I think there's only so many ways you can describe four-minute pretty little melodies. There is something, however, in this Isan recording from 2002 which makes it somewhat sounding more like a strong A-side for this single than the B-side of the split with Lali Puna.
Much like Isan, Xian Hawkins has also built a strong career on a number of incredibly noteworthy electronics-laden 7" single releases. This one is no exception. Released shortly after his full-length 4AD debut, the A-side is a brand new song while the B-side, "The Fourth Way," is an alternate version of "The Fourth Day" from the 'Nonument' LP.
Rumah Sakit craft instrumental rock with fierce energy and a bizarre structure that achieves stunning results. After their debut album on Temporary Residence, the members took a hiatus to concentrate on their other projects. Then they recorded some more, and those tracks appear here, but now, they're on hiatus again. Only two albums in three years might make some wonder about their longevity, and, in fact, there are rumors that this album may be the band's swan song.
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As the title may suggest, the latest release from the once nomadic James Bradell (aka Funki Porcini) is a wonderous collection of musical dreamscapes and headnodding grooves to relax with. Assisted by the musical (and visual) talents of Team Alcohol (Rupert Small), the disc's fourteen compositions, comprised of droning synth and guitar layers, funky, jazzy rhythms and sampled dialogue that sounds right out of a sci-fi B-movie, vary from subtle to conspicuous.
When we left Loscil—aka Scott Morgan—last, he had released his debut 'Triple Point' to much acclaim, and was preparing to tour behind the release. That was scant a year ago, and now Loscil is back, having toured the earth and recorded a mother of a concept album. 'Submers' is very much a continuation of the same ideals Morgan has upheld before—singular artistic vision, music created on keyboards and computers—but he plumbs new territories this time around.
"Bang bang! That awful sound!" said Cher in a song of the same name, and like any critical listener in search of a cheap laugh I was primed to apply that reference here. After all, it's easy enough for an instrumental rock group to come off as either hideously discordant or sleep-inducingly masturbatory. But the problem is, even the most awful sounds on Oma Yang’s second full-length release are sublime, and theirs is the sort of masturbation you'd pay good money to see (though you might not want to volunteer for clean-up duty afterwards).
After numerous tours of rapping live, Cex has finally released his first album with rhymes. While those who only know his instrumental output might be put off by this, others, like I, who have been following his career a little more closely will be more than satisfied with the first true expression of the Baltimore boy wonder's talents.
Sit down, make yourself comfortable, this album is far from both the post-industrial noise nor the minimalistic drone stuff David Jackman is usually known for his releases as Organum. Recorded between 1990 and 1993 (originally released in 1994), the album opens with the stunning epic 16¬Ω-minute, "Aurora," which is probably the closest Organum got to Taj Mahal Tavelers. "Aurora" features fantastic guitar sounds, exotic wind instruments, and unidentifiable shining and piercing other sounds by Dinah Jane Rowe, Christoph Heemann and Jim O'Rourke.
Since early in his career, music historian and WFMU radio host Irwin Chusid has been defining and championing a peculiar genre of music that he has termed "outsider music". Outsider Music is loosely defined as music made by people who have little or no musical training or talent, and doubtful sanity, but continue to make and record music in spite of their severe limitations. Outsider music can result from mental derangement, drug burnout or total cluelessness, but the results are often worthwhile. People with little or no self-awareness are capable of producing some of the most beguiling and ambiguous sounds you'll ever hear. Outsider musicians are boundless experimenters and low-fi geniuses - but their total sincerity and passion make the results even more astounding. For jaded music aficionados who have grown tired of the endlessly self-referential intelligentsia of the modern avant-garde, outsider music offers a completely new universe of stunning musical insight, and all of it totally accidental!
So I'm playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City the other day, or, as I like to put it, my new "vice". Yes, I'm witty. [keep trying - ed.] Anyway, this game takes place in the eighties, and I noticed that they chose to get the rights to actual music this time instead of inventing their own, which probably put a lot of mediocre artists out of work. It's a better game for it (nothing like running over a street hustler while listening to "Broken Wings"), but after eight straight hours of gameplay, even that can get tiring, especially when you consider that each station only has about eight or ten songs.
The Welsh musical artist Dafydd Morgan has sought to musically document rugged, wind-swept landscapes over the course of his career as Stylus, and 'Archif:01,' a collection of various non-album tracks between 1997 and 2000, fits cleanly into that agenda.
The core of Sybarite's album 'Nonument' (yes, there are nine songs to accompany the pun) sounds like the dallying analog electronics of ISAN mixed with some guitar and live percussion. Horns and cellos also dot the landscape created by Sybarite's Xian Hawkins.
A stateside release is the crowning achievement for what has been a hard three years for Melbourne, Australia's Art of Fighting. 'Wires' was originally released last year on the excellent Trifekta label to much crtical acclaim and the Australian equivalent of a Grammy for Best Independent Release.
Five years ago, Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards seemed poised to take over the rock world as their band, Failure, was earning accolades for their recorded output as well as for their live presence. Shortly after "Stuck on You" from their 'Fantastic Planet' album became a minor hit on college radio, Edwards and Andrews parted company, and Failure was no more.
Will "creates human Tragedies, causes Chaos, and is the primary source of Creation" profess the liner notes to 'World As Will II,' referencing the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, who believed that everything was intrinsically "will," and inherently negative, naturally causing conflict and suffering.
After about the third listen through, I noticed that this album seemed devoid of something. There comes a particular repertoire with each Piano Magic release, one you are just conditioned to expect based on their past works. But this new album did not seem to feature this repertoire. Gone are the perplexingly intricate sound collages which feature indecipherable instruments, sounding like they could be either computer-created noises or just esoteric analog instruments rummaged from the dusty bin of a thrift store.
Steve Wilkes leads this ecletic group of percussionists who released their first record in 1997. Wilkes, former drummer for the Blue Man Group, wanted to create a sound that was based entirely in modern drumsets with different stylings. The members would create sound collages that would, in a way, force the drums to take on the different roles other instruments normally play in a band: one would be the voice, one the rhythm, one the interesting flourish, etc. It's certainly an interesting concept, that's for sure.