The Answer Is In The Beat

Chronotope Project: Ovum (Spotted Peccary, 2017)

August 27, 2017 at 5:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

When this first showed up in the mail, somehow I didn’t even realize at first that I already have the album this group released last year. I listened to this a few times while going to sleep and it didn’t make much of an impression at first, it just sounded like pretty standard new age, with flutes and percussion and stuff. It really grew on me, though. It’s super comforting, but not entirely fluffy and light, it gets a bit darker and deeper at times. It’s typically slow, sliding, and fluid, and is equally in tune with nature as well as space. It utilizes a synth called the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, which looks pretty crazy. I’m into it.

USA/Mexico: Laredo LP (12XU, 2017)

August 26, 2017 at 3:53 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Austin band USA/Mexico includes guitarist Craig Clouse of Shit & Shine, drummer King Coffey of the Butthole Surfers, and bassist Nate Cross of When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. All of that adds up to expectations that this album will be weird, noisy, brutal, scary, and horribly fucked up, right? Well, you’re still not ready for how insane this album actually is. The noise is as harsh and engulfing as any power electronics record you care to name, but then the rhythm section bludgeons you with even more intense power. And the vocals sound like they’re coming from a combusting Dalek. They just don’t sound human. On top of that, there’s some digital glitch disorienting everything at certain moments, like near the end of opener “Possum Trot”. “Laredo” is ten times harsher than the first track, yet the rhyth, keeps barreling along straight ahead for the whole 7 minutes. “Windsor Park Hardcore” is 90 seconds of the most volatile, noise-blasted hardcore imaginable. The album ends with a just barely recognizable cover of The Fall’s “L.A.” The nice, peaceful cover art is entirely not representative of what this sounds like. Not at all. You are not ready.

Fracture: Cold & Rain 12″ EP (Astrophonica, 2017)

August 13, 2017 at 11:43 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I’ve been oblivious to Fracture until now, even though he’s released dozens of records on labels like Metalheadz, Exit, Offshore, Ohm Resistance, etc. since the early 2000s (either solo or with Neptune). This is supercharged club music with tightly edited breaks, lots of energetic samples, and pop elements which don’t seem overly saccharine or cloying. It has the rolling, choppy beats of post-2000 drum’n’bass but doesn’t just settle into looping the same patterns over and over (I haven’t heard drum’n’bass that does this in quite a while, and I’m hoping this style has died out and people are just simply more creative now), and there’s some footwork-ness (he’s collaborated with DJ Earl) but it stays within the d’n’b realm. “So High” (a co-production w/ Alix Perez) uses chipmunk rave vocals to build up its momentum, but it manages to stay somewhat muted compared to how you might expect it to get, and there’s some really inventive bass tones. Looks like this is a back catalog I need to plunge into.

Sug: God’s Clit Vol. 2: Time vs. Flesh tape (Hausu Mountain, 2017)

August 13, 2017 at 11:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Sugarm is now just Sug, and his first tape in several years is a long, heavy expedition which questions mortality and earthly existence. It’s very noisy and disjointed, with tripped-out distortion and floating, detached samples flying around heavy beats. It has the usual anything-goes spirit of Hausu Mountain releases, but is a bit noisier and darker than a lot of their releases, yet there’s still a cartoonish playfulness apparent. But there’s some very longform drone examinations here, such as “Silent Spiral”, which ends up sampling some sort of dizzy heavy breathing exercise before the speaker-panned beats jumble in and try really hard to make you lose your mind. “The Wizard Drips” is the shortest piece but it ends up being an entrancing psychic death march. “16 16 16” is a half hour long and takes up the entire second side of the tape, and it features the type of mind-warping that can only be accomplished with an EVI.

Khaki Blazer: Didn’t Have To Cut tape (Hausu Mountain, 2017)

August 13, 2017 at 10:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The newest brain-scrambler from Pat Modugno of Moth Cock features the type of rapidly fluctuating samples and abstract rhythms that are to be expected from him, but in some ways this one feels a bit more spacious and aired-out. There’s some airy drones and sensuous lingering behind all the squeaking and bonking and glitching. After the alarming test tones of “Saturn Rings”, “Passive Demon” is all sparkling constellations and cartoon powerdrills, and it rapidly switches between overwhelming enlightenment and sugar-spiked silliness. There’s moments where it’s like someone getting really starry-eyed and introspective and bordering on profound, and then the yoga mat gets pulled up from under them and they’re beaten over the head with it. Lightly, of course. This isn’t violent music in any way. It’s lopsided and goofy and trippy but not mean-spirited. Also, in a plunderphonic stroke of genius, the 11-minute album-ending dronescape “Death Bedhead” is constantly interrupted with a recurring sample of that annoying Gotye song, revealing the source of the album’s title.

Crypticz: Forever 12″ EP (Cosmic Bridge, 2017)

August 13, 2017 at 8:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Very good modern drum’n’bass, heavy on drizzling rainfall and tension. The production isn’t overwhelmingly dense, but it does sound busy. The beats are fast (although there’s some halftime rhythms as well) and the rest of the sounds are spacious and mist-like. These are not tear-out club tracks, they’re themes for late-night moonlit rituals.