Dominick Fernow has always been a polarizing figure in the noise scene: people either obsessively buy every limited tape he puts out, or they like to rant about him and his label on various noise message boards. So upon hearing that this album was going to be even more divisive than anything has yet released, my interest was definitely piqued. After hearing it a few times, it’s different, and yet not completely out of character in his discography.
If I could think of any condition that exemplified life today, it would be distraction. Even the most contemplative life is arrested by a thousand nagging interruptions. For my part, I was especially distracted while reviewing Old Punch Card, constantly turning away from the work to read some random article or watch some Internet video. Nothing peculiar about that, I’ll admit, but then I realized how well the album evokes distraction as a state of mind. It’s the sound of our own attention scattering into the ether.
This five disc box set collects all of Tindersticks' soundtracks for the French director Claire Denis. Dating back to their classic second album and continuing right up until their current incarnation, their relationship with Denis has borne exquisite musical fruit that covers a surprising spectrum of styles. This collection is an absolute treasure, covering the two previously released soundtracks with four unreleased works and each one is a masterpiece.
Somehow Mick Harris has slipped a couple of records by me in the last few years starting with the Super Mantis Part 1 single released by Combat Recordings in 2008. Scorn somehow makes simple drum beats and atonal bass sound angry. He's been working out this formula for over a decade and has left a traceable line from Super Mantis all the way back to his one-off Weakener project from 1998. In some ways, not much has changed: the bass still warbles and wobbles, the beats are still dead straight and simple, and the ambience is slowed down and impossible to pinpoint. But in other, subtle ways, Harris has refined these tracks over time and he's kept up with and just one step ahead of the legions of younger producers that he has inspired.
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is best known for his work in Tarentel and The Alps, but his latest solo release doesn't sound much like either of those bands (no surprise, since they don't sound much like each other either). Instead, his self-described celebration of love itself plunges wholeheartedly into dream pop/shoegazer territory, sounding like Lovesliescrushing's best moments expanded into a warm and enveloping ocean of artfully layered guitar noise.
The Dead C's Michael Morley has been releasing solo albums under the Gate moniker since the mid-'90s, but his latest effort is a curve ball that probably no one saw coming: after a decade-long hiatus, Morley has surfaced with an electronic dance album...of sorts. Thankfully, despite ditching his signature gnarled guitars for synthesizers, drum machines, and a laptop, there is no evidence at all that Michael has gone soft. In fact, A Republic of Sadness attains a whole new level of inspiration and subversion, proving that even catchy dance beats can be crushed beneath the weight of Morley's party-killing world-weariness.
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