- Michael Patrick Brady
- Albums and Singles
In the office where I worked this summer, the main lobby featured anenormous piece by artist Frank Stella. The piece was large, probablytwenty feet tall, and consisted of a series of colored boxes, enclosedin a thick orange boarded and symmetrically mirrored on the oppositeside. These are the kind of works, abstract shapes and colors, thatmade Stella and his minimalist style known in the art world. Everymorning I would step off the elevators and be cast in the imaginaryshadow of this walled piece, unable to ignore it, and think to myself,"Is it me, or is this a total fraud?" I'm no art critic, but for me thepiece did nothing. It evoked no feelings and no deep thoughts, only theconfusion that a crayola palette and attention to straight lines couldto some extent, make one renowned. So excuse me for being somewhat warywhen Rebel Powers was described to me as minimalist. Rebel Powers is acollaboration between Acid Mothers Temple's Kawabata Makoto, CottonCasino, Koizumi Hajime and Telstar Ponies' David Keenan. Thesemusicians came together to perform two long instrumental tracks, withonly incidental overdubbing to create what they identify as minimalistexcursions. "We Are For the Dark" is the first volley, and quicklydispelled my initial fears. Guitars drone against each other as ghastlymoans supplied by a sarangi, a classical Indian bowed instrument.Percussion drips in and out of the shambling piece as it oozes forward.The darkness Rebel Powers aims to provide is very apparent, and "We AreFor the Dark" lays out in its patient tones a spooky, malevolentatmosphere that only builds in intensty and effectiveness as the trackcontinues. The instruments seem to grind against one another like therusty components of a machine lurching to life and slowly gaining backits momentum and force. Errant shards of noise shoot out into the stewbefore disappearing beneath it. In the tail end of its long duration,the improvisation reaches a more insistent peak before petering out ina collision of clangs and dwindling washes. The track is not spare orsparse, and never does it feel overly repetitive (though in essence ittreads the same core for twenty five minutes) or boring. It has a depthand body that draws you in and wraps you up in the imagery; it doesn'tleave you staring at it confounded. Unfortunately, the next track isnot nearly as successful. "Our God is A Mighty Fortress" mills aboutaimlessly over a repetitive pattern for far too long. While the firsttrack transported me to dark forests, rain soaked dirt roads andlurking unknowns in the brush just behind, the second track brings meright back to my office, staring up at the Stella and wondering tomyself what the big deal is. As the track progresses, it does improveslightly, with a more clean, more relaxed attitude than the first, butthe loss of energy and excitement that the first ten minutes or so is adevastating hit to the whole. Had the tracks been reversed in order, Imay have been more forgiving, but the ideas as presented took the windout of my enthusiasm. Such is the risk with improvised music. Sometimesideas don't pan out and paths taken more often lead to dead ends thanexplosions of brilliance, but when they do the trip is entirely worthit. As demonstrated by Rebel Powers, minimalism can mean more thaneconomy, and bleak can be busy, but that asceticism is a trap that isdifficult to escape. Read More
- Steve Smith
- Albums and Singles
This album is staggering in its creativity, even though it's probablythe most pop-focused of Rollerball's releases. They bring the funkinfluence, which has always been lurking, closer to the fore quitetastefully, with propulsive drums and full-bodied bass inspiringmovement, but the highlight of their music is definitely thesuper-catchy lyrics and melodies. Stabbing, anthemic horn leads andsmoky piano lines accompany their vaguely dadaist cabaret vocals,singing seemingly lighthearted verses about clarinet samples and ourforefathers wearing drag, but the sense of tension that their dramaticpresentation inspires is remarkable. Rollerball's little details oforganic experimentation and everything-including-the-kitchen-sinknoisemaking are still present in some form, but they're more tightlywoven into the songs themselves, such that the album is full ofinteresting sounds throughout, but free from gratuitously tacked onelements. Still, this is a far cry from the extended free-noise oftheir earlier works. Tracks like "66 Deadhead Spies" and "Starling"play up the loungey aspects—shared male/female vocals and slick pianoinstrumentation; while a steady bassline anchors "Mike's Hind," thesole instrumental piece, as various sound effects and improvisedphrases float through the mix. "Spine Delay" seems to be a shout out toall dudes in the audience with its deranged, at times hyper-falsetto,singing, until the horror-movie organ emerges and the band settles on amellow groove. The album ends with a suitably incomprehensible spokenword piece about nature. Rollerball are an entertaining and interestingband, and it's great to hear further development of their refreshinglyunique pop music.Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
The second of the Anomalous co-releases is an oddly indefinable, "accidental" remix of Nurse With Wound's first album Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella by Matt Waldron of irr.(app.)ext. Chance Meetingis a landmark record of deranged psychedelic proto-industrialexperimentation. Matt Waldron's irr.(app.)ext. has produced some of themost exciting audio surrealism to come along in recent years. However,this disc is not the meeting of these two great minds that one mightexpect. As the story goes, Waldron was making a tape-to-tape dupe ofthe original United Dairies cassette, when his dysfunctional taperecorder began to warp and mutate the source material, producing itsown interpolation of the Nurse classic. This kind of accidentallydeteriorating tape idea has recently been used to much more subtle andingenius effect on William Basinski's Disintegration Loops series.Although I can imagine that the warbles and mutations caused by thistape recorder mishap might have appealed to Matt Waldron and StevenStapleton, its pleasures are truly ephemeral. All the CD boils down tois an inferior, hiss-heavy transfer of the original album, with somerandom time-stretching, glitches and wobbles that do very little toincrease interest for the listener. Although I admire the love foraccident and synchronicity that led Stapleton and Waldron to releasethis material, I don't think that it will hold much interest for theaverage listener. This review certainly won't discourage those whoobsessively collect everything issued from the Nurse With Wound camp.But for those who are just a little more selective about this stuff, Ithink I can safely suggest that you steer clear of this unique butultimately inane piece of conceptual audio. Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
The English esoteric artists Current 93, Nurse With Wound and Coil —recently canonized in David Keenan's England's Hidden Reverse — areobviously intelligent, always creative, and often revolutionary. Ifanything bad could be said about these artists, it would be that theysuffer from a kind of record release diarrhea. Their absurdly prolificrelease schedules litter the world with pointless EPs, singles andlimited-edition releases that are immediately snatched up bycollectors, but often suffer from a dearth of worthwhile musicalcontent. Recent flagrant examples have been Current 93's The Great in the Small CD and the Maldoror is DeadEP. Both of these CDs contained no new musical content, and left mescratching my head wondering how I was hoodwinked into purchasing them.This new little artifact, one of a pair of discs released as apartnership between United Durtro and Anomalous, contains two lengthytracks of sound material from 1985's In Mentrual Night, recently given a remix treatment by Steven Stapleton. In Mentrual Nightwas one of David Tibet's final works from Current 93's "spooky loop"period, and also one of the best. The atmospheric mixture of chanting,operatic scales, chain-rattling and musique concrete' tape tricks was asuperior final chapter to Current 93's noisescape phase. Why revisitthis material almost 20 years later? These remixes were commissioned tobe used as opening music to Current 93's recent shows in San Fransisco.Because these pieces were to be used primarily for background music,Stapleton has decided to muddy the mix, making it impossible todistinguish the voice and noise elements, turning the music into murky,nebulous ambient soundscapes that fill the room with atmosphere, butdon't share the unfolding, jarring drama of the original music. Thesounds share the same kind of distant, dreamlike uneasiness of earlierCurrent 93 tracks like "The Dreammoves of the Sleeping King," withhalf-remembered audible fragments of sound that trigger strangefeelings of nostalgia and/or deja vu' in the listener. Both tracks arequite good, but whether or not they are worth the price of admissiondepends upon your level of Current 93 obsessiveness.Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Brian Foote has been operating the Outward Music Company out of Portland, Oregon for a few years. Their small number of releases have included some singles and full-length releases by Signaldrift, Solenoid, Pulse Programming, and Strategy. Nudge is the result of Foote's collaborations with members of those bands along with people from other Portland-based groups like Fontanelle, Jackie-O Motherfucker, and Nice Nice. While I have to admit that my impression of the outputs by the aforementioned artists and groups have always been rather lukewarm, the combination assembled here far supersedes any expectations.Tigerbeat6
I'm always a big fan of crosssing musical styles, and here, electronic software-based sounds are combined with the musicianship and direction of experienced improvisationalists. The ten songs each exhibit new directions in songcraft, dismissing expectations of how voice, rhythm, and basic instrumentation interact. In a similar move like breakthrough albums by Lamb and Dntel, vocal tracks, like the opener, "Blue Screen," have a very progressive pop sensability, without ever being abrasive, noisy, or too busy. The sweet sounds of Honey Owens voice appropriately match guitar-like distorted delays and less rigid tracks elsewhere on the disc. Instrumental tracks make up the bulk of the record, infrequently utilizing guitar, trumpet, bass, vibes, drums and percussion. Songs like "'Til the Sun Expands" are subdued and subtle, while others like "Love-In Accident" are modern grooves primed for cinematic theme music, never stepping over the top to sound like a music college school jam band. There's plenty of abstract noise and unconventional slightly arrhythmic patterns to keep the humanity intact. One of the things I have actually liked about Outward's output has always been the artwork, and the diagram inside which illustrates the players on each song I must admit is quite clever — with geometric shapes, color coded with letters correspondent to the instruments used.
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- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Some time ago, while sending out Rhys Chatham's "Die Donnergotter" overthe college airwaves, I got a call. I had expected another barelycontained "WHAT IS THIS?? IT'S...AWESOME!," which had become theregular response (maybe I played the song too much). Instead, my"Hello?" received the sleepyheaded reply, "Is this, uh, Trans Am?"Aside from the fact that a first-time Chatham listener will have beenexposed to legions of his influenced before hearing the man himself(most hear even Branca before his mentor), Chatham's work sounds a bitold-fashioned, ironically, because of what it has accomplished. Hisfusion of post-modern art music ("contemporary classical," "new-music,"whatever) with rock music sounds great, but it does not create worksthat enjoy unlimited movement between their poles of origin. Chathamwrites extensively about the critical climate of the '70s and '80s inthe 140-page book that accompanies An Angel Moves Too Fast to See,describing in detail the newfound flexibility and freedom along genrelines that composers enjoyed at the time. And while this all makessense, explaining how he came to write the music and perform this newmusic, it does not change the fact that Chatham's music will alwaysbelong to the classical tradition. This is not to say that the composerhad not gone to great lengths to separate his music from the universitysound lab, the ivory tower of academicism threatening art music throughthe late '60s. If anything, Chatham's music is not challenging enough.Still, despite his enlisting New York rock scene players (ThurstonMoore and Lee Renaldo among others) to perform his music and choosingto perform in many popular NY rock clubs, Chatham remains a "composer."The length and scope of his works contrast rock composition, especiallypunk rock composition; likewise, the spectacle and performer/audiencedynamic of a Chatham piece is necessarily different than that of aRamones show. Whether this would or would not be the case in a perfectworld cannot change Chatham's place as an "art-music composer" (who,yes, utilized rock instrumentation and technique). As such, itsimpossible to approach his work without any preconceptions about theperformative aspect of the music or without imagining its place withina lineage, however ill-conceived, of "important" 20th centurycompositions. The merits of this box have not gone unappreciated; the least of which,behind the sheer unavailability of many of these legendary Chathamcompositions and the beautiful package (decorated with Robert Longo'sphotography), is, surprisingly, the earliest of the compositionsincluded. "Two Gongs," an hour-long piece from 1971 that takes up theentire first disc of the box, is a gem of minimalist composition, andis reason enough to sing Chatham's praises. Performed by the composerand Yoshimasa Wada on two large Chinese gongs, the music swells andclangs, an ocean of squirming metal capable of simulating heroin stuporand root canal in equal measure. Should you remain convinced thatnothing will top Branca's guitar symphonies and wary that this box setmay prove you wrong, Table of the Elements has kindly released A Rhys Chatham Compendium,a single-disc sampler for the box that contains much of Chatham's bestwork, including "Die Donnergotter" and an excerpt from "Two Gongs."
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The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band with Choir, "This Is Our Punk Rock, Thee R
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
On their last album, A Silver Mt. Zion grew to the Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band. This time around the players are the same six stalwarts, and they've added a choir for some extra flavor. As the name and roster grows for Efrim's ever necessary ensemble so also does the music become more and more powerful and damaging. Their songs seem to be getting closer and closer to the gy!be motif, with delicate, fluid, and lovely passages that explode into pounding earthquake-threatening dirges of grandeur. The only main difference is the increasingly awkward Efrim vocals, though it feels like at least he is more comfortable with them on each song, even if they're not any easier to listen to. Constellation
This is Our Punk Rock sounds exactly like what the title implies: the DIY philosophy applied to the usual Silver Mt. Zion routine with just the right mix of aggression and social commentary. The choir has just the right effect, chilling and soaring at the perfect moments, and spilling out whenever possible. It is not an organized choir by any means, and that's what makes it all the more endearing when paired with the clumsy Efrim lead. In fact, there are areas where the whole ensemble sounds dangerously close to Cerberus Shoal, with the theatrical firmly in place. There's an overwhelming feeling of complete remorse and decay in these songs, from the pained wail on "Babylon was Built on Fire/Stars No Stars" and the elegy of "Goodbye Desolate Railyard," a song expressing the band's remorse for the artistic death around their homebase in favor of an increased commercialism. There are some odd lyrics ("pus-capped mountains"?), but it's all delivered with the same calm resolute stance. Finally, there appears to be a cohesive and plaintive acceptance of their place in the world with the Silver Mt. Zion crew, with songs that blend into each other and work together as a whole. No stumbling, no slipping off the beam, just plain grace, even though it's a grace in the destruction of everything they hold dear.
- So Some Lonesome Corner So Many Flowers Bloom
- Babylon Was Built on Fire/Stars No Stars
- Goodbye Desolate Railyard
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- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Sometimes people just have to be cruel, especially when they're asked to listen to the worst album they've heard in a decade. Anyone who writes reviews will eventually get used to reading all kinds of press releases, from the useful detailed biographic ones to the amusingly erroneous ones to the ones that are quite clearly ridiculous hype for vapid old rope with no substance whatsoever. If The Fly magazine is calling a band genius then any music lover with any aesthetic sense whatsoever will see red hype alarm bells flashing. (The Fly is a faux-fanzine, set up by London based PR wafflers and is given away free at various venues throughout the UK, so that drunk faux-indie kids have something to use when the toilet paper runs out.)
 
Mower prove that even if you make the shittiest most talentless retro crap excuse for rockpops, some idiot somewhere will call it genius. The band try to rock but just don't. The singer can't sing. If he was someone interesting with original ways of deploying the limited range, this wouldn't matter a bit. Matt Motte writes stupid twee ditties about such mundane trivialities as going to a hip-club and not having enough money to pay for a German girl's drink, thus getting her thrown out. All delivered with the charm of a dead clown rotting in the garbage. The smugness of his toss off bathtime warbling stinks of the worst kind of desperate watery wannabe. He's a fuckin' idiot with nothing worth saying. The effort of strumming the guitar with tired unremarkable chord sequences that have already been used a million times probably did his brain in years ago. The press release also compares these listless dorks with no originality or talent to Buzzcocks, Nirvana, Black Sabbath, the Kinks and Ringo Starr (not the greatest drummer that ever walked the earth, but apparently Mower's lad does the plod 'on amphetamines'). This is so grossly insulting to all these bands that I suggest their remains sue Mower. At least that would stop them making another record. Really Jilted John would be a more accurate comparison for Mower, but who gives a fuck about that irritating nerd? Ten years ago this would've been retro enough to ride the coat-tails of the squalid Britpap scene, rightly slagged by interesting musicians such as Michael Gira and Robert Hampson as one of the worst things that ever happened to music. Now its just a sick joke that even the thickest Oasis fan would be embarrassed by. Now for the ultimate insult: even Blur were better than this!
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- Albums and Singles
A lot of electronic-based musicians and producers make reference tojazz music and its instrumentation in their sampling and arranging;mostly from the post-bop and cool eras. For a good chunk of this disc,Los Angeles hip hop producer Daddy Kev (aka Kevin Marques Moo)stretches the backing tracks to the far reaches in a true free-jazzspirit. Kev combines soloing drums, upright bass, funky loops, guitarruns and other ambient sounds with precise turntable manipulationprovided by D-Styles. The unique voice of MC Awol One plays off ofthese tracks with free-association/spoken word riffs that range fromhumorous to serious for a new take on beat poetry (no pun intended).Tracks such as "Finger Paint with Bloodlike War Paint," "Grey Skys inPsycho-Delic RGB," and "Buyin' Friends on Ebay" kick along to steadyrhymes and beats with quotes from orchestras, saxophone and piano."Idiot Savant Autistic Delivery" opens with a spoken-word sample aboutplaying free music that Awol One throws in his own dialogue to give asense of conversation. Steady hi-hat lays down a groove for FenderRhodes and bass to convey an all too brief 70s soundtrack for a copshow chase sequence that is scratched with vocal samples. As jazz andrap are said to be closely related, it was just a matter of time beforefree jazz and fusion made their way into the hybrid of hip hop soprominently. - Six Black Roses Are Sent to Your House
- Finger Paint With Bloodlike War Paint
- Idiot Savant Autistic Delivery
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- Taylor McLaren
- Albums and Singles
If records are fetish objects in the same sense that pornography is,then people who scour the globe for every last shred of vinyl relatedto spastic Japanese bands have got to be emotionally retarded in thesame way that fanciers of tentacle-rape animeare, right? Thankfully, the gang of musicians represented on the latestOOIOO record have reached a bit further back into their lives than thepoint at which giant-robot cartoons were the height of cool, and havebrought forward a kid's enthusiasm for tuneless xylophone banging andnonsensical whispering. This sits alongside repetitive ritualpercussion, noodly organ lines and increasingly complex harmoniesshared by a fairly wide assortment of instruments in a way thatoccasionally makes a lot of sense. I won't pretend to understand whatmakes some of these tunes worth exploring for fifteen minutes whileothers are abandoned after two or less, and I can't help but bedisappointed that the rousing trumpet-and-bass trance hoedown of "onmani," which brought a recent OOIOO concert to an absolutely crazedend, just sort of unfolds logically and goes away halfway through thealbum here. At least they don't rely on three-second-long yelpingtracks or bullshit mysticism for effect, and sometimes the combinationsthat they come up with are so good that I just don't want them to end.OOIOO shows are far more recommendable to catch as the energy capturedin the studio on this disc is nowhere near the heights that the band iscapable of reaching on stage. Thankfully Kila Kila Kila doesn't come close to being as sunny-new-age-schlocky as some of the material on Shock City Shockers 2.Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
This isn't just a lame Hollywood sequel to a tacky but entertaining guilty pleasure, it's a part three of a series which should have been killed long ago. Uwe Schmidt (Atom‚Ñ¢, Atom Heart) and his gang of Chileans' style worked undeniably well in a humorous way with the Kraftwerk covers on El Baile Alem?. It made sense: Uwe being a German living in Chile and the rest being Chileans, a few who have spent time living in Germany. The vocalist maintained the robotic, inflectionless feeling of the original songs while the group kept to very strict rhythms. The output was something both entertaining and worth numerous listens. To hear it all over again with almost lifeless covers of popular 1970s and 1980s classics is simply laborious. It's a joke that just isn't funny any more.Emperor Norton
"Smoke on the Water" opens the disc with a somewhat neat percussive interplay on the all too familiar riff. It's the first single from the album and probably should have been left as a single or EP coupled with the following cover, "Negra Mi ChaChaCha." Original compositions like "Electrolatino" and "El Rey de las Galletas" aren't necessarily unlikable but they're hardly memorable. "Riders on the Storm," "Smooth Operator," "Blue Eyes," and "Beat It," however, are the biggest offenders, as they are dull, lifeless reinterpretations which I hope I never hear again. (And gun sounds and field recordings of the surf and waterfowl doesn't enhance the music all that much.) In all honesty, I have heard more attitude in elevator music. It's time to do something different, unless people really enjoy buying the same culturally insulting record over and over and over again. What I think makes this record so vanilla is the fact that a lot of the band is actually sampled and threadded through Uwe Schmidt's laptop. The most irritating result from this is the sampled "huh" that appears at least once in every track. (What ever happened to the Quality Control department at record labels?) Ditch the laptop and get all real musicians and the difference will be clear. 
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