The Answer Is In The Beat

Moongriffin: Glimpse of Future LP (Cartilage Osseux Records, 2015)

July 19, 2015 at 7:23 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Debut full-length from a Portland-based artist who has spend time in the Chicago jazz scene and has produced this impressive spacey electronic jazz album. Really fluid and abstract yet tightly controlled. Belongs in the same conversation as Dave Douglas’ recent collaboration with Shigeto or Justin Walter’s album on Kranky, or any of the jazzier excursions affiliated with Brainfeeder and the like. It clearly sounds like jazz, and can be enjoyed by open-minded jazz listeners of old, but it has a modern sensibility and adventurous production, and isn’t afraid to have glitchy electronics (such as “No End”) or hip-hop-influenced rhythms. The title track is the only one with vocals, which are kind of slowed and dirgey. Otherwise, it’s a really intriguing set of instrumental post-jazz explorations. Available on Bandcamp.

soundtrack: Different Drum (Gulcher, 2015)

July 19, 2015 at 7:00 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

No clue about this movie at all, but this soundtrack CD has some decent lo-fi rock, handmade pop, and cinematic indie. Hypocrite in a Hippy Crypt’s “The Town Crazies” is gentle, optimistic drum machine pop. The Hardy Tree’s “Around the Steeple” is more post-rock/contemporary classical, with spare layers of violin, acoustic guitars, pianos, electronics, and vocals. The Underground Youth’s tracks are dark solo goth rock. Del Mas Alla’s “Dreams” is hissy, sloppy, atmospheric lo-fi dream pop with alternately serene and noisy guitars and flat smashy drums. Ubi Escalona’s “We’re All Waiting For Something” is a pretty organ instrumental with a soft chiming melody. “Long Gone” by The Hardy Tree is a pretty waltz-time song that feels like tiptoeing through a mystical forest. Of the 3 Xray Eyeballs songs, “Broken Beds” is faster and thrashier and more fun. “Flying With the Swallows” by Ubi Escalona is a haunting instrumental with reversed melodies and birds chirping. Del Mas Alla’s “Our Times” is sloppy Oh Sees-like garage rock. Home Blitz’s “Perpetual Night” is tight Wire-like post-punk pop which ends with a brief “Stairway to Heaven” quote. Likewise, The Underground Youth’s “Crash (BSA Jam)” is slow solo boogie-rock which dips into “Sympathy For The Devil” a bit.

Art of Ballistics: REX 84 (Lowatt, 2015)

July 9, 2015 at 7:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This EP kind of came out of nowhere, but basically it sounds like the type of instrumental hip-hop Ninja Tune and Shadow used to crank out loads of in the ’90s. As in, BREAKBEATS, not trap beats or glitchy samples. Hard, crunchy beats tapped out on a dusty old sampler. There’s smooth keyboards and enough progression to make these feel like songs rather than just sample collages, but it still sounds like something your favorite ’90s underground MC could flow over. It’s been done before, but it doesn’t sound like what most producers are doing today, so it’s refreshing. Streaming on Bandcamp.

Portopia ’81: Jet Stream tape (Constellation Tatsu, 2015)

July 5, 2015 at 6:13 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Portopia ’81 is one of many aliases of Japanese electronic music veteran Shin Buchikama, who runs a prolific tape label called Ginjoha. This tape is filled with bright, melodic synth-pop with vocoderized vocals and starry, cosmic synths. It’s way closer to YMO than most stuff you’d expect an ambient/new age tape label to release these days. It’s just refreshing to hear something like this from someone who’s been in the music business for decades, yet it still sounds fresh and exciting. Available on CTatsu’s Bandcamp.

Gurun Gurun: Kon B + Atarashii Hi EP (Home Normal, 2015)

June 14, 2015 at 6:26 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This is the second album by this Czech group who combines acoustic instrumentation and electronic processing for an overwhelming mass of tightly composed, multi-elemental sound. There’s glitchy electronic parts as well as masses of strings and percussion and seemingly every other instrument imaginable. These are dense sound constructions, but vocals by Cokiyu and Cuushe help to shape them into songs. They definitely help put a gentle, human face on these monstrous aural sculptures.

As with their first album, this one has an accompanying remix EP, which takes their conundrum-like compositions and makes more sense out of them. Marihiko Hara’s mix of “Mado” focuses on a string part and loops it into a rhythmic cue (not really a “hook”) along with gentle beats. Pawn’s remix of the EP’s title track seems the most excited and active, with animated pulses and blips along with diced vocals and spare, measured beats. Nanonum’s mix of the same track seems to be more scattered and swarming, taking the original and kind of flattening it out digitally. The last track on the EP seems to be the entire Kon B album rewound really fast.

Villages: Procession Acts LP (Bathetic, 2015)

June 14, 2015 at 4:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Villages (Ross Gentry) has a pretty hefty discography, with tapes, LPs and CD-r’s on labels like Hooker Vision, Sacred Phrases, and Kimberly Dawn, but I haven’t heard much besides a split 7″ I reviewed for Foxy Digitalis a few years back. This is his fourth release on Bathetic, and it’s a stunner. It’s ambient/drone stuff, but it seems to consist of clouds of mostly acoustic instruments, including plenty of strings and pianos and guitars. There’s some processing and static, but not so much that it distorted or blacks out the instruments. It just has a very natural feel; instead of villages, it feels more like forests. I guess Sean McCann or Barn Owl would be somewhat close comparisons, but these feels more haunted and mystical than either of those artists. Somehow it reminds me of some of Colleen’s early stuff, too, but fuller and more consuming. Seriously wonderful.

Pas Musique: Inside the Spectrum (Alrealon Musique, 2015)

June 14, 2015 at 1:22 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Pas Musique follow up their excellent 2013 album Abandoned Bird Egg with another spacey, trippy journey into subconsciousness. This one is more focused on space travel and extraterrestrials, with tracks like “Listening to Interstellar Space” featuring vintage samples from old instructional films about space. The tracks are framed by trancey electronic rhythms, but the beats are just a starting point, rather than the focal point of the tracks. “The Soul Catcher” has deep bass and light acid synths, but they’re more incidental than the grounding elements of the song. Other tracks have ethereal vocals, grinding guitars, and astral synth trails. “Cerebral Vacuum” has an offbeat, thudding percussion loop and clusters of electronic sound loosely joined together. Hard to really put into words, but it’s fascinating. Can’t wait to see this group at Mental Spaghetti Fest in Detroit next month.

[PHYSICS]: Only Forever tape (Constellation Tatsu, 2015)

June 14, 2015 at 12:31 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

It’s been two years since Spectramorphic Iridescence, [PHYSICS]’ debut LP on Digitalis. This new tape is less beat-driven, and closer to the cosmic/new age realm, but darker. If there’s dark ambient, why not dark new age? It’s not all dark-sounding, but there’s definitely some moments that feel like they’re summoning dark forces rather than just meditating or making pleasant background zone-out music. These tracks are all really busy, too, always swooping and transforming and ducking down one astral pathway or another. It’s like staring into a night sky and noticing that it’s alive and constantly moving, full of comets and asteroids. Up on Bandcamp.

BOAN: Mentiras LP (HoloDeck, 2015)

June 13, 2015 at 7:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

BOAN (pronounced “bone”) is a new project of José Cota (SSLEEPERHOLD) and Mariana Saldaña (ex-//TENSE//), both of whom were also in Medio Mutante together. I’m only familiar with SSLEEPERHOLD solo out of all of those names, but this is definitely way brighter and poppier than the dark, lo-fi electro of his solo stuff. The vocals here seem to be spoken in a monotone rather than properly sung, but they’re still more structured as proper songs than the more poetic monologues of labelmate Marie Davidson. The songs here are pretty repetitive, and the vocals are pretty minimal and repeat the songs’ titles a lot, but the songs are just so inventive and energetic that you don’t mind endlessly repeating the words along with them. “BOAN Acid” is like their attempt at an EDM club anthem, but from a lo-fi analog perspective. Actually it sounds like late ’80s Belgian new beat more than anything else, especially with the S&M connotations to the lyrics (“I am your master”) and demands to “jack your body to the beat”. Tracks like “Freaksnake” and “Mentiras” almost resemble a less-polished minimal wave counterpart to Purity Ring, and that this group should be touring with them and winning over their audience.

German Army: In Transit (Dub Ditch Picnic, 2015)

June 13, 2015 at 6:59 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Mysterious lo-fi creepers German Army have released dozens of tapes since 2011, with a growing number of CD-R and LP releases popping up occasionally. This 72-minute CD is the first factory-pressed compact disc release from the group (whose members are now identified as Peter Kris and Norm Heston), and it consists of tracks from tapes on Hobo Cult, Chondritic, Balaten, & Dub Ditch Picnic, mostly from around 2012-2013. All of the tracks here explore murky Cabaret Voltaire/Residents/Suicide territory, with spooky vocals, haunted drum machines, and plenty of delay and echo whenever possible. There’s 27 tracks here and a lot of them are a minute or two long, some of them explore similar sounds. If you’re looking for something more melodic, “Alms For Arms” has a pretty nice tense atmosphere and drum machine rhythm. “Twisted Lichen” starts out with backwards vocals, then they turn into this slowed-down detached melody, along with some bizarre disconcerting sound elements which fit together loosely. “Clan Bride” is probably the noisiest track here, starting out with a subterranean drum machine rhythm and more slow vocals, and then getting drenched in layers of propane-ignited guitar. “Mirror Analyst” is basically just a different mix of “Twisted Lichen” (this one sounds a little tinnier). “Pivot” is a cool minute-long gamelan loop experiment. “Holocene Epoch” is a hypnotic, dubby techno-ish track. “Human Cow” is a short Container-like drum machine experiment. “Deep Wall” is a cool trippy track with some sort of slowed down guided meditation sample, over a loop that oddly reminds me of some of Fred Thomas’ more tape manipulative stuff. “Malaria” is another experiment placing festering noise on top of queasy, wavering tape loops and spoken vocals. “Evening Gold” has an oddly clear piano-like melody on top of weird gremlin-like vocals and smashed up sounds. “Colony” has a mutated exotica feel, sort of like that Mike Cooper album on Room40. “Journey Into Speech” stretches out to 6 1/2 minutes of distorted vocals and rumbling beats. “Transcript of Tongue” ends the disc with more slowed down speech and ominous synths. There’s way too many tracks on here to go through all of them, but this disc offers a generous sampling of German Army’s expansive repertoire of disconcerting post-industrial sludge.