Newest album from Brooklyn-based IDM artist Kodomo. Definitely on the more melodic/rhythmic end of the Warp Records-influenced spectrum, very reminiscent of artists like Plaid, but more risk-taking than any of their recent works. Some acoustic guitars and other non-electronic sounds incorporated into the mix. “Impromptu” is a good way to get acquainted with this artist’s sound, it’s a bit more steady and danceable. “Red Giant” is fast and drum’n’bass-y. Other tracks are a bit more downtempo, but “Blue Shifter” picks up the tempo a little and has some marimba-type sounds. “Infinity Divided” has some vocal sounds, hard to tell if they’re real or synthesized. “Holographic” has more trancey melodies and I’d rather skip it. “Losing Your Way” is the “pop” song I guess, it has chopped up vocals, acoustic guitars, and a knocking future-garage beat.
Spazzy art-punk/noise-rock with female vocals, a la Melt-Banana. Instead of being as screechy/screamy, the singer here seems a bit more ethereal, and some of the songs here seem a little more straightforward and melodic. Lyrics are hard to understand, and hard to read in the lyric booklet, but they’re clean. “Dandelion” is a pretty good 48-second summation of what this band does, with super-spazzy drumming, noisy guitars, and alternately screaming and pretty vocals. Also, beware the hidden track at the end of closing track “Citrus”, which is surprisingly a pleasant, brief guitar/bass instrumental.
3:02 AM Laraaji ~ Space (Motion Sickness Of Time Travel Remix) ~ Remixes 12″ ~ All Saints
3:09 AM Laraaji ~ Eternity Or Bust ~ Celestial Music 1978-2011 ~ All Saints
3:13 AM Ray Lynch ~ Tiny Geometries ~ Deep Breakfast ~ Ray Lynch Productions
3:19 AM Michael Hoenig ~ Hanging Garden Transfer ~ Departure From The Northern Wasteland ~ Kuckuck
3:29 AM Zeitgeist ~ Zeitgeist ~ Astronomer ~ noise-arch.net
3:36 AM Mark Isham ~ Men Before The Mirror ~ Vapor Drawings ~ Windham Hill Records
3:42 AM Charles Cohen ~ UTEP 1 ~ Welcome Worlds: Music From Philadelphia ~ noise-arch.net
3:45 AM Didier Marouani ~ Temps X ~ Cosmic Machine ~ Because Music
3:51 AM Richard Truhlar ~ The Clouds Of Yoka ~ Kali’s Alphabet ~ noise-arch.net
3:58 AM Robert Hollis – Christopher Swartz ~ Utigra ~ 11X2 ~ Perimeter Records
4:03 AM Long Distance Poison ~ Brym II ~ Feorh ~ Tusco/Embassy
4:23 AM Lewis ~ We Danced All Night ~ Romantic Times ~ R.A.W. Records
4:26 AM Ulises Conti ~ F ~ Los Griegos Creian Que Las Estrellas Eran Pequenos Agujeros Por Donde Los Dioses Escuchaban A Los Hombres ~ flau
4:31 AM Topdown Dialectic ~ side A track 1 ~ tape ~ Aught
4:38 AM Magicicada ~ Ancient Squeek ~ Wrack With Ruin ~ Mission Trips
4:43 AM Thought Broadcast ~ Anchorite ~ Votive Zero ~ Editions Mego
4:47 AM Mr. Matthews ~ Seven Minutes In Heaven ~ Mugen Volume 8 ~ Hausu Mountain
4:54 AM Fhloston Paradigm ~ Perception ~ The Phoenix ~ Hyperdub
5:00 AM Minoy/Zannoy ~ Monochrome Melodrama ~ Monochrome Melodrama ~ noise-arch.net
5:02 AM Carl Hultgren ~ Not Afraid ~ Tomorrow ~ Blue Flea
5:05 AM Space Indigo ~ Keys Uplift ~ Yearbook Detroit 2014 ~ ZZZ Tapes
5:09 AM Paper Armies ~ Leave Your Room ~ Trying ~ Bridgetown Records
5:17 AM Ryan Huber ~ Blind Coup ~ Harken ~ Inam Records
5:29 AM Jandek ~ Part Five ~ Maze Of The Phantom ~ Corwood Industries
5:39 AM Planning For Burial ~ Where You Rest Your Head At Night ~ Desideratum ~ The Flenser
5:47 AM Daniel Bachman ~ Up And Down The C&O ~ Orange County Serenade ~ Bathetic
5:54 AM Xeno & Oaklander ~ Par Avion ~ Par Avion ~ Ghostly International
File under “Things FACT Magazine convinced me I needed in my life.” This 3xLP set was easily the best non-food purchase I made in Toronto last month. Of course I’d been aware of Laraaji because of his collaborations with Eno and Blues Control, but I never delved into his solo works. The first half of this collection focuses entirely on excerpts from his self-released tapes dating back to the late ’70s, and there is just so much mindblowing stuff here. The zither seems like the type of instrument that I’d enjoy pretty much any music that’s created on it, but this sort of ambient meditation music is just so otherworldly and unique. So many strange sounds I can’t place or figure out how he’s making them. But what gets me more than anything else are the songs where he sings. “Vision Song Suite” is 6 minutes of brief drum machine + zither avant-pop vignettes, and I want to hear several entire albums of this stuff. Literally the only thing I can compare it to in any way is Arthur Russell’s solo cello stuff, just in how he takes one instrument, a minimal drum track, his voice, and effects, and just crafts these incredible melodies and strange sounds, and it just deeply resonates with me. One of the things I enjoy best about music is when you hear an artist that just makes you stop and think, what possessed this person to create something like this? When you sit down and pick up an instrument and write a song, usually this is not what comes out. What sets this artist apart and makes him create something so utterly unique, and where can I get much, much more of it? So yeah, that’s what this is making me feel like. But besides the music from home-recorded self-released cassette tapes, there’s plenty of samplings from Laraaji’s higher-profile recordings. The transition from the cassette fidelity to warm, expansive studio ambiance is jarring, not so much on the track with Eno (which was recorded in 1980), but on the 1986 track with Jonathan Goldman, which sounds more like I would expect something from Eno’s Ambient series to sound like. The tracks with Michael Brook have a bit more of a running-stream nature feel to them, and “Laraajingle” is a downtempo trip-hop mantra recorded with Japanese group Audio Active. Bill Laswell’s recognizable bass sound is present on “Airbass”, an ambient drone from a 1998 Divination album. A couple of Laraaji’s newer self-released recordings appear towards the end, including the surprising ambient techno shuffle of “Staccato”. The entire last vinyl side is taken up by a 17-minute track from Laraaji’s collaboration LP with Blues Control, which I seriously which I’d picked up when I DJ’ed at a show they played in Ann Arbor a couple years ago.
Laraaji: Remixes 12″
This whole collection is amazing and has been soothing me during some stressful times lately. There’s a few more recent Laraaji reissues that I need to look into, when I have money to buy records again. But I let myself buy the remix 12″ that also came out this year, because I’m a huge fan of everyone on it. Bee Mask is a perfect match to remix Laraaji, blending nature-like tones and bouncy electronic rhythms with space and a few crucial noise swarms. Ela Orleans goes a more poppy route, surrounding kalimba melodies with gently trippy breakbeats, and incorporating vocals (her own as well as Laraaji’s, I think) as the track progresses. Sun Araw takes “Laraajingle” and turns into an even trippier, more abstract bit of blown-out dub, and reminds me that I still haven’t heard the newest Sun Araw album yet. Motion Sickness Of Time Travel takes a loop from “Space Choir” and repeats it in a way that it snaps back to the beginning and initially made me think the record was skipping, and slowly adds more synths over 8 minutes until getting choked by distortion at the end. Totally inconsistent with Laraaji’s music, but still a really powerful contrast. Looks like All Saints released an entire series of newer artists remixing older artists, and usually I hate stuff like that, but this 12″ is definitely ace, and I’m really curious what Hieroglyphic Being and Peaking Lights remixing Roedelius sound like.
Swedish electro-pop, reminiscent of The Knife, Zola Jesus, witch-house (during the downtempo tracks), LA Vampires and Not Not Fun lo-fi bedroom disco in general. “Glass Body” has UK garage type beats. “Halo Heart” starts slow and spooky, switches to more uptempo beats in the last few minutes. “All Our Beasts” is a slow noisy spooky interlude. “Black Birds” is another slow spooky witchy track. “Drops Of Armour” starts with cascading synths, kind of falls apart and gets sloppy after a minute or two but comes back, and then has dubby conga-heavy 4/4 beats. The final track is a more distorted, echo heavy mix of “Halo Heart” by Asher Levitas.
Really cool fractured scrambled noise collage. Not without rhythm and beats, but it’s jumbled and discordant and won’t make obvious sense. Black Dice fans will be all over this. “In League With Ugly Face” is the most “fun” track here, “Except Sioux” has clicky IDM beats and overblown feedback, “My Fault” has some mumbling underneath and has some joyously confused noises smashed together. “Blossoming Snares Of The Earth” has the type of crashing snare drums alluded to in the title. Seriously just a fun, noisy, confusing, fun album.
Mic break sounds = Ed Special: Art Fare
3:02 AM Tim Hecker ~ Incurably Optimistic! ~ Mirages (vinyl reissue) ~ Kranky
3:11 AM Thought Broadcast ~ Wanderer Dub ~ Votive Zero ~ Editions Mego
3:18 AM Circulatory System ~ If You Think About It Now ~ Mosaics Within Mosaics ~ Cloud
3:21 AM Guides ~ Ergo By Sunset ~ 7″ ~ self-released
3:24 AM Brian Eno & Karl Hyde ~ Return ~ High Life ~ Warp
3:34 AM Saturday’s Cab Ride Home ~ Espresso Shot ~ When We Were All There ~ self-released
3:38 AM Paper Armies ~ Walls ~ Trying ~ Bridgetown
3:43 AM 555 ~ Homunculus X ~ Nine Gates ~ Moon Glyph
3:48 AM The Bug with Liz Harris ~ Void ~ Angels & Devils ~ Ninja Tune
3:52 AM Soft As Snow ~ Drops Of Armour ~ Glass Body ~ Houndstooth
4:04 AM OOIOO ~ Gamel Udahah ~ Gamel ~ Thrill Jockey
4:09 AM Ros Sereysothea ~ Wait Ten Months More ~ Metal Postcard sampler ~ Metal Postcard
4:12 AM Xeno & Oaklander ~ Nuage d’Ivoire ~ Par Avion ~ Ghostly International
4:16 AM Barbeque ~ Skitchin’ ~ Yearbook Detroit 2014 ~ ZZZ Tapes
4:18 AM Martyn with Inga Copeland ~ Love Of Pleasure ~ The Air Between Words ~ Ninja Tune
4:22 AM Fort Romeau ~ Nights Bridge ~ Kingdoms ~ 100% Silk
4:25 AM Quarta 330 ~ Hanabi ~ Hyperdub 10.1 ~ Hyperdub
4:36 AM Laraaji ~ Tilturn (Sun Araw Remix) ~ 12″ ~ All Saints
4:39 AM Storm Ross ~ Alpenglow ~ The Green Realm ~ Fengrosso Music
4:45 AM Carl Hultgren ~ Ledge (Tambourine & Bells Mix) ~ Tomorrow (download only bonus track) ~ Blue Flea
4:52 AM M. Geddes Gengras ~ Ishi ~ Ishi ~ Leaving
5:00 AM Gershon Kingsley ~ Miracles ~ First Moog Quartet ~ Audio Fidelity
5:07 AM Venetian Snares ~ She Runs ~ My Love Is A Bulldozer ~ Planet Mu
5:14 AM Bubblegum Octopus ~ Rugolorf ~ Critters ~ Moth Life
5:17 AM Lone ~ Restless City ~ Reality Testing ~ R&S
5:21 AM Esteban Adame ~ The Reason ~ Day Labor ~ EPM Music
5:26 AM Ryan Huber ~ Weade ~ Harken ~ Inam Records
5:36 AM Stereolab ~ Heavy Denim ~ Wow And Flutter ~ Elektra
5:39 AM The Proper Ornaments ~ Stereolab ~ Wooden Head ~ Slumberland
5:41 AM Matt Kivel ~ Open Road ~ Days Of Being Wild ~ Woodsist
5:44 AM Ramon Speed ~ Upstate ~ Effulgence And Alacrity ~ Unread Records
5:47 AM Obnox ~ Best Time Of My Life ~ Louder Space ~ 12XU
5:51 AM Cold Beat ~ Wave ~ Over Me ~ Crime On The Moon
5:54 AM Planning For Burial ~ 29 August 2012 ~ Desideratum ~ The Flenser
Los Angeles native Esteban Adame has been playing keyboards in various Underground Resistance-affiliated projects (most notably Los Hermanos and Galaxy 2 Galaxy) since 2004, and has released a handful of solo 12″s on labels such as Motech and his own Ican Productions. This is his first solo full-length, on Dutch label/distributor EPM Music. The album embraces several flavors of late-night Detroit sounds. It starts with a bass-heavy, blinking ambient intro track called “Rise And Shine”. “Out To Get It” balances jittering hi-hats and floating synths with calmer moments, all on top of a steady 4/4 beat. “The Grind” is more of a gritty, tense burner, with meteor-shower synths sprinkling over everything. “Paraphernalia” is where we start getting into topsy-turvy melodic loops and ghettotech vocal samples. Seems a bit lo-fi, not quite in an ’80s Dance Mania way, but maybe like a smoothed-out homage to something like that. “Handed Down” heads straight into Galaxy 2 Galaxy territory, melodically, with swinging house beats and funky keyboard lines, and plenty of smooth soloing. “Home Sick” is another standout, with a haunting synth melody, slapping beats and echoed piano riffs. “The Reason” is vintage UR in contemplative mode, with lots of spacey whistles and a forlorn, distressed melody. “What I Really Think” is a retreat to a more singular type of track, focusing on a beat and a few sounds that don’t really move from their spots much, but seems to slowly build and expand a bit. “Another Day” sounds a bit similar to “The Reason”, except it’s brighter and more optimistic sounding. “Friday Night DUI” ends the album with a slinky soundtrack for starting your weekend with a cruise around Detroit, while intoxicated.
The Answer Is In The Beat 