The Answer Is In The Beat

Trees: Rootwork 12″ EP (Lovemonk, 2014)

April 23, 2014 at 10:43 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

First vinyl release from Ann Arbor’s own Charles Trees. This EP draws on several different shades of groove-based music, starting out on the title track with jazzy horns and drums, starting to drift away for a bit before a thumpy house beat comes in. But even this calms down during certain moments to spotlight the horns. Later a distorted acid bassline comes in, and the track segues into the next one, “Exodus”, a more stripped down house track with live instruments (delicate guitar, spare but funky wah-wah). “Get Adviced” opens with distorted kalimba and shaker-y percussion, and features rapping with a few curse words peppered in, an acid bassline, and a familiar James Brown breakbeat. The label on the record suggests that “Exodus” is the track with vocals, but it clearly lists “Get Adviced” as the 3rd track on the side, and that’s the one with vocals, so there must be some sort of error. “What’s Left” is another jazzy house track with horns, subtle guitar, and live jazz bass. Definitely a highlight of the disc. DJ F’s restructure of “Rootwork” loops bits of the jazzy drums and twists synth melodies into concentric patterns, creating a mesmerizing spiral of sound but not really progressing. Shigeto spends the last 9 minutes of the disc stretching out “What’s Left”, taking away the horns and (of course) emphasizing percussion, with lots of thumb pianos (some in reverse) and busy snares, plus some traces of subdued dub chords.

Chrome Sparks: Goddess EP (Future Classic, 2014)

April 22, 2014 at 11:16 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Second vinyl release for Ann Arbor’s own Chrome Sparks, who is now based in Brooklyn, signed to an Australian label, and moving up in the music world. This EP refines his blend of choppy, sample-heavy chillwave, using plenty of tasty synths, added live percussion, and bits of vocals, but not lyrics. The best tracks here are the ones that make the most usage of analogue synth melodies (“Star Step”, the gorgeous “Lost in the Chrome Forest”), but the more beat-driven/detailed tracks are just as impressive. “Enter The Chrome Forest” has all manners of knocking, glitching, fidgeting beats, and still manages to be the most dancefloor-tempo track here. The final two tracks, “ZZZZZZ” and “Goddess”, dip down closer to downtempo Brainfeeder territory, with “ZZZZZZ” having more knocking, off-time wonky hip-hop beats, and “Goddess” starting with Tycho-ish melodies, and then epic trance arpeggios.

Crash Course In Science: Signals From Pier Thirteen 12″ EP (Press Records, 1982/reissued Dark Entries, 2014)

April 20, 2014 at 10:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Holy grail time, kiddos. This is the first-ever vinyl reissue of the only 12″ EP Crash Course In Science ever released. (There was a CCIS box set a few years ago, but it’s super limited and expensive and you’ll probably never own it.) Vintage-as-it-gets minimal-wave that predated pretty much everything. Well, other than their previous 7″ from 1979. “Cardboard Lamb” was the track that got rediscovered by electroclash kids, and was reissued and remixed by Vitalic and a few others, but here’s the original in all its glory. “Crashing Song” is a buzzy instrumental which swoops as much as it crashes. “Flying Turns” is my absolute favorite track here, it’s stark and repetitive and paranoid and absolutely never gets old, I could listen to it on repeat forever. “Factory Forehead” is the most brutal track here, starting with proto-Wolf Eyes thrashing and then adding a fast minimal beat and several layers of paranoid buzzing synths and vocals. Super brutal, super ahead of its time. Totally classic, 100%.

Fennesz: Bécs (Editions Mego, 2014)

April 20, 2014 at 5:25 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Fennesz returns to (Editions) Mego for Bécs (pronounced “baeetch”), the thematic sequel to his last album on that label, 2001’s masterpiece Endless Summer. So expect plenty of loopy, distorted melodic guitar on this one, as well as all manners of glitch and processing. There’s also a few tracks with drums (“Static Kings”, “Liminality”) and some modular synth. This will indeed be familiar territory for anyone who’s a fan of Endless Summer (the guitar lines seem like variations on those from the older album), but it’s not unwelcome at all. The distortion seems darker and more sinister than previous albums (especially on “The Liar”), so it’s not quite a full return to a carefree, happy summer vibe. In fact, some of the melodies (especially on the epic “Liminality”) are quite sad. The highlight would have to be the title track, which covers a sickly sweet melody in ungodly amounts of blackened distortion, conjuring up images of eating the best candy you’ve ever tasted, and then having your teeth rot and decay, causing you to swear off sweets forever. “Sav” begins with a bit of a muted, crush rhythm, before zoning out to a searing, slightly hallucinatory desert landscape. “Paroles” ends the album with more shining, glowing guitar, with bursts of sizzling distortion.

Heterotic: Weird Drift (Planet Mu, 2014)

April 19, 2014 at 6:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Second album from Mike “µ-Ziq” Paradinas and his wife, following last year’s Love & Devotion, which featured vocals by Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst. I wasn’t feeling the preview clips of that album, but this album seems a lot more interesting. The synth sounds and melodies certainly sound like what Mike Paradinas’ vision of “pop” would sound like. The tracks with vocals feature Vezelay, who released an EP on Planet Mu back in 2011 that I don’t think I’ve actually listened to. They fit in with a lot of current indie-electro-R&B type stuff that’s everywhere right now, but musically, there’s some interesting things going on. The ultra-skittery beats on “Boxes” definitely sound in line with the last µ-Ziq record, and the slow, distorted beats on “Lumber” are reminiscent of the excellent XTEP from last year, as well as plenty of Paradinas’ older output. More than half the tracks feature vocals, but with a couple interlude-y exceptions, the instrumentals are as fully-focused and melodic, especially the Italo-esque opener “Self-Importance”, and “Sultana”, which sounds like it could almost be an instrumental version of an ’80s Fleetwood Mac single. “Amniotic” is another lovely little electro-shadow with fluttery percussion and an ’80s new wave melody. Definitely a promising step forward for Mike Paradinas’ most accessible project yet.

Blanche Blanche Blanche: Breaking Mirrors LP (Wharf Cat, 2013)

April 5, 2014 at 11:16 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I really should’ve reviewed this after I saw this band in Brooklyn last year, but now I’m going through my “review” folder and deleting stuff I’m just never going to get around to reviewing and I realized I never talked about this. Anyway, this group released my favorite album of 2012, and have since grown from a home recording project into a band with several members (I counted at least 6 onstage) which plays live and recorded this LP in a studio. Which means that it misses out on the hissy lo-fi sound of the earlier material, but now has expanded realms of studio trickery and composition complexity. More angular guitar sounds instead of chintzy out-dated keyboards. A bit rougher and angrier, too, not as much of the oddly tender moments on some of the previous records. There’s also a new sense of repetition; “Fire” repeats the titular word throughout the entire song, and “Zeroing In” similarly repeats “zero” until it truly does zero in. Just another bizarre, confounding album from one of my favorite weird-pop groups of the past few years.

Brain Collider tape

April 5, 2014 at 10:49 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Somehow I completely missed out on Hardon Collider until a few weeks ago, when he played at Far House. Totally unexpected and awesome explosion of glitch-fried circuitbent breakcore noise mayhem. I got a CD-r from him, but it looks like it actually came out in 2012, so I’m not going to review it. I also got this tape, and I have no clue if it’s new or not, but I’m going to assume it is. I’m not sure who the “Brain” part is, but this takes the trashy, glitchy, electro-fried sonic mess of Hardon Collider and melds it with a blasted-out noise-rock band. Generally slow, loose guitar and drum rhythms scarred and smeared with filth-covered electronic feedback. The wavering sound quality of the cassette makes it even more unhinged. Lots of blurry, hidden voices behind everything too; sometimes it sounds like some sort of Middle Eastern music, and the second side has clips from some cartoon show featuring McDonald’s characters. Not a whole lot of sense being made here, but it’s all in ridiculous, trashy fun.