The Answer Is In The Beat

Rabit & Dedekind Cut: R&D EP (Ninja Tune, 2016)

January 21, 2016 at 9:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Out of nowhere, Rabit and Lee Bannon (now known as Dedekind Cut) just released this white label 12″ on Ninja Tune. It. Is. Un. Fucking. Believable. Rabit’s album was one of my absolute favorites from last year, and Bannon has been has been on a tear for a few years himself. But this 12-minute mini-epic blows all expectations out of the water. The four tracks here unpredictably jaunt between angry junglist soundclash bursts, gabber kicks, sparse yet bass-heavy hauntings, chopped-and-screwed snippets, and other sonic weaponry. There’s a few brief moments of stillness, but they’re violently, arrhythmically interrupted, and the third track feels like an all out war. The final track is a melting, aching post-garage track which brings to mind the fact that Burial hasn’t released anything in a while, but with other people making music this astonishing, I think we can wait a little longer. I feel like there’s going to be a lot of music like this in 2016, and I’m excited.

Ministry: Toronto 1986 (Cleopatra, 2015)

January 21, 2016 at 8:54 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Before they were an evil, guitar-driven industrial metal band, Ministry were a silly synth-pop group who tried way too hard to sound Euro. After a single on Wax Trax!, their first album With Sympathy came out on Arista in 1983, and the group hated the direction the label was taking them in and disowned the album. Al Jourgensen has been known to visit radio stations and smash their copy of the album. Nevertheless, their early synth-pop is still pretty great, and I feel like this type of music is way more in vogue now than it was a decade or two ago. Most of these songs appeared on their second album, the Adrian Sherwood-produced Twitch, which came out on Sire in 1986. That album found them moving towards their dark electro-industrial sound, but they hadn’t opted for heavy guitars yet. It’s one of their best albums. And of course, this live disc includes their goth club classic “Every Day is Halloween”, which, as cheesy as it sounds, still resonates to outcasts and weirdos like me. “My Possession” and “Where You At Now?” are faster, more electro-punk songs, and hearing them now, they strangely remind me of Dan Deacon. The music to “Isle of Man” still sounds pretty ahead of its time. The sound quality isn’t too bad, but it basically sounds like an above average bootleg. It doesn’t really matter, because this music sounds better when it’s raw and grimy anyway.

Petre Inspirescu: Vin Ploile (Mule Musiq, 2015)

January 21, 2016 at 8:45 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

XLR8R named this the best album of 2015. I don’t agree, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Sparse beats, including shakers and other non-electronic percussion, as well as plucked strings. “Delir 2” introduces mellow keyboards, and constantly sounds like it’s going to break into a full-fledged beat, but it never does. Then some arpeggiating synths topple in sideways, and more sparse percussion, but no kick drum. “Delir 4” is kind of similar, another lush but minimal groove with nice instrumentation and some metal clanging sounds in the background. “Delir 5” is more of a chilled out dub-ish track with flakes of acoustic guitars. “Delir 6” is a bit more clicky, with more calm synths and gently hit snare drums. “Delir 7” also feels like it’s going to turn into a techno track, but gets sidetracked, with clattering can sounds and pensive synths. “Lumiere” is another odd, faintly pulsing track with abstract pianos, rattling percussion, and synth sounds imitating rainforest sounds. “Pan’la Glezne” is a pretty, starry ambient track.

Ambiq: 2 (Arjunamusic, 2015)

January 20, 2016 at 10:37 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Electro-jazz collaboration between techno artist Max Loderbauer (Sun Electric, NSI), clarinetist Claudio Puntin, and drummer Samuel Rohrer. The album is heavy with modular synths and other electronics, but this is clearly a jazz album, sounding improvised and barely controlled. Some of the tracks have steady drum beats, but not always through the entire song, and there’s no bass player, so the rest of the sounds sort of float around the percussion without really latching onto a groove. Some of the sounds echo and feel like reflections off a body of water rather than the actual objects. The album’s most bizarre, mutated moment is the gleefully trippy “Mytoprill”, which drapes a crashing drum rhythm with layers of flanged-out, acid-fried synths. “Naked George” and “Ephemera” are short, minimal, beatless experiments with eerie, theremin-like tones. “The Sedge” has fractured, arrhythmic drumming and blippy, bubbling synths. The album ends with the crystalline “Consolation”, one of its most calm, reflective pieces.

Running: Wake Up Applauding (Castle Face, 2016)

January 18, 2016 at 11:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

First CD release from a garage punk band who’s put out LPs, 7″s and tapes on labels like Permanent Records (Chicago), Catholic Tapes, Captcha, etc. This album buzzes through in half an hour, with thundering drums, blazing guitar (do I hear some Ministry riffs in there?) and echo-chamber-fog vocals. Many of the songs run into each other nonstop as if this is a live recording, with waves of fuzz and echo and effects throughout the songs and providing transitions between them. The singer constantly sounds lost, terrified, paranoid, chased by rabid wolves. Also he might have some sort of radiation poisoning and maybe his face is melting away. The first 2 tracks are thudding and relentless, but “Speed Camera” seems to stumble along and occasionally speed up. “Wake Up Applauding” starts out thumping but then breaks down into a slow zombie crawl before getting back up to speed (and ending with a call of “CHICAGOOOOOO!!!” and airhorns and gunshots). “We Never Close” starts out with particularly lacerating guitar. Of the 2 interludes, “Interlude-B” sounds like it could have been found on the cutting room floor of a Suicide rehearsal. 5-minute closer “Art Seen” is sort of like 2 songs in one, starting out slow and pounding, gradually working up a sweat with the help of plenty of lazer-blasted guitars. A total acid bath of an album.

We Lost the Sea: Departure (Translation Loss, 2015)

January 18, 2016 at 10:36 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

We Lost the Sea are an Australian post-metal band who used to do screamy sludge-rock a la ISIS or Cult of Luna. After their first album, singer Chris Torpy killed himself and they continued as a primarily instrumental group. Their newer material isn’t really metal at all, but post-rock, and it’s very spacious and well-paced. A few tracks have cello or trumpet, and there’s even a girl’s high school choir (but only on the first track, and it’s more textural than anything else). All of the songs on this album are basically about people who did brave, ambitious things, only to fail, but they still remained courageous and kept at it until the end. The liner notes explain all the stories. The final 2 tracks are about the Challenger space mission, and they end up being over half an hour total (and the include plenty of recordings of flight control transmissions and people on earth panicking). It gets heavy and dramatic, to be sure, but even with the ornate instrumentation, it doesn’t feel unnecessarily over-the-top. It has an oceanic feel to it. The album’s artwork depicts a lot of wide open panoramic vistas and landscapes, and the music sounds like that. The album ends on a super hopeful note, as it’s not intended to be an album about failure and tragedy, but of inspiration and staying true to one’s vision.

HNY: Sacred Fire 7″ (Spleencoffin, 2015)

January 17, 2016 at 5:55 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I was late to the party with Social Junk, not getting into them until after they broke up, and now it appears that I’ve repeated myself, because former SJ member Heather Nicole Young has retired her solo alias HNY, and this is the moniker’s final release. It is frightening and beautiful. “Sacred Fire” has absolutely charred guitars and percussive pounding, plus layers of haunting, shivering vocals. “Ghost” isn’t as noisy, but it’s still ominous, squirming, and of course spectral. Her vocals are a bit more ethereal and nearly tip into a new dimension of otherworldliness, but then it’s over too quickly.

Warren Michael Defever: Sunship tape (Northern Ashram, 2015)

January 17, 2016 at 5:43 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Some of His Name Is Alive’s limited CDR releases from the past few years have included spacey, cosmic, ambient drone pieces, and I was super excited to hear those and hoped Warren would do more music like that. This tape, recorded under his full name, is exactly what I asked for. Recorded at home as well as during a few performances in Detroit and Hamtramck (which I missed), the tape starts out with spacious piano similar to Harold Budd (whom HNIA performed with in Mexico during the ’90s), then from there it blossoms into a wide, enveloping drone with some slithering bass tones underneath. The second side has more spiraling, fractal prog-rock organ tones, then a much denser, shimmering mix of oozing synths and guitar licks. Halfway through, there’s a switch to a synth sequence which explodes into stereo, then it evolves into several more layers of paths and flourishes. Too mesmerizing to be a simple “relaxation” tape, this is an incredible, engrossing listen. The sun is still in the heart.

Final Cop: Castaway Lakota (Dub Ditch Picnic, 2015)

January 13, 2016 at 10:31 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

German Army seem clearly inspired by early industrial groups like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, but they tend to inhabit the murkier, more experimental end of the genre. GeAr founder Peter Kris has another project, Final Cop, which is much more aggressive, guitar-heavy, confrontational, and even occasionally (gasp) melodic than his more prolific outfit. Final Cop’s distorted vocals come a lot closer to Skinny Puppy and their legions of followers, and all of the songs hover around a minute or two, giving them a punk-like immediacy, even if they’re generally midtempo. Fiery guitar and fat, buzzing bass guitar smother the cruddy drum machine beats, and the snarled, nearly indecipherable vocals (along with sampled voices on a few tracks) complete their sound. The short, blistering songs are still pretty experimental, this doesn’t come close to sounding like goth club EBM/industrial, and this isn’t the place to look for conventional song structures or hooks either, but it’s still a neat burst of furious, bit-crushed industrial rage.

Ray Sammartano: Through the Chronos Lens (self-released, 2015)

January 13, 2016 at 9:46 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Ray Sammartano’s third album takes his music beyond the space planetarium sounds of his first two, with trippier effects and more drawn out synth drones. These tracks are mostly improvised, but there’s still an enormous amount of care put into their construction, and they’re inventive and surprising. A couple tracks even have echo-immersed vocals, transforming them into dripping 23rd-century space lullabies. At some points, it’s unclear if the music is dissolving into thin air or if a new melody or rhythm is bubbling up through the ether. Sammartano’s shapeless, formless synth explorations get lost in the best way. The album’s artwork couldn’t be more CDBaby-core (there’s even babies on the front cover), but that shouldn’t stop synth-drone fans from checking this out, and some label like Aguirre should press this on snazzy limited double gatefold vinyl. Stream/purchase on Bandcamp.