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The first new album in several years from this New Zealand trio is a patiently unfurling behemoth that finds them veering between loose rock songs and all-out improvised noise. It is a riveting excursion into shadowy lands of unknown destination, with little to disrupt the veil of gloom.
The cheekily named "The AMM of Punk Rock" starts with doom-laden, low-end rumbles that cook slowly, roasting over a pit of electronics. A recurring beep brings to mind an emergency vehicle pulling up to the scene of an accident and finding the cars flipped with their wheels still spinning, their engines churning and croaking undulating waves of feedback, and the drivers mysteriously vanished. Following this dark voyage is the album's shortest song and its most structured, "The Magicians." Here, rhythm guitar, vocals, and a steady beat grounds the song while a second guitar clatters and crashes behind them at a distance, if only to shield the others from its blistering, scattered attack until the drums answer in the machine gun finale.
"Macoute" drags bass notes and static across the floor during its frazzled intro before returning with the ruffled noises of strangled machinery: a warped, shifting pulse takes center, eventually giving way to high-pitched wailing and a few evolving textures before ending in decay. This abstraction alternates with "Eternity," whose recurring beat returns the album to solid ground. The guitars accumulate into a mixture of unassuming riffs, feedback, and crackling gestures that compels the song forward until achieving a hazy moment of solidarity with the drums.
The only time on this otherwise excellent album that seems wasted is the beginning of its longest track, "Garage," whose first ten minutes of hissing electronics, random squeals, and tentative guitar noodling makes it sound like the band is being captured during an uninspired practice. However, the second half of the song is fantastic as the drones, strums, and feedback all start to work together and join the drums for one last hypnotic session before the album ends.
An album this consistently enjoyable and unpredictably unsettling is well worth the wait, and the improvisations herein are enough to satisfy strange appetites for a long time to come.
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Due to be released on vinyl soon, this is currently only available as a double CD from their recent Australasian tour. Although recorded around the same time as their Boris collaboration, Oracle is pure Sunn O))). There is a move away from the murkiness of Black One but without a total return to their classic sound. Granted there is a lot of droning guitars but there is an equal amount of guitar-free experimentation which is even heavier than I had expected.
Southern Lord
The opener, "Belülrol Pusztít," is a different version of the track that Sunn O))) contributed to the Jukebox Buddha compilation. The foundations for the piece are processed Buddha Machines which sound a million miles away from the delicate and relaxing tones of FM3's original gizmos. Here the drones are supplemented with a jackhammer and Attila Csihar sounds as evil as ever; his invocations, throat singing and screeches sounding like a chorus of demons. This is another strong step forward for Sunn O))), I like how their studio work is diverging from the huge riffing of their live performances. It would be easy for them to churn out album after album of slowed down riffs but with last year's Altar album with Boris and the likes of this piece, they continue to surprise me.
On the other hand, the second of the two pieces on Oracle is not as exciting. It is precisely the type of heavy riffing they can produce without much effort. However, "Orakulum" was commissioned by the artist Banks Violette for an installation in London. Violette made replicas of Sunn O)))'s backline out of salt and this music was played. The intention was for the installation to feel like something was missing (i.e the band and the audience) so it is not surprising that the music itself is just a Sunn O))) live standard with added frills. Following "Belülrol Pusztít" this track seems a little pedestrian: variations of these riffs are on most of the many Sunn O))) live albums so it is easy to feel a little burnt out while listening to it. That said, once I listened to "Orakullum" a few times it is revealed to be an impeccable performance by the band. Again Csihar's vocals take it to an altogether more disturbing dimension, his performance is the velvet lining on the Grimm Robes.
This limited edition version of Oracle comes with a one-track bonus CD. "HeliO)))sophist" is a collage of live recordings made in 2005 on the band's European tour. Oren Ambarchi assembled the collage, creating the ultimate Sunn O))) live album. It is hard to hear the joins between the various recordings; it could well be just one performance. The layering of the vocals is the only thing that suggests that this is a reworking of live recordings. The overall effect is impressive but I would not be too upset if I missed out on this bonus disc; it is a nice way to spend 45 minutes but not essential by any means considering the amount of live albums the band have already produced (all of which are no substitute for actually seeing them live).
Oracle is unlikely to win Sunn O))) any new fans, it does not have the same enormity of their previous albums or the accessibility of Altar. However, with the flood of Sunn O))) related bands releasing albums at the moment (KTL, Grave Temple Trio, Burial Temple Trio, Ginnungagap, Aethenor, etc.) it is great to hear the masters doing what they do best. With any luck the next Sunn O))) album will focus on the more experimental side of their sound, as seen here on "Belülrol Pusztít." They have never ignored their experimental leanings in the past but now might be the time to completely embrace them and leave all the tag along doom bands in their dust.
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The performances of Dylan Nyoukis (Blood Stereo member and Chocolate Monk label CEO) come across like rinses of an infectious disease. His collaborations end up drenching the other party in a gnarled sheen of vocal mutations like a plague sweat. Fellow Brighton heads Towering Breaker attempt to keep their grip on their own noise/splutter before the maw of Nyoukis gulps them down.
Most of this record is made up of vocal muck smears and layers of slowed down drone like a soundtrack to degenerate hole-riddled sock puppet sex. There are a couple of rhythm loops grounding the freefall, both "MMM1" and "Tapes Tongue" roll and grumble along like ghost trains complete with ghostly wails. The shrieks of Nyoukis' oscillator-ribbed throat are spattered over these tracks, restless bubbles and pops that only a deranged tongue could spout.
Viscous drips of mess collide with overwhelming eyes-rolled-back shrieking fug; this is the sound of three men gorging on pig fat. There are enough other elements involved on Visions Versions to raise this release above the crunching noise deluge. Out of the oil and quivering come loops of Organ drone and liberated harmonica, no throat-based sound appears too out-there for these guys. It's not all straight-face vocal abuse though, "////" explodes like a chimp attack and a loose-nutted motor in a gale while a purloined Kids vocoder on "Murk Visions" heralds the spilling of the belly of the beast through dub vomit.
Ugly records rarely sound like this much fun.
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From the basic description, one might be left shaking their heads: organ improviser Nils Henrik Asheim and electronic noise thug Lasse Marhaug got together and improvised some material in an Oslo cathedral. However, as odd as the setting sounds, the result is fascinating.
Part instrumental and part field recording in feel, the two musicians set up in the organ loft of a soon to be renovated cathedral in Oslo, Norway late one night and improvised for an hour. Rather than using any direct to tape or digital recording methods, the room was instead mic;d (which is discussed in pure audiophile detail within the liner notes) to ensure an optimum meshing of Asheim's pipe organ and Marhaug's electronics. This strategy was extremely effective, as "Phoneuma" seamlessly combines the chime-like electronic tones from Marhaug's laptop with the mid and high end sustained organ that slowly and dramatically builds from a gentle, calm opening to a massive, chaotic roar that concludes in a wall of buzzing and dissonance.
The two not only show their instrumental proficiency, but their ability to improvise and compose in the improvisational context as well. Given the nature of the session, one of limited instrumentation and completed in a very brief window of time, it would be easy to assume that the tracks would blend together in uniformity, but that is far from the case. Each of the five pieces have their own distinct feel and mood, from the aforementioned filmic "Phoneuma" to the mechanical, electronics focused "Philomela," which seems like a boiler on its last legs somewhere deep within the bowels of the church as the center point, the clangs and rattles form the basis of the track before a piercing organ shrieks over the din at the end. Even the less than two minute span of "Magnaton" has its own unique ambience: focused bursts of harsh electronics, organ noise, and stuttering machine tones.
Both the opening and the ending tracks effectively bookend this album, from the massive tonal organ walls and electronic grinds of "Bordunal" which convey a sense of grandeur to the closer "Clavaeolina," where all sustained passages of ringing organ (reminiscent of Hermann Nitsch's Harmoniumwerk releases) eventually mesh into a soft, gentle melody of organ, and later a subtle, quiet electronic ending.
For all its basic structure, Grand Mutation is a complex, powerful work that reveals new textures and facets on each listen. What seems like an odd proposition at first is instead a fascinating meeting that surpasses any expectations that may have been held (though who only knows what the expectations could have been). I only wish they would take this show on the road. I'm sure this would be the best way to get most of us up early and in a church on a Sunday morning.
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An initial spin of this album will leave a sense of "what the hell did I just listen to?," but a few more rotations and what's revealed is some of the most spastic of free jazz and a set of music just waiting to have a cartoon accompaniment.
Remember those really old cartoons from childhood like Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny, etc.? Remember how they all had a sort of jazzy backing track that augmented the action oh-so-well? The Mighty Vitamins have updated this for the current millennium, and the resulting freakout is great.
The opener "Get a Good Job" establishes the mood for the next 40 odd minutes: a percussion section that sounds sourced from Fred Sanford's junkyard, guitar string abuse that is surely a crime in most states, and dialogue samples right out of a cartoon. Structurally, it doesn’t make much sense, but this blasting opening is followed up by the much more subtle four track "Kaw River Suite," which is based on much of the same instrumentation, but it sounds like someone slipped some Ritalin or Xanax into the boys' kool-aid as their playing is so much more restrained and calm, doing much more "mood" music than anything else. It's not bad at all, but honestly it detracts from the spazz flow of the disc, which really doesn't need any sort of break
Once "Nakatani" gets started again with its shrill sheet metal scrapings and flaming cat howl horns, you know the freakout has begun yet again, which then fails to let up throughout the remainder of the disc, with even some dirty Detroit funk rearing its Parliament-loving head in the massive "39 Steps" and "April 21."
Take-Out is not an album for everyone. In most ways it is dissonant, atonal, and insanely chaotic. It shines through these adjectives, however, making for a hyperactive romp that a cartoon mouse could napalm a cat to. Someone see if they can reanimate Mel Blanc's corpse so he can check this out!
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Global Clone compiles tracks from earlier cassettes for fickle digital ears, though still retaining their obliqueness (none of the five tracks are titled). GMS and Pete Swanson are coming from the diverse background of some of the more current "mainstream" noise artists (a la Wolf Eyes) by encompassing a greater variety of influences, such as industrial, electro-acoustic, and dub, as opposed to the "crank the distortion to 11 and get mic feedback" that many other artists adhere to, and it shows. The tracks making up this disc are more about the mood than the full on audial assault, such as the lo-fi siren loops with vocal chants and growls on the sprawling 22+ minute second track, and the sloth-in-molasses slow third track, which trudges through thick muck with feedback, guitars, and dubby percussion elements. The last two tracks, also the shortest, are perhaps among the most conventional of the noise scene, building on looped siren tones and distorted synths akin to some of M.B.'s (before he was Maurizio Bianchi and found Jehovah) earlier output.
Any sort of "noise" work is basically an acquired taste, but some are able to transcend the "I can endure 50 hours of Merzbow" club and become more than just an endurance test, and this is one of them. You're not going to see the Yellow Swans opening up for the LCD Soundsystem anytime soon, but the restrained textures and mood of Global Clone will make it more palatable for less adventurous listeners.
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These nine instrumentals hover like gossamer in the air, demanding little attention. There are surely some exceptional moments to be found, like the standout track "Blue Sands" or the bittersweet ending of "Sun Against My Eyes," but too many bland patches broke the spell of what I did enjoy. Schott plays a variety of instruments into a lot of space that she previously may have filled, however subtly, with some enchantment hovering just out of earshot. Because that playfulness is lacking on this album, it suffers a little from too much politeness. Many of the melodies are so sparse that they seem bare without any further accompaniment, no matter how elegant they may be.
As a soundtrack to a melancholy film or as something pleasantly unobtrusive to play in the background, this works just fine. As active listening material, however, I hate to admit that it just didn't grab me.
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Flower actually plays shahi baaja, and it doesn't sound so much like a banjo as it does an electric dulcimer. Either way, the instrument carries with it an Eastern sound and an overhanging drone. Combining this with Corsano's propulsive drumming feeds its mystic vibe to powerful effect. The give and take from the very beginning of "Earth" sounds like they've been playing for many years, and their differing styles are remarkably compatible. They change tactics with "Wind" as Flower shifts to bowing his instrument and Corsano switches to hand drums. "Fire" finds them stretching out for a longer excursion, and here they reach some meditative heights and blissfully transcendent moments. There may not be a lot of variety between these three tracks, with "Earth" and "Fire" sounding pretty similar in their construction, but if considered as a snapshot of a performance, it's a fantastic and engrossing reflection of their vision.
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Von Südenfed is the unlikely pairing of The Fall's irrepressible Mark E. Smith with Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner of Germany's Mouse on Mars. What results is not quite a post-techno version of The Fall, and not quite the post-punk reimagining of IDM. Instead, it's a dozen tracks of mutant digital funk fighting for attention as Smith drones, mutters, mumbles and hiccups his way through the machines, short-circuiting everything in his path.
There is a sense in which Tromatic Reflexxions might be the perfect realization of cyberpunk aesthetics: high-tech and low life. Mark E. Smith's rowdy, curmudgeonly vocals play the part of the drunken Mancunian football hooligan who has unwittingly wandered into a switched-on Dusseldorf club pulsating with mutant dance-funk extrapolated into its future manifestations by a sophisticated super-processor, and begins angrily ranting at the top of his lungs. Mark E. Smith has been quite vocal about his lyrics being influenced by writers such as Philip K. Dick, and the music of Von Südenfed goes some way towards realizing a musical soundworld that addresses these lyrical concerns. Not that you would know that judging from the press the project has received so far.
A recent feature in The Wire seems to indicate that this album was formulated partially as a response to LCD Soundsystem, who MES claims ripped him off, James Murphy stealing his vocal style for "Losing My Edge," and using the same rhythms as MoM. There's a problem with the claim that Murphy and Co. ripped off Smith and Co.: the LCD Soundsystem single came out in 2002, long before Smith's first collaboration with MoM on 2004's "Wipe That Sound" 12". Even discounting this time discrepancy, I think Smith sells himself and Von Südenfed short by claiming that Murphy in any way copped their style. LCD Soundsystem is all sass and low-fidelity throb: party-fodder for Williamsburg hipsters, single-minded and unsophisticated. Von Südenfed is avant-garde future funk for a generation that hasn't yet been born; a chaotic, eclectic and scattershot trawl through the many nuances of a tense and problematic musical assemblage. It is many things, but crowd-pleasing disco-punk it ain't.
As I suggested earlier, Von Südenfed opt not to recreate the noisy motorik of The Fall's classic sound, eschewing primitive post-punk clatter for plasticated synth peals and patently artificial beat constructions completely abstracted from whatever organic source they might have originally had. On tracks like "Fledermaus Can't Get Enough," the influence of The Fall's kraut-rock-abilly chug-n'-swagger is clearly present, but the track is tweaked and edited to within an inch of its life. The Fall have experimented with electronic music in the past, notably on 2000's The Unutterable, but have never embraced the hedonism of techno to quite this extent. MoM themselves have changed quite a bit since their early days of making wacky, chirping micro-dub. Radical Connector featured live drumming and vocals, including a wildly successful party anthem in "Wipe That Sound." Three more years down the line, their more radio-friendly instincts have merged once again with their propensity for odd and jarring bleepscapes; the addition of Smith on vocals adds a dynamic, unpredictable element that tips the scales into something completely new and unstable
A number of different approaches are tried across this album. "The Rhinohead" has the form of a straight-ahead rock song, but the devil is in the details: layers upon layers of digital fuckery, twitters and arpeggiations contribute a thick atmosphere that fights with the song's poppier instincts. "Flooded" and "That Sound Wiped" come the closest to DFA territory, MES delivering a sly, sardonic monologue against a loud, overamped future-disco track. MoM take every opportunity to tweak, mutate, double and vocoderize Smith's vocals, making it seem like they have the ultimate control over the shape of the track. This changes on tracks like "Serious Brainskin" and "Duckrog," where Smith's unhinged vocal delivery seems to pull apart the track at its seams, introducing an unstable element that threatens to upend the track, to which MoM can only respond hysterically with banks of glitched-out synths.
Even though Tromatic Reflexxions is chaotic by necessity and eclectic by design, all the tracks still sound like they belong together, and the group marks out their own unique sound that is quite different both from The Fall and Mouse On Mars. Von Sudenfed are not exactly playing to any current trends in underground music, but rather blissfully exploring their own mutual idiosyncrasies, engaging in a peculiar conversation across generational and stylistic differences. That this conversation turns out to make for such an interesting and often exhilirating listening experience is almost beside the point, as I'm sure they'd still be doing it even if no one was listening.
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Paul Dickow has more than impressed me since the release of Drumsolo's Delight in 2004. Since that time a series of outlandishly excellent 12" records have been released and Dickow has proven he can turn any song into gold if given the chance to remix it (check out his remix of "The Love That I Crave" by The Blow for proof). Future Rock rounds up everything great about those singles and situates them within the context of a solid full-length record chocked full of jazz, rock jams, and dub thick enough to make even the most resigned yuppie learn how to move his hips.
Kranky
"I Have To Do This Thing" from the World House 12" sealed the deal: Dickow's brand of dub-turned-psychedelia became the undisputed champion of deep sound the second the synthetic bass melody began pumping its fuzzy electronic blood through the echo chambers of drums and funky keyboards that populated the rest of the track. I listened to that song an unhealthy number of times and in the process found myself dreaming about what a full-length record would sound like were it to be populated by such unrelenting groove. Future Rock begins where "I Have To Do This Thing" left off with a ring of ultra-processed sound oozing with all manner of mirco-sounds. Dickow has not simply rested on his past success, however: he incorporates a phased vocal performance touched by subtle guitar rhythms and squirming bass right from the start. "Can't Roll Back" foreshadows the entire album, exhibiting an increased complexity in Dickow's music that isn't as immediately evident on his previous 12" work and that only makes the music better. It spins, shuffles, moans, sings, and pounds away for nearly 60 minutes without a hitch or wasted note.
Dickow maintains a density throughout Future Rock by building songs up piece by piece and then mixing each of the elements together like a master alchemist. Amazingly, each part of every song is prominent and powerful enough to take center stage and serve as a focal point around which other parts might play. Dickow, however, always seems capable of adding more to his swirling mix, as he does on "Future Rock" and "Red Screen." Both songs swim with a virtual army of instruments and each expands and contracts naturally without sounding muddled or confused. As the songs progress and new elements are added, old ones float back into the limelight and emerge as new. The result is a mass of music that is brimming with one catchy and addictive part after another. "Phantom Powered" originally caught my attention with its crunchy bass line, but repeated listens found my attention focused squarely on the rumbling of reverb-rich samples that accentuate that bass line. The songs begin to feel organic at some point and all the varied rhythms and melodies merge into a coherent whole that is unthinkable without each of its constituent pieces.
In interviews Dickow has spoken about the technicalities involved in writing and recording Future Rock. In some cases knowing what went into a record makes it better and aids in understanding why everything sounds the way it does. Future Rock is the rare record that needs no explanation and sounds exquisite from the start. What the technical side may have added, however, is a depth uncommon to many beat-laden records. Every song on here gets better with time and as of this writing Future Rock has probably been played well over 15 times from start to finish with a number of spins reserved for a couple of favorite tracks. There's a lot of complexity on Future Rock, but its immediacy goes a long way in making it great.
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Skye Klein opens Compressor with the furious bitch-slap of reversed bass, cracking snares, and an ominous array of machine noise perverse enough to warrant comparison to Venetian Snares. "Gridlike" is melodic, catchy, and vicious in its delivery, a near perfect combination of song-writing and sonic attitude. Klein tries to maintain that intensity for 48 minutes and almost succeeds.
Extreme
"Clip Incident" had me very excited. I was convinced that Klein was actually capable of topping the awesome power of "Gridlike" by expanding what it delivered in five minutes over the course of an entire album. "Gridlike" was to be the watermark against which the rest of the album could be compared: a slow burn of rhythmic chaos and uncomfortable synthetic groans. As "Clip Incident" came to a close I found myself a little worried; the music began to wander and any sense of identifiable structure began to slip away. "722" reaffirmed my belief that this record would grow on me over time. Its slow and nearly jazzy beginnings were vividly atmospheric, relaxing, and just a little menacing. I imagined a thousand crickets carrying chainsaws, the sound of their lullaby turned into a nightmarish drone, and their typical appetite substituted for human flesh.
I turned out the lights and turned up the volume and went along with the music, expecting to be menaced but not terrified... only to be surprised by the gunfire Skye unleashed at certain points during the song. There wasn't much melody and at points the track meandered here and there, but I was kept enthralled by how versatile the song was. Klein has a way of constructing tunes such that they can bend and shape them in any number of ways without risking coherency. Unfortunately, in making these tunes so amorphous, Klein also sacrifices his songs and focuses solely on mood. This would not be disappointing if it weren't for the fact that "Gridlike" happens to be a near perfect marriage of songwriting and spirit. Nevertheless, I sat listening to the record fairly enthralled and happily dreaming up any number of seedy deals gone awry, an entire underworld of quick glances and heavy breathing opened up, but was not too last in my imagination.
"Ghost Summer" is fantastic but represents the last truly spectacular song on the record. As Compressor moves through each of its remaining four songs, my attention begins to waver and for some reason I find it easy to push the record into the background. On the other hand listening to each of these tracks on their own is a treat; they all stand out in various ways without the other tracks getting in the way. The album is neither too long nor too short, it simply sounds flat after repeated listens because many of the songs sound like extensions of each other or like inferior versions of each other. If this had been released as an EP with only the first four songs, I'd probably be showering it with accolades. As it stands, I'm impressed on the whole with the relatively minor complaint that some of these songs seem derivative of each other or like unnecessary restatements. "Black Note" is a fine song on its own, but "Clip Incident" does the exact same thing with better results. So goes most of the album, but I don't want to slam it on the whole. Skye Klein has been making music for a long time and Compressor is indicative of some experimentation, the first steps of which are just slightly awkward.
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