07 November 2016

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Albums and Singles

Relay For Death

Natural Incapacity

HMS 039 : Double Compact Disc / Digital Download

http://www.helenscarsdale.com/published/rfd-natural.htm

Release Date: December 2, 2016

Relay For Death are the twin sisters Rachal and Roxann Spikula, whose noise mantras transcribe the harsh realities of urban blight that complicate and threaten their own survival. It was in the context of two month medical study that the Spikulas composed their debut album in 2009, amplifying the emptiness of hospital rooms into a ghastly pall worthy of the classic works by Maurizio Bianchi. Natural Incapacity sprouts from a similar research and development, manifesting from the sonic pollution that proliferates in their current residence of Richmond, California. Clocking in at well over two hours, Natural Incapacity was composed as a seamless, glacial accretion of locomotive grind, subharmonic environmental rumble, nocturnal street sweeping, and the quavering hum of toxic chemicals perpetually leached into the water table. By design, Natural Incapacity’s oil-stained drone is completely relentless, implying neither beginning nor end to this cycle of contamination. Relay For Death’s industrial meditation recognizes abjection, horror, and defeat as the prevalent conditions to existence. Even as a declared rejection to those conditions, Natural Incapacity is engulfed in a bleak nihilism constantly churning back upon itself. Grizzled antecedents can be found in the apocalyptic works of Maurizio Bianchi, Kevin Drumm’s Imperial Distortion, and Organum’s Vacant Lights.

While intended to be a seamless document, Natural Incapacity is split over two CDs and does feature a download of the composition in unedited form. The physical edition features hand-rusted metal covers by Jim Haynes and is strictly limited to 150 copies.

05 November 2016

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Albums and Singles

Faitiche welcomes back an old friend: Andrew Pekler was the musical director of the 2011 Ursula Bogner album, Sonne = Blackbox (faitiche05 lp/cd/book).

Known for his albums on Senufo Editions, Entr’acte, Dekorder, Kranky and other labels, Pekler’s new work Tristes Tropiques is now released by Faitiche. Tristes Tropiques is an album of synthetic exotica, pseudo-ethnographic music and unreal field recordings.

02 November 2016

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Albums and Singles

Dais is excited to announce the third box set of ambient master works by ominous painter and musician Tor Lundvall. Musically influenced by his own haunting and unique paintings, Lundvall creates ethereal landscapes of dreamlike beauty, seamlessly weaving classic ambient composition, piano and other instruments with a modern yet nostalgic touch, accompanied by electronics, samples, and field recordings. Best described as “Ghost Ambient” music, Tor Lundvall creates records that are absolutely unique and unequalled: the soundtrack to dreams, solitude, nature, nightmares, and memories.

This 5xCD box set includes the following:

• The Park
• The Violet-Blue House
• Rain Studies
• Field Trip
• Insect Wings, Leaf Matter & Broken Twigs Vol 2

02 November 2016

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Albums and Singles

Frozen Geometry emerged from years of sketching new textures on guitar, which were layered and looped into immersive capsules of harmony and drift. Erik Kowalski's original intention was to use them as melodic foundations for future compositions, but then he "became aware of them existing on their own."

First full-length offering from legendary ambient act in over half a decade.

An intriguing opus of hypnotic beauty and peripheral consciousness.

More information can be found here.

31 October 2016

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Albums and Singles

For some reason, I never fully appreciated Emeralds when they were around, but I think I am belatedly redressing that wrong with my interest in Steve Hauschildt’s quietly impressive and steadily evolving solo career.  Prior to Strands, I was most taken with his more "Kraftwerk' moments on 2012's Sequitur, but this latest release often feels like a gorgeous culmination of Hauschildt's artistry, eschewing almost all traces of Vangelis-inspired retro-futurist pastiche to weave a lush and languorous reverie inspired by both creation/destruction myths and the famously burning river of his own hometown of Cleveland.

Kranky

The opening "Horizon of Appearances" does not waste any time setting the tone for album, as it basically oozes into audibility as a melancholy drift of swelling chords with some distantly hallucinatory drips and twinkles buried deep in the background.  While they are very much in the periphery, those "drips" are probably my favorite part of the otherwise unrelentingly somber piece, sounding like falling condensation in a deep cave that unexpectedly blossoms into ephemeral melody as the splash reverberates around its cavernous surroundings.  Aside from those subtly psychedelic nuances, "Horizon" is far from my favorite piece on the album, but it is only the monochromatic sadness of the central motif that relegates it to the status, as I very much love the unhurried, exhalation-like pace and attention to detail.  The following "Same River Twice" offers up a somewhat different template, however, keeping the melancholy, but enlivening its theme with an undercurrent of burbling momentum, a shuffling rhythm, and flourishes of vibrantly glittering arpeggios.  It is a fairly representative work rather than an exciting leap forward, but it does capture Hauschildt's longtime aesthetic at its best: simultaneously understated, vibrant, and richly layered.

The album starts to catch fire in earnest (like the Cuyahoga) around the fourth song, however, as "Ketracel" bolsters its melancholy faux-string melody with an energetic bed of pulsing arpeggios, off-kilter rhythms, and a host of delightful bleeps and squelches.  Then the piece gets uncharacteristically pulled apart and the sadness of the central theme gets almost completely consumed by the increasingly erratic underlying music and some intrusions of noisier textures.  It is quite a curveball by Hauschildt standards and the following album highlight "Time We Have" keeps that momentum going beautifully.  Like several other pieces on the album, it is quite slow-moving and elegiac, but manages to come across as warm and rapturous rather than somber.  Also, Hauschildt enhances his perfect melody with some nice textural crackle and increasingly rich harmonies.  It is simultaneously simple, gorgeous, and moving and is likely the crown jewel of Hauschildt’s career to date. The following title piece is also another quiet stunner, as its lovely subdued and burbling melody is allowed to spiral off into a number of compelling textural directions, leaving a trail of wonderfully hallucinatory afterimages that seem to have a life of their own.

Lamentably, that wonderful streak of near-perfect songs could not last forever, as Hauschildt becomes overly somber again with "Transience of Earthly Joys," which almost sounds like a funeral mass.  It is not necessary a misfire, but it definitely could benefit from a lighter touch.  The closing "Die in Fascination" feels like belated coda to the earlier "Time We Have," as it reprises its formula of simplicity and a quietly beautiful flow of swelling chords.  Unlike "Time We Have," however, it just gradually fades away rather than blossoming into anything more.  Within the context of the album, that was an excellent sequencing choice, but it is a bit too basic to stand as one of the album's high points.  Much like every Hauschildt album, Strands is ultimately a bit of a mixed bag, as Steve is prone to occasional heavy-handedness or dubious stylistic choices.  However, he is also one of the most gifted and exacting composers currently working with synthesizers, so I do not mind listening to a handful of near-misses to get to the inevitable bulls-eye or two.  Also, even his near-misses tend to offer a few compelling facets, as the sheer craft of Hauschildt's work is always impressive even when the songs themselves fall a bit short.  In any case, Strands certainly seems like Hauschildt's finest album to date, boasting both an impressively sustained three-song burst of greatness and the feeling of a thematically satisfying and artfully sequenced whole.

Samples:

• Ketracel
• Time We Have
• Strands

 

30 October 2016

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Albums and Singles

Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie, the creative force behind A Winged Victory For The Sullen and Stars Of The Lid, is to officially release his score for the non-fiction film Salero on November 11th.

Having channelled some of the most iconic drift music of our time through A Winged Victory For The Sullen and Stars of the Lid, 2016 has already seen Erased Tapes luminary Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie provide original scores for a number of feature films including Jalil Lespert's Iris and The Yellow Birds by Alexandre Moors.

It’s on Salero, however, that we see Wiltzie weave some of his finest work and deliver an expertly distilled accompaniment to director Mike Plunkett's sprawling, uncompromising visuals. Set in Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat, the narrative follows the region's "Saleros" – those who have for generations gathered salt and earned enough to somehow carve out an existence in such a barren landscape. It’s with the discovery of huge Lithium reserves – a mineral used frequently throughout the tech industry – under the scorched earth that acts as a catalyst for exploitation of the environment and its people; holding a microscope to the drastic effect industrialisation has on local culture and tradition.

"I have always said that composing music is infinitely easier when you have beautiful images to be inspired by. It was a pleasure to write a score over this captivating place of endless, glimmering salt before its impending demise. I was fascinated by this mythical space and its ability to define the identities of the people who live in its vicinity, where this vast salt flat itself would be a central character" – Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie

More information can be found here.

30 October 2016

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Albums and Singles

I had absolutely no idea what to expect from Jim Thirlwell’s latest opus, as I am still a bit shell-shocked from the overwhelming maximalism of 2013’s Soak and all bets are off with soundtrack work.  Also, Tony Oursler's Imponderable is quite a bizarre film by any standards.  Appropriately, the soundtrack is quite bizarre as well, though it is considerably more understated, melodic, and tender than I had anticipated: Thirlwell's eerie, dark, and eclectic vision beautifully mirrors the film’s own noirish pulp-meets-hallucinatory experimentation aesthetic.  Both Oursler and Thirlwell definitely share a puckish appreciation for the nexus where garish "low" art collides with higher, more cerebral fare.  That said, Imponderable is still a soundtrack rather than an original new stand-alone Thirlwell album, so its appeal is very "niche."  Devout Thirlwell fans will definitely not want to miss it though, as it is quite a unique release that takes his aesthetic in some unusual and surprising directions.

Ectopic Ents

It goes without saying that Jim Thirlwell is an interesting guy who chooses interesting projects, but teaming up with Tony Oursler seems like an especially perfect marriage.  By coincidence, I found myself in NYC over the weekend, so I was able to catch a bit of Imponderable at MoMA, its current home.  I am curious to see if takes up residence anywhere else, as it has some interesting technical demands that prohibit it from playing in a regular theater. More specifically, it is "presented in a "5-D" cinematic environment utilizing a contemporary form of Pepper’s ghost—a 19th-century phantasmagoric device—and a range of sensory effects (scents, vibrations, etc.)."  I personally did not find the occasional red houselights or wafts of perfume to be especially crucial to the experience, but it is easy to see how the artist might feel differently.  Vibrating floors and scent infusions aside, Imponderable is a one-of-a-kind film just from its subject matter alone, as it is a complexly layered fantasia on director Tony Oursler's family history mingled with his longtime fascination with "stage magic, spirit photography, pseudoscience, telekinesis, and other manifestations of the paranormal."  The overall effect is unpredictable and disorienting in the extreme, as it feels like watching weirdly stage-y and stilted reenactments of multiple unfamiliar films while deeply in the throes of an acid trip.

Appropriately, Thirlwell’s soundtrack is similarly kaleidoscopic and phantasmagoric, flitting seamlessly from squelching and goopy vintage synth kitsch ("Symphony VII, Part II") to jaunty accordion romps ("Giggle Water") to gorgeous, exotic reveries ("Chinese Ghost").  The album’s centerpiece, however, is the comparatively lengthy "Spark of Life," an oasis of lush and darkly Romantic balladry amidst a wilderness of eclectic instrumentals.  Though it admittedly boasts a few over-the-top goth/theatrical tropes (church bells, a raspy throat gurgle) and very film-specific lyrics ("automaton will rise again"), Thirlwell’s tenderly incantatory vocals elevate it into something quite haunting and compelling.  Hearing an actual, naked human voice intrude into an album that otherwise sounds like a bizarre B-movie fever dream is quite striking.  I actually like all of the longer pieces quite a bit though, as Thirlwell seems to be at his most outré and inspired when he has a few minutes to stretch out.  In "Night Nurse," for example, he manages to find room for an interlude of strangled strings, a drone segment featuring eerily quivering feedback, and a darkly hallucinatory music box coda.  Elsewhere, he embarks upon a beautifully lush and melancholy reverie in "Faerie Bust" and deftly condenses all of the album’s disparate themes into a single piece with "The History of Magic."  I also quite liked the brief "Demonologia," as its gnarled, industrial-damaged collage aesthetic is much closer to my personal sensibility than the rest of the album.

Generally, my problem with soundtracks is that I just do not understand why they exist or why anyone would want to listen to music that is disembodied from its intended context.  I recognize that that is a harsh stance, but the whole point of a soundtrack is to provide color and mood for a more complex and layered whole without being intrusive or stealing the focus.  As such, soundtracks are fundamentally not meant to stand alone.  That said, I am not a crazy person, so I acknowledge that some soundtracks transcend their original intent.  The Imponderable score arguably does just that: while it is too closely thematically tied to what is on the screen to exist as a completely independent entity, it is also far too vivid and rich for its only life to be as a mere backdrop.  As I was watching Imponderable, I appreciated how beautifully the underlying music enhanced the scenes, but realized that it is probably very easy to watch the entire film without ever noticing the sheer depth, breadth, and imagination of Thirlwell’s score, which is definitely its own singular work of art.  That seems criminal, so I am delighted that this window into Thirlwell’s skewed genius remains open for me to explore at my leisure.

• Spark of Life
• Faerie Bust
• The History of Magic

 

30 October 2016

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Albums and Singles

Unlike most Benoît Pioulard enthusiasts, I connect most strongly with Thomas Meluch’s recent instrumental side, so I was a little bit heartbroken when he decided to end his recent hot streak in that regard with a return to more song-based work.  Personal preferences aside, however, Meluch's latest release is an intriguing and unusual one, as he seems to be simultaneously growing more ambitious with his arrangements and more abstract with his structures.  He also seems to be making a conscious effort to be a bit more upbeat and effervescent, albeit in his own muted way.  The overall result admittedly has a "transitional album" feel at times, but The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter definitely takes Meluch's "ambient pop" in a subtly more sun-dappled, blearily vaporous, and fragmented direction.

Kranky

The listening matter in question teasingly opens with a brief and gorgeously lush drone piece ("Initials B.P.") before the understated and elegantly orchestrated pop extravaganza begins in earnest with the following "Narcologue."  Tellingly, the very first lines that Meluch sings are about how he finally found the song he wanted, but it disappeared.  For better or worse, that statement is probably the overarching theme of the album, as The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter is chock full of great hooks and melodies that feel effortlessly tossed off or aborted prematurely.  This is very much an album of wonderfully glittering moments of maddeningly ephemeral pop genius.  The best example of this tendency is probably the wonderfully driving and uncharacteristically rapturous "Like There’s Nothing Under You," which exasperatingly bows out after just over a minute.

Despite Meluch's casual disregard for fully exploiting his perfectly crafted hooks, he clearly put an enormous amount of work into meticulously layering and texturing all of these fleeting vignettes, peppering them with odd percussion and subtly hallucinatory field recordings.  Meluch has stated in interviews that those recordings often tend to have personal significance for him and trigger memories when he hears them again, which is an admirably sneaky backdoor way to infuse his somewhat mannered, deadpan pop with hidden depth and mystery.  I certainly appreciate that aspect of the album myself, as the evocative and subtle sublayers make for rewarding repeat listening.  That said, it is the actual songwriting makes me want to listen repeatedly in the first place, so the songs with the strongest hooks tend to be my favorites (provided they stick around long enough to grab me).  Aside from the lush and delirious first single "Anchor as the Muse," Meluch saves most of his best pieces for the second half of the album, particularly "A Mantel for Charon," which I would describe as stomping and soaring…by Benoît Pioulard standards, at least (it still manages to remain characteristically dream-like and soft-focus).  The jangling and clap-filled "The Sun is Going to Explode But Whatever Its OK" is yet another stand-out, as its joyous music is amusingly undercut by Meluch's deadpan delivery and dark sense of humor.

In a perverse way, the problems with The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter are part of what makes it such an unusual and intriguing album.  Meluch seems to have been pulled in a number of seemingly disparate directions here, as Listening Matter sounds like he started out to make a glorious bedroom-pop Pet Sounds-style opus, but could not fully commit to it because being so nakedly poppy did not sit well with his muted, sleepy, and "underachiever" aesthetic: he avoids being gauche or heavy-handed to an almost self-sabotaging degree.  It also seems like Meluch is still (rightly) somewhat in the thrall of his recent instrumental bender, as a good number of these "songs" are brief, wordless interludes that would have been album highlights if they had stuck around long to leave an impression.  Aside from a handful of 3-minute pieces, this album rushes by like a goddamn whirlwind.  On the bright side, Meluch certainly did not lack inspiration or great ideas and he undeniably threw himself into presenting them all beautifully.  Consequently, The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter is quite a likable album–I just cannot shake the feeling that there is an even better one lurking in this material that may have come out if Meluch had not condensed so many ideas into so short a span.

• Like There's Nothing Under You
• A Mantle for Charon
• Ruth

 

23 October 2016

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Albums and Singles

From Steve Hauschildt:

"Strands is a song cycle that is about cosmogony and creation/destruction myths. The title alludes to the structural constitution of ropes as I wanted to approach the compositions so that they consisted of strands and fibers which form a unified whole. This was so the songs could have the appearance of being either taut or slack without being fundamentally locked to a grid. So the sounds/tones have a certain malleability to them and sound like they're bending through time. It's also grittier and more distorted than my previous albums. I wanted to try and capture that moment in nature and society where life slowly reemerges through desolation, so it has a layer of optimism looming underneath. The music represents this by seemingly decaying at times but then reforms and morphs in a fluid way back to its original state. I was also inspired by the movement of rivers, particularly their transformative aspect and how they're in a state of flux and change, in particular the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland where I live, which notoriously caught on fire thirteen times because of industrial pollution in the 1960s and before. I was very interested in the dichotomy of oil and water and the resulting, unnatural symptoms of human industry. It's a very personal record for me as it is a reflection of my hometown where I grew up and where it was mostly recorded."

Out October 28, 2016 on Kranky.

23 October 2016

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Albums and Singles

Monument Builders is the new album from loscil, the ambient/electronic project of prolific composer Scott Morgan. It was primarily created on sample-based instruments in Morgan's century-old Vancouver home. Like that aged space, this music is also rough-hewn, with rickety samples of boiling kettles and resonant moving air. Recordings from a vintage micro-cassette recorder contribute distortion, rattles and textures that serve as both percussion and abstract aural color.

According to Morgan, the genesis for the album may have begun as he viewed an old VHS copy of the American experimental film Koyaanisqatsi. "Something about the time-tarnished visuals and the pitch warble on Philip Glass's epic score added a new layer of intrigue for me," says Morgan. "Glass has always been an influence but lo-fi Glass felt like a minor revelation, as if the decay was actually enhancing the impact of the film's message."

The investigations on Monument Builders also took inspiration from the anti-humanist writings of influential philosopher John Gray, as well as photographer Edward Burtynsky’s iconic aerial photographs of pollution and environmental destruction. "Gray’s writing, particularly his book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, reinforced a bleak notion I had that we humans don’t have much say in how it all turns out," says Morgan. "With Burtynsky, I was struck by the fact that something so strikingly beautiful could be the result of large-scale waste and exploitation."

Monument Builders was composed during a period in which the life-and-death battles of close friends and family forced Morgan to examine his own feelings on mortality. In the course of that introspection, Morgan found himself buoyed by a feeling of celebration and a stubborn sense of survival – an acknowledgement of what it means to be able to breathe and create amidst the clash of love and chaos. Ultimately, Morgan hopes the music here can offer listeners solace while leaving room for exploration and surprise.

Out November 11, 2016 on Kranky.