Ever since discovering Bobby Draino’s Soundcloud a while back, I’ve been fiending to have some of his music on vinyl. Of course leave it to 100% Silk to make this a reality. Definitely some of the best lo-fi grimy house I’ve heard in an era full of this type of stuff. Ridiculous levels of hiss and distortion, acid synths and beats that snap and sizzle, and just a general sense that it was all made on shitty equipment with a fuck-it-all attitude. This is the type of noise-scene techno that would probably scare away actual clubgoers, at least if they’re expecting any type of smooth, accessible house music, which 100% Silk does sometimes and release, and are quite good at. But this is music to blast late at night at a warehouse with a shitty makeshift soundsystem. So much rudimentary echo and delay and pitchshifting… ahh, it’s just so great.
Completely overdue review, very sorry about that, but I saw this guy twice at SXSW and he was clearly one of the highlights of the entire week. I grabbed a copy of this LP after receiving a promo download a while ago and I’ve just been listening to it nonstop. My friend said his performances were “next-level, and I never use that term.” As with most artists on Holodeck, he sets up a mountain of bulky analogue synths, and just knocks it out of the park with slow-to-midtempo beats and horror-movie atmospheres. I love how this album has such a buzzy, lo-fi quality to it; there’s even a track with a false start. It clearly sounds hand-assembled and labored. Big, brutal industrial beats, but with oddly charming, beautiful melodies, and human levels of hiss and distortion. It always sounds like there’s some hidden voices trapped underneath the noise and beats, some teeth gnashing and tension brewing. It’s dark and gloomy, and maybe a bit angry, but it practices restraint and doesn’t blow up or become too punishing. It’s fantastic and magnificent and you need it in your life. It’s been re-pressed on vinyl, too, and there’s always the cassette and digital versions available at, where else, Bandcamp.
Brand new hit CD single from our favorite Washington-based folk troubadour, who is the son of a multi-millionaire, and was found making a deadly toxic substance called ricin in his home, but without any intentions to harm anyone. He seems to have improved his musicianship somewhat, and is attending music courses at a community college. He’s sent us a bunch of CD-r’s, most of which wouldn’t actually play. This one just contains a single song (length: 2:50) and is typical of his style. Really shrill, nasal vocals with lyrics about ocean water and night wind. The guitar is a bit less harsh on this one, and the guitar and vocals aren’t hard-panned, so he’s learning a little bit about recording, but his voice still clips a bit. Basically, this is the classic definition of outsider music. No typical rhythm or song structure, he just rambles on for a few minutes and stops just shy of 3 minutes, and then the CD’s over. Play this a ton and feel the night wind blowing around you on the ocean water!
Newest full-length from sound artist Richard Chartier’s noir-ish drone project. This album is full of slow, bell-like loops, ghostly footsteps, foggy hiss, sunken melodies, and just a general dark, rainy, mysterious atmosphere. Like The Caretaker’s best work, it’s sad, fragile, beautiful, and haunting. 25 minute opener “Why Pretend / The Desire Of Absence / Faulty Connections” goes through long stretches of moody droning before finally landing on a slow, sleepwalking rhythm for the last few minutes. “Pixels… Sometimes… Broke Your Heart (For A.)” is another exploration of cavernous spaces and distant sounds, with gentle whispers and soft, faraway bursts. “Falling Star (For P. Entwistle)” has some soft, muted, trudging beats, which sound like the ghosts of hip-hop or drum’n’bass tracks, along with thick, swirling ambience and piano melodies, and more dusky whispering. “62,000 Valentines (For T. Hunter)” is more misty, foggy slow-moving ambience, feeling like a stroll through an inactive city on a late afternoon during a weekend, where no buildings are open and nobody’s around because the weather is dismal and there’s nothing going on… which makes it a perfect scenario for a destination-free walk filled with solemn, singular reflection on life.
Newest album from an Iranian artist who has several albums out on labels that I’m not familiar with. Drifty field recording ambient with wispy flickering melodies, similar to some of Nobukazu Takemura’s works but without the frenetic glitchiness. Not completely soft and polished, there’s a little bit of a machine-generated roughness at points, but it’s still blissed-out enough to relax to. “Fen” starts with wind/water-type sounds, which continue throughout most of the song’s first half, and about 2/3 of the way through, there’s gentle music box notes panning through the speakers. “After the Rain” is the most concise (just shy of 10 minutes) and melody-rich track here, with more close-miked music box tinkling and more fluttery, microscopic melodic flourished along with its sublime ambient melody. “White Forest” is another rolling ambient piece with a soft melody and a subtle loop which fades away after a few minutes and lets the piece breathe a bit more. There’s a few hints of static and whispering wind, but the overall mood is calm and breezy. The digital wind swells up a bit during the last couple minutes, and there’s some more plinky electronic music box-like notes, but the last couple minutes get increasingly sparser and less active until it’s just silence and the album is over.
Oneohtrix Point Never’s label Software branches out into the world of video game soundtracks with the music from this ultra-trippy PS3 game. I haven’t played the game, but the visuals are extremely flashy and mind-altering, and the music perfectly matches this. The 29 tracks here average around 2 minutes, and are mostly hyperkinetic, and build upon maximalist styles of dance music such as jungle and juke. No room for build up and release, just hyped-up sugary ecstasy with over-excited synths, but still with chiming melodies. Perfectly enjoyable as a standalone album, but I’m sure it elevates the game into something truly exciting. I noticed at least one track (“Chargers”) that has airhorns, and a bunch have Amen breaks. No vocals other than the occasional looped, clipped vocal sample. The last 2 tracks (which both have “Mush” in the title) explore more ambient territory, with “Start Mush” in particular sounding like a rainforest-dwelling version of Autechre.
Following in the tradition of We Like Cats, here is another lo-fi dub reggae record by an artist normally associated with indie rock. This is the kind of album that kind of benefits from paying as little attention to context as possible; the back cover of the promo CD has a note written to reggae is if it were a person, with Rafter stating to reggae that it wants to learn from it and be more positive. I dunno, it seems kind of silly to me. Musically, it’s a pretty straightforward dub reggae record, with horns, panned drums/percussion, echoing pianos, snatches of vocals diced and delayed in the mix, etc. “Kusterica Vs Marcovic” is more uptempo, kind of a Balkan ska dub. “Christina 1981” has a bit of a far East meets synth-funk feel. “Translation Success” is another uptempo ska-ish song, with spacey synths. Other than that, pretty much what you’d expect it to sound like. Decent dub record, nothing more or less. Cool Scientist-inspired cover artwork.
Mic break music = Yann Novak: Snowfall
3:00 AM Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe ~ Tremet ~ Fazo IV: La Kvalito De Speguloj ~ Rainbow Body Records
3:06 AM Porya Hatami ~ After the Rain ~ Shallow ~ Tench
3:15 AM Koen Holtkamp ~ Between Visible Things ~ Motion ~ Thrill Jockey
3:22 AM Unicity ~ side B ~ Unicity tape ~ Constellation Tatsu
3:32 AM Golden Retriever ~ Archipelago ~ Seer ~ Thrill Jockey
3:39 AM Les Halles ~ Contemplating My Own Absence ~ Invisible Cities ~ Constellation Tatsu
3:44 AM X.Y.R. ~ Eskimo ~ Arktika ~ Constellation Tatsu
3:49 AM Tomotsugu Nakamura ~ Fawn ~ Soundium ~ Kaico
3:51 AM Pinkcourtesyphone ~ Pixels… Sometimes… Broke Your Heart (For A.) ~ A Ravishment Of Mirror ~ Dragon’s Eye Recordings
4:12 AM HTRK ~ Wet Dream ~ Psychic 9-5 Club ~ Ghostly International
4:17 AM Millie & Andrea ~ Corrosive ~ Drop The Vowels ~ Modern Love
4:23 AM Qixoni ~ Disharmony (Forsides Remix) ~ Disharmony Remixes ~ Techno Belligerent
4:26 AM David Kanaga ~ Space Ox ~ Dyad Original Game Soundtrack ~ Software
4:36 AM Brain Collider ~ side A ~ tape ~ self-released
4:49 AM Gezan ~ Kocyuu, Shitatarazu ~ Katsute Uta Toiwaretasore ~ Important
4:57 AM White Suns ~ Disjecta Membra ~ Totem ~ The Flenser
5:02 AM Mister Matthews ~ live at Modular Equinox 3/22/14 ~ .wav ~ adhoc.fm
5:14 AM Ambiq ~ Toxic Underground ~ Ambiq ~ Arjunamusic
5:32 AM The Space Lady ~ Synthesize Me ~ The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits ~ Night School
5:36 AM SlowPitch ~ Robotic Rain Cells ~ Dimly Lit Existence ~ What Rules
5:40 AM SSLEEPERHOLD ~ Ashes ~ Ruleth ~ Holodeck/Light Lodge
5:45 AM Panther God ~ Oranges ~ Golden Changes ~ Outside Recordings
5:48 AM Tycho ~ L ~ Awake ~ Ghostly International
5:53 AM Thug Entrancer ~ Death After Life V ~ Death After Life ~ Software
Another long-form drone from the owner of the now re-instated Dragon’s Eye Recordings. A 60-minute drone titled “Snowfall” seems like it would just write itself, but this doesn’t sound like what you’d expect. Rather, it’s closer to a rocketship gliding through space. Not the explosive take-off part, but the smooth ride once it gets into orbit. Really calm and static-filled, but with progression and evolution. Eventually the journey reveals some microtonal elements and hidden melodies, and there’s a much brighter tone in the last 15 minutes, although it spends the last few slowly dimming and fading to stardust.
The Answer Is In The Beat 