March | 2013 | The Answer Is In The Beat

Scott & Charlene’s Wedding: Two Weeks EP (Critical Heights, 2013)

March 5, 2013 at 6:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Scott & Charlene’s Wedding: Two Weeks EP

This actually isn’t brand new material from S&CW, it’s a standalone release of their split LP with Peak Twins that came out last year on Night People in America and Bedroom Suck Records in Australia. Of course, their album Para Vista Social Club that came out a few months ago was actually a reissue of an album that originally came out in 2010, so this is still much newer material, and it shows, as it’s tighter and more polished. But it still has a lazy, slacker-y feel to it, and it still brings to mind all manners of New Zealand indie-pop. “Two Weeks” and “Gammy Leg” start this EP off with similarly uptempo and catchy music, but less than cheerful lyrics. “Two Weeks” talks about being awkward and old-fashioned, and drinking during the day and being depressed. And “Gammy Leg” is delightfully gross, centering around a “zombie leg” which keeps spurting blood and won’t seem to heal. “I Wanna Die” follows, taking the tempo down to a bluesy shuffle and adding plenty of soloing. “My World” is another song about depression, but doesn’t have the uptempo catchiness of the first two tracks. “Hazy Morning” ends the EP with a solid 6 minutes of motorik rhythm and waves of awesome guitar effects, and lyrics seeking to resolve matters: “I don’t wanna be self-destructive anymore.” An enjoyable EP that deals with dark subject matter in a creative and sometimes humorous way.

Greg Boring: Heavy Syrup (Critical Heights, 2013)

March 5, 2013 at 6:09 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Greg Boring: Heavy Syrup

The back of this promo CD says it all: “We have no recollection of recording this”. That’s funny, because I have no recollection of listening to this! Just kidding. It definitely sounds like something by someone zonked out of their minds on some sort of abused household cleaning substance. Lots of Casios and other cheap keyboards, and a whole lot of uneasy sounds orbiting around slow carousel rhythms and female vocals which sound slightly more alert and coherent than the music, and maybe might’ve been produced to sound prettier in a different band. “Primitive Lotion” is an instrumental, and has it almost quite together, sticking to a steady Casio rhythm with delay effects, and coming off somewhat Clusterly. A few other tracks have this buzzing distortion that sounds like a misbehaving kitchen appliance or dishwasher or something, and that gets a little distracting. Final track “Night Moves” is another (mostly) instrumental cosmic space journey, with some squishy effects on the beats, and more astral synth exploration. I don’t mind the vocals on this album at all, but the tracks with less of them seem to be my favorite anyway.

The White Meadows: A Time For Drunken Horses (Reverb Worship, 2012)

March 3, 2013 at 3:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The White Meadows: A Time For Drunken Horses

Sample-heavy folk drone collage from Peter Taylor (Mortuus Auris & the Black Hand) and Maria Thompson. 10 very different tracks, utilizing gamelan percussion, throat singing, birdsong, opera, sitars, film dialogue, and numerous other sounds. Lots of acoustic instruments and nature sounds combined with electronic drone. “Birds” and “Frogs” sample records about those very things. “Clouds” samples dialogue about clouds, double tracking it with a second or two of delay so it says everything twice, and combines it first with aggressive, crunchy beats, then later with sublime nature-film synths. It sort of creates a new world music, one that draws from disparate elements, and most importantly from nature itself.

Journey Of Mind: Oil Burner tape (Constellation Tatsu, 2012)

March 2, 2013 at 11:23 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Journey Of Mind: Oil Burner

A rather short tape from an artist who seems to prefer leaving details up to the listener’s imagination. Two seven-minute tracks of slowed, warped ambience with beats that sound like they’re being played off a tape player whose battery is just about to die, but it’s smoothed out enough so that it actually sounds like a coherent musical statement. There’s also a lot of sounds that come in waves, like piano loops that fully fade out, stop, and start up again, but again in a way that makes sense. Very faded and distant and edge-of-consciousness, and it works so well.

Altar Eagle: Nightrunners + Remixes tape (Crash Symbols, 2013)

March 2, 2013 at 11:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Altar Eagle: Nightrunners

Nightrunners is an album that I feel like I shouldn’t have to review; it’s easily one of my favorite albums of last year, by far, and I feel like everyone should’ve heard it by now and praised it as one of the best albums of the year. Plus, you know, I wrote for their website so I’m biased anyway. But I’m guessing most people haven’t heard Nightrunners yet, in which case you can just head on over to Bandcamp right now and hear what you’ve been missing. Musically, it’s just really incredible synth/dream-pop, the arrangements and vocals are a definite improvement over their first album, the songs are catchy and touching, and it alternately reminds me of older Morr Music stuff, mid-’90s µ-Ziq (the synth sounds anyway), and Land Of The Loops. I fucking love Land Of The Loops.

I’m guessing the vinyl is no longer available, but Crash Symbols released it on tape with a track-by-track remix album on the second side (this is very nearly sold out as of this blog post). This is also available on Bandcamp (for free, even) so even if the tape’s sold out you can still hear it. The remixes tend to go for a deconstructive approach, looping and chopping up sections of vocals, rarely just taking them as is and merely applying their original song structures to new beats. Interpretations range from Seekers International’s wild dub take on “Digital Gold Futures”, to No UFOs’ dub-techno version of “Parallel Lives”, to a sensuous downtempo mix by Discoverer of “No Spring Till Summer”. “Fledgling” is my favorite song on the original album, and Ghibli’s remix doesn’t even try to capture what makes the original so special; instead, it isolates a heavily distorted vocal snippet, and loops an ecstatic melody over a loud clapping beat, and it’s over in a couple of minutes. Ricardo Donoso does a big dramatic cinematic edit of “New Designs”, focusing on the “we’re all lost but we don’t care” chorus and truly placing it in an appropriate new context.

Show #182 – 3/2/13

March 2, 2013 at 2:47 pm | Posted in The Answer Is In The Beat | Leave a comment

mic break music = giuseppe ielasi/kassel jaeger: parallel/grayscale
Hour 1
3:02 AM autechre ~ nodezsh ~ exai ~ warp
3:15 AM iannis xenakis ~ concret ph ~ grm works 1957-1962 ~ recollection grm
3:18 AM denis smalley ~ pentes (1974) ~ traces two ~ recollection grm
3:30 AM ashley paul ~ soak the ocean (pete swanson rmx) ~ mp3
3:39 AM brunch ~ piedmont ~ 7″ ~ fedora corpse
3:42 AM mazes ~ sucker punched ~ ores & minerals ~ fatcat
3:46 AM toxie ~ newgate ~ 7″ ~ goner
3:48 AM golden grrrls ~ wrld peace ~ golden grrrls ~ slumberland
3:50 AM saturday looks good to me ~ invisible friend ~ one kiss ends it all ~ polyvinyl
3:52 AM veronica falls ~ buried alive ~ waiting for something to happen ~ slumberland
3:55 AM sally shapiro ~ what can i do ~ somewhere else ~ paper bag
Hour 2
4:02 AM informatics ~ underlife ~ dance to a dangerous beat ~ dark entries
4:07 AM fall of saigon ~ visions ~ fall of saigon ~ dark entries
4:09 AM soft drinks ~ pepsi cola ~ the thing from the crypt ~ dark entries
4:12 AM smersh ~ herman ~ cassette pets ~ dark entries
4:18 AM lust for youth ~ always changing ~ growing seeds ~ sacred bones
4:21 AM holy balm ~ holy balm theme ~ it’s you ~ not not fun
4:25 AM german army ~ hornhead ~ extract character flaw ~ family time records
4:26 AM net shaker ~ phone away ~ i’m so cold ~ kill shaman
4:30 AM moira scar ~ telepathos ~ scarred for life ~ resipiscent
4:41 AM el fog ~ silent soaring ~ reverberate slowly ~ flau
4:47 AM unpopular electronics ~ track 3 ~ she just won’t quit ~ holy cheever church recordings
4:58 AM loop 2.4.3 ~ american elder ~ american dreamland ~ music starts from silence
Hour 3
5:03 AM guelewar ~ sanehmentereng ~ halleli n’dakarou ~ teranga beat
5:08 AM royal band de thies ~ kouye magana ~ kadior demb ~ teranga beat
5:12 AM dan friel ~ landslide ~ total folklore ~ thrill jockey
5:15 AM umberto ~ dead silent ~ morning confrontations ~ not not fun
5:20 AM freak ache ~ blue hole – black ocean ~ live ep ~ cdr
5:24 AM doldrums ~ sunrise ~ lesser evil ~ arbutus
5:26 AM pascal pinon ~ kertid ~ twosomeness ~ morr music
5:37 AM beach fossils ~ burn you down ~ clash the truth ~ captured tracks
5:40 AM the lovely bad things ~ maybe i know ~ the late great whatever ~ volcom
5:42 AM ty segall & mikal cronin ~ ramona ~ reverse shark attack ~ in the red
5:44 AM eat skull ~ how do i know when to say goodnite? ~ iii ~ woodsist
5:47 AM ducktails ~ sedan magic ~ the flower lane ~ domino
5:52 AM lucrecia dalt ~ escopolamina ~ commotus ~ human ear music
5:56 AM grouper ~ cover the long way ~ the man who died in his boat ~ kranky

Crush Collision 2/28/13 (Kompakt 20th anniversary special)

March 1, 2013 at 9:16 am | Posted in Crush Collision | Leave a comment

Kompakt is celebrating their 20th anniversary this year (the original record store that became Kompakt opened in 1993) so me and Tyler played 2 hours of our favorite Kompakt tracks. Here’s my hour.

Crush Collision 2/28/13
10:01 PM mikkel metal ~ dorant
10:05 PM freiland ~ frei
10:09 PM thomas fehlmann ~ streets of blah
10:11 PM wolfgang voigt ~ frieden
10:16 PM jurgen paape ~ so weit wie noch nie
10:19 PM justus kohncke ~ timecode (edit)
10:22 PM dirk leyers ~ wellen
10:27 PM m. mayer ~ 17 & 4
10:30 PM dj koze ~ mariposa
10:35 PM hug ~ tiny stars
10:38 PM dj koze ~ the gekloppel continues b2
10:41 PM jonas bering/dettinger ~ intershop
10:46 PM the field ~ over the ice
10:51 PM voigt & voigt ~ triptychon nummer 7
10:54 PM the orb ~ captain korma

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