May 12, 2021 at 10:46 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Ki Oni: Indoor Plant Life
Ambient music for plants is essentially a full-fledged genre now, encompassing not only rediscovered classics by Mort Garson and Hiroshi Yoshimura, but newer works by Green-House and Loris S. Sarid. Ki Oni’s
Indoor Plant Life is another addition to this particular canon, and its two 15-minute pieces both glow and glisten, gently floating in the breeze of an open window. The first one seems like it’s taking place during a sunny afternoon, while the second is more nocturnal, but there might actually be more going on while the sun is gone and everyone’s asleep.
Ki Oni: Stay Indoors and Swim
is even better, this time with 8 tracks to get immersed in, and yes, they feel more liquid. Very wavy and washed out, but also artificial, more like the pool at a hotel than a beach. The notes ramble and lap over each other, and sometimes they become a bit clearer the deeper you listen. “The Island Time Forgot” is filled with strange tape manipulations and gets particularly fun and trippy, and other pairs of tracks are basically just variations on the same currents, like different observations of the same tank. Perfect to get hypnotized staring at aquariums to, and then have dreams about it.
May 11, 2021 at 5:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Tristan Kasten-Krause: Potential Landscapes
Composer Tristan Kasten-Krause recommends listening to these four drone pieces “at an immersive volume”. If my apartment walls weren’t so thin I would be cranking this up super loud, but even at a reasonable volume, there’s a lot going on that could be easy to miss if you’re just treating it as background audio. “Dawn Looming” stretches out so far over the horizon that you can almost see it physically vibrating, and it manages to fold itself into a compact space by sundown. “Euphoria Cancel” both levitates with Carol N Johnson’s violin playing and pummels with Jayson Gerycz’s rumbling percussion. Somehow it all builds up to a single “klong”, and then it all goes silent, as if it never happened. “From Thin Air” is mostly a showcase for Lisel’s cascading vocals, with backing by the composer’s double bass. Finally, “Contra” is a 15-minute bass drone which gradually balloons, then hits a more fragile section just as it seems like it’s gotten almost larger than life. It feels like Kasten-Krause is persisting and stretching as far as he can to get to the end, yet, it still sounds like an abrupt fade-out, so maybe he was able to go further.
May 10, 2021 at 8:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Danny Goliger: Meaningful Pursuits
Producer and engineer Danny Goliger’s
first album doesn’t come with a whole lot of background info or contextual material, so there’s not much indication of what to expect when you press play. It starts off with some lush but complex d’n’b, then other tracks explore the funky yet playful (“Calculable”) and wistfully melodic (“Meaningful Pursuits”) sides of IDM. “Reality Now” is potentially a satire of extreme pandemic paranoia, with a robotic voice croaking things like “do not go outside, do not look out the window, do not look at your phone”. “Power Dry” does the levitating synth melodies and crisp drum breaks thing really well, then the drums go all choppy and slippery during the breakdown. “Moth” is sort of future garage with muscular drums, then “Court Card” has more carefully maneuvered beats and cresting pads, as well as a wailing synth lead. “B-” is a woozy ambient comedown, then the Benny Bridges-co-produced “Survivors Guilt” is a reflective glitch-pop tune with vocodered lyrics that are hard to make out, but lines like “changes set us free” and “you’ve got to wait” stand out.
May 9, 2021 at 11:44 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Deborah Martin & Jill Haley: The Silence of Grace
The first collaboration between Spotted Peccary regular Deborah Martin and Jill Haley (One Alternative, longtime William Ackerman collaborator) is super pastoral new age that perfectly matches the paintings of waterfalls, mountains, forests, and caves that make up the album’s artwork. Haley’s oboe and English horn gently roll across the fields of lush synths, and it generally feels light, warm, and uplifting. “Indian Heaven” has softly pounding drums and shakers, but it’s largely free-floating and beatless. “Verdant Sanctuary” has some gorgeous sparkling melodies, and “From Fire Into Water” has didgeridoo-types droning rhythms in its first half, although the instrument isn’t credited so I think it might be electronically generated. “Water Flows of Clouds and Thunder” similarly has synths that imitate harp-like tones, and it sounds exactly like its title, even ending with a brief burst of thunder. Thoroughly soothing and imaginative work.
May 3, 2021 at 8:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Cadence Weapon: Parallel World
Rollie Pemberton’s
newest album is his most politically charged release, immediately proclaiming “Black is back” and addressing gentrification and the government’s failure to recognize Black people. “Skyline” sums up the dystopian reality of these issues in 2 minutes. As ever, the noted journalist, former Poet Laureate of Edmonton, and soon-to-be memoir author’s lyrics are sharp and literate, but they’re on another level from the college-age club stories of his early albums, tackling big issues while also displaying a renewed sense of confidence. The surveillance-preoccupied “On Me” continues Pemberton’s from-the-beginning fascination with U.K. grime, featuring a guest verse by Manga Saint Hilare and production by Strict Face. “Play No Games” is closer to the purple sound from the late ’00s, with very busy, wobbly production backing pointed lyrics (“my prime minister wears blackface but he don’t really wanna face Blacks”). “SENNA” (with frequent collaborator Jacques Greene) is much closer to drill, complete with ad-libs, but with more of a euphoric rave atmosphere. Jimmy Edgar’s production on “WATER” (ft. Fat Tony) is brittle and tense, and “Eye to Eye” is less claustrophobic but still blood-chilling. Polaris winner Backxwash provides a cathartic guest verse on “Ghost”. “Connect” is a bit more dreamy and IDM-y, and closer to the more inward-looking and melodic material he’s made before. For the most part, though, this isn’t an album of hype club jams or introspection, and it’s nothing like the hipster nostalgia of his track on the last Jacques Greene album — it’s easily the most urgent Cadence Weapon record.
May 3, 2021 at 6:45 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Amiture: The Beach
Amiture’s debut album is a highly focused slab of minimal darkwave pop, filled with gloomy lyrics about lying and regret, and steadily throbbing beats and sequencers. The most unique addition is the pedal steel and fiddle which appear on several tracks, but they’re subtle enough that they don’t register as those instruments, you might just assume they’re synths. I guess you could draw parallels between goth rock and Southern gothic, but that doesn’t really fit here. Regardless, it’s fine stuff with sullen vocals, propulsive beats, and dark clouds of melodic synths. While the album is steadfast in its gloominess, “Slide In” seems at least a little playful, with lines like “I need a bagpipe so I can blow up every night”. “Operator” nails a shivery vibe pretty well, and then “Dream” is more haunting techno than darkwave. “Last Exit” is a blurry ambient daze, and then “Let’s Talk” is one of the most confident, yet most heartbroken pop songs here.
May 2, 2021 at 4:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Hal Galper Quintet: Live at the Berlin Philharmonic ’77
Alright, so here’s a previously unreleased live set performed by a bunch of artists I should probably be more familiar with. This concert was recorded after Galper had just finished a tour with Cannonball Adderley, and he’s joined by Randy and Mike Brecker, Wayne Dockery, and Bob Moses. All six songs are around 10-25 minutes each, and all five musicians simply go off. Opener “Now Hear This” is just nonstop energy for 14 minutes. “Speak with a Single Voice” (the title track to the LP released by the quintet in 1979) is almost twice as long, and while there’s a few moments that seem like pauses for solos, there’s no loss in energy, it’s just configured a bit differently. Galper’s piano playing sounds particularly rabid and multi-limbed here, not to mention Moses’ drumming or Dockery’s intricate bass wrangling. The rendition of “I’ll Never Stop Loving You” isn’t full band, only sax and piano, but both Galper and Mike Brecker push hard into the outer limits, far beyond the gentle love song it seems like at the beginning. And “This Is the Thing” is the most madcap of them all, too much energy for words. The only drawback is the album’s fluctuating audio quality. It clearly sounds pieced together from different sources, and both “I’ll Never Stop Loving You” and “Hey Fool” are particularly patchy, shifting from full-bodied sound to worn-out cassette bootleg (or tinny, watery mp3) without warning. The music itself is stellar, however, and for most of the album, it’s easy to overlook the less-than-ideal fidelity.
May 1, 2021 at 6:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Longmont Potion Castle: 18
After the unexpectedly normal-length
17, LPC returns to all-out bonus track galore hogwildness with the 20-track, 2-hour-plus
18. This one seems kind of like the last will and testament of Alex Trebek, because he’s on here a lot, and he sounds absolutely haggard and it’s more sobering than anything else. Add to that, it was clearly recorded during the height of COVID-19 lockdown, so restaurant workers aren’t too happy with his shenanigans. Honestly, I might be getting too old for this shit, but the tracks that end up with people screaming “STOP CALLING ME!!!!!” just aren’t doing it for me these days. They felt like an interesting character study sometimes before, but too often it just sounds like harassment now, and that’s not funny. That said, I will never get tired of the tracks where he just rambles off a bunch of jargon and confounds whoever he’s talking to, even those who purport to be the experts in their field (see “Shoot Smart”). And it’s always a fun time whenever the people on the other line actually realize how ridiculous he is, and either play along or recognize that it’s LPC, so they get it, and they’re super amused. The dude in “Commodore Babbit” seems pretty eager to talk about boats, until Alex unexpectedly pops up (and calls LPC a “son of a bitch”). The Game Stop call is nuts because of how he asks legitimate questions (even asking for early games like Pong and Asteroids) but then he keeps smearing his voice with all sorts of waves of echo, then ends up turning it into a sort of musical jam with a cool synth bassline, while he’s still having a conversation asking about products. “LPC 18 Theme” is a fun, crunchy guitar rock instrumental loaded with samples rapidly whizzing by. “Card Collector” is fun because of how he does the trippy delay vocal thing and then leads into him being a slick salesman type. Alex appears for a brief blip, and then LPC returns and brushes it off, like “sorry we got cut off there”. “Gentleman’s Quarters” is a sort of psychedelic pirate story, with bubbling water, fluctuating voices, “pond ramen”, and a hell of a lot of giggling from the other end. Totally fun and silly and the only appropriate reaction is to just lose your shit. And then “Wolverine” is an 11-minute train of people from bookstores talking to each other saying that someone was asking for books about subjects that happen to rhyme. Someone actually finds a book about wolverines, but then it turns out that the other person was actually asking about dopamine. And the thrash tracks are fun to just flop around to at 90 miles an hour and feel like your insides are about to burst out of your body. So yeah, he’s still got it, but it seems like the closing of a long chapter in the LPC saga, ushering in a Trebek-less future. SUBTERRANEAN TURNIPS!
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The Answer Is In The Beat 