May 10, 2016 at 9:12 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Ross Manning: LED 10″ EP
I’m being lazy and just cut-and-pasting from the Discogs entry, because I’m not even going to attempt to paraphrase the amazing concept of this release: “This is a recording of a private performance by Ross Manning in October 2015. All sounds are the product of electrical current generated by solar cells exposed to readymade light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In a darkened space, four cells suspended on strings were set in oscillating motion. Beneath them the artist placed small artificial light sources of different colours – yellow, green, blue and red – one at a time. The resulting electrical signals, amplified and sent to one of four speakers assembled in quadrophonic array, varied with each cell’s changing exposure to the LEDs, creating dramatic modulations in volume, panning effects and polyrhythms. By adding and repositioning LEDs closer to and further away from the freely swinging cells, Manning played his optical-audio instrument live, building a changing sound mass from the individual cells. No other sound sources or effects were employed in the single-take recording split over sides A and B of this LP. Mark Gomes, 2016.”
Basically: 20 minutes of multi-layered crazy scrambling generated electrical tones. Sounds very random and chaotic, but somehow there’s a strange anti-rhythm to it. The second side is slightly more sparse, it seems to flicker out near the end. But then it gets really interesting there, it has these cool Autechre-y shredding tones.
May 10, 2016 at 9:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Norman Westberg: MRI
Second Room40 release by the Swans/Foetus guitarist. The first 2 of these tracks were released on a CDr in 2012, but the last track is new. Very different than Swans or Foetus, this is textured guitar drone. Sometimes the loop pedal effects manage to create a breeze-like rhythm which carries the pieces. “410 Stairs” is the most melodic and pretty of the three tracks. “Lost Mine” is softer and feels like shuddering wind at the beginning. Not what you might expect if you’re familiar with the bands he’s been in, but it’s pretty lovely nonetheless.
May 10, 2016 at 9:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Cloud Becomes Your Hand: Rest in Fleas
Second proper album from a Brooklyn indie-prog band who have played here in Ann Arbor at Far House. Quite fun and creative. Kind of cartoony melodies sometimes, but it doesn’t seem jokey or novelty-like. It also doesn’t seem overly cutesy or “quirky” or “whimsical”, but it’s still lighthearted and playful and serious-but-not. Violins, colorful percussion, woodwinds, synths, new wave, RIO, etc. “Bridge of Ignorance Returns” is kind of a screwy Krautrock song. “Aye Aye” has a hint of country-ish slide guitar. “Other Suns” is a short moody instrumental, and is one of the album’s only calm moments. “Garden of the Ape” is kind of a demented fractured surf-ish song. The whole album is pretty short, about 30 minutes, but it packs a weird, squishy punch.
May 10, 2016 at 8:58 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Minihorse: More Time EP
Debut EP from an Ypsi-based group mining the sad, ‘gazey sounds of the ’90s for their fuzzy alt-pop songs. For fans of Failure, Hum, Pinback, certain elements of the first Weezer album, and sitting home alone, drinking. Okay, just kidding, it’s not THAT depressing. There’s controlled distortion and some bendy guitar sounds, but the vocals are clear and coherent (sometimes there’s even harmonies). “More Time” actually sounds closer to a very straightforward, non-avant Sonic Youth. “Under My Head” is sadder and prettier and has some sort of Mellotron-like soft keyboard drone. Playing around the area often, including a show with Fred Thomas @ UFO Factory in Detroit on 5/19!
May 10, 2016 at 8:31 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Mazut: #1 CDr
This Polish duo recorded their hour-long debut in one take after two years of conceptualizing the band without actually creating anything. The music often consists of simple acid techno sequences and grubby beats, with found tapes, radio transmissions, and toy instruments added into the mix. Some of it is prime industrial noise-techno which immediately hits the pleasure centers, while other tracks go on longer and are more subtle, awash in haunted desolateness. Some of the tracks use the same rhythms, so it does feel like a spontaneous jam, but it’s not anything to complain about. “Full Martin Heemeyer” has a low, thumping beat and big, expansive bass tone designed to give you the heebie-jeebies. Fans of Frak should be all over this one. It’s probably sold out physically, but it’s up on
Bandcamp.
May 5, 2016 at 7:58 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Taylor Deupree & Marcus Fischer: Twine
Taylor Deupree is a longtime master of glitchy minimalism, with dozens of albums to his credit. Marcus Fischer is a relative newcomer, but he’s already building up an impressive discography. This is their second collaboration, and it consists of warm, loud, hissy tape loops. You definitely get the feeling that you’re listening to physical artifacts, it feels like the reel-to-reel tapes are turning right in front of your ears. It’s the type of ambient music that it seems like you can pick up and hold, but you have to be careful because you don’t want to break it or get it dirty (or get your hands dirty, maybe). The opening track has a lighter, more pleasant mood than the rest, which can seem kind of sad and hollow. The final track is focused around soft acoustic guitar (or maybe banjo?) strums. Very delicate and lovely.
May 5, 2016 at 7:04 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Nickolas Mohanna: Mantis tape
Five years after his excellent CD
Reflectors, New York’s Nickolas Mohanna returns to the Australian label Preservation with this incredible tape called
Mantis. The album starts out with dazzling synth arpeggios, and it would be awesome if that’s all it were, but he takes it way further than that, adding cymbals, found sounds, city noises, eerie voices, acoustic instruments, sampled tapes and vinyl, and a plethora of other enchanting sounds. It just keeps going further, deeper and more haunted. Forgotten records melt away, guitars singe and simmer, and it almost sounds like there’s some Laraaji-inspired zither or dulcimer action going on. Each side plays as a continuous collage/dream, and it’s easy to get immersed/lost in this ever-shifting, curious sound world. Mohanna has been doing some truly amazing, impressive things for a while now, everything I’ve heard by him so far as been amazing. This tape, and this artist, deserve attention.
April 24, 2016 at 8:58 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
AshTreJinkins: Zone of the Enders tape
I thought this was going to be a cool tape of dusty, dirty lo-fi hip-hop breakbeats. There’s hip-hop on here, it has its beat tape moments, but it’s actually way more than that, way different. There’s lots of slow, knackered Andy Stott-like techno, lots of moments where it feels like sounds are melting off the reel. Then there’s dirty acid techno like “Home Burn”. When it does get to off-time hip-hop, as in “Next Area 1”, it feels like it’s being beamed down from a distant, shining UFO. Then there’s so many tracks that don’t have beats at all, they seem weightless, or tampered with by chemicals and slightly mutating. The longest track, “Breathe[n]”, has harsh distorted ambience and a panned hi-hat ticks in suggesting a beat, but the beat never actually comes, and it just sort of tricks your mind and takes it into a zone it wasn’t expecting. Final track “She is Gonna Be Here Soon” feels like being outside a club that’s playing trendy French house music, and you’re straining your ears to figure out what exciting things might be happening inside. A really creative, unexpected, mind-altering tape. Available on
Bandcamp.
April 24, 2016 at 8:33 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Suzi Analogue: Zonez V.1
Suzi Analogue doesn’t release new music too often, but whenever she does it’s always incredibly inventive and high quality. Her newest album isn’t like her song-based R&B/hip-hop releases, it’s more instrumental, but it doesn’t sound like your average beat tape. Most noticeable off the bat is the presence of drum’n’bass on a few tracks, the bright, jumpy kind that sounds like Metalheadz or Reinforced circa 1994, but filtered through modern sampling and just a different perspective on production. The tracks that seem to lean towards R&B are filled with bizarre echoing sounds and beats which seem to bubble up and scatter and not really go in a straight line, but they’re still easy to follow and headnod to. Slow, gothy “Bottled Drizzy Tears” seems to poke fun at the whole sadboy thing without seeming like an obvious parody or joke. “Trak Girl Magic” hints toward DJ Paypal-like juke, especially with the chopped-up vibraphone sample, but somehow the jumpy beat doesn’t really feel as frantic, it almost strangely feels happy hardcore, a tiny bit. The last track “4 Yall” combines the oldschool jungle breaks with fast juke-ish vocal samples and a brief downtempo breakdown. It’s been said before, but Suzi really ought to be far more well-known than she is. Available on her
Bandcamp page.
April 24, 2016 at 7:57 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Ytamo: Mi Wo
Ytamo is a female solo artist from Japan who has worked with collage/abstract pop artist Oorutaichi. She’s been making music for a while, but this is her first recording available outside of Japan. Her music combines delicate vocals and acoustic instruments (woodwinds, pianos) with clicking electronic beats. It is every bit as sweet and dreamy as you would expect, with light music box melodies and soft atmospheric sounds in the background, but it’s still a bit more abstract and strange than it might seem. The beats have a bit of an 808 kick to them, and sometimes they approach being danceable, but it feels like just an incidental groove. The vocals feel the same way, they drift in and out through the songs rather than being the central focus of them. But that’s not to say that they aren’t important to the songs. The album is playful, sunny, fluttery, curious, shy, and blissful.
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