Pressed on gold vinyl and packaged in a black sleeve with gold print depicting Medieval interpretations of the apocalypse, Angel Coma looks like it’s going to be heavy. Each side contains a single, long track, one by each band. Both tracks were recorded with the current lineups from the bands; Sunn O))) including vocals via Xasthur and noise provided by John Wiese and Oren Ambarchi; Earth being the Hex lineup of Carlson and Davies plus three. |
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Pressed on gold vinyl and packaged in a black sleeve with gold print depicting Medieval interpretations of the apocalypse, Angel Coma looks like it’s going to be heavy. Each side contains a single, long track, one by each band. Both tracks were recorded with the current lineups from the bands; Sunn O))) including vocals via Xasthur and noise provided by John Wiese and Oren Ambarchi; Earth being the Hex lineup of Carlson and Davies plus three.
13448 Hits
It's been written that this ground has been walked on before, but such a statement is an ignorant one that fails to acknowledge the finer moments of Chihei Hatakeyama's work. These recordings are anything but common, exhibiting an unusual attention to detail that surpasses the efforts of many like-minded musicians. Hatakeyama's work practically defines how musicality and expressionism can work well together.
7211 Hits
Tsunoda is one of my favorite artists working with fieldrecorded media mainly because of the way in which his body of work tests thedefinitions and possibilities of “environmental” sound or music.
8139 Hits
Imust confess that Andrew Chalk has been scoring my ritual eveningrelax/unwind "me-time" almost exclusively for the last few weeks. The newest release is exceptionally fantastic, reminding me why peoplepay outrageous amounts for his releases at online auctions.
10754 Hits
Behind all the bells and whistles singing and stretching across every second on this album is a beautiful, childlike song. The duo of Jason Frederick Iselin and Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens wrestle with unconventional sound and pop, folk, and classical sensibilities over the duration of Things Past. The tension that plays out between the odd and the familiar opens up a stream of ornate and soft music both catchy and laden with little treasures just waiting to be unearthed.
9581 Hits
Embracing true digital designs, Loscil harnesses the internet-as-merchant age and offers a new album for free download called Stases. Though Scott Morgan has never eschewed album leitmotifs, he employs one here which is more nebulous than his previous explorations in the submarine, the geographic, and the thermodynamic.
19971 Hits
The material on Music for a Spaghetti Westernwas recorded backin 1985-86 but not released until about 10 years later. ThankfullyKlanggalerie are keeping it from the tragedy of being lost to the ages,for now at least.
29911 Hits
In the wake of 2004’s Your Blues, Destroyer’s Rubies seems to bea stark 180 turn from the former's MIDI and synth drenched sound. Thesound on this record is lush and organic, recalling early '70s artrockers like Bowie, T. Rex and Roxy Music. And while Daniel Bejar andhis band provide the songs with a solid musical, he takes a page fromthe post-modernism handbook, imbuing his songs with a grand sense ofpurpose, yet inserting word games and nonsensical imagery as a counterpoint.
9203 Hits
Peoplehave grown so accustomed to Kieran Hebden's work as Four Tet that theyhave probably almost completely forgotten what his role as amusician/composer was in Fridge and the directions the trio werebeginning to pursue on their last full-length release, Happiness.The people who are aware and welcoming to more loose sounds will be themore receptive audience for this brand new project, as Hebden hasteamed up with Steve Reid, a seasoned drummer known for his work insoul and jazz circles.
9283 Hits
The fourth, and final, in this spaced-out series is the perfect bookend to Cope’s explorations in the dichotomous world cosmological and Earth Mother minded rock. Consisting of the rediscovered first effort and the last ever track recorded for his Rite sequence, Cope shows little sign of doing anything less than 23 minutes when it comes to playing for purely meditational purposes.
12461 Hits
Paranoia runs rampant all over this disc, a sense of voyeurism and danger with it, slowly escalating with every cautious movement. The technology we've built up all around us is slowly evaporating, wearing away with rain and wind. Nobody is sure what's beneath everything, what's grown since we buried ourselves beneath steel towers and miles of wire, but Echran is observing and recording the entire event.
7853 Hits
Texan Rick Reed is a true multi-instrumentalist ofexperimental traditions. His primarycompositions, for sine wave, short-wave and Moog, represent mastery of thetexturally-intense, sculptural minimalism nowadays crunched down from the Powerbooktable.
11287 Hits
This exceptional single track of bliss on lone droner Hardwick’s debut 3" CD-R runs into nearly eighteen minutes of steadily yearning cloud nine emissions. Wrapped in a garish Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label style wallpaper sample, the music is thankfully made with much better taste.
9099 Hits
I've been worried about music without discernable melodies or intriguing concepts lately because I'm finding more and more that they fail me. A host of "difficult" bands have released album after album of strange sounds and subconscious cut and paste tactics, but more often than not there's something musical, fun, or catchy playing side by side with all the insanity. Greg Davis and Steven Hess both reach for that extra something on this disc, but come away with an important piece of the musical puzzle missing.
7315 Hits
I'd champion this as the emo-heavy electronic album of 2006 if it weren't deserving of just slightly more praise than that. Shaw-Han Lien composes ultra-busy synthetic pop songs using the same old four-on-the-floor rhythm tracks and toppling sound banks made popular by disco and techno performers, but he adds his own extra-processed spice to the music, making it almost enjoyable. It is simultaneously bright, sunny, and altogether sickening.
6970 Hits
This is a spring/summer guitar record that’s been designed to fall somewhere between the earthy simplicity of folk players and the flash of '70s heavy rock. There are understated flamboyant twists to the playing and sound of Ezra Feinberg (ex Piano Magic) and Tim Green (The Fucking Champs and The Nation of Ulysses). The band’s name (and the LP title) maybe be pronounced like Stevie Wonder did on "Living for the City," but this album is anything but straight urban rock.
10953 Hits
I had never listened to Maximum Joy, I knew they were connected withThe Pop Group, who I had a passing interest in, but I can now understand whyMaximum Joy have descended into such obscurity. The songs on thiscompilation have not withstood the test of time: the music here soundsextremely dated and (worse again) it isn’t very good; this might be oneonly for the nostalgia crowd and/or Pop Group collectors.
7576 Hits
Not Alonepacks more than five hours of exclusive material by some of today'sfinest recording artists into one massive benefit album, the brainchildof Mark Logan of Jnana Records and David Tibet of Current 93. Asmight be predicted, many of the artists contained herein arerecognizable as the "usual suspects" of the extended C93 family—artistslike Antony, Simon Finn, Shirley Collins, John Contreras and Nurse WithWound. However, the set also unexpectedly contains contributions by astaggering number of indie and underground luminaries who exist welloutside of the perceived "apocalyptic folk" milieu.
11167 Hits
On Brendan Whitney's latest release as Alias, he's brought in kid brother Ehren tocollaborate, and together they have produced an album that is lush andethereal with a dream-like groove. Wide spaces of silence separate thetracks, giving a feeling of moving from one dream to another.
10104 Hits
Nice Nice are Jason Buehler and Mark Shirazi: a multi-talented duo fromPortland, Oregon who have demonstrated through their brilliant fulllength album, Chrome, that they can fill sound to the wallswith only a guitar and drums and some skilled real-time effects processing.With this series—a limited quartet of numbered CD EPs which had to bemail ordered directly through Temporary Residence—I hate to admit, onthe whole, I'm underwhelmed.
12919 Hits
