The Answer Is In The Beat

Aris Kindt: Floods (Scissor & Thread, 2015)

February 20, 2016 at 6:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

There’s a few CDs that have been sitting on my desk that came out of nowhere that I’ve been meaning to write about, and this is one of them. This is a duo including Francis Harris of Frank & Tony, and it’s way deeper, dubbier, and darker than their relaxed, blissful house tracks. Definitely some parallels to Dubchord and similar/related dub techno artists, but there’s something murkier and more decaying about this album. A bit more distortion, a bit more manipulated instruments lurking underneath, a considerable amount of subtlety. It creeps up on you with repeated listens, and it’s seriously great. There’s the upfront, bassy dub-techno pulse, but there’s wayward drifting sounds and some gorgeous, distant melodies. The duo threads a lot of seemingly alienated aspects together, but it’s remarkably cohesive.

Skin Lies: Stimulus Regression tape (FM Dust, 2016)

February 14, 2016 at 2:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Skin Lies is former WCBN DJ Dustin Krcatovich (DJ Danny Glover’s Kid, Actual Birds, Mall Mutants), who currently lives in Portland. His new project is way different from the noise/folk/pop/rock of his earlier stuff, this is more swirling cosmic experimental sounds. It’s still noisy and lo-fi, and it still sounds like something that belongs on a cassette tape, it just occupies a much different head space than before. Plenty of Fripp & Eno guitar textures and loops, and lots of early Cluster/Kluster in here as well. The tape is bookended by longer pieces which flow and progress with entrancing rhythms and goopy sounds and tape manipulations, then in the middle there’s 3 shorter mood pieces, of which “Reversal of Fortune” is the most serene. “Interlude/That River Is In My Way” is a long, 2-part epic which seems to get more ominous and haunting as it progresses. This tape is an exciting new start from someone who’s been at it for a long time. Up on Bandcamp now.

France Jobin: Singulum (Line, 2016)

February 9, 2016 at 6:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Typical of the Line label, the latest release by Montreal-based sound artist is ultra-minimal, but it contains moments of beauty. You need to turn it up loud, but it’s worth it, it sounds amazing. The opening track (“n”) fades in slowly, and has very beautiful piano loops and granulated effects. Eventually the loops sort of dissolve into a cloud, but they still retain their beauty, and it ends with an echoing, pulsing bass tone. The other pieces are shorter. “l” starts out with another gorgeous, minimal loop and gradually adds some haunting, engrossing synthesizer drones. “m” starts out a bit darker and more haunting, and eventually seems to drift towards something brighter and calmer, but then it ends up more chilling than before, concluding with a lightly piercing sine wave. “s” doesn’t change too much for the first half, just slowly layering in different synth pads, but the second half has more tonal variation, giving it a half-remembered-melodies feel. Very calm, slow moving, and tranquil.

CHVE: Rasa (Consouling Sounds, 2015)

February 8, 2016 at 10:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This one totally came out of the blue to me, but it appears to be a solo project of Colin H. Van Eeckhout from Belgian sludge metal band Amenra, as well as a few other metal bands I’ve never heard of. This album has nothing to do with metal whatsoever. It’s a slow-moving, 30 minute atmospheric song which features hurdy gurdy, bodhran, a stripped-down drum kit, and layers of vocals. The words “I will only rise until I fall” appear in the artwork, and those seem to be the only actual lyrics on the album. Basically, if Dead Can Dance recorded a half-hour droned out song with limited equipment, it might sound like this. Not really, though, because he doesn’t sound like Lisa or Brendan. The point is, it sounds really, really lovely, and you should listen to it.

Jimbo Easter: one-sided 7″ (Total Trash, 2016)

February 8, 2016 at 9:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Detroit weirdo Jimbo Easter is best known either as the frontman of bands like Druid Perfume, the Piranhas, Odd Clouds, and Moonhairy, or as an artist, of the visual and performance varieties. This record crams 5 of his tape-damaged Beefheart-like bursts onto one side of a 7″. Expect silly/scary voices, primitive Residents-like synth bloops, poetry, and a ton of tape hiss. If WCBN’s children’s music program Kids On Strike were still on the air, this demented platter of wax might’ve fit in nicely (minus the song that says “shit” of course).

Ontal: Entropia (Ad Noiseam, 2015)

February 5, 2016 at 9:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Frequent collaborators with Dronelock, Ontal are a Serbian duo who have have been putting out loads of crushing industrial techno records since 2013. This is their first album stepping into the spotlight (they also put out an album with Dronelock last year called The Topics), and it delivers the goods with throbbing, dark rhythms which occasionally bring the noise but can still be mixed into a DJ set. The two collaborations, especially the blistering “Steel Forms” with rhythmic noise veteran 2nd Gen, are some of the hardest tracks here. Other tracks have short but powerful repeated melodies, such as the mysterious thumb piano-like sounds on the midtempo “Loa” or the Orbital-like notes in the thudding opener “Foray”. “Entropia” constantly sizzles with feedback, and “Spiritus Ex Machina” is calmer and has a bit more of a shake to it. “Transmigration” is busy, gritty, and breaky, and “Sojitsu” injects rivet-like beats with acid synths. “Invigorated” attacks with a buzzing, distorted d’n’b bassline, but then dissolves into space for its final 2 minutes. The album continues Ad Noiseam’s long-running tradition of bringing quality rhythmic noise and experimental techno, and although this one does have a few super intense tracks, it’s still pretty steady and accessible.

Fjordne: Moonlit Evocations (White Paddy Mountain, 2015)

February 3, 2016 at 11:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Japanese electronic producer Fjordne (Shunichiro Fujimoto) has previously been known for processing acoustic guitars and pianos into glitchy ambient tracks. This album, however, is a lot closer to jazz, mixed with experimental hip-hop/illbient production techniques. The pianos are front and center here, but there’s some slow, trippy hip-hop beats, which are often echoed and reversed. Discogs files this under “contemporary jazz”, but I think that’s stretching it. It’s pretty wonderful, though, a nice, twilight crawl through a strange but ultimately safe forest. It’s exquisitely produced, with several layers of instruments and effects which are a little messy but ultimately welcoming, and the piano and guitar melodies are upfront and the drums are slow and uncomplicated, although sometimes they’re riddled with backwards masking and other effects. “Glati” adds a clunking hip-hop beat, sax, and a thicket of voices, and “Reverends” has another laidback, jazzy hip-hop feel, with a clapping rhythm and another dense tapestry of sounds. “Coenbiac” also seems to be a drunken stumble with beats tumbling underneath the thick collage of muttering voices and reverb-heavy pianos. “Capsella” also loops some strange voices, but otherwise it’s not quite as heavily layered. “Behind Exquisite, Tragic” forgoes beats for more eerie drifting sounds, pianos, and voices. This is a remarkably original album with much depth to it, a lot to explore.

v/a: KX 2015 (KX, 2015)

February 3, 2016 at 10:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This double CD compilation is the inaugural CD release on KX, which is pretty obviously a Kompakt sub-label, although I’m not quite sure what its significance is. Other than Reinhard Voigt, all of the artists on this collection are lesser-known, but they all fit in with the shuffling, hazy Kompakt sound. The tracks are generally minimal but atmospheric, and a few have some eerie touches, like the floating vocals and spare acoustic guitar plucks on Luis Junior’s “Numina”. “Jonas Rathsman’s “New Generation” injects a bit more of a buzzing bass sound, but is an otherwise driving, slightly melancholy melodic tech-house track. “Euripides’ “The Dreamer” is a nice long dreamy breakdown-friendly track that gets a little more playful than some of the other tracks here. Krisztian Dobrocsi’s “Subwolfer” is a bit more heart-tugging, with shimmering starry synths, a crackling beat, a slightly wobbly bassline, and some clipped, tearful vocal samples. Kelly Sylvia’s “Sapphire” is closer to Kompakt’s pop side, with a few spare words calling out only when necessary, and the synths likewise creeping up over the basic beat. It seems like there’s too little going on at first, and the vocals seem like they’re going to be skip-worthy at first, but no, it all comes together really nicely. Reinhard Voigt’s contribution is simply titled “RV 01” and it seems like a pretty nondescript minimal techno track with a slightly squirming bassline, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a need for it to be anything else. Euripides’ “Melancholy Days” builds and blossoms, with triplet arpeggios and a fragile, flower-petal breakdown. It’s also not quite as sad as its title suggests. Gadi Mitrani’s “Key of Stillness” is a classic hippie-raver-girl-babbling-while-on-ecstasy track, similar to (for a recent example) Marco Shuttle’s astonishing “Sing Like a Bird” and I’m sure a ton of ’90s goa trance records that I have no interest in hearing. This one’s good though. It’s all about paying attention to the bubbles in your mind, or something. It makes you want to take out your yoga mat onto the dance floor. Even though this may be the equivalent of Kompakt’s minor leagues, it’s still a good showcase for some hidden gems.

DJ Haus: Burnin’ Up (Rinse, 2015)

February 3, 2016 at 9:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This one isn’t as generic as it looks, I swear! It was released by London dance radio station Rinse FM, and while it clearly falls under the banner of UK garage, it mixes it up a bit, with influences from early Warp bleep-n-bass groups like LFO and classic Chicago house keyboard melodies. “Won’t Let U Get Away” is early ’90s bleep with just a hint of the current bass music scene, while “Burnin’ Up” does the same for oldschool Chicago acid house. “Hypnotizin'” is a stripped down track with familiar garage house chords, and “Eez Werkin'” similarly loops whistling synths and minimal rave pianos. “Houz Muzik” is the inevitable track with cheaply sampled vocals saying the word “house” ad infinitum. “No More Loving” has some nice fat Derrick May bass tones and some more bleepy notes. “In My Mind” chops up vocals MK/Todd Edwards style, adding another jack-your-body bassline. “Acid Stringz” ends with little more than a bumping beat and a shifting acid synth line, but that’s all it needs. Sure, everything on this album has been done before in some form, many times over, but that doesn’t make these tracks any less effective.

Kowloon_Walled_City: Escape From Walled City tape (Cavern Brew Records, 2015)

January 30, 2016 at 8:59 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I’m very confused, I thought Kowloon Walled City was a hardcore band. Turns out this is something different, hence the underscores in the name. This tape is on a Jersey-based label, and it seems to exist somewhere between new age and not-harsh noise, with a yoga instructor meditating around a thin veil of static. The second side has some distant, slowed-down loop that could be from a doo-wop song, joined by more shadowy singing and a rainy atmosphere. The lovely singing continues, and it’s joined by trickles of noise, and at some point some more scrambled noise just gets dumped on top. After some manipulated music box sounds, the tape gets quieter and starts to sound like it’s unspooling a bit. Then there’s some slow whispering, returning to the meditative speech of the first side, but it ends with more fragile (possibly in Japanese) singing accompanied by escalating noise. Even though the entire album is pretty short, it’s split a cross two sides of a 60 minute cassette, requiring lots of fast-forwarding (or rewinding, because it’s too short and mysterious to process on a single listen). Its Bandcamp gives it the dreaded “vaporwave” tag, but like recent, brilliant albums on Dream Catalogue by Immune and 2814, this one seems far more personal and moving than most of the jokey, groan-inducing output with foreign characters and garish artwork that’s clogging up Bandcamp.