Rebel Kind has transformed from Autumn Wetli of Bad Indians’ solo acoustic folky project (as heard on last year’s 1-sided LP on Life Like) to a girl group-influenced indie-pop trio featuring Amber and Shelley of Swimsuit. Definitely a much fuller sound for the project, and songs like “Motorcycle Man” and “My Baby Is Dead To Me” have much more of a bite than the project’s earlier material. Fred Thomas helped record the album, and he adds lo-fi dubby echo effects to songs like “I See” and “All Of The Flowers”. “Mother Nature” from the 1-sided LP is upgraded to a hazy full-band sound with more of that rusty lo-fi echo. “Best Friend” has more of that exuberant girl-group sound complete with handclaps, and “You Are Free” is a nice twee indie-pop anthem with solid bass guitar and fast drums. Available digitally on Bandcamp, and on vinyl from Urinal Cake.
Hour 1
3:03 AM His Name Is Alive ~ I Believe Your Heart Is No Longer Inside This Room ~ Tecuciztecatl ~ London London
3:07 AM Dean Blunt ~ 100 ~ Black Metal ~ Rough Trade
3:10 AM Rebel Kind ~ Very Vivid Personality ~ Today ~ Urinal Cake
3:12 AM Suspirians ~ Sirens ~ Suspirians ~ Super Secret Records
3:14 AM Gate ~ untitled ~ split 7″ w/ Tom Carter ~ Carbon Records
3:17 AM Loren Connors ~ Cafe Oto, May 14, 2011 ~ split LP w/ Vapour Theories ~ Carbon Records
3:24 AM Accelera Deck ~ Opprinnelig ~ Ipsissima Vox ~ Scarcelight
3:25 AM Steve Roden ~ Transparency (Red) ~ Flower & Water ~ Dragon’s Eye Recordings
3:29 AM Chris Herbert ~ Cité Radieuse ~ Constants ~ Room40
3:37 AM Courtis/Moore ~ King Pancreas ~ KPPB ~ Earbook
3:45 AM Philip Corner ~ The Gymnopédies: First ~ Satie Slowly ~ Unseen Worlds
3:48 AM His Name Is Alive ~ The Torso ~ Dark Reflections ~ cd-r
3:51 AM Machinone ~ Ruoho ~ Tokyo ~ flau
3:53 AM Grouper ~ Lighthouse ~ Ruins ~ Kranky
3:59 AM Ricardo Donoso ~ A Song For Echo (Part 4) ~ A Song For Echo ~ Kathexis Hour 2
4:02 AM Arca ~ Fish ~ Xen ~ Mute
4:04 AM Dorian Concept ~ Trophies ~ Joined Ends ~ Ninja Tune
4:08 AM Clark ~ Petroleum Tinged ~ Clark ~ Warp
4:10 AM Borealis ~ Antivenene (Ellevæ Cancelle) ~ Kallionyma ~ Tipping Hand Recordings
4:15 AM ACI_Edits ~ side B track 1 ~ tape ~ Aught
4:17 AM Principles Of Geometry ~ Polysex (VHS Head Remix) ~ Connie ~ Tigersushi
4:21 AM Torn Hawk ~ Acceptance Speech ~ Let’s Cry And Do Pushups At The Same Time ~ Mexican Summer
4:26 AM Pursuit Grooves ~ Get It ~ Lift ~ What Rules
4:31 AM Gabriel Saloman ~ The Disciplined Body ~ Movement Building Vol. 1 ~ Shelter Press
4:40 AM Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa ~ Dancing Venus Of Aurora Clay ~ Savage Imagination ~ Thrill Jockey
4:44 AM Trentemøller ~ River Of Life (T.O.M. And His Computer Remix) ~ Lost Reworks ~ In My Room
4:49 AM Matthew Collings ~ Vasilia ~ Splintered Instruments ~ Denovali
4:56 AM Korma ~ Sky Hook ~ Skyline ~ Car Crash Set
4:59 AM Lee Bannon ~ RMF-2 ~ Main/Flex ~ Babygrande Hour 3
5:03 AM Weyes Blood ~ Ashes ~ The Innocents ~ Mexican Summer
5:09 AM Broken Bone ~ Raw ~ Willowbrook ~ Aperture
5:14 AM Samuel Kerridge ~ Paint It Black Reprise ~ Deficit Of Wonder ~ Blueprint
5:19 AM Bombardier ~ Control Voltage ~ split 12″ w/ WMX ~ Void Tactical Media
5:23 AM Little Mack ~ Get It Together ~ Drac Juke ~ Raveyard
5:32 AM Tangerine Dream ~ Origin Of Supernatural Probabilities ~ Zeit ~ Sanctuary
5:45 AM Steve Reich ~ Radio Rewrite V. (Fast) ~ Radio Rewrite ~ Nonesuch
5:47 AM Scott Walker & Sunn O))) ~ Fetish ~ Soused ~ 4AD
5:56 AM Vashti Bunyan ~ Mother ~ Heartleap ~ DiCristina
The male half of now-defunct duo Hype Williams continues to make strange, puzzling, post-modern music, following up last year’s confessional breakup album The Redeemer with this liner notes-free release. Graduating from Hyperdub and Hippos In Tanks to Rough Trade, this is in some ways his most “indie” sounding release (just catch the Pastels and Big Star samples), and there’s plenty of chiming guitars here. The majority of the tracks here are short and sketchlike, with Blunt’s voice singing a few lines over looped samples and drums, and then the song just fading out and moving on to the next one. I never noticed this before, but I’m just realizing now that his music reminds me of Basehead, but way more arty. The presence of a female vocalist who is not Inga Copeland sort of reminds me of basically any Tricky album since he broke up with Martina Topley-Bird; there’s just a sort of disconnect and it’s not the same. That said, get a few tracks into this album and there’s some lovely stuff here. “Molly & Aquafina” is a gorgeous ballad with direct, hard-hitting lyrics (“you’ll never be the one I want you to be, because I know that person is me”), a lone guitar in the background, and the reassuring repeated line “I don’t worry ’bout nothing.” The centerpiece of the album is 13-minute “Forever”, a trudging dub piece with late-night sax, delicate guitar, and a few noise bursts which are integrated into the rhythm. The music here sounds pretty canned, just really generic keyboard pre-set sounds, but that doesn’t detract from it at all, it actually elevates it in a strange way. There’s some vocals in the beginning, and they work really well and you expect them to continue, but then the rest of it is so hypnotic that you kind of forget about the vocals. “X” is another long track (9 minutes this time) and starts out with a few minutes of synth drone before vocals, beats, bass guitar, and more pre-set keyboard sounds come in. It has more of that oddly disconnected duet feel, with Dean repeating “you’re fucking with a holy man”. “Punk” is not punk but reggae, with a solid beat and bassline and a bit of Rasta scatting in between Blunt’s nonchalant verses. “Country” is definitely not country, but weird circuit-bent noise and Mac volume control sounds. “Hush” is a minute-long track with grime-style rapping along with a prismatic loop and smooth jazz sax, and this leads into “Mersh”, another subdued grime/dub influenced song with a skeletal rhythm and similarly sparse usage of vocals. “Grade” brings a lot of elements of the album together for the album’s final 5 minutes; grand keyboards, sax, ethereal female vocals, stuttering electronic drums, and stonefaced grime vocals, ending the album on a much different note than the folkier songs it began with. You feel like some sort of transformation has happened, but trying to figure out exactly what has happened will take me way too long to figure out and I want to get this review done so this CD can be available for WCBN airplay as soon as possible.
Yet another LP from astonishingly prolific avant-guitarist Loren Connors, who’s released at least a hundred records since the ’70s. His side of this split LP is a live session from 2011, which is slow, reserved, and sparse, and alternates between being drowned in distortion/echo and being clear and upfront. Plenty of silence surrounds the echoing guitar notes, and it feels like he’s playing huddled in the corner of a cave with just a single candle providing light. Sometimes it’s more languid and calm, and other times he’s ruthlessly attacking his guitar. A few times, swirling wah-wah affects are present, which seem to trigger avalanches of feedback. The other side of the LP is by John and Michael Gibbons of Bardo Pond, Alasehir, Hash Jar Tempo, and a ton of other projects. This side seems to take a straighter path, with one guitar playing a more rhythmic pattern and the other soaring above, twisting into shapes and singing a mournful, feedback-drenched cry. It’s rough, but not quite as dirty/scuzzy as Bardo Pond, and is pretty accessible, unless you’re averse to long guitar jams. It fades out after 19 minutes, but honestly I wouldn’t mind hearing it go on a lot longer than that.
Josh Hedges moved to Nashville, but he will forever be a part of the Michigan breakcore scene. This EP contains 5 tracks, including material he performed at Codename: Dracula last year. As the title suggests, this is his haunted take on juke/footwork, which means fast hi-hats and hip-hop samples combined with gabber kicks and harsh breaks. The 13-minute title track is the highlight, and it’s dark and giddy. It’s like Halloween, it’s evil but not really evil, it’s just for fun. It’s more of an excuse to wear fangs and use fake blood than anything else. And eat lots of candy (but no Milk Duds, Dracula cannot chew them). “Point Detroit” is a similar uptempo juke/ghettotech track, with skittering 808 beats and halftime samples that seem to move in slow motion compared to the beats. Elsewhere, we have some thrashy metal breakcore (“Cannon”, Little Mack’s remix of DJ Skull Vomit’s “Antigoon”), and dilapidated harsh breaks with a harsh noise ending (“Get It Together”). Free download, grab it now, no excuse.
Clear vinyl 12″ of pounding minimal techno. “Epley Manoeuvre” is a long stare down a metallic tunnel, which gets more intense as the beats flare up. “Gravity” is a paranoid number with a beeping pattern that moves quicker than the beat, keeping things nervous. “Particle Repositioning” has the biggest bass and the deepest, most reverberating sounds. The hi-hat pattern has a little bit of swing to it, but still sounds purely robotic.
I can’t say I keep up with grime that much, but there are a few producers who cross my radar who work in that idiom who create interesting sounds. Korma is based in Seattle, but he’s attracted attention from grime DJ’s such as Dusk + Blackdown. The “Springblade” single is the more club-friendly of his two Car Crash Set releases, with both tracks featuring Baltimore-inspired cutup breaks along with grime bass. “Springblade” has snapping camera sounds, while “Chain 2.0” is tougher and has broken glass, sinister melodies and chopped vocal samples. The flanging beats at the end are particularly exciting.
Korma: Skyline EP
Even more exciting, however, is the Skyline EP, which takes things in a much weirder, less club-friendly direction. “Skyline” starts with sirens and a voice saying “warning”, and you can’t say you weren’t, as all manners of sword-like slashing sounds fly past you, arranged with precision. “Mech” is even crazier, an evil surveillance camera nightmare that makes you feel probed within an inch of your life. It’s so brutal and bludgeoning, but in a fun, enjoyable way. “Hornacek” is a stiff, mechanical droid-battler, with buzzing bass, smashing beats, and not much in the way of melody or emotion, because what good are those for if you’re a destructive robot? “Sky Hook” is another surveillance camera riddim, with beats that roll to the point of sounding like machine gun fire, and more flat yet heavy grime basslines.
A pretty harsh peering into the abyss from a producer who bridges techno with industrial noise. “Operation Neptune” is really the only dancefloor-accessible track here, and even it seems hellbent on bludgeoning dancers and dragging them to hell. “Surrender To The Void” is slow, pounding, and fiery, with lunging beats and doomy distortion. “Paint It Black” has crushing beats seared in molten white-hot noise, and the “Reprise” does away with the beats for a full-on magma bath. It strikes hard and obliterates. Yeowch.
International collaboration between Anla Courtis (of brilliant Argentinian band Reynols) and Aaron Moore (of Volcano The Bear). Two 20-minute pieces which alternate between frenzied drumming and more languid droning. “King Pancreas” definitely starts out on the frantic site, and gets lost in some fuzzy loops before getting stuck in a stammering glitch. But then it’s back to clean, sleepy guitar drifts, and lots of cascading cymbal rolls. Things slowly get more spooky and detached, with whispering wind, stray radio waves, sour violin and eventually mallet percussion patterns coming into play. “Punk Butter” has more scurrying, scraping string instruments and precipitous percussion before a forcefield of dark, meditative string droning appears, and then a howling coyote (possibly slowed down a bit to sound more evil), and a bustling, crashing percussion coda. Pretty disconcerting, but there’s definitely some thrilling moments to be heard in both pieces. Available from Bandcamp.
The Answer Is In The Beat 