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They play their songs with a perfunctory stage presence, not moving around very much, and so besides a few frenetic guitar solos, not much is missed without the visuals. I think I might be doing some injustice to seeing MEC live, such as ignoring the interplay between band and crowd and the overall fervor and excitement in the club/concert hall, but very few live albums have ever been able to capture sufficiently the combination of kinetic and potential energy at a truly compelling live performance. In order to supplement the lack of a visual element, the live album needs to record not just the energy and sound of the performer but also the crowd's energy and sound (the latter being less important since crowd chatter can be quite a detriment to the band's actual sound). Documenting these two separate energies as they intertwine and feed off one another makes the experience more palpable and real to the listener of the live album. James Brown's "Live at the Apollo" is the foremost example of a live album which perfects this blend. "Trials and Errors" is no "Live at the Apollo," but it does have a elegantly rendered and recorded Magnolia Electric Co. performance which is valuable both for the seasoned Songs: Ohia veteran and the neophyte. An estimable bootlegging culture (fully endorsed by the band) has arisen around Jason's Molina's projects over the last few years: there is an entire website dedicated to sharing of live material and it is exciting largely because there are plenty of songs in Molina's repertoire which never make it into the studio for a proper recording treatment. What Trials and Errors accomplishes is one of the better sounding recordings of a show from Brussels in 2003 featuring some Magnolia standards from 2004 as well as songs which are to be recorded for the upcoming studio full-length, What Comes After the Blues. The album works well as a promotional piece for the studio album and perhaps that was part of the reasoning behind its release. To me, however, that sounds a little too calculating for a band whose main ambition seems to be to play a lot of shows and to write a lot of songs. There are a few cuts ("Cross the Road" and "Ring the Bell") from the grand Didn't It Rain album which are comforting just to remind us that songs from the Songs: Ohia era have not been forsaken. Whereas those songs had a driving and forceful eye-on-the-prize execution on Didn't It Rain Magnolia Electric Co. give them a meandering and less straight-ahead treatment which is in line with the overall tenor of Molina's present ensemble. "North Star" and "Leave the City" are familiar to Ohia fans who heard these songs on the radio broadcast from Brussels in 2003 when Molina played them solo and stripped down to their most vulnerable, bare, and beautiful. The songs were inconceivably amazing then and since then MEC has adapted them well for the full band, adding the typical band instrumentation along with some trumpet to delicately ornament the whole presentation. Other live standards like "The Dark Don't Hide It," "Don't This Look Like the Dark," "The Big Beast" (sometimes called "The Mess We're In"), and "Almost Was Good Enough" seem to pop up at every live show the band plays and accordingly they do so here with enough aplomb but perhaps a little less excitement and vigor. Molina tacks his variation of Neil Young's "Out on the Weekend" onto "Almost Was Good Enough" almost as a preemptive strike (though issued too late) against critics who bemoan Young's influence on man. The remaining two songs are recent concoctions which have a good probability of turning up on new album. "The Last 3 Human Words" is a quiet and constant rumination recalling Bob Seger's more introspective moments, while "Such Pretty Eyes For a Snake" is a long narrative song (pre- or post-lapsarian, your choice) which climaxes aggressively and then falls asleep innocuously by the end.
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Though the LP is split into two side-long pieces, this is very much onepiece, as part one and part two sound similar. The forthcoming CDedition would benefit by combining them into one uninterrupted listen.The atmosphere here has here a lot of open space. As all music made byMirror could accompany films entirely shot in slow motion, Still Valleycontinues their consistency in vision and in excellence. Although theyare subtle, there are shifts in dynamics here, as during both partsthere are minor crescendos during the generally consistent ebb and flowof the patterns. One noticeable difference between this and other quietMirror affairs is the presence of oscillating pulses. These analogtones occasionaly accentuate the constant guitar drones, adding ashimmery quality, rather than becoming a competing element. While themusic is comparably quiet, it is still very powerful and affecting. Oneof the unique aspects of music such as this is its ability to defy thelaws of the passing of time. It's extremely difficult to tell whetherfive minutes or 15 minutes have passed while immersed in this soundworld, which adds to its appeal and prompts repeated listens. Althoughhe is more than ten years removed from his work with HNAS, it stillstrikes me as miraculous that in Mirror Heemann has since built up suchan impressive body of work based on retsraint and small gestures.HNAS's cut-up Surrealist approach was as far from the slow-moving,linear development in Mirror's work as possible. From the die-cut caton an otherwise blank olive green sleeve to the gorgeous soundscontained on the LP within, Mirror once again prove that less can bemuch more.
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The resultwould be something quite like quirky and eccentric MC Busdriver, parthip hop bohemian ("I used to be on the list of top five/ Fresh hip hopguys/ now I thaw out chicken pot pies"), angry unappreciatedBaraka-esque intellectual ("No one wants to hear me retrace my ancestryfrom a transatlantic boat cruise/ they want to hear my frantic energydiffused through pro tools") part anti-scene demagogue ("Rappers saythe darndest things you'll ever hear/ like I'm edgy and risque and Isay better luck next year") and two parts pure lyrical ability ("Idumbfound in the coffee shop/ looking like Jean Michel-Basquiat"). Fewmicrophone musicians can spit as quickly and as intelligently - theaforementioned couplets are delivered rapid fire, almost too quicklyfor the brain to process before the next obscure name-drop or poeticreference. Such has been Busdriver's claim to fame - or to the cynical,the gimmick that sustains an otherwise tired act. Either way, it's keptcoming at a steady pace: a prolific artist, Fear of a Black Tangentis Busdriver's third full-length in a little under two years. Theproduction duties are carried out admirably by several "big" (byunderground standards, anyway) names - Danger Mouse and Dadaelus amongthem, and their varied efforts — some glitchy, some jazzy- all seemwell-suited to match Busdriver's manic pace and frame of mind. But fora former battle rapper who has had significant critical acclaim andmodest (for an underground rapper, moving 20,000 units is a solidrelease) financial success, Busdriver spends far too much time bitchingand moaning. He decries the state of the industry ("Entertainmentindustries and bureaucrats/ Selling the ultimate brain freeze/ Thisyear I'm Sambo/ On the Clear Channel"), his lifestyle ("I hate my pad/I don't want to visit/ I need new brake pads on my Honda Civic") andhimself ("What kind of name is Busdriver?/ It suggests a wack allegory/that can't be justified by any background story/ I hear he sucks live/Only appeals to hipsters who dress like Russian spies"). Busdriver canrhyme all night, and no one can question his ability to do so, but bythe disc's fourth track the materialÕs run thin. How much endlessself-deprecation can a listening audience (who is supposedly beingentertained by it) be expected to withstand? Of course, the same can besaid of rock songs about love. Where Busdriver the songwriter may beserviced by moving on, Busdriver the rapper should be commended. It ishis microphone magic that keeps otherwise ancient subject matter freshand interesting, though a little diversity would have been nice,especially on a record called Fear of a Black Tangent.
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This seemed like an unexpected return toform until I checked the liner notes and discovered that these pieceswere, in fact, recorded from 1993 to 1995. To anyone familiar with thework of the duo from this period, the sounds on this LP will be veryfamiliar. Beequeen have always been extraordinarily good at creatingdusty, low-fidelity machine drones that have a grainy, organicresonance in which one can hear all manner of buried and obscuredmelodies. Their textures have a distinctly antiquated feel to them,like the penetrating buzz of a sodium streetlamp on an Amsterdam streetcorner in the late-1800s. On many of these pieces, Freek and Frans takeadvantage of the substance of tape itself, building pieces from therhythms produced by a slowly queuing cassette tape, or using thefundamental technical limitations of magnetic tape to intensify thelived-in, archival feel of much of this material. Even the name of thealbum conjured images of a long-neglected psychiatric hospital archive,full of disintegrating reel-to-reel tapes of long-forgottensignificance. "I'm Searching For Field Character" is the perfectsoundtrack to an Orwellian Room 101: a distorted voice with the weightytone of a Soviet social engineer reads aloud a block of text meant toreprogram us with revolutionary propaganda. All the while the clockticks loudly and distant air raid sirens blare. It has the effect of afrightening Cold War radio drama pulled into near-total abstraction.With interest I've tuned into the current wave of heavily hyped NewWeird American drone artists like Double Leopards and Dredd Foole, butthis brief LP by Beequeen comprised of material more than a decade oldseems fresher and more adventurous by far. Beequeen are careful not tostray too far from theme, mood and substance, so their work is alwaysenriched by the myriad symbolic associations that each listener bringsto the experience. The same cannot be said of the aforementionedartists, who often prefer to just play the same tone as loud as theycan for over an hour, as if endurance alone could prove the merit oftheir work. Aughton is a refreshing antidote to this kind ofamateurish noodling, and I highly recommend it to any who have foundthemselves disappointed by this sort of thing in the past.
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Sometimes L/A/B makes thrashing electronic hums andhorrifying factory sounds, other times their tracks sound like effectspulled from a science fiction film made in the 1950s, but theirproduction is always pure and direct. Whether or not a pulsing rhythmexists in the song or a definite effect populates the majority of thetrack, every song on Psychoacousticsis brooding, monstrous, and delivers a healthy dose of tense,atmospheric malady. To their credit, this isn't mindless noise pumpedup to maximum volume or noise so loud and intense that it borders onthe un-listenable; each song sounds carefully constructed and dedicatedto illuminating some dark and grueling scene right out of a horroranthology. After the four "noise studies" that occupy the middle of thealbum pass by, Psychoacoustics begins to illustrate some signsof continuity and blossoms with a greater range of sound sources andstructural design. "2050 ¡C" is composed of a distinct rhythm and anear-melodious bass melody until a gorgeous ringing tone fluttersbackwards and forwards over the slowly fading sounds of the percussion.It's a lovely moment on what might be taken to be an ugly recording.There's a little bit of everything on this album and, as a result, itends up being simultaneously alienating and inviting. I've listened tothe last five songs over and over again for about the last two hours,but the first half sounds a little too disconnected and unsure ofitself, as though it wanted to go somewhere but forgot how to getthere. The sounds on this album aren't as immediately deadly as somesounds on noise records can be and so it is easier to appreciate andbecome accustomed to these tracks. There's a good mix of sounds, ideas,and songs on Psychoacoustics, but it ultimately feels more likea primer to L/A/B's work and to their range of sonic output than arecord meant to be heard from beginning to end. On the other hand,those last five tracks are as addictive as can be and they alone haveimpressed me more than many other noise acts ever have within the spanof an entire discography.
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The trouble is that no one on this compilation is astranger to hip hop, as hip hop's place as the world's dominant youthculture paradigm makes a concept like this a laughable afterthoughtunless its executed with brilliance. Unfortunately, it isn't. Mosteverything here is a rehash of the last couple of years of Bip-Hop,~scape, and Force Inc. releases and the already myriad spin-offs andimitators. One track has a little bit of dub, another goes for theminimalist click and drone, another cuts up standard hip hop loops withquirky but highly predictable laptop tomfoolery—it's fairlyworkmanlike. And while not everything on the disc is a waste (in fact,a lot of the tunes are quite well-put-together,) the whole thing feelslike an excursion into the very well traveled. It's like going on anexotic vacation to the mall: you can pretend to be curious andinterested in the cultural zoo, but it's really just a bunch of peoplebuying crap and it's about as lame as imaginable. If nothing else, Teethmakes a good case for these (mostly Scandinavian) artists to break outand do their own thing. This same group of artists working with anassignment like "make electronic music from the theme of Bluegrass"would probably be at least worth checking out just to see the cultureclash. There's a lot to like about Teeth in a superficial"these are nice beats" kind of way, but it has about as deep anunderstanding of hip hop culture as a DJ scratching in a sodacommercial.
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Various piano loops are layered and layered upon each other until newmusical phenomenon emerges and echoes over the original loops.Sometimes the pieces are arranged such that the original loops are hardto distinguish and other times a solo piano part will roll through amess of muddy and claustrophobic production before being submerged innew melodies and effects. The problem with this recording isn't thatthe pieces aren't always entertaining, but that there's just too muchmusic to sit through. After the first CD is over with, much of thesecond CD sounds too redundant to be worthwhile and the crushingemptiness of these depressing sonatas becomes all-encompassing. I enjoyseveral of these tracks enough to be glad that they were released, butto unload eight pieces as heavy as these into one release is overkill.One listen to the first half of Variations...is enough to reveal a monotony that is hard to look past; listening tothe second CD only reveals the shortcomings of that monotony to agreater degree. The production is amateur at best, which isn't bad inand of itself, but the same production values appear on each track andreveal an obsession with pianos more so than a real attempt at craftinga listenable album. As a musical artifact these two collections revealthe origins of Basinski's work with loops and emphasize the emotionalweight his recordings always demonstrate. As a double album it failsdue to an actual lack of appealing variation and serious compositionalconsideration. Too much of the same thing can be ruinous and thisrelease is illustrative of that fact. One or two of these tracks wasenough to get the point across; I don't need eight to get the picture.
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Composed from a FrankensteinedNES-turned-synthesizer that I won't even try to understand or describe,the EP's central conceit is that the NES is its ONLY sound source: noeffects or processing were used to gussie it up. This adherence to anarbitrary albeit admirable formality gives the record its charm whilealso hamstringing it as a novelty. The limitations of the soundcapabilities of the NES' native sound processor mean that while thecompositions are more interesting than a lot of standard game music,they nevertheless can't sound like anything BUT game music withoverly-loud lead melodies and a sometimes grating dynamic range. NakedIntruder and Mile 329 wouldn't have it any other way though, and forthat, the record scores major points for the fun little curio that itis, and not stacked against what it 'could' or 'should' be. The musicitself is rich in melody and plays darkly against game music's usualpalette of silly, chirpy sing-songiness. It's hard not to smile wheneach track uses the exact sounds I've heard thousands of times whileblasting aliens with a flamethrower, but uses them in a new and purelymusical way. There's a surprising amount of bass in the tracks, and therhythms while stiff are about as funky as one can probably coax out ofthe Nintendo's sound chip. To cap it all off, the 3" CDR is housed in aclassic Nintendo game cartridge that's been gutted and slapped with aNaked Intruder label. Even if it's the kind of thing I only listen to ahandful of times, the NES cartridge with Naked Intruder on the spinewill be a great conversation piece for my CD collection for years, andfor $6, I can't ask for anything more.
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Ben Chasny's debut album for Drag City is the culmination of all of his work as Six Organs of Admittance up to this point. I first saw Chasny perform as Six Organs at 2002's Terrastock festival, and heard his album Dark Noontide soon after. I was struck at that time by his intuitive technique on the acoustic guitar, and the fuzzy blanket of drones that rippled underneath his extended instrumental excursions. Each release since has been stronger than the last, but every one of them seemed oddly transitional, as if Chasny hadn't yet settled on a comfortable repertoire of techniques.
While 2003's Compathia introduced Chasny's vocals and more approachably melodic pop songs, last year's expansion of The Manifestation contained two sidelong experiments in seething psychedelia and avant-folk noise. For School of the Flower, Six Organs synthesize all of these approaches into a varied and rewarding album that contains gentle folk songs, droning instrumentals, extended psychouts and unique combinations thereof. The opener "Eighth Cognition/All You've Left" begins with a noisy improvisation between Chasny's electric organ and Chris Corsano's drums, but abruptly shifts into a sweetly melancholic folk song with hazily distant vocals. Chasny's fingerpicking skills have improved by leaps and bounds since his early albums, and he now sounds as adept at composing and performing complex guitar figures as his obvious influences like John Fahey, Robbie Basho or Sandy Bull. The superlative "Saint Cloud" pits expertly picked acoustic guitar against soft, nonverbal chanting and layers of encroaching noise. "Procession of the Cherry Blossom Spirits" and "Home" are a pair of outstanding tracks that repeat this formula. Here, the stellar studio production lend a tangible presence to Chasny's guitar and the undulating textures of drone. The title track is a 13-minute bohemoth based around a hypnotic, cyclical melody that is played with trancelike repetition as Corsano reappears for an extended improvisation on percussion. The song reaches a crescendo at about the eight-minute mark, as Chasny overlays a mindbending solo on electric fuzz guitar that wouldn't sound out of place coming from space rockers Comets on Fire, of which Chasny is also a member. Six Organs pay tribute to one of its heroes, the criminally unsung Gary Higgins, with a cover of his song "Thicker Than a Smokey," which was the lead track from the singer-songwriter's 1973 Red Hash LP (unfortunately yet to be released on CD). It's a lovely song, and though no one could top Higgins' haunting rendition, Chasny captures the song brilliantly. School of the Flower is truly a great album and shows solid proof of exponential artistic growth.
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Battiato's career spans from the 1960s through the present but theoutput in the 1970s is arguably the most influential. 1970s Battiatomusic ranged from short pop tunes to drawn-out pre-prog primitive synthmelodies, and from minimal soundtracks to cut-up mayhems that obviouslyhad a strong influence on some of the best early Nurse With Woundmaterial. It's strangely appropriate, for me at least, that Volcano theBear both opens and closes the album, as it was at Aaron Moore's housethat I first heard, and was completely hooked on the Italian greatFranco Battiato. Since then, I've had Moore buy many Battiato CDs forme—since they're next to completely unavailable and undistributed inthe USA—and I have not been disappointed one bit. Moore eagerly tacklesthe task of singing in Italian on "Da Oriente a Occidente," originallyreleased on the 1973 masterpiece Sulle Corde di Aries as thepulsing vibrophone provides both the beat and main melody. It shouldcome as no surprise that modern psych-rockers Kinski, Cul de Sac, andAcid Mothers Temple can all be found on the collection, eagerly tryingtheir hand at other Battiato tunes, yet rarely do they wander faroff-course from the original tunes. Multi-instrumentalist, musicalgenius, close friend, and unashamed showoff Keith Fullerton Whitman,arguably mis-represented by his Hrvatski alias, fearlessly takes on theItalian vocals with his rendition of "Plancton," complete with flawlessacoustic guitar and nasty analogue synth playing, but even he keepsthings relatively conservative. It's not until fellow Italians Zu vs.Okapi and Jennifer Gentle that the musicians actually take a bit ofliberty with the music, each taking a more aggressive percussiveapproach, and it's probably because these people most likely know theoriginal music more inside and out than anybody else. (I'm going to sayit also helps to fluently understand language the words are in too!)Staying relatively conservative is not a bad thing in this case, as,with any luck, a collection like this could open up some new ears tothe genius of Franco Battiato. Well, we can hope anyway.
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- Kinski - Propiedad Prohibida
- Jennifer Gentle - Meccanica
- Land of Nod - Aries
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The band is Albrecht Kunze and Ekkehard Ehlers, who should beimmediately recognized as having one of the more idiosyncratic bodiesof work within experimental and electronic fields, combining everythingfrom laptop-cut classical compositions to sampledelic drone-outs, tothe occasional micro-house cut. The diversity of Ehlers' previousoutput anticipates März's music not only in the colorful andcross-pollinated nature of the songs but in the playful postmodern waythe duo borrows from its most potent pop predecessors. Few peopledidn't recognize the Nick Drake sample that opened their 2002 debut Love Streams,or the Nico samples that formed the cleverly-named "Chelsea Boys." Ason Ehlers' gorgeous reworking of the Beatles' "Good Night" from Plays John Cassavetes,März samples become more than simple allusions. Their immediacy workswithin the musicians' patient and minimal mood-building to become akind of dreamwalk through hand-picked pop history. The mood of März(German: March) is a bitter psychedelic breath, a walk in the park aswinter is starting, carried through a synthetic orchestra of lapsteel,trombone and double bass. Ehlers' superb tech-house beats guide a vocalof frosty feel-goodisms, drifting into the stylized kitsch lyrics of Love Streams, but remaining triumphant and genuinely comforting. Wir Sind Hier is März at the height of their pop enthusiasm, though stripped of Love Streams'clever appeals to pop mythology. There's even one here called "The PopSong," a perfect un-ironic crack at that golden ideal, as concise andbrilliantly catchy as anything on the band's debut, without giving upthe air of mystery surrounding them. Extroverted though it may seem, Wir Sind Hierstrives for obscurity as well, its increased production levels workingas if in spite of themselves to blend anti-pop elements like theincidental sound clatter and pastoral field recordings thatcharacterize Ehlers' solo work. His tech-house tendencies take over ona few tracks, notably "Blaue Faden," though length and repetition donot harm the album's flow or its pop sensibility. Instead theseextended reveries show Ehlers' and Kunze's talent for making simplemelody sound instantly anthemic, and the duo's willingness to exploitthis becomes part of their unique appeal. Lazy folks will call März'folk-tronica', but the group means so much more to me. Their twoalbums are some of the most essential listening from recent memory,progressive music deeply rooted in the pop tradition yet explodinghelplessly outward toward a loosely-defined, though definite future.
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