much of the material seems to lack something, like vocals or some sort of visual element, but I can see how performed live this really wouldn't be as much of an issue with the proper setting and context. Too many of their sounds, not to mention the mythology they invoke, remind me of Coil, which isn't too great of a leap considering Sion Organ mastered the album, but they do suffer in comparison. Even if not a whole lot of new ground is broken here, they create decent dark ambience, I only wish that there were more things to encounter in the shadows.
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Res Extensa isolates the small sounds of mechanical interference occurring for most people daily, from toaster-hum and PC-error to the faraway rumble of aircraft. His goal is not so much broad re-contextualization, but, as the title might suggest, a kind of extension past individual association towards the creation of what he calls "a sensitive whole," where sounds are "exposed in their affective characters and our connections to them." A bit cryptic in his desires, Paiuk is asking for something more than what a standard concrète composer would: not that the toaster be recognized as a familiar word within an unfamiliar sentence structure (and all of the old associations that this new placing carries over or leaves behind), but that the toaster be semi-recognized as maybe-a-toaster-as-I-know-it but also maybe this or that device or field of audible energy that I interface with enough that it does not feel alarming in juxtaposition.
The layered construction of Res Extensa suggests that sounds be left to flail and mingle in an interzone between immediate, "physical" reaction and direct cognitive interpretation. For me, the appeal of microsound or lowercase music or related things like The Conet Project has always worked on a similar level: the fusing of fields of small, not-immediately-jarring noise interferences (or the "glitch"-opposite: forced interferance of silence or faulty connection) to a level of dynamism and nuance where listening is less geared towards a 'picking-out' of sounds or the tracking of particular extremes but to the establishment of a kind-of limbo state, a suspension among past-recognizable forces seen now as more forces or fields of energy than anything solid.
The Conet Project dramatizes this idea by isolating literal phantom frequencies, radio energy with indirect aim and obscured potential. In comparison, Paiuk’s piece is a more comforting and relatively lush soundworld, its spaces small and inviting and its pace a slow unraveling of disturbances that never trump each other. Paiuk seems to imply that any overt drama in Rec Extensa comes from projected sources, and in this sense, the piece is some most unlikely ‘body music’ existing, as it tries to, in the realm of the senses with a barrier (however slightly or necessarily permeable) against all that might allow these sounds to fade into meaning.
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For instance, when "Approaching Low from the West" becomes a high-pitched wail drowning all voices but its own, it's capped by a billowing cloud that disintegrates all that has come before. Combined with an ominous guitar on "Blue Ridge," the water and the boat slapping against a dock suggest an empty aftermath that mutates into the shouts, helicopters, and sly marching drum of the title track.
Field recordings aren't evident in every song, and sometimes the music alone must carry the narrative, if there is one. For me, these spots are a lull in the album, but perhaps a necessary sanctuary. It's not until a banshee tunnel becomes a gentle guitar and birdsong in "Cows" that a new morning seems possible. The journey ends bittersweet with "Infection" as ringing stars and Doppler memories preface an elderly woman recounting her troubles walking which, it turns out, is because of a chest infection. I'm not sure what this story of hers has to do with the album as a whole other than emphasizing life's frailty, but the sentiment itself is clear.
With a guitar, effects, and carefully chosen recordings, Wright has created an album of surprising beauty.
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The music itself is lush with reverb as several layers of guitars swim together rather than fight for dominance. Like comets or other celestial bodies, gentle feedback lends qualities of longing and melancholy that complement the other instruments and the vocals without stealing attention.
Beginning with “Deserter,” the core features three songs with lyrics lamenting narcissism, apathy, and the dissolution of responsibility. Generous cross-fading links them as much as the subtle melodic shifts that transform into new songs, weaving them together so tightly that each one would lose something were it to be separated from the others. The voices of Burton himself, Kate Long, and Amber Webber are all able to handle the weight of the music and maintain the same level of levity. Webber’s “Return of the Native” is especially frail, with a tender vulnerability that underscores lyrics such as, “Losing you to your desire/In rooms with ocean views.” The instrumentals are propulsive, wrapping the suite in an urgency and importance that give weight to the revelations within.
In its evocation of yearning landscapes and spiritual exhaustion, Offshore is the perfect complement to summer nights.
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Touch
The disc is presented in a digipack with an included that contains lots of beautiful photos by label head/graphic designer Jon Wozencroft. Some of these have been included in previous releases on the label but it’s nice to see them again. Wozencroft also contributes a number of short field recordings ranging from a recording of an air captain’s announcement before landing to plumbing to a myriad of noises I cannot identify (the liner notes are non-existent for these recordings). These brief vignettes clear the aural palate between the meatier contributions.
Staying with field recordings, Chris Watson has provided two pieces to Touch 25. Unusually for Watson, these two pieces are fairly pedestrian (no, not recordings of people walking). Neither piece holds my attention for long which is especially unfortunate as both of them are less than three minutes each. The aforementioned recordings by Wozencroft have more vitality to them. As does Jacob Kirkegaard’s “Heavy Water [Bärseback],” a recording of water from a nuclear plant’s cooling system which captures the power and menace associated with splitting atoms.
Oren Ambarchi’s “Moving Violation” is one of my fave pieces on the album. The looped guitar hum and drone shows how much he has contributed to Sunn O)))’s last album. In fact, without the riffing Ambarchi’s guitar playing sounds more threatening. In stark contrast to Ambarchi is “Tree” by Fennesz which follows immediately. His acoustic guitar playing is warm and delicate; soft electronics smooth the edges of his playing. The difference between these two artists highlights the range of artists that Touch has championed over the years.
The jewel that shines more than any other on Touch 25 is Jóhann Jóhnannssonn’s “Tu Non Mi Perderai Mai.” It is haunting, beautiful and transcendental. I keep coming back to this particular piece to play and play again. Although the liner notes state that it is just two instruments (a ring modulated Hammond organ and a cello) it sounds like there are a host of synthesisers and sequencers at work. The natural sounding cello sounds almost unnatural with the celestial Hammond sounding like it’s going into orbit.
Not surprisingly but still disappointingly is the complete absence of material by The Hafler Trio considering Andrew McKenzie was such a central part of Touch for so many years. As such I find it quite odd, despite whatever differences there are between them, that McKenzie is not at least mentioned somewhere on a compilation celebrating the past, present and future of Touch.
Aside from that Touch 25 is a wonderful compilation, few compilers show as much quality control as the folks at Touch have. Unlike the vast majority of compilations, this disc runs smoothly like a good album by a single artist. Considering the scope of artists and styles appearing on Touch 25, this is some feat.
samples:
- Fennesz - Tree
- Jóhann Jóhannsson - Tu Non Mi Perderai Mai
- Philip Jeck - Hindquarters
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After completing his first brilliant color-coded trilogy, Stefan Betke took a heartbreaking left turn, leaving behind the minimalist sound he had helped usher in. Yet somehow, a quasi-mysterious artist known to the music world only by the name Burial managed to capture that spirit without resorting to mimicry. Better still, he's managed to develop a style all his own.
Though its release on Kode9's sensational Hyperdub imprint immediately places Burial under the dubstep umbrella, this music defies the laws of oversimplified categorization. While it does include some material from the previously issued South London Boroughs record, this self-titled album is hardly some mere collection of twelve-inch singles, with the majority of the songs previously unreleased and recorded between 2001 and 2006. That being said, these laid back tracks aren't custom built for the dancefloor, an anomalous characteristic for the dubstep genre, yet like many of his peers Burial belongs to the urban, the city, the streets.
After a brief untitled introduction courtesy of Benicio del Toro, "Distant Lights" crackles into existence with the unmistakable sounds of weaponry being prepared, followed by a subtly stuttering beat and the soulful wail "Now that I need you..." in both male and female voices. This implicit desperation worms its way throughout the album, burrowing its way into the rumbling bass. Kode9's favorite collaborator Spaceape makes a noteworthy guest appearance on the track that bears his name, weaving conscious freeform poetry with a deep accented affectation over dramatic strings and a slightly hard-to-follow rhythm. Thankfully, Burial has chosen not to showcase a bunch of dodgy grime MCs bellowing and blubbering gun violence slogans or other pandering claptrap over his productions, letting the music act as its own statement.
Surprises appear around the breaks, such as the abruptly introduced yet fleeting melody that lights up the brilliant "Broken Home" or the mutant eastern vibes on "U Hurt Me." Burial's choice of ambient interludes hold their own among their rhythmic companions, such as the stunning "Forgive," whose looped backwards vocalization reveals, perhaps, a house of God in this near-apocalyptic view of London. Soaking all fifty-one minutes in, Burial's triumphant debut delights, engages, and even astonishes throughout its duration.
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title: Précis
catalog #: krank098
formats available: CD
CD UPC Code: 7 96441 80982 0
Release Date: October 16, 2006
Content: Précis is the first album from Thomas Meluch under his musical pseudonym Benoît Pioulard. Following a series of limited, handmade cassette and CDR releases for friends and family over the last several years, and the well-received Enge EP (Moodgadget 2005), Précis arose as a documentation of a coming to terms with impermanence, marked by analog residue and the imperfections of human influence.
A multi-instrumentalist with an insatiable palette, Pioulard bases most of his songs on treated acoustic guitars and honeyed vocals, backed by carefully layered bells, bass, dulcimer, old tape samples, field recordings and myriad other sources. These sounds, though sculpted roughly into pop songs, have their own delicate patterns of ebb and flow, distortion and disappearance. From the sunny refrain of “Triggering Back” to the descent of nighttime chills on “Needle & Thread”, Précis sighs in time with the seasons. It’s an album about him, her, and you; it’s an exaltation of the ways these things end.
Context: Thomas Meluch is a 21-year old from Michigan fascinated with the sounds of nature and tape decay. Through almost a decade of recording, he has fostered an infatuation with a sort of sonic density that combines remnants of pop song structures with the lushness of painstakingly assembled overdubs that the home recording process affords him. He was recently featured on the Ghostly International compilation Idol Tryouts Two.
Press for Benoît Pioulard’s Enge EP:
“[Benoit Pioulard] creates crystalline folk-pop teeming with fragile vocals, acoustic guitars, electronics, and percussion in a hazy shoegaze style that’s .. more than a little easy to fall in love with” Textura
“[An] exceptional creative vision...cavernously emotional acoustic recordings by way of [a] penchant for electronic manipulation.” Lost at Sea
Track Listing:
1. la guerre de sept ans 2. together & down 3. ext. leslie park 4. triggering back 5. moth wings 6. alan & dawn 7. corpus chant 8. palimend 9. coup de foudre 10. hirondelle
11. needle & thread 12. r coloring 13. sous la plage 14. patter 15. ash into the sky
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title: Harmony in Ultraviolet
catalog #: krank102
formats available: CD
CD UPC Code: 7 96441 81022 2
Release Date: October 16, 2006
Content: Harmony in Ultraviolet is Tim Hecker’s sixth album. It is a continuation of Hecker’s interest in spectral communications, noise, impressionist musics, thresholds of listening pleasure/pain, and the limits of digital composition. This album is a significant development of his song-craft, challenging the usefulness of descriptors such as ambient, drone, metal, noise and even electronic music. If references are necessary it could be described as a sonata for the elements, songs of crackling embers, tidal pools, spruce skylines and autumn winds. Gerhard Richter’s abstract paintings are also a fair orientation. Materially speaking, it is a record of whirring drones, whispering fissures, dense disintegrating chords, late-night noise and truth-telling harmonics. Yet this record follows no overarching process, no underlying narrative. It is both a homage for the Italian partigiani and also not at all. It is songs about ghost writing and midnight whispers but then again it isn't. In many ways this album can be viewed as a work of total destruction, embracing indeterminacy as an aesthetic ideal.
Context: Tim Hecker is a Canadian-based musician and sound artist, born in Vancouver. Since 1996, he has produced a range of audio works for Mille Plateaux, Alien8, Force Inc, Staalplaat, and Fat Cat. His works have been described as “structured ambient”, “tectonic color plates” and “cathedral electronic music”. More to the point, he has focused on exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance and melody, fostering an approach to songcraft which is both physical and emotive. The New York Times has described his work as “foreboding, abstract pieces in which static and sub-bass rumbles open up around slow moving notes and chords, like fissures in the earth waiting to swallow them whole”. His Radio Amor was recognized as a key recording of 2003 by Wire magazine. His work has also included commissions for contemporary dance, sound-art installations, and various writings. He is also an acclaimed producer of techno, having toured and produced under the name Jetone. Tim has presented his work in a live setting around the world, including performances at Sonar (Barcelona), Mutek (Montreal), Impakt Festival (Utrecht), Victoriaville in (Quebec), IDEAL (Nantes), Vancouver New Music Festival (Vancouver), and Transmediale (Berlin). He currently resides in Montreal.
Track Listing:
1. Rainbow Blood 2. Stags, Aircraft, Kings and Secretaries 3. Palimpsest I 4. Chimeras
5. Dungeoneering 6. Palimpsest II 7. Spring Heeled Jack Flies Tonight 8. Harmony in Blue I
9. Harmony in Blue II 10. Harmony in Blue III 11. Harmony in Blue IIII 12. Radio Spiricom
13. Whitecaps of White Noise I 14. Whitecaps of White Noise II 15. Blood Rainbow
Selected Discography:
2005 Mort aux Vaches - Staalplaat (Holland) - Live recording at VPRO Studios, Amsterdam
2004 Radio Marti / Radio Havana - EN/OF (Germany) Collaboration with Stan Douglas
Mirages - Alien8 Recordings (Canada)
2003 Radio Amor - Mille Plateaux (Germany)
2002 Trade Winds, White Noise - Commissioned by Parachute Arts Journal (Canada)
My Love is Rotten to the Core - Substractif / Alien8 Recordings (Canada).
2001 Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again - Substractif / Alien8 Recordings (Canada).
Ultramarin - Force Inc Music Works / Mille Plateaux (Germany)
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On this three-track food/petrol/strings funding release the band continue their rock and roll d/evolution. What the Markers do maybe easy to flippantly sum up, but it’s spat out as complex improvisational process. This trio take the roots of musical cultures, personal experience and labels and feed them with a row of cocktail shots and composted Ginsberg instead of the same old generic watery rock moves. The thing about Magik Markers is that while they refuse to stick the tried and tested templates, they are happy to batter new life into traditional trio instrumentation.
At the center of everything, or sometimes central in a lost on the prairie outskirts kind of way, are Elisa Ambrogio’s vocals and lyrics. Her indolent NY blues on the second track might as well be from a different person when compared with the end of the bar moan on "three." Sometime timorously soft and hesitant and other times like a hell bound Jim/Kim hybrid (Morrison and Gordon), the word association and left side of the head pick-and-mix need multiple flybys to get the whole thing. Throughout this third track there’s a bulge and squawk groan from a grating wheel of sound caught in the sparking firework of guitar noise. This sap-thick take on rock and roll creaks its way into a wheezy live loop before taking off for a short nose dive flight; protest music against formality and form.
Despite the sometimes-harsh nature of dissent the opener here is a beautiful piece of coming together chemistry. It’s like I’m suddenly the unseen presence in a pre soundcheck jam that quickly flowers into something more fragile and gorgeous than the most carefully sculpted song. The centrifugal piano seems to be miced up from the next room as a laid-back guitar and lone female lullaby slip slowly into perfect post sex sync. Snatches of melody come like the whole affair is being blown from across some smoky water. Everything seems abstracted and one step removed, even its unconscious move into confusion, beat rant confusion and spluttering squall has an air of liberated elegance.
This sense of freedom is also apparent in the lethargic blues of "Two" where Leah Quimby’s bass begins to fill the gaps note by precious note. The drums might be a little overstated, but Quimby seems to be on her own path putting delicious musical flesh to bone.
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