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Greg Dulli is no stranger to death, as his albums have included songstinged with mortality. In recent years, however, he seemed to becooling off and enjoying life a bit more. He was working on materialfor a new album when he got the word that his good friend Ted Demme haddied of heart failure while playing at a charity basketball event earlyin 2002. Suddenly the album Dulli was working on had no meaning for himanymore, and he turned again to the familiar material of his past. Theman with the notorious party lifestyle began penning new material, andthe result is the death party record Blackberry Belle.The classic Dulli sound is back for the most part, with full sex rompand pomp, but every song has a twisted edge where it deals with loss onsome level or another. Dulli is starting to see the dangers of thenightlife he so casually sidled up next to at the bar, as the openinglines of the record show: "Black out the windows, it's party time/Youknow how I love stormy weather, so let's all play suicide." TheTwilight Singers of today are a tight group, with loud guitars, chorusvocals, and a smoky groove that ties it all together. Samples are now agreater part of the vocabulary, as well, from the crowd cheers on"Feathers" to the European phone ring sample that is the backbone of"Esta Noche." Several guests also punctuate Dulli's world of fun orgloom, from Petra Haden to Mark Lanegan. This album belongs to Dulli,though, as his first true work after the Afghan Whigs' demise. He walksthe walk, and he's always talked the talk, and for the first time heseems in the right place with it all. It's all or nothing on everytrack, and the focus shifts easily from narrator to voyeur for whateverbrings across the meaning more. One of his bands is gone, and the otherhe's burned down only to rebuild stronger than it was before. There maybe life in the old boy yet.samples:
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No doubt partially influenced by Benjamin Gibbard's work in the Postal Service, Transatlanticismshows off a denser, darker, and here and there more electronic DeathCab for Cutie than ever before. That's just the start of the changes,however, as their fourth album feels like a complete renovation oftheir familiar emo-tinged sound. Gibbard's voice is almostunrecognizable for most of the opening cut "The New Year" until,towards the end, his familiar whine breaks through. Then out of thepower of that track, the lamb emerges on "Lightness," and it's clearthat DCFC have an agenda: to prove that they can evolve. They've done afine job of it. Gone is the youthful idealism and the struggle of thoseviews; replacing it is an existentialism and an acceptance of some ofthe wrongs that everyone knows exist but are afraid to say. There arecracks in the veneer that need exposing, from the mundane matter offinding photos of an old love in the glove compartment to recognizing afling for what it is and letting it go. The record bounces around fromthought to thought as though these were all memories and thoughts thatshould have been left behind. DCFC faces it head on, bravely moldingtheir sound around these schizophrenic thoughts. Chris Walla'sproduction work also takes a leap forward, with the songs soundingclearer and crisper all around, and Gibbard's voice has never soundedso pure. There is a new power, a new clarity, and a new attack in theband that doesn't sound forced as it did on certain songs on The Photo Album,and there are no awkward moments. Even when things are slowed down orcalmer in delivery there is an energy crackling beneath the surface,waiting to surge. It's not always a smooth and easy ride for DCFC'slatest, but it's still a nice trip all the way down.samples:
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It only takes a few, short moments to ruin an entire record completely. Why must obscene jazz samples (i.e., elevator sounds) be used in conjunction with beat and bass heavy arrangements? Those overly-vibrant, obnoxious, and sickeningly bright bass pops combined with dynamically static horn parts lead only to decay. The decay is obviously contagious as it tends to infect the rest of the album.
Ashfelt begin with what sounds like it will be an intriguing mix of dance-worthy rhythms, futuristic melodies, and all manner of vocal samples and found-sound noise bursts. After eighteen minutes of listening, the inconstant and disorienting style changes become annoying and the palette of sounds that seemed so rich intially becomes stale and rots away. Then there are those jazz-wanna-be-samples-of-death that literally send me over the edge. It kills the entire album just as it was starting to pick itself up from its little fall. If the middle tracks that contain the disease-ridden tracks are killed off and the secolnd half of the album is listened to by itself, then everything seems quite wonderful and even promising! Ashfelt takes the best parts of the first half of the album and rearrange and rethink them on the second half; the result is more diverse, more focused, and less annoying. It's as if the band suddenly became more confident in their skills and realized that they didn't have to jump back and forth between styles to keep things nice and interesting. The melodies in the second half are more virile, the beats cut across the sound-spectrum like a swiftly and skillfully wielded knife, and the amorphous sound collages gain a level of intrigue not present before. Cut out the junk in the middle and Fat Space Acid doesn't sound half bad. Perhaps the next release will see this duo become more confident (and critical) and thus more exciting.
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- Taylor McLaren
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"Dear Mr. P (Label Boss),"Picked up the new Aesop Rock album on a trip to the local record storeon Tuesday. Interesting cover: lurid and hurt at the same time—itreminds me of the label in a lot of ways. The production is nice andvaried, too: simple fist-pumping and sparse beats in places, buzzingsynths and ringing metal in others. Neato, if maybe a bit too clever atthe expense of the beats at times.
"About halfway through, you make it known that some people have beentalking shit about you and your labelmates for not endlessly relivingthe glory of 1994. Thinking back on my opinion of rap in 1994 (too muchSnoop, too many guns, couldn't relate), I can't say that yours has beena change for the worse. Your response, though, that you've been doingyour thing for ten years now and that the shit-talkers are beneath yournotice, raises a question: Why do you have to hijack a track onsomebody else's album to dress down these `nobodies'?
"I'm all for personal meaning in rap, but beef is tedious, and sixminutes and change of beef IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMEBODY ELSE'S ALBUM (haveI mentioned that that parts bothers me?) is a sour note in an otherwisepretty good slab of music. Gunning for clowns, after all, is just so1994, and that's not where you're at, right?
"Don't let the turkeys get you down."
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Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas! A palindrome is a word or phrase that reads the same forward or backward. Drew Mulholland recorded this album of ritualistic electronics in celebration of our first palindromic year since, er, 1991. The album was recorded starting at 20:02 on 20/02 2002. Each track is 20:02 long. Get it? Pretty neato, huh? Ten animals I slam in a net.Mulholland has changed the name of his musical project from the relatively nifty Mount Vernon Arts Lab to the decidedly more turgid Mount Vernon Astral Temple, which should come as no surprise considering his new home on Threshold House. The Moon Musick Boys seem to have precipitated this sudden name change, and have also exerted an influence the new musical direction. For this album, Mount Vernon Aquatic Synagogue abandon the charming retro-futurist trappings that informed previous releases, which sounded a lot like BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Well, apparently Mulholland has decided to drop the Joe Meek posturing and get serious. Lived on decaf, faced no devil.
The new sound involves overblown prog synthesizers arpeggiating into the stratosphere, with sheets of heavy distortion and gale-force winds. Long story short, he's gone completely Kraut. Along with the new sound comes some annoying conceptual posturing. The daft liner notes by Mark Pilkington of Fortean Times drone on about silly time portals and then claim that the rituals done to create these pieces were "chronological terrorism." Huh? Wasn't this "Musick Cures Time" thing already done on Coil's Time Machines? How much of Coil's act is Mulholland planning to borrow? Was it a car or a cat I saw? All of this palindromic ponderousness comes to naught in the end, as the pieces on Musick That Destroys Itself are not the same forward as backward. I know this for a fact. I ripped the tracks to wave files and reversed them. Oh, and the "musick" doesn't destroy itself. If it did, I wouldn't have been able to buy the album.
So, all of this useless conceptual baggage aside, I have no complaint with the music. Both pieces are very similar, although the second track is infinitely more galactic. The synthesizers sound like the wet dream of that keyboard-playing midget from Hawkwind. Big, hefty slabs of Stonehenge siroccos sweep across a barren lunar landscape, with explosions of analogue spraying out into the stars. There is a certain cyclical logic to the structuring of the tracks, much in the same mold as Tangerine Dream's early sidelong compositions. While not perfectly palindromic, I must admit that there is a certain Rorscharch blob symmetry to the tracks. The first pressing also comes with a bonus CD of a live performance, possibly recorded at the Megalithomania! event last year. It's very tasty indeed. While I feel a certain nostalgia for the earlier sound, the new Mount Vernon Android Testicles is certainly a lot of fun as well. Let's hope that for future albums, Drew Mulholland will find some more convincing theoretical garbage to justify his music. Dogma in my hymn: I am God. This review is not a palindrome.
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The tenth release in Konkurrent's In the Fishtank series sees the horn section of jazzy post-rockers Jaga Jazzist paired up with fellow Norwegians Motorpsycho. This Fishtankdiffers slightly from others past in that the bands had a significantlyinvolved relationship before the session was even proposed. Bandmembers have floated freely between the two acts, and both were set toplay a festival together in Holland at the time Konkurrentpropositioned them for collaboration. Such previous involvement,combined with an unprecedented amount of rehearsal time has resulted inthe first Fishtank with a fully integrated and time-craftedsound. The rough edges and obtuse proportions that made previouscollaborations sometimes fun, and more often forgettable, are missinghere. The Jaga horns lend a spacious fragility to Motorpsycho's burly,often blues-laden psych, but in a thoroughly accommodating fashion.True, the latter had been heading towards looser, kraut-ier pastures asof late, but with a horn section now on equal footing, Motorpsychofreely indulge in their Neu!-ish tendencies. Fears that anotherjazz-infected Fishtank might go the way of wankery (see therecent Sonic Youth + I.C.P + The Ex collaboration) can be dismissed, asnothing short of careful, studied fusion is achieved here. Fusion isthe only name for tracks like "Doffen Ah Um," with a groove seductiveenough to justify the title's Mingus reference. The bulk of this Fishtank,however, offers a less-boisterous blend with the most successful tracksserving as bookends on the disc. "Bombay Brassiere" and the 20-minutecloser "Tristano," showcase Motorpsycho's talent for dense, drivingpsych, made crystalline by a layering of horn and flute lines thatbring both tracks to dazzling crescendos, bursting with temperedimprovisation. Other portions of the disc are less appealing, such asthe stiff, white-boy funk put to a version of the Art Ensemble ofChicago classic "Theme de Yoyo." On "Pills, Powders and Passion Plays,"Motorpsycho's Bent Saether contributes his musty, damaged vocals, whichmay sound fine over that band's acid-headed rock, but make a PhilCollins tune of this slow jam.This disc has plenty of moments sure to please fans of both bands,though newcomers could do better with either of the Jaga Jazzist fulllengths on Ninja Tune.samples:
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It all begins with a tinny, toy piano melody that seems to indicatethat we're entering some old, dusty dollhouse in someone's forgottenattic, populated by the porcelain dolls that are strewn through theliner artwork, who alternate between innocently angelic and eerilydemonic, with cracks in their glass and cloudy eyed glares that warnagainst entering this collage of splintered personality. Holding courtin this house are Brian Viglione and Amanda Palmer, the Dresden Dolls,whose name simultaneously conjures up tempting Weimar cabaret decadenceand the ensuing fiery disaster. Decked out in stark white makeup andburlesque couture they are a visually arresting band, but they areanything but window dressing. The Dolls have already made lastingimpressions on legions of audiences who have experienced theirformidable live show. Even without a full length, they play to sold outcrowds that most developing bands would kill for. The Dolls honed theirskills on stage and when it came time to make the leap to record theydid it on their own terms and on their own label, no less. On stage,the pair are mesmerizing, Palmer's face wrapping around every word andgiving them a liveliness held aloft by Viglione's booming retorts.Beneath the foundation and consignment shop assemblage lies a viciouscombination of talent, ideas, and dramatic flair that imbues The Dresden Dollswith a rising tension that ultimately grasps a hold of a satisfyingdenouement. The Dolls break open with the incindeary "Girl Anachronism"which revels in its doom and gloom stomp, Palmer's piano serving aspercussion as much as Viglione's drums. The song cuts deeply as Palmerspits out the chronicle of someone just out of phase with reality,haunted by instability and just screaming to make you understand whatshe's going through. On "Missed Me," Palmer plays the part of acoquettish little girl turned femme fatale with remarkable presence andpoise. She paints a deeply vivid portrait of the ill-informed dalliancewith her dark, manipulative side seeping out in every batted eyelashand cooing come on to the mister who should have known better. Herpiano unfurls a seductive tango melody that pops like swinging hips ina slinky, alluring strut. With the fury comes sighing introspection andself-examination, and tracks like "The Perfect Fit" delve into thepsyche that emits the frenetic static electric energy that buzzes offthe band. "Bad Habit" is tantamount to a mission statement, roaringthat "sappy songs about sex and cheating / bland accounts of two loversmeeting / make me want to give mankind a beating." The Dolls' Brechtiantheatrics don't hem them in, however. They excel at dark, moody sliversof song but at the core is still an irresistible knack at writingcompelling music and the words to back it up. "The Jeep Song," forexample, is a comparatively straightforward song about the anguish ofbeing reminded of a lost lover, with clever lyrics and positivelybright backup "ba da ba ba" singing. On the album's closer "Truce,"Palmer plaintively declares, "I am the ground zero." Listening to The Dresden Dollsit's easy to interpret that lyric in a way she most likely did notintend it. Through the craft and style exuded by this album, it feelsas if she and Viglione are destined to be the epicenter of a shock thatwill rattle the musically entrenched; to serve as a black leathergloved slap to the face, challenging the willing to step up and attemptto surmount their devastating fusion of thoughtful conception andflawless execution.samples:
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While plenty of Slowdive fans were quick to accept Mojave 3, I was not sold. My problems with their sound wasn't so much that I was expecting something along the lines of the drifting bliss of Slowdive, but the direction they took—picking and choosing elements from American country music like pedal steel guitar and harmonica—seemed rather half-hearted and out of place with faint vocals and bell sounds. Songs on the debut were weak in my opinion, almost like a discount Mazzy Star, but over the course of three albums I kept listening, things got better, but nothing bowled me over. Until now.
The 9+ minute epic, "Bluebird of Happiness" begins this year's release and is powerful enough to make everything else in the world cease to matter. Simplistic and elegant, it opens gently and half-way through lets loose a bombastic spine chilling anthem. The group hasn't shifted gears or anything: pedal steel guitars still sit alongside acoustic guitars, chiming glockenspiel, piano, occasional harmonica, and Neil Halstead's reserved vocals. The lineup hasn't changed and still features three original Slowdive members and production by Seefeel/Scala/Locust's Mark Van Hoen. The songs just sound stronger, bolder, and more creatively arranged than before. Even the rhythms of a song like "Battle of the Brokenhearts," with its jangly hoedown pace which usually has me cringing, fantastically pan out to a stunning drum-less million-dollar piano, moog, and glockenspiel melody. Sure, some borderline annoying country riffs still permeate through a few tracks but the songs are strong and captivating enough to sound like they belong this time around.
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LTM is making brainwashed nerd wet dreams come true once again with thereissue of this, a pivotal point in 23 Skidoo's career, disliked bycritics and nearly buried by the group themselves. Each side of theoriginal LP was 23 minutes in length. The first, known as "A SummerRite," was recorded at the first WOMAD festival in July of 1982 (andfeatures David Tibet on Tibetan trumpet), the second was recorded inOctober of 1982 at the Darrington Music College using Gamelaninstruments and later mixed down to form the album side known as "AWinter Ritual." For the CD release, the sides were switched and sidetwo is now known as "Part 1" (tracks 1-5) and side two is now known as"Part 2." A far cry from the loud bass and thunderous dance productionsof 23 Skidoo's most famous works, "A Winter Ritual" is almost equallyas trance-inducing with its usage of Gamelan gongs and bell sounds.It's no surprise that with the engrossing circle of Genesis P-Orridge(who did production on another record) and David Tibet, that it'sstrikingly remeniscent of parts of Psychic TV's Themes 1 (a.k.a. Cold Dark Matter), recorded with Tibet and others and issued with Force the Hand of Chance."Part 2" is more abrasive, with tape loops and various other percussivenoises and effects, carefully mixed together in a mishmosh of soundthat is far from stagnant, weaving through various parts and phrases,ending on the blissful "Healing (For the Strong)," which appeared in aremixed version (as "Healing/Fanfare") on Crepuscule's Operation Twilight compilation, 23 Skidoo's The Gospel Comes to New Guineacollection, and sounds like it was sampled heavily ten years later forCoil's "Nasa Arab." The disc closes with a bonus unreleased track, themonsterous and fantastic 27-minute long "Move Back — Bite Harder,"noted as "Part 3: An Autumn Journey." Longer than each side of therecord, this bit was also recorded live in 1982 on a tour which alsofeatured Cabaret Voltaire and Tuxedomoon. Assembled entirely from tapeloops of noises, sampled radio transmissions, and the Turnbullbrothers' screamings, this was part of a recording made by Crepusculeof the tour, but has never seen the light of day. Unpredictable andcaptivating, it makes for an excellent addition to the rest of thesought after music contained. samples:
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One thing to get straight right out of the gate: there should be nocorellation drawn between the title of Beulah's new record — the nameof the woman accused of breaking up the Beatles — and the fact thatseveral of the members went through divorces before and possibly evenduring its recording. Nor should it be considered a tell-tale sign thatthe end may be near for one of the few Elephant 6 bands left. In fact,it may have no relation to the music inside at all, which is without adoubt the finest batch of songs the band has ever unleashed. Beulah'snot gone "more mature" or "grown up" but just less free-form, sloppy,and damned indie rock. Gone are the post-mod singalong choruses andblaring horns, but still here are the wall of sound arrangements andvocal harmonies. Miles Kurosky is just as skeptical as ever, only nowhis fears are genuine, not goofily ironic. "A Man Like Me" is thisrecord's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" in that it's a confidentbeginning with otherworldly touches about the end of the connectionbetween two people. The notch gets turned up on the next track,"Landslide Baby," which Kurosky says is the woman's answer to the firsttrack. It's poppy, quirky even, but it calls out the man for what heis. "You're Only King Once" (Y O K O... hmmm...) continues the soberJarvis Cocker-like self-examination, as though finally reality has setin. There are bills to be paid, mouths to feed, houses to own, andlegacies to think about. Almost a country tinge enters every now andthen, just to give that extra heartache, and lines like "I just wantyou happy" and "I never meant to clip your pretty wings" let you knowit's not for show. The confidence returns every once in a while in themusic, but still gets eclipsed by the gravity of the subject matter.This is a record about losing what you care about most, and realizingit's because if you really cared about it the most you would have shownit more care. Maybe there is a hidden meaning in that title after all.samples:
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Usuallly I find it challenging to discover releases from talentedartists among these piles of promotional and advance CDs. Often I'llspare a mediocre album (especially from a new artist) from the hostilewit often found in my reviews by simply leaving it be. So imagine mysurprise when I inserted Larvae's debut EP Monster Musicinto my stereo. Influenced by and sampling from Japanese monsterflicks, the opening track "Mothra" is a industrial-strength drum n bassbeast. Aggressive, dark, and catchy, it eventually morphs intodistorted hardcore techno that degrades into white hot sizzlingcacophony. Reminding of bass-fiend Mick Harris' Quoit project, as wellas his Shortcut To Connect album with Mick Harvey, "Ghidrah"liberally applies warbly low frequency pulses to skittering junglistloops, increasing the energy around the 3 minute mark with NON-like airraid sirens and noise textures. Stepping away from the dancefloor, thefinal two songs on this four track teaser EP shows off the duo'saffinity for dark dub and, for lack of a better word, illbient music.The head-nodding grooves of "Mecha" give the track a cinematic qualityand should appeal to fans of Techno Animal and other experimental urbanbeatmakers. Mothboy and The Dustmite's remix of "Mothra" crunches andgrinds as a slow pace, with the same Japanese movie samples taken downin tempo and heavily effected. It is both eerie and icy, winding downinto a cold dark ambience. I am guilty of playing this 21 minuterelease several times over the past month or so, and with their debutfull-length Fashion Victim due out on Ad Noiseam, I highly urgefans of Mick Harris, Justin Broderick, and Kevin Martin to grab this EPbefore it sells out.samples:
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