20 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

Agora is Christian Fennesz's first solo album since Mahler Remixed [Touch, 2014] and Bécs [Editions Mego, 2014].  Fennesz writes: "It's a simple story.  I had temporarily lost a proper studio workspace and had to move all my gear back to a small bedroom in my flat where I recorded this album. It was all done on headphones, which was rather a frustrating situation at first, but later on it felt like back in the day when I produced my first records in the 1990s.  In the end it was inspiring.  I used very minimal equipment; I didn't even have the courage to plug in all the gear and instruments which were at my disposal.  I just used what was to hand."

Agora will be released March 29, 2019 on Touch.

20 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

"Michael O’Shea’s sole, breathtaking album ranks among our favourite of all time - yet hardly anyone seems to have heard of it.  Produced by Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis at the Dome studio in 1982, it's an utterly singular work of magick, meshing myriad, worldly modes into music that rarely fails to reduce us to tears.  It's one of those albums that basically sounds like nothing else - the only record we can draw some parallels to is Dariush Dolat-Shahi's life-changing Electronic Music, Tar and Sehtar, despite it coming from the other end of the world.

First brought to our attention by Blackest Ever Black at the start of this decade, we've gradually developed an obsessive fascination with its sublime, rapid dervishes and warbling rhythmelodies, so it’s a pleasure to see it finally made easily available to everyone who we’ve ranted about it over the years (2nd hand copies have been historically pricey and hard to come by!), and especially replete with its enlightening new sleeve notes by archivist and writer Failed Bohemian.

A busker among other trades, O'Shea was an itinerant soul who, after a childhood and formative years spent between Northern Ireland and Kerry in the south of the country, and extensive travel between Europe, Turkey and Bangladesh, created his own instrument - an electrified dulcimer known as Mó Cará (Irish for 'My Friend') - which he performed on at Ronnie Scott's, before later playing on bills with everyone from Ravi Shankar to Don Cherry, and also recording with The The's Matt and Tom Johnson.

Aside from his two contributions to the Stano album, "Content To Dine In I Dine Weathercraft" (also recently reissued by Dublin’s Allchival), O'Shea's first and only album is the main point of reference for this unique artist.  Like some eccentric expression of ancient Indo-European voices channeled thru a Celtic body, Michael O'Shea's improvised acousto-electric music intuitively distills a world of styles into singularly hypnotic works.  Using his self-built instrument; a hybrid of a zelochord and a sitar, made on a wooden door salvaged in Munich, and with the crucial addition of electric pick-ups and the "Black Hole Space Box," O'Shea would absorb sounds from his travels like a sponge, and relay them back thru the instrument with effortlessly freeform and achingly lush results as elaborate as a Celtic knot or elegant as Sanskrit text.

The mercurial flow of syncretised styles in 15 minute opener "No Journey’s End" catches your breath and doesn’t give it back, leaving us utterly light-headed and feeling something akin to religious experience, before his "Kerry" vignette most beautifully limns the epic coastline he hails from.  The plasmic swirl and phasing of "Guitar No. 1" is perhaps the one piece that time dates the LP to the post-punk era, even if it could have come from ancient Mesopotamia, while the album and artist's underlying metaphysics bleed thru most hauntingly in the timbral shadowplay of "Voices," and the rapidly tremulous, animist voodoo of "Anfa Dásachtach."

Noted in his lifetime, not least by himself as: "…joker, transvestite, inventor, psychonaut, actor, catalyst, community worker, musician, traveler, instrument maker," Michael O'Shea's life was, by all accounts, every bit as colourful as his music, which only makes his untimely death in 1991 all that more tragic, as we’d practically give an arm to hear what he could have made in the early techno era, as he was purportedly getting heavy into London's rave scene before he was taken.

Honestly no other record has cast such a strong spell over us in recent memory - to the extent of sending us on wild goose chases on the wrong peninsula in Kerry - so please pardon the gush 'cos we can’t help but share love for this life-affirming disc and Michael O'Shea's beautifully transcendent music."

-via Boomkat

Out now on Ireland's Allchival label.

20 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

With Voices is the newest recording by Dutch composer Rutger Zuydervelt under the moniker Machinefabriek.  True to its title, the album’s eight pieces exhibit Zuydervelt's use of cassette recorders, tone generators, radios, synths, and other hifi curios to construct bewildering aural architecture around vocal work from Peter Broderick, Marissa Nadler, Richard Youngs, Chantal Acda, Terence Hannum (of Locrian) and others.  These human voices are featured as musical instruments rather than mere vehicles of lyrical content, resulting in a sub-linguistic mosaic of primordially stirring moods.

The initial spark of With Voices was kindled while Zuydervelt was in Taipei creating music for a dance company.  In the final days of his trip, a dancer named Wei-Yun Chen caught Zuydervelt's ear with an instagram video featuring a voice that turned out to be Wei-Yun's own (she would end up on the album’s seventh movement, a piece that features dissected bits of Taiwanese poetry amid low-pitched murmurs and whispering fogbanks of static).  The encounter stirred Zuydervelt to create a single 35 minute soundscape upon which each vocalist on With Voices was encouraged to improvise, be it talking, reading, singing, or wordless, guttural intoning. Such vocal smatterings were then used to determine how the other tonal elements should be arranged, dictating where each musical passage would ultimately lead.  "The idea was for everyone to just do what came naturally" he recalls, "the element of unpredictability was important to me."

Indicative of this approach "III" (the tracks are simply titled with Roman numerals) slowly winds like ivy through staccato phrases spoken by Zuydervelt's peer Peter Broderick, whose micro-incantations skip along mechanically only to telescope into monastic grandeur at the track's midpoint; the vibrations of vocal cords are often stretched to a seismic hum to form the heavy implements in Zuydervelt's toolkit.  On "V," tape recordings of Berlin electronic artist Zero Years Kid (aka Joachim Badenhorst) sputter with their own apparent intelligence like a faulty AI attempting to interpret reels of human speech in some ruinous library of the distant future.  Finally, a Siren-like Marissa Nadler leads the suite to its lullabic endpoint with overlapping wisps of harmony devoid of accompaniment ending the album on an angelic note.

In these moments, like much of With Voices, warm-blooded arteries seem to have grown around bits of well-designed artifice to form something warmly alien, soberly futuristic, and inherently satisfying.  More than simply an album of collaborative features, With Voices is a mutating collage of modern minimalism that challenges as often as it comforts. There is an alchemical, metallurgical quality that arises from Zuydervelt's unique way of merging humanness with abstraction, harshness with beauty, and unintelligibility with familiarity on what may be the most affecting Machinefabriek release to date.

More information can be found here.

19 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

Laurie Spiegel's second full-length album, Unseen Worlds, arrived just over ten years after her debut album. Having realized the pieces found on The Expanding Universe (1980) on an instrument no longer available to her, the GROOVE System at Bell Laboratories, Spiegel moved on to composing and developing for the Alles Machine, alphaSyntauri, McLeyvier and various other instruments before creating an instrument entirely her own. Spiegel created "Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument" on a Macintosh 512k so that she could have an instrument that was not general purpose, but a small, specialized, and well-defined musical instrument for and by her that she did not have to compromise on or risk losing access to it. While it was a very personal instrument for Spiegel, demand among friends and colleagues nevertheless grew until "Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument" became a commercial product for the Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari personal computers with a devoted popular following that continues to this day, despite the obsoletion of those platforms.  At the time of her Unseen Worlds album's original release in 1991, the issuing record label turned out to be going out of business, dissolved and disappeared, sending the album immediately into obscurity.  Outside of a private CD edition issued by Spiegel on her own Aesthetic Engineering label in 1994, this new edition represents the first proper commercial release of Unseen Worlds.

"Unseen Worlds is not so much based on melody and rhythm as it is on textures, pulses, and sonic environments. Sometimes dark, sometimes light, its drama pulls in the adventurous listener who wants to take a musical journey.  Using computer software she wrote in order to implement a unique musical vision, Unseen Worlds blends the artistic and the technical, the cerebral and the sensual, and revives the virtually abandoned tradition of electronic music.  Unseen Worlds is the work of a sonic explorer whose music can both challenge and caress.  Those looking for other worlds of sound can put on headphones and find them here." - Craig Anderton

More information can be found here.

15 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

14 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

Rema-Rema : Announce Debut Album, 'Fond Reflections', 40 Years After Disbanding. 14th January 2019

13 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

13 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

In the past, I have favorably compared John Hannon's shapeshifting post-industrial collage project to This Heat, but this latest release leaves that signpost far behind and heads in a darker and more idiosyncratic direction. Bolstered by a new group of collaborators, Hannon's latest salvo more closely resembles an avant-garde string quartet soundtracking a tense Eastern European thriller. I have some mixed feelings about that change of direction, as the album's sustained fever pitch of dramatic intensity can be a bit exhausting. That said, Hannon's vision remains a bracingly vivid and visceral one and the new members inject some wonderfully unusual and inspired touches into the ever-changing Liberez aesthetic.

Alter

For this latest incarnation of Liberez, Hannon is joined by Matthew Reay, Sylvia Maria Saunder, and Iñigo Ugarteburu, all of whom were previously unknown to me, though I have since seen the latter described as a "virtuoso guitarist."I suspect Ugarteburu must be virtuosic at some other stringed instruments as well, as guitars do not play a particularly prominent role on this album.Rather, Way Through Vulnerability is a heaving maelstrom of tense violins, violently churning strings, and brutally pounded toms.The musicianship of the participants feels uncharacteristically relevant this time around though, as many of these nine pieces feel more like the work of an actual band than they do the masterful studio collages of years past.I could definitely see this version of Liberez being a powerful live act.If I were to glibly describe the new ensemble's aesthetic, I would probably say something like "Liberez may have left their This Heat influence in the rear-view mirror, but the new road they are on seems to be headed straight towards Godspeed You! Black Emperor city!"While typing that rightfully made me wince and hate myself, there is definitely some truth to such an assessment, though Hannon and company happily made a sharp detour into more ragged and rustic territory before they became fully immersed in melancholy cinematic grandeur and mannered artiness.In fact, Way Through Vulnerability feels like it was conceived by a rural commune of polyglot revolutionaries with a bent for traditional European folk music.

As intense and vital as the foursome's fiery vision can be, however, the new dynamic highlights some significant cracks in the Liberez aesthetic: Hannon has breached the blurry line that separates soundscapes/sound collages from songs and his compositional gifts are not quite on the same level as his textural brilliance and production intuition.That said, the album's bookends are quite good, particularly the opening "Celophane Window."In fact, it is kind of a masterpiece of coiled tension, as a hushed male voice cryptically delivers a monologue in a foreign language (Hungarian?) over a simmering bed of understated hand percussion and strangled, stuttering strings.The following "M'aidez" opens with another enigmatic spoken-word passage (presumably from Saunder and possibly in Russian), but soon erupts into an apocalyptic crescendo of crashing cymbals, pummeling toms, guitar noise, and tormented minor key string melodies.For better or worse, that is essentially the template for the entire album: atmospheric interludes of slow-building tension followed by episodes of volcanic ferocity that are akin to being curb-stomped by a disturbingly violent and cello-wielding Slavic folk ensemble.That certainly has its appeal, but the dark intensity of Way Through Vulnerability quickly starts to feel a bit one-dimensional and yields diminishing returns after a few songs.While there are certainly some beautiful pieces to be found, like the sensuously undulating and Flamenco-tinged "Here is the Proof," they feel like rare oases in album that is in a near-permanent state of boiling over.

That said, I genuinely love a lot of the details on Way Through Vulnerability, even if the overall arc of unrelenting drama and unresolved tension is a bit much for me.I especially enjoyed the newly added clapping rhythms and Hannon's continued genius for strangled and sharp stabs of feedback and bowed strings.I am also quite fond of the overarching vision, particularly when compared to the "hallucinatory radio transmission" aesthetic of 2013's stellar Sane Men Surround: this album is a viscerally, vibrantly "real" eruption of wood, steel, passion, and anguish undiluted by artifice.It is very easy to picture a room full of broken strings, splintered bows, and blood-splattered violins left in the wake of these sessions.The only real issue preventing this album from being an unambiguous leap forward rather than a compelling (if difficult) mixed success is one of balance: Hannon's dark clouds only part to let in some light, beauty, and tenderness on the closing title piece.Some more glimpses of that would have brought some welcome contrast and additional depth to the album.Without it, Way Through Vulnerability is far more polemic than poetry.Such raw elemental power certainly makes a strong impression, but it is not quite enough to make this Liberez's strongest album.

13 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

Without question, The Shadow Ring were one of the strangest and most inscrutable bands to ever exist, yet Graham Lambkin's gnomic solo career frequently makes his previous band look downright conventional by comparison. That is not an unambiguously wonderful achievement, however, as a lot of Lambkin's work leaves me wondering what on earth he is trying to convey and who such albums are for. For better or worse, the presence of Áine O'Dwyer does little to steer Lambkin towards more musical terrain. In fact, this latest release only doubles down further on Lambkin's recent cryptic, no-fi aesthetic, seemingly unfolding as a fragmented and abstract travelogue of a couple's travels across England, Ireland, and Sweden.  As with all Graham Lambkin albums, Green Ways is certainly unique and intriguing, but it is more of an unsolvable mystery and an experiment in extreme artistic constraints than it is a great album.

Erstwhile

The opening "One and One is One" is quite possibly the most fascinating riddle on the entire album, as well as the most self-conscious bit of deliberate art, recalling O'Dwyer’s own Music for Church Cleaners if the organ was replaced by strange vocal drones, whooshes of breath, rhythmic clapping, and mumbly wordless jabbering.No explanation is provided, of course, yet it sounds like O'Dwyer and Lambkin are giving a memorably bizarre performance of sorts to a presumably bewildered audience that unexpectedly explodes into applause and cheering.Much like the rest of the album, it feels like I am missing a sizable part of the picture, though my imagination has decided that the performance was a surreal and morbid puppet show.More likely, however, it was just the couple sitting in chairs on an empty stage, enthusiastically and semi-maniacally creating something out of nothing.The following "One and One is Two" is perhaps even weirder, as it sounds like two minutes of Lambkin rhythmically splashing around in a pond while grunting and gasping until the performance is abruptly ended by a much louder, larger splash.The curious suite of similarly named pieces is concluded with "One and One is Three," which sounds like the distant plinking of a broken or prepared piano heard through a quiet sea of tape hiss.While it is damn near impossible to figure out what any of those three pieces mean or how they are linked together, they nevertheless feel distinct from the rest of the album because it seems like O'Dwyer and Lambkin were willfully creating "music" (of a sort).That pretense is summarily dropped with the next piece and rarely resurfaces, as the bulk of Green Ways just sounds like Lambkin turned on a recorder in the middle of some interaction or experience and just let it run for a while.

For example, "The Mushroom Field" is literally just a field recording of the pair wandering around collecting mushroom and idly chattering, though the microphone is either being windblown or constantly rubbed up against a bag to create a disruptive roar.The following "Greenways," on the other hand, sounds like a boat with the microphone up against the motor while someone rattles chains nearby.Throughout it all, there are snatches of mundane dialogue, but very little happens and there is no processing to add any further depth, sound quality, or musicality to what transpires.Nor is there any larger arc to these seventeen vignettes that could likely be deduced by anyone other than Lambkin and O'Dwyer.In some ways, it would be fair to call Green Ways artless, as it is almost entirely devoid of conscious artifice.In other ways, however, it is art in the most honest and intimate sense, as Lambkin and O'Dwyer are framing and presenting their very lives as art and doing it in a radically impressionistic and unglamorous way.Rather than selectively picking and choosing the most beautiful or significant episodes from their shared life, Lambkin and O'Dwyer have instead woven a disorienting, ragged, and uneven tapestry of memories that pulls in a bit of everything: their wedding(?), street fairs, charming snatches of singing, facts about Vikings, deranged-sounding accordion performances, and lazy conversations about plants over some tea.It is not always particularly captivating material, but it does perversely work somehow and occasionally yields some lovely surprises, such as the tender "Down by Sally Gardens," in which a pretty and delicate piano melody embellishes the antics of some very loud cows.Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, there is the seething, grinding, and darkly phantasmagoric "Night Music," which sounds like a desolate, windblown shipyard at 4am and would certainly send any small child diving under their bed to hide from imagined terrors.

Notably, while O'Dwyer is arguably both the muse and a ubiquitous presence on Green Ways, this release is very much a Graham Lambkin album in its aesthetic and it is probably an album that only he could have made work.It is not unlike Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal, in fact: if a lesser/unknown artist had presented their own toilet first, no one would have cared at all.It was a significant statement because of who was making it and why.Appreciating Green Ways is similar, as there is not much about it that feels instantly gratifying, but if I trust Lambkin and believe in his art enough to let myself get enveloped in this lazy swirl of enigmatic scenes, some of the album's secrets become unlocked and glimpses of quiet beauty start to emerge.That said, I do not completely trust Lambkin, as he has always seemed like an elusive and complex collision of prankster, madman, charlatan, and genius with inscrutable motivations to me.Sometimes his work is revelatory and sometimes it is very much the opposite, but it is almost always a curious and unique experience (my favorite piece on Amateur Doubles is seemingly just Lambkin listening to a French prog rock album and occasionally sneezing).I do trust Erstwhile's curatorial instincts though and I am delighted that they gave this strange collage a formal release, as it likely would have eluded me otherwise.Green Ways is far too weirdly paced and indulgent to be a great album in any conventional sense, but it has burrowed into my consciousness and left a lingering impression like few other albums have from this year.

12 January 2019

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Albums and Singles

The Threats Of Memories 2LP reissue, on United Dirter, by Steven Stapleton and David Tibet features three side-long tracks, newly edited by Andrew Liles, from their albums The Sadness Of Things and Musical Pumpkin Cottage. The fourth side is a previously unreleased version, titled "DreamBreath," from the Musical Pumpkin Cottage recording sessions. It comes in a gatefold sleeve, reproducing Babs Santini's artwork from the original releases and a photograph of Steven and David by Ruth Bayer, as well as an insert containing all lyrics and credits, and with HandWriting by David Tibet. The 2LP was mastered by Andrew Liles, and the cover was designed by Ania Goszczyńska.  Photography by Andrew Thomas.

The Threat Of Memory 5CD boxed set, on United Dirter, by Steven Stapleton and David Tibet features all of Steven and David's previously-issued recordings, made under their "Steven Stapleton & David Tibet" faces, on the first four of the CDs, as well as a fifth CD with previously unissued out-takes from the Musical Pumpkin Cottage recording sessions. It does not include the unissued out-take on Side 4 on Side 4 of The Threats of Memories 2LP.

It comes in a hinged box, with new artwork by Babs Santini on the CDs' individual sleeves, as well as on the box's cover with a booklet containing all credits and lyrics, and with HandWriting by David Tibet.  The CDs were mastered by Andrew Liles and the cover was designed by Ania Goszczyńska.  Photography by Sarah Stapleton.

More information can be found here, as well as information on the related Dead Memory LP.