The Answer Is In The Beat

Infinite Body: Avolition LP (Isounderscore, 2015)

January 11, 2016 at 11:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Out of all the drone/noise artists I was into 5 or 6 years ago, Infinite Body was the one who seemed to make the biggest impact with a handful of releases only to sink without a trace (runner-up: the considerably more prolific Red Electric Rainbow). 2010’s Carve Out The Face Of My God was an exceptional album that tipped harsh noise into stunning, gorgeous melodic ambience. And then, nothing. Finally, he’s re-emerged with this short LP on Isounderscore, which has similarly been out of the game for a few years. The holographic artwork on this LP is out of this world as it is, and then the album’s first track “Slow of Heart” seems to set the album’s cover in motion, with criss-crossing time-stretched noise loops and solemn pianos underneath. Sean McCann mastered this album, and this track definitely has a similar “how the hell does he create these sounds?” quality in common with McCann’s work. “Enlacing” follows, practicing sample surgery with an unsuspecting pop diva and cross-stitching it with a buzzing (yet melodic and rhythmic) blanket of noise. On the second side, “Empyrean” is a shimmering, moonlit stroll with neon pulses and foggy horns. “All Things Made New” starts out with a woozy organ drone (the kind that makes you expect Prince to appear and say “Dearly beloved…”) and from then on it merges into a heavenly chorus-like synth drone. Seriously, I’ve been waiting for this record for 5 years and it doesn’t disappoint in the slightest.

Evil Robot Ted: Hints About the Sick Room tape (Scolex Recordings, 2015)

January 11, 2016 at 10:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Known for running Brokecore Recordings since back in the day and sharing split CD-R’s with artists such as Dental Work, Metal Babble, and Scissor Shock, Evil Robot Ted (John Marra) has been releasing his frantic brand of frantic ambient glitchcore for ages now. This tape on NJ-based Scolex Recordings is a sizeable sampling of his wares, ranging from the extended hip-hop experiment “Instar” to intense breakcore meltdown “Pyramid Materialization” to plenty of smeared ambient washouts. “Identifing a Skeleton as Holy” has a slowed-down, skipping industrial rhythm juxtaposed with a bright, star-like melody which is also riddled with glitches. A lot of the tracks on the B-side are shorter, more disconnected experiments, but “Anhydrobiosis” works up some slippery breakbeats, and “Cara Oculta” is a super gorgeous thing with a saddening melody and a crushed, trudging beat. “Honey Stomach” is sound of your life dripping away while you’re sick in bed drinking 50 cups of tea a day, and then the miasmic “Overkill All Over Again” explains itself. This is an incredible album and I wish I heard it before the beginning of this year so I could’ve included it during my Best of 2015 festivities. Free download on Bandcamp.

John Metcalfe: The Appearance of Colour (Real World, 2015)

January 10, 2016 at 4:50 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Composer and viola player John Metcalfe was in The Durutti Column in the ’80s, and since then he’s been a renowned orchestral arranger for artists such as Morrissey, Blur, Peter Gabriel, and many others. This album appears on Gabriel’s Real World label, and it’s a collision of modern classical and electronic music, with skittering drum’n’bass beats, acoustic double bass, and light operatic vocals. The album’s first track “Sun” is a 20-minute suite, and the closing title track is 16 minutes, so he’s clearly going for epic statements here. The songs in the middle are around 2-6 minutes, and “Sycamore” is probably the best song to start with (and it has the heaviest drum’n’bass influence on the album). “Just Let Go” features vocalist Natasha Khan and dips into trip-hop/Purity Ring territory, but in a smoothed out acoustic/orchestral way. Some of the other shorter tracks are more purely acoustic/orchestral, while “Gold, Green” veers a little closer to smooth jazz territory, but it’s not that bad. A pretty unconventional album, it seems quite high-brow but it still embraces modern styles and it’s worth checking out.

Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch: Like Water Through the Sand (130701, 2015)

January 8, 2016 at 7:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

French pianist/composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s first non-soundtrack album is a stunning audio suite which blends her vibrant piano playing with string quartet and electronics. “The Sum of Our Flaws” is all graceful, melodic pianos with a hint of cricket-like chirping in the background. “Tulsi” begins with a rainfall of plucked strings which are arranged into a slowly growing rhythm, developing softly pounding drums and synths. “Cotidal Lines” places the mournful-sounding string quartet up front and center, submerging piano in the background, while “Hands Closed Together” is nearly all piano, beginning calmly and rising in tempo in its second half. “Vestiges” begins with more distant-sounding piano, sounding fuller as the strings come in. “Persephone” and “Scale of Volatility” are both framed by electronic pulses, with the latter being faintly kissed by dubby electronic manipulation. “Six of Swords” seems like an ecstatic variation on the previous song’s piano melody. “Sublimation” returns to weepy strings, and the album ends with the calm, reflective “Strelka”. Clocking in at only 39 minutes, the album is a compact, easily enjoyable listen.

Subheim: Foray (Denovali, 2015)

January 8, 2016 at 6:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Subheim’s third album (and first in five years) is an ideal soundtrack for a bleary late night spent walking around an unfamiliar city with a heavy heart. Opening with scraping, discordant strings, the album contains shivering vocal samples, heartbroken pianos, and lots of slowly paced beats. “Red Ridge” is a flickering trip-hop track which recalls Massive Attack at their most windswept. “Forsaken” rides a knocking midtempo beat, and contains moaning, disembodied vocals, tense strings, gritty guitar, and gently bumping bass. “Arktos” embraces uptempo techno rhythms, with heavily detailed, shifting beats, layers of pianos and strings, and whispered vocals underneath. “Berlin” ends the album with the street sounds (a passing ambulance, a stopping bus) and more whispering.

Edward Ka-Spel: Spectrescapes Vol. 2 (Rustblade, 2015)

January 8, 2016 at 5:58 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Edward Ka-Spel is the enigmatic frontman of Legendary Pink Dots, a psychedelic industrial band who have released about a hundred albums since the early ’80s. He’s released at least half as many solo albums, although as the title to this one suggests, it’s an album of ambient soundscapes rather than songs. The first track is the shortest (6 minutes) and brightest and most melodic. The second is nearly 10 minutes, and is more hissy, creaky, and buzzy, with some weird operatic vocal loops during the second half. The third track is over half an hour, and it progresses through spooky melodies, bubbling textures, stormy sounds, kind of tribal rhythms, and vocals by “the ghost of Marie-Antoinette”. It goes on for a long time and it seems to meander if you’re not paying attention, but it’s actually a pretty amazing late-night soundscape.

Bersarin Quartett: III (Denovali, 2015)

January 6, 2016 at 11:14 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Not a group, but actually a solo project of sound sculptor Thomas Bücker, Bersarin Quartett constructs wide-eyed but melancholy ambient and downtempo, with extended loops of cinematic strings. The instruments (pianos, horns, etc.) are usually recognizable, but he manipulates and processes them so that sometimes they sound grainy or wavy. He also seems to make a point of the fact that he’s using loops, in the way they they often suddenly cut off and restart, rather than making them clean and continuous sounding. In some ways, it sounds fragile, broken, and decaying, but in others, it’s vibrant and pulsating, and seems to have been crafted with the utmost of care. There’s acoustic drums and plenty of booming bass tones, as well as rich clouds of atmospheric synths. Picking out highlights is difficult and ultimately pointless, as the tracks all seem to inhabit a similar mood, but Umschlungen Von Milliarden” might be the album’s most emotionally heavy track, and “Sanft Verblassen Die Geschichten” seems to have a greater concentration of forlorn acoustic stringed instruments, at least before the storm clouds take over. “Welche Welt” features vocals by Clara Hill floating in the ether. “Ist Es Das, Was Du Willst” has the album’s most crunchy beat manipulation, and it’s cloaked in thunder cracks and cymbal swells. The billowing purple clouds adorning the album’s artwork are apt; this is the type of album that seeps into you like a gas, and while it’s hard to tell at first whether the gas is safe or not, ultimately it ends up being helpful rather than harmful.

Teeth of the Sea: Highly Deadly Black Tarantula (Rocket Recordings, 2015)

January 5, 2016 at 9:05 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This London-based group formed after witnessing a Wolf Eyes gig, which tells you part of what they sound like, but only a small piece. There’s harsh noise and shrieking industrial vocals, yes, but there’s also horns and spaghetti western guitars, as well as minimalist Krautrock rhythms. “All My Venom” slowly builds up to acid rock guitars, deranged mariachi horns, thudding industrial beats, and crazed screaming. “Animal Manservant” starts with another jackhammering industrial beat and more screaming, but then develops brassy ’80s soundtrack synths. “Field Punishment” is more of a sparse, trippy techno track, but with more cinematic guitars and horns joining the pulsating electro beats and synths. “Have You Ever Held a Bird of Prey” begins with 4 minutes of near silence before an electronic pulse and jagged guitars come in. Subliminal voices whisper underneath the hypnotic throbbing for the remainder of the track. “Phonogene” is a short interlude of scrambled, skipping voices, and the 11-minute epic “Love Theme For 1984” ends the album, slowly building up acoustic guitars and Boards Of Canada-like synths, before more echo-drenched horns and guitars build up and die down, with the track’s final two minutes dissipating into space. A really stunning album which truly sounds like nothing else, and yet somehow the “psychedelic” tag still fits.

Gnaw Their Tongues: Abyss of Longing Throats (Crucial Blast, 2015)

January 5, 2016 at 8:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Like the now-defunct Wold, Gnaw Their Tongues (a solo project of a Dutch musician named Mories) blurs the line between black metal and harsh noise. He’s released dozens of albums and EPs, and most of his albums and songs have long, ridiculous titles. It’s hard to even tell if there’s actual guitars on this album, it might just be electronics, but he manages to shape the feedback into riffs as well as squalls of noise. It even sounds like there’s horror-movie strings and horns buried in the mix. The vocals are never less than ghastly and demonic, and only Satan knows what he’s howling about. “Through Flesh” is surprisingly musical for this sort of thing. “Abyss of Longing Throats” is the album’s most straightforward black metal-sounding track, with pulverizing blastbeats and riffs, as well as a spoken word break about “the martyrs of Christ be[ing] tortured”. The drums on The Holy Body” strike with precision, framing Mories’ tortured howls. “And They Will Be Cast Out Into Utter Darkness” is the album’s trippiest track, weaving warped strings and shifting drums, which morph tempos with no advance notice. “Up Into the Heavens Down Into the Circles of Hell” buries some operatic vocals underneath the shrieking, leading the album to its apocalyptic end.

d’Eon: Foxconn / Trios 12″ EP (Knives, 2015)

December 26, 2015 at 7:40 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I haven’t been keeping up with the output of d’Eon too closely, but he’s put out some amazing stuff, especially the hardcore/jungle EP he did under the name Kallisti. This EP came out last month on Kuedo’s new label and I’m just getting around to listening now, but already on first listen it is completely decimating my mind. Very intense Mark Fell/DJ Clap hyper-MIDI-juke, with shreds of late-night ’80s digital future melodies and dirty South beats poking through. And titles like “Samsung India Software Operations” (in two parts) and “Satyam Integrated Engineering Solutions”. And then “Datamatics Global Services II” throws in jungle breaks. Holy hell. “Foxconn II” brings things back down to earth with a more straightforward atmospheric trap song, but it still sounds really good. Apparently these tracks were made in 2012. They were ahead of their time then and they’re still ahead of their time. I’m glad I actually got around to hearing them before the year ended, I wouldn’t have wanted to keep sleeping on this one into the new year.