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Fortunately, the title of Piano Magic's new album is not indicative of the music. There is a certain coldness and calculation to Glen Johnson's ensemble but it does not quite approach disaffection. Part of the album's chill is due to the explicit motif of ghosts and spectral images which cuts across both the music and the liner notes.
The album's insert is filled with negative photographic images, giving the impression of looking across some dimensional boundary into another plane of existence. On the cover there is the moderately disturbing photograph of a man's head lying in bed as if asleep or, more likely, dead. Tree branches emanate from the top of his skull like antlers. The whole scene is awash in grayness and the antiseptic bed linens and death-stare give the aura of an open-casket wake. The songs themselves are a mixture of two very different sounds found on the last two Piano Magic albums: the first one is found on Writers Without Homes and it is a post-rock big band sound which doesn't mesh well with my conception of the band as an electronically eerie and spacious outfit. The second sound is from the more recent The Troubled Sleep of Piano Magic and it returns Piano Magic to an electronically-assisted and vacuous moodiness which is more consistent with the band's roots. I am not very fond of this first type of Piano Magic sound. "You Can Hear the Room," the album's opener, is an example of the former sound. It begins humbly but metastasizes into some gargantuan full band jam by the end. There is no space for the ghosts to inhabit the notes even though the lyrics tend to suggest that the song is in line with the album's central conceit. The first half of Disaffected is replete with this sound. Guest vocalist John Grant of The Czars has his obligatory appearance and continues his droll infection and inflection of Johnson's songs, twisting them into something hard to listen to rather than something pleasant. I find this second type of Piano Magic sound much more agreeable. "The Theory of Ghosts" is a prime example of this sound. You can simply feel the emptiness and space which haunts the music. The song is also the epitomic example of where less truly is more. Careful tunesmithing replaces crowded instrumentation and the eastern-sounding string work is a beautiful arrangement ornamenting the song. Other songs which fall into this latter category are "The Nostalgist," "You Can Never Get Lost (When You've Nowhere to Go)," "Disaffected," and "Deleted Scenes." "Disaffected" is an extended and finely-crafted synth beat featuring Klima's Angele David-Guillou on vocals. A delicate acoustic guitar part bridges the first half of the song (the vocal half) with the clicky electronic jam at the end. "Deleted Scenes," on the other hand, is a thoroughly moribund and enjoyable New Order homage. "Love & Music" creates a category all of its own and doesn't fit into the dichotomy I have laid out thus far. The syncopated drum beat is, at the very least, unexpected from the band, creating almost a Bossanova sound. This alone places the song as a strong antithesis to what I consider to be Piano Magic's sound (of either the first or second variety). The lyrics are inexcusably repetitive and monotonous, crying out for an indictment of laziness on the band's part. Along the same lines, I want to like Johnson's seemingly autobiographical "I Must Leave London" (which details his forsaking of the Queen's country and his repatriation on the continent in Spain) better but it sounds exhausted and almost uninspired. Disaffected has trouble existing as one cohesive entity. In keeping too thematically with its motif, the album constantly has one foot in the land of the living and the other in the land of the dead, like a ghost unaware of its ghostliness.
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Planet Mu
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Monika
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Scarcelight
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Thirsty Ear
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Twisted Village
By night,under the auspices of their group Major Stars, Wayne and Kate areequally enthusiastic purveyors of hard, loud and ferocious nonstop rockn' roll ecstasy. They've opened up for Comets on Fire on tour, eventhough their brand of high-octane, often instrumental rock is heavierand more substantial than the Comets' most wishful daydreams. This isnot to suggest that they are superior; rather that they are more pure,unadulterated and outright, unashamedly rawk. People who like to namethings call Major Stars a "psychedelic" rock band, but they're no more"psychedelic" than the sludge at the bottom of your Turkish coffee.What they are is kick-your-ass, balls-to-the-wall, energized freeformrock, full of big fat hairy riffs and powerful dynamics, rapidlyswitching gears to chase the next monstrous pummeling chordprogression. The foursome gel perfectly on stage, and this record,their first to be recorded in a state-of-the-art 25-track studio,captures the group beautiful, and is perhaps the best reflection yet oftheir live sound on record. The only things missing are the flyingsweat droplets and the heady breeze created by Kate's headbanging,hair-tossing stage theatrics. There are only four tracks and about 40minutes of music, but when the rock is this meat-and-potatoes, it can'thelp but leave me satisfied, even though I certainly wouldn't turn downseconds. "How To Be" wastes no time introducing their particular brandof crashing, resounding guitars, sounding exactly like Lester Bang'shyperbole-filled description of a Who gig, rather than what The Whoreally sounded like. The background is filled with a solid wall ofguitar runoff, Casey Keenan's caveman rhythms, forming a backdrop forWayne's soul-shredding post-Hendrix guitar performance, pulling farmore sound out of his instrument than should be physically possible."Song For Turner" is long and lyric-less, a study in reigned-in rockchaos if ever there was one, pausing for some detuned guitar noiseevery now and then, shifting to another rhythm and key when it suitsthem. It's totally accessible and totally grandiose, leading into thealbum's power-pop pit-stop "All Or Half the Time," which rivals TheBevis Frond for pure, pleasurable rock songcraft. Ending thingsbrilliantly is the 15-minute "Phantom #1," which starts out as slowlyshifting modal guitar drone, totally thick and hypnotic, beforeintroducing rhythm and rapidly upping the tempo until the song hasbecome a roof-lifting heavy metal beast, grinning and majestic. Nobullshit: Major Stars is just damned good rock music, so how come youhaven't heard this yet?
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Nothing can stop this band from forcing me to participate in the most sinister of feelings. They're soaked in evil, sex, and those lonely and terrifying sensations that only open, dead spaces can convey. Bohren und der Club of Gore associate themselves with doom metal via their own website, were formally a self-described "hardcore" metal act, have all the mystery and intrigue of the best David Lynch films, and yet none of these descriptions get to the core of this quartet's sound.
Geisterfaust, translated as "Spirit Fist," is broken up into five long floods of keyboard, sparse drums, and atmospheric sludge, each named after one of the fingers on a human hand. Never heavy or loud in the way that a metal act might be, Bohren manages to flatten everything in its path with its rather morose and morbid disposition. At the same time, having sex to this record seems to add a certain personality to the act, a kind of intimacy in the round, smooth edges of every sound that slow every sensation and motion down to near nothingness. It's appropriate to say that the song index on this record serves as a map to the movements of the entire record. Instead of having five completely distinct songs, there are simply five takes on a theme that is presented by "Zeigefinger." As the music moves forward, the quarter oscillates between moods, but never takes the tempo beyond its initial sluggish pace. Silence dominates the music just as much as any sound does; when the band goes quite there's an anticipation for the next chords or notes to strike. The structure of Geisterfaust builds up a sweaty uneasiness that pulsates almost maddeningly throughout each track until "Kleiner Finger" reaches its final moments. It's like knowing a monster is just around the corner, its thumping feet crunching forward ever so awkwardly, but having nowhere to run or hide. It's a long, hysteria inducing wait for a terrifying end. And, speaking of ends, the final two or so minutes is remarkable. The most simple of additions draws the album to a close and makes the barren wasteland that was paved before ignite with a lustfulness that can only be sparked by absence and resignation.
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Sub Rosa
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Thirsty Ear
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- Assisted Suicide (featuring Dälek)
- B-Side Wins Again (featuring Chuck D)
- Incipit Zarathustra
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ICR
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Fonal
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