03 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

URUK comes from the meeting in 2016 of two totally unclassifiable musicians: Thighpaulsandra and Massimo Pupillo.

Thighpaulsandra has an impressive track record particularly playing on many Coil albums. Traces of this influence can be found in the keyboards used on Mysterium Coniunctionis. We could randomly pick such masterpieces as the two volumes of Musick to Play in the Dark and Astral Disaster, records that were and still are among the best ambient albums ever made. He has also made several records in his own name (including the unpredictable Double Vulgar) and was a member of the UUUU (Mego Editions) project in 2017 which also featured a particularly creative Graham Lewis (Wire).

Massimo Pupillo is well known for having slammed a lot of ears as the bassist with the highly imposing Italian jazzcore trio Zu (those who saw them on stage will understand). 2009's Carboniferous or the more recent 2014 collaboration with Eugene Robinson (Oxbow) still resonate for a lot of listeners. In 2016, Massimo was in Triple Sun (no doubt a reference to the splendid song by Coil, again..) alongside two well-known musicians at Ici d'ailleurs - Raphaël Séguinier and David Chalmin (The Third Eye Foundation).

URUK also and especially brought out their first album in 2017 - I Leave A Silver Trail Through Blackness (Consouling Sounds). This is an imposing piece of dark ambient music in which the two musicians proved that they are more than just the sum their respective experiences. They are sound explorers obsessed by grasping the detail that shifts listeners from one world to another.

Their second album, Mysterium Coniunctionis makes direct reference to the eponymous and testamentary work of the psychiatrist Carl Jung, subtitled An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy. It clearly reflects the duo's intention to create particularly immersive and meaningful music from supposedly opposing materials - in this case the meeting of electronic and organic sounds.

More information can be found here.

02 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

There is complexity in simplicity, and Sparrow Nights is Peter Brötzmann and Heather Leigh's most enduring record to date, and their first studio album. A series of emotionally rich and boldly elucidated tonal and timbral exchanges played like compositions on pedal steel and reeds, the tracks (released as a 6-track LP and 10-track CD) are cold-forged minimalist blues motifs dragged from instrumental laments.

After three years playing together Brötzmann/Leigh's connection and understanding is by now both cerebral and deeply invested in the physical and sensory possibilities of their combined sound, while retaining a melancholic distance. Within this duo there is fluidity – neither is the anchor – and these recordings sound with as much variety as the sea. At times Sparrow Nights carries the clarity and poeticism of still water and open horizon ("This Word Love"), and at others it contains the elemental and ferocious roar of white water breakers on black rocks ("This Time Around").

On their previous three live albums (Ears Are Filled With Wonder, Sex Tape, Crowmoon) the duo have developed an intimate and intense language that manifests here as a focus on power and control, where figures blasted of unnecessary decoration are drawn from the shadows and smoke of collapse. The studio setting also allows Brötzmann to bring a broader range of reeds than in live scenarios: where previously he has played primarily tenor, clarinet and tarogato with Leigh, here he delivers the heat of alto and the low pressure of bass saxophone and clarinet.

Brötzmann's duo with Leigh continues to trace a fresh new arc in his trajectory, and this release also falls at a time when Leigh releases Throne, her most song-based record to date. Here as a studio duo they play a new-old blues for times of complexity, noise and chaos, continuing to redefine and re-sound possibilities for improvised music.

More information can be found here.

02 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

Geographic North proudly presents Don't Look Now, our second frightening foray into Halloween-inspired sounds to delight and dismay throughout the season. Featuring 90 minutes of haunted, hellish hysteria composed by some of the most abominable names in ambient music, the compilation nearly splits at the seams with grotesque grace.

All proceeds from this morbid mirth go directly toward youthSpark, an Atlanta-based non-profit that works directly with, and protects, at-risk youth from exploitation, abuse and trafficking in the Southeastern United States.

The compilation opens with "The Visitor," a peculiar prologue that portends potential peril ahead and one of two bookends concocted by Arp, who serves as the compilation's crypt-keeper of sorts. As the fog begins to swell, Ka Baird’s "Clearing" brings a trickle of overcast textures and exquisitely disorienting organ tones. Algiers shatter into the scene with brooding vehemence, sounding like a biting mix of John Carpenter and the Pop Group. Perennial witching hour heroes Anjou bring a moonlit mantra of eroding melodies that blossom with decay. "Sada," composed and performed by Clarice Jensen, steers the action deep into the underworld, projecting an inverted soundscape of smeared beauty. Western six-string virtuoso Danny Paul Grody carries the bizarre bewilderment into an open den of shimmering, pristine melody and resonance. The first main passage is nailed shut by "Cement Dossier," one of three anonymous and obscene chapter breaks from the Geographic North house band.

Next up, Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett unfurl a hypnotic hymn of rustic kosmische bliss that balances a deathly mix of paranoia and resolution. Eluvium's "Surrounded by Illusion" is a mini-epic of textural maximalism that only confirms the Pacific NW ambient godhead's emotional prowess. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma summons the ghost of Hildegard von Bingen for an organ-filled interpretation of "O virtus sapientiae" that's both life-affirming and devastating.

Robert Donne (Labradford, Anjou) crafts a pummeling waltz of soot and emaciation with "Rakkauslaulu," a stinging salute to Mika Vainio. Ilyas Ahmed offers an ice-cold hand to lead you through the ornately crumbing decay of "Local Blues," blurring itself almost too perfectly into the eerie, almost too comforting calmness of Félicia Atkinson’s "Little Things." Richard Chartier assumes his Pinkcourtesyphone guise for a purely cinematic lapse into the netherworld. The incognito amusement continues with "Stabbing," an extended, slow-motion scene that brings some of Suzanne Kraft’' most volatile and vile work to date.

"Thunderhead," a menacingly paced slow burn from Moon Diagrams (Moses Archuleta of Deerhunter), could be the soundtrack to the most alluring haunted house you’ve ever seen, while Roberto Carlos Lange's "Indian Rope" casts a curiously charming spell of glitter and gloom. Vancouver's own Secret Pyramid crafts a bewitching bereavement from the North, permeating everything it touches with bedeviled beauty for an unforgettable climax of bleak allure. Arp returns again to bookend Don't Look Now with "Love Theme," a fitting epilogue that reflects on the receding haze with hopeful optimism.

Although the sun has finally rose, plenty of shadows remain.

More information can be found here.

02 October 2018

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Albums and Singles

Los Angeles-based DJ and composer Nick Malkin is perhaps best known for his noirish, backlit ambient dance music under the name Afterhours (Not Not Fun). Malkin's also moonlighted as a casual collaborator with LA Vampires and Sun Araw, served as an early DJ with Chinatown-based experimental radio station KCHUNG, and currently hosts a radio show of atmospheric selections on NTS radio called Post-Geography. Now, Malkin returns with Slow Day on Brilliant Drive, his most radiant work to date.

Along with Maxwell Sterling (double bass) and Jon-Kyle Mohr (percussion), Malkin self-instituted an intricate form of collaboration that required extensive amounts of improvisation, meditation, and editing. Malkin introduced a curated series of loops to his collaborators, who then embellished them with textures and muted motifs. Malkin then laid everything out and went to work scouring, polishing, and re-contextualizing certain elements into something entirely new, with elements within dating back to 2014.

The end result is a profound live-band ambient record that celebrates a curated but communal musical dynamic, along the lines of The Necks or Supersilent, but heavily informed by the micro-delicacy of Mille Plateaux’s most fathomless works. Even with the highly disparate sound sources, Slow Day on Brilliant Drive is a deeply cohesive and surprisingly intimate work that speaks to Malkin's uncanny ear and devotion to a concept.

More information can be found here.

30 September 2018

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Albums and Singles

30 September 2018

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Albums and Singles

While this is improbably the first Orphax release to be covered on Brainwashed, Amsterdam's Sietse van Erve has been a significant figure in experimental music circles for nearly two decades, running the fine Moving Furniture label and organizing events at the STEIM Foundation and elsewhere. This latest album is kind of a decade-spanning labor of love, as van Erve solicited audio files from a number of planned collaborators back in 2006 for a project that was eventually abandoned. However, he recently rediscovered some saxophone recordings made by James Fella and decided to revisit them, resulting in the cacophonously brilliant opening piece "JF." To complement that piece, Sietse then enlisted his father to make some fresh new recordings for him to work his transformative magic upon for a companion piece. While the two pieces sound quite different from one another, both are compellingly unusual forays into longform drone that lysergically swirl and undulate with vibrant harmonic interplay.

Moving Furniture

I suppose saxophone-based drone albums are not particularly common, but the instrument lends itself quite well to microtonal experimentation and sustained notes, so albums in this vein have likely been a relative fixture in experimental music since Terry Riley's early days.To his credit, however, van Erve's approach to this project is a bit of an unusual/outsider one.Namely, he is not a saxophonist and is merely harvesting the sounds from the instrument for his own vision.That might not seem like a big deal, but it completely liberates van Erve from any and all performance-based concerns, so he is not painstakingly assembling the piece in real-time using looping pedals nor is there any real limit to the number of layers he can amass and intertwine.Sietse is also far from dogmatic in his approach to drone in general with the opening "JF," as the central motif is a swaying dance of shrilly harmonizing tones that are constantly changing their relation to one another.He does not use passing dissonances as mere tool to build tension–he immediately creates a fundamentally dissonant world and happily stays there for the duration.There is no sense that the piece is ever on the verge of unexpectedly cohering into a passage of unearthly beauty, but it is visceral and vibrant enough to remain compelling without any conspicuous evolution or compositional sleight of hand: it is simply a wonderfully tense miasma of waxing and waning howls from start to finish, though there are some wonderfully spectral and ephemeral shapes swirling in the undercurrent.It is a truly stellar and unusual piece.

The following "JvE" is considerably less harsh, as its deeper, more throbbing tones weave a slow-motion reverie of buzzing, oscillating, and flanging drones.In fact, it does not sound much like a saxophone piece at all–more like a Sunn o))) that worshipped clarity, precision, and elegance rather than roiling power and density (or like an Eliane Radigue shrouded in fog with a wall of amplifiers behind her).Much like its predecessor, however, there is another layer of activity beyond the actual notes being played.Unlike "JF," however, "JvE" is understated, slow-moving, and spacious enough for the resultant oscillating cloud of overtones to feel like a prominent and integral part of the piece.As if to underscore that feat, the central motif pulls a bit of a vanishing act in the piece's final moment to leave only a drifting, dreamlike cloud of hazy melodies and submerged, sputtering entropy.That transformation is particularly impressive when the context of the entire album is considered, as Saxophone Studies began in feral, confrontational fashion and lost very little of its steam and ability to beguile as it slowly and purposefully made its way towards a quiet, understated, and nuanced coda.

I am quite fond of both pieces, making Saxophone Studies a uniformly strong release, but I am most struck by the comparatively harsh discomfort of the opening piece, which takes drone music to a wonderfully tense and confrontational place.There is a vast ocean of drone in the world and most of it all blurs together for me.Very little of it, however, sounds like it is about to leap out of my speakers to kill me, which is why Saxophone Studies is an album that will stick in my memory.With "JF," van Erve proves himself to be a master at wielding sharpness, shifting dissonance, and unresolved tension to make an extended drone piece feel like a squirming and disconcerting living entity.Of course, focusing exclusively upon "JF" does a bit of a disservice to the more subtle microtonal sorcery of the closer, but two pieces make a perversely effective pairing: it is "JF" that makes Saxophone Studies a memorable and attention-grabbing release, but the more subtle pleasures of "JvE" will remain to be revealed and explored long after I become numb to the howling power of its predecessor.

30 September 2018

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Albums and Singles

Sean McCann's output has greatly slowed in recent years, as he has become increasing focused on running the fine Recital Program imprint, yet he was easily one of the most wildly prolific figures to emerge from the cassette culture explosion of the early 2000s. As a result, much of his finest work surfaced only ephemerally and many of his early tapes have likely only been heard by the most devoted of Foxy Digitalis readers. One of countless releases that slipped by me (and presumably lots of other people) was this one, originally issued on cassette and CDR on McCann's earlier Roll Over Rover label back in 2010. Despite that humble release, Fountains was an ambitious undertaking, as McCann envisioned it as an "ambient masterwork" that would be the debut release for Recital. He was never quite happy with it though, and moved onto his more orchestral-minded Music for Private Ensemble work instead. I certainly cannot fault McCann's decision, but he was wrong about one thing: Fountains actually is an ambient masterwork (or at least damn close to one).

Round Bale Recordings/Roll Over Rover

In the liner notes to this reissue, McCann amusingly describes this period of his career as his "smashed fire-hydrant geyser" phase, as his entire life was consumed by recording and releasing music.He also notes that Fountains was one of his most cohesive releases from that formative era in San Francisco, which I suppose is probably true, though I suspect there are still a number of other underheard gems lurking in his back catalog.In fact, I believe I first stumbled upon McCann’s work through a mere production credit on a Dreamcolour tape that unexpectedly floored me.Similarly, Round Bale's David Perron (a big McCann fan, obviously) only recently discovered Fountains himself when he asked McCann about unreleased material he might have lying around.Some of that unreleased material (from roughly the same period) appears on this reissue as the final five songs, stretching Fountains across two cassettes and exceeding two hours of music.It is hard to say whether those new pieces add anything to a largely unheard album, but the closing "Arrow" admittedly stands out as a quite a beautiful piece.In any case, the new pieces certainly fit comfortably within Fountains' prevailing aesthetic of elegantly blurred, churning, and dreamlike violin loops.Also, given the blearily hypnagogic and looping nature of these pieces, extreme length is kind of an asset, as the album feels like a lazily rapturous and immersive infinite loop, akin to McCann's own pleasant memories of falling asleep to Andrew Chalk albums.Also, for those less inclined to lose themselves in an endless slow-motion sound world, the cassette format is especially convenient for breaking up Fountains into more manageable subsections.

While a few pieces, such as "Community Gargle," incorporate squealing and scraping strings into McCann’s hazy, gently churning reveries, the vast majority of his violin and guitar loops are blurred and dissolved into ghostly abstraction.That penchant for soft-focus unreality also extends to the textural field recordings that appear in the background throughout the album, which (unsurprisingly) tend to be of fountains, albeit slowed and transformed into deep, reverberating ripples.There are some notable exceptions though, like the warmly lovely "Glancing at Ships," which evokes a steady rain falling on creaking dock…and then gurgling waters flooding into a splintering hull. That piece is unquestionably one of Fountains' individual highlights, though it is easy and perfectly reasonable to view this album as a series of variations on a single theme.Some variations just happen to be a bit more compelling than others, appearing as unexpectedly vivid oases in the languorous flow of fluttering, swaying, and vaporous bliss.The opening "It Never Entered My Mind" is another such piece, resembling a dense mass of slow-moving clouds, but with enough passing dissonance in its harmonies to offer a glimpse of something deeper and more mysterious.Elsewhere, "Stars Across The Floor" sounds like swells of E-bowed guitar that have been slowed down to the point that they feel like rivulets of water rolling down a window in a world where time has almost completely stopped.My favorite piece, however, is "The Tumblers," as McCann weaves a series of warped and undulating chords that sounds like a distressed tape fitfully playing at the wrong speed as a gorgeously warm haze of strings spreads outward from the edges.It is one of the album’s shorter pieces, but it is perfect in its concision.In fact, the entire album is quite strong and thematically focused, which gives it quite an impressively immersive cumulative power as it slowly unfolds.

I would like say that it is remarkable that such a wonderful and deeply absorbing album languished in obscurity for so long, but the world is full of great music that never found a suitably influential advocate or had a chance to reach the right ears.Consequently, it is a delight when someone like David Perron comes along to belatedly right a historical injustice and bring an opus like Fountains to a larger audience.It certainly deserves it.That said, I can understand why McCann is generally quite reticent about keeping his early work available, as those old tapes and CDRs are so divergent from his current work that they seem like a different artist altogether.The Sean McCann of 2018 is an orchestral composer with a deep fascination for sound-poetry and 20th century avant-garde movements like Fluxus, so it makes sense that he might view his early eruption of cassette work as comparatively unsophisticated and derivative.It is true he was a representative part of a milieu back in those days.However, it is also true that an enormous amount of great music emerged from that (second) heyday of the cassette scene and McCann was responsible for some of its finest moments.I suspect only McCann himself truly knows whether or not Fountains stands among the best work from that phase of his evolution, but I am unaware of any other secret attempts on his part to craft a career-defining epic of gorgeously bleary ambient heaven, so there is a good chance that this was a one-of-a-kind tour de force.If it was not, it at least feels like one.

30 September 2018

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Albums and Singles

Barnacles, the (mostly) solo project of Italy’s Matteo Uggeri (also a member of Sparkle in Grey) has released two albums nearly simultaneously, and even though the approach to each are drastically different, the final product is entirely complimentary. With one culled from source material of previous releases and the other with the legendary experimental Italian artist and composer, there is a wide gamut of sounds here, but one that has the unified focus of Uggeri’s compositional skills.

Alma De Nieto/Artoffact

Air Skin Digger is the self-plunderphonic of the two:four lengthy pieces of complex, interlocking loops that are created exclusively from Uggeri's other projects with no other instrumentation included. Per composition there are also only four source sounds used.Even with these self-imposed limitations, the final product sounds far more complex and diverse.Opening piece "How a Slave, Who Had Perpetually Defamed Me and Desired to Have Me Killed, was Himself Killed and Eaten in my Presence" leads off with noisy loops and far off bagpipes (performed by Alberto Carozzi) that are cast atop a nicely drifting, echoing backdrop.Soon frenetic drum loops, originally recorded by Simone Riva, are added and the piece takes on a chaotic, but brilliant direction.

Comparatively, "Of the Manner in Which the Savages Ate a Prisoner and Carried me to the Feast" is a bit more electronic sounding, and also more rigid.Synth sequences and guitar loops make for a tighter structure, eventually relenting with the inclusion of 4/4 kick drum patterns and what sounds like tapes from a riot.For the second half things loosen up as more drumming from Riva and distorted noise loops take focus.The final piece, "My Prayer to the Lord God When I Was in the Hands of the Savages Who Threatened to Eat Me,"is a fitting climax, throwing a bit of everything together and it all solidifying amazingly.Franz Krostopovic's viola is mixed clearly to the front as Uggeri blends in some industrial sounding drum loops to contrast.The mix is great, joining in the slow, ambient passages with more aggressive rhythms.After an ambient breakdown he reintroduces those original sounds with the addition of actual drumming, ending the album on a strong note.

samples:

• How a Slave, Who Had Perpetually Defamed Me and Desired to Have Me Killed, was Himself Killed and Eaten in my Presence
• Of the Manner in Which the Savages Ate a Prisoner and Carried me to the Feast
• My Prayer to the Lord God When I Was in the Hands of the Savages Who Threatened to Eat Me

For Sidereal Decomposition Activity, Uggeri works from a wider palette with newly created sounds, alongside contributions from the legendary artist Maurizio Bianchi.The two have collaborated at various times since 2007, so it is no surprise that their unique styles end up complementary, with Uggeri focusing on the rhythmic and chaotic sounds, and Bianchi, in full new age mode, leaning heavily on the synths and electronics."Infinite Cosmic Eruption" opens the album with Uggeri’s noisy, loop-heavy din.The rhythms are there but more processed and sparse compared to his solo material.Bianchi contributes some spacious, droning electronics that nicely fit with his current work, but still the final product feels faithful to his classic material as well.

This nod to classic M.B. is especially prominent on "Sidereal Decomposition Activity," with its wobbling distortion and Bianchi's decrepit, decaying keyboard passages.The dour, bleak electronic sound is the focus, as Uggeri's rhythmic loops are subtly blended in and out, at times taking the stage more aggressively but never as to overshadow the electronics."Astral Fall Dynamism" is a bit more disorienting in its distant mangled voice loops and plucked string patterns.The result is an abstract, less structured piece of material.Concluding song "Unearthly Armagheddon Energy" takes the album out on an especially strong composition.From its noisily static opening and depressive melody, the two pile on the sounds, rhythmic and processed, coming together as almost song-like and traditional, but in their distinctly idiosyncratic way.Building to a dramatic crescendo and then stripped back like the post apocalyptic fallout after a cataclysmic explosion.

Matteo Uggeri’s loop-heavy, abstract sound sculptor approach to music as Barnacles nicely ties these two records together that, in some ways differ greatly from one another.With Air Skin Digger being limited to just treating and remixing previous works, and Sidereal Decomposition Activity having major contributions by Maurizio Bianchi, the two albums start from notably different concepts self-imposed constraints. While the two may not sound entirely similar, Uggeri's style leads to a synergy of sorts, resulting in two distinct albums that are both essential and complementary to one another.

samples:

• Infinite Cosmic Eruption
• Sidereal Decomposition Activity
• Unearthly Armagheddon Energy

 

30 September 2018

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Albums and Singles

While he has long been one of my favorite artists, Tim Hecker has truly blossomed into a creative supernova over the last several years, as each fresh album seems to set a new standard for the state of electronic music. For the most part, this latest release continues that improbable streak of masterpieces, though Konoyo's vision is radical in a much different way than Love Streams or Virgins. The raw material was quite a bold departure from the norm, however, as Hecker collaborated with a gagaku ensemble in Tokyo. Despite the unusual instrumentation and the unexpected participants, Konoyo still sounds perversely like a classic Tim Hecker album, albeit the broken, squirming ruins of one. I suppose that makes it feel like slightly less of visionary bombshell than some other releases at times, but that is merely because Hecker's focus was on more subtle evolutions this time around, stripping away unnecessary density and adventurously playing with textures and structures to present a hallucinatory masterclass in experimental composition that seethes and churns with dark emotion.

Kranky

The conceptual premise for Konoyo ("The World Over Here") is rooted in some conversations that Hecker had with a friend (now deceased) about both the concept of negative space and a frustration with the ineffective overuse of density as a compositional crutch.The path between the original inspiration and the album that ultimately results is never a linear one with Hecker though: given his exhaustive and ambitiously transformative creative process, it is always a surprise to see what shape the music takes when it finally emerges at the end.For example, I suspect Tokyo Gakuso would find most of their contributions here to be fragmented, twisted, and decontextualized into utter unrecognizability.Hecker definitely took the thoughts about density to heart though, albeit not quite in anything resembling the expected way.In the opening piece, "This Life," the central theme of howling, swooping, and tormented strings unfolds over an unpredictably shifting backdrop that wanders from tumbling, smeared arpeggios to bleary chords to grinding, bass-heavy surges of power without ever building towards a stable structure or arc.It feels quite fluid and improvisatory, despite the fact that it was all painstakingly planned, as the structure of the piece feels like it is bending, waxing, waning, and dissolving in reaction to the serpentine movements of the main theme.That approach works beautifully for that specific piece, as the demonic strings are vivid and vibrantly alive enough to thrive on their own, particularly since Hecker is continually intertwining new sounds and transforming their dissonant harmonies.With a strong enough central theme, the underlying structure does not need to prop anything up or provide any sense of forward motion, so Hecker is free to use it instead to create a wonderfully disorienting sense of fractured and fragile ephemerality.Everything is changing all of the time and it is deliriously absorbing and gloriously hallucinatory.Not every piece on Konoyo manages to pull off that feat with the same aplomb, but it is certainly great when it works.

That free-form approach to compositional structure makes Konoyo a challenging album to wrap my mind around, as it feels like I am experiencing an endlessly changing flow of motifs and fragments over a willfully inconstant and unsettled foundation.As such, the album is more like a shifting series of compelling moments rather than a structured presentation of seven individual compositions.That deeply experimental approach is still quite compelling, as Hecker's music is characteristically wonderful and distinctive as ever, yet Konoyo is perversely like a John Coltrane live recording: it is undeniably dazzling on a moment-to-moment basis, but I will be damned if I can remember which songs were played or when they started or stopped when it is all over.That said, a few pieces besides the opening "This Life" stand out as especially striking, most of which fall on the album's second half.In particular, I love the many inspired textural flourishes that billow out of the brooding and amorphous "Keyed Out," especially the squirming, stuttering arpeggios and the buried sounds of distressed vinyl or mangled tape."A Sodium Codec Haze" is another favorite, as Hecker tears through a gorgeously swaying and rippling reverie with whistling howls and chattering surges of something like garbled machine noise.Also, the final stretch sounds like a chorus of slow-motion and nightmarish wind chimes, which is quite appealing as well.The album's two longest pieces are quite powerful too, as "In Mother Earth Phase" is the most nakedly beautiful and structured piece on the album, while the epic "Across to Annoyo" is a feast of skittering, gnarled, and strangled textures.

Aside from the radical transformation of his compositional technique, it must be said that Konoyo is also unique among Hecker's releases in its darkness, as its beauty is very much a bleak one.The strange and cryptic cover art is quite fitting, evoking a kind of contemporary urban dystopia that is cold and devoid of beauty, though ramshackle art can still blossom from its sad detritus. If Virgins sounded like it was recorded in a collapsing cathedral and Love Streams felt like it was recorded by a choir of angels, Konoyo feels like it was recorded in a post-apocalyptic junkyard by light of flaming garbage cans.  I will not attempt to guess what Hecker was feeling or whether he had any deeply metaphoric intentions, but the tone is definitely a heavy and striking one.In stripping away much of his usual artifice, Hecker has created a much more direct and raw emotional connection than usual.As such, this release is unlike anything else in Tim Hecker's discography and I love him for that.He could have easily made a universally beloved album by sticking to his rough trajectory, but instead he opted for a much more sorrow-steeped and difficult road.As such, Konoyo is probably the most challenging and prickly release in his discography, which may alienate some less-adventurous listeners.Artistic boldness and listenability rarely go hand-in-hand though and this is easily one of Hecker’s most ambitious and provocative statements to date.

23 September 2018

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Albums and Singles

This latest album, Davachi's second of the year, continues the compelling and accelerating evolution of her distinctive vision. In fact, Gave in Rest features some of her most experimental and uncategorizable work to date, incorporating Renaissance-era instrumentation and compositional ideas to create something resembling a spectral secular mass of sorts. While the results of this ambitious divergence can occasionally feel sketch-like, uneven, or less than seamless as Davachi explores unusual structures or revels in the joy of pure sound, the bulk of the album is quite good and a few pieces are absolutely sublime. Even if it does not quite rank among Davachi's strongest releases, Gave in Rest is the album that departs most radically from her comfort zone and delves the deepest into unexplored territory.

Ba Da Bing

The last year or so has been one of considerable creative and personal upheaval for Sarah Davachi, relocating from her home in Vancouver to Los Angeles, with an extended detour into Europe along the way.It was that period of relative rootlessness in Europe that arguably had the greatest impact on shaping the direction of Gave in Rest, as she spent a lot of time in churches–sometimes performing in them, but more frequently just basking in the calming atmosphere and reflecting upon the textures and interplay of various instruments in that unique acoustic environment.Consequently, it is no surprise that most of the instrumentation used for this album falls very much within traditional "church" territory, or at least sounds like it does (there are allegedly some synthesizers sneakily lurking amongst all the organ, piano, mellotron, and choral voices).Aside from that, Davachi's deep interest in early music additionally manifests itself in a curious fondness for the recorder.In fact, the recorder is the sole instrument in the album's deeply unusual and abstract opening piece "Auster."It is a very perplexing choice to open the album, as it is more of a fragmented meditation on the properties of the instrument than it is a composition: Terri Hron played a sequential series of sustained pitches and Davachi time-stretched them into a blurred and oscillating haze.It is an interesting idea, but it never becomes anything more than a slow-motion flow of disconnected tones, making it more of an extended prelude than a substantial part of the album (despite being the longest piece).It kind of sounds like a badly warped VHS tape of someone holding a single note on a '70s synth, then arbitrarily changing to another note...and then another, etc.With deep and attentive listening, there is definitely some intriguing microcosmic activity to appreciate, but I wish the piece had eventually transcended its initial theme rather than just lingered there.

After "Auster," the album begins in earnest with a pair of absolutely gorgeous and harmonically rich pieces.The first, "Third Hour" is built from an eerily wraithlike and gently undulating drone that slowly blossoms into a darkly beautiful dance of intertwining violin melodies from guest Jessica Moss.More than any other piece on the album, "Third Hour" achieves a hauntingly effective balance between the corporeal (the tormented violins) and the incorporeal (the smoky, billowing drones), as well as an emotional power from shifting swirls of uneasy harmonies.The elegiac "Evensong," on the other hand, sounds like a ghost mass, as mournful angelic voices flutter around a somber piano motif.The rest of the album is quite good as well, but it is more focused on experimentation than beauty, though the two occasionally blur together at times.The best piece among the remainder is "Matins," which is an extended exercise in layered and subtly transforming pastoral drone that is inventively curdled by uncomfortably harmonizing and stammering flute-like tones.Elsewhere, "Gloaming" and "Gilded" more explicitly explore Davachi’s recent fascination with achieving a kind of indistinct, floating stasis, as both resemble a hazy locked groove that glacially blossoms into a fragile, understated crescendo.In fact, "blossoms" is exactly the right word, as each feels like watching a flower slowly bloom via time-lapse photography.

The pendulum unexpectedly swings the other way for the closing "Waking," however, as it captures a long, unaugmented take of Davachi playing a Baroque-inspired organ motif.Like the other bookend "Auster," there is only one instrument, yet "Waking" is otherwise its complete opposite: rather than remaining in relative stasis and quietly exploring harmonies, "Waking" is beautifully melodic and bittersweetly melancholic.While it is superficially quite a traditional piece that would not raise any eyebrows in a church service, it is sneakily one of the most compelling and quietly stunning pieces on the album, as the trail of harmonies that the slow-moving melody leaves in its wake is both heavenly and hallucinatory.Between "Waking," "Evensong," and "Third Hour," Gave in Rest essentially amounts to a half-great album that fitfully features some of Davachi’s strongest moments and many of her most unconventional ideas.The only real caveat is that not all of her ideas made the leap into fully formed compositions.As such, this is probably not the best album for the curious to introduce themselves to Davachi's oeuvre, though fans will certainly appreciate her willingness to break new ground and avoid repeating herself.I certainly enjoyed it, though I hope she continues to explore this direction further, as Gave In Rest feels more like a promising taste of a compelling new vision than it does its definitive statement.