October 4, 2014 at 11:02 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Dead Milkmen: Pretty Music For Pretty People
Philadelphia’s greatest band ever delivers their second album this decade, after taking a decade and a half off (their last album was 1995’s
Stoney’s Extra Stout (Pig), after which they broke up, took up other projects, and bassist Dave Blood tragically killed himself in 2004). Self-released, as was their last album, and they put a lot of care into the packaging, and they include the lyrics, which of course is great. Musically, it sounds like the Milkmen, basically; some of it is uptempo punk rock, but there’s slower, sometimes more serious songs, and a little bit more synth than I remember hearing on their older albums (lead singer Rodney Anonymous is a huge industrial fan, and he even namechecks digital hardcore band Ambassador21 on “Make It Witchy”, and Mute Records flagship act The Normal on “Dark Clouds Over Middlemarch”). A lot of the time with this band, the melodies and even verses seem kind of secondary, as if they just came up with a great/funny song title and just built everything else around it, but sometimes that’s all you need. Some things just need to be said, and they just come out and say it, and it’s great. As with the last album, they’re even more pissed off with the world as ever; the title track starts off the album blasting the music industry and “Big Words Make The Baby Jesus Cry” is about the world being brainwashed into being Christian and dumb. “Mary Anne Cotton (The Poisoner’s Song)”, “Somewhere Over Antarctica”, and “Sanitary Times” are the more serious songs that one of the other band members (probably Joe Jack Talcum, or maybe Dean Clean) sings lead on instead of Rodney; “Mary Anne Cotton” is kind of psychedelic folk-pop, “Somewhere Over Antarctica” is a bit darker, like The Church or something, and “Sanitary Times” is a darkly humorous string-synth-laden tune about selling tombs. “Streetlamps/Walking to Work” starts out as a peppy surf instrumental, then turns into a song about ignoring tragedy and not saving people’s lives because of being late to work. “All You Need Is Nothing” puts being poor into perspective; if you have nothing, what is really essential, what can you live without? Love is expensive, it isn’t even part of the question. “Hipster Beard”, somewhat disappointingly, is not actually a song about hipster beards, a subject the Milkmen surely have something amusing to say about. But this is a band that named an original song “I Am The Walrus”, so they’re not immune to playing with your expectations with their song titles. I can’t say there’s anything as astonishingly brilliant/hilarious as “Stuart” on here, nor is there another insanely catchy/funny ditty like “Punk Rock Girl”, but really, it doesn’t matter because the fact that the Dead Milkmen are still around, and they still write Dead Milkmen songs and sound like the Dead Milkmen, and they still play live and tour, means that something is right in this world. I’ve said this before, but my appreciation and respect for this band has only increased as I’ve aged.
October 4, 2014 at 10:31 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Girl Tears: Tension
I wanted to hate this because of the band name, but it’s actually kind of refreshing, if only because every song here is a minute or less. The entire album is 9 minutes long, and most of the songs stop abruptly like they’re being cut off mid-thought. Fast, noisy, almost goth-y garage punk (deep spooky voice w/ reverb). “Never Again” and “Tension” are the most hardcore-fast songs. “Lobotomy” has a drumstick-click intro and some tom fills towards the end, so that’s the closest you get to a drum solo (or any kind of solo) on this album. The whole album is over before you can even think, so you might as well just play the whole thing several times in a row.
October 4, 2014 at 9:57 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Lejsovka & Freund: Mold On Canvas LP
Trouble Books are no more, but from their ashes rise this “DIY shitty classical” project. The deconstructed sheet music staff lines on the cover perfectly describe the music, as it sounds like pianos and bowed string instruments transformed and glitched out with computer technology. The traditional instruments may be approached in an amateur way, but they’re explored with enthusiasm. The all-necessary glitches and digital effects they’re bathed in create unique sounds that wouldn’t have been created using traditional means. “From Royal Ave” is the highlight, building layers of gorgeous strings, and then adding some digital debris on top and glitching everything out at the end. “Tangram Cat” is shorter and leaves the piano sounds relatively unscathed, except for some ethereal glowing at the end. But then there’s more pieces like “Moonshadow Bath Song”, which take more heartwarming layers of strings playing lovely melodies, and then just fries them in swarming distortion, and ends with some spare piano notes floating over the decaying sea of digital wreckage. The album ends with a 10-minute journey called “Ah Shit, My Heart Is Full”, building layers of minimalist piano, strings and woodwinds, adding synth arpeggios and digital voices, swirling everything around with effects, and then stripping it down to gentle piano.
October 4, 2014 at 9:18 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Wata Igarashi: Junctions EP 12″
4-track techno EP, mostly of steady not-too-fast tempos. “Flare” builds up to some echo-covered acid, but the real attention-grabber here is the UFO abduction techno of “Hitodama”, which basically sounds like being summoned onto an alien spacecraft through a shaft of light, with a beat. “Junctions” is stuttering and shifting, constantly gazing around while the beats buckle. “The Summon” is more long-dark-tunnel techno, but sounds more like it belongs on a dancefloor than an alien seance.
October 4, 2014 at 8:40 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Jeremiah R.: Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit 12″
Very Drexciyan/Arpanet-esque electro. In fact, Gerald Donald (rather, Heinrich Mueller) provided a remix for this artists’ previous 12″, so this is absolutely legit. “Exile” starts the EP in a spacey electro orbit, and then “Illuminated Process” is perfect high-speed nightcruising electro. “Infinite Skies” has a deep pool of bass underneath the ticking beats, and “Interdimensional Beings” backs deep kicks and snares with sparse synth pads and stuttering melodies. The EP’s title track closes things out, more gliding high-speed electro cruising with some off-kilter moods and noises.
September 28, 2014 at 10:01 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Ensemble Economique: Melt Into Nothing
Brian Pyle’s Ensemble Economique project continues to refine the gloomy goth-psych-pop sound he’s been creating for years, and damn near perfected with last year’s Not Not Fun-released
Fever Logic L.P. This one starts out with “Your Lips Against Mine”, which right away sounds like it should be the theme song to some sort of goth romance movie. So many layers of bubbling guitars, synths and sensuous vocals. “Make-Out In The GDR” continues this mostly instrumentally, with darkened chamber drums beating and vintage 4AD-like guitars. “Never Gonna Die” shrouds organ and vocals in caverns of reverb and has a drum machine shuddering along, and even thunder crashing sounds. The melodies on this album aren’t far away from the melodies on
Fever Logic, but it sounded so good last time that it’s hardly a complaint that this is so similar. The album ends with “Melt Into Me”, a coda of spooky heartbeats and rain-swept echoed whispers.
September 27, 2014 at 5:39 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Love Inks: Exi
Love Inks are an Austin trio who make minimal electronic indie-pop music similar to bands like Young Marble Giants. The songs generally consist of nothing more than a softly thumping drum machine, a bass guitar line, softly strummed electric guitar (or sometimes very soft organ tones) and ethereal, double-tracked vocals. It’s the type of music where every sound and every lyric counts. Deceptively simple, but it works, and the songs stick with you on repeated listens. Sometimes all it takes is just a phrase like “I don’t hear that” repeated in a nice melody with some pleasing tones (as on “Don’t Hear That”) to do it for you. It almost sounds like they’re suggesting more, but you really can’t imagine them adding more to their sound without making it sound overdone. It doesn’t sound like unfinished demos, it sounds complete. A few songs (“New West”, “Regular Lovers”) have crucial touches of sensuality, and “Sky Machine” has some cool shimmering tremolo guitar effects. “Text Message” is the lone instrumental track here, with abrasive guitar up against a high-pitched sinewave wall, and beats nervously shuddering in the corner. “Spirit Communication” ends the album with a slow jam, with the beats more spaced out and lots of echo on the snare drum, which doesn’t seem to appear on the rest of the album, and is emphasized here to make an impact.
September 19, 2014 at 2:56 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa: Savage Imagination
Second collaboration album between former Ponytail guitarist and J-Pop starlet. Has the types of lush, circular guitar looping arrangements you’d expect from Wong’s solo stuff, plus the drum machines and vocals of his more recent work. Although it actually seems a little lighter and less mind-bending than some of his last few efforts, but it’s subtle, it takes time to listen to it and absorb everything. It’s definitely not as poppy as Takako songs like “Fantastic Cat”, so don’t expect that type of a cutesy sugar rush. The vocals actually aren’t that noticeable for much of this album, they seem to function as an instrument rather than for lyrical purposes. The tracks all flow together and it’s hard to really pick out highlights, but “Dioramasaurus” has a guitar melody that sums up the album pretty well and ends up burrowing its way into your head. “Dancing Venus Of Aurora Clay” starts with lots of clapping before the guitars spiral in and the drum machine kicks in. “Dimension Dive” is a 3-part suite, and part 1 has another guitar melody similar to “Dioramasaurus”, but with lighter beats. “Luminescent Earth Traveler” has some vintage-sounding drum machine beats mixed in, along with lots of really playful sounds. The whole album is fun and relaxing and enjoyable, and they’re playing the
MOCAD on November 9, so that will be incredible, and a rare opportunity to see Minekawa, I have no clue if she’s ever played Detroit before.
September 13, 2014 at 11:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
M.B.: An Hour With…
Maurizio Bianchi is one of those hyper-prolific artists whose music I’ve always admired but never really delved into, simply because there’s so much of it, so much of it is so hard to find, and how do I really know where to start, or stop? But that’s about to change because now that I’m sitting down and listening to this album, I’m just blown away by how incredible it is. The 4 compositions on here are named by their track lengths (which do add up to exactly an hour), and from the beginning, “Seventeen Minutes And Fifty Seconds” is just hard to turn away from. Every time I listen to it on different speakers and different volume levels, I hear something different. Sometimes it’s icy microscopic glitch, sometimes it’s fluttery insects in thick night air. It doesn’t seem to change throughout much of its duration, but it pulls you in, and then when it does start to shuffle up around the 11 minute mark, it feels like everything’s starting to fly around you and gets you prepared for something chaotic to happen. “Twelve Minutes And Thirteen Seconds” is a long trawl through some dark haunted passageway, with all manners of tints and distortions fraying the edges of your vision. “Eight Minutes And Twenty-Seven Seconds” is tense dark ambient drone, which seems to incubate a glowing dismal orb, with fluid radioactive sparks squirming from it. “Twenty-One Minutes And Twenty-Nine Seconds” has crystalline sound loops which sort of outline a melody, with a calm but vaguely stiff and metallic drone beneath. The sounds very subtly shudder and vibrate if you pay attention, but it’s easy to just get lost and let it all wash over you. The blurb on the back of the jewel case sums up how this album is meditative and relaxing, but at the same time sort of rough. It uses the term “conscientious entertainment”, and questions what to do after you’re done listening and meditating to this album. Good question. It’s not accurate to call this noise or power electronics or industrial, but it’s not a simple ambient or drone record either. All I know is that this is going to sound perfect this winter, and not in some sort of cliched predictable “frostbitten cold bleakness” way.
September 13, 2014 at 10:16 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Charlatan: Local Agent LP
Newest full length from Digitalis founder Brad Rose’s current main project. Murky bubbly synth sounds, with a definite rhythm but less “techno” sounding than previous Charlatan stuff. Still gets pretty noisy, as on the end of “Blur Suit”. “Lonely City” has a pretty sweet, gelatinous ooze-smeared Detroit techno melody and bass pulse, without an actual beat. “Skulled” has more showers of fractalized modular synths over a swampy bass pulse. “The Cure” opens with thrashing, sloppy noise bursts and only gets crazier and more corrupted from there, until some sort of awkward beat emerges halfway through. Utterly bizarre and fascinating. “Double Blind Host” is another track with sort of an awkward misplaced-sounding beat, or rather a couple rhythms superimposed on each other which sort of fit. It’s definitely the most “minimal synth” sounding track here, if that means anything, which it most likely doesn’t. “Antiprism” has another lurching synth rhythm over gritty drum machine beats, with more synth detritus stumbling along afterwards. And “Nightmaring”, be glad that slithering monster is just in your dreams and not your life. Super incredible stuff as always, recommended to those interested in both vintage experimental electronic music and the way-out-there side of abstract dance music.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 