August 1, 2014 at 9:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The 442’s: s/t
As the map and compass inside the CD packaging clearly show, this band is charting their own course. It’s hard to even know what to file them under, as the string quartet format suggests 21st century classical, but they draw influence from jazz, folk, Gypsy music, Irish reels, and a multitude of other influences. Really tight, complex musicianship on all acoustic instruments. The accordion and piano on “Great Blue C” are really nice. “Heston’s” is pretty. “Social JustUs” has a nice counterpoint between accordion and multiple string instruments, which are sometimes panned left-right. “Chime” does indeed have some chimes. “Chelsea” has some nice whistling. Honestly, the tracks with vocals kind of turn me off. Otherwise, it’s an intriguing, adventurous album. Available on
Bandcamp.
July 27, 2014 at 10:58 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Kodomo: Patterns & Light
Newest album from Brooklyn-based IDM artist Kodomo. Definitely on the more melodic/rhythmic end of the Warp Records-influenced spectrum, very reminiscent of artists like Plaid, but more risk-taking than any of their recent works. Some acoustic guitars and other non-electronic sounds incorporated into the mix. “Impromptu” is a good way to get acquainted with this artist’s sound, it’s a bit more steady and danceable. “Red Giant” is fast and drum’n’bass-y. Other tracks are a bit more downtempo, but “Blue Shifter” picks up the tempo a little and has some marimba-type sounds. “Infinity Divided” has some vocal sounds, hard to tell if they’re real or synthesized. “Holographic” has more trancey melodies and I’d rather skip it. “Losing Your Way” is the “pop” song I guess, it has chopped up vocals, acoustic guitars, and a knocking future-garage beat.
July 27, 2014 at 5:36 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Miami Dolphins: Becky
Spazzy art-punk/noise-rock with female vocals, a la Melt-Banana. Instead of being as screechy/screamy, the singer here seems a bit more ethereal, and some of the songs here seem a little more straightforward and melodic. Lyrics are hard to understand, and hard to read in the lyric booklet, but they’re clean. “Dandelion” is a pretty good 48-second summation of what this band does, with super-spazzy drumming, noisy guitars, and alternately screaming and pretty vocals. Also, beware the hidden track at the end of closing track “Citrus”, which is surprisingly a pleasant, brief guitar/bass instrumental.
July 21, 2014 at 12:09 am | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Laraaji: Celestial Music 1978-2011
File under “Things FACT Magazine convinced me I needed in my life.” This 3xLP set was easily the best non-food purchase I made in Toronto last month. Of course I’d been aware of Laraaji because of his collaborations with Eno and Blues Control, but I never delved into his solo works. The first half of this collection focuses entirely on excerpts from his self-released tapes dating back to the late ’70s, and there is just so much mindblowing stuff here. The zither seems like the type of instrument that I’d enjoy pretty much any music that’s created on it, but this sort of ambient meditation music is just so otherworldly and unique. So many strange sounds I can’t place or figure out how he’s making them. But what gets me more than anything else are the songs where he sings. “Vision Song Suite” is 6 minutes of brief drum machine + zither avant-pop vignettes, and I want to hear several entire albums of this stuff. Literally the only thing I can compare it to in any way is Arthur Russell’s solo cello stuff, just in how he takes one instrument, a minimal drum track, his voice, and effects, and just crafts these incredible melodies and strange sounds, and it just deeply resonates with me. One of the things I enjoy best about music is when you hear an artist that just makes you stop and think, what possessed this person to create something like this? When you sit down and pick up an instrument and write a song, usually this is not what comes out. What sets this artist apart and makes him create something so utterly unique, and where can I get much, much more of it? So yeah, that’s what this is making me feel like. But besides the music from home-recorded self-released cassette tapes, there’s plenty of samplings from Laraaji’s higher-profile recordings. The transition from the cassette fidelity to warm, expansive studio ambiance is jarring, not so much on the track with Eno (which was recorded in 1980), but on the 1986 track with Jonathan Goldman, which sounds more like I would expect something from Eno’s Ambient series to sound like. The tracks with Michael Brook have a bit more of a running-stream nature feel to them, and “Laraajingle” is a downtempo trip-hop mantra recorded with Japanese group Audio Active. Bill Laswell’s recognizable bass sound is present on “Airbass”, an ambient drone from a 1998 Divination album. A couple of Laraaji’s newer self-released recordings appear towards the end, including the surprising ambient techno shuffle of “Staccato”. The entire last vinyl side is taken up by a 17-minute track from Laraaji’s collaboration LP with Blues Control, which I seriously which I’d picked up when I DJ’ed at a show they played in Ann Arbor a couple years ago.
Laraaji: Remixes 12″
This whole collection is amazing and has been soothing me during some stressful times lately. There’s a few more recent Laraaji reissues that I need to look into, when I have money to buy records again. But I let myself buy the remix 12″ that also came out this year, because I’m a huge fan of everyone on it. Bee Mask is a perfect match to remix Laraaji, blending nature-like tones and bouncy electronic rhythms with space and a few crucial noise swarms. Ela Orleans goes a more poppy route, surrounding kalimba melodies with gently trippy breakbeats, and incorporating vocals (her own as well as Laraaji’s, I think) as the track progresses. Sun Araw takes “Laraajingle” and turns into an even trippier, more abstract bit of blown-out dub, and reminds me that I still haven’t heard the newest Sun Araw album yet. Motion Sickness Of Time Travel takes a loop from “Space Choir” and repeats it in a way that it snaps back to the beginning and initially made me think the record was skipping, and slowly adds more synths over 8 minutes until getting choked by distortion at the end. Totally inconsistent with Laraaji’s music, but still a really powerful contrast. Looks like All Saints released an entire series of newer artists remixing older artists, and usually I hate stuff like that, but this 12″ is definitely ace, and I’m really curious what Hieroglyphic Being and Peaking Lights remixing Roedelius sound like.
July 20, 2014 at 7:56 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Soft As Snow: Glass Body
Swedish electro-pop, reminiscent of The Knife, Zola Jesus, witch-house (during the downtempo tracks), LA Vampires and Not Not Fun lo-fi bedroom disco in general. “Glass Body” has UK garage type beats. “Halo Heart” starts slow and spooky, switches to more uptempo beats in the last few minutes. “All Our Beasts” is a slow noisy spooky interlude. “Black Birds” is another slow spooky witchy track. “Drops Of Armour” starts with cascading synths, kind of falls apart and gets sloppy after a minute or two but comes back, and then has dubby conga-heavy 4/4 beats. The final track is a more distorted, echo heavy mix of “Halo Heart” by Asher Levitas.
July 20, 2014 at 7:53 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Magicicada: Wrack With Ruin
Really cool fractured scrambled noise collage. Not without rhythm and beats, but it’s jumbled and discordant and won’t make obvious sense. Black Dice fans will be all over this. “In League With Ugly Face” is the most “fun” track here, “Except Sioux” has clicky IDM beats and overblown feedback, “My Fault” has some mumbling underneath and has some joyously confused noises smashed together. “Blossoming Snares Of The Earth” has the type of crashing snare drums alluded to in the title. Seriously just a fun, noisy, confusing, fun album.
July 15, 2014 at 11:05 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Esteban Adame: Day Labor
Los Angeles native Esteban Adame has been playing keyboards in various Underground Resistance-affiliated projects (most notably Los Hermanos and Galaxy 2 Galaxy) since 2004, and has released a handful of solo 12″s on labels such as Motech and his own Ican Productions. This is his first solo full-length, on Dutch label/distributor EPM Music. The album embraces several flavors of late-night Detroit sounds. It starts with a bass-heavy, blinking ambient intro track called “Rise And Shine”. “Out To Get It” balances jittering hi-hats and floating synths with calmer moments, all on top of a steady 4/4 beat. “The Grind” is more of a gritty, tense burner, with meteor-shower synths sprinkling over everything. “Paraphernalia” is where we start getting into topsy-turvy melodic loops and ghettotech vocal samples. Seems a bit lo-fi, not quite in an ’80s Dance Mania way, but maybe like a smoothed-out homage to something like that. “Handed Down” heads straight into Galaxy 2 Galaxy territory, melodically, with swinging house beats and funky keyboard lines, and plenty of smooth soloing. “Home Sick” is another standout, with a haunting synth melody, slapping beats and echoed piano riffs. “The Reason” is vintage UR in contemplative mode, with lots of spacey whistles and a forlorn, distressed melody. “What I Really Think” is a retreat to a more singular type of track, focusing on a beat and a few sounds that don’t really move from their spots much, but seems to slowly build and expand a bit. “Another Day” sounds a bit similar to “The Reason”, except it’s brighter and more optimistic sounding. “Friday Night DUI” ends the album with a slinky soundtrack for starting your weekend with a cruise around Detroit, while intoxicated.
July 13, 2014 at 10:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Pursuit Grooves: Modern Day Minerals tape
The newest Pursuit Grooves album has been available on
Bandcamp for a few months now, but I found a copy of the cassette at June Records when I visited Toronto for NXNE, and I couldn’t be happier. This tape shows the now-Toronto-based producer doing what she does best, with unconventional beats and rhythms, mysterious dialogue samples, and soothing synth tones. A few tracks flirt with guitar-like sounds and harder-edged beats, but not in an overwhelmingly hard way. “Carbon Elements” rides skipping beats over swerving bass, sounding like it’s suspended in air, high above the ground, but still with a consistent rhythm. “Traces Of” has a dubby echo riddim and sublime organ, and a voice popping up that says “that doesn’t change a thing.” “Gem” closes the album with a more straightforward drum machine sound, rather than the found-sound rhythmic patterns that most of the tracks are constructed from, and voice that simply intones “beautiful”, which is all that really needs to be said. So good. Also worth mentioning (also on the same label, and also which I found at June Records) is SlowPitch’s
Dimly Lit Existence tape, which features a Pursuit Grooves vocal cameo, and is a different take on abstract downtempo rhythms, with dusty scratching, cinematic pacing and more mysterious dialogue samples, with an offbeat pop song (“Robotic Rain Cells”) thrown in for good measure.
July 13, 2014 at 8:05 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Bubblegum Octopus: Critters tape
I probably should’ve posted this before, but everything on the
Bubblegum Octopus Bandcamp is set to “name your price” for another day or so, so if you’re interested, you can grab a bunch of awesome releases for free.
Critters is the first physical BGO release in a while, and his first tape (as far as I know), and it looks like it’s
still available. It’s only 10 tracks and 20-something minutes, but it’s pretty packed with ideas and spazzy tempos and blippy melodies. Opener “Gems In The Dirt” takes its time to build, eventually settling on craggy splittering beats and high-pitched vocals. “Critters” starts with detuned Seinfeld bass slaps, then quickly descends into digital thrashing and growled vocals. A few tracks have hard-trance atmospherics, and others have choppy, obliterating drums and chiptune textures. “You Asperse Me” is surprisingly more straightforward grindcore than usual for the project. All awesome stuff, nobody really blends sweet, menacing and spazzy/unpredictable like BGO.
July 13, 2014 at 3:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Xeno & Oaklander: Par Avion
Wierd Records disintegrated a few years ago, so fortunately Xeno & Oaklander have aligned with the Ghostly empire for their newest work. The Brooklyn minimal-synth duo’s sound hasn’t changed much, which is fine because it’s perfect the way it is. I saw them at SXSW last year and their set seemed more like a continuous dance mix, which surprised me a bit, but their albums still consist of concise synth-pop songs of various tempos. “Sheen” and “Jasmine Nights” are the most straightforward 4/4 dance tracks, there’s some excellent speedier tracks (“Lastly”, “Nuage D’Ivoire”), but what stands out the most are the horror-atmospheric slow-jams: “Par Avion”, “Reflections” and “Providence” The latter 2 are short instrumentals, suggesting that this band should look into doing soundtrack work, if they haven’t already. Sean McBride’s voice is absent for most of the album, only appearing on the album’s first 2 tracks, as well as its last; otherwise Liz Wendelbo takes the lead, except for the instrumentals. I’ve listened to this dozens of times this week, it’s just so addicting and I never get tired of it. Now that they’re on Ghostly, maybe they’ll play in Michigan sometime soon? Please?
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The Answer Is In The Beat 