27 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Michael Wells, historically of Greater Than One, GTO, Tricky Disco, Technohead, S.O.L.O., and many more incarnates has unveiled a bunch of new and previously unreleased recordings under the Dataflow Recordings umbrella.

four S.O.L.O. releases have been made available: American Echo's, Low Impact, Silencio (originally recorded in 2012), and Out Is In (originally released in 1999).

Check out the video for "Days Gone By" off American Echo's here.

a new Tricky Disco single, "I Wanna Be Loved" is now available with two older tunes on the Cosmic Tones EP

numerous older and new tracks are available by Technohead

as well as Tech House Collection by G.T.O.

These are all available digitally from the following places:

• iTunes: https://goo.gl/h2zqKn
• Amazon: https://goo.gl/MdQX4e
• Google Play: https://goo.gl/YUiHjr
• Beatport: https://goo.gl/kLzEUE
• 7digital: https://goo.gl/9jc72D
• Junodownload: https://goo.gl/fWcn98

Dataflow @ Beatport: https://goo.gl/GZLiJf

27 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Last summer, Ben Frost flew to Chicago to record with Steve Albini for two weeks, an engineer who certainly shares his appreciation for raw power.  It turned out to be quite a fruitful union, yielding roughly two hours of (presumably) explosive new material that will likely be surfacing for the next several months of the foreseeable future.  This EP is the first salvo from that stockpile of blown-out, impossibly dense speaker-shredders, acting as a bit of a teaser for a full-length due in late September. As expected, Threshold of Faith absolutely erupts from the first notes, capturing Frost at the top of his gnarled, seismic game once again.  In fact, an EP seem to be the perfect format for Frost, as he is at his best when he shows up, unleashes a hellstorm of face-melting elemental force, then gets out before any numbness starts to set in.

Mute

The title piece that opens the EP is textbook/prime Ben Frost, unleashing a crushing sub-bass plunge beneath a foreground of sizzling, oversaturated stutter.  Some of the later pieces on the album are certainly stronger compositionally, but "Threshold of Faith" is the "shock and awe" statement of intent that throws down the gauntlet right from the jump.  In fact, there is not much of a song present at all, though there is a buried and smoldering framework of one, as a melodic synthesizer motif gradually begin to peak through the ruin as it progresses.  That motif is largely incidental though, as the real show is the roiling, corroded entropy that Frost unleashes over it.  Unexpectedly, however, the following "Eurydice’s Heel (Hades)" dials down the intensity to a mere simmer to showcase Frost's more understated and melodic side, unfolding as something resembling a distorted and majestic film score for something epic and medieval.  It ends a bit too quickly to leave much a deep impression though, as does "Threshold of Faith (Your Own Blood)," which pushes the subterranean bass down in the mix to clear the way for a melancholy tapestry of rippling metal strings and a bleary haze of overtones and synth swells.  Fortunately, Threshold of Faith starts to truly catch fire in its second half, starting with the dreamy and transitional "All That You Love Will Be Eviscerated (Albini Swing Version)."  Given what preceded it, "All That You Love" is a surprisingly tender, poignant, and legitimately gorgeous piece, resembling a twinkling music box melody embellished with a languorous and ghostly trail of delay and reverb.  It is a strong candidate for the best song on the entire release, despite avoiding nearly all of Frost's usual tropes.

My other favorite piece takes hard turn in the opposite direction though, as "The Beat Don’t Die in Bingo Town" is essentially just a simple synth melody inflated to grotesque, shuddering immensity.  It feels like a very lovely earthquake: the melody is nice and all, but the real beauty of the piece is the crushing, shivering avalanche of roiling density that only Ben Frost can deliver.  Texture and power are everything.  Sadly, "Bingo Town" abruptly ends after a mere two or so minutes, but the following Lotic remix of "All That You Love Will Be Eviscerated" helpfully reignites that stalled momentum almost immediately.  Initially, it reprises the dreamy beauty of the original, but it soon unexpectedly detonates into clattering and skittering flurries of distorted percussion. While I still prefer the original, Lotic does a fine job of turning that piece completely on its head, shifting the focus away from the sublime beauty of the melody onto sputtering, oversaturated blasts of careening drum crescendos.  Threshold closes in similarly strong fashion with "Mere Anarchy," which is built upon an elegiac progression of dense synth chords intriguingly enhanced by fluttering feedback that sounds like a half-strangled bicycle horn (in a good way).

Of course, there are always a few inherent caveats with any Ben Frost release, as he has willfully positioned himself in an extremely constrained stylistic corner.  While I like Threshold of Faith quite a lot, it succeeds precisely because it represents Ben Frost at his most "Ben Frost," which makes sense, as Steve Albini is primarily known for helping artists sound exactly like themselves in visceral, undiluted form.  Compositionally, however, Ben Frost is right where he has always been, which is somewhat exasperating, even if it seems to be entirely by choice: with few exceptions, these pieces all essentially explore one simple idea for a few minutes, then end with no significant development.  It probably is not fair to call that a flaw, as Frost's deconstructionist aesthetic seems deliberately founded upon taking simple motifs and transforming them into crushing, earth-shaking juggernauts.  The limitations of that formula are probably the only things preventing Frost from becoming one of my favorite artists, but he is one of my favorite sound designers and that seems like a necessary trade-off.  I suppose that means I have conflicting feelings about Threshold of Faith, as I would have loved some significant evolution or expansion of the expected palette, but it is hard to gripe much when Frost has so clearly carved out an wonderfully heavy niche all his own and seems to rule it more conclusively with each new release.

• Threshold of Faith
• The Beat Don't Die in Bingo Town
• All That You Love Will Be Eviscerated (Lotic Remix)

 

27 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

I am very much enjoying this new chapter of Wolf Eyes' career, as this second release on their Lower Floor imprint is every bit as deliciously wrong-sounding as Undertow, yet breaks some intriguing new ground.  The world is littered with iconic noise artists who flogged their one great idea to death and it is refreshing to see that John Olson, Nate Young, and James Baljo seem quite hellbent on avoiding that fate these days.  Granted, Strange Days II is only a lean 20-minute EP, but it is enough of a compelling detour to justify its existence despite that: it may be brief, but it is a complete and coherent statement.  As with most recent Wolf Eyes fare, it would be quite a stretch to call Strange Days II "noise," yet the trio definitely apply the genre’s tactics to unleash a corroded, thudding, and dystopian caricature of jazz (or at least a pleasingly gnarled twist on Zoviet France-style sci-fi tribalism).

Lower Floor Music

The meat of this EP is essentially just the opening 12-minute "011817," so it would probably be more accurate to describe Strange Days II as "the hot new Wolf Eyes single" rather an EP.  It is followed by a shorter second piece in the same vein ("011317"), but it kind of feels like a looser, proto-version of its predecessor.  I am totally fine with that though: substantial releases are nice, but so are releases that just have one or two great songs to deliver and do not linger around overstaying their welcome (I am the absolute last person who would complain about Wolf Eyes belatedly embracing quality over quantity).  Of course, Wolf Eyes are still Wolf Eyes, so "011817" still feels more like an improvisatory and amorphous vamp rather than a tightly crafted composition, but that looseness works in their favor here, adding to the lurching, distended, and diseased-sounding feel of the piece.  The only real surprise is that John Olson's vaguely Eastern-sounding flute theme is quite melodic and languorous, which makes an intriguing juxtaposition with the underlying groove.  That has led to at least one major reviewer favorably comparing Strange Days II to Miles Davis, which is definitely something I did not see coming.  My favorite aspect is definitely that juxtaposition of two seemingly incompatible aesthetics, but I also enjoy the stuttering, bass-heavy throb of the piece on its own, as it seems to be constantly stumbling and changing.  In fact, it favorably recalling Chris Carter’s rhythmic genius in Throbbing Gristle: the imperfections and idiosyncrasies make the beat sound like the work of massive, clanking, wheezing, and sentient machine rather a loop or programmed pattern.  I am a huge fan of brokenness and precarious structure in music, which are certainly two areas where Wolf Eyes excel.

As alluded to earlier, the shorter "011317" feels like a slightly less successful earlier stab at the exact same thing, but it also feels far more deserving of classic jazz comparisons.  For one, Olson unleashes an impressively competent and melodic saxophone solo, albeit one leaning much more towards free jazz.  Also, the percussive element collapses into skittering, clattering entropy rather than cohering into a throbbing pulse.  It is certainly not fluid or virtuosic enough to feel like real free jazz (nor would Wolf Eyes want that), but the layered chaos and guitar noise at least approximate something like an industrial-damaged The Dead C jamming with a saxophone player.  That is admittedly an aesthetic I can get behind, but it is not quite as impressive as a melancholy flautist being flattened by strafing swoops of electronic noise and a mechanized, stumbling juggernaut of a groove (which is what the first piece sounds like).  Also, the opener sneakily conceals a very deliberate arc amidst all its shambling and sputtering, as guitarist Jim Baljo unveils a repeating and epic-sounding motif in the piece’s final moments to pull it all together into a climax of sorts (rather than just meandering into silence).

Obviously, the sheer brevity of Strange Days II ensures that it is a fairly minor release in the voluminous Wolf Eyes’ canon, but it certainly does not sound like anything else coming out these days and "011817" would easily secure a place in my imaginary, self-curated best-of collection.  In a perverse way, Wolf Eyes have transcended their role as the DIY flagbearers for the darkest corners of the American underground and become the possible sound of the future–certainly not the future that anyone wants, mind you, but a hopelessly broken, dark, and post-apocalyptic one.  With Strange Days II, it is easy to envision Wolf Eyes as the house band in a bombed-out subterranean cabaret in something like Total Recall, raggedly and lethargically playing "jazz" to a drugged, dead-eyed crowd with a rusted and salvaged battery of inappropriate equipment that makes all the wrong sounds.

• 011817 (excerpt one)
• 011817 (excerpt two)
• 011317

 

27 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This singular album was originally released back in 2004 on David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label, but Boomkat has just issued it on vinyl for the first time (along with quite a lot of accompanying praise about its status as an absolute masterpiece).  As curmudgeonly as I am, I have to agree–while the epic centerpiece of Spellewauerynsherde could probably benefit from somewhat sharper execution, these seven pieces cumulatively amount to quite a quietly staggering whole.  Rapturous beauty aside, Spellewauerynsherde is also quite a radical and inventive bit of sound art, as it was crafted entirely from feeding medieval choral music in Rabelais' self-designed Argeïphontes Lyre software, which seems to work by mutating, disintegrating, and recombining the source material.  Naturally, the sublime and unusual source material itself deserves a healthy amount of the credit for this album's timeless beauty, but Rabelais' transformative magic has unquestionably elevated it into something considerably more otherworldly and mysterious.

Samadhisound/Boomkat Editions

For some reason, I always thought Akira Rabelais was European, but it turns out at that he is actually a Texan currently based in California with quite an intriguing talent for cultivating enigmas and cryptic puzzles (his multi-lingual website is an especially impressive riddle).  Understanding that facet of his persona is often quite crucial for getting to the true depth of his work, particularly in the case of this album and its unwieldy Middle English-style song titles. For one, they seem to have no direct relation to the titles of the cannibalized choral pieces that provide the grist for Spellewauerynsherde, which were apparently forgotten recordings of an a capella Icelandic folk music ensemble made in the '60s and early '70s (found in a closet in Valencia, CA, naturally).  More intriguingly, they mostly reference significant (and sometimes bitterly ironic) events that shaped humankind's perception of God and heaven, such as the excommunication of John Wycliffe (who first translated the New Testament to English) or the English publication date of The Lives of Saints.  Other titles reference our increasing understanding of the vastness of the universe or early masterpieces of English poetry (Rabelais, being a true polymath, is also a poet himself).  It is not so much the idea of God that fascinates Rabelais, however, so much as it is the struggle to express the ineffable.  Naturally, trying to convey such elusive beauty and mystery through a composition is exactly the sort of impossible task that can consume (and destroy) a life, so Rabelais has wisely taken himself out of the equation as much as possible.  Spellewauerynsherde is like a once-majestic ancient church that has become a beautiful ruin from the tireless artistry of erosion and untended greenery, as Rabelais' software eviscerates the human component to extract its ghostly residue.

The degree of that transformation varies quite a bit from song to song, however, which is part of what makes Spellewauerynsherde such a fascinating album.  On the opening homage to John Wycliffe, the gorgeous female vocals sound fairly straightforward, but they texturally resemble a distant radio transmission heard over a quiet spectral drone.  Another bit of subtle magic is that the unsuspecting vocalist starts overlapping herself at various points, resulting in a strange and unpredictable duet of sorts.  The following John Gower-themed piece is similarly dreamlike and angelic, but sounds less like a radio transmission and more like two small choirs performing at opposite ends of a vast and reverberant cathedral. I would probably be perfectly fine with an entire album that continued in the rough vein of those first two pieces, but Rabelais starts to descend into stranger and more abstract territory with the next pair of pieces.  The first, "1440," is definitely the more bizarre of the two, dramatically slowing down the vocals into an eerie and corroded-sounding lament that sounds like it is bleeding into our world from the spirit one.  It sounds far more like an ominous, creeping fog than an Icelandic folk singer, which is quite a bit of transformational dark magic.  The album’s Lives of the Saints-themed centerpiece ("1483"), however, goes in quite a different direction, unfolding as a 21-minute epic of hazy and floating drone drift concealing fleeting snatches of lovely melodies that struggle to peek through the swirling mists.  I have conflicting feelings about it, as I would not have minded if its lushly amorphous and undulating heaven expanded to consume the entire album, yet it also seems like a long and unexpected lull in the album’s momentum due to its contextual relation to the more structured, melodic fare around it.  It feels like a great album unexpectedly dissolved into a different one.

I suspect that extended interlude was a thoughtful and deliberate choice though, as Rabelais saved some of his finest work for the end of the album and clearing some space to ensure that it made a maximum impact makes a lot of sequencing sense (though 21 minutes was still probably a bit excessive).  In any case, "Gorgeous Curves" is a feast of swooping, soulful and intertwining Siren-esque vocals that seem to dance and weave through an undulating mist.  There is even more going on than just that though, as the vocals also seem to drift in and out of focus and sometimes seem to lock into a stuttering loop for certain words.  It is quite a dynamic tour de force all around.  The closing homage to John Milton ("1671") is also a stunner, but one which removes almost all conspicuous evidence of artifice to leave just a naked and perfect vocal melody over an understated and vaporous bed of heavenly drones and what sounds like wind blowing across a lonely, remote microphone.  Not far into the piece, the singing dissipates altogether to leave only the gentle breathe of the wind and the elusive, whispy drift of the sublime underlying drones.  That lingering fade into silence is the perfect come-down after Spellewauerynsherde's glimpse into the divine and the purest distillation of Rabelais' iconoclastic brilliance on the album: the other six songs are certainly an integral and entrancing part of the journey, but the culmination is the almost complete negation of the artist and his ego.  With Spellewauerynsherde, Akira Rabelais is less of a composer than he is a humble and thoughtful facilitator, taking something already timeless, sincere, and beautiful and devising an organic and ingenious means of purging it of its last few earthbound touches.

• 1382 Wyclif Gen. II. 7 And Spiride In To The Face Of Hym An Entre Of Breth Of Lijf.
• 1483 Caxton Golden Leg. 208 B/2 He Put Not Away The Wodenes Of His Flessh With A Sherde Or Shelle.
• (Gorgeous Curves Lovely Fragments Labyrinthed On Occasions Entwined Charms, A Few Stories At Any Longer Sworn To Gathered From A Guileless Angel And The Hilt Edges Of Old Hearts, If They Do In The Guilt Of Deep Despondency.)

 

27 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

A new Analog Africa compilation is almost always a major event for me, particularly since the general trend is that they seem to get both better and more imaginative with each passing year.  A significant reason for that success is that label head Samy Ben Redjeb has been increasingly drawn away from the heavily anthologized regions of Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, and Kenya and into less explored territories and more unusual, ephemeral microscenes.  Pop Makossa offers a bit of both, journeying into Cameroon and capturing the brief window in which the prevailing pop style absorbed the funk and disco sounds coming from the US.  If this collection is any indication, Redjeb and co-curator Déni Shain have found quite a rich and largely untapped vein, as these twelves pieces are a feast of fluid basslines, tight songcraft, strong hooks, and seductive grooves.

Analog Africa

The Dream Stars' opening "Pop Makossa Invasion" highlights a significant aspect of Analog Africa compilations and other international compilations in general: the curator is often doing quite a bit more than just finding some great songs, as they are retroactively defining (or creating) a movement or scene through the filter of their own taste.  That is not necessarily a bad thing at all, as I would certainly rather hear this music than not hear it and someone with great taste is the ideal person to guide me through it.  It presents an interesting issue though: it is important not to fall for the illusion that something like Pop Makossa is comprehensive or representative or that anyone who lives in Cameroon particularly romanticizes this era.  Case in point: "Pop Makossa Invasion" is a fine song, as it has a very cool snaking guitar line, a lazily stomping beat, and a charismatic singer, yet this is the first time that anyone anywhere is actually hearing it, as it was recorded for a radio station and never formally released (in fact, this compilation is the only Discogs entry for the band at all).  There are certainly some bigger names here as well, but Redjeb seems guided more by his statement that "Cameroonian bass players are some of the most revered in the world" than by any perceived need to illuminate his compilation with star power.  Of course, a few songs manage to cover both bases, particularly Bill Loko's amazing "Nen Lambo," which boasts a stellar disco bass line, a wonderfully propulsive groove, and hooks for days.  Apparently, Loko was a teen mega-star who only issued a couple of albums in the early '80s before leaving Cameroon and falling off the radar.  A mystery like that is just the sort of thing to secure Redjeb's curiosity.  Also, his tireless passion for finding the actual artists behind these songs goes a long way towards explaining why this album took eight long years to fully take shape and why Shain's involvement was so crucial, as he was the one actually in Cameroon doing all the detective work.

Aside from the aforementioned gem from Loko, my other favorite songs are sneakily tucked away at the end of the album, yet everything in between is invariably quite solid and occasionally even surprising ("Senaga Calypso" almost sounds like a Cameroonian reimagining of Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy").  In general, the degree of a song's success is almost entirely dictated by the greatness of the bass line, as all other factors tend to be consistently strong through Pop Makossa: all of these artists knew how to write tight pop songs and memorable hooks and each certainly had a formidable rhythm section backing them.  Bernard Ntone's "Mussoliki" is the no-frills zenith of that aesthetic, taking an absolutely killer bass line and just riding it for four minutes with wonderfully funky, jangly guitars and vibrantly rolling percussion.  "Mussoliki" also brings up yet another significant observation: while Ntone’s band may be stylistically indebted to the funkier and more soulful American artists of the time, they effortlessly transcend that influence in many ways.  In the case of "Mussoliki," I was particularly struck by the subtle and brilliant interplay between the lead and rhythm guitars.  Elsewhere, Pat' NDoye's "More Love" is yet another stunner, enhancing a smoldering and sexy groove with a call-and-response vocal hook with a female chorus and an absolutely smoking full band that unleashes an endless parade of stellar performances (NDoye’s percussion section is especially dazzling). In fact, "More Love" reminds me favorably of Fela Kuti (sans larger-than-life personality), as it is literally just a monster groove peppered with great solos, yet NDoye keeps things much tighter and more concise than Fela ever would have and sacrifices nothing in the process.

There are a few other songs that touch upon greatness as well, such as Clément Djimonge’s "Africa," but the most striking aspect of Pop Makossa is that there are absolutely no weak songs at all and very few that I would even consider average: this is an impressively vibrant, varied, and thoughtful selection all around.  Aside from attaining the highly coveted "all killer, no filler" success ratio, the highlights here can be quite revelatory.  Obviously, it is reductive to compare Pop Makossa to other recent African music compilations, but such a comparison is nevertheless relevant here: in my own fumbling and culturally ignorant way, I listen to a lot of funk and soul-influenced African music and the best songs on Pop Makossa either offer a fresh twist on a sound I already loved or stand among the best possible examples of that sound.  While I suspect 2012's Diablos Del Ritmo will reign forever as my favorite Analog Africa compilation, Pop Makossa is an impressively strong contender for that role.  In fact, it probably deserves it more, since Diablos was a detour into the African influence on Colombian music and everyone already knew that Colombia churned out some of the finest music on the planet–not exactly low-hanging fruit, but everyone at least knew where the damn tree was.  With this collection, Shain and Redjeb did some legitimately crucial digging in a place that sorely needed it and somehow managed to pare all their obscure finds down to an extremely fun and near-perfect collection.

• Bill Loko, "Nen Lambo"
• Bernard Ntone, "Mussoliki"
• Pat' Ndoye, "More Love"

 

22 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

BLUES FOR A UFO is music made from frustration and compassion. From a place of anger and of understanding. We have been living across from a huge construction project – a ten year overhaul of an old research and devolpment complex in Dearborn owned and operated by FMC, and it is ruining our lives. Day by day and bit by bit our house and mental health fade. Our beautiful historic home has cracks and issues and is covered in dirt and cement dust each day, with the sounds of cranes rumbling and cement trucks beeping going on for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. We tried to move, and found our home had been devalued until the work was done – in ten years.......

During this past year, our friends Dion Fischer and Aliccia Bollig-Fischer, had some issues of their own at the bar they run in Corktown, an up and coming neighborhood in Detroit. A multi-millionaire developer bought all the land around their historic bar and made a plan to build muti-story condos and high end reail. The UFO Factory lost it's egress for trash and grease storage and removal. They lost the chance to maybe purchase a tiny side lot for extra parking. They tried to take the developer to court to at least get their trash egress reinstated, and the judge threw out the case. The little guy was losing to the millionaire developer.

And then total tragedy struck. On the very first day of construction work for the new $150 MILLION dollar condo development, a cement truck ran into the side of the UFO Factory – splitting it's load bearing wall right open. The employees in the bar at the time escaped – but the bar has been structurally damaged and condemned by the city of Detroit.

We KNOW what this feels like. We KNOW how it is to be the little guy and have the huge corporation steal the life out from under us. And while we have tried, truly tried, to change our own situation, we've had no luck. Which is why we have taken our time and energy and turned it in a direction we can help.

This is new music, born out of frustration and sadness and anger, and hope. A hope that our energy can help heal the situation Dion and Aliccia have found themselevs in. A hope that making art and music gives way to release – a release of frustration and sadness, even if for only a little while. The knowledge that our love for the culture of Detroit, for the culture Dion has been a part of and spent 20 plus years supporting, could help in a time of need.

We are donating half of all proceeds from this new music to help the UFO Factory pay bills – all the bills a business has even if it is closed and the building s condemned. Insurance vendors, gas and electric, water, money for a new soundsystem, dollars to buy a new set of kitchen appliances....whatever is needed – we made this music to help. To help us in our time of utter frustration, and to help Dion in his time of temporary defeat.

Somehow, we will all beat this time of sadness. Please join us in supporting an institution in the Detroit arts and music scene, and help all of us have a little faith that the little guy can rise again.

Thank you.

Windy and Carl

August 2017

More information can be found here.

13 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

• Researched and executed by 31x artist, including Dean McPhee, Ian Humberstone, and Bridget Hayden.

• Thirty-one track twelve-inch vinyl and download code.

• Fourty page A5 pamphlet includes plantlore and illustrations from artists and herbal medicine section by herbalist Zoe Naylor.

• Twenty eight page pocket A6 booklet Oak, Fern and Daisy: ‘The Folklore, Culture and Magic of the Plant Kingdom’ By Jez Winship.

• Link to the 16mm film 'Pattern of Light' by Mary and David

• All contents housed within a unique plant relief printed hand numbered manilla sleeve

• Contains seed envelope harvested by FT group.

More information, including a trailer, can be found here.

13 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

This collaboration between Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Luijk (Af Ursin) has been active since 2011, yet this is the first of their albums that I have actually heard, as Van Luijk shares Chalk's love of limited, small press-style releases.  As a result, Elodie's output has mostly been a series of vinyl-only releases from Belgium and Japan, though Stephen O'Malley’s Ideologic Organ has thankfully stepped up to get their next album to a wider audience.  On paper, Odyssee seems like a very poor choice for my first Elodie experience, as it has two traits that generally make me steer clear of an album: it is both a live recording and the soundtrack to a film.  In reality, however, this album is quietly stunning, taking Debussy-style Impressionism into gorgeously smoky, twilit, and eerily hallucinatory territory.

Faraway Press

Odyssee consists of just one 33-minute piece, "Musique En Scène II," which was recorded live at the Geräueschwelten Festival in Münster in 2015.Although the release itself is characteristically lean on background information or useful details, the piece was apparently performed as accompaniment to a film that Van Luijk made that very evening.  Since the film did not exist earlier that day, it is probably safe to say that the music was completely improvised.  It certainly does not sound like it though, nor does it sound at all live (until the audience begins clapping at the end, anyway).  More importantly, it also does not sound particularly like an Andrew Chalk album, nor does it bear all that much resemblance to what little Af Ursin I have heard (though Van Luijk is admittedly kind of multi-instrumentalist shape-shifter).  I will not say that Elodie is necessarily greater than the sum of its parts here, but they certainly transcend whatever expectations I had and offer something a bit unexpected.  Of course, part of that stylistic transformation is due to the piece's simple structure and instrumentation, as it is essentially a languorous and Eastern-flavored flute solo centered on a small cluster of notes.  For his part, Chalk provides a shifting and understated backdrop of quietly swelling synth chords, which is just perfect, as a large part of Odyssee's otherworldly beauty lies in the breathy intimacy of Van Luijk’s flute.  Any further clutter would dilute the magic.

A more significant part of Odyssee's mesmerizing spell lies in the eerily melancholy and exotic mood, as it evokes nothing less than the exquisitely lonely sensation of being alone in a vast desert at night, though the piece gradually becomes somewhat less haunted-sounding as it progresses.  There is also quite a bit of subtle beauty to be found in the details.  For example, while Van Luijk’s woozily snaking flute melody is presented with crystalline clarity, it often leaves a ghostly afterimage that lingers in the air.  That dreamy reverie is sometimes additionally enhanced by a sheen of feedback or chirping, trilling overtones. The overall effect is quite a surreal one, as the piece leaves a wake of lingering shadow and murk while simultaneously conjuring up a chorus of illusory birds.  While that is essentially all the piece offers, that turns out to be more than enough, as both the melody and the atmosphere are quite entrancing.  The piece does have a clear arc of sorts, however, as Chalk’s synthesizer gradually becomes a bit more intrusive, creating more complex harmonies.  At the same time, the backdrop gradually shifts towards radiant major chords in the second half, though they are thankfully still vaporous enough to maintain the delicious spell of bleary unreality.  Granted, I would probably like the piece more if the occasional shafts of light were even more toned down, yet I appreciate the ambiguous precariousness of the brighter interludes, as the encroaching undercurrent often suggests a mirage rather than an oasis.

Given its humble origins, Odyssee was probably intended as a somewhat minor release, but it is a weirdly perfect one.My only minor issue is with its brevity, which was no doubt dictated by the film.  As far as I am concerned, it could have easily extended for twice as long, as the duo weave a gorgeously haunting dreamscene from the first notes, nimbly walking the tightrope of providing enough small-scale dynamic variation to keep me deeply immersed while never disrupting that spell with anything more forceful. Granted, I was admittedly quite predisposed to like this album as an Andrew Chalk fan, but that only got my initial attention: if this album were not special, I would have quickly lost interest.  Fortunately, Odyssee feels like something entirely unique.  I love pleasant surprises.  This is exactly the sort of hidden gem that I am always looking for, though I suspect it may herald the dawn of a painfully expensive scavenger hunt for the rest of Elodie's oeuvre.

• Musique En Sc√®ne II (excerpt one)
• Musique En Sc√®ne II¬†(excerpt two)
• Musique En Sc√®ne II¬†(excerpt three)

 

13 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Compiling recent small-run cassette works into a luxurious double record set, Essential Anatomies represents a reunion for the duo of Colin Andrew Sheffield and James Eck Rippie.  Collaborators since 2000 and friends for even longer, the four lengthy recordings here capture their Texas reunion in 2015, and with its undeniable sense of complexity and cohesion, makes it clear that they have not missed a step from their time apart.

Elevator Bath

On paper, what Sheffield and Rippie do is well-trod ground:  processing and recontexualization of samples and other forms of pre-recorded music.  But rather than being another pair of John Oswald wannabes, they do so with distinct expertise and precision.  To use a slightly abstract metaphor, they are much closer to Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production, taking bits here and there and using them as elements in a much different whole, than they are Puff Daddy’s wholesale plagiarism and lack of innovation.

The first of the four lengthy pieces (each around 22 to 23 minutes long) is an instant launch into the gloom that is Essential Anatomies.  Chilling, piano like scrapes cut through a blackened, churning abyss of sound.  Some shrill, sharp bits pierce through the darkness here and there, but the piece largely stays pleasant, even though it is rather bleak and covered in a nicely noisy sheen of fuzz.  Tortured, almost melodic tones occasionally shine through a wall of ghostly drifts and heavy rumbles, at times heading toward a bit of harsh crunch, but stays in check.  The melodies appear here and there again, acting as a slightly less oppressive counterpoint to the sound of decay that surrounds it.  Finally, the duo end the piece on a lighter note, like sun shining through menacing gray skies.

What is abundantly clear right from this start is that Sheffield and Rippie are not only extremely proficient at creating moods and space with their samplers and turntables (respectively), but also a creating dynamic compositions that are quite expansive and varied, changing often but returning to reoccurring motifs that results in a more composed, rather than improvised sound.  The second piece allows a bit more of their source material to shine through, mostly in the form of piano notes and what sounds like frozen reverberations of chimes far in the distance.  There is the same sense of space, but erratic loops and mangled notes result in a composition that builds in tension, eventually transitioning into haunting church organ like walls that dominate the latter half of the piece.

Comparably, the second record comes across a bit less melodic and a bit more textural in the composition and structure.  Part three begins with an almost percussive, crunching machinery like opening that is eventually melded with a batch of wet, almost organic like noises and radio static.  Bits of recognizable music still sneak through here and there, but it is less the focus.  Instead, metallic sweeps and unnatural field recording like sounds fill out the mix, though it ends on a slightly more ambient note.  The final composition first is free and spacious, with some crackling tactile like elements at first, but soon it takes on a decaying sound.  More organ and mangled string fanfares give a more conventional signpost here and there, but by the end the duo has already transitioned the sound to one of tension and fright, slowly evolving into an uncomfortable silence to end the record.

While I do not believe I could ever manage to place the source of the sounds Colin Andrew Sheffield and James Eck Rippie utilized in making Essential Anatomies, never does it feel like the two overly processed or from their source.  Meaning that, there is some of the original character left from the source material, however subtle it may be.  Instead these audio building blocks are obscured but tastefully utilized to construct these atmosphere heavy works.  Rippie’s day job is a sound mixer for films and television shows, which surely aided the two in creating the cinematic mood that these two records conjure up.  It is that combination of sonic nuance and compositional strength and diversity that make Essential Anatomies so good.

samples:

• Part One
• Part Three
• Part Four

 

13 August 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Ora was always a rather curious and enigmatic project, as the collective formed by Andrew Chalk and Darren Tate in the '80s has been historically characterized by extremely limited releases and shifting membership.  Time Out of Mind adds yet another strange chapter to the Ora tale, as it is a reworking of unreleased material that largely pre-dates Ora's debut release (1992's DAAC cassette).  Chalk and Tate make it clear that this is not a "lost album" though–it is more of an alternate history, suggesting a path that the project might have explored without the intervention of line-up changes and new working methods.  Naturally, Chalk fans will probably swoop down on this album en masse, as material from this project is so maddeningly rare, but this collection is a modest and understated affair content-wise, consisting primarily of brief sketches and vignettes of mysterious field recordings and bleary drones.

Shining Day

I am not quite as familiar with Ora's oeuvre as I am with Andrew Chalk's solo work, but there are certainly some recurring themes throughout the band's long and underheard history.  Naturally, I associate Ora most closely with drone music, but they also had a strong bent for both field recording and luring in fresh collaborators. All of those tendencies are reflected here to some degree, albeit in somewhat embryonic form.  For example, future members Colin Potter and Daisuke Suzuki both turn up, but Suzuki only appears on two songs and Potter is largely relegated to engineering.  Far more interesting are the divergences from Ora's future work.  The most significant is arguably the brief, sketch-like nature of these miniatures, which is a far cry from project's characteristic longform work.  Also, Chalk and Tate occasionally flirt with eschewing music altogether in favor of strange and evocative collages of field recordings, such as "Path To Infinity," which sounds like a mysterious figure slowly wandering through an abandoned factory full of echoing metallic clangs and ominous bubblings.  Another crucial component here is that Tate and Chalk greatly valued spontaneity at this phase of their career, using a portable recorder to work outdoors and incorporate natural ambiance into their work.  I believe Ora never fully abandoned that approach, but they did transition into using that material as grist for more elaborate studio recordings.  On this album, it feels like those initial explorations were the endpoint rather than the beginning.  Given the degree of transformational wizardry that Potter has brought to Nurse With Wound’s studio scraps, the ephemeral, fractured nature of this album can only be a deliberate choice.

That reduced emphasis on composition is admittedly felt a bit here, as there are no newly unearthed masterpieces lurking amongst these fifteen songs.  Again, however, that seems to be entirely by choice, as Time Out of Mind feels like a willfully naturalistic and egoless experiment: Chalk and Tate seem like they were not so much harvesting material for a great album so much as wandering about the English countryside in search of sonically intriguing or inspiring settings, then attempting to capture the essence of those settings in the moment.  That admittedly sounds a bit more beautiful and pure than the actual reality, as the duo were quite fixated upon scraping metal and cavernous natural reverb rather than, say, bird songs or whispering breezes, but it still makes for quite an unusual album and justifies this belated vault-exhumation: no one needs a collection of "normal" Ora songs that were not good enough to wind up on an album, but a strange and cryptic collection of sonic postcards from far-flung and obscure places has a definite appeal.

For the most part, the individual songs blossom into being and disappear too quickly to leave any kind of strong impression, but a few pieces stand out nonetheless.  One such piece is one of Suzuki's appearances, "Inastateless," which weaves a bizarre fantasia of scraping metal cacophony and dreamily swooping feedback.  Elsewhere, the flickering and undulating drones of "Windmill" and the menacing submerged ambiance of "Taiga" seem like legitimately fine Ora fare that should have probably surfaced on an album long before now.  I was also quite struck by the sheer strangeness of "Picturebox," a sound collage that sounds like a close mic’d field recording of marbles rattling around an elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque contraption as a jet passes by overhead.

Obviously, the one big caveat with this release is that these songs languished in the vault for two or three decades for a reason and all of the participants have since gone on to do far better work than is captured here. As such, this is not a viable entry point for new fans, nor will existing fans find a revelatory treasure trove of crucial recordings and they should not expect to: Time Out of Mind does not pretend to be anything more than an intriguingly divergent time capsule.  Given those modest expectations, this is a varied, experimental, and endearingly odd release that unveils a few fine pieces and offers a host of evocative miniature sound puzzles to mull over.  As the balance errs much more heavily on the latter, this release is probably strictly for completists and serious fans, but they are fairly certain to find its small pleasures absorbing.

• Looking Glass/Return to Life
• Path to Infinity
• Taiga