The Answer Is In The Beat

Robert Haigh: Creatures of the Deep (Unseen Worlds, 2017)

January 13, 2018 at 2:59 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Somehow I was completely unaware that the guy behind atmospheric drum’n’bass project Omni Trio had actually been making avant-garde and modern classical records since the early ’80s, and even contributed to some of Nurse With Wound’s best albums. He retired Omni Trio in 2004, but he’s continued releasing work under his own name. Most of the tracks on this album are relatively short, compact, and melodic, although “Koto Line” and “Sunken Pavilions” are longer and drift out more. There’s enough implied rhythm here that you could imagine heavy rolling beats backing them up, but here they’re left to float free and weightless. “Birds of Cadence” is clear and direct, and definitely the highlight for anyone who loves “Avril 14th”. “From the Mystery” has a gentle layer of reversed notes surrounding its effortlessly pretty melody. “I Remember Phaedra” has more of a sad mystical forest atmosphere to it. The album doesn’t last too long (about 40 minutes), and it ends pretty faintly and unassumingly, making for an easy tansition back into the real world.

Ueno Takashi: Smoke Under the Water (Room40, 2017)

January 12, 2018 at 10:36 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

On this solo instrumental album for Room40, Ueno Takashi (current member of Tenniscoats, once of Maher Shalal Hash Baz) plays guitar in such a manner that it’s hard to tell he’s even playing guitar. It’s hard to tell if Takashi is meticulously overdubbing and arranging guitar parts or if this is all done live with looping stations and other devices, but he constructs lush, flowing sound tapestries which can wash right over your ears if you’re not listening carefully, but are extremely intricate when you do pay attention. At times, it seems to resemble the cascading maxi-minimalism of pianist Lubomyr Melnyk. The pizzicato spirals of the second track are a bit closer to Dustin Wong, but not quite as buzzy, ecstatic, or high on life. Tracks 3 and 4 are a bit more eerie, and would make good soundtracks for haunted house levels in RPG games. 5 is like some sort of twisted, inverted carnival theme, while 6 seems to branch outward a bit more, and has some sort of demented rootsy bent to it, with a softly humming drone underneath. Each successive piece seems to hint further at different sorts of madness, but never pushing over the edge. It is exceedingly difficult to name any other guitarist who sounds like this, and it all sounds fascinating.

Graham Repulski: Permission To Love tape + Negative Highlight Reel tape (Shorter Recordings, 2018)

January 10, 2018 at 9:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Philadelphia-based lo-fi artist Graham Repulski just released two 10-minute tapes, both of which contain unique artwork for every copy, seemingly cut out from a book or magazine. Judging by the “Good bye” and “Good night” messages on their Bandcamp pages, these might be the end of the project? He doesn’t appear to have a Facebook page anymore. Anyway, Permission To Love is described on the artist’s Bandcamp page as “7 tracks of funky fun”. His music is a sort of fun, but not in an obvious, crowdpleasing way. This is extremely cryptic, lo-fi tape-collage rock, with big, tuneful melodies stretched out, obscured, distorted, and rearranged. He can very obviously write straightforward power pop songs if he wanted to, but other people do that, so he contorts them and screws them up. Songs that could be proper anthems are cut to shreds, cut off after a minute (the opening title track seems like an anthem in the making that was half taped over), howled under fuzz, and just otherwise fucked around with. The longest track is “Soft As Shit”, which opens side B and consists of 3 minutes of a simple piano pattern with stacks of raucous guitars dancing around. Sometimes lyrics are included on his Bandcamp page, but not for this one, so it’s mostly impossible to make out what he’s saying, but the melodies themselves are likely to stick in your head. Of the two new tapes he’s releasing, this one seems to be the more musical, and maybe the more humorous of the two (titles include “I’d Buy That For a Dollar” and “Malcolm’s Ex”), but the music itself doesn’t contain any obvious jokes or punchlines. But at the same time, it feels like some sort of absurdist performance art, and it’s hard not to find some sort of humor in it.
Negative Highlight Reel is definitely the more experimental of the two tapes. There’s hints of melodies and some rocking out (especially the title track), but lots of abstraction and obscurity. “Staring At Zero” is soft singing and faint strumming masked by abrasive backwards loops. The entire second side seems like the decayed, dried out remains of rock songs, with no discernible lyrics or hooks. “Bad Mop” is entirely backwards, and “Eureka Slink” is just a faint shred of a tune sung over what sounds like the worst phone connection ever, yet there’s a few other layers of beats and background noise patched together. Then “Kimp Notch” is a hair-raising coda of guitar feedback and yowling. This almost seems like a miniature version of Jandek’s “The Electric End”, and if this really is the end, there’s no more fitting way for this project to go out. But then, “The Electric End” wasn’t the end of Jandek, so who can tell, maybe I’m just projecting here. We’ll see!

Angel 1: Terra Nova tape (Constellation Tatsu, 2017)

January 1, 2018 at 1:02 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Angel 1’s first tape on CTatsu in 4 years, following acclaimed releases on 1080p and Beer on the Rug, plays like a series of subconscious DJ sets, with lengthy, slow-moving tracks drifting through various moods, beats, and samples. “Speed” is not fast at all, progressing through steady yet vaporous beats and a submerged Kanye sample. “Volunteering” begins in a sort of interstellar spa, with a bizarre growling/wailing sample interrupting an otherwise peaceful session, and eventually it heats up into a thumping, bubbling house track. “The German Idea of Freedom” is bursting with fuzzy lo-fi guitars and another screamy sample which is looped rhythmically, along with laughter and trippy voices, ending with a much more smoothed-out ending section. “Humanitarianism” continues with the sly playfulness of earlier tracks, with silly recurring samples and elementary piano notes setting the pace, ending up with the sounds of slurping, gushing waters (field recordings? digital approximations? a mix of both?) and resonating metal bowls. “Karaoke” is another lush, leisurely rainforest cruise, with a harmonica-like melody and sporadic voices whispering the word “passion”. This tape doesn’t have the unexpected harsh drum’n’bass moments of previous Angel 1 releases, but there’s still plenty of surprise and mirth to it. Tape/DL available from CTatsu’s Bandcamp.