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She is wise to realize that there is something painfully cathartic in exorcising these demons, voicing the cries of the dispossessed, palpably invoking their spirits. Diamanda Gal? forges a blood pact between audience and performer, calling up sorrow and anger from her deepest emotional reserves and fearlessly exposing them. For her new solo operatic work Defixiones: Will and Testament, Gal? could not have chosen a subject more obscure or meaningless to Western listeners — the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides carried out by Turkey between 1914 and 1923 — but the varied texts she has chosen, the haunting musical settings and, most importantly, her forceful and emotive delivery vividly evoke this forgotten moment in history. The double album is packaged with a hardcover book which contains the libretto, drawn from various texts by an impressive array of authors including Armenian poet Siamanto, French poet Henri Michaux, Syrian poet Adonis, Romantic poet Gerard de Nerval and Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. This multilingual patchwork of texts, some dealing specifically with the Turkish bloodshed and some only suggesting the same outrage, sadness and psychological terror, forms a compelling narrative flow from the hysterical anguish of the 13-minute opener "The Dance" to the painful resignation of the concluding "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean." Diamanda's stunning four-octave instrument attacks this material with amazing technical and emotional virtuosity, transforming from a quavering falsetto to a throaty growl in a matter of seconds, enforcing the primacy of her moving drama, effortlessly referencing Greek liturgical music, American blues and Middle Eastern vocalizations. Upon listening to the first track, I was completely transfixed and listened to the entire two hours plus of Defixiones in one sitting. Her seductive performance creates a violent historical shadowplay for the mind that feels all too relevant to our times; the sentiments so universal that she could just as well be singing about the horrors of the Civil War, the ethnic cleansing of the Third Reich, the bombing of Hiroshima or the rape of Nanking. Diamanda Gal?' electrifying work is entirely without peer in the contemporary scene. Her avant-garde exorcisms of plagues, madness and despair sound simultaneously ancient and modern, allegorical yet viscerally direct, elusive and immediate, and Defixiones: Will and Testament should be required listening for anyone who has ever felt the pull of human history's dark chambers beckon.
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Her dissection of the familiar musical tropes of the Blues is absolutely spellbinding, grasping onto a thousand phantom spirits as her voice quivers, pokes and penetrates each precisely enunciated syllable. John Lee Hooker's "Burning Hell" is transformed into cubist Blues — a fragmentation and reassembling of the song that lays bare all of its emotional truth, drains its blood and leaves it for dead. Her "cabaret grotesque" performance on a pair of Screamin' Jay Hawkins songs — "Frenzy" and the perennial "I Put A Spell On You" — is an absolute joy to behold. Her own composition "Baby's Insane" from The Sporting Life (the collaboration with John Paul Jones), is sweet but deadly. The free jazz vocalizations on her cover of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" recall the unhinged improvs of avant-jazz screamer Patty Waters. In Diamanda's hands, the country melancholy of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" becomes a terrifying, multidimensional shriek of pain, regret and despair. Perhaps the most beguiling and transcendent of all the songs on La Serpenta Canta is the heartrending version of Diana Ross and The Supremes' "My World Is Empty Without You," with its distorted piano rumblings and Diamanda's dynamic vocals alchemizing the true essence of the song's fragility and pain. Like Nico's haunting The Marble Index, Gal?' beautiful collection of post-apocalyptic torch songs shines darkly with ravishing beauty and a haunting sense of loneliness that threatens to surround my heart completely.
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The art of the sound collage and drone music has a group of key members. Mirror, Christoph Heemann, Andrew Chalk, William Basinski, and perhaps just a few more are known and loved and create music that invokes images from other worlds; be those images frightening, sublime, or esoteric, it is impossible to deny their visceral impact. Andrew Liles has been added to that list of elusive and wonderful musicians with this release.
From the first moment All Closed Doors submerges me into a universe I'm unfamiliar with and perhaps slightly scared of. Furniture drifts through the air, children laugh and disappear down long hallways, shadows scream and laugh at eachother when there is nothing to cast them, and the echo of something ancient pours down over me in the form of a vacant sky. The impact of Liles' sound worlds on this disc is unavoidable, his imaginative and spectral cadences whisper and glide through the air in ways that effect the brain; scary stories are told without the aid of a voice, heaven spills over from the speakers into the room even though such a thing is unthinkable. There's a strange light that bounces and reflects off of everything in this world; there are oceans of singing fish and mountains bellowing their hate onto the helpless below. I can't stop coming up with images, it's as if my mind is flooded with an invisible light that forces it into overdrive, into a creative process that can't stop, that wouldn't stop if the album didn't end. Very rarely do I find an album so immediate and compelling as this; I often have butterflies while listening to it. It is perhaps the equivalent of a sexual release extened over fifty minutes of sound. None of the overtly sexual material from Liles' Aural Anagram/Anal Aura Gram is here, but there's that mysterious and ancient something looming over the whole of this release. It's a tension that can't be avoided, a physical tension created in the presence of an erotic and secretive resonance. 
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310 are back with a new album for Leaf that sees them taking a turn that may leave fans of their previous work out in the cold. It's always good to see artists making strides and tackling new challenges with their work, even when they are primarily working from a relatively accessible base as 310 are. However, 310's new direction seems to be one aimed at a larger audience, and as such suffers from an awkward directness.
Processional finds the group adding vocals to their established aesthetic of slow beats, smooth basslines and melancholy. The result is a record rooted much more in the pop tradition than their previous outings, and to some degree the familiarity of pop music dulls the edge. The album is slickly produced and has a clear, separated sound that other indie downtempo producers often strive for but fail to achieve; this could be major label material if it was trying. While much of the album is still instrumental, I can't help but come back to the vocal-rooted tracks as the ones that define the album's tone, mood, and direction. The instrumental pieces are nicely constructed and layered with bits of real-world ambiance, guitar, and polite rhythm programming but they never rise and fall with dynamics enough to make them especially memorable when they are placed up against the songs with singing. Whenever a human voice takes over, the songs seem more fully realized and the interaction of various sounds and timbres seems more deliberate. The album's more melodic and 'songy' moments are finely crafted and could be prime examples of a new kind of electronic pop music that inherits the sincerity and feel of synth pop pioneers without mining old records for ironic cues. However, despite the space-age production, dead-on playing, attention to detail, and obvious sincerity that 310 has for this material, it still feels at times a little flat. This is Pop Noir being created by able hands, but as with so many artists who make the leap from instrumental work to songs with singing, the vocal material overwhelms the rest and it all fails to fit into a smooth whole. Andrew Sigler croons more than sings over tracks with enough melodrama that it is sometimes difficult to listen to him without picturing a disaffected lounge singer in a velvet tuxedo. The Robin Guthrie-esque guitar is terrific in the background of "Pacific Gravity (Vocal Version)" but the voice pulls me out of the song too often. I'd love to hear this record without the few vocal tracks to see how it would flow as a pure instrumental, but that's not the record that 310 made.
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- Shadow Traffic
- Moving Platform
- Pacific Gravity (vocal version)
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Blue Star/Merge Parlour, the last in Lexicon Devil's series of F/i reissues is less essential than Winter only because it pales in comparison to previously re-released pieces of the F/i catalog, notably the full lengths What Not Now??Alan! and Space Mantra;however, like the Boy Dirt Car reissue, this disc goes beyond anostalgia trip or an attempt to cash in on recent trends. F/i wereentirely unique in their ability to rock as hugely as the greatEuropean psych bands, while sounding at the same time like a very exactproduct of the Midwestern wasteland. All the bombast and ascension intheir often sprawling songs feels tempered by layers of gloom andsuburban malaise; any futurism comes with an equivalent expression ofdisdain for an automated, static culture. The F/i sound could bedescribed as industrial psychedelic, with most songs taking off onrepetitive, kraut-influenced grooves and then treated to a healthyglossing of dirty space-age electronics. A clear touchstone would beearly Chrome, but F/i is less claustrophobic, more prone to slip intothe trance-inducing drone epics than barbed sci-fi theatrics. Theirapproach can feel tired at times, and is certainly more successful onthe aforementioned albums, but this disc includes some of the band'sgreat moments too, like the hard, swinging psych of "Blue Star,"sounding like Guru Guru blasted through a silo, or "Om Twenty-One,"where guitars fizzle and bend around grossly modulated synth tones likea punker's homemade homage to Ligeti's 2001 score. Merge Parlour,F/i's three-song side from a split with Vocokesh, shows the band movingin an increasingly electronic direction. "Pleasure Centres/The Beach,"the standout track from the split, and the best song here, is one ofthe most intense and abstract F/i songs ever, with steady torrents offeedback and distorted samples forming the backdrop for more of thefamiliar guitar squeal, waves of industrial percussion, and droningsynths. That the band's original lineup dissolved quickly after Merge Parlourproves they must have had excuses other than a stagnancy in the music.Lexicon Devil has done a nice job with these reissues, sticking to theoriginal material and liner notes without weighting them down withextraneous crap (my guess is there was more than enough). If anyone isto be canonized, it will happen, as it should, by merit of the musicalone.
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If you've never heard of Milton Mapes, it's no big surprise. Just don't show up to their live gigs expecting to find Milton: the band takes their name from lead singer/songwriter Greg Vanderpool's grandfather. Their songs are straight from the dustbowl heartache fused with a country-rock sensibility that any bartender in a small town saloon would be glad to have playing on the jukebox.
Theirs are songs not about people or places or situations, just the moments that we all go through in our lives as we strive to find that perfect place to belong. Together with stalwart Roberto Sanchez and a host of guest musicians, Vanderpool spins his songs into a golden second album, easily sticking on the mind and in the heart. The album opens rather slow and deceivingly on "Great Unknown," a somber note about giving it all up to look for the love you've never had. On the next track, betrayal takes over, and for a moment it sounds like a veiled threat: "maybe you're gone, ready or not/maybe you're here, maybe you're not." The harmonica and pained vocal over a crunch Wilco had but lost almost do it alone, but the harmony on the second verse just slays. In fact, the album settles in for a good six songs of perfection before it hits a misstep, and even then the song in question ("Palo Duro") isn't so much bad as it just sounds like filler to make up time before the next great song kicks in. It does and they do on "This Kind of Danger" and "The Sad Lines," my favorite song of recent memory from an artist I've never heard before now. Milton Mapes, you see, is as much a character as he is a namesake, and his integrity, weakness, loneliness, and history are all over Westernaire. This time in his shoes is a ride of ups and downs, and I hope there's more tales in this vein saved up for next time.
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This is a weird and psychadelic EP from Ian Masters (Pale Saints) andMark Tranmer (Gnac) that fits almost nowhere in my record collectionbut is still somehow intriguing. Wingdisk combine simple drum machinepatterns with hanging, wistful synth chords to create obvious, almostnaive arrangements for Masters to sing over. Everything sounds veryhome-recorded and it joyfully spits in the face of the trendy laptopproduction that almost anyone else would have put these songs through.The songs are all stitched together with location recordings of publicplaces in Japan which to Western ears makes them all sound a little oddand out of place. I imagine the duo couped up in a Tokyo hotel Lost In Translation-styleand recording a handful of simple jams that were later sequenced intothis EP. I'm sure it didn't go down that way, but that's what isinteresting about this release. For all of its composers previousexperience with making bigger records, this seems like a deliberatelyleft-field, tiny record meant to be enjoyed by only the smallest circleof friends. It shares a reluctance to be categorized with later HisName Is Alive material and at times sounds like the work of a couple ofhigh-school friends trying their hand with a four-track tape recorder.For that mystery alone, it's worth a listen.
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The NYer privilege of being able to see a zillion interesting shows onany given night has always made me jealous, but rarely so much as itdid when Painkiller was resurrected for a couple of nights with HamidDrake on drums earlier this year. Thankfully, the Japanese havereleased the next best thing on this pair of CDs: an hour and a half ofPainkiller's fatter, funkier brother, the terribly-named Buck JamTonic. The two discs make a neat set: the first was mixed by drummerTatsuya Nakamura, while the second features three Bill Laswellinterpretations of the same sessions. An obvious result is that there'ssome overlap of source material between the discs (see the samples of"Nu," from the Tokyo mix, and "Tzu," from the New York mix), but whereNakamura's tracks are rough-sounding little nuggets of rock, Laswell'sare denser epics that build and ebb dramatically (across a widerspectral range, too) over the course of 20 or 30 minutes. Furtheringthe variety, John Zorn actually played alto and soprano sax that day instead of just honking, and Laswell pulled out some monstrous "boWAAAAAAAOW" noises to really get the blood flowing; the effect is a lot like the ugly muscle of Execution Ground, only with way peppier drumming. Hearing it through two different sets of ears gives BJTsome replay value beyond its fist-pumping qualities, too, so it's morethan just a replacement for a concert experience. Get past the awfulname and hideous cover, and there's plenty to enjoy.
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Intr_version continues its winning streak with the fourth release fromunclassifiable French-Canadian maverick Ghislain Poirier, showing himmoving more towards a pure hip-hop sound, while keeping a foot firmlyplaced in the minimal, beautifully melancholic electronica that filledearlier releases like his 12k debut. Conflicts,however, is more a product of contemporary politics than any logicalprogression for the artist himself. Of the twelve tracks, only threeinclude rapping, but the entire disc bears urgent witness to a seriesof protests, struggles, and reconstructions. Poirier's music has neverbeen texturally complex, working instead through the juxtaposition of afew bold layers to create absorbing, cinematic spaces, but where beforea calm, meditative mood was achieved, Conflicts is anxious andpensive. On almost every song, thick, unadorned breaks take theforeground, often lacking more than one or two accompanying layers.Poirier's sonic palette has taken a turn towards grittier, more tactilesounds, like groaning feedback and plodding double bass. The hollowresonance of a plucked bass-note could represent the whole of Conflicts,not thematically vacant, but a record that, on the contrary, suggeststhe bombed-out spaces of the industrial skeleton on its cover. Hooksand melodies emerge in fragmented form and feel barely afloat on thethin strains of stringed instruments and feedback whines that createthe rarely comforting backdrop of most tracks. The album's lyrics areoutwardly political, something obvious to even the non-French speaker,and Poirier's delivery is unique; half spit and half spoken, his wordsare as confrontational as they are musical. The most impressive partsof Conflicts, though, are the instrumentals covering the disc'ssecond half. Poirier has a thing for off-kilter beats that skip around,hitting and missing, but he uses them in a way that is never overkill,managing to keep focus on the physicality of the beat itself withoutslipping into self-parody. He also loves to send rhythms, and entiresongs, sliding arbitrarily into silence, only to bring them staggeringback out for a big finish, a habit made possible by the rich and oftenformless nature of his backgrounds. From a few layers of droningfeedback, Poirier is able to construct an elaborate cradle for therhythms that front each piece, creating music that sounds at times likethe high frequency squeal of Nurse with Wound's Soliloquy for Lilith,put to a skipping backbeat. If Steven Stapleton is really consideringhip-hop for his new direction as he claims to be, he might do worsethan check in on Poirier for some inspiration.
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I sometimes like music that floats effortlessly from drone to post-rockknob twiddling to electronic beats of fancy, all over the same album,and still makes it seem normal, like it isn't driven by some mentalillness or other after all. Twelve's First Albumis exactly that kind of record, custom designed to infect the brain andnever let go, and for the most part it accomplishes this noble, perhapsimpossible, goal. In quite possibly the trippiest framework since theself-titled For Carnation album of three years ago, Twelve moveeffortlessly from genre to genre without so much as a breath of freshair. Six.By Seven's Chris Olley is the brainchild of the proceedings,bringing along vocalist Tee Dymond and Six.By's drummer Chris Davis tofill it all out. The album starts with a twenty-four guitar drone trackof stunning but simplistic beauty before settling in to the slow coreepic "Talkin About." Clocking in at over eleven minutes — though itdoesn't ever feel like it — the track starts off quiet enough buteventually soars in two glorious crescendos of guitars and programmedstrings. A lovely, earnest beginning; then, it all just goes awry, butnot in a bad way. "Travelin' Light" is funk bass electronic madnesswith a bit of drone mixed in that sets the album on its ear, and thepolyrhythmic wonder of it all takes over half the record. The slow rockreturns on "Never Let You Go" and "Now," but this record belongs to thegrind and grit of the programmed tracks. It's a complete record,there's nothing missing, and a combination of the styles might havemade it all implode. Flawed though this may seem, it serves the recordperfectly for a solid debut that previous work merely hinted at if atall.
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With a name dually inspired by Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows and a sudden, tragic drop in seratonin levels, 400 Lonely Things is clouded in a nebulous haze of sadness, brought on by doubt, aggravated by melancholy. The beautifully packaged limited edition LP of the debut album offers no information on the instrumentation or personnel involved in its creation. The idea, I suppose, is to isolate the listener in the same way the artist imagines himself isolated.
The cover artwork shows a badly drawn, dejected cartoon dog sloppily torn from a newspaper, sitting in the middle of a giant lacquered wood plaque. I can't think of a sadder image, really. The 18 brief songs on the LP feel as if they were all conceived and created in solitude, like a slightly less neurotic, slightly more talented Jandek. Most of the tracks are built around lonely minor-chord guitar, or haunted loops, distorted and mutated for maximum spiritual emptiness. 400 Lonely Things use a gallery of effects pedals and keyboards to add the desolate atmosphere redolent of driving slowly along empty roads at twilight, in the middle of nowhere. Many of the tracks have a washed-out, faded nostalgia, like the somber loop that comprises "Tagiri." It's a bit like Boards of Canada, and a bit like early Edward Ka-Spel solo works, but really it's like nothing other than itself. There is a certain hypnotic coherence to the sequence of songs, although each track is a molehill unto itself, a lonely piece formulated to pull you deeper into a reflective sense of regret. "Stuff Found In My Wings" adds gentle organic clicks to a barely-there roomtone. At times, this frustration becomes positively hallucinogenic, as in the disturbed sound collage of "Out Of Phase" and the swirling, ritualistic drones of "Catching Falling Stars." The seventeenth track is composed of 400 very lonely seconds of silence, which segue into a locked-groove impasse, obscuring the final track "Very Lonesome," a Moondog-meets-Daniel Johnston campfire sing-along that slowly slides backwards into a pit of haunted echoes. 400 Lonely Things is a quietly impressive debut, and the perfect antidote to all those fucking happy pills everyone is on.
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