Albums and Singles

17 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

Marginal Talent

Listening to Schniztler's solo recordings from the 70s is a mixed bagbut quite good fun in several ways. It's like a time capsule, for onething—a throw back to a particular genre of relentless sequencerpatterns, modal noodlings, phasers and filter sweeps. It has theessence of a personal musical identity that influenced the people whowent on to create that genre from it. But the sound on these solorecordings shows that what Schnitzler was able to do, given the timeand opportunity, went well beyond the daily fodder of that genre. Hecould dredge a harsh grittiness from the equipment as well as delicatefinesse that doesn't fit the nostalgic idea of that warm analog soundso fetishized in recent years. The abstract pieces without rhythms workbest. Schnitzler had quite an inventive talent for composing theseevolving layers of otherworldly sounds into science-fiction concertostoo menacing to be merely psychedelic. The curious tension between thefamiliar and the novel, even with an advantage of perspective nearing30 years, highlights the unusual breadth available on Schnitzler'spallet. Where things work less well is when that pallet is applied tocreating the kind of sequencer-driven rock music that others includingTangerine Dream did too much with in the same period. The mechanicalstructures are used as a basis for soloing that just shouldn't havebeen allowed to happen. Such banal melody in the solo lines was notexactly uncommon among the electronic bands of the time. For example,Edgar Froese could throw a crowd into a tizzy of excitement just bypicking up a guitar but, let's be honest, he was never very good atplaying it. It's the same problem here. Listening from the 21stcentaury, one wonders where the sci-fi connotations come from. Were thestyles appropriated for movies and other media to then becomeconventional symbols? Is it a trick of association with the zeitgeist?Or were musicians actually aiming at making space-age sound? Anyway,fans of Schnitzler's 70s solo oeuvre will welcome this addition to theset of color albums. At the very least I can say with certainty thatthe CD booklet represents a succinct response to the problem of what todo with such a ridiculously small page format.

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10 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

Warp

Over three years after the release of their full-length debut, The Noise Made by People,Broadcast have returned full force with a truly exceptional follow-up.While staying true to their moody, late '60s psychedelia-influencedcore sound, the band opens up further to make their retro-basedstylings something that is truly all their own. Haha Sound isboth more playful and more experimental than its successor, evidencedin the opening track, "Colour Me In." Trish Keenan's vocals are sweetand girlish, offsetting the ghostly machinations and audible squeaks inthe background. Her vocals, however, are more often haunting andmelodic such as on "Before We Begin," "Man Is Not a Bird," and "OminousCloud," while on "Pendulum," the first single from the record, Trish'svoice sounds slightly emotionally detached. On "Minim," they cascadelike a hypnotic waterfall, and she turns "Valerie" into a lullabye. Thelyrics are full of rich, abstract imagery—like "If green is chasing thehills over miles / If blue is pursuing the sky" on "Colour Me In;" and"Shake your earrings over my head / Lay down your dreams on my pillowbefore bed" from "Valerie"—that suits Broadcast's music well.
Percussion is without doubt a centerpiece of Haha Sound.The band's drummer Steve Perkins shines. Throughout he helps ground thefey electronics and balance out the airy vocals. The combination ofthese three has its greatest success on the song "Lunch Hour Pops,"which is possibly also one of the best tracks the band has everrecorded. Other outstanding titles on the record which demostrate agood blend of all the band's strengths include "Man Is Not a Bird,""Before We Begin," and "Winter Now." These are dotted with a handful ofshort instrumentals like "Black Umbrellas" and "DistORSION."
The overall ambience of Haha Soundis sweeping and spaceous. Although the instrumentation and pruductionis tight, the result is not one of preciousness or overbearance. Allthe songs feel like they have room to breathe, without being soextraneous as to need 70+ minutes for an album. Instead it clocks in ata compact 45 minutes. Although I am typically hesistant to attachsuperlatives when describing an album, I nevertheless must admit thatBroadcast has released what is hands down one of the finest albums ofthe year. It is undoubtably a remarkable achievement for the humblelittle band from Birmingham.

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10 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

Touch and Go

These songs make me into another person. I'm a criminal, then a scaredlittle boy, and the next minute I'm the loner walking through thedesert with a storm at my back. Nina Nastasia forces me to assume theseroles with her voice in my ear and her guitars cutting down at me likevicious slaps. One minute I'm in quiet solitude, hiding in a thicketand the next I'm being whipped around by a squall bursting withlightning and unexhaustable power. Run to Ruinis just that: powerful and excited. Nastasia's voice is absolutelyentrancing and the instrumentation is a fluid swarm of acousticstrumming, near-classical arrangements, and cabaret-styled,instrumental passages. "We Never Talked" starts the album as theperfect preface. Nastasia's lyrics are somewhat vague and manage toevoke a sense of wonder and mystery in every song, but especially onthe opener. "In the car, you'd have brought it up / But I went on aboutthat job / All the love I have left you won't know / All the fear Ihave left you won't know." The way it's sung puts a knot in my stomachevery time... and then the storm begins. "I Say That I Will Go" is astory about keeping a promise. It has a deliciously twisted ending thatsuggests all sorts of mischievousness. Violins, cellos, banjo,dulcimer, piano, and some distinctive drumming from Jim White of DirtyThree drift, collide, and wail with Nastasia's excellent story-tellingand clear, graceful, and at times absolutely earth-shattering voice.Though the album runs at just over thirty minutes long, each song isfull of character and developed completely. There's more variety on Run to Ruinthan on most albums that last twice as long. "The Body" begins like animitation-baroque piece and "On Teasing" sounds like a tale told bygypsies around camp fire; it features an instrumental duel that soundsas if it comes from the spirit world. "You Her and Me" creates a hybridsound that holds country and folk music dear to the heart but is muchmore bare and delicate. Despite all the acoustic and familiarinstruments used, this is a unique album with a myriad of styles andalien melodies. Every time I play this record, it's like beingtransported to another world. Not one song is disposable and after thealbum stops, I have this incredible urge to play it again just so I candrift away.

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10 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

Disko B

Austrian-born Rancho Relaxo All Stars collaborator Susanne Brokesch isan electronic-based sound artist whose work has resulted in variousoutputs such as group art shows, soundtrack work and several recordingsunder her own name as well as the pseudonyms of Sil and SilElectronics. Her latest release, So Easy, Hard To Practice,is mostly a collection of various soundscapes and minimalist-typecompositions where, at times, the rhythms are implied more thanoutright stated. What I found to be interesting about this disc isBrokesch's arrangement of synthetic sound patches, which at timesconvey a somewhat organic feel. The mild pulsing of "Confidence" laysbeneath a wash of obscure drones and sci-fi movie lasergun blast soundswith the occasional squelch until sparse, linear drum machine patternsmove in to take the track out. "Bel Air Mix 1" is a nice and subtleblend of reverbed synthesizer chords and heaving electro-cello over topof quiet, swinging drum machine tom-tom and snare hits which fade inand out throughout the mix. Rounding out the disc's forty minutes isthe somewhat out of place and longest track, aptly titled "Dancing."The mid-tempo programmed rhythms and syncopated bass end thump awayagainst a backdrop of flitting, somewhat harsh treated synths and othernear-industrial type sounds. The introduction of electro percussion andhandclaps add to the dance elements which are already very prominent.Although too fractured to be considered an ambient-type disc andgenerally lacking a steady pulse for head nodding, the interesting makeup of So Easy, Hard To Practice finds a fair middle ground that had me following the shifts without it being too obvious.

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10 August 2003

Michael Patrick Brady

Albums and Singles

Arena Rock

The title of this album leads one to wonder if it is in a way, a slyindictment of certain purveyors of experimental, progressive, orpost-rock music that they themselves are one of. Are they trying to saythat perhaps these genres are somewhat more susceptible toself-indulgence at the expense of entertainment? In any case, themembers of the Swords Project are at least saying that we have a choicein the matter and in that spirit they seize control of their musicaldestiny presenting an album that is both complex and enjoyable. Theirmusic has a shimmering, buoyant quality that wraps around itself in adizzying assemblage of layers. "City Life" is a veritable möbius strip,beginning with the faint, choppy voice of vocalist seeping through apastiche of programmed train-chugging drumbeats, static, and electronicmanipulation. The beats soon crackle into live drums and a flickeringmelody begins to unfold, floating without an anchor in the musicsurrounding it, like catching faint sight of a porch light through athicket of trees. It sounds as if the core of the song is bursting fromwithin with only enough energy to fall back into itself and repeat thesame process once again, leaving behind a mesmerizing vapor trail as itsinks back to earth. "MD11" reveals a cleaner sound, moving swiftly andbuilding off of a single melodic idea throughout the song. It seemslike more of a rock song than the tracks that precede even as itbriefly delves into a stutter-glitch bridge. "Cocktails andShuttlecocks" continues in this vein, though it progresses in a moresubdued shoegazer style, utilizing a violin for dramatic effect amidstthe warm bass lines and gentle melody. "Audience of One" takes theatmosphere of that previous track and expands upon it instrumentally,and by using minimal whispered vocals the band allows the violin totake the forefront in what makes for a really impressive long piece.They balance space and dynamics extremely well, building tension andtaking the music through peaks and valleys that make the track a truestandout. "Immigracion" presents itself as a rather standard indie rocksong, perhaps more in the vein of Death Cab for Cutie than any of thereferences the band itself might name check. By this point in thealbum, it seems like the collage aspects presented in "City Life" havebeen altogether abandoned, and that is a shame, but what remains isstill an interesting collection of songs that have a knack for melodyplayed by a band in perfect harmony with one another. The SwordsProject closes with "New Shapes," a long, droning track thatincorporates some elements of their earlier flair, but never commits tothe sound fully. The song is slow to develop, but with patience thefinal minutes take off into a propulsive workout. Throughout the album,the percussion is a major highlight. It fits each compositionperfectly, knowing the right time to sit back and let the rest of theband squall along and when to push through the din to give the piece alittle extra oomph. Entertainment is Over if You Want Itseems to lean away from the more brazen attempts at experimentation ofit's contemporaries, instead bringing these elements into the music inbrief spurts or bursts. At its core is just good music, approached witha sense of what makes for a compelling and enjoyable listen.

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10 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

Melektronikk

Greg Davis has spent the past few years finding the perfect crossbetween the real and the artificial, manufacturing music that is parttraditional instrumentation, part electronic samplings. Precursorsis presumably named for the fact that these songs precede his newalbum, and offer hints to the songs he's been working on. The frequenttourmate of Hrvatski has apparently unearthed something heretoforeuncharted within himself, as these songs represent a marked departurefrom his usual style, and also a less organized vision. Where beforeDavis would use acoustic guitars and electronic percussion to create arelaxed mood, "Lightning Proves to be Unnecessary" opens with an almostcacophonous display of noise. Organs are melded to electronic scratchesand other noises that build and grow to what seems like a forcedclimax. Then silence. Farm noises fill the air next, as a rooster crowsand birds can be heard in the distance. It's the battle, the anger, theblood and bone crushes, and then suddenly elysium. Acoustic guitar andorgans play out a funeral march or fitting tribute to a fallen comrade.Although the melody grows monotonous over the brief length of thetrack, there is a beauty to it all that warms the heart nonetheless. Onthe flipside is more percussion-less music from Davis, with clarinet,melodica, Rhodes piano, and guitar forming a simple yet swellingprogression. Eventually more instruments are added, creating a jarringstutter with instruments playing on the up and down beats.Full-sounding while delicate, the track never progesses much past that,but luckily it never threatens or promises to. It's all veryminimalist, and a new start for Davis, one that should hopefully seemore complicated structures come to fruition. This is just a taste, anda good one at that.

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10 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

Safe as Milk/Melektronikk

The second single in the Safe as Milk/Melektronikk collaborativeMilkland series brings together two subjects that couldn't be moreopposite from each other, and that seems to be part of the point. Safeas Milk is a Norwegian label that releases acts more rock in nature,while its sister label Melektronikk specializes in acts that areexperimental electronic; so any collaboration between the two will havemixed effects on the psyche, as this one does in spades. Milkland 2features Vibracathedral Orchestra, whose music easily reminds me ofasylums. Not the patients, mind you, because I think this music woulddrive them even more over the edge if they heard it; but I clearly feelthe waiting rooms and observation stations where you can actually seethe afflicted in this music. I imagined an entire dance troupe ofloonies, or as I called them the Psychotic Conservatory, flailingaround in anger, sitting in the middle of the floor chanting nonsense,and crying while jumping up and down. "Rain Gutter Teasing Rusty CatSneezing" is an amalgam of instruments and sounds that is not easilydigested or understood, and although I found it at the same timeinteresting and unnerving, it made me want to listen to their atonaldrone more. Phonophani, on the other hand, a side project of Alogmember Espen Sommer Eide, is manic noise of a far different sort. Beepsand bloops are the main percussion of "Bees - They Will Sting You" fora few seconds, then layer upon layer of flourish and glitch are addedon top, compelling the rhythm and tone into some bizarre roboticchoreography. Eventually, it seems as though the machines are acting ontheir own accord, no longer caring or paying attention to what thehuman programming them is asking or wants. Wonderfully creative musicfrom both artists, even though it makes me ponder whether either has ascrew or two loose.

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Vibracathedral Orchestra - Rain Gutter Teasing Rusty Cat Sneezing
Phonophani - Bees - They Will Sting You

10 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

Vertical Form

Smyglyssna is Henrik Johansson, a Swedish electronic musician who isdesperately hoping that the music-buying public will be able todistinguish the music on his new album We Can Fix Itfrom that of his numerous European contemporaries. Perhaps I don'tpossess an ear properly tuned towards these subtle distinctions, but itseems that Johansson has produced an album that is more or less wearingthe IDM uniform: a postmodern combination of beats lifted from the past20 years of electronic music, processed and edited within an inch ofits life with the kind of surgical precision only possible with anexpensive new Powerbook. The nine tracks add up to something slightlybetter than average, but slightly less than great. "Might-It-Be's andIf-It-Were's" opens with some creepy alien sound washes, before Mr.Johansson introduces his limited sound palette, which involves CarlCraig-style Detroit electro with all booty-shaking potential carefullyremoved and replaced with a dry, academic contempt for accessibility.It bears more than a passing resemblance to earlier IDM such as BlackDog Productions, with its shifting patterns and cubist beatconstruction. It all comes together nicely, and even achieves somegenuinely funky moments, but I can't help feeling that this kind ofthing was a bit more compelling five years ago. For its entiresix-minute length, "Work Shall Be Abolished" threatens to turn into afull-on electro-funk song, but Johansson is too restrained to engage inanything that might be construed as fun. "Triangular Ears" is probablythe best track on the album, as it is the one time Johansson fullyabsorbs the listener in his infectious beat construction, with funny,eclectic sounds that are reminiscent of Mouse on Mars. The ugly loomingspectre of Boards of Canada haunts most modern electronic artists, andmany seem afraid to venture out of their shadow. Smyglyssna is noexception, with his obvious BoC pastiche "Foaming Prairie," a pastoralkeyboard melody matched with hazy distortions. The R&B flavored"Tea With Angela" finishes the album on a slightly messy note. Ibelieve there is hope for Smyglyssna, if he can somehow manage toremove his head from the collective ass of the European IDMcommunity and make something that sounds a little less like everythingelse.

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10 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

Vertical Form

A little less than a year after the release of We Can Fix It comes the inevitable collection of remixes, which has been creatively titled We Can Fix It Remixes.The remixers chosen for this project must have been asking themselves:Can we fix it? Can something be done to improve the aggressivelyaverage material that Smyglyssna produced for this non-landmark album?The answer is a guarded yes. Modern hip-hop beat assembler Boom Bipturns in an impressive re-imagining of "We Can Fake It," giving thesong a regular beat and adding dramatic melodic elements that make foran entertaining listen, though it ends rather suddenly. England'sFujiya & Miyaga succeed in mutating the boring "Tea With Angela"into a weird pop song, with backwards vocals, handclaps and marimbaadded. Anticon's Sixtoo adds an irregular loping beat to "FoamingPrarie," which neither improves nor detracts from the original, butdoes succeed in making the song sound even more like Boards of Canada.Soft Pink Truth's reworking of "Work Shall Be Abolished" should becalled "Queer Eye for the Boring Swedish Guy," cleverly using his homotouch to transform the boring raw materials into a smart disco-housenumber with weird samples and plenty of attitude. Underground white-boyhip-hop group Restiform Bodies do a strange treatment to "Tea WithAngela," making it sound way more textured and varied than the originalsong. Icelandic artist Einoma ends the disc with the dark, industrialhip-hop groove of his "We Can Fake It" remake. I should probably addthat Smyglyssna also contributes two remixes of his own to this disc.They are both as predictable as the material on his original album. We Can Fix It Remixes certainly does not cohere as an album, but it does contain some good songs that don't betray their trite origins.

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10 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

There is something about the way this music sounds that brings back memories of some art long lost in electronic music. There is melody, counterpoint, harmony, rhythms based half way between space and hip-hop, and a completely uplifting feeling throughout. Where We're From... is dance-inspiring, but it isn't a dance record; everything swells and flares slowly, emitting a warm light that radiates for miles around.City Centre Offices

It reminds me of when I first began listening to electronic music and how I was captivated by the way melodies could be made to sound on a keyboard and how the rhythms were completely hypnotic, made out of the strangest of sounds. There's an emotional aspect to every song on this record; the melodies invoke memories, ideas, and images as they crawl slowly through the air. It's a sound I've heard before, a sort of style that held me prisoner for so long and started my addiction to all things strange and beautiful, but it doesn't sound old or unoriginal at all. Yasume know that composition is just as important as the alien feel of their sounds, so they weave together deep bass rumblings, piano-like melodies, humming string sections, and metallic percussion with a careful ear and penchant for some angelic atmospheres. The juxtaposition between the lazy melodies and the curving, sexy beats only add to the experience, creating a mood that is neither ambient (in the dictionary sense of the word) nor cluttered and heavy. Take note: electronic music can be interesting without having to go to extremes. Yasume is gentle, passionate, and other-worldly all within the realm of the familiar. They might not be doing anything that hasn't been done before, but what does that matter when Where We're From... is as lush and elegant as it is?

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10 August 2003

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Albums and Singles

JMZ

It's pretty incredible to hear a keyboardist thrash along with abassist and drummer. It's even more incredible when the keyboardmanages to sound heavier, more melodic, and threatening (all at thesame time) than any guitar could. Groundswellis the debut album from Parts and Labor and to put it simply: it rocks.It's like being strapped into a jet for the first time and beingintroduced to mach-5 and blackouts. Although the keyboard often holdsthe lead role in each song, it's the duo of bassist BJ Warshaw andeither Jim Sykes or Joel Saladino on drums that propel every song intooverdrive. The entire album sounds as if it could've been recorded inan abandoned warehouse somewhere on northern Jersey's shore. The bassis absolutely unhinged, rattling about as if it were on fire and readyto explode. Above it all is an unexpected partner: the keyboardtwirling, performing loops, convulsing, and generally ejaculating overeverything. It serves another role, however: every now and then gentletones and wavering notes will hover over the near-tribal rhythm sectioncreating an odd juxtaposition of sounds that will either producenightmares or light a fire under my ass and send me into thestratosphere. The music isn't particularly violent, but it's LOUD anddetermined to beat the three minute mile. "TB Strut" also happens to beone of the best headbanging songs I've heard, it's just impossible toresist that melody! As a nice little bonus, Parts and Labor haveincluded a video for "Intervention" on the CD (it's also available ontheir website). It's a fun video in a very twisted way. These guys mustbe monstrous live so hopefully they'll expand their tours a bit furtherwest soon.

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