Part three of nine in the Ache Div/orce split seven inch series is, aspromised, a strange meeting between two groups that are already strangeenough. Despite the juxtaposition in sound, this split made me wonderwhat the two songs might share and, unsurprisingly, it's the spirit ofthese two songs that comes across has being most common and important.
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Perhaps overwork has made Mathieu's Macintosh unhappy. He is consciousof the computer's painting-out on this release more than ever, The Sad Macbecoming a symbol of the plateau at which digital reconstruction has tobe re-suggested.
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Unlike most of the "digital" dub that continues to flood the market,the latest release from T. Raumschmiere's eclectic (read: incrediblyspotty) Shitkatapult imprint is actually surprising with its apparentlysincere recognition of the real, although commonly overlooked,historical connection between dub reggae and techno.
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Just when techno so desperately needs a good shot in the arm (orperhaps, the mouth or ass) from one of its biggest and most respectedstars, it is instead subjected to another installment of "When GoodArtists Go Crap." The Cloud Making Machineis the musical equivalent of an American liberal arts student dickingaround Europe for a semester, largely meandering without so much as aspeck of the intended or desired resulting enlightenment.
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The last few solo albums by Edward Ka-Spel have clearly shown that theLegendary Pink Dots' cofounder and frontman isn't afraid to steer hismusic in new and ever more idiosyncratic directions, but O Darkness! O Darkness!takes things several steps further out.
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Kemialliset Ystavat is the most consistently rewarding artist currentlygrouped under the "Finnish Underground" free-folk banner. KemiallisetYstavat ("Chemical Friends") is primarily the work of Jan Anderzen, whoshares with his fellow compatriots (Es, Avarus and Islaja, amongothers) a taste for loose, deconstructed acid folk, turning deceptivelysimple acoustic arrangements into fractured, kaleidescopic miniaturesymphonies that are richly evocative of the psychic geography ofFinland's subarctic forests.
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The Friday Group play meta-country and western music, mapping out thosedusty, hard-bitten spaces in the American West that only persist in theabstract world of forms. Theirs is an existential sound awash withharsh, unrelenting sunlight and parched desert aridness.
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This is the second La STPO release to surface on Portland's Beta-LactamRing Records, the new home for this strangest of French prog-rockensembles. La STPO, whose name translates literally as "Shy Society atthe Bird Parade," were discovered by legendary French experimentalistsDDAA (Defecit Des Annees Anterieurs—"The Deficit of Former Years"), whoreleased the band's first EP on their own Illusion Productions back in1986.
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With Black Sheep Boy,Okkervil River offer their first consistently brilliant albumresounding with themes and cascading with conceits. Neutral Milk Hotelseem to be an oft-repeated and more often misapplied referencepresently, but the structure of Okkervil's latest album unmistakablymimics In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
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Considering the lyrics on the No Religion7", I was surprised by some of the music and the packaging on thelatest full-length from Ireland's most whimsical gypsy. The musicsounds and feels entirely religious through the first four tracks and,to a great degree, recalls the gothic architecture and monolithic scopeof the more astounding and awe-inspiring cathedrals of the world.
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Noise, even more so than metal, shares a strange relation withviolence, death, sex, drugs, and any combination thereof. In fact itseems as though bands like Merzbow, Masonna, Whitehouse, et al.represent the extreme edge of violence and sexuality in their artwork,titles, influences, and lyrical output. I sometimes question just howmuch this fact determines the popularity of such acts seeing how manyof their releases just don't impress me.
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Esmerine are an outfit for the end of the world: their songs arepowerful meditations on loss, pain, and dread. At their core are BeckieFoon (A Silver Mt. Zion) and Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You Black Emperor!and Set Fire to Flames). Their second album, Aurora,is the black smoke that arises from the rubble. Here, bleak orchestralmovements slowly build to breathtaking conclusions, such as on theopener "Quelques Mots Pleins D'Ombre," where pulsating cellos gatherforce and speed, culminating in a few brief moments of controlled furyon top of a barrage of drums, bass, and piano.
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Oneida's gaze is fixed firmly on the 1970s, but rather then being allawash in overblown solos and misguided mythology, theirs is anall-encompassing view, surveying both the well known and the obscure."Lavender," with its insistent kick-drum and anthemic guitar heroics,is Oneida's call to arms with Kid Millions spouting off nonsense aboutlavender on winter days and braiding pubic hairs.
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I Thought I Was Over That not only comes off the heels of a successful LP and tour, but the tracks included are of a varied enough nature to please devoted fans who missed a single here or there and curious newbies alike.
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Elliott Sharp may be a very unlikely collaborator for Merzbow's MasamiAkita, but that's part of this CD's interest... and ultimately itsfailure, though the meeting is intriguing, even when it falls on itsface. Tranz is structured in a way similar to many of Merzbow'sother collaborative albums: two tracks are composed by Merzbow usingSharp's sounds as source material, and two by Sharp using Merzbow'ssounds.
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Veteran MC and onetime Jungle Brother Sensational's Speaks for Itselfgave me pause when I first heard it. It's so bad that there just HAS tobe more than meets the ear. Is it all a big joke, a hip hop farce,taken to an unlistenable extreme? Is it a deliberate ploy to shedlisteners or to get dropped from his label, a la Bob Dylan's Self Portrait?Or has Sensational really been a geek off the street with no ear forthe beat or knowledge of recording all this time (since 1993!) and he'sbeen fooling us all along? In any case, Speaks for Itself won'tfool anybody. It's just plain awful.
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With the recent RIAA bust of Mondo Kim's in NYC and the news of Apple'smove to Pentium D chips embedded with copyright-protection lockdownsystems, it's pretty clear that the recording industry and Hollywoodaren't planning on slowing down their draconian Gestapo tactics anytimesoon. That's why Negativland's new album No Business could not have arrived at a better time. No Businessis far more than an album: it's a multimedia essay and meditation onthe concepts of public domain, fair use, copyright law and theramifications of digital media filesharing on the music business as ithas existed for the past several decades.
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This is the second Beta-Lactam Ring release for the Japanesepsychedelic rock group with possibly the worst band name in modernmusic (outside of emo atrocities like Alongside Magenta and A Month ofSomedays). It might be a good idea for the trio of dead k, T and A tochange their name to something a little more marketable, as the musicisn't bad, really.
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Harsh noise can be fairly boring stuff, but when done properly, thekind of destruction it can unleash (especially live) is impressive,perhaps reaching that apocalyptic level so many reach for. Both RichardRamirez and Skin Crime are seasoned veterans but they've both foundtheir way to the Troniks/PACrec label for this effort in obliterationand, sadly, the results are a bit mixed.
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NYC multi-instrumentalist Adam Pierce's Obrigado Saudadewas one of my favorite discs of last year; a most splendid mixture ofpop, jazz and Brazilian-inspired musics crafted with catchy hooks,memorable melodies and cool beats of various time signatures. What waseven more impressive was that Pierce hadn't relied on many guests topull off this recording, yet the performances are totally tight fromstart to finish.
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