25 January 2015

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Veteran UK musician/composer Robert Haigh returns to Siren for the first time in three years. Although not a major departure from Haigh's previous work for the label (three albums of piano music released between 2009 and 2011 subsequently known as the Siren Trilogy) this 18 track collection benefits from a wider pallet of subtle sonic textures. With The Silence Of Ghosts Haigh has visioned a journey through strange and beautiful terrain - a topography of fragile melodies and muted discords.

The opening track, Song Of Selene, is a spacious, hymn-like nocturne; hauntingly stark and reflective. In Another Light is an off-beat waltz (3/4, 2/4 time) in which a cyclic theme explores major and minor keys with subtle electronic shimmers. Crooked Mile is a Satie-esque outing featuring an angular melody that climbs through strange modal keys to a discordant destination. The title track The Silence Of Ghosts is achingly melodic, yearning and touching - a eulogy to things that have passed. Where later tracks such as Happening no. 1 and 2 explore Haigh's gift for improvisation, the ghostly Demian Air presents a deep sonic excursion through electronic textures where submerged piano notes echo across alien terrain. The closing track, New Cross Counterpoint, was originally based on a refrain from Haigh's own earlier composition of the same name (from A Waltz In Plain C). The track with its Glass-like arpeggiated piano counterpoint subsequently took on a life of its own but Haigh decided to keep the title anyway since it 'felt right' for the piece.

The Silence Of Ghosts is a mature and deeply reflective work employing Robert Haigh's distinctive subverted melodies and spacious counterpoint. This collection should appeal to fans of Satie, Debussy, Harold Budd, Philip Glass and Max Richter.

Artist Name : Robert Haigh
Title : The Silence of Ghosts
Format : CD (limited edition 700 copies) with miniature jacket sleeve
Catalogue Number : Siren 024

All tracks written and performed by Robert Haigh
Mastered at Skye Mastering by Denis Blackham
Artwork by Andrew Chalk
Sleeve by Saul Haigh

Track listing:
1. Song Of Selene
2. In Another Light
3. Crooked Mile
4. Happening no. 1
5. The Silence Of Ghosts
6. Twelve Tone Poem
7. Fragile Again
8. Lost Rites
9. Pentatonic Dream
10. Crossing The Water
11. Bells Of Lyonesse
12. Second Nature
13. A Cycle Of Flattened Fifths
14. Happening No. 2
15. Thieves Of Symmetry
16. Demian Air
17. Years
18 .New Cross Counterpoint

25 January 2015

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Albums and Singles

Second in a trio of inaugural cassette releases from Yucatán, México's Lengua de Lava, Harness joins two live performances recorded on the same night at Oberlin College's Fairchild Chapel. The first documents the gutsy force of Joe Panzner and Greg Stuart's machine noise, the second catches Jason Brogan and Sam Sfirri in slow-death mode, twisting canine howls and malfunctioning equipment into avian distress signals and seismic events. Each duo treats their material differently, but the attention paid to physical properties and processes links them. It's a detail picked up and echoed in the superb artwork from Matthew Revert, who channels the corrosive elements of both pieces into a frayed and intricate scrawl.

Lengua de Lava

"We Didn't Get There Tonight" begins with a short punch of hiss and a steady hum. It sounds like a machine rushing to life and blowing a fuse in almost the same moment. The ensuing brume of sine waves, atomic pops, and broken signals reinforces that image. Panzner and Stuart play with fields of electrical interference and evoke the flashing red lights of agitated equipment on the verge of meltdown. They mix that with the blistering friction of material bodies. Metal grinds against metal in some passages, then compressed air screeches from the speakers and the pocked surface of a worn-out asphalt slab is slammed against the blown-out flutter of busted speaker heads. Glass vibrates against an invisible surface at the end and then the piece comes to a sudden and jarring stop. At first blush the whole thing sounds improvised, but hints of structure seep out of the way Panzner and Stuart react to each other and move from one section to the next. Their interactions are too canny for the whole thing to be completely off the cuff.

The same can be said of Jason Brogan and Sam Sfirri's side, "Wolf." Against the odd sputtering of something that resembles a dot matrix printer, or the digital approximation of a sprinkler system, Brogan and Sfirri place howling wolves, chirping birds, running water, the sound of thunder, and eventually the alien quaver of creatures unknown. By the ten minute mark the initial scene has changed from a pastiche of the familiar to a disconcerting collage of ringing tones and murky field recordings. The conditions for the performance are partially set by the materials Brogan and Sfirri chose to play with, but the outcome depends on the transformation of those materials and the way in which they decide to layer everything. As "Wolf" goes on, that layering becomes sparser and sparser, until a new and artificial (but almost totally convincing) field recordings emerges. A coda is provided in the form of several time-altered howls. They move by so slowly that they register almost as fog horns, or as the mating calls of a whale pod.

Again, the physical elements of the performances come straight to the fore. Both the sound sources and the medium on which they are carried and transformed figure into the way the music is heard. It registers as tactile and malleable, as both music and as something like sculpture seen in four dimensions. The blueprints look rigid, firm, even definite, but as these two concerts demonstrate, the results are more like the shadows of those plans scattered on the crest of time.

samples:

• We Didn't Get There Tonight
• Wolf (1)
• Wolf (2)

 

25 January 2015

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Albums and Singles

2013's Era was a criminally underappreciated monster of an album that marked an significant, unexpected surge forward in forging a distinctive and wonderful aesthetic all Disappears' own.  I am not sure quite what I expected from this follow-up, but it certainly was not still another dramatic evolution.  That is exactly what I got though.  While I still give Era the edge from both a songwriting and simmering menace perspective, Irreal takes its predecessor's hypnotic, machine-like precision and echo-heavy minimalism and runs with it.  Admittedly, the band's brilliance is primarily stylistic this time around, but Disappears have nonetheless provided yet another thoroughly bad-ass avant-rock tour de force.

Kranky

I have liked (or loved) songs on just about every album that Disappears have released to date, but Era was noteworthy in being the first where the Chicago foursome have truly sounded like only themselves, whereas earlier works always made the band's shifting influences very apparent.  To its credit, Irreal stakes out that particular (and very cool) niche even more emphatically (in fact, one of the opening lines in the title track is "I’m onnnnn....some new trip" delivered with a singularly bad-ass drawl).  Notably, the new trip that Disappears are on sounds increasingly less and less like rock as I know it.  Sure, they look like a rock band and they play all the normal rock instruments, but their strain of rock is now just as informed by dub, experimental music, and minimalism as it previously was by Neu! And GVSB.  Equally important is the fact that Disappears' rhythm section of Damon Carruesco and Noah Ledger embraces an almost machine-like (and non-rock) degree of precision and repetition, though enough fluidity still creeps into their grooves to make them perversely sensual at times.

Aside from their wonderfully simmering, hypnotic pulse, Disappears' other major innovation is their increasingly minimal and non-traditional approach to guitars.  There is almost nothing resembling a chord progression or a riff on this album, aside from maybe the stumbling, broken-sounding harmonic hook of "Irreal."  The only real exception is "Halcyon Days," which unexpectedly boasts some chords and a delay-heavy guitar melody.  In all other respects, Irreal is basically a series of excellent bass-driven grooves colored by plenty of nuanced, effects pedal-heavy guitar textures.  That might not sound all that amazing on paper, but the execution of it all is both ingenious and damn near perfect.  I cannot begin to imagine how much work went into chiseling these songs into their final forms, as few bands that I know of make better use of space than Disappears.  Guitarists Brian Case and Jonathan van Herrick have almost completely carved away any traces of excess or ornamentation in their playing, so on the rare occasions when they actually do open up, it makes a real impact.  Otherwise, they are more than happy to just ride a single note if it suits the song, which I greatly appreciate.  Also, the relative absence of guitars creates room for neat tricks like the echoey dub effects on the drums in "Interpretation" (another highlight).

That said, there are a few ways in which Irreal falls a bit shy of its predecessor.  As noted earlier, the songwriting is a bit weaker than it has been previously.  That seems to be by design (the emphasis is now definitely elsewhere), but it would still be nice to have something as hooky as "Power" or "Pre Language."  The closest Irreal comes to a great single is the title piece, but it is sabotaged by an awkward segue into a three-minute outro.  The other perplexing aspect of this album is that it greatly downplays the presence of frontman Brian Case, as his half-spoken vocals are largely treated like just another instrument.  I do enjoy his disaffected mumbling, but not nearly as much as I like it when he sounds like he has a basement full of dead prostitutes.  That change drives me a little crazy, as he can be one of my favorite frontmen when he is "on" (his vocals on "New House" were the definite highlight of Era for me).  Consequently, I think the pendulum may have swung a bit too far towards "inhuman" with this album–a better balance between cold, minimalist perfectionism, hooks and charisma can definitely be found.  Despite those caveats, however, Irreal is probably still my second favorite Disappears album, as the elements that do work do so extremely well: hooks are nice, but a strong, singular, and beautifully executed artistic statement is quite satisfying too.

• Interpretation
• Irreal
• Halcyon Days

 

 

25 January 2015

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Albums and Singles

The first volume of Gengras's Collected Works was unexpectedly one of my absolute favorite albums of 2013, so I was looking forward to this follow-up with a great deal of anticipation.  As it turns out, my expectations were way off the mark, as New Process Music is nowhere near as great as its illustrious predecessor.  However, it is equally worth noting that it is not trying to be: this album is a different beast altogether.  While The Moog Years captured Gengras at his haunting, long-form compositional peak, New Process Music instead documents a series of brief experiments in harnessing the squiggling, burbling chaos of a small Eurorack modular synth.  The results are certainly interesting, but anyone seeking something beautiful or sublime should definitely look elsewhere.

Umor Rex

Unlike The Moog Years, which collected pieces from a number of Gengras's cassette releases, the 8 pieces that comprise New Process Music are all essentially previously unreleased (though Gengras did make them available digitally at one point).  Also, the majority of these pieces were recorded during live shows spanning 2011 through 2012, though they do not sound live.  Essentially, these pieces were all patches that he devised for live performances (enhanced by tape echo), but the raw recordings were all later tweaked and further processed in his studio.  The post-production enhancements generally seem to be peripheral or textural in nature, though "Ricochet" unexpectedly features a distant-sounding interlude of Arvo Pärt’s "Für Alina."  Consequently, the meat of New Process Music is literally just variations on some endlessly repeating patterns: these are Gengras's first "pure" modular synth compositions.

Admittedly, Gengras conjures up some fairly cool patches, particularly with the longer pieces.  The 8-minute "Slider," for example, augments its relentless early Tangerine Dream-style pulse with some squirming and trilling higher notes and a low roar that sounds like it features some buried field recordings.  The twinkling and throbbing "The Last Time We Were Here" again reminds me of early Tangerine Dream, but seems more like the crescendo (and then coda) of one of their heavier pieces.  Another piece that works quite well is the closing "Pure (Reprise)," as it seems much more composed, relaxed, and melodic than anything else on the album.  It is essentially built upon a bittersweet series of swelling notes, but Gengras does a fine job of enhancing them with well-placed sizzles and echoing afterimages.  For someone like me who is not at all a modular synth enthusiast, "Pure (Reprise)" is by far the best piece on the album, as it is the one that feels most like a complete, thoughtfully constructed composition.  I am probably not the target demographic here though, as it seems like New Process Music’s true raison d’être is to delight synth fans with the way that Geddes wrestles with (and willfully causes) entropy.

Ultimately, New Process Music is less a disappointment than it is an album that is just not for me.  While The Moog Years admirably transcended the limitations of the synth revival genre, this album whole-heartedly embraces and embodies them.  It certainly suffers from its severe constraints, but those constraints are all completely by design, so I can hardly gripe about the outcome.  My sole meaningful critique is that most of these pieces lack the momentum and length needed to maximize the power of Gengras's many swooping and blurting variations.  These songs are mostly roiling and untamed right out of the gate, so there is never any real drama or feeling that anything is at stake, whereas Geddes's somewhat similar (but beat-driven) Personable project at times feels like a speeding train about to derail.  These pieces just kind of start and then eventually stop without any rewarding arc, just a bunch of cool technical feats and twists.  That said, New Process Music is still a vibrant and adventurous experiment, so modular synth enthusiasts will probably find a lot to love here, which makes perfect sense: this album is very much just for them.

• Slider
• The Last Time We Were Here
• Pure (Reprise)

 

24 January 2015

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Albums and Singles

England / Ohio's Mat Sweet presents his latest album under the Boduf Songs moniker via The Flenser!

Stench of Exist is at once his most accessible and most esoteric work to date; from the opium flow of the tracks, running headily into one another like tributaries to river, to the muted-industrial-electronic-effected drums underscoring the spiraling melodies and fluttering drones, to the clean and rich guitar, abstracted cycles and feedback walls, its whispered doom metal masquerades as a lullaby.

Stench of Exist unfolds languorously, laced with mysterious electronic filigree. Gorgeously intimate, it transforms the minimal into maximal with layers of electro-detritus wreathed in lush guitar strums, street-side field recordings, reverberating pianos and softly crooned vocals. It is a record of rain and cities and nighttime. The collision of arabesque tonalities with electronic sound and ambience brings to mind the promise of Blade Runner—half-asleep at 4:00 A.M. and slightly medicated, with pyramids and flame-spewing cityscapes in downpour glowing against the fluttering eyelids in the almost-dreaming consciousness. A record for saturnine commuters, on headphones, after sunset.

Coming February 2015.

More information can be found here.

24 January 2015

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Albums and Singles

Recorded Nov/Dec 2014.

Title lifted from the Joan Didion book The Year of Magical Thinking. Thanks Joan.

Samples and more information are available here.

24 January 2015

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Albums and Singles

"...And Wait For Something to Happen"

A dark, dark journey of spirits and alchemy conjured in the supernaturally hot, still spring of 2014 in Burlington, North Carolina, that haunted black X on the map buried deep in the Alamance foothills. These are the wailings of phantoms trapped beneath the floorboards and between the walls of our murky and crumbling 1910 home, buried on sleeping side-streets within a moment's reach of swarming, grasping woods. These are the sheets of rain swept in the doorway, the static churning of a possessed shortwave radio, the spitting demons of electricity and malfunction and broken, obsolete machines slowly giving way to organic sounds, light, an upward journey out of the very hands of night's oblivion and into more luminous, radiant decay. Here lies collapse, entropy, and rebirth.

More information can be found here and here.

24 January 2015

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Albums and Singles

The latest sonic throw-down between Jim O'Rourke and Christoph Heemann; a state where it's almost impossible to determine who is responsible for what. The plastic people have melted together, that's why!

(Slightly) more information can be found here.

24 January 2015

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Albums and Singles

After intense one-on-one dialogue with Heather Leigh on the label's renewed remit to present beautiful records that showcase all styles of "guitar" in all their extremities, Golden Lab is delighted to deliver to you what is, no question, an absolutely blinding example of just such a record.

A recording that captures Heather Leigh direct to cassette – one of those performances where the pedal steel was raging so hard that the vocals never had the opportunity to even make an appearance. Recorded in glorious mono and mastered to really bring out the harshness of those insane tones, the capturing of this performance to cassette gives the pedal steel an almost tape-like quality itself and its transfer to vinyl only warms it up further into a new zone of somehow cosy metallicism. This is an absolute joy – a real tear-yr-face-off record that sort of acts as a companion piece to HL's recent work w/ Stefan Jaworzyn in Annihilating Light. This won't stick around long.

More information can be found here.

24 January 2015

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Albums and Singles

Jasmine Guffond is an original creator of conceptual sound. This first output under her own name is its own study, and if you've heard her former projects Jasmina Maschina or Minit, you should not be surprised at the different driving force and fresh structure of sound behind this new venture. However, if you're anticipating veins of clean, melodious folk or purely experimental electronic, you should shift your expectations.

Yellow Bell presents a broad spectrum of musicality, floating within hazy electronics, lost vocals, and ambient dimensions. The balance of digital synthesizer, loops, processed voice, and guitar creates a meticulous soundscape that both intrigues and calms. With its delicacy and immediacy, Yellow Bell distorts the perception of time and creates an environment for engagement and understanding.

While creating its own memorable dynamic, Yellow Bell resonates with the delayed endlessness of Grouper or lovesliescrushing and touches on the early electronic sounds of Musique concrète.

More information can be found here.