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Jagjaguwar
The Wilderness' eponymous debut boasts a sound as expansive as their name suggests. Opening track, "Marginal Over," is the kind of song that is tailor made to achieve lift off. Colin McCann's guitar rings out, drenched in echo and late afternoon sunlight, while Brian Gossman and Will Goode's rhythmic attack keep at least one foot grounded here on Earth. While these and other such moments from Wilderness make this release a cut above other third-rate shoegazer hacks, there is also a fair share of less inspired moments. As a result, Wilderness isn't an out-of-nowhere revelation so much as it is a solid debut with much to build on for the band. Like "Marginal Over," songs like "Fly Further to See" and "Say Can You See" are built on foundations of beautifully rising and falling guitar lines, percolating beats, and the oddball singing (or is it announcing?) of James Johnson. When he isn't recalling the ghost of David Byrne past, he sounds like a more controlled John Lydon, spouting absurdist lines like "commerce your comment, comment your comment, standing as landing, living as giving." Though a good chunk of these songs mange to be engaging throughout, particularly "The End of Freedom" with its crisp tom hits and sturdy bass runs, there are a few moments that are not as striking. "Post Plethoric Rhetoric" for one takes too long to get off the ground, and once it does it fails to pack the punch of their shorter compositions. Another complaint that needs to be registered is the lyrics, which tend to follow the lead of the guitar and spout off random imagery and meandering thoughts. Fortunately, James Johnson's delivery is just affecting enough so as to keep things from becoming laughable. Wilderness, overall, is a record that desperately wants to break through (though to what I'll probably never know). While it seems clear that they are still in the test stages, there is still plenty of reason to look forward to hearing more from The Wilderness in the future.
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Infraction
The distant howl of a fog horn turned low and dead prowls through the underbelly of these three tracks. It's unsettling and nocturnal, the perfect musical score to accompany the artwork included with this album. It may be a bridge lit by high, bright lamps, but it could be a Russian winter scene, the details of a city lost in the haze of a Ukrainian nightmare come to life. Submissive, intricately tempered whispers, wails, and waterfalls slide through a maze of slowly turning passages, each crossing the next and producing a wall of silent deaths lost to the trees and mountains that seem to dot the landscape created in the textural sprawl of large, impressionistic strokes and dizzying, detuned growls. The only light is the deep blue color of the moon, it seems to emphasize the paths the cold takes as it digs into bone and slows blood down into an icy sludge. Thousand year old corpses line the inside of a long forgotten tomb marked by escape attempts made by the living unfortunate enough to be trapped there and the unholy scripture of a language long lost to history. Zimiamvian Night can be absolutely horrific, the manner through which their vision is presented implies a certain scope and attitude, namely that silence and softness can be just as heartbreaking and fear inducing as the onslaught so often presented through power, high volumes, and abrasive sounds. The whole of "Between Moments" is a suffocated draft beating through the heart of a sunken city buried below years of war, weather, and catastrophe. The quiet movements and subtle variations in volume and texture create an uneasy atmosphere that keep me guessing as to what might be around the next corner. The music is also strongly visual, painting broad pictures of empty, destroyed landscapes and scarred memories abound with still fright: the sight of an almost dead human crumbling away or the image of a hand protruding from cracked dirt. Thinking about what the last moments for that human must've been like is much like listening to this record. My imagination has taken wild turns while listening to this, often finding reason to be quite scared of the dark. Zimiamvian Night's approach to sound worlds is slow and dominant, allowing sounds to develop into silence before moving on. It's a panoramic piece of music that spirals slowly into insanity, like watching a final heartbeat throb away in the slowest of motions.
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Hanson
Somewhere, in some dingy squat-house performance space, someone is flipping out over Hair Police. Totally loving that "shit man, they just don't give a fuck!" and that their craggy noise-scapes are probably pissing off the neighbors. When Hair Police are done he or she will light a cigarette and congratulate themself for being in on the cutting edge. Judging by the lack of anything captivating on Drawn Dead though, it would be a safe bet to say that the Louisville, KY trio is next in line to fall off said edge. Drawn Dead isn't so much a record that is out and out terrible, but suffers from the fact that I've heard this all before, generally from better bands. What makes this even more frustrating is that I know the kind of oral brutality Hair Police are capable of. Whereas albums like Obedience Cuts grabbed me by the nuts and flung me around the room in a PCP-fueled rage, Drawn Dead limps into action, taking a few half-assed swipes at me before deciding it would rather do something else. Despite this, there are some decent moments that save Hair Police. "Untitled 1" features garbage disposal gurgles that cut in and out along with what sounds like breaking piano strings, all of which slowly build for the songs eight minute duration. Throughout, ghostly guitar squiggles and distant whispers appear, furthering the tension. "Untitled 3" alternates between barrages of short-circuiting noise and almost ambient white noise, making it at least somewhat interesting. The band finally achieves something of a groove on the final minute and a half of "Untitled 4" where Mike Connelly's demented guitar squall and Robert Beatty's pissed off electronics shed more bile and blood then Jason Voorhees at summer camp. But small signs of light can't help Hair Police escape this dark night. As Jon Whitney correctly pointed out in his review of Wolf Eyes' Burned Mind, "People love beats and they love repetition." It's a spot-on assessment and is perhaps one way of explaining why Drawn Dead is so unsatisfying. While Hair Police are no more abrasive then Wolf Eyes or perhaps Throbbing Gristle, it's the fact that the songs on this release simply languish there—all noise and no swing—that makes them so frustrating. Never do the rhythms (of which there are little to none) rise above crawling, which makes me feel stuck in some sort of noisy fog that will never pass. While Hair Police are very abrasive and confrontational, that does not give them a free pass. Drawn Dead gives too little and demands too much, leaving me unsatisfied and annoyed. By the end, I couldn't be any less interested.
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- Matthew Jeanes
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It's been five years since the birth of Stefan "Pole" Betke's label,~scape, and in that time the artists he's chosen have had a bit of achore living outside of the shadow of Pole's near-genre definingversion of minimalist dub. Early ~scape releases were easily linked tothe "Pole sound" of clicky, spacious percussion, filtered melodies anddeep, dubwise basslines. With the Staedtism compilation series,Betke didn't help things at all by selecting artists and tracks thatwere more than happy to color inside the lines established by thegrowing roster of artists like Kit Clayton, Jan Jelinek, andDeadbeat—all of whom managed to spin Betke's sound into somethingunique, but certainly linked to the aesthetic. Now, with the fifthanniversary collection, ~scape appears to be making a decided breakfrom history, and a departure from the forumla that has thusfar guidedits sound. The results, as with most label comps, are mixed. It's easyfor laptop prodcers all over the world to grab onto frgments of hip hopculture and front like they are a part of that tradition, but it'sanother thing for them to successfully groove without sounding likethey are simply borrowing what is fashionable. David Byrne probably hadit right when he named his compilation "The Only Blip Hop CollectionYou Will Ever Need," as the sound has already worn out its welcome.Still, ~scape is moving in different directions, and with some amazingsuccesses. John Tejada's "And Many More" is the first truly memorabletrack on this disc, and it's a wiggly slab of melodic electro thatwouldn't sound out of place on a Bola record, but is somehow morefleshed out too. Triola's track "Neuland" is a bit too new agey for mytastes, but Jan Jelinek more than makes up for it with his brushedbroken jazz homage full of looping detuned guitars. Andrew Peckler alsoplays with the Jazz references, perhaps bridging the gap between fansof sample-based and improvised music even better than mid-1990s eraacid jazz. Deadbeat continues to shine as one of ~scape's most talentedartists, even if "We Like It Slow and Steady" is immediately familiaras "old school ~scape" with it's wandering synth stabs and filteredpercussion over dub backing. In Triosk, ~scape is even working with aband, Manitoba, and the sound is both warmer and more mature than manyof the tracks with a similar vibe that more obviously hatched out ofsomeone's hard drive. The ~scape version of pop music complete withvocals is less successful than it should be, but will likely find anaudience all the same. "But Then Again" shows a label willing to flexits stylistic muscle a bit, even if there are a few bumps and bruisesin doing so. With the number of good to great tracks here relative tothe duds, it's impossible to fault the effort. - Jan Jelinek - Western Mimickry
- John Tejada - And Many More
- Triosk - Tomorrowtoday
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- Matthew Jeanes
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Kilo is deconstructed techno made by two guitarists. This fact makestheir abstraction from and disregard for the rules of technoimmediately understandable, but it doesn't automatically explain howthey can craft such beautiful tracks out of so many fragments. Theguitar is the new laptop, I'm sure of that. For a while, almost everydisc that came across my stereo was obviously and proudly the productof a laptop or desktop computer, created by musicians flying in theface of traditional instruments and methods for composition. Now, asthe obvious and clumsy backlash, every indie electronic record comingout has some sort of guitar playing or sampling or abusing it, and it'sbecome almost a calling card of artists who want to be taken seriouslyas musicians rather than simply known as accomplished button-pushers.That's okay though, as records like this give the trend successes thatare worthy of the bandwagoning. The loops and pieces of guitar areeverywhere on Augarten and yet it sounds very much like anelectronic, synth-driven record. The rhythms are all minimalist technoconstructions, something I would have expected from a label that's tiedinto the Kompakt stable. The melodies, however, are tied to thatfamiliar six-stringed instrument that has grounded the majority of allpopular western music for decades. There are slivers of folk and rockand blues and even country twang woven in amongst the ribbons of deepbass and techno structures so that the record feels grounded intradition while still being completely fresh. Well, maybe completelyfresh is a bit of an exaggeration—Kilo don't stray tremendously farfrom the formula of clicks and pulses and thumps that drives most ofthe Kompakt, ~scape, and Ritornell rosters. Still, there is a warmth inthese songs owed to the guitar that makes them not only accessible topeople who might otherwise shrug off sparse electronics, but gives thema kind of time and place to call home. Other people are making clickyminmal techno, and others still are fracturing guitars throughsoftware, but I've not heard a recent attempt to bring the two togetherthat succeeds as well as this. Read More
- Matthew Jeanes
- Albums and Singles
This disc from Alejandra & Aeron is an ode to grandmothers,dedicated specifically to and featuring the voice of Bousha, Aeron'sgrandmother. I know this: if I had recorded a record like this andgiven it to my grandmother, she would not have known what to make of itother than to conclude that I was a little "Off." Sometimes, even musicwith the best intentions falls on deaf ears because there's a culturalor generational boundary that people are unwilling to cross. Bousha Blue Blazesis likely to make a lot more sense to young, forward-listening peoplewho are reflecting on their own relationships with grandparents than itwill to grandparents themselves. What Alejandra & Aeron havecreated is a delicate lattice of live room recordings, faintinstruments, and occassional voices that recalls the hazy sun-soakedafternoons I spent with my grandmother as a child. Bits of sound hanglike dust in the air as the pair play and process and record fragmentsand then arrange them into structures that are held together by onlythe finest filaments of melody. The record plays almost like ahand-written letter composed to Bousha that I might have discovered inan estate sale some decades after Bousha, Alejandra and Aeron were alllong gone. These songs are intimate, delicate, and they are at oncelighter than air and soaked with the weight of memories and personalconnections. I know my own grandmother wouldn't know what to make ofthis record, but life's erosion from time is here in every movement ofspliced ambiance and in every whisp of guitar. It's a lovely testamentto grandmothers everywhere, and even if they don't understand it, maybegrandmothers everywhere are listening to this record and smiling. Read More
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The heartbeat rhythm that opened "Hands" on Four Tet's 2003 release Rounds is nowhere to be found here. Instead, Everything Ecstatic opens with a skuzzy bass loop, and soon launches into the polyrhythmic workout of "A Joy." For me, it makes for a far more enthralling introduction.
The heartbeat rhythm that opened "Hands" on Four Tet's 2003 release Rounds is nowhere to be found here. Instead, Everything Ecstatic opens with a skuzzy bass loop, and soon launches into the polyrhythmic workout of "A Joy." For me, it makes for a far more enthralling introduction. Kieran Hebden has varied his technique here; on previous albums, he allowed his samples to stretch out and meander a bit, while here he makes use of smaller phrases and layers them far more effectively. "Smile Around the Face" is the album's most upbeat song, featuring a buzzing melody, handclaps, and small fragmentary samples. The first three tracks here (not counting a 23 second clip of a live sound check) are arguably the strongest. On the album highlight "Sun Drums and Soil," percussion builds to a throbbing din, while samples gradually flow in and out of the composition. As Hebden tastefully layers more and more samples and drums, the song slowly builds to a crescendo that is put over the top by his relentless keyboard samples, free-jazz horn, and heavily treated vocals. The second half of the album, though not as strong as the first, is still consistent. On "High Fives," a vibraphone sample is repeated throughout the song on top of a hip-hop beat while other samples, such as turntable scratches and electronic chirps fade in and out. The closer, "You Were There With Me," is a piece featuring wind chimes, xylophone, and gong samples slowly ringing, providing a meditative end to what may be Four Tet's most intense and challenging offering.
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- Lucas Schleicher
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Pieros
Thealbum was, in part, recorded live in St. Augustine Church, Galway andthe cover art reflects the religious content, not just with the angelon the cover, but in the slip the package is housed in. It immediatelyreminded me of many of the Virgin Mary shrines I've seen and it made mewonder: what is Aranos up to? The first four tracks have all thebeautiful echo and warmth a cathedral can possibly provide, but for themost part these songs are composed of drums, bass, organs, and violinplayed at very subdued levels. When "Yevka Sings" hits, it's quite ashock because the choral chanting is so utterly sublime and powerfulabove the instrumentation that its emotional and physical impact canonly be compared to being smacked gently by a massive diesel engine.The music caught me so off guard that I felt my stomach drop and Iimmediately began the song over just so I could prepare myself for itand feel the vocal bliss about to come. I'm not sure if this quartet ofreligiously soaked music is supposed to share or counterpoint anyfeelings raised by No Religion (though "Breath of Unknowing" comes awfully close to sharing a name with the mystical text The Could of Unknowing),but what is obvious is that Aranos is capable of bringing out the moreomni benevolent emotions tied with good mystical or "religious" music.The final six tracks employ varied methods of making music to create acarnival-like atmosphere, a whirlwind of musical ideas that, as far asI can tell, share little to no relation with the first part of thealbum. The atmosphere is almost always soft and careful, as though itwere made to procure images of prowlers or ghosts shifting through thetrees and tall grass at night, but in other places Aranos comes rightout of hiding to paint slightly more vivid sound pictures housed inspastic movements and rock n' roll attitude. "Crab Life" sounds exactlylike its title; small sounds jumping and skipping about, recalling theshuffled steps of crab on the ocean floor. "Silver Goat," on the otherhand, is fronted by Aranos' unmistakable and piercing voice, the musica galloping mix of staccato violins and racing rhythms propelled by afinal, violent movement. This is perhaps Aranos' most varied album, butalso one of his most consistently enjoyable. Other albums by him mayonly be appropriate for certain moods, but I keep coming back to thisalbum and finding that it adheres to almost any of my capriciouslistening needs.samples:
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- Jonathan Dean
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Beta-Lactam Ring
This handsomely packaged slabof vinyl contains nearly 40 minutes of enticingly obscure, cinematicear candy, and is as experimental an album as EKS has ever recorded,with the possible exception of Textures of Illumina.Simultaneously harking back to the earliest of early LPD and EKScassette experiments, and looking forward towards new and tantalizinglyesoteric future trajectories, this LP moves through a sequence ofnightmarish sound dramas with a puzzling but eerily familiardream-logic that sounds like the product of pure Surrealist automatism.The album's black-and-white, Max Ernst-style sleeve graphic depicts acraggy tree populated with unblinking human eyes instead of leaves,with three eye-shaped diecuts revealing three bluegreen eyes peekingout from the inner sleeve. Just as in symbolist paintings, the ocularimagery here seem to instruct the listener to look within, and to thinkof the sounds within as primarily visual rather than strictly auralphenomena. Everywhere on O Darkness, EKS seems to be takingupon himself the misery of the world, evoking current events in hismorbid, pessimistic opening monologue: "When the bell tolls at twelve,my thoughts will go towards those who were simply at the wrong place atthe wrong time. I will concentrate, focus, mourn in my own peculiarway. And I honestly think I can keep it up." With this simultaneouslyfunny and depressing soliloquy, EKS kicks off the record's first side("The Rim of the Pit"), which introduces a vivid urban soundscapebustling with noisy streetcars, the distant tinkling of soft piano jazzfrom an open apartment window, hurried footsteps accompanied by aseries of booming bass throbs that seem to prophesy a vague and gloomyfuture full of dread and anxiety. It's hard to tell if ole Ed hasgathered these sounds from period films or radio broadcasts or if theseare field recordings he has gathered and spliced together; it's equallydifficult to discern if the incidental, maudlin Hollywood soundtrackmusic heard throughout the album is sampled or created in the studio byEKS and Silverman. Either way, it's a real head-trip, palpably real andhauntingly nostalgic, vintage sounds that Boards of Canada would givetheir two left testicles to be able to make. One of the movementsinvolves a fractured, programmed beat assembled from cut-up femalevoices, resonant church bells ringing, a lonesome foghorn, afascinatingly unorthodox use of sequencers that recalls Nurse WithWound's "Yagga Blues," among other things. EKS continues his paranoidinterior monologues over a series of shrill, jarring car alarm bleats:"I was stuck between the 15th and 16th floors when it happened. Itsounded bad out there. Whatever the damn thing was it behavedmethodically. One room at a time." The last time I'd heard such aterrifying horror story masquerading as experimental music was Current93 and Thomas Ligotti's I Have a Special Plan For This World.Side two ("Wings Trapped in Amber") involves a further descent into themaelstrom, with anonymous passengers boarding a train to who knowswhere, varispeed bouncing ball rhythms juxtaposed with ocean sounds,laughing children, a street musician and encroaching drones that giveAlan Splet's subterranean Eraserhead sound environments a runfor their money. Unexpectedly out of the din comes a clattery,ramshackle group tribal improvisation placed amidst a jungle full ofsquawking birds. By the end of this tangibly real dream-space, it tookme some time to touch down and reconnect with my "real" time and place.O Darkness! O Darkness! is a conduit into EKS' nightmares, which depending on your sensibilities, could be either a gift or a curse.samples:
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