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This three disc set sees the reissue of Charlemagne Palestine’s masterpiece for the piano along with two previously unreleased versions of the piece for harpsichord and string ensemble. "Strumming for Bösendorfer Piano" is a landmark of modern composition, a return to first principles typical of that generation of minimalist composers. Eschewing complex forms and technique, Palestine instead chases the pure sound lurking within the piano and uses the instrument in a way that was revolutionary then and remains just as stunning now.
The piano has long been a tyrant on composed music, the entire orchestra a slave to its discrete and immutable tuning. This is not necessarily a bad thing. To be honest, the world would be a far poorer place without the countless masterpieces that have used the piano and its tuning as their cornerstone. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, it was easy to see how composers were beginning to wonder where they could go based on the confines of the orchestra and, at its heart, the piano. Erik Satie's Vexations took an absurd idea of playing a short piano figure hundreds of times, stretching the patience of the audience and the pianist to its limits. Later John Cage silenced the black beast with 4'33" which, although not exclusively composed for piano, opened up a new direction for composers to move in. Morton Feldman's various piano works focused on playing softly over long durations, creating an intimacy lost in the showy compositions of earlier composers. Altogether, they usurped the role of the piano and gave it the chance to sing in a way which it never knew it could do.
These works laid the foundations for two great piano pieces of the late 20th century. The first is La Monte Young's dazzling long-form piece The Well Tuned Piano, which dispensed with the traditional piano tuning in favor of intonation. The result was a piece of piano music which was colored in a way that had rarely been heard before. The second piece, which actually preceded Young’s piece, Palestine's Strumming Music, managed to wrestle such unearthly tones out of the piano as Young’s without resorting to completely retuning the instrument. Charlemagne instead devised a piece which took advantage of the piano’s natural ability to resonate, creating a human-instrument feedback engine. Beginning with pulsing E and B notes, Palestine would keep the sustain pedal down and start listening for the resonances in the instrument and play other notes to accentuate and articulate these vibrations. Before long, it is hard to determine which notes are being played by hitting the keys and which are the ghosts of the keys previously played. By the end of the piece, the normally predictable piano is acting in a way most unlike its usual staid self. Palestine does more in one sitting at the piano than hundreds of composers have done in the history of the instrument.
The liner notes describe the genesis and evolution of the piece, initially Palestine was quite specific that only the Bösendorfer piano would suffice as other pianos lacked its own unique resonant profile but as will be discussed below, he later adapted the piece for harpsichord and string ensemble. Additionally, although this piano recording lasts just under an hour, there are references to Palestine's intentions for a four hour rendition which would have preempted and rivaled Young’s own epic piece.
The two "new" recordings (both remaining unreleased since the '70s until now) lack the dazzle and the ingenuity of the original but both are intriguing in their own way. Betsy Freeman’s playing of "Strumming Music for Harpsichord" highlights just why Palestine insisted on using the Bösendorfer piano alone for the piece. Granted the harpsichord is not renowned for its resonance but the brittle sounding notes sound unusually harsh after the lush timbres of the original. The blurring effect of the resonance is lost as each key played is startlingly clear throughout the piece but the repetition and sustained attack gives this version a charm of its own. The version for string ensemble takes the piece on a third path, Palestine conducting the ensemble and directing them like he directed his own playing at the Bösendorfer. The shortest of the three recordings (only around 25 minutes), it is again reminiscent of Young’s works; listening to "Strumming for Strings" brings about the same meditative mood as Young’s The Second Dream of the High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from the Four Dreams of China. However, mood is the main link between the two, Palestine’s stamp is all over this piece and, honestly, this triple CD set is worth the money for this recording alone.
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Jack Dangers has been bitten by the dubstep bug and there are no two ways about it. Answers Come in Dreams finds the long time innovator giving in to (or perhaps trying out) the style du jour for a strange distillation of his own sound.
This happened once before when Meat Beat Manifesto released a new version of "Helter Skelter" with a jungle tinge and then turned in a remix of Nine Inch Nails' "Perfect Drug" that proved that Dangers could tap into the reigning dance culture when he wasn't busy creating it.But Answers Come in Dreams is a different story.At a time when dubstep has bubbled over the rim of the underground to become the inevitable hotness for a while, the purpose of a new record from Meat Beat Manifesto that plays by the dubstep rules is a little hard to understand.
Meat Beat Manifesto is, after all, one of the progenitors of dubstep.Tracks like "Lucid Dream" from Subliminal Sandwich or pieces of Storm the Studio from all the way back in 1989 anticipate the slowed-down, dub-infused spacious stomp of contemporary dubstep.There's no doubt in my mind that Dangers' music played a role in paving a way for the wobble, so the inevitable question that Answers Come in Dreams keeps raising is "why does this record sound so little like Meat Beat Manifesto?"
Answers Come in Dreams features plenty of Meat Beat trademarks and sample callbacks, to be sure.A beat from "Spinning Round Dub" (off of 2004's RUOK in Dub) surfaces on "M Y C;" the wonderful "let me have silence" spoken piece shows up in "Token Words;" "Melt" recycles a bit of the "Radio Baylon" bassline; and the analog filtered percussion and squelchy synths on "# Zero" and "010130" sound familiar.But the album features many more tracks like the opener "Luminol" or the lfo-addled "Let Me Set" that are almost completely void of Dangers' usual charm.
Throughout, the record contains dreamy whispers of the Meat Beat sound that float deep in the background like lost radio transmissions.An occasional synth note or bubbly ambiance or waterphone drone will remind me that Dangers is in there somewhere, perhaps lost and even trying to escape from dubstep's droll plodding.But those moments are so fleeting and washed out that the whole thing feels like a dubstep remix of a Meat Beat record that could have been produced by someone else.Gone is almost all of the humor and playfulness that has been a stable of Meat Beat records since, well, always.
If all of that sounds like I'm very down on the album, I'm not.It is on its own terms a fantastic subwoofer workout and a near-perfect distillation of Meat Beat into bass and space. There are enough distorted drum breaks, spooky sonic backdrops, and waves of wobbly and overdriven low end to keep me more than happy.Jack trades in his bass guitar (for the most part) in favor of deep 808 blasts and heavy synth rumble that will not make sense at all if you aren't listening with a decent sub, and I love all of that.The beats are stripped down and the patterns in everything are simplified to give the bass room to breathe.While that takes away most of the beautiful rhythmic complexity that Meat Beat is known for, the approach is still effective here in eliciting a head nod.In fact, I tire of most dubstep so quickly that it's nice to have something that gives the low frequencies a bashing while still injecting tiny, fleeting fragments of the familiar.
V/VM (recording as The Caretaker) released a six CD box set a few years back that was inspired by the scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson is wandering around in the old hotel ballroom and he hears the faint, ghostly melodies of a party that has long-since ended.Answers Come in Dreams feels like that to the rest of the Meat Beat catalog.It's full of half-remembered dreams and barely-recognizable fragments of Meat Beat carried on the wind and blown through empty hallways, that have somehow drifted into a dubstep party that is taking place in that empty ballroom.It's less of Dangers coming back to show the young kids how it's done and more of a seasoned pioneer playing in someone else's playground for a spell.I don't know if the dubstep die hards are going to take to a record that doesn't feel quite as up-to-the-minute as that scene requires: new sub-styles seem to come and go every fortnight.Still, Answers Come in Dreams is a dark and bass-heavy grind that benefits from Dangers' impressive ability to wring depth out of space.
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Although only active for around six years, this Shanghai based noise project already has a sprawling discography that rivals many of the long-standing artists that inspired them, with a multitude of limited cassette and CD-R releases. However, I think this may constitute the band’s first solo, mass produced outing. And with this opportunity, the band does exactly as they should: a 73 minute single track of grating, painful dynamic noise.
Torturing Nurse, and many of their peers in the burgeoning Chinese electronic music scene, have been in a unique position with the evolution of their sound.While the Japanese artists who inspired them evolved their approach over many years (see Hijokaidan’s early brain damaged jazz and Merzbow's tape loop experiments compared to their latter output), the Chinese sound has almost sprung up immediately as a condensed microcosm of what everyone else had done.The cultural barricade against outside influence that was brought down by the establishment of the Internet and its immediate access to music led to a rapid influx of new sounds, all of which were quickly absorbed and digested by the artists active now.
Following the template of classic Hijokaidan albums such as Romance and Modern, this disc is actually one uninterrupted piece of constantly undulating, churning harsh noise.While it mimics the structure, the approach differs somewhat.The mix is somewhat thinner than the other artists in the genre, letting fragments of voice or guitar squealingor whatever to be audible, creating an almost melodic, musical counterpoint to the rushing rapids of white noise atop.
"Relenting" isn’t something that is going to happen here, though:there isn’t any semblance of ambience or quiet reflection, but the single piece retains a dynamic propulsion throughout that never drags nor becomes boring.The opening shrieks and screams give way to deep, over-driven buzzes and pulses, with feedback that is shaped crudely into almost musical elements appearing later.
The vocals reappear later, but so does slew of other noise textures and approaches, such as the filtered, nasal blasts about half way through the album, and the CCCC-like psychedelic flanging that coats the mix at various times, closing the album with a heady blast reminiscent of Astro or other solo works from Hiroshi Hasagawa.
As a whole, it does feel like Torturing Nurse’s sound, at least on this album, is the culmination of the 20-odd year period that has defined modern "Japanoise" to the masses.Influences from everyone involved, including the Incapacitants, MSBR, Masonna, and the other previously mentioned artists can all be heard on this album.However, the result is not simply the aping of known projects, but the full culmination of their sound, that is much more about influence than copying.It’s obvious what and who inspired this band, but they still combine these influences in a way that makes the result clearly their own work, which is what separates the good from the crap when it comes to noise.
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While often pigeonholed as a "shoegaze" band, the duo of Lovesliescrushing is something entirely different. Ostensibly doing similar things: Scott Cortez's heavily treated and layered guitar noise and abstracted, mostly unintelligible female vocals from Melissa Arpin-Duimstra, LLC took these and pushed them to the furthest reaches, making little to no concessions for traditional musical style or structure. Here, a selection of pieces between 1990 and 2000 are presented, some for the first time, reworked and shaped into even more abstract forms of glorious noise.
The tracks cover a wide range of dynamic approaches and structures.In some cases, they are soft, delicate pastiches of beauty:"Seahorse" places thin, reversed guitar notes with a soft, warm bed of sustained sound to create a song that is alien, yet inviting in its style."Kittenmother" is a piece of pure ambient beauty, with a somewhat melancholy, mournful quality to it."Winglike" takes this even further, with Arpin-Duimstra's distant voice and echoed guitar over a dense hum giving everything a very sad feel.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are a significant number of songs here that are all about the orgasmic ecstasy of over-driven guitar noise and feedback."Spidery Velvet," though melodically a restrained piece is presented with an accompaniment of maxed out guitar feedback from Cortez to the point of pure distortion:the 4 track it was recorded on couldn’t even come close to keeping up with the volume."Elephai" is similar, meshing delicate lullaby vocals with massive guitar noise that becomes the core of the song.
"Feathermouth" even drops the focus on melody, immediately launching into a torrent of feedback and effects that is undeniably harsh, but somehow manages to retain a hint of musicality, which becomesmagnified by its slow sonic decay as the song ends, ripping away the raw sounds slowly.The closing "Goldenfur" takes the best of both worlds, opening with the delicate, shimmering guitar textures and breathy female vocals, slowly building into heavier and denser layers before reaching a climax of roaring guitar noise that retreats, leaving only the remnants of feedback to end the album.
One of the most striking aspects of these recordings iis how they foretold the sound of many current and prolific artists.During the harshest moments of over-driven feedback and squeal, I instantly was reminded of some of Jesu and Nadja's best moments: the simple love and indulgence of noise, but harboring a melodic sense that keeps it within the loosest sense of form and structure.Following the deconstructed sounds released on CRWTH earlier this year, this makes for the perfect compliment in its physical and emotional content.
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It has only been three years since Sublime Frequencies released the inaugural entry in their Guitars From Agadez series, but so much has happened since then that it is a near miracle that Group Inerane even managed another album. The biggest event: second guitarist Adi Mohamed was killed in the uprisings that followed the coup d’état that ousted Niger’s president. Thankfully, frontman Bibi Ahmed narrowly avoided the same fate and recruited Taureg guitar legend Koudede to fill the void. Unsurprisingly, the new Group Inerane are a darker and noticeably different band.
I can't think of any other band that can quite top Group Inerane for sheer outlaw cool.For one, the Tauregs are a historically nomadic culture living in the Sahara desert, a culture that has been sporadically clashing violently with both the Mali and Niger governments for decades.In fact, the whole Taureg Guitar movement originated in rebel camps in the 1980s.Then, of course, there is the fact that famine, unstable government, and corruption plague the entire country.New member Koudede improbably adds still more to the band's near-mythic bad-assitude, as he grew up in a uranium mining town, never went to school, and learned how to play guitar in Libyan and Algerian rebel camps.It is definitely not the ideal milieu for a rock band to set up shop in, especially when band members are getting gunned down in firefights with a military junta, yet Ahmed has nevertheless managed to survive and even thrive in that environment.
Anyone who has heard Sublime Frequencies' other Group Inerane album will probably be a little surprised by the band's change in direction.Guitars From Agadez Volume One sounded like a raucous party, filled with handclaps and exuberant, oft-ululating female backing vocalists.This album is considerably more restrained and hypnotic, sounding less like an out-of-control African wedding reception than a blues-damaged Neu!As it turns out, an Africanized Neu! is extremely cool.On the new-style tracks, such as "Ikabkaban," the rhythm section of Abdulai Sidi Mohamed and Mohamed Atchinguel lock into a simple, mesmerizing groove, providing a propulsive foundation for the guitars' bluesy ringing arpeggios.The whole effect is very trancelike, as everything thumps and throbs along insistently, but the deft improvisations of Bibi and Koudede manage to still make it feel like an unpredictable and vibrant affair.
The group hasn't totally abandoned their past though, as most of the elements present on their first album are still present to some degree–they just seem much more toned down.Probably some of that is due to this album's dodgier sound quality, but Group Inerane are definitely more laid back.The biggest difference is that the group feels much smaller now, though it is hard to tell if that is true since the album only credits the four core members.Even if it isn't true, there is no conspicuous evidence of exotic instrumentation and traditional percussion now.Also, the band's female backing singers seem very diminished in both number and presence.Group Inerane have also largely stopped using distortion, an odd choice considering their newly "rock" line-up and instrumentation.I am not a big fan of exotic rock appropriations in general (and I don’t particularly care for the more standard-issue rock of "Tamidit In Aicha"), but the rest of the album's quasi-motorik direction is quite satisfying and unique.Of course, I enjoyed their previous sound too, but the only thing I truly miss is the rampant ululation.
Unfortunately, I am a bit conflicted on the sound quality of this release, even though I am well-accustomed to the expected Sublime Frequencies rawness.These nine songs appear to have been recorded live by Hisham Mayet in Niamey, Niger earlier this year and the quality is only slightly better than what might've been achieved with a boombox.This definitely sounds more like a field recording than a concert recording.That said, it is certainly admirable to present Group Inerane in as raw and unhomogenized a way as possible, but this album does not sound like a total in-the-red rock frenzy–it sounds like a barely adequate live recording with somewhat buried vocals.Given the difficult circumstances in Agadez, that may have been the best that Mayet could get.In fact, Hisham was probably lucky to get anything at all.That does not make it any less frustrating though.The music is certainly inspired and impressive, but Guitars From Agadez Volume 3 is mere documentation that something awesome is happening ("the now sound of the Taureg Guitar revolution!") rather than an awesome album in its own right.
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I have always had a love/hate relationship with Edward Ka-Spel's work–he has written some of my all-time favorite songs (Tear Garden's "Romulus & Venus," for example), but he's also recorded an avalanche of stuff that I was not so enthusiastic about. Consequently, I became an increasingly casual LPD fan over the years and haven't heard their last few albums at all. That being the case, I was totally unprepared for how excellent this album is–I can't think of another band in history that has managed to write some of their best songs 30 years into their career. The Dots' best days are definitely not behind them.
Seconds Late For The Brighton Line feels like an album by a rejuvenated band, which is somewhat surprising, given that they've been at it for three decades.Also, it is their first album as a four-piece, as two long-time Dots members (Niels Van Hoorn and Martijn De Kleer) have recently departed.However, there is a perverse logic to their current vitality, as having fewer band members limits what Ka-Spel and company can do, making everything simultaneously a bit more challenging and bit simpler.The band had to find new ways to do what they've always done and fewer people playing means more emphasis on the actual substance of the songs.Edward recently mentioned that the hardest thing about the current stage in the band's career is figuring out a way to make people think a new LPD is "special," but there is actually a very clear-cut way to do that and they've done it: write some great songs.Lots of people make spaced-out psychedelia these days, but Edward Ka-Spel occupies pretty rarefied territory as a songwriter.
There are no major stylistic departures here from previous Legendary Pink Dots albums, but there are a few things worth noting.There a couple of Ka-Spel quirks that I have always had a hard time with: his more impassioned, higher-pitched vocals and his sometimes over-whimsical, "deranged nursery rhyme"-style delivery.Obviously, many LPD fans feel quite differently, but I vastly prefer his more understated side and I get what I want this time: Ka-Spel is generally at his world-weary, ominous best here. The only clear exception is the opening piece, "Russian Roulette," which narratively counts to 18 ("14 wives save the marmalade for 15 flies") before bursting into a plaintive mantra of "your number's up, the chips are down, you thought you counted."That is normally the kind of thing that makes me cringe, but the surrounding music snowballs in intensity nicely, making for a likable song.Apparently it is also provides the cryptic key to deciphering the album's overarching concept, but I have made zero progress on solving that particular riddle–someone else is going to have to do the heavy lifting on that one.
There are three songs that seem to stand head and shoulders above all the others for me.My favorite is "Radiation Day," largely because the warm, woozy synthesizers below the vocals are extremely cool.Everything else is pretty amazing too though–the band were clearly firing on all cylinders here, as Ka-Spel's vocals are quietly, melodically intense and all the peripheral sounds are pleasantly weird and unpredictable.Edward's vocals are even better in "God And Machines," as he calmly describes an unsettling and enigmatic dystopia over a bed of hissing and buzzing electronics.It's the sort of song that is evocative and disturbing enough to obsess a person for days and it is exactly the sort of thing that Ka-Spel does better than anyone else (and seems to be getting still better at).Unexpectedly, however, I also found myself drawn to the infinitely lighter "Someday," which sounds jaunty, innocent, and even vaguely tropical.The Legendary Pink Dots are one of the few bands that can safely take stabs at writing pop songs–they are far too intrinsically warped to mess it up.
Remarkably, the band's sound does not seem to suffer at all from their newly attenuated line-up: the Dots remain as characteristically lush and lysergic as ever, picking up the slack with increased reliance on computers.It doesn't sound like they are having much trouble coming up with new ideas either, a state of affairs that I cannot credit a laptop with.Seconds Late For The Brighton Line is simply a very solid (and sometimes spectacular) album:longtime fans will find plenty of what they have always loved, newcomers will find several compelling reasons to become longtime fans, and inquisitive minds will be able to drive themselves crazy trying to figure out what it all means.They've won me back.
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Brian (Lustmord) Williams' long-out-of-print 1994 ode to the vastness of space has been remastered and reissued. The record may sound better now than it did 15 years ago, but I’m not sure that all of it has stood the test of time.
As soon as I heard that Wlliams had a ‘side project’ of sorts where he used deep space data from radio telescopes, I rushed out to buy that record. The extended drones and minimalist synths with patches of faint NASA radio chatter were exactly what I was looking for in 1994. Ambient electronic music was everywhere, but most of it teetered on the edge of new age tedium or uninspired techno as vacant as the spaces from which it drew inspiration. I had it in my mind that Lustmord working with some rhythms and space sounds would be the perfect antidote to all of that hippie techno bullshit. And for the most part, it was.
I used to drop a track from Trans Plutonian Transmissions into every one of my DJ sets because whether I wanted to lay some minimal Scorn beats over Arecibo’s atonal wash or mix “Anomalous Intermittent Radio Source” into tracks from Sub Dub and DJ Olive, it always worked perfectly. It was never a record that I would listen to from top to bottom, but it played well with most of the other things I was into in the mid-'90s and it always felt like a rare gem. I guess that the rareness was real, as the record has long been out-of-print and commanding nice sums from collectors at auction. I wish I had known—I still have my original copy and I haven’t listened to it in probably 10 years.
The reissue has been remastered, but it doesn’t sound extraordinarily different to me. In fact, I don’t think that most listeners will detect much of a change at all which is probably a good thing. People will likely just be happy that the record is available again, but I’m not sure that all of it has held up. The lumbering plodding of “Beyond the Heart of Space” wears out its welcome to these old ears long before its 13:45 runtime is up, although I likely would have loved it 15 years ago. The NASA radio samples and control room chatter that dominate a couple of tracks remind me an awful lot of The Orb, and they take otherwise serious, dark pieces and make them sound like a 909 kick drum is right around the corner. I still love “Anomalous Intermittent Radio Source” as an example of Lustmord edging towards dubby trip hop, but most of the slower ambient pieces don’t stand out as much as I remember.
The notion I keep coming back to when I listen to this old record with a new perspective is that if I didn’t know this record used deep space data, I would have no idea that it was inspired by such a source. If I was told that this record used sounds gathered in caves or underwater or from field recordings in the desert, I wouldn’t be surprised. As a composer, Williams surely brings his own perspective to the work, so this record sounds exactly like I would expect a record about space by a guy who is a master sound designer and dark music producer, but I’m not sure it is enough to make it work. In a way, it reminds me of those cooking shows where they give chefs some unexpected ingredients and ask them to whip something up. Of course the Italian chef is going to take whatever he’s given and make an Italian dish out of it!
I wonder if space is really as moody and creepy as Arecibo makes it out to be? On her album “Music from the Galaxies,” Dr. Fiorella Terenzi took a similar sound source and made something much more playful out of it. Trans Plutonian Transmissions would work perfectly as the soundtrack to a movie where the derelict spaceship is drifting off into space with its crew in peril, but it seems a little less honest than it could be given the explosive, violent, and energetic nature celestial bodies.
Perhaps Arecibo is about looking into the vast expanse of the universe and focusing on the emptiness and the dark matter, rather than the light and energy. I get that, and in 1994 that was really all I wanted to hear. Now, though there are parts of this record that I still like a lot, it doesn’t intrigue me as much as the idea of the same composer visiting this same idea with a new take on it.
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In the annuls of folk exploration, no modern pairing has explored the outrageous and the traditional quite like Matt Valentine and Erika Elder. The variety of sounds, styles, and effects Valentine and Elder have mined to create their monstrous creations are infinite. This cornucopia is ever-present on the duo’s latest, Barn Nova, which introduces a hefty amount of country spice in MV + EE’s psychedelic stew.
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The Caretaker is here to take listeners on a trip deep into the foggy subconscious mind where perception, memory, and dream all collapse into a syrupy void. If this six disc set isn't enough murky drone for a lifetime, I don't know what is.
In a long history of projects that I admire on a conceptual level more than I enjoy on a practical one, this limited edition six disc set has to be right up there. The Caretaker's entire raison d'être is to explore the vibe of a scene from Kubrick's The Shining through sound. Sure, there's a bit more to it as the well-written liner notes instruct, but the basic premise is really that simple. There's that scene in The Shining where the ghostly ballroom emerges and the caretaker seems dislocated in time, unable to distinguish the present from the past, the real from the imagined, or the dream state from the waking, and that's the backdrop for six full length cds of minimal drones. I should start by saying that the music is almost all beautiful, albeit in a creepy way. It appears to be composed of bits of sampled music that have been slowed down, stretched, and reverberated into near oblivion the way that a fistfull of sand is dispersed when you throw it against concrete.
To describe the music is to do the whole project a disservice. In fact, if this were the kind of release that was meant to be described by one person to another, there wouldn't be six discs of basically the same thing. At first, I was mesmerized by the basic sound design and the concept. I don't know that I was really letting go of myself in the kind of way that would be required for this set to work its full magic, but I was playing along. I popped in the second disc and was greeted with more of the same kind of grainy, slow, drifts of sound that populated the first disc. Ocassionally, there are tiny fragments of recognizable music the float into the mix like David Lynch's Lady in the Radiator playing DJ to a Christmas party. Still, trainspotting samples in a set like this is also beside the point.
By the time I was on the third disc, I started to realize that the whole enterprise was either a cruel joke (and V/Vm are known perhaps as much for their pranks and offbeat sense of humor as for their music) or the logical result of carrying out the experiment to lose touch with time and place quite seriously. Because by the third disc, I wasn't sure if I'd already heard these bits before on the first one. By the fourth disc, I was just skipping randomly through tracks and then listening back to the whole thing wondering what would happen if I had six cd players all plugged in to a 12 speaker surround sound setup. I found it almost impossible to concentrate on the music itself or on the mood it was evoking, as I was far too concerned with how the discs might be used in other ways; sped up to sound 'normal' or played backwards or all at once or sampled to make hip hop tracks--my mind was boggling.
At that point, I realized that the experience of Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia is going to be both resolutely individual depending on the listener, and that the whole thing takes a certain kind of release of the will in order to work. I've never been good at sitting in one of those chairs where you strap on some LED flashing goggles while a guy plays you alpha wave inducing drones. I just can't let my conscious self go enough for that not to seem completely corny. In the same way, it feels like a six hour marathon of these discs without interruption would be the only way to truly grok what it is they are about. I must say that I'm absolutely curious what The Caretaker will be doing live to bring this experience to an audience. I'm glad to have this strange and beautiful but ultimately overwhelming artifact of their work if for no other reason than it's a terrific example of a simple idea manifest in a deeply challenging way.
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The full 33 minutes of Once in a Full Moon stands as Black Sun Productions finest musical moment to date. This is an ambitious piece of moon music that covers the territory between lunacy, ambition and grace.
Those familiar with Massimo and Pierce’s website will recognize one of the central melodies of "Once in a Full Moon" from the site’s intro. As a welcome, it is like the ominous opening of a door into the site; here it is the full-blown panoramic view from the cliff edge into their world. This great thematic piece moves through several passages which all come together to form this greater whole. The music moves from swinging breeze chimes and bass choir passages that part the moon-obscuring clouds to Massimo and Pierce’s anything-but-innocent choirboy vocals. Their (almost) signature soundclash of percussive clangs, softer electronic pops and liquid sounds filter into the mix like invisible stitches, making this instantly recognisable.
Even though the drowned version of their "Johnny Over the Sea" comes after this heavily involving and lengthy listen, it still holds its own. With the song’s intro not so much drowned as pixel-fucked, the song grows to reveal greater space than "Once in a Full Moon." Broadcast from a distant shore, the droning undercurrent sounds keep a tense edge of loss and longing fresh in the mind. It might be reading a little too much into things, but this could be taken as another paean to the late Jhonn Balance. If it is, this Brecht piece (remade from BSP’s own Operttamorale) is a fitting tribute.
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