3:01 AM His Name Is Alive ~ Summer Of E.S.P. ~ Universal Frequencies ~ 4AD
3:04 AM Mind Over Mirrors ~ Storing The Winter ~ When The Rest Are Up At Four ~ Immune
3:11 AM Faceplant ~ Sedation ~ split 2LP w/ Pulse Emitter, Date Palms & Expo 70 ~ Immune
3:19 AM Aphex Twin ~ Avril 14th [by request!] ~ Drukqs ~ Warp
3:23 AM Xander Harris ~ Clear Expensive Skies ~ New Dark Age Of Love ~ Not Not Fun
3:28 AM Alex Burkat ~ Tarot (Global Warming Mix) ~ 12″ ~ 100% Silk
3:34 AM Sir Stephen ~ Dance For Life ~ House Of Regalia ~ 100% Silk
3:37 AM K Joy ~ Like This (DDD Dub) ~ 12″ ~ DJ International
3:45 AM Nightmares on Wax ~ Eye (Can’t See) ~ Feelin’ Good ~ Warp
3:49 AM John Wizards ~ Durvs ~ John Wizards ~ Planet Mu
3:50 AM Hawerchuk ~ Caned Pees ~ 12″ ~ Planet Mu
3:55 AM Something J & DJ Maxximus ~ Mercedes Bentley Vs. Versace Armani (Nu Skool Rave Edit) ~ single ~ Warp
4:06 AM Kine ~ Meditation 2 ~ Meditations In April Green ~ Alrealon Musique
4:18 AM Devotion ~ Pattern Of Sanctuary ~ In Love We Stand Alone ~ Brave Mysteries
4:20 AM Jacob Kart ~ Name Was Given Because Of The Presence Of Elk ~ Takes It’s Name As It Is Crooked ~ Baro Records
4:25 AM Fifty Grand ~ No Punch ~ Join You (The October Demos) ~ Aural Sects
4:30 AM Oberman Knocks ~ Cammerton Pull Creep ~ Wrecque Byte Quarters EP ~ Aperture
4:35 AM The Fleshy Timeclock ~ Narthex ~ I Was Only ~ Bandcamp
4:39 AM DJ Rashad & DJ Spinn ~ Brighter Dayz ~ 12″ ~ Hyperdub
4:43 AM Scissor Now! ~ On Your Knees ~ Not Now, But Right Now! ~ Arbco Records
4:44 AM Coachwhips ~ Hands On The Controls ~ Hands On The Controls ~ Castleface
4:46 AM Bailterspace ~ Films Of You ~ Trinine ~ Fire
4:48 AM SISU ~ Harpoons ~ Blood Tears ~ Mono Prism
4:51 AM Eleven Pond ~ Vandykes Collar ~ Assemblage ~ Dark Entries
4:55 AM Dark Day ~ Invisible Man ~ Hands In The Dark ~ Dark Entries
5:00 AM Clay Rendering ~ Natures Confusion ~ 12″ ~ Hospital Productions
5:05 AM Zola Jesus & JG Thirlwell ~ Hikikomori ~ Versions ~ Sacred Bones
5:08 AM Algebra Suicide ~ Let’s Transact ~ Feminine Squared ~ Dark Entries
5:11 AM German Army ~ Cut Memory ~ Endless Phonics ~ Monofonus Press
5:14 AM Nagamatzu ~ Operator Dead, Post Abandoned ~ Shatter Days ~ Dark Entries
5:20 AM Henry & Hazel Slaughter ~ A7 ~ Endless Power Cycle ~ Fedora Corpse
5:23 AM Xex ~ Dance For The Limbless ~ Change ~ Dark Entries
5:31 AM Olekranon ~ Libertine ~ Danaus ~ Inam Records
5:38 AM Sarah Neufeld ~ You Are The Field ~ Hero Brother ~ Constellation
5:43 AM Esmerine ~ Yavri Yavri ~ Dalmak ~ Constellation
5:48 AM Julianna Barwick ~ Waving To You ~ Nepenthe ~ Dead Oceans
5:50 AM Jumpel ~ Leaves ~ Bloc4 ~ Hidden Shoal
5:52 AM Julia Holter ~ Maxim’s I ~ Loud City Song ~ Domino
5:57 AM Dirty Beaches ~ Dead End Job ~ Fixture Records Sampler 2013 ~ Fixture Records
Ethereal gothic neo-folk, similar to Dead Can Dance. Cavernous operatic female vocals, droning acoustic instruments, and pastoral folk melodies. 8-minute opener “Guardian” floats spectre-like for its first half, settling upon a slow strumming rhythm for its second. “Charism” has soft pounding drums and lute-like strumming, and spoken male vocals about deliverance and perpetual light. 2-minute “Pattern Of Sanctuary” has sorrowful strings, the most abrasive guitar sounds on the disc, and double-tracked female vocals, one of which may or may not be singing backwards. “In Love We Stand Alone” is a moving ballad with resounding strummed acoustic guitars, mariachi horns, and gorgeous vocals. The disc ends with a 12 minute droney remix by Nathaniel Ritter (Circulation Of Light), which maintains a bit of an acoustic pulse for the first half, but then drifts into hissing electronics and minimal vocals for the second half, with a brief bit of organ during the song’s final seconds.
Droney, sometimes noisy meditative music by a group featuring Vietnamese vocalist Dao Anh Khanh, as well as members of PAS Musique. The vocals on here are an acquired taste and I couldn’t get into them at first, but they’re spirited, joyous, and ultimately transcendent. The first meditation here builds on a relaxed, almost bluesy (or at least Blues Control-y) rhythmic loop, before Khanh’s gruff, sometimes wailing vocals set in. The track takes its sweet time layering in synth textures and guitar lines. Around 13 minutes, the vocals are delivered through a vocoder and the music breaks from the rhythm and enters a more concentrated state. The second movement has a really nice synth texture to it which for some reason reminds me of Toro Y Moi but droned out, minimal and ambient, plus there’s this buzzing motor feedback sound behind it which might be a bit distracting for something more poppy and polished, but works fine here. This texture/loop kind of disappears after 7 or 8 minutes, after which we’re left with a bunch of mysterious, squirmy echoed sounds and more ecstatic, sometimes laughing vocals. Movement 3 has another soft, minimal rhythm, and lots of wild flute blowing, plus plenty of feedback guitar in its second half. Movement 4 is the shortest (just 5 minutes) and has lots of whooshing synths, and vocals and rushing feedback which build to an ecstatic climax. The final movement is the calmest, with bits of meandering guitar, until more whooshing synths build during the second half and more vocals worm their way in.
When I saw this group at SXSW, there was a huge crowd at the front of the small, seated venue in the back of the coffee shop that they played at. The shop’s staff kept telling everyone that this was a fire hazard and that everyone needed to get back in their seats, but everyone just shrugged it off and said “who cares? this is dance music.” This album captures the sounds of what they do live, but of course the crowd adds more energy. But it’s a fun album, usually maintaining a lo-fi 4/4 pulse with echoed vocals, not quite as psych as a lot of NNF bands but not as polished and deep as the 100% Silk stuff. There’s plenty of post-punk nods, from the Y Pants cover “Favourite Sweater” to “Losing Control” which reminds one a little bit of a certain Joy Division song. “Phone Song” is probably my favorite, it just seems like the track that would mix best in a DJ set, with plenty of interesting layers of vocals and synths, I think it has more of a minimal techno build than the rest of the tracks. “Take It” is slower heads close to Nite Jewel lo-fi slow-jam territory, and “Town Called Hope” keeps this slower tempo, but “One & Only” ends the album back up to house tempo, with extensive use of rave sirens over its 8.5 minute groove.
Two albums of electro-acoustic improv from an Italian duo. Usually very minimal, kind of a detuned Jandek feel, with spare guitar pluckings, stray trumpet lines, and brief bursts of feedback. There’s also some blues slide guitar on tracks such as the aptly named “Broken Slide” and “A Strange Season #1”. “City Of Motors” is the most immediately striking track on Umber, starting with a stuttering buzz, then flatly but frantically wailing in one direction for its duration. “Blood And Dust” seems to get a little more caustic, with a bit more anxious electrified drone creeping in.
Zero Centigrade: Selce
Selce is shorter, only containing 5 tracks instead of the 12 on Umber, although these 5 tracks stretch past 36 minutes total. It’s hard to really say if there’s much of a difference; this one’s not necessarily more minimal, but maybe a bit less caustic. “Dogmouth” gets a slight bit doomy for a few moments, with some loudly strummed bass chords, but otherwise it’s as minimal and slow-moving as usual.
Free jazz reed player Alfred Harth’s career stretches back to the early 70s, and he’s released music on ECM and ReR and worked with Fred Frith and Otomo Yoshihide, among many others. Carl Stone is also a long-running experimental composer who has been making music since the early ’70s, who studied with Morton Sobotnick and James Tenney. On this collaboration, Harth takes radical approaches to playing the saxophone (including bowing, playing the keys and springs as percussion, and usage of air and spit), and Carl Stone manipulates this with his laptop, transforming it into deranged bird noises, cutting in voices, and fragmenting it into pieces. There’s no clear rhythm here, it’s all free-flowing, chopped up, and possibly designed to confuse. At its most active, such as the first track, it’s pretty exciting. The last track is a 22 minute epic which will positively fry your brain, if the previous half hour didn’t already.
Hour 1
3:02 AM Illusion Of Safety ~ Quell ~ Sedation & Quell 10″ ~ C.I.P./Complacency
3:11 AM M. Geddes Gengras ~ side A ~ Santam Rasa tape ~ Healing Power Records
3:34 AM Ron Of Japan ~ untitled ~ clear 7″ ~ Hanson Records
3:41 AM The Big Ship ~ Bowshock At The Heliosphere ~ Split tape ~ Hausu Mountain
3:55 AM Kevin Greenspon ~ Glass Prison ~ Common Objects ~ Family Time Records Hour 2
4:00 AM Illusion Of Safety ~ Always Somewhere Else ~ Sweet Dreams 10″ ~ Substantia Innominata
4:10 AM Moth Cock ~ Call Merk ~ Bremmy tape ~ Hausu Mountain
4:18 AM PAS Musique ~ Something Indescribable ~ Abandoned Bird Egg ~ Alrealon Musique
4:22 AM Robert Alberg ~ Sunset Mine ~ Acoustically ~ self-released
4:26 AM Olekranon ~ Fayad ~ Danaus ~ Inam Records
4:31 AM Sensate Focus ~ X ~ Sensate Focus 3.333333 ~ Sensate Focus
4:44 AM Funkstorung ~ Awkw ~ Breakart ~ Musik Aus Strom
4:51 AM Tigerboy ~ With Attitude? ~ 7″ ~ V/Vm Test Records
4:55 AM Shapednoise ~ Until Human Voices Wake Us ~ Until Human Voices Wake Us ~ Opal Tapes Hour 3
5:01 AM Kassen ~ B2 ~ Coaster ~ Creme Organization
5:09 AM Ken Jackson ~ Lottery Blues ~ My Magazine ~ self-released
5:12 AM Henry & Hazel Slaughter ~ A5 ~ Endless Power Cycle ~ Fedora Corpse
5:15 AM Stave ~ Minus3 ~ Reform ~ Flingco Sound System
5:21 AM Nagamatzu ~ Muslin ~ Shatter Days ~ Dark Entries
5:25 AM Dark Day ~ The Exterminations (4 Thru 6) ~ Hands In The Dark ~ Dark Entries
5:29 AM Kaito ~ Beautiful Day ~ 12″ ~ Kompakt
5:36 AM Algebra Suicide ~ Little Dead Bodies ~ Feminine Squared ~ Dark Entries
5:40 AM Psyclones ~ Tribulation ~ Different Thinking People ~ Permanent Records
5:43 AM Psyclones ~ Chant ~ Psyclones ~ Subterranean Records
5:47 AM German Army ~ Pulling Lashes ~ German Army ~ Skrot Up
5:53 AM Occultation ~ All Hallows Fire ~ Grave Command: All Hallowed Hymns ~ Unseen Forces
5:58 AM Julia Holter ~ He’s Running Through My Eyes ~ Loud City Song ~ Domino
You might be able to tell that I buy a hell of a lot of NNF/100% Silk releases, simply because most of them are incredible. This one’s been a favorite as of late, just really classy late-night house. Lots of pretty, melodic synth-strings, some flutes during “Theme From Tony’s Party”, and perfectly placed vocal snippets. “Airplane Mode” has probably the biggest late-’80s Detroit vibe to it, particularly the drum machine and synth bassline, but the cloppy electronic bongos and chilled out chords take it somewhere else. “Baby Dre” is a slower-tempo number which could be a Soul II Soul instrumental, except it has seagulls and waves in the background, and a somewhat unexpected synth melody which shows up during a breakdown, and sounds a bit different from the rest of the track but fits very well. This record feels like it could run the risk of being too swanky and smoothed-out, but it just works so well and it just feels good listening to it.
naboamusic has been pretty quiet so far this year, but there’s been a few releases that I just downloaded that I need to listen to more and post about. But here’s one they sneaked out towards the end of last year that shouldn’t be ignored. Another mysterious artist that I couldn’t tell you anything about, but plenty of frazzled chopped-up beats and menacing yet playful melodies. Sounds like some clarinet sounds in “Gzngztrzm”. After a few tracks of splintered glitchcore, you think “Jungular” is going to be a massive jungle rinser, but it ends up being a 6-minute glacial piano drone. “Blisster” starts outs like it’s rising out of bed, but then turns into severely frantic, stepping-on-itself glitch-spazzery, end then ends after barely a minute. “Crystalline Space Entity” is the most bass-heavy, d’n’b-influenced breakcore track here, but still with a cracked lo-fi cheapcore aesthetic.
A few years ago, I reviewed El Fog’s second album Rebuilding Vibes for Foxy Digitalis. This was a fantastic album of minimal glitch-dub, utilizing vibraphone as the primary instrument, and totally reconstructing the possibilities of what that instrument can create. Now flau has made the project’s original album available again, along with some bonus remixes. The album seems a bit more easily categorized as downtempo dubby minimal techno, with a crackly 4/4 beat thumping away on many tracks, but also a homespun layer of distortion along with the vibraphone, sort of resembling a more jazz-influenced version of Pole’s early works. Of course, it’s hard not to compare this work to Jan Jelinek circa Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, and sure enough, Jelinek contributes a remix here, combining two of the album’s tracks for a beat-free track with very minimal, subtle glitching and gliding. There’s also a great track called “Deep Sea And Stars” which was previously only available on a compilation, and a very minimal remix El Fog did for NQ, which just seems to consist of a low pulse and some very faint crackling sounds.
Masayoshi Fujita: Stories
Masayoshi Fujita has released a few albums under his own name in collaboration with Jan Jelinek, on Jelinek’s Faitiche label, but Stories is his solo debut. Instead of electronics, this is a minimalist neo-classical album for vibraphone and strings. Really lovely, melodic/rhythmic gamelan-like music that fans of minimalist composers will dig. “Deers” is really driving and straightforward, “Snow Storm” is covered in a cloud of reverb but it does have a clearly discernable melody/rhythm. The track entitled “Cloud” is appropriately more droning, slow and atmospheric. “The Story Of Forest” is where the strings come in, slowly and tenderly along with the melodic vibraphone. “Story Of Waterfall I. & II.” is a longer, more abstract vibraphone piece with varying dynamics. “Swan And Morning Dews” is more slow, atmospheric vibraphone with a hint of strings. “River” is probably the most upfront, vibrant mix of vibraphone and strings, plus some sort of fuzzy percussion sound, either some sort of digital processing or maybe prepared vibraphone? “Memories Of The Wind” is another slow, quiet vibraphone piece. The whole album is extremely beautiful, dreamy, and full of wonder.
![[tlr]: Homunculus](https://theanswerisinthebeat.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/tlr.jpeg)
The Answer Is In The Beat 