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![cover image](/brain/images/human_quena_orchestra-politics_of_irredeemable.jpg)
Considering the album's consistently dour landscape, the tracks presented are actually quite distinct, giving the disc an air of organic and genuine feeling rather than seeming coaxed from the grasp of some preconceived stylistic genre. Instead, the opening "Progress" broods forward with foreboding expanse of black drone interspersed with sharp cries and metallic clatters. The infused effect is one of a sonic representation of the post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland, barren and cold.
The two-part "Mores" begins with a steady and quite gentle drone that gradually continues its descent into foreboding fan belt textures and a thick bass pulse. The explosion opening the beginning of the second part is as dense as anything presented here, as grinding drones and shard-like vocals emerge from the buried background. The production, with the vocals set far back amongst the murk, makes the effect that much more frightening and isolated.
"Aspiration" opens with a scream and a drone atop a light organ line, easily the fairest sound presented on the album. The eerie effect of this heavenly sound being beaten again and again pretty much dissolves the hope of any uplifting conclusion to the disc, though to be fair that was pretty much clear from the get-go. Sprawling along, the piece is a monster of punctuated dissolution, a truly grimy realization of the fight between light and dark, with dark obviously taking the upper hand. Still, the dialogue remains an interesting one throughout, as the two present themselves in continuous, almost harmonious opposition, never quite giving in completely either way.
The approach is ultimately a far more densely orchestrated one than most acts forging similarly dark soundscapes. The other two-part piece here, "Denial," moves with patient poise, beginning with a soft and angelic vocal hum emitted into the haze from the belly of some secret cave. Moving cautiously forward, each sound presents itself with care, contributing to the ever-evolving shape of the work as a whole. It may represent a dark chaos, but it is achieved through highly human ends.
The closing second part seals the casket for good however. Thick guitar squall and vocals (again--perhaps too consistent throughout the album to remain as entirely damaged as initially appearing) create a dense blanket of violent energy that seeps outward in toxic dispersion. Yet this too quiets slowly into an unclear and unanswered end, leaving more questions than answers on this consistently ambiguous record.
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![cover image](/brain/images/christopher_riggs-i_feel_so_strong_i_feel_i_could_punch_hole_in_fucking_wall.jpg)
Likely at once Riggs' sparest and most difficult outing, this disc presents five untitled tracks of solo electric guitar improvisations marked by spacious, often nearly imperceptible treatments of the guitar through techniques far beyond usual strum and pick tactics. The opening, for example, is a seven-plus minute piece whose entire sonic output is stretched out among the time period with distinct and sudden blurts of scrape and grate that dissipate back into the white silence as quickly as they appear. Think John Cage meets Derek Bailey, or Alan Licht covering Morton Feldman.
From the beginning then, there is an emphasis on the spaces between the sounds as much as the sounds themselves, or, perhaps better put in this context, the holes are as numerous as the punches making them. Comparatively the second track, opening with a chalk on metal screeching, is downright loud, flitting about between what sounds like tinkling glasses and straws sucking caramel. Nary a recognizable guitar tone rears its head.
The same can be said throughout. The buzzing sound of a bug imitating a dentist drill lurches throughout the third track, as a grating tone pitch shifts back and forth beneath, eventually making its way to the head and lodging itself there, left to brew menacingly before breathy bowed drones wind and crack themselves into a heaping alien landscape. This is some extremely advanced and entirely organic improvisation that truly manages to carve out new approaches to sound-as-sound.
Perhaps most harrowing is the fourth track which, following the previous two, consists of 15 minutes of muffled stutters buried beneath vast crevices of emptiness. Christopher is willing to go as long as he needs to in order to make every sound count, and the result is as spare as they come. Sounds come and go throughout, but they are far from the norm. The closing fifth track sounds like a tea kettle whistle in a cavern, with static white noise writhing below the chirping bowed high end before bending like a rubber band into a frenetic release of tension whose quick cut-off leaves the album's end as mysterious as its beginning.
Christopher Riggs is a guy who deserves some attention. Anyone who has heard his playing with Hall and Morris knows that the guy has chops, but it is this stuff that really pushes the boundaries. Seemingly coming from a stance aligned more with the classically-based sound experimentalists of the twentieth century than the noise practitioners he often plays with, Riggs nevertheless walks the borders with aplomb, at once translating both sides into one another until any cultural delineation disappears and the sounds are left to do as they will. Beautiful, original and fully realized, this is work well worth grabbing before its 18 copies are gone forever.
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![cover image](/brain/images/william_basinski-shortwave_music.jpg)
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As part of the spilt series by the Baltimore label Wildfire Wildfire, this single gives two exciting examples of fluid electronic songcraft. By different means, both groups evoke feelings of retro-futuristic goodwill by combining digital composition with analogue musicianship.
 
For a band, nothing can be more fruitful, or more dangerous, than attempting reinvention with every release. While constant change can be a sign that a group lacks basic aesthetic principals, there are a few that can maintain a distinct personality through every genre they work in. From the drum-less punk of their debut Freckle Wars to the shimmering guitar-scapes of last year's Way, Ecstatic Sunshine has become one of those groups. Now playing solo under that moniker, group founder Matthew Papich has used the recent shakedown to concentrate on guitar and electronics in equal measure. Even when his instrument is heavily processed, Papich's guitar tone has a bright, crystalline clarity. On "Easy is Right" he plays a simple, echoing riff that serves as base for obtuse, seemingly random synth tones. The bright, taffy like globs of sound push themselves into the foreground, threatening to but never burying the underlying guitar. The song drifts pleasantly along, undulating in pitch until the each sound element is gradually unraveled.
On the flip-side, "Take Turns" by Lucky Dragons is much more muted and organic. The song begins with a simple melody plucked out on a thumb piano. After a few measures, the notes quickly pile on top of each other, snowballing into pentatonic, gamelan like arrangements. Shakers, mouth trumpet, and muted voices join in the chatter. The song feels like some animistic rain-chant, but it never becomes raucous or loose. Each instrument stays firmly rooted in its pre-programmed position. What’s exceptional is that were it not for the artificial precision of the playing, you would never know the song was constructed electronically.
What unites the two songs is creative use of electronic instrumentation. Rather than letting their working methods determine the aesthetics of their music, the two artists use their tools in unexpected ways. Solo guitar music can be overly sober and technical, but Ecstatic Sunshine makes it bright and relaxed. Lucky Dragons so successfully blend native instruments that the whole process sounds natural. Though this single is a brief entry in each band’s catalogue, it neatly condenses what is appealing in both.
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![cover image](/brain/images/william_basinski-shortwave_music.jpg)
Shortwave radios are easy to find and relatively affordable. They emit whole slews of interesting sounds, all with an element of indeterminacy: it is hard to know what will be picked up by the antenna, giving the process of using one musically a nebulous mysticism. Scanning the dial turns up bits of Morse code, the rapid pulse of telemetry, fragments of newspeak rendered in foreign languages, muzak broadcast from halfway across the world. No wonder it has had and continues to have so much appeal for musicians.
The songs Basinksi has crafted on this album make for some of his most brilliant and memorable excursions. Listening, I picture him as an explorer of invisible worlds. From the comfort of his terrestrial abode he scries the airwaves amidst endless spools of tape as shrill alien sounds emanate from the radio. The disc is bathed in a resplendent otherworldly glow, emerging from the warm static of buzzing transistors and delicate white noise. The five pieces are very somber, very soothing and calming to the enervated mind. The disc is sequenced in a way that shows a gradual refinement, as if at a certain moment, the élan vital behind what he was trying to capture made itself manifest through the ether and the reel to reel, happily recording, was able to capture it.
“Evening Scars” opens the album with a lush orchestral phrase. Joined by the warbling oscillation of the radio receiver caught fluttering between stations; the two sounds intertwine around each other in a fine tuned balance. This is the perfect noise for washing the body with after a tiring day of work. The slight fades between songs are nearly imperceptible, even though clearly demarcated. Like the steps of a spiral staircase, each song elevates the mind to a new level of musical ecstasis. Thus “Cobalt Pools” flows seamlessly into “Fringe Area,” a dark and icy piece that captures the vicissitudes often accompanying contact with praeterhuman intelligence. Which is what I feel Basinski is doing in these songs: reaching beyond the void of space and time, listening for signs of nonhuman life, and making contact. Whenever this album is played, it is as if some subtle, metaphysical information is being imparted. As such, “On a Frontier of Wires” is the most profound revelation contained. Veiled female voices whisper in lulling sibilants from behind the magnetic cacophony. And like his Disintegration Loops, the voice gradually fades, decomposes, and falls apart. A recurrent series of notes, like a detuned angelic horn, rings its siren call throughout the near 24 minutes of the song. As with all great exercises in minimalist repetition, it never loses its welcome, and becomes familiar as a well loved mantra. “Particle Showers,” which was not released on the original LP version, makes for a nice come down from the bliss that was felt on the previous tracks.
These experiments formed the basis for the working methods Basinksi would later exploit on his 90 minute shortwave magnum opus, The River, and showcase the musical studies that would make it possible. Nothing short of masterworks themselves, these studies are testament to a bright musical mind.
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Please visit the site to hear previews and order.
LIMB is an archival release of experimental and minimalist compositions recorded from 1980-1983, from the early days of Foetus and pre-Foetus. Though the material is largely unreleased, some of the pieces have been previously released on the compilation albums by Coil and United Dairies. Some were excavated and some of it was reconstructed or re-edited from compositions on cassette. One piece is constructed from an organ part written in 1982, which JG took the liberty of finishing in 2008. These pieces were made before the introduction of MIDI and sampling technology. It shows the lineage and genesis of some of the methods that JG is working in today.
If you like JG's work as Manorexia, you'll dig this album.
LIMB is released as a deluxe double disc package. The music disc contains 12 tracks at 18+ minutes with an additional 20 minute bonus mp3 track.
On the second disc, director Clement Tuffreau kindly allowed us to include his 2005 documentary about JG Thirlwell, NYC FOETUS, with this package. The eighty minute film features interviews with JG Thirlwell, Matt Johnson, Alex Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten), Michael Gira, Richard Kern, Lydia Lunch, Martin Bisi and Elysian Fields along with a lot of never before seen footage of Foetus, Steroid Maximus, Manorexia and more. There is also with 45 minutes of bonus extras,comprised of Steroid Maximus 18 piece ensemble live in France, Foetus live in Hannover, Manorexia live at The Stone NYC and a snippet of JG's LEMUR commission at 3 Legged Dog in NYC. The film is subtitled in French .
This deluxe package also contains a 48 page perfect bound book with minimal designs by JGT (all in his signature red, white, gray and black palette).
This is all held in an attractive sturdy plastic slipcase printed with another of JG's designs.
LIMB CD
01. Sick Mins (Ectopic Version) 8'39"
02. Ezekiel's Wheels 1'38"
03. Te Deum 4'18"
04. The Anxious Figure 4'03"
05. Primordial Industry 6'12"
06. Industrial Go-slow 3'37"
07. That We Forbid 2'49"
08. Sjogren's Syndrome 7'17"
09. Echolation 1'22"
10. TO45 tag 1'37"
11. Piano Piece 4'03"
12. The Caterpillar Kid 5'52"
plus bonus track (mp3 file)
You Have To Obey 20'00"
LIMB DVD
NY Foetus
A documentary about JG Thirlwell by Clement Tuffreau
+ many bonus extras of Steroid Maximus live, Foetus, Manorexia, LEMUR and more!
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![cover image](/brain/images/theoneensembleotherthunders.jpg)
Instead of using the group as his solo vehicle outside Volcano the Bear, Padden has begun releasing albums under his own name and letting this group develop its own voice. This loosening of the reins over the last couple of albums has seen The One Ensemble mature as a group, going from being simply a great band to a great band that seems to have ideas about becoming even better. Padden’s stamp is still apparent; on “The Beacon” the melody is very much what would be expected of him. The eastern European and klezmer influences that run through The One Ensemble’s music are even stronger on Other Thunders with pieces like “The Vapour” sounding like they could belong on one of Tzadik Records’s Radical Jewish Culture releases.
Yet elsewhere his role as captain of this vessel seems to be nominal only as the other players push The One Ensemble into strange waters. “The Instructions” has more in common with Volcano the Bear than Padden’s solo work in terms of structure but the mood brings to mind the disturbing formlessness of Limpe Fuchs and her group Anima. This otherworldly feeling dissipates with the “The Sun” whose mostly vocal structure has a tribal and ritualistic vibe to it, the previously encountered alienation of “The Instructions” making these human voices all the more compelling.
This mix between Padden’s vision and group experimentation makes all the individual pieces on Other Thunders into superb miniatures but overall it stops the album coming together like the earliest One Ensemble albums. However, instead of fracturing under the weight of its variety, Other Thunders instead revels in its multiple personalities. So while it may not beat Live at VPRO as my favourite One Ensemble album, it comes close and judging by the direction the group are taking on the last two releases, it will not be long until I have a new favorite.
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![cover image](/brain/images/groupe_six-selected_works.jpg)
Their response, as is suggested in the relatively brief but informative liner notes, was closely linked to their teachers' approaches. The first disc, which mostly presents a series of miniatures from the group, displays an overarching tendency toward the kind of spatial melodicism for which Satie was a major proponent. Auric's "Prelude" opens the disc with a small and whimsical piano work who's dainty moves are at once simple and intricately emotive.
This approach would garner much attention and, though many of these musicians would not be heard from in a wider circle, the Parisian associations are unavoidable when listening to any of this material. In fact, so singular is the sound that one piece flows into the next as if they were written as such, with the second track, Durey's "Romance sans paroles," flowing perfectly from the first with an even more uncluttered sound.
This neo-classical approach is largely best exemplified by the piano pieces, which take up the majority of the first disc, as these allow for the clearest grasp on the work. Milhaud, perhaps the best known of the six people featured here, is marked by a fluidity on "Caramel mou" that moves from mood to mood at a moment's notice without ever losing sight of a certain bar room pulse and energy. Poulenc's gentle "Huit nocturnes" flit atmospherically about with little pretension and a careful respect for each note. With such being the case, it is perhaps inevitable that many of these pieces are infused with an admiration for the silences between each note, infusing each piece with an almost reverential simplicity of cause.
In stark contrast to the first disc's 22 pieces, the second presents only three. Milhaud's "La Création Du Monde" is a ballet whose playful genre-jumps are in marked proximity to the cartoon music of Stalling and Golden Era Hollywood soundtracking as well as the jazz and Brazilian music Milhaud had been studying. Conversely, Honegger's "Prélude, Fugue Et Postlude" is a dramatic and radiant work whose reach is similarly expansive, though perhaps a bit more serious in intention. Yet the bulk of the disc is taken up by the nearly hour-long "Les Mamelles De Tirésias" of Poulenc. Again almost cartoonish in nature, the two-act opera bouffe is nevertheless a vast demonstration of the creativity and broad reach of the composer at hand.
A fine and well-compiled compilation, the discs here are filled with exciting and highly varying approaches to a certain style at a certain time. That many of these works are difficult to acquire in another context only makes the album more intriguing. Though this may seem an oddity among the 20th century classical canon, this is highly enjoyable, interesting music whose renown is perhaps not what it should be considering its quality.
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![cover image](/brain/images/cave-psychic_psummer.jpg)
Mixing equal parts Can and Stereolab (who, of course, took more than a bit from Can themselves) with a grooving and cruise-worthy psychedelicism propagated by the likes of Funkadelic, Cave manage to sound at once immediately familiar and entirely original, a trait uncommon in today's increasingly oversaturated music landscape. Where many bands seem to be loosening their belt of late however, Cave is continually tightening, forging their jams into focused demonstrations of their collective potential.
Where Cave stand out is in the band's ability to do this without ever losing the intricacies and feeling afforded to in-the-moment creation. Rather than sterilizing their sound into a palatable and time-wary take on the extended, horizon-minded style they practice, the group takes full advantage of both studio and approach to craft each piece into a work the form of which only elevates the group's output.
Such is clear from the very opening, when the rich guitar line of "Gamm" is built from the ground up into a thudding instrumental. After a patient intro, the unit explodes into pure energy, each instrument contributing to the throb and shape of the whole. No note is superfluous here, and the focus gives the piece an even clearer trajectory. The following "Made in Malaysia," with its hyper synth lines and clacking drum work, fuses a nearly punk chant with an absolutely undeniable and deranged riff whose effect is garnered from the construction of the lines themselves rather than the overall effect. This is an immensely precise spaciness being conjured.
Elsewhere, the group displays the subtle mastery of form they have. The dancey funk of "Encino Men" emanates outward while the brooding post-punkisms of "Requiem for John Sex" built towards a kind of post-rock vocabulary that eschews any sense of wanky self-indulgence in favor of pure group energy wielding. The result is a special disc that easily represents the strongest statement from this group yet. Great material and great production rarely coalesce in such a clear and fertile vision as this.
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Preservation
I recently learned that Paul Gough began making experimental music in 1982 after being inspired by fellow Aussie Tom Ellard's criminally underappreciated Severed Heads, which immediately gave me a favorable disposition towards him. Not that he needs that, of course, as he seems to have been doing quite well before acquiring my goodwill. Unusually, however, he has only been releasing his computer-based abstract experimentations for the last decade (aside from very limited self-released cassettes) and has a reputation for being somewhat reclusive, though he has collaborated with some well-known folks like Christian Fennesz and enjoys a healthy degree of international renown. I have also read that Gough hates bios, so I guess I will elaborate no further (in case he reads this). I don't want trouble.
"Come On Join The Choir Invisible" commences the proceedings with a ghostly mass choral drone, which is quite striking but regrettably fails to evolve into much of anything. I will give Gough the benefit of the doubt here and assume that it is meant only as an introduction rather than a complete work, as the following track ("Evil Household Ceremony") is much more ambitious and fully realized. Its foundations are somewhat mundane (a pulsing, wavering drone and a buried repeating melodic loop), but a chaotic blizzard of electronic blurts and whizzes rages all around it and Gough's singular production abilities make for a very engaging headphone experience.
Notably, those first two tracks illustrate an odd paradox: Gough's studio wizardry often transforms even somewhat pedestrian material into something alive and attention-grabbing, yet he occasionally fails to exploit his more inspired moments to their full potential. That said, Gough gets absolutely everything right with the haunting and near-perfect "It Will Never Snow In Sydney", which is very similar in tone to Angelo Badalamenti's more unsettling soundtrack work for David Lynch (but far more complex). Menacing low-end synths combine with heavily reverbed and echoed voice snippets, thick drones, and mangled swells to create an atmosphere of singularly haunting disquietude. Then an unexpected psychedelic menagerie of shifting digital frogs (or something) drifts into the mix and it stops being near-perfect and enters the realm of flat-out amazing.
Pimmon nails it again with crackling and roaring slow-motion melancholy of "Hidden," but "Sydney" largely eclipses all the surrounding tracks and causes them to seem pale and somewhat anticlimactic by comparison. That is not to say they are not enjoyable- it's just that Gough never again achieves such a brilliant convergence of studio mastery and songcraft. Smudge Another Yesterday is a vibrant, complexly layered work that is quite gratifying even during its least impressive moments when listened to attentively. Gough is a staggeringly skilled and meticulous producer that achieves improbable clarity amidst elephantine density and elevates panning into an art form, so it is probably unreasonable to expect his musical vision to consistently reach similar heights. This is the work of an extremely purposeful and patient man at the peak of (most of) his powers.
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Sifting through the melancholy cool and reverb-laden muck of Violet, Boy In Static's sophomore album, I acknowledged this restless songwriter's potential bubbling under the surface. Caught in the trappings of a subgenre with presumably scarce room to trailblaze, Alexander Chen still managed to construct an acceptable and often gratifying facsimile with more than a few personal touches. Now paired up with Kenji Ross, Chen seems eager to leave that part of his catalog far behind, letting his voice ride atop songs like "Starlet" instead of buried below swirling guitar effects.
The album's title hints playfully at a time in a child's development where he discovers ways to emulate the adult men he looks up to. As a boy in the '80s, I distinctly recall buying candy cigarettes—both the gum and chalky varieties—from the ice cream truck that parked itself outside my elementary school the minute warm weather began to creep out from under winter's unkind influence. New York was a different place back then, yet lyrically Chen seems more preoccupied with the West Coast as evinced on "LA Runaways" and the album's most singleworth ditty, "Young San Francisco." On the latter track, AFX-ish quasi-xylophonic twinkles courtesy of a toy piano provide a joyful melody for the bubblegum rhythms and positively precious vocals. Musically, this song embodies everything the new Boy In Static strives to be, and its aesthetic similarities to "Young Folks" from the aforementioned Peter Bjorn and John won't be lost on anyone paying attention.
Unfortunately, Candy Cigarette contains more aspiration than inspiration, filled with fleeting emotive moments and flickers of talent, but so very rarely shining brilliant. What concerns me most about this is whether or not I flatteringly mistook Boy In Static's capacity for imitation for artistic authenticity. It's a decent indie pop record, with novelty quirks and quite a few respectable nods to New Order (especially on "Osaka"), but Chen and Ross need to assess whether or not they're as clever as they think.
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