The term "exoteric" can relate popularity, being the exact opposite of "esoteric" and, for the most part, this description is suited to Metalux. Their strange noise has always been a little easier to swallow with its comprehensible beats, recognizable guitars, and punches of melody. Put them with John Wiese, however, and the title of this album begins to appear ill chosen. |
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The term "exoteric" can relate popularity, being the exact opposite of "esoteric" and, for the most part, this description is suited to Metalux. Their strange noise has always been a little easier to swallow with its comprehensible beats, recognizable guitars, and punches of melody. Put them with John Wiese, however, and the title of this album begins to appear ill chosen.
7062 Hits
Japan’s LSD March are best known for their thunderously loud and trippy music. Empty Rubious Red shows a softer and more melodic side as the group is stripped back to Shinsuke Michishita alone. The white hot power is still there but only rarely bubbles to the surface. Instead the focus is on building the same power and tension through quieter and less overdriven playing.
13065 Hits
Orac Records' co-founder Randy Jones and Paul Dickow (Strategy) both take stabs at remixing the electro-popping, hard-edged dance number "The Love That I Crave" with solid results. The original is twisted and manipulated into stretches of dub-laced pop and sweet, delicate minimalism that is about dance as much as it is about lush beauty.
7399 Hits
The Dots have always been good at exploring the liminal borderlands between structure and abstraction, between dream and waking life, between nightmare and whimsy. The band's music always has one foot resting on each side, and they are not afraid to dance for extended periods on one side or the other. This album seems to synthesize a lot of the band's previous approaches: crepuscular nightmare monologues, extended noise jams, chugging electronics, twisted fairy tales, orchestral passages, surrealistic cut-up sequences and druggy excursions into nebulous Qlippothic realms.
13494 Hits
In this year's Terrastock, Detroit's Paik was once again one of the show stealers. While the instrumental combo's formula isn't the most original sound in the world, their songs are fun, the tunes are well-defined, the live sound is intense, and their stage presence is nothing less than godlike. Monster of the Absolute is easily one of this year's better instrumental rock records, as it's the sexy side of gritty: something you don't mind getting dirty for because it feels that good.
9339 Hits
This is the debut release from a quartet out of Helsinki who play buoyant instrumental electronic music. Swift and without a beat, the songs are like rushing rivers of tones and simple patterns. Since there aren’t necessarily any new sounds or styles to be found here, the songs are carried more by the band’s sheer exuberance.
10833 Hits
As a kid I loved banging on things and making loud, annoying noises. I'd hit metal pans together, click my tongue, whistle, holler, and stomp my feet, twiddle my fingers on plastic bins, jiggle door handles, and make all sorts of funny sounds with my throat. It was a blast. Apparently that sort of attitude towards random sounds has stuck with percussionist Christian Wolfarth throughout the years.
6442 Hits
Scott Morgan's greatest ally may very well be understatement. His work sits comfortably next to many of his label mates, especially Lichens and Bird Show, both of whom utilize unusual sounds and quiet drift to highlight the beauty of their melodies and rhythms.
9499 Hits
"Do Not As I Do," the latest single from Hukkelberg’s 2005 album Little Things, has everything I could hope for in a pop song: a good voice, original lyrics, and a memorable chorus.
5673 Hits
This Sunroof! docking with satellite ecstatica continues Matthew Bower’s exploration into the brighter side of drone experimentation. This is one of the best places yet to begin to attempt to keep up with Bower’s worldview and schedule. Programmed as a single track yet built out of many chunks of separate jams and studio tinkering this continues the Sunroof! tradition of gorgeously excessive bliss up against a sense of playful freedom.
10537 Hits
So much of what Jim O'Rourke does is impossible to predict. His music either entices or disgusts and typically fluctuates between radical experimental work and more conventional "pop" records. With Mats Gustafssen and Thurston Moore in tow the result is akin to mechanical ambience: music that's probably best left ignored, but that announces itself too powerfully to be placed in the background.
7141 Hits
Tom Carter made a revealing statement in his Eye interview, claiming that Charalambides has always been a fairly direct band. Whether they sound mysterious or not, returning to their material with this in mind has been an eye opener. On Charalambides' latest record, the band sounds more confident than ever, directing their energy into a powerful piece of musicianship, passion, and vision. and also recording what happens to be their best album to date.
8913 Hits
David Goodman was the bassist in the Boston band Lockgroove who was taken over and replaced by Dave Doom, traversed the northeast, gathering sounds and, unlike every academic sound gathering world traveler, has woven a fun and diverse pop/post-pop album instead of some boring bit of stuffy nonsense. Munchy the Bear is one of the most fresh and original debut albums I've ever heard.
9739 Hits
Jonas Munk is a talented musician, producer, and texturalist. As Manual, his recordings are warm, the guitar hums are deep, and the sounds of waves and wind chimes are dreamy and picturesque like a summer day on the beach with the hot sun beating down and a cool, cleansing sea breeze gently passing through. All it needs, however is a hook.
10633 Hits
Electro-acoustic ventures will either sound warm, welcoming, and exciting from the start or they will be colder and less appealing. Cold, approximated experiments often yield the latter for me, drawing more yawns than squeals of excitement. Gregg Kowalsky's effort is a balance between auditory masturbation and consistent hammering; if the music doesn't yield to his desires, Kowalsky just tries to pound it into happy submission.
9222 Hits
With this release, the Numero Group has managed to achieve perfection. The music consists of 14 songs by as many artists, all folky females, whose homemade records were so limited that it’s a miracle that somebody was able to compile this many gems in one place. The crowning achievement for Numero is that they finally included in their deluxe booklet a page devoted to each artist with an accompanying image.
6692 Hits
Deep City was birthed in academia, with its founders being various teachers and administrators in the Miami-Dade public school system. Like a number of record labels, Deep City had a house band, who would back various singers and soloists. For their house band, the Deep City crew had the brilliant idea to use Florida A&M University’s pep band!
8607 Hits
After almost two years and another incarnation of the band, the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. returns with a tour and a new album. I was wary upon hearing of the reformation if only because the group had showed signs of fatigue since the departure of Cotton Casino. However, it seems that the time off has served them well. Not only is this album a welcome return to form, but also some of the tracks exceed this incarnation’s past accomplishments, rivaling their past output with stylistic variations that haven’t been heard in years.
10245 Hits
As the sticker on the cover warns, this version of Acid Mothers Temple is neither The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. nor The Cosmic Inferno. In fact, this is the first Acid Mothers Temple album without the group’s founder Kawabata Makoto in the line-up. Rather, this is a new band altogether formed by Magic Aum Gigi, who has appeared on a few previous Acid Mothers albums, and includes two other musicians to complete the “punk blues” trio. I was particularly interested in what a non-Makoto Acid Mothers album would sound like, and ultimately learned how much his presence adds.
9582 Hits
Sounding like a rock band that wants to score the next David Lynch movie, Orbit Service craft a handful of songs that start promisingly, but only lead to disappointment. The marriage of science fiction, psychedelic drugs, and grim detective story that composes most Songs of Eta Carinae is bled dry of any tension and meaning half through the record and by then the music has become an endurance test instead of an entertaining listen.
6031 Hits
