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Titles like “Sleepless Nights,” “Daze,” and “Nightfall”were dead giveaways to songs that would feature slow moving tempos,ambient electronic structure, and echoed guitar, all swirling into ahazy paste of long winters and short days. After a period of time withBlindfold, I can say my original assessment wasn’t far off. I’velistened to Blindfold’s eponymous debut at least six times in two days,each time remembering less and less of what I’ve heard. And that’s thebasic problem plaguing Blindfold here - nothing stands out. A typicaltrack here will start out with an ambient sound-scape, followed by somemelodic figure played through an echo pedal. On a few of the songs,there are vocals, which makes things slightly more interesting. “Daze”features a genuinely interesting guitar riff, plodding drums, and thelow, nearly mumbled vocals of Birgir Hilmarsson. Blindfold seems tomake the mistake of placing to much emphasis on texture rather thendynamics. While texture is good, it makes for pretty unremarkablesound-scapes here. There aren’t many flat out bad moments on Blindfold,but at the same time it remains a fairly unremarkable experience. Ihope that in the future, Hilmarsson can take the rough ideas sketchedhere and perhaps apply them to a larger, more encompassing canvas.Until then he seems content to just steal a few ideas from hispost-rock heroes and gently lull me to sleep.
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[self-released]
Drywall —a pet project consisting of Ridway,drummer Rick King and long-time collaborator Pietra Wexstun—takesall these trends to the extremes, but only about half of thetime. The new (and, for some of us, "long-awaited") CD opens witha joyous zydeco romp about a barbeque party populated with thenastiest—yet cuddliest—of all inbred middle America stereotypes. Itcloses with a seamless reconstruction of George Bush speeches thatwould bring happy tears to a culture-jammer's eyes. In between,though, it zig-zags through a playlist of uneven songs about war, thePope, sinking ships, ghosts, and several introspective, soul-searchingmeditations. Half of them feature Wexstun's wonderfully gratingand unorthodox keyboards ("Fortune Cookies," "That Big Weird Thing")along with some truly inspired instrumentation andstream-of-consciousness rants in the best Ridway tradition while theothers are so gosh-darned straight-forward and pedestrian that they'repainfully bland in comparison ("Abandon Ship," "Wargasm 2005"). The album reaches great heights and forgettable depths, and it fails inthe end to give any sort of "average" impression: it's bothwonderful and bad. It's two albums in one! Unfortunatelyyou can't buy one without the other.
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Maybe Kinski does rely on the loud/soft dynamic quite a lot in their compositions and, frankly, their last album seemed too bent on switching between churning, piston-driven rock and more electronic affairs that simply hummed and drifted away within the record. It was a distracting feature on an otherwise fine album; all that's changed with Alpine Static. The blasted, wailing guitars and metronomic drum performances are still present, but the compositions have more depth to them. Tracks like "The Party Which You Know Will Be Heavy" and "Passed Out On Your Lawn" pass between thumping, heavy sections and subdued portions that are equally exotic and familiar. The use of atmospheric movements within some of the pieces works much better than previously due to the inclusion of far more organic sounds. When the strings freak out and begin to convulse like a dying animal there's no sense of forced drama or pause, the album flows together as one continuous piece of music. It's pretty amazing feat considering the range of sounds to be found and the fact that a couple of these tracks have been floating around for a little while now in one form or another. Both "Hiding Drugs in the Temple (Part 2)" and "Passed Out On Your Lawn" have appeared before in some form or another and with different names. Also refreshing is the dynamic of darker and lighter songs on Alpine Static. My experience with Kinski is that they tend to pick a mood and stick to it, but between different songs and, sometimes, within a given song Kinski switch up the atmosphere and spirit easily and seamlessly. There's no shortage of very serious rocking, but the best parts of the album are when they manage to build a real tension and then release it perfectly with a wave of drumming fury and infinitely stretched guitar tones that each something like pure noise feedback. They control it just enough to give it a melodic edge that makes it captivating. Alpine Static is a huge improvement on their past albums, mainly because I want to listen to the entire record instead of skipping around and looking for the aggressive, propulsive songs on the album and leaving the rest to sit as filler. Every portion of the album is used more economically and satisfyingly, making it a more enjoyable listen and a more well-rounded piece of music all the way around.
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The Designed Disorder
Everything about the introductory release from The Designed Disorder isset up to annoy me. The title makes no sense and seems to have norelation to the music; the artwork is nice but predictably absent ofpersonality; there's a hidden track listed on the track listing (thusmaking any effor to hide it moot;) and the whole thing looks and feelslike a release set up for marketing a new label rather than jumpingright in with vital new material. All of this should annoy me, but somehow the music contained on Autonomous Addictsmanages to elevate beyond any of those petty grievances. It is, afterall, the music that really matters here, and in that department thisnew label is showing promise. Collected on the disc are some of thenoteable and familiar names from the US "dance music that no oneactually dances to" scene. Richard Devine, Eight Frozen Modules,L'usine, and Twerk give the record some cachet and will likely servethe purpose for which the disc was produced: namely introducing peopleto new works by lesser-known artists like Anon, RD, and Edit. All ofthe artists working here pull from a similar kind of post-urban,post-digital milieu which gives the record a cohesive tone, even if itmeans that individual efforts sometimes blur together. The stark, crispbeats from Deru and Eight Frozen Modules are mostly interchangeablewith those from Tipper and Anon, but they are all good. The nice thingis that everything on the record is clean and well-produced and finelydetailed. When the bass drops, it's synthetic but satisfying, and whenthe beats get schizophrenic, they never outpace the songs they areserving. Hologram turns in the record's best and most melodic track,demonstrating in the process that composition counts for as much if notmore than sound design, even on a record like this one. RichardDevine's track is nice and uncharacteristically subdued, but his"hidden track" is an acid throwaway from a decade ago that doesn't addanything more than novelty. Logreybeam's track is a real find here too.The song's sampled drum sounds replace the predominantly syntheticdrums from the previous tracks to help mix things up a bit. Now ifpeople could just learn to write a melody without an FM synth tine...
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Betweenis a five track collection of home recordings, live cuts and a radioperformance. The beauty of Vetiver gets to shine more on this CD thenon the album which I found good but a little bogged down by gueststars. Every track seems to belong together on this EP, which I thinkis thanks to the more stable line up. The small bit of overlap between Between and Vetiveris a live radio version of “Belles.” Compared to the studio versionthere is superficially not much of a difference, the studio one is abit more polished whereas this radio version is far more intimate.Cabic sounds like a more serious and grown up songwriter compared tohis compadre Banhart, more dignified country singer than flower childwailer. “Been So Long” is one of the finest Vetiver songs I’ve heard,the drums are almost tabla-like and background harmony vocals runthrough the song like a thread of silk. Normally the sound of flutesleaves me cold but the flute at the end of “Been So Long” fits like aglove. “Maureen” is a slightly tinny sounding live recording, justaround bootleg quality but all the more delicate for it. “Save Me APlace” stays faithful to theoriginal Fleetwood Mac song, but it is paced just a little slower. When I played the albumfirst I didn’t even notice it was a cover, assuming it was familiarbecause it was from the Vetiver album. It was only later I saw it was acover, it fits in so well with Cabic’s style of writing. “Busted(Brokedown Version)” is where the country vibe reaches its peak, therough recording makes it sound like a forgotten Neil Young number fromhis Harvest-era. I can find no faults with this CD apart fromits length, as I would have liked more than fifteen minutes worth of music,but as various teachers over the years have drummed into me, it isquality not quantity.
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Melodic
Okay, so the 21+ minute remix by Four Tet is a little indulgent asit sounds like an entirely separate piece of music from the Pedrooriginal, but even that opus works well alongside the rest of thiscollection of slightly folky, slightly funky takes on "Fear &Resilience." Danger Mouse turns in the most commercially approachableversion by jazzing the Pedro original up with some rare groove samplesthat wouldn't sound out of place on a Tribe Called Quest record.Prefuse 73 cuts and splices fragments of the original with his typicalcollage of riffs and hip hop detritus to produce something post-modernenough to keep it from sounding like a retread. Pedro's own versionanchors the disc and proves perhaps the most adventurous in its rangeof sound, while the Home Skillet mix deconstructs the source intoshimmering digital noise and wavering synths. Though the remixers heretook entirely predictable routes, all of the mixes are handled withenough love and attention to quality that the disc works as a wholecollection and not just as a single theme repeated a few too manytimes. It's certainly gotten me interested in checking out more fromPedro, which is what an endeavor like this is intended to do, so toPedro and Melodic I have to say: "mission accomplished."
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TigerBeat 6
When I listen to Kid 606, I look forward to having my mind melted. Iexpect schizoid rhythms, caustic noise, and unrelenting beats to kickmy ass around my room and to make me dance like a marionette. And forthe most part, that’s just what Kid 606 has done. Over the course ofseven years he’s perfected his mish-mash agro style, which placed apremium on aggression, noisy experimentation, and spliced samples. SoResilience was a total sucker punch for me, which is probably just howthe Kid intended it to be. Simplicity is his M.O. on this release, andthe songs barely come close to touching upon his schizophrenic mash-upsof previous releases. “Done With the Scene” opens the album and slowlybuilds upon a series of panning synthesizer samples. The rhythm, thoughsedate, still provides enough kick to prevent the song from languishingand does a good job of not interrupting the washes of synthesizer aboveit. This leads right into “Spanish Song,” with its near disco readypercussion and random vocal samples, sounds like a club jam slowed downfor the benefit of the weary. After the high standards set by thesesongs, the album splits itself between material that is interesting andwell executed and material that is not. An example of the latter can befound on “Phoenix Riddim” which abuses its reggae guitar sample andquickly wears out its welcome. Similarly, “Sugarcoated” is stretchedfar to thin, so that by the time it ends I had forgotten what had madethe track appealing in the first place. But while there are severalless then stellar moments on Resilience, they are balanced out bytracks like “Xmas Funk,” where Kid 606 varies the tempo and builds upona variety of loops rather then just one. Elsewhere, there is“Cascadia,” with its synthesizer squelches and distant rhythm track.While the song is far from anything Kid 606 has attempted before, itnonetheless can rank up alongside with some of his finest work. Thoughseveral of the songs on have been culled from earlier releases it wouldbe unfair to label this a rarities or singles collection. Ultimately,Resilience is a record that allows Kid 606 to spread himself into otherstyles.
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The Music Fellowship
While only one song here manages tocomplete its journey in less than ten minutes, the rest meander througha variety of well-executed ideas that make their epic lengths more of ablessing then a curse. “Adam’s Fruit Temptation” begins with fairlyconventional guitar picking before being overtaken by a wash ofelectronic effects. It begins its next section with a slightly menacingbanjo that is carried by an undercurrent of electronic washes and organdrones. An up-tempo guitar jig follows, with its roots firmly plantedin the tradition of Appalachian folk. As it settles into a repeatedmelodic figure, an organ slowly swells up and provides backing.“Something About Dangerous Women” is a slow, sinister work thatgradually builds steam over a series of harmonic figures, beforefalling into minor key picking. The track is far sparser then “Adam’sFruit Temptation” and in addition to his six string acoustic, Tamburodeploys a droning ebow here to back him up at various points. As hispicking gradually intensifies, Tamburo throws in more notes to heightenthe sense of unease. For other players, this could have proved to be acostly mistake, but Tamburo knows exactly where to cut it. Tamburofollows the breathlessness of “Dangerous Women” with “My Time MachineMoves Slower Without You,” which cascades upon a wash of electricguitar effects. The song hues closer to the shoegazer haze of My BloodyValentine than the rest of the album, but is a fitting and beautifulcoda, with a spine tingling guitar part that appears throughout. Thoughit would be tempting to lump Mike Tamburo’s work with what is often(and erroneously) dubbed “freak folk,” the fact is that his music isfar more rooted in the traditions of American folk and blues to warrantsuch a label. Ultimately, the album’s success is rooted in bothTamburo’s masterful playing and his ability to not be pinned down by aparticular style or sound. Beating of the Rewound Son is a beautifulalbum that is just as comfortable exploring sun-drenched houses in thecountry as it is empty warehouses sitting along a polluted river, andit is the discoveries you can find here that which makes the album sorewarding.
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ADAADAT
This is aparty record built principally on the joke that its author and hisfriends love KFC and are willing to write songs about it. Sure, it's astupid premise, but DJ Scotch Egg isn't aiming for anything highconcept or deeply moving here. The tracks are all built around abackbone of skipping gabber beats and distorted noise and screamingmixed with video game melodies and 8-bit synth sounds, and while thecombination doesn't immediately sound inviting on paper—it works. What results is a fun, bouncy record that moves quicklybetween songs and interludes and manages tap into just the right amountof absurd energy to be worth listening to again and again. There aresome self-indulgent moments that take the KFC joke a little too far(like the hidden track at the end of the record that is a severalminute long conversation about KFC and Hare Krishnas and so on), butfor the most part even the forced theme and the juvenile humor don'tcome off as too overbearing. I've already picked out several tracksfrom this record to throw into my own DJ sets, which is certainly asign that DJ Scotch Egg has gotten something right here. I imagine thata crate full of records like this one that are fun but bordering ondisposable would get old really quickly, and to the gabber andspeedcore/breakcore aficionados out there, all of this may be old news,but I found KFC Core to be the perfect antidote to hardelectronic music that takes itself too seriously. There's a time forthat, but there's a time for this too, and right now I'm bouncing to aremix of the Tetris theme and I can't help but smile.
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Secretly Canadian
Though they would alter their name for each variation on the group(going from The Panoply Academy Glee Club to Corps of Engineers toLegionnaires), their sound remained essentially intact: spiralingsong-structures, angular hooks, and a sense of stylistic ADD. Presentedin reverse chronological order, Everything Here Was Built to Breakwillbe a welcome addition to any fan of the band. “Nom de Plume” opensthings up, slowly swelling to a crescendo of pounded piano, clean toneguitar picking, and trembling vocals while “Comfort,”matches prog-metal guitar chords with near operatic singing,interspersed with harsh post-punk scratches. These two previouslyunreleased songs showcase what the group was best at:post-hardcore styleguitar interplay and intricate drumming with a foot solidly grounded inpost-rock dynamics. Taken with another unreleased track, “Please Stray/Look Us in the Eyes,” (all three were intended to run together in alive setting) it seems clear that The Panoply Academy’s best attributeswere their ability to take seemingly disparate strains and make themmatch as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Working it’sway further into the past; the compilation reveals the beginnings ofThe Panoply Academy to be far more rooted in the bratty energy ofNation of Ulysses and Cap‘n Jazz then the more complex sound theywould pursue on their later recordings. “Remedial Symmetry” featuresmetronome precise drumming and a brain damaged seesaw guitar riff thatpropels the song ahead. These songs are great in their own right, butwhen they follow more polished efforts from the compilations firsthalf, it has a negative effect of making them seem inferior, ratherthen the basis for what was to come. Perhaps the most interestingaddition on Everything Here Built Was Built to Break is theinclusion of several covers the band recorded throughout their career.Their version of Nick Drake’s “Harvest Breed” manages to avoid a roteimitation by imbuing the song with a cold, electro heart. Meanwhile,their cover of Supertramp’s “Dreamer/ Crime of the Century” ishysterical, complete with gung-ho operatic vocals and anenthusiastically bashed piano solo. Most surprising though is theirtreatment of Country Joe and the Fish’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixing to DieRag” from Exotic Fever’s Don’t Know When I’ll Be Back Again Vietnam vetbenefit. The band strips the song of it’s jaunty country sound andinstead turns it into a slow funeral dirge while managing to keep allof the dark humor of the original intact. Secretly Canadian has done agreat service for fans who would be unlikely to find any of these songselsewhere. But for the rest of us who weren’t there sweating along tothem in a basement during their various tours of the US, it might beadvisable to start with the proper albums first, before seeking thisout.
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The message that the film seems conveys is clear: A Certain Ratio werean amusing footnote in the story of Factory Records. Ignored as theirpeers in Joy Division and New Order gained popularity and influence,and all but forgotten by the time groups like the Happy Mondays camealong, it’s probably a safe bet to say that the majority of those whosaw 24 Hour Party People had no idea who A Certain Ratio were.This is a damn shame, as one listen to any of A Certain Ratio’s albumsfrom 1979 to about 1983 (when the group began to splinter apart) showsthat they were far ahead of the curve. 1980’s half four-track demos,half live cuts (from their tour with Talking Heads) The Graveyard andthe Ballroom pretty much predicts the recent dance-punk explosion, withthe band laying into precise, skittering funk inflected punk. By thetime of 1982’s I’d Like to See You Again, the band had tradedin the thin guitars and anxious vocals of Simon Topping for somethingfar more lush and organic. To say I was shocked at the difference insound and approach between The Graveyard and the Ballroom and I’d Like to See You Againwould be an understatement. Gone were the pent up vocals, wiry guitarsand urgent drumming, in their place were synthesizers, vocoders, andbig, fat bass lines. A Certain Ratio had always been influenced byAmerican funk and disco, but here that influence became more pronouncedthen ever. Opener “Touch” is perhaps the slickest, catchiest bit ofR&B that Parliament never recorded. “Hot Knights” features aswinging beat with some squishy analog synth to keep it buoyed, withsome fun nonsensical lyrics thrown in for good measure. Elsewhere,there are interesting experiments with vocoders, such as on thegraceful disco of “I’d Like to See You Again” and the more driving“Show Case.” The highlight though is “Axis,” which features some trulyjaw dropping bass work from Jeremy Kerr and grooves languidly on afoundation of tightly syncopated beats and well placed keyboard riffs.The song manages to incorporate not just the bands love of funk andR&B, but also reveals the influence of New York’s early 80selectro-dance scene, something the band had been listening toobsessively at the time. In addition to the eight original tracks, LTMhas also included five bonus tracks. While the original songs on I’dLike to See You Again were born mostly out of the bands fascinationwith American R&B, these five tracks display the growing influenceof Latin jazz (“Tumba Rhumba”), house music (“Knife Slits Water”), andthe cut and paste attitude of hip-hop (a remix of I’d Like to See YouAgain’s “Guess Who”). Though they don’t necessarily fit in with theoverall flow of the album, they nevertheless showcase the band’sinventive chops and strong sense of ensemble playing. Those who came toknow A Certain Ratio from their earlier, more punk influenced workmight be caught off guard or even put off by the songs here. Icertainly was. But it would be unfair to not to give this release theattention it deserves. While not as immediate or raw as anything foundon The Graveyard and the Ballroom, the songs on I’d Like to See You Again exhibit a strong sense of sophistication and stylistic development.
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