Albums and Singles

29 May 2005

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Infamous among club DJs and producers for the deep tech-house styleincubated and pushed forward by their still potent Basic Channel andMaurizio records, Germany's Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald took amost adventurous step when they departed from the dancefloor for thelabor of love known as Rhythm & Sound.
Burial Mix

Since the project'sinauguration,their sincere and passionate devotion to roots reggae hasyielded a slew of exciting and highly sought-after 10" records, thebulk of which were subsequently compiled on 1998's Showcase and 2003's astounding pair of classics With The Artists and The Versions.While the "digital" dub sound has exploded into a feverish trend amongelitist music geeks and wannabe techno-rastas, the duo managed to stayahead of the gaggle of poseurs by undertaking a massive and ongoingreissue campaign of the Bronx-based Wackies Records catalog, and yetanother imprint dubbed Basic Replay for the purpose of putting lostgems back into print. These latter efforts have afforded them atremendous amount of credibility and well-deserved respect from thetoasters they've now exposed to entirely new audiences, whichundoubtedly explains how Rhythm & Sound manage to acquire suchimpressive singers for their releases. See Mi Yah, a collectionof 11 tracks culled from their recent box set of 7" records, challengesand delights with a strong roster of vocal veterans and lesser knowntalents. The same spacey rhythm, with little variation, appears onevery song, making for an occasionally tedious listen. Thankfully, theparticipants each contribute their own stylistic flairs, from theharmonic riffing and freestyle spoken word of Koki on "Rise And Praise"to Bobbo Shanti's infectious sing-song approach on "Poor People MustWork." The legendary Sugar Minott gives a stellar and memorableperformance on "Love Is The Answer," smoothly lamenting the painfullysad state of our war-torn world while simultaneously calling for apositive personal and collective uprising in the spirit of humansalvation. Frequent Rhythm & Sound collaborator Paul St. Hilaire,perhaps best known as Tikiman, comfortably settles into the penultimate"Free For All," a lyrically simplistic yet pleasantly repetitiousgroover. The album closes with a much-desired instrumental "version" ofthe "See Mi Yah" rhythm, leaving room for new performers to make theirmark with it in Jamaican dancehalls and bedroom studios alike.

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29 May 2005

Lucas Schleicher

Albums and Singles

Mistaking this band for nothing more than an Animal Collective sideproject would be silly; it is clear that this duo has a distinctpurpose from the second "Berserker" begins: they're out to record thevoice of ghosts and the sound of the underworld.
Paw Tracks

I enjoy this recordfar more than anything else Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) has beenassociated with. It's the droning heart of Berserkerthat draws me in and the unstable flux that dominates the album'sentire flow from start to finish—it's the way the album stops soundinglike a musical piece and begins to sound more like an attempt tochannel in thoughts and feelings through the environment of soundoccurrences and strange voices that really sticks with me. Littlebabies babble away in the background, suffocated under a harsh wind ofstatic and toy keyboards, beats trample away, providing an electricvisual like a trance party as viewed through the eyes of a real child,and soft melodies repeat over and over again, providing a hypnoticaudio-mandala on which to concentrate the restless mind. Lennox and NYCDJ Scott Mou don't rely on any of the silly conventions that bands likeAnimal Collective seem to draw their inspiration from; there are acouple of Grateful Dead-like symbols featured in the album's art, butinstead of acting like some futuristic psyche-folk outfit, Jane comeacross as an inventive band filled with new ideas concerning where togo with all the electronic equipment they have at their hands. The fourtracks on Berserker fill up 54 minutes, but never do any of thetracks become tiresome, they move with a sense of intent and this iswhat removes Jane from any drone or ambient tag that they might bestuck with. As tempting as it might be to let this music settle intothe background, it is full of small details that wouldn't be caughtunless the ear was really paying attention to all the movementsfloating underneath the synthesized and sustained buzzes or fluttersthat, at first listen, seem to stand above everything else on therecord. Each song has distinct movements and each movement fitsseamlessly with the next. Eventually the distinction of separate piecesof music slips away and Berserker begins to sound likesomething of a concept album, which it isn't. It's just the consistencyand overall mood that this record exudes working its magic throughrepeated listens.

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29 May 2005

Chris Roberts

Albums and Singles

Sanddollars, serving as an extended teaser for Why?'s Septemberfull-length, is easily Anticon's most agreeable record of the year todate. In fact, so much of it is so poppy—and at times (gasp!) radiofriendly—that it arouses suspicion. Is Sanddollars here just tomove units, swelling label coffers and providing funding for the nextworlds'-most -abrasive rap record?

Anticon

It's not that Anticon is forbiddenfrom or incapable of releasing a pleasurable disc—13+God comes to mind,and that was just last month—but Sanddollars's eight tracks areso pleasantly arranged, breezily instrumentalized and playfullydelivered that I can hardly be blamed for suspecting foul play. Thelikability does come at a cost: some substance seems to have beensacrificed along the way. Though Yoni Wolf and bandmates are masters oftheir sound—and a notable sound at that, coming to us via turntables,keys and keyboard effects, samplers, strings as well as stringedinstruments and maybe even a medieval woodwind—Wolf's songwritinghardly reaches the heart of the matter, barely showing a hint of hispoetic ability ("and they've been givin me a thousand bucks to sing myautobiography/ but they're not givin a flying fuck about mymeloncholisty"). At times Wolf tends to drone on, singing aimlesslyabout arguing on Internet message boards and only being famous on theunderground; accessible and inoffensive but coming very close topedestrian. The title track is the best-constructed pop song and themost bubblegum friendly, with slick piano bridges, a "ooo-ooh" chorusand little intrinsic meaning. Fans of Oaklandazylum, despair not: Sanddollarsis not all saccharine and polish. The dark and fast paced 500Fingernails gets a little creepy; Vice Principal, anchored by vocalscoming over a public-address-system delivering cliched adonishments,provides goofy comic relief. But shining through it all is Yoni Wolf'sskill as a composer. Where his poetry borders on the bland or evenfrivolous his music is there to save the day, cancelling out allcliches or unimportant ramblings with sweet hooks andbeautifully-phrased melodies and rescuing Sanddollars from irrelevance. On the whole, Sanddollarsproves to be a delightfully-written miniature collection of tunes thatwill raise expectations and bolster anticipation for Why?'s upcomingfull-length.

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29 May 2005

Administrator

Albums and Singles

The Hafler Trio's latest EP for Important is pretty much as expected ofthe series: one twenty minute piece of Andrew McKenzie's patentedatmospherics. The piece starts off with some soft metallic harmonics,sounding like heavily treated guitar strings.
Important

As it progresses lowfrequency hums and whistle-like feedback enter the mix. None of thisgoes anywhere, the piece is stagnant and sounds more like someoneimpersonating McKenzie rather than the man himself. While I enjoy hiswork, he isn't making much progress with Being a Firefighter.Each of the previous releases from Important built on each other andhad their own little quirks, however this EP doesn't cover as much newground as the others. It sounds like the typical tinnitus and chimes ofthe earlier releases but Being a Firefighter never reaches theintensity of these earlier releases. While it works fine as ambiencewhile pottering around the house, the other EPs from this series wouldare commanding enough to force an intense listening. Usually McKenzie'swork makes better use of sound using phasing and volume as tools and itis here that Being a Firefighter falls down. There is nothinghere to make me want to listen to it more than a couple of times. Ofcourse the CD is beautifully packaged in the usual style, silk screenedcard sleeve and a 3" CD embedded in the clear plastic of a regular 5"CD. I expect little else but perfection from The Hafler Trio and Being a Firefighter falls just short of his high standard.

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Being a Firefighter isn't Just About Squirting Water

29 May 2005

Jim Siegel

Albums and Singles

Any producer that samples dialogue from the film Fear And Loathing In Las Vegasscores big points in my book. The line in question, in which thejournalist/protagonist Dr. Gonzo is ruminating on the joy and irony of"running a savage burn on one Las Vegas hotel and then just wheelingacross town and checking into another" captures the spirit ofHellfish's hardcore techno perfectly.
Planet Mu

Hellfish has made a career out ofwreaking havoc on classic rap tunes, often fusing entire vocal trackswith stomping, distorted four on the floor kick drums. A case in pointis album opener "U Don't Quit," during which he presents an entirelyunaltered old school hip-hop beat, only to transform it into athrobbing straight ahead 4/4 hardcore track at the 40 second mark.Transformations such as this are one of Hellfish's best tricks, as thesampled vocal that ties these two together makes the transition fromearly 80's to 2005 seem effortless, and ultimately places the music ina timeless dimension. One Man Sonic Attack Force benefits frombeing mostly comprised of new tracks and hard-to-find remixes, unlikehis previous Planet Mu CDs which have been mostly made up of tracksreleased on his own Deathchant label. Any track that gets the Hellfishremix treatment, such as Manu Le Malin's "Big Bald Fuck" and The SpeedFreak's "Iron Hand," instantly becomes of a piece with his originalcompositions, making the album a cohesive listen. While his tracksalmost always feature sampled dialogue and other embellishments, hisrapid-fire beat programming always remains the focus. The first minuteof "Iron Hand" features a man recounting countless crimes overinstantly recognizable chunks of Carl Douglas's "Kung Fu Fighting," butthis is merely an intro. For the remaining four minutes Hellfish getsdown to business, with bits of said disco hit used merely to accentbeats that pound away at lightning speed. The samples are silly but hisfierce, pummeling rhythms save the project from simply being anexercise in novelty. "Gettin' Paid 40r Doin' Shit" is brilliant in it'sabsurdity. Rumbling beats are interrupted by the voice of a manuttering the title in a way that sounds as if he is on the verge offalling asleep mid-sentence. The balance of ferociousness and fun iswhat makes this album such a pleasant listen. The rhythm-and-nonsenseapproach that Hellfish is an expert at is perfect for a futuristicdance party, albeit one at which the participants have boundless energyand are prepared to pogo all night at 180 BPM.

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29 May 2005

Administrator

Albums and Singles

As the members of Adult reconfirmed in last week's episode of The Eye,New York City is excessively clique-driven, obsessed with scenes,exclusivity and over-categorization. Nowhere is this more obvious thanin the current wave of so-called "Brooklyn Noise" artists, a group thatis said to include bands as various and sundry as Black Dice, Gang GangDance, Animal Collective and Excepter, among others.

Load

As usual, thereductiveness with which these bands have been grouped together by theelite contingent of music critics thus far has led to a lot ofgeneralization that is unfair to the artists involved. Instead of justtalking about how the music actually sounds, we are expected only totalk about how this fits into a larger movement, or exploit the musicand aesthetics for some political end. For bands like Excepter, thisapproach just doesn't fly. Not only do they sound significantlydifferent, Excepter have a longer history than most of the other bandsgrouped under the "Brooklyn Noise" heading.

Excepter is the brainchildof John Fell Ryan, a former member of the No Neck Blues Band, whobrings with him from his former collective a canny sense ofimprovisational dynamics. Ryan and the four other members of Exceptercreate a unique brand of improvised electronics that does not dependupon laptops and preprogrammed, post-techno routines, but rather on acommunal, ritualistic idea of music slowly coalescing and emerging fromgroup play. Their live performances are truly unique events, throwingtense Throbbing Gristle energy together with Berliniamsburgelectroclash posturing, extended krautrock jams with druggy shoegazerrock, beatific ambient washes of sound with eruptions of paint-peelingnoise and clunky analog chatter.

Their first full-length KA was a very impressive debut album, and their newly released follow-up Thronesshows that the band is not through tinkering with their sound. Wherethe first album was eclectic and mercurial from track to track, Thronescreates a mood and chases it to its conclusion, never straying too farfrom the path. As such, it's something more of a trudge than KA,and some will not have the patience for the full journey. But it is arewarding listen, a trance-inducing combination of analog pulses,looped samples, fractured drum machines, swirling guitar noise, fieldrecordings and echoplexed male and female vocal wails lost in amaelstrom of reverb. It's rather more insistently dark than itspredecessor, in contrast to the bright ocean paradise pictured on thesleeve.

The title is a Biblical reference to one of Daniel's moreapocalyptic and prophetic dreams: "I beheld till the thrones were castdown, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose...throne [was like] thefiery flame, [and] his wheels [as] burning fire." The music doesjustice to this hallucinatory prophecy, creating an environment abuzzwith eerie, cavernous echoes from a hazily envisaged future calamity,voices yawning back into the void, swirling and cracking apart in thebrutal crashing sound waves. If Excepter continue to evidence the samewillingness to experiment with and expand their soundworld, they couldvery well have as long and distinguished a career as the No Necks, andperhaps some day critics won't find it necessary to pigeonhole themalong with their NYC contemporaries.

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29 May 2005

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This is, by far, the best record Keith Fullerton Whitman has released. Playthroughswas an album of electronic, fuzzy bliss and his two most recent EPswere introductions to musical accomplishments Whitman had never shownbefore.
Kranky

They were searching, historical, and sometimes dark releasesthat showcased an ability to create excellent music on a number oflevels. Multiples comes across as a merging of everythingWhitman has done up to this point, but does not sound like a simplemingling of styles that have already been explored. Subtitled Stereo Music for Acoustic Electric and Electronic Instruments,the entire album fluctuates between manipulated live sounds, beautifulmusical bits generated by experimental equipment, and dreamlike, unrealsoundscapes. At times dark, at times wholly engrossing in its sleepyhappiness, the album falls out of the speakers like a blanket; itenvelops the world in a shadow and then slowly begins to vibrate, wave,and shake in a series of ghostly shudders and choral hums. By the timemore recognizably musical elements come into play there's already atangible mood in the room; it's not entirely comfortable, but therolling clockwork of "Stereo Music for Yamaha Disklavier Prototype (5),Electric Guitar and Computer (3)" acts like a salve and begins to stripaway the frightful anticipation that was building before it. Some ofWhitman's most directly gorgeous work is on this disc. His use ofmelody and synthetic washes of sound is top notch—there's never awasted moment or movement. One song will often wash into the next,confusing any sense of time or arrangement and focusing more on effectand feelings. Whitman's music may be intimidating on some levels;there's a certain amount of intellectual work behind every one of hisreleases, but that is not this album's most prominent feature. Whathe's managed to do is combine his relentless quest to produce new andinteresting music via new (or old) and interesting technology withspirit. Not to say his previous records have been lacking life, butthis record is so perfectly seamless, such an ear-catching, musicalalbum that it outshines and, at least at first, covers up all theintricate work that went into making it. This is not an album to listento solely because it was made in an interesting way or has someacademic value (even though it may have such value); this is an albumto listen to because it is unlike anything else in the world andbecause it is an outstanding and lovely cut of musical bliss.

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29 May 2005

Lucas Schleicher

Albums and Singles

Honey Owens of Jackie-O Motherfucker, Paul Dickow of Strategy andFontanelle, and Brian Foote, also of Fontanelle, form a bio-organicunit filled to the brim with all manner of exotic sounds and strangeinteractions. Combining sequenced and processed composition with liveand acoustic elements, this trio flies back and forth between jazzy,dub-influenced sounds, punk attitude, and spacious, dark atmosphereshighlighted by Owens' seductive voice.
Kranky

The slippery and secretiveinsertion of sounds recalls the allure of film noir, smoky environmentsspattered with characters whose lives are too dark to relate in any wayother than knowing glances and sunken faces. The energy found in songslike "My New Youth" is bright and spastic, with guitars and keyboardswailing to the frantic pulse of a drummer who has just learned how totreat his feet and hands as separate entities. The soul beyond all ofthese songs speaks volumes about how this record feels: it's afree-for-all combining libido and force with silky curves, jarringjuxtapositions, and the seedy feeling of walking through a red-lightdistrict. Listening to "Classic Mode," I was quite sure that I wasgoing to be in for the electronic pop record of my life; Owens' singingis stunning when supported by this sort of wind-swept percussion andsparkling string work. This song is worth the album alone, but Nudgerefuse to stay still, never giving in to their own charms and lettingthe life of the instruments move them instead of the opposite. It'shard to imagine any of these melodies being any different than theyare, their force and persuasion is perfect in almost every aspect. Iremember hearing that electronic music can't have any soul and that, attimes, it was too robotic to be anything close to human. I know thisalbum isn't entirely electronic, but the band's use of electronictrickery is so well applied to the entire album that Cached feels like a living testament that any such statement can't possibly be true.

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29 May 2005

Andrew Culler

Albums and Singles

As much as I love the Hammond organ, there are few contexts in which Ican enjoy it. The instrument is so singular, its timbre so unique andpowerful, that I find it only works in positions of dominance, wherethe music's other parts are either entirely supplemental in nature orbarely there at all. Eric Malmberg's first group, the late Sagor &Swing, featured his Hammond as a foundation instrument in theirpop-length pastoral motifs, but I could never gain the access to theband's music that I wanted.
Häpna

The condensed nature of their songs, andthe organ's drum-major role, always made Sagor, despite the music'saccessibility-especially for an instrumental act, seem too decorative,too thin for my tastes. Den gåtfulla människan,Malmerg's first solo release, is, in contrast, all I could have hopedfor: a wonderful organ-only record stretching Sagor's moody miniaturesinto spacey atmospheric tracks of retrograde sci-fi charm and confidentfilmic vision. The artist's organ settings look back to some of PopulVuh's more sedentary moments and capture the same dreamy nostalgia andprimordial quality through a similar mastery of subtle melody and moodsuggestion. According to Häpna, every sound here is organ-generated,which must somehow include the metronomic drum-machine that groundssome of the longer tracks. I am more impressed by the ambient orincidental harmonies that Malmberg manages through lateral pilings ofnon-distinct organ haze and swirling phase effects. I'm reminded ofBjörn Olsson's solo works which also function organ-centrically andaccomplish a similar retro aesthetic without granting it the full depthof the music. It's as if these musicians tap into universals ofstructure and mood existing as psychic constants, so as to always sounddated yet at the same time not. This music could as easily function asscore to a Disney film as to a Herzog; it is as direct and as opaquecompletely, special and not just for organ-lovers.

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29 May 2005

Jonathan Dean

Albums and Singles

I wish more people knew about this group, as they are often brilliant,and far more consistent than a lot of bands who get way more press. TheMagic Carpathians began as a side-project of Polish progressive bandAtman, but since 1998 the group has become the primary outlet for themusic of Anna Nacher and Marek Styczynski.
Vivo

Their releases as TMC haveranged in character from vocal-driven, subterranean avant-rock toexperiments in instrumental ethno-drone, ritualistic tribal music andindigenous Easter European folk forms. The element that has remainedconsistent throughout all of the work is Anna and Marek's ceaselessquest for boundary-less, transcultural psychedelia; locating hiddenconnective currents of drone, rhythm and hypnotic melody in music drawnfrom strikingly disparate locales. I much prefer their drone-heavy Ethnocore series of albums to their more skeletal, song-driven work exemplified by albums like Ksiega Utopii and last year's Euscorpius Carpathicus;I really admire their songs, it's just that I prefer the dense,textural qualities of their ethnic drone work. In answer to my prayers,it seems, the Carpathians have inaugurated a new series of releasessubtitled Ethnoise that seek to synthesize both of the group's approaches into a complex whole. Sonic Suicidematches Anna Nacher's possessed vocal workouts with long passages ofthick, vibratory trance music, extended kraut-jazz freakouts and gentleKarpaty folk. Adding to this newfound eclecticism are several tracksrevisiting the third-eye psychedelic guitar workouts familiar fromAtman's heyday, and a few tracks that utilize a specially builtsynthesizer to create devastating squalls of analog noise and ripplingwaves of drone. This might be the best Magic Carpathians album yet, asits got something for everyone, and yet the whole album still feelsvery much of a piece. In "The Place I Come (Second Take)," Anna Nachersings in English and Polish with a visceral energy that variouslyrecalls Patty Waters, Yma Sumac and Renate Knaupt, against a tenselyfunky jazz-rock backdrop filled to bursting with chattering synths,vocal multitracking and swooping, psychedelic effects. Anna's vocalsare intense, spitting out apocalyptic couplets which a Polish friendhelped me translate: "Our palms are opening and we believe/Life iswaiting for us/The broken glass/We believe in seven/I don't knowanymore." The song fades out to a field recording of Moroccan streetmusic. "Carpathian Herbs" is a descent into a dark tangle of lysergicnoise, a nearly 15-minute track that journeys through deeply fucked-upmental corridors, layering all manner of loops and samples into abubbling cauldron of noise that all makes some sort of terribledream-sense. At times, the music is so filled with sonic detail andlayers of samples, field recordings, synthesizers, backwards-trackedmelody and a breathtaking array of instrumentation from around theglobe, it's difficult to concentrate attention on one particularelement. The net effect is frequently stunning, however, assuring thisalbum an early spot on my year-end best list.

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29 May 2005

Chris Roberts

Albums and Singles

Boston beat nerd Edan's second full length Beauty and the Beatis, appropriately titled, a hip hop fairy tale, a record with b-boycredentials and otherworldly destinations. Before he heard Straight Outta Comptonand converted to the church of rap, the former Berklee College of Musicattendee wielded guitars and grooved to Woodstock-era rock, folk andpsychedelic records.
Lewis Recordings

And it shows: the music on Beauty and the Beatis undeniably old-block hopping funky hip hop music, but comprised ofmostly samples from trippy 60s and 70s space and acid rock and suchlikeinstead of the usual jazz and R&B blend: David Gilmour instead ofDavid Axelrod. It works, in part, due to Edan's simplicity (or is itjust ease?) when it comes to making music. Much of Beauty and the Beatis just a simple three-part loop with some shifty sampling stapled to awhimsical, rapidly and steadily cadenced and often esoteric rhyme flow.But something—be it the incredibly energetic pace (the 13 tracks speedby with Edan or a partner spitting nearly the whole time), theaforementioned unusual source-material or the contemporary GeorgeMartin-like freewheeling production—makes the music subtly sublime in afunky and bizarre way. Making a hip hop record while utilizing a scantnumber of percussive sounds is perhaps Edan's greatest triumph on Beauty.He raps over a barely-audible snare and drum line from what could be aVelvet Underground record, something that conventional bass-cannon-bredMCs could barely hear, let alone flow on. He loses the audience onoccasion, but only with his obscure references andstream-of-consciousness attention span; bombastic b-boy couplets like"I work with the aesthetic of a brain medic/ Cutting up the reels withcrystal shards to make a tape edit" work best, even when uttered over astrangely minimalist but downright "groovy, man" loop with barely abeat to rap on. It's as distinctive-sounding a hip hop record as I'veheard lately and yet feels like its comprised of strangely familiarsounds, none of which I could never identify. It's far out, G.

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