Subheim’s third album (and first in five years) is an ideal soundtrack for a bleary late night spent walking around an unfamiliar city with a heavy heart. Opening with scraping, discordant strings, the album contains shivering vocal samples, heartbroken pianos, and lots of slowly paced beats. “Red Ridge” is a flickering trip-hop track which recalls Massive Attack at their most windswept. “Forsaken” rides a knocking midtempo beat, and contains moaning, disembodied vocals, tense strings, gritty guitar, and gently bumping bass. “Arktos” embraces uptempo techno rhythms, with heavily detailed, shifting beats, layers of pianos and strings, and whispered vocals underneath. “Berlin” ends the album with the street sounds (a passing ambulance, a stopping bus) and more whispering.
Edward Ka-Spel is the enigmatic frontman of Legendary Pink Dots, a psychedelic industrial band who have released about a hundred albums since the early ’80s. He’s released at least half as many solo albums, although as the title to this one suggests, it’s an album of ambient soundscapes rather than songs. The first track is the shortest (6 minutes) and brightest and most melodic. The second is nearly 10 minutes, and is more hissy, creaky, and buzzy, with some weird operatic vocal loops during the second half. The third track is over half an hour, and it progresses through spooky melodies, bubbling textures, stormy sounds, kind of tribal rhythms, and vocals by “the ghost of Marie-Antoinette”. It goes on for a long time and it seems to meander if you’re not paying attention, but it’s actually a pretty amazing late-night soundscape.
Not a group, but actually a solo project of sound sculptor Thomas Bücker, Bersarin Quartett constructs wide-eyed but melancholy ambient and downtempo, with extended loops of cinematic strings. The instruments (pianos, horns, etc.) are usually recognizable, but he manipulates and processes them so that sometimes they sound grainy or wavy. He also seems to make a point of the fact that he’s using loops, in the way they they often suddenly cut off and restart, rather than making them clean and continuous sounding. In some ways, it sounds fragile, broken, and decaying, but in others, it’s vibrant and pulsating, and seems to have been crafted with the utmost of care. There’s acoustic drums and plenty of booming bass tones, as well as rich clouds of atmospheric synths. Picking out highlights is difficult and ultimately pointless, as the tracks all seem to inhabit a similar mood, but Umschlungen Von Milliarden” might be the album’s most emotionally heavy track, and “Sanft Verblassen Die Geschichten” seems to have a greater concentration of forlorn acoustic stringed instruments, at least before the storm clouds take over. “Welche Welt” features vocals by Clara Hill floating in the ether. “Ist Es Das, Was Du Willst” has the album’s most crunchy beat manipulation, and it’s cloaked in thunder cracks and cymbal swells. The billowing purple clouds adorning the album’s artwork are apt; this is the type of album that seeps into you like a gas, and while it’s hard to tell at first whether the gas is safe or not, ultimately it ends up being helpful rather than harmful.
This London-based group formed after witnessing a Wolf Eyes gig, which tells you part of what they sound like, but only a small piece. There’s harsh noise and shrieking industrial vocals, yes, but there’s also horns and spaghetti western guitars, as well as minimalist Krautrock rhythms. “All My Venom” slowly builds up to acid rock guitars, deranged mariachi horns, thudding industrial beats, and crazed screaming. “Animal Manservant” starts with another jackhammering industrial beat and more screaming, but then develops brassy ’80s soundtrack synths. “Field Punishment” is more of a sparse, trippy techno track, but with more cinematic guitars and horns joining the pulsating electro beats and synths. “Have You Ever Held a Bird of Prey” begins with 4 minutes of near silence before an electronic pulse and jagged guitars come in. Subliminal voices whisper underneath the hypnotic throbbing for the remainder of the track. “Phonogene” is a short interlude of scrambled, skipping voices, and the 11-minute epic “Love Theme For 1984” ends the album, slowly building up acoustic guitars and Boards Of Canada-like synths, before more echo-drenched horns and guitars build up and die down, with the track’s final two minutes dissipating into space. A really stunning album which truly sounds like nothing else, and yet somehow the “psychedelic” tag still fits.
Like the now-defunct Wold, Gnaw Their Tongues (a solo project of a Dutch musician named Mories) blurs the line between black metal and harsh noise. He’s released dozens of albums and EPs, and most of his albums and songs have long, ridiculous titles. It’s hard to even tell if there’s actual guitars on this album, it might just be electronics, but he manages to shape the feedback into riffs as well as squalls of noise. It even sounds like there’s horror-movie strings and horns buried in the mix. The vocals are never less than ghastly and demonic, and only Satan knows what he’s howling about. “Through Flesh” is surprisingly musical for this sort of thing. “Abyss of Longing Throats” is the album’s most straightforward black metal-sounding track, with pulverizing blastbeats and riffs, as well as a spoken word break about “the martyrs of Christ be[ing] tortured”. The drums on The Holy Body” strike with precision, framing Mories’ tortured howls. “And They Will Be Cast Out Into Utter Darkness” is the album’s trippiest track, weaving warped strings and shifting drums, which morph tempos with no advance notice. “Up Into the Heavens Down Into the Circles of Hell” buries some operatic vocals underneath the shrieking, leading the album to its apocalyptic end.
Hour 1
3:00 am Jefre Cantu-Ledesma ~ “Love After Love” ~ A Year With 13 Moons ~ Mexican Summer ~ 2015
3:04 am Vaadat Charigim ~ “Neshel” ~ Sinking As a Stone ~ Anova/Burger Records ~ 2015
3:17 am Matchess ~ “Sinister Prophecies of Coming Catastrophe” ~ Somnaphoria [Album of the Year] ~ Trouble in Mind ~ 2015
3:21 am Circuit des Yeux ~ “Do the Dishes” ~ In Plain Speech ~ Thrill Jockey ~ 2015
3:24 am Mind Over Mirrors ~ “Strange(r) Work” ~ The Voice Calling ~ Immune ~ 2015
3:29 am Colleen ~ “Lighthouse” ~ Captain of None ~ Thrill Jockey ~ 2015
3:36 am White Poppy ~ “Telepathic Love” ~ Natural Phenomena ~ Not Not Fun ~ 2015
3:39 am Jessica Pratt ~ “Back, Baby” ~ On Your Own Love Again ~ Drag City ~ 2015
3:43 am Julia Holter ~ “Feel You” ~ Have You in My Wilderness ~ Domino ~ 2015
3:47 am Jib Kidder ~ “Dozens” ~ Teaspoon to the Ocean ~ Weird World ~ 2015
3:49 am Fred Thomas ~ “Cops Don’t Care Pt. II” ~ All Are Saved ~ Polyvinyl ~ 2015
3:51 am In Tall Buildings ~ “Flare Gun (City Center Remix featuring Dina Bankole)” ~ mp3 ~ Western Vinyl ~ 2015
3:55 am Billowing ~ “Causeway” ~ Modifications D’Éclairage (new) ~ Life Like ~ 2015 Hour 2
4:03 am Downtown Boys ~ “Desde Arriba” ~ Full Communism ~ Don Giovanni ~ 2015
4:05 am Downtown Boys ~ “Future Police” ~ Full Communism ~ Don Giovanni ~ 2015
4:06 am Joanna Gruesome ~ “Last Year” ~ Peanut Butter ~ Slumberland ~ 2015
4:09 am Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts ~ “Outta Town” ~ Manhattan ~ Rough Trade ~ 2015
4:11 am Graham Repulski ~ “Octopus Bribes” ~ Success Racist ~ Shorter Recordings ~ 2015
4:14 am Deafheaven ~ “Come Back” ~ New Bermuda ~ Anti- ~ 2015
4:23 am Locrian ~ “The Future of Death” ~ Infinite Dissolution ~ Relapse ~ 2015
4:30 am Jlin ~ “Guantanamo” ~ Dark Energy ~ Planet Mu ~ 2015
4:35 am DJ Spinn featuring DJ Rashad and Danny Brown ~ “Dubby” ~ Off That Loud EP ~ Hyperdub ~ 2015
4:39 am DJ Taye featuring DJ Earl ~ “XTCC” ~ Break It Down EP ~ Hyperdub ~ 2015
4:42 am Kode9 ~ “Void” ~ Nothing ~ Hyperdub ~ 2015
4:45 am Nozinja ~ “Vamaseve Vatswelani” ~ Nozinja Lodge ~ Warp ~ 2015
4:50 am DJ Topgear ~ “Dedicated CDR Flex” ~ split 12″ w/ CDR (new) ~ AD AAD AT ~ 2015
4:56 am Container ~ “Eject” ~ LP ~ Spectrum Spools ~ 2015 Hour 3
5:02 am Oneohtrix Point Never ~ “I Bite Through It” ~ Garden of Delete ~ Warp ~ 2015
5:05 am Dan Deacon ~ “Meme Generator” ~ Gliss Riffer ~ Domino ~ 2015
5:09 am Coil ~ “Fire Of The Green Dragon” ~ Backwards ~ Cold Spring ~ 2015
5:14 am Steve Roach ~ “Outer Weave” ~ Skeleton Keys ~ Projekt ~ 2015
5:19 am Portopia ’81 ~ “Jet Stream” ~ Jet Stream ~ Constellation Tatsu ~ 2015
5:24 am Sergeant Sawtooth ~ “Adventure Thru Inner Space (Qixoni Remix)” ~ This is Tomorrowland ~ Scolex Recordings ~ 2015
5:27 am John Carpenter ~ “Night (Zola Jesus & Dean Hurley Remix)” ~ Lost Themes Remixed ~ Sacred Bones ~ 2015
5:34 am Shlohmo ~ “Ditch” ~ Dark Red ~ True Panther Sounds ~ 2015
5:38 am Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, and the Rajasthan Express ~ “Roked” ~ Junun ~ Nonesuch ~ 2015
5:41 am Helvetia ~ “A Dot Running For the Dust” ~ Dromomania ~ Joyful Noise ~ 2015
5:45 am Mount Eerie ~ “Boat” ~ Sauna ~ P. W. Elverum & Suns, Ltd. ~ 2015
5:47 am Pigeons ~ “Not a Party” ~ The Bower ~ MIE Music ~ 2015
5:50 am Low ~ “Landslide” ~ Ones and Sixes ~ Sub Pop ~ 2015
The Answer Is In The Beat 