26 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

"Imagine Richard Youngs as the junior member of a cabal of prolific and puritanical English musician-mystics, including The Fall's Mark E Smith, Van der Graaf Generator's Peter Hammill, Martin Carthy and The Clangers composer Vernon Elliot, and still his nature will elude you."

-Stewart Lee, Sunday Times.

Dissident is a hallucination of a legendary lost Samizdat-style recording of the legendary lost Richard Youngs Band. It's not clear to me that it is against anything in particular, and as such it is not literally dissident. In fact, I'm a little lost how or why it is dissident, save for being informed by the imagined provisional recordings of pre-Glasnost protest. Perhaps the wordless scratch vocals are voicing dissent, but I remember having fun. So much so, I couldn’t stop myself from fleshing out the rough nylon guitar songs to a full band arrangement, recorded in multiple spaces.  Which is as far from the Samizdat spirit as you could care to go.

More information can be found here.

26 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio, Dome took the ethic of "using the studio as a compositional tool" and recorded and released three Dome albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: Dome (July 1980), Dome 2 (October 1980) and Dome 3 (October 1981).  A final fourth album, Will You Speak This Word: Dome IV was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in May 1983.

These albums represent some of the most beautifuly stark and above all timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early 1980s alternative music scene.

Previously issued in the out-of-print Dome 1-4+5 boxed set in 2011.  Now available as standalone LP with download card.

More information can be found here.

26 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

Martina Lussi's second album fuses together disparate sound sources with a disorienting quality that reflects the modern climate of dispersion and distraction. The Lucerne, Switzerland-based sound artist released her debut album Selected Ambient on Hallow Ground in 2017, and now comes to Latency with a bold new set of themes and processes.

The range of tools at her disposal spans field recordings, processed instrumentation, synthesized elements and snatches of human expression.  The guitar is a recurring figure, subjected to a variety of treatments from heavy, sustained distortion to clean, pealing notes. Elsewhere the sound of sports crowds and choral singing merge, and patient beds of drones and noise melt into the sounds of industry and mechanics.  The track titles manifest as a compositional game of deception complete with innuendos, empty phrases and claims – flirtations with perfume names and ironic assertions.

From the volatile geopolitical climate to the changing nature of music consumption in the face of streaming and digital access, Diffusion is a Force is a reflection on fractured times where familiar modes and models change their meaning with the ever-quickening pace of communication.

More information can be found here.

26 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

On Epitaph things are different - Jay's voice croons crystalline over goth futurism for the first time on record (if you haven't heard of Ku….) - he sings one of the oldest Greek songs ever written and has spent the last year doing impromptu vocal covers of Tricky tracks in Cambridge pubs. And did you notice the tracks don't have dub in the title any more?

This his first proper proper solo LP from Jay Glass Dubs - a widescreen vision of 4AD nightmares, ballads for River Styx crossings and echoes that never end. It's This Mortal Coil if they knew about dungeon synth and Metalheadz and still thought dub techno was boring as fuck.

Epitaph follows his 2LP retrospective of Dubs on Not Waving's Ecstatic Recordings; and his 12” mini-LP with Leslie Winer on Bokeh early in 2018.  It's his 5th and no way final release for Bokeh (do you remember BKV 002, the slowest dancehall mixtape ever made?).  Realized with help of Greek vocalist and performing artist Yorgia Karidi and a special saxophone guest spot from Ben Vince (Curl, Where To Now, Hessle Audio).  Bokeh graphic visionary Patrick Savile's sensually airbrushed and peeled lemon closes this funeral casket of all the things you thought you knew about Jay Glass Dubs.

More information can be found here.

26 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

"Heart-rending shoegaze entries from the master of rose-tinted but thorny ambient pop hymns, landing smart on the heels of his nostalgic pangs collected in the recent Songs of Remembrance / Songs of Forgiveness LP reissues. The struggle is beautiful.

Accompanied by the languorous basslines of Drew Piraino on the record's broadest and most affective pieces, Jefre's chiming guitars and muffled drums form hymns to rare feels, with the distancing effect of distortion connoting the effect of age, as serene moments appear move ever farther out of reach.

That effect is felt most strongly in the transition of "Love’s Refrain" from something like a crumpled tape recording of shimmering yacht rock thru to its coruscating, noisy finale, and the dense weight of humid air and featherlight chirrups in "Little Dear Isle," while the other side pushes off from the sore synth chorale of "In Summer" and into the slackened drums of "Blue Nudes (I-IV)," again underlined by Drew Piraino’s murmuring bassline, with Jefre pushing the upper registers into the red, before collapsing into the tape noise and lone piano refrain of his "Prelude.""

-via Boomkat

More information can be found here.

20 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

Alive in Dark Rooms is the third live release from Joao Da Silva’s Luciernaga project, following two equally limited, handmade CDs from 2015 and 2017. Compiling four full performances between 2017 and 2018 it functions not only as a snapshot of how the Luciernaga project translates to a live setting, but also is a brilliant overview of the different styles and approaches Da Silva has been working with these past years. At times meditative and beautiful, and at other turns dark and harsh, it is a superb document of his recent work.

Self-Release

In a live setting, the Luciernaga sound is not one that is drastically different from his studio releases, with the only obvious point being their longer durations and structure.Much of the non-live work Da Silva has released previously is likely improvisations captured in the studio and then edited down/cleaned up as needed. So in these live performances, the only difference is their long-form nature, the fact they are recorded with just a portable recorder in the room, but also the presence of an audience.Given the fact Da Silva prefers to play small spaces with largely groups of friends and fellow artists, I can imagine that their presence is a positive force, at least in the case of these shows.

The first performance, "Dirge" (Ridgewood NY, 2018) captures more of the lighter, ambient side of Luciernaga.Da Silva slowly weaves together various loops, building them up but keeping them spacious in sound, making for a rich yet subtle mix.Soon more overt guitar droning and what almost sounds like a sustained chanting voice are mixed in, bringing a stoic, almost sacred minimalism feel to the piece.As the 20 minute performance continues, Da Silva places more emphasis on the melodic sounds in the mix, eventually taking the focus in an icy, shimmering, powerful, yet mournful tone to conclude the performance.

"Untitled" (Charlottesville, VA, 2017) has a dirge-like quality to it, but on the whole follows the previous performance in a more melodic, tonal approach.There is a slowness to his playing, but one that is pleasantly spacious.Again Da Silva takes his time before introducing slightly more conventional guitar sounds to the composition.Here the sound is less effected in comparison, focusing more on the traditional tone of the instrument, but elongated with ebow-like sustain.On the whole it is largely a light, drifting piece with some more commanding guitar performances, making for a nice balance between two extremes.However, with the murder of Heather Heyer just a couple of weeks later in the same city, I imagine Da Silva’s performance would have been drastically different had it been a bit later on.

The other pair of performances on Alive in Dark Rooms capture the bleaker, more grim side of Luciernaga.The short (just a bit under 10 minutes) performance of "Raga for LMC" (also recorded in Ridgewood NY, in 2017) immediately opens with a darker, vaguely sinister midrange hum.The swells in volume are a bit more intense here, and while Da Silva's guitar work is a bit more musically melodic, the effects and overall feel of the piece have a profound depressing quality when compared to the previous two shows.Finally, "Untitled" (Maspeth NY, 2017) begins with an immediate sense of bleakness.Various sounds expand into a frigid, open space that, while beautiful, is anything but inviting.Soaring guitar sounds cut through the cold, empty mix with a distinctly beautiful quality to them, but the dreariness never subsides.Eventually what beauty remains in the piece is stripped away, becoming more ugly and almost violent in the closing minutes of the performance.

Sitting alongside his studio works perfectly, Alive in Dark Rooms is an exemplary release that brings the more spontaneous elements of Joao Da Silva’s work as Luciernaga to the forefront.It may be a subtle impact, but I feel that part of the variation, besides the inherent long form structure to the performances, would be the presence of an audience.It is never an obvious thing:only rarely on these four performances do you even hear any clear evidence of other people present for recording and then it is only a bit of dialogue at the very onset.However, it surely impacted Da Silva’s playing, and whatever the influence was, makes for four complex, multifaceted compositions that stand just as strongly as any of his studio material.

Samples available here.

20 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

Alhough I lamentably cannot claim to have been a fan since the beginning, I have been aware of Ectoplasm Girls' intermittently surfacing bouts of outsider genius long enough to feel like a fool for sleeping on this latest solo album from Nadine Byrne (released last spring). In my defense, it was billed as a soundtrack and I am generally averse to such things, but Dreaming Remembering is quite unlike anything resembling a conventional soundtrack that I have heard. Instead, this album feels like a collection of B-sides from a great synth pop/minimal wave artist, stretching and reshaping their hook-heavy hits into something considerably weirder, more abstract, and subtly hallucinatory. Some pieces are certainly more substantial than others, but the best moments bring an extremely appealing pop sensibility to the synth and experimental music milieu.

iDEAL

This is Byrne’s second solo release under her own name, following 2014’s maddeningly out-of-print A Different Gesture (also a soundtrack of sorts).She has also surfaced as The Magic State on a similarly elusive release, but Dreaming Remembering uncharacteristically got a digital release, making it likely to be Byrne's widest reaching solo work to date.It is certainly a solid pick for that honor.Unsurprisingly, the film being soundtracked here is one of Nadine's own, as music is just one facet of an oeuvre that also stretches into video art, textiles, sculpture, photography, and probably several other additional disciplines that I have missed.The album is a bit more substantial than the film itself, which feels like a looping video installation or an interrelated series of music videos (there are three different vignettes set to five of these songs).According to Byrne, both the album and the 19-minute film are intended to "exist in the borderland between memory and dream, drawing their inspiration from that threshold of consciousness where one cannot tell one from the other."In that regard, the album succeeds quite admirably, as the unusual approach to vocals gives these pieces an elusive and fragmented mystery.It is not unlike voyeuristically getting a glimpse of someone's deepest secrets in their diary, but lacking the necessary context to unlock their actual meaning.

Notably, Ectoplasm Girls' earliest work was characterized by an eclectic and computer-averse "anything goes" approach that incorporated samples pregnant with childhood memories, yet Dreaming Remembering feels like the work of a gifted synthesizer artist with sharply honed production skills and a clear vision.While she handles all of the instrumentation herself, Byrne curiously enlisted a guest vocalist (Sarah Kim) for four pieces; primarily the ones that are most heavily based on lyrics/poetry.Neither Kim nor Byrne actually sing at any point on the album, however, as their voices are either devoted to confessional-sounding spoken-word monologues or loops that act like an additional layer of instrumentation.Admittedly, the former probably gives the album its most substantial content and depth (at least conceptually), but Byrne is able to wield something as outwardly vapid as a repeating loop of "Um hmm, ok" to great effect in "Okay."The lion's share of the album's appeal lies primarily in the hypnotically buzzing and throbbing synth loops that Byrne assembles, so the vocals essentially just need to be there to imbue these burbling post-industrial soundscapes with a glimmer of soul and human warmth.The sole exception to that is the album's centerpiece "Mothers and Daughters and Sisters," in which a variation of the title phrase becomes kind of an intensifying and cathartic mantra that eclipses the surrounding music.Aside from the brief and insistently throbbing "Nothing Is Opposite to Forever," the remainder of the album’s highlights delve into much more vaporous and dreamlike territory, such the warmly ripping reverie of "ATDN."

While "Mothers and Daughters and Sisters" is the album's unquestionable zenith, it is another piece "But You Don't" that best highlights Byrne's endearingly unique and off-kilter sensibilities, favorably reminding me of the obsessive and deranged collages of early Severed Heads without ever crossing the line into feeling derivative. I would have already been delighted by the piece if it were just an endless loop of the syllable "Ehh" over an energetically lurching and clap-based drum machine groove, yet Byrne ingeniously builds on that playfully maniacal foundation with further loops that sound like sped up tapes, as well as a slowed-down snatch of sassy trash-talking.The overall effect is both wonderfully disorienting and gleefully, infectiously ridiculous. To my ears, that direction is where Byrne's true genius lies: making experimental music that feels genuinely experimental, yet deftly evading self-serious artiness with a healthy appreciation for hooks and a strong intuition for wryly mischievous juxtapositions.I wish Byrne had explored her lunatic dance party side more, but this is ostensibly a soundtrack for an art film, so it is a welcome and unexpected treat that such a piece even turned up here at all.As it stands, Dreaming Remembering is a mostly excellent album diluted by a few weaker pieces, but its impressive highlights and the elusiveness of Nadine's other releases combine to make that it the ideal entry point to the work of a wonderfully talented and idiosyncratic artist.

20 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

The Dead C have been on an impressive hot streak in recent years, so it was a reasonably safe bet that I would be delighted yet again by Rare Ravers. However, I was definitely not expecting such a revelatory leap forward this deep into the band's career. Immodestly described as "recorded and burned through a thousand galaxies of dust and doubt and endless infinite wonder, transforming both time and space," this album feels like it was conscientiously sculpted to ravaged perfection in an actual studio and it sounds absolutely amazing. As it turns out, The Dead C's long history of rehearsal tape-level sound quality and shambolic, messy self-indulgence concealed the fact that they were secretly an extremely tight band capable of unleashing firestorms of howling guitar noise with the precision of a scalpel. I imagine some fans are still holding out hope that the band will someday return to writing actual songs with lyrics and vocals, but this album is an instant classic as far as I am concerned.

Ba Da Bing

Much the recent Armed Courage and Trouble albums, Rare Ravers is roughly composed entirely of 20-minute pieces that each fill an entire side of vinyl, though in this case there is a two-minute interlude ("Waver") separating them.The opening salvo, "Staver," erupts with a characteristic snarl of distortion and feedback, but Robbie Yeats' insistently steady and unwavering snare and high-hat rhythm quickly cuts through the maelstrom and drags the song forward through the buzzing, crackling wreckage.That howling mass of distorted ruin never goes away (this is a Dead C album, after all), but in this case it turns out to be the mere foundation for something more structured and compelling rather than the sole raison d'être.That said, the omnipresent snarl and sputter still play an absolutely crucial role: if I saw a cool art show where the gallery was shuddering and collapsing around me, that context would be every bit as memorable and essential to the experience (if not more so) than the art I was ostensibly focused on.In this instance, the nod to structure and an overarching vision is quite a modest but effective one, as "Staver" is anchored by a repeating bent note that sounds like a deep, anguished moan.Notably, the piece briefly seems to collapse into directionless noodling around the halfway point, but that proves to be a cunning feint, as the smoldering ruins soon spring to life with a flurry of atypically sharp and audible drumming.The resurgent piece then goes on to finish in strong fashion, as Yeats' return signals the beginning of an unexpected second act in which the hollow animal moan of the first half slowly converges with a wobbling, pulsing, and insistent swell of distorted feedback.

Following a brief descent into the shuffling, sputtering psych-murk of "Waver," the album's superior second half is ushered in with the sputtering sludge avalanche of "Laver."Again, that is fairly well-covered Dead C territory, but searing howls of strangled feedback soon start viscerally streaking through the chaos as a ramshackle groove lazily starts to cohere.The recording quality plays an essential role here, as the recurring blasts of snarling guitar noise are beautifully intense and physical.That proves to be fortunate, as the rest of the song completely drops out for a while, leaving only a series of howling noise eruptions punctuated by stretches of near silence.After that, it briefly dissolves into an interlude that sounds like a panning and undulating shortwave radio transmission.The piece soon lurches back to life though, cohering into a slow, heavy groove of muscular drums and snatches of clean, melodic guitar.The roiling entropy underneath is the real show, however, as it sounds like there are blood-thirsty noise demons attempting to tear their way through the veil of distortion.Again, the crispness and clarity of the recording plays a major role, as creaking of strings and the intricacies of the feedback squalls are able to gradually seize the foreground from both the beat and the melody.That is optimal, as Michael Morley and Bruce Russell unleash an absolutely glorious tour de force of screaming and distorted noise squall.Lest anyone get too concerned that The Dead C are approaching perfectionism or compositional rigor, however, "Laver" ends by being abruptly cut off mid-note.Maybe that actually is perfect though, as the only appropriate way for this album to end was probably for an amplifier to explode or the recording desk to short out from signal overload.

It feels very wrong to describe a Dead C album as flawless, as the band's aesthetic has always been a fundamentally broken, corroded, and deconstructed one, so I will instead say that Rare Ravers is an album that is impressively devoid of any wasted time, directionless meandering, unrealized potential, or half-baked ideas.I was similarly struck by the volcanic power that this threesome can unleash when they are focused and allow some degree of professionalism to creep into their recording process.The Dead C have always been great at sounding like a shambling, jagged, and brilliant mess of a band, yet the occasions where they could rightfully be described as "face-melting" have been few and far between.Rare Ravers is legitimately face-melting during its howling crescendos.Similarly, the sheer ingenuity of Morley and Russell warrants praise as well, as the two have somehow managed to avoid repeating themselves again and again despite their hyper-constrained palette of blown-out bass and feral feedback squall.It is like watching a magician keep pulling rabbits out of a hat that cannot possibly contain any more rabbits.The Dead C have been a fitfully great band for decades, but they have truly defied the odds and blossomed into a reliably formidable and tirelessly evolving unit over the last several years.For now, Rare Ravers feels like a high-water mark, but I have no doubt that Morley, Russell, and Yeats will soon surpass it if they continue on their present trajectory.

• Staver
• Laver

 

20 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

Agora is Christian Fennesz's first solo album since Mahler Remixed [Touch, 2014] and Bécs [Editions Mego, 2014].  Fennesz writes: "It's a simple story.  I had temporarily lost a proper studio workspace and had to move all my gear back to a small bedroom in my flat where I recorded this album. It was all done on headphones, which was rather a frustrating situation at first, but later on it felt like back in the day when I produced my first records in the 1990s.  In the end it was inspiring.  I used very minimal equipment; I didn't even have the courage to plug in all the gear and instruments which were at my disposal.  I just used what was to hand."

Agora will be released March 29, 2019 on Touch.

20 January 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

"Michael O’Shea’s sole, breathtaking album ranks among our favourite of all time - yet hardly anyone seems to have heard of it.  Produced by Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis at the Dome studio in 1982, it's an utterly singular work of magick, meshing myriad, worldly modes into music that rarely fails to reduce us to tears.  It's one of those albums that basically sounds like nothing else - the only record we can draw some parallels to is Dariush Dolat-Shahi's life-changing Electronic Music, Tar and Sehtar, despite it coming from the other end of the world.

First brought to our attention by Blackest Ever Black at the start of this decade, we've gradually developed an obsessive fascination with its sublime, rapid dervishes and warbling rhythmelodies, so it’s a pleasure to see it finally made easily available to everyone who we’ve ranted about it over the years (2nd hand copies have been historically pricey and hard to come by!), and especially replete with its enlightening new sleeve notes by archivist and writer Failed Bohemian.

A busker among other trades, O'Shea was an itinerant soul who, after a childhood and formative years spent between Northern Ireland and Kerry in the south of the country, and extensive travel between Europe, Turkey and Bangladesh, created his own instrument - an electrified dulcimer known as Mó Cará (Irish for 'My Friend') - which he performed on at Ronnie Scott's, before later playing on bills with everyone from Ravi Shankar to Don Cherry, and also recording with The The's Matt and Tom Johnson.

Aside from his two contributions to the Stano album, "Content To Dine In I Dine Weathercraft" (also recently reissued by Dublin’s Allchival), O'Shea's first and only album is the main point of reference for this unique artist.  Like some eccentric expression of ancient Indo-European voices channeled thru a Celtic body, Michael O'Shea's improvised acousto-electric music intuitively distills a world of styles into singularly hypnotic works.  Using his self-built instrument; a hybrid of a zelochord and a sitar, made on a wooden door salvaged in Munich, and with the crucial addition of electric pick-ups and the "Black Hole Space Box," O'Shea would absorb sounds from his travels like a sponge, and relay them back thru the instrument with effortlessly freeform and achingly lush results as elaborate as a Celtic knot or elegant as Sanskrit text.

The mercurial flow of syncretised styles in 15 minute opener "No Journey’s End" catches your breath and doesn’t give it back, leaving us utterly light-headed and feeling something akin to religious experience, before his "Kerry" vignette most beautifully limns the epic coastline he hails from.  The plasmic swirl and phasing of "Guitar No. 1" is perhaps the one piece that time dates the LP to the post-punk era, even if it could have come from ancient Mesopotamia, while the album and artist's underlying metaphysics bleed thru most hauntingly in the timbral shadowplay of "Voices," and the rapidly tremulous, animist voodoo of "Anfa Dásachtach."

Noted in his lifetime, not least by himself as: "…joker, transvestite, inventor, psychonaut, actor, catalyst, community worker, musician, traveler, instrument maker," Michael O'Shea's life was, by all accounts, every bit as colourful as his music, which only makes his untimely death in 1991 all that more tragic, as we’d practically give an arm to hear what he could have made in the early techno era, as he was purportedly getting heavy into London's rave scene before he was taken.

Honestly no other record has cast such a strong spell over us in recent memory - to the extent of sending us on wild goose chases on the wrong peninsula in Kerry - so please pardon the gush 'cos we can’t help but share love for this life-affirming disc and Michael O'Shea's beautifully transcendent music."

-via Boomkat

Out now on Ireland's Allchival label.