Recorded in an abandoned warehouse, this is a self-released CDR from a South London-based duo who seem to have a freeform, post-industrial junk-art collage aesthetic. Musically, they remind me of a less harsh Wolf Eyes with Robert Smith singing (or maybe even Scott Walker at times, but that’s more of a stretch). Lo-fi synth feedback, droning rhythms, somewhat overstated vocals. The songs are very disjointed, never coming close to proper song structure, but retaining a lo-fi indie-punk edge, while droning out and using elements of industrial noise. Which is why it’s so disconcerting how the vocals are so grand and bellowing, you usually expect some sort of lifeless zombie snarl accompanying something like this. “Sleep (Version 2)” has the straightest rhythm and guitar chords, coming closest to a regular song. “Panopticon” strikes a similar balance of straightforward rhythm, guitar chords and feedback noise. Shorter tracks have more of a fragmentary, stream-of-consciousness feel, especially with the lyrics. Available at Bandcamp.
Hour 1
3:06 AM Aube ~ Move From Drop ~ Ricochetentrance ~ Lunar
3:09 AM Aube ~ And More ~ Rewriting The Book ~ Elsie + Jack
3:20 AM Ezra Buchla ~ A Cruel Man ~ At The Door ~ Care Of Editions
3:25 AM Scott Cazan ~ Bodies ~ Swallow ~ Care Of Editions
3:42 AM [# / Tau] – Boris Hegenbart ~ Folded ~ First / Dew ~ Care Of Editions
3:45 AM Craig Johnson ~ several tracks from side A ~ untitled tape ~ self-released
3:53 AM Foom ~ Tieu ~ Surface Noise And Imperfections ~ No Fidelity Audio
3:57 AM People Like Us ~ Break Me, Break My Horse ~ Don’t Think Right, It’s All Twice ~ Cutting Hedge Hour 2
4:03 AM Thought Broadcast ~ Fortune Teller ~ Thought Broadcast ~ Olde English Spelling Bee
4:05 AM Regional Curse ~ Natural Living ~ Natural Living ~ Night People
4:13 AM Prostitutes ~ Lot Of Scars ~ Crushed Interior ~ Digitalis
4:18 AM Patrick Cowley ~ Mocking Bird Dream ~ School Daze ~ Dark Entries
4:22 AM LA Vampires with Maria Minerva ~ Trying 2 Be Honest With Myself ~ The Integration LP ~ Not Not Fun
4:25 AM Policy ~ Ghost In The Groove ~ Postscript ~ 100% Silk
4:38 AM Knaebot ~ Blue Meets Grey ~ Secondary Addax 3″ CDR ~ Bad Sekta
4:44 AM Jonas Reinhardt & Abyss Of Fathomless Light ~ White Kingdom Of The Five Year Plan ~ Rusting Ciphers Of A Forgotten Sky ~ VCO Hour 3
5:03 AM Foetus ~ Pratheism ~ Soak ~ Ectopic Ents
5:09 AM JG Thirlwell ~ Urchin ~ The Blue Eyes OST ~ Ectopic Ents
5:12 AM Laserbeams Of Boredom ~ Blown Blurs ~ Mind Arrays ~ self-released
5:17 AM Circuit Breaker ~ Exitexerx ~ Cairn ~ self-released
5:19 AM Freelove Fenner ~ Shepherdess ~ Do Not Affect A Breezy Manner ~ Fixture Records
5:21 AM The Low Frequency In Stereo ~ Cybernautic ~ Pop Obskura ~ Long Branch Records
5:25 AM Hydropark ~ side B track 1 ~ untitled second tape ~ Life Like
5:34 AM Secret Pyramid ~ A Descent ~ Movements Of Night ~ Students Of Decay
5:40 AM Evil Robot Ted ~ Suburban Black Metal (Live) ~ Ejecta 3″ CDR ~ self-released
5:42 AM Jim Guthrie ~ Lone Star ~ Sword & Sworcery: The Ballad Of The Space Babies ~ self-released
5:44 AM Rites Wild ~ Minimal Where ~ Ways Of Being ~ Not Not Fun
5:48 AM Unicorn Hard-On ~ Wet Pet ~ Weird Universe ~ Spectrum Spools
5:56 AM Huerco S. ~ Quivira ~ Colonial Patterns ~ Software
Haven’t heard any of this group’s previous recordings, but they’ve been around for over a decade and Norwegian avant-rock powerhouse Rune Grammofon released their last one. On first listen, the presence of Krautrock rhythms, analog synths and female vocal harmonies immediately brings to mind Stereolab, and this band’s name doesn’t help defer those comparisons. Even with such an easy reference point, this is still very enjoyable indie-pop, and it definitely seems more informed by vintage electronics than most young bands trying to sound retro. “Cybernautic” has a lovely, catchy chorus and some vaguely Raymond Scott-esque synths (it puts “Cindy Electronium” in my head, and that is a good thing). “Black Receiver” is full of spiraling psychedelic feedback, and “Satellites In Sight” ends with ecstatic horns and keyboards. “Ionic Nerve Grip” is a bizarre spoken word track, with a ranting narrator who reminds me of Einar Orn of the Sugarcubes.
I’ll never forget when I first started doing at WRSU when I was in college, and we got the first CD by The Mae Shi. It consisted of 4 brief spazzy punk songs, and then a 50 minute noise jam. We used to play around with that for sound collage fodder a lot, or just play the entire thing when we felt lazy and didn’t want to actually DJ. Since then, Ezra Buchla has had an extensive resume, also playing in Gowns with EMA and contributing to her solo album, and working with Chelsea Wolfe and Whitman, among others. This solo LP is a stunning work, starting with “A Cruel Man”, consisting of droning, minimalist John Cale-like strings, and eerie hushed vocals. “His Thirsts” starts with some solid, clear tones, then adds on shifting sheets of vacuum-like noise layers, and stirs them into oblivion. “Hail Nothing” is similar to the opening track, with strings and vocals, but is more melodic and structured. It’s an astonishingly beautiful lament of despair and bleakness, definitely exactly the type of beautiful, depressing music you want to spend the entire dark, lonely winter crying along to. On the reverse is sidelong string opus “Black Box”, which starts with low, brooding drone, building into wavering, chattering textures, and later blossoming into a wide array of emotions, by turns enormously beautiful and deeply mournful or even scared. It’s the type of piece where you put it on barely noticing that it’s playing, not really expecting anything, and then after a while it just hits you with astonishing beauty and expressiveness. Wow.
On side A, harsh screeching metal, harsh screeching strings. Nervous rattling/tapping, vibrations, and some shattering wave tones. On side B, contact and condenser mics, field recordings, and room tones. Starts out sounding like a supermarket checkout line with a deafening sinewave tone and thudding, trudging rumble which nobody seems to notice or react to. It gets quiet for a bit, but then comes back with more voices (which seem slightly, eerily pitched down), and vibrating tones and some ethereal music. This ends without warning, and a few minutes later you’re facing buzzing, feedback and ring modulated noise, along with bass vibrations nervously being pushed out. The shuttering, splintering (but not overtly harsh) noise continues relentlessly for a while, until it sort of disintegrates into tone clusters.
This album is actually a partial reissue of Hikuioto, a CD self-released by Boris Hegenbart under his [#/Tau] alias in 1997. The album consists of low sinewave tones, connection interference/static/crackle, and field recordings. There’s some Japanese talking, so it’s hard for me to understand exactly what it’s about, but some of it sounds like it might be from public transportation, and the beginning of “Tacet” has a sharp voice exclaiming “MIND THE GAP”, so it has a definite city life feel. But there’s a nature feel as well, particularly with the extensive use of insect sounds, and the entire second side being an excerpt of a piece called “Musicforcicadas”. A few tracks also seem to have a reoccurring bit of gentle, blippy IDM-ish melody, starting with “Tripel” and then reprising this on “Folded”, which also features Japanese transit voices. “Drone” features bubbling water sound and low droning voices (possibly slowed down, possibly from an animal or human) and other strange buzzing sounds and voices, chopped up and layered into music. “Pond” ends the side with lots of buzzing insects, high-pitched voices/animals/insects that seem to say “mee mee mee mee”, and more Japanese dialogue. And then all of side B is “Musicforcicadas”, an extended collage of Japanese singing and insects, folded and endlessly looped into a hypnotic Steve Reich/Oval-inspired minimalist glitch mantra. The original CD release extended the piece out to 25 minutes, but the version on this LP is subtitled “(Cut)”, and very abruptly cuts the music off as if the “stop” button was pressed or possibly even the stereo unplugged, with no warning or fadeout.
Foom is the long-running moniker of lo-fi loop collage artist Chris Lichatz. His earliest releases plumbed the depths of lo-fi experimental rock, with 1996 seeing the release of a 7″ called “Them Ol’ Stanky Blues” (featuring Beefhartian wailing over a slowed, skipping Led Zeppelin record), as well as a triple 7″ on Stomache Ache Records called “Six Of My Favorite Turds”. Since then, he’s been hoarding thrift store vinyl and creating dreamy collages with one turntable, a splitter and two looping pedals. This is his first vinyl release since the ’90s, and the record is actually packaged in a collaged-over sleeve from one of the thrift-store records that were plundered for samples. The album, as to be expected, is an easy listening nightmare of schlocky strings and vinyl static, repurposed and made much more sinister sounding. Brief opener “Thre” features plenty of evil, maniacal chipmunk giggling, and “Tieu” starts with a backwards shifting loop and lonely bells and harmonica, before tumbling into backwards strings and subdued piano. Evenetually a loop emerges featuring brief pauses, caused from simply stopping the record for a moment and starting it again, and that loop, along with another bed of syrupy backwards strings, is just enough to jolt you up and take notice, if the music has you zoning out or nodding off. Some eerie vocal loop adds to the distant, lonesome quality. On Side B, “Forr” greets us with more gentle but disconcerting string loops, and more ghostly wisps of disembodied vocals. “Tieu” starts with slowly blooming crystalline orbs, before slow disjointed rhythms and buried voices seep out, staggering between the speakers. Some high-pitched soul wails appear out of nowhere, a vinyl slipping and making some sort fo revving-up sound gets looped, and some trudging drums beat against a sad, empty funeral drone. A distant backwards loop of tense, chaotic movie strings disintegrates into a more peaceful loop and some gentle, fluttering female vocals, which gracefully fall like flower petals. A curious sliver of blues piano seems to faintly play right before the album’s end. Highly recommended for fans of The Caretaker and the more easy listening, less oldies radio side of People Like Us.
One thing I’ve noticed about 100% Silk releases is that if they’re meant to be played at 45, sometimes they just sound better at 33. That Polonaise record is such an incredible cosmic slow-disco record at 33, it just doesn’t make sense at 45 at all to me. This Jonas Reinhardt record does sound fine at 45, but maybe a little too amped up, so I’m listening to it at 33 now and it simmers and stirs. Definitely a good precursor to his Kraut-disco opus Mask Of The Maker which came out on Not Not Fun this year.
Jonas Reinhardt & Abyss Of Fathomless Light: Rusting Ciphers Of A Forgotten Sky tape
Now that I’ve finally gotten around to posting about that 12″, I’m also finally getting around to covering this tape that he also released last year, in collaboration with Abyss Of Fathomless Light. I never got around to touching this tape, literally, because it was sewn shut. The tape itself comes in a beautiful dual-layered paper packet which you have to destroy to retrieve the tape. I managed to pry the thread out from the top without causing too much damage, just a little bit of tear. Musically, it’s nothing like his more dancey material. The synths are still a bit cosmic, but they’re surrounded by disembodied taped voices, industrial gravel percussion, and so much post-civilization dread and despair. Each side is listed as its own extended piece (Side A is “Beneath The Liquid District Of Amalgamation”, Side B is “White Kingdom Of The Five Year Plan”), but instead of focusing on one idea for their duration, they seem to be suites of individual movements. Some parts seem more electrified and invigorated, and others are more decayed, staring at the ruins of society in disbelief and hoping for everything to fade away.
More golden laserscapes from CTatsu. Side A features shorter glimpses, while side B is a 17 minute expedition called “Vernal Pool Simulation”. Not the most complex new-age/drone tape out there, mostly just airy, rippling synths and some chirping birds and rushing water, especially on the 50-second “Interlude”. Sometimes all you need are arpeggios and nature sounds. Definitely soothing and therapeutic, as the track title “Chamber Of Regeneration” suggests.
![[#/Tau] - Boris Hegenbart: First / Dew LP](https://theanswerisinthebeat.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/tau.jpeg)
The Answer Is In The Beat 