No, it's not a much-needed tribute to the KLF/JAMMs, it's another 2xCDcollection of electronic music from friends of a musician who runs hisown label. It might not be as varied or densely packed like aTigerbeat6 comp or thematically tied as a Morr comp, but it doescontain some fine moments of both label-promoting and friend-promoting.Hrvatski's guitar and click "Lullaby" contribution reminds me all toowell that there aren't enough Hrvatski albums in the world, MikeParadinas' alias Kid Spatula serves up a dish tastier than any Mu-Ziqrelease I own, and the thoroughly entertaining collage of illegal hiphop samples, "Turntable Savage" by Hellfish. However, there are a fewvery weak spots: like the Vincent Gallo-lite contribution by Dykehouseand the obvious oversampling of Coil's "Hellraiser Themes" in thedrum-and-bass-by numbers "Defluxion" by Venetian Snares or theover-predictable, skippable Tusken Raiders track, "Pansy". In allhonesty, this collection would have probably been much more noteworthyif released in 1997. In the end I'm left affirmed by my affection forElectric Company and my interest in whoever this Joseph Nothingcharacter is. Must research deeper,...
samples:
- Kid Spatula - Sharemaker
- Hrvatski - Lullaby
- Hellfish - Turntable Savage
What if Tito Puente, Kraftwerk and electric Miles Davis had jammed ...what would that have sounded like? German electronic duo BerndFriedmann (aka Burnt Friedman) and Uwe Schmidt (Atom Heart, SeøorCoconut, etc.) may provide the answer with their Flanger collaboration,this being the third album in just a few years for Ninja Tune. Theirmusic is thoroughly jazz - warm, spacious, latino jazz - where everysound glows with clarity and every song comfortably glides over theeardrums, even when it's frantic. Vibes, electric and upright basses,guitar, synth, organ and some saxophone and vocoded phrases provide thepalette, framed within often complex and rapid rhythmic layers. It's aninternational affair all around with many live players recorded inSantiago, Copenhagen and Cologne, some track titles in French, Spanishand German, and the album title inspired by an essay by British sci-fiauthor J. G. Ballard. Uwe and Burnt seem to enjoy obscuring the linebetween what is programmed and what is 'played', only revealing thedigital enhancements and editing here and there, when they choose to.Not that it really matters mind you. The all important question is'does it have soul?' and the answer is a resounding 'yes'. It's anotherstellar 46 and 1/2 minutes worth of Flanger, more focused than ever.
After a fascinating re-release on Temporary Residence earlier this year("Maander"), the Kollektief return to reinterpret some of those songswith a live band. and add a few new compositions. The results are amixed bag, but never dull. It's said that Thomas Weber, KammerflimmerKollektief's central figure, gave the members copies of "Maander" andthen asked them to come into the studio to play them as best theycould. Considering "Maander" was beat-driven electronic music, it'shard to see how a live band could rework that and come out with similaror better results. The Kollektief manages just fine. I found thereinterpretations to be better than the originals, but still lacking insome sense. Maybe it's that I like the music but it doesn't affect meall that much. But two of the last three tracks on this release, newmaterial by Weber and the Kollektief, are well done. I liked them muchbetter than anything else I'd heard from the band. The ambient wonderof "Kissen," for instance, is spooky in feel and in the way it buildsbut never quite achieves anything destructive or shocking. It's almostaural teasing, but in a good way. "Venti Latir" is hauntingly gorgeous,with violins and bass and keyboards that can cause the heart to soar.All in all, a solid release, even though two of the tracks are underminute, and really did nothing for me whatsoever. Weber got someamazing results on "Incommunicado," and it would serve this group wellto try a whole release of original material.
The use of 8 bit chiptune sounds has been extending beyond the insular video game world and into other genres.  Dusty old Nintendo consoles and Commodore 64 computers have been reprogrammed into musical instruments for years now, and there is an entire compilation album of artists using only the Game Boy based Nanoloop software.  Return of the Bloop Beep Buzz pushes this concept even further, using the even more primitive Atari 2600 as its primary source, resulting in a limited, but still unique sonic palette.
This album actually came as quite a surprise as soon as I started spinning it. I've always associated Wiese with hyper-kinetic, harsh laptop-sourced noise above all, and the seven tracks on this compilation instead show a tamer, more droning electronic sound, with the occasional bit of abstract electro-acoustic collage.
This "musical illustration" of the events occurring in the brain following a lethal stroke is a dramatic, chilling and emotional portrait. Musically, it is removed from anything else Nurse With Wound have done (even if it does touch on similar influences as the rest of Steve Stapleton’s body of work) as Bowers adds a more composerly hand to Stapleton’s surrealist drift. Bowers and Stapleton have crafted something unique that does not fit neatly into any categories, even amongst Nurse With Wound’s expanded horizons. This is draining, devastating and utterly compelling.
Two sides of a paranormal equation are presented in this cluster of songs. Decorated with primitive drums, avant drones, eclectic voices, and an array of stringed splendor, the two groups arrive at a meeting ground in the crossroads, with the arcane formulas of folk magic flowing down one street, and the poetic musings of a post-modern bard immersed in his lyrical wonderland on the other. Where one is ecstatic in the throes of Dionysian abandon, the other zones out into a haunted, rarefied Aethyr.
The year's first contender for top honors comes from violinist and composer Eyvind Kang. This new full-length on Ipecac sits among his major works, displaying a rare breadth of compositional talent, spectacular playing, and raw emotion.
Loops of Your Heart is Axel Willner, better known as The Field for his three albums to date on Kompakt. His debut full-length under this new moniker sets aside the minimal techno formulae of his primary guise for a far more ambient experience. Unfortunately, he discards many of the distinct characteristics of The Field in the process, downplaying his established strengths.
This English guitarist's first full-length is just as impressive as last year's excellent Brown Bear EP, but displays quite a significant and somewhat unexpected evolution.  Rather than playing up the psychedelic touches and constant sense of motion that made his earlier work immediately gratifying, Dean has taken the more difficult and distinctive road of shifting his emphasis more strongly towards space and decay.  Thankfully, his melodies are usually strong enough to support that potentially perilous decision.  As a result, Son of the Black Peace is as much a bold artistic statement as it is a great album.
It seems that I badly underestimated William Basinski, as I stopped following his career several years ago out of frustration with his apparent creative stagnation.  His methods and conceptual underpinnings have certainly evolved steadily, but it seemed like the end result was always something murky, free-floatingly melancholy, and endlessly repeating, regardless of how he got there.  Then I heard this 2009 album and was unexpectedly floored.  Basinski seems to have found whatever it was that he was missing.
Craig Tattersall and Andrew Hargreaves are The Boats, a UK duo that have an exceptional ability to mix abstract electronics, shoegaze drones, and jazz-influenced acoustic drumming into a singular work that sounds like no one else. The small symphonies and genre hopping on here are simply brilliant and unique.
In their third collaboration, Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto go for a more conceptual approach: Sakamoto recorded 24 piano improvisations to open concerts during a Japanese tour, each within a different key. These 24 pieces were then handed over to Fennesz, who added his touch to them. The result is a compelling, if sprawling, work of gentle improvisation.
This archival release, captured live in Philadelphia, is a valuable companion piece to the previous Bardo Pond and Tom Carter session, 4/23/03, which was originally released on CD nine years ago, and is receiving a vinyl reissue this week. It is a joy to hear another side of Carter and Bardo Pond playing together, this time in a live setting.
Earlier this year, Lovely Music reissued Robert Ashley’s 1978 landmark Private Parts album and now along comes its follow-up: 1979's similarly groundbreaking and idiosyncratic Automatic Writing. On its surface, this album remains a haunting and uneasily dreamlike affair, as it anticipated both ASMR and the evolution of ambient music by several decades and still sounds improbably contemporary today (or perhaps just too singular to feel like it belongs to any era at all). Beneath the surface, however, lies something far more fascinating and deeply conceptual than mere ambient music (or most late 20th century modern composition, for that matter): Automatic Writing is the culmination of Ashley's experiments in using his mild form of Tourette's Syndrome as a compositional tool. Unsurprisingly, making such a quixotic endeavor work proved to be quite a challenging and oft-exasperating undertaking, but Ashley's five years of trial and error ultimately resulted in one hell of a strange and memorable album.
Natural Snow Buildings seem to be currently locked in a rhythm in which they release one truly monster album each year and Solange Gularte's latest solo effort seems to have possibly secured that honor for 2012 right out of the gate.  More remarkable than the album's quality, however, is how restless and adventurous Solange has been in tweaking her sound.  This sounds almost nothing at all like her last album (2010's Modlitewnik) and makes some bold and somewhat surprising changes to her expected aesthetic.
I basically enjoyed Williams' acclaimed 2009 dark ambient opus Perdition Hill Radio, but did not find it especially revelatory or unique.  This follow-up is an entirely different story though: The Resurrections Unseen marks a huge compositional leap forward.  As expected, the mood is similarly blackened and ominous, but this effort is significantly more focused, artfully structured, visceral, and slow-burning than its predecessor: this is a rumbling, album-length plunge into the void rather than a mere series of crackling and brooding soundscapes. Fowler Collins has delivered an instant genre classic.
Ben Chasny, the sole creative force behind the scorched-earth folk music of Six Organs of Admittance, and Elisa Ambrogio, the snarling frontwoman of Magik Markers, have come together to form 200 Years. Their debut record is ten songs of hushed, pretty, and occasionally lackluster voice and acoustic guitar.
No one will ever accuse the Opalio brothers of lacking ambition.  Their previous release, 2013's Psycho-System, was a hallucinatory drone epic that spanned six discs and clocked in at over three hours.  Now they are back with a triple-album in a very different vein.  Though similar in its staggering scope, Abstract Expressionism for the Ears is often considerably more accessible and organic-sounding than its more insular and deeply warped predecessor.  Part of that credit certainly goes to Stevens, who proves himself to be a very sympathetic collaborator, but the primary difference is the focus on unconventionally employed (and melodic) piano strings, which often makes Abstract Expressionism resemble classic Laraaji plunged into an otherworldly rabbit hole.  Most other times, of course, there is no earthbound point of reference to be found at all.
While Richard Skelton has long been one of my favorite artists, he has not released anything new in a while that has captivated me quite like he did the first time that I heard him.  That is not to say that he has experienced any sort of creative decline or anything, but he is definitely an artist who tends do one specific thing brilliantly, which regrettably tends to yield diminishing returns with increased familiarity.  With this follow-up to their Wolf Notes collaboration, however, Skelton and Autumn Richardson alchemically transform some of their previous recordings into something quite new and unexpected.
