- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Reel to Real collects Liquid Liquid percussionist Dennis Young's early home recordings while a member of the pioneering New York dance band. Captured on reel-to-reel recordings, hence its (somewhat painfully cliché) title, these pieces range from random experiments to near songs that still have an endearing demo quality to them.
Unsurprisingly, many of the 16 songs that make up this collection feature heavy use of drums and percussion, and end up being the ones I found myself coming back to most.Opening "Big Boom" is literally named, all hollow and pounding drum patterns, with Young's shouty lo-fi vocals appearing as a near afterthought.His playing on "Gravitation" takes on a weirder, almost synthetic quality and timbre, with the same vocal approach.
Complex polyrhythms dot the fittingly titled "Drum Solo," pounding along with a sharp, metallic edge to the icy snare patterns.His inclusion of what sounds like bits of primitive analog synth within the patterns of "More is Less" go a long way, fleshing out what would otherwise be another, less engaging drum solo piece.
Past the drumming, Young's early experiments also heavily focused on synthesizers.The odd "Panic in the Air" sees him pairing his voice with a rapid synth sequence and more traditionally played electric organ.Uptempo keyboard arpeggios and keyboard noodling also feature heavily on "Unknown Origins," though the mix is more expansive and his inclusion of vocals give a more fully realized feel.Similar is the tight sequences and dramatic flair of "Contortions" which, while still having a loose bedroom-recorded sensibility to it, feels more like a song rather than an experiment.
Peppered throughout are some less structured, more obvious experiments that range from interesting to skippable.Something like "Overdub Dub" sticks out as an odd bit of reggae sound, filtered through the lens of post-punk to resemble the likes of PIL or The Slits but less confident.There are also a few folksy passages, such as "Aliens," which is all cheap acoustic guitar and lighthearted vocals that bear more than a passing resemblance to Genesis P-Orridge.
Approaching Reel to Real as a traditional album would be a major mistake, since it is intended to be nothing more than a collection of forgotten, closeted demos and experiments.Personally, I have always been fond of these sort of compilations.There is an exuberance and excitement within the weird noises and odd experiments that might not be something for everyday rotation, but still great to dig into when the mood strikes.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Sigmarsson's work with the Icelandic group Stilluppsteypa frequently showcases both absurdity and dissonance heavily, and while his own work bears traces of that, divorced from any imagery, has more of a dark quality to it. At times austere, but not at all devoid of humor, it is three long pieces that never become stagnant resulting in a gripping collection of tones and textures.
The title of the album is undoubtedly related to the length of time it took to complete:recordings on here date back to 1998 but not completed until just last year.The first piece has Sigmarsson weaving together field recordings and the ambiance of idling machines, sometimes dissonant and sometimes melodic.It is on here that he especially showcases some dark, dramatic passages and textural spaces.
The feel of the second section is not too dissimilar, beginning with a short lived metallic expanse.Much of the piece is constructed around complex, hollow humming noises that mimic that of air conditioners or heavy equipment, but treated to bring out different, almost musical qualities.Later on he brings in what sounds like a conventional synthesizer passage, bathed in distortion and noise.At this point the record seems to shift, with Sigmarsson bringing bits of music into the otherwise abstract space.Tones almost resemble otherworldly symphonies mixed with expansive field recordings, intangible yet impeccably composed.
A passage of organ music is introduced in the closing minutes of this second segment, according to the liner notes titled the "garage days organ session" with Helgi Thorsson (of Stilluppsteypa) and frequent collaborator BJ Nilsen.It is at this point that the lighter, more absurdist moments of Sigmarsson's other work becomes apparent. This loose bit of organ improvisation drifts into the third and final piece, which is comparatively more static.It is not repetitive, but it stays more within a single dynamic and overall sound compared to the drastic jumps and variations that appeared before.
Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson does not reinvent a genre or make drastic strides in the world of experimental electro acoustic composition on So Long.However, it is exceptional in the way he blends varying textures and noises, moods and spaces, into a constantly expanding and developing record.Any sort of narrative that he may be trying to convey is anything but obvious, but the content of the music itself was more than enough to sustain my interest.
samples:
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Back in 2010, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma released what is arguably his masterpiece to date, an improbably successful celebration of love entitled Love Is A Stream.  Several years later, its melancholy follow-up captures Jefre in a rather different personal and creative place, albeit one in which his talent for woozy shoegaze guitars remains wonderfully intact.  Within those confines, however, there has been a dramatic change: Stream's lush, dreamy torrent of shimmering guitar noise has been replaced with a much more fragile, fragmented, and submerged-sounding aesthetic. The overall effect is not dissimilar to a playing a sun-warped Cocteau Twins cassette on a malfunctioning tape machine, but in a good way, as Moons evokes a unique mood of bleary, flickering, and half-lit remembrances.
Aside from the perfect, heartbreaking symmetry of being a "break-up album' bookend to Love Is A Stream, 13 Moons is also notable for both its method and its non-relationship extra-musical inspirations. The most significant factor is probably that Jefre recorded the entirely of the album during a three-month residency at the Bay Area's Headlands Center for the Arts, where he had the freedom and resources to devote his entire focus to composing and recording new music all day every day.  While his actual guitar-playing still sounds very much in the same vein as his other recent work, Cantu-Ledesma's recording and composition techniques have changed rather dramatically: 13 Moons is primarily comprised of reel-to-reel recordings of "live takes" with a minimum of overdubbing or layering, though he often augments his guitar with a drum machine, a modular synth, and a bunch of (not particularly prominent) tape recordings culled from his daily life.  The overall effect is quite pronounced, as Jefre's former blissed-out and oceanic guitar noise has been transformed into something much more woozy, wobbly, and delicate.
Also, though he originally set out intending to write a batch of melodic "songs," 13 Moons did not quite turn out that way at all.  One reason is that the album is strongly informed by Jefre's passion for the films of Alain Resnais, Chantal Akerman, and Chris Marker (among others).  Ostensibly, it is Marker's penchant for combining seemingly incongruous elements that played the most significant role in where Moons ended up, but is very easy to see how Resnais's obsessive repetition and shifting perceptions of reality may have manifested themselves as well.  On a more practical level, however, the album probably took shape the way it did mostly because Cantu-Ledesma left Headlands with a mountain of recordings to sift through.  Rather than pick through all that material for choice bits to expand upon, Jefre spent the next week figuring out how to turn it all into a dreamy, quivering, and fractured album-length collage: though there are 16 individual pieces here in name, their durations and differentiations seem quite arbitrarily and irrelevant, though the overall sequencing is itself quite deliberate and effective.
There is still quite a lot of evidence of Jefre's original plan to write structured, melodic songs in pieces like "The Twins/Shadows" and "Agate Beach," but those moments are always very ephemeral: hooks periodically surface only to soon sink back into the haze, segue into something else, or be torn apart by an unexpected snarl of noise.  Also, that bleary, kaleidoscopic aesthetic is further enhanced by the unwaveringly glacial pulse of the drum machine, which makes it feel like time has slowed down dramatically or at least stopped behaving according to normal earthbound rules.  Overall, that adds up to a very unusual, vulnerable, and bittersweetly hallucinatory album.  If Moons has any faults, it is merely that there is not a single individual piece that can be held up as something amazing, nor does it quite feel like the album goes on long enough.  That said, leaving me wanting more is always vastly preferable to overstaying one's welcome and Jefre truly does not make a single misstep anywhere: 13 Moons is basically just an endless succession of superb dream-pop snippets smearing and bleeding into one another to form a beautifully warm and blurred whole.
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Being a rabid Richard Skelton fan, I was initially heartbroken when this release sold out before I could get my hands on it, but now that I have the digital version I feel quite a bit better.  As far as Skelton albums go, this is a comparatively minor one.  Also, it sounds weirdly like a solo album: while collaborator Autumn Richardson is present in name, her usual vocals are nowhere to be found.  Consisting of just a single 27-minute piece, Diagrams is a likeable, if very slow-burning, drone work built upon a characteristically groaning, melancholy string motif that casts off a (characteristically) glittering spray of harmonics.  Compared to last year's The Inward Circles album, Diagrams admittedly feels like a step back into somewhat well-trodden territory.  However, it is territory that Skelton basically owns and he ratchets up the intensity a bit more than usual this time around, so fans will probably still find plenty to enjoy about this brief dispatch.
As is traditional for Skelton and Richardson, Diagrams for the Summoning of Wolves has some very deep conceptual roots.  Like Wolf Notes and Succession before it, Diagrams is inspired by the dwindling wildness of their home turf of southwest Cumbria, but with an interesting twist.  Whereas *AR's previous albums were intended as meditations upon what was lost and what someday might return, Diagrams is almost exactly what its title suggests: a ritual to summon back the departed wolves.  Sadly, no information is provided as to where this ritual originated or its historical success rate, only that Richard and Autumn somehow transformed the hand gestures, scents, and markings of said ritual into music.  When viewed in that light, the music actually makes a lot of sense: "Hand Gestures, Scents, and Markings" feels much more like the gnarled, steadily intensifying soundtrack to an ancient pagan ritual than a mere modern composition (which would presumably get to the point somewhat quickly rather than purposely simmering in relative stasis).
The music itself generally sticks to Skelton's expected aesthetic of somber, droning bowed strings amidst a prickly thicket of creaks, squeals, and sharp harmonics, but there are some fresh divergences.  For one, "Gestures" is certainly longer than any other single piece previously recorded by *AR and its long, slow build is also something of a departure from the duo's usual fare.  Also, Skelton and Richardson augment their normal sound with some field recordings this time around, most notably with the distant wolf sounds that periodically drift into the quietly brooding opening minutes.  Finally, when it finally fully blossoms (after 15 minutes or so), "Gestures" exhibits a surprising degree of both density and ferocity: there are quite a lot of heavy, grinding metallic textures bolstering Skelton's churning strings.  For a duo as contemplative as Richard and Autumn, Diagrams unexpectedly feels like an album meant to be played quite loud, as only then does it seem like a beautiful, violent catharsis rather than an atypically stretched drone-piece.
Notably, it took me a lot longer to warm to Diagrams than either of *AR’s previous releases, as it occupies a curious sort of no-man’s land for an album: it is too slow-moving to quite work as a headphone album and too fixated on a single motif to quite work as a "song."  Instead, it just kind of feels like ambient music until it fully catches fire: easy to ignore for quite a long time, then gloriously, unexpectedly, and attention-grabbingly heavy.  The pay-off is certainly quite powerful and satisfying when it eventually occurs, but it is not quite rapturous enough to surpass either of the duo's more concise and instantly gratifying previous albums.  As such,  Diagrams is an EP that will primarily only appeal to the already converted, though I ultimately enjoyed it quite a bit,
- Hand Gestures, Scents, Markings
- Hand Gestures, Scents, Markings (excerpt 2)
- Hand Gestures, Scents, Markings (excerpt 3)
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
This 1995 release is generally regarded to be one of the dirt-encrusted jewels of The Dead C's frequently perplexing discography.  For the most part, however, that place of honor is almost entirely due to just one song: the lumbering and smoldering epic "Outside."  A fairly strong case can also be made for one or two other pieces, but the remainder celebrates the trio at their messy, contrarian, hookless, and indulgent height.  Some listeners will likely find those pieces brilliantly annoying, but most (like me) will probably find them exasperatingly pointless and half-assed.  On the bright side, "Outside" is almost longer than all of the weaker pieces combined and it is about as good as noisy guitar music gets.
In what can only be described as a classic Dead C move, The White House opens in singularly obnoxious and off-putting fashion.  Few artists are less concerned with putting their best foot forward than these guys, a fact borne out by the one-two anti-punch of "Voodoo Spell" and "The New Snow." For its part, "Voodoo" literally sounds like two minutes of someone just messing around with a new pedal they bought or an excerpt from some justifiably forgotten noise cassette from the early ‘80s.  The following "New Snow" is initially a lot more promising, as it seems like the blown-out wreckage of cool rock song pregnant with possibility.  Instead of developing into something better, however, it becomes a near-unlistenable 12-minute spew of masturbatory synth noodling.  It is the sort of thing that is so terrible that I am forced to wonder what kind of stuff did NOT make the album.  Later, I am similarly perplexed by the 1-minute celebration of hollow plunking that is "Aime to Prochaine Comme toi mem."  For a six-song album, three worthless songs is fairly unforgivable, no matter how short two of them are.
Thankfully, the remaining three pieces are a different breed altogether, aside from still being characteristically messy and lo-fi.  The first (and least) of the trio ("Your Hand") sets the template, taking rock music into an appealingly mumbly, dirge-y, hissing, and jangling place.  It is a perfectly fine piece, if a bit plodding, but it is easily surpassed by what follows.  That said, the plodding pace is kind of the point, as The Dead C are at their best when they sound like a live recording of an otherwise great band totally falling apart (or at least not caring at all what they sound like): guitars stop and start seemingly randomly, the drummer is trying to play as little as possible, the singer sounds half-asleep, whatever structure there is quickly crumbles, and the guitar solos are indulgent bursts of cacophony.  By all rights that should be a uniformly awful aesthetic, but the trio sometimes alchemically transforms that mess into something that sounds almost impossibly cool and bad-ass.  "Bitcher," for example, has an actual chord progression and a heavy, sludgy groove, but then it is all gleefully sabotaged with overzealous flanger use that makes it sound like the band is being slowly sucked into a black hole.
The White House’s final piece is its clear zenith, as well as a very solid pick for the single best song that The Dead C ever wrote (though that honor probably goes to Harsh ‘70s Reality’s "Love" for me).  In a general sense, "Outside" does not do anything particularly different from the other "songs," aside from boasting a clearer, stronger vocal melody.  In all other respects, it sounds exactly like The Dead C, only the best version possible:  recording seemingly started with the song already underway, the "beat" is lumbering at best, the vocals are half-mumbled, there are only a couple of chords played ad infinitum, and everything is heard through a sheen of static and stuttering, snarling guitar squall.  That is admittedly slightly reductive, as there are some weirdly beautiful buried or chirping guitar parts, but the secret formula otherwise seems to be: 1.) come up with a few cool-sounding chords, 2.) add a decent vocal melody, 3.) turn it all into a smoking wreckage, and 4.) make sure it goes on for a long time.  I do not quite grasp why duration works in The Dead C’s favor, but it does: at nearly 20 minutes, the sizzling, escalating entropy of "Outside" becomes somehow transcendent and hypnotic.  I wish I could say that the rest of the album approached similar heights, but it is crazy to complain that The White House only achieves ragged, stumbling genius once, since no one else has quite achieved anything like it (not that people are exactly queuing up to emulate these guys).  Ultimately, The White House is far from an essential album, but "Outside" is a masterpiece of underground rock at its most magnificently fucked-up.
 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Wine-dark, oozing thick like oil and suddenly bright with phosphorescent lickage, Hexadic is witness to the primordial birth of a new approach to the neck of the guitar.
More information can be found here.
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Fortune exists as both a film and an album. It is an expressive portrait, but doesn't adhere to any obvious narrative; rather, it's a comfortable space that the viewer can move in and out of, dreamlike and immersive. The 11 new songs on this LP or CD don't require visual accompaniment - Damon & Naomi have constructed the sequence to communicate through sound alone - but at upcoming performances the duo will be presenting them live as a soundtrack to Naomi Yang's "silent" film.
People often talk about Damon & Naomi as if they’re the raw infrastructure that remained after Galaxie 500 fell apart, a steel skeleton still stubbornly standing after an earthquake. But when Damon & Naomi began a new project, they weren’t adjusting so much as starting from scratch. By the time they released More Sad Hits, they had grown enough as musicians and songwriters that they didn’t need to lean on stark sincerity and reverb-drenched emoting. Instead, they reined in their sound, favoring acoustic over electric, building more complex and specific textures, and exploring smaller sonic spaces. If Galaxie 500 was ahead of its time, Damon & Naomi are prescient in their own way, firmly rooted in the early ‘'90s but hinting at things to come. The project provided a necessary platform for the pair to focus, hone, and build on the groundwork that they laid for themselves, peeling away layers to reveal a shy closeness that Galaxie 500 never could.
The pair’s latest project, Fortune, is an LP released in tandem with Naomi’s video piece by the same name. Naomi Yang refers to the work as “a silent movie,” though the visuals are so bound up in the music (and vice versa) that it’s more of a long-form music video, a visual poem set to the metronome of a textural score. She conceived of the piece to explore conflicting feelings surrounding her father's recent passing; Yang was suddenly burdened with a massive archive of his artistic work (her father was a photographer), as well as the ongoing aftermath of flawed parenting. Her use of the term "fortune,” then, is tinged with sardonicism but also with nostalgia—portraits from the 1940s and '50s painted by protagonist Norman von Holtzendorff’s father (also recently deceased, and who also left his archive in Norman's hands) feature prominently. An ongoing tarot card motif ties in another facet of the suddenly slippery term "fortune," using Damon & Naomi's now familiar brand of close, acoustic warmth to explore the past’s bearing on the future: "I want to be over / To touch and be gone / Forget this amnesia."
More information can be found here.
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
WIRE
Blogging 3:46 // Shifting 3:17 // Burning Bridges 3:17 // In Manchester 2:42 // High 1:52 // Sleep-Walking 7:31 //
Joust & Jostle 2:12 // Swallow 4:17 // Split Your Ends 3:31 // Octopus 3:16 // Harpooned 8:23
As some might have noticed "on the internet", Wire are announcing a new album — simply called WIRE — for release on 13th April [UK] and 21st April [USA].
The album features songs which you may have heard at live shows, along with some brand-new ones.
You can stream the track "Joust & Jostle" on pinkflag.com and pre-order from pinkflag mail order. The album will be available on CD and vinyl.
Here's the press release
+++
Right from their inception in 1976, back in the first stirrings of punk, Wire went about making music in a subversive, conceptual way, setting themselves apart from both their peers and their influences.
“I had this idea that I wanted to avoid things that had a particular kind of tradition,” explains singer and guitarist Colin Newman. “I thought the three-chord trick was too simplistic and that the one-chord trick would be better. Or the two chord trick where the second chord is definitely not the right chord.”
Bass guitarist and vocalist Graham Lewis identifies another trait that has run throughout the group’s lifetime. “People said we were mysterious, arch and dark. But the only way of doing that successfully, is by also having a sense of humour. You have to have that balance. With Wire there’s a peculiarity, a contrariness and that can be funny."
This questing approach has permeated Wire’s songwriting, their onstage presentation, even the decision, back in the 80s, for Robert Grey to strip his drumkit down to just bass drum, snare and hi-hat. And it has served them well in guarding against repetition and cliché. In context, Wire’s last album, 2013’s aptly titled Change Becomes Us was another case of “Expect the unexpected”, as it found them extensively reworking a rich cache of material abandoned amid a temporary break-up in the early 80s.
Their 13th studio album - simply titled Wire – comprises material that was written with the album in mind, but toured extensively first, as well as songs that Newman introduced to the group in the studio just prior to recording. The idea was to get the most spontaneous reaction possible from the musicians, and far from the rough and ready results one might expect from such a tack, Wire is full of swooning pop melodies with a 60s tinge and an irresistible, near motorik rhythmic momentum. One can recognise certain melodic inflections, guitar and bass motifs, and drum rhythms from Wire’s idiosyncratic vocabulary but it has a remarkable freshness.
The basic tracks were recorded at Rockfield Studios near Monmouth, with overdubs added at Brighton Electric last December following the group’s DRILL : BRIGHTON Festival. The 11 tracks selected for release were the ones that came together most naturally.
From the outset Wire was an alliance between four very different characters and continues today with the addition, in 2012, of It Hugs Back guitarist Matthew Simms, who is around thirty years younger than the other group members. “With Matt there was a really new dynamic that had appeared in the group’s sound and that was something we wanted to capture, utilise and be creative with,” says Lewis.
Wire is the first album where Simms has been involved in formulating the material from the ground up, but when the group’s particular chemistry starts working he is now very much part of the process.
“With ‘Sleepwalking’, I don’t think we even ran all the way through it before we recorded it.” Newman says. “Wire do this thing so well and there’s instant atmosphere. There’s my rhythm guitar, Matt playing lap steel, Graham (Lewis) playing bass with effects – there’s as much effects as bass - and Rob’s tolling drumming. It was already almost sustainable for six minutes with just that.”
Lewis also provides most of the lyrics for the album, their subject matter encompassing love songs, cryptic narratives and coded messages. One time, Newman asked Lewis to send over some unfinished, unformatted text so he wouldn’t be bound by what to use for the chorus. This material spawned two songs written on the same day, ‘Split Your Ends’ and the droll ‘In Manchester’. The latter has one of the album’s loveliest melodies, but it’s no coded paean to the city in its Baggy heyday. Instead this process led to the disorientating and rather absurd situation of having “In Manchester” as a soaring chorus, when the song is not about Manchester beyond a single line in the lyric.
As the album progresses, some of the sunlit pop tunes become more shadowy and it ultimately plunges into the musical black hole of ‘Harpooned’, eight churning minutes of the group’s darkest, most abrasive music to date, and a favourite in live performances since 2013.
Big money offers have been made to Wire to become part of the Heritage Rock industry, to get the original line-up back together and play only 70s music. These have all been unequivocally turned down. Fun though that might be, why plant yourself firmly back in the past when you are making new music this potent with the promise of more in the future?
“The point where our personal narratives meet is all about change - moving on and keeping it interesting for ourselves,” says Newman. “We’re in it for the long haul and this is a one-way trip.”
Wire will be launched by the fourth event in the band's DRILL series entitled DRILL : LEXINGTON - five nights (14-18 April) at the Lexington in London with Wire headlining, plus a different "curated" support each night. This will be followed by a UK & US tour. Further dates & events will be announced soon.
Text - MIKE BARNES
DRILL : LEXINGTON
Can you believe we are already on the fourth incarnation of the DRILL : FESTIVAL? So far we DRILLED in London, Seattle and Brighton, hosting over 150 artists, including Swans, Savages, Toy, Earth, British Sea Power, Courtney Barnett, Youngfathers, Helmet, These New Puritans, and many young, upcoming bands. DRILL : FESTIVAL is, we think, unique in that it has no specific location, timing or format, and so we can encompass multi-venue, wristbanded events like DRILL : BRIGHTON and single venue events like DRILL : LEXINGTON. Presented by WIRE in conjunction with The Quietus & The Lexington (the team that brought you DRILL : LONDON), the concept is Wire headline every night with a different and carefully chosen support that will give each date a different flavour. This harks back to the event which spawned the whole DRILL : FESTIVAL concept: two nights in the Lexington, in November 2010, with Factory Floor and Lonelady. DRILL : LEXINGTON runs from 14-18 April at The Lexington, London.
We will be announcing the full line-up of DRILL : LEXINGTON towards the end of the month. Meanwhile, tickets are already on sale here.
6- MUSIC FESTIVAL
As well as all this activity in April, May and June, there will be a short burst of live action from the band this month with three UK dates culminating in an appearance at 6Music's festival. The festival appearance will be in the main concourse at the Sage in Gateshead. Tickets are already long ago sold out; however, as Wire are playing on the main stage, we will be filmed for red button and BBC YouTube inclusions. Anyone who knows 6Music will know they make a very big deal of their festival, so expect to hear rather more of Wire on the staion than you are accustomed to! Colin will alo be appearing on their show The First Time with Matt Everitt. The show is broadcast on Sundays but will be recorded in front of a live audience at the festival on Saturday, February 21st.
++++++++++
And finally…
This newsletter and the website are complementary resources. To keep abreast of Wire and all its doings, we recommend checking Pinkflag.com regularly as well as being signed up to this mailing list.
All the best,
Pinkflag
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
"That's the most intense fear and feeling--when you go to a show and you're actually scared," says Oliver Ackermann, guitarist and frontman of Brooklyn trio A Place To Bury Strangers.
"Or you can palpably feel the danger in the music," adds bassit Dion Lunadon, "Like it's going to fall apart at any moment and the players doing it are so in the moment they don't give a shit about anything else. They're just going for it. It's a gutter kinda vibe; everything about it is icky and evil and dangerous."
The same could be said the band's fourth album, Transfixiation. Rather than fixate on the minute details like they may have done in the past, the group, rounded out by drummer Robi Gonzalez, trust their instincts and try to keep things as pure as possible. Music is much more exhilarating when it's unpredictable even on repeat plays, and this is very much an unpredictable record. Gonzalez makes his recording debut with the band here, and it's obvious that he's helped pushed the band's recordings closer to the level of their infamous live shows.
"The one thing we have in common is this fire when we're playing," adds Gonzalez. "I don't know; it's real intense."
More information can be found here.
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Live Knots, Oren Ambarchi’s first release for PAN, presents two live realizations of "Knots," the epic centrepiece of his Audience of One (Touch, 2012) release. Built on the interplay between Ambarchi's swirling, guitar harmonics and the metronomic pulse and shifting accents of Joe Talia’s DeJohnette-esque drumming, the piece merges the organic push and pull of free improvisation with an overarching compositional framework.
"Tokyo Knots" presents the complete recording of a duo performance of the piece by Ambarchi and Talia recorded at Tokyo's legendary SuperDeluxe in March 2013. The performance builds gently on the foundation of Talia's insistent ride cymbal and the shifting tonal bed of Ambarchi's rich overtone-drenched guitar, eventually going into a free rock free fall of buzzsaw harmonics and crashing drums. From within the maelstrom, Talia picks up a pulsing motorik rhythm that leads the piece back to where it began, with the addition of the shuddering, elastic tones of a hand-played spring reverb unit.
"Krakow Knots," recorded live at Unsound Festival in Krakow in 2013, works with the same basic structure but stretches it out to nearly twice the length and adds strings played by the Sinfonietta Cracovia, led by Eyvind Kang on viola. The strings expand the piece's textural range with lush chordal blocks, uneasy dissonances and occasional Ligeti-esque swarms of micro-activity, the swelling string tones intensifying the ecstatic nature of the piece as it moves towards its mid-point crescendo in which Ambarchi unleashes a particularly malicious continuum of stuttering harmonic fuzz. The strings then enter with a series of swelling chords, announcing the piece’s final movement, and reaffirming the uniqueness of the tonal and compositional language that Ambarchi has patiently developed over the last two decades, in which the influence of post-minimal composers such as Alvin Curran, Gavin Bryars and David Behrman can be felt alongside the inspiration of raw free jazz, harsh noise and academic psychoacoustics. The final moments of the performance pit Talia and Crys Cole's amplified objects and spring reverb textures against a field of gently gliding string glissandi before the audience erupts in much-deserved applause.
– Francis Plagne
More information can be found here.
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Behold is the second collaborative release from Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke following on from the 2011 release Indeed. Seamlessly blending field recordings, electronics, guitar, drums and other acoustic instruments into a subtle combination of Krautrock, minimalism and classic free flowing electronics.
Side A takes the listener into the Fourth World adventures pioneered by Jon Hassell whilst the flip seems like an unlikely pairing of Krautrock aesthetics and the slow building repetitive structures of The Necks.
This is sharp, focused contemporary music, one where minimalist motifs meet maximalist tendencies. Behold is another landmark recording made by two of the most enthusiastic experimental explorers active today.
More information can be found here.
Read More
