August 4, 2015 at 8:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
France Jobin & Fabio Perletta: Mirror Neurons
I recently reviewed a Fabio Perletta album which was absolutely lovely, the type of hypnotic glitchy ambient that always immediately captures my attention and makes me happy. This album is a bit different than that. It’s a bit closer to the realm of “lowercase listening”. The first track, “Parallel”, needs to be turned up way loud before you can hear anything, and even then it’s just a faint drone which slightly blossoms a bit more during the second half of its 14 minute duration. “Reflection” is a little more immediate (not really the right word), starting out with a luminescent drone and then easing in some sneaky bass. Again, it helps if you turn this one all the way up, it’s hard to notice the subtleties if it’s too quiet. For a while it has a sharp yet not too piercing sine wave tone, then it fades into lovely organ drone, before introducing more tones that will drive your dog crazy. “Mimesis” has similar ringing tones, but they shift and glitch a bit, before landing at a more drifting (and slightly barren, desolate) passage. Eventually it develops and gets richer and deeper, before the ringing sine waves take over. I’m not sure if this release counts as “deep listening” or “lowercase listening” or maybe a combination or maybe neither of those actually exist and it’s whatever you make of it. Regardless, it is an immersive experience.
August 2, 2015 at 7:32 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Anthony Donovan & John 3:16: Of The Hex & Its Likenesses
A bit less “post-rock” than I remember the previous John 3:16 album sounding like, this one has vaguely spaghetti western-sounding guitars, which sometimes erupt into harsh feedback, as well as shamanic drumming and atmospheres, creepy whispered vocals, and clicking/sparkling electronic tones. It is nebulous and orbital. It meanders, but then it is grounded and focused. It resists order and format and clears its own path. It is swampy and down-and-out, yet it’s viewing the cosmos from a spiraling asteroid twisting its way throughout the solar system.
August 2, 2015 at 6:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
OverScan: Conscious tape
This one’s sort of like Tim Hecker without all the prestige and hype and monolithic dark-room performances. Well, at least the distortion on the first track brings up the easy comparison to Tim Hecker. I don’t want to say “low-budget” or “poor man’s” because that devalues this. But basically there’s plenty of music out there that isn’t getting all the Pitchfork hype and is even available for
free download that is still noisy and spacey and droney and fantastic. This one gets more stargazing and sweeping and drifting as it goes on. Really bright, expressive cosmic synth melodies and sometimes crickets (as on “Perspective”). “Terrorvision” flows a little bit into dark ambient territory, but not enough that it can’t still be considered new age (maybe). “The Pitch” is sort of similar, it’s brighter-sounding but there’s still some weird voices buried underneath. In general, a nice starry wash of sound that hugs you like a fuzzy blanket.
July 30, 2015 at 9:57 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Cylob: Inflatable Hope 12″ EP
Rephlex is apparently defunct now, but IDM’s hardcore elite will never go away. Cylob’s been releasing music on his own label since 2007 anyway, and this his second release for Power Vacuum. As one might expect, it’s full of squirming, elastic synth sounds and jittery beats. Some of it sounds like LFO wired on a bit too much caffeine, other times it’s splattery electro. “Rosetta” is the EP’s “pretty” track, and even that seems to hyperventilate with the beats getting more skittery as the track progresses. The track title “Pulp the Bass” tells you what you’re in for, as it seems to squeeze as much digital juice out of the spasmodic bass sounds as possible. These are grotesque, bizarre creations that are simply too weird and mutated to work on any sane dance floor, and that’s exactly why they’re prime IDM.
July 30, 2015 at 9:45 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Matilde Davoli: I’m Calling You From My Dreams
Kinda chillwave dreampop stuff. “#1” is like a chillwave version of some
Dark Side Of The Moon melodies (just try singing “Us & Them” along with the beginning). “Realize” is like chill-surfguitar-Moroder (I’m thinking the “Call Me” rhythm). Other songs do the kind of hushed Beach House thing. “Dust” and “I’m Calling You From My Dreams” do big drums and epic synth melodies. “Summer Ending” is a pleasant light synth chillwave beat thing, it’s nice and summery. Last track is kind of snoozy but it’s short. Decent overall.
July 30, 2015 at 9:42 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Hussy: Galore
Male/female garage rock duo from Madison, WI. Not as back-to-basics as you might expect for a garage rock duo, there’s acoustic guitars and shakers and synths and other layered instruments. “Channeling Spiral Stairs” is a straight-up Pavement homage with violin for some reason, and it actually works really well. “Darkness” also has violin and it’s kind of slower and gothier, and that works surprisingly well too. Most of this band’s songs are pretty short (a minute or two long, except “My Bad” which is over 4) so they try out an idea and move on to the next one and I like that.
July 22, 2015 at 11:38 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
/f: pq:c
A sequel to
one of last year’s best albums (with easily one of the best album covers of all time), this is the third (as far as I know) installment of the circuit-fried glitch project of the artist otherwise known as Susan Balmar. This one’s on a different Bandcamp than the previous two, the comprehensibility-is-far-beside-the-point
Psalmus Diuersae. The label has a penchant for removing material or changing track or release or artist titles without warning (the second /f album seemed to only be up for a few days before disappearing), and of course there’s no way to tell who’s actually creating any of these sounds. Most of the sounds are fascinating, though, going beyond the usual eccojam-muzak cliches of vaporwave into something that sounds more futuristic and, well, not just like taking smooth jazz and slowing it down without altering it much.
/pq:c covers a nice range from MIDI lullabys to scrambling glitch collages to Schematic-y IDM to slivers of
E2-E4-like melodies. I continue to be totally in awe of this project, I think whoever this artist is, they’re one of the best ones doing crazy glitch stuff right now. Available on
Bandcamp.
July 22, 2015 at 11:07 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Dead Hands On A Piano: Walking Around
This one immediately caught my attention because of the artist name, but the music is even way better than that. Really noisy, glitchy, messy, distorted, tape-damaged minimal-synth/industrial with Krautrock rhythms and ambient passages. It’s amorphous and unpredictable and it’s beyond awesome. I can’t wait to hear more from this artist. A must-download (and it’s free!) from
Placenta Recordings.
July 22, 2015 at 10:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Fabio Perletta: Unseed
This is the type of hypnotic ambient glitch album that immediately catches my attention as soon as it begins (Fourcolor also comes to mind). It seems like it’s standing still but it’s always flickering and slowly weaving in and out of soothing textures and droning notes. There’s natural recordings, it sounds like there’s some dripping or flowing water and the sounds of seeds (the physical CD comes packaged with Japanese cherry tree seeds) but it’s the drones and glitches that hook me. This whole album is seriously lovely.
July 19, 2015 at 9:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Twigs & Yarn: Still Forms Drift CD-r
Austin-based duo Twigs & Yarn’s debut album on flau caught me by surprise when it came out in 2012. Its glitchy plunderphonic folk-pop sounded fresh and resonant, and non-album single “Yuurei” was even dreamier. Their second album is a limited CD-r release on Eilean Rec. and is a bit closer to pure ambient than their debut, but there’s still plenty of subtle field recordings interwoven with fragile electronically-enhanced folk songs. “In The Valley” is just super lovely. Some of the songs are loopy and rhythmic, and others get swept away into a lush, richly vegetated environment. Really incredible, I recommend this duo highly. The album’s sold out physically but it’s still available digitally on
Bandcamp.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 