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Their fourth album sees Grails continuing to go from strength to strength. Even after last year's excellent Black Tar Prophecies collection I am completely gobsmacked at how far Grails have come on in such a short space of time. The title of the album is particularly apt as the group have shed all unnecessary fat from their sound. There is not a misplaced note or tone on this album, this definitely sounds like Grails have sold their souls at the crossroads in exchange for untold amounts of talent.
The playing on Burning Off Impurities is impressive but without any showiness. Each of the four members plays their part with restraint, letting it rip when it suits the piece and keeping silent when required. The Middle Eastern atmospheres that have crept into their work in recent years are as sublime as ever. "Silk Rd" finds Grails mixing western and eastern influences seamlessly to create the album's centrepiece and what I feel is best piece of music from their entire career. As soon as it finishes I want to dive right back into it again but self-restraint (just about) kicks in and I move on to the rest of the album which is just as deserving of my ears as "Silk Rd."
What sticks out about Burning Off Impurities is the sheer amount of styles and influences that Grails have effortlessly adopted. "Drawn Curtains" is brimming with the same melancholy (and a very similar violin) that Dirty Three have built their whole career out of. "Outer Banks" covers a huge range of different Krautrock influences, although the Faust inspiration shines through like a beacon, no doubt due to one-time Faust member Steven Wray Lobdell sharing in the production work. All the music is captured beautifully—the mix is just right and there is a good balance between the different aspects of the compositions. It never sounds like an instrument is dominating the piece, it all sounds very natural but still retaining enough punch to stop my attention from wandering.
I am still amazed at Grails' speedy transformation from a bunch of guys I could take or leave to a group that I eagerly anticipate more music by. Their upward trajectory is showing no signs of levelling off so as much as I am enjoying this release, I await to see where they go from here. There is so much packed into this disc however, that even if I have to wait a few years I do not think I will be burned out with Burning Off Impurities.
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Inspired by Popol Vuh and originally released in a tiny pressing of 550 on vinyl from the inimitable Acid Mothers Temple front man. Licensed from A Silent Place. Included on this cd reissue are the bonus tracks from the even more limited 7" included with 100 copies of the original LP.
Guitarist, violinist, performer on numerous traditional instruments, composer and leader of the Acid Mothers Temple, Kawabata Makoto expresses in this solo performance all his mantric cosmical vocations and spins them into space sonorities. He took inspiration from the Popol Vuh album of the seventies Hosianna Mantra, during his visit to A Silent Place headquarters in late Winter 2006. In a sunny Sunday noon spent in the country-side, eating and drinking Apulian specialities and listening to some great experimental records, Makoto and his Italian friends Pierpaolo and Pasquale, took the decision to start this cooperation. A few days later, back in Japan, Makoto recorded the Hosanna Mantra album at the Acid Mothers Temple between March 12th and 13th, using electric guitar, bouzouki and sitar. The result is this new fantastic sound coming from the cosmos. A simple gem of crystalline beauty.
"Music, for me, is neither something that I create, nor a form of self-expression. All kinds of sounds exist everywhere around us, and my performances solely consist of picking up these sounds, like a radio tuner, and playing them so that people can hear them. However, maybe because my reception is somewhat off, I am unable to perfectly reproduce these sounds. That is why I spend my days rehearsing. Where do these sounds come from? Who is sending them out? That is not something for me to know, and neither is there any way that I could find out. I simply believe that they come from the 'cosmos'. (Maybe other people would call God the source). Since I was a small child I have been prone to hearing ringing sounds in my ears and other sound phantasms. At the time, I believed that these were messages aimed directly at me from a UFO, and so I would gaze up at the sky. But once I started playing music myself, I came to feel that these noises were a kind of pure sound. And I promised myself that one day I would be able to play those sounds myself. It is only recently that I have begun to feel that I have been able to come close to reproducing these sounds in my solo guitar work, and in my INUI project. However, in June of 1999, I finally discovered my own 'cosmos' and I experienced an instant of total union with it!! That 'cosmos' is still tiny in size - although any cosmos can, by its very nature, be infinitely huge or infinitely small. The energy and vibrations contained within that it far exceeded my imagination in scope and beauty. I can only describe the miraculous instant when my 'cosmos' accepted my consciousness as MAGIC.”
-Kawabata Makoto
The release date is May 22nd, 2007.
Cover art and tracklisting are as follows:
1. Hosanna Mantra 1
2. Hosanna Mantra 2
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Brand new full length album from the Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO featuring their recent addition, female vocalist Kitagawa Hao. Recorded over a period of four months at The Acid Mothers Temple this is a very clean sounding and polished AMT. Frontman Kawabata Makoto admitted, only half joking, that this has the "cleanest sound in AMT history!"
More controlled than many of their speaker destroying fuzz blasted speed guru jams, Crystal Rainbow Pyramid is focused on mystic ambient passages leading into Kawabata's head-heavy echo-riffs. Crystal Rainbow Pyramid is clearly one of the new classic AMT recordings. Prepare to have your mind blown slowly with evolving heavyweight jams and climactic peaks of exquisit ecstacy. Artwork by Seldon Hunt.
The release date is May 22nd, 2007
Cover art and tracklisting are as follows:
1. Pussy Head Man From Outer Space
2. Crystal Rainbow Pyramid
3. Electric Psilocybin Flashback
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Part-Monster, Piano Magic's seventh "proper" album (excluding compilations), easily lives up to its title. Though Piano Magic are generally tarred with the brushes of "ambient," "coldwave" or even "ghost-rock," Part-Monster has it's fill of all-out, near brutal, dynamic intensity. Indeed, anyone who's witnessed PM live over the past 2 years or so will testify that the shadowy introspection of their records is camouflage for a beast of many teeth. Bringing in Guy Fixsen, of the group, Laika, as producer, clearly marked the band's intention for a rawer, more powerful sound. (Fixsen has taken the production and/or engineer chair for such luminaries as The Pixies, Moonshake, The Breeders, Joy Zipper, Stereolab, Lush and most notably for My Bloody Valentine's Loveless.)
That's not to say that Piano Magic have entirely turned the amps up to 11. Part-Monster gracefully manages to balance this cathartic noise with romantic paeans to their favourite subject (the more cruel, tragic side of their home city, London) and most notably tips a hat to perhaps the most graceful of its outcasts, Joseph Carey Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man.
In this, the 10th year of their existence, Piano Magic can look back on a varied and accomplished discography most bands wouldn't manage in a lifetime of trying. Records for 4AD, Darla, Morr Music, Important and many more, mark their way, as well as the soundtrack to Bigas Luna's Son De Mar movie (2001) and performances at some of the biggest festivals in Europe (Benicassim, Primavera, BAM).
Though based in London, Piano Magic is a living model of the Entente Cordiale - 3 of it's 5 members are French (6, if you include regular chanteuse, Angele). Even so, since it's conception, in 1996, the group has drunk heavily from the glass of British musical inspiration - most notably, The Smiths, Joy Division, New Order, as well as the selective 80's output of 4AD, Factory and Rough Trade Records. Though they operate somewhat beneath the radar in a fashion-obsessed Britain, Piano Magic have amassed a huge, devout following in Europe and regularly tour the likes of France, Spain, Italy to sold-out halls.
Though the group is their main obsession, singer Glen Johnson also maintains a solo project of left-field electronica under the guise of Textile Ranch, whose album Bird Heart In Wool was released on Very Friendly in 2005. Along with keyboard player Cedric Pin, his Future Conditional project will release their debut album, We Don't Just Disappear on LTM Recordings this April - a label most notable for the re-issue of many Factory Records' "classic" albums.
The release date is May 22nd, 2007.
Cover art and tracklisting are as follows:
2. The Last Engineer
3. Saints Preserve Us
4. Cities & Factories
5. Great Escapes
6. Soldier Song
7. Halfway Through
8. The King Cannot Be Found
9. Incurable
10. Part Monster
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Spicchiology? is the sophomore release from the supergroup XXL, comprising all members of Xiu Xiu and Larsen. Recorded in late 2006 in Torino Italy, Spicchiology? is the result of a profoundly creative friendship translated into music and spanning the globe. ALSO: Place your orders fast--the first one-thousand copies will include a bonus disc taken from the rehersal sessions!
"It is hard as an American, if of a somewhat borish, middle class suburban, albeit freakishly desperate artistically inclined background, to really present without being excessivly prosaic as to what it could mean to have, for the second time in ones life, two weeks to spend in a sublime foreign city with the only premeditated task at hand being, with good friends, to make a record about sadness and violence and history. Well prosacism cannot be denied, it was, by God, in Italy. Blood Oranges, the wrapper of being spicchio. The concerted study of being Spicchiology?. As I type this I am watching an Italian film about terrosism in Italy in the late 1970s. I did not know anything about this time until the men of Larsen told Caralee and me about it over wine. Now in America it is all that Washington says: "terror." But they already knew and were ready to push past and through it again, holding our historyless hands. Everyday before recording we walked by a tower that in the 1300s the town executioner occupied and the bones of the people he was paid with taxes to behead were buried around it. The Oakland police department? Please! Warehouse shows? Barf! The souls of unbaptised infants live in the black painted and burned cathedral-cum-gallery where one of the three XXL guitarists curates art music shows. Not to say that Europe knows all but it has hurt itself for 2000 years and in America we have only just begun. If the last XXL record was romanitc and fun, this one is broken and superior. Look at yourself! Your matress is embarassed that you give it a job. The farfisa is a real one, not a sampler. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!”
-James Stewart of XXL (and Xiu Xiu)
February 2007
Release date: May 22nd, 2007
Cover art and tracklisting are as follows:
1. So Easy, So Cheap
2. Daydrinking
3. Little Mouse of the Favelas
4. The Green Count Tapes
5. Last in the Society
6. Nothing About Dwarves
7. Tale of Brother Cakes and Sugar Dust
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Merge Records is thrilled to announce the release of Andorra the new album from Caribou on August 21st, 2007. The album will be released in Europe on August 20th (City Slang).
Andorra is the 4th full length from Dan Snaith recording under his Caribou moniker (formerly Manitoba - but that's a whole 'nother story). Andorra has more of a full band feel than some of Caribou's earlier studio efforts. It's still just Dan in the studio creating his singular magic, but the extensive touring that Caribou did for their last album, The Milk of Human Kindness, definitely left its mark on the arrangements. The sound is more expansive and more blissfully psychedelic than ever.
Dan seems pleased with the results: "I'm super-happy with the way the album has turned out. I've put seemingly endless hours into it over the last year or so getting everything exactly as I wanted it and have never been this madly excited about my music. I can't wait for you all to hear it and hope you'll like it too."
We have no doubt that you will.
"The sound Snaith debuted with on Up in Flames and developed with The Milk of Human Kindness is easy to describe in terms of other bands, blending Mercury Rev, Neu!, Brian Wilson, and a few others in specific proportions. It's most certainly a formula, but then, so is E=MC2" --Pitchfork Media [9.0 rating]
"Sounds like the work of someone given one month to live" -- Urb
Andorra Tracklist:
1. Melody Day
2. Sandy
3. After Hours
4. She's the One *
5. Desiree
6. Eli
7. Sundialing
8. Irene
9. Niobe
"She's The One" features and was co-written by the Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan
Merge will be releasing a CDEP of "Melody Day", the first single from Andorra, on July 10th. More details to follow shortly.
Look for Caribou on tour in North America in October and November 2007. Complete tour dates and routing coming soon!
Stay tuned for more updates and details.
www.mergerecords.com
www.caribou.fm
www.myspace.com/cariboumanitoba
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Unfussily and without gimmicks, Adam Pierce (as Mice Parade) favors certain notes and chords that quickly build excitement, sadness, and nostalgia. I don't think of this as cheap, easy, commercial or anything less than art. To dismiss it as pop would be a mistake.This disc is an evolved version of his flowing, blissful, non-clichéd popular music.
I recently saw Adam Pierce making a one-song sit-in appearance at a late night Vashti Bunyan gig at the Central Presbyterian Church in Austin. Without my glasses it was hard to see whether the blue instrument he was holding was a baritone ukulele or a guitar. Either way, his contribution was virtually undetectable. If he played a note it went under my radar, though in the circumstances such restraint was well-judged. Bunyan was magnificent, her voice an unadorned wonder. A deep beauty shines out of her; she speaks in little more than a warm whisper, reacting to applause as kindly and gently as if we were her offspring bringing her our latest crayon doodle. Except for the darker and brilliant "I’d Like to Walk Around in Your Mind" her songs are sad, luminous, quiet pieces of artistry which lack nothing. The man who is Mice Parade knows better than to gild the lily.
A couple of years ago I either realized or read someone else say that Mice Parade will probably never make a masterpiece. We shall see, but certainly, wisely, it seems that there is merely a flow and Adam Pierce is going with it; in that sense like the Incredible String Band and Gastr del Sol.
The 4 minute opener "Sneaky Red" could be the bastard son of George Formby and MBV, propelled by a dynamic electric guitar crunch and the tilt-a-whirl strings of it's nylon counterpart. Pierce's voice has never sounded better or sadder. That is, until the deceptive "Tales of Las Negras" which follows. Driven by slippery drumming, a blissful European sensibilty and a gentle descending hum, eventually the track features the cool warbling of Stereolab's Laetitia Sadler against the rising sparkle of Pierce's plucking. Not a moment wasted.
The handclaps and subtle highlife-influenced guitar of "The Last Ten Homes" give it enough contrast to balance the slightly less satisfying vocals. "Snow" bursts in with more of the polite yet contrasting crunch. What follows is either a peak or an annoyance, depending upon mood or point of view. Kristin Anna Valysdottir's singing may cross the fey line for some people or make "Double Dolphins on the Nickel" a classic. Either way, it's worth hearing and the clever pulsing guitar notes are an undeniable foil.
"Swing" clears the air with swirling strokes after the muddier and crowded "Satchelaise." The latter has a relaxed feel of a live workout that didn't ignite, seeming instead to stagnate. "Circle None" begins with a hypnotic quasi-African guitar figure before bleeding into the kind of portentous, ebbing, instrumental piece that brilliantly seems to be arriving and leaving at the same time. Currently perfect for ad agencies and NPR producers, neither of which is Pierce's fault or his intention, I imagine. The piece subtly reprises earlier sections of the record, as does the chiming, choppy, spiralling finale "The Nights After Fiction."
The music is affecting because it consists of sounds which Pierce believes in and which he finds affecting. They are as carefully chosen as his contribution to the Bunyan show. Given his idiosyncratic caution this record shows a definite willingness to expand the palate of sound. That is surely the way forward.
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Yet another collaboration from the same group of people is getting tedious, not enough experimentation or progress is being made on the musical front. This duo comprises of Caleb Scofield and Santos Montano, both from Old Man Gloom and the former is also in Cave In. I have a feeling more people will be sold on Zozobra based on the artist connections than on the strength of the music. The Hydra Head talent pool ia growing stagnant and this mediocre at best album is firm proof that the label is in serious danger of becoming a circle jerk for a few select artists.
Hydra Head
While the music on Harmonic Tremors is far from bad, it is indistinguishable from the vast majority of metal bands who have formed in Isis' wake. Tracks from this album could be swapped with any of those featured on the recent album by Clouds, also a Cave In spin-off. Like that Clouds album, the vocals here are a major stumbling block. The growled vocals have been dirtied up with enough distortion to make them gritty but at the end of the day they resemble Slipknot or Trivium or whatever metal band is popular now; aggressive and angry because that is what supposedly fits with this music. That being said, even without the vocals the songs would still be average. It is as if more time has been spent getting good guitar tone rather than coming up with the goods in terms of riffs. Many of the guitar lines have the essence of a seasoned player going through their warm up exercises instead of challenging themselves.
"Kill and Crush" and "Invisible Wolves" are both sub-par in terms of songwriting. I hear many bands who have only been playing a few months performing at open mic nights come up with songs of a similar quality, I expect more from two artists with a far more substantial recording history. Most of Harmonic Terrors come off as songs that have only been jammed out a little before heading to the recording studio as too many of the tracks come across as half-finished. A little more work and my opinion on this album would be totally reversed. The odd song does redeem Zozobra, I enjoyed "Silver Ghost" which avoids the growling vocals and the playing is stripped down compared to the other songs. It's a refreshing listen amid the other over-egged cakes. If more of the album was in this vein I would be singing its virtues from the rooftops.
It is not news that Hydra Head has turned too far inwards and spends too much time coming up with new merchandise ideas instead of finding new talent. They are relying too much on musical cross pollination from many bands that are too similar to each other to give rise to interesting offspring. Harmonic Terrors comes across as one of these failed hyridizations. While I am not saying that Scofield and Montano should not play together, both themselves and Hydra Head should be able to stand back and honestly ask themselves if this is quite as good as it could be. All parties (artists and label) have put out good music before so it is not unreasonable to expect something of a higher quality.
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Taking inspiration from the likes of the Velvet Underground and Albert Ayler, Organ Eye is the manifestation of four different persons "doing improv" for the first time, and the results are worth taking a closer look at.
The term “drone” has really become passé. Now linked to the likes of metal artisans such as Sunn O))) and Earth, it is now almost synonymous with massive sustained guitar riffs and overly processed vocals. Organ Eye, a four-person improvisation group featuring members of Portugal’s Osso Exotico and New Zealand’s Minit are also in the business of doing drone, but more in the classic sense. You won’t find any Sunn amps or smashed guitars here, but you will find classic Spacemen 3 guitar feedback drones and Velvet Underground inspired violin work.
The band cites the aforementioned VU's "Sister Ray" (17 of the greatest minutes in rock history), Buddhism, and Albert Ayler as some of their major influences, and it’s pretty transparent in their work. It’s drone more in the sense of dwelling in feedback and exploring the nuances of the tape loop as an instrument. The two massive tracks are based on live improvisations, and like the giants of free jazz, the players reflect off each other and create something that sounds like it was carefully planned and choreographed long before any gear was turned on.
"Tema #1" opens like the Spacemen 3 cats, all loops of guitar feedback and odd percussive found sounds here and there. The wall of feedback continues to build throughout the entire work, never really getting into the realms of harsh noise or the like, but does become progressively dissonant as the track wears on. Later, John Cale is channeled through David Maranha's violin work, reminscent of some old record with a banana on the cover. The piece finally ends with gentle electronics slowly fading away.
Where "Tema #1" opened with the organic feel of six strings resonating, "Tema #2" takes the bionic approach and begins with grating high pitched tones, like a telephone call on a busy signal slowly being shredded by a blender. Scrapes and other odd percussive textures are promenant as well, until the electronics build more and more through the first half, to the point that listening becomes difficult (in the “ow my ears are starting to ring” sense) before dropping a few notes in the scale and settling in at a more mid range set of electronic loops and harmonium drone. At the end it creeps up to tinnitus level once again before ending abruptly.
Being that this is drone based (in the La Monte Young sense, not in the black metallist sipping a chai latte sense), it can’t really be deemed “easy” listening. However, the players seem to be a natural fit with each other, and have made an improvisation that just feels natural, and right and leads to a very compelling debut work.
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Being a noise musician is kind of like joining the mafia. Sure, you can do other things with your life, branch out and try something new, but you can never really leave the scene. Seeing a release on Touch, that bastion of UK beard-stroking electronic experimentation, would lead one to think Kazuyuki Kishino has dropped the guitar noise and tossed out the effects in favor of a Powerbook and Max/MSP…but that would be wrong.
KK shows a more medatative, compositional side here yet still manages to throw enough feedback and distortion in to keep it a KK Null release. The opening screech of the first track, "0415," is just as harsh as anything else he's recorded as KK Null, ANP, or Zeni Gava, and is more jarring than a hot coffee enema in the morning. The difference between this and any other faceless noise release, however, is that the static eventually fades away, revealing a backdrop of heavily effected and delayed electronic tones, junk metal percussion, and finally swelling back up into the harsh static from the beginning. This is a somewhat stark contrast from the next track, "0418," which is based around low end loops and rhythmic electronic tones, with just a hint of noise mixed in.
Fertile was inspired by field recordings made during a trip to Australia, many of which were then integrated into unfinished studio tracks, though often mangled beyond recognition. It makes for a nice contrast between the digital harshness of his electronics, and the subtle, organic sounds derived from these nature recordings. Just don't expect Chris Watson audio documentaries here.
One of the excellent things about this work is how strikingly diverse it is from track to track. Besides the aforementioned tracks, there's "0500," with its looped field recordings and electronic percussion, right next to "0359," which sounds like Null playing a rousing game of Space Invaders through a bank of guitar effects. The album ends with two longer tracks, both consisting of more overt field recordings and organic textures and enough reverb to scare Lee "Scratch" Perry.
Kishino has made a very different release under the Null moniker that shows he is exhibiting a sense of growth and an urge to try new things and styles, but still keeps that harsh noise history of his around to keep that cred with the noise fans.
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