The Answer Is In The Beat

RXM Reality: Panic Cycle tape (Hausu Mountain, 2018)

April 28, 2018 at 7:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This debut Hausu Mountain tape from a Chicagoan wielding an untold amount of hardware expresses both paranoia and joy, with a FOMO rearing its head on occasion. The track title “I Haven’t Been Invited In” implies being shut out of both a club and society in general, and the music follows suit; highly energetic and intelligent, but not populist or DJ-friendly. Very broken and non-liner, sometimes sounding more collage-like, other times with more of a progression to it, as on the longer tracks. There’s dub pressure anchoring “Your Problem”, but it develops a nervous footwork twitch before plunging deep into deadly bass drops. Sometimes it seems like once he finally gets into the club, he can’t decide which room to stay in, so he just rages hard in all of them during the same short timespan. Eventually it all crashes into the matrix with “Under”, a ruthless loop of destruction which continually erodes, winds itself back up, short circuits, and breaks down all over again. It takes several listens to piece all of this together mentally, but it all belongs, and is it ever strong. Powerful.

Severed+Said: Incorporeality tape (Not Not Fun, 2018)

April 28, 2018 at 6:10 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Psychic dreamwave which high-tails it into chase scenes at key moments. Repetition induced by possessed states. Dream flashes. Energy psychosis. Recorded in a garage near the Florida swamps, this one buzzes and shocks. It most definitely sounds like a Not Not Fun cassette release, but there are some sinister premonitions here. Sometimes, like “Dimensional Drifter”, it lurches towards techno but doesn’t quite connect with the rhythm, so it pulls back. Other times it starts steady and then explodes onto the killpath, like “Psychic Incision”. There’s lots of mood-setting interludes too. This could easily just be the soundtrack to a low-budget horror film made in someone’s living room and the forest next to their backyard, but it’s so much more than that.

Benjamin Finger: Scale Of Blindness (Eilean Rec., 2018)

April 28, 2018 at 5:40 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Somewhere between fluid waves and electrical currents, Benjamin Finger’s fuzzy, formless sound constructions lapse into rhythms of their own devising before spilling out into pools of static. It’s often chaotic and dense, but even when a track seems sparse, there’s still several layers operating at their own paces, but still connecting to form a whole. Extended closing piece “Vanishing Faces” is one of the more evenly layered, paced out tracks here, and it gets broader (but not necessarily heavier) near the end, with some particularly striking strings making an impact. Not crazy about the track with the long monologue, but the rest of the album is alluring.

Birds Of Passage: The Death Of Our Invention (Denovali, 2018)

April 28, 2018 at 4:50 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Alicia Merz makes music you travel to and inhabit, rather than simply listen to. It seems easy to describe any music with lots of reverb and intimate, precious vocals as sounding like it’s coming from an enchanted forest or the heart of a vast glacier, but she absolutely nails that type of sound. The second track, “Haunt My Existence”, is over seven minutes, and it’s easy to lose track of time and not even notice that many minutes slipping away. Other tracks are frozen, isolated love songs dedicated to strangers, and to the unknown itself. Pianos sound like they’re vibrating from under an ice floe, and guitars are like melodic rustling leaves. I remember last time I listened to a Birds Of Passage album, Grouper had released something new around the same time, so that grabbed my attention more. This time, however, the new Birds Of Passage is far more captivating than the new Grouper, which is underwhelming to me so far.

GLvis: s/t 1-sided 12″ LP (Owlsnest, 2018)

April 25, 2018 at 10:34 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

First off, I really appreciate how lo-fi the packaging is. This is a 1-sided LP, and the center sticker was just pasted on over the record’s playing side, and I had to poke a whole through the center label in order to play the record. Likewise, the front and back covers were merely pasted on a sleeve for a 12″ single. As far as the music, GLvis (pronounced “jel-vis”) is a street musician from Milwaukee. He’s sort of like a cross between Madison, WI’s Art Paul Schlosser and Ann Arbor’s own Shakey Jake Woods, to name two famous street musicians. Maybe throw Jandek, Wesley Willis, Eugene Chadbourne, and the eternally single Robert Alberg into the equation too. He strums an open tuned guitar and sings in a slurry, sometimes nasal voice about race, religion, and relationships. He also seems to crack himself up a bunch of times. Apparently he used to work at a restaurant and would sing to the patrons after his shift, until too many people complained and he was forced to stop. “Turtle Rain” seems to be a take-off on “Purple Rain” but it’s hard to tell exactly what it’s about. He has a truly bizarre inflection to his voice, so it’s kind of fascinating. He then begins singing a gospel song, but without warning it turns into the vicious “Bitch Take a Hike”, and then a song about hypocritical Christians called “Preacher Cheater”. Then he plays a cover of John Lennon’s “God” (credited to “some other guy”) with new lyrics, such as “I don’t believe in talent”. Fans of Irwin Chusid’s Songs in the Key of Z and Incorrect Music Hour, meet the latest addition to the outsider music canon.

Tatira: Blood Return (Inam Records, 2018)

April 19, 2018 at 7:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Just 2 months after The Light Will Disappear, Ryan Huber’s second album under the name Tatira has arrived, and it continues with the artist’s progression into Tresor-worthy techno. The synths seem a bit more energized, the beats are punchier, and it just seems more alive than his drone work. There’s still a heavy drone element to these tracks, however, and they slowly build rather than make startling transitions. He does tend to give tracks abrupt endings, though, sometimes accompanied by some sharp feedback. The main exception is “Dissolving Thoughts,” which seems to not want to escape its blissful house reverie, but after about 7 minutes, it gets swept under waves and continues thumping along for 13 minutes. Most of the rest of the album is more succinct, with “Abscessed” and “Ten Times Bleach” playing with polyrhythms and keeping things exciting. “Drifting” is the album’s lone ambient interlude, and “Recompense” is a soft minimal pulse which seems to probe for life on a faraway moon. During the final minute, it frees itself and floats into nothingness. BTW, the artist started a blog recently and interviewed me for it, so check it out if you’re interested!

Jesusbeams: E crack EP + Exphr EP (self-released, 2018)

April 18, 2018 at 10:56 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The artist also known as Evil Robot Ted has been quietly releasing music as Jesusbeams for a few years now. E crack is one of two recent EPs, and it’s a short blast of fast, fractured beats, but not exactly in a breakcore way. The first three tracks are brief, explosive, and pretty much entirely percussive, and aren’t all that different from each other, so they can all be taken as one track. “Atrax (Slow)” is much different, sounding like listening to a droning robot from the other end of a vast, dying factory.
The other recent EP, Exphr, is noisy ambient glitch, with crystalline melodies shredded into shards over a faint click track. Once you get into the headspace, it projects directly into your mind and distorts your dreams. The rhythms push and pull, then free themselves, leaving starry residue. The last track is a noise piece, which slowly grinds upwards, revealing some zig-zagging sparks, but then getting completely electro-shocked out by the end.

Rob Clouth: Transition EP + Transition Remixes EP (Mesh, 2018)

April 18, 2018 at 10:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Rob Clouth has previously released music on Traum Schallplatten and Detroit Underground, and his latest work arrives on Max Cooper’s Mesh label. Not enough people are familiar with Cooper, but if you are, this is similarly elegant, melodic, and brimming with exquisitely detailed sound design. Opener “Silica” sounds like it’s sampling bottles clanking and drumming on pots and pans, but it’s so fast, intricate, and rhythmic (not to mention bass-heavy) that it doesn’t register as a sound collage. “Like a Second Sun” skitters and lunges, scattering odd sounds and voices across the board, but the pianos keep everything grounded. Then they get glitched up and the beat kicks into footwork mode. “Shedding Layers” is a long techno track with a twitchy beat and slowly encircling synths. The electronic filtering makes it sound like there’s tense strings bowing rapidly, foreshadowing some sort of attack. “Transition” scrambles voices until they’ve turned into seafoam.
Once we’re done with this short but fascinating ride, there’s the remixes. Max Cooper’s “Shedding Layers” is at least as club-friendly as the original, but also packs in a mind-numbing amount of rapid glitches. Ben Lukas Boysen’s “Transition” begins with the scrambled voices of the original, but eventually fuzz and scattered melodies and sunbeams win out. The mysterious Brecon turns “Silica” into even more of a head-nodder (just watch for those flying knives), while Chihei Hatakeyama suspends and dissolves the glitchy kitchenware percussion in his usual high-floating cumulus clouds. The remixes are really good but the originals are outstanding.