This album is aptly titled, as the 17 tracks it contains sound neitherhi nor lo fi. Stephen Wilkinson's debut release as Bibio is made up ofa mixture of muffled field recordings, well-recorded live guitarplaying, and ambient drones. Although individually these elements aresuccessfully executed, the finished product could have been more fullyrealized.
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3716 Hits
Around the time of Hood's Rustic Houses, Forlorn ValleysLP and their "Filmed Initiative" single, the band evolved from writingshort and brilliant pastoral odes into writing longer and digressiveelegies. Effectively, Hood changed from late afternoon ramblersmarching from pub to pub into long trail through-hikers. There is morejazz than noise in their songs these days.
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The idea of a hyper-quartet feasting on the remains of dead metalguitars, hyperventilating percussion, and over-romanticized melodiesmight, at first, sound like a fun trip through nausea. Due to a lack ofvision, however, the EP these four Texans have crafted becomes too dullafter its first half has expired to even be considered satisfyinglydizzying. Four tracks full of spinning drum sticks and convulsingguitar strings amount to a whole lot of yawning when they all beginexactly the same.
5129 Hits
Divided By Lightning is what happens when a willowy, sexuallyindeterminate club kid named Philip (who, like allclub kids, lists his occupation variously as model, artistand entertainer) decides to record an album.
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Throughout 2004, the typically prolific Richard H. Kirk dug deep into his vault, releasing several discs and twelve inches of previously unavailable solo material. Still, after 2003's politically charged albums The War Against Terrorism and The Bush Doctrine, likeminded fans seemed eager for more new work amidst the increasingly bloody Iraq quagmire and the rhetoric-heavy U.S. presidential election campaigns.
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The most important and pleasing aspect of Andrew Liles' latestfull-length is that it doesn't depend on any one formula, nor does itever venture into the realm of total and complete chaotic madness. Attimes the music is wonderfully melodic, featuring ballroom-like musiccirca 1930s or 1940s and, at other times, it is an admixture blossomingwith strange digital reverberations and analogue distortion.
3787 Hits
The aural assault unleashed on Cosmic Trigger/2AM Visitis nothing short of a head cleansing catharsis of the best kind.Japan's Kohei-chang (AKA Filthy Dabo) uses homemade electronics andscrap metal to assault the senses on his third full length release.
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Eyvind Kang is the avant-garde violinist whose work can be heard onalbums by a multitude of artists including Secret Chiefs 3, John Zorn,Bill Frisell, Beck, Marc Ribot and Arto Lindsay. He has also released ahandful of solo albums that are each more impressive than the next,culminating in last year's majestic Virginal Co-ordinates.
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Early Day Miners have this odd quality of meticulously recalling a veryspecific mid-90s, Midwestern emo/indie sound, though slowing it to anear halt. It's as though the Miners spelunked their way to somefossilized sound from the Polyvinyl/Tree/Caulfield label nexus of 1996and successfully unearthed it, thawed it, and unleashed it, albeit at aslower tempo (perhaps the lethargy can be attributed to a neardecade-long hibernation).
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Brian Williams has been operating as Lustmord for more than 20 yearsnow, churning out an impressive number of albums, all of which havebeen classified, for want of a better term, "dark ambient." Not thatit's an inappropriate term for what Williams does, creating rhythm-freesoundscapes that evoke an oppressive atmosphere of loneliness,desolation and dread.
10397 Hits
Käthe Kruse, Wolfgang Müller, and Nikolaus Utermöhlen formed somethinglike a band in 1980 and began producing all kinds of awkward soundcollages, pounding rhythmic pieces, and just plain silly exhibitions.Whether or not they can truly be considered a band is hazy, butPsychedelic Pig's release of Nursery Rhymes for True Fools of the Grailcontains twenty pieces of audio that were either ridiculously rare("Schöne Musik" appeared in an edition of twenty copies on cassette) ornever released at all.
5771 Hits
This 17 minute EP belongs to a rare breed of musical projects: theconcept project that is not overblown or pretentious. Perhaps thebrevity helps this cause, as Hawaii 5.0is the perfect length to visit the islands without feeling trappedthere. Each of the five tracks represents a different aspect of theHawaiian experience, as filtered through Ache label owner Andy Dixon'ssense of composition.
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The late Bryn Jones was rightly notorious for his extreme prolificacy:a characteristic that incredibly, does not seem to have slowed down atall since his demise in 1999. In addition to the mountains of new musicthat has been dusted off and released in the past five years, therehave also been many reissues of previously limited edition releases, ofwhich Syrinjiais one.
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After tooling around with their sound on recent releases in search ofthemselves, Pinback have finally crafted what may be the best slice ofindie pop ever created. They've certainly always had the elementsright: hook-driven melodies, a playful sensibility, the right effectsfor the right moments, and a perfect mixture of instruments to choosefrom track after track.
3169 Hits
Lab Waste, the nom de collaboration of Los Angeleans Thavius Beck andSubtitle, have mated the rap set with the digital age on their oddlytitled full length debut, Zwarte Achtegrond("Black Background" in Dutch). Appropriately modern, to make theirmusic they eschew two turntables and a microphone for two Apple G3s anda veritable shopping list of samplers, mixers and gadgets that would bethe drooling envy of any A/V club.
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On his latest collection as The Soft Pink Truth, Drew Daniel attemptsto answer the famous question posed by The Minutemen while negotiatinga postmodern marriage of heaven and hell.
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Sun City Girls are heroes of the Attention Defecit Disorder generation.This 57 minute collage, prepared for broadcast on WFPK in Louisville,Kentucky, presents everything from found dialogue to snippets offamiliar songs to live playing to absurd skits in rapid-firesuccession.
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While maintaining the typical uncompromising method to creating music,which is after all much of what makes Waits what he is, he perhaps goesa bit too far. For the first time in his career, he abandons keyboardinstruments. Instead, he is accompanied by a drove of weird noises,from bells, whistles, hisses and what sounds like banging on pots andpans to industrial clanging and leaky pipes hizzing, to humanbeatboxing, which Waits performed and recorded on a cheap tape deck inhis bathroom.
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And then there was Tussle, the latest in a succession of bands honingin on the resurgence of interest in bands like Liquid Liquid, Pigbagand 23 Skidoo.
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The Master Musicians of Bukkake take their name from the famous2,000-plus-year-old Moroccan band, replacing the traditional "Joujouka"with "Bukkake," a Japanese term for a particularly vile form ofpornography, which I won't describe here, except to say that ininvolves a large group of men doing something rather humiliating to onewoman.
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