The Answer Is In The Beat

WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN: “NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER” (Constellation, 2024)

October 28, 2024 at 8:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The debut release by a new project featuring Efrim Manuel Menuck from Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mat Ball of BIG|BRAVE, this is somewhat similar to various incarnations of A Silver Mount Zion, but much noisier and dronier. Menuck’s trembling vocals and apocalyptic poetry are set to throbbing vibrations and glimmering synths. The effect feels similar to witnessing a divine heavenly light in a cathedral, while being sheltered from a violent thunderstorm. The title track sounds particularly bleak and ravishing, while the uncommonly beautiful “Uncloudy Days” is a much-needed glimmer of peace, driven by the message that “there’s no good but the good we make ourselves”. The longest track begins by referencing the time Michael Jackson dangled a baby over a hotel balcony, singling out one specific weird moment in popular culture which was amplified by the sensationalist media system that’s only gotten more unbearable since then. The verse is relatively short, then the music swells up into a great cacophony, and all you can do is just sit in the middle of it and FEEL, there’s no way to fight yourself out of it. It’s magnificent.

Rich Pellegrin: Topography (Slow & Steady Records, 2024)

October 27, 2024 at 3:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Pianist Rich Pellegrin recorded this album in a church over the course of a few sessions, along with saxophonist Neil Welch. All of the songs are titled after different natural locations, with some specifying whether they’re taking place during day or night, so they’re all like snapshots or scenes. They’re also conceptualized by Pellegrin, sometimes written, sometimes internally, but still improvised by the players. It’s all very intimate sounding, especially Welch’s playing, in which you can hear every breath stroke and movement, though there are also times where he seems a bit distant, or on the periphery. The gentle piano notes during “Stream” are what my brain keeps coming back to after putting this album on late at night so many times, there’s just something so calming and assuring yet still mysterious about that part. “Field (day)” is both one of the more rhythmic and melodic pieces, it creates more of a sense of traveling than the others. Both “Canyon” pieces fittingly have a vastness to them, but the “night” one does so in a particularly haunting way. Final track “Marsh” somehow meshes the parts of the album that feel comforting and eerie.

Matt Robidoux: m e s h s o n g s ep cassette (Air Tone, 2024)

October 21, 2024 at 9:18 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

After releasing an album showcasing a touch-controlled aluminum synthesizer shaped like two corn cobs, Matt Robidoux presents a short cassette of compositions featuring MIDI accordion, pedal steel guitar, baritone horn, and e-drums. Maybe other instruments or sound sources are involved too, because there’s lots of other sounds and textures to be heard. Opener “Dream Window” is filled with sharp pinging tones, footsteps, knocking, and objects rolling on the floor, ending up as a flurry of glitches, pops, and waves. “Gum Loop” has a warm, rolling guitar loop, processed horns, shimmering patterns, and sporadic drum bursts. “Snail Shell of Rust” starts out with harsh refractions and zaps, surprisingly ending with sparse, intimate piano notes. “M e s h s o n g” is a sort of glitchy, unstable piece that ends up being the most playful, even funny track here (the backwards drum hits at the end seem comedic somehow). “Two Shapes” starts with more reversed sounds and light fluttering, along with glitch-delayed guitars, then turns into eerie melodies drifting into the sunset.

Meadow Argus: Zoom tape (Tynan Tapes Temporal, 2024)

October 19, 2024 at 12:34 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The newest Meadow Argus tape focuses on one thing and one thing only: organ-based drones. No field recordings, no childhood memories, just cheap organs recorded to cassette tape and looped to infinity, occasionally revealing imperfections or subtle manipulations. The second part feels more expansive and horizontal than the first, though there’s some very distinct warbles and deliberate-sounding shifts and curves. The third part stretches out towards its own form of zen, and then the final part feels a bit more corrupted and burnt out, but somehow in a comforting way.

Sir Tad: Two Walkers tape (Tynan Tapes Temporal, 2024)

October 13, 2024 at 4:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This tape mixes samples from self-help tapes and home recordings with drowsy keyboards set to quasi-dub rhythms. With songs like “Path to the Dutchie”, we get something that sounds close to a homespun Mad Professor. “Homestake Pass” starts with some goofy kid noises but ends up being a serene, floating-down-the-river melodica drone dub. “Mondo” is a pleasant psych guitar loop thing, the melody reminded me of Galaxie 500’s “Fourth of July”. “What a Jerk” is some playful tomfoolery with kids’ voices. “Year of the Dragon” is just a bright, gleeful keyboard melody, then “Off the Boo Hoff Trail” is just so slow and gloriously out of wack that it feels healing. “Tynan’s Theme Song” is a simple, engrossing melodica melody which ends the album as a proper sendoff, even with snippets of a kid saying “bye bye now”.

His Name Is Alive: Underground River Of Black Electricity 7″ EP (self-released, 2024)

October 8, 2024 at 9:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

His Name Is Alive rarely play live these days, as Warren Defever is busy working as a mastering engineer at Third Man Records in Detroit, and he’s also been playing as part of the group Infinite River, making new age and meditative music, and making art. But 4AD released a tremendous box set of the first 3 HNIA albums with bonus material, so the band played some live gigs. I caught the Detroit show at El Club, and it was mindblowing to see the current version of the band play early songs like “How Ghosts Affect Relationships” and “There’s Something Between Us And He’s Changing My Words”. And then they played songs from the more recent albums (the ones the current band members played on) and of course ended with “This World Is Not My Home”, into “Can’t Go Wrong Without You” and then back into a for-real singalong of “This World Is Not My Home”. This record was for sale at the merch table, along with Cloud Clocks, which were basically repurposed clocks bought at Target which they painted, signed, and charged $100 for. But this record is a mix of Warren’s new age stuff, thanks to the harmonium and tanpura droning, as well as some of HNIA’s newer psych stuff, with the Mellotron, though it’s not proggy or heavy. There’s gentle guitar waves and a current of dreaminess. The second side has drumming by Steve Nistor, who regularly plays with Infinite River, and it’s closer to the more drifting side of Krautrock, eventually gaining some percolating synths and a choppier, increasingly more complex rhythm. Not quite Warren solo, not quite Infinite River, not any previous version of HNIA, but it’s still HNIA all the same, and like any HNIA record, it takes me somewhere I can’t identify and never expected to go.