03 May 2010

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Albums and Singles

Morr Music

The lead song, "No. One" is an upbeat maximalistic rocker which is decent but not nearly as catchy as some of the highlights of Ms. John Soda's debut album (the counting vocals and frequent stops aren't much more than a mild annoyance), while the second track, "Sometimes Stop, Sometimes Go" has some beautiful moments. Each, however, are sort of ruined by Stephanie's frequent talking. She's got such an alluring singing voice that I wish she would only sing these tracks rather than hide behind spoken word interludes. The third cut, "I & #8217" begins as a mishmash of sounds and samples from the No P or D album, but as it's re-pasted back together, vocals and additional instruments are added by Subtle (which features unnamed Anticon members - although Dose One's voice is clearly audible). It's an interesting concept but at four minutes doesn't sound like it's beed explored to the full extent. The disc continues with the creepy late-night car wreck devastation score in the form of the slow moving "If Someone Would Know," and closes the almost unbearingly heavy dialogue of "I think it could work, Marilyn," where Stephanie is almost playing dolly, talking as the fictitious voices of Elvis and Marilyn in a situation far more interesting to read about than to hear. I honestly hope this is the last they come this close to making a "spoken word" record. The good thing about the EP is that it's been made with the intentions of selling on the upcoming European and North American shows: shows I'm anxiously looking forward to. I remain enthusiastic and firmly believe that this EP, while mildly anticlimactic, isn't going to lose any existing fans at all. 

samples:

• No. One
• Sometimes Stop, Sometimes Go
• I & #8217

03 May 2010

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Albums and Singles

There's something unspeakable wandering the halls of a deserted hotel somewhere in the past and its sound has been captured so that all can know it. Salvaged from dusty records in plain white and brown sleeves, these recordings take a decidedly darker stroll into the halls of forgotten happiness and celebration. The Caretaker has managed to take the deserted and neglected and give them new life by expanding their sound: horns blasting for the satisfaction of dancing men and women are slowed down to funeral marches and the static and hiss of old records become the wind and rain as it toils outside the windows of a shining and elegant ballroom. There's an element of surgery in The Caretaker's approach: that which must've seemed so vibrant and brimming with life is torn open so reveal something betraying that image inside. Everyone had their demons at this party and each of them were quite desperate to hide that little part of themselves; fear had its axe in everyone's back. But there's more going on here than just psychological investigation: The Caretaker strips back a little bit of reality to reveal the void underneath everything.

V/VM Test Records

This explains the reason for all the sounds being so spacious: voices extended into the unintelligible, drums turned into drones and smoke, and strings diminished to hollow wails. The good news is that the fear never becomes too great and the void never feels all-consuming. The sounds and sights to be found on this release can be explored with confidence: whatever it is that is lurking through these distorted and destroyed melodies certainly cannot cause any permanent damage, right? Even this seems uncertain, really. "And The Bands Played On" is a reminder that nothing is for certain and that whatever certainty is assumed is truly dangerous. From start to finish, We'll All Go Riding on a Rainbow is filled with absolutely haunting and unmitigated sound. There are points when it is impossible to tell whether the sounds being heard are really from a lost record or from some lurking and abnormal creature not subject to a name or description.

03 May 2010

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Albums and Singles

samples:

• A Familiar Place
• Stealing Through
• Horizon

03 May 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

samples:

• Just In Case You Are Bored (10:10-11:11)
• Just In Case You Are Bored (22:22-23:23)
• So Are We

03 May 2010

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Albums and Singles

Earlier this year Autechre curated the fifth All Tomorrow's Parties festival, and of that bounty comes this, actually the fourth ATP compilation. All Tomorrow's Parties comps have never been more than glorified mixtapes ("ultimate" mixtapes according to Thurston Moore), thoughtfully scratching the surface of one of the best large-scale concert series; Autechre's volume, though, is the first with potential to transcend its posterity-building, afterthought status, becoming an (almost) essential collection.

All Tomorrow's Parties

This is the first double-disc (or album) of the ATP comps, making the odds of finding something compelling even greater. This is also the first ATP comp to focus almost entirely, and understandably so, on the electronic realm, giving it, though twice as long, a common thread that was lacking on the first two, curated by Sonic Youth and Shellac. An increased cohesiveness is particularly achieved in the sequencing of the tracks across the two discs. Disc one is undoubtedly more of a "daytime" collection. It begins with two hip-hop songs, the first new material from Public Enemy and the second a stellar remix of the Masters of Illusion track "Bay-Bronx Bridge," a Bollywood-breakified gem that would be at home in a DJ/rupture mix for sure. Two hip-hop infected instrumental tracks follow, by Autechre's upbeat alter ego Gescom and Miami's Push Button Objects, whose "ATP track" features sitar plucking and operatic vocals floating above a cracklin' beat. These songs are "pop" enough to follow the hip-hop and segue nicely into a laptop piece from Jim O'Rourke sounding like the more pleasant bits of recent Fenn O'Berg stuff. This is music for relaxing in the backyard after an afternoon of driving around with the beginning of this disc in the ghetto blaster. Two Autechrian, yet nonabrasive tracks from O.S.T. and Made begin the evening's journey into night. Somewhat uneventful, these leave room for the third and final hip-hop track, this time from Kool Keith's ! Dr. Dooom, whose "Leave Me Alone" is a hilarious tirade against the music industry containing one show- stopping verse that begins, "Why you think I should wear a motorcycle helmet—why don't you wear it?" Detroit techno guru Steve Pickton's Stasis project closes disc one with a wonderful piece blending spacious drones into rumbling electro and beginning a trip to the dancefloor that will be continued on the second disc.
More of a "nighttime" disc, with most of its tracks primed for the dark spaces of the dancefloor, disc two kicks off with one of its nicest surprises, faceless technoid Anthony 'Shake' Shakir's "Ghetto Futures," a track whose slashing breaks sound played by a live army. A fragile, beautiful track from Disjecta (Seefeel's Mark Clifford) allows a brief moment of peace before the beefy, though unremarkable techno throbbings of Baby Ford and Mark Broom. A lengthy and exceptionally soothing Pita track begins the final and most abstract segment of the comp. Surprises herein include an Autechre track that, despite its title ("/]-/](II)"), is relatively accessible, even danceable, and a sprawling new track from Sub Pop sludge/drone stoners Earth. The typically harsh stylings of Bola (one of four Skam artists on this comp) and Hecker round off the disc in predictable, though enjoyable fashion. If ATP comps of the future provide the same variety, tempered by the same degree of cohesion and consistency evident here, these collections may become as valuable as tickets to the events themselves.

samples:

• Masters of Illusion - The Bay-Bronx Bridge [Bhongra Remix]
• Stasis - Artifax
• Anthony 'Shake' Shakir - Ghetto Futures (Go Figure)

03 May 2010

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Albums and Singles

samples:

• Divisible By Three
• White Sun Descend
• Stateless

03 May 2010

Administrator

Albums and Singles

samples:

• The Juan Maclean - By The Time I Get to Venus
• LCD Soundsystem - Give It Up
• Black Dice - Endless Happiness

03 May 2010

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Albums and Singles

Asphodel
If you haven't heard any of Richard Devine's recorded output up to now, this album is a great place to jump on. Devine has always pushed the envelope of what his tools can do, and with Asect:Dsect we are treated to a version of Devine as mad tinkerer that remains interesting on successive listens the way that some other DSP records do not. Devine's previous outings Lipswitch and Aleamapper visited the extremes of his take on music. The former was a million-mile an hour beat and squiggle fest that was notably absent of a center reference point; a soundtrack for ADD if ever there was one. By contrast, the latter was an exercise in micro-detail exploding out into vast expanses of reverb that demonstrated that there was more to the reigning king of DSP than wonky beats and 128th note programming. With Asect:Dsect, Devine has managed to bring the best elements of those previous records together in a way that is both more accessible and more carefully exploratory at the same time. It's easy to imagine the harsh and often mechanical rhythms that Devine eeks out as simply the music made by machines with Devine at the helm, trying to keep up. But in reality, though his soundscapes and polyrhythms are impossibly inhuman, machines would never make music this confounding. Machines don't take chances, but Devine does and Asect:Dsect is full of imaginative bursts that betray their digital genesis. This is futurism in one of the only ways that it can still be realized in a post-modern world. It's data-rich, full of leaping off points and connecting nodes that take one idea leap over two or three more, and return the listener to the start with a new sense of the territory waiting to be explored. Anyone who has ever clicked through link after link on the web and wound up on a site so arcane that it seems as though it must exist outside the network will understand the kind of journey that Devine is on here. Not every path is a complete success, and in places the experimentation bogs down the beats and synths with a feeling of sensory overload that works against the grain. But most of the time, the songs serve as little soundtracks for synapses firing that even those uninitiated to the world of powerbook rock will understand. There are even moments here that are beautiful, sparse, or understated--three adjecties not usually associated with Devine's brand of electronica. By the album's closer, the tempo has dropped, the melodies have bubbled up to the fore, and the percussion that previously ricocheted as though it were recorded inside a hypercube has settled down to a slow and steady head-nodding groove. Devine's greatest accomplishment with Asect:Dsect is not the volume of plug-ins used or the much-touted 24 bit 96khz production value, but the greater sense of musicality he has brought to game. We are used to classical music that strives to capture a place or time in history through the orchestration of sound, and Devine is working squarely in that tradition. The trick is that he's realized the perfect soundtrack to a time we haven't yet experienced, a futurist fresco of sorts, and diving into that can be confusing to say the least. Everyone should have at least one Richard Devine album to experience the far reaches of sound design at the juncture of human creativity and enabling technology. If you are going to get just one Devine record, make it this one (for now).

• W | -carp-
• Itsuko
• Randale

02 May 2010

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Albums and Singles

While it collects commissioned pieces from 2003 and 2006 through 2008 (hence the title), all of the various tracks here were created for other works and performances, but are still unified as being crafted by the hand of Carsen Nicolai. While there are a few different approaches used from track to track, never do they feel out of place along-side each other, and both the Alva Noto penchant for abstract composition and almost danceable rhythmic electronics appear here.

 

Line

Opening track "Garment" and "T3 (for Dieter Rams)" both encapsulate the aesthetic of Nicolai’s home label Raster-Noton, beginning with seemingly random electronic fragments that are molded into a tight rhythm as the track plays on.Both feature disparate noise surges and deep, heavy bass pulses with the occasional glitchy click or resonating bell-tone.Both begin with more of a collage sense, the sounds having seemingly little to do with each other.However, the sounds pull together and lock into place, the result is a pseudo-techno work that just demonstrates Nicolai’s ability to clinically sequence the smallest sounds into memorable, almost catchy pieces.

In other pieces, the source isn’t so much a software patch as a piece of organic sound that forms the basis of the work.The two takes of "Argonaut (for Heiner Müller)" are constructed on samples of heavy, bassy strings.In its initial format, it is a slow, additive sequence that slowly brings in mournful digital melodies and soft, white puffs of noise and maintains a sad, bleak quality throughout.The closing "version" take on the piece works from the same recipe, but by including warmer bells and a more complex layering of sound, the piece has a more rejoiceful quality to it, celebrating rather than mourning."Early Winter (for Phill Niblock)" also starts from a sampled string basis (of a Niblock composition), but includes just enough digital elements to give an inhuman quality, and as it continues on it channels a bit of Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack, but composed by the replicants themselves.

The other pieces more inhabit the world of abstract sound collage without a specific organic grounding or traditional rhythmic structure."Stalker (for Andrei Tarkovsky)" brings in the dark tension of the 1979 sci-fi film, meshing heavy bass tones and higher register pieces, all with minor chord stabs to give a bleak feel appropriate for the inspirational material.The short "ANS (for Evgeny Murzin)" is a brief, but live piece based upon the infamous Russian ANS synthesizer that juxtaposes rapidly fluctuating tones with longer, drawn out analog textures.

While the tracks in For 2 may be dedicated and inspired by artists in a variety of disciplines, Nicolai’s devotion to carefully structuring the smallest of sounds into rhythmic passages, as well as the lush exploration of digital and digitally treated sounds unites these pieces into a cohesive whole.Although they have a consistent, unifying feel to them, the tracks are all strong on their own merits, with no sense of filler or padding inserted.Alone or together, Carsten Nicolai’s compositions here shine as exemplary examples of contemporary electronic music.

samples:

• Stalker (for Andrei Tarkovsky)
• T3 (for Dieter Rams)
• Early Winter (for Phill Niblock)

 

02 May 2010

Matthew Spencer

Albums and Singles

Rhythm can lead, but sometimes it’s anything but enlivening. On his new limited-edition edition EP, Jason Urick creates an atmosphere as driving as it is claustrophobic. The four pieces collected are somewhat repetitive, but nonetheless they have a subtle insistency that sticks in the mind long after the record is finished.

Thrill Jockey

Beat making is a relatively new preoccupation in Urick’s run as a solo-artist. Unlike is last album, the excellent Husbands, he keeps his compositions sparse. Despite this, they have an unsettling air, especially the title track, which is downright sinister. It’s built from a short, patios inflected vocal sample intoning the words "fussing and fighting" over and over again. Urick bends and stretches the sample to the accompaniment of sparse reverb drenched drum programming. Bits of disembodied noise wash in and out of the mix in a narcoleptic haze, apt accompaniment to a late night drive through a blighted cityscape.

The rest of the EP still has the same disembodied quality, but without the explicit menace. It’s as if Urick’s sounds were trapped in their own limited scope, trying to escape the tiny range of motion that he gives them. It’s not until the end of the third track, "Sleeping Bag/Lets make it Critical," that Urick displays the kind of technical grandiosity that he is capable of. Drifts of static pile up and through the noise an airy half melody emerges, providing a sparkling coda to an otherwise unremarkable soundscape. It is the only moment on the record where Urick approaches the density that marks his best work, and while this may be a step backwards for him stylistically, it satisfies in a way that the other tracks do not. The rest seem pale and confused. Despite freshening his approach, Urick’s work on Fussing and Fighting lacks the vitality of his previous work.