The Answer Is In The Beat

Church Chords: elvis, he was Schlager LP (Otherly Love, 2024)

February 25, 2024 at 6:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This amazingly titled LP, masterminded by Stephen Buono, has a long list of guest artists, including Nels Cline, Genevieve Artadi, Jeff Parker, and Takako Minekawa. Elliott Bergman (NOMO, Wild Belle) played on and co-wrote the Tropicalia-influenced “Renda”, sung in Portuguese by Artadi. “Apophatic Melismatic” is more of a bubbly cosmic disco excursion, and is mostly instrumental. The album gets a little jazzier after that, and Jeff Parker delivers a bewildering solo on “Warriors of Playtime”. “She Lays on a Leaf” sounds heavily Krautrock-influenced and has Stereolab-like vocals, but comes out much differently than that band’s interpretation of the style, sounding more surreal and aggressive. “Owned by Lust” is a punkish, paranoid rant, and “Then Awake” is a lush, slinky psychedelic pop gem featuring Minekawa. The manipulated robo-vocals on “I Hope You See” make the futuristic R&B track feel like an outlier on an album that already doesn’t conform to one style, dreaming up a combination of sounds from several different places and eras.

Longmont Potion Castle: Best Before ’24 (D.U. Records, 2024)

February 18, 2024 at 4:21 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Right off the bat, this one starts with an LPC all-timer. “Post-A Cappella” is yet another example of LPC coming up with a ridiculously catchy song idea and asking every record store he can find if they have it in stock. A few years ago it was “flip child, buck wild”, now it’s “boo boo dickit”. He thinks it might be by Burt Flickit, or maybe Robert Cure of the Smiths. And it’s a blackened jug band track, or maybe indie klezmer. Anyway, I want to find a maxi-single of this too, I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. Other than that, well, there’s still a lot of Joe Sour like on the other recent LPC albums. At this point, you kind of get the feeling that literally any time anyone calls him, for any reason, he probably starts yelling “you’re a motherfucking chicken shit criminal!!!” at them. And in the past, when LPC silently connected him to a police office, he seemed to hush up and be respectful of authority. Now he’s yelling at cops just as much as anyone else, which makes him unexpectedly punk. Later on, his sampled voice calling someone a “chicken shit prostitute” gets turned into the hook of one of the album’s musical themes. “Energy Star” is another great “LPC confounding someone by spouting out ridiculous jargon” call, as he keeps getting picture-in-picture on his TV and the volume keeps changing as he’s trying to fix the contrast or change the channels. “Star People” is a “who are you voting for?” survey, and absolutely nobody seems interested in any specific candidate, except for the one guy who wants to vote for the Good Lord. Also, at the very moment “you want me to come down and get nimble with you?” is challenging “do you have any videos of people just beating each other?” as one of my favorite LPC one-liners. Also, the part when he acts for an outlandish sort of body art, and the person he’s calling talks about how people have requested even more outlandish and violent things, and he actually seems a bit startled. The last track is a 10-minute medley of thematically unconnected calls, but they all escalate in absurdity. The album title implies that LPC is falling off this year, but rest assured, that is not the case at all.

Meadow Argus: The Palace II tape (Tynan Tapes, 2024)

February 17, 2024 at 1:21 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

When I was in high school, me and my siblings had a “band” and we started recording an “album” on cassette but never finished it. After looking through my tapes recently, I think I found the tape we started making, which I thought was lost because I’d looked for it before and never found it. I don’t own a working tape deck at the moment so I’ll have to bring it to the radio station to confirm. I found other tapes I made as a kid too. This new Meadow Argus release popping up around the same time as me finding these tapes is a major coincidence since it makes usage of samples from childhood tapes as well. 12 minutes into the first side, the rolling noise waves part a bit, and kids make announcements about community events and youth groups. They do fake radio announcements, interviews, and traffic reports, and say they’re going to give away CDs (first Mariah Carey, but then they change their mind and say Hanson). The second side has a charming story about finding a jellyfish in the sea, carried along by mesmerizing synth bloops. Eventually we drift far past childhood memories, where serene reflections are interrupted by jarring rips and tears.

Anthony Pirog: The Nepenthe Series, Vol. 1 “From the Ambient Realm” LP (Otherly Love Records, 2023)

February 13, 2024 at 9:07 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Guitarist Anthony Pirog (of the Messthetics) reached out to several heroes and colleagues, and asked them to contribute material for a collaborative ambient record, respectful that everyone might have a different definition of ambient. Nels Cline guests on opener “Ripples of Light”, a spot-on title for a piece that slowly looms over the horizon, suddenly flashing near the end like the sun is fully poking out. John Frusciante, still in electro-acoustic drone mood, adds sparkling textures from a Monomachine on “Aurora”, while Pirog’s guitar provides slow, heavy waves of soothing fuzz. “Dense Blazing Star” has distant, suspenseful guitar melodies that feel like synthwave without synths, while Luke Stewart’s electric bass crumples and flickers. “Inflorescence”, with Andy Summers of the Police, is one of the more cinematic selections, with soaring melodies and some nice interplay between the guitars/guitar synths, as well as a few strange parts that seem a bit frayed or curdled. “Glowing Gesture”, another title that couldn’t describe the sound more accurately, is more of an ambient Americana reflection, featuring Janel Leppin (Pirog’s partner) on pedal steel guitar. “Bernal Heights” is the only Pirog solo composition, and it’s a blurry, sweetly melancholy guitar synth piece. “Cirrus” (with Brandon Ross), yet again, lives up to its title by being soft and wispy. “Night Winds” (with Wendy Eisenberg) is darker and a bit more abrasive, with noisy feedback hissing behind rawer, more anxious lead notes. Finally, “Eternal River” (with Ryan Ferreira) is a sublime resolution, particularly when it reaches the chiming melody at the end.

Dr. Pete Larson: Field Drift 2 LP (Great Corner Sound, 2023)

February 10, 2024 at 6:07 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Dr. Pete Larson still plays nyatiti-driven psychedelic rock, but he has been working with synths a lot lately, and has now started an electronic music label. This is one of Great Corner Sounds’ first batch of releases (the others are by Fred Thomas aka ECOATM and Rebecca Goldberg), and it’s all pieces recorded live to 2-track by Pete using unfamiliar technology. Intentionally minimal, the tracks focus on a few textures (some watery, some crunchy) and ticking beat patterns. Opener “Fence” is the closest the album gets to the aquatic flow of dub techno. “Wromp” has some nice heavy distortion, but it doesn’t get quite as saturated or dirty as most outsider house. The initially more downtempo “Humid” has some cool squirming textures and a trace of a hypnotic early trance vibe, and “Extra” is tougher and more industrial-like, ending with an ominous flatline buzz. “Pig Creep” manages to glide as well as scrape and smear. “Air Wall” tries something a little different, mostly working its way through subtly glitching ambient textures until a beat pokes its way in, speeds up, and then starts snarling with distortion. “Wave” has fun with big bass plunges, and “De-Fence” revisits the mood of the first track, but sounds a little sharper instead of washed-out.

Applesauce Tears: Encounters (Black Cottage, 2024)

February 5, 2024 at 11:44 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Almost like clockwork, Atlanta’s Applesauce Tears seem to release a new album of cinematic psych-pop instrumentals every year. Their usage of vintage synths and swaying rhythms always bring to mind Black Moth Super Rainbow and Boards of Canada, except not as lo-fi, subliminal, or cryptic. While it’s easy to describe their sound, they do a lot with it, and there’s moments that aren’t easily predictable, such as “The Flower Ouch Hour”, which continually switches from chilled-out spacescapes to cosmic power pop. “The Time Darling” has a lot of lonesome submovements with distant singing and whistling, bookended by more airy, optimistic sections. “The Docks at Bootle” navigates through dense seashore fog, eventually switching from psych-rock to something closer to lo-fi hip-hop, with dusky trumpet calling in the distance. “Caramel Coated Go Go” is exactly the type of happy candy-high sunshine pop the title suggests. “Three Sweets” starts out kind of jangly but alt-rock tough, then it transforms into this slow, sweeping downtempo thing unexpectedly. With the final track “Puff the Star Stuff”, there’s rainfall, squiggly voices or trumpets or something, trappy beats, mellow keyboards, crickets, and a switch to a slower, more dazed-out beat. The group’s music is easy to put on in the background and vibe out to, but if you listen closer, you find yourself asking, does this make sense? Do these folks know where they’re going, or is being lost and ambling around the entire point?