08 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Raster-Noton

The album opens with a suite of four tracks that are intended to represent one singular soundtrack, but each function on their own.  The 12 minute opener "Phaser Acat 1" has a hollow, but heavy ambient quality to it, blasting in white noise and feedback like tones that, at least for the first half, are much more in-line with the likes of digital Merzbow with a hint of black metal chug lingering below (perhaps O'Malley's contributions).  For the second half, the noise drifts away but the chug stays, albeit low, as clinical static and soft, lush synths begin to become the focus, the full contrast between guitar-like riffs, digital static, and soft synths are actually not that far removed from some of the more abstract Jesu work.

The remaining two pieces of this opening set, "Soma" and "Meta Phaser," resemble the first generally, continuing the deep, dark ambience with swells of noise and feedback, the latter adding buzzing analog tones and overdriven bass amp feedback while turning the noise up a bit, before allowing everything to fall away into quiet drift.

The remaining pieces are not as stylistically linked as these, but have a similar feel and sense about them, though the actual nuances differ from track to track.  "Sora" sounds like a film score that has been bootlegged off of an old VHS tape:  the string-based tones and sweeps are audible, but covered in a layer of analog filth that's exaggerated by digital skipping and occasional overdriven bass tones.  Both "Monophaser" tracks are a bit less forboding than the others, emphasizing string like electronic tones and static crunch, the former adding in what may be field recordings of thunderstorms into the background.

"Teion Acat," and its predecessor "Teion" are more reserved, but tense and dark in execution, focusing on grim sustained tones and static decay, the latter sounding like a more obvious reworking due to its more cut-and-paste style construction, but the white noise swells and stuttering bass synth components give it an even greater sense of tension than the original, which makes up for any compositional complaints.

While this was a bit different than I was expecting from the label…I usually prepare myself for minimalist fragment tones and the smallest clicks sequenced into rhythm tracks, I was both surprised and pleased at the combination of rawer digital noise and dense atmospheres that are presented here.  Then again, the label has yet to disappoint me, so I had no expectation that they suddenly would begin to.

samples:

• Phaser Acat 1
• Soma
• Monophaser 3

08 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Important

Part of the intrigue of the musical interplay here is surely due to the unusual instrumental lineup. Consisting of Braxton cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, violaist Jessica Pavone, guitarist Mary Halvorson, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara, the ensemble has an uncommon airiness in all of its endeavors. Never bogged down by weighty riffs, the compositions here float along in the mid and high ranges with a breezy and emotive ease of movement. While each work here represents a different approach (all members contributed compositions) the overall effect is a unified and mobile whole that gives the album a logical but gentle momentum.

The quartet's depth can be seen from the beginning, as the brief "Unfinished Ballad" slips gently into the funkier proceedings on "Army of Strangers." Here, the unit combines tight, James Brown rhythms with modern Bloodcount-like elasticity. Despite brief solos all around, no musician ever stands out or takes over as line after line is woven together in the name of the composition. Which is really the point on display throughout the album. These are, fundamentally, compositions, and anything done outside of the score (however loosely defined that may be) is done so in an attempt to further a dialogue with the pieces' initial ideas.

As much can be seen on "Pinched," with Halvorson's power chords and Fujiwara's drums cranking out punk attitude while Bynum and Pavone intersect near Klezmer cornet and viola lines against them. When the work disintegrates into smears of tone and noise, it works less because the digression is as well performed as it is as because of its logic within the stylistic tensions already set up in the minutes preceding it. It is just this sort of smart play that keeps the disc moving into realms stylistically beyond the ultimate listenability of the disc as a whole.

If anything, this is an album that only whets the appetite. These four capable musicians have a simpatico that few do, as well as a clear willingness to explore one another's work. This mix of respect, talent and experimentalism is rare, and the results are as rich as one would hope. While "Too Sweet" may be an undulating and fiery excursion, it is balanced by the calm ensemble work on the closing "Hate Fields;" it is this sense of balance that allows the unit to explore any musical approach without fear of discontinuity. Here, talent is overridden by communication, composition by approach, and style by feel, a trait sadly all too uncommon in the world of contemporary composition.

samples:

• Army of Strangers
• Pinched
• Hate Fields

08 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

NB Research Digest

Ponytail is the solo project of one-half of Helsinki dubstep team Clouds (I thought I had never heard of them, but then I recognized their track from the most recent DJ/Rupture album).  Clouds are cleanly produced, structured, melodic, and heavily indebted to Jamaican music.  Ponytail is conspicuously none of those things.  This is likely due to Tanner's singularly eclectic inspirations: Charles Mingus, punk, and proto-industrial provocateur Pekka Airaksinen.  And, of course, Finnish agrarian folk music (which Tanner's family has been involved with for many generations).  Being a particularly ingenious and creative fellow, Tanner does not overtly borrow anything from the aforementioned artists; he merely plunders their aesthetic philosophies and applies them to his own ideas.

Themes For Cops is a pleasing and compellingly strange album, but it is very difficult to describe a constantly shifting and fragmented 34-minute song.  The only consistency is deep bass and dubstep/downtempo hip-hop drums.  Only the fact that they are there, of course. The actual rhythm/bass line tends to segue into something new every minute or so.  Sometimes it is danceable and locks into extremely ephemeral groove, but more often it sounds like I am listening to a dubstep tape that has been through a washing machine.  Fuzziness, odd wavering, warping, and off-kilter lurching abounds.  Not in a bad way though- more in a Boards of Canada/William Basinski kind of way.  

Tanner's musical palette is, to make a gross understatement, rather varied.  Electronic glitchery coexists with violins, accordions, lounge-y farfisa, neo-classical piano, and pop song snippets.  Making experimental music with a wide array of source material is not especially unique at this point, but Tanner does it in a particularly unclumsy fashion and largely avoids self-indulgence (and conclusively avoids pandering to listeners).  As alluded to earlier, nothing sticks around long enough to achieve any sort of lasting beauty or funkiness—Themes is more like fever dream in which a torrent of striking moments (ranging from sublime to crazy to unsettling) deluges the listener.  It is unlikely that anyone will ever say that this is their favorite album or anything, but Ponytail certainly will elicit much more inner commentary like "Hmm. that sounds cool.," "Was that snippet from a freaking Ladyhawke song?!?!!," or "Woah- what the hell is going on here?!?" than his contemporaries.

Themes For Cops compellingly makes the argument that you can get away with just about anything if you throw in some drums.  Many of the ruined and corrupted sounds here would be perfectly at home on a much more listener-hostile and uncompromisingly harsh album, but are rendered strangely palatable in this context.  Tanner has made a surprising and engrossing album- I vastly prefer this to his parent band.

Samples:

• Excerpt One
• Excerpt Two
• Excerpt Three

08 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Bureau-B

Most of the pieces here have a strong groove to them, there is very little of the droning soundscapes that made up the bulk of Disconnected. This is most welcome as Faust were always at their best with a strong beat and a catchy riff. However, there is also little here of what would be traditionally considered a song; the music is like a runaway horse that pulls the band with it, the band doing their best to direct it. This all adds up to a glorious end result, tracks like “Kundalini Tremolos” and “En Veux-tu des Effets, en Voilà” steamroll along and are impossible not to get caught up in.

It is not all heavy rockin’ as the title track shows more of Faust’s abstract side, Jean-Hervé Péron’s wordplay sits atop a largely percussion-led piece with what sounds like looped guitar in the background and Zappi Diermaier’s drumming seems to be in constant flux, spinning the beats around and changing the momentum of the music in a strangely subliminal way. On the face of it, hundreds of bands do the same thing to much the same effect but even though they are at an age where the spark of inspiration has usually extinguished, Faust instil some magic into the music. There is a touch of the absurd which stops them falling into cliché (and this is reflected in the liner notes by Péron and Zappi).

The remarkable thing about this album is how little it sounds like Faust. While it is unmistakably them, the music on C’est Com... Com... Compliqué is very different to any of the new material released on any recent live albums and even Disconnected was a very different beast. This is especially surprising as Nurse With Wound used the same recordings to make Disconnected as Karsten Bötcher used to mix this new album (they were originally to be released at the same time as sister albums). The difference is so huge that I cannot even identify what bits Steven Stapleton had taken for Disconnected bar one or two glaringly obvious bits. This situation is a bit of history repeating considering how different Faust’s early albums were despite being culled from the same sessions.

C’est Com... Com... Compliqué is a stunning album (and certainly my favorite out of the two being released this week) that sounds as fresh as any of Faust’s best albums. Although I am a big Faust fan, I did not think they could ever recapture the power and joy of their early years but with this album they have achieved that goal and they have done it without rehashing any old ideas.

samples:

• Kundalini Tremolos
• Bonjour Gioacchino
• C'est Com... Com... Compliqué

08 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Salamanda

Playing for a home crowd has a dramatic effect on how Faust play, there is a far looser feel to this performance compared to other recent live albums like ...In Autumn and Od Serca Do Duszy. At first, it feels so loose that I was not sure if I even was enjoying the music (the first couple of pieces are slow burners) but with repeated listens, the happiness the band exude becomes infectious. Much of the first disc is composed of new (or improvised) songs ranging in styles from spacious abstractions like “Firework Lovesong for Lilli-Sau” to stomping rockers like “Es Ist Mir Kalt.” “Lass Mich” (featured on the Nurse With Wound collaborative album Disconnected) makes for a joyously ramshackle performance, at times it feels like the song is going to fall apart under its own momentum but somehow Faust keep it together.

The second disc contains all the usual crowd pleasers; “Krautrock,” “Giggy Smile” (that guitar riff is still timeless) and “Schempal Buddha” (a.k.a. “J’ai Mal aux Dents”) are all blasted out with atomic force. A rousing version of “It’s a Rainy Day (Sunshine Girl)” finishes off Faust’s set; a beaming smile on a cheery face. The final track of the album is given over to Nurse With Wound with Jean-Hervé Péron singing alongside Steven Stapleton on a version of “Rock’n Roll Station.” Stapleton’s love of Faust comes through with him altering the lyrics to include loads of Faust references while Peron gets lost in the beats.

Schiphorst 2008 is a good live album but I am not sure if it will find welcoming ears outside of hardcore Faust (and NWW) fans as the recording quality is not exactly stellar. The mix makes the best of the bootleg quality recording but the end result is flatter than I would like. A little oomph in the low end is definitely needed. That being said, the actual performance captured transcends the actual recording quality, listening to this album makes me wish I was there as Faust sound like they are having great fun and to hear it live would be awesome.

samples:

• Firework Lovesong for Lilli-Sau
• Lass Mich
• Schempal Buddha

07 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

The End

"Sandskin" begins the record with the kind of indistinguishable and formless buzz typical of most drone-rock outfits. It is pretty, involving, and utterly elastic. Imagining the various and distinct sounds as a unified mass is only a matter of letting the mind slip so that it can confuse the song's various features. When the rhythmic pounding that typifies the rest of the track first erupts, it spawns a dizzying effect. All the various parts (guitar, bass, drums, unidentifiable noise) seem wholly unrelated: the drums don't match the buzzing ambience and the buzzing ambience is at odds with the decidedly epic guitar wails that generate the song's forward motion. Over time these differences gel and Nadja proudly display their rock 'n' roll muscle. Chugging riffs, massive distortion, memorable melodies, and slow, deliberate arrangements are all Baker and Buckareff need to be compelling; the balls-to-the-wall character of this album is founded on that simplicity. Nadja rock on this record and forego many of the qualities that often cause writers and fans to describe them as experimental.

Still, there are plenty of devices employed on Skin Turns to Glass by which the duo obscures their heavy metal formula. Baker's guitars have a tendency to imitate analog synthesizers and the textured distortion that coats each of the four songs on Skin Turns to Glass resembles the sort of noise one might expect from Richard Pinhas or an artist on Touch. Crunchy, over-driven gusts of sound are as much a part of the record as piano melodies, heavy riffs, and pounding rhythms. Baker's solos disappear into nets of granular echo and spacious guitar reverb only to re-emerge and die a glorious, electronic death; an entire song dissolves into hushed waves of trembling strings and distorted, ambivalent moans take center stage as often as distinct instruments do. The tension created by emphasizing chaotic noise and sensible arrangements in equal doses is part of what gives this record its substantial depth. It is also what characterizes Nadja's best music.

If anything interrupts this record's consistent and potent delivery, it's the untitled closing song. It runs for nearly a half hour without doing much but humming indistinctly at a low volume. It isn't until the song is nearly over that the driving rock elements present everywhere else on the record return and conclude the album properly. While this song may have fit on another, more abstract Nadja record, it serves only to distract and debilitate on this one. Without it, Skin Turns to Glass is a wholly coherent and consistent record rooted into the power and clarity of rock music. The duo didn't need to include "Untitled" for the album to be complete. For that reason it sounds more like a curiosity than a proper part of the album.

samples:

• Sandskin
• Slow Loss
• Untitled

07 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

This dubwise sideproject from the established Ninja Tunesmith seditiously defects from the singer-songwriter's last album under his primary Fink moniker.  Yet unlike the icy-hot textures crafted by current kings of the sound Rod Modell and Stephen Hitchell, Fin Greenall's approach curves away from deep space revisionism while skewing more towards Rhythm & Sound's rootsy reverence.

Aus Music

Although his Ntone debut Fresh Produce rendered an auspicious contribution to the subgenre formerly known as trip hop, Fink's subsequent divagation into unremarkable folk-inflected indie fare largely failed to leave much of an impression on me.  While the move earned him a new crop of followers, Greenall's iconoclastic desire to make dull songs for wistful boys and girls too proud to buy Dave Matthews Band albums alienated many of his initial fans.  To those left behind and embittered, consider Sideshow, his subtly techy yet inherently organic contribution to the endlessly expanding co-option of Jamaican music by electronic producers, an olive branch of sorts.

Admit One is the second Sideshow full-length for Aus Music, a Simple Records imprint that Greenall co-founded with DJ/producer Will Saul.  Contrasting with the bedroom studio norm that dominates in electronic music, these ten tracks result from a collaborative band effort, with bass, percussion, and string duties almost entirely farmed out to other musicians, leading to some unadulterated performances that save the album from the common pitfalls of more machine-driven recreations.  "Youth Of Today" contains everything I enjoy about dub music, from its low slung bassline and snapping drum hits to the sonic pulses and echoes, generated in this instance by Greenall's hands-on use of primo effects units like the Alesis Quadraverb GT and the Boss SE50.  Tech-house hybrids "Sequential Dub" and "African Cherry" provide that little something-something for the dancefloors, though their tempos will likely confine these 4/4 cuts to warm-up sets.  On the vocal front, Paul St. Hilaire's perpetually honeyed tones bless the wide open spaces of lead single "If Alone", while Samar's persistent repetitious vocals on "French Model In Dub" complement Ellie Wyatt's disconsolate strings.

Only marginally more uplifting than a Tindersticks instrumental, the cinematic "Strung Outro" presents Wyatt's lush strings and Greenhall's tender plucking immersed in Tim Thornton's chiming cymbals and hats.  This track exposes a curious alternate future for this group, one that bridges both of Greenall's projects without crossing any dangerous boundaries.  The lone abscess on this otherwise unblemished record is, unfortunately, its opening track "Television," a fatuous specimen of insipid pop sung by Nashville's Cortney Tidwell, an otherwise reliable alt-country artist that should have known better than to record this uncharacteristically vapid driblet.  Lacking any real connection with the rest of the choice material on Admit One, it gave me such a bad impression that for weeks I avoided listening to any of the other tracks.  Thankfully, beyond this lies a wonderful album awaiting listeners willing to jump the minor hurdle and hit the forward button on their respective iPods.

 Samples:

• If Alone
• Youth Of Today
• African Cherry

07 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Western Vinyl

All Is Wild, All Is Silent borrows its title from William B. Dewees' Letters From An Early Settler Of Texas To A Friend and the music is certainly appropriate to that theme ("the album swells with images of an untamed land... and faith in the face of an unknown and savage Nature.").  In simpler terms, this album is...ahem..."cinematic."  Somewhat bombastically so, in fact.  Of course, Balmorhea are often extremely good at what they do (the plucked violins, stark piano, and shimmering electric guitar in "Harm and Boon" are quite striking, for example), so I can't easily dismiss them.  Of course, I cannot embrace it either, as their newfound maximalism clashes uncomfortably with their earlier minimalism.  Balmorhea are at their best when they are simple, uncluttered, and languid (as on 2008's excellent Rivers Arms).  This new line-up adds quite a bit of heft, but is a bit too song-y and liberal with crescendos and sweeping grandeur for my taste.  The world already has one Calexico.

The opening track ("Settler") begins with a vaguely pretty and simple piano part and manages to prematurely explode into soaring epic mode when the strings come in after a mere twenty seconds or so.  There is also a vexingly unsubtle chorus of sorts that makes me want to bang my head into the wall every time it crassly blunders in.  This stylistic mishap is rendered still more distressing by the fact that "Settler" becomes quite beautiful after the midpoint, when a shimmering piano gives way to a stripped-down and melancholy interlude of acoustic guitar, mournful violin, and laconic wordless vocals.  I even like the stomping outro, which ingeniously enhances the song's earlier, somewhat uninteresting themes with an exuberant Latin clapping rhythm.

"Coahuila" is one of the album's few unqualified successful songs.  it contains all the usual elements of the new and brawnier Balmorhea (poignant violins, simple acoustic arpeggios, distant reverbed vocals, an intense crescendo, etc.), but is unique here for unfolding in a patient, unforced manner.  Unearned climaxes and misplaced intensity are probably this album's biggest pitfalls.  "Truth" also succeeds for the same reason and ends with some beautiful unaccompanied piano.  Unfortunately, while some tracks stand out from the others, nothing particularly floored me.  There are a lot of inspired moments on this album, but no songs that have sustained brilliance.  It's all just merely pleasant and inoffensive.   

I am hoping that this is a transitional album and that future efforts more seamlessly integrate Balmorhea's newfound muscularity.  They are a fairly unusual and often excellent band and I heartily recommend checking out their earlier efforts, but this is a bit of a mis-step. Of course, in Balmorhea's defense, All Is Wild, All Is Silent would make an excellent accompanying score to a somewhat highbrow western.  Notably, however, that film does not exist, and I feel puzzled and foolish listening to musical evocations of heroic cowboys and wagon trains in my apartment.  

Samples:

• Settler
• Coahuila
• Truth

07 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

Kemado

Marissa Nadler's appeal is so simple that it's hard to explain. Though certainly her fingerpicking style is lovely, there are doubtless other artists who could dwarf her abilities. Her voice is evocative but often drenched in reverb, which is not at all an uncommon strategy for artists looking to add some haunt and atmosphere to their work. Her songs are often simplistic, and across her four albums there are certainly moments of déja vu for a careful listener; similar melodic progressions get trotted out repeatedly, and the lyrical imagery draws from such a recognizably discrete set of themes that, at this point, it would probably be possible to make a Marissa Nadler magnetic poetry lyric set for refrigerator doors everywhere. What makes Marissa Nadler's music irresistible is not reducible to any of its component parts. It's something else, something intangible, something approaching what Roland Barthes called "the grain of the voice," but somehow even less definable. Either you "get it" or you don't, and luckily, critics and listeners everywhere seem to be "getting" Marissa Nadler more with each successive release. Given this trajectory, Little Hells may well be Nadler's breakthrough album.

It's her breakthrough album because she sticks to what she knows; simple, melancholic fingerpicked folk ballads that take advantage of her sonorous, spine-tingling vocals, narrating tales of damsels in distress or lovers absent or dead. What has changed are the arrangements; many of these tracks feature a full band backing up the singer-songwriter, a band drawn from the ranks of groups like Blonde Redhead, Beachwood Sparks, and Vetiver. Sure, Nadler has had accompaniment in the past, notably some subtle synths here and there on her debut, and the electric third-eye soloing of Greg Weeks on her last album Songs III: Bird On the Water, but she has never tried for a traditional rock sound, which is her big gamble on Little Hells. Not that you would know it from the first track "Heartpaper Lover," which uses a limited sound palette with no rhythm section, just Marissa's multitracked vocals and guitar, with atmospheric air raid synths forming a creepy backdrop. But on the album's second track, "Rosary," everything changes. Not only does the track feature drums and bass, but also a noticeably jauntier and more confident performance from Nadler herself.

The changes get even more intense with tracks like "Mary Comes Alive," which add synths to the already maximalist arrangement, and ends up sounding like a lost Mazzy Star B-side. This is not to say that Marissa has abandoned her folk origins, and many tracks here retain a sense of that witchy Brit-folk vibe that made an album like The Saga of Mayflower May so appealing. More notable than the continuities are the disruptions, however, a track such as "Mistress," which incredibly, is nothing less than full-bore countrified rock, Nadler singing from the point of view of a joyful adulteress: "Goodbye misery/linens on the line...Come in now, you know I won't desert you/It's been four years waiting for the day/That would you would leave your girl and take me/Somewhere away." The production on Marissa's voice is top-notch throughout the album, transforming the sometimes miasmic muddle of past albums into vocals that are at once nebulous and piercing, like a whisp of smoke that spontaneously forms into distinct but ephemeral shapes before melting back into undifferentiated haze.

Little Hells is a fantastic album that completely transcends any tenuous association that Marissa Nadler might once have had with the annoying, and now dead, indie "freak-folk" scene. There are no willful eccentricities on display here; just a great singer-songwriter with incredible poise, seemingly in full control of her aesthetic, spinning ten haunting narratives in musical miniature.

samples:

• Ghosts & Lovers
• Rosary
• Mistress

07 March 2009

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Albums and Singles

The CD will only be available from the Williams Street online shop.