17 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Forget was recorded during a period of epic productivity for Xiu Xiu. While writing Forget, they released the lauded Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, collaborated with Mitski on a song for an upcoming John Cameron Mitchell film, composed music for art installations by Danh Vo, recorded an album with Merzbow and scored an experimental reworking of the Mozart opera, "The Magic Flute." All of this frantic, external activity lead to a softly damaged dreaminess and broadened intent that has not been heard before in other Xiu Xiu works.

The album was produced by John Congleton (Blondie, Sigur Ros), Greg Saunier of Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu's own Angela Seo. It features guest appearances by fabled minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine, LA Banjee Ball superstar commentator Enyce Smith, Swans guitar virtuoso Kristof Hahn and legendary drag artist and personal hero of Xiu Xiu, Vaginal Davis.

Standout track, "Wondering" is one of the catchiest boogie pop gems in the Xiu Xiu catalog, but like much of Forget, it still bears an underlying tension that manifests differently in each piece. From the haunted guitar duet of "Petite," the hilariously fraught lyrics of "Get Up," the advanced industrial boxing match of "Jenny GoGo," or the experimental goth explosion of "Faith, Torn Apart," all the songs in their own way build to a roiling boil of a fate in vanishing.

The calligraphy on the cover translates literally to "we forget." It bows to the universality of everything and everyone's inevitable decline and foggy disappearance. Regarding the album title, Xiu Xiu singer Jamie Stewart said, "To forget uncontrollably embraces the duality of human frailty. It is a rebirth in blanked out renewal but it also drowns and mutilates our attempt to hold on to what is dear." Forget is both the palliative fade out of a traumatic past but also the trampling pain of a beautiful one's decay.

Out now on Polyvinyl.

17 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Actress, real name Darren Jordan Cunningham, known to friends as DAZ, returns with a new album, now on Ninja Tune and a new music system called "AZD" (pronounced "Azid"), a chrome aspect journey into a parallel world. An artist who has always preferred to make music than to talk about it, in “AZD” he has achieved another remarkable landmark, one which is as resistant to interpretation as it is demanding of it. Following on from his previous albums, R.I.P, Splazsh and Hazyville, an epilogue poem attached to the press release for Ghettoville was construed by media, commentators and spectators that Cunningham had retired. This led him to conceptualise this mass of conclusion as the key to ‘Giving power back to identity.’

So a few pointers, or possible ways to think about AZD. The album is themed around chrome – both as a reflective surface to see the self in, and as something that carves luminous voids out of any colour and fine focuses white and black representing the perfect metaphor for the bleakness of life in the Metropolis as suggested by Anish Kapoors Cloud Gate.

Another way to approach would be through the art of James Hampton and Rammellzee (who inspired "CYN," which Cunningham also sees as a vision of New York in reverse…) – both of whom, though of different generations of the African-American slave diaspora, created art through “Sourcing castaway materials from their environment and reinterprating them into absolute majesty given from the fourth dimension.” There is also the career-long influence of the Detroit techno pioneers, something which becomes clear on this album "there is a contrast in the type of glow or reflection."

Alternatively, you could write your PhD thesis on Jung’s Shadow Theory and AZD: "Lots of ideas come from dreams, this isn’t new, but sometimes the conscious mind starts to meld into the universal consciousness through constellation tunnelling.” If that sounds too taxing then you could always fall back on Star Wars and, in particular, the Death Star: “It has a dark dystopian backdrop, with highly sophisticated technology, but it is fading into the ether, still holding on and emitting a powerful energy. The music remaking the embers, binding them together and pulling them apart again."

Alternatively, just listen. That "glow" Cunningham talks about makes this in some ways more immediate than previous Actress releases. Take lead single, "X22RME" (pronounced “Extreme”) which elegantly plays between the lines of Oriental classic rave and Balinese warehouse Techno machined in a Rotherhithe lock up welding the grooves into a seamless cracked joint.

At the other end of the spectrum is "Faure in Chrome," a byproduct or development from his collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra, in which he “repatterns” aspect of Faure's Requiem into a piece which sounds like the very institution of classical music being encased in electronic ice and scanned through a high frequency bandwidth. In between are gems like "Runner," a personal re-soundtracking of Blade Runner "its from the deleted Fade Runner scene where AZD in a Peckham Cafe realises his barber has over the years etched a faded scroll into his head using early 80s African synthpop as a vexing serum“, or "Falling Rizlas," an alienated music-box ballad. It's a remarkable piece of work, that harks back both to Actress’ previous productions and to earlier iterations of the (broadly conceived) "techno" project without being beholden to anything but Cunningham’s forward-facing, individual and disembodied vision.

The simplest you could say about AZD is that it’s art – the unique creation of a unique mind. There will be few more distinctive, brilliant or visionary suites of music released in 2017. Call him what you will, this is the year that Darren ‘Daz’ Cunningham - aka Actress, aka AZD – asserts more clearly than ever before his complete independence.

Out April 14, 2017 on Ninja Tune.

12 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Elden M's recent resurgence as Allegory Chapel Ltd. has nary taken a pause since reappearing three years ago following an 18 year silence. What might be the most surprising fact, however, is that Without Tears: Noise in Theory & Practice is actually his first full length vinyl release since the project's inception in 1986, amidst a varied array of tapes and CDs. This fact obviously has not been lost on him though, because this album is a comprehensive and cohesive work that covers the full gamut of the ACL sound, from the past to the present, presenting a singular and unique artist and his diverse, complex output.

Throne Heap

My first exposure to ACL coincided with my first real experience with noise as music, which was the 1995 Japanese/American Noise Treaty compilation.With those limited early days of the internet (and my lack of financial resources as a high school student), I did not have as much of a chance to explore many of these artists beyond that compilation, but the ACL song "Martial Mega-Medley" stuck with me, and I managed to find a used copy of When Angels Fall a few years later.ACL's work had a different edge to it, one that did not fully eschew rhythm or space, but also a wonderfully uncomfortable mood, and I was happy to hear when he resumed activity.

Pieces such as "Sedona Walkabout" sit most specifically with his earlier works.There is a pulsating, almost rhythmic underbelly to the buzzing electronics (which seems to be sourced from a guitar cable, given the tell-tale hum).Random voice samples appear throughout, processed and cut up into disturbingly unclear bits to make their source rather disquieting.Flanged electronics and delayed effects result in a constantly shifting, dynamic piece of sound that ends in a nice industrial expanse."Marin Headlands" is another of the noisier pieces, though starting with a brilliant fake-out:what at first sounds to be a blast of harsh noise wall soon reveals itself to be an ocean side field recording of crashing waves and birds before subtle processing leads to a somewhat less natural.

Immediately before Elden M. reappeared as ACL, he released some work as Avellan Cross, a more EBM influenced project, which has clearly bled over into his "main" moniker.In fact, the lengthy "Distributed Organs, Flesh Feedback" could almost be an AC piece, with its thumping 808-like beat and swirling electronics.Guest vocalist Marfisia Bel delivers a spoken word piece over a vaguely house bassline.It is not really a noisy work per se, but the ACL approach to abstract construction still shines through clearly.

Hints of this conventional electronic music also appear at other moments throughout the record too:"Journey Into Noise" is overall pretty dissonant, but there is an underlying loop that sounds like a destroyed orchestra hit sample that makes for a strange bit of rhythm within an otherwise psychedelic burst of noise.The "Live @ Mata" medley consists of four recent pieces blended together, shifting from engine noise and out of focus shortwave passages into snappy drum machine and back to blasting distortion.He does an exemplary job blending these two extremes of to his sound together, which is all the more impressive coming out of a live setting.

By description alone it almost sounds like Elden M. tries to do a bit too much at once on Without Tears, but in truth it is anything but.Instead, the clashing of rhythm and chaos is an exceptionally compelling one, with these occasionally disparate elements managing to gel together perfectly.There is an exceptional blend of the familiar and the unknown to be heard throughout, but presented in a way that comes across as memorable crafted songs rather than just formless experiments or unstructured excursions.

samples:

• Journey Into Noise
• Sedona Walkabout
• Distributed Organs, Flesh Feedback

 

12 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Iranian born, Austin raised artist Shawhin Izaddoost’s new release as VVV may, at least superficially, follow the hip-hop derived model of the mix tape as a collection of ideas and unfinished work, but that is not entirely accurate. Why El Paso Sky feels mostly like a fully polished and realized release. A combination of rich, complex ambient moments, vintage synth sequences, and strong beats are exceptionally well done on here, with a mix that captures both cerebral production and avant garde sounds with straight ahead physical rhythms and melodies.

Holodeck

Izaddoost's sound draws elements from vintage electro and techno, but it is solely a product of the modern era.Sure, a song such as "Metcalfe" sticks to a clean mix of unspoiled beats and dramatic synth leads, but the filtering and arrangement is far more complex than a simple nostalgia trip would produce.For "Limestone," he works from a distinctly old school sounding pulsating synth and some traditional house-like vocal samples, but the cold, distant processing results in something entirely different, as is the lush static bath in which the piece ends.

Why El Paso Sky has a darkness to it as well, however.The subway ambience and massive reverb that darkens "No Left Hand Turns" gives the throwback drum and bass sounds a more sinister sheen.On the other hand, the mass of beats and samples of "Isfahan" seem to be not at all intended for dancing, and the big leads are obscured by what sounds like guns cocking and glass breaking, making for an exceptional sense of tension.Crackling space defines "Black Fences" and what sounds like a field recording of walking gets molded into some odd rhythmic loop that is brilliantly abstract.

Additionally, one of the album’s strengths is simply the complex and intricate production throughout.On "Why El Paso Sky," Izaddoost starts from a looped new age-y piano and adds expansive passages of electronics to make for a murky, heavy ambient sound.From this relatively basic sounding framework, the depth is astounding, and the full piece has some oddly three dimensional, almost physical quality to the sound.The heavy beats and subtle arrangements throughout "Gauss Patterns" are largely minimalist in structure, but the effects and processing add a much more significant depth to be deconstructed.

The only notable weaknesses to Why El Paso Sky are that it is essentially a teaser for a forthcoming album, and because of that, some of the pieces are painfully short.For example, the heavy leads and lush programmed textures of "Fly Paper" are amazing, but drift away at less than two minutes.This is more than made up for by the more fully-fledged pieces, however.Closer "Hide The Lightening" is all clanging industrial beats, noise, and plucked strings, but even with its deconstructed style, the memorable slinky bassline ties it together perfectly.

As a mixtape, however, VVV's latest release serves its purpose exceptionally well.It stands on its own, even if there are a few moments that seem frustratingly unfinished and incomplete, but also heralds the forthcoming release as something all the more tantalizing.Izaddoost’s work is exceptionally modern and compelling.The abstraction and beat-less pieces are engrossing, but when paired with the more rhythm-centric works, the final product is a strong release that stands independently, but also makes for a nice teaser for what is to come.

samples:

• Gauss Patterns
• Isfahan
• Why El Paso Sky

 

12 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

Relay for Death, the noise(ish) project of twins Rachal and Roxann Spikula, has a brief but exceptionally bizarre history already. For their debut release Birth of an Older, Much More Ugly Christ, they used only the materials recorded in their hospital room during a three-month medical study, resulting in an empty, depressing, yet gripping work. Then, after a five-year hiatus, they released both of these late last year. The two releases are distinctly different from each other, but both uniquely brilliant and fascinating in their discomfort.

Helen Scarsdale Agency/No Rent Records

Natural Incapacity is clearly the more difficult of the two releases.What is essentially a two hour and 16 minute composition (split across two CDs, which also includes a code to download it as an unbroken piece), the sisters Spikula focus on field recordings taken throughout their current home of Richmond, California, documenting the pollution and environmental decay perfectly via audio.Unsurprisingly it is not among the most pleasant of sounds, and is nicely accompanied visually by a heavy, rusted metal plate that doubles as the cover art.

The piece is immediately introduced via sloshing noises into a rattling loop; quite obviously a train that itself seems to be rattling on in a precarious state of disrepair.Incidental sounds are captured as well, but of far less obvious sources.The two shift the mix here and there, at times to emphasize the heavy low end sounds, at others a bit lighter and less oppressive.Even though the source material is obviously field recordings, either their placement in the mix or tasteful processing lead to some of the piece sounding entirely unnatural and hard to identify.The second half of the piece begins with sharp, fizzing like sounds cutting through, but the rest is similar, concluding with a nice false conclusion.At first it sounds like a simple unmoving wall of noise, but upon closer inspection there is quite a bit going on.

samples:

• Natural Incapacity (Part One, Excerpt One)
• Natural Incapacity (Part One, Excerpt Two)
• Natural Incapacity (Part Two)

 

Anxiety of the Eye, however, is a more diverse and varied work.Again, the tape is constructed entirely from field recordings, this time from the desolation of Death Valley, California, but there is more in the way of changing dynamics and varied source material."Anxiety of the Eye" leads off with a weird buzzing pattern that almost sounds like an old computer data cassette, complete with the pseudo-rhythms that end up being perceptible.Afterwards more evident recordings can be heard:crickets and rushing water but offset by some big, reverberating bangs that are almost percussive (but not rhythmic).Past that the duo trade in echoing, metallic noise bursts punctuated with expansive spaces, concluding the piece with crunching textured loops and sputtering electronic-like sounds.

For "Western Sensorium," the mood is a bit more ominous.Erratic tones underscore what sounds like swarms of locusts, with the foreboding elements staying more sustained.Later what sounds like a mass of ringing bells and synth-like noises pop up, staying nice and varied within this structure.Considering the source of this material, the Spikulas capture the vastness and depth of the environment exceptionally well just with the audio.The latter portions of the composition have a dreamlike drift quality to them, with the occasional shrill noise burst (like on the other half) before fading off bleakly.

Both of these new Relay for Death albums showcase the unique sounds and structures of Rachal and Roxann Spikula, but each one focuses on different approaches.Natural Incapacity is the most audacious of the two, both for its length and intentionally static sound.Anxiety of the Eye is more diverse, but also less commanding and forceful in its structure.Each is excellent and complement one another however, so there is no way I can rate one as any better than the other.They may not be pleasant in the traditional sense, but I know I enjoyed both quite a lot.

samples:

• Anxiety of the Eye
• Western Sensorium (Excerpt 1)
• Western Sensorium (Excerpt 2)

 

12 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

I was not sure quite what to expect with this collaboration, as Jim O'Rourke is quite an adept shape-shifter and Kassel Jaeger (Francoise Bonnet) is a bit of an unknown quantity as well.  Also, many seemingly enticing pairings tend to feel like the polished and edited distillation of a single improv session. Wakes on Cerulean does not entirely elude that free-form and off-the-cuff territory, but it is a consistently rich and vibrant release nonetheless.  More importantly, it sometimes shares a lot of stylistic common ground with O'Rourke’s classic I'm Happy And I'm Singing album, albeit one frequently embellished by an inventive host of field recordings.  Cerulean probably errs a bit too much into genial burbling and restlessly shifting through motifs to quite attain canonical greatness itself, but it boasts enough striking passages to compensate for the lesser moments. With a bit more work, Cerulean probably could have surpassed I'm Happy and I'm Singing.

Editions Mego

Although available digitally, Cerulean was primarily intended as a vinyl release, so the two side-long pieces here are very much shaped by the limitations of that format: they are roughly are the same length and time gets filled in some unexpected and unusual ways.

The first half opens with some evocative hollow clatterings that sound like they could have been recorded on a forlorn pier, but the piece soon blossoms into a warm and elegiac drone motif that sounds like church organist in a very tender and melancholy mood.  That theme arguably forms the bedrock of the piece, but it is very easy to lose sight of it amidst the blizzard of twinkling and sputtering laptoppery that follows.  The tone is certainly not harsh at all, but the constantly shifting nature of the foreground makes for an unpredictable and disorienting listen rather than a beautiful and immersive one (despite the initial leanings in that direction).  Beauty is not absent, of course, yet it is often curdled by a stuttering obsessiveness and impatience or derailed by a shifting sense of place due to Jaeger's roving intrusions of textured field recordings.  All of that admittedly feels like it was by design, but it feels "by design" in a way that suggests a lot of disparate ideas collaged into one amorphous piece with a lot of editing.  To their credit, however, O'Rourke and Jaeger are smart enough to linger for a while when they hit upon something truly sublime.  In fact, there is one extended passage that ranks among both artist's finest work:  an undulating haze of swaying synth tones that gradually gives way to a heavenly and understated reverie enhanced by a pack of distantly howling wolves (or something else arguably wolf-like).  Afterwards, unfortunately, the piece swells to an incredibly dense, flanging, and modular synth-heavy crescendo that sounds like an especially indulgent strain of free-form '70s space rock (that, of course, feels like another composition altogether).

The second half opens in far more subdued fashion, as gentle drones slowly sway and swirl together over some understated field recordings.  It gradually masses into far more hallucinatory form, however, as the various sustained tones make shifting and uncomfortably dissonant harmonies with one another. Gradually though, a lovely new motif appears, as dreamy organ-like chords float over a deep pedal tone from O’Rourke's guitar and a bed of crackles, hisses, and quietly strangled electronics.  Uncharacteristically, that theme sticks around for quite a long time, blossoming and deepening rather than being consumed by the next theme.  Eventually, however, it does fade away to be replaced by an unrelated tapestry of bubbling synth arpeggio sweeps and eruptions of splashes, crunches, and scrapes for a final coda.  The field recording component feels like an ingenious variation on the closing fireworks display of Jaeger's Zauberberg collaboration, but with actual fireworks being subversively replaced by everything but fireworks (probably). Unfortunately, it is not a particularly satisfying fanfare overall, as my ears are completely desensitized to candy-colored synth burbling these days and the rest of the piece was far more satisfying.  The format probably deserves the brunt of the blame, as I suspect O'Rourke and Jaeger had a great 14-minute stretch of material and 17 minutes of space to fill.  Sometimes problems like that lead to delightful experiments and sometimes they just lead to perplexing compositional decisions.  This one falls into the latter category.

Ultimately, I like Wakes on Cerulean quite a lot, but albums of this nature always have a nagging element of exasperation to them as well.  This release feels like a sketchbook full of great ideas rather than a great painting made from one of the more promising sketches-it would be a lot more impressive if O'Rourke and Jaeger had focused upon transforming the more beautiful passages into complete, fully formed pieces.  Both halves of the album have a least one kernel of absolute brilliance that could have probably been shaped and expanded into a masterpiece.  Instead, Wakes on Cerulean is merely a fitful flow of many ideas that occasionally gives way to striking vistas of very real inspiration.  As such, Cerulean is a strong album that captures both artists at the peak of their respective powers, but the fruits of that union are not always presented optimally.

• Excerpt One
• Excerpt Two
• Excerpt Three

 

12 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

On paper, this is quite an improbable and unexpected collaboration: an iconic and mercurial Japanese noise-guitar god teams up with a pair of serious Belgian jazz musicians.  For one, Keiji Haino generally tends to work with artists that are nearly as outré as himself (My Cat is an Alien, Merzbow, Peter Brötzmann, etc.).  Also, playing with an elemental force as unpredictable and unhinged as Haino seems like it would be roughly as harrowing as riding a bucking bronco for anyone new to his orbit.  To their credit, however, both Verbruggen and Demoulin prove to be inspiring foils and manage to ably follow Haino's muse to whichever strange places it wanders.  Needless to say, this is very much Haino's show, veering wildly between free-form chaos, roiling electronic maelstroms, feral howling, and a few passages of sublime accessibility.  Given that, Miracles is a bit of an overwhelming mixed bag as a whole, but one with some genuine flashes of brilliance inside.

Sub Rosa

This endeavor originated back in 2015 when drummer Teun Verbruggen and keyboardist Jozef Demoulin (of Othin Spake and Lilly Joel, respectively) embarked upon a three-week Japanese tour together. At some of the dates, the pair were joined by "local" musicians, one of whom happened to be Haino.  I am not sure if that initial meeting was recorded or found its way onto The Miracles of Only One Thing at all, but the trio found enough common ground that night to make some studio recordings together, then record a live show.  Miracles is apparently a distillation of the best moments from those two events, but the line separating the live and studio work is an extremely blurry one–if anything, the opening epic "Non-Dark Destinations" sounds like an apocalyptic live performance (it is not), while the cleaner sounding "Hotel Chaika" comes from a show at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo.  Though there are two other pieces on Miracles (one of which is only included on the CD version), the extended and explosive "Destinations" and "Hotel Chaika" performances are the real meat of the album.  Everything else is basically intermittently interesting filler.

"Non-Dark Destinations" appropriately opens the album with a storm of cacophonous gong crashes courtesy of Haino that are soon enhanced with a healthy dose of blown-out bass frequencies and howling, gibbering electronic textures.  That basically sets the tone for the rest of the piece, which progresses like a fitfully erupting volcano ably accompanied by rolling and clattering free-jazz drumming from Verbruggen.  Neither Haino nor Demoulin offer anything particularly melodic for quite some time, content to instead weave a snarling maelstrom of hums, buzzes, blurts, and swooping frequencies, spewing out some wonderfully sickly sounds in the process.  Unexpectedly, however, the piece coheres into a steady off-kilter groove and some floating chords around the halfway point to give way to a strangely beautiful interlude that elevates the piece into something almost transcendent (though that oasis of comparatively sanity is short-lived). Also of note:  Haino picks up his guitar for rare solo at the end, unleashing an oddly timed and cleanly dissonant theme that sounds almost Jandek-ian.

Miracles' other epic salvo, "Hotel Chaika" offers no hidden melodic heart, though it does kick-off with a gloriously broken and wrong-sounding groove and some very uncomfortable pitch-swoops and sea-sick synth vibrato.  If it stayed in that vein, it would be another instant classic, but Haino and I part ways a bit later in the piece when he starts cathartically stuttering and shouting, transforming "Hotel" from bizarre and drugged-sounding sci-fi jazz into something that feels like an exorcism or a bout of Tourette's syndrome.  From that point on, "Hotel Chaika" feels like a deranged performance art piece punctuated by wild drum soloing and dense masses of electronic entropy.  At some point, that somehow morphs into something resembling a hard rock song with overdriven bass, wild drum fills, and plenty of screaming vocals, but that too is soon derailed by a jarring explosion of electronic blurts and bloops.  Overall, it seems like a disjointed show of force and an exercise in constantly wrong-footing me at every turn with abrupt shifts, which mostly leaves me cold despite some impressively wild drumming from Verbruggen.

Sadly, the other two pieces do not add much of substance to the album.  The first, "Snow is Frequent, Though Light, In Winter" is 5-minute interlude of ringing cymbals and quietly simmering hisses and crackles that sounds like the prelude to a larger piece that never comes. I suppose it provides a strangely calm and effective coda to the preceding fury, but it mostly just feels like it is there to eat the remaining space on the second side of the vinyl release. The meditative CD-only "Tonight" is a bit more substantial and intriguing though, opening with a fluttering flute solo from Haino that weirdly evokes Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis before unexpectedly evolving into something resembling Tuvan throat-singing.  Unfortunately, Haino cannot resist the temptation to get in a few more screams, so it has kind of a confusing and uneven tone.  Alas.  Still, Haino and his collaborations certainly unleash one hell of a firestorm on the first half of the album and they had no shortage of great ideas here.  The catch is just that Miracles captures unbridled and unfiltered creativity in its raw form, which makes for a challenging and sometimes frustrating listening experience.  To their credit, Verbruggen and Demoulin helped push Haino to some dazzling heights, but Miracles probably could have been legitimately canonical if they brought a merciless producer/editor along for the ride as well.  Of course, it would not truly be a Keiji Haino album then, as erratic shifts and questionable decisions are the necessary trade-offs for his white-hot spontaneity and tirelessly bold experimentation.

• Non-Dark Destination
• Hotel Chaika
• Tonight

 

12 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

After a lengthy six-year hiatus, this long-running bi-coastal duo have unexpectedly resurfaced with a new LP of buzzing, bass-heavy drones.  I am not sure if Disorder necessarily counts as a radical departure given Growing's history of constant re-invention, but it is certainly a remarkably far cry from their last full-length (2010's dance-damaged and sampler-centric PUMPS!). It also bears little resemblance to the more shimmering and gently psychedelic fare for which Growing is best known.  Instead, the dominant aesthetic seems to be that of Kevin Doria’s recent pure drone work as Total Life, though that vision sounds artfully blurred together with Joe DeNardo's own (noisier) Ornament project, adding some welcome layers of depth and harmonic complexity.  While it does not necessarily recapture the magic of the duo's prime, it makes up for it by opening a promising and surprisingly visceral new chapter.

Important

Growing has been compared to a lot of other artists over the years as they have evolved, but none of the familiar names are remotely relevant anymore.  With Disorder, Doria and DeNardo seem to be looking back into the past to the early days of electronic minimalism, albeit with some much rougher edges thrown into the mix.  The most apt summary that I can conjure is this: picture Eliane Radigue doing a solo improv show with a sine wave generator; some distortion pedals; a large, rusty fan; and an ancient and fitfully operational air conditioner.  That just about nails it, I think

The first half of Disorder commences with a slowly sweeping flange over a dense bed of humming and buzzing sustained tones of indeterminate source.  The flanging is subtly hallucinatory and creates a useful kind of structure and pulse, but the real activity is sneakily hiding in the deceptively static-sounding foundation.  At first, Doria and DeNardo just slip in subtle changes in harmonic coloration, but after about five minutes, some harsher feedback-like tones intrude and the piece makes an unexpected chord change.  No further chord changes immediately follow, but the tone of piece is transformed into something more throbbing and dynamically unusual as the flanging becomes more distant and spectral.  At that point, the piece begins to take shape in earnest, as a host of overtones and buzzing oscillations glacially ebb and flow over the gently undulating drones.  It is quite a quietly impressive trick, taking the distortion-heavy "amplifer worship" aesthetic of bands like Earth and Sunn O))) and using it as a backdrop for the small-scale pleasures of a well-crafted cloud of shifting overtones.  In classic "vinyl release" fashion, however, a grinding new "locked groove"-style motif emerges from the reverie to ride out of the final few minutes of the side.  Fortunately, I like that part too, but it does sound like a completely different piece.  On the bright side, drone music is especially conducive to making such moves seem relatively seamless.

The second side of the album begins with a steady bass throb, but the melodic foreground is comparatively kinetic, as some hollow-sounding guitar feedback slowly moans and pulses.  While the guitars initially sound like they are going to mass into a roiling maelstrom, they instead cohere into a restrained rhythm that is out of phase with the underlying bass hum, albeit not in a particularly rewarding way.  That basic  theme is somewhat enlivened by some harmonics and overtones, but the piece does not truly come alive until a squall of guitar noise blossoms into another obsessive locked-groove motif that sounds half like industrial machinery and half like a relentless robotic juggernaut slowly bulldozing a dystopian futuristic landscape.  As much as I enjoy that unexpected twist, Doria and DeNardo do not do all that much with their cool new theme for quite some time, opting to embellish it only with a quavering haze of distant and ghostly feedback moans.  Eventually, however, a similarly mechanical and shuddering counterpoint emerges and an erratic and mesmerizing polyrhythm takes shape.  The final few minutes are the payoff, as all the thickly buzzing instrumentation disappears, pulling back the curtain to reveal quite a fascinating and complex skeleton of moving parts.

To their credit, Disorder is definitely not the album I would have expected Doria and DeNardo to make after being apart for so many years: Growing's erratic trajectory always at least seemed to be heading towards vaguely more and more accessible, melodic, and electronic-based territory.  Consequently, I expected them to either look backwards toward their own prime or instead pick up roughly where they left off and try to rekindle some of their upward momentum.  Instead, they completely mashed the "reset" button and made a deep plunge back into the subterranean.  The Growing of Disorder genuinely sounds like a band that might have beaten up the Growing that made PUMPS! (an observation that I mean in the best possible way).  Of course, on another level, this release makes perfect sense and is probably the most honest album that the duo could have possibly made: Disorder is an improbably natural-feeling culmination of the stripped-down and darker directions that both artists have been exploring lately in their own solo careers.  While this is not a perfect release (the second half feels a bit too meandering and unfocused for my liking), the flaws lie only in the execution and the pacing: I have absolutely no qualms at all regarding the vision.  At its best, Disorder strikes the perfect balance of power, nuance, simplicity, and machine-like repetition.

Samples:

• Excerpt One
• Excerpt Two
• Excerpt Three

 

12 March 2017

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Albums and Singles

After first quietly surfacing with a self-released EP back in 2015, this duo of Seefeel's Mark Clifford and Loops Haunt's Scott Gordon make their formal debut with a full-length on Editions Mego.  While hints of both artists' main gigs are evident, this drone-centric and abstract project is very much its own thing.  For the most part, this album is a likeable suite of incidental vignettes built from warm, sustained synth tones, but a handful of pieces transcend that modest aesthetic and delve into admirably novel territory.  If I were being glib, I would describe the highlights as "hauntological drone," but that has misleading dark ambient connotations and does not do Oto Hiax any justice at all.  Instead, I will just say that Clifford and Gordon have found an evocative and subtly haunting way of blurring together dream-like and gently hallucinatory soundscapes with the sharp edges of reality.

Editions Mego

The opening "Insh" does not exactly put Oto Hiax's best foot forward, but it does provide a vague hint of the duo's vision.  Lasting little over two minutes, the piece is a simple and languorous reverie of pleasantly twinkling synthesizers over a muted bed of gentle rumbles and tape hiss. The bulk of duo's energies were clearly not spent obsessing about crafting a cool melody or massing layers into any kind of rewarding harmonic depth, but there is a lot happening dynamically (albeit on a very small scale): the simple central motif hides a lot of wobbling, whooshing, and glimmering micro-activity.  If given more time to develop, "Insh" probably could have evolved into an absorbing cloud of hazy overtones, but Clifford and Gordon are instead content to just let their motif fade away so they can move onto the next idea.  Fortunately, the next idea is quite a bit more compelling, so I can understand their hurry.  Built upon a stuttering and slightly erratic machine-like pulse, "Flist" is a strangely beautiful and unpredictable piece, lazily ebbing and flowing from one swell of dense, gnarled-sounding synth snatches to another as a host of chaotic electronic flourishes blurts, chirps, and squelches away in the periphery. As much I like the hypnotic throb and the futuristic tone, the real magic lies in the inventive structure: "Flist" feels like the compositional equivalent of a flock of birds endlessly dispersing and recombining into interesting new shapes.

The rest of the album is basically a see-sawing back and forth between those two disparate poles: pastoral ambience and considerably more inventive and distinctive fare. Near the end of the album, a third option emerges as well: obsessively stuttering locked-groove-style rhythm experiments.  To some degree, that bizarre mixture of aesthetics seems to be by design, as if Clifford and Gordon deliberately sequenced a flow of sketches and interludes between their more painstakingly crafted and elaborate set pieces to ensure that their best ideas make maximum impact.  One such high point comes immediately on the heels of "Flist," as the brief but wonderful "Dhull" sounds like a buzzing drone performance taking place as a construction site slowly, fitfully, and reverberantly collapses in the distance.  Aside from a few strong compositions, it is primarily the clattering, crackling, and scraping non-musical textures such as those that make this album special–the more they intrude upon the simple, sketchlike synth motifs, the more compelling the material gets.  Of course, the best moments of all come when a strong composition intersects with a strong textural component, as occurs with the album's sublime centerpiece "Thruft."  Musically, the piece is just a elegantly simple and bittersweetly melancholy chord progression, but it increasingly sounds like it is unfolding in the empty hull of a sinking ship being slowly bent and warped by the steadily increasing pressure.  As such, it is quite a brilliantly executed and absolutely haunting bit of music.

To some degree, the swaying and radiant closer "Loyal Odes" acts as an unofficial sequel to the imaginary and morbid tableaux that I projected onto "Thruft."  This time, however, the ship is resting on the bottom of the sea and the souls of everyone on board are slowly fluttering up to a sun-dappled heaven.  More prosaically, "Odes" is essentially a minimal and elegiac organ-like drone piece, but it is elevated into something far more with a host of hollow thumps, metallic creaks, and a gorgeously shifting nimbus of feedback moans.  Clifford and Gordon certainly know how to end an album on a perfect note, even if some of the preceding material is a bit uneven.  While a number of pieces feel like mildly interesting experiments, prematurely abandoned ideas for more significant works, or mere ambient water-treading, the album unexpectedly works quite well as a complete experience.  This is largely due to the duo's talent for coherent and effective sequencing and their impressive intuition for pacing: a few songs may end a bit too quickly for my taste, but nothing is ever allowed to overstay its welcome and these pieces all flow together quite nicely.  In a perfect world, the album would probably have a more favorable "killer" to "filler" ratio, but Oto Hiax's intermittent flashes of brilliance are easily dazzling and inventive enough to eclipse their less-inspired moments.

• Dhull
• Thruft
• Loyal Odes

 

10 March 2017

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Like master painters exploring a subject over a lifetime’s work, Kevin Martin and Dylan Carlson – The Bug and Earth, respectively – have each been mining and defining their genres for more than 20 years. They’re united by an interest in – really an obsession with – heaviness. They search for, examine and break the boundaries between beautiful and ugly, minimal and maximal, light and dark – but The Bug and Earth always make music that is heavy in the most thrilling of ways.

These two uncompromising outsiders met via the visual artist Simon Fowler (Angels & Devils.) Simon arranged for Dylan to come to a King Midas Sound gig, but Martin’s trademark use of a powerful strobe light meant that the epileptic Carlson couldn’t enter the room. Undeterred, Carlson featured King Midas Sound’s music in a podcast, and the pair eventually decided to collaborate around Angels & Devils.

The anglophile Carlson had long admired Martin, and other British sonic experimenters like Spacemen 3 or Pentangle. In turn, Martin understood the genius in Carlson’s deconstruction of metal, and Earth's boiling down of the genre to its core, elemental riffs. Martin saw that he and Dylan were both "wanderers," and "misfits in the world we live in." They were both huge fans of dub and the Velvet Underground, and they discussed how those influences could provide a combined template for something entirely new.

When they finally began to record, it quickly became apparent that the music they made together needed room to stretch out and "drone," – to be its own thing. Two tracks eventually emerged, "Boa" & "Cold," and were released as a standalone EP, with Dylan's signature guitar sound weaving seamlessly around some of Kevin's most destructively heady bass explorations. Martin had decided to exclude those songs from Angels & Devils, as he felt "They had developed a singular life of their own, outside of the identity of that album."

Ninja Tune asked The Bug and Dylan Carlson to perform live in LA around the label’s 25th anniversary, and Martin and Carlson took the opportunity to further the recording project in person. So The Bug vs Earth project holed up in Daddy Kev’s legendary LA studio, with DJ Nobody engineering, for two very long days. Those recording sessions have resulted in the masterpiece that is Concrete Desert. Inspired by J.G. Ballard’s urban dystopias, and the Californian dream capital's sordid, fragmented underbelly, Martin says that the album is in some ways a Los Angeles-set companion piece to London Zoo.

The record's beautiful, chiming melodies are like shards of sonic light, glowing in currents of heavy bass darkness. There are pulsing soundscapes, ambient pinks and whites, and irresistible grooves. This is music that grips you entirely, and catches you in its lava-flow – an astonishing, primal album of vast depth.

Releases March 24, 2017 on Ninja Tune.