15 April 2012

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Albums and Singles

In theory, this doesn't seem like it should not be an especially noteworthy album, as Brad Rose is constantly collaborating with other musicians and has already amassed a vast, Merzbow-esque discography under many, many guises and I am fairly unfamiliar with his foil this time around (guitarist Pete Fosco).  Also, this is already the fourth Concessionaires release.  In reality, however, this duo conjures up one hell of a crushing, synth-heavy futuristic dystopia.

Under the Spire

This is one of those extraordinarily rare times in which I fell hopelessly in love with an album within its first 30 seconds, as "Mirrorshades" is a staggering mechanized hellscape from start to finish.  The actual framework is quite simple (just an incredibly dense and ominous two-chord synth pattern), but the relentless pulsing and thumping and fluttering chaos that surrounds it elevates the piece into something both fearsome and mesmerizing. It sounds so disturbed, massive, and inhuman that it is almost impossible to reconcile that it originated from two friends convening for a rare, improvised recording session in Oklahoma.  I can't even guess what Fosco is doing, as nothing sounds even remotely like a guitar, unless he has some pedal that makes his playing sound like a malfunctioning spaceship getting sucked into a black hole and crushed.

Unsurprisingly, Rose and Fosco are not able to replicate that scary triumph six more times, though the lush and brooding "Gazelocked" comes pretty close.  However, they are able to make a graceful transition from "brilliant" and "startling" to merely "excellent."  There are a number of obvious reference points for the rest of the album's aesthetic, like Tangerine Dream's Zeit or Phaedra, Vangelis's Blade Runner soundtrack, or the bleak rumblings of Lustmord, but Concessionaires are different enough from their space music forebears to carve out their own distinct niche.  In some ways, Artificial Interface is a skillful combination/continuation of all three of the aforementioned artists' work: Tangerine Dream's relentlessly repeating patterns; Vangelis' melodic futurism; and Lustmord's enormity and heft.  In other ways, however, it seems new–like contemporary drone music suffused with some serious deep space dread and alienation.  In any case, it is unexpectedly muscular, multilayered, concise, and devoid of any annoying synth noodling (which is something I absolute cannot stand).

While I haven't heard Concessionaires' other three releases, which were only released as very limited cassette editions, I suspect a lot of the focus and success of Artificial Interface is due to the band's new addition: producer Matt McDowell.  By the duo's own admission, this album is the distillation of several hours of long (and occasionally messy) jams, yet it certainly doesn't sound like it.  The only real clue is that each piece is essentially built upon a single motif, though that single motif is usually multi-layered and textured.  Having a talented third party carve away the meandering rise and fall of the improvisations to isolate a few minutes of magic makes all the difference in the world and McDowell seems to have handled that difficult task unerringly: these pieces are sculpted and mastered for maximum impact.  Certainly, some of the pieces are stronger than others (the languid come-down "Flat Pink Octagon" being another highlight), but the better pieces are easily among the best new music that I have heard this year.

Samples:

• Mirrorshades
• Live Angels
• Gazelocked

 

15 April 2012

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Albums and Singles

There's a saying something to the effect of "You'll never be as good as your first album," and for Frank Tovey, his second Fad Gadget record doesn't make a good argument against that statement. In 1981, Tovey seems to have been trying to distance himself from the electro domination that prevailed throughout his first singles and much of Fireside Favourites. Depeche Mode were graduating from opening for Fad Gadget to headlining their own shows, and Mute was being recognized as a home to many synth-dominated acts. Tovey made choices that may have suited him right at the time but years later I don't think they hold up so well.

Mute

It's important to note that between Fireside Favourites and Incontinent came a single for "Make Room." It featured live drumming from Wire's (then ex-) drummer, Robert Gotobed, Wire friend Desmond Simmons on synth, and a slapping funk bass riff contributed by Pete Balmer. The song leaned more in the direction of electro-funk than that of synth-punk, and didn't leave nearly as much an impression on the fans, critics, and history as the B-side, the seminal "Lady Shave." "Lady Shave" was clearly the more bold side. It more closely resembled the early Fad singles, but, regardless of the instrumentation, the song was an attack: it was aggressive, dirty, catchy, and unavoidable. I mention the importance of this song as it seems like such a poor choice to relinquish such an awesome feat to the B-side. To me, this is the choice that sets Incontinent up for mediocrity.

One of the most unfortunate perils of British music is that the fickle press seems to have had an unfair influence on decisions of bands and record labels. Just as soon as acts like OMD, Human League, Gary Numan, or Soft Cell were "in" for being synth acts, they were "out," and most were changing their sound in the early '80s to either prove that they could create music by (needlessly) adding excessive amounts of more traditional rock instruments or cave in to record executives who wanted them to "update" their sound to a more commercially viable "pop." (This is a repeating cycle, see: the demise of shoegaze in the early '90s.)

"Blind Eyes" doesn't launch the album with a very bold statement. The funky bass, piano, hand claps, and live drums, are all mixed so homogenously dead center, and Tovey's vocals blend in so much with the colorless tapestry that they too sound almost completely void of personality.It certainly doesn't sound representative of the Fad Gadget who was introduced to the world, launching himself off bars and engaging everyone. Even the song "Swallow It," which is a fantastic song on paper (it's got a great riff and audacious lyrics), sounds rather flat.

"Saturday Night Special" is pure genius, however, it sounds unlike anything Tovey did before or after. The song, a waltz with harpsichord providing the bulk of the instrumentation, either gets its name from the common slang for a small, cheap handgun, or perhaps it is a nod to the Lynyrd Skynyrd song with the same title. It features some of the most memorable lyrics ever penned by Tovey and is this album's jab at America:

"Every man should have the right to own a gun
Every man should have the right to shoot someone.
Film stars and farmers still forcing opinions like TV politicians playing cowboys and indians."

Despite the setback of having a somewhat flat production like the other songs, "Saturday Night Special" manages to be a breakthrough, as is the closer for side one of the LP, the instrumental title track. This electro gem features some delicious sequencing by Daniel Miller and probably would have made a great B-side to "Lady Shave," which should have not only been an A-side, but was damn good enough to make Incontinent a better record as side one song one. "Manual Dexterity," the instrumental song opening the record's side two, on the other hand, is forgettable enough to have been left as a B-side and off the album.

"King of the Flies," got a remix before being featured on a 7", making it more immediate and less bland, however it didn't make the song any less forgettable. "Diminished Responsibility," on the other hand, screams to be a full-album side, as the nearly six minute piece with drone waves and noises could easily last for another 15 minutes. The album's closer, "Plain Clothes," is almost unlistenable due to the painfully uncomfortably distorted guitar riffing.

Sure, Frank, too wanted to prove that he could record an album loaded with more traditional instrumentation, but it wasn't what he was good at, not at this point. What followed the next year, Under the Flag, thankfully more than made up for the poor decision making that went into Incontinent.

samples:

• Saturday Night Special
• Incontinent
• Diminished Responsibility

 

11 April 2012

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Albums and Singles

I've grown to expect unusual albums from Daniel Padden and this one did not disappoint me.  Much like Sublime Frequencies and Harappian Night Recordings, Ship Chop is the product of an omnivorous love of indigenous and exotic music from around the world: Padden took his favorite records and turned them into collage pieces that inventively combine previously unrelated cultures and sounds. Most remarkable about the album, however, is how exacting he was with his editing.  This easily could have been a murky and surreal miasma of overlapping recordings, but it isn't.  Instead, this album is surprisingly coherent, sharp, and hook-filled.  While there quite a few shorter pieces that are too brief to be satisfying, the handful of more extended songs are pretty unerringly excellent and it all forms a memorably warped whole.

Dekorder

The first thing I realized as I listened to this album is that Daniel Padden has excellent and fascinating taste in music, but my second epiphany was that he approached this project in a surprisingly ego-free way.  A lot of the time, his editing is so subtle as to be unnoticeable.  Padden's aim was clearly not to dazzle the world with his clever juxtapositions or inventive layering.  Instead, Ship Chop unfolds like a very eccentric mixtape, recontextualizing many of Daniel's favorite snatches of music to heighten their impact and better illuminate their inherent beauty.  The opening piece ("Various Saints") is initially a perfect example of that non-intrusive approach, as something that sounds like a Chinese funeral march slowly segues into strangely ghostly whooping, but it ultimately morphs into a groove composed of heavily chopped chanting.  The second piece, "Flared Up By Love," is a bit less schizophrenic: it is essentially a repeating male vocal over a simple flute pattern and an African or Indian drum loop.  It all sounds perfectly coherent and natural together, but it is highly likely that none of those individual elements originate from the same country, culture, or time period.

As alluded to earlier, Padden's degree of inspiration is often in directional proportion to song length.  The album's centerpiece is the 9-minute "Dancer's Reverse," which weaves together an eerie kalimba-sounding motif with some of the most tortured and forlorn-sounding strings that I've ever heard (they sound like violins, but anything is possible on this album).  That's only the starting point though, as it eventually cycles through some quasi-religious chanting, rumbling drums, and bizarre cut-up loops.  That kalimba returns again in the album's other clear highlight (the uneasy "Belly of Parchment"), where it is beautifully coupled with blurred and subtly dissonant flutes. The violins come back in a great song too, sounding more tortured than ever in "Rattling Belts."  Notably, that same piece ultimately becomes one of the weirder and more disorienting stretches on the album once the crazed hooting, yelping, and loud false laughter comes in.

It is definitely the darker pieces that resonate most strongly with me, but they wouldn't be nearly as effective if the rest of the album were any less unpredictable and varied.  Padden and his unwitting collaborators cover pretty much the entire gamut of human emotion in just under an hour: joy, pain, celebration, religious ecstasy, humor–it's all here.  The magic lies in how compellingly and inventively Daniel is able to unfold his condensed abstract history of all humanity.  Sometimes the changes are startling and abrupt, but there are also many times where something initially comical or absurd (a strangled bagpipe-esque snippet) is used as the groundwork for something much deeper.  Notably, the album also highlights the fact that much of the music that I would classify as "experimental" these day falls within fairly limited parameters in regards to production, instrumentation, timbre, and the types of scales and melodies used.  Ship Chop sounds quite bold and unique amidst that context.  It has some missteps and compositional flaws, certainly (great parts end too quickly, some transitions are too jarring, etc.), but they don't ever stop the album from being a playful, bizarre, and mesmerizing experience.

Samples:

• Dancer's Reverse
• Belly of Parchment
• Rattling Belt

 

 

 

11 April 2012

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Albums and Singles

Michal Jacaszek is one of the few contemporary composers around who is able to blend classical themes and instrumentation with digitized noise without sounding forced or unnatural.  It's a very distinctive aesthetic that he has been honing for a decade now and it seems to grow more refined with each new album.  Glimmer doesn't stylistically diverge at all from my expectations, but Jacaszek has made some definite improvements in building textural layers and balancing his characteristic gloom with some warmth and movement.  Those minor tweaks collectively make a big difference, as this might be his finest album yet.

Ghostly International

One of the more perplexing problems in my life as a music lover is that I do not like the harpsichord at all, yet a number of great musicians use it for some of their best songs (Joanna Newsom, Colleen, etc.).  Jacascek goes one step further than most, however, as he makes it the very foundation of his sound here.  This puts him at a distinct disadvantage with me and my ears, but his instincts are mostly quite good.  Also, he makes very effective use of both clarinet and acoustic guitar, which helps.  He loses me a bit whenever he starts to approximate morose baroque chamber music, but the album's more abstract, ravaged, and creaking pieces are pretty stellar.  Ruin and decay might be Jacaszek's primary areas of expertise, actually: he seems to evoke them better than practically anyone else.  He is also quite adept at melancholy romanticism, which makes a striking combination.  When he is at his best, it sounds roughly like a zombie Bach and his undead friends are playing a forlorn concerto for the damned with rusted and cobweb-covered instruments.

Michael Gordon ventured into somewhat similar stylistic territory with his disturbing Decasia score, but he was much more aggressive and used teeth-rattlingly detuned instruments.  Jacaszek's work is far more subtle and listenable because he is able to maintain the illusion texturally while still remaining conventionally melodic instrumentally.  There are some great individual motifs strewn throughout Glimmer, like the melancholy overlapping clarinets in "Windhover," or the stuttering Spanish-tinged guitar at the beginning of "As Each Tucked String Tells," but Michal tends to shine brightest  in the shadows and periphery.

For me, the real beauty and genius of this album lies in its submerged-sounding swells, escalating hiss and crackle, odd creaks and echoes, reversed loops, and rare roars of noise.  In this regard, "Evening Strains to be Time's Vast" is probably Glimmer's single greatest piece, as it unfolds in an eerie, slow-burning backwards lurch beneath a languidly beautiful clarinet solo before erupting in a caustic squall of noise.  While that is definitely the album's harshest and most cathartic moment, its brilliant crescendo is not a fluke: Michal achieves a similar degree of roiling brilliance at the end of "Dare-gale."

Obviously, I still wish there was a lot less harpsichord on Glimmer (apologies to guest harpsichordist Margosia Skotnicka).  Personal prejudice aside, it is responsible for too many of the album's rare moments of obviousness or dubious nods to chamber music.  Also, I think Jacaszek errs on the side of sounding too much like a soundtrack composer sometimes.  Literally everything else about this album is wonderful though.  Jacaszek still has some room to grow as a composer, but his textural wizardry as a producer is unimpeachable and I absolutely love Andrzej Wojciechowski's beautifully nuanced clarinet playing.  And I can't fault Jacaszek's vision: he has certainly carved out an appealing niche that is uniquely his own, which is a rare thing.  For all its brooding, gloom, and neo-classicism, Glimmer is a remarkably singular, vibrant, and deep listening experience.

Samples:

• Dare-Gale
• Windhover
• Only Not Within Seeing of the Sun

 

11 April 2012

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Albums and Singles

When I first found Throbbing Gristle's live album, I expected it to be the ultimate TG time capsule--preserving TG's live sound for future generations—but the band had other plans.  Rather than a live recording made at a pubic gig, Heathen Earth was a contrived and controlled affair that captured the sound of Throbbing Gristle performing for an invited audience in their studio. Rather than a blistering assault, it played more like a subdued (albeit menacing) jam session. They never made it easy.

Industrial Records

I picked up a copy of the original CD release of Heathen Earth when I was in college.  I paid little attention to the liner notes when I first scanned through that strange, muddy mess of a record so I had no idea that it was a live recording until sometime later. I was already familiar with 20 Jazz Funk Greats and D.O.A., but I had always treated TG as an act to be revered and appreciated more than truly enjoyed. Drew Daniel's wonderfully exhaustive book on 20 Jazz Funk Greats reignited my interest in trying to understand TG in the context of their time. So, when it came time for me to revisit Heathen Earth through the newly remastered reissue, I jumped at the chance to experience the live sound of Throbbing Gristle anew.

To be fair, Throbbing Gristle's recorded sound was so raw that it often carried about it the noise, imperfection, and energy of a live recording anyway. So if Heathen Earth sounds not so far away from a studio recording as one might expect, well that only makes sense given the constrained conditions under which it was recorded and the unpredictable nature of the artists who wrote and performed it. How fitting for a band that skewered expectations at every turn to release a live album that sounds in some ways more polished than their studio records.

This remastered edition benefits the source material greatly. The remastered mixes feature more stereo separation and a much-improved frequency range.  I hear the difference the most in the low frequencies, as if some of the low mid-range has been carved out of the mixes to provide a little more separation. The mechanized kick drum and bass line in "Something Came Over Me" feel pumped up, while the squealy static noise in "The World is a War Film" sits higher in the mix.  Chris Carter says that he didn't EQ anything during the remaster process in an effort to preserve the sound of the original records, but the revisit on the source material has made a notable difference here.  Everything is just a bit louder too, though thankfully not bashed over the head with the brick wall limiter that might be tempting to apply to a 30 year old, eight track recording.

After all these years, the aspect I find most striking about Heathen Earth is how it defies TG's confrontational image.  The track list seems to be chosen specifically to avoid the freakout energy of tracks like "Hamburger Lady" and "Subhuman," and while Heathen Earth is far from easy listening, it is generally smoother and less difficult than many other TG records. The record's most abrasive moments come early in "The Old Man Smiled" and are then followed by a noisy jam of synth noodles, hisses, and feedback on "Improvisation," the creepy if relatively mellow "The World is a War Film," and the synth-driven "Something Came Over Me," that serves as a blueprint for early Skinny Puppy if ever there was one.

"Still Talking" is built around a simple oscillating synth tone and overlapping layers of tape loops that hint at dark sexual energy without ever exploding into it outright.  "Don't Do As You're Told, Do As You Think" brings TG back to something that sounds more recognizable as a band, but still, the song is little more than a loop that grinds on for seven minutes as the band throws sounds over it before the whole thing comes to an abrupt stop.  Throbbing Gristle ends the set with a bit of ironic humor by bringing the audience out of the performance with the recorded voice of a hypnotist on "Painless Childbirth," and just like that, it's over. The sound of a slide projector advancing slides can be heard in the background, but without the slides or a video or some other reference for the event, I can't help but feel that the record is somewhat limited in its ability to capture the live experience.

This reissue contains a bonus disc of live recordings made at more traditional performances from 1980 and it's here that I begin to get a better sense for how tense and strange a TG performance might have been. The recording quality for most of these tracks is considerably inferior to the material offered on Heathen Earth, but somehow these recordings feel more like being present at a TG gig. "Trained Condition of Obedience" feels almost completely unhinged in a way that nothing on Heathen Earth ever does. "An Old Man Smiled" recorded at Club Berlin sounds radically different than "The Old Man Smiled" recorded back at the Industrial Records studio. On this disc the band is more given to sprawling noise and the pitch black squalls that I think of whenever anyone mentions "Throbbing Gristle" and "Live Show" in the same breath. Maybe all of that just winds up being a product of my own bias, having never seen Throbbing Gristle perform but having had years to imagine what it must have been like.

The bonus disc closes out with the 7" Single versions of "Subhuman" and "Adrenalin," two tracks that couldn't sound much more different and still be contained on the same record. If "Subhuman" represents TG at its most violent and overtly confrontational, "Adrenalin" is decidedly more subversive perhaps because it sounds almost like a proper electro track that some madman has grabbed hold of and added weird shit to. While these two songs don't tell the whole story of Throbbing Gristle, they do a great job of revealing some of the band's strange breadth and general demeanor.

samples

 

• An Old Man Smiled
• The World is a War Film
• The Old Man Smiled

08 April 2012

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Albums and Singles

Ten years ago this week a heart attack ended Frank Tovey's life. To this day, Fad Gadget has still not achieved "household name" status but Tovey's music continues to have an influence both directly and indirectly on music across numerous genres and ages. This month Brainwashed is going to honor his work by tackling each Fad Gadget album.

Mute

For those who don't know thie history of Mute Records, Daniel Miller released a single under the guise of The Normal in October of 1978. He was just a young guy with enough money to record a couple songs, press a 7" single, and distribute from his bedroom. "TVOD/Warm Leatherette" was a hit and for months Miller was flooded with demo tapes from bands he had no interest in who wanted him to put out their records. It wasn't until the following year when he was introduced to Frank Tovey by graphic artist (and now noise artist) Edwin Pouncey (Savage Pencil, Pestrepeller) that Miller decided to release Mute 002."Back To Nature"/"The Box" by Fad Gadget appeared in September 1979, 11 months after Mute 001, and "Ricky's Hand" (coupled with a remix titled "Handshake") followed shortly in February, both produced with Daniel Miller. The punk ethic was being marketed for mass commercialization and Frank Tovey was the perfect marriage of energy and forward-minded technology, he had a fantastic stage presence, and, most importantly, wrote some excellent songs.

For a musical act, the key to transcending the "dated" label is to possess the talent for creating exceptional songs. Forget the technology Frank Tovey employed, and accept that his first two singles, "Back To Nature" and "Ricky's Hand" had the perfect elements: driving rhythm, catchy riff, and unapologetic, non-cliche lyrics. Following the two singles, Tovey expanded his studio lineup and recorded this debut album with the power team of Eric Radcliffe, John Fryer, and Daniel Miller. Although an expanded cast of characters included more traditional instrumentation such as live drums,bass, and guitar, the sound remained faithful to what was established with the first singles.

"Pedestrian" opens side A with a deceptively quiet introduction in the form of an interplay between guitar and a twinkling synth, turn it up loud enough to hear it and suddenly the monster synth sound and hurried rhythm crashes in. This is clearly an example of the energy that Frank channeled as Fad Gadget, and, for something so synthetic, it's sound resembles what could be imagined as live: as Frank almost trips over the lyrics a few times, simply to keep up with the energry of a fast moving song, ironically titled "Pedestrian." Without a gap, the noises from the song's end mutate into the opening for "State of the Nation," a slower tempo popular set opener with an eerie riff and a delicious live drum beat by Nick Cash. "Salt Lake City Sunday" returns to the uptempo feeling from the album opener, and it's a short tune poking fun at Mormons, of course,

"They march, the Latter Day Saints
Salt Lake's sick residents
They want you to repent
The want your ten percent"

It's kind of eerie how 22 years later people are still asking Mormons the same question, and especially now that Mitt Romney is scarily close to becoming a president, "can you leave my ancestors to rot in their graves?"

Another crowd favorite, "Coitus Interruptus" follows, and, if you were either lucky enough to see Fad Gadget live or are able to watch the video here (see 3:31), it becomes painfully clear even Bradford Cox owes his entire live schtick to Tovey!

I can't say I'm as excited about side B. While I enjoy the opener, "Newsreel" and the closer, "Arch of the Aorta," it doesn't have as much soul as the first side. "The Box" was needlessly re-recorded for the album, as it loses all of the power and intensity of the version that graced the B-side of the debut single. "Insecticide" is an fun, tweaky, noisy tune, with squelchy, distorted vocals; and it seems to be an odd choice for a single A-side, as it was coupled with swingy, horn-blaring "Fireside Favourite," (as Side AA of the single) from the end of the first side. Given the 7" didn't come with a classic picture sleeve, it could have easily been a record label choice, but "Coitus Interruptus" would have clearly made a better hit single.

It's important to note that while it wouldn't be uncommon to hear Fad Gadget music played in a set with Human League, Kraftwerk, or Gary Numan songs, however the sound is where the similarities end. Tovey's approach was different: he didn't incorporate technology in the same way. Frank Tovey used synthesizers because he found them to be his best resources as the one-man show he started out as. He didn't distance himself from his audiences by either assuming a the role of a robot nor an emotionless alien. As Fad Gadget, Tovey engaged with the people–hanging from rafters, leaping into the crowds, tar-and-feathering himself, shaving himself onstage, suffering head injuries, and bleeding–making a genuine show of his live performance. Additionally, his subject matter was clearly not a grim painting of a horrific science fiction future (note that his first single was titled "Back To Nature").

In a time where technology was making new forms of music possible, Frank Tovey chose to keep as much control over it, keeping it as human as possible. Those who still aren't convinced only need tolook at the cover for Fireside Favourites, it's not a display of technology, it's a photo of Frank singing live!

samples:

• State of the Nation
• Fireside Favourite
• Insecticide

08 April 2012

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Albums and Singles

Taking a step away from his singer-songwriter dabblings and harsher noise outputs of Burning Star Core, Yeh's 1975 is a piece of sound art that occasionally flirts with musical elements, but prefers to stay in the realm of abstraction, with a healthy sense of humor to boot. While it might not feel like an album in the traditional sense, the pieces that make up this disc still come together strongly, making for a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Intransitive

The first half is a series of alternating pieces of droning tones and processed voice, none of which is easily identifiable as far as source material goes:it could be violin, it could be feedback in regard to the drone tracks, who knows.The opening "Drone" is comprised of complex intertwined tones, rising and falling with one another delicately, but forcefully.In its latter moments it becomes more spacious, which sets the stage for the subsequent two drone works.

The second of the drones has a lighter, floating sensibility to it, with the chiming swells being less oppressive than the ones in the preceding track.The third and final drone piece continues this theme, bringing in a drifting variety of tones that never become too overwhelming, ending on an especially somber note.For an artist that often trades in harsh blasts and ugly noise, there is a heavily level of restraint and care put into these works.

Between these are two pieces of voice composition, both made up of cut-up fragments treated with a digital sheen.Besides the fact that the vocals are sliced into microscopic fragments that belie their humanity, there is a hollow, 8 bit digital sample quality that renders them even more synthetic.The second piece sounds comparably more abstract, with the voice snippets both presented in pure scatter-shot chaos, and other times allowed to lock into some sort of monstrous rhythmic structureWhile I enjoy the drone works, here is where Yeh's skills shine.His use of something so simple and omnipresent, the human voice, may not be entirely unique, but his ability in structuring and treating the results is what sets it apart from other similar works.

On the second half of the disc, the two part "Two Guitars," sounds distinctly like one guitar is effected/treated to generate shrill, sustained tones while the other left to be a more textural element.The first piece emphasizes the shrill, often uncomfortable tones, while the latter focuses on the staticy, textured guitar layer.Like his work with just voice, this self-imposed restriction lets Yeh do what he does best:creating a complex composition from a relatively small sonic palette.

The final two pieces do not seem to be built around any specific theme, but stand together strongly on their own to close the disc."Au Revoir…" sounds like a collage of thin, digitally processed synth samples that are occasionally mixed up with booming industrial blasts and wet, messy analog synth outbursts."…Et Bonne Nuit" has the same primary components, but takes on a more deliberate rhythmic structure in comparison, with both pieces ending with the untreated sounds of piano.These pieces feel less limited as far as their source material goes, but even without those self-defined boundaries, the result is a dynamic set of pieces that never get too ambient as to be ignorable, but never go for the jugular with distortion either.

Interspersed in the album are two "skits" that add a distinct levity to a genre that’s usually far too stoic and serious.While "Drips" is simply dripping water, "Shrinkwrap From A Solo Saxophone CD" is just that:rattling plastic wrap captured via microphone.It's untreated and uneffected, and from the title it's obvious what it is, but without that clue, it could be any piece of abstract electronic sound. Compared to his more noise-centric outburst and his last single of actual "music," 1975 is a more abstract and stripped-down work, but one that still clearly shows Yeh's ability to manipulate sound into unique and idiosyncratic shapes.The combination of working quite creatively with limited source material, as well as not taking himself too seriously, makes for a piece of sound art that is compelling without being too sterile or academic.I'm hesitant to call it a "fun" album, but speaking in relative terms, it kind of is.

samples:

• Drone (1)
• Voice (2)
• Au Revoir...

 

08 April 2012

Albums and Singles

This is the first of two collaborative albums between Jim O'Rourke and Christoph Heemann and represents some stunning spaced-out collage work by both artists. While it lacks the variance of Vol. 2, this particular work is a master class in using a very limited palette of sounds to create a massive emotional impact. The duo are almost painterly in their craft, shading and blending the different tones into each other rather than allowing any discrete patterns to emerge.

Read more …

08 April 2012

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Albums and Singles

It has been a few years since Terry Riley has released an album with any meat to it. This double CD represents the first major recorded work Riley has done in a long time and it is a sprawling and intense journey. However, it is far from a return to form and a number of flaws get in the way of this being listed alongside his classic works.

Tzadik

One of Riley’s hallmarks has been his accessibility but Aleph is a cantankerous beast. Performed on a Korg Triton Studio 88 keyboard in just intonation, I was expecting something along the lines of his organ works from the 60s or perhaps an electric version of the gorgeous just intonation piano works found on The Harp of New Albion. Instead, Riley creates a dense fog of improvised keyboard that is difficult to penetrate.

The name of the piece, Aleph, represents a beginning and bringing together concepts from Judaism, mathematics and even connects to the alap of a raga (something close to Riley’s heart). This heady mix of connotations is represented in Riley’s music with its suggestions of infinity and almost religious tenacity of his playing. The first disc in particular howls and skronks along to the point where I feel the need to stop it. It is hard work, especially so due to the settings on the Korg that he is using. Somewhere between a saxophone and one of those cheap toy Casios we all had as children, it grates on the ear more often than not. Towards the end of the first disc, Riley sounds like a traffic jam as the different notes sound like angry blasts of car horns rather than the hypnotic cycles that I would normally associate with his work.

The second disc fares better as Riley settles more into a more comfortable mode. The timbre is still an issue but he utilizes the sounds better than earlier in the work. He allows the notes to breathe and the just intonation scale becomes more apparent. Towards the end of the piece, his almost random playing suddenly morphs into a boogie-woogie rhythm and it feels like all the blood, sweat and tears of the previous hour has resolved into something not only familiar but actually pleasant to listen to.

As much as I look forward to new works by Riley, Aleph is marred by that awful synthesizer sound. I cannot help but feel that if Riley had performed this on the piano or even with a less grating setting on his Korg then it would be an awful lot better. Even a shorter edit of the performance would be preferable as the first part is a slog to get through. As it stands, Aleph is more of a curio than a canon release.

samples:

• Aleph - Part I
• Aleph - Part II

 

08 April 2012

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Maximalism is in vogue for electronic musicians right now. With the rise of commercialized dubstep (aka "brostep"), this trend is unlikely to be reversed in 2012. Luckily, John Talabot is making fantastically balanced, listenable dance music a bit left of center; his debut album, ƒIN, downplays the genre's current above-ground trends in favor of his own nuanced production.

Permanent Vacation

As near as I can tell, Daft Punk's hyperbolic live shows in 2007 were a zeitgeist-defining moment, setting the tone for five years of dance music both rewarding (Flying Lotus and the Brainfeeder scene, Underworld's slept-on Barking, Orbital's return to the stage) and laughably overwrought (Justice, Deadmau5, Skrillex, et al.). Dance music is, by its very nature, a track-oriented scene, with songs sculpted for maximum impact in three or four minutes within a club setting, where hard-hitting structures make perfect sense. For those who prefer digesting their music at home, on headphones instead of in between sweaty, thrashing bodies, electronic music that fires on all cylinders can wear out its welcome quickly.

To that end, Barcelona-based musician John Talabot has crafted a full-length debut that strikes an elegant, elusive balance between danceable energy and relaxed home listening. Talabot has been producing remixes for a few years now, deconstructing well-known songs by the xx, Delorean, Glasser, Shit Robot, Teengirl Fantasy, and others. His first album under this pseudonym, ƒIN—French for "the end"—has already raised his profile a good bit in dance music circles. The good news is that ƒIN lives up to the hype: it's a stunning piece of work, elegantly composed, tailored for repeat plays, and the best electronic album I've yet heard this year. Talabot's ear for stacking simple melodies on top of one another like Legos, building emotional impact with precision, was pioneered by acts like Orbital in the '90s. I can't recall the last time I've heard the concept executed this sharply.

Lead track "Depak Ine" doesn’t immediately charge out of the gate; rather, it's a seven-minute slow-burner that incorporates nature samples—check the frogs croaking in place of the would-be "chorus"—and enough atmosphere to make Christoph Heemann jealous. (Well, maybe not quite.) While not aggressive, the tempo and rhythm are significant enough for "Depak Ine" to revitalize any 3:00 AM dance-floor. Pional's echoed vocals on the next track, "Destiny," recall Noah Lennox's reverbed chants on Merriweather Post Pavilion and Tomboy, minus the all-colors-bleeding production that sank Merriweather's replayability faster than the Titanic.

As ƒIN progresses, Talabot shows his versatility. "Journeys" incorporates a sun-kissed, summery vibe, layering guest vocals from Delorean frontman Ekhi Lopetegi atop a Caribbean melody. The chopped-up vocals and synths on "Last Land" shoot the album's upbeat nature into the clouds; the track pauses for a breath midway through, only to return with a heartstring-tugging key change set against the primary melody. "When the Past Was Present" is the album's secret weapon, with a groove reminiscent of New Order's flawless run of singles on Substance; halfway through, a laser-beam note of distorted, echoed guitar cuts through the din (think "True Faith") and takes the song's emotional impact to the next level.

It's hard to find fault with ƒIN. If anything, though, several of these tracks could stand to be lengthened. Only two cross the five-minute mark—the opening and closing tracks, naturally—as ƒIN is clearly tailored to our iPod Shuffle ADHD generation. At a meager three minutes, "El Oeste" winds down a whole lot quicker than it should; its locked-groove rhythm is the most hypnotic thing on the album by a mile, so when it ends abruptly, its impact is somewhat lessened. Likewise, "Estiu" builds tension as effectively as possible in three minutes, but ultimately has its hands tied by its quick ending. If Talabot would have doubled the length of a few of these tracks, I think the album would be improved—if just barely.

Many of my favorite electronic artists aren't afraid to stretch out their songs, playing to their strengths ad infinitum, from Tangerine Dream's hot streak in the early '70s to Orbital's sprawling masterpiece In Sides. Let's hope Talabot does the same going forward; several of the songs on ƒIN are begging for such treatment. Closing track "So Will Be Now..." magnifies the preceding tracks' thirst for running time; it tops out at seven minutes with not a second wasted, weaving a rubbery bass line and soulful vocal samples into a hypnotic web of prog-house, closing ƒIN on its high water mark. Despite its occasional self-imposed restrictions with regard to song length, ƒIN gets my vote for the best electronic album of 2012 to date.

Samples:

• Destiny
• When the Past Was Present
• So Will Be Now...