24 February 2013

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Albums and Singles

Like past releases, the latest from Dan Friel is an overblown, exuberant burst of colorful noise, swelled with circuit bent synthesizers, distorted drums, and major key melodies, celebrating life in a messy display of strength. The sheer caustic timbre of these songs is still the biggest barrier to entry for a lot of people, but now that Parts And Labor has broken up it is more likely than ever than Friel's solo venture will get some serious attention.

Thrill Jockey

Opening with what might be Dan's grandest statement yet, "Ulysses" pretty much sums up Total Folklore in a cathartic blast of noise. Its twelve minute running time cartwheels past on a blown-out hip hop beat stretched and crushed to its limits amidst hyperactive layers of melody. From there, Total Folklore is a singular vision, all victory and hyperbole—songs like "Valedictorian," "Landslide," and "Velocipede" are all congratulatory sonic fireworks, taking the final stage music from a hundred 8-bit video games and putting them through fuzz pedals.

In between full songs, there are "Intermissions" which serve apparently as breathing room between the noise; this is an album intended to be listened all at once, even when its short attention span and self-contained nature suggests otherwise. At 37 minutes, the record plays faster than its impenetrable walls of sound would suggest, but being incredibly catchy makes most noise war electronica easy to swallow. Even without vocals or any real diversity in instrumentation, these songs play on base impulses of rhythm and pop construction, so most of the joy comes from just soaking it all in.

Dan Friel's work in Parts And Labor always seemed a byproduct of the essential balancing act that is having a band. Each member contributes a little bit of their own design to the overall sound, which means no one member dominates the way the songs are heard. Friel's solo work, by comparison, barely holds back at all; it's got all the discipline of a kid after trying caffeine for the first time. Total Folklore is engrossing in its unwavering bliss and cacophony, and it probably wouldn't sound half as distinctive if Dan didn't throw every ounce of energy he possessed into it.

samples:

• Ulysses
• Landslide
• Intermission 2

 

24 February 2013

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Albums and Singles

This is Cobb's first full-length under his own name, but he has long been an active and influential figure in the American drone scene as both Taiga Remains and the man behind the Students of Decay label.  Appropriately, the shedding of his artistic alias coincides with a more human, warm, and intimate direction that is not wildly dissimilar to early Taiga recordings like 2006's Ribbons of Dust.  That (somewhat circular) change seems to have suited him quite well, as he and his guitar have delivered a wonderfully languorous suite of gently swaying dronescapes.

Students of Decay

Passage to Morning is a curious type of album that only a completely confident and established artist could make, as Cobb does not overtly attempt to offer anything particularly "new" or striking.  Instead, these five pieces required me to trust Alex as someone who has a very firm handle on what constitutes great music and allow him the proper time and focus to unearth their subtle beauty.  That is not to say that there are not pieces that stand out, as I immediately loved the queasily dissonant oscillations that ripple through the culminating swells of "The Habit Body."  I was also completely drawn in by the way that the cold and cavernous opening of "Bewildered By Its Blue" gives way to warm and gently crackling drone bliss.  Rather, I mean that the full extent of Cobb's craftsmanship did not become apparent to me until I had heard the album enough to appreciate the flow of the individual pieces within the context of the whole.

The opening "The Immediate Past" is the best illustration of Passage to Morning's initially inscrutable nature, as its glacially unfolding swells of guitar shimmer are transformed into something much more compelling by a ghostly, buried undercurrent.  Rather than continuing to evolve, however, the piece remains relatively static until it eventually fades out.  The closing "Landscape Dissolves" follows a similar trajectory: slowly fading in, sounding great, then fading out.  Initially, I found that to be incredibly exasperating, as it seemed like Cobb created a perfect backdrop for something truly wonderful to occur, then decided that he was content with just the backdrop.  To a certain extent, I still feel that way about some songs, but there is actually a clear evolution displayed over the course of the entire album.  Taken on its own, "The Immediate Past" can seem like something of a prematurely ended missed opportunity, but it feels much more meaningful and substantial when it is allowed to flow into "The Habit Body" (and so on).

My criticisms are rooted in high expectations, however, many of which were either met or exceeded: Cobb has created some truly lush, beautiful drone that favorably reminds me of both recent Windy & Carl and early (pre-orchestral) Stars of the Lid.  Admittedly, nothing on Passage to Morning matches either band at their peak, but Alex has proven that those heights are within his reach.  Cobb's main hurdle is finding a way to make his work more distinctive from that of his peers–a way to humanize his work still further. Alex's talent for burying dissonance and tension within beauty is likely his greatest and most uniquely Cobb-ian trait, but the songs without that balancing act can too easily be mistaken for the work of someone else.  Despite that, Passage to Morning is still an excellent album and an impressive creative evolution for Cobb.  There are definitely strong hints of even greater potential within these songs, but the current offering is very much an absorbing and well-composed effort in its own right.

Samples:

• The Immediate Past
• The Habit Body
• Bewildered By Its Blue

 

18 February 2013

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Albums and Singles

From its sound to its presentation, this is as much scientific experimentation as it is something to vaguely consider music. The track titles and stark, back cover–that looks more like a lab report than an album cover–are indicative of a work that is heavily focused on conceptualism. For the most part, the experiments work taken out of context as compositions, with a few hang-ups along the way.

Spectrum Spools

The entire A side of this LP is taken by "Material Study 01 (Sand)," a recording of a buried hydrophone recorded directly to MiniDisc as Pollard stood directly on top of it, shifting his weight occasionally.The result is a textural piece that emphasizes slow scraping and rubbing noises, sometimes sounding more like overly amplified vinyl surface noise, building to an almost rhythmic throb before ending.

The B side begins with "Material Study 02 (Cello and Jacket)," based upon the sound of a contact mic'd cello being dropped to a carpeted floor, then processed via guitar pedals and computer software.In this case, it bears absolutely no resemblance to its source, but instead is shaped into a low-end sustained passage that builds into a higher pitched sound later on.It is overall more consistent and has its own understated rhythm to it.

"Spatialisation Study 01" is four tones played via a home stereo and captured via seven positions in a home, with the results combined into a single eight minute piece.As "Material Study 02," the composition makes for an infinitely stretching, almost ringing sound that is heavy on the low end, with only the most subtle of variations being heard until it spreads and becomes denser.

Based upon the same session, Pollard uses audio clicks from the previous piece on "Spatialsation Study 02," replayed and recaptured via the same room-based setup. They are shaped into a percussive piece that sounds at first like the dying quivers of a drum machine, and then a wall of noise, consisting of all 49 sounds layered atop one another.The final piece, "A Pencil Rubbing for the Album Cover," is self-explanatory:a recording captured via contact mic'd paper.As blunt as its title is, the sound follows suit: a collection of scrapes and muffled noises that sounds exactly like a paper being sketched upon.

With the back cover almost clinically outlining what was used to create these recordings, down to the North Face jacket that appeared in "Material Study 02," the source and inspiration for these recordings is never obscured or hidden.For the most part, the material here could be divorced from those technical details and underlying conceptual ideas and still work as a strong acoustimatic composition.It is only at times, such as on the side-long "Material Study 01" and the final piece where the concept outshines the sound, with the former drifting into formless, repetitive territory, and the latter simply being too straight forward to be compelling.Between these two, however, is a wealth of material that works on both a conceptual and enjoyable level, and overshadows any of the album's shortcomings.

samples:

• Material Study 01
• Material Study 02
• Spatialisation Study 02

 

17 February 2013

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Albums and Singles

I'm always impressed by groups that can make a collection of distinct songs without changing much in the formula that composes each one. By sparing themselves a lot of the melancholy and slowed choruses inherent to dreamy guitar pop, Beach Fossils has made a sophomore record that feels emotionally charged without ever having to resort to gimmicks or overcompensation on mood or texture. At the core of each song is genuine pop, driven by a real desire to communicate ideas clearly.

Captured Tracks

Clash The Truth is a pop record which succeeds on very modest principles. I'm never averse to a musician throwing a lot of ideas into an album—the more the merrier if it works—but I'm still earnestly respectful of a band that takes their own process to heart and works on improving that and just that. Clash The Truth tries to make the most with a few guitars, a drum set, a handful of delay pedals, and a pleasant voice, following fairly similar templates for each song. Even at its most transparent—probably on "Brighter," the obligatory throwaway ambient interlude—there's a unique voice here that can't be easily replicated.

Usually, I would be worried about this kind of stringent structuring, but it works magnificently in the hands of talented songwriters. Primary member Dustin Payseur knows exactly when to hold back, when to pace himself, and when to drop in a second guitar melody or an offbeat drum fill. There's an edge of post-punk or surf rock or shoegaze present which varies with each piece, but it's distanced just far enough away that I find myself thinking of it as an aftertaste. Instead, I hear that primary sound, nondescript but essential, which speaks confidently on songs like "Careless" and "Shallow" as if it had always been accepted practice to seamlessly blend all these genres.

When Kazu Makino arrives for guest vocals it's perhaps a little too obvious, and songs like "Ascension" play out like a quick attempt to pad the album's somewhat brief 35 minute playing time, but these are minor disappointments. Once the caffeinated surf punk of "Crashed Out" finishes off, all is right again. Beach Fossils have made it clear that they are another group perfectly playing their roles and having fun doing so. Good for them.

samples:

• Crashed Out
• Clash the Truth
• Shallow

 

17 February 2013

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Drawing on parapsychology, pseudoscience and good old fashioned dance music, the latest album from Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt is almost unimaginably good. Based around the Ganzfeld experiments in telepathy, in the spirit of The Marriage of True Minds, this review will consist of two parts. One, the regular review by me and the other an experiment by my wife who has not heard the album but has attempted to experience it by concentrating on my thoughts as I listened to the album on headphones.

Thrill Jockey

Firstly, we present the ganzfeld approach to reviewing The Marriage of True Minds. The target (me) sat in a separate room to the receiver (my wife) and listened to The Marriage of True Minds on headphones. The receiver was allowed to sit on an armchair with her eyes covered. The receiver listened to pink noise through a set of headphones. She were asked to concentrate on the target and describe any mental imagery and mental sounds that they experienced. The receiver’s responses were recorded on a Dictaphone and transcribed below. The receiver was not allowed to listen to The Marriage of True Minds prior to the experiment and the target did not describe the album to the receiver in advance of the experiment (and indeed the receiver was not all that familiar with Matmos anyway!).

"You": There’s something like a light in the very top slightly to the left of my vision. I’m very conscious that it’s there. It feels like something high and bright, like stars and because music’s on my mind I’m thinking of like, I don’t know, like lead in, that it’s delicate somehow or maybe stripped, something like that. In my mind’s eye there’s kind of soundwaves or smoke or fog. Yeah there’s something current about it with little flashes like salmon actually coming out of a river, little flashes of brilliance. A person just a moment ago, like a figure just popped into my mind there. Kind of, a face, definitely a face there. I’m hearing looping like a motif, recurrent motif, like voices maybe. Maybe like a record scratch, actually sounds like "Doo! Na-ha. Doo!" Yeah it’s actually kind of like vinyl yeah, maybe coming to the end of the record or something. Definitely feels like there’s more, there’s a sense of more, more going on. E, the letter E. Hands, maybe hands, fingers? I’m not sure what that was. Face. Again kind of a figure. A woman or a man with long hair. Sense of movement. Backwards. Yeah, I can hear voices, it’s almost, almost constant.

"Very Large Green Triangles": It’s like a chorus going on. But it’s not like someone singing, it’s like someone calling and then this, kind of, vinyl scratch or more like a record coming to the end – actually a weird Mr. Blobby face came there for a second. Dice. Gorilla maybe. Again, yeah faces. They’re coming thick and fast as if the face is drawing in white but just the silhouette in a very stylized, then kind of an Easter Island type head. Something like a little shaft of light, a handle. Window lock. Trees. Feeling a bit self conscious. And a rod support or some little piece of metal. Window. Yeah, architectural details are running through my head. The voice or whatever it was, I’ve just realized that that’s less apparent now, that chorus. Yeah there’s a bit of self-editing going on here, things popping into my head but I can feel my conscious mind rebelling against them or interpreting them. Oh god, very clearly a rat with wings. Literally a rat with wings. Kind of turning into a hamster or a gerbil or something cuter now. Still there, definitely. Cat. They’ve gone. Cat’s there faintly. Seedlings, like watercress.

"Mental Radio": More low… I can’t describe it, the sound has kind of changed, it’s low and forward. No, I can’t put it into the words but the sound feels different. Relaxing. The word "Condor" popped into my head briefly but I’m fighting against saying it because it sounds so stupid. Phoenix or something, something sharp and not quite there. There is a feeling of birds or fish, something moving quickly. Fox. Kind of electricity meeting something, maybe chemistry. Oh and feeling of movement, very definite feeling of moving down and up at the same time, kind of pressing together but not tense. Something like a tunnel or a bubble forming or something. Teeth. There’s a definite sense of movement, this feels faster. Maybe not faster. Progressing definitely. Like it’s going somewhere.

"Ross Transcript": This feels closed in, it doesn’t actually feel good. Kind of creepy imagery coming to me. Skulls. Not human. Other. Needle and thread? I notice over the last few minutes that my proprioception has gone wonky. My head very much feels like it’s in the wrong place, not where I know it to be. There suddenly very busy. It feels a bit fussier now, more bits. I am seeing circles, tunnels, something. Sorry, I’m probably mumbling. It just popped into my head: A tunnel maybe I’m dying. Don’t go into the light!

"Teen Paranormal Romance": Roses, old fashioned tea roses. Honeycomb structure. Complex. Amber, amber orange, yellow. Yeah, definitely honeycomb. Kind of bubbles, bulbous, I’m not sure. Wasps. Proprioception has gone haywire. I feel, it feels really disconcerting. It feels like my legs are up much higher than they are. Like I’m bent over. Now I’m seeing angular shapes like rods kind of piled up on each other. This feels awful, my body feels like it’s totally wrong. White just popped into my head for a second but I can’t put anything around it, just a little white something. Yeah. This feels terrible. Moustache, definitely old fashioned mustache. Kind of M-shapes, like when you draw birds as a child. Those kind of shapes. Cherub briefly there for a second. I shouldn’t have self-censored but briefly there was something like Darth Vadar’s helmet. Now I’m thinking of Death Star. Yeah, sorry, going down a road here. Space is in my mind now definitely.

"Tunnel": Kind of gauzy, gauzy material. Light coming through. Yeah the light kind of coming through a white material, slightly opaque material. Unfolding, there’s a huge sense of unfolding now. The light’s kind of getting bigger in my field of vision. Again, brief concern that I’m dying but kind of OK. Kind of V-shapes going on as if like in a ravine or something. Cloudy now, misty or my vision’s getting greyer. Darkening kind of like there are storm clouds gathering. Feels colder now. My proprioception is mental. There’s a lot less going on now, it feels quieter. That sound is back, the kind of vinyl… bouncing. Ooh I feel, there was a moment there where I felt Alice in Wonderland-y like I was much smaller, like condensed. It feels narrow, that’s the only word. And there’s this kind of surreal element to it. Circus. Toilet briefly popped into my head there. Astronaut. Think white is in there somewhere but I can’t put my finger on the other things. Sense of surfacing. Two women talking to one another. Dressed in their finery. Movement – right to left and left to right like I’m being kind of shook sideways. A little figure, not sure what. A baby. Everything feels a lot louder over the last little while, a lot busier.

"In Search of a Lost Faculty": Seeing sea mines. Coral. Tube coming out of something. Like something small coming out of something bigger. Kind of like grinning skulls like a stylistic face again. A man working on something. Like a forge, you know working intently on something. A person waiting. On a bed. Something growing from something. A lot more organic, a lot more like the human form, more exaggerated. Like elements of nature, very much like animals, just going through small, fine-detailed. Wooden blocks, figures, shapes. Checkerboard pattern. Mount Rushmore, something… carving of a face but very angular. Brown. Hands reaching. Again thinking of kind of small animals maybe.

"Aetheric Vehicle": The Italian flag briefly. Fussy angular fiddly patterns. Actually quite like the outer edge of the sun. I’m definitely getting distracted now by internal sensations. It’s becoming harder to concentrate. Cork in a bottle. Coop from Twin Peaks. Red. And a girl with her hands open wide, a kind of exaggerated "I don’t know" stance. That girl is very much in my mind now. Spinning mechanics maybe. Something like weather apparatus. X. Y. I feel like John’s concentrating very hard now. Maybe forcing himself more, I’m not sure. Unfortunately my inner skeptic is having a little war with myself now. Big and expansive but gappy, very loose. The snow, yeah definitely trees in snow. There’s something incongruous, something I can’t put my finger on. Something not quite adding up or quite right. Really not getting wrong but maybe juxtaposed is more the thing. Night sky. There’s a fuller sound in my ears, the noise seems to have upped a gear. Very conscious I’m probably mumbling. I was thinking very much a rapid pulsing but there is actually a vibration coming through. Either that or I’m really tuning into your thoughts John and you’ve gone for a very bassy sound.

"ESP": There’s definitely a sense of rumbling but can’t put my finger on it. Kind of a top-down feeling, don’t know what that’s about. Thinking of sliding, sliding down. I actually thinks this takes a lot of training, I can’t get past the self-consciousness or the self-editing that’s going on. There’s thoughts briefly coming and slipping away before I can really get a handle on them or decide what they are but I think that’s the conscious mind just imposing itself on this. And here was me thinking I didn’t engage my brain before I talked but apparently no, it really does happen. I’m getting teeth, body parts, eyes, disassembled, kind of, that sounds a bit macabre but no just brief glimpses of individual parts. Mostly an eye. A chain and a lock. An eye there. Really clearly. Like a wolf’s eye. Purple. Figure moving. Silhouetted. There is definitely more like a bass line that’s kicked in, very rhythmic, very centred. Building up speed and then dissipating, gone. There it is, very clearly. Not as clear as before but it came in there again a second but it’s gone. Bathtub was there for a sec. There’s definitely a bass line there coming in every so often. Trendy person there with the black plastic framed glasses. Kind of Salvador Dali rock composition. Bass line's coming back in but it’s gone. Now there’s more, less heavy, a lighter sound. More fine-tuned. Not fine-tuned, finer. I’m really struggling with the sense of time passing. This feels like it should be the 40 minutes. I’m finding it hard to hold myself in concentration. I’m definitely beginning to get I think a little bit anxious about this – Oh! And it’s done!

Matmos have created a stunning work that is as much indebted to methods like free association and as it is to psychic powers. Their employment of unexpected juxtapositions and sense of the other on this album, more than any of their previous releases, is as much a work of psychoanalysis and Surrealism as it is a parapsychological experiment. The ideas may or may not be psychic in origin (personally, I am not even a little bit convinced of it) but the ideas are at the least great and they present a perfect springboard for Matmos to begin from.

"You" (a cover of a Leslie Winer song) sets the scene with a female voice talking about telepathy and the moon, describing everyday activities before another voices asks us "Will you hold that thought?" Musically, some pretty piano provides a platform for sequencers, rubber bands and banjos to take us to another place. The piece also introduces the ubiquitous if unassuming triangle which aside from being one of the most humble of instruments, is a key image throughout The Marriage of True Minds. As if on cue, "Very Large Green Triangles" (also featured on The Ganzfeld EP in a different form) is classic Matmos with its mix of humor, high concept, modern composition and a banging beat. It drives through this plane and into the next, like the very thoughts the duo are trying to project.

I never feared that Matmos would make a dull album based on the subject matter but any danger of that occurring is blown away with each successive piece. "Mental Radio" is a maelstrom of horns and sirens whereas "Ross Transcript" is a concrete poem consisting of manipulated voices, kitchen appliances and abstract synthesizer waves. However, the album’s highlight is undoubtedly the monster piece "Tunnel" where everything that they strive for in melding the paranormal with their music works like magic. A biting guitar, didgeridoo-like sounds, triangles and a pounding beat come together like the sort of concentrated psychic assault that only exists in comics. "There’s a light at the end of the tunnel but it isn’t daylight" – free association or telepathic exchange, "Tunnel" gives me chills.

"In Search of a Lost Faculty" is another highpoint but one of a different caliber. Here the recordings of the participants of Matmos’s experiments are heard in a mostly unadulterated form. All the participants mention chiming, bells or musical triangles (or some variation thereof). As such, Daniel and Schmidt create a haunting soundscape out of struck triangles, bell-like sounds and the ethereal sound of Clodagh Simonds’ voice. Early versions of this have been performed at Matmos live shows since 2008 and it is fantastic to finally have a studio version to go with my memories. Finally, a cover of The Buzzcocks song "ESP" closes the album, which Matmos deconstruct in their own unique way. It is a great rendition of the song that caps off the album in a wry, tongue-in-cheek way. The original already has a fantastic melody but Matmos rework it in such a way as to make it, aptly, bore into the centre of my brain where it has stayed for weeks now.

So while I am less than convinced of telepathy (the vaguely random, read-what-you-like-into-it transcript of our ganzfeld experiment was fun but more wrong than right), I am totally convinced of The Marriage of True Minds. Matmos have taken their time in developing this album but it has been time well spent as this is easily up with their best work like A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure or The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast.

 

17 February 2013

Administrator

Albums and Singles

While singing has frequently been part of Yoshi Wada’s other compositions, this is the first work of his to be released that dispenses with all other forms of instrumentation. Three male voices are all that is needed to create this intense and beautiful work captured during two performances in 1978. Combining the ultra modernism of the minimalist movement and ancient vocal traditions, Singing in Unison rivals any other modern vocal work I have heard thanks to its powerful mix of simple structures, complex harmonies and, above all, its emotional warmth.

 

Em

In the 1960s, La Monte Young ditched his saxophone and began singing drones accompanied by his partner Marian Zazeela while Tony Conrad, John Cale and Angus MacLise created a heady wall of precise harmonization around them. The Theatre of Eternal Music would eventually collapse over disputes as to whether Young was a composer or these were group improvisations that belonged equally to all five of them. However, Young and Zazeela’s fascination with singing in an incredibly exact way continued and can be heard on albums like Dream House 78’17" (recorded with a new, Young-approved line up of the Theatre of Eternal Music) or backing Pandit Pran Nath on multiple recordings of this master of the Kirana Gharana style of Indian classical music. Young and Zazeela had invited Pran Nath to New York where he stayed, teaching interested musicians the demanding techniques he had developed throughout his practice of the craft.

One such student was Wada, who learned not only Pran Nath’s style and musical heritage but also Pran Nath’s use of dense harmonies that were possible using only the human voice (in a similar manner to how other composers were using instruments to achieve the same harmonic outcomes). In the liner notes, Wada describes his lessons with Pran Nath and his strict regime of practicing early every morning singing with a tambura. Mixed with memories from childhood of Buddhist monks chanting in prayer and his exposure to a group of women singing traditional Macedonian music, the seeds were sown for Singing in Unison. Wada envisaged a male alternative to the Macedonian women’s approach and combined it with the vocal training he had received from Pran Nath. Singing in Unison involves three male voices singing a wordless, timeless chant. It sounds like primal folk music and is far removed from the volume-intense bagpipe and installation works he would be better known for.

The group itself consisted of Wada, Richard Hayman (not the Boston Pops arranger!) and Imani Smith and it is hard to hear where the three voices differ as they merge into one another. A picture of a promotional postcard in the liner notes describes the work as "Improvisational singing in unison" but Wada’s own notes from 2012 suggest that the form was originally based on his own solo improvisations and then written down (there is a copy of a page from his handwritten score also included). The three voices largely follow the same undulating form, going up and down together. There are augmentations here and there along with deliberate shifts in pitch to bring out an array of microtonal intervals. It is these moments when Singing in Unison goes from being simply beautiful to being intensely spiritual, almost mystic. Yet, there is no spiritual agenda here, this is the power of music at what first to be its most basic level (the human voice) but tailored to hit our ears and our minds in all the sweet spots. Wada states his goal is communication and with Singing in Unison, he successfully manages to send a message of peace to the listener.

As with one of the previous Wada reissues on Em Records, the entire work is only available on vinyl with an extract from the complete recordings available on the CD edition. In the case of Singing in Unison, this means that the CD contains only one of the two recorded performances. I went for the vinyl as I wanted to get the whole lot but I may end up getting the CD too so I can listen to Singing in Unison without having to interrupt the music every 20 or so minutes. The performance included on the CD is a slightly better recording only because there is less background noise during the performances. However, both performances pack the same emotional punch as each other even if at times they stray a little from each other so perhaps there was more improvisation than I was giving the group credit for.

Improvisation or not, what matters most about Singing in Unison is that it pulls me in completely for its entirety. Wada’s music always takes me over but normally it is due to its relentlessness. With Singing in Unison, he leaves the shrill steamroller effect of bagpipes and big percussion aside to persuade the listener instead of conquering them.

 

17 February 2013

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Edward Ka-Spel's recent hot streak arguably takes a bit of a break with this release, but that is at least partially by design, given the Chemical Playschool series' role as a repository for indulgence, improvisation, experimentation, orphaned songs, and general weirdness.  The bulk of these lengthy pieces center around Ka-Spel's surreal, paranoid monologues and throbbing, synth-based space rock vamps, which can be quite compelling (and also disturbed-sounding).  The catch is that these lengthy not-quite-songs are not particularly well distilled, leaving the album's many high points embedded in quite a bit of meandering psychedelia.

Rustblade

"Immaculate Conception" opens the album in somewhat deceptive fashion, as it initially feels a lot like a catchy, well-crafted song.  Over a very minimal throbbing synth line, Ka-Spel sings a pleasantly lilting melody while strange sounds and backwards guitars and pianos swell around him.  That illusion only lasts for about four minutes though, at which point the piece becomes a very clear foreshadowing of what is to come.  The aesthetic can certainly be described as "space rock," but it is a very specific and unusual strain of it, in that most expected "rock" elements are nowhere to be found.  Instead, Ka-Spel tends to sing somewhat linear songs over subtly pulsing electronics until the bottom drops out and the structure is crushed in a black hole of abstraction, studio effects, and moody atmosphere.  The only difference between "Immaculate Conception" and the three major pieces that follow is that "Conception" is just nine minutes long and only fleetingly collapses before regaining its structure.

I suppose that probably makes it the album's most accessible song, but I have always preferred the Dots' darker, weirder side, which is where most of the album's remainder takes up residence.  My favorite piece is the (initially) warm and burbling "Sparks Fly/Museum," which eventually gets consumed by an escalating tide of electronic chaos.  After a very lengthy descent into The Silverman's rumbling, bleeping, and whooshing free-form spaciness, a new (and superior) song emerges.  The new song ("Museum") is much more dense and menacing, showcasing how truly compelling and blackly funny Ka-Spel's monologues can be ("I'm here, suckers!").

The similarly lengthy "The Opium Den" contains only fleeting traces of actual song, but offers an extremely beautiful instrumental passage that sounds like hammered dulcimer before it ultimately dissolves into some rather hallucinogenic drone with whispered and rasped vocals.  "Ranting and Raving," on the other hand, returns to the darkness of "Museum," as Ka-Spel's creepy, echo-heavy stream-of-conscious almost-poetry ("please keep an ear out for my screams") unspools over a heavily throbbing bed of buzzing industrial synth and clattering, panning tribal drums.  Then some sort of gibbering, chirping digitized menagerie erupts and my brain is left well and truly scrambled. After that, there is nothing left but the come-down.  Though uncharacteristically brief, "Immaculate Conclusion" brings the album to an appropriately eerie close, as the increasingly processed Ka-Spel endlessly chants "you all belong to me" over layers of buzzing and squelching radio waves and a fragilely melancholy melody until his voice fades out to leave only a crackling aftermath.

The whole album adds up to complicated experience that is pleasantly difficult to wrap my head around.  Taken on a song-by-song basis. Chemical Playschool 15 can seem quite exasperating and flawed, as nearly all of the songs feel like great ideas that have been stretched, bloated, and diluted into merely decent songs with occasional and ephemeral flashes of brilliance.  Taken as a complete album, however, it all seems perversely successful and cunningly assembled.  In fact, all the excess and indulgence and 20-minute songs seem to turn into assets in the right light, as the album could not be nearly as immersive if it were shorter or more aggressively edited...and total immersion is essential to this suite's magic.  I may not like every aspect of Chemical Playschool 15, but by the end of the album, I definitely felt like I had been on a long, surreal, and exhausting journey and emerged from the wilderness a little bit different, which is an experience that few other albums can offer.

• Sparks Fly/Museum
• The Opium Den, Parts 1-3
• Ranting and Raving

 

 

 

17 February 2013

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Albums and Singles

Daniel Padden has always been a prickly, inscrutable, and unpredictable artist, equally capable of visionary brilliance and perplexing, inaccessible indulgence.  This latest effort is an especially perverse and puzzling one, as Padden takes his long-standing fascination with English and Eastern European folk music into more accessible, song-like, and vocal-centric territory.  It is an intermittently successful experiment, but The One Ensemble's greatest talents definitely lie elsewhere.

Pickled Egg

There are two things that I absolutely love about The One Ensemble: their ability to cohere into a lumbering, raggedly visceral juggernaut and their talent for combining beauty with savage dissonance (a feat perhaps best exemplified on Wayward the Fourth's "Horsehead Waltz").  Unfortunately, most of Oriole either lacks both of those elements, or employs them in fleeting, schizophrenic, or less-than-optimum ways.

The opening "The Farthest West" comes closest to capturing the band at their best, as it veers from truly lovely viola melodies to bludgeoning tango to a squealing, snarling viola freak-out over the course of its 7-minute length.  There is even an evocative and enigmatic chant interlude in the middle ("these are the mountains that will fall from the skies of Morocco").  It comes extremely close to being a great song, as all of the individual parts are quite striking and complement each other beautifully, but the tango motif is flogged a little too aggressively with too little development for my liking.

After that promising beginning, however, Oriole becomes something of an odd and uneven grab-bag, as the remaining five songs are a mixture of traditional (or faux-traditional) sea shanties, covers, and reprises of earlier material.  The main issue is that vocals tend to become the primary focus of a song, largely overshadowing the more compelling instrumentation beneath.  That would not be problematic if the songs were particularly strong, but that brings up yet another issue: Padden's song choices are not solid enough to carry an album.  The cover of Moondog's "Pigmy Pig" is a prime example: while the Eastern-European-drinking-song melody of piece certainly hits Padden's historic comfort zone, the repetitive and absurdist quasi-nursery rhyme lyrics very nearly drive me insane ("Pigmy Pig, how big you are, big as Pigmy Seal").

Also, there are not one, but two sea shanties on the album, which is quite a lot given that there are only six songs in total.  The dirge-like "Chicken on a Raft" is a traditional piece in which a sailor laments his weariness and love troubles over breakfast, while "Verdant le Coq" is a shrilly raucous and lurching sing-along.  Both of them thankfully erupt into something more eventually, but I cannot get around the fact that they are actual sea shanties, which is a genre that does not resonate with me at all.  I understand that the emotions at a song's core can transcend the actual words and that Daniel was trying to tap into something timeless, but I simply could not identify with those sea-faring folk on a real emotional level ("chicken on a raft on a Monday morning, oh what a terrible sight to see").  I do not particularly like eggs though ("chicken on a raft" means "egg on toast"), so maybe that piece will someday grow on me.

The album is rounded out by a couple of interesting misfires.  "Burning Must" revisits the churning "Gypsy dance" theme of Live at VPRO's "Mustard Mustard," but also periodically sounds like a locked-groove of Dexy's Midnight Runners trying their hand at dissonant Dischord-style art rock. "Oriole," on the other hand, is all over the place.  Some parts are great, particularly the point near the beginning where the viola and cello are furiously sawing away over something that sounds like a marching band attempting to replicate a busy signal with maximum force.  It has an extremely unconventional structure though, which I had a hard time embracing.  A few themes seem to repeat, but the transitions between the major key accordion sections, the indecipherable sung passages, and the darker, more string-heavy parts seem a bit sudden, arbitrary,  and confounding.  It reminds me a bit of over-achieving technical metal or prog rock bands who cram lots of abrupt changes and disparate sections into their songs to pointedly highlight their virtuosity and unwillingness to limit themselves to pedestrian song structures.  I wish it did not.

On a more positive note, Oriole still sounds like The One Ensemble, which is no small feat.  While the increased emphasis on vocals and the more singular embrace of folk traditions have certainly shifted the focus a bit, Padden and his compatriots remain as unique, impassioned, skillful, and anachronistic as ever.  I am quite curious about this album's genesis, as it feels much more like a one-off ("The One Ensemble make a deeply eccentric folk album!") or an odds-and-ends collection than a new, significant artistic statement.  As an album, Oriole is just not focused or coherent enough to measure up to the rest of the Ensemble's recent work.  There are certainly hints of greatness to be found, but they feel like they may have been released before they had a chance to fully grow and take shape.

• The Farthest West
• Chicken on a Raft
• Oriole

 

17 February 2013

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Albums and Singles

A timely and welcome reissue of the first part of the trilogy of recordings by
Ferial Confine dating back to 1985.

Catalogue No.  : Siren 021
Released by Siren Records, Tokyo
Release Date : 17 February 2013

11 February 2013

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Albums and Singles

Compiling their vinyl debut and follow-up EP, this compilation captures the Chicago rock supergroup (made up of some of the city’s best known noise artists) honing and perfecting their surprisingly restrained and tuneful, but appropriately grandiose work.

Self-Released

Consisting of Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded, Intrinsic Action) on vocals, Greg Ratajczak (Plague Bringer) on guitar, drummer Dylan Posa (Cheer-Accident, Flying Luttenbachers), bassist Kenny Rasmussen and percussionist Blake Edwards (Vertonen), there are a lot of recognizable people here to those versed in the harsh noise world, so my interest was piqued when I heard Anatomy of Habit was more of a post-punk death rock band.

Within the first few minutes of opener "After the Water" (the shortest track at about seven and a half minutes), I immediately felt some kinship with the short-lived Freek Records label, who also captured some more noise-oriented bands doing more guitar-based music, such as Bodychoke and Ramleh.Maybe not in a direct manner, since those artists leaned more into a distorted, occasionally psychedelic squall while AoH has a much cleaner, almost ascetically sparse approach to their epic length compositions.

For example "Overcome" sticks to a sparse echoing bass and quiet feedbacking guitar structure rather rigidly, with Solotroff's vocals and slight variations to keep things moving.Slowly but surely noisier guitar drifts in, building to an aggressive climax of slow, but monolithic guitar riffs, stabbing drums and raw, aggressive vocals.It is not a song to just casually listen to; it demands full attention, which is rewarded at the end.

Repetition is a key piece of these songs, most of which clock in at around a full length side of vinyl in duration."Overcome" and "The Decade Plan" open with elongated passages displaying simple, but effective variations, with Solotroff's vocals occasionally drifting more into mantra like repetitions.Never is it dull and tedious though, because the songs consistently build to dramatic crescendos that make them captivating.

While there is a variety of sounds and approaches, it is a dark record."The Decade Plan" opens as closed to upbeat as it gets, which is quickly contradicted by a dark, doom-laden closing.Even the more Joy Division tinged "Torch", with its majestic rhythmic dissonance is reformed into an early '80s metal riff-fest later on, bearing a passing resemblance to Metallica’s "For Whom The Bell Tolls" in the best possible way.

With the debut LP ("Overcome" and "Torch") coming out in 2011 and last year’s EP ("After the Water," "The Decade Plan") both being relatively recent, there is a noticeable difference that can be heard between the two, with the more recent work showing a bit more variation and nuance in comparison to the more bluntly aggressive earlier work.The material works together as a consistent whole though, and feels more like a full debut album rather than a collection of previously released material, managing to be both powerful, but also memorable and catchy.

samples:

• After the Water
• The Decade Plan
• Torch