- Chris Roberts
- Albums and Singles
Anticon
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/why-sanddollars.jpg)
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- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Important
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/haflertriobeing.jpg)
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- Jim Siegel
- Albums and Singles
Planet Mu
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/hellfish-sonic_attack_force.jpg)
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- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Load
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/excepter-throne.jpg)
As usual, thereductiveness with which these bands have been grouped together by theelite contingent of music critics thus far has led to a lot ofgeneralization that is unfair to the artists involved. Instead of justtalking about how the music actually sounds, we are expected only totalk about how this fits into a larger movement, or exploit the musicand aesthetics for some political end. For bands like Excepter, thisapproach just doesn't fly. Not only do they sound significantlydifferent, Excepter have a longer history than most of the other bandsgrouped under the "Brooklyn Noise" heading.
Excepter is the brainchildof John Fell Ryan, a former member of the No Neck Blues Band, whobrings with him from his former collective a canny sense ofimprovisational dynamics. Ryan and the four other members of Exceptercreate a unique brand of improvised electronics that does not dependupon laptops and preprogrammed, post-techno routines, but rather on acommunal, ritualistic idea of music slowly coalescing and emerging fromgroup play. Their live performances are truly unique events, throwingtense Throbbing Gristle energy together with Berliniamsburgelectroclash posturing, extended krautrock jams with druggy shoegazerrock, beatific ambient washes of sound with eruptions of paint-peelingnoise and clunky analog chatter.
Their first full-length KA was a very impressive debut album, and their newly released follow-up Thronesshows that the band is not through tinkering with their sound. Wherethe first album was eclectic and mercurial from track to track, Thronescreates a mood and chases it to its conclusion, never straying too farfrom the path. As such, it's something more of a trudge than KA,and some will not have the patience for the full journey. But it is arewarding listen, a trance-inducing combination of analog pulses,looped samples, fractured drum machines, swirling guitar noise, fieldrecordings and echoplexed male and female vocal wails lost in amaelstrom of reverb. It's rather more insistently dark than itspredecessor, in contrast to the bright ocean paradise pictured on thesleeve.
The title is a Biblical reference to one of Daniel's moreapocalyptic and prophetic dreams: "I beheld till the thrones were castdown, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose...throne [was like] thefiery flame, [and] his wheels [as] burning fire." The music doesjustice to this hallucinatory prophecy, creating an environment abuzzwith eerie, cavernous echoes from a hazily envisaged future calamity,voices yawning back into the void, swirling and cracking apart in thebrutal crashing sound waves. If Excepter continue to evidence the samewillingness to experiment with and expand their soundworld, they couldvery well have as long and distinguished a career as the No Necks, andperhaps some day critics won't find it necessary to pigeonhole themalong with their NYC contemporaries.
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- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Kranky
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/common/images/covers/krank081.gif)
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- Stereo Music for Hi-Hat (6)
- Stereo Music for Farfisa Compact Duo Deluxe (18), Drum Kit (3)
- StereoMusic for Acoustic Guitar (8), Buchla Music Box 100 (2), HewlettPackard Model 236 Oscillator (3), Electric Guitar and Computer (3) -Part One
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- Lucas Schleicher
- Albums and Singles
Kranky
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/common/images/covers/krank083.gif)
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- Andrew Culler
- Albums and Singles
Häpna
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/eric_malmberg-den_gatfulla_manniskan.jpg)
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- Jonathan Dean
- Albums and Singles
Vivo
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/the_magic_carpathians_project-sonic_suicide_ethnoise_1.jpg)
samples:
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- Chris Roberts
- Albums and Singles
Lewis Recordings
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/edan-beauty_and_the_beat.jpg)
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- Jonathan Dean
- Albums and Singles
Corwood Industries
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/jandek-when_i_took_that_train.jpg)
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- Jonathan Dean
- Albums and Singles
As part of the Instal Festival, Jandek made an unannounced appearance, referred to only as "a representative from Corwood Industries," in front of a largely bewildered but enthusiastic audience that included David Tibet and a few others in the know. Glasgow Sunday is the official live recording (MP3s of the show have been circulating for months) of the performance, released on Corwood Industries in a typically nondescript jewel case.
It seems that John and Nancy couldn't make it to Scotland, so in their stead Jandek played as an impromptu avant-rock trio with the amazing Richard Youngs and the equally great Alex Neilson. Youngs and Nielson have previously performed and released an album together called Ourselves, and since the early 90s, Youngs has been involved in more experimental projects than you could shake a stick at, most notably a series of ear-opening collaborations with Simon Wickham-Smith. Alexander Neilson is a drummer for Scatter as well as the terrific One Ensemble of Daniel Padden. Adding all this underground credibility and experimental musical heft to Jandek seemed a strange idea at first; I would have expected the performance to be a solo affair on acoustic guitar. The strategy pays off brilliantly, however, as Youngs and Neilson add an improvisational intensity to the man's skeletal guitar meanderings and tortured moans that seems a perfect fit.
According to Youngs and Neilson, who had only one opportunity to rehearse the trio, Jandek categorized all of his songs thusly: "Ballads, blues and brutals." The performance captured on Glasgow Sunday leans heavily on the latter two categories, with eight lengthy tracks of blasted-out blues, atonal free-rock and confrontational lyrical intensity. Neilson's drums and Youngs' bass crash, ricochet and buffet against each other in senseless cacophony, rising to several crescendos with Jandek's spindly, impressionistic, detuned guitar punctuations. It's true improvisation in the sense that Youngs and Neilson seem to be completely in the dark as to Jandek's next move; and can only relentlessly follow his lead and respond in kind to the man's frighteningly explosive melancholia. Though it is unmistakably the same Jandek from the last 40 albums, there is also something wholly new and fascinating about his performance here that is unique in the Jandek oevre. Though he must be pushing 60 by now, his music is as tense and uncompromising as ever. Those that have accused Jandek over the years of being nothing more than a painfully untalented loser (I'm looking directly at you, Irwin Chusid) must stand back and reconsider their opinion in light of Glasgow Sunday. There are many ways to describe music as emotionally charged, chaotic and unstructured as the music here, but incompetent and unlistenable are not among them.
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