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I Thought I Was Over That not only comes off the heels of a successful LP and tour, but the tracks included are of a varied enough nature to please devoted fans who missed a single here or there and curious newbies alike.
After a string of critically acclaimed full-lengths, Lali Puna mark 2005 with their very first compilation release, which raises the question: what makes a compilation worthwhile, if not essential? Some artists use these kind of releases as throwaways, to keep an audience's appetite whetted during studio time, or simply loaded up with filler and other fluff to move units in times of need. Not so with Valerie Trebeljahr & Co.: I Thought I Was Over That not only comes off the heels of a successful LP and tour, but the tracks included are of a varied enough nature to please devoted fans who missed a single here or there and curious newbies alike. First of all, there's a ton of material: nearly 80 minutes is enough to fill two pieces of vinyl. Secondly, it's of a varied enough nature—remixes of Lali standards, remixes of other artists' work by Lali, duos, throwaways and a jam (if that's the term in electro-pop) or two—to truly merit the release as more than a convenient collection for those who couldn't track down all the singles. Happily, the remixes are worthwhile, too—rather than superficial changes, they truly add something new to the source material—like putting an addition onto the house rather than just a new coat of paint, or in some cases, like going from a duplex to a lighthouse. Some of Trebeljahr's choices for remixes will turn some heads, too. They're able to "poppify" a track from left-field hip hop outfit Boom Bap, ably adding a verse-chorus-verse setup to an otherwise freewheeling instrumental; Lali Puna even takes a stab at a Giorgio Moroder (he of synthesizers and Scarface fame) composition. The collection is by no means flawless: the Dntl version of "Faking the Books" loses most of the subtle majesty of the original, and some of the new work will be too glitch-pop for the established audience. It's also a little heavy on later material: nearly half the tracks come from 2002 and later. And remixed or no, some of the instrumental tracks seem to wander, and suffer greatly in comparison to those graced by Trebeljahr's simply lovely singing voice. Alternately haunting, soothing and even salacious, any remix or rarity, no matter how adroit or precious, is vying for second place without the presence of her pipes. Not a hackneyed retrospective or throwaway "greatest hits" collection by any means, I Thought I Was Over That seems tailor-made for Lali Puna's loyal listeners: they'll get to see whole new sides of the group's lyrical and compositional abilities (especially if they missed the 2004 Mirconomic EP), and get to be spared the bother of tracking down all the singles. New listeners, though, won't be nearly as rewarded, and would be best advised to pick up Faking the Books or Scary World Theory before moving on to this smorgasbord.
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Caminate
The tracks alternate, though the package design is so obscurethat the only way to tell which tracks appear in which order is tomatch the times of each to a title and time listed on one of fourdifferent cards inserted in the front pocket of the digipack. The firstpiece is terrific: Merzbow's "Esrma 1" is based on a pattern ofalternating notes which twist subtly as layers of grainy synth-likesounds are added one at a time. It's a very linear and musical piece,with a straightforward upward spiral abruptly ending with what mustbe... a guitar through a flanger. (Uh-oh.) Here's where Tranzstarts to falter. Even without the knowledge of specific guitareffects' sounds, an obvious sound is recognizable, and Elliott Sharpseems incapable of providing much more than off-the-shelf guitar andeffect sounds for the remaining 3/4 of this album. Sharp's first turnat the wheel, "Mares 1," begins with a burbling, flatly-tensebackground bed of grainy noise, but gracelessly throws in suchchestnuts as: the outer-space phaser sound!; The guitar-shopfinger-tapping shred solo (these are cringe-inducing without David LeeRoth in the vicinity)!; The twisting the delay-knob up and down sound!;and so on,.... Sharp marches so blithely over the pleasingly crunchybackdrop that I tried to listen to his piece as if I was hearing tworadio stations at once, absorbing one while information from anotherwas irritatingly bleeding through. On track 3, Merzbow tries again, buthe does not match the focus he started out with, and the final track islittle more than a Max/MSP effect doing its thing uneventfully for afew minutes. If a person was involved in its composition, he appears tohave removed himself before the disc went to press. The asaforementioned intriguing appeal is rather like rubbernecking: peoplewere maimed in this car crash, but it's tough not to keep looking atthem. I have returned to this album four times since I first heard it.It's maybe a good textbook about how two very disparate artists mightforce themselves to work together across styles and methods. It mighteven have worked, had the artists not both phoned in their music. Ifthey'd arrived at a solid idea and explored it, maybe this could havebeen surprising music instead of merely an exercise. Still: ever hearda Merzbow album with finger-tapping on it?
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- Jonathan Dean
- Albums and Singles
Beta-Lactam Ring
With a name only slightly less stupid than German contemporariesHNAS (Hirsche Nichts Aufs Sofa—"Moose Without A Sofa"), and an eclecticsensibility only slightly less whacked-out and surrealistic, La STPOhave trudged on in near-total obscurity for two decades, with arevolving door membership that has included more than 30 musicians overthe years. BLR's '86-'90 reissued the hard to find Illusion EP, together with an equally impossible-to-find LP from 1990. Le Combat Occultedoesn't reissue anything, but instead collects a generous amount ofunreleased, alternate, rare and live tracks drawn from the band'sentire history. La STPO records are always scattershot, rapidlychanging, almost pathologically eclectic affairs, and this one evenmore so, as most of these tracks were not even conceived in eachother's presence. In a strange way, this increased randomnesscontributes to the kind of Dada pranksterism that the band appear to beaiming for, the majority of their songs senselessly shifting musicalgears in ways that only make sense within the post-RIO experimentalprog milieu in which they are generally considered. For all of theirdeliberate goofiness, however, there is very competent musicianship atthe heart of La STPO, and only a talented band could pull off thesebreathlessly dynamic rock gymnastics, switching from histrionicstop-start prog-rock virtuosity to Neanderthal free jazz skronk, toSpike Jones-style cartoon wackiness, to percussive breakdowns onmallets and sheet metal, to tuneful psychedelic ballads and austerechamber music, often within the span of a few minutes. The sillinesscan be downright exhausting at times, but it certainly keeps thingsmoving; I challenge anyone to be bored by the music found on this disc.With their opaque lyrical aesthetic and sleeve designs, the bandclearly align themselves with a long tradition of Europeanavant-gardism of the kind exemplified by Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst,but they also invoke Russian Suprematism in tracks like "TechniquesExplositionnistes," giving shoutouts to Malevich and Kandinsky. Unlikeother bands such as Nurse With Wound or HNAS that traffic in thesekinds of kitchen-sink compositions, La STPO actually have the musicalchops to pull off these death defying leaps of musical illogic withoutresorting to tape-splicing or plunderphonia. There is a lot more thatcould be said about music as chock full of complexity, eccentricity andobscurity as that made by La STPO, but it's best to just be jerkedalong by these intelligently insane and spectacularly talentedmusicians, and just see where the journey leads.
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- Lucas Schleicher
- Albums and Singles
Troniks/PACrec
The Rita, it would seem,follow in the footsteps of these vulgar giants. Two tracks make up this60+ minute record of almost pure white noise, feedback, suffocatedscreams, and unrelenting brutality. The first and most obvious facet ofsuch an approach to noise is obvious: there isn't much variation and onmost releases that makes it too easy for me to get bored. The secondand maybe most ear-catching facet is that when The Rita decide to allowvocal samples and odd sounds bleed through their curtain of damagedequipment, they sound exciting and fresh. I think the image must beholding these fellows down. I'll be the last to say there's an image touphold here, but when one song is titled "Naked Girl Found Dead in thePark" and the artwork depicts what must be a rather brutal rape, themusic inside is likely to exaggerate its real intensity for the sake ofconsistency. It's a shame, too, because while violence can be anattractive and creative event, it seems like most eyes are focused onthe less perverse and more boring, pornographic stuff that shows nosigns of creativity or understanding, whatsoever. At one point on "ViceWears Black Hose," the noise congeals for a moment into the sounds ofwhat might be a sample from a Dario Argento film soundtrack, butinstead of letting such an unsettling transition play its role, TheRita shot things back into a confused and overdriven death fest.Extremes can be interesting at times, but this is one that has beenplayed out one too many times. There are far better explorations of sexand violence out there if that sort of thing seems evenly remotelyinteresting, but the disappointing part is that The Rita show a lot ofpromise on this record and then let me down by trying to drown theirwork in the sort of noise that eventually comes to sound tame and sillybecause of its nonstop intensity. In the end it sounds normal and notat all threatening, almost as though it's become its opposite andobtained a trance-like, subdued state in the pursuit of nonstop,attention-grabbing assault. - Lucas Schleicher
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- Gary Suarez
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Mute / F-Communications
Lacking eventhe occasional sonic spasm evocative of Garnier's true worth or talent,these ten truly dreadful pseudo-cinematic tracks are as mind-numbinglyboring as 99% of the pretentious scores to even more pretentiousdramatic films. It embodies everything that I didn't like from 2000'scritically acclaimed Unreasonable Behavior packed into oneoutrageously unfocused crapfest, dipping into too many genres for itsown good. Between the fluttery yet dull flamenco flourishes on "HuisClos" to the falls-flat-on-its-face IDM meets neo-classical fusion of"Act 1 Minotaure Ex," I am almost tempted to believe that this albumwas intended as a goof, a tongue-in-cheek snipe at the self-indulgentcompositions and obligatory radio-singles comprising movie soundtracks(not to mention an unusually cruel joke on Garnier's worldwidefanbase). The hallucinatory dreamstate spoken and shouted word of"First Reaction (v2)" attempts to make some kind of bold politicalstatement amidst Garnier's cacophonous free jazz fuckery, yetultimately says surprisingly little. The lowest point of the albumarguably comes when Garnier foolishly fumbles with rock n roll on "(IWanna Be) Waiting for my Plane" with its bland looped guitar riff andlazy mindess lyrics. The AFX-esque "9.01-9:06" and the DJ friendlytribal house cut "Controlling the House Pt. 2" would potentiallysalvage this album if the rest of the material here wasn't so awful,but even these two are marred by unoriginality and lukewarm tedium. AmI being unnecessarily harsh? Am I perhaps too immature to understandthe intricate complexities of The Cloud Making Machine? Am I sostubbornly unwilling to excuse this radical departure that I'm unableto offer a fair, evenhanded analysis of the album? No. It's a boringpiece of shit that is, at times, excruciating to sit through andthoroughly impossible to stomach. Avoid as if Vincent Gallo himself hadrecorded it.
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- Jonathan Dean
- Albums and Singles
Seeland
In addition to advertised"EIGHT TRACKS of AUDIO on a ROUND CD," this generous package fromSeeland also contains a 18-page essay entitled "Two relationships to acultural public domain," a hilarious Quicktime video and a whoopeecushion toy emblazoned with the "circle c" copyright symbol. The essayitself is perhaps the best thing about the album, as it touches on manyissues and possible trajectories for the current war between themainstream music business and the internet-savvy consumer. Negativlandmake several modest proposals about the future of the music business inlight of the digital revolution, some of which involve the very realpossibility that making music may no longer be a viable way to makemountains of cash. This is not necessarily the end of popular music;but it may very mean the end of corporate music. As Negativland pointout in their essay, they themselves have never made any kind ofreasonable living off of their music, but they continue making itanyway, because they have a sincere desire to make music. Having beenat the receiving end of several well-publicized lawsuits because oftheir plunderphonic audio collaging, which frequently took jabs atcorporate-label music such as U2 and Michael Jackson, Negativlandclearly know of whence they speak, and this makes for an engaging read,one of the best and most level-headed essays I have read on the topic.The accompanying CD may be the weakest link of the package, whichthough it does have several very amusing moments, is not nearly asstrong as their last album, the fantastic Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak,an unsung masterpiece of noise. This CD is something of a first forNegativland, as it is entirely constructed from plunders and samples,with no additional voicework over top, as is the usual case for thealbums derived from their Over the Edge radio broadcasts.Instead, it's a series of People Like Us and Evolution ControlCommittee-style gags, resplicing Ethel Merman until she's singinglyrics like: "There's no business like stealing/It's so appealing."Also in the audio blender are The Beatles, the soundtrack to Disney's The Little Mermaid,an RIAA spokesman's speech at the Grammy Awards, a vintage radio dramaand other sources too various to mention. The oversized wallet thathouses the album and essay is filled with so much corporate iconographyand mythological characters, it looks like the dual wet dream of JosephCampbell and Marshall McLuhan. All told it's an absolutely fantasticpackage from Negativland, and I'd suggest getting your hands on itbefore the RIAA shuts down its sale on account of all those peskyunauthorized samples.
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Bubble Core Records
\With Bem-Vinda Vontade, the latest release onhis own Bubble Core Records label, Pierce has employed a full band onabout half of the disc's nine tracks, including HiM bandleader andfellow drummer, Doug Scharin. Having seen Mice Parade in liveperformance just as this disc was being released, I can totallyunderstand the appeal of inviting the live group to record on some ofthis disc; master-skilled classical and Flamenco guitars (though Piercehim is a great player), multi-faceted keyboards that more than fill inthe gap of a non-existent bass player, and Scharin's sleek andpolyrhythmic drumming. "Nights Wave" beautifully rings withnylon-stringed guitar chords and vibes over slinky beats which set thefoundation for a heartfelt vocal exchange of loss between Pierce andM�m's Kristin Anna Valtysd�ttir, who also lends her accordion chops.This one still has me hitting the repeat button. The novelly titled"The Days Before Fiction" starts from a wall of plucked guitars, keysand vibes driven by turnaround beats only to transform into traditionalTropicallia for a spell and shift back again without disturbing a hairof the groove. Distorted, upper-register guitar chugs away againstValtysd�ttir's vocals and the bombastic, yet laid-back drums on "TheBoat Room" which gradually becomes complimented with intertwiningvibraphone. One of those discs where you hear something new with eachlisten, Bem-Vida Vontade has far too many salient points todescribe in one review. One noteworthy element about this disc isPierce and company incorporating vocals on a good chunk of this disc.With these new zealous compositions, Mice Parade appears to be leaningmore towards an edgier style of the experimental pop music that cameabout in the late 1960s, but without any pressure to defy themainstream.
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Everything on this record screams of biological energy; the music casts a shadow over the room the second it begins and, as it continues, strange flora begins to bloom from it left and right. Lee Norris' work in Metamatics has little to do with this more abstract moniker and it's of little surprise that the Lampse label has decided to make Septs Vents its inaugural release.
Lampse
First and foremost, it's a beautiful album crawling with night life; fire flies, crickets, owls, and the ominous crunch of dead limbs and old leaves populate every corner of each of these 11 tracks and though it is inviting at times, the majority of this nocturnal beast overflows with an ambient horror. When the hissing and ephemeral life becomes to dense, like a plague of locusts or any insect buzzing over a continent mindlessly, Norris loosens his approach up and allows some sunlight to creep through the dark curtains his monumental sounds can cast. Guitars of near-Spanish descent part the canopy and wooden percussion stroll along underneath creating small oases of comfort and liquid relief. Listened to as background music, Sept Vents acquires a strange flow that twists and turns uncomfortably; it's never allowed me to keep my attention elsewhere for very long and often the shifts in tempo and demeanor will draw me away from my books or from my computer. Close listens bring out a strange logic of indiscernible organic samples and immediately recognizable electronic pulses; the album doesn't exactly play itself out as a strictly electronic album, but it doesn't revel in the realm of field recording, either. The sounds are heavily processed, but remain identifiable enough to feel wholesome, frightening, familiar, or alien (sometimes simultaneously). Lampse may be another label to watch closely, if this record is any indication of its musical platform and commitment to good music, then it's likely that there will be plenty more strange worlds coming from this camp.
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microindie (US) / Fortuna Pop! (UK)
Bearsuit have a lot stacked against them,so it's surprising that Cat Spectacularmanages to succeed when it is so tempting to simply call them twee-popopportunists and move on. Part of what makes Bearsuit's debut album soenjoyable is easily summed up in the 2:57 of "Cookie Oh Jesus," whereloud, fuzzy guitars and drums take the stage only to be whisked asideby shaky trumpets, insistent tambourines, and the intertwiningmale-female vocals of Iain Ross and Lisa Horton. It's a sugar rush thatdoesn't induce tummy aches or diabetes. Elsewhere, the band let thetempos and the noise slacken, such as on the awkward shuffle of"Cherryade" and "On Your Special Day," a song about life after themachines have turned on their masters that contains the best vocalperformance from Horton who wonders "Why, why are the machines sosad?/Why must they exact such terrible revenge upon the small?" on topof Ross' yearning voice and a bed of gently plucked guitars andrecorders. Bearsuit are not poised to break any new sonic ground to besure, but that hardly matters. They have enthusiasm and charm, andwhile they have a few checks they need to write for Boyracer, Henry'sDress, and Unrest, Cat Spectacular manages to be exactly what it should be for its 29 minute duration: a fun, noisy pop record.
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- Lucas Schleicher
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Troniks/PACrec
The album consists ofthree long pieces and two shorter, these serving more as setupcompositions for the giants that follow them. "Permeating Tissue" is astrange beginning; a vacuous low-end loop cycles over a series ofatmospheric bubbles and gasps for roughly thirteen minutes- the resultisn't boredom, but a strange trance ensues that covers the rest of thealbum in a blackness only a subject like the plague could evoke. Infact, the rest of the album seems to issue a blackness that chokesevery sound Candey decided to use. "The Watchman, The Visited, and TheUnder-Sexton" might have been a medieval chant culled from an oldmonastery still sitting in the mountains of France, but instead issounds like possession, an incendiary demon ripping apart every holysymbol and fracturing the physical body until the soul begins to bleedfrom the bones. Five minutes may not register as much time for anoise-maker to establish such a vivid mood in a piece, but Candey pullsit off with grace. The sounds on the album all feel old, the static andhissing producing the effect of being in a library at times. This couldvery well have been a recording of the plague years, though thefrequent spacious elements used on the record give it a mystical air,as though a Masonic library would be far more appropriate. "FinallySilent" is the 25 minute closer and, true to its name, squelches theprevious four tracks in its size and stature. Screaming, scraping, andabsolutely dying to be released from the terror the album emanates,"Finally Silent" emasculates and devours everything, leaving a tinyquiet place in its wake that feels less like relief and more likedesperate loneliness, a tiny figure waiting to die.
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- Jonathan Dean
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Beta-Lactam Ring
City Calls Revolution is better recorded and the performances far more energetic and memorable than those on last year's He's Crying 'Look',though the band is still mining the same post-progressive rockterritory, all breathless guitar dynamics, virtuosic drumming andhistrionic, shrieking vocals. Opening track "Concrete City Breakdown"unashamedly begins with a sprinkling of spacey Korg synths and T'sheavily phased Fender Jazz bass, before opening out into aHawkwind-meets-Zappa thing, which continues for perhaps longer than itought to, but is never boring. dead k's broken English squawking isgrating until he really starts bellowing and screaming, and then it's aperfect match for the group's tireless stop-start, adrenaline-pumpedmetal meanderings. Luckily, GMFTPO isn't the sort of progressive bandthat pauses for five-minute solos on bass or drums, so things keepmoving at a breakneck clip, which is good. "OMGS" and "Demagog" [sic]are two shorter tracks sandwiched between the album's behemoth sidelongtracks, and serve as excellent showcases for the group's concise,efficient songwriting efforts, which I actually quite prefer to theirmore long-winded tracks. The trio effortlessly changes key and tempo,barreling through endless corridors of seething rock dynamism, T andA's interplay on "Demagog" at times resembling the stunning openingsequence of Yes' "Heart of the Sunrise." (I admit it, I'm a huge fan ofYes. So sue me.) Ending things off on a post-Floydian note of building,churning splendor is the 38 minutes of "A Day in the Planet Orange,"which creates a cyclical architecture of blistering guitar soloing,intense drumming and complex bass acrobatics. My patience did wear abit thin by the time the group geared up for their final ascent intothe stratosphere, but if I had been on just a little bit of kind bud,I'm sure it would all have seemed a lot more exciting. Not that youneed drugs for GMFTPO's hairy psych-prog showstoppers to make animpression, but it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt at all. - Jonathan Dean
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