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Praemedia
I'm quite sure a devilish tailor is making its way through my eardrums every time I put this record on. It's not that there's anything evil about this record; but every instance of sound is a rapidly moving panorama of subconscious and dream-like sounds accelerated through time and set to explode upon aural reception. Blevin Blectum's newest record plays like a billion ping pong balls shot into a room about three inches wide and tall. The result is a barrage of micro-sounds that weave themselves together to make patterns of pseudo-melody and hushed excursions into the clouded heart of glass machines. At times Magic Maple is propelled by a turbine engine bent on choking some kind of rhythm out of the random chaos of sounds assembled into each song and at other times it's a playful cascade of rushing sounds, skipping semi-percussion, time-distorted bits of radio interference, various vocal samples, and unknown instruments bent and snapped into unrecognizable alien keyboards. Blectum's songs never fall into any recognizable format nor do they rely on any one technique; each song plays like a small portion of something greater that, if it could all be heard at once, would reveal some grand, majestic schematic that can only be hinted at when received through typical, human ears. What's more, Blectum's chaos is catchy: at times a xylophone or inter-dimensional steel drum fades in and out of the mix to reveal bits of repeated melody and mutant rhythms that never quite find their own pace. It's an addicting kind of music because it doesn't look to typical song structures to make it enjoyable, but it also doesn't go overboard and exist somewhere on the edge of sonic tolerance and pure experimental recording. It's almost pointless to talk about these songs individually; most of the time I can't tell where one song ends and the next begins. Everything fits together perfectly, but the whole album modulates within itself and never gets boring or frustrating in all its bouncing glory. The end of the album, however, is particularly outstanding and there are moments when just the smallest changes made by Blectum are breathtaking. Of course, these moments don't last long because she just never bothers to sit still.
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Karaoke Kalk
In an attempt to Google up some information about this new project from Jens Massel (previously known for his work as Kandis & Senking) and Michael Cramm, I learned that the original Poto & Cabengo were a pair of identical twin girls—real names Grace & Virginia Kennedy—who spoke to each other in their own secret language for the first decade of their lives. What this has to do with this record is a mystery to me, but it's an interesting bit of trivia nonetheless. Interesting is a good word to describe this album which Massel & Cramm describe as their tribute to the sounds of country & folk music. While the idea of European electronic artists being influenced by American roots music may seem strange, there are precedents such as O Yuki Conjugate and Dead Hollywood Stars. Unlike those earlier examples, Poto & Cabengo tend to stick a little closer to the traditions of the genres, with plenty of pluckin' and singin' sitting alongside the pretty electronic melodies. It's an approach that works more often than not, although the latter part of the record is marred by the bizarre "Suevian Rhapsody," which features a nonsensical combination of croaked spoken vocals and a variety of dialogue samples from movies and television. This is a unique and fun release, and at a compact 36 minutes in length, it wraps up before the concept gets beaten to death.
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- Drew Wright
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There is something otherworldly lurking just below the surface of Klas Rydberg's strained howls that is slightly off-putting, something that is not so much heard as felt, something that draws you in while oozing a slight uneasiness. Where a majority of the increasing number of sludgy, pseudo doom acts are content to pound away on the same note for hours on end in the name of "atmosphere," this Swedish septet strives for something more on their third full length.
Salvation is an eight song, 72 minute behemoth that's as diverse as it is excruciatingly heavy. While the bulk of the album's duration is spent creeping under the weight of Johannes Persson's immense guitar tone that's as percussive as any drum set, the band is not afraid to add their own flourishes to a style that can quickly become stagnant due to its repetitious nature. Nowhere else is this more evident than on "Crossing Over," which pits Rydberg's underrated singing voice against a slow building wall of jangled guitar that would sound at home on any bold dreampop album. While this is one of my personal favorite tracks, it does seem out of place amongst the oppressive rage of its peers and has a tendency to slow down what is already becoming a physically arduous listen by the seventh track. That's not to say the remainder of the album is without its placid moments, but they are composed in such a way as to not reveal what beast waits around the corner or beneath that proverbial surface, consisting of deftly composed goth rock morsels with a decidedly "non-American" vibe that's difficult to explain and separates them from their contemporaries. The first track, "Echoes," even works with a slight Middle Eastern-themed solo as it slowly builds to the deafening, cathartic roar prevalent throughout the more straightforward "Adrift" and "Vague Illusions." With the volume up enough (which it should be at all times), it is even possible to detect the tasteful contributions of Anders Teglund, whose sparse synth work walks the thin line between subtle and barely audible, adding yet another layer to this dense masterpiece. While the cruel reality surrounding this album is that it will more than likely get lost in the shuffle of a great many other bands who channel 80's-era Swans into their particular brand of madness, this one is worth the effort. - Drew Wright
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Virgin Prunes formed in Dublin in 1977, part of the fertile Lypton Village artpunk scene that also spawned U2. Instead of Bono and The Edge, Virgin Prunes had the equally absurdly named Gavin Friday, Guggi, Dave-id, Dik and Pod (later adding Haa Lacka Binttii and D'Nellon). From a very early point, it became clear that while U2 were aiming for global chart domination, Virgin Prunes were more interested in remaining aggressively idiosyncratic, developing their own unique brand of transgressive, avant-garde performance art and a wildly anarchic take on post-punk rock.Depending on who's being consulted, the band name either refers to an Irish slang for masturbation or a term for a person with a particular kind of sexual hang-up. A cult fixture from the early singles until their 1986 swansong The Moon Looked Down and Laughed, the Prunes are barely remembered today. Much of their work was outstandingly original, and yet it has remained criminally ignored and rarely heard, largely due to the near-total unavailability of their back catalog. Initially available only in small vinyl and cassette editions, the catalog has suffered over the years from poorly mastered bootleg CD reissues that immediately went out of print. Mute Records, working alongside principal visionary Gavin Friday, attempt to rectify this situation with the release of five definitively remastered and repackaged reissues of the Virgin Prunes back catalog, with bonus tracks, lyrics and rare band photos included with each album. Since the Prunes disbanded, Gavin Friday has maintained a tenuous connection with the mainstream, recording a series of contemporary pop albums and doing soundtrack work for the popular Irish films In The Name of the Father and The Boxer. He scored a minor hit with the track "Angel," which appeared on the soundtrack for Baz Lurmann's Romeo and Juliet, and he can be seen performing in a scene from Lurmann's garish musical Moulin Rouge. In addition to occasional collaborations with his friend Bono, Friday has also worked with a number of other artists, contributing vocals to Coil's Scatology, Dave Ball's In Strict Tempo and The Fall's Wonderful and Frightening World Of The Fall.
The chronological beginning of the reissue series is A New Form of Beauty, in many ways the most ambitious of the Virgin Prunes' various projects. A New Form of Beauty was intended as seven-part artistic cycle exploring the band's inversion of the standard concept of beauty, reflected in their eccentric costumes and bizarre neo-primitive face paint. The Prunes were tuned in to an Artaudian current of perverse beauty and outlandishly confrontational performance, and this manifests quite well in the music itself. In many ways, their freakish attire and dark sense of melodrama served as a blueprint for the emerging goth scene, but the Prunes had talent and creativity that their followers often lacked. A New Form of Beauty Parts I through IV are collected here for the first time, originally released separately on 7", 10" and 12" EPs and a cassette. (Part V was an exhibition held in 1981, Part VI is an unpublished book and Part VII is an unreleased film.) The music is mercurial and often difficult; dark and overwrought; jagged and dissonant. Gavin Friday's vocals are twisted and menacing on the 10-minute "Come To Daddy," a lopsided avant-punk epic propelled by a brutally distorted, metronomic beat. The song tumbles over itself by the seven-minute mark, turning into a clattering free-improv with Friday screaming desperately: "No one cares about Mammy! No one cares about Mammy!" Their style seems equally informed by glam rock, Krautrock and their punk contemporaries, somewhat comparable to Public Image Ltd.'s Metal Box but existing an aesthetic sphere of its own invention. "Sweethome Under White Clouds" is another deconstructed punk song, this time with a sinister mantra and undercurrents of atmospheric drone. And "Sad World" is something else entirely: a gloomy paean to misery that slowly fades into drug-damaged oblivion. The overlapping vocals of Gavin and Guggi, which often form a tense call-and-response conversation, is one of the Prunes' unique trademarks. "Beast (Seven Bastard Suck)" is a dark, chaotic slab of malevolence punctuated by the crack of a bullwhip. Even when I sense the Prunes are just fucking around with delay peddles, as on "Abbagal," the effect is positively eerie. Disc two consists of Part IV, a 37-minute live performance entitled "Din Glorious," which moves freely between energetic performances of their songs to blasts of terrifying noise, grotesquely distorted vocals and deeply unsettling tape manipulations. A New Form of Beauty is practically begging for rediscovery and reappraisal as one of the most wildly imaginative and unorthodox documents produced in the post-punk era. Stay tuned over the next four issues for reviews of the rest of this critical series of reissues.
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With their debut full length album, this New York City trio have created one of the most memorable melodic electronic albums in recent memory. Throughout the 11 track CD they fuse acoustic instrumentation with electronics to outstanding effect. The album works well as a whole, with many tracks segueing into one another seamlessly. Although most of the tracks are beat oriented, the varied drum sounds and patterns complement the melodic elements rather than become the focus.
schematic
The use of a brass section on several tracks sets Forest of the Echo Downs apart from countless other electronic releases. This live instrumentation gives "Black Moss Caves Pt. 1" and "Forest Floor" a cinematic quality. This music would be the perfect soundtrack to a film version of the plant-life scenes illustrated on the cover. The mid-album placement of "Baron of the Bog," the sole vocal track, balances the 44 minute set nicely. This track would be played during the scene in the film in which the main characters meet in a bar with a plant-life theme. This track has a live, almost lounge band feel, but does not sound out of place among the other, more digital compositions. Although "Holographic Moon Owls" and "Pollen and Spores" have similar qualities to instrumental hip-hop, their arrangements prevent them from sounding as if they are lacking vocals. While most tracks feature a linear structure, they also contain plenty of analog synthesizer burbling and other intricate flourishes. The three-dimensional use of the stereo field ensures that new discoveries will be made with each repeated listen. Although it is unclear whether the acoustic instruments have been played live or are sampled, it is apparent that this crew has musical ability that goes beyond sampler programming. By the end of "Black Moss Caves Pt. 1," I had to remind myself that I was not listening to Dead Can Dance. It is not often that groups working in electronic music transcend genre and defy categorization with this level of success.
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Intr_version
Here is another album from Intr_version that perfectly conforms to my expectations. I first heard The Beans on the label's excellent Saturday Morning Empires compilation, where their "May 6th Expires" served as the closing track, a gentle, rain-saturated drift-off that managed to sound both out-of-place among label's dominant electronic artists and also very apt, as a summary of the melancholic mood-building available throughout everything I've heard from the label yet. With this, their fifth proper release, the group has made a record whose spectral, narcotic beauty I feel instantly like I've heard many times before, but will never grow tired. The Beans are from Canada, and it's hard not to align their music, however slightly, with fellow countrymen Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Bassplayer is four long "rock" instrumentals driven by the same kind of simple, sad, two-chord meditations that Godspeed layers high with the swooning textures and the odd cryptic political snippets to create their signature effect. The Beans approach the same medium with fewer musicians, a looser stylistic palette, and much less bombast. Their slow, low-rising pieces seem—like Godspeed's—to touch on very familiar, almost basic melodic components, but without as much heart-stringing, making them better open to interpretation—if not quite subversive or challenging content-wise. Nothing is particularly new about the group's style or methods; however these songs speak for themselves, as "May 6th Expires" did as the finale of Intr_version's sampler. Included here as the first track in longer form, the song saturates from the first second, an almost note-less, reverb-expanded bassline brimming and coating each lazy, jazzy slide of the guitars, hooked into each other as if guarding against a very real threat of disintegration, a feeling notably lacking from the work of Godspeed and other post-rock groups where the studied, forced character of songs often ruins their potential for dramatic intensity. Bassplayer benefits from production that retains a live feel, emphasizing the endurance and conviction of the players while making the layered crescendos of the music all the more impressive. My first thought when hearing The Beans was actually a similarity to Australia improvisers The Necks, not so much in direct tonal relationship or even in the music's structural intent, but The Necks work within a similar slow-enfolding, immersive environment in which a song's parts reveal themselves as dependent without a sense of hierarchy. And though The Beans' discography does include three film scores, they refuse the visual dependencies of most things termed "cinematic." While much of this music captures a certain melancholic urgency that could serve the right film very well, it's hard to tell if this is not simply a part of the familiarity, the comfort I find in the music. Bassplayer is special in that it takes comfortable, almost predictable associations and offers the opportunity of living inside them for a short time, a kinetic edge usually denied music of such lateral calm and tender restraint.
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Threshold House
At first listen, COILANS seems like Exhibit A for the sort of experimental audio that functions as more of an intellectual or conceptual pleasure, rather than the sort of viscerally satisfying music I've come to expect from Coil. It clocks in at well over four hours of entirely unstructured, rhythm-less high-frequency sine-waves and subtly shifting AC hum. Tracks have no beginning or end, no point-counterpoint or resolution, and no tonal consistency. This new three-disc set also includes a DVD of synchronized digital animations for four of the tracks. It's a reissue and expansion of ANS, a limited edition, tour-only CD released last year, minimally packaged in an unmarked black plastic clamshell. This new boxed set comes in a beautiful foldout cardboard package (identical to the recent reissue of Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy for Lilith) decorated with pictures of the disused ANS machine itself, sitting neglected in a basement room of the Moscow State University, rarely used and in dire need of a radical overhaul. It was built in 1958 by Evgeny Murzin, who set out to create a synthesizer capable of producing the full range of audible frequency via a unique photoelectric process. The composer inscribes his visual "score" onto a glass plate covered with sticky black mastic, slides it through the machine, which reads the inscribed plate and converts the etchings into sound produced by a system of 800 oscillators. In the liner notes, which provide further technical information about the machine, Coil acknowledge that it takes a lot of practice and skill for the user to relate the marks on the plate to the resultant sounds. Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke (whose name is misspelled in the notes) spent an entire year of intensive work with the machine to produce his one and only piece of electronic music entitled "Flow." However, Coil spent only a few days with the ANS, so by their own admission, the sounds on these three discs cannot be described as "compositions" in any sense. Instead, the sounds represent an accidental interpretation of Coil's visual art into audible electricity. As such, it is pointless to assess the musical merit of any of these pieces. The soundpieces in the set are the work of various solo and group alignments of Jhonn Balance, Peter Christopherson, Ossian Brown, Thighpaulsandra and Ivan Pavlov of COH. The notes do not identify which track features which personnel, either because they can't remember or they think it doesn't matter. The CD wallets (and the prints included with the first edition of the set) feature some of the line drawings that were used to make these pieces, but once again, the listener is given no indication which drawings produced which sounds. The drawings operate as Spare-style magical talismans, where occult symbols and "alphabet of desire" glyphs representing words or phrases (such as the tautological "IT JUST IS" on the back of disc B) exist as arcane sigillizations. But the ANS is able to take these occult strategies a step beyond the usual, by transforming them into an entirely exotic lexicon of ghostly electric frequencies. This relation of visual image to sound had the effect of a strange form of synaesthesia on me as I waded through these four discs of unprocessed analog tones; I began to form novel mental connections between sound and vision, thoughts and symbols. Halfway through the third disc I had become like Nikola Tesla, obsessively listening to electronic signals trying to pick out messages he was certain were being transmitted by extraterrestrials. Is it possible for the mind to subconsciously decode this esoteric system of pulsations, throbs, clicks and whirrs? It's impossible to say with any certainty, but the mere suggestion that it might be so makes the sound entirely compelling. At first glance, the DVD animations seemed no more inventive than WinAmp visuals, but I soon noticed the subtle psychedelic abstractions present in each perfectly synchronized schema. By the end of my COILANS adventure, I was tuned into a heretofore unexplored magickal current, a current that sparks and buzzes with vibrations of the manifest spirit. Electricity has truly made angels of us all.
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PALESTINE is one of the cornerstones of YANN TIERSEN's next album DUST LANE. Ici,d'ailleurs asked some members of collective This Immortal Coil (DEADVERSE [Dälek], CHAPELIER FOU, THE THIRD EYE FOUNDATION [Matt Elliott] and Yann Tiersen himself) to deliver their own reading of this emblematic track for a EP to be released in vinyl only.
PALESTINE, an original track and 6 interpretations by 6 strong-tempered personalities...
Cornerstone of YANN TIERSEN's next album DUST LANE, PALESTINE stands at the crossroads of the artist's multiple talents. It is the expression of an itinerary without fail where the toy piano harmonises altogether with the electronic instruments, Dave Collingwood's implacable drums and Matt Elliott's characteristic voice. An invitation to travel, in an undoubtedly troubled time, but, above all, a humanistic hymn beyond boundaries, reflecting unfailing hope.
Ici,d'ailleurs asked some members of collective This Immortal Coil (of which Yann Tiersen himself) to deliver their own reading of this emblematic track.
DEADVERSE (Dälek) gives the opening shot with a version worthy of an armoured division ready to blast away all genres and walls; heavy hip hop with industrial rhythms, both insistent and devastating, for modern dancefloors.
CHAPELIER FOU, with a complex rhythmical cartography - in the vein of his début album to also be released in March - cleverly de-constructs the boundaries of PALESTINE in a sequenced slow motion crumbling, like a deeply moving continuous shot where sound gives life to images.
MATT ELLIOTT brings his project The Third Eye Foundation back to life for a totally unbridled comeback and blows minds away with his unique dark shadowy dub to once more prove the obvious universality of his language.
YANN TIERSEN, in trans-genre-hobo way, brings peace to his track by opening its own boundaries to the spectres of serial composers, of German precursors of the digital age as well as the post-Timothy Leary of the years 2000, to deliver a yet unknown face of the artist.
The PALESTINE EP will be release in march 2010 in 12" vinyl with a download coupon (the digital version includes a 20 mn bonus version from ORKA )
The limited colored vinyl edition (500 red / 500 green) will only be available by mail order or during the concerts.
Preorder now & choose your color
The 18 first copies of each series (except black) will be signed by Yann Tiersen.
Orders will be sent on mid-march.
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- Creaig Dunton
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While comparisons to Cold Cave are going to be somewhat inevitable in this day and age, this four track EP from Clockcleaner vocalist/guitarist John Sharkey III embraces the new wave nostalgia to some extent, but the result is closer to early '80s death rock than the more synth heavy projects, owing far more to the likes of Christian Death than New Order.
The four tracks that comprise this 12" follow a similar recipe, but never feel overly redundant or repetitive. The opening "Not My Idea" joins a fuzzed out bassline to a monotone drum beat. The funeral march is fleshed out with some very 1980s analog synth parts and deep, monotone death rock vocals. "Torture" mines similar territory, with slow pounding echoed drums and morose vocals, all of which plods along depressingly.
"Let’s Make Friends" has a bit more "rock" sound to it, the synths and drums are a lot sharper and there’s a more traditional verse/chorus/verse structure to it, but still with the same dour and angry sound to it. The shorter "This Is Murder" immediately calls to mind something off The Cure’s Faith, but with all of the production and reverb stripped away to near nothingness.
The embracing of 1980s synth sounds on here will surely put it next to the likes of Cold Cave, but the results are quite different. There is a more stripped down organic feel here, with most of the tracks being only bass, synth, drums and vocals in various configurations, without a lot of post-production or effects. The sound is nature and sounds a lot more like it was recorded to a 4 track instead of a Macbook. It also carries over a good amount of the sleaze from Clockcleaner, but focusing much more on the goth sounds of them than the scuzz-rock of that band. The vocals occasionally start to go a bit too far into rock territory, contrasting with a genre that’s normally more restrained in its approach, but the shift isn’t too strong as to kill the vibe of the material.
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Having been stalwarts in the Japanese electroacoustic microsound scene for over a decade now, the quartet has always focused on unifying the usually disparate worlds of laptop based programming and improvised organic music. For their second release on the 12k label, they have done exactly that, marrying acoustic guitar with software patches, all presented in a warm, post-rock influenced analog audio bath.
The opening of "Elementary Domain" matches beeping tones and distant noises with the untreated pure sound of guitar strings and bells. The structure is definitely one of a more abstract and laptop-composed nature, but the parts used are definitely warm ambient pop, weaving together a complex piece that is far more natural and inviting than expected. "Help Ourselves" has a similar feeling to it, but employs a great deal of warm piano, shimmering analog strings, and all so subtle laptop noises.
Surprisingly enough, the remainder of the songs are, for the most part, actually more "natural" sounding. "When Unwelt Melts" is a slow building piece that begins with the gentle chimes of a music box, with a bit of acoustic guitar above. As it continues, the addition of analog and digital instrumentation fleshes out the song, leading through a natural evolution that delicate and beautiful. "Helical Scenery" also joins acoustic guitar and shaker percussion with soft synth textures. As the track is given room to grow and change, lush accordion-like tones and more pronounced guitar intermingle above the subtle keyboards.
Towards the latter half of the disc the music becomes slightly more forceful and obtuse, but never out of control. "Be Born" mixes lush, infinite harmonium and harmonica passages with abstract organ noodling, and by the time the massive, crashing percussion shows up at the end, the track rivals some of the best krautrock out there. The long piece, "First Breathing At Last," again uses the digital elements as instruments alongside synths and guitar to create a structured, yet rhythmically disjointed piece that definitely has structure to it, but a very abstract and esoteric one. The track allows the heavier synths and electronics to rise up at the end, creating a heavy, but not oppressive sensation.
One thing that separates them from so many other laptop artists is the fact that Minamo is a band. They play together, mostly working with live recordings, and use laptops and other digital based technology as instruments, not as a crutch. The music they create has that organic, "live" feel to it, even though the instrumentation is at times anything but traditional. Like label mates Small Color, there is a warmth and soul here, proving that digital music does not need to be abrasive and inhuman.
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After successful releases on Sedimental and Tilt Recordings Thanasis Kaproulias was invited to the venerable VPRO Radio to perform a piece live, and unsurprisingly it has been released on the Staalplaat label for the rest of the world to hear. The single 47 minute track covers the composer’s sound as it is being refined, capturing elements of other artists such as Francisco Lopez and Bernhard Gunter, but still retaining an identity all his own.
The earliest parts of the performance are most inline with Gunter’s work, consisting of an extremely quiet hiss with microscopic textures that are almost psychoacoustic in their changes. It has a slow build in volume and texture, with shrill tones appearing extremely low in the mix, but still enough to be noticeable. Kaproulias’ penchant for shocking the listener is definitely here, as on his previous work, with an abrupt, violent clattering of field recorded noise crashing in unexpectedly. This appears as a loop, with the subsequent reprises being far less violent and jarring than the first.
The hiss continues under the clattering, which eventually rises into a rushing stream of white noise: a monochrome hiss that initially sounds like simply static, but slowly morphs into a complex composition of chaotic sound. Under the dissonance of the noise, tones that resemble a processed piano appear below the blanket of sound. Occasionally a rhythmic blast of destroyed digital sound comes up to act as a counterpoint to the more inviting tonal elements, but it never lasts for long.
The white noise cuts in and out in Kaproulias’ preferred style, eventually reappearing more as an apocalyptic swarm of locusts that swells into harsh stuttering noise, with the piano-like tones holding on for dear life amidst the end of the world chaos that surrounds it. Eventually it all relents, with the closing minutes mirroring the first moments of near silence, which left me on edge for another moment of jarring noise that never quite happened.
Novi_sad’s style obviously works in a live context, as it does in a more composed studio format. The overall structure is one that is more restrained and minimalist than what was showcased on his other releases, but it never feels overly limited or simplified at all. As usual, the label has packaged this radio performance in a unique way, this time in a digipak style fold-out made of recycled LPs, held together by the ubiquitous center pin. It has a cool appearance to it, and from the sound of other reviews, it’s not going to render the disc unplayable.
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