The Answer Is In The Beat

Balance: Conjure (Two Rooms, 2022)

March 30, 2023 at 9:38 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Pianist Michael Malis and saxophonist Marcus Elliot developed and recorded these pieces together in the first month of 2020, and the Trinosophes-associated Two Rooms Records released it late last year. Alternating between Malis and Elliot compositions before ending with a Lawrence Williams piece, the album encompasses several different moods, with the musicians sometimes playing harmoniously, and other times seeming more confrontational. Two significant guest artists push the musicians even further. The opening title track features the brick-hard poetry of Chace Morris, who returns on the more patient but no less stern “Serpent’s Serpent”. The other guest is master drummer Gerald Cleaver, who helps steer the ambitious, fractured “MRA” through its various movements, and helps give the exhilarating “Number Four” its swing. The remainder are just Elliot and Malis. Both of them follow angular paths during “Leap Year”, but occasionally one takes off and flies. Malis drives the train during “9-24”, but both players are in perfect formation. The longest piece, “Possible Futures”, hangs on Malis’ extended notes, which sometimes hang weightless, which Elliot contrasts by switching to bass clarinet. At times it’s easy to think there’s a deep, bowed string instrument being played. Both the artist and album couldn’t have been more accurately named.

Rasmus Birk: Cult of Rasmus (Black Cottage, 2023)

March 25, 2023 at 1:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Affiliated with Applesauce Tears and Black Cottage Records, Rasmus Birk is an Atlanta-based cut-and-paste electronic group, and apparently some sort of cult. They seem to prefer pinching samples from old films, maybe even educational ones, so their music has this out-of-time quality. “This Is Your Focus Leader” is a celebratory opener filled with gleeful horns and guitar riffs. “Sop the Droplet” unexpectedly begins with gospel pianos, then eventually adds slap bass and distorted, smeared beats. “Sunshine Casual” is a gorgeous chillout track, with bird chirps and sighing vocals complementing the dreamy beats. “Wolfie” does in fact featuring a wolf howling, starting out with a fun, freewheeling first half and then spacing out for the second. “Babette Becomes a Burden” has an ear-catching sample (“I said, I’m not hard to look at!”) and swells of dubby horns. “Down and Baroque” has a curious combination of black-and-white old movie samples and slow, squishy beats. “Head and Breakfast” seems to try its hardest to play around with your head, chopping up a sample about playing a while after supper and before bed over queasy synths. “Creeping Jenny” is a long, multi-part journey involving a mysterious long distance call, and it has a heart-warming ending. “Her Name Was Funky Bundle” is based around a minor conflict between a couple; the repeated “I’m no freak!” sample near the end is what gets me. “Confetti and Meet Halls” starts out uncertain, then loses itself at the disco. Finally, “The Feedback Rhythm” moves sideways with erratic riffs and nervous synth sequences.

Illusion of Safety: Organ Choir Drone (No Part Of It, 2023)

March 19, 2023 at 1:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Organ Choir Drone is edited down from hours of material recorded by Daniel Burke, including his first Eurorack modular synthesizers recordings, used for a performance with Shen Wei Dance Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “Children of the Fear and Light” is where to start if you’re interested in hearing modular synths at their gnarliest, and it matches its title with swarming movements that bring to mind a giant radioactive insect monster from an old sci-fi movie, plus there’s the faint sound of chattering children near the end. “Organic Pistons” seems to be where the album title comes from, as it’s just a really beautiful, almost sacred-sounding organ piece. “Waste of Civilization” contains piercing, high-pitched frequencies throughout much of it, as well as scrambled masses of radio-transmitted voices, but much of the other synth work is more peaceful, so it ends up somewhere between serenity and confusion. “Black Helicopters” appropriately starts out with violently shredding/chopping distortion, then flows through various amounts of disorienting buzzing and droning, as well as gentler guitar manipulations that subtly trick the mind. “Groundswell Horns” is the longest track, at 19 minutes, and it starts out with some more higher frequencies and desolate wandering. Some slight glitching, rustling, and clicking emerges, making it feel like things are barely holding together and on the verge of collapse. The rest of the piece is a very slow, gradual build, bubbling and shifting until everything starts moving faster and more forcefully, drilling into the core at the very end. Once that’s achieved, there’s little else that can be done, so the brief finale “Blackout” is two minutes of a faint, sickly gnawing feeling until everything expires.

Death Factory: Vol. 3 (No Part Of It, 2023)

March 18, 2023 at 2:58 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This CD contains four lengthy pieces by Chicago’s Michael Krause from a decade or two ago. This is bludgeoning death industrial that you just stare into the face of as it slowly consumes you. Opener “Manifestation of Fear (3rd Version)” is truly mesmerizing, the distortion just permeates your consciousness and the slow thudding fully draws you in. Then it turns into this sort of bleary horror carnival spectacle, and ends with a demonic jumpscare. “Feasting on Fear” is more of a cinematic junkyard soundscape that gets more scorched as it goes on. “…More Disturbing American Foreign Policies” applies some pretty mind-frying effects to a looped sample about Cambodia, presumably from a documentary or news broadcast. Finally, “Prophecy” is a massive, nearly half hour swarm that gets into some harsher, more piercing tones than the other pieces, but spaces out its more overwhelming moments.