August 12, 2015 at 10:33 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Blind Shake: Live in San Francisco
I saw this band open for Thee Oh Sees at SXSW this year at a free show late at night inside a cramped, sweaty room, and all I can remember is that it was 100 degrees and I had to wait for an hour or so until the band performed and I was worried that my friend was getting impatient, even though she really wanted to see Thee Oh Sees. So I don’t really remember much about how this band sounded. Listening to this live album, they sound pretty decent, actually. Two brothers both snarling and playing noisy guitar and a third guy bashing away on the drums, no bass (so if you’re not into trebly garage rock with no bass, this might not be for you). With 2 exceptions, all the songs are under 3 minutes, usually about 2 and a half, and they’re mostly uptempo and smashy, owing equally to British punk and ’60s garage rock at its stompiest. The guitar effects are great, they definitely make good usage of such a limited palette. The whole album is over in 25 minutes, which is just perfect. I think I need to see these guys again and actually pay attention next time.
August 12, 2015 at 10:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Detroit 442: Pigs LP
This punk band clearly and proudly hails from Detroit (just check out their anthem “Another Night in Detroit”), but it’s easy to mistake them for a British band, given singer Lacy 442’s over-exaggerated Johnny Rotten snarl. He definitely gives the band character, setting them apart from loads of other samey-sounding punk bands. The band has a riff-happy melodic sense similar to the Sex Pistols as well, although some tracks like opener “A Fear Of…” are repetitive, almost motorik. They kick into hardcore overdrive on tracks like the brief “Such a Laugh” and “The Fall of Everything”, and they pay tribute to their ’60s garage rock influences by covering The Troggs’ “I Want You” (recorded live at Detroit’s Comet Bar). Best of all is the hilarious “Ted Nugent Sucks Dog Cock”, which more than lives up to its fabulous title, meaning that it is completely unsafe for radio airplay. There’s also side B’s intro “Sonata Per Un Uomo Arrabbiato”, which has discordant piano playing showered by taunts of “you motherfuckers!” The album concludes with the lengthy “Pigs”, which breaks loose from the fast, short punk format for a slower, more psychedelic noise-rock jam with horns, sort of in the spirit of The Stooges’ and MC5’s epic jams, which has a subliminal chant of “kill all the pigs.” The whole album is super fun and creative, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously yet it says some interesting and pertinent things.
August 11, 2015 at 8:41 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Black Dirt Oak/Jantar: Presage split 12″ EP
Black Dirt Oak are affiliated with Pigeons, but unlike that group’s more poppy, song-based psych explorations, BDO are more rambling and free-form. Their lengthy instrumentals have more electronic textures, and are influenced by Krautrock and dub as well as folk and jammy psychedelic rock. They lock into rhythms, but they still keep things loose and squishy. Actually, “Magic Hat” seems to very loosely hang onto its rhythm (but it’s still there), and “Fjordside” takes over 5 minutes of riding an organ drone before the drums come in. And then there’s the far-away vocals and trippy flutes. Both tracks seem to transcend time and go by a lot quicker than they would seem to. Not much is known about Jantar (yet), but their two compositions take their time, with every slowly paced piano and flute note making an impact. “Night From Four Martyrs” stretches to nearly 10 minutes, with the last 4 featuring layers of guitar noise in the background, while the piano still paces back and forth in the foreground. “Pull Out That Poison Dart” begins as a cocoon of reversed guitars, from which gentle, steady drums and mantra-like vocals emerge. And then they disappear, leading the piece to slowly fade away and retire.
August 9, 2015 at 10:40 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
German Army: Of Babongo tape
Released on Discrepant, a world music-leaning experimental label with releases by Kink Gong, Old Komm, and Mutamassik (and apparently a new Mike Cooper LP later this year), this could potentially be viewed as German Army at their most Muslimgauze-esque. Or if not him, someone who’s likely to sample traditional-sounding folk instruments from a remote corner of the globe, combined with lo-fi industrial rhythms. This tape does oddly seem a bit more down-to-earth (or maybe out-in-the-open) than a typical German Army tape. Most of the tracks segue into each other, so it has more of a collage feel, and it’s just more cohesive. Plus it just seems like there’s more purpose to this tape than some of the other stuff I’ve heard by them. German Army at their most mystic? Something like that. It’s incredible.
August 9, 2015 at 10:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Timeghost: Cellular
This album combines fractured industrial drone with creepy spoken word. Unlike a lot of albums that do things like this, a lot of the spoken vocals are undistorted, which makes them even creepier when they say things like “Do you feel something on your leg?” The first two tracks respectively utilize synthesizers triggered by cell phone interference and field recordings of the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. The third track (“Dissection Theater”) has more of a shuddering rhythmic noise pulse to it, with distorted vocals reciting a cut-up version of the Nuremberg Code. “Delicate Resonances” is a warped lullaby with lyrics sourced from Methodist hymns, with a female computer voice reciting text by the artist’s mother. The other side is a little different, it doesn’t always do the spoken word stuff, at least not always in the same way as the first side. “Uber Orgone” is a pretty haunting track with chiming synths, electrifying drums, and operatic shrieking. It’s too easy for me to think of Coil when I hear this type of creative industrial-ish music that really doesn’t succumb to all the horrible cliches of industrial music, but it’s a valid comparison all the same. Closing track “Gaia” has weird massed voices chanting robotically. Seriously strange and haunting. Not to mention the die-cut artwork on the vinyl version on Load Records. An impossibly hard code to crack.
August 9, 2015 at 9:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Multicast Dynamics: Scape
Denovali Records has been doing an amazing job at consistently unearthing quality experimental music of all stripes. One of the best things about the label is the fact that when they sign someone, they tend to reissue some of their older, limited/out of print releases as well as issue new works. So the label introduces Samuel van Dijk’s Multicast Dynamics project to the world by reissuing an obscure tape he released last year, as well as a new proper album.
Scape (the older album) makes its CD and vinyl debut, and it’s a haunting album of echoing, watery dark ambient. I just noticed that this is actually an alias of dub-techno producer Mohlao, and this makes total sense, as his tracks always had a bubbly, wet texture to them. Instead of being tied to techno beats, this is minimalist 20,000-leagues-deep sonar music. There’s soft pulsations, as well as sub-bass rumbling. It feels remarkably strange and alien. At times some dimly lit (not exactly warm) drone fades in, a lot of the time it’s just pitch black. The whole thing is just wonderfully murky.
Multicast Dynamics: Aquatic System
(the newer album) expands on the tape’s sound, which is to say it goes even deeper under the surface. It’s also more expressive and awe-inspiring. It travels deep, but it finds life there. There also seems to be more of a rhythmic pulse to it than the previous album. It’s more informed by his dub-techno sound, even if it’s neither dub nor techno. Most importantly, it’s got BASS to it. Something to float around in weightless suspension to. Definitely the best Multicast Dynamics release so far (these are apparently the first two installments of a four part series).
August 9, 2015 at 7:43 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Amalgamated: s/t
was recorded back in 2004-2007 and mixed and mastered (by James Plotkin) years later. Some of it has crunchy, MBM-like breakbeats, and some of it is more solitary, minimalist mood excursions. “Borborygmus IX” is a softly throbbing piece filled with ominous piano, and “Unworm Ascending” is a subterranean bass guitar journey. Some of the tracks with dusty breakbeats remind me of The Grassy Knoll, which is a name I haven’t even thought of for years. This isn’t quite acid jazz, but it’s acid something.
August 9, 2015 at 7:09 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Cocoon: While the Recording Engineer Sleeps
Recorded in 1985 and originally released in 1989, this album features German jazz legend Gunter Hampel along with Jürgen Gleue of 39 Clocks and The Phantom Payn, as well as a guest appearance by Thomas Keyserling, who appeared on early albums by Tangerine Dream and Amon Düül II. The press release says to file this under jazz, but even with the lineup’s jazz pedigree, I’d still call it psychedelic or Krautrock. It has its trippy psych-rock moments, especially bursts of guitar noise on a few tracks, but plenty of other tracks here have fluttering flutes and mellow vibraphones giving it a jazz feel, but it’s just an element to it. It still sounds like dark, loose experimental rock. The last track was, in fact, recorded while the engineer was dozing off. “The Ritual of the Boogie Transformation” features Hampel speaking in tongues and generally sounding crazy for 8 minutes. The following two tracks feature his lead vocals as well, and give the album an interesting rambling mood that it doesn’t have otherwise. This album’s okay, but somehow it seems kind of sterile, like a later Can album or something.
August 8, 2015 at 10:57 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Five Star Hotel: #HOTELSEASON
I already posted about Five Star Hotel’s
latest tape on
Decoder, but this kid is doing something so completely far-out and different than anyone else that I have to post about his other most recent release here. While the
Outlands tape has ten lengthier tracks which are a bit slower than some of his other stuff, this 17-track, 24-minute mixtape is a seriously intense headrush. There’s way more hip-hop samples here, and way more of a manic juke influence. A few tracks start to bleed into gabber and hardcore (I’m thinking Bloody Fist style), and “Snowblind” (by far the longest track at 4 minutes) is a bit closer to harsh noise. I have to admit the whole “trap” thing isn’t always something I can get into, Southern rap in general isn’t really my thing and taking those styles of beats and turning them into hedonistic fratboy/festival EDM is definitely not something I can appreciate. But this guy takes elements of trap, juke, gabber, Baltimore/Jersey club, and a huge shower of noise, and just turns them all into something else entirely. I’m astonished. I hope people outside of the Detroit area take notice of what this guy is doing because yow. And of course there is a ton of his music available for free download on
Bandcamp that I haven’t even delved into yet.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 