Show #278 – 2/7/15

February 7, 2015 at 11:47 am | Posted in The Answer Is In The Beat | Leave a comment

Fundraising week!!! Pledge your support to keep WCBN on the air! http://wcbn.org/donate or (734) 763-3500!!!

3:01 AM Matana Roberts ~ All Is Written ~ Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee ~ Constellation
3:11 AM Jefre Cantu-Ledesma ~ Agate Beach ~ A Year With 13 Moons ~ Mexican Summer
3:13 AM Mount Eerie ~ Emptiness ~ Sauna ~ P.W. Elverum & Sun
3:16 AM Eternal Tapestry ~ Maidenhair Spleenwort ~ Wild Strawberries ~ Thrill Jockey
3:24 AM Johan Agebjörn ~ You Passed Through ~ Notes ~ Paper Bag
3:30 AM Somatic Responses ~ Back Home ~ Obscure The Future ~ Photon Emissions
3:37 AM Sam Prekop ~ The Loom ~ The Republic ~ Thrill Jockey
3:40 AM /f ~ Pviaeni Catic ~ Micromental ~ Psalmus Diuersae
3:43 AM Mark Barrage ~ Pitcher ~ Surplus Behaviour ~ Endless Melt
3:44 AM AFX ~ Acid Organ (Rough Mix) ~ mp3 ~ Soundcloud
3:53 AM Else Marie Pade & Jacob Kirkegaard ~ Altocumulus ~ Svævninger ~ Important
4:00 AM Jessica Pratt ~ Back, Baby ~ On Your Own Love Again ~ Drag City
4:04 AM Jib Kidder ~ Dozens ~ Teaspoon To The Ocean ~ Weird World
4:06 AM Panda Bear ~ Come To Your Senses ~ Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper ~ Domino
4:13 AM Portland ~ Canejo Place ~ Uprox Detox ~ Component
4:15 AM Sergeant Sawtooth ~ Mission To Mars ~ This Is Tomorrowland ~ Scolex Recordings
4:20 AM Env(itre) ~ Slanderman ~ Lapislazuli ~ Touched
4:24 AM Barbeque ~ AFK ~ Quit Your Job To This Vol. 2 ~ Placenta Recordings
4:27 AM Stopgap Measure ~ Relocation ~ First Blood ~ Juke Trax Online
4:33 AM Steve Roach ~ Invisible ~ Invisible ~ Bandcamp
4:43 AM Negativland ~ Car Bomb ~ Escape From Noise ~ SST
4:45 AM Ty Segall Band ~ Slaughterhouse ~ Live In San Francisco ~ Castle Face
4:47 AM Vankmen ~ Mirrorshard ~ Demolish (Tooth_Eye Remix) ~ Toxic Appetizer Platter Vol. 1 ~ Placenta Recordings
4:48 AM Quiet Noise ~ It Will Get Better ~ Audible Life ~ Audiobulb
4:52 AM Noboru Watanabe ~ Goretouch ~ White Light Wind ~ Bandcamp
5:00 AM Second Culture ~ Entheon Centuries ~ Thunder Conjuring Mind ~ Second Culture Music
5:04 AM Floating Spirits ~ Noctilucent ~ Like the Rain ~ Touched
5:08 AM Surface 10 ~ Dawn / Bleep / Dusk ~ Surface Tensions ~ DiN
5:14 AM Tinsen ~ Eventualmente ~ Tinsen [lo-op] ~ Placenta Recordings
5:20 AM Tomaga ~ Futura Grotesk ~ Futura Grotesk ~ Hands In The Dark
5:24 AM Ricardo Donoso ~ Prisoner’s Dilemma ~ Deterrence ~ Denovali
5:28 AM Thomas Köner ~ Tiento de las Nieves ~ Tiento de las Nieves ~ Denovali
5:34 AM Squanto ~ Jaffa (Take 1) ~ Basement Tropic ~ Lily Tapes And Discs
5:45 AM M. Geddes Gengras ~ The Last Time We Were Here ~ Collected Works Vol. 2: New Process Music ~ Umor Rex
5:54 AM Jaga Jazzist ~ Kitty Wu (Machinedrum Remix) ~ ’94-’14 ~ Ninja Tune

Michna: Thousand Thursday (Ghostly International, 2015)

February 2, 2015 at 6:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Michna: Thousand Thursday

Michna: Thousand Thursday

Second full-length from Adrian Michna of Secret Frequency Crew. Like labelmate Shigeto, Michna produces danceable music with downtempo/hip-hop influences. This one seems a little more dancey than previous releases, with the first 3 tracks sounding like they could be on a DFA release, with percolating disco rhythms and rough-but-shiny synths. “Solid Gold” features MNDR and is a shot at a straightforward dance-pop song. “Nuroq Legacy” is a dancey track but it lapses into a downtempo/hip-hop breakdown. “Time Will Tell” isn’t quite so dancey and has bitcrushed drums and playful melodies, and I like it better than the dancier tracks. “Jace the Mind Sculptor” is a simmering interlude with crashing wave sounds and some mysterious voices chanting in the background. “Increasing Ambition” has more percolating dance beats and new wave synths. “Believe In It Pt. II” shifts to midtempo, with more big chunky breakbeats and simple synth melodies, but it settles into another dance groove, has more subliminal voices embedded, switches up a couple times, and really is not as simple as it might seem at first. “She Exists In My Mind” has choppy hip-hop breakbeats and rapidly flickering bass synth notes, with increasingly detailed production (Michna certainly has a knack for drum fills and stuffing up the tracks with voices and other sounds). “Skyway T/A” bumps the tempo up a bit with more busy drumwork and emotive melodies, ending with a voice mail message from a downstairs neighbor worrying that the ceiling is going to cave in. “Death Pits of Rath” ends the album with more thundering breakbeats, almost approaching Meat Beat Manifesto territory.

Stephen Vitiello & Steve Roden: The Spaces Contained In Each (Room40, 2014)

February 1, 2015 at 8:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Stephen Vitiello & Steve Roden: The Spaces Contained In Each

Stephen Vitiello & Steve Roden: The Spaces Contained In Each

Today has been the first major snowfall of this winter here in Ann Arbor. I’m glad I put off reviewing this album until today, because it’s fitting music for a world covered in snow. The crackling and humming sounds at the beginning of this album, as well as the sounds of blowing wind, make this abundantly clear. Sparse synth textures drift in and out, as well as some softly tolling bells, but it’s the found sound recordings and loops that resonate most. I’m not sure what seasons these sounds were recorded in, but it certainly sounds like a winter recording to me. Even the water-like sounds feel like dripping icicles or a snowy river that isn’t quite frozen over. And there’s faint train sounds, which sound like they’re distantly traveling through a snowy forest. The album ends trudging away through a forest thick with snow, possibly with someone puttering away on a moto-scooter.

Somatic Responses megapost

February 1, 2015 at 8:05 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Somatic Responses: Gamma Ray Bursts

Somatic Responses: Gamma Ray Bursts

Somatic Responses have been so prolific over the past 20 years that it’s easy to take their consistency for granted. Of course, they’ve also managed to stay under the radar, never quite gaining the accolades of Autechre, but racking up a discography of dozens of releases, all of which are worth your time. They’ve also long been advocates of free music, with several of their older releases still available for download on the long-since-updated c8.com, and their own Bandcamp page a treasure trove of over 2 dozen mostly-free releases, including some of their albums that were properly released on CD. (Be sure to check out the recently resurrected Component Recordings’ Bandcamp too, as it has tons of free downloads, including SR’s essential double CD Adverts.) In addition to the album Let’s All Disintegrate, the EP Android Affair, a live set recorded in Denmark, and a SR-curated multi-artist compilation called Photon Collisions, SR ended 2014 by posting three full-length albums to their Bandcamp. And by full-length I mean well over an hour, approaching 2 hours in 2 of the albums’ cases. Gamma Ray Bursts is the more IDM of the 3, with Artificial Intelligence-like melodies and electro beats, but a bit more ruffed-up and modernized. The choppy beats and lush melodies of tracks like “Diffusion Graffiti” sit alongside the harsh complex rhythmic patterns of “Fingablipin”, the scattered jungle breaks of “Somatic Circuits”, and the lazy acid of “Ima Jima Lazy Acid”.

Somatic Responses: Hard Landing

Somatic Responses: Hard Landing

Hard Landing is, appropriately enough, more hardcore, with more d’n’b and breakcore drum patterns, and more of a concentration of noisy elements. “Dennis Karate Floating Down The River Amman, Tied To Door” is SR at their breakcore-mentalest, with the outrageous smashed-up breaks spontaneously slowing and speeding in tempo and continuously being munched up and spit out.

Somatic Responses: Obscure The Future

Somatic Responses: Obscure The Future

Most surprising, however, is Obscure The Future, the duo’s ambient album. There’s still beats, but for the most part there’s much more space and bright melodic textures than on anything else the group has produced. Tracks like “Back Home” have cuddly new age melodies, but still retain some rumbling bass that you wouldn’t associate with that genre. The longer tracks in the album’s second half show some space exploration that the duo has simply never done before, and they do it astonishingly well. While it’s incredible that Aphex Twin has been offering up years’ worth of leftovers for free, Somatic Responses have been giving away main courses for years, and certainly deserve at least a bit of attention for it.

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